Golo's page

With Warpriest’s other powers focusing around buffing swiftly and frequently I would love to see a majority of these blessings be changed away from also being a buffing action.

I really would like some part of this class be more active instead of a passive benefit or buffing.

Maybe I’m an action junkie but I would like to see the blessings allow you to do to special things when you attack.

Like maybe the minor Air blessing is that on a successful attack with your favored weapon you initiate a bull rush if your attack roll also surpasses their CMD. Using your Attack roll as you combat maneuver check. This action does not provoke an AoO. Greater Air, you do this in a cone or line effect.

The Earth Blessing could be a trip, Water a reposition or bullrush.

Minor Healing Blessing is that as a standard action you can make a melee or ranged attack with your favored weapon if successful an ally within 15 feet is healed an amount equal to one half of the damage dealt. Maybe the major blessing is the same but you can heal all allies in an aoe.

War Domain blessing as a full round action you can attack as though you possessed the whirlwind feat. Maybe greater is you can attack all foes in a line or cone effect with your weapon flying from your hand and then back again.

Fire you recite a prayer presenting your weapon and flames erupt from it in a 15ft cone that do 1d8 +1 per warpriest level.

I want them to be less domain like and more war like and more active.

I really think that this type of thing could make the blessings far more interesting and I wish they were a greater focus for the class.

Captain America clearly has an archetype which grants him shield proficiency. Or he elected to take it as a feat, as it's doubtful that shields were part of his standard WW2 army training.

I can't tell you how much I loved this comment today. I laughed out loud. Those lines could have been spoken by Sheldon Cooper. It just conjured this image of two people having a serious and earnest conversation about how to build a superhero. (Which I'm sure many of us have had in the past). I love the juxtaposition of the serious tone and fun and crazy subject matter.

I really think the devs should do video episode of conversations like this in a sort of Big bang like style of a "Sheldon Cooper" telling people they are wrong. Honestly some of the comments that the Devs could respond to are so off base or overly dramatic that it is hilarious. Now it would all be for humour not to be offensive which I think they have the skill to pull off easily.

Really I think the Dev team is showing incredible patience and discretion. I'm sure if I was in your position I would be too tempted to make snarky responses.

Part Two – Tomb of the Iron Medusa

We leveled our guys to 15th level 240,00 gp limit and did the Tomb of the Iron Medusa. We got about halfway through before we ran out of time. We will continue Friday next week or the week after.

Basically the same group, except I traded in my archery feats for more spell casting feats. Spell penetration, Greater Spell Penetration, Heighten and I used preferred spell on cure light, Cure Serious and Heal so I would not have to prep so many healing spells. I also pretty much dumped my dex and strength to raise my wisdom and charisma to a focused caster build.

The slayer, swashbuckler and Inquisitor had lower damage output at level 15 in the first few fights due to Incorporeal creatures and elementals. The lack of precision damage was fairly noticeable. However the slayer and Swashbuckler still had power attack damage to fall back on.

Swashbuckler – So far his lack of flight at level 15 has become an issue. Next time we continue we’ll prepare an extra Air walk for him. When he could get into the fight he did pretty well, but suffered from a lack of targets that he could apply precision damage or bleeds to. That was poor planning on our part however, he played well and choose well in most other things. If we had leveled these people up I’m sure he would have had a few potions of fly or something.

Slayer – He had a switch hitter build so he could switch to the bow when flying was needed. He performed extremely well with his bow and had 2 critically timed critical shots against his Quarries. He Used a ring of invisibility, set up his “favored targets and quarries” then went about systematically killing them. Because of the amount of movement involved in some of the initial fights he was making very good use of vital strike and against the strong DR of the elementals it turned out to be a decent tactic. Had we had bless, haste prayer etc.. normal buffs that we are accustomed too he would have rocked these encounters.

Inquisitor – OMG CRAZY skills. She was the smartest character ever. She knew everything that was knowledge related. It was really nice because there was a lot of history, background stuff for the tomb. However, I think it was too much. When she is beating the DC by 15 or 20 points consistently, maybe she didn’t need to start with max INT, and spend all her talents on increasing her skills. While she still did ok damage a lot of that is because she was flying, invisible, echolocation with a holy bow. (Her normal combat/skill rogue does a lot more damage.) Again we felt that all of that knowledge and intuition should be harnessed to kill creatures instead of something as banal as sneak attack. Some form of insight bonus progression that replaced sneak attack but was still precision damage. I think it is a really cool class and I think she had a lot of fun with it. She also became our defacto leader even without any social skills because she understood everything and could guide us to the right places. She really out shone even the Lore shaman on skill checks.

Blaster/Control Shaman – Very effective, the additional sorcerer wizard spells from lore help flush out some of his damage/control areas. Lore seems very strong at this level, flame was not really impressive in its hexes or abilities because we had air walk. He also made good use of preferred spell for Disintegrate and fireball and a few others.

My Shaman – Because I had preferred spell I had a much larger variety of spells so I didn’t need to prep heals. Wealth compensates a lot for short comings at high levels my staff of life has already seen a good amount of use from Remove Blindness. At this level the Druid Spell list has a lot more flexibility for control and damage. However, the healing is still meh. Life sight is only rounds which is far inferior to the revelation of the same name. It was still hard to find appropriate spells or spells that didn’t take up a lot of area. Since I used most of my feats on preferred spell I felt a bit lacking in other things. Again it goes back to there should be an option to spontaneously cast healing spells as the greater spirit power of life it is even worse with the druid spell list as cure mod is 3rd level and mass cure light is 6th.

I didn’t use a hex from life or battle other than life sight a few times. They are just not strong enough to use an action on at this level. As I tanked my physical skills the only useful stuff I had from battle was the lesser spirit healing power. It was really a clutch ability when used with a meta-magic rod of reach spell. It allowed me to spend less time casting healing or channeling so I could do triage just fine.

There was one encounter that was basically walked over due to 3 characters with echolocation, both shamans and the Investigator. While we were all blind, echolocation made it not matter. Creatures that use sunburst and sunbeam make for a lot of blindness.

At this point in the play-test I’m more okay with the druid spell list but I spent 4 feats making it so I could function near to a cleric in healing potency. I never did take extra channel or selective channel. I still wish the life shaman hexes or other hexes gave options to get some spells we don’t have. Greater magic weapon, Blessing of Fervor, Prayer, bless etc. Divine favor, divine power etc for the battle shaman.

I know some people will say if you want to heal well then be a life oracle or cleric. However, as this was a play test this is what I tested. Had the war priest been viable to fill the role I wanted I would have tested that. However, I don’t think it is far enough along in its development.

Part One

We play tested Sanctum of a Lost Age. Our Party consisted of five level 7 characters. We used 20 pt builds PFS rules and 23,500gp

First off if you have not played Sanctum of a lost age it was pretty cool. I liked the module/dungeon crawl. It was well written and enjoyable.

In our party we had two front liners a Swashbuckler and a Slayer. The Swashbuckler used an Agile Rapier, and the Slayer used an adamantine Greatsword. We had two archers an inquisitor and a shaman and another Shaman who was more of a blaster.

I will invite the team and DM to add in their thoughts as well. I will share my observations focusing mostly on the Shaman as that is what I played.

Half-Orc Swashbuckler – At this level he did extremely well he seemed to hit very hard and very reliably on his first hit. He was very optimized and it showed. However early on he had a bad string with no crits and no kills so that his panache was not re-filling. However, that changed after the first few fights and his rolls warmed up. This seemed like a very strong class. To me it seemed crazy that they got improved crit for free at 5th level.

Half-Orc Slayer – Our slayer did an all around build. He had no bad stats, power attack and deadly aim so he could switch hit. At this level he had no magic weapons which was problematic in one encounter. However, usually he did enough damage that it didn’t matter too much. He and the Swashbuckler did some good team work to keep things in flank. When he could sneak attack his damage was on par with the swashbuckler. He invested quite a bit in skills and I think if the class had 6 skill points it would have been easier for him to spend less points on his int and charisma. Overall this seems like quite a capable class, as long as they can get the sneak attack in they can do great damage.

Half-Elf Investigator – This class is crazy knowledgeable. Our investigator started with 18 int and spent all her inspirations talents on increasing her skill abilities. She knew everything. She used all her feats for Archery and was an ok archer. We talked a lot about sneak attack and were conflicted if it really worked well as a mechanic for the feel of Investigator. We really felt that she should be using this knowledge to help herself and even others hit harder, more accurately and with precision. It does need something about as damaging as sneak attack but that could come from some kind of monster lore like ability. After identifying a creature you get level to damage and int to attack that creature or type of creature. Make it a move action and then later a swift or free action, something using their highly deductive mind to strike with precision to disable creatures quickly.

Elf Shaman – Lore and Fire the “Blaster” Shaman. This was a pretty effective blaster. He had access to good “hexes” the Mind probe was fun and worked well. As a Druid he also had quite a few battle field control spells. He had very low physical scores but all of his mental scores were quite high. Lore seems really potent for abilities and extremely situational spells. I think it was a pretty successful caster at 7th level.

Human Shaman – Battle and Life the “Archer/healer”. I took battle and life because of their spirit abilities and my role was “healer”. While I didn’t let anyone die I found that cure moderate as a 3rd level spell is awful. So I relied on cure light my 4 channels and archery. What I found is I was stretched too thin ability wise. I wanted to hit with my bow and have some channeling and healing/buffing. It turns out that other than Barkskin there are not a lot of buff spells for druids for other people at low level. No Bless, No Prayer, no Blessing of Fervor. Our whole team missed these kind of spells terribly. I like playing “support casters” and found that I was not enjoying the druid spell list for this role. I also found that now that I had the druid spell list a lot of the Spirit magic spell slots for the more blasty spirits looked more redundant. The only battle spell I used was Wall of fire, while I ended up using all of the life ones at some point including restoration after the fight with the ghost tiger. I was a pretty poor archer even with 18 dex and a +1 bow (+1 str). I really did not like most of the Hexes available and one of them was duplicated between Life and Battle. With not being able to spontaneously cast heal spells I had to pre pare them which after playing clerics and oracles seemed painful. There should be a healing hex that allows you to spontaneously cast some heals as a cleric. In general I felt that the hexes were weaker than a witches and because my primary casting is wisdom that charisma to uses or number of times per day was not as strong as revelations. During the Behir fight and the Necromancer/dire lion fight I was having a problem keeping people alive and ran out of healing spell prepared and channels, the only reason we lived was the battle healing lesser spirit ability or I would have lost the slayer twice. As it is we nearly burned a wand of cure light wounds out of combat for this module I think we used 38 charges. Aqueous Orb from the other shaman saved our life in the necromancer and the flesh golem fight.

At this point in the play test I would really like to see the cleric list re-instated. While I love the battlefield control and damage abilities of the Druid more than the cleric’s list I felt the lack of buff spells and heal spells very keenly. I think however, our blaster/control shaman may disagree as he performed his role a lot better than I did mine. However, this could be fixed with better life spirit abilities and Hexes. Let the greater spirit ability be spontaneously cast cure spells and then I think I would not feel so bad. Also if there were abilities like the lore’s ability to add sorcerer/wizards spells to their list. To add some cleric/wizard something group buffing in that would be good. The druid is awesome at buffing animals and animal companions but we don’t have those. So there is a good portion of the druid spell list that really does not fit us thematically.

Also I did not like that hex uses were based on charisma, the witches are unlimited use (other than once per person). The life spirit channel ability should be 3+ cha or 1+ Wisdom. I felt too MAD to successfully be a “Battle” shaman. I don't think I used a life or battle hex the entire module as I always had better options with spells or shooting my bow.

There are lots of interesting things to talk about. Do we think the blessings are balanced?

I'm finding the low level blessing vary in power quite a bit from each other. Also I would like for the blessings to feel more active.

The Warpriest should be out doing things to their enemies, swinging their weapons, or pronouncing judgements or something along those lines. They seem like a very active class in concept "warpriest". The standard action to buff someones weapon or give a person a bonus is too passive. It doesn't feel right to me.

The strength swift for a bonus is okay, the healing blessing swift action heals are great. They feel like something that assists them in their job and feel more active.

I think this has also been alluded to by people wanting some kind of spell combat mechanic. But I'm just trying to evaluate the abilities as written so far.

The greater blessings for the most part are more active, summoning a creature to help, making enemies re-roll etc...

Yes there will be buffs, I just wish more of them were more active or more immediately warlike. I also think a warpriest should get more of them.

I think the signal over noise ratio is way out of hand for providing meaningful feedback for the last several hundred posts.

I think it has been firmly established that there are two main camps of Favored Weapon Vs Non-Favored Weapons.

I think both groups have expressed a strong opinion about this issue.

There is no way that the developers have failed to see that this is an issue for people.

Please let us stay on topic of the Warpriest Class. Obviously all of you want it to succeed, so lets keep it a civil discussion and move on from this topic. Please.

IS it wrong for me to see this as a superhero style pounder? I love it. But I don't understand how the knock back ability could ramp up though every 5 levels? How would a class that could that could knock back a an enemy 5' feet at 5th, 10' and 10th etc. be over powered. Did see why you had to wait all the to 20th to get a "basic strong man power". I can play Juggernaut now. Awesome

I actually think that could be a really fun image it is possible that it instead could be a series of feats. Knockback, cleaving knock back (2 targets) greater knock back (provokes) whirlwind knock back.

Though really it is just a bull rush maneuver tied to an unarmed strike without following the target. Like using bull rush strike on a crit. You just need a feat or ability that allows a standard action punch to bull rush. Then a chain could be added for cleave and whirlwind. No new mechanics created really just variations.

The distance knocked back is based on the cmd check not level because that mechanic already exists in bull rush. Using existing mechanics keeps things simpler and takes a lot less text to explain.

Since the brawler has a lot of feats it is a fun option defending a wall or bridge.

That is really one of the best things about the brawler. He gets to use all those feats that would be really cool to have in weird situations.

He is like a cyberman every time he encounters something different he can use an ability to upgrade and by pass it. Though this does mean ever time I see some using martial maneuvers I'll be temped to play a sound clip of the cyber men say "Upgrading". Or "upgrade in progress."

Okay so after a brief playtest of the war priest.
Warpriest of Ragithiel – Bastard Sword Level 8. Power attack, did decent damage.

Basically he did not perform poorly, nor did he break any banks. I didn’t like the standard action to increase my armor. But it did help a few times to keep me from being hit. I didn’t feel any different than a cleric fighter at 8th level except no weapon training.

I experienced a lot of what people are saying. However, it was not so dramatically underpowered. I was not bad, I basically held my own. I could wish for a few changes to spice things up. Because the Paladin next to me could heal and damage better than I could.

Also action economy was not going where I wanted. Swift actions in blessings and in sacred weapon, lots of standard action blessing for buffing. I felt like I could stand around buffing all day, while the paladin just walked up and smited or used a litany swift action spell… Ohh WP should have the Litany spells. But that would be another swift action and I already have weapon power as swift.

I actually like the Blessings quite a bit and wished I had more of them and they were a little more varied. I also wished my channel abilities were better and more central…. So here is what I would suggest.

Minor blessing change… Can you make them be able to be channeled through a weapon, so if you have a sword and board you don’t have to drop your weapon to use some of the touch abilities. Though most of them were touch a weapon and I was holding one.

Let their weapon work like an arcane bond so they don’t have to have somatic components while they wield the deity’s favored weapon.

Major changes….

You start with 2 minor blessings and get an additional at 4 and 7 at 10 you get two majors then an additional at 14 and 18. So yeah 6 minors and 6 majors. All belonging to your god or maybe one every other level like rogue talents 2,4,6,8 10 etc…. As long as the blessing belongs to a domain your god uses.

Give them Channel Divinity – at level 3 you can channel as a cleric = to your level to heal your allies or you can channel through your weapon similar to channel smite. Except the damage is not positive or negative it is just damage. You can do this 3 + Wisdom times per day or whatever. Then at higher levels the smite damage can be for all your attacks of two uses or Something that will compare to smite evil but is different.

Give them full Bab or give them 9 spell levels.

Make them spontaneous paladin casters or…. Remove all spell casting and give them a blessing every two levels and D12 Hit dice…

Sacred Weapon… can you make the duration a minute? Or just make it like a divine version of arcane strike to simplify it. That way we don’t’ have to keep track of rounds or run out of swift actions between it and some of the blessings.

Everytime the Blog post is a little late, I get excited that it is being delayed because they are putting up the playtest.

I'm curious that there hasn't even been a leak about what the next last few classes are going to be.

The problem with ray spells is that "effect: Ray" is not used consistently.

For example Continuous Flame doesn't have Effect Ray it has Targets 3 or more rays. and the Text says you fire Rays... But at no point do you target rays, you target creatures....

Ray as a category is extremely poorly designed category. I feel like it should be weapon focus (Touch Spell) or (Ranged Touch Spell) would be more applicable due to the fact that spells are not categorized well in terms of Rays or similar effects. Weapon Focus (Ranged Touch Spell) would include a lot more spells.

Additional ray spells

Contiguous Flame
Blinding Ray
Elemental Assessor
Heatstroke
Searing light
Firebrand

Gloombolts? --- it reads like a ray - like scorching ray but it is called bolts. What are bolts....? Lightning bolts and call lightning are aoes.. this is a ranged touch attack... does it count as a ray?

Deafening Song bolt? are these rays?
Blood Crow Strike? bolts again..
Shards of Chaos - bolt and shard

Then there are spells like...
Vengeful Comets
Fiery Shurikens

Mechanically all of these spells are ranged touch attacks that result in damage or a condition and are weapon like bolts, rays comets, shurikens.... you should be able to get a weapon focus for ranged touch spells.

Golo

So I am interested in Mounted combat clarifications. I have searched the archives and come up with several different answers from different posts most of them contradicting each other and none of them seem to be by anyone official. Also there are a lot of posts on the topic so it seems many other people have asked the same questions even if the answers they get vary greatly. I’m hoping that this could get FAQ’d or get a nice Paizo employees attention to clarify the issue. Even though I’m look at this as a cavalier it also could impact Summoners, Druids, Rangers, Paladins or anyone with an animal companion/mount. So I will use mount generically for any animal companion or eidolon that can be used as a mount.

Because I will be using this character in pathfinder society I can’t really use a house rule.

Using Trample or overrun on a mount in general.
Whose CMB do you use? The Mount or the Rider? – In the archives I have seen both answered by different posts, usually favoring the mounts.

Lets say you want to have improved overrun, Greater over Run and Charge through… Does the mount or rider take those feats? – There doesn’t seem to be a consensus but more think it should be the mount.

When you manage to trample with the trample feat it allows you to make a hoof attack with the mount on the creature trampled. Is this feat basically useless if you are not riding a pony or horse? If I’m a small character riding a dog or boar as a mount I don’t have hoof attacks. Does this mean they can bite or gore instead or do I just need to have greater overrun so they get an attack.

Thanks

Barbarian
1: Power Attack
1: Improved Overrun
2RP: Overbearing Advance
3: Combat Reflexes
4RP: Quick Reflexes
5: Charge Through
6RP: Overbearing Onslaught
7: Greater Overrun

Well I run a barb that has a very similar build. In the end the barb is a much better at overrun and can use it far more situations and on more people in one turn. Note that you don't have to overrun in a straight line (if it is not a part of a charge, charging does though give you a +2 bonus on the overrun attempt). Because you can overrun multiple opponents and you have combat reflexes you will more often get way more attacks than if you took a normal full attack action.

Look at overrun carefully. When you meet or exceed their cmd you successfully move THROUGH their square w/o provoking attacks of opp. If your CMB check exceeds by 5 they fall prone. You are now on the opposite side of the target 1 or more squares and depending on how you read the rules you are not provoking any AoOs for the maneuver, even when you leave their threatened squares behind them.. that is the whole point of overrun, to get through to the other side w/o provoking AoOs if you are taking AoOs because you leave their threatened square it kind of defeats the whole purpose since overrun can be combined with movement. However, different judges have run it differently because it is not 100% clear. Most treat it like ride by attack but for the barb its multiple targets.

If you use the charge as part of an overrun its complicated in your scenario with the barb and target Z you would run over abc (taking Attacks of opportunity if you knock them prone) then you would resolve your charge attack on Z and then your overrun on him. It then functions a lot of ways as ride by attack because you continue your movement after the charge and it does not provoke from the target or targets of your over run. Depending on the judge I guess but this is how I have seen it resolved most often.

As a strategy I suggest a traveling partner that also has combat reflexes, cleave (or other multi attack as a standard action) and a decent AC aka Bait. Let Bait move up and have the bad guys surround him or her (delay if you need to) ideally he will have readied a cleave attack for 2 adjacent opponents. Bait cleaves. Then when it is your turn overrun as many of the bad guys as you can that are threatened by the bait. Both you and the bait will get AoO's vastly increasing the number of attacks you would both get and often killing the bad guys even before the issue of if they can attack you after you leave their square even comes up.

Obviously a belt +6 strength is fantastic for this build... Since you are getting 4 AoOs currently at 4th level and you don't really need dex for more.. though a +2 dex ioune stone may help a little for a 5th AoO though I have never needed more than 4 and I'm up to 10th level.

Also consider if you have a buddy to take paired opportunist with at 9th level. Then you will get the +4 for prone and +4 for paired opportunist.. it’s nice :)