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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > You Gotta Have Faith to Play a 5E D&D Cleric

You Gotta Have Faith to Play a 5E D&D Cleric

Why I'll Be Playing 5E D&D for the Foreseeable Future
Uncommon 5E D&D Races -- Dragonborn

Welcome to Nerdarchy with you this time is Nerdarchist Ted.  Among our group I am the resident Cleric when we play Dungeons and Dragons. Many players look at the cleric as the parties healer or slave and that they have to do what the party says.  But especially after the introduction of Charisma being an important role in a clerics stat they can easily become a central character and make a great party leader.

Dungeons and Dragons

When you are a cleric you are a divine conduit of your gods divine power.  You wield this power as a smith wields a hammer.  Now some worlds have gods that are very active and some worlds have gods that are far removed from the world.

There are many paths to becoming a cleric.  You might have worked your way up through the ranks of other acolytes or your god might have chosen you for some unknown reason.  What ever the choice it will impact the characters back ground.  You also need to ask why is your character special or more special than all the other acolytes who were not chosen.  Not all who serve a god wield that divine power.

All of these choices make for a much more interesting character.

With each class choice in Dungeons and Dragons there are loads of decisions into making a character.  Race, background and  weapons all make for a wonderful spread.  A player could take a life time playing and never make enough characters to cover all possibilities.

With the cleric however you have all of these, but you have to choose or have your DM choose your god. If your average world holds 20-30 different deities Combine that with all the other choices and you get enough concepts to make your head spin.

So when you sit back and consider playing a cleric you can do so and wear your holy symbol emblazoned on your chest or shield or play an evil or shady cleric and keep your deity secret or maybe even your divine power a secret.  So with all aspects of the gaming world it probably falls into one of the domains of a god so your choices for a cleric are just ridiculous.

Clerics and Religious benefits

There are many benefits to being a cleric in Dungeons and Dragons.  As a good cleric you get trust and help from towns and cities so much easier.

cleric

You can get free or cheaper healing from fellow clerics of your order when you encounter them.  You can get a safe bed to sleep in at your deities temple .  You can also get help with information or quests.  Maybe even the properties of a magic item identified.

Then there is the other side.  If you are an evil cleric you can actually be a better Necromancer than the wizard.  You can call down your divine magic to lay waste to your enemies or sneak in an evil spell when you offer to heal an injured comrade or enemy.

The Clerics and Multi-Classing

Of all the classes out there Cleric is the easiest to blend with anything.  I could go into detail about how well clerics mix with each of the classes, but it would be a lot of repeated information so I will break it down into three sections.  See how it fits best for you.

Martial – If you are playing a fighter or other martial class then adding some levels in cleric can be great.  You only lose a few possible hit points as hit die is not that much different.  But what you get is access to magic and with it a bunch of healing.  Depending on the edition you are playing if you go with a war or fighting deity you probably get another good benefit that helps out your character as well.

Sneaky – So you want to play a rogue or other sneaky character and mix it up with cleric.  There are a bunch of useful spells that will help out this type of character.  You could seriously benefit from Divination magic and healing when you fail to find traps.  But if you are this type of character your god benefits are probably geared to help you out as you are already sneaky.

Spell caster – You have a mage or other caster and you want to add cleric to the mix.  Of course you do because who doesn’t want more spells?  Not only more spells, but more options.  In early editions like 2nd and 3rd it was easy for low level casters to run out of spells adding a second casting class practically doubles your spell allotment.

Nate the Nerdarch in a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons around 20 years ago ran a character who was cleric-wizard-pscionicist and at the high levels we got up to there was honestly nothing he could not accomplish though magical means.  My athasian Elf fighter fighting with two outrageously powerful longswords could not touch him even if I wanted to.

 

 

So there you have my take on clerics and how useful they are in a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign If you feel I missed something or got something wrong please feel free to add it in the comments below.

With that I will sign off and please remember, Until Next Time: Stay Nerdy!!

 

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Ted Adams

The nerd is strong in this one. I received my bachelors degree in communication with a specialization in Radio/TV/Film. I have been a table top role player for over 30 years. I have played several iterations of D&D, Mutants and Masterminds 2nd and 3rd editions, Star wars RPG, Shadowrun and World of Darkness as well as mnay others since starting Nerdarchy. I am an avid fan of books and follow a few authors reading all they write. Favorite author is Jim Butcher I have been an on/off larper for around 15 years even doing a stretch of running my own for a while. I have played a number of Miniature games including Warhammer 40K, Warhammer Fantasy, Heroscape, Mage Knight, Dreamblade and D&D Miniatures. I have practiced with the art of the German long sword with an ARMA group for over 7 years studying the German long sword, sword and buckler, dagger, axe and polearm. By no strecth of the imagination am I an expert but good enough to last longer than the average person if the Zombie apocalypse ever happens. I am an avid fan of board games and dice games with my current favorite board game is Betrayal at House on the Hill.

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