Warpriest Class Deck Preview

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

It's time for a look at the upcoming Warpriest Class Deck. As the song reminds us, warpriests are good for absolutely everything. While we all know the iconic paladin Seelah is objectively the best character ever, what you might not know is that my favorite character is actually not Seelah, but rather Oloch. In fact, I love warpriests across the board. Let's meet some now!

First up is Oloch. In Skull & Shackles, Oloch combined solid combat and seafaring skills with strong support powers. A devout Gorumite, our new take on Oloch here is more self-reliant, perhaps even a little bit selfish. My guide for this character was a line from his Meet the Iconics post: "Oloch is a quiet, brooding warrior with a disturbing love of violence."

"...relishing the red rush of battle..."

This Oloch shows a personal take on the minor blessing power, but if you need aid in a fight, he can contribute some divine aid—or just charge into the fray himself. During playtesting, our phrase for this Oloch was "Gorum helps those who beat the crap out of things."

Next up is the forgepriest Amli Faldar. We found Amli in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting book Belkzen, Hold of the Orc Hordes. Amli is a follower of Kols the Oath-Keeper, the dwarven demigod of duty.

The hammer is also named Oathkeeper.

As a member of the Oathkeepers, Amli adds dwarven toughness and Craft to Melee and Divine skills. She's good at using both weapons and armor, and she can help others who do so as well.

Finally we see Uliah Muharim, a charismatic member of the Wagons of Light, a group secretly working to combat the undead. We found Uliah in the Pathfinder Player Companion book Black Markets. Like many in the Wagons of Light, Uliah is a devotee of Sarenrae, the Everlight.

Shown here NOT in disguise...

Uliah is our most divine-focused warpriest character, and is also the best with allies, especially mounts. Our hope with Uliah is that you will enjoy having him charge around from location to location, and so will everyone else in your party.

For this class deck, we're trying a few new things. We've added some boons for each character's deity. For Gorum, we added a series of spiked armor cards, reflecting the favor of Our Lord in Iron. For Kols Son of Torag, we added a series of hammers, weapons that aid in crafting. For Sarenrae, we added a variety of healing and anti-undead powers, and also a theme built around mount allies.

Look at all the holy candles...

Another new concept in this class deck has to do with deities' favored weapons and a new concept for cards list powers. The idea came from various attempts to make the favored weapons available to the characters even though they aren't—and shouldn't be—Basic cards. On the cards list side of each character card, in the area where a cohort might be listed, we have a new instruction. For example, Amli's is You may treat 1 copy of the weapon Warhammer as if it says "Owner: Amli." This is somewhat like a character power, but it applies only during deckbuilding and rebuilding. Using this technique, we can give Oloch a Greatsword, Amli a Warhammer, and Uliah a Scimitar.

A trio of starting weapons—in the right hands.

We might adopt this concept to other uses in the future. For game designers, this is interesting new space, a way to smooth over some rough edges and also add some fun new knobs and levers, without adding more powers to an already crowded powers list. One thing that's key to this idea is that it's "fire and forget"—you use it when you need to see the cards list, but you don't need to look at it when you're playing a scenario. Please try this out and let us know what you think!

One final note. Those PACG players who like to dig into the background of these characters might recognize some names from the Pathfinder resources mentioned here. When we were looking for existing warpriests to inspire the class deck characters, we found several potential examples. When we discovered that both Ron Lundeen and Tyler Beck had (independently) worked on some, we knew we'd found our characters. Special thanks to both Ron and Tyler for inspiring the characters and for playtesting and feedback on these (and many, many other) parts of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game—and thanks again to all of our amazing fans, playtesters, players, and contributors!

Chad Brown
Adventure Card Game Lead Developer