The Cleric sucks ... or discuss the Cleric

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Back when I was in high school I remember being frustrated That 2E Ad&d didn't seem to emulate fantasy novels very well.

The solution to this I realised at the time was to drop the Magic-user and Cleric and then rename the Druid "Wizard".
 
Interestingly enough, The Fantasy Trip, also an early rpg, has almost no healing spells. There's the spell Minor Medicament (which I'm fairly sure is new to the new edition that came out a couple of years ago) which will get rid of stuff like warts, acne, a cold, pinkeye etc. Then there's the Cleansing spell which can cure diseases, vermin, mold etc. because it does 1 die of damage to all living things in its area of effect (which could very well kill a character already weakened by disease). There's also Regeneration, which will over about a week heal a character fully and regrow lost body parts (which is slightly faster than fully natural healing, but not by too much), and finally Revival, which will revive someone who is mostly dead, but not dead dead (if you died within the last hour and have a generally intact body) and is incredibly costly in magical power, requiring a master of magic with a lot of stored energy or a lot of assistants to provide the extra energy. Healing skills are a lot more effective at dealing with combat damage and work much faster. Alchemists can also make healing potions. All this is more in line with the kind of fantasy fiction you'd see as influences I think. Magic might help with minor ailments, or help someone recover faster, or bring back someone who is dying, but at great cost. Skilled healers can do a lot, and there are some herbs that can be mixed for healing too.

If you're going to use Warrior though, you should use Wizard to get that double W-feeling.
 
Back when I was in high school I remember being frustrated That 2E Ad&d didn't seem to emulate fantasy novels very well.

The solution to this I realised at the time was to drop the Magic-user and Cleric and then rename the Druid "Wizard".

Yeah I really like this idea and would like to try it sometime as the Druid comes closest to the feel of a lot of sorcerers, etc. in fiction.
 
Back when I was in high school I remember being frustrated That 2E Ad&d didn't seem to emulate fantasy novels very well.

The solution to this I realised at the time was to drop the Magic-user and Cleric and then rename the Druid "Wizard".
Gandalf, in D&D terms, is definitely more of a Druid than anything else.

I’d probably note that in Basic D&D, the Druid was a sort of prestige class option for a Cleric, if memory serves correctly.
 
Interestingly enough, The Fantasy Trip, also an early rpg, has almost no healing spells. There's the spell Minor Medicament (which I'm fairly sure is new to the new edition that came out a couple of years ago) which will get rid of stuff like warts, acne, a cold, pinkeye etc. Then there's the Cleansing spell which can cure diseases, vermin, mold etc. because it does 1 die of damage to all living things in its area of effect (which could very well kill a character already weakened by disease). There's also Regeneration, which will over about a week heal a character fully and regrow lost body parts (which is slightly faster than fully natural healing, but not by too much), and finally Revival, which will revive someone who is mostly dead, but not dead dead (if you died within the last hour and have a generally intact body) and is incredibly costly in magical power, requiring a master of magic with a lot of stored energy or a lot of assistants to provide the extra energy. Healing skills are a lot more effective at dealing with combat damage and work much faster. Alchemists can also make healing potions. All this is more in line with the kind of fantasy fiction you'd see as influences I think. Magic might help with minor ailments, or help someone recover faster, or bring back someone who is dying, but at great cost. Skilled healers can do a lot, and there are some herbs that can be mixed for healing too.

If you're going to use Warrior though, you should use Wizard to get that double W-feeling.
That was one of the aspects that made the TFT campaign I was in very frustrating. We spent more on healing potions than we took in treasure. The money came from the generous starting cash and my Animal Trainer having captured, trained, and sold some horses...
 
That was one of the aspects that made the TFT campaign I was in very frustrating. We spent more on healing potions than we took in treasure. The money came from the generous starting cash and my Animal Trainer having captured, trained, and sold some horses...

You need to get someone trained as an alchemist to make the healing potions yourselves. Or get some physickers in there to heal most of the wounds. Or change your approach to the whole adventuring thing :smile: We never did any dungeoneering in TFT when I played as a kid, lots of overland adventures instead, that might help with the deadliness. Adventuring is a tough gig.
 
On magical healing, the lack of magical healing is a common complaint with modern games. You frequently see "magic healing" make a return under the form of high tech healing in a lot of sci-fi. It is a huge benefit for game continuity to include some form of healing or your games are going to involve long periods of rest and recovery or frequent replacements.
This is an area where games and fiction split. It simply isn't an issue in fiction because of plot armor. Herbs, balms and mystical drinks with rejuvenating powers are generally enough as the author has full control over the future of the story and is not subject to lucky / unlucky die rolls. High powered magical healing can be saved for dramatic scenes.

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On magical healing, the lack of magical healing is a common complaint with modern games. You frequently see "magic healing" make a return under the form of high tech healing in a lot of sci-fi. It is a huge benefit for game continuity to include some form of healing or your games are going to involve long periods of rest and recovery or frequent replacements.
This is an area where games and fiction split. It simply isn't an issue in fiction because of plot armor. Herbs, balms and mystical drinks with rejuvenating powers are generally enough as the author has full control over the future of the story and is not subject to lucky / unlucky die rolls. High powered magical healing can be saved for dramatic scenes.

View attachment 30580
Ehh. It seems the solution to that is to basically just make serious injury difficult to sustain. Games already often tend to do that anyway.

It's a weird thing really. Because if I'm pumped full of shotgun shells today, get healed, get stabbed twice with a bowie knife tomorrow, get healed, and then on Thursday get hit with shrapnel from a grenade and healed again then I'm going to have a fair degree of mental trauma. I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem, but completing ignoring mental trauma from constant exposure to violence is handwaved.
 
So, this came up in this thread about how many classes work for you, but the discussion deserves its own thread, and that thread deserves to not be dedicated solely to talking about the Cleric. Anyway, it came up that some posters (me included) really don't like the class design for the D&D Cleric. So, I'll present my reasons for not liking clerics, and others can chime in defending the cleric or further bashing the class.

So first off, the Cleric is just odd as a class, especially in OD&D. This game has three classes. Fighting-Men (which got shortened to Fighter pretty much immediately), Magic-Users and Clerics. Now, the Fighting-Man and Magic-User are pretty basic concepts. One is an archetypal hero, a Conan or Percival or Roland or what have you. The magic user is also fairly obvious. Think of Merlin, Gandalf (although there is that whole no swords thing), Circe or even Dr Fate/Strange. These are fairly broad archetypes. But the Cleric is not. The Cleric isn't a broad archetype, it's a finished character concept. "I'm a priest of a certain religion. I get my magic from my god, and that magic is focused on healing and supporting others, and can be taken away if I don't behave according to my religious tenets. I have also sworn an oath not to shed blood so I won't use any edged weapons in combat, relying on blunt force instead, but I do go about heavily armored and with a mace. Also, I'm very focused on hunting down the living dead, especially the vampire Sir Fang." That's a whole character right there. Give that sucker a name and the name of their deity and you're good to go. Going from two broad concepts to one much more specific is very strange.

Secondly, the Cleric instantly makes the game less good for generic fantasy use. Why? Because while most fantasy stories have some sort of fighters and some sort of magic-users, very few that pre-date D&D have anything resembling the Cleric class in them. It basically only exists in the "D&D genre" of fantasy. This is one of the reasons I don't use a lot of OSR stuff even though I generally like the rules and ideas. The omnipresence of the Cleric, even in stuff that's supposed to be dark fantasy or alternate types of fantasy or more generic and basic than modern D&D is kind of suffocating. And yes, I could just remove the Cleric, but all the healing spells, spells to remove curses and unpetrifying people etc are locked into that class. Can't give anyone else healing, nope, it's got to be some sort of Priest class that does that.

I could probably think of more reasons, but that'll do as a start.
Gygax (et al.) was fairly well acquainted with medieval battlefields and who could be found on them.
Clerics with their maces in DnD are closely adjacent to one of the realities of the medieval church and its higher-ranking members, who were in charge of enormous estates donated for the support of the clergy/church. These bishops and abbots, "princes" (an overstatement) of the church, many of the lands they were invested with for their dignity in the church and the support of the clergy under them were treated no different than any noble tenants-in-chief owing "servicium debitum" in return for their estates and titles. He was aware they waded into battle in full panoply and fought alongside, leading their vassals.
The proscription against edged weapons was a real thing, although it was actually a point of contention within the Church. Some clerical lords did indeed fight with sword in hand, while others used maces, or (much worse) "holy water sprinklers", vicious flails equipped with a bottle of holy water to bless their enemies as they bashed them into submission. It was the price of playing together nicely with the secular lords and kings of the realms into whose company they were tossed, or getting their respect and showing their worthiness to rule. They belonged on his wargame table. To make them fit in with the fantasy feel of the game he and his buddies were gradually cobbling together, so they could retain their place on the table (because they earned it, historically) he equipped them with the only magick that made sense considering the overt pacifistic message of their Church generally.
Viola!
He said himself it was a game, at day's end, so he probably didn't even sweat for a moment that there was something a little wonky in the tweak and the fit (part of which was because they were, historically speaking, Johnny-come-late-lies compared to magicians and warriors, IMO). But he knew for sure that there was no other way the PC parties were going to survive without some sort of magical/accelerated healing, and that happened to be a piece of the "magic" (mira) on which the Church ran. The cleric back in the beginning was very important to game play. Unfortunately, the various iterations have, bit by bit, stripped the cleric of the special niche he enjoyed in the early years. Now, they're superfluous. Everyone has healing "surges" (omfg). However, they are also a Sacred Cow, now. One of the original Big Four.
It just sounded to me like you were missing this information. They actually Do ... err, DID make sense. At one time.
So, that's my $0.02
 
On magical healing, the lack of magical healing is a common complaint with modern games. You frequently see "magic healing" make a return under the form of high tech healing in a lot of sci-fi. It is a huge benefit for game continuity to include some form of healing or your games are going to involve long periods of rest and recovery or frequent replacements.
This is an area where games and fiction split. It simply isn't an issue in fiction because of plot armor. Herbs, balms and mystical drinks with rejuvenating powers are generally enough as the author has full control over the future of the story and is not subject to lucky / unlucky die rolls. High powered magical healing can be saved for dramatic scenes.

View attachment 30580
I am sorry, but "long periods of rest and recovery" as a downside for not providing magical healing, in a game/game-world where the GM gets to fast-forward as much time as needed in the fiction as often as it is deemed necessary OR (when it is just one or two members of the party), OR an alternate PC be picked up to keep the player engaged for the interim, always seemed to ring so hollow to me. It just doesn't bear up.
 
The GM only needs to fast forward to extent that he has ulterior motives for timing the campaign.
 
You need to get someone trained as an alchemist to make the healing potions yourselves. Or get some physickers in there to heal most of the wounds. Or change your approach to the whole adventuring thing :smile: We never did any dungeoneering in TFT when I played as a kid, lots of overland adventures instead, that might help with the deadliness. Adventuring is a tough gig.
Yea, an alchemist would make things better. My character did have Physician and was considering Vet until the slow progression started to discourage me. I know some of the problem was how the GM ran the game, but it became clear to me your initial build was very important because advancement was going to be painfully slow.
 
Ehh. It seems the solution to that is to basically just make serious injury difficult to sustain. Games already often tend to do that anyway.

It's a weird thing really. Because if I'm pumped full of shotgun shells today, get healed, get stabbed twice with a bowie knife tomorrow, get healed, and then on Thursday get hit with shrapnel from a grenade and healed again then I'm going to have a fair degree of mental trauma. I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem, but completing ignoring mental trauma from constant exposure to violence is handwaved.
Except that the trauma is by NO means solely mental.
You are completely ignoring the fact that violence was actually done to the body. The injury was real and the pain, and especially the shock (which can, in and of itself, kill you)
The healing doesn't erase that fact; it only erases the consequences. The stages of healing afterwards normally can be more than a little traumatic in themselves.
Any human being who actually lived this way would end up with completely unmanageable PTSD and likely a few psychosis.
 
That's an interesting opinion. I definitely don't share it.
My point was not about what I like or do, only that GM agency about moving the plot forward is pretty much the only reason he'd have to.
 
Except that the trauma is by NO means solely mental.
You are completely ignoring the fact that violence was actually done to the body. The injury was real and the pain, and especially the shock (which can, in and of itself, kill you)
The healing doesn't erase that fact; it only erases the consequences. The stages of healing afterwards normally can be more than a little traumatic in themselves.
Any human being who actually lived this way would end up with completely unmanageable PTSD and likely a few psychosis.
That's part of why I mostly play fantasy RPGs (and when I don't the next most likely thing I'll play is SF). I can be happy with low combat games, but I still like me some combat. And I don't want combat to mean PCs being sidelined for long periods of time. So... injury and healing isn't realistic in my games... And having a character type that specializes in healing is not a bad thing, so long as it's set up so the character can do more than just healing, and doing so doesn't leave it unable to do healing too easily.
 
My point was not about what I like or do, only that GM agency about moving the plot forward is pretty much the only reason he'd have to.
I understood perfectly what you said; I simply don't agree with you.
If there is no magical healing, or only very limited, and the players take issue with the long convalescence from wounds, fast-forwarding is the only answer to their beef, unless you just give-in and break the integrity of the setting/system to give them instant healing to satisfy them. BUT the latter is an issue that shouldn't even come up, if players and GM have been clear and forth-coming in their expectations prior to getting the game started in the first place.
 
That's part of why I mostly play fantasy RPGs (and when I don't the next most likely thing I'll play is SF). I can be happy with low combat games, but I still like me some combat. And I don't want combat to mean PCs being sidelined for long periods of time. So... injury and healing isn't realistic in my games... And having a character type that specializes in healing is not a bad thing, so long as it's set up so the character can do more than just healing, and doing so doesn't leave it unable to do healing too easily.
I'm not real clear about what "... doing so doesn't leave [the character] unable to do healing too easily." means, but I think I pretty nearly agree with the latter half of your post completely.
 
I understood perfectly what you said; I simply don't agree with you.
If there is no magical healing, or only very limited, and the players take issue with the long convalescence from wounds, fast-forwarding is the only answer to their beef, unless you just give-in and break the integrity of the setting/system to give them instant healing to satisfy them. BUT the latter is an issue that shouldn't even come up, if players and GM have been clear and forth-coming in their expectations prior to getting the game started in the first place.
Ahh, I see where we're at loggerheads, just a misunderstanding. When I said fast-forward, I meant in terms of healing in service to the plot. Those instances where a GM, because they have a plan, can't live with the game in questions usual healing rate or what have you. Or, worse, they micromanage encounters to minimize damage such that the plot beats still ring on time.
 
Ahh, I see where we're at loggerheads, just a misunderstanding. When I said fast-forward, I meant in terms of healing in service to the plot. Those instances where a GM, because they have a plan, can't live with the game in questions usual healing rate or what have you. Or, worse, they micromanage encounters to minimize damage such that the plot beats still ring on time.
OMG - UGH! Yeah, I get you. I can't (well, won't, anyways) deal with that "brand" of play.
Thanks for being patient with me :smile:

BTW, kudos for "loggerheads"! It's been too long since I last saw/heard it used. What a great term!
 
I'm not real clear about what "... doing so doesn't leave [the character] unable to do healing too easily." means, but I think I pretty nearly agree with the latter half of your post completely.
I was considering, for example, the D&D cleric who takes other spells than healing so they can do more fun stuff in combat. But then their spell slots have been used up and they don't have any healing left...

Often the answer is cleric in a bottle...

Actually, RQ seems to do OK. It takes so few wounds to put someone out, that anyone with a decent POW and maybe some POW storage can heal up most of the wounds.

In Cold Iron, people mostly relied on cleric in a bottle, though once a cleric had a few levels under them, they had enough magic points to cast some combat spells AND still knock off a time critical healing spell or two. And the all important Empathic Healing (aka "blood transfusion"), the only way to save a critically injured companion, though at least the Flesh to Stone spell would put such a companion on ice... and crafty PCs would purchase Flesh to Stone wands to use to save companions without having to risk getting in range of whatever dropped the companion...
 
Except that the trauma is by NO means solely mental.
You are completely ignoring the fact that violence was actually done to the body. The injury was real and the pain, and especially the shock (which can, in and of itself, kill you)
No I'm not. How did you come to that conclusion?
The healing doesn't erase that fact; it only erases the consequences. The stages of healing afterwards normally can be more than a little traumatic in themselves.
Any human being who actually lived this way would end up with completely unmanageable PTSD and likely a few psychosis.
Yes. That was exactly my point.

I've no idea what you think I was saying.
 
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No I'm not. How did you come to that conclusion?

Yes. That was exactly my point.

I've no idea what you think I was saying.
I apologize, that was poorly worded on my part.

You said:
"I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem ..."

I meant to state that "unrealistically fast physical healing" makes the mental and emotional trauma MUCH worse.
It is akin to denying the reality of the body trauma experienced.
You know you were (severely) injured. That is accompanied by a very deep, intrinsic, sense of your physical person being violated to go with the anguish of the pain. That takes a severe toll.
So, the period spent healing isn't just about healing the body; it is about healing the injury and only slowly physically reclaiming your life and healing the psycho-emotional trauma ....
But then the person with the healing magic mumbles, waives their hands and wiggles their fingers and !POOF!
No, you aren't! See? All better now!
Talk about a huge bout of psycho-emotional whiplash!
Followed in short order by, "Come on, now, time for battle again!" Time to get violated all over again when you haven't even had time to deal with the first event.
This is an horrific cycle that accelerates the rate at which the body gets traumatized. Going through that over and over would unmake your mind and completely destabilize you emotionally, likely resulting in numerous psychosis and severe emotional problems.
All because they were never allowed the time to heal naturally and deal with the emotional as well as the physical trauma of being wounded in the first place.

I hope that is significantly more clear.
 
I apologize, that was poorly worded on my part.

You said:
"I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem ..."

I meant to state that "unrealistically fast physical healing" makes the mental and emotional trauma MUCH worse.
It is akin to denying the reality of the body trauma experienced.
You know you were (severely) injured. That is accompanied by a very deep, intrinsic, sense of your physical person being violated to go with the anguish of the pain. That takes a severe toll.
So, the period spent healing isn't just about healing the body; it is about healing the injury and only slowly physically reclaiming your life and healing the psycho-emotional trauma ....
But then the person with the healing magic mumbles, waives their hands and wiggles their fingers and !POOF!
No, you aren't! See? All better now!
Talk about a huge bout of psycho-emotional whiplash!
Followed in short order by, "Come on, now, time for battle again!" Time to get violated all over again when you haven't even had time to deal with the first event.
This is an horrific cycle that accelerates the rate at which the body gets traumatized. Going through that over and over would unmake your mind and completely destabilize you emotionally, likely resulting in numerous psychosis and severe emotional problems.
All because they were never allowed the time to heal naturally and deal with the emotional as well as the physical trauma of being wounded in the first place.

I hope that is significantly more clear.
Not really. I still don't understand why you are trying to explain to me the exact point I was making.

I mean I get it - that's why I said it!
 
Not really. I still don't understand why you are trying to explain to me the exact point I was making.

I mean I get it - that's why I said it!
Dude, you literally said,
"I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem ..."

I just explained why it is a BIG problem.
 
And the next word was but...

You’re not even quoting the whole sentence.

I’m genuinely confused. Does the context not make my overall point clear?
 
And the next word was but...

You’re not even quoting the whole sentence.

I’m genuinely confused. Does the context not make my overall point clear?
No. It doesn't.
If you understand the mental/emotional trauma involved in physical trauma and would like to see that modeled (I think that was what you said; I really don't remember any more), how can you possibly not understand (because you said you didn't) that unrealistically fast physical healing as a matter of course in the first place increases that trauma exponentially, i.e., it IS the actual problem with using that kind of healing in the first place?
The statement expresses an oxymoron, as far as I can tell.
 
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No. It doesn't.
If you understand the mental/emotional trauma involved in physical trauma and would like to see that modeled (I think that was what you said; I really don't remember any more), how can you possibly not understand (because you said you didn't) that unrealistically fast physical healing as a matter of course in the first place increases that trauma exponentially, i.e., it IS the actual problem with using that kind of healing in the first place?
The statement expresses an oxymoron, as far as I can tell.
You "don't really remember anymore"?

Ok when I was saying you had misunderstood me and asking if I was unclear or if the context clarified things I was assuming you would do the sensible thing and go back and reread the original post.

But apparently not...?

I'm genuinely reluctant to keep repeating the same basic point these days on internet forums because it's become obvious that most of the time misunderstanding has less to do with me being unclear than people just skimming and leaping to conclusions.

That's why I was asking if my original point was unclear.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Dude, you literally said,
"I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem ..."

I just explained why it is a BIG problem.
It's a game.

Yes, to real people, the amount of trauma an RPG character experiences would leave massive psychological scars.

But who wants to play a game where that's a feature? How is it fun to roleplay intense therapy sessions and relearning how to walk?
 
I apologize, that was poorly worded on my part.

You said:
"I'm not really sure why unrealistically fast physical healing is a problem ..."

I meant to state that "unrealistically fast physical healing" makes the mental and emotional trauma MUCH worse.
It is akin to denying the reality of the body trauma experienced.
You know you were (severely) injured. That is accompanied by a very deep, intrinsic, sense of your physical person being violated to go with the anguish of the pain. That takes a severe toll.
So, the period spent healing isn't just about healing the body; it is about healing the injury and only slowly physically reclaiming your life and healing the psycho-emotional trauma ....
But then the person with the healing magic mumbles, waives their hands and wiggles their fingers and !POOF!
No, you aren't! See? All better now!
Talk about a huge bout of psycho-emotional whiplash!
Followed in short order by, "Come on, now, time for battle again!" Time to get violated all over again when you haven't even had time to deal with the first event.
This is an horrific cycle that accelerates the rate at which the body gets traumatized. Going through that over and over would unmake your mind and completely destabilize you emotionally, likely resulting in numerous psychosis and severe emotional problems.
All because they were never allowed the time to heal naturally and deal with the emotional as well as the physical trauma of being wounded in the first place.

I hope that is significantly more clear.
Thats an interesting thought experiment - what does it mean to suffer physical trauma, and then have it waved away? Not something i have seen explored in an RPG context.

Perhaps the magical healing in our games is accompanied by an undescribed mental effect, especially where divine magic is concerned. 'The Good God has cured your wounds and done so because you are a worthy champion for them. Rise again and fight the good fight!'
 
Gygax (et al.) was fairly well acquainted with medieval battlefields and who could be found on them.
Clerics with their maces in DnD are closely adjacent to one of the realities of the medieval church and its higher-ranking members, who were in charge of enormous estates donated for the support of the clergy/church. These bishops and abbots, "princes" (an overstatement) of the church, many of the lands they were invested with for their dignity in the church and the support of the clergy under them were treated no different than any noble tenants-in-chief owing "servicium debitum" in return for their estates and titles. He was aware they waded into battle in full panoply and fought alongside, leading their vassals.
The proscription against edged weapons was a real thing, although it was actually a point of contention within the Church. Some clerical lords did indeed fight with sword in hand, while others used maces, or (much worse) "holy water sprinklers", vicious flails equipped with a bottle of holy water to bless their enemies as they bashed them into submission. It was the price of playing together nicely with the secular lords and kings of the realms into whose company they were tossed, or getting their respect and showing their worthiness to rule. They belonged on his wargame table. To make them fit in with the fantasy feel of the game he and his buddies were gradually cobbling together, so they could retain their place on the table (because they earned it, historically) he equipped them with the only magick that made sense considering the overt pacifistic message of their Church generally.
Viola!
He said himself it was a game, at day's end, so he probably didn't even sweat for a moment that there was something a little wonky in the tweak and the fit (part of which was because they were, historically speaking, Johnny-come-late-lies compared to magicians and warriors, IMO). But he knew for sure that there was no other way the PC parties were going to survive without some sort of magical/accelerated healing, and that happened to be a piece of the "magic" (mira) on which the Church ran. The cleric back in the beginning was very important to game play. Unfortunately, the various iterations have, bit by bit, stripped the cleric of the special niche he enjoyed in the early years. Now, they're superfluous. Everyone has healing "surges" (omfg). However, they are also a Sacred Cow, now. One of the original Big Four.
It just sounded to me like you were missing this information. They actually Do ... err, DID make sense. At one time.
So, that's my $0.02
As far as I can tell there was actually no particular proscription against swords, any such decrees were about priests participating in battles in general (it's not like a blunt weapon will not shed blood either) and were sporadic, regional, time-limited etc. As has been pointed out earlier in the thread, the origins of the Cleric class lies with Dave Arneson's campaign and the need to fight back against the Vampire PC Sir Fang. To this base was then added stuff from medieval history that was not always correct, as well as miracles from the Bible (this is why clerics can walk on water, turn sticks to snakes, call down a pillar of fire and part the seas). But about the ban on edged weapons specifically, here's William of Breton, talking about a bishop who fought with a mace.

William of Breton said:
Indeed, the Bishop of Beauvais, having seen the brother of the King of the English, a man of incredible strength whom the English had on this account nicknamed "Longsword," overthrow the men of Dreux and do great harm to his brother's battalion, the bishop became unhappy, and since by chance he happened to have a mace in his hand, hiding his identity of bishop, he hits the Englishman on the top of the head, shatters his helmet, and throws him to the ground forcing him to leave on it the imprint of his whole body. And, since the author of such a noble deed could not remain unnoticed, and since a bishop should not be known to have carried arms, he tries to hide as much as possible and gives orders to John, whom Nesle obeys by the right of his ancestors, to put the warrior in chains and to receive the prize for the deed. Then the bishop, throwing down several more men with his mace, again renounces his titles of honor and his victories in favor of other knights so as not to be accused of having done work unlawful for a priest, as a priest is never allowed to be present at such encounters since he must not desecrate either his hands or his eyes with blood. It is not forbidden, however, to defend oneself and one's people provided that this defense does not exceed legitimate limits . . . .

And then we have stuff like the Battle of Durham Field, showing priests not afraid to openly participate in battle with the typical weapons of war of the day.

XLIII
Five hundred priests said mass that day
In Durham in the field, And afterwards, as I hard say,
They bare both spear and shield.
XLIV
The Bishop orders himselfe to fight,
With his battell-axe in his hand; He said, ' This day now I will fight
As long as I can stand! '
 
Thats an interesting thought experiment - what does it mean to suffer physical trauma, and then have it waved away? Not something i have seen explored in an RPG context.

Perhaps the magical healing in our games is accompanied by an undescribed mental effect, especially where divine magic is concerned. 'The Good God has cured your wounds and done so because you are a worthy champion for them. Rise again and fight the good fight!'

In real world treatment amnesia inducing meds are not uncommon, so that the patient doesn't remember er the unpleasantness. Now these are given so they don't remember the treatment, not forget the injury entirely but magical healing could certainly heal the mind as well as the body. After all it is a game and magical healing is a means to keep the characters engaged. If one wants to add mental trauma that is fine, but that could quickly turn your D&D game into CoC.
 
In real world treatment amnesia inducing meds are not uncommon, so that the patient doesn't remember er the unpleasantness. Now these are given so they don't remember the treatment, not forget the injury entirely but magical healing could certainly heal the mind as well as the body. After all it is a game and magical healing is a means to keep the characters engaged. If one wants to add mental trauma that is fine, but that could quickly turn your D&D game into CoC.
That’s my thought if you’re so concerned about the psychological trauma. Let the magical healing heal that too. Otherwise get on with your RPG escapism and have fun. Or make the trauma a real part of the game recognizing that it will be a different game than D&D.
 
Yea, an alchemist would make things better. My character did have Physician and was considering Vet until the slow progression started to discourage me. I know some of the problem was how the GM ran the game, but it became clear to me your initial build was very important because advancement was going to be painfully slow.
A GM can mess with any game, the painfully slow advancement can be a problem (encountered it with OD&D and AD&D as well).

I found when started to play TFT, those who ran the game or played it like D&D (this back when 1e was brand new) ran into all sorts of problems, but there was one GM who started with TFT and his games were a blast. The combat so much more fulfilling, and the lack of instant healing led to a different style, a grittier feel.

But heck I was an old hand at keeping MUs alive by then so the seeing the Warrior focused player have to think as well (and not just run up and bash) was nice. TFT also rewarded good tactical thinking and making use of spears and such, those of us who did a little SCA really liked it.

We also had some pretty good advancement (better than some xp stingy D&D DM's) and did not mind that we were always on the edge penury for several "levels" had a nice feel actually, close to many sword and sorcery novels...but we always had just enough for the gear we needed to adventure.
 
Yea, an alchemist would make things better. My character did have Physician and was considering Vet until the slow progression started to discourage me. I know some of the problem was how the GM ran the game, but it became clear to me your initial build was very important because advancement was going to be painfully slow.
Yeah, slow progression can be discouraging, but that is of course one of the easiest things to adjust as well.

A GM can mess with any game, the painfully slow advancement can be a problem (encountered it with OD&D and AD&D as well).

I found when started to play TFT, those who ran the game or played it like D&D (this back when 1e was brand new) ran into all sorts of problems, but there was one GM who started with TFT and his games were a blast. The combat so much more fulfilling, and the lack of instant healing led to a different style, a grittier feel.

But heck I was an old hand at keeping MUs alive by then so the seeing the Warrior focused player have to think as well (and not just run up and bash) was nice. TFT also rewarded good tactical thinking and making use of spears and such, those of us who did a little SCA really liked it.

We also had some pretty good advancement (better than some xp stingy D&D DM's) and did not mind that we were always on the edge penury for several "levels" had a nice feel actually, close to many sword and sorcery novels...but we always had just enough for the gear we needed to adventure.
Compared to old school D&D the fights usually take longer but are often more intense and dangerous per fight (compared to newer D&D the fights don't take longer but are definitely more intense and dangerous). You can definitely have a labyrinth with just a single big fight in it and that can be enough for TFT. You get a lot of "okay, everyone sit down, let the physician look you over, maybe drink a healing potion" after fights too in TFT. Also probably a lot of downtime in between adventures for healing, regular jobs etc, rather than "okay, so we spend a day to heal everyone up, then once more unto the breach!"
 
That’s my thought if you’re so concerned about the psychological trauma. Let the magical healing heal that too. Otherwise get on with your RPG escapism and have fun. Or make the trauma a real part of the game recognizing that it will be a different game than D&D.

If you get right down to it, a lot of things in the typical RPG would in real life have the PCs dealing with PTSD. I just hacked these awful orc creatures to death. listened to them scream and am now covered with their brains and fluids. Dear god WTF is that thing that just ate 2 of my companions and is now coming for me!!! Getting a couple of arrows pulled out is pretty tame compared to some of the things that a PC would face.

I don't think a game like that is bad, but it would need to have everybody on board and is a huge change from the default.

I've thought CoC Dark Ages would make for an interesting change of pace for a S&S campaign.

GM: Ok, so you guys know Conan right? Well this is going to be like Conan... (interupted)
Players: Oh yeah sure, sounds great lets go.
GM: I'm not done, this is going to be like Conan except you guys aren't Conan, you are the kind of people Conan meets. You know the ones that don't always make it to the end of the story.
Players: Gulp!

:hehe:

A GM can mess with any game, the painfully slow advancement can be a problem (encountered it with OD&D and AD&D as well).

I found when started to play TFT, those who ran the game or played it like D&D (this back when 1e was brand new) ran into all sorts of problems, but there was one GM who started with TFT and his games were a blast. The combat so much more fulfilling, and the lack of instant healing led to a different style, a grittier feel.

But heck I was an old hand at keeping MUs alive by then so the seeing the Warrior focused player have to think as well (and not just run up and bash) was nice. TFT also rewarded good tactical thinking and making use of spears and such, those of us who did a little SCA really liked it.

We also had some pretty good advancement (better than some xp stingy D&D DM's) and did not mind that we were always on the edge penury for several "levels" had a nice feel actually, close to many sword and sorcery novels...but we always had just enough for the gear we needed to adventure.

I've not yet played TFT but I have done quite a bit of Gurps Fantasy in the past. The detailed combat always made it different even from games like RQ. A lack of healing can be a plus as it makes avoiding damage so critical to survival, and really heightens the sense of danger. It also means that death or disability retirement is just a bad roll or two away which can also be a plus so long as all involved are good with living on the edge. It leads to a very different experience than a game like D&D where healing is readily available.
 
The good TFT fights were not much like a D&D set-up, or more importantly all the nifty terrain in a dungeon actually was easy to give effect to in TFT. Surviving fights was always about coordination, flanking, taking advantage of terrain, splitting off an opponent. 90% of the combat "tactics" seen employed in most D&D games in the day would quickly end in TPK in TFT, or at least by the second encounter. One reason our best adventure team build everyone bought Silent Movement. We really felt like what we could do was limited on by our skills as players and we were not locked into a predetermined optimal strategy or style or class.

In our games healing potions were readily available if one had the $.

Never got into GURPS mostly because it seemed like taking TFT in a direction I found too nitty gritty, and already had TFT. A common mod (or hack these days) was to add HP so these could increase separately from ST.
 
Having been away from the ‘Pub for the weekend, I thought a bit more about the issues raised by this thread, and looked back at some fiction and rules. Clearly, whether clerics are a good class in D&D is a matter of personal opinion on which there will never be complete agreement, and I have no quarrel with anyone’s view on that matter. But there are a couple of questions raised by the thread that I wanted to pursue further, since they do seem more amenable to empirical evidence and argument rather than simply a matter of taste. To give the discussion some coherence (and in keeping with some at least of the thread above) I’m going to limit my discussion to OD&D.

Do characters resembling the cleric derive from fantasy fiction, folktales, etc., so that a fantasy game like OD&D might reasonably include them?

This seems to depend on what sources one looks at, and how one interprets them. Certainly, there is no one specific antecedent for the D&D cleric; the closest thing is a Christian holy warrior with some of the powers associated with some saints. But the same could be said of D&D magic users—fiction and history provide lots of examples of magicians, but no single one that precisely matches the powers and limitations of the D&D mage. Instead, the mage is a pastiche of ideas drawn from various sources.

If we look for characters that are ‘priests’ (using the term very loosely) of some god or cult and have magical powers or abilities as part of that role, then I think the clear answer is that such do exist in fantasy fiction, legends, myths, etc. In fantasy fiction, here are a few random examples, limiting the discussion to material published before 1974 (spoilered for length):
One of the main characters in Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis stories (which date to 1938-41) is Dalan the Druid. He is clearly a priest of Mider and has magical powers, including control of fire and plants, a crystal ball he uses for scrying, and the ability to project his mind. In fact, he does more that seems like D&D magic than any of the characters labeled wizards or sorcerers in the stories. Dalan also fights physically a good deal (like a D&D cleric), though with a sword and without armor. The stories also feature Xandar, high priest of Assurah, as one of Elak’s opponents with magical powers, those these come from worshipping a demon rather than his ‘public’ god. One might consider him a hidden anti-cleric, in D&D terms.
In Kuttner’s Mask of Circe (1948), essentially all the ‘magic’ that is done is conducted by the priests or priestesses of Circe or of Apollo (or by the gods themselves). Here magic is explained away as super-science, but that was not uncommon in fiction of this era.
In L. Sprague de Camp’s “Eye of Tandyla,” (1951), the priests of Tandyla have created a magic circle around their temple which negates the main character’s spells and they have cast a couple of different spells on the ‘eye’ (a jewel used as the eye of an idol).
Though Clark Ashton Smith tended to present religion as con game in his stories, sometimes priests do have real supernatural powers. In “The Chain of Aforgomon” (1935), the high priest of that god sets a hideous curse on the main character, which is worked out through repeated incarnations. Likewise, in “The Black Abbot of Puthuum,” the titular abbot is said to have some supernatural powers of longevity and clairvoyance because of his religious status, though he is also a sorcerer.
Hadrathus, high priest of Asura, in Howard’s “Hour of the Dragon” (1935) apparently has magical powers, though I’d have to reread the novel to say more.
In Elric’s world, Pan Tang is a society is of magic-wielding clergy, as evidenced by their theocrat, Jagreen Lern. As I noted upthread, their magic seems to work the same as other sorcerers, but in the Elric stories magic is fundamentally about calling on powerful supernatural beings, especially the lords of Chaos. So it might make as much sense to call all sorcerers in Elric’s world clerics (in a D&D sense) as it would to say that the priests of Pan Tang are really just magic-users (in D&D terms). Both Elric and Jagreen Lern fight in armor without any problem for their spellcasting.
One could find more examples by more combing through fantasy literature than the little exploration I had time for. And one can of course find instances in Classical literature and myth, like Chryses the priest of Apollo in the Iliad, and in legends about saints, to say nothing of the Bible. In fact, most of the new spells created for clerics in OD&D seem to come from miracles associated with Moses (sticks to snakes, insect plague), Jesus, or various saints (curing wounds and disease, purifying or creating food and water or neutralizing poison, speaking with animals and plants, raising the dead).

Which would be easier: to take a game which had separate rules for ‘clerics’ and remove the class, or to create a special sub-class of clerical magicians in a game that offered only an undifferentiated class of magic-users?

To some extent, this is a matter of personal preference; what one person thinks is laborious another may find easy. But it seems to me that, if we focus on OD&D, it’s much easier to remove clerics from the game than it would be to add them in if they did not exist. Taking clerics out of the game requires essentially no work or adaptation, beyond interpreting the result of ‘cleric’ on a few tables as ‘magic user.’ Just don’t use the class. Undead will become a bit more formidable, and healing will be more difficult, but otherwise the game will be more-or-less the same. That is clearly a lot easier than adding the cleric to a game-system that did not include it.

Even if you want to retain the cleric’s spells and ability to turn dead, this will not require a great deal or work. Clerics have only 26 spells in total in OD&D, and 11 of those are either identical to spells for magic-users (even having the same name) or variations on them. Inserting the remaining 15 spells into the magic-user table would not be much work (as an experiment, I did it to my satisfaction in about 20 minutes); about the only decision to make is whether it should be the same level as it was for a cleric or be adjusted up or down a level. Likewise, it is not difficult to convert the cleric’s ‘turn undead’ ability into a spell: my personal solution would be to create 2 different spells, each with 10 minute duration, Turn Undead (2nd level) and Disintegrate Undead (3rd level). These would just use the mechanics of the chart for the class ability, including depending on the level of the caster. For the Turn Undead spell, treat results of ‘D’ on the chart as ‘T.’

All that I personally found pretty easy. Doing the opposite would be a lot more work. If OD&D provided only a single class of magic-user and I wanted to create the cleric as it now exists I would have to:
  • Comb through the list of spells and decide which were appropriate (fairly easy).
  • Move some spells up or down a level for clerics as opposed to magic users, vary their durations, ranges, or effects somewhat (rather harder). It’s needed, though, because I will also have to:
  • Create a new spell progression table for clerics, different than that for generic magic users. Figuring out what this should be could be difficult and would benefit from play-testing; it would be quite hard to come up with a good one ex nihilo. But it’s necessary because I would also require:
  • Rules that allow clerics to fight as well as cast spells. I’d have to decide what types of arms and armor they could use, their hit-dice type and progression, etc.
  • And finally rules for ‘domain’ management for clerics at higher levels.
YMMV, but for me, doing all of that for a game that didn’t provide it would be much more difficult than simply ignoring clerics and all rules associated with them, or even than recombining clerical spells into the magic-user spell list.

What gets lost in a lot of this discussion is that OD&D clerics are not just another type of magic-user; they are characters that can fight effectively and use magic. For me at least, that was always one of their main attractions. And, if you see that as the essence of the cleric, then I think you could argue that ‘clerics’ are actually very common in fantasy fiction. It’s not at all rare for magic-using characters to also be warriors and skilled in physical combat. The OD&D cleric was not an ideal way of getting at that fantasy archetype, but I’d rather have it than a game where you are either (a) a fighter who can never use magic except by way of magic items or (b) a magician who cannot fight effectively without magical aid.

Is OD&D a generic fantasy game, so that including a ‘cleric’ class that draws heavily on medieval Europe is out-of-place?

Looking the game over again this last weekend, I’d have to say, no, it isn’t generic. True, it is not any one existing fantasy world, but it picks particular elements from specific works and makes them its canon. These elements aren’t ‘generic,’ for the most part. For instance, OD&D famously bases its magic system on Vance’s Dying Earth stories. I love those stories, and their view of magic is quite gameable, but most fantasy stories, legends, etc. do not present magic that way. Instead, it’s much more common to have magic require some sort of traffic with supernatural beings (gods, demons, elementals, fairies, what have you), a factor that plays little part in OD&D. Similarly, the idea that demi-human races of elves, dwarves, and halflings are basic to the world comes directly out of Tolkien. Most fantasy written before 1974, I would guess, did not feature those beings at all, or if it did include elves and dwarfs, dealt with them more as faerie creatures rather than humanoid species.

When OD&D isn’t borrowing from one or another fantasy work (or horror films for some its undead, etc.) its background is clearly pseudo-medieval. This fits the technology, the arms and armor, and what little the books tell you about the world beyond the dungeon. It’s clear, for example, that the world will feature castles—indeed, if a party approaches one ruled by a fighter, they will be challenged to joust! Given that pseudo-medieval flavor, basing the cleric on a Christian holy warrior with some saint-like powers seems reasonable, if not maybe the best decision possible.
 
The good TFT fights were not much like a D&D set-up, or more importantly all the nifty terrain in a dungeon actually was easy to give effect to in TFT. Surviving fights was always about coordination, flanking, taking advantage of terrain, splitting off an opponent. 90% of the combat "tactics" seen employed in most D&D games in the day would quickly end in TPK in TFT, or at least by the second encounter. One reason our best adventure team build everyone bought Silent Movement. We really felt like what we could do was limited on by our skills as players and we were not locked into a predetermined optimal strategy or style or class.

In our games healing potions were readily available if one had the $.

Never got into GURPS mostly because it seemed like taking TFT in a direction I found too nitty gritty, and already had TFT. A common mod (or hack these days) was to add HP so these could increase separately from ST.
In the campaign we played in, I WAS the only player to not have a PC die... All three of my PCs (we eventually decided each of the 3 players could play up to 3 PCs) were capable missile characters. My original was a "ranger" type and wasn't optimal in combat. My second PC was optimized more for combat, less for skills. My 3rd PC was optimized for crossbow... All three are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WHm8AUNEgGcvGbTmn6AS2qxZmJYkReFCrRJTlFdLJho/edit?usp=sharing

Over the course of the almost 2 year campaign, I'd say we had 5 "adventures". The first was checking out an abandoned village, not much action. The second was checking out a small dungeon and bailing out. The 3rd was capturing and training horses. The 4th was a small dungeon we didn't back out of, but lost several PCs in and spent months of real time (bi-weekly 2 hour sessions) with many forays. We would go in, have a fight and retreat. At one point we bought the town out of healing potions. My PC saved us from some use of healing potions, but physicker's 2 points of healing doesn't do much to a serious wound and with at best 3-4 points of armor and 2d6 weapons, minor wounds are uncommon. We got pitiful treasure (the goblin leader escaped with whatever real treasure there even was).The final adventure we were after gryphons (which we did capture some eggs) and we found a high tech fort which the local baron wanted. It was clear there was no way we could hold it against his forces (and we had no way to recruit our own forces). The campaign ended without us actually resolving how we were going to blow the place up to deny it to him and whether any of us could manage to escape.

It's worth noting we used the revised rules. We didn't use any supplemental material to my knowledge.

The point to me is that without a lot more coaching of what experience rates and treasure rates should be, the game was very discouraging. The jobs table was a PITA. My character had nice skills but didn't qualify for any good paying jobs (I'm not sure ANY of my 3 PCs did). Literally the BEST thing we did for money was my PC training horses... Oh and having new PCs come in (with more starting cash than I did) and use some of their cash to purchase healing potions was the only other cash influx to our party. I guess the mage DID make some money doing jobs. Oh, but I'd hate to use that jobs table for very long. If you roll monthly for very long, you will eventually roll high and have misery... I don't remember what odds I calculated for working a winter but I was actually glad it didn't make sense for me to roll on the jobs table...

Could a GM who understands the game run a better game? Sure. But this is the classic problem we complain about lots of games. There isn't enough mentoring in the core system to help a new GM and players have a successful campaign. I did have fun for a while, but once we got into the tech fort, I lost interest and mostly checked out during sessions and became close to resentful by the end.

And I dunno - maybe we need a TFT thread... :-) Well except that a "cleric" would have really changed up the game...
 
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