James just put up a post about D&D, specifically Clerics. I played obsessively for a few years in the 1980's and occasionally after that. Clerics as a category don't quite work. The game requires some healing and rescue, so that got stuffed in the bin. The original formats were somewhat medieval, and not only was the church important in that context, but many knight and paladin types were tied in pretty closely to particular saints, shrines, or causes. Another thread in the creation was in battling against monsters that had a spiritual or unearthly component, so you had to have someone for that as well. It was a mixed grill that didn't entire fit together. A typical party was a fighter, a magician, a thief, and a cleric. We like fours. It feels balanced. As one went further, there were specialty and mixed categories of the four. In retrospect, these were an unnecessary aid to creative character design. No need for a specialty category of illusionist, ranger, or assassain. You could just be that in your basic category. I suppose you could propose as you went to the DM that you wanted to specialise at something and were willing to give up some advantage in some aspect in order to gain it in another.
I never played a cleric, and didn't see the advantage. A good NPC to have along, maybe.
2 comments:
I think I played one once. It’s one of those classes that seems like it will be more fun than it is. I think it gets better if you go to higher levels, but you are definitely hamstrung in the early few.
A Cleric is basically a healer. All MMO type games have the holy trinity. Fighters, Sorcerers and Healers. This is extended in many of them to include a Thief type as well.
In EVE, the game I'm playing now, we have Fighters, both good and evil, solo and in fleets. our fleet battles are unparalleled with up to 6000 players online and fighting.
Our Clerics are Logistics, essential to any big fight. Our Thieves are the Special Ops types with Stealth as their strength.
Our Sorcerers are very different with Industrial R%D being how you progress in your ability to make inventions, and then sell them.
The entire thing is player supported. I will mine many hundreds of millions worth of several ores today, with my Mining Barges, and my Ore Hauler will take that to market, a moderately dangerous journey in its self. I sell ore, I make Weapons and Ammo, and make a bit on the side with Rat suppression when its needed. Rats are NPC enemies and compared to the player base mostly easier. Well in some places that's not true. but its a huge game.
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