Is there a reason not to simply merge clerics into the Warlock class or vice versa at this point?
The reason I ask is that they are both devotees of an extraplanar/supernatural force they rely on for their power. The subtle differences in them is something you can have applied with background choices & alignments more or less. Not something that justifies an entirely new class. Just seems like if you want to be a 'warrior with magic boost' you pick Paladin, or Monk, then if you want to be a magic user divining power through a pact/devotion you choose Warlock. Any of these could be tuned as 'healer' for the group so why a dedicated class to the most boring aspect of the game? Players ime don't want to get stuck being 'the healer' because they feel like a glorified waterboy/girl. It doesn't seem to offer much more to the game than redundancy, confusion, & boredom. Totally open to being wrong on this if I missed something, but just wondered why it's even there. My general advice to new players is to ignore the cleric class unless it seems profoundly interesting to them, otherwise choose Paladin, Monk, or Warlock.
Totally open to hearing thoughts. Maybe I missed some amazing & unique feature of clerics in 25yrs playing this that justifies them having their own class.
Clerics are very much not stuck as "the healer" and haven't been since 3rd Edition at least. People keep acting like they are purely because it's an ingrained idea, not because of any actual mechanical limitations. Playing a cleric as just being the healer is, in fact, a very inefficient way to do it.
Clerics and Warlocks are extremely different, both mechanically and lore wise.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Clerics are absolutely not just healers. They can be total tanks with plate armour, Shields and a martial weapon, they can be a ranged pew pew, they can be battlefield controllers, have buff/debuff abilities and heal on the side. The fact that there are so many other classes that can now heal means that clerics have been freed up to play to their full potential if you know how to play them.
Clerics are amazing, even if you never cast a heal spell. They are imo, the single most versatile class in the game. I honestly cannot understand what point you are trying to make OP. This isn't 2e where clerics are expected to save their spells to cast heals only. If you're ONLY healing on a cleric in 5e you are failing hard at being a cleric. They do so much more.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
It seems, OP, like you have a skewed and incorrect view of Clerics and Warlocks.
Clerics are the devotees of Gods. They are granted power by their God which channels through them. Any subclass of the Cleric can serve back or mid line in function more than adequately in offense, defense and support. They also dabble well in utility. They have access to the best healing and resurrection, they have some good defense spells, they have a lot of good support spells and they have strong offensive options. They can be built with a focus as a caster or as warrior, regardless of subclass, although some subclasses may favour one over the other. Clerics can be played many ways and have great versatility - and you can change it every day by changing spells. One day you are the badass that blasts enemies, cave in heads with divinely empowered maces and hammers, and cut swaths of destruction from a a sweeping fire storm, demolishing buildings with earthquakes and reigning terror upon your foes. The next day you might be a humble healer - closing wounds, regenerating limbs and resurrecting the dead. Another day you are the general of the group - aiding your allies with greater vitality, boosting their attacks, weakening enemies and playing the battlefield with tactical strategy. Or perhaps you're the one who checks the path ahead is clear, and lead the group to the person or object you need to find. Or you can just be the cook creating food and water out of thin air on a long journey.
Warlocks are people who create contracts, pacts, with powerful beings - greater than man but lesser than god. This pact empowers the Warlock, bestowing gifts that become theirs - but is there a cost? They are the enbodiment of a faustian deal, although such pacts can come about in a variety of ways. Warlocks offer great customisation in theme and flavour. Their features offer great nuances. The spells they can access arelargely encounter-focused but there's a fair bit of utility in there too. Choice of pact boon, spells and invocations can really make th character seem your own. This offers considerable roleplay opportunities, especially given the built-in backstory of how your pact came to be and what the patron wants in return for these gifts it gives. While the roleplaying is more than substantial, the mechanics are weak. The choice of subclass greatly details what kind of character you will be in an encounter, although spell choices can offer a bit more leniency. If you want to be a warrior then you can but it is will take a lot of your choices to make that a useful choice, and if you want to be full spellcaster you can but you won't compare to others like Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer. The warlock spell list offers a lot but most are very encounter/battle focused and weaker than most others in terms of support and utility. You can be more reliable battle-to-battle, but in any given battle you'll not be as effective in spellcasting. You have very few slots to use. The majority of your play, in most cases, will be spamming eldritch blast. Warlocks can be fun to play, they do have a few good features if you know how to use them, and they offer a greatly customisable theme/set of quirky and gimmicky things. But they lack of the versatility of others and their mechanics feature an overreliance on Eldritch Blast, unless you chose Hexblade which functions like a weaker Paladin. If you embrace that shoehorning, they can be effective in that regard.
In summary, Clerics and Warlocks are nothing alike. The mechanics, playstyle, lore, and RP are immensely different. So, I really don't understand your idea of saying they need to merge. It's like saying a TV and a water bottle need to merge. It just doesn't make sense to me, sorry.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Sorcerer's also get their magical power from some higher power, be it the devine power of a devine soul, draconic power,or the shadowfell etc. Fighters and Barbarians are both trained warriers should they also be merged.
Using the OP arguement we don't really more than 3 classes, magic user, warrier and Gish, but as others have said there is space for different ways to receive magic as there is for different types of melee combatents so the classes should remain distinct.
Any of these could be tuned as 'healer' for the group so why a dedicated class to the most boring aspect of the game? Players ime don't want to get stuck being 'the healer' because they feel like a glorified waterboy/girl. It doesn't seem to offer much more to the game than redundancy, confusion, & boredom. Totally open to being wrong on this if I missed something, but just wondered why it's even there. My general advice to new players is to ignore the cleric class unless it seems profoundly interesting to them, otherwise choose Paladin, Monk, or Warlock.
Totally open to hearing thoughts. Maybe I missed some amazing & unique feature of clerics in 25yrs playing this that justifies them having their own class.
I'm glad that you're totally open to being wrong, because you are indeed wrong. Life Cleric is dedicated to healing. But other domains certainly aren't dedicated to healing.
My Tempest Cleric is a lot of fun, and she's definitely not dedicated to healing. None of the Tempest Cleric abilities or Domain Spells are for healing.
I'm glad that you're totally open to being wrong, because you are indeed wrong. Life Cleric is dedicated to healing. But other domains certainly aren't dedicated to healing.
My Tempest Cleric is a lot of fun, and she's definitely not dedicated to healing. None of the Tempest Cleric abilities or Domain Spells are for healing.
I wouldn't even say that Life Clerics are dedicated healers either; yes they're better at healing than other classes, but really that just means they can get more out of each healing spell they cast, so they can cast fewer of them, freeing them up to cast other spells (which they can take quite a few of since they get most of the healing spells for free). Life Domain combos really well with Healing Word as the bonus healing is a bigger proportion of the healing it does, it's ranged and it only requires a bonus action, leaving you free to also cast Mace/Warhammer every round 😈
I'm going to be playing a Monk/War Cleric combo in an upcoming campaign, and I think that's going to work really well, as the early War Cleric bonuses are fantastic for a martial character, while giving me a nice mix for half/third spellcasting depending how I end up mixing the two classes in the end. The Cleric class is very, very flexible and suits a tonne of different builds, where Warlock functions very differently mechanically, and I feel can be a lot harder to multi-class with.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
This is all really great to hear and helps me refocus on how to see them. Most of my impressions of Clerics are definitely from AD&D/2e and I had such a boring time playing them I never gave them another go. I think I'm reading through the 5e doc's through that old lens but this helps me scope out a bit and recalibrate. Appreciate the feedback, thank you! Looking fwd to trying a Loxodon Cleric.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Is there a reason not to simply merge clerics into the Warlock class or vice versa at this point?
The reason I ask is that they are both devotees of an extraplanar/supernatural force they rely on for their power. The subtle differences in them is something you can have applied with background choices & alignments more or less. Not something that justifies an entirely new class. Just seems like if you want to be a 'warrior with magic boost' you pick Paladin, or Monk, then if you want to be a magic user divining power through a pact/devotion you choose Warlock. Any of these could be tuned as 'healer' for the group so why a dedicated class to the most boring aspect of the game? Players ime don't want to get stuck being 'the healer' because they feel like a glorified waterboy/girl. It doesn't seem to offer much more to the game than redundancy, confusion, & boredom. Totally open to being wrong on this if I missed something, but just wondered why it's even there. My general advice to new players is to ignore the cleric class unless it seems profoundly interesting to them, otherwise choose Paladin, Monk, or Warlock.
Totally open to hearing thoughts. Maybe I missed some amazing & unique feature of clerics in 25yrs playing this that justifies them having their own class.
Clerics are very much not stuck as "the healer" and haven't been since 3rd Edition at least. People keep acting like they are purely because it's an ingrained idea, not because of any actual mechanical limitations. Playing a cleric as just being the healer is, in fact, a very inefficient way to do it.
Clerics and Warlocks are extremely different, both mechanically and lore wise.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Clerics are absolutely not just healers. They can be total tanks with plate armour, Shields and a martial weapon, they can be a ranged pew pew, they can be battlefield controllers, have buff/debuff abilities and heal on the side. The fact that there are so many other classes that can now heal means that clerics have been freed up to play to their full potential if you know how to play them.
Clerics are amazing, even if you never cast a heal spell. They are imo, the single most versatile class in the game. I honestly cannot understand what point you are trying to make OP. This isn't 2e where clerics are expected to save their spells to cast heals only. If you're ONLY healing on a cleric in 5e you are failing hard at being a cleric. They do so much more.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
It seems, OP, like you have a skewed and incorrect view of Clerics and Warlocks.
Clerics are the devotees of Gods. They are granted power by their God which channels through them. Any subclass of the Cleric can serve back or mid line in function more than adequately in offense, defense and support. They also dabble well in utility. They have access to the best healing and resurrection, they have some good defense spells, they have a lot of good support spells and they have strong offensive options. They can be built with a focus as a caster or as warrior, regardless of subclass, although some subclasses may favour one over the other. Clerics can be played many ways and have great versatility - and you can change it every day by changing spells. One day you are the badass that blasts enemies, cave in heads with divinely empowered maces and hammers, and cut swaths of destruction from a a sweeping fire storm, demolishing buildings with earthquakes and reigning terror upon your foes. The next day you might be a humble healer - closing wounds, regenerating limbs and resurrecting the dead. Another day you are the general of the group - aiding your allies with greater vitality, boosting their attacks, weakening enemies and playing the battlefield with tactical strategy. Or perhaps you're the one who checks the path ahead is clear, and lead the group to the person or object you need to find. Or you can just be the cook creating food and water out of thin air on a long journey.
Warlocks are people who create contracts, pacts, with powerful beings - greater than man but lesser than god. This pact empowers the Warlock, bestowing gifts that become theirs - but is there a cost? They are the enbodiment of a faustian deal, although such pacts can come about in a variety of ways. Warlocks offer great customisation in theme and flavour. Their features offer great nuances. The spells they can access arelargely encounter-focused but there's a fair bit of utility in there too. Choice of pact boon, spells and invocations can really make th character seem your own. This offers considerable roleplay opportunities, especially given the built-in backstory of how your pact came to be and what the patron wants in return for these gifts it gives. While the roleplaying is more than substantial, the mechanics are weak. The choice of subclass greatly details what kind of character you will be in an encounter, although spell choices can offer a bit more leniency. If you want to be a warrior then you can but it is will take a lot of your choices to make that a useful choice, and if you want to be full spellcaster you can but you won't compare to others like Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer. The warlock spell list offers a lot but most are very encounter/battle focused and weaker than most others in terms of support and utility. You can be more reliable battle-to-battle, but in any given battle you'll not be as effective in spellcasting. You have very few slots to use. The majority of your play, in most cases, will be spamming eldritch blast. Warlocks can be fun to play, they do have a few good features if you know how to use them, and they offer a greatly customisable theme/set of quirky and gimmicky things. But they lack of the versatility of others and their mechanics feature an overreliance on Eldritch Blast, unless you chose Hexblade which functions like a weaker Paladin. If you embrace that shoehorning, they can be effective in that regard.
In summary, Clerics and Warlocks are nothing alike. The mechanics, playstyle, lore, and RP are immensely different. So, I really don't understand your idea of saying they need to merge. It's like saying a TV and a water bottle need to merge. It just doesn't make sense to me, sorry.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Clerics are definitely not a Warlock. As different as Sorcerers and Wizards.
More like as close as Wizards and Druids.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Sorcerer's also get their magical power from some higher power, be it the devine power of a devine soul, draconic power,or the shadowfell etc. Fighters and Barbarians are both trained warriers should they also be merged.
Using the OP arguement we don't really more than 3 classes, magic user, warrier and Gish, but as others have said there is space for different ways to receive magic as there is for different types of melee combatents so the classes should remain distinct.
I'm glad that you're totally open to being wrong, because you are indeed wrong. Life Cleric is dedicated to healing. But other domains certainly aren't dedicated to healing.
My Tempest Cleric is a lot of fun, and she's definitely not dedicated to healing. None of the Tempest Cleric abilities or Domain Spells are for healing.
Clerics have not been dedicated healers since 2nd Edition.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I wouldn't even say that Life Clerics are dedicated healers either; yes they're better at healing than other classes, but really that just means they can get more out of each healing spell they cast, so they can cast fewer of them, freeing them up to cast other spells (which they can take quite a few of since they get most of the healing spells for free). Life Domain combos really well with Healing Word as the bonus healing is a bigger proportion of the healing it does, it's ranged and it only requires a bonus action, leaving you free to also cast Mace/Warhammer every round 😈
I'm going to be playing a Monk/War Cleric combo in an upcoming campaign, and I think that's going to work really well, as the early War Cleric bonuses are fantastic for a martial character, while giving me a nice mix for half/third spellcasting depending how I end up mixing the two classes in the end. The Cleric class is very, very flexible and suits a tonne of different builds, where Warlock functions very differently mechanically, and I feel can be a lot harder to multi-class with.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Thematically, sure there is some overlap.
Mechanically, they're not even remotely similar. They have their own unique identities and should definitely stay their own classes.
This is all really great to hear and helps me refocus on how to see them. Most of my impressions of Clerics are definitely from AD&D/2e and I had such a boring time playing them I never gave them another go. I think I'm reading through the 5e doc's through that old lens but this helps me scope out a bit and recalibrate. Appreciate the feedback, thank you! Looking fwd to trying a Loxodon Cleric.