I was thinking about the cleric's channel energy class feature and thought of a different way to approach it. What it boils down to is that instead of having a set number of times per day that the channel energy ability can be used with an amount of dice rolled determined by your level you instead have a dice pool that you draw the healing from.
To determine how many dice you have in your "Energy Pool", or whatever it would be called, is determined by taking the number of dice you would normally roll in a single channel attempt (1 at 1st level, 2 at 3rd, etc) and multiply that by the character's Charisma modifier plus 3. So for example a 3rd level cleric with a 14 Charisma would have 10 dice to spend on channeling instead of the normal five channel uses at 2d6 a piece. Everything else about the channeling (Will save to avoid damage and it's DC, the fact that it's a standard action that provokes and anything else I'm not thinking of) stays the same for channeling.
For feats that require the cleric to spend "one use" of their energy channeling they now require the expenditure of a number of dice equal to what one use of the channel energy feat would normally be for their level.
So I'd just like to know if this would be balanced? How do you think it would effect the game or would it really matter?
So no thoughts at all on this? Alright, I guess I'll just talk it over more with my gaming group then.
Without a really good reason for allowing it, I wouldn't.
Using a dice pool variant, you open yourself up to some extreme nova issues. I picture an unexceptional 5th level evil cleric (cha 14, extra channeling) walking into a bar and slamming everyone within 30 ft. for 21d6 damage. Even with the relatively easy will save at DC 14 for half, that'll still be ~36 damage to everyone who made the save - tragically, that's about average hp for a 5th level character. Of course, a failed save is unquestionably lethal to everyone below level 8.
In short, more dice per use becomes too swingy. Fewer dice might be okay, but then lesser effects like Turn Undead become a problem, since those effects don't care about dice, just the act of channeling energy. The channeling limits are there to to give a certain metric for effective mass healing or damage, and both the uses per day and the hp per use are presently balanced to that end.
Is there a particular non-powergame-y reason you want to convert it to a pool instead of the RAW functionality?
Ah I hadn't even thought about the Extra Channeling feat. That would throw it off then. And I hadn't thought about having a negative energy channeler going nova on a crowd to wipe out a huge mass of people. Thanks for pointing those things out.
As for why there are two reasons. The first was I've seen too many times where a cleric wanted to heal someone just enough to keep them afloat till they could get over and stabilize or use a more powerful single target spell on a downed party member/friendly NPC but didn't dare to because the Xd6 healing would get the enemies nearby too. Even with Selective Channeling it sometimes just doesn't make sense to heal everything in a 60' radius (sans two or three enemies). The other was to see if I'd read enough to actually start fiddling with Pathfinder rules like I did with 3rd & 3.5. Not a good reason I know but there ya go.
Any suggestions on how I could make this work?
@Nostri, you might want to check page 40 of the Core Rulebook about a Channel Energy NOT provoking an Attack of Opportunity. See 2nd column about 10 lines down: "This is a standard action that does not provoke
an attack of opportunity."
Just my 2 cp.
Probably your simplest solution would be to include specific parameters for exactly the sort of abuses I mentioned.
Cleric gains (3+cha)*(level+1)/2 number of d6 for channeling. They may not channel more than (level+1)/2 at a time, but they must channel their maximum in order to use any other effects that function off of channeling energy, such as turning undead.
As a side note, in my games I typically let clerics channel at a single target as a touch effect, if they really don't want to splash everyone (either healing or damage). It's proven a fairly safe rule so far.