Title says it all. I can't think of any class with more flexibility to excel at whatever it's needed to.

For reference, my current character build (end result) is 29 cleric/1 wizard/10 arcane archer.

A cleric by itself (40 cleric, no multi/prestige classing) is already surprisingly good at nuking if you pick your domains well. Take Magic domain for Ice Storm (18d6 damage at level 40 with no save allowed), mage armor, and stoneskin. Take Trickery domain for improved invisibility. Drop your wizard off at the nearest job board because you have no use for him anymore. The only disadvantage with this build is that you can't really nuke until you get the light damage hammer stun at level 7, although if you're willing to give up either improved invisibility or ice storm, you could swap a domain out for Air, pick up your phone, and Call Lightning at level 5. (Meanwhile, that wizard you dropped off at the job board found an interview at a temple). At level 11 you get heal (to full health); the healing (and nuking) options just keep improving after that.

Want a melee cleric? You can have that. Pick a race with favored class fighter or any, main class cleric, then take just enough levels in fighter to grab whatever free traits you need. Martial weapon proficiency is an added bonus. Take 4 levels of fighter by level 20 and you get 4 attacks per round. Of course you will never be as good at melee DPSing as a weapon master or a flanking rogue; then again you might be if you're fighting sneak-immune or critical-immune enemies (a third of the game).

Clerics can also excel at ranged combat (also surprisingly). See also: my current build. Important: grab the 10 levels of arcane archer by level 20 to get 4 attacks per round. This build hits like a truck at any range, packs more AoE damage than a jet fighter, and heals more than Dr. Zed from Borderlands. Plus you can always switch to a melee weapon + shield if you have to tank.

The only role where clerics aren't quite able to keep up: stealth/rogue. Even then, clerics get find traps (which also disables the traps). Who needs to open locks when you can open entire objects with a warhammer? And while it might sound unorthodox, you could always multiclass cleric/rogue for sneak attacks.
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So... are clerics overpowered, or am I just wearing rose-tinted glasses?

Cleric's are indeed awesome. It's hard to go wrong with them really.

He says "no," stops time, hits you with two maximized IGMSes, stops time again, and hits you with two more. You're dead with massive overkill.

Or you try to ditch the weapon master and he just turns and Dev Crits you.

Are clerics really powerful? Yeah, though they still can't match mages in raw firepower (especially from a distance) and the more you go past 20 the weaker they get relative to dedicated weapon masters/arcane archers (spells don't scale as well and the stat boosts/feats/better gear favor the non-casters). And there's a reason Harm/Heal are usually nerfed, Time Stop/IGMS are usually nerfed, and Dev Crit is disabled.

Clerics are overpowered in most rpg video games because the balancing factors from dnd you do not find translated from pen and paper.

Religion isn't correctly implemented.

Neither are skills and most modules skills are given the shaft

Battle cleric I think of one level monk halfing with zen archery and sling.

If you're willing to settle for wearing robes and no shield, that works ok to retain the WIS AC. Unfortunately, without going unarmed or kama, you'll be yielding the monk -3 progression which is a decided disadvantage.

Clerics are considered quite overpowered in pen and paper too. Ever heard the term "CoDzilla"?

NWN is better than PnP in terms of class balance. As Chipster mentions in high magic adventures you will get powerful item properties that allow other classes to bridge the difference. In pen and paper, however, there are far, far more magical effects to cover and some of them are considerably more open-ended effects than in CRPG's, so even with high magic with excessive magical item availability it's still very hard for non-casters to keep up. 3rd edition did improve over its lifespan in that regard, but the 20/20 hindsight was that the core rulebook was just poorly balanced and contained too many underpowered and overpowered classes and too few that were even roughly balanced.

Well, First , Clerics have the ability to wear armor which further increases their Armor Class bonus which make them endure a lot of punishment.. They can also can heal with their skill. Second, Cleric's can cast divine spells which ignore arcane spell failures from their armor.. For some Clerics are considered overpower, but in my opinion, Clerics seems to be fairly balance in the game since they are good for support and can be useful on the offensive too..

I certainly feel that divine casters are overpowered at the lower levels in the 3.x set Dungeon and Dragons compared to non-casters. I've been banned from playing a Paladin in a number of game groups because of how easy it is to get away with murder when using "Detect Evil" at will. A couple of feats and a Lv 12 Paladin is darn good at offing corrupt (Corrupted? Well, he was evil!) dynasties, since most NPC nobles don't have a whole lot of HP...

Of course, a Bard 4/Paladin 6/ Evangelist 5 build doesn't even need to commit murder, they can just whip up the peasants into a murderous rage and point them at a target. "In the name of (insert lawful good deity here), go forth and reclaim this land!"

Edit: Edited the builds prestige levels.

You know, I've heard of the Paladin getting banned a lot, but the most common reason I've heard is that it's a newbie trap that inexperienced players gravitate to only to discover that the class kinda sucks and is completely outclassed by classes like the Barbarian in combat.

I've done a lot of lurking and seen this very issue discussed before, and the solution to the problem is actually rather simple: being evil is not a crime, much less one that justifies summary execution. A Paladin who attacks and kills someone just because they register as evil will fall. Making this clear at the outset will temper the Detect Evil spell substantially. You actually have to know the target has done something to justify being attacked and killed.

Besides this fact, there's also the issue that detect evil is not infallible. It can be blocked by certain magical effects, and is also capable of giving false positives. If you're trying to do it intentionally it's very easy to create these false positives. This is a subject of much more stringent debate, with some people insisting that the DM is being unfair if they provoke a situation where non-evil creatures detect as evil, while others insist it's the paladin's fault for attacking without additional information. The general consensus, however, is that Paladins who smite first and ask questions later are flirting with falling and putting the DM into an unfair a position where certain kinds of stories (such as a cunning villain who frames someone else for a crime) are likely to cause a trigger-happy paladin to fall.

By 12th level the Wizard is capable of amassing an army of angels, while at 20th level you're a planar power and functionally a demigod. Dealing with corrupt nobles is far below your pay grade by this point.

There's a great article called Calibrating your Expectations that talks about what your expectations should be for various levels of power. He points out that a lot of the problems with D&D are due to misconceptions in the expectations of character power. People have expanded on this idea since then, but the core idea can really help with getting perspective over the system as a whole.

Clerics can be considered overpowered, if only because they can be good generalists, or very good at something specific like meleeing or offensive spellcasting, depending on the build, while still easily remaining the best class for healing and supporting a party, and being pretty sturdy on top of that.

But that's not just true in NWN, it's a feature of 3rd edition D&D, to the point that they made 3.5 partly to mitigate how easy it was to turn clerics (and druids, and any divine spellcaster really) into invincible murder machines.
Not that they had much success imo, since clerics are still very powerful in 3.5.

The fact is that if you make a class that's pretty tough to kill (clerics only weakness being bad reflex saves), can heal itself very easily, and has good offensive power, it's kind of bound to be OP in the right hands.

Personally, if I were running a fairly standard campaign, I would ban the standard Paladin class for a different reason; I am of the opinion that you need to earn the title of Paladin, not start out as one.

Hence, this house rule: The Paladin class is not allowed for new characters. All Paladins must use the Prestige Paladin variant from Unearthed Arcana.

In non-D&D CRPGs, Paladins have always felt like hybrid classes to me, while the D&D Paladin's spellcasting seems rather tacked-on (especially since it's non-existent at the levels many campaigns take place). The Prestige Paladin gets better spellcasting at the expense of a bit of fighting ability, which feels about right.

Incidentally, one problem with the D&D 3.x Cleric is that it gets the physical combat ability of a hybrid (compare to Psychic Warrior), but the magic ability of a pure caster (compare to Wizard), which is a bit much. One solution might be to treat Clerics as hybrids (giving them Bard spell progression), and add the healing spells to the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list (is there a good in-universe reason for them not to be there?).

Edit: Another thing I would change: I would make spells like Divine Favor be touch-range rather than caster only. This way, the Cleric can play more of a support role rather than going into the front ranks.

So I gotta earn the right to take levels in one of the worst classes in the game. Seems legit :-P

In all seriousness, this is an improvement on the regular Paladin, but it has the same problem of getting no relevant class features past the 3rd level and therefor giving no incentive to continue advancing the class. If you want to see how the Paladin could be improved, check out the Pathfinder version of the Paladin. Even at a glance, you can see it gets a lot more class features and therefor good reason to keep advancing the class.

In all fairness, all the 9-level spellcasters are regarded as "a bit much". The Cleric and Druid are not regarded as any better than the Wizard, and the consensus is that they're fairly well balanced against each other but completely gamebreaking compared to everything else.

Perhaps a prestige version of the Pathfinder Paladin might work; one just needs to tweak the levels at which the abilities are gained, and some level-based aspects of those abilities might need adjustment as well. I think this would give the Paladin more of the feel that I feel that class should have.

(And, of course, do some playtesting to make sure the new version is both balanced and fun.)