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Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has so much to offer players of 5e. With Project 4ever, we’re dissecting 4e and repurposing a bunch of its inspirational gems. Most important for our discussion today are combat roles and power sources. If you’re not sure what those are, check out our past articles on them!

In our discussions on this blog we’ve already dug deep into the 4ever Fighter and Rogue classes. Today’s article is doing the same thing with the Cleric! If you’re already super familiar with what the 4e Cleric offers, feel free to skip to the section, “So, What Are We Stealing?”

Blessings of the Divine

The Cleric has long been D&D’s iconic healer. While 4e offers many classes that can step into that role, the Cleric remains perhaps the best at keeping the party’s hit points high. As a “Divine Leader”, however, the Cleric has more responsibilities than just managing hit points. Fueled by the power of the gods, the 4e Cleric actively buffs the group in various ways and leads them to victory.

Deities

Readers familiar with 5e Clerics know the importance of choosing an appropriate Divine Domain. But in 4e, more narratively important is the deity or divine force you worship. Domains have a place, but are only important in how they pertain to your chosen deity. I’m of the opinion that modern D&D has lost something valuable and interesting in how it has de-emphasized the relationship Clerics have with their god. It’s like a Warlock without an Otherworldly Patron; why leave all that juicy narrative goodness out?

4e also makes the distinction that Clerics aren’t granted their divine abilities directly from their god. It’s the ordination or investiture as a Cleric that lets you cast your spells and heal your allies. I only bring this up as a future nod toward other divine classes, as each one channels the power of the gods a little differently.

Guidance of a Leader

4e Clerics have the “Leader” role, but they don’t only act as support. As with all 4e classes, the Cleric attacks the enemy, and most often if the attack is successful, that ability’s secondary effect kicks in.

Check out this Cleric power from the Player’s Handbook:

From the attack’s description, we can see that the Cleric makes a ranged attack against the Reflex of a creature within 5 squares of it. The “Hit” line says that if the attack is successful, the Cleric deals some radiant damage to the target, and then gets to give an accuracy boost against that enemy to one of the Cleric’s allies. That’s obviously a buff to your chosen friend, but then the narrative text just under the attack’s name gives some flavorful description: “Sparkles of light linger around the target, guiding your ally’s attack.”

Most of the 4e Cleric’s attacks work just like this, dealing a bit of damage and also granting your party some bonuses. Gone are the days that a Cleric will only spend their actions and resources on supporting the party, and not even really interacting with the enemies. The Cleric’s job is active and dynamic, with access to a wide variety of abilities and powers to aid the party in combat.

Holy Warriors

4e Clerics are also pretty sturdy. They’ve got training in up to Chainmail, and (sometimes) with Light Shields. They’ve got an evenly-split array of options between melee and ranged, allowing them to be effective on the front lines next to or just behind a good Defender. They tend to stick with simple weapons, but in 4e the mace has a d8 damage die (the same as a longsword) and often that’s sufficient.

They also make use of holy symbols as implements for their more magical attacks. 4e lays an enormous importance on implements, giving them just as much mechanical support as weaponry. Clerics rely on both, lending the class a versatility that many other classes simply don’t have. On the other hand, it also means that often 4e Clerics need to invest their hard-earned treasure in both a good weapon and a powerful holy symbol.

These details are all well and good, but how can they enhance our 5e games? Keep reading to find out!

So, What Are We Stealing?

Clerics in 5e have stridently broken out of the often-maligned role of support-only. They can be built as tanks, damage-dealers, infiltrators, almost anything you can think of. If we try to force the class back into more of a support role like in 4e, aren’t we hindering its flexibility? In a sense, yes. But there’s more to it than that.

5e offers two overtly-divine classes, the Cleric and the Paladin. 4e basically has four, one for each combat role. In 4e, if you want to build a divine character and don’t want the leader role, you simply don’t choose a Cleric; an Avenger, Invoker, or Paladin will be more your style. Since Project 4ever will eventually offer these additional classes, Clerics don’t need to cover every character concept. For those players who do want the Leader playstyle, we’re going to offer a focused Cleric class that can excel at that.

So let’s take a look at how we can do that, and still offer a variety of interesting builds.

Level 1: Hit Die & Proficiencies

The 5e Cleric gets a d8 for its Hit Die. That’s pretty standard, so we’ll keep it and leave the higher Hit Dice to the Defender classes. It gets training with medium armor and shields, but we’re going to steal from 4e and add a bit more flexibility by also granting training with chainmail. This way, Clerics who want to wear heavy armor have that option from Level 1, and don’t need to wait on any sort of class feature to opt into it.

Traditionally in 5e, Clerics who want to wear heavy armor also get proficiency with martial weapons. However, we’re stealing most of 4e’s weapon properties and damage dice, so that d8 mace mentioned a little while back? It means that Clerics can get by just fine with simple weapons without needing to devote class features to getting something better. Of course, there will be other ways to pick up martial weapon proficiencies if the Cleric really wants to hit a bit harder.

So what else do we get at level 1? Let’s see!

Level 1: Healing Word

In this feature, the 4ever Cleric steals something common to every Leader class in 4e: a way to heal your allies without spending your main action on it. Players of 5e will recognize the name as a common (and effective) healing spell that just costs a Bonus Action to cast. Our feature here functions similarly, making use of that Bonus Action, but doesn’t use spell slots. Instead, the 4ever Cleric gets two free uses of it per short rest.

For those familiar with some of 5e’s quirks, this feature might raise some eyebrows. After all, the 5e Healing Word spell is considered in some gaming circles to be a bit problematic. It’s notorious for being an easy way to get a downed party member just enough hit points to get back on their feet, but not enough hit points really to reliably keep them there. What results is the infamous “yo-yo” effect, where a character gets knocked out and healed repeatedly and in quick succession, and with little overall cost to the party’s resources. So… why give every 4ever Cleric the ability to do exactly that a couple free times between short rests?

Well, for starters this feature isn’t exactly like that divisive spell, because we’ve stolen a big part of how healing works in 4e. See, in 5e healing just works, and it can be spammed for as long as the Cleric has spell slots available. But in 4e (and now in Project 4ever), each character has a well of healing that's expended whenever they're healed. In 4e they're called healing surges. In 4ever, it's your Hit Dice.

So when the Cleric uses Healing Word on the Fighter, the Fighter has to expend a Hit Die in order to receive the healing. There are more nuances that we can get into another time, but the point is that there are limits to how often a 4ever character can be healed, which helps to balance the fact that Leaders such as the Cleric are able to heal their friends with a Bonus Action.

Level 1: Spellcasting

So if healing can be done as a Bonus Action and has its own resource, what sorts of spells do Clerics get? Well, for the most part we like how spellcasting and spell slots work in 5e. We’ll go over spellcasting and slots in more detail in the next article (Stealing From the 4e Wizard), but suffice it to say at the moment that some of your slots come back on a short rest, and some of them come back on a long rest.

The 4ever Cleric’s spell list includes old and new spells. The new spells tend to focus either on mid-range spell attacks or melee weapon attacks, with support effects built in alongside the attacks.

Whether your 4ever Cleric wants to focus on ranged or melee support (or a balanced mix of both), the spell list has got you covered.

Level 1: Ritual Casting

5e has the “ritual” tag attached to some spells that allows them to be cast without expending a spell slot, at the cost of a longer casting time. These are generally regarded “utility” spells; not of particular use during combat, but handy tools in a Cleric’s belt for other situations that arise.

The thing is, a character can only know or have prepared so many spells, and needing to balance those between combat and utility spells can lead to some frustration at the game table. 4e handled this problem by having utility spells interpreted as “rituals” instead; technically not spells, but still magical in nature and extremely useful in the right situations.

As this article’s already overlong, we’ll go over rituals more in the future Wizard article.

Level 1: Domain Initiate

This is the 4ever Cleric’s chance to gain access to a few extra spells and rituals. The domains are similar to the 5e domains, but only offer the bonus spells and rituals, rather than each one forming an entire subclass.

Most of the domains allow your Cleric to tweak their spell list a little bit, gaining access to spell’s other Clerics won’t usually have. If you remember how 4ever Roles work, you might pick up that this lets your Divine Leader expand a bit into another Role. For example, the Arcana Domain lets you pick up some spells that are normally reserved for the Wizard’s spell list - letting your Cleric sometimes act as a Controller. Similarly, the War Domain might help you raise your damage output, making you feel a bit more like a Striker.

Each domain also has an associated Channel Divinity, but that doesn’t come into play until next level.

Level 2: Talents

As far as talents go, they work the same for Clerics as they do for the other 4ever classes: you get one every even-numbered level.

Here are a few that might make good choices for a Cleric:

Battlewise is great for Clerics who want to go earlier in a combat and set up buffs for the party as soon as possible. On the other hand, if you’re a Cleric who likes to bash foes with weapons, you could always take the Weapon Proficiency talent to upgrade to a longsword (for accuracy) or a warhammer (for higher damage).

Level 2: Channel Divinity

Remember the Domain Initiate feature at level 1? This feature builds on that slightly, giving you access to your chosen domain’s Channel Divinity. Channel Divinity itself is a Cleric resource that comes back on a Short Rest, and your choice of domain gives you a way to use that resource.

At this level every 4ever Cleric also gets access to the “Turn Undead” Channel Divinity. Rather than doing 5e’s thing of shutting down undead creatures, this version instead has a much smaller area but also directly deals Radiant damage. While not as potent as 5e’s version, we’re hoping this one will also be less problematic and more fun at the table.

Level 3: Cleric Subclass

And here’s the long-awaited choice of subclass for 4ever Clerics. Since domains aren’t used as subclasses in Project 4ever, what kinds of subclasses do we have? The answer might be difficult to guess for 5e veterans, but those familiar with 4e might recognize some of these:

Anointed Champion: a battle priest who specializes in wearing and blessing arms and armor.
Astral Savant: an exceptionally knowledgeable and powerful divine spellcaster.
Divine Oracle: a prophet who interprets visions and speaks thunderous omens.

These subclasses are meant to highlight the storytelling of what you do as a Cleric in a fantasy world, rather than only list the sorts of powers you get from your deity.

Level 4: Divine Inspiration

Just like the Fighter and Rogue (and just like every 4ever character), the Cleric gets a little something extra whenever it uses Inspiration, something related to its Power Source.

Here’s what it looks like:

This goes to show that no matter their Role, every Divine class we design will have some sort of capacity to act as a Leader, able to heal and support their allies at least a little bit with divine power.

Level 4: Ability Score Improvement

Old news here. As per usual with 5e, we’re including the “ASI” at level 4. You get the usual options of increasing an ability score by 2, or two ability scores by 1, but then also a third option: you can increase one ability score by 1 and gain an extra Talent of your choice.

This extra Talent is in addition to the one you get for reaching level 4 (as noted above in the “Level 2: Talents” section).

Level 5: Combat Prowess

Here’s another place where the Cleric differs from the other classes we’ve shown off so far.

The Fighter and Rogue each get the “Weapon Prowess” feature at this level, which improves their damage every time they hit with a weapon attack. Some Clerics make just as many weapon attacks as Fighters and Rogues do, and so they have the option of picking up Weapon Prowess at this level.

However, many Clerics rely on spell attacks, and a bonus to weapon damage wouldn’t help them at all. And so, the Cleric also gets the option of “Implement Prowess”, which basically does the same thing for any attacks that use implements - which includes spell attacks made as part of cantrips or leveled spells, and also magical attacks made as part of other features you may have, such as from your subclass.

And for the Cleric that wants both? Not to worry. At the moment we’re only focusing on the first 5 levels of these classes, but basically as you level further you’ll get the chance to boost the option you didn’t pick here at level 5.

A Further Note on Spellcasting

It should be noted that, just like in core 5e, at level 5 the Cleric gets access to level 3 spells and slots. These should correspond roughly to the “Exploit” features that the Fighter and Rogue get at level 5; a big ability that can be used once Long Rest.

Wrapping it Up

And that’s the Cleric! The first five levels, anyway. With many notable changes from the 5e original, we’d love to hear what you think about our design choices.

I feel like I should mention that the point of this entire project isn’t to be *better* than 5e; we love 5e. The point is to focus 5e towards the more tactical play that we enjoyed in 4e. It’s not the right way to play, it’s just a way to play.

Next up is the 4ever Wizard! We’ll delve a little deeper into the nuances of implements, spellcasting, and rituals, as well as what sets this version of the class apart from core 5e.

Until then, happy gaming, and we’ll see you in the Archives!

Designing 4ever: Stealing From the 4e Cleric

Blessings of the Divine

Deities

Guidance of a Leader

Holy Warriors

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