The Warpriest that I wanted, introducing Marshmallow's Templar class


Homebrew and House Rules


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You will notice that this is currently incomplete, as I need to compile and complete a list of the Templar Blessings, and additional extra feats that may need to be written like Extra Divine Pool etc.

It's late and I wanted to post this for feedback before I continued.


Templar Blessings added.


I was expecting templar that uses/commands marshmallows...


Very surprised at the lack of feedback.


bump?

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2 people marked this as a favorite.

People are probably waiting to see the final Warpriest to see if they need alternate homebrew.


Being unable to use Sacred Weapon with anything but your Deity's Favored Weapon is meh.

Templars of Erastil are pretty much a no go since you copy pasted the Spellcombat text therefore prohibiting them from Battle Casting with their bow.

So basically this reverts the Warpriest back to the chump who gets obliterated if for any reason he needs or is unable to use a weapon other than his Deity's Favored Weapon.


Scavion wrote:

Being unable to use Sacred Weapon with anything but your Deity's Favored Weapon is meh.

Templars of Erastil are pretty much a no go since you copy pasted the Spellcombat text therefore prohibiting them from Battle Casting with their bow.

So basically this reverts the Warpriest back to the chump who gets obliterated if for any reason he needs or is unable to use a weapon other than his Deity's Favored Weapon.

I actually did not mean to exclude ranged favored weapons, that is a good catch, and it is fixed.

As far as favored weapon, I never understood being proficient in all martial weapons, just to end up not using its damage die. After all, the whole point of using different weapons is to gain access to their better statistics. This was one of my biggest issues in the playtest, the ability just didn't make sense to me.

That said, I will give it proficiency with all martial weapons, which should alleviate most of those issues.


I have some criticisms.

Seems way better than the magus somehow. It has the full cleric spell list and a super weapon ability and can cast while making a full attack and has a swift action healing source and can wear heavy armor from level 1. It doesn't get spellstrike but I would argue that would be of limited use with the cleric spell list anyways. Instead, you just have a damn hard to kill guy who is casting a spell to buff himself to essentially fighter-level efficacy every fight and has enough spells left over to pull off a lot of the cleric's schtick too.

I think that a lot of domain powers might be too good as a swift action even if it costs you a divine pool point to use it. The strength domain power comes to mind as does the nobility domain power.

How does battle casting work like two weapon fighting when the templar does not need a free hand to do it?

Your sacred weapon also still has the same problem as paizo's sacred weapon. Making all sacred weapons have the same damage die means that high crit weapons become a strictly preferred option. This is hilarious since sacred weapon was meant to give hope to followers of deities with sub-optimal favored weapons. Instead, the ruling makes a deity with a falchion as a favored weapon strictly superior to a deity with a greatsword as a favored weapon (at level 13) rather than the falchion only being obviously superior. Not addressing critical hit rules as part of the damage rules is a mistake, I mean.


Idk about way better.

Battle casting is meant to be like two weapon fighting in that you take -2 to your attack and gain an extra [attack action] in which you cast the spell. I suppose the linguistics there could be cleaned up.

The thing about the cleric list is that it is not so inherently powerful as the wizard list, mostly it's just a big list of buff spells and a couple blasts here and there.

A deity with a falchion as a favored weapon would be considered superior to a deity with a greatsword as a favored weapon regardless of sacred weapon, so that point is kinda moot. I feel the one written that affects any weapon you have Weapon Focus on is more broken than mine.

Perhaps swift action domain powers are a bit much.

As for being able to buff himself to the fighter's level of efficiency, that was kinda the point of the original class and is still the point of mine.


Sacred weapon exacerbates the problem. That is true. It is a failed mechanic on Paizo's part as it does the opposite of what the mechanic was supposed to do.

And the Magus has its own spell list which is much worse (or really more limited) than the wizard and cleric spell lists.


Excaliburproxy wrote:

Sacred weapon exacerbates the problem. That is true. It is a failed mechanic on Paizo's part as it does the opposite of what the mechanic was supposed to do.

And the Magus has its own spell list which is much worse (or really limited) than the wizard and cleric spell lists.

However, the cleric spell list consists mostly of buffs, especially at the lower levels.

Lack of spellstrike also makes a lot of those spells less likable.


It has command, murderous command, and inflict light wounds as first level spells. Note that inflict light wounds actually outperforms shocking grasp at first level.

For level 2 spells, it has hold person, admonishing ray (let us not forget that these ranged full attacks also lets ranged spells get off very easily and also generally allows the class to avoid having to make concentration checks), dread bolt, sound burst, and spiritual weapon.

The cleric spell list is full of spells that shut down and wreck shit. So is the wizard spell list but that is why magus has its own list.


Well, the warpriest also uses the cleric list, so unless you are saying that we need to go through and customize a spell list I really don't see the issue. Magi also have access to all wizard spells of their level by way of Arcana.


The warpriest cannot cast any offensive magic while full attacking. They are exclusively limited to self buffs. Moreover, they can only cast as part of a full attack (that is to say as a swift action) a limited number of times per day.

Your templar is a font of power and hate, casting terrible shadows over the poor innocent magus with his single one-handed melee weapon clutched trembling against his lightly armored chest.


Excaliburproxy wrote:

The warpriest cannot cast any offensive magic while full attacking. They are exclusively limited to self buffs. Moreover, they can only cast as part of a full attack (that is to say as a swift action) a limited number of times per day.

Your templar is a font of power and hate, casting terrible shadows over the poor innocent magus with his single one-handed melee weapon clutched trembling against his lightly armored chest.

So, a watered down spell list, with a Templar Blessing allowing him to access more of the spell list then?

Or should I put a limitation on what spells he can cast using Battle Casting?

The latter seems a much simpler and elegant fix.


MM you have some rad ideas a lot of the time
but sometimes you get chappy and people just tune out

just wait for the ACG and then do this once you take all the new archetypes, feats, gear, etc into account

then fight the good fight with a rad idea


So, comparisons to the warpriest?


I think it's an interesting take on the divine warrior class concept, but I'm not quite sold on it.

I feel like it is very similar to the Magus and could benefit from being a bit more distinct, and to be honest I think I prefer the Warpriest's Fervor casting to the Templar's Battle Casting. Skipping concentration checks and the shifting concentration bonus/attack roll penalty modifiers the magus uses makes the Warpriest's spellcasting much faster and easier to resolve. As others have already noted, a warpriest who casts lots of offensive spells seems a bit off. I'd use the Fervor limitation, but extend it to spells that either target the Warpriest or the Warpriest's weapon. That way you can Swift Action cast Magic Weapon or Weapon of Awe as well as Divine Favor.

I like the idea of the divine pool, it means keeping track of fewer distinct resources, which the warpriest has a multitude of - fervor, blessings, sacred weapon, sacred armor, spells etc.

Sacred Weapon is limited to favored weapons only? This may be a design philosophy difference, but I find this restriction really painful. I'd like to be able to play an archer warpriest and use my class features penalty even though my deity's favored weapon is the greatsword. The WP play test threads had rather long debates on this topic. One possibility might be to give the WP sacred weapon with the favored weapon by default, with the option to unlock it with other weapons by taking Weapon Focus with said weapon.

I'm not crazy about Unsanctioned Repertoire, it makes the potential spell list (cleric+paladin+inquisitor+various domains) incredibly unwieldly even for an experienced player, and it favors Good warpriests over Evil ones because many of the Paladin spells are both extremely good and heavily favor Good-aligned characters. I'd personally prefer to see the Templar get a unique spell list with appropriate spells drawn from all the different divine caster spell lists, but I realize that compiling such a list is a daunting task for a homebrewer.

I didn't think I'd say this, but I actually kind of miss the Warpriest's deity-specific Blessings - they help flesh out the WP and make warpriests of different deities feel more distinct. I feel like Templars of different deities will look relatively similar.

I have to say I skimmed the templar blessings, but I really liked the ones I saw.

Rather than giving the class fighter training, how about letting him treat his Warpriest level as his BAB for all feats (normal and bonus feats)? It makes some rather interesting WP options come available earlier than you'd expect them, like Improved Critical, and helps bring out the "martial" aspect of the class.

I really like that you bumped the Templar's Fervor Healing and channel energy to full cleric/paladin progression - the warpriest's fervor healing fails completely at staying relevant on the mid-high levels.

It has no dead levels, which is awesome. :)


Divine Magus was the chassis that I built the class on, so there ought to be a lot of similarities there.

The main reason I stuck with Battle Casting/Spell Combat was specifically to avoid having to force the player to waste their swift action which is something that really bothers me about the warpriest because it limits his options that turn, and consumes fervor. Because of the need for concentration checks, and the lack of spellstrike, I didn't see any real threats come from allowing access to the spell list.

Clerics have a great and powerful spell list, but the main thing about them is that mostly they are all buffs, and the most powerful cleric buffs are the spells that I would cherry pick for this class which is the reason I stuck with the same spell list.

Not opposed to ditching fighter training in favor of pseudo BAB for feats.

I do think I should expand Unsantioned Repertoire to include Antipaladin spells, that's a good catch.

As for the Individual Blessings based on the Deity, the Templar does actually gain a Domain sans the spells at first level, and a Templar Blessing exists that allows you to pick up a second one.

I also never saw a point in Sacred Weapon affecting a weapon other than your deity's favored one. The reason one would choose to wield a different weapon than the deity's favored weapon is usually because of its better damage dice or crit range, and the sacred weapon ability is there to mitigate the weaknesses of some deity's favored weapons.

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The magus is my favorite class in the game. When I saw the final warpriest, it made me wish Paizo focused on making the warpriest more like a cleric parallel of the magus. That being said, I feel this goes way too far in that direction, almost looking like a copy-paste of the magus.

See, the magus's abilities were tailored towards his spell list and arcane spells. Spell combat and spellstrike were great for blasting and crowd control effects. However, the cleric list is mainly buffs, which makes Fervor the perfect parallel to spell combat. I would have expanded on that class feature rather than take spell combat and spellstrike. For example, maybe at later levels his self buffs can also extend to other allies if the spell allows it.


I don't like fervor because it eats the swift action. Spell Combat is a fantastic mechanic, but I wanted this version to have different restrictions, so I stuck with deity's favored weapon being the only weapon the templar can cast with during a full round.

I gave him the same spell list as the warpriest, with options for borrowing the one or two niche spells from paladins or inquisitors in a way that mirrors Knowledge Pool.

I also don't wanna front load the class anymore than it already is, that is something the magus and warpriest do and it's pretty poor design imo. A kensai magus gets like 3 feats for free at 1st level and spellcasting which makes a mockery of the fighter.

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The kensai has a 3/4 BAB and only gets Weapon Focus. Yeah, they get EWP, but at the lost of pretty much all of their proficiencies.

I don't care if they have a restriction on sacred weapon. Stealing spell combat isn't cool. Fervor's swift action was fine. Warpriest didn't have many uses for their swift action, and it allows the class extra mobility.


As much as I am a fan of Spell Combat on the Magus, I think Fervor spellcasting makes more sense for the warpriest. The magus balances his use of SC between spellstriking offensive spells and casting defensive spells as the situation warrants - it makes sense to limit it to a full-round action combined with a full attack.

The Warpriest handles differently. He typically wants to cast short-duration buffs, and he wants to cast them as fast as possible - ideally in the first round, when he also wants to move into a better position and/or charge. Limiting Battle Casting to a full round action means he likely won't be able to use it in his first round.

That said, I agree that the swift action chokepoint is a problem for the Warpriest, something I pointed out several times in the playtest. It's excruciating to try and combine a mid-level WP with styles or magic items that use swift actions. If I were you I'd consider tweaking Fervor spellcasting (free action cast one spell per round, must target WP or WP's weapon?) rather than ditching it completely.

Fervor helps the WP feel distinct from the Magus and it compliments the divine magic approach to combat much better than spell combat.

If you want to make the WP less front-loaded, that shouldn't be too hard. I'd cut battle casting, and I'd move Heavy Armor Proficiency to level 2 or 3.


Kudaku wrote:

As much as I am a fan of Spell Combat on the Magus, I think Fervor spellcasting makes more sense for the warpriest. The magus balances his use of SC between spellstriking offensive spells and casting defensive spells as the situation warrants - it makes sense to limit it to a full-round action combined with a full attack.

The Warpriest handles differently. He typically wants to cast short-duration buffs, and he wants to cast them as fast as possible - ideally in the first round, when he also wants to move into a better position and/or charge. Limiting Battle Casting to a full round action means he likely won't be able to use it in his first round.

That said, I agree that the swift action chokepoint is a problem for the Warpriest, something I pointed out several times in the playtest. It's excruciating to try and combine a mid-level WP with styles or magic items that use swift actions. If I were you I'd consider tweaking Fervor spellcasting (free action cast one spell per round, must target WP or WP's weapon?) rather than ditching it completely.

Fervor helps the WP feel distinct from the Magus and it compliments the divine magic approach to combat much better than spell combat.

If you want to make the WP less front-loaded, that shouldn't be too hard. I'd cut battle casting, and I'd move Heavy Armor Proficiency to level 2 or 3.

Free action doesn't sit well with me. Letting them cast once per round also doesn't sit well with me.

The magus can cast a quickened spell and still engage spell combat in full, getting off two spells and a full round of combat. IMO any divine analogy to that must be able to put out similar results.

I personally don't feel Spell Combat is something that should be exclusive to the magus, I think it should be something any gish class should be able to do.

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And I think gish characters should get combat action economy benefits with their spells in their own way rather than steal spell combat from the magus. Saying every gish should get it is like saying martial that picks up the Unarmed Strike feat should get flurry of blows. Plus, there's many different ways you can design a special ability that lets a class cast a spell and fight at the same time.

Also, a magus cannot Quicken spells until like 13th-15th level whereas the warpriest can essentially do it at 1st level. Fervor is basically a "free" quicken spell with the restriction that it must be a spell that targets you.

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