Cleric Class Preview

Monday, April 23, 2018

Clerics are the first spellcasters to get a preview, so you might want to look at the blog about spells before you proceed! We have a lot to say about this class, so let's cut to the chase!

Cleric Features

Clerics' key ability score is Wisdom. This means that they get an ability boost to Wisdom at 1st level, increasing their Wisdom score by 2. They also use this key ability to determine the DC of their spells. Like other things in the Playtest, spells are also affected by your proficiency. Clerics are trained in divine spells, so they add 10 + their level + their Wisdom modifier for their spell DC. They use this same proficiency for touch attacks of their spells and for spell rolls.

At 1st level, clerics get several class features, including their deity and domain, anathema, channel energy, and of course, divine spellcasting (which we'll talk more about in a bit). Your deity has a major impact on your character, and you'll see a lot of similarities to Pathfinder First Edition, such as being trained in your deity's favored weapon and getting access to one of their domains. (Come back on Friday for a ton of detail about those parts of your character!) Your choice of domain gives you a unique domain power. Powers are a special type of spell that come only from your class, and are cast with Spell Points—think of things from Pathfinder First Edition like domain powers or a wizard's school powers. Powers are stronger than cantrips, but not as strong as your best spells. A cleric's initial power costs 1 Spell Point to cast. She gets a starting pool of Spell Points equal to her Wisdom, and can increase this by taking feats later on. If she gets other ways to cast powers of a different type, she combines all her Spell Points into one pool.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

A cleric's deity also imposes some restrictions on her, collectively called anathema, representing acts that go against her deity's will and teachings or violate their alignment requirements. Though we give some examples of anathemic acts for the various gods and goddesses—like how it's anathema for a cleric of Sarenrae, goddess of honesty, to cast a spell that would help her lie better—we wanted to leave this broad enough that the GM and player can make the final say in how these work in their games. Many other classes that follow similar restrictions have their own anathema. Care to guess which ones those might be?

As you go up in level, you'll increase your proficiency rank with divine spells to expert at 12th level, master at 16th level, and legendary at 19th level.

Divine Spellcasting

Of course, the cleric's main feature is her divine spellcasting! At 1st level, you can cast two 1st-level spells each day, which you prepare from the selections on the divine spell list. Every time you gain an even level, you get one more spell slot per day of your highest level of spells (so at 2nd level, a cleric has three 1st-level spells per day). At every odd level, you get access to a new level of spells. You'll always be able to cast two or three spells of your highest level and three spells of every lower level, plus your cantrips and powers. Like your other spells, your 9th-level spells cap out at three spells, so at 19th level you become legendary in spellcasting instead. So what about your 10th-level spells? We'll talk about those in a future blog!

We made your number of spells more straightforward by eliminating Pathfinder First Edition's bonus spells granted for having a high ability score. Your Wisdom still matters greatly for your spell DC and other things important to clerics, but giving it slightly less weight makes it more practical now for you to play a cleric of Gorum who focuses on Strength and uses spells that don't involve your spell DC or that have decent effects even if your enemy succeeds at its save.

Now, it's not quite true to say those are all the spells you get. Remember channel energy from earlier? This feature lets you cast heal or harm an additional number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier! Moreover, these spells are heightened to the highest level of spell you cast, so as soon as you hit 3rd level, all those heal or harm spells become 2nd-level spells. This replaces the Pathfinder First Edition cleric's spontaneous healing, which required her to sacrifice her prepared spells to make room for a heal spell. Now, you can use your channel energy to cast these extra heal spells, and if you think you'll need more healing than this provides, you can always prepare more heal spells using your normal spell slots (in fact, this can be a good use of some of your lower-level slots as you go up in level). Your choice of deity determines which spell you can cast with channel energy. Pharasma lets you cast heal, Rovagug makes you cast harm, and someone like Abadar or Lamashtu lets you choose your path at 1st level.

Cleric Feats

As we've mentioned before, we always wanted Pathfinder Second Edition to provide all classes with a sizeable number of options for customization. The cleric was one of the classes that had the most to gain, since a cleric got a bunch of class features at 1st level, then crickets for the rest of her career. The cleric's new class feats give her all sorts of new flexibility, so let's look at some of those!

At 1st level, you might pick Communal healing so when you cast heal to tend to a creature other than yourself, you regain some Hit Points too, or you might take Turn Undead, which forces undead that critically fail their saves against your heal spells to flee from you. (This works great with the 3-action version of heal!) You could also pick Expanded Domain to explore your deity's domains further, gaining the initial power from a different domain than the first one you chose. You can select this feat twice, letting you delve into a maximum of three domains!

At higher levels, you gain new cleric feats at every even level, except levels 12 and 16, when you increase your spell DCs instead. At 4th level, you might pick up Advanced Domain to gain the advanced power from one of your domains. At 8th level, if you channel positive energy, you could take the Channeled Succor feat so you can cast remove curse, remove disease, remove paralysis, or restoration with your channeled energy spells instead of just heal.

Let's take a look at a category of feats clerics have plenty of: metamagic! You can activate a metamagic feat when you cast a spell. This increases the number of actions required to cast the spell and modifies the spell in some way. At 1st level, for example, you could select Reach Spell to let you add a Somatic Casting action to a spell and increase its range by 30 feet (or to make a touch spell into a ranged touch spell with a 30-foot range). This is a metamagic feat lots of spellcasters can take, but the cleric gets some others that are more specific to her as well. Command Undead, a 4th-level feat, lets you change the effects of any harm spell you cast to instead take control of an undead creature. Heroic Recovery, an 8th-level feat, adds a powerful buff to heal spells: you can target one creature at range using 3 actions (the 2-action version of heal, plus another action to activate the metamagic) to heal them for a solid number of hit points and also give them a bonus to attack and damage rolls and a 5-foot increase to its speed for 1 round. And if you use a lot of metamagic, the 20th-level cleric feat Metamagic Channeler is a great choice—it lets you apply a metamagic feat to a harm or heal spell without adding an action to its casting!

So what are your favorite parts of the new cleric? Any builds you're itching to try out? How about concepts you made in Pathfinder First Edition you'd like to take another shot at?

Logan Bonner
Designer

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Tags: Clerics Kyra Pathfinder Playtest Wayne Reynolds
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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

It's right in the first quote, DR.

They are spells you can cast "at will". And later, "Cantrips aren't 0-level spells; they're spells you can perform all day".

That right there tells you that they don't occupy spell slots, since you can only cast a given spell or spell slot a limited number of times (probably three). Not at will, and not all day.

So I stand by what I said before about cantrips (and, presumably, oraisons): "we know that cantrips in PF2.0 are unlimited use, they do not occupy spell slots used for other spells, and they are automatically heightened to the caster's current level."

I don't know what other spin can be put on expressions like "at will" and "all day".

Silver Crusade

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FWIW this text seems to answer the "do cantrips use spell slots" question pretty clearly.

Blog wrote:
Every time you gain an even level, you get one more spell slot per day of your highest level of spells (so at 2nd level, a cleric has three 1st-level spells per day). At every odd level, you get access to a new level of spells. You'll always be able to cast two or three spells of your highest level and three spells of every lower level, plus your cantrips and powers

You get three slots of every spell level, plus cantrips. If cantrips took slots that wouldn't be true.


Cantrips using up your normal spell slots would be ridiculous as it would leave you with extremely limited options at first level.

https://youtu.be/Wl4MsLrq3M8?t=1408
Kyra casts Bless.

https://youtu.be/Wl4MsLrq3M8?t=2517
Explanation of cantrips as "unlimited spells". Kyra has prepared to "all of those" and can cast them as often as she wants.

With only 2 spell slots per day at level one, casting one Bless (from a spell slot) and still having access to "all of those" cantrips doesn't sound like cantrips take up any spell slot.

So yeah, I think we can assume that cantrips are either just spells known without any slot management at all, or they have their own individual spell slots which are independent from your 1st-9th level slots.

Quote:
"Shield" memorized as a fist level spell (or cantrip) will probably last a extremely short time and/or give a spall AC boost. Memorized as a higher level spell it will become better.

Shield was actually used in teh Glass Cannon podcast. It's a cantrip, costs one action to use and increases your AC by 2. It also give you access to the shield block reaction if you are attacked. So it's basically the same thing as the raise shield action.

I think it was mentioned blocking with the Shield spell will absorb 4 damage, which is quite a bit less than a regular shield absorbs. I assume that's the number that increases with automatic hightening of the spell at later levels.

Liberty's Edge

kitmehsu wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:


Mark blog wrote:

Cantrips

In the playtest, cantrips are spells you can cast at will, but they are no longer level 0. Instead, they automatically heighten to the highest spell level you can currently cast. That means if you're 5th level, your ray of frost is 3rd level and deals more damage, and your light cantrip is better at counteracting magical darkness.

Not here.

I think you are missing that they automatically, as in without imput, are cast at your highest level of spell, as caster level or character level scalling of spells does not exist in pf2. Which means, if they where prepared in spell slots you would either have, assuming a character who has fifth level as their highest spell level, cantrips of the fifth level prepared in first level slots(which is extremely counter intuitive) or be forced to use your highest slots to use cantrips(which severely linits choice either making highest level spells or cantrips pointless since they all compete for the same slots)

So with the scaling indicated, it seams most likely, though not explicitly confirmed, that your cantrips are independent of your spell slots.

So, why the cleric blog don't say anything about how many cantrips we have and how we acquire them?

That seem a basic information to share when you are speaking about the number of spells and powers you have. Knowing that I have 1, 2 or 10 always available cantrips outside my spell slots change a character level of flexibility a lot.

Some are acquired through our race selection, so maybe that is the reason. But that mean that non spellcaster will have a level of access to them. A rogue probably will find a way to get Detect magic (I think to have read that it is a cantrip) and that will have some serious effect. Magical traps with a lower spell level than that of the rouge will be extremely easy to detect, higher level magical traps will be very hard (I assume that they are at least as hard to detect as illusions).


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Diego Rossi wrote:
kitmehsu wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:


Mark blog wrote:

Cantrips

In the playtest, cantrips are spells you can cast at will, but they are no longer level 0. Instead, they automatically heighten to the highest spell level you can currently cast. That means if you're 5th level, your ray of frost is 3rd level and deals more damage, and your light cantrip is better at counteracting magical darkness.

Not here.

I think you are missing that they automatically, as in without imput, are cast at your highest level of spell, as caster level or character level scalling of spells does not exist in pf2. Which means, if they where prepared in spell slots you would either have, assuming a character who has fifth level as their highest spell level, cantrips of the fifth level prepared in first level slots(which is extremely counter intuitive) or be forced to use your highest slots to use cantrips(which severely linits choice either making highest level spells or cantrips pointless since they all compete for the same slots)

So with the scaling indicated, it seams most likely, though not explicitly confirmed, that your cantrips are independent of your spell slots.
So, why the cleric blog don't say anything about how many cantrips we have?

I dunno. I mean they also didn't mention skill proficiency, Armour proficiency, perception. Can't fit everything in, so they likely highlighted what they thought was salient and interesting.

Liberty's Edge

Yeah, the rogue Blog didn't mention Evasion or Dex-to-damage despite Mark assuring us that the first is a thing and the Demo Games proving the second (though whether Rogue specific who knows).

Sometimes stuff gets left out.

Liberty's Edge

As the number of cantrip has a heavy impact on the value of the spell slot it don't seem a negligible factor in evaluating if the 3 spell slots/level limit is a big downgrade in flexibility or not.

Liberty's Edge

Diego Rossi wrote:
As the number of cantrip has a heavy impact on the value of the spell slot it don't seem a negligible factor in evaluating if the 3 spell slots/level limit is a big downgrade in flexibility or not.

Oh, absolutely. That just doesn't mean it will end up in the blog.

Though, personally, I'm betting on three for symmetry. Which is enough to have a couple of utility options (Light and Create Water, for example) plus an attack cantrip (if one exists).

Liberty's Edge

Diego Rossi wrote:
And 1d10 damage against full dice, race bonus hit point and constitution bonus? A warrior goblin will have something like 15 hp. Three casting. if you hit every time. Hope your wizard is very resistant to damage.

I suspect most goblins will not be 1st level characters built with the PC rules (that's the equivalent of a CR 1 monster, probably). 'Level 0' monsters have been confirmed as a thing, after all.

And regardless, that's 5.5 damage average. That's the same as a Str 12 archer, which is decent first level damage or someone with a +3 stat mod using a dagger. Even if enemies are more durable (and all don't seem to be) it's comparable to the damage everyone else is doing per attack (if on the low-ish end).


Deadmanwalking wrote:
Yeah, the rogue Blog didn't mention Evasion or Dex-to-damage despite Mark assuring us that the first is a thing and the Demo Games proving the second (though whether Rogue specific who knows).

They did? Ick.

(Emphasis within quote mine).

Liberty's Edge

dysartes wrote:

They did? Ick.

(Emphasis within quote mine).

Quite possibly only for Rogues, but they had Merisiel doing 1d6+4 with a rapier and Dex 18.


I'm sure we'll get a blog specifically about cantrips. It will probably be a Friday blog, maybe the same week we get Wizard or Sorcerer as a Monday blog.

Dark Archive

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I would think it would be a magic school blog on the Friday if the wizard is a Monday


I wonder if deity choice will potentially add Cantrips/Orisons the way it does regular spells?


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Deadmanwalking wrote:
dysartes wrote:

They did? Ick.

(Emphasis within quote mine).

Quite possibly only for Rogues, but they had Merisiel doing 1d6+4 with a rapier and Dex 18.

I think it will be for everybody on certain weapons. They seem to want every weapon to have special traits. I imagine there might be two Dex traits for melee weapons, Finesse (Dex to hit) and Precision (Dex to damage.) The Rapier is a good choice to have both of those, we know the Scimitar has at least two traits after all (one that rewards hitting one person multiple times and one that rewards hitting different people).


I have seen v.little to be optimistic about so far regarding the cleric...out of the classes previewed so far, its definitely the limpest.

1) Obligatory pos/neg channelling still hanging around like a bad smell
2) Down to 1 domain
3) Still gish
4) Domain powers/spells looking potentially meh
5) Healbot has raised its head

Now obviously until we see all the details, final opinions cant be given, but I will say that Paizo track record with clerics is dire in my opinion.

They said at the start of the playtest, the problem with the PF1 cleric and customisation options was down to the fact that the core cleric was so bland.....

But they were the ones that designed core cleric!!!!

Also in PF1, cleric archetypes are just poor overall....but this cannot be blamed on the core chassis. Crucially, Paizo were just unwilling to make the trade outs that would have made the cleric more engaging to play. Taking it one step further, there was no reason why cleric could not have been incorporated into 'Unchained'.

I hope Im proved wrong for PF2, but the signs are not promising. Maybe my views are skewed by the fact that I dont like some of the new mechanics for gameplay that Im seeing in PF2. It just doesnt feel right. The terminology seems quite confusing.

I could end up being one of those people that hangs up their PF boots when the new version is released.... :(((


doc roc wrote:

They said at the start of the playtest, the problem with the PF1 cleric and customisation options was down to the fact that the core cleric was so bland.....

But they were the ones that designed core cleric!!!!

Also in PF1, cleric archetypes are just poor overall....but this cannot be blamed on the core chassis. Crucially, Paizo were just unwilling to make the trade outs that would have made the cleric more engaging to play. Taking it one step further, there was no reason why cleric could not have been incorporated into 'Unchained'.

They also said they did not design the core cleric with archetypes in mind, because archetypes weren't yet a thing when they designed the cleric. I not sure what further admission you want out of them. They took the blame already.

Now, as to why they didn't make an unchained version of the cleric, that's a better question. My guess is they didn't want to invalidate what few archetypes clerics did have, or create a situation like with monks where they have to make archetypes work for two different classes, or pick the classic version only. But that's only a guess.

In any case, they're redesigning it now. Having the ability to be within shouting distance of your PF1 character seems to be a design goal, but at least there's a bit more freedom as well.


Yeah the new edition really gives them the chance to fix some of those issues.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
AnimatedPaper wrote:
doc roc wrote:

They said at the start of the playtest, the problem with the PF1 cleric and customisation options was down to the fact that the core cleric was so bland.....

But they were the ones that designed core cleric!!!!

Also in PF1, cleric archetypes are just poor overall....but this cannot be blamed on the core chassis. Crucially, Paizo were just unwilling to make the trade outs that would have made the cleric more engaging to play. Taking it one step further, there was no reason why cleric could not have been incorporated into 'Unchained'.

They also said they did not design the core cleric with archetypes in mind, because archetypes weren't yet a thing when they designed the cleric. I not sure what further admission you want out of them. They took the blame already.

Now, as to why they didn't make an unchained version of the cleric, that's a better question. My guess is they didn't want to invalidate what few archetypes clerics did have, or create a situation like with monks where they have to make archetypes work for two different classes, or pick the classic version only. But that's only a guess.

In any case, they're redesigning it now. Having the ability to be within shouting distance of your PF1 character seems to be a design goal, but at least there's a bit more freedom as well.

On Unchained: they only did 4 unchained classes. 2 of them were upgrading core classes that were otherwise way too weak. The third was re-balancing a broken class. And the fourth was made simpler to understand and utilize. All of these had pretty functional reasons for needing redesign. The cleric was already plenty functional; it was just also boring. It was arguably overpowered, but only because 9th level casting is OP and fixing that was beyond the scope of an unchained class.

The only thing I think you could even make a case for swapping the cleric in with one of those 4 would be the barbarian. And I don't think you'd have that good a case. Even if you want to talk about a hypothetical second batch of unchained classes, I don't think cleric would make my top 5 because there were other classes with larger structural issues. (Fighter, Gunslinger, Swashbuckler, Skald, and maybe cavalier.)


I would move the Umonk to the same category as Ubarb. It is possible to play a chained monk at or above the level of a Umonk, but it requires knowledge of archetype stacking.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Gunslinger, Swashbuckler, and Cavalier were more fleshed-out variants of Fighter.

As a result, fixing Fighter could have indirectly fixed all of those with far less effort.

Adding in Paladin, Cleric, and Skald as other classes 'to be fixed' in an 'Unchained 2' would have probably been the way to go.

...it probably would have provoked the same sort of gnashing of teeth and frustration as all current discussions about Cleric and Paladin have been provoking...


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Captain Morgan wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:
doc roc wrote:

They said at the start of the playtest, the problem with the PF1 cleric and customisation options was down to the fact that the core cleric was so bland.....

But they were the ones that designed core cleric!!!!

Also in PF1, cleric archetypes are just poor overall....but this cannot be blamed on the core chassis. Crucially, Paizo were just unwilling to make the trade outs that would have made the cleric more engaging to play. Taking it one step further, there was no reason why cleric could not have been incorporated into 'Unchained'.

They also said they did not design the core cleric with archetypes in mind, because archetypes weren't yet a thing when they designed the cleric. I not sure what further admission you want out of them. They took the blame already.

Now, as to why they didn't make an unchained version of the cleric, that's a better question. My guess is they didn't want to invalidate what few archetypes clerics did have, or create a situation like with monks where they have to make archetypes work for two different classes, or pick the classic version only. But that's only a guess.

In any case, they're redesigning it now. Having the ability to be within shouting distance of your PF1 character seems to be a design goal, but at least there's a bit more freedom as well.

On Unchained: they only did 4 unchained classes. 2 of them were upgrading core classes that were otherwise way too weak. The third was re-balancing a broken class. And the fourth was made simpler to understand and utilize. All of these had pretty functional reasons for needing redesign. The cleric was already plenty functional; it was just also boring. It was arguably overpowered, but only because 9th level casting is OP and fixing that was beyond the scope of an unchained class.

The only thing I think you could even make a case for swapping the cleric in with one of those 4 would be the barbarian. And I don't think you'd have that good a case. Even...

They really did 5, since Combat Stamina was written in such a way that it not only was an upgrade to fighters in the mechanical sense, but it also opened doors for them to skip feat prerequisites similarly to how newer classes like Swashbuckler and Brawler had baked into the 1st level mechanics for the class. It also gave them a much coveted resource in how it allowed you to actually boost your attack rolls and/or combat maneuvers.

Shame it was considered so complicated that no one considered reading it beyond just how it interacted with feats.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
The Sideromancer wrote:
I would move the Umonk to the same category as Ubarb. It is possible to play a chained monk at or above the level of a Umonk, but it requires knowledge of archetype stacking.

Aye, that's the asterisk on the Unchained Monk to be sure, but at the same time it's a significant step up from the core monk and a LOT easier to hand to a new person and have them make a functional character. The Ubarb is also a lot easier to handle for a new person, but the core barb was still pretty intuitive for building and coming out functional.


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AnimatedPaper wrote:


They also said they did not design the core cleric with archetypes in mind, because archetypes weren't yet a thing when they designed the cleric. I not sure what further admission you want out of them. They took the blame already.

I know they mentioned that and I see what youre saying, but I think youre missing the point.

Irrespective of the fact that they hadnt considered archetypes at the time it still doesnt change the fact that:

1) Paizo designed the cleric blandly and still even when comparing it against other core classes too

But more importantly..

2) When given the opportunity to change things around with said archetypes they didnt.

Hence my lack of optimism regarding the current cleric.....

Silver Crusade Contributor

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I suspect that, with the cleric being one of the most notoriously powerful classes of 3.5, giving them archetypes that amount to "here's a bunch of stuff at no cost" would not have been terribly well-received. ^_^


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Can cleric of Torag use their warhammer as divine focus? can clerics use a shield painted with their god's insignia as divine focus?

Scarab Sages

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And can you perform your somatic components with your shield or favored weapon? It would be hugely annoying to have to sheathe and redraw one’s weapon all the time when casting while fighting. (Or is the light shield still an option in PF2?)


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Diego Rossi wrote:
Even the developers feel that way [that over time there's going to be lots of expansions], but they see it as a selling point.

One of the selling points of D&D 5e is that it has had (and was planned to have) very few rules expansions and that every rule element was going to be as rigorously playtested as WotC could manage. PF2e has very much wanted to differentiate itself from D&D 5e and one of the ways it's doing it is by making characters very customisable with lots of options (and an implied expanding list of options). One of the reasons I play PF instead of 5e is the dearth of first party support for character options in D&D 5e.


John Lynch 106 wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:
Even the developers feel that way [that over time there's going to be lots of expansions], but they see it as a selling point.
One of the selling points of D&D 5e is that it has had (and was planned to have) very few rules expansions and that every rule element was going to be as rigorously playtested as WotC could manage. PF2e has very much wanted to differentiate itself from D&D 5e and one of the ways it's doing it is by making characters very customisable with lots of options (and an implied expanding list of options). One of the reasons I play PF instead of 5e is the dearth of first party support for character options in D&D 5e.

Yeah, I instantly recognised the glacial and conservative release schedule, so converted a bunch of classes, prestige classes, spells, feats, and monsters to 5th Ed.

The best part of 5th Ed is how easily hackable it is, you can push it more towards another edition's style of play (and mechanics), it's basically 3rd Ed Lite.


I've been sharing this, and responses have been pretty positive so far. Love to see the cleric getting some love!

Clerics in 1e are pretty badass. I've seen a dropoff in their being played though, past 9th or so level.

This is sad, because it's where they really start to shine.

But it's usually because buffer is a great role; it's just underappreciated, sometimes. The ease of/encouragement towards making glass canons only exacerbated this.

It's one of the many, many reasons I've loved hearing about the update to the Heal skill. It isn't just on one person any longer, and this ultimately puts more choice and power into the hands of those players.


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Kalindlara wrote:
I suspect that, with the cleric being one of the most notoriously powerful classes of 3.5, giving them archetypes that amount to "here's a bunch of stuff at no cost" would not have been terribly well-received. ^_^

As is often the case, you have confused "More relevant options" with "More power".....

Silver Crusade Contributor

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Me and a huge swath of players for the last eighteen years, apparently. The term "CoDzilla" did not come out of nowhere.

Thank you for the condescension, though. I'll be sure to add it to my collection.


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Kalindlara wrote:

Me and a huge swath of players for the last eighteen years, apparently. The term "CoDzilla" did not come out of nowhere.

Thank you for the condescension, though. I'll be sure to add it to my collection.

Not so fast.... you are the one using the existence of "CoDzilla" in D&D 3.5.... I repeat D&D 3.5....as some kind of excuse for the poor Paizo design of the core cleric in PF1 that resulted in basically all of the subsequent problems the class has/had.

D&D 3.5 is irrelevant to the debate.

And not only that it conveniently ignores the fact that the Druid (another component of your "3.5 CoDzilla") has a far better core design than the cleric. And it ignores the fact that the wizard (aka God Wizard) actually in many ways got a power upgrade in transitioning to PF1.

In terms of the cleric, Paizo made the choice to have such a bland chassis and Paizo made the choice to not do anything of note with the archetypes.

And for all your talk about 3.5, I could equally point to the huge number of people since Day 1 of PF who have wanted a redesign of the cleric.

The fact that Paizo themselves admit the problem is 100% proof of my point. The fact that cleric in D&D 3.5 (alongside several other classes) was v.powerful has nothing to do with the current discussion.

I repeat....AGAIN.... we are not talking about making the cleric more powerful.


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doc roc wrote:
Kalindlara wrote:

Me and a huge swath of players for the last eighteen years, apparently. The term "CoDzilla" did not come out of nowhere.

Thank you for the condescension, though. I'll be sure to add it to my collection.

Not so fast.... you are the one using the existence of "CoDzilla" in D&D 3.5.... I repeat D&D 3.5....as some kind of excuse for the poor Paizo design of the core cleric in PF1 that resulted in basically all of the subsequent problems the class has/had.

D&D 3.5 is irrelevant to the debate.

And not only that it conveniently ignores the fact that the Druid (another component of your "3.5 CoDzilla") has a far better core design than the cleric. And it ignores the fact that the wizard (aka God Wizard) actually in many ways got a power upgrade in transitioning to PF1.

In terms of the cleric, Paizo made the choice to have such a bland chassis and Paizo made the choice to not do anything of note with the archetypes.

And for all your talk about 3.5, I could equally point to the huge number of people since Day 1 of PF who have wanted a redesign of the cleric.

The fact that Paizo themselves admit the problem is 100% proof of my point. The fact that cleric in D&D 3.5 (alongside several other classes) was v.powerful has nothing to do with the current discussion.

I repeat....AGAIN.... we are not talking about making the cleric more powerful.

Stop just stop once you start being rude you already ruined your stance take a step back and apologize for being rude then rephrase what your trying to say. It will help you make your point in such a way that people will listen instead of just ignore your post or alternatively choose the opposite side just to annoy you. I've seen it happen.

Just trying to help ya out.


Please, get rid of the 3rd edition "Clerics cast with Wisdom, but their other abilities are Charisma-based" insanity. EVERY other casting class, arcane or divine, uses only 1 stat for both spells and abilities. When you updated the paladin for pathfinder, you consolidated its abilities and spells both under Charisma. When you created the warpriest as a cleric/paladin/fighter hybrid, you gave it both spells and powers under Wisdom (even though you cloned paladin abilties for it). so WHY are you making the 2nd edition clerics need both Wisdom and Charisma!?!?!?!?!?!?

End the insanity and hate against clerics and allow them to focus on things besides healing... please.

Silver Crusade Contributor

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Personally, I'd rather change all primary spellcasting classes to rely on multiple ability scores.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I'll be the first to point out how lacking the CRB Cleric was in meaningful class features and player choices. It's one of the many reasons I never played one and generally avoided using them as a GM. However, it's just not true that Paizo didn't attempt to expand on the class or give them more meaningful decisions over time. Archetypes such as the Ecclesitheurge, Theologian, and Evangelist allowed you to focus more effectively on spellcasting with added versatility, focus, or even access to new spontaneous spells. Melee clerics were already strong and then the Crusader archetype and Divine Fighting Styles made them better. Channel Energy went from a mostly-boring heal ability to the most varied class feature in the game (aside from spells) with the inclusion of Variant Channeling and deity-specific channeling feats like Fateful Channel and Liberation Channel. Domains were expanded greatly with the inclusion of Inquisitions, Subdomains, and archetypes such as Separatist that allowed access to new deity-domain combos. Plus every book that added new spells made the class instantly more versatile since they can prepare any spell on their list!

PF1 Clerics are never going to be that interesting to me, but that's hardly due to a lack of effort on Paizo's part to give them interesting choices. That said, the addition of Class Feats and the boost to Domain Powers along with the inclusion of Subdomains and Archetypes in PF2 Core points towards a serious effort to fix the issues that PF1 CRB Cleric had. I'm rather looking forward to how it turns out in the end.


wanderer82 wrote:
Please, get rid of the 3rd edition "Clerics cast with Wisdom, but their other abilities are Charisma-based" insanity. EVERY other casting class, arcane or divine, uses only 1 stat for both spells and abilities. {. . .}

Arcanist begs to differ if you don't avoid all the Arcane Exploits that use Charisma. Certain builds of Shaman beg to differ. Even Druid slightly begs to differ (Wild Empathy, although that isn't much). If you go beyond arcane and divine, Psychic also begs to differ, and you can avoid one of Wisdom or Charisma, but you can't avoid both. And for practical purposes, almost any caster that isn't Intelligence-based and isn't some archetype with extra skill ranks at least somewhat begs to differ, having to pump some into Intelligence just to get enough skill ranks per level to be able to do much other than cast spells.


Kalindlara wrote:
Personally, I'd rather change all primary spellcasting classes to rely on multiple ability scores.

I too would like more MAD, in general, it got to a point in 4th Ed, where you could finagle it so everything triggered off of 1 score - I use my Charisma for everything!

Scarab Sages

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I believe 4e had some secondary stat dependence for Wizards, depending on what magic implement they used. I thought that was a nice idea. For instance, in PF2, you could have Cha-based effects for enchantment specialists, Dex-based ones for evocation specialists, Wis-based ones for abjuration specialists, etc.

Sorcerers, having merged with Kineticists in my best-case scenario, might then have Con as a secondary ability. Given that pretty much every single character is going to advance Con at each ability score increase, given that you get 4 of them, having Con as a secondary casting stat is not going to be a balancing issue.


The new handling of stat increases really takes the penalty out of MAD classes. So comparing PF1 and PF2 MAD is an apples to oranges comparison.


Catharsis wrote:

I believe 4e had some secondary stat dependence for Wizards, depending on what magic implement they used. I thought that was a nice idea. For instance, in PF2, you could have Cha-based effects for enchantment specialists, Dex-based ones for evocation specialists, Wis-based ones for abjuration specialists, etc.

Sorcerers, having merged with Kineticists in my best-case scenario, might then have Con as a secondary ability. Given that pretty much every single character is going to advance Con at each ability score increase, given that you get 4 of them, having Con as a secondary casting stat is not going to be a balancing issue.

True, they also have the choice (out of two) of where to put your secondary racial ability score increase, which is now taken care of with the racial, floating bonus of PF2.


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Doktor Weasel wrote:
The new handling of stat increases really takes the penalty out of MAD classes. So comparing PF1 and PF2 MAD is an apples to oranges comparison.

Yes, looks like we will not be seeing too many 18, 18, 18, 8, 8, 8-type characters.

Silver Crusade Contributor

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Catharsis wrote:
I believe 4e had some secondary stat dependence for Wizards, depending on what magic implement they used. I thought that was a nice idea. For instance, in PF2, you could have Cha-based effects for enchantment specialists, Dex-based ones for evocation specialists, Wis-based ones for abjuration specialists, etc.

It's worth noting that 2e had its own variation on this, whereby you could only specialize if you had high Int and another high score depending on the specialization. So there's plenty of interesting precedent for this.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing something like this - it'd be cool if specialist wizards felt very unique. (At the very least, I'd love to see forbidden schools set by your specialization make a return. Universalists got crushed by the current anything-goes approach to wizard specialization.)


Assuming wizards get the same number of spell slots per level as a cleric, with no bonus spells due to high int and probably no school spells, burning two slots to cast one spell seems punishing enough for specialist wizards. You can cast your forbidden schools, but that is 2/3s of your spell casting for that level.


doc roc wrote:
Kalindlara wrote:

Me and a huge swath of players for the last eighteen years, apparently. The term "CoDzilla" did not come out of nowhere.

Thank you for the condescension, though. I'll be sure to add it to my collection.

In terms of the cleric, Paizo made the choice to have such a bland chassis and Paizo made the choice to not do anything of note with the archetypes.

And for all your talk about 3.5, I could equally point to the huge number of people since Day 1 of PF who have wanted a redesign of the cleric.

The fact that Paizo themselves admit the problem is 100% proof of my point. The fact that cleric in D&D 3.5 (alongside several other classes) was v.powerful has nothing to do with the current discussion.

I repeat....AGAIN.... we are not talking about making the cleric more powerful.

One of the reasons I believe that the cleric in Pathfinder has so few options was that it was extremely overpowered (and flexible!) in the Pathfinder Playtest (alpha and beta, 2008).

Examples:


  • Each domain gave a domain ability at 1st, 2nd, 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 20th level.
  • The Magic domain's first-level ability: Mage Hand that can wield a weapon and adds wisdom modifier to-hit and damage
  • Travel domain's first-level ability: swift-action dimension door (can transport allies)
  • Channel Positive energy damages undead, causes them to flee, AND heals allies

It seems that this was realised in the later part of the playtest, and in order to ensure that it wasn't broken, domains were massively watered down, and clerics only get abilities at 1st, 6th or 8th, and maybe one ability above 10th level.

As this is also inconsistent, it makes designing archetypes very difficult, as they have nothing to "trade out".

I would very much like Jason Buhlman to explain his side of this story.


Vidmaster7 wrote:


Stop just stop once you start being rude you already ruined your stance take a step back and apologize for being rude then rephrase what your trying to say. It will help you make your point in such a way that people will listen instead of just ignore your post or alternatively choose the opposite side just to annoy you. I've seen it happen.

Just trying to help ya out.

Nothing in my post was remotely "rude".

Defending your point with evidence and identifying flaws in others is not rude. Its called proper debate. The fact that someone doesn't like what you're saying doesn't by definition make it wrong! Evidence is required.

When people start swearing and other such stuff then its rude.


Mekkis wrote:


As this is also inconsistent, it makes designing archetypes very difficult, as they have nothing to "trade out".

I would very much like Jason Buhlman to explain his side of this story.

I disagree. Even with a bland chassis more effort could have been made with archetypes and trade outs.

Medium armour + shield + spont cure/harm could have traded out easily whenever a more focussed archetype was needed. It very rarely was.

Channel energy was like a sacred cow being barely ever touched. By trading the entire ability out you free up a big chunk of design space for something relevant.

If you really wanted to go full on trade out, light armour and deity weapon could go. Didn't happen.

There was nothing stopping them doing a half BAB/D6 HD archetype which would have freed up loads of space. The closest was the Cardinal... which was pretty much universally derided.

Too often an archetype traded out more than it gained or made half hearted trades instead of going for it. See above and below!!

The Ecclesitheurge was a great example. Lovely idea.... poorly executed.

There is a reason why vanilla cleric was still played so often.... the archetypes were just plain bad, so it was pointless. Trying to be a niche cleric was just not worth it.

Why do you think Herald Caller got love? All of a sudden you had an archetype that made some trade outs and got something meaningful in return.

IMO Paizo just didn't make the effort. They knew the chassis was bland but they weren't brave enough with the archetypes.

Search "cleric boring"..... see how many hits you get!!!


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Scarab Sages

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OMG, that PF1 playtest Travel domain power was SO GOOD. A certain overpowered lamia matriarch turned my Wizard friend to stone and pushed him off the tower, so my Desnan Sarabelle leapt after him (same initiative score by chance), grabbed him in mid-air, and teleported him to safety before he could shatter into sand. :D

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