IconoclasticScream's page

There is lots of good discussion going on in this thread. I am actually learning from it. What I want to interject is--flavor. The cleric's domain powers should all be diety-specific and unique to that particular diety. Two gods with the war domain will still see war in different ways, and so provide their clerics with different benefits.

There should be some general abilities gained from the domain that are appropriate, but a spell that no other god bestows is where the connection really shows.
If necessary, those spells or abilities can be inserted where the missing 3.5 factors were taken out with no replacement.
Lastly, I think some of the cleric's buffs should be reduced in effectiveness unless used when fighting the recognized enemies of the cleric's diety--more connection.

Maybe one of the things we should explore is having a choice in what domain power comes with a domain. The question of bonus spells aside, maybe there needs to be a little more possibility in what a deity grants as a power to her subjects, in reflection of what that god is worried about. Just as wizards now have the choice to take a familiar or bond with an item, to keep with the Plant domain example, to reflect differences in concerns of a deity, maybe the cleric can choose at first level to take the Wooden fist (for the "angry" nature deity) or go with the command plants/Knowledge (nature) (for the "peaceful" deity).

Clerics have received arguably the single biggest boost in Alpha/Beta in the form of the channeling/healing. It only makes sense that they'd not only get a kick in the pants from 3.5 but also to help offset the new boost they've received. If you want to bring back the old Domains, you need to come up with another suitably powerful thing that they can nerf to offset it, otherwise you are changing the big 3 into the big 1- the cleric.

Who really benefits from the cleric's new ability to Channel Energy? It's not the cleric- it's the rest of the party. The cleric could always heal himself with no effort. He'd have to run around the battlefield doing healing one person at a time for everyone else. If you were waiting for that healing, you had to hope the cleric got to you in time. In the meantime, all of the spells the cleric prayed for that he thought would the party are being blown to save everyone else. Now, though, the rest of the cleric's party can get hit points back en masse. Despite how great Channel Energy works mechanically, it still subjugates the cleric to a non-combat role for some, if not most, of combat, and that sucks if you want to play a cleric who likes to get his hands dirty. At least now the cleric still gets to use that Augury spell he would have had to burn healing the wizard because he got hit by a strong wind.

And to point out what other people have said, the domains didn't make the cleric so powerful (something I, like others, don't necessarily agree with anyway). The cleric's spells did. If anything, those need to be changed a bit, but the Domains were fine as they were.

A +3 bonus for it being a class skill. The only difference between a class skill and a non-class skill is a +3 bonus (and maybe some stuff to do with prestige classes).

I shouldn't have used the words "any longer"; that was just confusing.

I must have read the description of the Plant domain in the PHB ten times looking for the +3 bonus. :)

I haven't been following the Rann/Thanagar Holy War story, but I noticed on DC's website the solicitation for last week's Hawkman Special, written by Jim Starlin (who, in general, is a fine writer (the man created Thanos, so he must be doing something right)).

Anyway, the blurb for the Special read "Hawkman finds himself face to face with a force of unspeakable evil: Synnar. The things Hawkman will learn in the course of their confrontation may lead him to question his very existence!".

Okay, so I admit that in glossing over it I misread it (or maybe yesterday in the comic shop I just couldn't remember it correctly). Rather than Synnar I thought it would feature Onimar Synn (from the "Return of Hawkman" story in _JSA_ a few years back). I figured if Synn was going to go up against Hawkman that alone was worth the price of admission, but I wanted to see what this big reveal was.

I'm so sorry I did.

Am I the only person who remembers the nightmare it took almost twenty years to fix regarding who Hawkman is? That for years no one was allowed to use the Hawkman character because of the continuity quagmire the character had become?

And now, with one comic book, what David Goyer and Geoff Jones had neatly fixed, Starlin seems to have nuked.

But you can still study nature, if you want; you just don't get a +3 bonus any longer.

Where'd the +3 come from?

What is wrong is that he completely ignores that you get the powers and spells of BOTH Domains in Pathfinder, where you only got a single domain spell per level from EITHER domain in 3.5. Clerics have not been nerfed in this way.

I didn't ignore that (and couldn't have mislead anyone who has the Beta; we all know that clerics get both domain powers). I focused only on the effects of one domain. There was no reason to mention the second. And even if I did, a few extra spells gained at levels behind (sometimes far behind) when they would have been gained in 3.X doesn't do much to make the character improved.

For flavor? There seem to be some unfortunate gaps in specific spells. But the 1st and 8th level domain powers offer SO much more flavor than any spell (or really domain power) did in 3.5. That's just opinion of course.

Can you explain how that's true? Using my example of the plant domain, how does being able to harden your fist like wood give more flavor to a cleric than allowing him to study Nature? Perhaps if it were a militant nature deity I could see your point, or even the Aggressive Nature domain, but... can you imagine how inappropriate it would be for some pastoral cleric of a god of harvest to have Wooden Fist?

So for this reason tinkering was/is a good idea. I just dont like this tinker. It went beyond fix what was broken (some domains) and ended up lame. It's like they had a good idea for sorcerers and wizards so tacked on a simliar theme for clerics.

I'm not trying to slight Jason in the least- I promise I have nothing but respect for him undertaking this herculean task- but the revised domains seemed rushed, with change made for the sake of change. . The good news is, if enough people agree there needs to be a change to the way they're presented in the Beta, we have ten months to fix them.

Clerics are still good because they have been excellent since 3.0 and the change to channel energy for clerics is great, - but I absolutely agree about domain abilities. This is a big dull step backwards. I will be houseruling this to essentially keep the spells as 3.5 (I like that they cast spells)and maybe get one or two of the unique abilities to 'pathfinder upsize' them.

The change to channel energy is fantastic. But it set the bar pretty high for the cleric class, and otherwise the changes have been (I hate to say it) disappointing.

As excited as I’ve been with everything else to do with Pathfinder RPG, the change in the way cleric domains are presented is just killing me. I’ve been waiting with each update in the rules for a return to the old domains, but with the release of the Beta and essentially no change in presentation I wanted to write this.

Being a cleric now kind of… well, sucks. To some degree that’s a visceral, subjective reaction, not unlike being jealous of a sibling at Christmas because they got better presents than you did. Clerics lost spells they can use per day from 3.X to Pathfinder (something that I never understood the need for, short of making a neat row of “4”s for 20th level clerics), although that happened to a lot of casting classes. Most classes got an improvement to hit dice- clerics didn’t (and they probably didn’t really need it). Other classes got all kinds of neat new or augmented abilities- new barbarian rage powers, rangers have favored terrain, sorcerers have bloodlines, etc.

What did clerics get?

When domains were changed, clerics got the shaft.

Domains are supposed to show a special connection between the priest and their deity. And it’s not that they don’t as presented in Pathfinder RPG, it’s that they seemed to show that connection a bit better in 3.X. And in the process of changing how that connection manifests, the cleric lost a lot of special abilities.

I’m going to look at the Plant domain to demonstrate my point. It’s a completely random domain, picked only because that’s what I opened my Player’s Handbook to just now.

So my cleric follows Erastil, and belongs to a church that serves a farming community. The cleric takes the Plant domain. Now, in 3.X, that gives my cleric two special qualities right out the gate. Because Erastil is lord over flora, my cleric has the power to share in that dominance of plant life, and can rebuke or command plant creature. More importantly, the cleric has learned about nature through his training, and this is reflected by adding Knowledge (nature) to his skill list. With Pathfinder Plant domain, that same cleric who serves the farming community does not learn about nature, does not show that immediate command over the plant kingdom. What he learns is to harden his fists for combat.

Right away I’m thinking, “Why does his special ability have to be combat oriented?”. This reminds me of the X-Men books, in that every mutation (except for poor Doug Ramsey) gives an offensive or defensive bonus in combat.*

At first level my cleric can cast Entangle one extra time per day. Again, this shows that special tie he has to the plant kingdom through his god. With Pathfinder, I get the same connection, but now I have to wait until second level.

At third level in 3.X he gets Barksin. He has to wait until fourth level for that in Pathfinder.

With 3.X, at fifth level he can cast Plant Growth, and seventh level he can cast Command Plants. He can never do either of these in Pathfinder. This is another time that the old domains worked so well. They allowed clerics to cast spells that were normally outside of their own spell lists, in this case a druid spell. There were other cases where the spell came from the arcane spell list, or were special spells unique to one deity. Those might not be gone now, but they are fewer and further between than they used to be. And that’s sad, because a lot of flavor is lost in that.

At eighth level, with the Pathfinder build, he gets the Bramble Armor special ability; something he wouldn’t get with 3.X. It’s a neat ability. But it takes eight levels for there to be an advantage in the new domain system over the old. It’s also the last time that happens.

Ninth level he gets Wall of Thorns with 3.X. He doesn’t get it in Pathfinder until twelfth.

The Pathfinder cleric never gets to use Repel Wood or Control Plants (they’re druid spells), but the 3.X cleric can at eleventh and fifteenth levels, respectively.

Maybe the worst hit to the cleric of Erastil is saved for last. With a 3.X build he’s able to cast ninth level spells at seventeenth level. At that point he can manifest Erastil’s divine power of plant life to cast Shambler, summoning shambling mounds to aid him. With Pathfinder he has to wait until twentieth level to do the same thing. And that seems rather anticlimactic- hitting the pinnacle of your class, and your reward is that you can conjure up the Parliament of Trees to perform guard duty. If first and eighth levels are so special, why shouldn’t the cleric gain something unique at twentieth? Why just a spell that other classes could cast three levels earlier?

I guess what this all leads to is my asking “Was the old domain system broken?”. If the change was made to just give more for the cleric to look forward to as he gained levels, I’d say that overall the change has failed. Access to spells that the cleric normally couldn’t cast shouldn’t be considered a throw-away ability. From that perspective, the cleric class has very few of those dead levels that Pathfinder set out to eliminate.

Of course, not everyone may see it the same way, so the suggested fix is to integrate the old and the new domain systems. Keep the domains as presented in the SRD (or OGL, or whatever) with the one twist that the cleric can cast each domain spell once per day (and it cannot be used for Automatic Casting), and add new abilities at a small number of set levels- first, eighth, and twentieth seem fine.

*Yeah, yeah, Grant Morrison’s run on X-Men, blah blah. Humor me.

I interpret the comment on page 176 as meaning that when the domain power says "You can cast X 1/day", then that's the bonus spell that's being referred to. I.e. it's an actual spell, not a spell-like ability.

Then the wording needs to be changed in the progression table 4-5 on page 21, because they're all listed as Domain Powers, just as they were in Alpha.

The domain powers don't seemed to have changed in any way from Alpha to Beta. But there is now, in the Beta, a distinction being made between domain powers and the additional bonus spells.

All in all, I think it makes far more sense to leave how attractive a given character is up to the player. If they want to stress it, maybe they could take an "Attractive" feat or something, but building it in to Charisma just doesn't make sense.

Maybe we should bring back Comeliness as the seventh Ability Score.

The confusing verbage might be connected to some non-OGL spells. The Spell Compendium had a number of domain-based spells. Just my thoughts.

Not sure of the fix though.

I posted this in another thread earlier: "There's talk of bonus spells for clerics based on domains (pgs. 22 ("Each domain grants a number of domain powers dependent upon the level of the cleric, as well as a number of bonus spells.") and 176 ("In addition, each domain grants a number of bonus spells.")), but I'm not seeing that list/information. Granted domain powers remain the same as far as I can see between Alpha and Beta, so unless some of those domain powers are now considered bonus spells either something is missing from the book or the wording seems misleading."

I thought at first, when the blog a few weeks back mentioned the return of bonus spells, that we'd see a return to kind of bonus spells granted that were outside the normal clerical spells at a certain level, like in the Spell Compendium. Now that I'm looking over the Beta I'm wondering if the bonus spells were meant to be more like what wizards get with arcane schools (pg 194).

I'm still looking for information on the cleric's domain-based bonus spells (pgs. 22 and 176)...

Given the love being shown to the Mythos entities, my first thought was that Ydersius was going to be some sort of analog to Yig, or possibly worshiped by a counterpart of Howard's Serpent People.

There's talk of bonus spells for clerics based on domains (pgs. 22 ("Each domain grants a number of domain powers dependent upon the level of the cleric, as well as a number of bonus spells.") and 176 ("In addition, each domain grants a number of bonus spells.")), but I'm not seeing that list/information. Granted domain powers remain the same as far as I can see between Alpha and Beta, so unless some of those domain powers are now considered bonus spells either something is missing from the book or the wording seems misleading.

OK, I've fixed the problem with the back page thing. You may need to sign out and sign back in, and you will need to repersonalize the file.

You are The Man, Gary.

I think I've tried to re-personalize the files a dozen times now, and both the complete version and the one-file-per-chapter version keep downloading as just the back page.

This is what I get for being on the front line to download the Campaign Setting. :(

I sincerely hope that even if the GSL proves friendly to 3pp that the Pathfinder RP won't be affected. I have played 4e and it is not for me. True20 is my game and Pathfinder (as a 3.5 OGL property) looks very promising. I'm an OGL guy and I want Paizo to stay that way too.

Can you imagine the backlash if, after five months of playtesting Pathfinder Alpha, on the cusp of the release of Beta, and with many people already pre-ordering the final Pathfinder RPG handbook over a year before its release, this news about the GSL caused even a "Wait a second..." reaction from Paizo?

Gailbraithe wrote:

But I'll proudly vote Democrat, knowing that my vote supports a party that respects humanity in all its forms.

Except of course, respect for those mean old Republican supporters. We all know they just aren't human.

Well you're definitely not human. And even though I know you vote for the greater of two evils my door has always been open to you.

On July 18th the Blog entry said one of the changes in the Beta will be "Cleric domains and wizard schools now grant bonus spells instead of spell-like abilities (although they maintain their supernatural abilities)."

I'm hoping for the return of cleric domains returning to what they were of not that and something else.

Wait, I just noticed our faction icon appears next to our name.

This is geek Heaven. :)

1635. Andoran.

Only stuff that's part of a subscription. One of the nice benefits of that.

So 4e is "Joanie loves Chachi"?

It's "The Tortellis".

Or Elminster will wake up next to some woman from before the Spellplague and ask her why she never wears sweaters.

The Symbul wakes from a dream about the Spellplague and hears water running in the bathroom. When she enters the bathroom and opens the shower door she sees Elminster, who smiles at her and says "Good morning!".

***Edit: I need to stop paying attention to "Monk" reruns and type faster.***

I'm quietly hoping that in a few years 4E Forgotten Realms will ultimately be revealed to be nothing but a fantasy existing inside an autistic boy's snow globe.

Boars

Wow. Those look like they were sculpted in 1981. Awesome. :)

Ao may have been maintaining a level of maintennce during thier exile. Apparantly this time he either chose not to, or was caught napping at the switch.

Or he was conveniently ignored because his presence would have dashed upon the rocks with the fury of a Category 5 hurricane this ridiculous idea of Mystra's death undoing everything.

I find it inconceivable that the same supreme being (at least as far as Toril was concerned (yes, yes, I know Ao answered to a higher authority, just play along)) that mere years early stripped every divine being of their power for their own napping on the job would become so non-interventionist that it would let catastrophe reign down on the planet, or that a being of such power could not be aware of what one of his servants was doing (an entity capable of reducing hundreds of gods to mortal, powerless forms with a thought must surely possess some degree of omniscience).

Me too.

I'm passing the thread crown to you. :)

Didn't we run into someone like that once in New Orleans?

I could have never run that encounter in a game. Ricky would have walked out of the room and never come back.

Unless you're thinking of something we actually saw in the Quarter, in which case a naked transsexual brandishing a scimitar would have been almost pedestrian.

And what's more memorable than a naked guy with a sword?

Naked pre-op transsexual with a sword.

I knew from LJ you had were running the Realms. I just think that if a microcosm of geeks doesn't indulge in the occasional groan-inducing Gor reference, just to remind ourselves what's going on in seedy AOL chat rooms and private con parties, we might forget the Goreans are out there, and even worse things will happen in fandom.

I have no idea where to find such a mini, especially in so short a period of time (just to make this come back to your topic :) ).

. . . I mean, all I need is a naked guy with a longsword covered in blood wearing broken manacles . . . seriously, how much is that to ask?

;)

You're running a Gor game, aren't you? :)

I see you got the e-mail that we've fixed the PDF!

I sure did, and I was on the new download like stink on a monkey.

I never cease being amazed by the level of customer service that comes from Paizo. Seriously, this was a problem pretty much reserved for the few of us with Macs who didn't want to use Adobe.

Hey James (and everyone else involved), thanks for getting the PDF fixed up for us Mac folks!

GG- Drop me a line at this screen name at gmail dot com. I'm in the Kingsbridge/Riverdale area and am looking to get the ball rolling on a similar project soon.

I want to build a zoo, 4E Realms style: A Topical Aside

Yeah, but don't forget, as NPCs, they don't have to have classes, so if they create a druid NPC, they can just build him with elemental powers, and say he's a druid, regardless of what druids actually look like when they come out.

Of course, then you get into introducing NPCs that can do things PCs can even closely approximate until years down the road.

Which is just to say that after gaming in the Realms since the late '80s, for the first time in twenty years it's no wonder I'm not drooling like Pavlov's puppy over the release of a new FR campaign setting.

I'm morbidly interested to see what happens to Realms NPCs who are created using the limited selection of classes available at this time. Will Faerun be without druids, bards, or barbarians? Or will people who continue to buy Realms products in the future be forced to spend money on books with pages wasted revising stats to reflect changes and additions to core rules, as WotC did to those of us who bought the supplements for their first Star Wars RPG (I can think of at least three versions, for instance, of Darth Vader published to reflect changes throughout the same edition of the game in how Sith were to be created).

I've read this before, and it is perplexing to me. I could have sworn the old grey box said THE planet's FULL name was Abeir-Toril, which was often times just SHORTENED to Toril...

I'll do you one better. I know that I read something by Jeff Grubb in which he said he added the name "Abier" to the name of the planet for the grey box set so that, in the Cyclopedia, "Toril" came first alphabetically.

This backs me up, but now I'm going to have to hunt down that original article.

My number came up early? :)

I always seem to be part of the last batch of people who get to download their PDFs, so when I saw mine we available this afternoon I nearly flipped my lid.

(My g/f just opened the file with no problems using Adobe Acrobat, so maybe it's an issue with Preview.

I also re-personalized the file, downloaded again, and still having the same issue.)

Anyone else having problems with titles not appearing in full on chapter headings (for instance, on page 4 I can see the "S" from "Second", then the line is empty until "layer's Guide"), and pictures covering over text (flag on the ToC covering up the names of the chapters, the image on page 14 covering quite a bit of text, etc)? I've never had a problem viewing any PDFs, Paizo or otherwise, using Apple Preview so this was unexpected.

In an ideal situation I'd like to combine these orders (Pathfinder Beta and Rise of the Runelords Dice) to cut down on shipping. However, if the dice aren't available when the RPG is I don't want to have one order holding the other up. Should I wait until I get the "shipping soon" email for the book to see if the orders should be combined, or would it be too late at that point?

Any chance of an ETA other than "August" on these yet?

No it's right. Amazon sells everything 25-38% less then retail cost.

It's his shipping charges that seem weird. If I'm reading Etrigan right, he's saying that when he goes to check out he's still showing an individual shipping charge for each item. And each shipping charge seems really high.

I know the Pathfinder books are cheaper through Amazon. Hell, everything else it, too. My bookshelves are a testament to that.

You are right about the saving... I stop before the checkout when I see the amount of money for shipping and handling...

Take a look at my order:
Pathfinder #13—Second Darkness Chapter 1: "Shadow in the Sky" $19.99
Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting (OGL) Hardcover $49.99
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (OGL) Beta Release Print Edition $ 24.99

Subtotal (3 Items) $94.97
Shipping & Handling $36.18
Shipping & Handling Discount - $5.55
Order Total $125.60

Wait to ship these items together (less expensive)
Subtotal (3 Items) $94.97
Shipping & Handling $26.81
Order Total $121.78

But overall, I don't save much if I compare it to the price I just pay with Amazon (62.14$)... It's half the amount!
I was a PDF exclusive buyer until today (to save shipping cost)... Now I have another option more cost effective...

When I do "Wait to ship together" for those three items the combined shipping is a little less than nine dollars. Priority USPS is $14.60, and two-day UPS jumps up to $37.31.

Where do you live?

Yes.. but for unknown reason, they charge me the 12$ for each book when I try to order them.. This is why I decide to pre-order on Amazon... And on Amazon, you have about 25% reduce cost for pre-order books...

I'm not trying to sell Amazon to anyone here, but if people need others option, it's a pretty good one...

Have you let Cosmo or someone else know about that? Because that just can't be right. Unless you live off-planet or something.

And 12$ shipping cost per book is for non-subscriber... and it's pretty excessive...

I'm confused. You can't order multiple books at once as a non-subscriber?

I love Paizo stuff, but I just can't understand why someone could want to pay 12$ of shipping and handling for each rpg book he want to order...

I don't know about anyone else, although I could guess, but I do it to support Paizo.

And it's not really $12 shipping for each book. I'm paying less than ten for five books.

I'm glad- and proud- to be a subscriber.

[...]which makes a Cleric1/Druid1/Rogue1/Sorcerer1 that much more likely to exist. However, without the fractional base attack bonus rule, such a character, after four levels, still does not have a base attack bonus to his name.

Tough. That character has been spending a lot of time learning to be a novice priest, commune with nature, train animals, how to pick locks, move without making a sound, disable traps, and to channel the arcane energies he's discovered within himself. With all of that and more going on, becoming more adept with swinging a sword has gone on the back burner. Let him take a level of fighter when he hits fifth level and he'll have his +1 BAB.