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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kmart Kommando" data-source="post: 3889141" data-attributes="member: 39915">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  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> )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..  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /></blockquote>

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