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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stevelabny" data-source="post: 2517256" data-attributes="member: 9298">I'm baffled. Using the PHB only, I have no idea why people think clerics are the most powerful class or why people constantly talk about how useful they are.I dislike the low-level spell choices of a cleric, and I  despise most of the high-level choices (especially the Symbol spells).  The handful of decent mid-level choices and the ability to fight in armor don't seem all that impressive to me compared to what other classes get. Turning is very powerful against undead (too much so?) but is obviously not useful in other circumstances. And if turning works, and most/all of the undead run or explode, thats not too exciting either. I've had limited experience playing a cleric, but just finished DMing a 20 level campaign. My gf played a cleric, and she is the type to play "defensively" and save all her spells for healing or a life-threatening emergency so that might also affect her opinion. She and others I've played with that have played a few diffeerent classes, agree that the cleric is just the least exciting as a straight class character.  (I think there are some good multi-class possibilities and enjoyed a gestalt cleric/wiz I was playing for a while) The aren't a lot of offensive spells and those that are, don't have that certain something that makes a spell fun.  The buffing spells are nice, but with many being rds or mins per level they won't always be options.  The spell list I most often see includes a few Heals and Harms, a Spell Resistance for everyone,  an automatic and annoying Heroes Feast every morning, and a few other set spells that barely ever change. The utility spells also seem to not be as varied as a wizards utility spells.It seems clerics can only tailor their lists to either to control/slay undead, or fight/banish outisders. They seem to be pretty two-trick, and don't provide any versatility. Which is probably the reason I dislike them, since I prefer bard/rogue jack-of-all-trades types. While I do think that the 3E clerics are better constructed than older editions (I have a few years experience with Basic / 1e) , I still don't think they're far enough removed from the stand-back-and-heal clerics. So why do you (or others you know) love clerics so much?Am I just missing all the cool things they can do? Am I missing uses for spells? Or is it just my personal play style that makes me dislike clerics?</blockquote>

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