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Real clerics?
One thing I love about D&D are clerics. Battle-hardened, armored guys who buff and heal their allies but aren't afraid to whack the opponents with a trusty mace now and then.
Will we see these incredible guys and gals in Neverwinter or will only see the straight up ranged healer/nuker abberation type such as "Devoted Cleric?"
Comments
Well the "Devoted Cleric" and the "Battle Cleric" are the two Cleric archetypes in Player's Handbook 1. So I hope to see the former option as well. I never played a Battle Cleric, but I believe they were more up close and personal style of divine casting. The Devoted Cleric is primarily a Leader and then Controller second. Whilst the Battle Cleric is primarily a Leader and Defender second (although I could be mistaken it has been awhile).
One thing to keep in mind about 4th edition Clerics is that they cannot wear Full Plate armor. Their proficiency ends at Chain mail. They could take feats to overcome this, but I'm not sure if Neverwinter will have that choice? The only class in PHB1 that is proficient in Plate would be the Paladin.
Ah, so it's a 4th edition thing. I'm familiar with basic through advanced, 2nd edition, 3rd edition and 3.5, but am actually completely clueless about 4th edition.
Battle Cleric or Paladin could perhaps be my choice of class then, if they exist.
I DM'd over a 20 year period, maybe 70+ gamers over that time, and never once met a 'battle cleric' template.
Though I haven't DM'd since MMOs became the staple, I dont even recall clerics in EQ1 doing this until they introduced wards (after Discord?)
The first real builds I had seen of a Battle Cleric template came with DDO and it's feat system, I saw so many cleric/chanter/pally hybrids min/maxing and called 'battle' clerics.
Back in my day...they rolled a paladin.
Battle Cleric sounds good since I like healing through melee damage. Better to be in the heat of things actually hitting stuff. In the pen & paper rules there's for example an ability:
Healing Strike
Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier radiant damage, and the target is marked until the end of your next turn. In addition, you or one ally within 5 squares of you can spend a healing surge.
Just gotta wait that they get that class into Neverwinter.
Nawp. Archetypes were just suggestions of common roleplaying approaches. No seperate spell lists, or anything.
But in practice, all 1st-Ed clerics were "battle clerics" (in quotes because it's largely theoretical more than practical), people rarely chose to voluntarily downgrade to lighter armors. I can wear chain, by jove I'm gonna!
And they all toted around their maces and hammers, even if the damage (and cleric's HP) was too pitiful to make aspirations to "hand-to-hand fighter" very practical. Third-stringers, at best, even the thieves were better in a straight brawl. And touch-based spell damage? Alignment issues!
If you wanted to heal (as most parties expected you to), "wasting a cure" on the pitiful damage output of a cause light wounds? Rarely-to-never happened.
Keep that holy symbol™ handy though, in 1st and 2nd ed. you got a lot of use out of it.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
pretty much depends of the divinity they follow friend, for example, a cleric of a god that represents travel will prolly use light or no armor at all to not hinder mobility and use smaller/pratical weapons.
how does it look like a big mess? menus and UI look very easy to follow and user friendly.. combat overall was easy to follow in the videos i have seen and looked like it worked well...
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
There's a lot of things contributing to it.
1. Animations when moving around look very awkward and unnatural.
2. There's a strange faerie pixie dust trail showing you where to go that distracts from the overall graphical impression. Strange blue glowing circles under everyone and their companions' names further amplifies the issue.
3. A party of players with their companions going into a dungeon looks like a big zerging stomping down the poor monsters getting in their way. It looks very messy and it's difficult to make out what's going on.
4. Combat animations look like they have weight and power to them, which is good, if you like the anime-style super speed attacks and magical glitter effects (I don't). Unfortunately the magical glitter effects and even more invasive effects going on during the combat further obstructs the view and makes even more a mess of things.
6. The game seems to about standing around in town waiting to be teleported into a dungeon by the dungeon finder.
I agree the UIs are visually stunning - both the combat UI and the various interface screens. But the gameplay itself, IMO, seems a horrible mess.
Here's the video I'm referring to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0E6Yw-M1YY
What I'd like them to do is:
1. Clean up the visual impression. Remove elements such as the pixie dust trail, magical glitter from non-magical attacks and strange circles around the players' and monsters' feet. Remove companions from group play.
2. Slow down combat so it looks like more traditional D&D games. I'm not talking about having it turn-based, but more balanced animations that aren't so "anime" influenced.
3. Use the extra breathing room and awareness provided by steps 1 and 2 to implement more interesting combat features such as blocking to add a more reactional element to the combat and less about having your character spazz out with attacks. Something like Oblivion/Skyrim combat elements added might work.
4. Improve the horrid animations such as the trickster rogue's moving about in general.
On a different note, I've, uh, peeked a little into the D&D 4th edition Player's Handbook and have a feeling someone could make an awesome single player RPG with turn-based tactical party combat out of it.
i watched that whole video gameplay looks fine to me.. especially for a f2p game.. im' not expecting gw2 level of animations or controls here
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
My gaming blog
To be honest I thought GW2 suffered from poor animations, especially when moving. It felt very "floaty" and weightless.
#2 - You can turn the trail off.
#3 - I am not overly concerned about immersion breaking. I usually have the nameplates/tags up and it rarely bothers me. However, after watching the TotalBiscuit video there was so much stuff going on it really did look messy. Clean lines but almost jarringly distracting (imo). I think the target rings around the characters were what did it most of all, for me. And I was quite surprised that they did.
Not sure about this title. I think I may (for a change) play it as F2P only and plan on the likely scenario of it not holding my interests for any length of time (normally I would buy a 'pack' and probably at the Founder's level).
Ah well. Time will tell.
Their role in the game is different from the paladin, which is also reflected by their abilities. They are both "holy warriors" so they share that, but they fulfill different roles. Paladins are tankers/damage dealers while clerics are supporters/healers.
That's fine, but I bet you will someday download the FTP client and try it yourself. Call it a hunch.
Also huge fan of games that allow Battle Clerics or Battle Mages, just opens up so much more game style options. DDO's Battle Clerics are great fun.
Then i do not know what you've played those 20 years because even back on AD&D 2nd edition, Priest handbook:
"All priests have certain powers: The ability to cast spells, the strength of arm to defend
their beliefs, and special, deity-granted powers to aid them in their calling. While priests
are not as fierce in combat as warriors, they are trained to use weaponry in the fight for
their cause."
This sums pretty much all the build options back on the AD&D 2nd edition days, surely it was more casting oriented, but the priest roleplaying was sorta a "god" thing, if you worshiped the god of war, or Bane, you were bound to be a fierce warrior, every deity gave you a specific feat on a weapon sometimes, and since clerics were already wearing plate, you could be on the road for melee caster. In fact i do not remember a single priest on my tables who wouldnt had to melee from time to time, and sometimes there was always a guy who wanted to go for "follow me" role as a cleric.
Even tho, i agree with you most of the time you would advice to roll a paladin but once the game was going and they felt that were unstopable (lets face it in many prior 4e editions, clerics were stupidly overpowered if they were correctly rolled) and rally against their targets.
Paladins in 4e are defenders with optional build striker (like warrior), and Paladins back on the day were not Battle clerics, they were devoted knights bless with minor clerical power bestow by their god, usually on questing or a mission for their deities/Kings, they were primarily melee class without the spell casting buffet of the Clerics, but they had some other features to aid them in their quest, however they were SEVERLY restricted in the roleplaying field, paying dimes not accepting rewards most of the time, as well as even restricted with whom they could party. So basically paladins were a restricted version of a warrior without several melee advantages and lack of clerical power, they did however end up being very sustainable fighters and dpsers at higher levels with a holy avenger on their hands (thats it if they did not died prior to their stupid charging against all that is evil)
What we do in life, echoes in eternity.
Like the Vanguards cleric a plate wearing king buffer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlMEuVY19ws
Interesting... truely, fascinating.
I've been playing Pen and Paper D&D for six to eight years. I've never met a Cleric who wasn't a "warpriest", except for NPCs. This is reflected in every D&D computer game too. From Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights.
In our D&D 3.5 edition games, we saw the feat for "ranged healing, derp", but no one used it. I mean, why would you want to use such, if you can instead be right next to the front line, beating, praying, casting and what not. Healing has also always been touch-based in D&D computer games. Even Neverwinter Nights dosn't include this ranged healing feat, only game what I can recall, which has ranged healing (except for area heals, duh) is DDO - where they dumbed it down quite a bit.
There's a reason why 3.5 e had a war Domain for clerics of any race available. Thus, giving clerics the ability to wield heavier weapons even when not being elves, who could of course freely utilize longbows and longswords.
Everyone knows that a Paladin cannot serve as a proper healer in D&D. Especially in 3.5 edition, they are heavily restricted in that area. A level 6 paladin might have lay on hands equal to one character's full health at best, and maybe one or two prayers of Cure Light Wounds, which are inadequate to use, especially in combat at that level. Instead, paladins, at least in my games, have always played offensive roles with their smite evils, blessings and auras, leading the party into any charge (followed by fighters, barbs and the like, so no one in the front loses their aura bonuses.)
PS. I must give some praise to Axxar, truely beautiful posts above!
We?re all dead, just say it.
4e (generalities)
Another way of saying Devoted Cleric and the Battle Cleric is caster and melee. Both heal, buff, but not in equal amounts.
A paladin is doesn't heal even half as much, has more armor/weapon choices, more hp and the stat focus is different.
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