Why Is the Cleric Unfun?

[ThirdWizard]

I believe most encounters I've seen at level 14 and up have at least two heals cast at some point during the battle. That makes a good average at least, and I know I've seen more. Scrolls of heal are a mainstay and my group wouldn't go out without at least seven or eight of them in tow at these levels. The low level cure spells just rarely cut it, they don't keep up with the damage if the monster gets a few good hits off, a PC could go down in 2 rounds. That's a problem I've had with 3e for a while now

As an aside, Augment Healing helps a lot, though! Since that feat came out, we've seen the mass spells become more worth it to counteract area attacks against them. That was great. I give it as a bonus feat for the Healing domain instead of the stupid +1 caster level. I also think it would be great to have each spell have a minor effect that goes off when turned into a cure spell spontaneously. So, you could do a little fire damage if you drop a flame strike for a cure. Just enough to give the player a little satisfaction. But, its difficult to do that with all those spells.

 

[Hussar]

There's another issue here as well - the 15 minute game day. It's the clerics who dictate the pace of the party. Once the cleric drops his last cure light wound for the day, IME, every party rests.

And, the cleric burns through spells faster than everyone else, because that 25% of resources is coming almost exclusively from his spell list. Before the fight, he's buffing, during the fight, he's spot healing and possibly debuffing, after the fight he's bringing everyone back up to full hit points.

The wizard is generally only casting spells during combat, maybe a couple before combat and none after.

So, it's not surprising that clerics get labeled unfun for the group when the entire pacing of the adventure centers around him. The cleric player pretty much has to heal the party, and the rest of the party has to rest whenever he runs out of healing.

Much better to spread things around a bit.

 

[KingCrab]

You can play 'a party of clerics' and cover every role in the party far better than you can with any other class.

Agreed. Except maybe for a party of druids which can also fight, heal, and blast exceptionally well (though perhaps they aren't as good at healing during combat) together with having awesome summons and feats to buff them.

Someone here on EN world once said (though I don't recall who):
playing a cleric = fun
playing the only cleric = unfun

 

[cougent]

As a player I usually play a cleric, a warrior priest. I heal when I can and as I can, but that is *not* my primary function. If it was / or becomes so my cleric will go away. The PC would not tolerate such a life and the player behind it would find it very unfun.

As a DM I either provide a "whipping boy" cleric NPC to be the heal-bot or provide other means to the players for healing, but I would never ask or expect a player cleric to conform to these preconceived and IMO stupid ideas of being a group healer only.

Its hard to say this in a way that someone will not take it personally, even though no personal offense is meant to anyone, but an unfun cleric is either 1) a weak DM using the cleric as a crutch to keep the party alive 2) an unprepared group that is using the cleric as a crutch to keep themselves alive because they did not prepare 3) a weak player who lets others dictate how he plays his character.or 4) a mix of the above.

How can the "strongest class in the game" be reduced to a "band aid monkey" if not through player and DM error?

 

[Jhulae]

The cleric isn't unfun. He's unappreciated, except maybe in the afterstory ("...and Ted's cleric totally saved our collective backsides!"). Nobody wants to be the guy who's just fulfilling his obligations.

QFT.

The fact is, as soon as the party sees you playing a cleric, the *expect* to be healed. And, even worse, some players get annoyed when you'd rather cast an offensive spell than cast a cure on them, even if your spell can win the combat.

What makes the cleric 'un-fun' is the expectation that you're just there to keep others in the fight.

If the group can detach the "Cleric is a band-aid-box" mentality, then Cleric is a lot of fun to play.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think that's a valid point, and your 'Chuck' example is quite good. If you are playing with players that don't conserve thier hit points because they just assume you are going to restore them and rely on you to keep them alive despite thier bad decisions, then playing a cleric could suck. But what we are really saying is, "Players that make unreasonable demands on thier teammates suck to play with." Similarly, there are DMs out there that set up encounters so that everyone ends up taking so much damage, that the game can't advance unless the cleric burns all of his spells putting everyone back in fighting order. (And similarly, there are players that pressure the DM to do this because the game is 'boring' if this doesn't happen.) And that also would suck, but that's more a sign of bad DMing than anything else in my opinion.

Unreasonable demands? I'm not sure what game you play, but our demands of our teammates are simple: work together doing what you do best in order to help us defeat the enemies.

Most of the cleric spells are below average in terms of damage potential or taking the enemy out of the combat potential(generally the barbarian with the greatsword doing a full attack does more damage than any offensive spell the cleric could cast, so keeping him up a round longer is more effective than casting the offensive spell).

Most of the combats we've faced around level 10 tend to be 3 enemies who are capable of doing near 40 damage each per round. If they hit the wizard, he's dead. So, the primary role of the tank type is to stand up front and hope the enemies see him first and attack him. Then to hope that his greater AC than everyone else stops some of the damage so that he can survive 2 rounds of the enemy attacking him.

Since its unlikely that we'll kill all 3 enemies in the 2 rounds the fighter has to live, the cleric's primary responsibility is to heal the fighter with the highest powered healing spell he has to give him 1 more round more to live. Then, all the non-clerics in the group need to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible to drop the enemy before it gets to attack for another round.

Then after the battle, the wands of cure light wounds come out so that we don't use any more of the clerics spells since we'll need them for sure in the next combat or the fighter will die again.

And if the enemies are less powerful than that, we know it's the sign of an easy encounter and we use our least powerful abilities, since we know we will win.

 

[Goose]

Ive always wanted to play a cleric/rogue of Mask, pretty much never let on that i was a cleric to the general public. Using deciet and mischief to my advantage.

I think clerics are unfun to most due to lack of imagination, there are lots and lots of ideas you can do with clerics, hell with all the different domains they are probably the most versatile class in the game. If you find clerics boring then you are doing it wrong.

 

[Hussar]

Ive always wanted to play a cleric/rogue of Mask, pretty much never let on that i was a cleric to the general public. Using deciet and mischief to my advantage.

I think clerics are unfun to most due to lack of imagination, there are lots and lots of ideas you can do with clerics, hell with all the different domains they are probably the most versatile class in the game. If you find clerics boring then you are doing it wrong.

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.

If I play the only rogue in a campaign with lots of traps and I refuse to put any ranks into Search or Disable Device, I'm might be roleplaying my heart out, but, I'm also screwing the rest of the party. Most players take a pretty dim view of that. And rightfully so. I'm playing the rogue, I bring to the table certain skills and abilities that no one else has, so, it's not terribly unreasonable to expect me to fufill my end of things.

If there were other options available, then expecting the cleric to be heal bot would be unreasonable. But, there aren't really. Band aid fixes with wands of healing or potions aren't really solutions. They work, but, IMO, in a very cheesy way. You shouldn't need bags full of potions to keep going just so the cleric doesn't have to cast healing spells.

At the end of the day, many (and I would guess most) campaigns feature a fair bit of combat. That means the cleric is going to have to heal. Full stop. There's no way around it. Pretending that you're not a cleric is just going to annoy the heck out of the other players who know that you could heal them.

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?

 

[Wormwood]

If the group can detach the "Cleric is a band-aid-box" mentality, then Cleric is a lot of fun to play.

I agree.

Apparently, 4e is making some strides in that direction.

 

[Zweischneid]

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.

If I play the only rogue in a campaign with lots of traps and I refuse to put any ranks into Search or Disable Device, I'm might be roleplaying my heart out, but, I'm also screwing the rest of the party. Most players take a pretty dim view of that. And rightfully so. I'm playing the rogue, I bring to the table certain skills and abilities that no one else has, so, it's not terribly unreasonable to expect me to fufill my end of things.

THAT, is the mistaken assumption that ruins the cleric (and pretty much any other class) IMO.

If I sit down with a bunch of people I expect them to be roleplaying their heart out and to be able to do the same. Thats the reason I get together with people to spend time on roleplaying games. Thats why I buy these pricy books. Thats why I invest hours and hours into designing fun adventures and interesting characters. Thats the very goal everything else should lead up to.

If in some game party efficiency (from the perspective of whatever class) or expectations thereof get into the way of roleplaying, than there's something fundamentally wrong with that game. Than, for an in-game reason you're sacrificing the whole purpose of playing the game in the first place.