This might be better suited for a Golarion world-building post, but it definitely applies to the playtest and clerics.
Any chance there'll be a note/list in Alpha 3 on the holy symbols of the 20 primary gods of Golarion? I'm starting a cleric of Nethys, and other than knowing my domains and favored weapon, I've no idea what's on the medallion around my neck.
I saw a few elaborate holy symbols in one of the Pathfinder books (at my GM's house last Thursday) but alas, I'm hoping for simplified and easy to identify icons that would mark the bare minimum details of a holy symbol (and from there, more elaborate symbols can be produced later). In effect, I'm looking for the most generic ideas of what each god's holy symbol is (if only to use my Knowledge (religion) checks wisely and helpfully in our playtest).
Steven
who probably carries this bias for simplified/minimalist icons from 2EFR's Faiths & Avatars, as it's always easier to make a symbol more complex than simple
Any chance there'll be a note/list in Alpha 3 on the holy symbols of the 20 primary gods of Golarion?
Hey, Steven! I wondered the same thing when designing a cleric of Pharasma awhile back. After searching around, I remembered they posted a description of the holy symbols for each of the 20 primary deities to the main Paizo blog a few months ago. So I saved it off. Here's the complete rundown for you...
Symbols of Golarion Deities:
Abadar: Golden key with a cityscape carved into its head, with four runes and a keyhole along the lower edge.
Asmodeus: Red pentagram.
Calistria: Three slender daggers touching their pommels together so the blades radiate out from the middle.
Cayden Cailean: Slightly dented and well-used iron tankard.
Desna: Butterfly with star, sun, and moon symbols on its wings.
Erastil: Arrow nocked in a bow made of a pair of antlers.
Gorum: Iron sword thrust into the side of a rugged mountain.
Gozreh: Leaf with a drop of water dripping from its tip.
Iomedae: Elegant longsword with a circular sunburst behind the sword's hilt.
Irori: Dark blue hand, palm out, inscribed inside a sky blue circle.
Lamashtu: Monstrous three-eyed jackal head seen from straight on.
Nethys: Androgynous porcelain mask, one half black, one half white.
Norgorber: Black featureless mask with one silver starburst for a left eye.
Pharasma: Comet whose tail trails out behind it to form a spiral.
Rovagug: Circular fanged mouth surrounded by nine curling spider legs.
Sarenrae: Angel with arms outstretched and wings curled above in an ankh-like shape.
Shelyn: Exotic songbird with a long rainbow-colored tail curling up over its head.
Torag: A gleaming silver hammer with blocky runes on it.
Urgathoa: White-eyed housefly with bloodstained wings and feet and a distorted human skull pattern on its body.
Zon-Kuthon: Battered skull with no lower jaw; a spiky chain has been threaded in one eye socket and out the other, so the two chains hang down like metal tears.
--Neil
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I'm not a big fan of the lack of Domain powers. I figure it is because some of the domains aren't 'core', so granting a domain ability that is the same would be a problem...
Still, I want domain powers.
I want clerics to have 2 more skill points. I know clerics are considered a 'bad ass' class, but all in all, they aren't terribly popular since much of what you end up doing is saving the other party members. Choosing to 'not be that kind of cleric' is seldom a choice.
So, letting a cleric have 4 base skills (for me it would be Knowledge (religion), Heal, Sense Motive and Diplomacy) is a good thing.
I don't think throwing powers at the cleric would solve that problem. You would have people pick the cleric not for its healing capabilities, but for its other powers. Therefore, it would more likely appeal to players who don't want to heal the other party members, but want to be powermongers.
The cleric is already one of the strongest classes. Then again, I always have at least one player choose a healer of some kind, since they realize what happens when they don't (things becomes a lot more difficult).
I think making clerics different is more of a flavor thing (like other posters have suggested).
How is keeping track of the cleric's powers more of a bookkeeping challenge than keeping track of 3.x domain spells? Spellcasting classes are bookkeeping nightmares anyway, and it's hard to make it significantly worse.
I'm also not sure brevity in describing the powers is necessarily a good thing. Brevity leads to ambiguity, and ambiguity leads to message-board flamewars. :-p
The Cleric while it works mechanically flavor wise it kind of fails, and that has to do with one of the key features: Turn Undead, why say as a Cleric of the Sea would my Diety and doctrine care about the Undead?
the cleric works fine as is IMHO
The Cleric while it works mechanically flavor wise it kind of fails, and that has to do with one of the key features: Turn Undead, why say as a Cleric of the Sea would my Diety and doctrine care about the Undead?
Have you perchance seen Pirates of the Caribbean? ;-)
"Arr...there be plenty o' undead 'neath the briny waves o' the sea..."
--Neil
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The Cleric while it works mechanically flavor wise it kind of fails, and that has to do with one of the key features: Turn Undead, why say as a Cleric of the Sea would my Diety and doctrine care about the Undead?Personally, I'd just give them the choice: channel vs. undeath, channel vs. elementals, and channel vs. outsiders. Pick one when you take the class (or, more correctly, get one as a consequence of your deity). In the case of the deity of the sea, you'd channel to turn fire elementals and rebuke water elementals.
I would agree with you, but I wonder what this would mean in terms of healing allies?
If you say that a cleric who chooses Fire/Water for his turn/rebuke doesn't heal allies, then you're taking something away from him (namely, a bunch of spell flexibility). However, if you decide that he still can heal living creatures, you need to make a good argument for why he wouldn't also harm undead when he did so.
The Cleric while it works mechanically flavor wise it kind of fails, and that has to do with one of the key features: Turn Undead, why say as a Cleric of the Sea would my Diety and doctrine care about the Undead?Personally, I'd just give them the choice: channel vs. undeath, channel vs. elementals, and channel vs. outsiders. Pick one when you take the class (or, more correctly, get one as a consequence of your deity). In the case of the deity of the sea, you'd channel to turn fire elementals and rebuke water elementals.I would agree with you, but I wonder what this would mean in terms of healing allies?
If you say that a cleric who chooses Fire/Water for his turn/rebuke doesn't heal allies, then you're taking something away from him (namely, a bunch of spell flexibility). However, if you decide that he still can heal living creatures, you need to make a good argument for why he wouldn't also harm undead when he did so.
Why should Clerics have to heal? Once again it comes down to the "Why the hell do I have this power when it has nothing to do with my dogma?". And please don't say tradition.
Any chance there'll be a note/list in Alpha 3 on the holy symbols of the 20 primary gods of Golarion?Hey, Steven! I wondered the same thing when designing a cleric of Pharasma awhile back. After searching around, I remembered they posted a description of the holy symbols for each of the 20 primary deities to the main Paizo blog a few months ago. So I saved it off. Here's the complete rundown for you...
Thanks very much, Neil!
Now if only we didn't have to wait until October for the Gods & Magic Chronicles release to get more info....
Steven
who guesses he'll have to come up with his own monastic sect of Nethys worshipers to work into his character background to tide over the campaign until the canonical info comes to light....
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Why should Clerics have to heal? Once again it comes down to the "Why the hell do I have this power when it has nothing to do with my dogma?". And please don't say tradition.
Because traditionally (sorry) healing and herbalism and all that is connected to shamans, wisemen, religious figures, as well as the concept of faith healing.
Also, if you decide that it's not the gods and their servants that should be in charge of healing, you end up with no one being able to heal people well (Iron Heroes (which I really like btw)) or everyone being able to heal (4e, bleah).Furthermore, it makes sense to me that in borrowing or channeling the power of the gods, you would have at least enough to spare to patch up your own mortality. If not by the power of the gods, then how? Survival is important to most doctrines. If you're dead, you can't preach/worship etc. (barring some more interesting type gods, such as undead etc.)
Thanks very much, Neil!...Now if only we didn't have to wait until October for the Gods & Magic Chronicles release to get more info....
No problem, Steven. Glad to help out. And I was pleasantly surprised to run into you here.
Also, for playtesting purposes, maybe you can hit Sean Reynolds or Mike McArtor for more insight into Nethys. Paizo really ought to find a way to work a world-builder of your calibre into Golarion anyway.
Just my two-cents,
--Neil
I don't think throwing powers at the cleric would solve that problem. You would have people pick the cleric not for its healing capabilities, but for its other powers. Therefore, it would more likely appeal to players who don't want to heal the other party members, but want to be powermongers.
The cleric is already one of the strongest classes. Then again, I always have at least one player choose a healer of some kind, since they realize what happens when they don't (things becomes a lot more difficult).
I think making clerics different is more of a flavor thing (like other posters have suggested).
Newsflash, smart cleric players don't heal people. They have each party member buy a wand of CLW (or lesser vitality) and use it between combats for them. Healing in combat is generally a poor tactical choice. The cleric will end the combat faster (and thus save party member's lives more effectively) by opening a gigantic can of whupass CoDzilla style. Offense trumps defense in D+D.
So giving them more powers is totally unnecessary, but won't have the effect you detail - people already do that. In fact, heal-b#@%* is a really boring role which is what caused WotC to improve Clerics in the first place (seriously, the designers *said this*) - no one wanted to play them because no one wanted to spend combat healing other people.
I never said they didn't need a power boost, but you will see from the Pathfinder tables that clerics have more dead levels than any other class. Obviously, Paizo thought the changes to them should be the smallest of any class.
Turning has now become a healing option so that clerics have more healing power. This is to free up clerics spells for other purposes. Obviously, the people at Paizo thought that clerics still used a large portion of their spells for healing and wanted to change it.
I have played in campaigns where everyone had wands, but what happens during combat when players are being hammered by monsters for lots of damage and need healing during combat? Is the cleric supposed to rummage through the other players gear to get his wand? Also wands cost money, and at high levels wands of CLW (created at minimum CL) just don't cut it anymore. Even a wand of CMW is 4,500 gp (that's 18,000 gp for 4 PCs and even that only heals 2d8+3 hp per use).
Again, people like you seem to want to bring up specific situations that happened in their games and apply it to every situation. I can tell you that I have seen over a score of clerics played in D&D over the years (by over a dozen different people including teachers, lawyers, police officers and scientists) and only one of them chose your smart option.
I'm fine with clerics not being healers, but they don't need extra powers to do that. Plus, while clerics don't have to be healers they still end up healing simply for the sake of expediency.
This is why in 4e other PCs can now heal themselves and why in Pathfinder clerics turn undead power is now an alternate healing source. Both rule-systems are to make life easier on clerics. But there is a limit you can get to. Clerics have long been regarded as a powerful class. With the implementation of new spells, feats and prestige classes I have seen individual clerics stand toe-to-toe with fighters, disable every trap that a rogue can, and match wizards for sheer firepower. They don't need a plethora of domain powers every 2 levels and I am fairly happy with the current situation. Paizo's changes are just enough to give the cleric a bit more staying power and a few more options to play with without going overboard.