Editing Cleric (section)

===[[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition|Fourth Edition]]===
[[File:Cleric 4e.jpg|right|150px]]
The 4th edition designers, driven mad by how absolutely mandatory clerics were for any long-term party, decided to reshuffle roles in an attempt to give everyone the means to survive to some extent without needing a cleric: for the short-term, there are now rules for resting that included non-pitiful amounts of healing outside of a battle. However, when inside a battle, there would be the need for more immediate healing - this is where the "Leader" role came in ([[Warlord]]s, [[Bard]]s, [[Shaman]]s, [[Ardent]]s, [[Artificer]]s, [[Runepriest]]s, and, naturally, Clerics). All classes of this role had a means to provide more on-demand healing, and of course the Cleric was among the frontlines of this.

Even among other leader classes, the Cleric has a very open list of playstyles. Between full-up melee, [[Laser Cleric|divine lasers]], healing, or something in between, it was easy to have multiple clerics who were dissimilar to each other. Your only constants were Healing Word (your healing power), your cleric lore (Either add your Wis modifier to heals when they spend a healing surge to heal or +2 AC, scale armor, and let you and allies you heal get +2 to attack when you heal them), and Channel Divinity (A once-per-battle power that involved beseeching the gods for something, with feats offering equivalent powers from gods and domains).

After [[D&D Essentials]] showed up, the cleric was rebranded as the [[Templar]] and a new, non-[[AEDU System]] cleric [[Variant Class]], the [[Warpriest]], came into being. The Warpriest had their domains baked into the class' progression, though it's limited in scope with half of them being deities from [[Forgotten Realms]]. More than any other class before or after it, however, this class is absolutely crippled in the field of diversity. Once you select a domain, you are forcibly stuck into that domain's specific playstyle.

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