The Secrets of Divine Channeling (PFRPG) PDF

This product is 36 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page back cover, 1 page advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving 31 pages of content.

In the fine tradition of Rite Publishing, the book starts with an aptly written in-character introduction to the ideas presented herein. The introduction and first chapter take up 5 pages and feature a new trait for minor channeling. The idea of channeling is presented in two ways: On the one hand, clerics can choose the trait to gain access to minor channeling abilities or they could take two feats to get up to 6 new things they can do in combat via channeling their divine energy, which is domain-specific.
However, if that is not enough for you and you want to go all out, you can also play the divine channeler, a new base class. He has d8, 4+Int skills, medium BAB, good fort and will saves as well as some massive channeling abilities – to trade this off, his spell-selection is more limited than the cleric’s and he can’t cast as many spells per day.
The next chapter, feats, takes up 2 pages and features the aforementioned feats for the cleric. I liked the 8 feats, none seemed over-powered or under-whelming.
The bulk of the book (24 pages), though, is taken up by the domains and their respective channeling abilities. Each Doamin features a sensorial image, i.e. how the channeling of the divine energy manifests itself, which I found quite cool, a minor channeling effect, a combat domain channeling effect and two major channeling effects.
I’m going to give you an example on what to expect and, due to being so cheerful, I choose the Madness domain!
Sensorial Image: Purple and scarlet energies, swirling air currents, and a faint stale, musty odor.

Minor Channeling Effect: Imbecile’s Tongue makes it impossible for the victim to communicate.

Combat Channeling Effect: Breath of Madness boosts the combat capabilities of the targets for WIS-damage and could be used offensively and defensively.

Major Channeling Effect I: Wave of Confusion – mass confusion.

Major Channeling Effect II: Madman’s Screech damages opponents and causes WIS-damage to boot.

Editing and formatting is top-notch, as I’ve come to expect from Rite Publishing. The interior art is ok, although nothing to write home about.

Conclusion:

When I first read this book, I have to admit that I didn’t get the hype around it. Yes, it is a fair book, but I just didn’t immediately jump up from my chair, wanting to implement this, possibly because the book is necessarily campaign-setting neutral. I let the idea gestate for about a week. And gradually, subtly, I started to realize what the content in this book does – It makes it possible to customize THE HELL out of any cleric and offers a variant (un)holy-man-class that is closer to the aspects of his deity than the cleric in some regards, without unbalancing the game. The abilities are cool and should help just about any divine caster to greatly diversify the options he has while providing an entertaining alternative to the cleric. Best of all, channeling makes individual divine casters of different gods much more unique and diversified and should be considered a boon to DMs and players alike, especially those who don’t want to build another “evil cleric” that swats around the same spells as all the other evil clerics. The sensorial images, while being short paragraphs, add A LOT of flavor to the different domains. Sooo…what would I have liked to see that wasn’t there? Well, even more domains. And campaign-setting specific domains with more fluff. And PrCs for the divine channeler. That’s a good sign and I sincerely hope that Rite Publishing expands on this great concept in e.g. their Questhaven project and put out a “Secrets of Divine Channeling II” one of these days. It’s a subtle, humble book, but it will enrich your gaming, I guarantee it.
My final verdict is 5 stars.

My review wouldn't fit. For the full review see forum post.

With Rite Publishing’s The Secret of Divine Channeling we have a completely new divine class, which is similar to a cleric in many ways, but divergent enough to justify a great publication. The Divine Channeler class is focused more on channeling divine energy than they are on casting divine spells, and as such they’ve received a host of new channeling abilities to go along with the Clerical domains.

Since they are so focused on their domains, they gain most of their spell compliment in the form of domain spells, and cast far fewer spells from the divine casting list.

Divine channelers enjoy new channeling abilities afforded to them by their domains, of which they can choose two. Each domain has several effects that can be accessed as the Divine Channeler gains levels.

These abilities start with Minor Channeling, small effects tied in to their domains that they can employ by channeling energy. Such things as gusts of wind, increased speed or what have you.

Then there are Combat Channeling effects. They are used in combat to heal or cause damage – with each domain offering different effects.

Lastly there are Major Channeling effects. Accessed at fifth level through a new feat called Major Domain Channeling, these are more impressive effects tied in with each domain.

In addition to the effects that go along with channeling in this new class, Divine Channelers also receive Turn Undead as a bonus feat at level 1, additional extra channeling at levels 7, 13 and 15 and at 20th level as their capstone ability, they become Energy Masters. This allows them to gain immunity to channeling effects and also shield others around them. Seven new feats have been added, dealing of course with Channeling. There is also an extensive list of new effects tied in to each domain.

Additionally, Clerics can gain some of these effects through the use of a new trait (Minor Channeler) and the second is the Sensorial Imagery – flavor built into this class which describes how the various channeling effects manifest themselves to the senses.

The concept behind this character is actually quite simple and the character class itself excels for that, looking to be eminently workable into a new or existing campaign. Treat them much like Clerics that take a wider view on how to channel energy and you’ll enjoy the experience. 5 out of 5 stars.

Facts:
The PDF is 36 pages long.
This consists of Adverts (2 pages), cover (1 page), Title page (1 page), Introductory story and introcudtion (1 page), OGL (1 page) and 30 pages of content.
The content consists of a new class (Divine Channeller, 3 pages) and advice on how to use these with existing chanelers such as Clerics (1 page), 8 new feats lreating to channel energy (2 pages) and the remaining 24 pages are a new mechanic combining domains and channel energy for using channel energy for new effects.

Opinion:
This is an awesome idea. It makes channel energy mroe than just heal/harm and gives a lot of diversity to a central Cleric feature making them more customisable.

The presentation is clear, the effects do not seem over-powered (although I haven't had a chance to play with them yet) and there is a lot of variety within each domain.

The Divine Channeller itself is a cometent class, but I have some problems with it, mostly with the inconsistent progression of the Channel Energy. Also , for a class ostensibly devoted to Channel, it doesn't actually end up with much more powerful channels than a Cleric (although you will end up with a lot more channels). This might have been better as a Cleric variant rather than a whole new class.

I'd like to give it 4.5 stars as the flaws aren't that major, but sadly that's not possible.