Meet the Templar

I really can not remember the last time I saw the vocal minority so united, this time against the Essentialized writeup of the cleric. To put it mildly, you got people wondering what is wrong with R&D and/or if anyone at Wizards of the Coast has ever played a cleric before. Some claim that the warlord was already a superior leader and that it “escaped” the writeup unscathed. I think the funniest complaints are a tie between Mearl’s hatred of clerics, and variations of “my character(s) are forever ruined”. Again, this is the cliffnotes of forum-rage.

So, what has actually changed?

Well, when you take cleric powers from Heroes of the Fallen Lands out of the equation, basically 30ish of around 250 features (or less than 20%) and prayers got nerfed. I can see where people are coming from: they had a character that could do something, and that something no longer operates as well as it did before, whether having the ranged reduced by a square or two, or having the damage scaled back a die. Fortunately (perhaps unfortunately for some), I do not think that the designers decided to purposely set out to fuck you over, or just fuck over clerics through some bizarre personal vendetta.

Is it possible that they did it because some cleric prayers were just too damned good? I have seen turn undead single-handedly destroy an encounter with a good number of undead (and/or elementals and demons, if you’ve got the feat for it), which make for pretty iconic encounters. Worse, the damage and range scale faster than normal (ie, not just at each tier or once per tier), making it an extremely potent ability that you didn’t even lose anything to pick up. Not to mention that some of those nerfs simply switch off the friendly-fire mode of some prayers, making you only just as good at area-effect attacks as wizards.

Some people complain that they should have just ramped up everything else in order to compensate, which tells me that yeah, they did have it too good. Frankly it makes a lot more sense to pare one class down instead of giving everyone else a booster shot: less errata and less cries of power creep all-around, and I don’t foresee any shortage of clerics in the future. Clerics have had tons of support since 4th Edition was released, and if their errata amounts to a small chunk of their powers–again, before we count the Essentials stuff that they can also use–then I’m alright with that.

Changes

Thanks to the Essentials line (specifically Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms) there’s two pages of errata listing changes made to various other books. A good chunk of it is for the races making re-appearances, but a few magic items and some rituals also get modification.

Much of the racial information is simply telling you about variable secondary modifiers, such as that dragonborn get to pick between Strength or Constitution, while tieflings can choose from Constitution or Intelligence now (hellooo star pact). A few races get extra attention; half-elves get opt out of dilettante for knack for success, which is a great alternative to a subpar at-will-turned-encounter power. On another note, drow can look forward to now having to pick between cloud of darkness or darkfire during character creation.

Other changes include divine challenge getting clarified and condensed to about half its former size, amulet of health sees its poison resistance reduced to twice its enhancement modifier, Brew Potion only makes common potions and elixirs, Disenchant Magic Item now provides different percentages of residuum depending on item rarity, etc.

July Rules Updates

Thats…a lot of changes, and not simple ones, either. For starters, magic missile now always hits but deals less than half damage than before, dispel magic becomes an encounter spell, and lead the attack only lasts a turn even if you hit. And thats just a few of the changes out of Player’s Handbook. All told you’re looking at 20 pages of errata, so I’m glad that Character Builder gets updated as well. This means that unlike 3rd Edition I don’t have to print out the pages (or check the interwebs) so that I can reference them when making a character.