Dropping the Cleric

[inkmeister]

Agreed RedBaron. The cleric seems a poor fit for many things, but the magic user could make a great priest type character. As I see it, for example, in Game of Thrones, none of those priest types are really clerics, they are magic users.

Also, I seem to recall in the first Elric book a character who was a "Warrior Priest of Phum," and his main weapon was a bow and arrow. I don't recall him ever using any magic at all. So I can see where a certain type of player could enjoy playing their fighter character as a priest or undead hunter or whatever.

The cleric as written doesn't do anything for me, and I have to do mental acrobatics to justify it and make it work in my game.

[idrahil]

Dec 6, 2013 8:37:55 GMT -6 inkmeister said:

Agreed RedBaron. The cleric seems a poor fit for many things, but the magic user could make a great priest type character. As I see it, for example, in Game of Thrones, none of those priest types are really clerics, they are magic users.

I somewhat disagree (but only based on personal interpretation of the books). Both Melisandre and Thoros are Red "Priests" but Melisandre behaves much more like a magic-user while Thoros (In my eyes) is very much the pious cleric. Healing, raising the dead, wearing heavy armor, fighting many battles, etc. There is also the Red Priest in the last book that ends up with the Theon's uncle. He also heals but could go either way in my mind.

Again, it's just my opinion but Thoros is just every bit the cleric in my mind

Dec 6, 2013 8:37:55 GMT -6 inkmeister said:

The cleric as written doesn't do anything for me, and I have to do mental acrobatics to justify it and make it work in my game.

That's the beauty of of these old rules. We can tinker with them and easily make what we want or need for our campaigns (I my self use clerics and religion heavily in my current campaign). Trying to take certain classes or abilities away from the later editions or more complex systems leads to all sorts of issues (in my experience).

As for the discussion of removing clerics removes alignment, I also disagree.

I look to Lone Wolf (Game books and RPG). There is a clear alignment in that world and ALL magic is a gift from the gods. And there are no clerics (per the classic D&D rules) to be seen. Healing is magical or herbal in nature. It is a system that works very well (In my opinion of course)

[Red Baron]

Removing clerics majes religions more inportant because its no longer just a game mechanic for a single class. Instead the gods are a cultural aspect of the world. They could reflect its peoples, be influential alien beings that involve themselves with the fighters like sheelba and nenguable do with fafrd and the grey mouser, or be entities sorcerors must seek out and enslave or build relationships with.


Clerics reduce a great s&s trope to a simple game mehanic

[llenlleawg]

Dec 6, 2013 10:55:58 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

Removing clerics majes religions more inportant because its no longer just a game mechanic for a single class. Instead the gods are a cultural aspect of the world. They could reflect its peoples, be influential alien beings that involve themselves with the fighters like sheelba and nenguable do with fafrd and the grey mouser, or be entities sorcerors must seek out and enslave or build relationships with.


Clerics reduce a great s&s trope to a simple game mehanic

Not "more important", surely. I suspect that in those campaigns for which religion is only a concern because of the cleric class, the absence of a cleric would lead to an absence of much concern about religion in general. That is, while the existence of the cleric might force the DM to have to take up the question only with regard to the cleric's religion and nothing else, the absence of the cleric hardly encourages the DM to take up the question generally!

From my perspective, it is perhaps a mistake to see clerics as a "S&S trope" in the first place, as I would likely consider most S&S-style priests as Magic Users anyway. As a (pseudo-)Christian trope which is a mashup of Biblical prophet, chivalric Templar, and Hammer horror monster hunter, the class does a lovely job!

[Red Baron]

As hammer horror monster hunters, I would rather have a fighter, with no magical protections save a bag of garlic, wooden stakes, and a mirror, have to go up against a vampire or a wight. If a player wants to be an acolyte in the cult to some being, than he should definitely be a sorcerer with possibly a few related cleric spells in his starting spellbook.

And certainly no turn undead under any circumstances.

[jeff]

Thanks for resurrecting this thread. As one who is planning on dropping clerics on the next game I plan on running, I find it particularly useful.

[tec97]

This is a pretty neat idea provided that the DM provides some manner to rebuild hit points apart from normal healing.

[Red Baron]

Lets not derail the thread with this, as I'm sure there all already several on hit point regeneration, but I'm ok with giving back all the hits lost in a combat, at the end of combat.

My reasoning is:

Combat should be avoided whenever possible. My d6 combat is quick and deadly. Its best to find some way around a fight, be it by intimidation, bribes, services, stealth, whatever. The monsters generally are as wary of injury as the players and both will go down easily if they aren't heads up.

If combat does happen, it should be simple(abstract), quickly resolved, and deadly. The whole point of even playing out combat, instead of flipping a coin to determine who dies, is that it leaves room for magic, strategy, roll playing, and running away. Get it over with and get back to the game.

Players who survive regain all hits lost in the fight. This requires a rest afterwards. If a character runs out of combat than he isn't suddenly healed and can return. If Slim Bill gets hit with a fireball and runs into the next room to withdraw the combat, he'll still be in too much pain to fight properly when his pursuers have dealt with his companions and come looking for him.

I like the idea of rolling new hit points at the beginning of each combat, but this makes traps that do damage hard to work. Maybe they do a certain amount of hitdice damage, and hit dice thus removed cannot be rolled when rolling damage in combat? I'm not sure. Traps are difficult. I prefer roleplaying out complex traps that kill, maim, imprison, separate the party, get the party lost/ throw off their maps.

[saveforhalf]

I generally like keeping the cleric. If I were to drop the class, I'd probably just add their spells to the magic-user list. I'd also add a multi-class fighting-man/magic-user option using either the AD&D multi-classing rules or the elf class from Holmes/BX/BECMI as a template.

[sepulchre]

Redbaron wrote:

Instead the gods are a cultural aspect of the world. They could reflect its peoples, be influential alien beings...Clerics reduce a great s&s trope to a simple game mehanic

Totally agree, well said, though I think the turning undead/demons is a mechanic that can still be employed.

than he should definitely be a sorcerer with possibly a few related cleric spells in his starting spellbook.
And certainly no turn undead under any circumstances.

Or dispense with spells entirely, and adopt the Turning Undead ability to bind or ward the undead - a reaction/morale check to represent the powers of the cult or a gifted (shaman, prophet) or specialized office (exorcist) of clergy of an established religion.

I'm ok with giving back all the hits lost in a combat, at the end of combat...combat should be avoided...should be simple(abstract), quickly resolved, and deadly

Yes, I have adopted that idea and it works especially well for a normal combatantant/non-heroic (0-3rd lvl) game.

[Red Baron]

I really do dig the the whole "Now I shall stab you to death, Dracula" vibe, though.




And those puritan hats are too cool to pass up.

[Porphyre]

That could be an interesting variation: edged weapons are forbidden to clerics except against undead (because if you prick them, they do not bleed!)

[codeman123]

Everytime i run a d&d game this crosses my mind i have never felt the cleric fit with my vision of fantasy. Most of the time i include cleric but i have been known not to usually i let characters heal very rapidly anyways as i view hitpoints as not only just a life total but stamina etc. Again this changes from campaign to campaign depending on what im in the mood for. For gritty pulp fantasy (my fav) i usually say no but for traditional style d&d i go with yes and usually keep gods fairly vague as well so thats not a problem.

[Red Baron]

Mar 10, 2014 16:39:45 GMT -6 Porphyre said:

That could be an interesting variation: edged weapons are forbidden to clerics except against undead (because if you prick them, they do not bleed!)

Very cool.

[benno]

my campaign is closer to the 1900s than the 1300s. clerics definitely don't fit as-written. i'm not confident enough with the rules to tweak to fit but in my first session we just stuck with fighters. it hasn't caused any problems so far, i don't see why it should if you're not doing a dark ages europe campaign.

[Finarvyn]

Another issue is that the cleric player often feels the need to become more passive and hold back so that he can heal people, rather than being at the forefront of adventure where he may get hurt. At least, my cleric players fall into this role a lot.

[Red Baron]

I would drop clerics in a heartbeat if I had a third class to replace them. The game seems barren and unfulfilled with only two classes.

However, any other class I can think of to replace them just riffs off of the archetypes of someone who fights or someone who uses magic or some combination of the two. A suitable third class would be someone who neither fights competently or uses magic, but who wants to play that.

[Lorgalis]

Redbaron what about a barber, apothecary, alchemist - they could fight but not well, make convocations of healing, poison, enhancing drugs, toxic gases, acids, solvents, adherents, could stitch a wound, treat blood disorders with leaches. So you get some minor spell like effects that are not spells but may seem magical to the ignorant.

Why adventure - to obtain and discover items, ingredients, and maybe test subjects. You can get a mad doctor, mad scientist feel if you let your mind wander.

Add something akin to Dr Jeckle or The Witcher series of novels.

[tog]

Mar 9, 2014 22:02:59 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I really do dig the the whole "Now I shall stab you to death, Dracula" vibe, though.

And those puritan hats are too cool to pass up.

Witch-Hunter class, maybe? Someone with knowledge of the occult and mysterious but non-religious; might want a different name but I can't think of one right now.

If you eliminate Clerics, does that automatically eliniate Druids as well? I've been entertaining thoughts off and on about letting Druids turn undead, on the theory that the Druid's link to nature allows them to turn/destroy unnatural things such as undead.

[oakesspalding]

Jul 19, 2014 8:56:36 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I would drop clerics in a heartbeat if I had a third class to replace them. The game seems barren and unfulfilled with only two classes.

However, any other class I can think of to replace them just riffs off of the archetypes of someone who fights or someone who uses magic or some combination of the two. A suitable third class would be someone who neither fights competently or uses magic, but who wants to play that.

The answer of course is Thieves. The problem is how to do it. I put a huge amount of thought into it and am still not convinced I got it right. But I am certain that they, in some form or another, are the answer.

[jdjarvis]

Clericsal types as a social role or NPC only has a practical value to a campaign in that it encourages the players to become more involved with the campaign at large if they want access to the clerical goodies . The DM and player also never end up in a direct philosophical conflict over the players view of clerics and the DMs view any debates get shifted more to the relationship between a PC and NPC.

The nature and recovery of HP need not be adjusted or changed in the slightest in OD&D where healing magic is moderately rare and not there at all at 1st level.

[jdjarvis]

Jul 19, 2014 21:22:20 GMT -6 oakesspalding said:

Jul 19, 2014 8:56:36 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I would drop clerics in a heartbeat if I had a third class to replace them. The game seems barren and unfulfilled with only two classes.

However, any other class I can think of to replace them just riffs off of the archetypes of someone who fights or someone who uses magic or some combination of the two. A suitable third class would be someone who neither fights competently or uses magic, but who wants to play that.

The answer of course is Thieves. The problem is how to do it. I put a huge amount of thought into it and am still not convinced I got it right. But I am certain that they, in some form or another, are the answer.

I second the opinion that thieves make an ample memebr of a PC class trio that neither fights well or depends on magic consitently.

I am drawn to consider 2 alternatives as well based on the nature of the campaign one is playing: Hunters or Healers.
Hunters are adequately different from fighters in their need to track and stalk prey and they are trained to strike precise blows (from distance usually) but not with the martial prowess of the fighter.
Healers play a familiar role but need not be tied to relegion at all as they can be the apothecarian barber/herbalsts alluded to upthread or mayhaps more of a hippy zen/empath.

[Red Baron]

Jul 19, 2014 21:22:20 GMT -6 oakesspalding said:

Jul 19, 2014 8:56:36 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I would drop clerics in a heartbeat if I had a third class to replace them. The game seems barren and unfulfilled with only two classes.

However, any other class I can think of to replace them just riffs off of the archetypes of someone who fights or someone who uses magic or some combination of the two. A suitable third class would be someone who neither fights competently or uses magic, but who wants to play that.

The answer of course is Thieves. The problem is how to do it. I put a huge amount of thought into it and am still not convinced I got it right. But I am certain that they, in some form or another, are the answer.

I liked what you did with thieves in Zylarthen, because they feel like they have some special prowess that goes beyond what just anybody can do. Again, the problem is that thieves in stories are normally still magicians or fighting men.

What I see in a lot of games is either hybridization of classes or use of a "specialist" as a third class - someone knowledgable and proficient in a certain set of skills. The former is a total cop-out, and the use of a "specialist" tends to require whole lists of special minor powers. For example in zylarthen, the descriptions of fighting-men and magic-users are short and sweet and get at the essence of what the class is about, while the thief's concept is a piecemeal compilation of several powers and goes on for twice the length of the other two classes together.

The solution lies in having a third core archetype, along with sword-guy and spell-guy. Everything else I can think of falls under one of these categories already. The farthest class removed from these would be some type of monster, and that's why demi-humans and balrogs and the like seem so tempting to play: fighting-men fight and magic-users use magic and unicorns unicorn and balrogs balrog, so it seems like you're doing something new and different. But that still doesn't seem like a satisfactory answer. 

[oakesspalding]

Jul 20, 2014 10:03:34 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

For example in zylarthen, the descriptions of fighting-men and magic-users are short and sweet and get at the essence of what the class is about, while the thief's concept is a piecemeal compilation of several powers and goes on for twice the length of the other two classes together.

That's a great point that frankly I hadn't really noticed or thought about (an embarrassing admission). In my sort of defense, at least half of the Thief stuff is "flavor text" about safe-houses, canting language, etc. But that of course prompts the obvious question as to why that sort of thing is needed for the Thief but not the others. With the Zylarthen Thief I'm not sure it is needed (the text itself was somewhat of a holdover from an abandoned pre-Zylarthen project).

As I said my goal was to get away from the fiddly list of ten or whatever skills and pick one or two main things from which everything else flowed organically. So limiting armor meant that Thieves could do sneaky acrobatic things better (though that limitation can't be said to exactly be an advantage-a Fighting-Man could simply choose not to wear armor and do the same). Hiding in shadows and the surprise attack bonus seemed to go together as the sort of different thing that Thieves might be expected to be good at-a talent that was both better and worse than just, say, giving an overall defensive or offensive bonus-and that organically paired with climbing, sneaking and so on. And the luck re-roll was an attempt to give Thieves one more meaningful and different non-fiddly thing that would actually help them as opposed to helping primarily their party. So that's 3 (or 4) things. It's better than 10, but I agree not as good as, say, an obvious 1 or 2. Whether that set of 1 or 2 actually things exists (in a way that would be satisfying and at least somewhat "balanced") is an open question.

Since in the three little brown books, the cleric substitute is almost as good a fighter and has almost as many hit points as a Fighting Man, a simple answer to compensate for the armor limitation (which I think you must have) would be to have really small experience point intervals-much smaller like, say, only needing 500 points to get to 2nd level. That would in effect soon give you extra hit dice that would compensate for the armor limitation. but I rejected that, thinking that it would make it seem like Thieves were just Fighting Men that didn't like to wear clothes and were quick learners. But maybe that's what we want.

[talysman]

On the one hand, I think the archetypes really do boil down to two: Mundane (Fighter) and Superpowered (Magic-User). So a third class really should be Hybrid.

On the other, if you focus the Mundane class on fighting, you could have Mundane Non-Fighter as the third, which I have started calling the Talent, with Thief being one example. If you condense all the thief skills into Stealthy (Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Pick Pocket) and Cunning (Remove Traps, Pick Locks, Climb Without Equipment, and Decipher Maps/Scrolls,) with Surprise Attack as a third ability, you can rename each ability but keep the same mechanics to create other Talent types. I did this once for an Apothecary class and a Leech (non-magical healer) class.

The exact meaning of the class abilities and the mechanics used are going to vary, of course, and there are plenty of examples out there of Thief classes that fit different tastes, like the Delving Deeper thief or the LotFP expert. I don't think one set of interpretations and mechanics for the class is really going to work at this point, but the character who depends on (pseudo)mundane cleverness instead of fighting skills does seem like a good third archetype, despite the lack of agreement on how to implement it.

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 20, 2014 16:02:10 GMT -6 talysman said:

I think the archetypes really do boil down to two: Mundane (Fighter) and Superpowered (Magic-User). So a third class really should be Hybrid.

I agree that the archetypes for the fantasy battle field ultimately boil down to fighters and magic-users. But fiction, including D&D, covers a lot more ground that "just" the fantasy battle field, and that's where the "non-battle" archetypes are found.

Jul 20, 2014 16:02:10 GMT -6 talysman said:

I don't think one set of interpretations and mechanics for the class is really going to work at this point, but the character who depends on (pseudo)mundane cleverness instead of fighting skills does seem like a good third archetype, despite the lack of agreement on how to implement it.

I agree with this; the "right" implementation for the non-combat archetypes is going to be game-specific. And this can be one of the great joys of D&D for the rules tinker

It's interesting to re-read the "Specialist" section (U&WA p22) with an eye for potential PCs (alchemists, spies, and assassins are mentioned explicitly). I'm sure most of these types could be grouped into one of talysman's "Talent" types.

[Lorgalis]

Jul 20, 2014 16:02:10 GMT -6 talysman said:

On the one hand, I think the archetypes really do boil down to two: Mundane (Fighter) and Superpowered (Magic-User). So a third class really should be Hybrid.

On the other, if you focus the Mundane class on fighting, you could have Mundane Non-Fighter as the third, which I have started calling the Talent, with Thief being one example. If you condense all the thief skills into Stealthy (Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Pick Pocket) and Cunning (Remove Traps, Pick Locks, Climb Without Equipment, and Decipher Maps/Scrolls,) with Surprise Attack as a third ability, you can rename each ability but keep the same mechanics to create other Talent types. I did this once for an Apothecary class and a Leech (non-magical healer) class.

The exact meaning of the class abilities and the mechanics used are going to vary, of course, and there are plenty of examples out there of Thief classes that fit different tastes, like the Delving Deeper thief or the LotFP expert. I don't think one set of interpretations and mechanics for the class is really going to work at this point, but the character who depends on (pseudo)mundane cleverness instead of fighting skills does seem like a good third archetype, despite the lack of agreement on how to implement it.

I'm sorry, I am dense this evening. What do you mean by rename the ability, but keep the mechanics to create other Talent types? What did this Apothecary and Leech look like?

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 20, 2014 20:47:52 GMT -6 Lorgalis said:

What did this Apothecary and Leech look like?

One version of talysman's Leech is here:
odd74.proboards.com/thread/8847/class-leech

[Lorgalis]

Ok, I get it now. Sees like you could create an Talent mechanic for all 3 classes with subclasses using different talents combinations/groups. A uniform mechanic across all classes, not limited to one.

One thing I notice is that the DelDeep thief has base 50% chance in it's abilities, but does not improve. The d6 mechanic does not allow for small incremental changes like d100, yet one would like to avoid moving from d6 to d20 to d100 in an effort to keep rules simple/uniform.

Would a 3d6 option work well - adds a bit more room/uses d6? You get 16 breaks each roughly 6.25%.

So they could have a base 50% on a 3-10, and some increase over levels.

Not sure.

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 20, 2014 21:55:13 GMT -6 Lorgalis said:

One thing I notice is that the DelDeep thief has base 50% chance in it's abilities, but does not improve. The d6 mechanic does not allow for small incremental changes like d100, yet one would like to avoid moving from d6 to d20 to d100 in an effort to keep rules simple/uniform.

We probably shouldn't hijack this "cleric" thread to talk about thief mechanics, but while I'm here saying that I will also mention that there's a 66.67% (not 50%) chance of rolling 3+ on a d6, and that there's a thread discussing advancement for DD thieves here