I must be doing something wrong because all the guides and walkthroughs I've read seem to indicate a cleric (or at least a druid which I have yet to try) is a must. Part of the problem is that I'm not a D&D guy so my expectations of healers are probably skewed by the types you see in MMOs.
Anyway, they seem much more useful as simply a melee addition than any of their class specific skills. Sure, they can cast turn undead, and make 1 type of mob run away - sometimes.
When they heal a hurting member, it does one or more of several things.
Fails
Heals one lousy hit point
Causes the cleric to get the hell beat out of him
And I only get to cast it once per fight/day. The whole healing thing seems pretty messed up - for me anyway. I don't think it's ever caused one of my party members to survive when they wouldn't have otherwise.
I'm sure all these problems have very little to do with the game mechanics and everything to do with me not understanding the concepts of the game. Could someone fill me in?
You know you can go into spell selection with the tabs at the top of your inventory? And any cleric spell, as long as your cleric worships a good god, can be turned into a cure wounds spell if you hold down the shift key when selecting it. Later level cure wound spells will give your characters much more life.
First off a cleric is a must. You have to have some type of healer in your group if you want to get through those tough fights and if you don't want to be running back to town so you have some place safe to rest everytime you get beat up.
First, for spells always remember that a good aligned cleric can spontaneously cast. This means that a good cleric doesn't have to pray for healing spells. He can have others in his list and whenever you need one simply hold the shift key down while you got the spells on the radial menu up and all your spells will turn into healing spells.
Second, clerics are the only class that can craft healing wands. Very handy in a fight.
Third, Clerics are the only class that can add the holy property to magic weapons. Very handy when fighting evil creatures
So now we'll cover how to handle healing in combat. First you must take Combat casting as a feat. Secondly you must check the cast defensivly option in the radial menu. This will let you avoid those nasty Attacks of Opportunity when casting in a fight.
Clerics are pretty weak at lower levels, but they get much more useful as you go along. They get +1 per level up to +5 for thier healing spells. So at 5th level you would get a 1D8+5 for a cure light wounds. minimum of 6 points. At higher levels clerics actually will destroy undead instead of turning them. And they get soem pretty good protection, damage, and buff spells.
For feats I would take combat casting, craft wand, and craft magic weapons & armor. this will cover all your basics.
Ummmmmm this is all I can think of off the top of my head, hope it helps.
I have the heart of a small boy,
I keep in a jar on my desk.
Clerics are highly useful when it comes to healing. Unfortuantly for them during combat healing can become a problem. You could always choose to cast stone skin your cleric to help him or her out. Further more when you are in battle and you are trying to heal someone, Cast Denfensivly, that helps out a lot. You could even take the Feat Combat Casting which helps out in Casting spells such as your healing in battle for them to be more effective.
Paladins have the ability to heal others. However with them they have to gain a few levels and there healing is no where good as a Clerics in battle. Case in point you could either have your paladin either a. fight or b. heal. Personally I choose to have my Cleric do the healing and use my Paladin to fight if I even have a Paladin in the party to begin with.
There are more Feats your Cleric could take to help cast better, you just have to read them. In any case I would never have a party with out Cleric, there a major help in keeping your party alive.
Thanks for the replys. I'll have to keep plugging away at it. I like most aspects of ToEE, especially the more familiar I become with it. In case I need to rebuild, can someone suggest a good template for a cleric?
Not a template per say, but I like to take Clerics of Heironeus. Give him a high wisdom, preferably an 18, and a high strength as clerics tend to do alot of melee combat. High dex and con scores are always a plus as well. For your domains I'd take good and war. nice domain spells, and you can add the holy property to magic weapons.
You want a high concentration skill score, max it out every level. For feats take combat casting and extra turning. After that I'd stick mostly to the item creation feats, but the only ones you really need are wands and weapons and armor.
I have the heart of a small boy,
I keep in a jar on my desk.
Not to rub it in but last night I had a cleric heal 32 points of damage with a cure critcal wounds.
Really it sounds like your Cleric concentration skill is lacking. 'Concentration', 'Healing' are the top skills to give cleric. If your concentration skill is low your results will be poor. The 'tumble' skill can help your cleric from being smacked while running through the battlefield.
Make sure you fill out thier spell lists with the best healing spells you can get... remebering every time you level up to fill in vacant slots. - cleric of a god with a healing domain such as Pelor seems to do better healing than one from a different domain.
Now stats are of great importance - I never accept a cleric (or Druid) without at least a 17 in wisdom and in many instances toss those... an 18 wisdom is needed for the best healing spells. A high dex and Con are also needed to keep them from being cloberred when casting. A high intelligence to gain skills.
For feats you most definately want 'combat casting '
'empowered spel'l, 'heighten spell' are also great feats for a cleric. plus any defensive feats such as 'dodge' and 'mobility'. I also take craft weapons and armor, and rarely go for the brew potion - as you can rest where you know bugbear travel - they nearly always have healing potions in this game.
[QUOTE=SingleMalt]Thanks for the replys. I'll have to keep plugging away at it. I like most aspects of ToEE, especially the more familiar I become with it. In case I need to rebuild, can someone suggest a good template for a cleric?[/QUOTE]
...in this FAQ you will find a detailled cleric-build:
Thanks again for the replys all. I'll be putting your suggestions to work. I'm new to this genre of games (single player RPG) coming mainly from MMO's, and completely new to the D&D ruleset.
I bought ToEE near release, installed it, and was turned off immediately by not being ready for the differences in playstyle and lack of knowledge of D&D rules. The same thing happened with Neverwinter Nights. I played Dungeon Siege for about half an hour and realized I was heading down a tunnel. Lately I've found myself completely burned out on MMOs, and no other game types out there attract me, so I'm dedicated to getting around the things about the quality RPGs that turned me off. Once I get a feel for them, I'm confident they'll hold my attention for a while.
As single-player games go of any genre, the Morrowind series is easily my favorite.
If any of you thing ToEE is not the best game to "cut my teeth on" are there others that might be more suitable? NN? Diablo? Divine Divinity? Icewind Dale? If someone who had never played RPGs at all asked you what their first RPG should be, what would you tell them?
In a lot of ways I really like ToEE's aspects that initially turned me off. I remember thinking at first how it was so tedious to wade thru the turns, character by character, telling each one to attack individually, then going thru the whole thing again, and repeating until killing a couple mobs took 5 min. Then I realized after trying some more recently, and having read some more of the manual and online guides, that choices I make at each of these "turns" or rounds, or whatever, make a big difference in how the fight comes out.
I would Definetly recommend Diablo. The First Diablo Game is cool a little cheesy but not to bad. The second and the expansion a must I say to play.
Actually the collection of Diablo games are my number one ranking game. I am just starting Marrowind and it hasnt quite snagged me. I only put Marrowind in either to kill some time or because I am so bored I have nothing else to do.
TOEE is certainly hard to play if you aren't familiar with the 3.5 ruleset or the D&D ruleset at all...
...on the other hand TOEE is that easy that you won't run into to many problems...
IWD2 is also not that easy - cause you also have to build a whole party and have a higher level cap - means you have more room for mistakes - and the IWD2 HOF-mode is only for veterans !
In BG2 you only have to design one PC - but BG2 (and BG:TOB) has some of the most difficult fights (of all D&D games besides HOF) and a very complex magic system...
PoR seems to be heavily flawed and bugged - for this reasons I have never tried it...
if you can live with the poor graphics I would suggest two older games:
...the little bit lengthy BG1
...or try Planescape Torment
if you can't just stay with TOEE - it has the best ingame-help of all D&D games and you can find most other information on this forum...
The diablo series and Baldur's gate series are definate musts if you want to play good RPG's, my personal favorites.
I just picked up POR for 10 bucks at walmart, that's Pool of Radiance 2 Ruins of Myth Drannor btw, and with the few patches they have out I haven't had many problems with bugs. The graphics are a bit dated, and I had to turn the sound off to avoid the game locking up on me. But I'm actually having fun with it.
I would also recommend the Majesty series. It's actually more of an RTS than an RPG, but I had loads of fun with both parts 1 and 2.
I have the heart of a small boy,
I keep in a jar on my desk.
[QUOTE=SingleMalt]Please critique my latest try at building a cleric:
Wisdom-highest, followed by
STR/Con/Dex
followed by Cha and lowest number went to Int
All stats are fairly high - I messed around in the roll window a long time.
Skills: Concentration tumble survival diplomacy appraise and heal all maxxed
feats: combat casting, scribe scroll
Domains: law and good (I think)
Deity: The one that starts with an "H"[/QUOTE]
Statistics: It sounds as if you've pretty much have the right idea. If you have an Int score of 12, you'll definitely have enough skill points. Dexterity is should be around the same amount as Int, since a +1 Dexterity bonus is the highest you'll get by wearing full plate armor. Still, a high reflex saving throw will come in handy (especially towards the end), so the choice is yours. Charisma can help if you find that you need more chances per day to turn undead. Would you mind actually posting your character's numerical build (so that any of us could evaluate your character further)? We may be able to provide further advise with some more information.
Skills: Definitely Concentration and Heal. Tumble and Survival I wouldn't suggest for a cleric, since heavy loads and bulky armor would make Tumble useless, and Survival is more of a skill for Druids, Rangers, and Barbarians. Diplomacy is a skill that I would only suggest if you don't have anyone else that is supposed to use the skill (preferably a Paladin, Bard, Sorceror, or even a Rogue, depending upon what you have for a party). I would say the same thing for Appraise as I would for Diplomacy. You may want skill points in Listen and Spot to slightly decrease the possibility of being taken avantage of(in short, getting your cleric's pockets picked, or being hit by sneak attacks). Also, you may or may not wish to put a few ranks in the Spellcraft skill, if you feel that may help.
Feats: DEFINITELY Combat Casting. Scribe Scroll MAY or MAY NOT come in handy, depending upon what use you may find for it. If you're looking for something to really help your caster survive from the start, you may wish to go with a feat that upgrades a low saving throw (unless you have a +1 or higher reflex or fortitude save to start with)
Domains: I commend that you selected the Good domain. When you take the Craft Magic Arms & Armor feat (but that wouldn't be until your bonus character feat at character level 6), you'll be able to get the Holy enchantment at level 7. The same thing should happen with the Law domain (the Law enchantment is called "Axiomatic") at that time. However, there are claims that the Law domain is bugged (the bug being that your cleric wouldn't be able to give weapons the Axiomatic enchantment), so beware. Overall, you'll encounter A LOT of Chaotic Evil enemies, so both of those domains are the best for enchanting alignment weapons.
Deity: Heironeous, god of valor. He's a patron of Paladins and good-aligned Monks.
Overall, it sounds as if you're off to a decent start.
Dungeon Crawl Inc.: It's the most fun you can have without 3 midgets and a whip! Character stats made by your's truly!
I still don't get the xp penalty for crafting things. Sure, I can wait til level 10, but then I get to use what I craft for only a small portion of the game.
[QUOTE=SingleMalt]I still don't get the xp penalty for crafting things. Sure, I can wait til level 10, but then I get to use what I craft for only a small portion of the game.[/QUOTE]
you will reach level 7/8 early in the game - try to craft most of the items then - and just don't level up your cleric until you have crafted most of the items you need.
This way (with a lower level then the rest of your party) your cleric will get much more experience (EXP-calculation is based on your PC level and DC of the monster) !
First off you need to stop looking at it as a penalty. It's a cost, just like the gold that goes into it. That's what it costs for you to make magic items.
If all it took were a few gold and the right spells, then every farmers pitch fork or hoe would be magical, beacause they would be easy to come by.
But when the spellcaster has to invest a little bit of himself everytime he crafts a magic item, he's going to be much more particular about what it is he makes.
Having a level cap of 10 kind of takes away from this, as you keep gaining exp even after you top out. But the system wasn't written with video games that have a level cap in mind.
I have the heart of a small boy,
I keep in a jar on my desk.
