Why Is the Cleric Unfun?

[cougent]

Cougent - note, I said "Capability" not guarantee. If I'm at full hp's, the chances of me getting whacked in a single round are fairly low. That chance only increases with damage. So, in effect, by not healing the nickel and dime stuff, you are increasing the lethality of an encounter.

Generally not something other players are going to be happy with.

Cleric PC: Naw, you're only down 10 hp. Suck it up, I'm saving this Command spell.
DM: You take 47 damage. You have 47 hp's right?
Fighter PC: When I'm at full I do... :\

I will just say this, from reading all of your posts here it is obvious that you and I have vastly different interpretations of cleric abilities and values.

[long argument deleted]
We are never going to agree on this, way too far apart.

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.

This was the one that really made me go "Wow!", in your own words you are giving free will to only one class, everyone else has roles. I personally would hate that style of play, and yes you would hate me as a player too, but even though I like to play clerics and detest playing wizards... in your game I would play a wizard.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I don't get how anyone could watch another PC die in front of them, knowing they could have saved them with a few spells, and not have some bad feelings around the table.

Player1: "Why didn't you heal me before I died?"
Player2: "I didn't feel like it."

Player1: "He just did half my hp to me in one round!"
Player2: "Good luck with that. I cast righteous might."

???

 

[Wormwood]

I don't get how anyone could watch another PC die in front of them, knowing they could have saved them with a few spells, and not have some bad feelings around the table.

Which only underscores the point that some people shouldn't play clerics---yet the game demands someone must.

 

[roguerouge]

In your campaigns, does NO ONE ever go: "You... you... saved my life! My whole life... has been meaningless! Thank you. Truly, Pelor's gifts are the light of the world."

Or is everyone screaming medic?

I tend to think that when you take the sidekick for granted, you're inevitably going to get a surly sidekick.

 

[roguerouge]

Wouldn't it be funny if converted spells retained some "essence" from the original spell.

Cleric: There, I healed your wound.
Fighter: What the heck! There are &!@**# bugs crawling out of the scar!
Cleric: The spell was originally "Insect Plague"

That is awesome! (A cure spell powered by leeches would be another way of doing it.)

 

[Hussar]

Was that a TPK?

If not the party worked around it.

*snip*

So, it's only a failure if EVERYONE dies? Hrm. I have a somewhat different definition. It's only a success if everyone lives.

I will just say this, from reading all of your posts here it is obvious that you and I have vastly different interpretations of cleric abilities and values.

[long argument deleted]
We are never going to agree on this, way too far apart.


This was the one that really made me go "Wow!", in your own words you are giving free will to only one class, everyone else has roles. I personally would hate that style of play, and yes you would hate me as a player too, but even though I like to play clerics and detest playing wizards... in your game I would play a wizard.

Umm, what? You mean that no one expects the cleric to heal? No one expects the rogue to check for traps? No one expects the wizard to be artillery? I'm somehow imagining all of this? Haven't we had role definitions for the classes for about 20 or 30 years? It's not about giving the wizard free will. Good grief. Sorry, I guess I wasn't overly pedantic enough for the internet.

Jeez, talk about fixating on the minutia. :\

EVERY CLASS HAS A ROLE. How's that for clarity. EVERY class. But, part of the cleric's role is to play medic. That means he's going to be spending time helping other people do fun stuff, rather than do it himself.

Hey, people like playing the bard too. Some people enjoy playing support roles. But, in a RPG, deliberately designing things so that you require a particular role (support healer) to be filled makes it somewhat unpalatable.

The question was originally asked as to why the cleric is considered unfun. The basic answer is twofold: A. Clerics are pretty much required in most campaigns. B. Lots of people don't like playing support roles.

I fail to understand why this is difficult to understand.

 

[Zweischneid]

Jeez, talk about fixating on the minutia. :\

EVERY CLASS HAS A ROLE. How's that for clarity. EVERY class. But, part of the cleric's role is to play medic. That means he's going to be spending time helping other people do fun stuff, rather than do it himself.

Hey, people like playing the bard too. Some people enjoy playing support roles. But, in a RPG, deliberately designing things so that you require a particular role (support healer) to be filled makes it somewhat unpalatable.

The question was originally asked as to why the cleric is considered unfun. The basic answer is twofold: A. Clerics are pretty much required in most campaigns. B. Lots of people don't like playing support roles.

I fail to understand why this is difficult to understand.

Because people play RPGs not because of ROLES, but because of characters. Hence, people might feel drawn towards the opportunities of religious roleplay in a fantasy setting but get frustrated by a group constantly anyoning them with meta-game thinking on classes, roles, etc.., all of which should be secondary to providing a roleplay experience, not vice versa.

I fail to understand why this is difficult to understand.

 

[Henry]

I don't get how anyone could watch another PC die in front of them, knowing they could have saved them with a few spells, and not have some bad feelings around the table.

Probably because the spell was used previously to help the fighter resist about 40 points of fire damage in the previous combat, or will be used later to paralyze the main villain and allow the party to take him down. Alternately, that character should have used the potion of cure light or cure moderate wounds that he picked up previously, or had the cleric use the wand of cure light that he purchased for use, so that the cleric wouldn't have been taken advantage of. (I'm not talking about variants where there's little or no magic other than the spellcasters, I'm talking about "default" D&D as presented in the books.)

There's a lot of "what-ifs" that people could play with resource usage, just like the party that has harsh feelings at the wizard who uses web instead of his orb of force on the owlbear, and then the party faces a wraith two encounters later, where he saves half of them from level drain. It's just the breaks of playing the game itself -- deciding when to use something, and to best effect, is part of the fun to me.

 

[ShadowX]

I believe I have pontificated on this subject before on this board, but I will go at it again. Healing easily ranks as the most fragile of systems in an RPG. Too powerful and you have just created a slave class devoted to healing other people. Too weak and it becomes worthless. Third edition erred towards the latter side. The designers opted to have short and deadly combats and relatively weak heals. Now a cleric that heals wastes one of the few precious rounds in combat accomplishing very little. The Heal spell shifts the balance a little as it fulfills its purpose with some actual effectiveness. Furthermore, 3e supplied ample methods for out-of-combat healing. A Wand of Lesser Vigor costs 750GP and heals 550 hp. A far more effective use of resources in light of these facts is to have the powerful cleric and druid classes bring down the enemy faster and then use a cheap method of out-of-combat healing.

I am glad to hear that 4E is moving away from the incremental exhaustion of adventuring parties and more toward "every encounter pushes the party to the limit" design. Unfortunately, the latter requires that you move away from the ultra-deadly offensive salvos that occur in 3E combat. I want to see combats that last more rounds, more attrition focused. No more going "nova" in 2 round combats. Healing a comrade would be viable, but not obviously the best or worst option and it wouldn't occupy the vast majority of a cleric's time in battle because you would need it less often and combats would be longer. That would be the holy grail of RPG design.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Because people play RPGs not because of ROLES, but because of characters. Hence, people might feel drawn towards the opportunities of religious roleplay in a fantasy setting but get frustrated by a group constantly anyoning them with meta-game thinking on classes, roles, etc.., all of which should be secondary to providing a roleplay experience, not vice versa.

1) You don't have to play a cleric to play a religious PC.
2) The thinking is not meta-game at all.

Which only underscores the point that some people shouldn't play clerics---yet the game demands someone must.

What we do is have a healer NPC adventure with the party. That NPC is run by a player (passed around if desired - doesn't matter) and just heals/buffs/restores. That keeps a player from having to play a PC medic all the time.

Probably because the spell was used previously to help the fighter resist about 40 points of fire damage in the previous combat, or will be used later to paralyze the main villain and allow the party to take him down. Alternately, that character should have used the potion of cure light or cure moderate wounds that he picked up previously, or had the cleric use the wand of cure light that he purchased for use, so that the cleric wouldn't have been taken advantage of.

I'm talking about higher levels where heal is almost the only viable source of in-combat curative magic.