Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Ice Barbarian 09-12-05, 02:30 PM	I've never actually played a cleric character but I feel like it would be difficult to come up with a decent background explaining why the cleric is an adventurer. Maybe this is something that the class handbook goes into more detail about but I feel like if you're a faithful servant to your god/goddess and serving in the role of a priest then you'd be at a temple or other place of worship. Maybe I'm being too literal and clerics don't need to be trained by the clergy of their chosen deity but I do feel like this is what the class pretty much as in mind. I think for most deities I'd have trouble explaining why, after being instructed as a faithful follower, a cleric would take off to go adventuring with a mixed party for an indefinite period of time. Obviously good clerics would want to fight evil, etc. but does abandoning "home base" to explore dungeons or exotic locations really make sense?
Venom of the Yuan Ti 09-12-05, 02:37 PM	Experts and Adpets are often the preists, you are a chosen servant of a god, you are there to battle his/her/it/misc enamies. A clerics background should contin at least one pivital moment, prehaps overpowering what the character can do for a very short time, the moment when they are "called". *Clerics of pelor 1. Undead are bad. 2. Indeed. 3. We should do somthing. 4. *Gets up* 1. Were are you off? To fight undead and bring peace to the world and converts to Pelor? To truly become a part of the solution to evil? To do somthign worthwile with the superhuman power that our God has given us? 4. No, im going to do evening prayer, you know it only takes one of us.
weasel fierce 09-12-05, 02:44 PM	The cleric archetype is not a normal priest, its a knights templar, or crusading preacher. Plenty of reason to destroy evil and convert heathens :)
Ice Barbarian 09-12-05, 02:51 PM	Yeah that's a good point, I was just thinking that clerics are likely to have received formal training and it almost seems wrong that they'd just walk out. I guess I'm just not keeping in mind that PCs are all, at their heart, adventurers.
weasel fierce 09-13-05, 12:41 AM	Well, it also depends on the campaign. If the characters are thrown into tumultous events, then it doesnt matter what they are. Adventure sought them out!
Arindor 09-13-05, 01:27 PM	Here is the brief backstory of my favorite cleric character. When Endrin was a child he and his parents were ambushed by a female vampire on there way home from town. The vampire tortured and killed his parents in front of him and would have killed him too if not for a passing cleric who heard the screams. The cleric drove off the vampire and took Endrin to live with him in the local temple of Pelor. There Endrin got an education and training in the ways of fighting undead. Now grown up Endrin takes up the power of Pelor and goes in search of foul undead in the hopes that he will find the vampire that killed his parents. Voila adventuring cleric.
eudas 09-13-05, 02:21 PM	A vampire? a nontrivial Hit-die intelligent undead who *happens* to be chased off by what would *have* to be a high level cleric, who just *happens* to be travelling by? Seems pretty thin, to me. Actually, it seems *really* damned thin, to me. What about something a bit more... believable? A person growing up in a devout household, who is sent to be educated by the clerics of (insert locally worshipped reasonably benevolent good deity here), and after receiving religious training and education, is sent on relatively minor church related tasks (insert lev 1-4 quests here) accompanied by a guard or two (insert other PC's here), eventually taking on more responsibility as they are promoted through the priesthood and being assigned to more difficult tasks commensurate with their abilities? Yeah, it's not as sexy as vampires being driven off by passing strangers, but it's way more likely to be something that would actually, you know, happen. eudas
Arindor 09-13-05, 03:46 PM	So none of your characters have ever happened upon an attack on the road and driven off the attackers? You must have the safest raods in your campaigns! All the bandits must be out of work, all the trolls go off to look for nice little bridges to live under. If I had a copper for every villager we had to rescue on the side of the road my characters could retire in that nice floating castle in the sky... oh wait you probably don't have those either because they wouldn't be believable. Come on this is DnD believable is whatever you want it to be.
eudas 09-13-05, 04:19 PM	Hm, actually, I haven't had to rescue very many villagers from vampires or trolls, no. Most of the dangerous things in the world stay away from civilized lands where units of infantry will be dispatched to slay dangerous beasts. You know, that whole thing about nobles protecting the villages under their authority so their lands stay profitable, and all that. Most of our encounters with dangerous beasts have been in swamps, alternate planes, sunken citadels in remote country lands, etc. "D&D is as believable as you want it to be" is certainly true. That being said, some peoples' suspension of disbelief is stronger than others'. I mean, if you don't want to put any work into your character background, just say so. It's ok, really. Not everybody wants to write 10 page dissertations on their character. I certainly don't. But let's try to come up with something better than "his parents were killed by $RANDOM_MONSTER so now he wanders the lands lusting for revenge. oh, and he's dark and mysterious, yeah." :rolleyes: eudas