How to play an interesting cleric? Majority of them I'v seen can be summed up as

How to play an interesting cleric? Majority of them I'v seen can be summed up as
>Muh god
Only marginally better than the druid players with their
>Muh woods

they don't serve the god simply because muh god. You serve this being who promotes some ideal, and you will fight to promote that ideal.

I'm playing a "cleric" in a pathfinder campaign coming up.
I'm going to a necromancer with domains of death and runes. The DM is letting me come up with a lot of the religion.
>summon undead terrorists
>give them plates with explosive runes

The key to easily making an interesting cleric, at least from a purely roleplaying standpoint, is to make the character first, then choose a god that fits the character as best you can. You always want some point of contention between the deity and the cleric in question so there's always "crisis of faith" opportunities for the GM and for character development. I mean there's not really anything wrong with just wanting to play a cleric of X, but I feel like you're more likely to just conform the character to the doctrine that way, instead of making an independent person first, then applying a god that fits, preferably like a mass-produced glove (i.e: not perfectly since it's not custom tailored).

The last few Divine characters I've played:

> "muh sins"
> "muh children"
> "muh beauty"
> "muh vengeance"
> "muh crown"
> "muh love triangle"

Not to overgeneralize, but a Divine character turns to faith in response to something. There's a REASON why priests believe in God, and make worshiping him the focus of their lives.

X + Y = Faith. You know what the conclusion is; finding out the variables that lead them there is the interesting part.

I play my current one as someone who serves in a contractor role with a group that takes jobs to travel out into conflict regions and help stabilize them (this is the combat aspect of the character, she has military-style training) and once these areas are made safe for the locals, her group helps install services that their church provides to its followers (this is the religious aspect, her cleric duty) namely healing centers and areas in which to pray for various blessings, the types of things that the unit can teach locals how to run on their own and then they move on to the next contract.

When in doubt slap another classes cliche onto the character you want to play as.

>Rogue Cleric
Charming and money grubbing. Never seen without his donation box. Feels entitled to 10% of your earnings.

>Wizard Cleric
>Bookworm bible thumber. Slightly insane. Screetches about end times and mutters to himself. No sense of right or wrong.

>Ranger Cleric
>Hangs around crossroads proletizing to travelers. Hates one thing with a firey brimstone passion. Gives great hugs when you put out your campfires.

>Warlock Cleric
>Creepy fucker who just *loves* everything, especially god, small animals, fresh blood, god and YOU! Known to wear a white shirt, a tie, and knock on people's doors. He knows your in there!

See, easy.

Play a drow trickster cleric with high dex.

To be honest there are so many good cleric choices, even in 5th.

From UC, Forge clerics are awesome as fuck, my friends one casts "heat metal" on his sword and shield before massive fights.

Think big OP.

Both 'Cleric' and 'Paladin' classes are shitty. By making their be direct, magical evidence of their religion being true it ruins the entire mystique and purpose of faith.

The best holy warrior is the kind of does the prayers and tries to get monsters to repent because they believe it, not because some not!Zeus gave them lightning bolts.

Play a character who shares the underlying philosophy of the god they're a cleric of, but fundamentally disagrees with some aspect of the service they've been called to. People don't choose to become clerics, they are chosen. Even Moses struggled with being the chosen emissary of YHVH.

>image

Melisandre would be a multiclass cleric / wizard

You made your religion can only use blind faith to hook you and theirs has a real god you can see and has done stuff?
Sounds more like an indictment of actual relgions irl.

Faith in something that can't be proven over another faith that cant be proven is ultra silly. Ie islam is the true faith not Hinduism......why cause ahhh well ummmmmm my book tells me so.

You are mad*

I've played characters of the cleric class as:

>Goblin Jesus
>Hick Paladin
>Insane Survivalist Elf
>Fascist Asshole

The overspecialized cleric has the same problem as a fighter who only has skills and a personality related to stabbing things - their persona is flat and dull. Naturally a fighter will know more about stabbing things than a cleric, and a cleric will know more about religious things than a fighter, but they don't have to overwhelm the character.

Also, you can have very spiritual characters who are not receiving divine powers. I'd actually like to see more of those pop up. It's rare to see a character who is not a cleric give much of a care to their faith.

user don't engage him, he doesn't actually care about the thread topic he just wants to argue with strangers.

>he doesn't have a concept of what it means to be truly above the limits of this world
>instead of seeking and following any transcendence he wants to follow powerful magic sky men that are bound by those limits instead
As a person who likes both in games, I'm disappointed that there are people who think like you in reality. Here's your (you).

I had a player in one of my games who player a former soldier and mercenary turned Cleric when he had a religious experience after a battle. He was a gruff, down-to-earth type and often struggled to reconcile his religious ideals with his own beliefs, but ultimately realized he was doing good.

Under buttered roasts.

Best answers.

Agreed, that said, I like the idea of a cleric who lives in abject fear of the God they worship, praising and doing deeds in their name to appease them and not get smote.

>my friends one casts "heat metal" on his sword and shield before massive fights
That seems like an extremely poor choice, user.

...

>How to play an interesting cleric?
I don't know. Give them some sort of character complexity or inner struggle.

Like maybe the Painbearer of Illmater vowed to heal the pain of others out of guilt at how much pain he caused as a mercenary earlier in life looting and pillaging innocent villages for supplies.

Or maybe the holy paladin suffers from some horrible disease and seeks a noble death on the battlefield instead of wasting away in a sickbed.

But you need two equations to solve for two variables

>Mfw I'm putting Ilmater in my setting as a combination of Jesus and Joshua Graham
I think the best way to jumpstart interesting clerics is to have interesting gods, or "gods". If every religion in the setting is merely "tribute to this single god that governs things we care about", clerics only have so much room since they have a direct bind to that god. There needs to be some uncertainty and doubt, it adds so much. When the doctrine and how to best serve the god are unclear, clerics will take on different methods that shed light on their own character.

>Rogue Cleric
>Charming and money grubbing. Never seen without his donation box. Feels entitled to 10% of your earnings.

Just have a properly insulated handle, and logically the cleric won't take the damage, thus negating all the bits about dropping and penalties. To be fair, this is difficult because getting steel red hot means heating it to over 500 degrees celcius IIRC, but in a magical setting it should be no problem to enchant the handle to stay cool. Otherwise, a ceramic handle with a lot of leather wrapping might work.

Yeah, this shit would never fly at my table.

It's a real shame one of the most interesting characters in New Vegas was in the worst DLC for the game.

That said, was anyone else bothered by the whole idea of him being Caesars second in command, then just sort of having to help him out because he went back home to help the natives? I feel like the game wants you to forget he killed dozens if not hundreds of innocents, betrayal or not.

Or maybe he was a characterized satire of a "born again" religious man. I dunno.

Most PCs in that game probably kill "dozens if not hundreds of innocents"

No one is as fanatical as a convert. Give your cleric a backstory where their life before the religion is at odds with what they are now.

Like someone who was indocrinated by the church after their parents were killed for heresy, or a man with dark urges who threw himself into the faith to stop himself from becoming a monster.

Asbestos exists and would be available.

I mean yes, there are worse than Josh in the world of fallout, but there are a lot of people who aren't horrible murderers, especially on the scale of a guy like him.

I've rarely seen clerics played well at all, especially on Veeky Forums.

There's literally an alchemist class that does this. Not with undead, however.

What would it even do?
"Any creature in physical contact with the object takes 2d8 fire damage WHEN YOU CAST THE SPELL"
"you can use a bonus action on each of your subsequent turns to cause this damage again"
so unless you're saying that you somehow can use a Bonus Action in the middle of your Attack Action, then it ain't happening.

>Not working with the Legion.
>Not helping tackle the degenerate nature of man through self improvement and an authoritarian regime.
>Not wanting to build humanity in the shape of the greatest civilisation to grace the earth, whose principles, are the foundations of all successful civilisation.
>Not wanting to follow a man whose ideals aren't held back by petty morality and is willing to create a viable state which can out-compete all other states.
>Not enjoying the forests of crucified degeneracy in the literal post-modern art gallery that is Legion lands, filled with pre-war safety, something that no other faction in the post-war USA could provide.
>Not becoming the greatest national hero the Legion has, saving the Kaiser, the literal genius of it all from brain cancer, giving the winning tactical advice and winning the admiration of the Legate, a literal tank of a man and having both pillars of the Legion being eternally grateful to you, thus becoming the Stalin to the early days Trotsky and Lenin.
No but seriously the faction sucked because the writers have no idea about believability, Ceaser's voice actor was the worst choice ever, his character model was even worse, that first encounter was so poorly written and the quests in comparison to any other faction was so bad, the Legion could have been so much more, the Legate and Joshua were done so well, but Ceaser, the focus of a huge cult of personality was so bad, as were the dumb American football design on the uniform, they could have been so much more.

That could be said for any Bethesda game though.
>Inb4 different design studio.

Make them jews, charge for healing.

Allow the party/whoever to sign up for a health care plan, in which you cover most of the cost so long as they can cover a small co-pay charge.

MAXIMUM DRIVE

>rome
>viable with a single authority
Rome died under an emperors rule.

>Rome died under an emperor
>Ignoring Caesers expansion
>Ignoring all the reforms that could only be done under am authoritarian regime.
>Ignoring all the great things done from Augustus forwards.

Singular rule had its downsides from Nero to Constantine but when it worked it really did work.

That's influence of our world's modern useless shit priests.
Priests were:
- keepers of lore and traditions (which were way more useful in the old times without libraries and shit)
- Judges (Rebe, is black a color according to The Scrolls?)
- lawyers (keeping track of wedding, births, deaths, vows e.t.c.)

And if all this is backed by some actual supernatural power - you can even go adventuring while keeping these roles.

Play a fanatic, not a zealot.

What's the difference?

But House does everything the legion does, without an autistic hatred of technology. House is a fascist with the parts that made fascism halfway interesting (futurism, modernism) and without the inane bullshit of reaction.

Also

>Not giving Vegas independence and allowing it to be more than a jewel on some autocrat's belt.

Absolute plebian.

I love clerics and characters who have faith in general. I'm as atheistic as they come, so trying to interpret someone very different in that aspect is always interesting.
As some have said, build a character, then choose a god. Know what aspects of their faith resonates with their character, and what aspects don't. Have them interact with people who have a different interpretation of their scripture or something. Or just find some time to roleplay explaining, in-character, your faith to the other characters in your build. It's a good exercice, I think.

I love pic related as an interesting priest type character. He's in a complete love-hate relationship with his goddess.

Last cleric I played was a sharran who served because he owed his life to her. It was a literal obligation that eventually drove him to nihilism and genuine worship

Are there any fantasy novel that stongly feature clerics, divine characters or divine magic?
Doesn't have to bee good books

>Not "v wot mviii"
Fail

Take a few years off Veeky Forums and become a normie, then return and everything will be cool again

Jacek Piekara's series about an Inquisitor named Mordimer Madderdin is about a world where Jesus got off his cross and murdered everyone who did not believe, and it follows stories about the inquistion that resulted from such a world.

The stories are also one-sided fucking shit where every episode is the inquisitor walking into a village, accepting a mission briefing from his High Priest while fucking 3-4 whores at the same time to fulfill the author's masturbatory fantasies, fucking more whores while investigating, then murdering every dweller of the village because they committed some sort of a transgression, and leaving the non-whore women to be raped by his two extremely ugly sidekick thugs. It's like following a really shitty, edgy session of WFERP, and yes, I'm sticking by this acronym. Nothing makes my blood boil more than this retarded fucking book series and the cult following it has.

I dunno, the last druid I played was more like
>muh RULES OF NATURE
Fuck metal gears- I mean giant golems.

>All that post

I don't quite know what you're trying to convey, but I just really don't like those books and I associate them with edgy 13-year-olds. I remember reading it myself when I was 13, and one of the good signs of my "trying to be super-mature, contrarian and above it all" was recognising back then that this book is trash, and there's nothing fun in it, even in a pulpy way.

It's like Geralt was the Polish Elric and that's good, but then, I have no fucking clue what else is there that's good in Polish fantasy. Piekara and Pilipiuk are utter trash and Dukaj is insanely complicated.

A player of mine is running a charlatan cleric and it is wonderful. He is a dropout bard who hates the bard, his roommate in college. He refers to his god as 'that god I worship' because he is cursed to not say it. Also, it plays that scammer angle.

The last cleric I played was
>muh fookin' family

>I don't quite know what you're trying to convey

Ah, okay. I'm not particularly socially smart and this reads into me overthinking this particular gif. Sorry for wasting your time.

Not a total waste of time, now I have a dumb book to be angry about

>5e DND
>make a half elf cleric
>goddess is avendra. Goddess of luck and change
>back story for my half elf is that she grew up in a travelling caravan where her parents were clerics for hire
>decide to take it a step further and make it that they were gypsies
>our first missions we help save the town blah blah blah
>in return for saving the town the party gets ownership of the biggest tavern
>convince the party to convert said tavern onto an avendra Church
>turn tavern into a holy casino where for a small pittance of 10 coppers you can get a luck check for the day
>to check your luck you play black jack with one of the priests (dealers)
>if you win you are lucky, if you lose you are not
>you can play as many times as you want
>the warriors in this church of Avendra are call "Fortunate Soldiers" almost all of them are recently converted mercenaries

My last character was a "good deeds for food and bed" hobo cleric that worshiped a nature god. He had no interest on riches.
Also he was way too nice, which led to shenanigans and the party trying to screw him over.

Or have it that your actions are inescapably your god's will, no matter how you fight it.

I've played an inquisitor who learned that his Gods are basically just immortal humans living in exile in the spirit realm. He didn't give a shit. He wasn't a believer because his Gods had the biggest stick or the tastiest carrots, but because he thought they stood for the right things, as exemplified in the religious sagas and myths in ways that couldn't be expressed with simple, straightforward teachings. If the Gods didn't exist, he'd invent them.

>be a Viking
>learned how to carve runes
>figured out how to draw magical power from runes
>raided and reaved across the seven seas
>The Gods noticed
>Now I gotta work off the debt I owe to them for using their runes without their permission