On this night before Christmas, I want to talk about an accidental #SupermanAnalogue, the cleric and druid class from #DungeonsAndDragons. Particularly if you've ever 0layed 3rd edition, then you should be familiar with the term "CoDzilla". 
Now, the most baked in example from #dnd is of course the Paladin class. It is the righteous Knight in shining armor after all. So much so that we had an episode of #MenOfSteel on the subject with @BrandesStoddard to discuss the parallels: certainpov.com/men-of-steel-t…
However, I want to talk about CoDzilla because holy hell did they stumble into a crazy overpowered default pair of classes. It's a lot to explain the mechanics, but if you're mostly familiar with 4 or 5e, then you may be surprised to hear how broken these two used to be.
Druids are the easier ones to explain: they were full casters that also got the most powerful animal companion in the game AND could transform at will into incredibly powerful combat animals AND STILL COULD CAST SPELLS AS AN ANIMAL.
Since then, designers have struggled to balance the class, but 3rd edition was really the one where they threw their hands up and said "fuck it". Without a doubt, this is the class that started the arms race that was 3rd edition.
However, Clerics were right there with the Druids. They had solid base offensive capabilities, could wear plate armor, and were also full casters. Plus they could load themselves up on buff spells to make themselves figurative beasts themselves.
The usual impression of the class is that of a cloth wearing healer, but the table top version was innately dominating.
All of this is to say that if you wanted to play some all powerful servant of the people, then these were the classes to play. While a Wizard or a Rogue was for the aspiring Batman, this was the would be Superman.
And maybe it's just because the go to Cleric race is the dwarf, and the classic dwarf looks like Santa, but that seemed like a good topic to talk about on Christmas Eve, because I love Superman and D&D so what the hell? I've been good this year.
Please unroll @threadreaderapp
