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Yesterday. We played the combat against Nualia.
Averin, the party cleric didn't use his Channeling because he didn't have this feat.
While she was under his two minions protection she was damaging her enemies with her 2d6 channeling damage. I used this power two times, making nearly a maximum of 20 hit point to those that didn't save and a minimum of 10 to those that saved.
I switched to melee attacks, because I didn't want to TPK the party.
Her bastard sword attacks dropped the Hellknight paladin to negatives, and he didn't die because I fail spellcraft check to cast defensively Death Knell.
Has somebody playtested this Channeling with an full leveled cleric? I believe thay if Nualia where Cleric 5, she would kill the entire party without problem.
If a party has another cleric to counter this channeling perhaps there is no problem. But, what happens if they don't?
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I disagree...
Even if Nualia had used her ability for another two rounds, she wouldn't TPK us. She would probably drop the Paladin, but all the other characters finish the combat with plenty hit points (even the other fighter at front line). The paladin was near dead, but the party, as a whole was far from defeat.
It has the same problem that all the area attacks, you need to "forget" the character laying in negative hit points, or you risk killing them.
Note that we also made some tactical mistakes, I didn't realised that "remove fear" was a range power until later in the combat. If I did, I could cast it on the bard, and she would be able to join the battle. Not only would this help to defeat Nualia, but also make the combat more enjoyable to her (the bard not Nualia ;).
I really believe that you could have pressed us a little bit more without killing the party.
But yes, I need to take that feat ASAP, it's a must-have for a cleric.
BTW, I was Averin the cleric, who probably needs to check the use of conditionals sentences in English.
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Having had experiance with using full level clerics to take on my CoCT party I'm wondering if selective channeling should exist at all as it seems to remove the main balance factor of channel energy,
that being said it wouldn't have made much differance where I used it as I had decided that what people were fighting would have done suicide attacks anyway 14 2nd level clerics and 1 9th is not something to take lightly especially when they are willing to die for their god, the party avoided TPK but they knew they had been in a fight and it would probably have gone worse if not for some bad rolls on my part and that damnable "Curse Grenade".
While I agree that the ability of the clerics channeling positive energy to turn undead and to heal living creatures is perhaps the primary purpose that Paizo intended with this change, I think that an evil clerics ability to channel negative energy gives the villains side a real boost. It may be too much of a good (evil?) thing, but until I get a chance to run my group up against an evil cleric or three I won’t know for sure (as soon as real life stops rudely intruding I’ll do so – we’re in the process of changing the players over to the Beta version as well).
In past adventure paths that I’ve run the evil cleric has always made a good villain, but usually winds up as easy meat for the party unless he/she is backed up by some serious minions. The negative energy channeling will not only make their undead lackys more likely to last a few extra rounds, but will deal out damage to the party as well. And it may be that when there’s a good cleric in the players group that the two opposing clerics will target each other with spells first, to eliminate the potential counter to their channeling attacks. As I said, I’m looking forward to play testing this to see how it works out!
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I've run an encounter including 2 Clr4 and 1 Clr8. Not only did they have channel negative energy (no selective though. didn't fit their style) they also had around +10 to +15 to hit with greatswords for 2d6+10 damage.
I ended up using the channeling just to change tactics, but ordinarily the greatsword would have been the best option for the Clr8. He ended up killing his already unconscious allies at one point, but that was fine with me to prove how evil he was. Since they were facing 3 PCs, they never got the chance to really inflict the channel on a bunch of enemies at once (with only 3 PCs, they never really all got into range). But an average of 14/7 damage would be a decent option for a cleric (who normally has no greatsword [thanks human proficiency!], who has run out of spells and is surrounded by enemies.
My group will be running through the Revenge of the Kobald King soon (hopefully they don’t know that) and I’m thinking of changing the kobald king from a Ftr 2/Sor 4 to a F 1/Cl 5. This would give him 3d6 of negative energy channeling and since he and most of his minions are undead, it will make things “interesting” for the players. Of course if the party’s cleric doesn’t show up for the game I may have to change him back – I’m not sure if they’d make it without some positive energy channeling in response.
On the other hand, even if the cleric does show up I may have the party run the final encounter again without him, to see how they would do without a “counter” for the negative energy bursts…
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Channeling energy has been something that is greatly enjoyed by my players and it does certainly make villians more menacing if they have it. I did agree though that just looking at selective channeling(which I have not had to deal with yet) it feels like it does pretty much remove the tactical limitation that was placed on turning to give it this boost.
Perhaps a change where selective turning takes up 2 turn attempts instead of one? It still allows turns to be used out of combat freely as a heal and to work well against undead, but then when you are using it in a fight you have to decide if you want to risk healing your enemies(or hurting your allies) or if its worth having less uses of the power.
-Tarlane
And Channeling has the benefit of discouraging the players to "mob the caster." In our party, with high Tumbles etc., minions and blockers aren't worth much and any mage or cleric type doesn't last long once half the party gets into direct melee with them. Channeling makes the tactics more interesting - do we send in one tank to try to draw out some Channels before the rogues etc. melee?