Raise Dead is only reason to speak up for them.

Or Resurrection, Chaotic Commands, Turn Undead (!), Heal and many, many other useful spells and abilities. ;)
What exactly is it that you don't like about them?

Clerics are shit boring to be, but you really do need one in your party for healing and protective spells

I agree about them being slightly boring to play... But in the end, it depends on you yourself how boring it really is, no? ;) But I have to admit I never had any personal interest in playing a cleric protagonist... About the only class I've never played.

They only strong spell caster is a mage. I´d like to see a cleric stand up to power word death and flame arrow, or that spell with the death scull in in when your body fluid gets drain or something (damn... what is the name of that spell)

it is some brain sucking spell for sure and no cleric can stand up to it. No..
Like Grojlach says it depends on you for the boring part.. and i'm playing one right now and is not so boring because i am having more fun playing Korgan and Keldorn and Anomen.. were hunting around in the sewers for the Hidden as well as earlier we heard a rumour that their was some Slavers and we cleaned em out of this pub in the Slums.. so might as well set the whole neighbourhood straight at some point and clean those dirty slavers out of the town. Even Korgan would nay trade in woman and child! Bah but I have Jaheira and Anomen as well as Aerie to. So it is a very righteous party.

Edit> Everyones always yapping about God this and God that.. :D Aerie is into some Halfing and Keldorn always having a Radiant Heart attack.. Now Anomen barking while filling in for Jan while we try to cure his lady friends situation...

[ 01-25-2003, 04:57 AM: Message edited by: Djinn Raffo ]

I don´t know if you necessarily need a cleric in your party. If Aerie wouldn´t be cleric I would still keep her instead of Anomen, Jaheira, Cernd or Viconia. I say you can do without.

Depends on how you're playing. If you're soloing a sorcerer or monk, what in the world would you need a cleric for? ;) But if you've got a lot of "weaker" party members to worry about, a cleric is almost inevitable to take along if you want to keep at least some fun in your game. There aren't always temples around to raise/resurrect your dead characters at, and to reload every time one of your party members dies doesn't really sound that appealing either.

Clerics suck?

Reasons why clerics are a worthwhile class:
1. They can raise dead and heal characters.
2. They can wear almost any armour.
3. They can wield most of the game's best weapons (FoA and Crom come to mind)
4. They can use shields.
5. They can cancel out spells such as confusion with Chaotic Commands.
6. They can protect themselves with Globe of Blades and not receive any melee damage if they have good enough armour.
7. They <u>can</u> tank effectively because of points 2, 3, 4, 6.
8. They have turn undead which makes meat out of undead, or allies them towards you. In ToB evil clerics can turn Paladins.
9. They can prepare your characters for battle with spells such as Bless and Chant.
10. They can Silence enemy casters with Silence 15' Radius.
11. They can cast spells such as Harm which reduces even dragons to 1HP.
12. They can imbue your characters with Magic Resistance with the spell of the same name.

I can continue on, but these show you that clerics are indeed far from useless, and can be very versatile characters if used correctly.

pcgiant all that doesn't change the fact that they suck! :D

Well Jaheira's dead. Those bloody slavers had some trap in their lair you know and some kind of green death made her melt from the inside out. Portraits gone and all i have left of her is a lock of her hair.. Just when i thought i was going to get laid to..

Bah.. cleric is no substitute for a thief! ;)

A disintegrate trap, you mean? And you're not going to reload?

Holy Smite is somewhat comparable to Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting. It does 1-4 Magic dmg per Level to any evil creatures in a pretty large AoE. Abi-Dalzim's does approximately 80% more damage than Holy Smite at equal levels (Abi-Dalzim's averages 4.5/lvl, compared to 2.5/lvl for HS), but don't forget that a cleric will have access to HS far earlier than a mage, as well as always being of a higher level.

Though I think the mage does have far more useful spells than either the cleric or the druid, the ultimate solution is to have both arcane and clerical spells, and then combine it with a fighter [img]smile.gif[/img] Fighter/Mage/Cleric is a truly wicked combo and can use a vast amount of spell combinations as well as protection magics.

[ 01-25-2003, 07:05 AM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]

In addition, Holy Smite blinds the victim on a failed save.
This is very powerful, due to the way Blindness is implemented in the Infinity Engine - it reduces viewing range to 1 (which means a monster can barely see the end of it's nose), and forces +10 penalty to THAC0. As a result, Nature's Beauty rocks. :D

I second that. [img]smile.gif[/img]

The thing is, any class *can* be soloed with, or if you're making a party, you have 6 positions to fill. why not have a cleric, mage AND Thief ? the thing with a party is mixing and matching the abilities of your crew. A mage might be better (but that's subjective) than a cleric, but a cleric IS useful. Since you have room, why not take both ? An infantry man has less firepower and less armour than a tank, but do you see armies going to war with JUST tanks ? No. because each unit has a tactical role to play, and a good general uses his troops to support and complement each other. It's called 'Tactics'.

Also a cleric has acsess to flame strike. thats a powerful offensive spell. Armor of Faith is a nice protective spell. they have acsess to true sight and plenty of other good spell. i do agree though that they arent even close to as intresting or powerful as the mages are.

Mages suck [img]tongue.gif[/img] :D

A well made Cleric built by a skilled player who knows the spell system is way better. Tons better. As for things like Flame Arrow and other spells like that, Shield of the Archons should soak those up like sponges. Clerics have spells that can and will make them nearly immune to all matter of most things.

We have already been down this path however, I will say no more.

Druids rock as well. Hope you brought your bug spray.

Yes, we have - and we found out the a Cleric can do about, well... diddly squat against Abi Dalzim's Horrid Wilting en masse and/or Time Stop. [img]tongue.gif[/img] This led us to the conclusion that BG2 is discriminating against Clerics... remember? ;)

We, they are. Good summoning power, excellent Anti Mages spells and Nature's Beuaty is just... ba-roken! :D

I know, I know.

I am still really PISSED OFF that they did not include the Cleric's best high level ability, Avatar. I mean, they gave all sorts of broken over powered elements to the other classes, why not give an over powered souped up something to the Cleric.

I mean, hell, with a Cleric, you could utterly demolish anything in ToB or SoA, Avatar renders you immune to things like Time Stop. If you have things, like Time Stop for example, or Spike Traps, or any other numbers of stinky cheese, why not add the stinkiest cheese of them all?

Sure, a Priest of Talos turning into a Storm Elemental would be a little overpowering, but, name something in game that is not overpowering in some fashion. We have an all the cheese you can eat buffet, but, bring on the CHEESE FIESTA!

:D Did you know that an Avatar of Mystera has an ability called Mystera's Spell Lashing? It releases pretty much every single damaging arcane spell you can think of all at once at a selected target. That's a lot of saving throw rolls to make if you hope to live though that! :D

Nope, not going to reload.. Isn't that cheating? The only time i'll reload is if my main character dies.

Nope, not going to reload.. Isn't that cheating? The only time i'll reload is if my main character dies.</font>[/QUOTE]I'm not sure... Following the third edition rules, even if a character is disintegrated, he/she could still be resurrected (check page 246 second column of the PHB for those who don't believe that the dust left behind after a disintegration counts as "a small portion of the body" ;) ). So from that perspective, you should have been able to resurrect Jaheira. If the game was following third edition core rules, you wouldn't be cheating; you'd just be avoiding a bug that would make no sense with those official rules. Her portrait shouldn't have vanished as it did.

But the point is that I've got no idea what the official 2nd edition rules are on resurrection after disintegration, so I can't justify reloading as "not cheating" at this point just yet, as BG2 is based on those 2nd edition rules, not the 3rd edition ones. Does anyone know the official 2nd edition rules on this? :confused:

Your equipment would be lost either way, though.

[ 01-25-2003, 01:58 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

Right after you come in from the sewers into the Slavers lair. Captain Haegan (i believe) and his crew are all their. Wiped the floor with them and then started up the stairs of that first room where they all are. That's where the trap was.

And good eye there.. her equipment was still there on the floor.

LOL. So either it was another spell bad enough to make her portrait disappear (but I doubt it was a Flesh-to-Stone or Imprisonment spell - and even then retrieval of your character is still possible with the right spells) or just some really messy application of the official rules.
But like I said, I'm unfamiliar with the 2nd edition core rules, on which BG2 is based.
Or perhaps items aren't supposed to disappear with a disintegrate... Pfft, I'm confused myself now. Anyone? :confused:

[ 01-25-2003, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

The trap in the stairs in the Slaver Stronhold is an Acid trap. As such, it deals massive Acid damage (in the 20-60 range on Core) and holds you for a few seconds.

Oh wait... I'm getting it now, I believe. When a character dies with too much damage at the same time and immediately drops below -10, they're permanently dead, under certain rules and difficulty levels. But I thought that only happened in IWD1... Still slightly confused, but less than before. Sorry for mixing the green spell up with a disintegration. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 01-25-2003, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

In 2nd edition rules, items dissapear when disintegrated and you cannot be resurected. in 3rd edition, the items dont dissapear, and i think youre character can be raised.

Dragons Breath is, in my opinion, WAAAAY overpowered. if they add a mage spell of that caliber, then i see absolutely no reason why a cleric shouldnt have at least one overpowered abilitie. i cant think of too many overpowered abilities for the cleric. the deva sucks compared to the planetar. they should like be able to summon lesser solars(if there are any. read the description of the real solar. sheesh, thats all i can say.) or something. the dragons breath used within time stop, using improved alacrity and abi-dalzim's horrid wilting and comet. man, that finishes nearly anything.

well, let me say that if they added avatar, they need to add in the downtime after the spell is used (1 week IIRC?) as I remember, that ability was a *touch* overpowered

I agree. If we had something that powerful, I think the Cleric should feel fatigue for a week. I could live with that.

However, on the same hand, I think they should bring back spell components for mages. For balance reasons of course. But then, everybody would hate mages. Sorcerers would be even more popular. However, that would be fixed as well if all sorcerer spell selections were randomly selected by the computer.

Somebody should work on a Balance Mod :D

If you combine a cleric with a mage, you can get some really powerful spell combos.

You can put holy smite into sequencers, heal into contingencies, or to kill anything:

Time stop, cast harm (reduce target to one hp with successful hit--no saving throw), attack (hit is guaranteed by time stop), attack with any weapon for the last point of damage.

The other great thing about combining the cleric and the mage; they will be able to cast more spells per day than any other character.

yeah, spell components were such a huge pain in the butt, thats why I always prefered a good ol fighter to be honest

Straight up fighter is one of my faves! Great fun.. Lots of great items to play with! [img]smile.gif[/img]

you knew someone was going to do it, so here goes:

"a buckler"