How to break a Cleric?

[Set]

A Man In Black wrote:

There's no reason you can't have a god of any two or three arbitrary domains.

Oh yeah, the real world is chock full of them. Shiva, god of destroying-the-world, patron of dance and phallic-holy-symboled ruler over male-fertility? Yeah. "Ahm gonna dance so hard that your world will burn from it!"

A Man in Black wrote:

If there's some powergaming, game-breaking combination of domains, then you need to fix the domains, not merely assign incompatible fluff to them and then ban clerics of philosophies/causes.

Total agreement there. Flavor should never serve as a replacement for mechanics, which is probably why I've spent the last 25ish years somewhat annoyed at the Paladin class, which attempted to 'balance' mechanical benefits with role-playing and flavor restrictions that end up restricting the actions and choices of the *other* players, punishing them for allowing Bob to play the class in the first place...

Flat-out bad design, IMO, although the Code of Conduct has been watered down time and again, over the years and editions.

[Wildfire Heart]

Shuriken Nekogami wrote:

those are all good points. clerics were not overpowered. they burnt a lot of resources subverting the fighter. and they are burning money dealing with other peoples ailments. clerics, and any players willing to play them without having to draw straws should be respected better.

I play a female Aasimar cleric named Isaala in a game I'm playing, and one of the things she does is INSIST that if you want that level drain removed, You're paying for it, or it's coming out of the "loot pool".

our party tends to split loot fairly evenly, and due to the fact that nobody else has healing stuff but the gnome tinker (who usually takes her side in most arguments anyways) and the fact that our party tends to get just a wee bit beat up after most encounters, most party members aren't willing to cross her on that point.

Especially since one of the first things she did was use the command spell to dunk our full plated drunk dwarf into a deep river after he tried to hit on her.

And let the ranger save him.

And laughed.
My response out of game was (between gales of laughter as our ranger frantically rolled a swim check at a substantial penalty) "Well, Neutral Good only goes so far, and she HATES strangers hitting on her". Since then she's maintained a relatively neutral relationship with the Dwarf. She doesn't mind him, but she's wary of him. There are other RP reasons why she doesn't trust the dwarf, but she keeps those to herself.

to quote Dende:
"You touch me, and you're not getting up again. That's right, I'm your white mage. AND NOBODY F@#$S. with the white mage".
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(Thefactthatshecandroplightningboltsonyourheadandshootaswellasanarcherfromh orsebackispurelycoincidental)