Why Is the Cleric Unfun?

[RigaMortus2]

Hi,

Clerics can be unfun, but they can be fun as well! Being able to heal is only half of what a cleric is about; being in position to heal when needed is important as well. And, clerics are good backup fighters, at least at low levels. Plus the role-playing opportunities are great.

Except when you WANT to wack an enemy with your Mace or you WANT to cast Flame Strike but you HAVE to cast Cure X Wounds instead... And that is the issue...

 

[Remathilis]

without changing the theme of this thread too much...

I hope highly for the melee ascendancy of rogues and the melee descendant of clerics. Since clerics are spellcasters, they shouldn't be better fighters than rogues (who are noncasters). So I hope the paragrim shifts from Fighter>Cleric>Rogue>Wizard to Fighter>Rogue>Cleric>Wizard it terms of combat (non-spellcasting)

 

[JohnSnow]

The cleric's "unfun" because he's been statted so that he can heal, spellcast and fight.

Ideally, a cleric should be operating at a much lower "burn" rate than a wizard. Why? Because he can do things in combat other than cast spells.

A wizard who gets into melee is wasting his time. A cleric is doing his job. Ignoring their role as "heal-bot" the cleric should be going into melee and casting the occasional spell to buff themselves or damage their opponent.

In OD&D, the cleric was a half-step between "fighting-man" and "magic-user" - the original hybrid class. They should NEVER have been the exclusive province over healing - which is what made them the "walking band-aid" class.

Out-of-combat healing should be different than in-combat healing. I'd venture to say that the former should only be limited "per character" (for realism reasons) whereas the latter should be far more restricted - forcing the cleric to sacrifice actions or "get the blessing of his deity." By the way, the latter could be modeled as "whenever the cleric rolls a 20, he has the blessing of his deity - allowing him to channel a wave of divine energy that can be used to heal an ally."

In 3e, the cleric has become such a primary caster that he can compete with the wizard. Ditto the druid. As such, I think it's finally time we did away with the notion of "no arcane healing" spells being a "balance issue." Want a wizard who heals? Play a druid. He also gets better armor, a better familiar (animal companion), and the ability to shapeshift. Personally, I'd like it if wizards gained the ability to provide out-of-combat magical healing.

Aside: do you suppose they dumped the druid class so that they can give wizards a decent ability to shapeshift like they SHOULD? After all, since they don't (usually) worship gods, why is a druid not just a different flavor of wizard?

 

[Daiba]

I've played a lot of clerics (and enjoyed them), and I have to say that it's all in how you present yourself. I.E., if I'm playing a philosophy cleric of Battle, or something like that, I'll bill myself as a warrior. If I'm playing a cleric if Heironeous, I'll call myself a paladin and structure the backstory around that kind of portrayal.

This next point applies to character creation in general: Take the mechanics and mold them to the character concept - never allow the crappy inherent flavor packaged with the game to impair your roleplaying and storycrafting experience...

The most fun I've ever had as a cleric was playing a half-orc with 5 intelligence who desperately wanted to be a priest of St. Cuthbert (but was denied entrance into the clergy due to his severely limited mental faculties). He was almost certainly incapable of parsing or consistently following a rigid dogma, but his heart was in the right place (and presumably, Cuthbert was understanding enough to grant him power for it). The other players quickly got used to the fact that he wasn't very bright and had a single combat strategy: "make himself big" and "smash". Healing was definitely an afterthought.

 

[Imp]

Here's my stab:

Clerics aren't fun – in current editions – because they're mandatory.

If having a representative of a god amongst the adventuring party was a rarer thing, they'd be a more exciting concept.

 

[RigaMortus2]

I wonder if Clerics are no longer going to be platemail wearers, and be cloth wearers. After all, that's how they are in World of Warcraft

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I have a totally different way of looking at this problem.

a) Everyone can use potions.

Yep. But wands are much cheaper and even very generous DMs would raise an eyebrow over a party where everyone was carrying 20 potions each. If the potion solution were adequate by itself, we'd see more of it. Obviously we can reduce the cost of potions and treat them similarly to how they work in some genre fiction where one drop does all the work.

b) Wands of cure light wounds once used rigorously turn hit points into a 'per encounter' resource, and this isn't good for the game. The problem isn't that you need arcane wands. It's that you shouldn't have divine wands. They aren't even in flavor anyway.

I agree that divine wands are a little silly or at least not encountered much in genre fiction/media. But healing, even back in 1e, was still often done per encounter in practice. We just rested for a day after every couple of encounters. It wasn't as crazy then as it is now because 1e and 2e had rather arbitrary damage and hit point scaling. We had fewer hit points ... which incidentally is another possible solution: increase the amount healed by these spells.

c) The game is heading too much toward 'every encounter should put significant pressure on the characters'. This leads to too much random death to begin with, and forces you to have a cleric to deal with the problem. It would be better if encounters usually challenged players incrementally except in climatic encounters.

I agree. It doesn't help that CR/EL is more art than science. Matching a party to an encounter is tricky. CR/EL are great tools; they give a DM a general estimate of encounter strength. But tools are all they are. I've regularly seen encounters rated as EL X where there's monsters in the next room also of EL X that will run to help the first group. That isn't two seperate EL X encounters! That's one encounter that becomes manageable into two if the party uses stealth and tactics. We're using the tools as guidelines and sometimes even as laws. That's isn't good. A real simple way around that is to just use easier monsters.

d) The Heal skill is way under used. .... (essentially, the heal skill as a 'per encounter' ability).

And it works OK! Thats what's in the NWN and NWN2 computer games. The use of the skill is offset by the cost of "healing kits". Cheaper than potions and they take time to use so they're not well suited for combat.

 

[Gort]

There are a bunch of people in this thread who seem to be insinuating that parties don't need a cleric, and that they're just a crutch of incompetent/bad players. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't particularly like having to wait for 3 weeks for my hitpoints to come back naturally every time I have a fight. There also seem to be insinuations that only bad players get hurt. (see the guy claiming that getting hurt is a player "mistake") Losing hitpoints is something that happens to adventurers every day, no matter how good they are. The fights are supposed to be challenging, after all.

 

[Celebrim]

There are a bunch of people in this thread who seem to be insinuating that parties don't need a cleric, and that they're just a crutch of incompetent/bad players.

I don't know if they are strictly necessary, but I also don't know why in 3.X you'd ever want a party without one. (Of course, I've also stated that its not clear in 3.X why you'd necessarily play anything else, or why you wouldn't want 2, 3, or 4 clerics either.) I do know that they are much more strictly necessary in 3rd than they were in 1st, largely because monsters hit more frequently and do more damage when they do compared to 1st.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't particularly like having to wait for 3 weeks for my hitpoints to come back naturally every time I have a fight.

It's at this point that you begin to lose me. In 3.X you heal with a night's sleep your character level worth of hit points, or double that if you rest all day. Even if you are barbarian with high CON and reduced to zero hit points, it isn't going to take 3 weeks to recover.

But that's just the beginning. With the Heal skill, you can double that rate of recovery. So, a 10th level party with a couple of people to tend wounds can recover 20 hitpoints a night, or 40 hit points in a day even without spells. So, unless you frequently have 10th level characters with 840 hit points, you should be fine in recovering back a significant portion of your health by resting.

Add to that a Paladin laying on hands, or a Druid's or Bard's healing ability (and maybe even something from a Ranger), plus an emergency potion or three, and you can make it without a Cleric.

But why would you want to?

There also seem to be insinuations that only bad players get hurt. (see the guy claiming that getting hurt is a player "mistake") Losing hitpoints is something that happens to adventurers every day, no matter how good they are.

Getting dropped to the point that minor healing and a night's rest doesn't resolve most of the problem is often bad luck or a mistake on someone's part (whether DM or player). But yeah, even good player's lose hit points.

The fights are supposed to be challenging, after all.

Strictly speaking, this isn't true in any edition. I always believe that the adventure as a whole is supposed to be challenging. But I rarely make an individual fight challenging unless its intended as some sort of climax.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I have no problem playing a character that heals or otherwise supports the group. Heck, bards are fun for me.

But I tend to avoid clerics because I don't like playing up the whole religious angle.