I read recently that the least played class in Baldur’s Gate 3 was the cleric, and it wasn’t even really close. Nobody wants to play the support class. Heck, I agree. The last D&D game I was in, I played a bard and I desperately tried to make myself more useful to the group than just amusing our enemies with a spirited round of Vicious Mockery.
I really did love Vicious Mockery, though… but I feel that’s just the sort of job ChatGPT would steal away from an adventuring party.
Anyway. Cleric unpopular, so I play cleric. The least played races are Gnome and Half-Orc, so I’m going to go with half-orc.
Meet Harka, the Half-Orc cleric.
Character art by Midjourney, by the way. It really didn’t have an easy time getting in all the elements I wanted, but it did a whole lot better than Dall-E 2 and Stable Diffusion. Dall-E 2 was the worst of the lot.
You’ll find Harka Skullstealer at the front of the party. She wields a dual-headed warhammer, wears heavy armor, and casts Inflict Wounds in battle — the 3d10 damage makes short work of the most difficult enemies. Her War Domain gives her the occasional extra attack in battle, and Divine Favor makes each attack hurt just a little more.
As a sign of her devotion to her god Gruumsh the One-Eyed, she claims a skull from among her conquests and sacrifices it to her deity during long rests. Her holy symbol is the skull of a quasit she slew as a baby. Her orcish father realized that by sending the quasit, Gruumsh was reaching down from his divine battleground and selecting Harka to be his eyes and ears on the mortal plane.
Harka typically does not ask Gruumsh for healing spells, but if it were required, she would do so for a trusted companion.
Harka’s parents were mortal enemies who met on the field of battle. Her mother, a human barbarian, had been sent with her warband to find glory deep in Orcish lands. She was in close combat with an Orc chief when an elven warlock who had been shadowing the barbarian troupe for his own reasons cast a spell that catapulted them both into a plane of sand and desert. It required all of both their skills to survive and find a way back to Faerûn. Not finding a home either with the orcs or the barbarians, they made their home in the more understanding city of Waterdeep, where neither their relationship nor their half-breed daughter caused any concern at all.
Now Harka’s parents and her god have sent her to gain glory in battle and sacrifice many skulls in his name.
Harak Skullstealer, Half-Orc Cleric of Gruumsh
War Domain
Lawful Neutral
Armor: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, Shields
Weapons: Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons
Tools: None
Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
Skills: Persuasion (with her warhammer), Religion, Intimidation (from race)
Racial traits: +2 strength, +1 constitution, medium sized, darkvision, relentless endurance (once per long rest, when an attack would bring you to zero HP, you have one HP instead), savage attacks (when scoring a crit with a melee attack, roll a damage die an extra time and add it to the damage).
Languages: Common and Orc.
Speed: 30 feet.
Age: 15.
Her starting gear: chain mail, warhammer, light crossbow with 20 bolts, priest’s pack, a shield, a holy symbol (quasit skull)
Cantrips: Thaumaturgy (typically to make her eyes glow in battle and to make other impressive effects). Spare the Dying (used on enemies if it would be difficult to get their skull back to camp without them in it. Maybe occasionally for party members). Resistance (because Gruumsh has no patience for weaklings).
Half-orc. Rare race yet I swear every single D&D game I play either I am playing one or someone else is. Will admit my Half-orc paladin was my all time favorite character. Played it with my son who was playing as halfling ranger. “Me big. He small.” “Me hate dead things.”
I would have thought they were more common, but these days, I talk to my son who plays D&D a lot, and he is saying most people are bird people or bug people or tieflings or dragonborn or other exotic races.
Half-orc seems so vanilla compared to those.
Wow, I didn’t know bird or bug people were generally an option in D&D these days. I am definitely out of the loop. I still think it peaked with 3rd edition. I haven’t even bought the core books for 5th yet.
I actually enjoy playing clerics. Of course like yours most of my clerics are melee heavy battle cleric types, or the occasional worshiper of something I get a kick out of thematically (death, or a god of chaos and bad luck in one case).
Clerics in D&D have always been front-line melee. I think it was MMOs that forced them to focus on the healer role. That said, in EQ, clerics could solo certain dungeons with the right gear. I used to go through Howling Stones using a hammer that proced Divine Aura (invulnerability) along with a damage shield. Stuff would hit me until they died.
Casters that didn’t play along were a bit tougher. It’s all about choosing your battle 🙂 But even in EQ, when it was raid time, it was all about the Complete Heal rotation until later expansions revamped healing.