I made up a cleric today in the new D&D4e rules, in between running interference/mediation on my school’s technology policy and re-writing a massive chunk of our indicators for NEASC accreditation standards. It was a useful mid-day break, especially since ‘s car broke down shortly after lunch, while I was in the middle of trying to referee a debate between our old dean and our new dean without either of them actually being there. Tricky.

So a cleric of Pelor was just the thing!

I had one rules question, which my friend Barak was able to referee me through quite nicely, related to the new cleric power Channel Divinity. There are many versions of this power, but a cleric seems to automagically get access to two: Divine Fortune, and Turn Undead. You can use your feats to claim additional powers along these lines, so that as a cleric of Pelor I have the power to call down Pelor’s Radiance, which makes a serious mess of local undead.

It was fairly easy to make a cleric. I picked a set of ability scores using Method 2: 16, 16, 12, 10, 10, 10. By picking Human as my race, I was able to raise my Strength to 12, matching my Intelligence, and the 2 16s went into Wisdom and Charisma. I picked the Devoted Cleric build, and chose all the recommended powers (at-will, encounter, daily), and the suggested feats. My defenses are not particularly strong (16 AC, 13 Fort, 13 Ref, 17 Will), and I haven’t worked out my weapon damages yet if I get sucked into combat. All the same, it only took me about an hour to work out the most critical information. Picking the “Adventurer’s Standard Kit” even solved most of the issues about what to buy — it took me longer to figure out that I had 100 gp as a 1st level character than it did to pick my equipment, because that information was not in an intuitive place for folks reared on D&D 0.8 and 1.0 and so on.

This wound up being considerably easier than building a sixth-level wizard before. I’m glad that Barak helped me through that process, and also pre-generated the wizard I played the first time I playtested D&D4e. All in all, I’d say that it took me an hour to generate this cleric. Next up, I think, is a dwarven or tiefling fighter.

The world-builder in me is quite active, of course. I’m already thinking about how to go about structuring a world in which this game could be played. First, though, I think I want to design an adventure, and playtest through the power advancement between 1st and 3rd levels. Then I’ll think about developing a campaign or a world.

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