I think medium armor could have been stripped from them as well, I don't see the need for good fortitude saves either.You don't see the cleric, then. Clerics aren't divine mages. Clerics are warrior-priests. They wade into the fight with divine might strengthening their strikes. Divine wizard style clerics might be possible, but they're not the only possibility, and they're not the usual choice for Pathfinder clerics.
Clerics in 1e had the best saves against poison, so the good fortitude save has some basis in tradition.
Who said they wouldn't be able to show anything for it?
They can still cast spells which are every bit as potent as the deity-based clerics.
I'm not 100% on this, but do either Taoism of Shintoism profess the ability to perform the miraculous? At all?
*maybe* they could cast - and like I said, if so they can/should get their own customized order within the cleric framework.
I know more of shinto, and it's sort of a polytheistic belief anyway - so easily enough ported to the cleric class more or less directly. Honestly, I could see the shinto setting the basis for an entire pantheon of customized clerics (as suggested) each worshiping some particular kami or another (like specialty priests, basically).
Taoism, though ... not sure at all.
This thread has been hi-jacked!
Man in Black, Voodoomike, The Speaker in Dreams, and LilithsThrall all have good points. But instead of trying to say "Do away with entire class" or "change clerics to be like sorcerer bloodlines", why not put in helpful information and ideas. Pathfinder isnt going to put a recall on the Core book. Its out already, Threads like this are good to get ideas on how to improve things in future books. I dont think it will happen, but in the Advanced Players Handbook they could add 20th level powers to Domains. If they felt it was warrented. They might have new rage powers for barbarians, things to help balance and help make the game better.
Clerics are here to stay, everyone has their opinions about the class or what it shouldnt have or should have. Lets assume they are going to stay with whats in the Core book and put constructive input from there.
Personally, I think they should have something to look forward too at 20. Im fairly sure most people will admit wizards arnt weaker than clerics and they have 20th level cap stones. Beckett has put up some great ideas.
I propossed that at 20th level, Clerics literally become their Hol Symbol. Essentually they can never be disarmed or robbed of it, but aso they no longer require any Material Components or Foci les than 5,000 GP...
Alternatively, they could ascend to Outsiders based on alignment. They would get D.R. 5 /(Maic and Alignment), Outsider traits, and all weapons are treated as their alignment(s) for overcomming D.R. Otherwise, similar to the Monk...
Another option would be that all Level Dependant caps on spells get extended to up to double their normal max. (Not sure how powerful this could be, but a 20th Clerics Cure Light Wounds would heal/deal 1d8 + 10).
These are great idea and constructive.
On a side note, if clerics dont get Maximized Channel then Paladins shouldnt have it. Maybe the balanced answer to that is, instead of giving clerics the maximized channel it could be taken from the Paladin. But as i said earlier, im sure they will try and avoid changing the Core book.
*I just before PF Core came out, I propossed that at 20th level, Clerics literally become their Hol Symbol. Essentually they can never be disarmed or robbed of it, but aso they no longer require any Material Components or Foci les than 5,000 GP (subject to change based on your setting's wealth).
Y'know, I have absolutely no problems with the PF changes to the cleric. Loss of heavy armor - no big deal. Changes to domains - no problem. Nerfing certain spells - great, was looking forward to it. And I generally believe that no capstone is needed on classes with strong spell casting capability.
But this does have a certain appropriateness factor that wouldn't be unbalancing at even lower levels than 20th. I'd call it some kind of "Living Saint" power or something like that. You figure that a cleric of 20th level would have to be a pretty significant achievement for a faith. When dead, his religion will be trading his bones around as sacred relics. Mark my words...
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Your certainly allowed your opinion, and I respect that, but I do not agree with any of this. Personally, I detest the White Mage Cleric that people keep trying to insinuate. If I wanted to play a Wizard, I would play a Wizard. If I wanted to play a Divine Wizard, I would play a Wizard and take a 1st Level Feat to add a Domain to your class list. Saying that Clerics are the best class, however, is purly a matter of opinion, and generally those that think that the Cleric is overpowered conceed that the Druid, Wizard, and Sorcerer are stronger, (usually in that order).
First off, you need to stop following me around. I am married, and it is starting to get annoying, you waiting around for me to post so you can act like you know everything and only your (very incorrect and extremely exagerated) opinion mus be followed as law and be the dfinition of "what is".
Wrong. Again. It went Cleric, Druid, Wizard > Sorcerer. Man, you're talking a lot about stuff you don't know.
Secondly, no. Both Druid and Wizard are enerally concidered stronger than the Cleric, especially in 3E. In PathFinder, the Sorcerer is right there, too. It is a matter of opinon, of which you are also entitled to have. However, as a matter of opinion, the ONLY WAY TO BE WRONG is to say someone elses opinion is wrong.
Get over yourself and stop assume that yours is the olny valid one if even one person agrees to it, and ignoring other that do not. Maybe you had a problem with Clerics. That is far from universal.
The cleric isn't at white mage status. Seriously what the hell do you think medium armor and medium BAB - full with a single spell - means?I am curious, though, about your Paladin idea. You want the Paladin to be the Divine Caster and Divine Warrior. So, (aside from Wizard or Commoner/Scribe) were should that leave the Base Cleric? Personally, I would much raher just flat out drop the Paladin and switch it over to Cleric.See, this is why nobody takes you seriously. You flat out admit - you want Cleric to be the only divine class. Gee, I wonder why everyone is is shaking their head?
Tertiarily, if your going to respond, read what it is you are responding to. I flat out adbmit, I DO NOT THINK THAT THE PALADIN SHOULD BE THE ONLY DIVINE CASTER. Reread it.
I also admit that I (as a matter of opinion), do not like the often prepossed Divine Wizard, especially as a complete switch from the base Cleric. Because I know your going to ignor #3 (again), The Divine Wizard has no armor, suffers from spell failure (except has no way to overcome it), casts Cleric Spells with a D6 HD, 2+Int Skills, and Poor BaB and Poor Fort & Refl.
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Yes, I know the "bloodline" concepts started as feats, but they were rather narrow in application (celestial and fiendish). The bloodlines idea made you pay level exp to gain relatively minor bonuses in UA, too.
Sorry, I was referring to the PF Style Bloodlines. They appeared in Dragon Mag when 3.5 hit. While not as great as the PF Bloodlines, they are similar, offering a list of bonus spells and granting minor boosts. No L.A. involved.
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There are a lot of religions which have no deities and yet have belief in divine magic. Taoism and Shintoism are two that come immediately to mind.
Regarding the idea of dietyless clerics ... 8-0That particular cleric is THE WORST idea to hit the cleric class ever. It is completely counter intuitive to the entire idea of "cleric" and "divine" magic entirely.
Ooo!!! Hey! Good catch!!
I guess I was thinking 'polytheistic' only, BUT yeah - those are great examples of something that, IMO, if cleric-based *should* have their own organized progression as well.
I don't see why this is a problem. There are a lot of good reasons both in and out of game to play Clerics without a deity. This is also not at a new concept to the game, betwee Ravenloft, Planescape, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, or just generic settings that didn't establish a network of deities. In fact, There is only one reason I ever hear for why Clerics should have deities, and that is generally because the DM can't think outside the box on the issue. It is generally, "because that is the way it is, you must have a deity or who is granting you magic", but that really has no grounds or logic.
The problem with those sorts of religions existing side by side w/the polytheistic "active dieties" is that with active dieties on one side, and no dieties on the other, the one with no dieties may well have no followers (because it's no longer a faith-exclusively-based world for religions). It's going to be a real, REAL hard sell if they walk the world professing something and can *show* nothing for it when every other cleric *can* provide evidence.
How so? Buhddism, for example does this in the real world, and there are no issues. For example, Buddhists (in America) can get the same Clerg rights as a Catholic Priest or Baptist Minister. Buhddism really isn't that hard of a sell. You should also keep in mind that Buhdism does believe in many deities. But they are not the focus of the belief system.
As a hypothetical capstone, how about this?
Domain mastery You understand nuances of divine power that others will never master. You may now spontaneously cast any domain spell as if it were a cure or inflict spell, using the rules for spontaneous casting. Your domain spells now automatically bypass spell resistance of any targets and no longer require divine foci or material components.
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As a hypothetical capstone, how about this?
Domain mastery You understand nuances of divine power that others will never master. You may now spontaneously cast any domain spell as if it were a cure or inflict spell, using the rules for spontaneous casting. Your domain spells now automatically bypass spell resistance of any targets and no longer require divine foci or material components.
That could be cool, especially with the last portion about S.R. I would really like this as a possible Capstone for certain builds, too. Rather tan the only one. It makes a lot of sense for the magic Cleric builds, though possibly less for others.
However, I really hope they come out with a Feat or something to just let any Cleric Spont Cast Domain Spells. That was always a huge complaint about the 3E Cleric, that a Fire Priest just didn't feel like a Fire priest, having 1-9 Fire Spells per day. Especially with Channel Energy, Spont Cure/Infict spells is a fairly useless ability.
As a hypothetical capstone, how about this?
Domain mastery You understand nuances of divine power that others will never master. You may now spontaneously cast any domain spell as if it were a cure or inflict spell, using the rules for spontaneous casting. Your domain spells now automatically bypass spell resistance of any targets and no longer require divine foci or material components.
That could be cool, especially with the last portion about S.R. I would really like this as a possible Capstone for certain builds, too. Rather tan the only one. It makes a lot of sense for the magic Cleric builds, though possibly less for others.
However, I really hope they come out with a Feat or something to just let any Cleric Spont Cast Domain Spells. That was always a huge complaint about the 3E Cleric, that a Fire Priest just didn't feel like a Fire priest, having 1-9 Fire Spells per day. Especially with Channel Energy, Spont Cure/Infict spells is a fairly useless ability.
A few feats and prestige classes have granted spontaneous casting before. There was an ability in that vein in Complete Divine IIRC. I was trying to come up with something any cleric might use and that wasn't too powerful. As clerics only really have spellcasting, domains, and channel energy as class features and several ideas for channel energy have already come through, I thought about something any domain could benefit from that wasn't too powerful.
I'm not 100% on this, but do either Taoism of Shintoism profess the ability to perform the miraculous? At all?Yes, for example, in Shintoism there is something called the 'Kotodoma' (if memory serves, that's the correct name of it) which might be compared to Enochian. In folk Taoism, there is also magic working - the most famous of which is the search for immortality, but that's certainly not the only example.
Kami are not gods and Shinto priests don't worship kami, let alone one particular kami.
I know more of shinto, and it's sort of a polytheistic belief anyway - so easily enough ported to the cleric class more or less directly. Honestly, I could see the shinto setting the basis for an entire pantheon of customized clerics (as suggested) each worshiping some particular kami or another (like specialty priests, basically).
As I said - not an area of expertise, but from what I did know the idea of shinto priests "praying" to kami-spirits is pretty close to "gods" and the current cleric defaults, so ... yeah.
Again - I know next to nothing in Taoism, so :shrugs: ... never said I'd rule 'em out, just that they're a bit more of a divergence from the default.
How so? Buhddism, for example does this in the real world, and there are no issues. For example, Buddhists (in America) can get the same Clerg rights as a Catholic Priest or Baptist Minister. Buhddism really isn't that hard of a sell. You should also...
The problem is exactly that - IRL, this is not something that matters much - NO religion can show/prove anything. As soon as we hit fantasy and we have active and powerful dieties, the nature of the game changes.
The "hard sell" isn't as a valid religion, IRL, but more of one in line w/clerics and "extra-dimensional" beings as their power source. If the Buddhists have more gods and such - fine, they fit the mold now (ie: they have a power source).
The conceptual problem for me is the idea of NOT getting your powers from some god or other, yet still calling it "divine" somehow. That, IMO, doesn't wash from the conceptualization point - mechanics be damned at that point. If it doesn't make sense - I won't allow it (thus, all clerics in my games must be tied to some specific diety).
EDIT: On Ravenloft - doen't clerics lose some key features in RL? Like turn undead and all the "good" effects go away? I'm not familiar enough w/planescape, but technically, isn't every god in that one? Darksun had no gods, so they turned to worshiping elemental spirits (kind of like the shinto and kami, IMO - best analogue anyway). In dragonlance the freakin' gods were "lost" or something .... there were no clerics until Goldmoon brought the power back by tapping one of the gods and using her holy item (can't remember specifics on that).
Point being - all of those sources either disallowed clerics, or maintained the "extra dimensional power tap" element of the cleric. They are NOT just walking around on their own power. That being the case, any 'cleric' worthy concept needs to be drawing it's power from some diety (and Darksun was as specific as it could be - the four different elements, each as it's own source and NONE taken at the same time - only one element/cleric - as in 1 god per cleric).
Shinto priests don't pray to kami.
They write sigils, but, even then, the relationship is more animistic than deist.
Thus ... my use of quotation marks - is this intentionally dense on your end or text-tone problems?
In any case, this is an argument of semantics - points been made and granted that it *can* function. Next up???
Well ... being as I've less than NO interest in arguing about religions beyond game world implications - I'm pretty much done with this line of logic.
Back to "cap-stone" stuff, I do like Beckett's idea as well - that ignoring of material components really does fit well for the theme.
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The "hard sell" isn't as a valid religion, IRL, but more of one in line w/clerics and "extra-dimensional" beings as their power source. If the Buddhists have more gods and such - fine, they fit the mold now (ie: they have a power source).The conceptual problem for me is the idea of NOT getting your powers from some god or other, yet still calling it "divine" somehow. That, IMO, doesn't wash from the conceptualization point - mechanics be damned at that point. If it doesn't make sense - I won't allow it (thus, all clerics in my games must be tied to some specific diety).
That is actually the point I was trying to make. Yes, Buhddism does believe in the existance of deities, because it is based off of Hinduism. However, in Buhddism, deities are not at all a primary focus of the religion. They are more like Santa Clauses, or Easter Bunny is to most Christians. Well sort of, I am not sure if I am saying that part right for what I mean.
EDIT: On Ravenloft - doen't clerics lose some key features in RL? Like turn undead and all the "good" effects go away? I'm not familiar enough w/planescape, but technically, isn't every god in that one? Darksun had no gods, so they turned to worshiping elemental spirits (kind of like the shinto and kami, IMO - best analogue anyway). In dragonlance the freakin' gods were "lost" or something .... there were no clerics until Goldmoon brought the power back by tapping one of the gods and using her holy item (can't remember specifics on that).Point being - all of those sources either disallowed clerics, or maintained the "extra dimensional power tap" element of the cleric. They are NOT just walking around on their own power. That being the case, any 'cleric' worthy concept needs to be drawing it's power from some diety (and Darksun was as specific as it could be - the four different elements, each as it's own source and NONE taken at the same time...
In Ravenloft, outsiders (those that come from other places like FR, Golarian, Krynn, etc . . .) automatically lose the sense of personal connection to their deities. For the natural citizens, they never had one. It doesn't affect their abilities at all, just th fluff of personal connection. In Dark Sun the Dragon Kings have Clerics (for the most part, Templars). They draw Divine power from non-divine beings, and their own faith and belief in concepts. In Dragonlance, you are correct on that part, but I was specifically talking about the later Mystics, which specificall do draw and channel Divine power from themselves.
Why does divine mean deity only? Don't get me wrong, I am not saying your wrong and I am right, i just seems like a narrow interpritaion in my opinion. What about Druids, who are essentually nature priests (and cast Divine Spells). It seems extremely illogical and heavy handed to hold one class to a standard that others do not.
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Well ... being as I've less than NO interest in arguing about religions beyond game world implications - I'm pretty much done with this line of logic.
Back to "cap-stone" stuff, I do like Beckett's idea as well - that ignoring of material components really does fit well for the theme.
Sorry, I didn't see this. I wasn't trying to push with the above.
I, personally, think that any class which gets either Wish/Miracle or Gate doesn't need a capstone. However, if a capstone is going to exist, the best option I've heard so far is turning the Cleric into a living holy symbol.
Paizo seems to disagree with you on that point, and we're working in their game paradigm. Oracle class with the Lore mystery can have miracle on their spell list, castable 6/day, and additionally gets the capstone ability to cast WISH once per day without providing the material component.
Capstone abilities are, according to the conversion guide, meant to be major rewards for sticking out all 20 levels in the base class. You can path out of the base class and still have access to 9th level spells, so having access to Miracle, Wish, or Gate should not be "good enough" in the case of capstone decisions.
Channel Energy has been cited as a major class feature for clerics - one that sufficiently redefines the class. It makes little sense to have the Paladin end up better at channeling energy than the cleric. The capstone ability should, at least in part, address that fact.
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However, I really hope they come out with a Feat or something to just let any Cleric Spont Cast Domain Spells. That was always a huge complaint about the 3E Cleric, that a Fire Priest just didn't feel like a Fire priest, having 1-9 Fire Spells per day. Especially with Channel Energy, Spont Cure/Infict spells is a fairly useless ability.
To prevent having it require a Feat to be blown, making an Alternate Class Feature that allows a Cleric to swap out Spontaneous Cure / Inflicts for Spontaneous access to one of his Domains (or even both?) could be a neat option.
I do find it odd that the cleric is the only class without a capstone ability, and tad unfair.
In Ravenloft, outsiders (those that come from other places like FR, Golarian, Krynn, etc . . .) automatically lose the sense of personal connection to their deities. For the natural citizens, they never had one. It doesn't affect their abilities at all, just th fluff of personal connection. In Dark Sun the Dragon Kings have Clerics (for the most part, Templars). They draw Divine power from non-divine beings, and their own faith and belief in concepts. In Dragonlance, you are correct on that part, but I was specifically talking about the later Mystics, which specificall do draw and channel Divine power from themselves.
Why does divine mean deity only? Don't get me wrong, I am not saying your wrong and I am right, i just seems like a narrow interpritaion in my opinion. What about Druids, who are essentually nature priests (and cast Divine Spells). It seems extremely illogical and heavy handed to hold one class to a standard that others do not.
I'm not entirely up to snuff on RL (2nd ed was my last foray), so I'll simply shrug on that one and call it *too strange to stomach* for me. I'm 90% positive that 2nd ed didn't do that, so ... I'd be more likely to go with that interpretation (whatever it was - probably close to what I mentioned before - been a LONG time, though). Given your blurb, though, I'd say that "personal connection" can mean a lot of things ... can't say more w/out directly looking at the sources, though. :shrugs:
Yeah - I forgot about the Templars in that, BUT - there are/were HUGE limitations that went along w/those guys.
1) They were restricted/given access only by their respective sorcerer king - not *exactly* clerics, yet not independent like mages either - they were dependent upon an outside force (though clearly not extra-dimensional). Most of this was fueled by the sorcerer kings and their vast gardens of Trees of Life to provide enough magic energies without destroying what was left around them. The concept of 'spell beggar' (fun term I found in FR novels) is still in tact with them - but the mechanic is elaborately detailed enough to make it functional w/out extradimensional (ie: dieties).
2) They were restricted in their range of power and influence to within the city limits - if they left the cities ... they had NO power (beyond the range of the sorcerer-king's influence). At all! This totally boned them, and kept an emphasis on their more limited nature and concept.
{This is more FYI junk since it was brought up and is one of my favorite settings!!!!}
On Krynn going 'mystic' and no longer required direct divine contact!?!?! Seriously!?!??!? Did Weiss and Hickman sign off on that?? That's ... insane given the prep and setting work they used in fleshing out the whole world. I've got nothing but pure shock for that ... 8-0
As for "divine" and "diety" going together ... really? How could they NOT? That's the more odd statement to me (but then, I am a Catholic, so maybe it's just been beaten into me from young ... ?)
I'm not the most devout of zealous of the faithful (in fact, I can't remember the last time I went to church, and still need to get my daughter baptized ... don't ask), but Divine is pretty much part and parcel meaning "having to do with dieties and the heavens." So ... anything that does not take that into account I feel fundamentally fails to grasp what it means just on a fundamental level. {also not "i'm right, you're wrong" here - but expression MY breakdown of understanding more than anything else}
I mean, how do you hear/read 'divine' anywhere and fail to make the connection to a god of any kind?
On Druids, they worship the dieties inherent in nature and the spirits of the forest, etc. So, you've got (in most fantasy settings) some sort of nature gods, OR the idea that each living thing (plants and animals) have some sort of greater inner-connective power. This, too, is "divine" in it's nature either way (though I tend to go with the nature dieties myself and their followers being druids in my own games).
With paladins, they, too, must define which god they follow - mostly as a matter of story with them, but still, in my games (and most settings I've read) there are only so many gods that grant paladin-status anyway, so ... again "divine" is tied to "diety" with them, too.
As for how strange this may be, or not - it's been the default assumption of every group I've gamed with since I started gaming way back right up to the present. In fact, I'd say that maybe only within the past 1-2 years or so that I've encountered the 'generalist' cleric idea where someone wanted to pursue it actively ... it really stunned me and even the player sort of warmed up to the idea of "focusing" upon a diety over generalization.
:shrugs: maybe it's heavy handed, but my world's seem more reasonable to me for it, and I've never had any complaints from the players.
Matter of fact, I'm currently running a pbp game where every character is a paladin. I've codified which dieties grant paladin status, and I've added a myriad of house rules to greater emphasize the differences of the paladinical orders. The players seem to love this and have found it interesting so far ... again, this is just my experience with it.
However, NONE of that is particularly relevant to the discussion on-hand. ;-)
I've heard more "yeas" than "nays" in favor of your proposed 20th level capstone, Beckett.
To any interested, I'd call that a "win" for instant adoptable house-rule.
Paizo also disagrees with those people who think Clerics need a capstone power (seeing as how they didn't give the Cleric one). What's your point?
Paizo screwed the pooch on the Cleric is obviously my point from posting one, and Paizo has demonstrated in multiple cases that the ability to cast miracle or wish is not an inherent capstone ability.
The entire class can be "fixed" with a mechanics change that will return the cleric's classic niche, allow its class ability to scale with levels, and prevent the unneccessary front-loading of its class ability.
Remove the "Channel Energy" class ability as it is, and replace it, at level one, with the paladin's Lay on Hands ability CHA+level times per day, and then give the cleric the same Channel Energy trade off (2 to 1) with those lay on hands abilities. Then give the cleric mercies at level 2 and every second level following that. At level 20 let both lay on hands and channel energy be maximized, and apply mercies to Channels as well as lay on hands.
In fact, to make the cleric more interesting and varied, remove the automatic conversion of spells into cure/inflict and replace it with automatic conversion of spells into domain spells. Then the clerics who want to be massive heal-sticks can take the healing domain to spontaneously cast curative magic, but clerics who do NOT want to focus on that can spontaneously cast domain-appropriate spells during the day without having to prepare those in advance.
Replacing the current channel with LOH based progression lets the cleric memorize useful spells, and lets him or her offload more and more of their healing onto class features as levels accumulate. They channel LESS often at level one, but MORE often at level 20, than Paizo's goofy, half-formed cleric, and their domains better define and differentiate them because of the spontaneous casting aspect.
In comparison, the Paladin's LOH/Channel ability is still great, but goes back to being a somewhat reduced version of the cleric's, as it was in 3.x - the Paladin remains a fairly terrifying boss-killer and has impressive healing on the side.
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Well, as for the capstone, i´ve seen a few neat ideas, spontaneous domain casting is a good one. But i´ll give them more versatility above the paladin. As a capstone, ill give the clr the ability to apply either Maximize, empower or quicken to the channel energy, just usable once per round, so no "double channel" (Still, it is a x/Day ability, so, i should playtest it and see how it works being more than once per round).-
Just another idea in the brainstorm.-
- Max -
Well, as for the capstone, i´ve seen a few neat ideas, spontaneous domain casting is a good one. But i´ll give them more versatility above the paladin. As a capstone, ill give the clr the ability to apply either Maximize, empower or quicken to the channel energy, just usable once per round, so no "double channel" (Still, it is a x/Day ability, so, i should playtest it and see how it works being more than once per round).
Keep in mind that the Paladin can inherently quicken his LOH if using it on himself. I'm not sure I'd transfer that ability to the cleric's version of LOH in my above suggestion, though.
I don't see why clerics are grafted to the cure/inflict spells, frankly, and why spontaneous casting of domain spells breaks the class. It seems to me it would make the class a TON more versatile and make the domains factor more into the character than a single spell per level, and some weak-ass domain abilities.