at nominals poetry santos domino nomine Patri hatefully etc etc etc hello and
welcome to the divine temple or more lightly hello and welcome to this
episode of how to be a great player when we look at the cleric class now i have to
confess i do have to confess so far we've looked at the paladin we've looked
at the wizard we've looked at the ranger and they've all been fairly easy for me
to put together my thoughts on why they're so entertaining to play the
cleric made me think it made me think really long and really hard and I'm
flummoxed by it and I I do find it rather curious so I wonder if you share
my thoughts on the matter so when we look at the cleric let's just jump
straight in here we look at the merits of the cleric there isn't another class
that can touch the cleric from merit weapons heavy armor and magic oh I now
can turn undead to the clerics got at all it literally has everything the
cleric class can heal itself turn undead beat the living snot out of anything
that comes running up to it and take a beating as well so why and this is a
genuine question is everybody not playing a cleric they can do we really
had a fight you can do they can do everything a paladin can do they can do
everything a mage can do they can do everything that no one else can do which
is turn Undead so the cleric is a remarkably powerful
class and yet and yet I find myself still paused for thought they have as a
merit religion the belief in a higher power now unlike the paladin
whose belief is an unwavering line of thought to their code as people rightly
pointed out to their oath to their their convictions the cleric is really just
there to interpret Scripture be a messenger of the gods and oh yes one day
become a god because well they can do everything so don't see why not
now this brings me to the negatives the cons of a Kerik is that for all this
amazing ability that they have they don't seem to be very fun they seem to
be like the character that because they can do everything because there are
these superheroes amongst the classes there but boring or at least that's what
I found anyway so I had to go digging further so they can be boring they can
be incredibly overwhelming you've got magic on the one hand you want your
traditional combat on the other you are turning Undead you've got healing spells
that just come out of nowhere so the cleric class can be overwhelming
in terms of everything that it can do because it can do a tremendous amount of
things so that's something to bear in mind that's a negative they're also not
the master of anything in particular so if a cleric went toe-to-toe with a
fighter and didn't use their spells the fighter would win they have abilities
and capacities that the cleric just doesn't have access to on the other hand
if they were to take their spells and there we go toe to toe with a wizard
ultimately I think the wizard would win if the wizard got the drop on the cleric
and the cleric was fairly low level kinda they can be bland they can have
the religion thing now as a negative it's a positive for the prost for the
cleric because it gives them something to roleplay with and there's all sorts
of bonuses and things that are going to come up a little bit later that the
cleric gets access to because of that strong religious connection it is also a
negative because if the prayer if the prayer if the player of the cleric if
are playing a cleric for example and you don't embody the religion your GM is
likely to say em you lose your spell's you're not following what your God has
said so adding on to the complexity of the spells of combat you now have this
religious requirement which you now have to fulfill and follow and your GM should
have given you the basic outlines of that faith or religion or you should
have picked it up from the book and you should be following it so it can be a
negative if we look at the potentials are the potentials the potentials are
rich rich law so all this canonical law the Saints the people who have come
before the avatars of the gods the priests as a cleric has access to all of
that and can become that by the way the cleric is the character most likely to
become divine followed closely by the monk and then the paladin and then all
the other clauses slowly get towards deification later on but it is the
carrick who stands first and foremost as their God's conduit onto the planet so
that's a big story they can have a focused narrative where it's focused
around the clergy focused around the monasteries focused around that
particular space that religious dogma finds us in and that can create quite an
interesting campaign they are also undead hunters so they can have
campaigns that are focused specifically on undead and not have too much of a
problem with it they're not going to have to hack and slash through every
single kind of encounter so the potential for the cleric is huge they
can do almost anything they like and they can be very good at it as well and
that's something that I think is very very important the different types of
clerics now this is where I thought haha I will now find the reason why we don't
see everybody playing clerics apart from the negatives of course this is where we
will find that the cleric only has one or two styles while the characters not
there are more cleric types and options than almas there are wizard types and
options wizard still win but clerics come close
you've got the battle cleric the cleric who wears heavy plate armor wills amazed
wills a shield and goes into battle and hits things and uses their divine magic
to enhance their damage dealing to enhance their abilities and to just
strike the wrath of their God into their foes so that's the battle cleric quite
an intimidating force and arguably a very dangerous opponent you get the
priestly type of cleric the Father the abbot the monk and I mean monk as in
brown robes bald central point I forget the name of it and the one who sings in
choirs and is quiet and reserved and divine like so the priestly kind is the
one who does a bit of healing does a liberal of administration there's a
little bit of support maybe give some advice to the players the fellow players
characters is the sedate kind you get that kind of priest you get the healer
of course the priest who focuses primarily on healing and that's not just
using magic it's using their skills as well to push that healing the priests
are without doubt the greatest of healers because they can use any spell
they like as a healing spell and that's very powerful so they can become the
healer in which case like that hospital year paladin of last week they could
become a priest who does no harm because they are the ultimate doctor and so
that's an option for you an undead hunter obviously is something that a
priest can become no other class can hunt undead like the priest can wizards
can go in and use necromancy to try and control the undead but ultimately it's
the priest who can go in and turn them to dust by holding up their holy symbol
and that's it instead of God there's anything they can do about it so the
undead hunter is a class that the priests can can really explore and and
capitalize them the zealot now the zealot is something that I find quite
interesting and the zealot is the type that quite literally embodies what their
God says and will fulfill it to their ultimate and degree
our paladin is almost like a zealot except the paladin has taken vows to act
and do things on behalf of their gods in a certain way all their oaths the cleric
who is a zealot is the cleric who doesn't see anything outside of their
space anything outside of their God's domain is for them blasphemy and they
will hunt it down and destroy it and a zealot cleric using all of their combat
martial abilities plus their spells becomes a dangerous fanatic that could
be very interesting to play then you get the shield the shield is a battle cleric
or a cleric who goes into combat expressly to keep their companions alive
yes they'll do a little bit of healing here and there but primarily their
function is to an armour their fellows to shield them to distract the enemy to
keep the enemy at bay but not to necessarily destroy the enemy either
it's a much more versatile utilitarian type of cleric than the rest are they're
there to support and to make sure that others get through and that's also a
very interesting space to be in can you prevent your party from dying or taking
massive damage before it happens rather than and the healer who picks up the
pieces afterwards or the battle cleric who goes in and makes all the pieces so
the cleric has got a lot of different types that can be played so why aren't
we seeing more clerics being chosen a party of clerics as a party that would
be almost impossible to kill simply because they fell over I resurrect now I
resurrect oh I'll beat you to a pulp no you won't because you can't hit me
because mamma Claus is so high but I appreciate the sentiment you go ahead
and resurrect so nonetheless it's a party of people who just won't ever
leave the planet now from a story's perspective of course we've got all the
different types of stories that'll come through we've got the religious stories
we've got combat stories we've got healing stories a lot of it could be
undead stories because I've gained all that power of turning the undead and of
course the two big ones that we've got is the salvation
which was very similar to what the Paladin had in terms of his fall from
grace and then his return to grace but the salvation damnation option of the
priest of the cleric is I think a little bit more consequential paladins the gods
aren't fighting over their paladins they're fighting with their paladin's a
cleric on the other hand might have an evil deity in opposition to their own
tempting them to come to the dark side for me a cleric is more like a Jedi or a
Sith Warrior than any of the other classes forget the poor old paladin
they've got codes and things which yes is very Jedi like but the temptation in
my opinion is far greater on a cleric than it is on a paladin and a cleric
makes more sense to me as a Jedi or a Sith type of persona where you've got
this battle between the Wills between good and evil and the gods themselves so
clerics are a very very very dynamic class a very capable class a very
survivable class yet we don't see them that often now I have to tell you a
story of a player of mine who played a cleric and who made sure that the prayer
of the cleric was uttered so often they would utter it at the beginning of the
battle at the end of the battle during dialogue before meals after meals they
really drove home this idea of this prayer that everybody at the table
ultimately converted to that particular God and could recite the prayer that's
how powerful just recite and it wasn't a complicated thing life is death death is
life her death is rebirth rebirth is life life is death death is rebirth
rebirth his life just the simple mantra which he would repeat over and over and
over and over again and we got this amazing
version of the rest of the players characters to that God as well as of
course the entrenchment of that God and the characters and I as a GM had a lot
of fun playing with trying to lure that character away from their God and tempt
them and then that kind of thing so the cleric is something that we need to
explore more I feel and if you do play a character but you're put in the comments
below tell us what you like about the Thoth tell us why we should be playing a
party of clerics and nothing else let's champion the cleric a little bit
because I think they may get the short end of the stick in terms of being
looked at as a class of being slightly boring there are anything but boring
until next time join us on social media we're on facebook we're on Instagram
we're on Twitter we're all over the place come and find us and join the
conversation so we can unpack these things together and see what we can come
up with as to why we like or don't like particular classes until next time
though I wish you and yours the happiest okay