| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I love my Herald Caller. Effectively, you get three feats over eight levels in Augment Summoning, ignoring Spell Focus: conjuration for all prerequisites, and Superior Summoning. You also automatically speak all of your summons' languages, which is HUGE. Finally, you can heal your summons with channel energy no matter their position from you, which is icing on the cake.
I also love the "lose a prepared spell," mechanic because I can Prep whatever so want and lose spells for curing of summoning (and you can drop domain spells for summoning spells too because the ability lacks the spontaneous spell casting ability's exclusionary clause.)
|
Yeah, I have to agree that the 4 + Int skills per level is pretty cash money. Now you can actually take advantage of a robust list of class skills in addition to saving feats for a common enough Cleric build. I would say that Herald Caller is a little more "selfish" than the Evangelist, saving their own feats insead of buffing.
2 skill points per pevel is a huge pet peeve and the reason I have yet to give the Cleric a try. The lack of standard action summons (without jumping through hoops) is a pain, but I consider the amazing spell list a decent trade-off over playing, say, a Summoner.
Overall, it's a good archetype on a caster class that's so powerful out the gate that you'd have to intentionally sabotage yourself to suffer a notable drop in effectiveness. I would hardly call this archetype, or any of them, a capital-T Trap.
|
Evangelist doesn't get spontaneous casting of Cure spells. This is actually a big deal, because that's the ability that lets you BOTH prepare the spells you want AND keep people alive when they need you do. It's the ability that stops you second-guessing your prepared spells. That's bad compared to a mainline cleric; the Herald Caller does even better by casting both cures AND summons spontaneously.
Applying bardic performance to summon spells is neat, but there may be some rules hiccups as to maintaining a performance and summoning/casting spells at the same time.
And the Herald Caller gets several ways to handle his summoned monsters "like a pro"; significantly, he's always considered to share a language with the critters he summons. So you can actually tell those leopards to jump through hoops and THEN kill people. And more skill points helps too.
Yeah I really can't add more to this I'm of the opinion that the extra skill points, the ability to swap spells for heals and summons, along with all the other perks are just too nice. Now if I can ever get the build right with a reach build :P
|
|
Herald Caller Clerics are actually one of my favorite character types in all of pathfinder. The archtype is simply amazing. While evangelist is a strong summoner, the herald caller has several boons the evangelist does not. The first, and biggest, is the 4+ Int skill points. This is huge for out of combat effectiveness and it is almost worth taking the archtype for this alone. Herald Caller is, simply put, what the cloistered cleric archtype should have been. However, skill points aside, the saved feats are great because they allow you to take more feats that matter. needing Spell Focus (Concentration) was always a pain for summoning builds, and Herald Caller eliminating that is a huge boon to summoning builds of all kinds.
Why? By saving you three feats, Hearld Caller lets you make "hybrid" builds more effectively than a Evangelist can. For the evangelist to be a truely effective summoner, you need he wants an ABSOLUTE minumum of 3 summoning-focused feats, one of which is the otherwise useless spell focus (conjuration), and likely want at least 5 or possibly even 6 since summon good/evil/neutral(summon good/neutral creature are pretty much mandatory for summoner clerics with non-evil auras), evolved summons and superior summoning are all great feats. So if you want to be "the best" summoner you can be, thats going to be 9 feats as an evangelist. So, if you wanted to be...say...a melee-focused reach cleric AND the best possible summoner you could be, you'd either have to delay your summoning prowis to very high levels to take stuff like power attack and combat expertise early, OR use the bare minimum summoning feats needed to be "good" at summoning.
The Hearld Caller, meanwhile, thanks to his free feats, can squeeze both all the feats needed for reach shenanigans AND the summoner essentials into the early levels, making him effective at both earlier than the evangelist while also letting him take all the summoning feats he wants WHILE STILL HAVING MORE FREE FEATS in the higher levels that can be spent on things to further bolster his combat prowis. Herald Callers, simply put, make far better "reach summoners" than evangelists because of the saved feats and better early game effectiveness with both roles.
Even further, the Hearld Caller does something else that, in my mind, was very needed in Pathfinder, that no other cleric archetype, not even evangelist can do. Whats that? Fix negative energy channelers. Negative energy channelers normally suck hard without either the rulership daze or madness confuse. To "work"a negative channeler needs to pump cha at the expense of wis, lowering their DCs to the point where they can never reliably cast a DC-based spell again, AND have to spend a good number of feats on channeling. Even further, the need for cha makes them too MAD to be a melee cleric, and at higher levels channeling damage doesn't scale strong enough to make it a worthwhile tactic. This leads to negative channeling clerics being limited to the same small handful of deities with OP vairant channeling options or being lame ducks that do nothing but cast buff or utility spells at high levels when channeling starts to suck.
Yet, what else on the cleric list besides buffs, utility spells and heals cares nothing about DCs? SUMMONS. Normally, channeling and summoning don't mix well as a build because both require heavy feat investment. Herald Caller fixes this in a BIG, BIG way. Suddenly, Offensive negative energy channlers become viable at high levels if they are also herald callers; the saved feats from Herald caller lets them stay competent at both channeling and summoning in the early levels while being truly powerful summoners in the later levels where channeling becomes less effective and summoning will end up being their go-to tactic! Hearld Caller actually provides a way to make a negative energy channeling build thats effective at all levels, so much in fact that Hearld Caller is pretty much the ONLY way in the game to make a negative channeler who worships anybody other than Ra, Horus, Lamashtu, Azathoth or that one butterfly goddess who's name I forget effective at all levels, so more power to the heard callers!
Oh, and while it's already been stated, your summons auto-understanding you is EPIC. No need to spend those shiny extra skill points on linguistics!
The Channel Energy stuff is kind of nifty. The loss of Inspire Courage is pretty significant, but you might be able to do a lot of interesting stuff with those extra feats. For instance, you could become a pretty competent archer or have a Boon Companion for an animal or familiar who could probably help out enough to cover most of the "gap" from not having Inspire Courage. If Unchained is in play it also might be interesting to look at VMC options. I guess a Herald Caller with the Bard VMC would be almost like a summoning focused Evangelist with -1 off Inspire Courage but the addition of Bardic Knowledge. If you're Evil and channel some negative energy the extra damage might easily outperform that lost +1.
I wish the archetype granted Sacred Summons instead of Superior Summoning though since having too many summoned creatures out can be a nuisance. If I were looking to create a flood of monsters I guess an Evil Herald Caller with some Extra Channel could support an army of undead buddies who help out his big summons with Aid Another and similar tactics. This would have to be for the right game though, probably one with very few players and a relaxed attitude since your turns might take a while.
|
|
Losing inspire courage is not as bad as it seems if you build accordingly. Variant Channeling in particular is a strong option to build around as being able to confuse or daze entire mobs while also damaging them is quite a powerful control tool that, at least to me, makes up for the lack of inspire courage. Also, if you go with Urgathoa instead of one of the daze/confuse channeling deities you can grab Shatter Resolve to make your negative energy channeling also inflict the shaken condition. Combine this with necromancy shenanigans(Urgathoa would approve!) and you can be handing out both "buffs" via aid another and similar actions from your undead to your summons while simultaneously debuffing and damaging enemies. Even further, the fact your "buff" comes in the form of multiple bodies means they serve another purpose: battlefield control. Hoards of undead mooks backed by elite summons make for a very potent little army with which to direct the flow of battle.
Necromancy not your thing? Be an aasimar and take the channel force line of feats. Now instead of using an undead legion to apply control you push, pull and throw enemies around like a Jedi or Sith, controlling the battlefield through manipulating positioning. The evangelist works great as a summoner because it's a natural force multiplier. The hearld caller meanwhle, due to the saved feats, can be made into a strong force divisor I.E. controller via negative channeling.
Thing is, offensive channeling is very feat intensive and kinda worthless to make the sole focus of a character, but it plays exceptionally well with a hearld caller as the archtype covers the weaknesses of a negative channeling-focused cleric(aka being weaker at high levels) while a negative channeling build makes up for the hearld caller being a weaker force multiplier by making it a potent force divisor if built correctly. An evangelist simply can't be built as an effective channeling-focused build because it gets too few feats; so this is the one place the hearld caller really shines over the evangelist in my eyes.
The Herald Caller is what a cleric archetype should be..... its definitely the best IMO.
Kudos to the designer!
Yeah, herald caller is properly strong without being too strong. It's not like the monstrosity of the monster tactician.
Why is everyone getting held up on proficiencies? A masterwork light shield has no non-proficiency penalty, and if you take the armor expert trait neither does mithral breastplate. This is a very minor tradeoff that's basically not worth talking about. How this even merits more than a brief mention compared to losing a domain is beyond me. That's huge, easily worth more than the effective three bonus feats you're getting. However, that pales in comparison to the archetype's biggest downside, which perplexingly no one has talked about: it sharply reduces your options for summoning.
With Herald Caller you can only summon monsters appropriate for your deity. This is limited to the specific list of expanded monsters on page 30 of the Summoner's Handbook, and monsters that match at least one of the alignment or elemental subtypes of your deity. Has anyone even bothered to look at how restrictive that is!? We're talking maybe 1-2 monster options per spell level, if you pick a good deity choice with a favorable alignment and elemental subtype. Pick poorly and you'll have a smattering of dead levels with literally no legal options for summoning. If your GM offers an expanded list with lots of monsters with alignment subtypes that could really flesh out this archetype, but without an expanded list there are so few options here that the archetype is utterly irredeemable.
So I'd have to disagree with everyone posting above, this archetype is a trap that guts your list of legal choices for summon monsters. Bite the bullet and take the feats instead, and use either preferred spell or greater spell specialization if you really want spontaneous conversion.
|
Why is everyone getting held up on proficiencies? A masterwork light shield has no non-proficiency penalty, and if you take the armor expert trait neither does mithral breastplate. This is a very minor tradeoff that's basically not worth talking about. How this even merits more than a brief mention compared to losing a domain is beyond me. That's huge, easily worth more than the effective three bonus feats you're getting. However, that pales in comparison to the archetype's biggest downside, which perplexingly no one has talked about: it sharply reduces your options for summoning.
With Herald Caller you can only summon monsters appropriate for your deity. This is limited to the specific list of expanded monsters on page 30 of the Summoner's Handbook, and monsters that match at least one of the alignment or elemental subtypes of your deity. Has anyone even bothered to look at how restrictive that is!? We're talking maybe 1-2 monster options per spell level, if you pick a good deity choice with a favorable alignment and elemental subtype. Pick poorly and you'll have a smattering of dead levels with literally no legal options for summoning. If your GM offers an expanded list with lots of monsters with alignment subtypes that could really flesh out this archetype, but without an expanded list there are so few options here that the archetype is utterly irredeemable.
So I'd have to disagree with everyone posting above, this archetype is a trap that guts your list of legal choices for summon monsters. Bite the bullet and take the feats instead, and use either preferred spell or greater spell specialization if you really want spontaneous conversion.
Divine Heralds (Su): A herald caller can use summon monster spells only to summon creatures particularly appropriate to her deity. This includes all creatures listed as summon monster options for priests of her deity (see Expanded Summoning for Priests on page 30), creatures whose alignment matches at least one aspect of her deity’s alignment, and creatures of an elemental subtype that matches a domain granted by the deity (if any). When summoning a creature that is normally summoned with the celestial or fiendish template, a herald caller of a chaotic deity can instead summon it with the entropic template, and a herald caller of a lawful deity can instead summon it with the resolute template (see pages 292–293 of Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2 for more information on these simple templates).
Because of these summoned monsters’ strong ties to the herald caller’s deity, the herald caller also gains specific benefits with creatures she summons with summon monster spells gained from her cleric spell list. The herald caller and her summoned monsters can understand each other’s spoken words as if they shared a common language (though this doesn’t give summoned monsters the ability to speak if they normally lack it). Whenever the herald caller uses channel energy to heal, she can include all of her summoned monsters, even if they are out of her normal channel energy radius or of a creature type that would not normally be affected. If she channels energy to deal damage, she can exclude any of her summoned monsters that would normally be affected.
This is not anywhere near as restrictive as you described.
The Herald Caller's Divine Heralds (Su), does not restrict you to alignment subtypes like the Sacred Summons feat. This means ALL ANIMALS that follow your alignment can be summoned.
In addition, if you pick any deity with Neutral as part of their alignment like Neutral Good, you can readily summon neutral monsters like Elementals. Cos as stated above, as long as a summoned monster's alignment t matches at least one aspect of your deity’s alignment, you can summon it.
For most clerics on the good to evil or law to chaos scale, you already can't cast alignment opposite spells anyway, so there really isn't that much to lose.
The only cleric summoner that loses out a little are pure neutral cleric, which might find themselves unable to summon monsters from the 4 corners of the alignment grid, LG, CG, LE and CE.
Overall, you lose very little summon choices. After all clerics are already alignment tied when it come to alignment type spells.
You're right, it talks about alignment rather than alignment subtype. Rather strange that the author write all that when they could have just written "must have an alignment within 1 step of the deity's alignment", which would have been much clearer and avoided confusion with alignment subtypes. So yeah, just pick a neutral good deity and you're good to go.
|
|
Well there are alignment issues if you don't include a line like "and creatures of an elemental subtype that matches a domain granted by the deity (if any)"
An off my head example are the CE Demon Lords, Flauros and Kostchtchie, which have the Fire domain and Ice subdomain respectively.
If the wording is just "must have an alignment within 1 step of the deity's alignment", then Herald Callers of these 2 deities would not be able to summon Fire and Ice elementals at all. Which would defeat their purpose as Herald Callers.
Ok I'll bite...how the heck does the evangelist offer double digit bonuses to everyone? Seriously I'd like to know how.
The thing that kills the evangelist to me is that you lose the ability to sack a spell to get a heal...might not be a huge deal but it sure helps in a pinch. That and really 2+ int skills just sucks... I really wanted to like the evangelist...but I just couldn't get over those limitations.
The herald caller seems pretty perfect with a reach build...start off as a martial type and as you slowly work your way to caster mode you get the nice bonus feats that go towards the summons...I would still pick up sacred summons but still you can really make some head way... Lets not forget the 4+ int. I just see him as a really nice generalist summons/heals in a pinch while working on the polearm.
The trades are pretty obvious, though they aren't explicitly listed. You trade medium armor and shields for 2 extra skill points per level. You trade a domain's abilities for abilities that would normally be gained from a domain at those levels. You trade the domain's spells for the ability to spontaneously cast summoning spells.
I'd say the ability to communicate with your summons for free to be pretty great. You are a summoner who doesn't need handle animal or linguistics.
Morale bonuses shouldn't stack. It's why many bards don't pick the heroism spell.
Edit: Ok, so that's a competence bonus. Never noticed the bonus switches type halfway through.
You're right, it talks about alignment rather than alignment subtype. Rather strange that the author write all that when they could have just written "must have an alignment within 1 step of the deity's alignment", which would have been much clearer and avoided confusion with alignment subtypes. So yeah, just pick a neutral good deity and you're good to go.
It's even broader than that - a herald caller or a LG god could summon a CG or a LE monster (provided they don't have the chaotic or evil subtype,) neither of which is within 1 alignment step from the deity.
Even a well played character can get unlucky and need some spot healing. But spontaneous heals still aren't super great. They do have their moments though.
You're right, it talks about alignment rather than alignment subtype. Rather strange that the author write all that when they could have just written "must have an alignment within 1 step of the deity's alignment", which would have been much clearer and avoided confusion with alignment subtypes. So yeah, just pick a neutral good deity and you're good to go.It's even broader than that - a herald caller or a LG god could summon a CG or a LE monster (provided they don't have the chaotic or evil subtype,) neither of which is within 1 alignment step from the deity.
No, they can't. The Summon Monster spell gains the alignment descriptor of any creature it summons, and a LG Cleric cannot cast spells of with the evil or chaos descriptors, so those monsters are out of their reach anyways. The Herald Caller doesn't override any of those rules, so those monsters are still out of their reach. In practice, Herald Caller is any monster within 1 alignment step of your deity, plus any with an elemental subtype that match a domain offered by your deity.
No, they can't. The Summon Monster spell gains the alignment descriptor of any creature it summons, and a LG Cleric cannot cast spells of with the evil or chaos descriptors, so those monsters are out of their reach anyways. The Herald Caller doesn't override any of those rules, so those monsters are still out of their reach. In practice, Herald Caller is any monster within 1 alignment step of your deity, plus any with an elemental subtype that match a domain offered by your deity.You're right, it talks about alignment rather than alignment subtype. Rather strange that the author write all that when they could have just written "must have an alignment within 1 step of the deity's alignment", which would have been much clearer and avoided confusion with alignment subtypes. So yeah, just pick a neutral good deity and you're good to go.It's even broader than that - a herald caller or a LG god could summon a CG or a LE monster (provided they don't have the chaotic or evil subtype,) neither of which is within 1 alignment step from the deity.
Not quite, Summon Monster only gains the alignment descriptor if it summons a creature with that alignment subtype. So, summoning a CE salamander is not a chaotic nor an evil spell, and a CG or a LE herald caller would both be able to summon it. Here's the text:
When you use a summoning spell to summon a creature with an alignment or elemental subtype, it is a spell of that type.
Granted, after glancing over the list, it does seem that most of the aligned creatures also have alignment subtypes, so the difference might be mostly irrelevant. The only ones I see that don't have subtypes matching their alignment are the salamander (neither chaotic nor evil) and the xill (evil but not lawful.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've read stuff from one of the archetype devs and he said he deliberately designed the class to be better for deities with a neutral component as he felt currently clerics of extreme alignments (ie LG, CE) had an advantage in terms of sacred summonining.
I personally feel its a great archetype. Yes there is a loss of domain but I think its worth it...