Post/Author/DateTime	Post
paintedmask2 04-13-04, 12:57 PM	I saw this varient class while flipping through UA the other day, and I'm wondering whether it is properly balanced... It's too bad this didn't exist about a year ago; I had the perfect character for it in our last campaign... A young naive multi-classed deviner/cleric of Bocab. Oh well...
77IM 04-13-04, 05:14 PM	It's an awesome concept but is woefully underpowered. The additional domains and skills are quite handy, as is the spell list (particularly good spells are identify and unseen servant). However, they don't quite make up for the lousy BAB, poor armor proficiencies, and lower hit dice. In other words, in the non-spell-casting department he is slightly better than the wizard, but in terms of spell-casting he is not nearly as useful. We have a guy in our party playing a variant "semi-cloistered" cleric with the medium BAB and 1d8 hit die, and he's still lagging behind both the party cleric and the wizard in terms of usefulness. Poor armor, in particular, means that wading into battle to heal people becomes incredibly risky. -- 77IM
DM Zoc 04-14-04, 12:51 AM	The problem with "balancing" the cleric variant is that it's based on an over-powered class; the cleric is inherantly more powerful than the wizard. This variant puts them closer together, but only slightly.
bitnine 04-14-04, 01:06 AM	Originally posted by 77IM It's an awesome concept but is woefully underpowered.You know, some people would consider "less powerful than current version of the cleric" to not necessarily be the same thing as "woefully underpowered"; however, if you run a game with a cloistered cleric side-by-side with its martial version, I could see how the comparison might be brought to the forefront.
Lord Arkhaven 04-14-04, 09:42 AM	It works well with Mystic Theurge, because you are playing that kind of character like a Wizard anyway.
Lina_Inverse 04-14-04, 10:22 AM	Originally posted by 77IM It's an awesome concept but is woefully underpowered. The additional domains and skills are quite handy, as is the spell list (particularly good spells are identify and unseen servant). However, they don't quite make up for the lousy BAB, poor armor proficiencies, and lower hit dice. In other words, in the non-spell-casting department he is slightly better than the wizard, but in terms of spell-casting he is not nearly as useful. We have a guy in our party playing a variant "semi-cloistered" cleric with the medium BAB and 1d8 hit die, and he's still lagging behind both the party cleric and the wizard in terms of usefulness. Poor armor, in particular, means that wading into battle to heal people becomes incredibly risky. -- 77IM ummmm no,cleric spells are pretty much equal to a wizards.this isnt 2E miracle makes wish look sad,fire storm beats out every nuke every imagined and slay living is the best 5th level spell. also mwahahaahaha clerics dont have spell books. spell casting:advantege clerics. not untill 17th level(wail of the banshee)is the wizard ANYWHERE near the power of the cleric.
77IM 04-14-04, 01:35 PM	Well, let's please not start this "are clerics overpowered" debate again. I'm not going to argue spell-for-spell whether clerical spellcasting is as cool as wizard spellcasting, or do an in-depth numerical min/max analysis of class balance. These arguments will not sway me anyhow, because after 4 years of playing 3rd Edition D&D, lots and lots of empirical evidence suggests to me that clerics are pretty much balanced with the other primary spellcasters. Several levels worth of playtesting also suggests to me that the cloistered cleric is not really able to pull his own weight in the party during combat. Although you could make a really good case for the cloistered cleric as an out-of-combat skills-and-utility-spells sort of guy, he is at best on par with the wizard in this regard. -- 77IM