What Should Clerics Be Doing?
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I always liked it when clerics preached their god's dogma in a open discussion with people who disagreed with the cleric and questioned his ideas. When the cleric answers the questions with ease you can tell the player did research and is a good Rper.
thats what i want more of.
I fully agree.
I like to speak to people who are playing Clerics when I'm zooming around as a DM, especially the ones I've not seen or heard of before. It amazes me how many people come up with the line ''Yeah I don't know anything about the god really''. How can you play a cleric of a god you have no understanding of?!
My advice would be to really get to grips with the faith you want to play a priest of. Knowing the ins and outs of a faith can help you to put twists on the dogma and make something cool and unique.
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heck i'm on a role :P how about we wipe Tymorias dominance over the city and allow new churches to rise from their ruins. who ever RPS the best and gets the most done is granted the New church of Arabel. heck the purple dragons are out of the city.
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No one "dominates" the city. That's the entire point of v4.
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I don't know, it does seem to me Tymoria does dominate the physical landscape with her big ass temple, shrine (which receives the most visit out of all other churches), and all these posters around talking about fortune.
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And what other factions are really left? It is Phoenix Legion and Bhaliir (under ground, somewhere) … I believe it is even worse than before when we had multiple noble houses and a somewhat distributed balance of power governed by the crown. But I fear this is getting a bit off topic again ...
Another idea would be to host events of a certain church, who has gathered a few followers, outside of Arabel. The DMs could run this event and portray how they expect priests to be played by playing such priests themselves. Lead an active discussion about the dogma, then throw the PCs into a small quest to make sure they understood it.
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Another idea could be to up the spells of well played priests. For example summons could be stronger or one level higher than cast. Duration could be extended but I am not sure how much scripting this would require.
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There are plenty of factions left (Bhaliir, the Phoenix Legion, The Militia, The Sembians, the Candlekeep faction, the Eclestian Order, The Mage Guild plus some more of a clandestine nature, and more on the way too) so I think the future is bright on that front.
More powerful spells for well played priests is a nice suggestion, but one of the things we're asking is what makes a well played priest! We've had some good ideas so far.
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a pet peeve of mine is when a cleric walks around town with a full plate on. but that's just me, a cleric with a full plate on screams powerbuild and not actually priest. Clerics should be useing their money for their church and not personal gear.
again thats just my opnion it might be totally wrong
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For me the best priests have always been the same as the best types of other classes.
As long as you're RPing to the best of your ability, involving people in your plots, being a friendly player OOCly and not powerleveling your way to Hammer of the Gods as fast as humanly possibly I have no gripe with any clerics.
Its always been the ones that seem to suddenly appear in the middle of a plot that you've been involved in since level 1 and wtfpwn you that I've had issues with. Get involved in the stories from day 1 not just once you're too powerful for someone to actually oppose you without NPC's, acquirring ridiculous loot or taking a week off to powerquest to your level.
A rule of thumb that I think would help a lot:
"If you're in a plot, look at the power level of your enemies and try not to massively surpass it in mechanical power. If you're already massively more powerful mechanically then you probably shouldn't be the one at the forefront of every DM quest. You should be recruiting lowbies and sending them to do the work whilst you hang back and mastermind it all or deal with the serious threats when they arise. Feel free to make yourself a difficult challenge but not an insurmountable obstacle. How is that fun for the others involved?"
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Well played priests, hmm …
1. Understands his gods dogma in and out
2. Knows his enemies dogmas inside out and can argue why their god is bad and his god is awesome
3. Knows about famous heroes of his god and relates their stories, especially how they triumphed over their enemy gods heroes
4. Has developed deity specific prayers that inspire others
5. Holds regular sermons in which he preaches his gods dogma but also invites to challenge him
6. Takes others out into the field to further his gods agenda
7. Ensures that his followers are well equipped and try to put them into similar colors/designs - it helps a lot to feel "part" of something
8. Looks after his followers first, last after himself since he has faith in his god (goes for buffs, healings, gear, etc.)
9. Have a clear goal on how to further his god
10. Supply your followers with clear tasks and goals that they can pursue and reward them for doing it
11. Build a following and be ready to step back so others can take up the lead -
Priests should also be using the dieties favored weapon and any armor restrictions.
Such as some faiths only let thier priests wear armor up to chainmail
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Priests should also be using the dieties favored weapon and any armor restrictions.
Such as some faiths only let thier priests wear armor up to chainmail
Make sure you don't mistake 2nd edition requirements with 3rd edition which we follow here (mostly).
Very few priests are limited on armor choices; only priests of Elistrae that I can think of off hand.
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Other than that I think it's quite hard to be known unless you do what I do and spam the boards and make continuous announcements about your faith.
I don't think I ever made a single board posting or sending with my priest, Lillybeth ravenlocks, yet she was well known enough to be on the "catch her doing anything and have her executed" list.
It's all about bringing the belief into your everyday actions and emotes.
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And seriously… Stop hating on the warrior priests. Some priests are SUPPOSED To be that way. What would Tempus think if his priests wern't out there buffing and fighting and generally kicking butt.
On the other hand, I can remember seeing more than one clerics of Sune out there on the front line in fullplate. Dunno if I understand that so much.
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what has failed to be mentioned here is that clerics are supposed to be the political representations of their gods on the mortal plains.
A cleric should not only be gathering converts and bolstering the faithful, but should be actively increasing the political power of their churches and faiths.
examples include"
A cleric of Tempus trying to gain influence over the military.
A cleric of Azuth trying to Take over the Mages guild.
A cleric of Hoar be trying to gain influence over the judges and judicial system -
I have a plan.
We all pick a Deity and write up all we can find on it. At the very least the stuff from the website. Some poor DM (Deadlock, probably) then transfers the text into a number of ingame books. The apropriate book spawned on each cleric when their first cleric level is taken.
This will ensure that every player knows what their god is about. The workload would be huge, but atleast people will know their cleric of lurue is not supposed to be a murderous deathbot.
Clerics who know their gods inside out are the most captivating. Lets ensure they do!
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There is nothing wrong with battlepriests, it just happens to be a tradition that the freakiest gods that have nothing to do with combat have their own divisions of warrior-priests in Arabel.
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There is nothing wrong with battlepriests, it just happens to be a tradition that the freakiest gods that have nothing to do with combat have their own divisions of warrior-priests in Arabel.
This. Only clerics with War domain or actual wargods should have the battlepriests.
Maybe Tymora as well. War domain's a general blanket considering some non-wargods get it to replace law, so…
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Whatever the players do as clerics, they must remember to never, absolutly never try to convert any other characters to the dogma of its deity. A cleric must not promote its faith. A cleric should limit itself to saying things like ''Tempus is mighty'' or ''Praised be Corellon''. Sermons, rituals and holy quests, should never interfer with the cleric's personnal business or little pleasures.
I take exemple on a Tormite cleric who was selling wands to a Banite. A cleric should never let his faith influence his action. Clerics use the powers granted to them willingly, by their deity, for selfish needs and never to promote the faith accross Faerun.
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@Cunning:
I have a plan.
We all pick a Deity and write up all we can find on it. At the very least the stuff from the website. Some poor DM (Deadlock, probably) then transfers the text into a number of ingame books. The apropriate book spawned on each cleric when their first cleric level is taken.
This will ensure that every player knows what their god is about. The workload would be huge, but atleast people will know their cleric of lurue is not supposed to be a murderous deathbot.
Clerics who know their gods inside out are the most captivating. Lets ensure they do!
This is actually a very good idea and would go well with adding to the Player Resource Forum. If I can get access to the old Tyrran board, I collected quite a bit of info about Tyr there. I'm sure there are other players who have put together "smart books" on their chosen character's deieties over time and we could start combining that into some files or threads on the forums.
Of course, I guess the best thing to do would be to publish IC books, but some of the info is really OOC and sometimes hard to translate into IC.