Cleric or Druid [Archive] - Wizards Community

Cleric or Druid [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Verderben
01-21-08, 12:21 PM Hello, I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but I have read much about the "CoDzilla" concept, and I was wondering which class, cleric or druid, is more powerful or that better lends itself towards powergaming and munchkin behavior than the other.
Thank you and have a nice day!
larry_the_titan
01-21-08, 01:25 PM Hello, I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but I have read much about the "CoDzilla" concept, and I was wondering which class, cleric or druid, is more powerful or that better lends itself towards powergaming and munchkin behavior than the other.
Thank you and have a nice day!

First off you need to know the meaning of the words that you are asking about before you use one at the wrong time.

Powergaming or Powergamer refers to a style of play and a level of optimization. The desired effect of Powergamers is to get the highest level of power out of any choosen feature of a class, race or feat.

Munchkin is an insult on the optimization board refering to some one who cheats in order to be more powerful. Munchkins in some cases are know to have only the desire to break any given game with little care for game balance or the story.

Now back to the original question, of the two Druids do have an easier methods of gaining great power. Clerics on the other hand only need a couple things to become down right God like. Depending on what you want they both can break a game with the right build and they are both part of the big 5 classes.

According to the last class power rankings found here;

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=14758242&postcount=135

Cleric comes in 5th and druid comes in 4th in over all class power.

Now of the two you asked about the most powerful of the 2 is the druid because it is a great deal easier to wade into battle or just decimating the bad guys with the druids abilities. Clerics require either the use of Divine metamagic or a great deal more work.
Napoleon_the_Clown
01-22-08, 03:24 AM Clerics do get spontaneous healing though, which can be a major bonus. It becomes less potent as you get higher leveled, in comparison to the amount of hit points you have, but it can save your butt. But, based off what I've seen, Druid can be more readily turned into a substitute for pretty much any class. They have a limited capacity to heal (not as great as a Cleric, I'll grant you), great damage spells, and the ability to turn into big scary monsters that will out tank and out hit any fighter that isn't using badly broken (typically third party) feats. Throw on their animal companion and... Why bother with a Fighter or even Barbarian? And they can be a formidable blaster too. Wisdom based casters are obviously going to have the best Will saves of anyone, probably even greater than a Monk. Wildshape/Shapechange can easily give them respectable (at the worst) Fortitude and Reflex saves. With a passable number of skill points per level, you can even be the party skill monkey if you dump stat wisely. They can even play party face. Sure you can't do all of these at once and do each as well as someone devoted to it (with the exception of making the Fighter feel worthless), but you can do a lot of them at once.

Cleric, on the other hand, doesn't get as many skill points and doesn't get as many "treats". Due to a lack of armor restrictions, Clerics will tend toward being more reliant on heavy armor, though, as a Divine caster, will have similar Will saves compared to Druids. Their Fort saves will probably be generally higher without buffs, but that isn't by any means guaranteed. The only two things that a Cleric will almost always leave a Druid in the dust with are undead and healing. If you want Shapechange you need to take the proper Domain. It looks like a pretty good Domain, but keep in mind that you'll only get Shapechange once per day.

That's not to say that a Druid is a better class. Druids have to look out for poachers, especially if they're currently in an animal form. :P
LoneFlame
01-22-08, 11:45 AM That's not to say that a Druid is a better class. Druids have to look out for poachers, especially if they're currently in an animal form. :P
Why? The Druid just eats them.

Druid's got the better class skills, skill points, & more class features. With a little work, you can make the Druid a decent healer. Plus, with a little work, you can make it a great blaster. Finally, with next to no work, Druid can be a melee death master. More importantly, Druid can do all of that no problem.

Druid is the definitive prepackaged Jack of All Trades. How the hell WotC thought the Druid was balanced compared to classes like Bard & Figther, we will never know.
larry_the_titan
01-22-08, 12:12 PM Druid is the definitive prepackaged Jack of All Trades. How the hell WotC thought the Druid was balanced compared to classes like Bard & Figther, we will never know.

Am I reading this right or did you just say that the Druid class should be balanced to the power level of a Bard and Fighter Classes? Do you really want that? Do you even know what that would mean? To lower the power level of the Druid that low you would have to Remove 3 levels of spells, Wildshaping, and make its Animal companion the same as the Rangers just to make it the same power level as the bard and its still possible that the Druid might still win a fight against the bard or fighter even at that level of power. It has nothing to do with the Druid being overpowered and it has everything to do with the Fighter and Bard being effectively underpowered in all most every possible way. I mean overall the classes are done right Useless at higher levels.
Divisionbyzer0
01-22-08, 12:22 PM I don't get the obsession with "balance". There's no way everything can always be balanced. What is better or worse depends on the situations. Warriors can kill low level spell casters without much trouble. In my current game we've beat monsters that we otherwise wouldn't have without the Bard's improving our probabilities of hitting and making saving throws.
Salla
01-22-08, 02:07 PM Hello, I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but I have read much about the "CoDzilla" concept, and I was wondering which class, cleric or druid, is more powerful or that better lends itself towards powergaming and munchkin behavior than the other.
Thank you and have a nice day!

The Druid, because it's simpler and needs no splatbook support.

Druid 20 with Natural Spell. You're a gamebreaker, everything else is gravy.
LoneFlame
01-22-08, 02:54 PM Am I reading this right or did you just say that the Druid class should be balanced to the power level of a Bard and Fighter Classes? Do you really want that? Do you even know what that would mean? To lower the power level of the Druid that low you would have to Remove 3 levels of spells, Wildshaping, and make its Animal companion the same as the Rangers just to make it the same power level as the bard and its still possible that the Druid might still win a fight against the bard or fighter even at that level of power. It has nothing to do with the Druid being overpowered and it has everything to do with the Fighter and Bard being effectively underpowered in all most every possible way. I mean overall the classes are done right Useless at higher levels.
I'm sorry. What I meant by that was that I was amazed by the fact that they let the Bard & Fighter(both of which dramatically suck 90+ percent of the time) be so weak compared to everything else in PHB, while at the same time in the same book they have the Druid, which is arguably stronger than even the other high lv casters.

I don't get the obsession with "balance".
If one class sucks dramatically when compared to other classes, then no one in their right mind will want to play the bloody thing. It essentially becomes a waste of ink & paper. Out of the PHB, this applies to Fighter, Bard, Paladin, and Monk. Paladin, cause there's great no reason to take him beyond lv 6. Fighter because a class that consists solely of character feats & has the worst skills out of all the classes is lame. Monk because it can't hit anything worth a crap(fix that & it's okay). Bard cause anything you can do with it you can do with some other class & achieve profoundly better results.

At the same time similar logic applies to something that is dramatically more powerful than anything else. When that happens, people will tend to want to play that instead of other classes. This means that one class needs to be either removed or toned down. Druid is such a class, because it has 9th lv spells, can shapeshift into death creatures(meaning great melee), has a pet, thus enabling it to have something to fall back on while in an anti-magic area, great class features, & a well-round base structure(complete with 2 good saves & great skills)
larry_the_titan
01-22-08, 03:15 PM I'm sorry. What I meant by that was that I was amazed by the fact that they let the Bard & Fighter(both of which dramatically suck 90+ percent of the time) be so weak compared to everything else in PHB, while at the same time in the same book they have the Druid, which is arguably stronger than even the other high lv casters.

Thank you for clarifying that.

At the same time similar logic applies to something that is dramatically more powerful than anything else. When that happens, people will tend to want to play that instead of other classes. This means that one class needs to be either removed or toned down. Druid is such a class, because it has 9th lv spells, can shapeshift into death creatures(meaning great melee), has a pet, thus enabling it to have something to fall back on while in an anti-magic area, great class features, & a well-round base structure(complete with 2 good saves & great skills)

The best way to describe the Druid is with 4E terms. Druids are capable of being Defenders, Strikers, Controlers and Leader and sometimes all at once. They also get a Striker and/or Defender Cohort as a Class ability. The overall thing is that Druids can be the entire party and everyone else is just extra when made right. Clerics tend to have to focus but can get more powerful in one area then a Druid if you really know what you are doing.
Votan
01-22-08, 06:09 PM I don't get the obsession with "balance". There's no way everything can always be balanced. What is better or worse depends on the situations. Warriors can kill low level spell casters without much trouble. In my current game we've beat monsters that we otherwise wouldn't have without the Bard's improving our probabilities of hitting and making saving throws.

Balanced isn't required but making playing the different classes in a group fun is nice. If you have managed it due to a particular play-style, level range and set of group dynamics than congratulations. This is most certainly not automatic with the 3.0/3.5 rule set.

But I would like to see an overall set of rules that is more robust to differences in play-style. For example, it seems uncommon to me to find a group that really uses diplomacy skills as RAW regardless of how articulate or inarticulate the player actually is. That can make a huge difference in the "fun" level of playing a bard if an inspired wizard with CHA 8 who asks the right questions at the right places outdoes a Bard with 22 CHA and a +18 Gather Information check on getting clues.
Divisionbyzer0
01-22-08, 06:32 PM I'm sorry. What I meant by that was that I was amazed by the fact that they let the Bard & Fighter(both of which dramatically suck 90+ percent of the time) be so weak compared to everything else in PHB, while at the same time in the same book they have the Druid, which is arguably stronger than even the other high lv casters.

If one class sucks dramatically when compared to other classes, then no one in their right mind will want to play the bloody thing. It essentially becomes a waste of ink & paper. Out of the PHB, this applies to Fighter, Bard, Paladin, and Monk. Paladin, cause there's great no reason to take him beyond lv 6. Fighter because a class that consists solely of character feats & has the worst skills out of all the classes is lame. Monk because it can't hit anything worth a crap(fix that & it's okay). Bard cause anything you can do with it you can do with some other class & achieve profoundly better results.

At the same time similar logic applies to something that is dramatically more powerful than anything else. When that happens, people will tend to want to play that instead of other classes. This means that one class needs to be either removed or toned down. Druid is such a class, because it has 9th lv spells, can shapeshift into death creatures(meaning great melee), has a pet, thus enabling it to have something to fall back on while in an anti-magic area, great class features, & a well-round base structure(complete with 2 good saves & great skills)

I suppose you have a point. I think the bard should have retained offensive spells and there'd be a bit more incentive to stick with it. Bardic music -- though seemingly intangible -- is quite good in my opinion. The bard could be "fixed" by adding stuff into the dead levels. I'd only take fighter to gain feats I needed to prestige into something else. The monk actually seems alright as is to me. Paladin is really fairly lame now that I look at. How often do you need to remove diseases from others? Just play a fighter / cleric instead.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Verderben 01-21-08, 12:21 PM	Hello, I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but I have read much about the "CoDzilla" concept, and I was wondering which class, cleric or druid, is more powerful or that better lends itself towards powergaming and munchkin behavior than the other. Thank you and have a nice day!
larry_the_titan 01-21-08, 01:25 PM	Hello, I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but I have read much about the "CoDzilla" concept, and I was wondering which class, cleric or druid, is more powerful or that better lends itself towards powergaming and munchkin behavior than the other. Thank you and have a nice day! First off you need to know the meaning of the words that you are asking about before you use one at the wrong time. Powergaming or Powergamer refers to a style of play and a level of optimization. The desired effect of Powergamers is to get the highest level of power out of any choosen feature of a class, race or feat. Munchkin is an insult on the optimization board refering to some one who cheats in order to be more powerful. Munchkins in some cases are know to have only the desire to break any given game with little care for game balance or the story. Now back to the original question, of the two Druids do have an easier methods of gaining great power. Clerics on the other hand only need a couple things to become down right God like. Depending on what you want they both can break a game with the right build and they are both part of the big 5 classes. According to the last class power rankings found here; http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=14758242&postcount=135 Cleric comes in 5th and druid comes in 4th in over all class power. Now of the two you asked about the most powerful of the 2 is the druid because it is a great deal easier to wade into battle or just decimating the bad guys with the druids abilities. Clerics require either the use of Divine metamagic or a great deal more work.
Napoleon_the_Clown 01-22-08, 03:24 AM	Clerics do get spontaneous healing though, which can be a major bonus. It becomes less potent as you get higher leveled, in comparison to the amount of hit points you have, but it can save your butt. But, based off what I've seen, Druid can be more readily turned into a substitute for pretty much any class. They have a limited capacity to heal (not as great as a Cleric, I'll grant you), great damage spells, and the ability to turn into big scary monsters that will out tank and out hit any fighter that isn't using badly broken (typically third party) feats. Throw on their animal companion and... Why bother with a Fighter or even Barbarian? And they can be a formidable blaster too. Wisdom based casters are obviously going to have the best Will saves of anyone, probably even greater than a Monk. Wildshape/Shapechange can easily give them respectable (at the worst) Fortitude and Reflex saves. With a passable number of skill points per level, you can even be the party skill monkey if you dump stat wisely. They can even play party face. Sure you can't do all of these at once and do each as well as someone devoted to it (with the exception of making the Fighter feel worthless), but you can do a lot of them at once. Cleric, on the other hand, doesn't get as many skill points and doesn't get as many "treats". Due to a lack of armor restrictions, Clerics will tend toward being more reliant on heavy armor, though, as a Divine caster, will have similar Will saves compared to Druids. Their Fort saves will probably be generally higher without buffs, but that isn't by any means guaranteed. The only two things that a Cleric will almost always leave a Druid in the dust with are undead and healing. If you want Shapechange you need to take the proper Domain. It looks like a pretty good Domain, but keep in mind that you'll only get Shapechange once per day. That's not to say that a Druid is a better class. Druids have to look out for poachers, especially if they're currently in an animal form. :P
LoneFlame 01-22-08, 11:45 AM	That's not to say that a Druid is a better class. Druids have to look out for poachers, especially if they're currently in an animal form. :P Why? The Druid just eats them. Druid's got the better class skills, skill points, & more class features. With a little work, you can make the Druid a decent healer. Plus, with a little work, you can make it a great blaster. Finally, with next to no work, Druid can be a melee death master. More importantly, Druid can do all of that no problem. Druid is the definitive prepackaged Jack of All Trades. How the hell WotC thought the Druid was balanced compared to classes like Bard & Figther, we will never know.
larry_the_titan 01-22-08, 12:12 PM	Druid is the definitive prepackaged Jack of All Trades. How the hell WotC thought the Druid was balanced compared to classes like Bard & Figther, we will never know. Am I reading this right or did you just say that the Druid class should be balanced to the power level of a Bard and Fighter Classes? Do you really want that? Do you even know what that would mean? To lower the power level of the Druid that low you would have to Remove 3 levels of spells, Wildshaping, and make its Animal companion the same as the Rangers just to make it the same power level as the bard and its still possible that the Druid might still win a fight against the bard or fighter even at that level of power. It has nothing to do with the Druid being overpowered and it has everything to do with the Fighter and Bard being effectively underpowered in all most every possible way. I mean overall the classes are done right Useless at higher levels.
Divisionbyzer0 01-22-08, 12:22 PM	I don't get the obsession with "balance". There's no way everything can always be balanced. What is better or worse depends on the situations. Warriors can kill low level spell casters without much trouble. In my current game we've beat monsters that we otherwise wouldn't have without the Bard's improving our probabilities of hitting and making saving throws.
Salla 01-22-08, 02:07 PM	Hello, I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but I have read much about the "CoDzilla" concept, and I was wondering which class, cleric or druid, is more powerful or that better lends itself towards powergaming and munchkin behavior than the other. Thank you and have a nice day! The Druid, because it's simpler and needs no splatbook support. Druid 20 with Natural Spell. You're a gamebreaker, everything else is gravy.
LoneFlame 01-22-08, 02:54 PM	Am I reading this right or did you just say that the Druid class should be balanced to the power level of a Bard and Fighter Classes? Do you really want that? Do you even know what that would mean? To lower the power level of the Druid that low you would have to Remove 3 levels of spells, Wildshaping, and make its Animal companion the same as the Rangers just to make it the same power level as the bard and its still possible that the Druid might still win a fight against the bard or fighter even at that level of power. It has nothing to do with the Druid being overpowered and it has everything to do with the Fighter and Bard being effectively underpowered in all most every possible way. I mean overall the classes are done right Useless at higher levels. I'm sorry. What I meant by that was that I was amazed by the fact that they let the Bard & Fighter(both of which dramatically suck 90+ percent of the time) be so weak compared to everything else in PHB, while at the same time in the same book they have the Druid, which is arguably stronger than even the other high lv casters. I don't get the obsession with "balance". If one class sucks dramatically when compared to other classes, then no one in their right mind will want to play the bloody thing. It essentially becomes a waste of ink & paper. Out of the PHB, this applies to Fighter, Bard, Paladin, and Monk. Paladin, cause there's great no reason to take him beyond lv 6. Fighter because a class that consists solely of character feats & has the worst skills out of all the classes is lame. Monk because it can't hit anything worth a crap(fix that & it's okay). Bard cause anything you can do with it you can do with some other class & achieve profoundly better results. At the same time similar logic applies to something that is dramatically more powerful than anything else. When that happens, people will tend to want to play that instead of other classes. This means that one class needs to be either removed or toned down. Druid is such a class, because it has 9th lv spells, can shapeshift into death creatures(meaning great melee), has a pet, thus enabling it to have something to fall back on while in an anti-magic area, great class features, & a well-round base structure(complete with 2 good saves & great skills)
larry_the_titan 01-22-08, 03:15 PM	I'm sorry. What I meant by that was that I was amazed by the fact that they let the Bard & Fighter(both of which dramatically suck 90+ percent of the time) be so weak compared to everything else in PHB, while at the same time in the same book they have the Druid, which is arguably stronger than even the other high lv casters. Thank you for clarifying that. At the same time similar logic applies to something that is dramatically more powerful than anything else. When that happens, people will tend to want to play that instead of other classes. This means that one class needs to be either removed or toned down. Druid is such a class, because it has 9th lv spells, can shapeshift into death creatures(meaning great melee), has a pet, thus enabling it to have something to fall back on while in an anti-magic area, great class features, & a well-round base structure(complete with 2 good saves & great skills) The best way to describe the Druid is with 4E terms. Druids are capable of being Defenders, Strikers, Controlers and Leader and sometimes all at once. They also get a Striker and/or Defender Cohort as a Class ability. The overall thing is that Druids can be the entire party and everyone else is just extra when made right. Clerics tend to have to focus but can get more powerful in one area then a Druid if you really know what you are doing.
Votan 01-22-08, 06:09 PM	I don't get the obsession with "balance". There's no way everything can always be balanced. What is better or worse depends on the situations. Warriors can kill low level spell casters without much trouble. In my current game we've beat monsters that we otherwise wouldn't have without the Bard's improving our probabilities of hitting and making saving throws. Balanced isn't required but making playing the different classes in a group fun is nice. If you have managed it due to a particular play-style, level range and set of group dynamics than congratulations. This is most certainly not automatic with the 3.0/3.5 rule set. But I would like to see an overall set of rules that is more robust to differences in play-style. For example, it seems uncommon to me to find a group that really uses diplomacy skills as RAW regardless of how articulate or inarticulate the player actually is. That can make a huge difference in the "fun" level of playing a bard if an inspired wizard with CHA 8 who asks the right questions at the right places outdoes a Bard with 22 CHA and a +18 Gather Information check on getting clues.
Divisionbyzer0 01-22-08, 06:32 PM	I'm sorry. What I meant by that was that I was amazed by the fact that they let the Bard & Fighter(both of which dramatically suck 90+ percent of the time) be so weak compared to everything else in PHB, while at the same time in the same book they have the Druid, which is arguably stronger than even the other high lv casters. If one class sucks dramatically when compared to other classes, then no one in their right mind will want to play the bloody thing. It essentially becomes a waste of ink & paper. Out of the PHB, this applies to Fighter, Bard, Paladin, and Monk. Paladin, cause there's great no reason to take him beyond lv 6. Fighter because a class that consists solely of character feats & has the worst skills out of all the classes is lame. Monk because it can't hit anything worth a crap(fix that & it's okay). Bard cause anything you can do with it you can do with some other class & achieve profoundly better results. At the same time similar logic applies to something that is dramatically more powerful than anything else. When that happens, people will tend to want to play that instead of other classes. This means that one class needs to be either removed or toned down. Druid is such a class, because it has 9th lv spells, can shapeshift into death creatures(meaning great melee), has a pet, thus enabling it to have something to fall back on while in an anti-magic area, great class features, & a well-round base structure(complete with 2 good saves & great skills) I suppose you have a point. I think the bard should have retained offensive spells and there'd be a bit more incentive to stick with it. Bardic music -- though seemingly intangible -- is quite good in my opinion. The bard could be "fixed" by adding stuff into the dead levels. I'd only take fighter to gain feats I needed to prestige into something else. The monk actually seems alright as is to me. Paladin is really fairly lame now that I look at. How often do you need to remove diseases from others? Just play a fighter / cleric instead.