C is for Clerics

   An important Class yet who wants to play one? I do but I have never claimed to be normal. There is a lot of possibility's to being a cleric including some really fun utility spells. The problem is that your party will expectet you to heal the party almost exclusively to anything else. A good idea if you don't want to only memorize healing spells is to work with the DM and see about finding or buying potions and wands of the various healing spells. If you belong to a church then you may be able to acquire these things from it if you are in good standing. Maybe you can even manage to ferret out a discount by doing missions for the church. By having this external healing source you can memorize some of the interesting utility spells. Also a good tip is for spells you don't need everyday like cure blindness, acquire them in scroll form so that one time your fighter is blinded you can cure it right away without needing to rest and re-memorize.

   Something to think about is that clerics will always have a overarching goal. What do I mean by this? It means that you worship some higher force. If you worship Pelor and the group is without any real goal you can push for some undead hunting. You also have some automatic NPC contacts for your character if you are a part of a religion. Visit a big city and need a local contact? Try your church and see what you can get from them. Of course just because you worship a religion does not mean you are instantly friends with all the other clerics of that religion. A good twist to your story might be that you are against your gods religion because of the leaders or maybe your just not orthodox enough for them. Just because you don't agree with who ever controls the church does not mean you are against the God. Maybe the leaders of the church are corrupt or maybe they toned down the message to make it more palatable for the masses.

   To wrap up if you don't want to run a cleric, just don't, you won't have fun. If your playing D&D and not having fun with your character then try something else. A party can live without a cleric or better yet you can hire a cleric. There are rules for hirelings and such for a reason. Having an NPC cleric come along with the party may reduce your GP and XP intake but at the least you have a reduced chance of dieing. Also it gives the DM a direct roleplaying outlet to the party.