The handiwork of the gods is everywhere—in places of natural beauty, in mighty crusades, in soaring temples, and in the hearts of worshipers. Like people, gods run the gamut from benevolent to malicious, reserved to intrusive, simple to inscrutable. The gods, however, work mostly through intermediaries—their clerics. Good clerics heal, protect, and avenge. Evil clerics pillage, destroy, and sabotage. A cleric uses the power of his god to make his god’s will manifest. And if a cleric uses his god’s power to improve his own lot, that’s to be expected, too.[1]
THE CLERIC[]
Role: The cleric serves as a typical group’s primary healer, diviner, and defensive specialist. He can hold his own in a fight but usually isn’t well served by charging to the front of combat. The cleric’s domains and spell selection can greatly affect his role as well.
Clerics are masters of divine magic, which is especially good at healing. Even an inexperienced cleric can bring people back from the brink of death, and an experienced cleric can bring back people who have crossed over that brink. As channelers of divine energy, clerics can affect undead creatures. A good cleric can turn away or even destroy undead; an evil cleric can bring undead under his control. Clerics have some combat training. They can use simple weapons, and they are trained in the use of armor, since armor does not interfere with divine spells the way it does with arcane spells.
Attributes
- Str:(☆☆☆) Strength is an important stat for a cleric focusing on melee combat. If you plan on going ranged or not being involved in the damage dealing of combat, this stat loses its importance.
- Dex:(☆) As a cleric, you are proficient with heavy armor, which calls for you to wear at least full-plate. Wearing something sub par is not optimizing. Now, yes, there are builds that call for Dexterity, but those are few and far between, so in general, dump this one.
- Con:(☆☆☆) At higher levels, it's really your Constitution that determines hit points. Yes, the hit die plays a role, but a +8 Con is better than getting max hit points with a +0 Con. You can see the simplicity in that.
- Int:(☆) You get 2+Int skill points. Whooo! /sarcasm. Intelligence is a dump. (Although Concentration and Spellcraft are worth those two points, so feel free to place a 10 in this score.)
- Wis:(☆☆☆☆) Wisdom is arguably the most important stat for clerics. It determines your spellcasting, and as a full caster, is vital. There are cleric builds where Wisdom as the second highest stat is viable, and this works for casting where you do not plan on using offensive spells. Even so, it determines bonus spells per day, so it is great to have.
- Cha:(☆☆) Charisma powers your social skills, which you most likely won't have ranks for... It also powers your turn attempts which help in combat against undead... OR... Power Divine Metamagic (see the feat section). If you are for some reason avoiding Divine Metamagic, feel free to dump Charisma.[2]