Cleric - General Playtest Notes


Classes: Cleric, Druid, and Paladin

Scarab Sages

From my Ruins of Greyhawk playtest. With some added inspiration from Red Hand of Doom PbP.

  • Spoiler:
    The first battle was against the returned Swordwraiths in the War Wagon. Seeing they had returned and knowing how the battle went, the cleric cast hide from undead which got the party into position, and then started the battle with a positive channel - the CR 7 swordwraiths had a 40% chance to make their saves against a level 9 cleric, which seemed reasonable. The cleric player announced how much more fun the new turning mechanic was after using it in combat and for healing. The battle posed no threat, with only the war wagon dealing damage to the PCs.

    Overall Result: The channel positive is good. Not too good, but worth using in some situations. Definitely improves the overall ability of the group to continue the adventuring day and allow the cleric to cast something other than cure spells. Job well done!

  • Spoiler:
    The dretches stepped back, trying an ineffective scare on the fighter. Then the evil clerics appeared, having cast invisibility on themselves. Stepping up with a 5ft step, 3 clerics (2 CR 4 and 1 CR 8). Both CR 4 clerics hit with their greatswords, having +15 to hit the fighters flat-footed AC, one scoring a critical. The CR 8 cleric had a +20/+15 attack, only hitting once. In one round the fighter lost half his stoneskin and half his hit points - he retreats.

    From there the fight becomes one between spellcasters, with the cleric and sorcerer (now active) using their best spells, including cone of cold, to lay waste to the clerics as the fighter engaged the naga. The group was satisfied with this fight, having at last met a decent challenge. I had fun using the CR 8 clerics rebuking to damage the entire party a few times, even though it wasn't the best option. Not often you can yell "Iuz will take your life!" and really mean it.

    Overall: This was an interesting battle as it involved both evil and good clerics. The evil turning was a treat as a DM, although my negative-channel player in RHoD has had little luck with his damage as of yet (the positive-channeler has saved some bacon though). I am thinking that adding Cha bonus to the damage healed/dealt would be a nice low-level boost to the power. I also fervantly hope that elemental channeling can become an option - the elemental domains should allow the cleric to create an optional burst of elemental energy. As a DM I found the new domains to be a pain for two reasons:

    1. It gives a cleric many more special options. This both increases the size of the statblock and creates more rules searching depending on the domain.

    2. It creates an odd compatability issue. Although most domain powers match the domain spells in 3.5, they are granted at even levels in PRPG. Meaning a 3rd level character is short one spell from his 3.5 counterpart. Considering this could be something dramatic like invisibility in the above example, that radically changes the tactics available to 3.5 versions of clerics.

    A final note on domains: several of the domain powers saw little to no use, being slightly underpowered for the action required (in some cases, I ran 8 clerics with the same domains and never used it once). These were, in no particular order: Trickery (copycat), Evil (align weapon).

    The following domain base powers, on consideration of the PC, appear too useful: Artifice, Evil, Healing, Magic.

    My biggest concern is that many domain powers are unclear if they allow a saving throw. This is especially true for the Evil and Chaos domain powers, which inflict heavy penalties with a melee touch attack.

  • Spoiler:
    Today the brave adventurers left the confines of their refuge bottle only to find themselves in a trap set by the cultists of Iuz.

    Facing 5 level 6 clerics (and on round 3 a mohrg) turned into an interesting battle. Several clerics used rebuking, while others healed the damage dealt to party members by such attempts. The party fighter turned the General's (see earlier post) own tactics against his troops by sundering two holy symbols per round. Overall it was a fairly decent fight for 2 level 10 characters.

    But then the mohrg arrived. As the fighter tried to move to sunder another holy symbol, he incurred an attack of opportunity, which the mohrg used to paralyze him. Rolling a 2 on his save, the party cleric had to use up his remove paralysis to free him. The next turn was the mohrgs, again paralyzing the fighter as he fumbled his save.

    This fight was relevant for 2 reasons. First it showed that Turn Undead is no longer an instant win for the cleric, which is good. Second, it showed the clerics array of spells becomes much more relevant when they are not healing all the time. This does a good job at balancing the power loss from Turn while providing a more interesting class.

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