Clerics are very strong. If you want to see "overpowered" Look up a Cleric build called "Blood and Faith" It is Cleric/Rdd/Bard super good.

Clerics indeed very strong in nwn dew to ability to stack up stats buffs together. Divine power is a nice fix to medium AB and boost str to 18 and bull strength can be casted on top if your str is 18 or more already(and its stack with items). Additionally cleric wear heavy armor, has decent chose of weapons, nice anti undead spell and healing spells. Add the fact that buffs does not require high DC, so clerics fell pretty well with just 19 wisdom, compared to sorc and wizards, who want to max out casting stat. So yeah, cleric is pretty much best class in game

In terms of healing capabilities, the order from best to worst is: cleric, druid, paladin, bard. While paladins and bards suck at healing, druids can can heal almost as well as clerics, with the exception of raising dead.

I am not sure what conventional wisdom, from which PnP game that is, but back when I played PnP (AD&D), the Cleric was by far the most important member of the group.

The healing, the resurrecting, clearing disables, the buffing, turning undead, the disabling and debuffing of enemies, HARM, etc... All with full plate and decent combat on top.

CRPGs OTOH make things a lot easier to get by with different groups, and using potions/scrolls to make up for the missing cleric.

Oh, I was speaking of NWN, where wizards don't have access to Wish.

No, in majority of RPG's cleric was a boring class that only heal and watch everyone fight. In D&D they made clerics interesting to be played. He is not the best offensive or defensive caster, not the best melee fighter and not the best at stealth.

Is a "duck class"(ducks can fly, walk, swin but is mediocre in everything), if you use dual class or actually knows how to play as a cleric, yes, is a very effective class. But that is it.

PS IF you thing that clerics have too many offensive spells, show me a single spell that do more damage than "maximized" the Isaac's greater missile storm.

Just to play Devil's Advocate...Implosion has a higher DC than other 9th level spells and isn't blocked by Death Magic Immunity. It can kill a 10,000 HP enemy with one hit despite that enemy being immune to Death Magic and critical hits, for example.

Personally, I enjoy healing; the problem I have with healers in D&D is that healing spells (excluding Heal and Mass Heal) are too weak; they're not that useful in combat, and out of combat, it takes too many casts to bring a heavily injured fighter up to near full health. Also, the spells are touch range, meaning you can't use them when you are away from the combat (as you can in the Dark Sun CRPGs).

Also, since we're talking NWN1, I can name two cleric spells that, in the right circumstance, can outdamage the spell you mentioned; Heal (if used against undead) and Harm (if used against non-undead), provided that the target is able to survive the spell you mentioned.

Furthermore, Slay Living, if the target fails its saving throw, could be argued to be capable of doing more damage. (Does the spell actually change its target's HP to 0 or -10, or does it just inflect the Dead condition without changing HP? In the tabletop game, it sets HP to -10, but what does it do in NWN1?)

There's actually another issue (though RP rather than balance) I have with the D&D cleric and healing spells; it ties healing to religion. My preferred character would be a character who uses spells like a mage or sorcerer (though perhaps with a different spell list), but can heal at least as well (preferably better, as I mentioned above) than a cleric. If I made a fantasy setting where divine magic exists, clerics would favor offensive magic and mind-affecting magic, as I feel that fits the flavor of religion better, while mages (at least some mages) would be the healers.

You are right. But clerics aren't suppose to be "cure and watch everyone fight", are suppose to invoke the power of a deity in "mortal realm"

Clerics have a lot of cool healing spells resurrection for example can return your merc to life with full HP. Regenerate can give virtually 6hp * caster level more HP restoration can save you a lot of times....

About damage, you can't compare insta kill spells with damage output spells. Isaac's greater missile storm + metamagic can do up to 40d6 * 1.5 damage with no save and since the damage isn't elemental, you can be immune to fire, cold, lighting...

To show how this spell is strong, look to this video at 2:38 against Vix'thra
https://youtu.be/TEMYFXB8a-c?t=157

With HASTE you can unleash 500+ damage in few seconds. I an not saying that clerics don't have good raw damage spells, only that they aren't the best in this.

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I personally like the DnD idea of a cleric being a "invoker of a deity power" and a Druid being a "invoker of nature power", in the majority of RPG's, clerics are boring...


EDIT > Only for comparison, the Breath weapon of a Great Wyrm Golden Dragon in DnD 3.5e can do up to 24d10 damage( http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Gold_Dragon ). The same max damage as Isaac's greater missile storm without metamagic. And note that there are a lot of ways to get high fire resistance.

Of course, if you are able to cast those spells, you are high enough in level to cast Heal, and therefore are already at a point where healing magic is no longer weak.

I am mainly concerned about the first 10 levels, in which you do not have access to the Heal spell or any similarly powerful healing spell.

To be fair, the game was designed for tabletop gaming where people would actually track the numbers and roll the dice by hand. Having healing abilities outpace damaging abilities is pretty exasperating in that context. By the time the heal spell comes along, there are so many crazy offensive abilities that even a full heal spell can't reliably keep people on their feet so it's not as much of a problem.

On the other hand, repeatedly casting Cure Light Wounds, having to role a d8 each time, and possibly having it heal as few as 1 hit point (in 2e and earlier; situation is marginally better in 3e and onward) could be quite exasperating. I remember playing classic Wizardry games (where the healing situation is similar to 2e) and finding it annoying to repeatedly cast DIOS (equivalent of AD&D's Cure Light Wounds), especially when it restores only 1 HP to a character who needs 2 HP to be healed, and that's without having to physically roll the dice every time. (For the record, this example assumes the spell is being cast outside of combat.)

Healing in solo nwn is pretty much undeeded with all that healing items, healing potions, ability to rest almost anywhere with no consequences and in OC - ability to teleport to healer even from the middle of fight. What actually sell priests as insanely powerful is the fact that in NWN similar buffs stack and divine power replace character AB with higher one from fighter. Add persistent haste from item - solo cleric is significantly better in melee then solo paladin and solo fighter. Add great defensive buffs - cleric is one of the most protected pure classes

P.S. And since priest Bull strength stack with Blackguard bull str... 13 str cleric blackguard casting Divine power-Bull strength(cleric)-Bull strength(blackguard) gets 26 str(Divine power give set str to 18, and bull str +4 stacks together to +8) - thats identical to fighter that started at 18 str and put every single level point in str(assuming pre-epic companion)

dtgreene hit the nail right on the head (critical range: 20/x4)

Healing in NWN1 is borked. Either you have "lawl I heal my squad to full health and I can do this all day" or utter garbage with nothing in between.

The obvious solution: Make low-level healing scale:
Heal light wounds: heals (d4 + 1) x level up to a low limit
heal medium wounds: heals (d6 + 1) x level up to a low limit
heal serious wounds: heals (d6 + 1) x level up to level 10
heal critical wounds: heals (d6 + 1) x level up to level 15
area heal light wounds: heals (d4 + 1) x level up to level 15 in area.

Apply these changes to negative energy as well.

More broken mechanics. What the crap were the devs thinking when they made obviously broken mechanics like that? Heal/Harm could instead scale heavily with level (6-10 health per level or something like that)

**** that, use Implosion.

I always found the lack of mage healing to be nonsensical. Given that there are first aid kits, you'd think that wizards would cash in with a dozen brands of enchanted first aid kits available in every large city. There's no reason why mages couldn't heal. Ranger loses a leg? Reanimate it and slap it back on. Rogue shatter a bunch of ribs on a blast trap? Transmute the pieces into a living metal armor construct guaranteed to work at least as well as previously (heal damage and gain +3 damage resistance for a day). Pre-emptive transmutation buffs should be a thing. A wizard who can't temporarily encase your fighter's arm in a conjured exoskeleton construct (strength +6, damage reduction +8/physical, +10/fire, +10/cold) is obviously a sham. If the rest of your squad dies, reanimate them.

Mages are mechanically impoverished in D&D. Can't wear heavy armor, low health, low base attack bonus, can't heal. Apart from a handful of exceptionally overpowered spells (Disjunction, greater missile storm, time stop, ...), they are flat-out inferior to clerics. The best use for the Wizard class: take 1 level for Arcane Archer.

NWN1 doesn't tie healing to religion. My cleric doesn't have a listed deity and is guaranteed to heal just as well as any other.