D&D 4E Will it be possible to play 4e without clerics?

[shadow]

I have a confession to make. I never liked the cleric class. While wizards, warriors, and rogues are staples of myth and fantasy, spell slinging clerics are a pure D&D-ism. Religions and priests have existed in every human culture, but I can't remember any myth or legend prior to D&D that featured priests that routinely went on adventures and cast healing magic. Moreover, the cleric class forces a number of fairly specific religious and cosmological assumptions on any campaign world (e.g. a polytheistic pantheon with deities who routinely dole out spells to the faithful).
For my homebrews, I routinely looked for ways to eliminate or downplay the cleric class without much success. In all previous editions clerics were the sole source of healing abilities. Eliminating the cleric class meant eliminating any healing.
What I've seen of 4e has given me some hope. All classes have healing surges that allow them to regain hit points without resorting to healing magic. Also there has been talk of 4e being playable without an arcane caster. Will 4e be playable without a cleric?

 

[Shroomy]

Between healing surges and other leader classes, I would have to say yes.

 

[hong]

If the turnoff for the cleric is simply a matter of fluff, you could substitute a warlord to do the same thing.

 

[Ximenes088]

Yep. The Warlord will be a martial Leader class with abilities to provoke healing effects for the rest of the party. It's been stated that a martial-only group of ranger, fighter, rogue, and warlord should be able to handle encounters without major issues, and even then, their weak spot is ostensibly a lack of a controller rather than lack of healing. Even without a warlord, each PC will have around 6-9 healing surges, each healing 1/4 of their HP and usable 1/encounter and without restriction outside encounters. They'll run out of surges eventually, but even a totally unassisted fighter can heal from zero to full twice before he's really out of juice.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I think the big restriction is the limit of one "second wind" per character per encounter. That's the limit for the self-heal, as far as we know.

That might be enough if your party is cautious and has good defenses/is really aggro and able to beat down enemies quickly/is otherwise able to keep HP loss to a minimum. But if HP attrition during combat is a problem, you'll likely need a cleric or warlord.

 

[Desdichado]

I've played plenty of 3e and 3.5 games without clerics. If anything, it looks even easier in 4e. But it's readily doable in 3e and/or 3.5 with just extremely minor tinkering already.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I've played plenty of 3e and 3.5 games without clerics. If anything, it looks even easier in 4e. But it's readily doable in 3e and/or 3.5 with just extremely minor tinkering already.

I have, too. My current campaign features a rogue, fighter, ranger/dragon shaman, sorcerer, and warlock. The ranger/shaman and warlock cover the healing (via wands and scrolls if need be). What the suffer from is lack of easy repairs to ability damage, poison, and negative energy.

 

[Henry]

Religions and priests have existed in every human culture, but I can't remember any myth or legend prior to D&D that featured priests that routinely went on adventures and cast healing magic.

I can think of quite a few examples from one or two real-world religions, but it's not a topic for discussion here.

But yes, Mike Mearls stated it would be pretty easy to put something like that together; heck, just the healing surge thing would go very very far to making this a reality.

 

[Nifft]

I can think of quite a few examples from one or two real-world religions, but it's not a topic for discussion here.

Me, too.

But on a topic germane to this forum: I'll bet there's a lot of examples in Anime.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Campbell]

I can think of quite a few examples from one or two real-world religions, but it's not a topic for discussion here.

But yes, Mike Mearls stated it would be pretty easy to put something like that together; heck, just the healing surge thing would go very very far to making this a reality.

My current hope is that all major forms of healing will require Healing Surges so that, while Leaders will improve combat survivability and character up time, not having a leader won't affect longevity nearly so much. One of the issues I commonly faced with 3e is that an extra cleric often affects daily longevity drastically.