Why Is the Cleric Unfun?

[Numion]

Bordering on being totally off topic here, but I have always felt that the "Fighter" should be a weak-strong class. Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, any specialized type of fighter should be strong, but plain Jim fighters not so much, and to get back closer to topic a "divine" fighter type (yes there is the paladin, but just bear with me) should be uber-strong. After all, he is divinely powered, not just muscular and well trained.

There's an easy fix here: just grant an XP bonus to paladins, like 20-30% and they'll be more powerful than Fighters. Not that you asked for one

I fully admit this is a personal prejudice of mine and probably has a lot to do with my fondness for clerics as warriors, instead of support medics.

That's also my view of clerics.

 

[FireLance]

Psychologically....

The cleric is un-fun because the human mind loves to change things. Changing things is active, controlling, manipulating, forcing the world to obey your commands.

The cleric's core schtick is to PREVENT change. To be reactive. To stop others from being able to control, manipulate, and use others. It's the exact opposite of what the human brain naturally delights in doing. It's important. It's effective. But being the cleric means being the "buzzkill," to keep the status quo, to stop interesting things from happening.

Psychologically, that's a lot less fun.

I mean, what would you rather do? Rend flesh from those who oppose you with arcane power? Or repeatedly hit the "undo" button and take back the rending that others do to you?

I must say that's a rather interesting perspective. As previously mentioned, I like clerics, and it's possible that one of the reasons why I like them is that I see them as active "doers" rather than reactive "undoers". To me, healing and restoration is as much an act of change as is just as active as harming and destroying ("Can we fix it?" "Yes, we can!" ). However, I can see how other people might view things differently and find clerics to be less fun as a result.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I must say that's a rather interesting perspective. As previously mentioned, I like clerics, and it's possible that one of the reasons why I like them is that I see them as active "doers" rather than reactive "undoers". To me, healing and restoration is as much an act of change as is just as active as harming and destroying ("Can we fix it?" "Yes, we can!" ). However, I can see how other people might view things differently and find clerics to be less fun as a result.

Well, subtraction is just backwards addition, but people naturally do addition MUCH better than subtraction. Ditto multiplication vs. division.

An', yeah, if you can somehow see the cleric as active, rather than reactive, you can get around that little mental block. But healing, at least (and most see clerics as the healers) is inherently reactive -- you don't need a cleric unless something is going wrong already.

I'm a fan of clerics, too, but I expressly prefer the kind that convert by the sword, the kind with ideological axes to grind. I'm not a huge fan of playing Mr. Fix-It for the team, or even of playing Mr. Buff-It for the team. I'm a bigger fan of the role-playing opportunities for a religious zealot.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

Our games have always had hard-hitting monsters in every fight, so Shield Other has killed several clerics. Now no one will cast it, or even memorize it.

In my Iron Heroes game, half the players gave their characters Resilient Toughness, so they can shift reserve points and heal themselves relatively quickly in combat. They're still stuck in the 'we need a healer' mode. I revised and adjusted how magic works in IH, to make it a viable tool, though not quite 100% reliable, but still no one will touch it.

Even though I'm hammering the party to within an inch of their lives, not having a healbot hasn't made play any less fun. Even though pretty much all the players are power gamers and try to squeeze as much damage out per round as they can. (often by dumping all their defense to get more attack bonus, then dumping attack to to get more damage, and then wondering why they're getting hurt so much. we're talking lvl 1 commoners with crossbows are making pincushions out of them )

My last experience as a cleric lasted for all of 2 levels. (to 2nd level, actually) We had a second cleric in the party, a dedicated healer build. So I tried to buff the party, and all was good for a time, until the DM asked me something about my god, and it was some old converted obscure module with a long list of deities, and I said 'the war one' and the DM said 'you don't remember the name of your god? no spells for you today'
So, my cleric walked away and became a duskblade.

A couple of things I think would make the cleric more fun to play:

1. If healing scaled better. Iron Heroes has a sample healing potion, and it heals 4 hit points per hit die of the person that drinks it. My party has a few of those floating around.

2. Reserve Points are a must. Reserve Points - Cure Light Wounds wands = quicker out of combat healing. No more 'how many hit points are you down?' ... 'okay, so that's 8 charges off this wand, oh it only has 5 left, so I break out the next wand...' :\

3. Short term swift action buffs and/or heals. Now some of the little things everyone wants the cleric to do don't impact doing cool stuff.

4. Oh, and fix anything that says 'heals you up to half' and kick it to the curb. Healing up to half is just asking to get one-shotted in the surprise round. It happened so many times to us. 'Heal to full' and 'encounter-based resources' = much better, IMO.

I'm running a 4 person lvl 2 Iron Heroes party through a D&D 3.5 lvl 4 module, and adding more monsters/warm bodies per encounter and enjoying it all, without having killed anyone, only disabled a couple at some point or another, and only one person has even gone unconscious. (at like -5 hit points, he rolled poorly, but a good first aid check got him up and running again) Though I use much better death and dying rules that I borrowed from a message board somewhere, possibly here, been a while since I found it.

I've tried to be a cleric a few times, but stock cleric = not fun.
And it gets worse when the CRs get high enough that monsters are pretty much auto-hitting against anyone that isn't specifically built as a high AC dodge monkey. Then there's no choice but to fall into bandage mode and try to stay ahead of the hp bleed out..

 

[Kahuna Burger]

To me, healing and restoration is as much an act of change as is just as active as harming and destroying ("Can we fix it?" "Yes, we can!" ).

Bob the Cleric...