Cleric

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The Cleric, Priest, or Bishop is a character class in Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games. The cleric is a healer, usually a priest and a holy warrior, originally modeled on or inspired by the Military Orders. Clerics are usually members of religious orders, with the original intent being to portray soldiers of sacred orders who have magical abilities granted by the gods, although this role was later taken more clearly by the paladin. Most clerics have powers to heal wounds, protect their allies and sometimes resurrect the dead, as well as summon, manipulate and banish undead.

A description of Priests and Priestesses from the Nethack guidebook: Priests and Priestesses are clerics militant, crusaders advancing the cause of righteousness with arms, armor, and arts thaumaturgic. Their ability to commune with deities via prayer occasionally extricates them from peril, but can also put them in it.^[1]

A common feature of clerics across many games is that they may not equip pointed weapons such as swords or daggers, and must use blunt weapons such as maces or war-hammers instead. This is likely based on a popular misinterpretation of the depiction of Odo of Bayeux and accompanying text, which has in modern times been re-evaluated. They are also often limited in what types of armor they can wear, though usually not as restricted as mages.

Related to the cleric is the paladin, who is typically a Lawful Good warrior often aligned with a religious order, and who uses his martial skills to advance its holy cause.

Dungeons & Dragons

In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, the cleric is one of the four base character classes. Clerics are versatile figures, both capable in combat and skilled in the use of divine magic, which they employ without any restriction due to encumbrance of amour. In earlier versions of the games they were restricted to using bludgeoning weapons, such as maces, staffs, and war-hammers. In later additions this limit was raised depending on the symbolic weapon of their deity, although other martial (non-simple) weapons were still alien to them - requiring a costly feat in the latest edition of the game to employ them. Clerics are powerful healers due to the large number of healing and curative magic available to them. With divinely-granted abilities over life or death, they are also able to repel , destroy, rebuke, or control undead creatures - depending upon whether he/she is good or evil.

MapleStory

In MapleStory, Magicians can choose their second job as the Cleric. Clerics are regarded as essential members to parties, for their skill, "Bless", but much more importantly, their ability to heal their allies. When a Cleric uses "heal", it replenishes party members' HP (health points) to a very high degree, usually completely, unless the heal is at a weak level, the party member's HP is extremely high, etc. The "heal" skill can also damage undead monsters while simultaneously healing party members. However its priority is the party members.

In the 3rd job, they become a very supportive class. They possess the skills Doom, Mystic Door, and Holy Symbol. Doom changes the form of MapleStory monsters into blue snails. Their fighting abilities are demolished and become weak monsters. Mystic Door allows party members to come from towns into any map, similar to a Town Scroll. (Except Boss/PQ/ETC) Holy Symbol is an essential skill for Priests. Priests are generalized as the "Supportive" class due to this. Holy Symbol increases the amount of EXP received. The more members, the more EXP increase. As well priests earn lots of money without the need for hp potions but they are weak attackers.

The 4th job of a Cleric, the Bishop, takes its skills to an even higher degree. However their role as a "Supportive" class lowers as they gain very strong skills (e.g. Genesis). The skills they obtain are deadly. However, there are still supportive skills such as Resurrection.

Other Games

• EverQuest
• In EverQuest II, "Cleric" is a term that refers to both Inquisitors and Templars, which are evil and good (respectively) variants on the traditional Clerical roles.
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has the Cleric class as one of the four specialized healer classes, in a form compareable with D&D (heavy armor, low damage output, some anti-undead abilities). Allowed Races are all Humans but Kojani/Asian, all Elves but Wood Elf, plus Half Elf, Dwarf, Halfling and Gnome. Clerics choose one out of five deities at level 20 ("Affinity"), which in turn gives them various special abilities not shared with Clerics of other deities, such as improved Melee Damage for War Clerics, or especially high defense for Preservation Clerics.
• In Lineage II, human mages may choose Cleric at their first class change. Elven Clerics exist as well, but are called "Elder" instead.
• In Darkthrone, the Cleric character will add 5% to defence bonus.
• In Fire Emblem, the Clerics, sometimes known as "Sisters," are only females (their male equivalent being the Monk or the Priest) and usually wield staves and are unable to fight. To compensate for their inability to counterattack against foes, Clerics and other healers gained large amounts of speed and luck which gives them a high evade rate. They're promoted into Bishop class through Guiding Rings, becoming able to use Light magic. Some of the Clerics in the saga are Ellen, Princess Guinevere's lady in waiting in Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi, Serra, the healer in service of Ostia in Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, and Mist, the younger sister of the main character, Ike, in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. In Radiant Dawn Mist is able to use swords as well as staves and comes with her own personal weapon, the Florete. Mist promotes into a Valkyrie, gaining a mount.

Like their male counterparts, Clerics tend to have high Magic, Luck, Resistance and speed, as well as above average skill. As Bishops, they generally have the highest critical rate of all magic-users in order to compensate for their low Magic caps and weak tomes. Also, they almost always have poor growths in defense and HP which makes them vulnerable to magic-resistant melee units such as Pegasus/Falco(n) Knights, a characteristic shared by all magic-users in the franchise.

• In Rappelz the Cleric is the main healer/buffer, sacrificing soloing abilities to aid allies. The Cleric has very powerful buffs that raises party member's abilities and powerful healing spells to save party members from dying.
• In Vanguard SOH The Cleric is a heavily armored healer who uses holy magic to punish his enemies and restore his allies. Disputably the best solo class, the Cleric is a force to be reckoned with.
• In ROSE Online the Clerics were given the power of holiness by the Goddess Arua, the goddess of the Seven Hearts, for supporting, and protection. Clerics uses wands as their weapon, and attacks in long range. They can Stun enemies by using an electric spell, make monsters not believe in their soul to prevent them talking, (Means using spells/skills) summoning monsters to support them in battle. They also has very high defence, and 9 different "buffs". Attack power up, Defence up, Accuracy up, Movement Speed up, Attack speed up, additional damage to attacks, critical rate up, Maximum HP and MP up. They can also heal, and Resurrect fallen people to escape from the evil God Herbarn's hands.
• In RuneScape, certain religious groups such as monks, paladins, priests and clerics are typically seen as NPCs, although a player with high prayer and/or fighting, may wish to become a cleric or some other form of holy warrior to their chosen god.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Man employs cleric-like characters in their military forces, the Priest and Chaplains for the Imperial Guard and Space Marines, respectively. Priests and Chaplains inspire the troops to fight with increased vigor, reminding them of their duty to the God Emperor. Whereas the Space Marine Chaplains are armed like stereotypical clerics (with blunt weapons, although they have the option of chainswords and power weapons), the Priests attached to the Imperial Guard are armed with either chainswords or the Eviscerator, a double-edged and double-handed version of the chainsword. Priests can be attached to a squad of Imperial Guardsmen, in lieu of a Commissar.

References

• Slavicsek, Bill; Richard Baker, Kim Mohan (2005) (in English). Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies (Illustrated ed.). For Dummies. ISBN 9780764584596. http://books.google.com/books?id=xNU7E01MCEgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Cleric+Dungeons+and+Dragons&client=firefox-a. Retrieved 04-12-09.