Cleric

>Cleric
>never falls
>The D&D game does *not* deal
with the ethical and theological beliefs of the
characters in the game.

At least 4e had a sense of shame leading its writers to mumble some nonsense about power sources and inalienable sparks of divine inspiration always staying within their hosts, no matter how rotten of heart those wayward fools might be - old-school D&D just bluntly shuts down any interest in properly roleplaying beliefs of your character. Come on, grognards, is it even possiblle for your self-respect to ever recover afrer openly admitting your roleplaying debility just like this?

user, didn’t you hear? Role playing isn’t allowed in the osr.

And yet, for some reason, their general always talks about cunning strategy, immersion in the world, consequences for choices and player skill. Weird, huh?

I find every attempts to flesh out clerics etc. to be alienatingly terrible. The vaguer the better in my book. Leave more room to the player.

Worshipping only one single god in a full pantheon is extremely weird. People would worship whatever god they needed at the moment.

And to elaborate, its already hard enough to RP a character who believes in something general like Law or Chaos (per BECMI), but the dumbing down of the cleric into dumb religious guy who says "nuuu you can't do thing xDDD" and "ok I bring back ded party member gib gold plox xDDDD" is total cancer.

Another step of cancer is the "pagan ish deities, but still medievalish europe." Then we have knight templar of Poseidon and Osiris and so forth. That's real fun... about fucking once. There already is an Order of the Stick. And its more than just pagan god stapled to fake earth cultures ill fittingly, they're also Jesusified; ie, all pagan deities in this dumb fucking kind of setting want you to be just like them.

The next stage of cancer past this in terms of generic fantasy is when we've finally reached the level of stupidity by which the setting is infested with ascended player characters that have colossal egos. They, too, are Jesusified; they want you to be more like them. Thus, Dick Fuck Jackass: The PC becomes Dickusfuckius the Lord of Jackasses, whose Dogma is "Thou must be a dick fuck jackass!"

Oh yes, great fucking roleplaying. Much imagination. Kill yourself posthaste.

Bump for proof that OSR is gay

Personally, I treat Clerics as just a specialized Wizard.
That is, that 'arcane' magic and 'divine' magic are just categorizations on the schools of thought taught to the novices, or who happens to have their hands on the scrolls/tomes that they learn them from. They are taught that their abilities come from the gods in the same way that real-life people talk about their wealth coming from God, in that through Him all things are possible.

Applying this to Paladins (since you are clearly talking about Paladins falling), they are not merely warriors who can cast some spells. Since they swear themselves in service to a god, part of the frame of mind of their spellcasting is that it comes not just from "all things are possible thanks to my god", it comes from what they consider to be a more personal connection to the deity. If we compare the deity to a royal, the Cleric is their servant, but the Paladin is their personal bodyguard.
When a Paladin falls, it is a break in that connection. Either the god disapproves or the Paladin no longer believes in the tenets. This creates an emotional trauma that prevents the Paladin from using the abilities, but does not actually delete the skills from their brain. Atonement is them reforging the connection that they need to be in the correct frame of mind to have the confidence that they can use Lay on Hands.

But maybe I am just being autistic.

Clerics were never characters, they were just a mechanical construct that dispensed healing magic. Not a real class, best gotten rid of but it'll never happen because DnD is just a game about imitating DnD.

Dungeon Crawl Classics absolutely fucks with players for not following their God's path.

Literally no one does that. Being dedicated to a particular god does not mean you shun other Gods. Only shit players and DMs pull that.

No. Clerics have always been full casters who can heal, but its not their most effective schtick.

most do.

Classic example: FR, in which laypeople slut between gods and get no benefit, and virtually all people who get powers from gods are monotheistic.

Clerics for a long time were considered better front line warriors than Fighters

It is less "I only worship one god" and more "this god's domain is over these things that, due to my personal philosophy and/or lifestyle, I pray for blessings over most".
A Grecian warrior may pray to Ares for strength in battle and daily training, but when he goes home he whispers a prayer to Hera alongside his wife for their newborn to have sweet dreams.

Clerics just happen to specialize in the teachings of their specific god and the conduction of their rituals.

Exactly. They fight. They cast spells.

Some of them happen to be healing, but I dunno how people could fail at math so badly to think mid combat healing is usually viable.

High Con, high level dudes may SOMETIMES be better off receiving Heals tho.

This doesn't alter that Clerics, as a concept, exist to provide magical healing.

They've stapled ten thousand other goodies onto them, but the class literally just exists because you need a way to heal in order for the game mechanics to function.

This is because clerics don't actually recieve their powers from their gods. The only thing driving a cleric's abilities is their own faith, it's a secret the gods all agree to keep from mortals at any and all costs.

no one says this. The only assumption with OSR is that your character probably acts in a rather mercenary type faction and if you role-play an idiot you will probably die. Also acting like a badass unstoppable force at level 1 will probably cause NPCs to roll their eyes but their is nothing wrong with that per se

Shall we be honest? We all know that this sort of justification only exists because they feel shame about a setting with Christianity, but they lack the courage or creativity to do anything but a setting with fake Christianity.

Thus you have hurr, cleric of Tyr, cleric of Zeus, cleric of Quetzalcoatl... all with plate and so forth.

>This doesn't alter that Clerics, as a concept, exist to provide magical healing.

No, clerics, as *your* totally worthless opinion, exist *to you* to provide magic healing. Unfortunately, your opinion is of no value or relevance to the rules.

>but the class literally just exists because you need a way to heal in order for the game mechanics to function.

Not at all. I've barely played with parties with clerics at all, and those who had them, didn't focus on healing at all.

To cure yourself of your retardation, go look carefully at how much healing spells restore (1d8 at level 1 etc), how much enemies deal with an attack (probably 1d8 or so), how many times you can do that a day (probably once or so)

Your MMO horseshit has no power here, faggot.

The "literal" reason clerics exist is to fight vampires and stuff.

>Since they swear themselves in service to a god
nowhere in any official D&D rulebook has this been true of paladins.
I know, I checked. I'm very annoyed he won that argument.

they don't need healing spells they get channelling.
that said, spontaneous healing conversion is also a thing. Even if you specialize only in Debuffs and blasting the game expects you to be filling the role of healer.
just like it expects druids to summon meatshield animals.

healing isn't about keeping them at full, It's about keeping them up for 1-2 more rounds.

So? Using healing spells in combat is almost always the hallmark of a FUCKING RETARD

>that said, spontaneous healing conversion is also a thing.

and a waste
and unnecessary for healing
>the game expects you to be filling the role of healer

Why is 3e the alpha and omega for you subhumans?

Why do you think clerics are needed for healing? Explain please

Honestly, the less complicated the better. Look at the clusterfuck we've had over Paladins: If Paladins simply had the clerical code of conduct, we'd have avoided thirty years of stupid arguments.

>Why do you think clerics are needed for healing? Explain please

They do it better than paladins, rangers, and druids, the other classes capable of healing?

that's called 4e/5e

Yes they do. I've seen a lot of OSRfags basically say that your character is just a pawn, at best a direct self insert, and that "roleplaying" is cancerous faggotry

links/pics or it didn't happen

You know as DM you could just do that if you want

>Shitposting about 4e by comparing it to 1e cus he doesnt understand what D&D entails in his own fucking pic.

Could you be more of a newfag?

>Worshipping [sic] only one single god in a full pantheon is extremely weird.

Almost like it's a fantasy world with very visible miracles...instead of Earth

Gentle Reminder that Gary Gygax was a Jehovah’s Witness and thus any false depiction of theology in the game would be an abomination. Guy didn’t even celebrate christmas as it was a pagan holiday.

well there is such a thing as too much roleplaying. I know because I was in such a group. 4 hours of nothing but shooting the shit in a tavern hoping the GM would cause anything, anything at all to happen but he didn't want to "stifle the roleplaying" made me want to die. Like playing DnD like a boardgame might be bad but so is being a fucking theater club reject who turns it every session into an anime filler episode is awful.