Why Is the Cleric Unfun?

[DandD]

Give every class the ability to heal, and make it so that the Cleric isn't a divine mage anymore. That's all that is needed.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Clerics are fine. It's the other players that suck.

Hell is other people.

 

[frankthedm]

Buh? What does this have to do with the subject? How is Cleric=Healbot even remotely related to power gaming issues?

Very closely actually. Clerics were made strong characters because Wotc assumed a good portion of that power was supposed to be used up healing the party in the standard set up {Fighter, Cleric, Rouge, Wizard]. They got 9 levels of spells as a primary caster, know every spell on their list, get to cast them in full armor, and they have 3/4th’s BAB [practically Full BAB after 9th level if they choose]. The 2 domains can drastically empower their abilities and for every drop of character power rogues lost against the undead, the cleric gained.

For all this, they were expected to be the medic and support combatant, which their spell list compliments VERY well. And to make the job easier, they don’t even have to prepare their healing spells provided they are not evil.

A powergamer come along, looks at all the goodies the cleric gets and screams “GIMMIE!”, ignoring the responsibilities all that power brings with it. He burns the healing that should have protecting the lives of party members on the mediocre attack spells so he can *think* he nukes like a wizard and then he torches his spell stack to buff up beyond a barbarian’s attack power. After he burns out and wants to rest after 10 rounds in game, he wonders why folks thought it was his job to prevent their characters from dying, believes other character classes are weak compared to his own and can’t fathom why anyone thinks there is something wrong with the system.

 

[Driddle]

A powergamer come along, looks at all the goodies the cleric gets and screams “GIMMIE!”, ignoring the responsibilities all that power brings with it. ... After he burns out and wants to rest after 20 rounds in game, he wonders why folks thought it was his job to prevent their characters from dying and can’t fathom why anyone thinks there is something wrong with the system.

Interesting. One guy wants to do everything, while the other guy(s) expect him to fulfill a very specific, narrow role.

In this case, I'd say the fault lies on both sides of the table. No one has any respect for cooperative play balanced against individual style.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Interesting. One guy wants to do everything, while the other guy(s) expect him to fulfill a very specific, narrow role.

In this case, I'd say the fault lies on both sides of the table. No one has any respect for cooperative play balanced against individual style.

The problem is that against hard encounters you need 4 specific roles fulfilled in 3rd edition:
Someone who does damage
Someone to heal and increase the power of the party
Someone who has enough hit points to take a couple of hits and not die
Someone to disadvantage the enemies, take some out of the combat and do area of effects

It isn't a coincidence that these ended up as the 4 roles in 4th ed.

Without one of those, your party will lose against SOME hard encounters. It depends which one you are missing and the nature of the encounters as to which ones will be hard. For example, against a lot of small creatures, you can do without a defender. The hit quick with area of effect tactic will likely win against them before you need someone to take the damage.

However, I think it's reasonable to expect at least one of the party members to fulfill the healer/leader role since it will be needed against a lot of encounters. If the only cleric in the group is not going to fulfill it then who will? When the fighter yells out "I just took 120 damage this round and they can do it again next round. I'm down to 20 hitpoints and won't survive. I need at least 110 points of healing THIS round." and the cleric yells out "Sorry, I'm not that type of cleric." and the whole party drops dead, then whose fault is it?

But I think that's the point. Some people don't want their actions to be decided for them simply because someone will die next round unless they heal 80% of the time.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Pre-Heal, it's quite hard to make a combat healer cleric in 3e. You need feats and magic items from splatbooks such as Augment Healing or Ring of Mystic Healing and you're still not that good at it. The core cleric is probably best as a self-buffing melee damage dealer, especially if you use unerrated Righteous Might and Divine Favor. His healing and condition cures, such as Restoration, are best used outside of combat. And he has some good situational buffs such as Protection From Evil and Freedom of Movement, also best cast outwith combat.

 

[R_kajdi]

This is a mistaken assumption. It's not a case of doing it "right or wrong". No matter how you play your cleric, the other players at the table expect you to heal them. The same way that we expect the rogue to scout/search for traps, the fighter to splat things and the wizard to cover pretty much everything else.

For me, faced with a PC who refused to heal would result in the character getting dumped off at the first opportunity and a new character brought in who wants to actually play on the team. Like I said above, it's a social contract issue. The cleric (or druid) is the only character that can heal. Why should a party get screwed over just so you can avoid doing the one thing that only you can do?

This whole mentality of "a class has to be played this way" seems a bit off to me. I mean, why is it so much worse for the healing situation to have a cleric who doesn't play a heal-bot as opposed to a character that doesn't do healing at all? Also, doesn't this really mean that one of the big cleric decisions (channel positive or negative energy) really can only go one way. I know my personal favortie cleric I ever played was a negative channeler (Wee Jas) It was a bit of a different choice, but everyone was aware of it in the party so it worked.

Just being a cleric and being capable of using CLW wands really means that at moderate level you can heal after combat. The solution is in a party without a lot of combat healing to be a little more cautious in combats, since you can't on someone being able to give you back 50+ hp in a round if you are really getting mauled. With the above mentioned character, I think I had something like 20-25% of my spells every day memorized as heals. So I saved combat heals to where they were really needed, and used a CLW wand while out of combat to heal people up. Would you really basically say to that you should drop that character off at the nearest town, in favor of a more generic one? Seems sort of mean spirited to me-- I mean, I'm not out there complaining about the wizard's spell load. Why should I get a bunch of flack if I'm not heal optimized?

 

[howandwhy99]

Clerics are generally unfun for those who want to hack & slash. Whether by sword or magic, the cleric isn't going to out do the Fighter or Wizard at their specialties.

However, Clerics are capable of both swordplay and casting spells. And their spell selection puts them in a position where the other members of the group are greatly benefited for having Clerics around.

Not to mention, if you can heal yourself magically (instead of waiting days to recuperate) you are Mr Hard To Kill. You can last as long as your spells can last generally.

In 4e, I imagine Clerics may be akin to Trolls. (i.e. Infinite healing == Regeneration)

 

[frankthedm]

Clerics are generally unfun for those who want to hack & slash. Whether by sword or magic, the cleric isn't going to out do the Fighter or Wizard at their specialties.

Actually, by lighting thier spell stack on fire clerics CAN out do the fighters at fighting. Thats one of the big issues with the cleric.

 

[howandwhy99]

Actually, by lighting thier spell stack on fire clerics CAN out do the fighters at fighting. Thats one of the big issues with the cleric.

The Cleric in 3e is far and away the most powerful class in the game. That was a mistake.