Over on the Dungeon World forums stras gave an example of play that completely describes why I care enough about DW to put all this effort into it:

We here at Dungeon World HQ are really excited about the launch of Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3. We suspect more than a few of you are, too. To celebrate, we put together a short collection of Fronts that reflect the story and setting of the world of Sanctuary at the beginning of the first installation of the Diablo trilogy. Revisit the town of poor Tristram and see if you can best the Lord of Terror yourselves. The Catacombs await!

-Sage (Sage#1256) & Adam (skinnyghost#1319)

A few weeks ago I was visiting my brother and we ended up at a pre-release event for the newest Magic set, Avacyn Restored. After seeing the turnout, atmosphere, and support I started to wonder: why doesn’t D&D have something like this?

Magic and D&D are owned by the same company. Since Magic’s considerably more profitable there have been a few attempts to make D&D more like Magic, but they’ve largely been derided by fans (or at least vocal fans on the internet) and haven’t stuck around for long.

Prior attempts to learn from Magic have centered on the randomized element. Magic’s sold in randomized boosters, right? So what can D&D sell that’s randomized in boosters? Unfortunately for Wizards of the Coast the RPG market hasn’t been overly welcoming to randomized booster packs. Randomized miniatures stuck around for a while, but eventually became cost-ineffective. Randomized cards for D&D (and Gamma World) have been pushed but don’t seem to have stuck with many groups.

I think the issue with both of those is that they jump straight to the method instead of addressing the goal. What makes Magic players show up in droves just to play the new set a few days early several times a year?

The Problem

To quote one of my favorite shows, the facts are these:

Magic the Gathering puts out roughly four new sets per year: one base set and 3 expansions. Each of these gets a pre-release event where players show up at their local game store and play tournaments with the cards before they officially go on sale. There are prizes, of course, but tournaments with prizes aren’t rare, so that’s not the draw of these specific events. Pre-release events serve to get people excited about new cards and draw the community together at regular events, even moreso then regular tournaments like Friday Night Magic.

At some of these pre-releases there are additional perks. For Avacyn Restored it was a “Helvault,” a promotional package styled after some element of the Magic fiction (don’t ask me what). During the tournament players completed “achievements,” for each player who completed X achievements a seal (sticker) is removed from the Helvault until it opens. Inside are trinkets for everyone in the tournament: promo cards and so on.

D&D has no such cycle. While Wizards has recently cultivated a community play cycle on par with Friday Night Magic (D&D Encounters) there’s not as strong an incentive to pick up new material. As a datapoint, let’s look at D&D releases for 4th Ed¹: 1. I’ve made every effort to include every product, based primarily on WotC’s official list and this page. Where possible I’ve grouped products into categories: core for the core rules, adventure for plotted adventures, ephemera for gameplay tools, tiles for tiles, settings for settings, and supplement for anything else. If I’ve missed something, please let me know.

None of these supplements has (that I know of) been pushed with release events. Some have been tied into the D&D Encounters program, but none have had dedicated game days just for that product to push/celebrate it. In total there are 16 adventure products (some of which contain more then one adventure), 7 campaign setting products, 8 core books (including Essentials), and 35 supplements. Looking more subjectively I’d say that 11 supplements are broadly applicable: you can use them in literally any game, even if you’re not using the martial power source and you don’t have dragons and your cosmology is different.

I also suspect that this is far more content then any given table can use. It’s very much a “bundle something for everyone together” approach. You buy the Player’s Handbook II because you want to play a Druid, you just happen to get extra classes that you might play some day. It’s even more dramatic with adventures. I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC has released more adventure content then can be played in the time since release by the average group (once a week for a few hours). This is a stark contrast with Magic where every major set is valuable to everyone.

The sheer body of work also serves as a barrier to late adoption. Coming into Magic with the current core set plus the latest expansion is as easy as at any other point in Magic’s history. Compare that to D&D where a current purchaser has to figure out what books to buy, if any, after the core books² 2. Assuming they can figure out they need to buy the core books first, that is.. Is the Player’s Handbook 3 like an iPhone 4, the latest and greatest (and therefore a better buy then 2)? Or is it like the third Harry Potter book: don’t buy it until you’ve made the most of the previous two?

I have no sales data at all, but it appears that sales of these supplements are not currently enough to support this edition. In fact, based on the time between editions, I would guess that the sales of supplements has steadily been declining. The time it takes for this decline to kick is has gotten shorter with each edition of D&D, based on the shortening times between editions.

New editions aren’t intrinsically bad  of course. But they do require considerably design resources and risk alienating existing customers. If the core + supplements model is valid then new editions have to be deployed carefully.

So that’s the situation. Magic has a large audience who keep coming back for more. Part of that is due to randomized gambling nature of buying new cards, but not all of it. The blind buying of boosters is becoming less and less central to Magic, especially with the challenge of non-randomized “Living Card Games.” D&D on the other hand tends to lose players over time and relies on periodic big banner releases to draw them back in.

Is there a way for D&D to have a steady audience who stay interested in the game the way Magic players stay interested in magic?

Eventful D&D

The big takeaway from the Avacyn Restored pre-release for me was that it felt like an event. Everyone was there for something that was only going to happen this one time (even if those cards would be on sale soon and stay on sale indefinitely). So what if D&D products were geared towards creating cycles of play and events like Magic does?

In its first full year (2009) 4th Edition had 11 supplements and 7 adventures. It’s impossible to make a big deal out of any of these when there’s so much more content coming. Of these releases 4 of them are follow ups to the core content (classes, DMing, monsters, items). The common impression seems to be that these sell better then other supplements, so let’s say they don’t need any more promotion. Our goal is to take those other 7 supplements and 7 adventures and tie them together into something that:

• Promotes community play
• Drives player retention
• Doesn’t block late adoption
• Sells more copies

What if D&D were seasonal? Instead of a c0nstant stream of new books let’s make three big releases per year. Each one will have a theme behind it to tie it together and build excitement. Since D&D is your game and there’s no meta-plot these will be light meta-events: an orc invasion, the opening of a gate to Hell, the fall of a major city, and so on. A meta-event should be something that can be slotted into a typical D&D setting easily.

Instead of releasing plotted adventures for meta-events there could be encounter books that also include suggested setups that string some encounters together to make an adventure for groups of specific levels. The orc invasion event, for example, could contain low ranking orc slavers, the heart of the orc army, mounted riders, the orc priests, etc. Then there would be a few setups to use those to make an adventure for different levels: defend a village for low level, infiltrate the camp for mid level, do battle with the high priests at high level, or whatever.

The advantage to this presentation is that more people use more of the content. Instead of presenting a plotted adventure where consumers won’t be ready to buy another until they finish exploring this one, present the tools to build an adventure easily that can stretch or shrink to fit the group’s time and how much they want to draw out of the book. My group may play once a month and defend the village in 4 sessions, a group that plays every week might decide to draw it out into a huge attack that lasts 16 sessions.

Of course along with adventure material comes the standard trappings of new content: feats/powers, paragon paths/destinies, items, monsters, maybe even some specific mechanics. All the meta-event material should be as reusable as possible while still sticking closely to the theme. The orc encounters and woodland combat powers are still useful if I’m not doing the event, the event is just a way to group the content into more exciting packages.

To build up the event aspect of it, each meta-event would be kicked off with a game day. The game day would be focused play on the theme of the meta-event, hopefully with some tie to the theme and maybe some cool rewards for play. For the orc invasion event it could be holding the walls of the keep. You sign up for the event, sit down with a pre-gen and play for two hours. The store hosting the event tracks the outcome of each table, once enough orcs are slain the armory opens and everyone who’s participated gets some trinket (custom dice, a mini, whatever).

In addition to the kick-off there could be mini-events tied to the current event at conventions. If the orc invasion is going on during GenCon there could be a GenCon event where the orc army meets the human one. A few weeks later at PAX there could be an orc hunt in the woods as the remnants of the orc army are cleared up. A few weeks later the next event launches.

Ideally new players get introduced to these events early on. Maybe the core books even come with a code to get a digital version of the current event, just to get people into the cycle.

To me this sounds like a win for everyone:

As a player, I get cool targeted events that bring the community together and let me meet other gamers. I get new content every few months (in addition to a periodic PHB II or whatever). If my home game follows the events I get a cool touchstone with other people in other games: I can compare how the event played out for my character vs. theirs.

As a GM, I get adventure content that’s bigger and more adaptable to my game. This adventure content is also designed to move my game along and change the world as it happens. Even if I don’t keep up with the current event I can always buy it for the monsters and such now and use the actual event later.

As a game designer, I get to continually try out new ideas without having to compete as much with my own back catalog. I can also introduce new ideas across all parts of the game (classes, monsters, treasure) at the same time instead of piecemeal. I get to share bigger concepts with GMs. The seasonal nature of releases could even allow for a slow evolution of the rules.

As a game publisher, I get a way to push new content without wearing people out. I get a way to promote more and get more people excited. I create shared experiences within my audience which bring them together.

None of these ideas are all that new. Obviously this has been Magic’s format for quite some time. World of Darkness did some event books. The Marvel RPG is about to put out its first event book. I’ve heard that Warhammer 3E does something similar, though I haven’t played anything beyond the core set. The thing that hasn’t been done is leveraging WotC’s connection with game shops to make an event book truly an event for the play community as well.

The ultimate goal is to make D&D feel as alive as Magic. To get players coming out to see the latest and greatest, instead of staring at the bookshelf full of think books they already have.

This week’s Legends and Lore continues the look at core classes, but takes a different approach: instead of design goals, we’re looking at balancing wizards.

It’s really interesting that the wizard is the class where this series of posts shifts. Mike mentions that wizard’s don’t need to be clarified, but I disagree. Wizards have perhaps more fictional bases then any other class: Harry Potter, Rincewind, Gandalf, Gwydion, Merlin, Circe, Elric, Dallben, Harry Dresden, Prospero, Doctor Strange, John Constantine, &etc. So which of these does our wizard share something in common with? Even within gaming, or ever D&D editions, there’s been a wide range of wizards. So which is this?

Based on the balance issue discussion, we’re pretty much looking at the 3rd Ed wizard, modulo some ‘balance’ updates. They’re poorly defended, cast arcane spells (with some chance of failure in some circumstances), have deep knowledge, etc. It’s a bit of a letdown not to see the same core concept break down as the other classes, just because I think the wizard needs it more then the cleric does.

Anyway, now that we all have the same idea of what a wizard is (more or less) let’s look at balancing them.

Or, rather, let’s talk balance first. Is D&D a game that needs balance?

This is another branching point where there’s more then one way to do it, depending on the game. If this is a game with some sort of competition through the rules then sure, balance is key. But that’s not the only game to make. There are plenty of fun games where the distribution of power between the player characters is unequal. This can range from slight differences in power (as in most D&D editions) to deliberate inequality (Ars Magica, Buffy).

It sounds like this edition of D&D is one where power is more or less equal across the group. Great! It’s a definite design decision. Personally I’d love to hear more about the why of balance, not the how, but whatever. The fact that balance is approached this way is a clear statement about what D&D is and does, so that’s fine.

The majority of Mike’s points are aimed at classic ‘problems’ with wizards and they’re all sound ways to patch holes. There’s some challenges, for sure, but I’m sure they’ve already been weighed and considered. Fewer spell slots diminishes one of the classic cool factors of the wizard and risks constant breaks to prepare spells, so the at-will cantrips had better be interesting. Only having certain spells in wands seems so clearly targeted at balance that there’s no fiction behind it (why hasn’t some wizard fit a fly spell into a wand?). But those are minor complaints, ones that I’m sure the design team will continue to think about (or maybe they’ve already addressed). The most interesting point is the last one:

Creativity, Not Dominance: Finally, on a personal level, I’d love it if creative use of a spell focused more on improvisation rather than number crunching. A web spell entangles the bandit chief’s horse, cutting off his best chance to escape. Greaseallows a rogue caught in a giant crab’s claw to wriggle free with ease. If we build good, clear descriptions into the spells that bring them to life and combine these descriptions with a robust set of DM tools for improvisation, spells become tools that characters can use in creative ways rather than strictly defined special abilities. Hopefully, reining in some of the mechanical challenges that D&D has faced in the past makes it easier to encourage creative use of spells in a compelling, immersive way.

Ignoring the context of how these changes help perceived balance, this is exactly what I want wizard spells to do: to have clear effects in the fiction of the game.

The idea here is for each spell to primarily be about what it does in the world of the player characters. When the wizard casts grease what actually happens? Any specific rules needed should follow from that.

It’s interesting to look at one of Mike’s examples of an unbalanced spell, grease, through this lens. Mike’s statement on grease:

For instance, the 3E grease spell required a DC 10 Balance check to avoid some of its effects. That seems reasonable, until you realize that grease was a 1st-level spell and that a 15th-level NPC cleric might have a total Balance check modifier of –8.

If we look at the grease spell based on its fictional effects this seems completely in line. In fact, it’s not different then a thief tossing a big bucket of pork drippings on the floor. So is grease really broken if the players can achieve the same effect with the leftovers from dinner?

Of course, it depends. Mike’s assumption seems to be that high level characters should be inherently immune (or at least resilient) to such tricks, and that spells need to be balanced first and fictional second. A different game might assume that the reasonable outcome of the fiction reigns, or that characters of higher power aren’t always so tough. The disconnect comes from wanting the wizard to be clearly balanced but also follow the reasonably fictional outcomes of magic.

Ultimately this may be one of the ways for D&D Next to really put its stamp on D&D. Is the wizard first and foremost balanced? That’s the 4E party line, and it’s great for a tactical boardgame but not as popular for roleplaying. Or does magic take place in the fiction first, even when it’s effects can then be more (or less) powerful in some given circumstances then expected?

(Title of course a reference to this.)

Not much to say about this, just something interesting Adam found as we mess with how to present Dungeon World. Here’s the short description of what D&D is from Wizards of the Coast (source):

And here’s a similar description for Pathfinder from Paizo (source):

I could probably idly disect these all day, but the most interesting thing to me: Pathfinder is a “Roleplaying Game” (it says so right in the name), while D&D is an “imaginative, social experience” but with players, like poker.

Adam and I like to be as open about Dungeon World as we can be (making it CC-BY, putting it on Github, etc.) so I always make a point of sharing our sales data when I get a chance. As of the last time we collected data (the end of April) we had sold a total of 805 copies between print and PDF. Considering that the print version only got two print runs of 100 copies each, that’s pretty great.

On top of that, April was one of the best months we’ve had since the boom of the initial release. That’s likely in no small part due to some kind words from Mr. Monte Cook. Now we’re starting to look forward to plans for the full edition, which is coming along nicely.

We’re still looking at design goals for the core classes, so this week Mike tells us about the rogue. Just the fact that we’re talking about the rogue, not the thief, says more about the design goals then most of the rest of the post.

The difference between a rogue and a thief is in the context implied by the class: playing a thief says something about who your character is and what they do, playing a rogue just says what they do. So far, with the possible exception of the cleric, all of Mike’s design goals have been very much about the function of the class: how it fights, uses skills, and casts spells (if it does cast spells). That’s all very important stuff, but it completely leaves alone a huge part of the game. What makes these characters interesting? How do they fit into the larger world?

My first real D&D experiences were with d20 and as I got more involved with online discussion one of the most common forum topics was what combination of classes to use to create a certain type of character based on what the character can do. There was plenty of talk about how the cleric class was a tool to represent certain abilities, the deity part was “fluff.” This seems to still be largely true of D&D Next, and the rogue/thief divide shows that off. The class that Mike’s talking about is a set of abilities with a slight connotation of being a sneaky dude(tte) on the wrong side of the law.

Looking through Mike’s four goals only the first says anything at all about elements of the class beyond mechanical effectiveness at invoking certain rules. I’m sure you can see this coming, but: that’s a fine solution, depending on the kind of game you want to make.

A rogue described like this sounds just at home in a boardgame (say, Castle Ravenloft). The specific examples Mike offers—tricking a king, ambushing—sound very thief-y, but the actual design goals are so general as to apply to everyone from Syrio Forel to Bilbo Baggins.

This approach works great for a game where your character really isn’t anything until they’ve been in play for a while. It’s also great for a tactical game where what the character does means more then who they are. It’s not such a great fit for a game that presumes the characters are important and interesting. So: it depends on the game you’re making.

The important bit is following through on that decision. If the D&D Next rogue is really about fighting dirty and being skilled then the DM and players should be given the tools and expectations that a first level character is a blank slate and that important details will accumulate. The possible issue comes from the expectation clash: I sit down to play a game that really focuses on the characters but the rules only help me figure out how good my character is at stabbing and baking.

Anyway, that applies to all the class previews so far. The most interesting bit of the rogue is the fourth point: the rogue makes the routine look trivial. Mike’s description mentions how previous editions have reflected better skill through greater chance of success, but this rogue could just presume success in most cases.

I see this as an attempt to fix a very real problem, but with the wrong fix. The underlying issue is that the typical “roll and succeed or nothing happens” system isn’t always that great, especially if your class is going to be built around it. If my awesome skills mean I just get a flat increase in chance to succeed I don’t feel all that different from someone without the bonus. Skilled-only uses help that (where, say, only a skilled healer can restore hitpoints with a heal skill) but the only possible results are still “you do it” or “nothing happens.”

This view of the rogue attempts to fix that by not using rolls as often, reflecting the rogue’s skill in their ability to just do it. That certainly reflects increased skill, but it puts the onus on the DM to make interesting things happen. Unless there are considerable other changes to how the game works (non-randomized games can certainly be awesome) the rogue participates less in one of the most interesting drivers of play: uncertain outcomes. The rogue now just knows they can do more.

Maybe a better approach to reflecting skill is to make checks more interesting. One of the best things in many recent games (Mouse Guard, Freemarket, Apocalypse World) is the use of interesting consequences for all outcomes. If a missed roll means considerable consequences then being skilled can mean avoiding some of those consequences. Someone who’s never picked a lock before just can’t pick a lock, someone who can pick a lock rolls but risks serious consequences (time, safety, and success may all be in jeopardy), but the rogue only risks their tools first (or something similar). This way the rogue still gets to challenge the unknown and the DM gets the assistance of the rules in creating interesting outcomes, but the rogue is still obviously at all times more skilled, even if they fail the roll.

It’s also worth noting that making the rogue roll less is the opposite approach of early D&D, where the thief was the only class that got to roll for certain things (like picking locks). Everyone else just wasn’t trained, the outcome of their actions was up to the DM. But the thief, they were special, they got to rely on the dice to determine success or failure. Instead of the skill taking away chances for interesting outcomes and giving them to the GM having the skill lets the rules step in in place of the DM’s judgement.

Just like how fun a cleric is depends greatly on the HP system, playing a rogue greatly depends on the skill system as a whole. When the system is binary and available to everyone (as in d20) just giving the rogue a bigger bonus, or even automatic success, doesn’t mean all that much. For being a skilled rogue to really mean something the skill system has to be an interesting place (not necessarily a complex one) for the rogue to show off in.

This week Mike continues his look at the D&D Next core classes with some thoughts on the design of the Fighter.

Mike’s first four points (The Fighter Is Best At Fighting, The Fighter Draws on Training, The Fighter Exists in a World of Myth) all seem pretty predictable to me. These are core elements of the Fighter. The other three made me pause a bit.

First up, #4: The Fighter Is Versatile. This is tough because I can totally argue both sides. Let’s start with the positive: the fighter should be versatile because it fits into the game better. Assuming some kind of proficiency rules (where, say, Wizards can’t use swords or whatever) being the person who can use any weapon is a big benefit. The typical D&D approach to treasure just amplifies that: being the fighter is especially useful because no matter what magical weapon shows up, you can use it if it suits you.

The downside that I see comes right from Mike’s second sentence of this point:

That’s great, but the flexibility of the fighter implies that those three would likely be the same person. If the fighter is flexible and the master of fighting then being a higher level fighter means being better with all weapons. The highest level fighter is not only the best swordsman, but likely the best axeman, hammerman, and anything-else-man.

Sure, there may be some quirk of the rules (like bows being Dex-based) that makes some weapons different. Still, for some types of games, this is really odd. If we’re playing Game of Thrones-style, where certain people are known for their prowess with certain weapons (Ice, Maege’s mace, hand-and-a-half swords in one hand), then this model of fighter seems out of place.

So again we come around to my favorite point: It Depends On What Kind of Game You’re Making.

Thankfully this is one time where we actually have an answer: it sounds like this is the kind of game where treasure is important and random, so the Fighter must be able to use all weapons well. Great! That isn’t the approach I’d take (see: Dungeon World) but it’s a totally reasonable approach. They just have to carry it through the rest of the game. If magic items aren’t random and the Fighter can always get the weapon they want then their ability to wield anything stops being interesting.

Mike’s next point, The Fighter Is the Toughest Character, is easy to agree with. Of course the Fighter is the toughest, that goes hand-in-hand with being able to wade into combat. I hate to nitpick, but the last sentence of this point bears some discussion:

The last point echoes the same untouchability:

I only pick on this because it’s one of my least-favorite things about modern D&D: misses do nothing. Assuming attack rolls work something like every other edition of D&D a high AC means that a large part of the time the results of a turn will be “nothing happens.” That’s a fine result in some games, where the opportunity cost of a round is a clear tradeoff. The fact that a miss does nothing in a tabletop war game is fine. But for many of the common modes of D&D having misses occur often just means that nothing happens.

If the Fighter really is so hard to touch that monsters miss against them often then that DM needs to be given the tools to make fights interesting. If the Fighter isn’t a likely target then the DM needs to make the Fighter’s job be about protecting others, finding ways to put their high AC between the orcs and the Wizard.

The other interesting side effect here is when we take the Fighter along with last week’s post about the Cleric: if the Fighter is all about being untouchable, who is the Cleric healing?

In World of Warcraft the answer is: still the Fighter, because the Fighter is the only one who can even stand long enough to heal against the big bads. But if that’s to be the case in D&D, the DM has to know that’s what they should be doing.

Overall I like this vision of the Fighter. It’s maybe a bit broad, and I’d prefer attacks that always meant something (even on a miss), but the core concept is strong. I just wonder if the DM will be given the right tools to still run interesting adventures for this kind of Fighter.

I’m more than a little late getting around to talking about Mike’s post about Cleric design goals. It’s been a busy week! I gave a talk on software testing at my alma mater, saw some old friends, and Dungeon World has gotten a fresh round of buzz. The up side to posting so late is that, having seen this week’s post, I know that we’re going to be covering more classes in future articles, so I can set a bit of precedent here on how I’ll post about each class.

The nature of Mike’s posts themselves are interesting, given that they recently announced a release date for the public Beta. He’s kind of refocused the column from pitching crazy ideas to setting the stage for what everyone will be reading in under a month. There’s not much here that’s new, it’s all about affirming the core of the design. Setting the stage for the Beta.

Before I get into the Cleric, I should also note that Monte has left D&D Next. There’s been plenty of rumors around it. Personally, I don’t know what to make of it. My first guess is that it has something to do with making the game open. Monte mentioned differences with the business side of things and he was a 3E designer (who went on to make a lot out of the OGL), so I wonder if things got heated over how open to make Next.

Mike’s first point (The Cleric Is A Healer) leads to what I think has been the weakness of the Cleric class in some editions (for different reasons): HP. The Cleric is the guy that needs to worry about everyone’s HP and can do something about it. How much fun it is to play a Cleric often ties to how well the HP system holds up.

Moldvay is often my starting point for D&D comparisons, and there the Cleric’s healing is literally the difference between life and death. A strong monster can kill with a single blow, so having the Cleric around is an absolute necessity. The Cleric’s job is also interesting because of the brinksmanship of HP: is it worth healing now, when it’s your only chance?

Basically, the Cleric-as-healer is fantastic in games that present challenge as a main aspect of the game. If you enter a Moldvay dungeon without a cleric, you die, simple as that.¹ 1. If you enter a Moldvay dungeon with a cleric, you might die, simple as that.

If, on the other hand, you’re playing a more on-rails game where there’s a safety net to combat then healing is much less interesting. For the Cleric’s role as “the gal who can heal” to be interesting to a broad swath of gamers healing has to be a decision point in the game. The effectiveness of the healer needs to have an obvious effect, not just a bit of color on how easily you best the bad guy.

Over the years D&D has—for the most part—moved away from having that kind of challenge as a central part of the game, so you see most of the innovation in “healing as fun” in MMOs. Games like World of Warcraft make healing an active interesting thing by making it maybe the biggest decider between success and failure. The healer’s ability to mange their options and choose the right spell at the right time give the current encounter, tank, mana, and so on, is a key factor in success. It expands on the Moldvay Cleric’s interesting choices by making those choices more frequent and equally important.

Continuing in video games² there’s another thread of design. 2. Uh oh. I heard that in Lana Del Ray’s voice. This is the model followed by action-oriented games like Halo and Call of Duty, where healing is passive and assumed. In both of those games (or at leas the recent iterations of both) HP is effectively a per-encounter stat. Once you leave a fight for a few seconds your HP is all back.

In this model healing isn’t an interesting thing. There’s no healer class in Halo or Call of Duty. This is effectively the problem found in higher levels of several D&D editions: HP loss stops meaning so much, so being an effective healer just isn’t interesting.

So ultimately how cool the Cleric is depends on HP, and HP’s place in the game. If running out of HP means death and consequences then being a healer is having a voice in those consequences. If running out of HP is mostly mitigated (often in favor of letting the GM tell a story) then healing means little.

The rest of Mike’s points are pretty classic D&D stuff: the arcane/divine divide, clerics in armor, clerics reflecting their deity. The deity point I find particularly interesting, mostly because it’s a point of interface between the DM’s domain and the players’.

Generally in D&D the DM is responsible for everything but the player characters, which the players own. The fact that the Cleric has to have a relationship to a deity is a great way to bring information across between player and DM at character creation. It’s one of my favorite bits of classic D&D: there are points where the players and DM have to interact, even during character creation.

I’ll admit that the Cleric has never been my favorite class, but I think that’s partially because in the games I played in healing didn’t seem to matter that much. There wasn’t a feeling that good healing made the difference between meaningful outcomes in the game. Hopefully if the Cleric is still all about healing then that healing will make a difference in how the game is played.