Cleric Weapons Proficiencies, pp. 8 and 10

[NekoMouser]

According to the text on page 8, under the heading "Weapon and Armor Proficiency", a Cleric receives proficiency with all simple weapons, and is also proficient with the favored weapon of their deity.

As noted on the table of Deities of the Pathfinder Chronicles on page 10, this is desperately unbalanced. It gets even more broken if you check out the reprinted table on page 7 of the Rise of the Runelords Players Guide.
While some receive exotic weapons proficiencies and others receive special new weapons (and Clerics of Abadar get a blanket proficiency in all crossbows or something...I wonder if that includes repeating varieties?), others get "freebies" they already have. In the case of Pharasma and Nethys, the weapons proficiencies are possessed by every class in the game. And what's up with Clerics of Irori? Do they pick up Improved Unarmed Strike, or do they just have hands like the rest of the PCs?

No dis intended to the dagger or the quarterstaff. They're good weapons. Nor am I against having proficiency in a deities favored weapon available to clerics. i think it's a great idea in principle. But if you are going to give away a free weapon proficiency (feat equivalent), then by all means give it away equally to all Clerics. Dagger, Crossbow and quarterstaff are largely useless "freebies": every Cleric receives these anyway. Give them all something equivalent or don't give it to any of them.

[Gotham Gamemaster]

So, are you asking that every deity have a martial weapon as their favored weapon? That wouldn't seem to fit flavor-wise with some deity concepts. But I see your point. What if the rule stated that if your deity's weapon is a simple weapon, you receive weapon focus with that weapon instead?

[Robert G. McCreary]

With all due respect, this is about flavor, not about balancing the clerics of various deities. This is something that hearkens back to the specialty priests of 2e. If you're going to do this, then every cleric should have War as one of their domains, since Animal (or Community) isn't as good as War. Or Diviners should get the ray attack of evokers, because their power isn't good enough. And then what's the point of having different deities or different specialist wizards?

If you you want proficiency in greatsword instead of a dagger, then play a cleric of Gorum instead of a cleric of Pharasma. But some people choose their deities based on character concept and roleplaying considerations, and proficiency in one weapon or not is not the most important aspect of playing a cleric, nor is it "broken."

[NekoMouser]

SargonX wrote:

With all due respect, this is about flavor, not about balancing the clerics of various deities. This is something that hearkens back to the specialty priests of 2e. If you're going to do this, then every cleric should have War as one of their domains, since Animal (or Community) isn't as good as War. Or Diviners should get the ray attack of evokers, because their power isn't good enough. And then what's the point of having different deities or different specialist wizards?

If you you want proficiency in greatsword instead of a dagger, then play a cleric of Gorum instead of a cleric of Pharasma. But some people choose their deities based on character concept and roleplaying considerations, and proficiency in one weapon or not is not the most important aspect of playing a cleric, nor is it "broken."

1. If they aren't balanced, it is "broken".

2. This hasn't been 2e in a while. If it were 2e, I wouldn't be raising this concern. I'd still be playing another game. Loss of the sacred cows of older D&D iterations is something that began to set 3.5 apart, and something that seems to be continuing in Pathfinder. And not to any detriment I've noticed yet.

3. It seems a great deal of effort has gone into balancing the domains. The domains you listed are now much closer in power level than they were in 3.5, and I'd actually put my money on the guy with the Animal domain. Keep healing your companion and let him trash Mister "I can Battle Smite". Community makes a nice addition for anybody who plans to specialize in healing. The Diviner gets something that's actually still pretty viable at 20th level as a 1st level ability and only has to lose one other school, unless that's changed. The Evokers ray is actually the weaker of the two down the line, which is a way of balancing abilities I'm not always fond of...but it is a clear attempt to balance the schools of magic.

4. The great sword is not "better" than the dagger. It's bigger. Frankly, it sucks for people who have better Dex than STR once Weapon Finesse becomes available. Besides, the dagger has the ability to do slashing or piercing, making it far more utilitarian despite it's d4 damage.

5. This isn't about the statistics of the weapon. This is about being handed something that I already have all I need of and being told I'm getting something free. You're rebuttal to that notion seems to be that I should simply pick the "better" option or suck it up because I'm (by veiled assertion) a crappy roleplayer.

Which I think pretty much makes my point all over again. Here. I'll quote you line and verse. Page 3, Pathfinder RPG Alpha release 1.1, "I also worked to even out some of the choices", followed two sentences later with "These rules work to even out some of these choices". A paragraph down is "...I wanted to add more to all the classes, to give each of them a reason to be followed up through 20th level". Page 8, "The following modifications are designed to balance the player character classes". Page 18, "to create a more standardized system for for determining class Hit Dice". Ad infinitum. Is this sinking in?

One of Pathfinders stated goals is to create a more balanced version of the 3.5 rules set, even for those of us that suck at roleplaying. They certainly seem to want to create a more clear and concise rules set, which is not aided by "proficient with the favored weapon of their deities" in combination with "Favored Weapon Unarmed Strike", at least not without some further clarification.

Roleplaying decisions are for the game table, not the rule book. I don't plan on wearing much armor as a Cleric of Pharasma, and that's a roleplaying decision. I plan to use a dagger a lot, which is also a roleplaying decision (if my deities favored weapon was a comet shaped lump of knotted rope, I'd switch to that in a heart beat). But my roleplaying decisions don't effect how the game is balanced for all Clerics. Clerics everywhere can still wear Heavy Armor (except the Cloistered variety, if that makes an appearance at your table). What not all clerics get is a weapons proficiency that isn't already on their list under "Simple Weapons". Nor do all of them get to use Exotic weapons. Nor would it be particularly appropriate for them all to have "super secret star knives that are better than what you got" and spiked chains. What is important here is that some receive a feat equivalent, while others receive a good roleplaying award. And that isn't particularly good game design.

To the other poster...Weapon Focus looks like it might be a good way to fix it, but I'm not sure. A +1 to hit with a given weapon versus negation of a -4 to hit with a given weapon seems to still favor the proficiency on paper, while my canny intuition tells me that the guy with the +1 t hit with a dagger is 5% more likely to win a fight than his sun worshiping, scimitar wielding associate. I don't want to split hairs too fine, though. It seems like a relatively close fit. I'm still not sure it fixes the problem for Clerics of Irori, though. The obvious fix would be to give them Improved Unarmed Strike, but that does a lot more than a weapon proficiency or a +1. Looks good, but it may not be balanced well. *sigh* I guess I'll see if it can't be plugged into a playtest.

[Robert G. McCreary]

NekoMouser wrote:

1. If they aren't balanced, it is "broken".

I disagree. Comparing individual abilities within a class that are chosen are not "broken." If a human fighter uses his bonus feat to take an Exotic Weapon proficiency that my elven fighter doesn't have, does that make the human, elf, or fighter broken? Dwarves get dwarven waraxe as a free proficiency, but elves only get longsword, rapier, and bows. Does that means the dwarf is broken?

NekoMouser wrote:

2. This hasn't been 2e in a while. If it were 2e, I wouldn't be raising this concern. I'd still be playing another game. Loss of the sacred cows of older D&D iterations is something that began to set 3.5 apart, and something that seems to be continuing in Pathfinder. And not to any detriment I've noticed yet.

I'd say the loss of sacred cows is a hallmark of 4e, and I hope not of Pathfinder. I was using that example to show there was a history (and perhaps, therefore, a reason) for this kind of difference between clerics. But you're right, it is irrelevant to the discussion.

NekoMouser wrote:

3. It seems a great deal of effort has gone into balancing the domains. The domains you listed are now much closer in power level than they were in 3.5, and I'd actually put my money on the guy with the Animal domain. Keep healing your companion and let him trash Mister "I can Battle Smite". Community makes a nice addition for anybody who plans to specialize in healing. The Diviner gets something that's actually still pretty viable at 20th level as a 1st level ability and only has to lose one other school, unless that's changed. The Evokers ray is actually the weaker of the two down the line, which is a way of balancing abilities I'm not always fond of...but it is a clear attempt to balance the schools of magic.

Those were examples, not mathematical proofs. The point is, you can take any class abilities and compare them to other class abilities without the context of the rest of the class and claim it is "broken."

NekoMouser wrote:

4. The great sword is not "better" than the dagger. It's bigger. Frankly, it sucks for people who have better Dex than STR once Weapon Finesse becomes available. Besides, the dagger has the ability to do slashing or piercing, making it far more utilitarian despite it's d4 damage.

I didn't say it was. But some people might claim that higher damage is more important. Again, it was an illustrative example.

NekoMouser wrote:

5. This isn't about the statistics of the weapon. This is about being handed something that I already have all I need of and being told I'm getting something free. You're rebuttal to that notion seems to be that I should simply pick the "better" option or suck it up because I'm (by veiled assertion) a crappy roleplayer.

First off, I never said you were a crappy roleplayer. I'm sorry if you got that impression, I tried to keep my post impersonal.

But I was trying, again, to illustrate the difference between mechanical and roleplaying considerations. It gives flavor to the different deities. Nethys is the god of magic, so his favored weapon is the quarterstaff, a traditional weapon of wizards. It makes sense in a flavor/roleplaying sense. It may not make sense from a mechanical perspective, and again, if that is important to a given player, then they can pick a deity which gives them a "better" weapon, be it a greatsword, a dagger, or a three-tongued horny toad slayer. It does not make sense for Nethys' favored weapon to be a longsword or something else, just to address perceived mechanical imbalances, especially ones as insignificant (IMO) as a single weapon proficiency.

NekoMouser wrote:

Which I think pretty much makes my point all over again. Here. I'll quote you line and verse. Page 3, Pathfinder RPG Alpha release 1.1, "I also worked to even out some of the choices", followed two sentences later with "These rules work to even out some of these choices". A paragraph down is "...I wanted to add more to all the classes, to give each of them a reason to be followed up through 20th level". Page 8, "The following modifications are designed to balance the player character classes". Page 18, "to create a more standardized system for for determining class Hit Dice". Ad infinitum. Is this sinking in?

So therefore every possible imbalance must be fixed? I think that's patently impossible. And anyone can make an argument that any one part of the game is unbalanced vis-a-vis another part. The racial weapons example I gave above. The free human weapon proficiency - if you're a fighter, it's going to be an exotic weapon proficiency, and no one else gets that. One domain compared to another. One wizard specialty compared to another. One rogue ability compared to another. Ad infinitum. Is this sinking in?

NekoMouser wrote:

I'm still not sure it fixes the problem for Clerics of Irori, though. The obvious fix would be to give them Improved Unarmed Strike, but that does a lot more than a weapon proficiency or a +1. Looks good, but it may not be balanced well.

I do think you have a good point with Irori. I always just assumed it was the equivalent of Improved Unarmed Strike. I don't think it would be all that game-breaking. But then, we seem to have different ideas on game balance. :)

[NekoMouser]

The dwarf gets the ability to treat weapons with Dwarf in the title as Martial Weapons (which as a Cleric or Wizard really doesn't get him anywhere) and handful of martial weapons proficiencies. The ability they receive is functionally similar to the one elves receive, and is only superior if you don't have access to Complete Warrior (which contains Elf specific weapons, which don't appear in the PH). The Elven Thinblade is easily in balance with a Dwarven Waraxe. Further, the ability to use racial specific weapons (which are normally exotic weapons) as martial weapons is feat equivalent, and in fact used to be a feat in 3.5. With that in mind, there isn't a thing unbalanced between these abilities of Dwarf, Elf and Human.

Your line of argument there is also a little flawed. You're comparing the balance of different abilities and different races taking the same class. Even if the vaguely similar abilities of the various races weren't balanced, the races can still balance out across the board.

The unbalanced feature we are discussing occurs within a single class, in a single sentence of text and on a single table with but one other set of variables. You've brought up those (the domains) before, and I feel that I've made my case on the attempts to make them balanced against each other. Each deity has 5 domains and can grant two among them to an aligned Cleric. No imbalance in the number or sort, really. Which just leaves us with the weapons. And it doesn't take a genius to work out that two members of the same race and class, receiving the same ability, should not get a different number of feat equivalents.

Let's put that balance in perspective. Two human fighters, each receiving the standard abilities of their classes. One decides his name is Bob, while the other names himself Ted. Checking the text, it seems that the name Ted grants a character the ability to use the Human Weapons Training ability twice. So while any Human Fighter with any other name receives the ability to take an exotic weapon proficiency (or the ability to use a dagger, which everybody already has but he might take because he's a good roleplayer), Ted gets two exotic weapons proficiencies.

Of course, naming your fighter something else doesn't effect the number of feat equivalents he has available. Neither does where he's from, or what gods he worships, or whether he bathes often. Why? Because it would be monumentally bad game design. You'd have to be working for Square Enix to do something like that. :P

Now the actual example. Two Human Clerics, both receiving the same racials, the same number of domains, spells, turning attempts. But if one chose Zon-Kuthon and the other Pharasma, they would receive a different number of feat equivalents. They even have some domain choices in common, but a different number of feat equivalents. That is broken.

I don't want Paizo to change all the weapon proficiencies. I think it would be more appropriate for Pharasma's clerics to use an aspergillum than a dagger, what with the comet for a holy symbol and the anti-undead associations. That's not what I'm trying to point out, though. You're right, and Nethys should have quarterstaff. It's entirely in theme, just as scimitar works for Sarenrae. They each receive an appropriate weapon. They do not both receive a feat equivalent. Proficiency with a martial or exotic weapon (or even Improved Unarmed Strike) are all feat equivalent. Proficiency in a single simple weapon is not feat equivalent, and the feat it would fall into (granting proficiency with all simple weapons) is already possessed by all members of the class. I don't mind the weapon selections made, as arbitrary as a couple of them seem to be. I agree with your assertion that the flavor of the game woud be different if every god used a wacky exotic weapon or a great sword or whatever.

My problem is with the balance of abilities they provide. And that's fixable without modifying the weapons granted. As was previously pointed out, minus the minor nitpicking on my part, weapon focus is a feat equivalent. If the character already possesses the weapon of the deity from another source (in this case, from the simple weapon proficiency provided by cleric), then a weapon focus feat for the appropriate weapon would be an equitable solution. Improved Unarmed Strike also (again minus my other observations about that feat) seems to be a good fit for the Irorians. I don't want that just "assumed", though. I'd like an actual clarification.

Maybe this can be balanced satisfactorily, and maybe it can't. But just saying that it can't, or that no one should bother because you can't balance everything is a pretty lame excuse not to try. And a clarification for Clerics of Irori, as pointed out in my initial post, would seem to be in order.

[Pneumonica]

I don't see the difference between being proficient in one weapon and being proficient in another. One cleric is proficient in two-bladed sword, another in the scythe, and another in the longsword. Are they equal? No. Is one better than the other? No.

I've generally given Weapon Focus to clerics whose favored weapon is simple. There's numerical balance (though I'm sure a lot of people will say that's horribly imbalanced as well).

[TopCat]

Well I've always houseruled that clerics are proficient with their deity's favoured weapon so I don't see this as a problem at all.

Then again, I'm always DMing a party of 6 or 7 so the cleric is usually the 3rd or 4th martial character in the party and therefore doesn't usually do too much fighting. For a party of 4 this may make more of a difference.

In fact, in my current (non-Paizo) campaign, the cleric has used his weapon in combat a grand total of once (and the party is currently 24th level)!

[Robert G. McCreary]

I see where you're coming from NekoMouser, but I think we have different views on what it means to be "unbalanced" or a "feat equivalent." Yes, looking at each cleric and the weapon proficiencies they receive, some are unbalanced compared to others. I don't think that makes it broken or bad design, however. I think it's good design, because it makes sense within the context of the world. A cleric of a deity of agriculture, for example, might very well be less powerful in combat than (and therefore unbalanced in comparison to) a cleric of a god of war. Again, from a mechanical perspective, there's no reason to play a cleric of the god of agriculture, but within the world, there are reasons to play such a cleric. A list of all the deities is given for completeness' sake (and for use for NPCs, for example), but that doesn't mean that each one needs to be playable at an equal level.

I also have a different view on "feat equivalent" abilities. An ability that is equivalent to a feat is not the same as getting that feat. This is why the races and clerics get a stated proficiency in weapon(s), not the Martial Weapon Proficiency or Exotic Weapon Proficiency feats. A feat gives you choices, either what feat to choose, or what to apply it to. Gaining a specific weapon proficiency is not the same as gaining that feat, because you don't gain the choice inherent in that feat.

Which is why I think that giving clerics with simple favored weapons a free Weapon Focus feat unbalances it the other way. Now they have an extra feat (not a feat equivalent) that provides them a bonus, while the other clerics just get an extra weapon to use.

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. We have different ideas on what is balanced or unbalanced (or perhaps more accurately, what is broken or not broken). I can certainly understand your point and your argument, it's just not important to me.

Except for Irori. I think an unarmed strike is much weaker than any other weapon (due to nonlethal damage and provoking AoOs), so clerics of Irori should get Improved Unarmed Strike to use their favored weapon effectively. But that would unbalance them compared to other clerics, because they would get a free feat the other clerics don't. Again, I don't see such an "imbalance" as a problem, but I can understand why others might think so.

[Dragonchess Player]

One way to "balance" this is to use Weapon Group Feats, with the ability to trade 1st level "any" choices for extra feats, instead of using the Simple, Martial, and Exotic categories. Add bladed scarf to Exotic Flails and Chains, dogslicer to Light Blades, earthbreaker to Picks and Hammers, klar to Claw Weapons, ogre hook to Picks and Hammers, sawtooth sabre to Exotic Light Blades, Shoanti bola to Exotic Slings and Thrown Weapons, starknife to Light Blades, and war razor to Light Blades.

Clerics worshiping a deity that has an exotic favored weapon (Callistra/whip, Zon-Kuthon/spiked chain) can take the Flails and Chains and Exotic Weapons groups. Those worhiping a deity that has a favored weapon in the Basic Weapons group (Nethys/quarterstaff, Pharasma/dagger) can use their choices to get one or two extra feats (depending on if they wish to invest in the Bows or Crossbows groups). Clerics of Iori can choose the Monk Weapons group and use the other choice to gain Improved Unarmed Strike.

Note that since all characters (except druids, sorcerers*, and wizards) can gain extra feats at 1st level at the expense of proficiency in more weapons, this works fairly well. Multiclass characters only gain extra choices if they multiclass into a class that gives more group choices at 1st level.

*- Battle sorcerers under this system would gain Basic Weapons, plus any other one group at 1st.

[Big Jake]

TopCat wrote:

Well I've always houseruled that clerics are proficient with their deity's favoured weapon so I don't see this as a problem at all.

I have to agree with Top Cat and company on this.

I understand that you think it is unbalanced that some clerics are proficient with one extra weapon than the others, but it really, really, truly, honestly does not unbalance the class.

First off, it doesn't change the cleric's attack bonus.

Secondly, most of the weapons do about the same amount of damage anyways. (d6 or d8)

Third, being able to use the weapon effeciently will still take feats (e.g. improved trip, improved disarm, shorten grip)

Fourth, the cleric doesn't have to use the weapon, and many will choose not to. (I've never been fond of polearms, for example.)

Finally, and this has less to do with balance, it makes sense. Clerics receive some combat training (hence the med. BAB progression) and it just makes sense that a cleric would always receive training with the deity's favored weapon.

I have seen both sides of this. I have run many clerics in 3rd edition. I have taken weapon proficiency with a deity's favored weapon, and it's a wasted feat. Everyone I've played with has agreed that it's a wasted feat.

I have been in games where the DM gives proficiency for free, and it has NO IMPACT on game balance.