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wizuriel
2009-10-31, 09:32 AM
I've never been much a fan of 3.5 clerics. One issue I really have with them is they are a full caster and still a competent fighter. I feel they step too far into what the paladin class is suppose to be.

Normally would be more interested in buffing paladins than nerfing a class but I feel clerics are just far too powerful. Any suggestions to making clerics a tad weaker and not a superior paladin?

Steward
2009-10-31, 09:35 AM
The SRD has a cloistered cleric variant that makes Clerics less of a fighter-type class. The Cloistered Cleric (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Cleric_Variant:_Cloistered_Cleric) has a smaller hit dice and base attack bonus, fewer weapon proficiencies (simple only), and focuses more on divination than the basic cleric does.

Siosilvar
2009-10-31, 09:36 AM
Drop Divine Metamagic (feat), Divine Power, and Righteous Might. Divine Favor can stay or go depending on what you want.

It's a start.

Mongoose87
2009-10-31, 09:37 AM
Bear in mind the way WotC expected it, a Cleric was supposed to be a healer and occasional buffer who was a semi-competent warrior. DMM: Persist was far from their concerns.

Defiant
2009-10-31, 09:39 AM
So play them or ask whoever's playing them to act more as a healer and buffer... and give the Paladins their own spotlight.

Eldan
2009-10-31, 09:42 AM
I'd use the cloistered cleric mentioned above, but don't give them the bonus domain. Also, restrict Divine Power et al. to the war domain.

wizuriel
2009-10-31, 09:58 AM
cloistered cleric seems more in line with what I want.

Can than make a battle cleric type PRC that gives more BaB and weapons at a lose of caster levels.

Indoran
2009-10-31, 10:36 AM
So play them or ask whoever's playing them to act more as a healer and buffer... and give the Paladins their own spotlight.

Paladin Power-wise is a lousy class... several remakes have been attempted... the fluff is great but... the class abilities are underwhelming...

You could give the paladin smites / encounter instead of smites / day. and maybe a bit more spellcasting as well as reduce MAD.

For example change casting stat from wisdom to charisma.

I like cleric the way it is... In fact I play cloistered cleric, losing BAB is not that big deal and having access to knowledge devotion is always good...

Belobog
2009-10-31, 11:09 AM
You might want to look here, for a boosting-the-paladin solution: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33551. Should give the paladin a unique feel and role, and give him at least some spotlight time.

Additionally, Cloistered Cleric is also a good thought, but it doesn't really cut to the issue surrounding the cleric; as far as I remember, it just gives a different base to work off of.

D-naras
2009-10-31, 11:16 AM
How about giving paladins the same spell progresion as a bard? Using paladin and cleric spells, and power by CHA should make them pretty good (if not overpowered). This obviously doesnt nerf clerics at all, but it could make paladins more attractive to a player interested in a divine caster. If you do that, you should give the pally 2 more skill points and concentration, spellcraft and knowledge(arcana) as class skills.

Milskidasith
2009-10-31, 11:16 AM
Cloistered Cleric gives them skill points (now you can dump Int and still make prereqs) a bonus domain (or the domain feat; knowledge devotion = constant +1 to everything, +2 or more in most cases), and the loss of BAB and armor. BAB can be made up with spells, and while armor means they might need to rely more on dex, they're still able to Clericzilla it up.

Glimbur
2009-10-31, 11:31 AM
cloistered cleric seems more in line with what I want.

Can than make a battle cleric type PRC that gives more BaB and weapons at a lose of caster levels.

It's silly, but you might want the Prestige Paladin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/prestigiousCharacterClasses.htm#prestigePaladin). Half casting is really harsh, you might pull out some of the class features and make it 10/15 casting or something.

ErrantX
2009-10-31, 11:41 AM
It's silly, but you might want the Prestige Paladin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/prestigiousCharacterClasses.htm#prestigePaladin). Half casting is really harsh, you might pull out some of the class features and make it 10/15 casting or something.

Or, be like a normal paladin, and dip a few levels and get away before you're stuck.

Sad but true. I <3 Pathfinder's Paladin for making me wanna stay in the class.

-X

InkEyes
2009-10-31, 11:46 AM
Buffing the Paladin as a class would still be useful. The vanilla Paladin class is only slightly above a vanilla fighter in power (thanks to partial spellcasting). As they are, they suffer from dependency on STR, DEX, CON, WIS, and CHA; folding their casting stat into another ability (CHA?) will help somewhat. They also get a bit of a boost from access to spells in the Spell Compendium. Using a rebuild of the Paladin as a whole would be the most effective change, but homebrewers often use ToB classes as a baseline for a rebuilt paladin. That means if you're not comfortable with that power level the paladin may be tipped too far the opposite way. Fax Celestis has a great rebalanced Paladin, or if you can find it One W1nged Angel's (from the WotC forums) is pretty good too.

It's important to note that even with a rebalancing of the Paladin the Cleric as-is will still dominate. No reasonable person in their right mind rebuilds classes to Tier 1 power level. A cleric will probably trounce a Warblade/Crusader/Swordsage in an even battle. You can't achieve a practical balance without filling the basement and knocking down the top floors.

Ernir
2009-10-31, 11:48 AM
I've never been much a fan of 3.5 clerics. One issue I really have with them is they are a full caster and still a competent fighter. I feel they step too far into what the paladin class is suppose to be.

It's not the Cleric class itself that's the issue here, the class is a D8 hit die with Turn Undead and 3/4 BAB. It's the spells that do all the work.
So I doubt that changing them to Cloistered Clerics is going to make any difference you'll be happy with.

Clerics are a tier one class for a reason. With their spellcasting power, they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want, and little short of a complete and massive rewrite/restriction of his spell list is going to change that.

Wholehouse replacing them with Favoured Souls (Complete Divine) or Spontant Clerics (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) would reduce their versatility, though. It brings them down a tier, although still far ahead of the poor Paladins. :smallfrown:

ericgrau
2009-10-31, 12:54 PM
It's DMM persist that breaks them as fighters. Otherwise divine power is a trap. It takes ~4 rounds just to break even on the damage you lost by spending a round casting divine power, compared to a cleric that attacked in round 1 instead. Divine power is for when you have a buff round, which just as easily could be used to peg a short duration buff on someone else (which isn't on anyone already, b/c it's short duration).

So now, just as an example, that leaves the infamous cleric archer with a worse attack bonus than an arcane archer. But the arcane archer is considered sucky because you could just buff a fighter with greater magic weapon. Yet the cleric is supposedly better because his buffed attack bonus is higher than the fighter's unbuffed attack bonus (no greater magic weapon). fighter archer > arcane archer > cleric archer > fighter archer. See any inconsistencies here? Not to mention if any cleric with half a brain has a million buffs then any monster caster with half a brain will dispel magic any cleric they see, ending any advantage.

I am still in favor of banning divine favor even though it's not enough to beat the attack bonuses mentioned above, simply because quickened divine favor is such an obscure trick that you shouldn't expect players to know it to be optimal.

As for the full casting bit, that's another issue. But at least it's weaker than wizard casting.

Starbuck_II
2009-10-31, 01:20 PM
Not to mention if any cleric with half a brain has a million buffs then any monster caster with half a brain will dispel magic any cleric they see, ending any advantage.


You realize there are Beads of Karma, Divine Spell power, etc that increase Divine caster level, right?
So the Clerics GMW is undispellable amd lasts all day.

krossbow
2009-10-31, 01:24 PM
As others have said, the issue is mainly the suckiness of the paladin here. They really have nothing going for them once they burn those smites.


However, most houserules to depower clerics tend to center around making them use 2 stats for casting like a favored soul, as well as reducing the hit die. Nevertheless, depowering casters without buffing the melee people generally just means the monsters will curbstomp you; keep that in mind.

SmartAlec
2009-10-31, 02:01 PM
A recent attempt by a friend - DMing a campaign - saw him simply remove the eighth and ninth levels of spellcasting completely for all classes, and retweak the spell progression so that full casters only got access to level seven spells at level 19. I'll try to get hold of his notes; it seemed an interesting attempt, although a long way from being fully playtested.

ericgrau
2009-10-31, 02:34 PM
You realize there are Beads of Karma, Divine Spell power, etc that increase Divine caster level, right?
So the Clerics GMW is undispellable amd lasts all day.

Expensive, non-core, and still behind the arcane archer anyway (see original post). There are several dispel checks so at least some buffs go down either way. It only takes 1 or 2 to bring the cleric below par.

Starbuck_II
2009-10-31, 02:50 PM
Expensive, non-core, and still behind the arcane archer anyway (see original post). There are several dispel checks so at least some buffs go down. It only takes 1 or 2 to bring the cleric below par.

Do'nt you mean: Expensive or non-core... right? Because Beads of Karma cost nothing technically.



Reduce the price of a strand of prayer beads that is missing one or more beads by the following amounts: bead of blessing -600 gp, bead of healing -9,000 gp, bead of karma -20,000 gp, bead of smiting -16,800 gp, bead of summons -20,000 gp, bead of wind walking -46,800 gp.


Now the DMG says Standard costs 25, 800 gp.
Removing healing and smiting= 25, 800. So he gives you the Karma for free.

Althiough, that seems too good a deal so I'd keep the healing bead so you at least pay 9K.

Curmudgeon
2009-10-31, 03:21 PM
Now the DMG says Standard costs 25, 800 gp.

That's an error. The corrected price (see Magic Item Compendium, page 263) is 45,800 gp.

AslanCross
2009-10-31, 04:34 PM
Replace the cleric with the Cloistered Cleric variant so they end up in a more casting-oriented role (though admittedly they STILL are pretty awesome).

Replace the paladin with Crusader (though I usually have both as available options in my games). There are also a number of good homebrew paladins. Examples are One Winged Angel's Rebalanced Paladin and Fax Celestis's mantle Paladin. The former is good for multiclassing, while the latter is good for a straight class build.

krossbow
2009-10-31, 05:58 PM
Make anyone playing a cleric play the healer class; then see how many people choose that :smalltongue:


Wizards of the coast made Clerics op for a reason; they wanted to make sure that people would play the class, as a party QUICKLY falls apart without one.

AslanCross
2009-10-31, 06:00 PM
Make anyone playing a cleric play the healer class; then see how many people choose that :smalltongue:


Wizards of the coast made Clerics op for a reason; they wanted to make sure that people would play the class, as a party QUICKLY falls apart without one.

I don't think they intentionally made it overpowered. What they wanted to do was give it more options other than healbot, true. The problem is they went overboard without realizing it and exploits were discovered in the form of DMM.

Kylarra
2009-10-31, 06:14 PM
I remember reading somewhere that they intentionally made it more powerful since nobody really wanted to play a cleric in 2e, but I doubt they were aiming for OP.

Starbuck_II
2009-10-31, 06:16 PM
Make anyone playing a cleric play the healer class; then see how many people choose that :smalltongue:


Wizards of the coast made Clerics op for a reason; they wanted to make sure that people would play the class, as a party QUICKLY falls apart without one.

Why not just give every spellcaster healing? That makes Cleric less a heal-bot.

Kylarra
2009-10-31, 06:20 PM
Why not just give every spellcaster healing? That makes Cleric less a heal-bot.Sounds like what I did in Disgaea... XD

Ravens_cry
2009-10-31, 06:25 PM
Why not just give every spellcaster healing? That makes Cleric less a heal-bot.
Almost all of them do, in Core anyway. Bards, Druids, Rangers, Paladins and (of course) Clerics all get healing in some amount or the other. Only Sorcerer and Wizard don't.

Curmudgeon
2009-10-31, 07:26 PM
Almost all of them do, in Core anyway. Bards, Druids, Rangers, Paladins and (of course) Clerics all get healing in some amount or the other. Only Sorcerer and Wizard don't.
And once again, Rogues get no respect. :smallsigh:

Steward
2009-10-31, 07:37 PM
Rogues aren't usually thought of "spellcasters", so leaving them out of the whole "almost every spellcaster gets healing" statement isn't that big of a slight.

Curmudgeon
2009-10-31, 07:44 PM
Rogues aren't usually thought of "spellcasters", so leaving them out of the whole "almost every spellcaster gets healing" statement isn't that big of a slight.
Well, using a spell completion item is considered finishing a spell, so being able to use a scroll via Use Magic Device does qualify. Of course, that qualification isn't generally good for anything except a few oddly-worded prestige class entry requirements.
All that’s left to do is perform the finishing parts of the spellcasting (the final gestures, words, and so on).

AshDesert
2009-10-31, 09:14 PM
There are basically two parts to this. 1) Make the Paladin actually work as a class, and 2) Bring the Cleric closer to the view of the priest in a monastery or church. These are my solutions, however I found that it's actually pretty easy:

1) Make the Paladin's casting based off of Charisma. Give them Smite Evil X/encounter rather than X/day, so that they're actually, you know, useful. You might try giving them the Bard's casting progression, but that does get a little crazy if you make a wrong choice on some of the 5th and 6th level spells you give to him.

2) Since the key to making Clericzilla is DMM Persist, so make Nightsticks only usable on Turn Attempts, rather than giving you more Turn Uses, then get rid of Divine Power (there simply aren't enough Undead in non-Horror campaigns to take away DMM entirely, but it becomes way OP with Nightsticks tricks). Make all Clerics into Cloistered Clerics, minus the bonus domain.

Again, these are just my solutions, but they seem to work well as simple fixes to at least make the Paladin worth playing and keep the Cleric from becoming your groups resident Divine Warrior.

Dimers
2009-10-31, 09:19 PM
Any suggestions to making clerics a tad weaker and not a superior paladin?

One might say that the cleric is a superior paladin because it can kick tail in melee and be the party healbot. (Others might disagree, but utility spells and skills are certainly not the cleric's specialties.) You can take away a lot of the cleric's healing specialization by using Andy Collins' suggestion on spontaneous domain casting (Unearthed Arcana p.64 sidebar): remove clerics' automatic ability to spontaneously cast cures, instead allowing them to cast their domain spells spontaneously. This move also adds to fluff, since it makes the cleric considerably more specific to their diety.

You could simply reduce spells-per-day for clerics, since (as Ernir points out) it's the spellcasting that's the problem.

I favor rewriting the entire spell list to remove the abusive and overpowered options entirely, but then, I'm also the type to make my own game system over a period of a couple decades just to "get it all right" :smallamused: I haven't looked into it myself, but a way to spend less time on such a task might be starting with d20 Modern spellcasting, where every caster class is a prestige class and none of them ever get hyper-powerful.

Matthew
2009-10-31, 10:08 PM
I tend to think of it the other way round, that the paladin is impinging on the territory and role of the cleric. With that in mind, the underlying problem is that the paladin is a fighter variant, and full spell casters in D20/3e significantly overshadow other classes.

Grommen
2009-11-01, 11:23 AM
Almost all of them do, in Core anyway. Bards, Druids, Rangers, Paladins and (of course) Clerics all get healing in some amount or the other. Only Sorcerer and Wizard don't.

One of the first things we took back out of 3ed was the Bards healing. All the other classes healing ability is so weak it's never been a problem.

Clerics are bad ass. Deal with it.

Ernir
2009-11-01, 03:01 PM
I am still in favor of banning divine favor even though it's not enough to beat the attack bonuses mentioned above, simply because quickened divine favor is such an obscure trick that you shouldn't expect players to know it to be optimal.

:smallconfused:
What on earth is obscure about applying Quicken to a core level 1 spell?

AshDesert
2009-11-01, 05:58 PM
One of the first things we took back out of 3ed was the Bards healing. All the other classes healing ability is so weak it's never been a problem.

Clerics are bad ass. Deal with it.

Umm... Druids are still full casters with access to the same healing spells Clerics get (albeit not spontaneously, although Druids get free summons so you can decide for yourself which one's better).

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-01, 08:40 PM
Umm... Druids are still full casters with access to the same healing spells Clerics get (albeit not spontaneously, although Druids get free summons so you can decide for yourself which one's better).Druid healing is a spell level higher, though. As long as you aren't in-combat, it's actually better to cast SNA IV for a unicorn than to rely on actual Cleric or Druid healing spells.

AshDesert
2009-11-01, 09:29 PM
Druid healing is a spell level higher, though. As long as you aren't in-combat, it's actually better to cast SNA IV for a unicorn than to rely on actual Cleric or Druid healing spells.

I know that it's better to cast SNA's than it is to heal in combat, but I was referring to his statement that every other (Core) classes healing ability is bad, which is not quite true, as the Druid stills gets plenty of healing power, albeit not as fast as the Cleric and they can't spontaneously make useful spells into healing spells.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-11-01, 09:31 PM
One of the first things we took back out of 3ed was the Bards healing. All the other classes healing ability is so weak it's never been a problem.

Wait. Druid healing is weak enough to not be a problem... but bard healing was strong enough to be a problem? I'd expect paladins or druids to be pegged as healers sooner than a bard would. Clerics are still the archetypal healbot; but then again we have wands of CLW for a reason.