I was all set to not like this, so the fact that I do is pretty cool. It's well balanced and has great flavour. My only concern is that with glossolalia, since most things speak a common trade language the bonus for shared languages is going to go off almost all the time. I also think that it's effect on faith healing should have been detailed under the glossolalia ability rather than under faith healing. That's largely stylistic though
Good job
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Dedicated Voter Season 6
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This is a really nice take on a holy roller, improved by making it a bard instead of a cleric. I can practically hear the revival music if I read it. I actually like the non-positive energy aspect of faith healing, but it should be mind-affecting (which makes it clear how undead are handled). Neil's suggestion of having it start as temps is a good one, I'd make them moderate duration so that the evangelist can use it to jack up the faithful for a fight. That makes it more special when the revivalist preacher gets to the point where he can close the wounds instead of just bolster.
Pretty sure this one gets my vote. PREACH, brother!
But what if they were banging on about you as their deity?...
Would you want this person sitting next to you as a guest at a formal evening dress dinner party?
Oh good grief, no. One of the last people that you want sitting next to you during a thirteen course dinner is some religious zealot banging on about how great their deity is.
If they were serious about it, they should have the good manners to sit in reverent awed silence throughout the meal, and only resume babbling (with increased fervour) once they had left.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I think this archetype is terrific. I think your power swaps are right on target, your flavor text is good, your naming works (I, for one, love glossolalia), and your concept is tight. Everything fits well. There are a few bits where clarification could help (faith healing for undead, for instance), but I have no problem with bards getting a healing performance, given that they already can heal with their spells; and, for that matter, with a higher-level performance in the core rules (which you, I think wisely, swap out).
All in all, a terrific job. Probably the tightest, best-designed archetype I've read so far.
Congrats on getting to round 2, and best of luck!
This archetype hits all of the right notes for me. Perhaps convincing faith could stand to have fewer skills in it, as all of those it gains tend to be more useful than Knowledge checks. Perhaps faith healing should be mind-affecting. Beyond those two little quibbles, though, this is pitch perfect. Put me in the camp loving glossolalia, both the ability and the name. The thematics of the abilities are among the tightest so far.
This is definitely getting a vote from me. Good job!
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As it happens I just got to the part of Snow Crash where the word glossolalia is being used. I hadn't heard it before then.
I would have liked the Faith Healing ability to be written more clearly and the mechanics smoothed out and simplified.
Overall I think a lot of this entry is awkwardly written.
In spite of my misgivings, I like the idea and will vote for it.
I like it, I think if I use this in my game I'll make the healing illusory. Thus the reason it doesn't affect the undead (though perhaps it does affect intelligent undead)
Evangelist (Bard)
1.Is the Archetype conceptually interesting?
2.Are the mechanics of the Archetype interesting?
3.Are the mechanics of the Archetype balanced and well executed?
But rather than simply adding up the marks for a final score I'm gonna interpret them as a point in 3-dimensional space and the final mark of your submission will be the length of the vector between the origin and this point.
Note that my ranking doesn't need to directly correspond with my votes, as other factors like: Strength of your item submission, mood, my horrorscope and other random stuff still factor in. Also note that this scheme is highly subjective and only mirrors my perception and opinion about your archetype submission.
Conceptual Mojo (CM): 4, Really great, even if it just is a rehashing of the old Evangelist Prc, I absolutely love to see it presented as a bard archetype (rather than trying to bardify a cleric).
Mechanical Mojo (MM): 4, this really is a preacher and divinely inspired evangelist. Glossoialia is especially great and oozes flavor,
Mechanical Execution (ME): 3, the healing by words just doesn't feel right, temporary HP would have been a better fit, but aside from that everything feels neat and polished.Even if your language could use a bit of a cleanup in places
Final note: One could deduct you points, because there already was a Prc with this flavor, but I always was sad that the Prc did do many things wrong, and just didn't work or commute the flavor ( at least in my eyes), so I'm even more happy that you brought back the concept and made it shine.
Total Score: 6.403
Now I can root for your ;)
I can't really much that hasn't been said. Like others I came in having memories of the shabby 3.5 PrC version of this. Your version is neat and the quibbles I have about the exact wordings of the abilities are similar to everyone else. But these are quibbles.
Your flavor text made me want to play an evangelist of Aroden and I really struggle to come up with a good concept for a bard.
Well done, now get that villain cranking! :-) I'll be extremely surprised if your name isn't in the Top 16. Good luck in the competition.
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Although I'm not a fan of the idea of an evangelist character in a fantasy RPG, you've managed to pull it off extremely well and this submission is one of the 5 that I voted for to advance to the next round.
I think maybe the extra spells should be replaced for existing spells the normal bard gets as a possible balancing act, but I could be wrong. I really like the weird faith healing mechanic.
Not entirely a fan of Glossolalia as a GM, but I think that the bugs can be worked out of this in a relatively simple fashion and that shouldn't keep you from advancing.
Hope to see you in Round 3!
Sean, you ol' bard-honk you. This is great stuff. I grew up Baptist, so I've see this guy's work up-close. Definitely getting a vote from me.
I'm not crazy about putting raise dead on this bard's spell list, FWIW. Faith healing is OK, but actually raising the dead seems a little much.
Also, this would be a great recurring villain, target, or even a befuddled contact for an Inquisitor.
A good implementation of the theme. Very flavorful.
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Dedicated Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7
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As much as I dislike evangelists in RL, I do love this archetype. The best thing an archetype can, IMO do, is to provide a very different flavor to a given class - this one does. The mechanics seem solid and it most certainly fills a niche in the game.
Voted.
I'm really digging this archetype. Everyone else has pretty much illustrated in their own words what I would have said. And I really cracked a big smile when I saw you used glossolalia; I really like that word. That, along with shibboleth, are some of the few words that I've appropriated from the bible into everyday speech -- much to the chagrin of the majority that has no idea what in the world they mean.
I mean, I'm an atheist ... and I can imagine myself role playing the hell out of this archetype. Would make for a great flimflam tent revivalist who's eager to spread the word that Aroden isn't dead and he's willing to demonstrate it.
I mean, I'm an atheist ... and I can imagine myself role playing the hell out of this archetype.
It's easy to play pretend with something that you can just dismiss as "mythology"; a bit harder when the thing actually carries weight with you (and the fantasy book's interpretation of it might be nothing like your own). This is why you'll occasionally bump into a neopagan gamer who takes issue with the "witch" class, or with some other element of their beliefs that our fantasy melting pot has assimilated.
Not that I think any of that is a bad thing; really, I think part of fantasy's job is to explore human conditions from slightly weird or different points of view. And an Arodenite revivalist is a pretty sweet idea. :)
It's easy to play pretend with something that you can just dismiss as "mythology"; a bit harder when the thing actually carries weight with you (and the fantasy book's interpretation of it might be nothing like your own). This is why you'll occasionally bump into a neopagan gamer who takes issue with the "witch" class, or with some other element of their beliefs that our fantasy melting pot has assimilated.
Not that I think any of that is a bad thing; really, I think part of fantasy's job is to explore human conditions from slightly weird or different points of view. And an Arodenite revivalist is a pretty sweet idea. :)
I think you have a great point Nicolas -- I view myself as a very spiritual person. I don't dismiss religions easily and I don't bend my knee easily either -- as such I have a very hard time wanting to play someone who does. Most divine character classes are rather repellent to me because of this, however this archetype did give me some ideas for characters that I think would be fun to play. As such it does something most 'divine' types don't do for me, which got it my vote.
I just want to reiterate that whatever my stances are isn't in any way meant to denigrate or disparage those whose belief systems may be diametrically opposed to mine. It's just when I'm thinking of this particular archetype, I'm thinking of Steve Martin's character from My Blue Heaven or Robert Duvall in The Apostle.
Of course, the precedent would be that I'd be in a campaign where it is role-playing intensive. I'd thoroughly enjoy this archetype as it pretty much maps out a path for me to take with regard to mechanics and character direction. This is coming from a guy who agonizes putting together a PC from scratch by wanting to optimize him and to carve a competent personality type out of such options. This one brings to the table some (in)fallibilities I can run with. I may be biased, of course.
This archetype is only one of two I've come across from reading all 32 entries that easily went to my 'gets my vote' pile by ignoring completely whatever they may have (not) submitted in their first round entry.
Star Voter Season 8
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Sorry if I'm not going to preach to the choir on this one -- pun very much intended! :)
One major problem IMHO: Faith Healing is a 1st level ability. For it, you trade inspire competence and soothing performance, which are respectively, 3rd and 12th level abilities. This is too much mojo borrowed "on credit" if you ask me.
This creates a huge problem as people taking a one level dip into bard end up with that ability at the cost of nothing.
Also, the ability is based on a Perform check, not a save that is based on 10 + 1/2 bard + Cha. This means the ability scales with *total character level* and not actual bard level. The higher your Perform check, the more healing you provide right? Sure, only 5d4 points of healing with a DC 30 check is not a big deal if you ask me, but note that it's for everyone in a 30-foot radius. Not a bad ability for a fighter with a headband of int +2 (headband keyed to Perform ranks) to have at ANY level if you ask me... all at the cost of a single bard level, which in its own, already provides lots of benefits...
Finally, I find the ability way too close to "Soothing Performance" (quoted below for reference) for comfort, so I can't jump in the bandwagon and give you praise for originality here.
Soothing Performance (Su): A bard of 12th level or higher can use his performance to create an effect equivalent to a mass cure serious wounds, using the bard's level as the caster level. In addition, this performance removes the fatigued, sickened, and shaken conditions from all those affected. Using this ability requires 4 rounds of continuous performance, and the targets must be able to see and hear the bard throughout the performance. Soothing performance affects all targets that remain within 30 feet throughout the performance. Soothing performance relies on audible and visual components.
"Soothing Performance" is, by the way, a 12th level ability... and Faith Healing lets you do most of it by the time the bard reaches 9th level.
Too much too soon I think, and too tempting for potential one level dip!
Well; I for one was tickled pink over this one.
Having been raised in a home where there was always a televangilist on the tube I harkened back to that time in my life. Now I must admit though that after reading this I laughed so hard coffee almost came out my nose.
"Sit down before I put this Glove on you."
Ultimately I had to ask myself..."Would I want to play this character?" And the answer was a resounding YES!!!. I love the spell additions and I thoroughly enjoyed the convincing faith, however what sold it for me was 1. The fact that the Evangilist did not rely on his own faith but the faith of those listening, and 2. That it was an archtype for the Bard.
Up to Pathfinder I never really liked playing the Bard and PFRPG made the bard enjoyable again. You good sir have continued this tradition for me.
I would recommend this for advancement.
And that's that. It's all in the hands of the gods. (Well, the hands of the Paizo computer gods, I guess.)
Anyway, thanks to everyone who voted for me this past week. Or even lacking a vote, thanks to everyone who commented here, whether that comment was 'Awesome! Got my vote!', 'Good, maybe gets my vote.', 'Good, but not good enough', or any increasingly less loving variations thereof. :-)
Thanks especially for constructive criticism and comments; I've been formatting answers to various posts during the week, and I'll have that finished and posted sometime tonight. It won't be responding to every single post here, mostly ones that raised questions or gave me ideas. Or else ones that made me just want to engage in tomfoolery; damn that 'no-banter' prohibition!
Thanks again. This has been a thrill.
Now that I can speak, I want to clear up one thing right away, even though it wasn't ever really brought up during the voting round. It's just sort of been nagging at me. Creating game mechanics that are based around actual, real-life belief systems is treading a fine line, and while I'm optimistic I didn't cross over that line, I do want to make my intentions clear.
In case anyone out there belongs to a religion where charismatic healing and speaking in tongues is a regular part of your worship, I can only hope I haven't offended by using them as the basis for this archetype. Hopefully this doesn't come across as making fun of anyone's beliefs; it's really the exact opposite. I found those beliefs to be interesting enough that, while I don't personally share in them, they still provoked my imagination. So if I have offended you in any way, I hope you'll read this and reconsider this entry in that light.
But hopefully I haven't offended at all and this is just me putting out fires that don't even exist. :-)
Now that I can finally post about it, thanks so much Sean for commenting on my submission regarding SKR's criticism. That was a great display of sportsmanship! It also would have won you my vote if you hadn't had it already :P
Evangelist (Bard)
LOL
Having an Evangelical preacher I can see where you are coming from on this. I live in the Bible Belt and there are as many Evangelists as there are Charltans.
That said, though, I would have liked to see this a cleric Archetype, or even a Religious Bard. That's a concept I've considered developing myself. Exchange arcane abilities for divine abilities, and you have thi concept.
I really like this and the abilities associated with it. I don't know if it'll make it into my 8 count vote, but good work.
Ken
So a general note on the archetype name, since that seemed to attract the most negative feedback:
I came up with the class concept first and then decided on what name to give it later. I went through a few options for it before feeling 'Evangelist' was the best fit. I was aware there was a D&D class with the name (although I had thought it was a 2nd edition kit rather than a 3.5 edition PrC; I didn't bother tracking down the source because I didn't want to chance polluting my ideas with whatever that class had written into it.) and debated whether or not I felt that should limit my options; in the long run, I didn't. If you feel that was uncreative, well, that's your prerogative. Me, I'd rather stick with a more appropriate name, even if it's already seen use elsewhere, than call the archetype something that didn't fit it as well. This guy isn't a 'Preacher', 'Faith Healer', 'Charlatan' (yes, I came close to using that one too. Heh.) or any of the other names I discarded; he's an Evangelist. Period.
On to questions and comments, then!
Neil Spicer:
I really like the concept of making Faith Healing an ability. But, rather than have it provide real healing right away, I think it might be more interesting to start it out as an ability that can only provide temporary hit points. Then, as a higher level ability, give them something boosts the Faith Healing so it heals real hit points or grants temporary hit points.
That notion intrigues me, in a 'damn, wish I thought of it first' way. It would actually make sense if you're going with the premise of a 'false preacher' charlatany guy. "Grandmere went to see Father Feelgood, and she could walk again! But then a few hours later we got home and she collapsed. Guess we'll just have to go back tomorrow with another donation..."
BUT- and this will make more sense if I get a chance later to write up another lengthy 'where my head was' post- part of the concept I had going into this was someone who could more or less sub for the cleric's traditional role as party healer. (For a party that either had no cleric or the cleric just wanted to bash people relentlessly and not have to save spell slots.) Your idea could still work for that, (just as a preventative rather than restorative measure- preaching before rather than after combat) but the temporary points would have to have a modestly lengthy duration. Alternately I could see Faith Healing provide that as a choice from the start; a new evangelist could choose to either provide regular healing based off of 1d4 or temporary HPs with a higher die. Or else the temp version could scale up much faster than real healing as far as perform DCs to get more healing dice in play. And then around level 10 or 12, the evangelist learns how to use the other style and could provide either. All of which would super-complicate an ability I already had a hard time getting into a smallish space, so I can't say I'm unhappy with what I submitted, but I do like the brainstorm you set off here. Thanks.Mark Moreland:
Faith healing seems a well-reasoned use of bardic performance, and I really like that you went with an alternate performance type instead of getting rid of bardic performance altogether, which would be a major misstep. Balancing it against two other performances was a wise choice as well, as this is a bit more powerful than any single performance; making one of those the helpful inspire competence was a good choice.
I was torn for a bit between inspire competence and inspire courage; it all depended on whether I thought faith healing was too good, in which case inspire courage would have taken the hit. Since Nobody's complained that it's vastly overpowered, I assume I made the right choice here.
I also like convincing faith, though I'm not so sure bonuses should be applied to Knowledge (religion) or Linguistics, at least not in all instances.[/quote
My thought on linguistics was that it kind of played along with whatever an evangelist taps into that causes glossolalia. In retrospect, this wasn't the ability I put the most thought into; I just wanted to get rid of bardic knowledge, since it didn't feel right for the archetype. (In fact, it was supposed to be renamed 'Convincing Piety', but I somehow wound up forgetting to do that through at least five different drafts.) I would argue for keeping Knowledge: (religion) in there, though; just because he may or may not be faking his beliefs doesn't mean he hasn't at least done his research on the topic.
Finally, I think your additional spells are all good choices, but you should make it clearer that these are on the bard's spell list and not spells known, since I originally read this and thought "oh no! That many free spells is way too powerful." I now realize your intention, but clearer wording wouldn't hurt.
Isn't simply saying 'these spells are added to x's spell list' the standard way to do that, though? Not being snarky, here, I'm genuinely curious what the proper way to do that is; I thought I had it right.
Ryan Dancey:
Mechanics (1 point)
Great mechanics. I know why you don't want to use channeled power for the healing but there could be some explanation given for how it works; although mechanically that's unnecessary so I'm not dinging you for the lack. I know the word count is tough.
Yeah, there was definitely a sentence or two more about 'using the force of the worshipers own belief to affect reality' in earlier drafts before I started getting ruthless with the word chopping.
Glossolalia alone deserves a shout out. What a fantastic concept - a way to make language dependent things work on anything that can speak a language! Back in the day, Bruce Cordell was secretly working a concept like this into D&D - there are hints of it in a few places most notably Die, Vecna! Die! and I've always had a sweet spot for that concept.Neat! I'm a sucker for the 'primal language of power' concept, myself. I always wanted to see or make a prestige class that took massive ranks in Speak Language, plus Dark Speech, and Words of Creation (yes, i know, the last two are technically incompatible...) and made some kind of reality-altering linguist out of them. (The Truenamer doesn't quite count.)
Sean K. Reynolds:
Faith Healing: This is fine, though the "this is not positive energy and doesn't harm undead" is sort of weird because it leaves this narrow zone regarding abilities that trigger off of positive energy or negative energy. Hmm, this doesn't harm undead, but does it heal undead?
Huh. The truth is that I just forgot to declare it a mind-affecting ability, but... now that you've mentioned that I'm not sure I want it to be. Maybe it's a bit cheese to allow undead healing, but on the other hand I'm picturing an evangelist healing from Geb traveling the countryside with his undead flock preaching to the horrified locals that the living and dead can coexist in PEACE, brothers!
It's unclear if the 9th-level condition-removing ability lets the bard choose one condition when he gains the ability (like a paladin mercy), or if he learns them all and just chooses when using this ability.
My bad if so; I intended that to mean the 9th level bard had access to them all and chose while healing. Which might be a bit much next to a paladin's mercy, but this was intended as a replacement for Soothing Performance which (admittedly at 12th level) automatically ends three out of those five conditions.
Actually, it was a bit different in my first rendition of the ability; removable conditions got added in batches as the evangelist leveled, and the evangelist could choose to end multiple conditions at once, at a cost of a certain number of healing dice per condition. So an audience of fatigued and nauseated listeners could have both conditions ended, but fatigued would cost 1d4 and nauseated 2d4, and the entire audience gets the reduced dice whether they need the conditions removed or not. Also ability damage and disease were intended to be dealt with this way. But it was much too complicated and wordy, so it got simplified (and less word count greedy.) And remove disease & restoration just got added to the spell list.Ross Byers:
I edited the title of this thread. The original did not capitalize "Evangelist" or "Bard".
Argh! Literally, two seconds after I clicked 'submit' I said 'I know I proofread the body, but did I double check the title? Oh, man, please don't let this be one of those cases where I'm doing a test run and just typed blah blah blah.'
So not as bad as it could have been; still, sorry for the extra work required there, Ross.Ask a RPGSuperSuccubus:
Would you want this person sitting next to you as a guest at a formal evening dress dinner party?
Oh good grief, no. One of the last people that you want sitting next to you during a thirteen course dinner is some religious zealot banging on about how great their deity is.
Brother Marrowbone, evangelist of Orcus, would like a few words with you, Ma'am.
Dark Sasha & Dire Mongoose:
I needed an individual just like this to preach about the glories of Razmir, "The Living God." I was just going to yank something from the NPC tome (blanking on its exact name), but this is better as it perfectly fills the niche.
Wow, good call. That's an amazing fit. I'll definitely do the same thing if I ever do something with Razmir in a game.
It's also a sign of a great archetype, I think -- upon reading it you realize it's perfect for characters you want to make (as PCs or NPCs) -- like you needed the archetype all along to fill a niche and didn't even know it.
Very glad you guys picked up on that; when I said 'dead and false gods', I DEFINITELY meant 'Aroden and Razmir are as likely to have evangelist followers as any other deities.' I just didn't want to spend too many words belaboring what I hoped would come across naturally. Very happy it did. And yeah, I could see these guys being officially sanctioned by the church of Razmir to travel through neighboring countries and converting the masses. I imagine they're the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, too; all kindness and healing and 'Oh, you should bring your family to Razmiran, and give yourselves over to the Living God!' And not mentioning enormous, backbreaking tithes and state-mandated worship until they're across the border.
Alizhor:
I really like this interpretation of an evangelist, especially that it is still arcane casting rather than divine casting. The faith healing works quite well, however I was curious why this is gained at 1st level rather than 2nd level (when the bard gains inspire competence).
Two reasons: I wanted these guys to be a viable cleric substitute from level one onwards, and I was going with the 'an Archetype can be balanced across the various levels of it's abilities, and not as a level-for-level tradeoff' school of thought. In other words, i felt like giving them one or possibly two d4 AoE once or twice a day at level one was balanced even against not losing an ability till two levels later. (Inspire Competence being a 3rd, not 2nd, level ability. Though I suppose pointing that out makes it look even worse? Eek.) I suppose it could be an issue if someone wanted to do a one level dip, in which case they're getting something for nothing. (But I don't know that the evangelist would be a tasty dipping class in any case.)
My only other concern was that giving up jack of all trades for the expanded spell list seems a tad overpowered to me. It doesn't seem like Sean K Reynolds or the other RPG designers mind it so much, so I'll let that pass.
It wasn't the best tradeoff, I think, but I was running low on things to sacrifice. (Actually it started out by my saying 'Jack of all trades feels wrong for this AT, so I'll find something to replace that.') Still, it's only additional options, rather than definite upgrades; picking one of those spells means you don't get a standard useful bard spell at that level. And since most of those are healing/situational (again, with the thought of subbing for a cleric) it's questionable how optimal they are. Although all the language dependent spells in conjunction with glossolalia could make the evangelist a strong crowd controller.
Theocrat:
I like this overall, but wonder if it has to be faith based or if an idea or concept could suffice (but would it still work). Like say, could you swap 'faith' for Taldor without much rules or reasoning adjustments.
I think it's flexible enough that if you wanted to swap out a religion for a cause or something it could work; my inspiration was obviously the fire-n'-brimstone preacher, but it could be adjusted. You might want different fluff text to explain glossolalia, though.
Quandary:
Obviously a great chassis for Razmiran zealots, I couldn't help thinking that with a few more minor variations it could even model things like non-Divine `preachers` of atheist Rahadoum.
Huh, now that's a Golarion possibility I hadn't thought of. I could see that easily, though; this could fit with a little nudging. 'Feel the power within you, friends; it is the power within us all! We need not call upon the heavens for that which we already possess!'
So basically Rahadoumi evangelists are new agey guys. Picture lots of crystals and patchouli incense.Stehil:
Really love the thought you put into this one, especially with it being a Bard.
My only one question is if there is a limit to the amount of allies that can be healed? If not a 30 foot radius could leave up to 36 people being affected by this. Pushing out perform oratory at say level 10, would be 10 ranks, +3 class skill, + 6 sill focus, +4 cha (say 16 base with +2 stat item), +2 MW Instrument = 25, If not in combat you can take 10 meaning 35 which is 6d4 on a 10 or if you roll well 45 for 8d4. putting it on par with mass cure serious wounds with glossolalia which isn't obtainable till 12. Rolling a 20 puts it on par with mass Critical, not available till 16. Both which have a target/level cap. That's also providing you use any of the +5 or 10 to a skill check items, add d4 as needed.
That's interesting; I ran the math too but hadn't thought about it as applied to a fully packed 30' area, more just what a standard party needed. It's possible it could be worthwhile to set a maximum number of targets at once; I'd want to playtest a bit to see. I'm fine with the amount healed, though; while it exceeds what a standard bard could do with various cure spells, that's part of the point; he's supposed to be a healer that's at least somewhat on par with an equally leveled cleric. The healing dice scale slightly slower than the cleric's channeled energy dice do, and the smaller die means that the evangelist will usually be behind them in healing amounts (though using glossolalia and adding your level makes it closer.) I tried to balance it off the assumption of taking 10, too; a really good roll will potentially outdo a cleric's healing, but then you're also risking a low roll as well. I'm okay with that.
That aside it's a small knit pick that can be solved with a cap of targets or dice.
I know some people have issues with the word Glossolalia being a mouth full but it's the correct term and I also think it's kind of fun to say :)
Solid all round.
Agreed on Glossolalia. :-) I know some people didn't love it here, but it happens to be one of my favorite 25-cent words and it's one of the few things I absolutely wouldn't change about the idea even if I could go back in time and hand two-week ago me a printout of every single comment on this thread. Sorry guys; too nifty not to use. ;-)
Nicolas Quimby:
Was Faith Healing supposed to come at 1st level? The abilities it replaces come at 3rd and 12th, respectively.
Replacing Soothing Performance was pretty much just a default choice; since Faith Healing does what it did, and does it more or less better, there was no need to keep that. As far as replacing Inspire Competence... well, talked about that a bit above; I'll probably bring it up again when doing a step-by-step 'how I made this' post later, but it could have replaced Inspire Courage instead of competence, but I'm not sure I wanted that. I think that, weighing the 'skill buff vs. scaling healing', healing probably comes out ahead, but not by so much that it feels more than very slightly imbalanced.
Convincing Faith also looks pretty powerful; I don't think this is overpowered in the long run, but it's pretty frontloaded.
Agreed; amusingly enough, it's an ability I just tossed in there at the beginning because most bard archetypes did similar things for swapping out Bardic Knowledge; I just did it too much. And then when I was editing for word count, refused to touch or even look at it because 'No, I NEED it, they'll CRUCIFY me if I edit that out!' Maybe dial it down; bonus to Knowledge: Religion and then a choice of ONE of the social skills listed.
Also, faith healing could have probably just used six-siders,
Disagree on that one, simply because I was trying to keep it level in comparison to what it was being traded out for plus slightly weaker than a cleric's channeling. Though I'll admit that rolling a load of d4's is much more annoying than rolling d6', just at the table level. You always have plenty of six siders; you'll probably have to borrow d4's if you roll really well on your perform check. And they're more annoying to read. :-)
and the interactions with glossolalia could have been listed more concisely under that ability's own entry.
True, that, though. Like Mark said, there could have been simpler ways to have glossolalia's uses be clear.
I really like glossolalia, and by that I mean the word "glossolalia" (I was not aware of it until I googled it a moment ago),
Hee! Another member of the club. See, Neil, Mark: better learning through roleplay! I CAN'T change the name!
Eric Bailey:
Faith Healing (Su):
My only gripe about this ability is how it doesn't really interact with "faith" in any way. If you aren't being healed by positive energy, what exactly is healing you? Your bard's faith? the recipient's faith? While the mechanic here seems fine, it doesn't answer some basic questions about HOW it works.
Word count nibbled away at my ability to do that, unfortunately. I envisioned the evangelist's words stirring the listener's belief to an extent that they were healed basically by believing they were being healed by their god. Still a little clunky even explaining it like that; basically it would be up to an individual DM whether this was all just spoon-bending or if those worshipers belief called some kind of attention on themselves; whether an actual deity or soemthing else took notice of them. Neil's idea of having it be temporary hit points instead of healing creates an interesting case for the 'worshipers heal themselves' possibility. But basically, it's just my old Planescape love coming out to play. Belief defines reality!
Convincing Faith (Ex):
Most classes that grant this type of ability do so for a very small number of skills. Giving a large bonus to most of the class's best skills seems unwise. I think you need to narrow this down somewhat. I can see a bonus on bluff skills to deceive, for example, but not to feint in combat. Likewise on Diplomacy; a bonus to change attitude would be okay, but probably not to gather info. I think this ability boosts too many skills for a skill-heavy class.
That's actually a good compromise too; add that to the 'wish I'd thought of that' pile. (And precedent for it too; I think the detective, for one, has similar limitations on the skills granted.)
Sean, I think this archetype is a good one. There is some thematic stuff here that you didn't develop, such as conversion or coersion abilities. I feel that those types of abilities would help round out this character a little better; it would certainly help to envision this guy as an antagonist. But perhaps that stuff is part of a bard's basic schtick anyway.Right; that was my thought here. I figured no need to add that when he already has fascinate, suggestion, and all associated goodies. Basically a lot of my thought in making him wasn't 'what can I add to a bard to make him evangelistic' so much as 'what does he already have that works for evangelistic purposes? Okay, now what clashes? Okay, take those out and see what I have to add in...'
Seth White:
Awesome. This gets one of my votes for sure.
Just one question: Does this mean Elan was the first evangelist of Banjo the Clown?
Sadly, my 'Offer free espresso makers' ability had to be cut for word space.
Power Word Unzip:
Dangit, now I'm all hungry. Hey, since I voted for you, will you send me some cookies?"Thank you for your support and please vote for my item! If you have questions, I'll be happy to answer them once voting for this round is closed."
Yes, it's a cookie cutter statement. But if it helps, think of it as gooey chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven with a tall glass of milk next to the plate.
Uh-oh. Hm. Hey, judges, can I get a ruling on whether this would be considered bribing the voters?
On second thought... too dangerous regardless. If I start giving board people cookies, Lilith might take offense at having her traditional role usurped. They'd never find all the pieces of my body...
Matthew Morris:
I'd have made faith healing temp HP, but other than that this is better than the 'faith healer' bard archtype I was working on
*crumples electrons in a small ball and moves it to the recycle bin*
You're seriously working on that? Cool! Bothersome that this wasn't AS unique an idea as I'd thought it was, but I could think of worse brains to be plucking thoughts from. :-)
MicMan:
While in my mind an evangelist is more about show than the real thing (and in choosing Bard as a base class you seem to follow along that line too) the abilities he has are all rock solid without much in the likes of trickery and pretense. This strikes me as odd - but that may be only me.
I don't necessarily see the archetype as shysters, myself. (Though there's room in here to play them as such, if one wants.) I think part of what makes their sermons/performances so effective (either in healing or convincing the masses to go out and tear down that church of Iomedae in the name of the TRUE GOD Aroden!) is the fact that they're very possibly completely sincere in what they say and believe in.
And you can always load up on illusion spells and max out Bluff, otherwise. ;-)Nick Bolhuis:
My only concern is that with glossolalia, since most things speak a common trade language the bonus for shared languages is going to go off almost all the time. I also think that it's effect on faith healing should have been detailed under the glossolalia ability rather than under faith healing. That's largely stylistic though
Good job
Ideally, (given an unlimited amount of space), I'd love to see Glossolalia affect all of a bard's (audio) performances. The flat boosting of DC for offensive ones is simple enough, but it'd be neat to have it have a slight boost when using Inspire Courage or Greatness and the like. And yeah, that all would go under the glossolalia entry itself. (If nothing else, when I was sweating over word count, doing that would have saved me the two words "see below"!)
The DC boost is okay, i think, although partly a remnant of an earlier edit. In my first draft, I'd lessened their combat ability by taking away armor and shield proficiencies and restricting them to simple weapons (though I then gave them automatic proficiency in a single deity's favored weapon.) Since I figured that required them to stand back from the fight, I then worked out the glossolalia DC boost as a makeup for that; that would insure some spell DCs would be comparable to those a primary caster would be tossing off. Then I liked that idea enough that I kept it even after I added armor & weapons back in to the archetype; I still figure it's balanced by the extremely small list of spells it boosts (though admittedly I added a lot of language-dependent spells to their list with Mysterious Ways.) It also still boosts offensive performances, of course, as well, but I think the only one of those that would be potentially unbalanced with a boosted DC is Deadly Performance, and as a capstone ability, I'm not sure that's entirely a bad thing. Still, I agree the ability could use fine-tuning. (Though again in an earlier draft I'd replaced Deadly Performance with a different capstone ability altogether that I REALLY liked and was saddened by having had to cut it.)
Demiurge 1138:
This archetype hits all of the right notes for me. Perhaps convincing faith could stand to have fewer skills in it, as all of those it gains tend to be more useful than Knowledge checks.
Agreed; I think the compromise I found myself coming to up-post to a similar comment was having it affect JUST Knowledge (religion) and the evangelist's choice of ONE of the following: Intimidate, Bluff, or Diplomacy; that way the player can decide at first level if he wants his evangelist to be conniving, fire-and-brimstone scary, or genuinely politic and soft-spoken.
Perhaps faith healing should be mind-affecting.
I thought so too, and just neglected to specify it, but upon consideration and rethinking, I'm not sure about that. Urgathoa needs evangelists too. :-)
Xaaon of Korvosa:
I like it, I think if I use this in my game I'll make the healing illusory. Thus the reason it doesn't affect the undead (though perhaps it does affect intelligent undead)
Ooooh, now there's a fun thought. So not even temporary HPs, just the healing equivalent of shadow conjuration? That's a heavily interesting idea (and one that I don't think I've ever seen used before in any versions of D&D/Pathfinder.)
Azmahel:
Conceptual Mojo (CM): 4, Really great, even if it just is a rehashing of the old Evangelist Prc, I absolutely love to see it presented as a bard archetype (rather than trying to bardify a cleric).
Not so much a rehashing as a 'only vaguely knowing that the prior version existed and not caring much one way or the other.' ;-)
Final note: One could deduct you points, because there already was a Prc with this flavor, but I always was sad that the Prc did do many things wrong, and just didn't work or commute the flavor ( at least in my eyes), so I'm even more happy that you brought back the concept and made it shine.
Yeah, I did go back and look at it after voting opened and people started mentioning the old version. It has some interesting ideas, I think, but felt a little light on flavor. (Also more tuned towards converting the masses than adapting real-world evangelistic tools.) I don't think it's bad, but I can see why I haven't seen a build constructed around it.
Ian Eastmond:
I think maybe the extra spells should be replaced for existing spells the normal bard gets as a possible balancing act, but I could be wrong. I really like the weird faith healing mechanic.
I think you could do that and it wouldn't invalidate the concept; I didn't have enough room to even think about doing that, though. :-) Not sure I personally would even with more space, though; I like characters having to make choices. You can be an evangelist that speaks with the voice of the gods and has much greater healing powers than the standard bard, but you might have to choose not taking that illusion spell that can cause choirs of singing angels to float down from the rafters while you preach.
Joe Wells:
Sean, you ol' bard-honk you. This is great stuff. I grew up Baptist, so I've see this guy's work up-close.
I had born-again relatives who would flat out refuse to let me into their house if I was carrying D&D or similar reading material. Because, y'know, it was the work of Satan. ('Similar reading material' quickly grew to include ANY fantasy novels. I did not object when my parents stopped using them as convenient overnight babysitters.)
Not that everyone following certain faiths are full of the crazy; I just had the misfortune of being related to stereotypes.
I'm not crazy about putting raise dead on this bard's spell list, FWIW. Faith healing is OK, but actually raising the dead seems a little much.
It was a questionable choice, I'll admit; but I did want him to manage to fill in for even higher level clerics, if needed. It is still a 5th level spell, so an evangelist has to wait much longer than a cleric to cast it; I had fewer issues with adding breath of life in as a lower level spell, though, simply because it's much more limited in scope.
Urizen:
I'm really digging this archetype. Everyone else has pretty much illustrated in their own words what I would have said. And I really cracked a big smile when I saw you used glossolalia; I really like that word. That, along with shibboleth
Hee. I love shibboleth as well. (Even though the first time I ever saw the word I thought it meant aquatic psychic fish-monsters.)
Would make for a great flimflam tent revivalist who's eager to spread the word that Aroden isn't dead and he's willing to demonstrate it.
Me too! Along with the Razmiran preacher, that's the other BIG idea this AT gives me.
Purple Dragon Knight:
Sorry if I'm not going to preach to the choir on this one -- pun very much intended! :)
Fair enough; I appreciate constructive criticism as well. And starting with a pun helps. :-)
One major problem IMHO: Faith Healing is a 1st level ability. For it, you trade inspire competence and soothing performance, which are respectively, 3rd and 12th level abilities. This is too much mojo borrowed "on credit" if you ask me.
This creates a huge problem as people taking a one level dip into bard end up with that ability at the cost of nothing.
Also, the ability is based on a Perform check, not a save that is based on 10 + 1/2 bard + Cha. This means the ability scales with *total character level* and not actual bard level. The higher your Perform check, the more healing you provide right? Sure, only 5d4 points of healing with a DC 30 check is not a big deal if you ask me, but note that it's for everyone in a 30-foot radius. Not a bad ability for a fighter with a headband of int +2 (headband keyed to Perform ranks) to have at ANY level if you ask me... all at the cost of a single bard level, which in its own, already provides lots of benefits...
Finally, I find the ability way too close to "Soothing Performance" (quoted below for reference) for comfort, so I can't jump in the bandwagon and give you praise for originality here.
Soothing Performance (Su): A bard of 12th level or higher can use his performance to create an effect equivalent to a mass cure serious wounds, using the bard's level as the caster level. In addition, this performance removes the fatigued, sickened, and shaken conditions from all those affected. Using this ability requires 4 rounds of continuous performance, and the targets must be able to see and hear the bard throughout the performance. Soothing performance affects all targets that remain within 30 feet throughout the performance. Soothing performance relies on audible and visual components.
"Soothing Performance" is, by the way, a 12th level ability... and Faith Healing lets you do most of it by the time the bard reaches 9th level.
Too much too soon I think,...
All good points. I'm gonna start from the back and work forward. When I decided that I wanted the evangelist to be able to do mass healings from first level onwards, then Soothing Performance had to go, obviously, since it was now redundant. If there's lack of originality here, I think it would be fairer to say I'm stealing from the cleric's channeling ability rather than the bards 12th level one, though. (Since Faith Healing was intended to basically be a watered-down channel energy.) The way it scales it's more or less on par with Soothing Performance as far as the amount healed by the time you'd be reasonably close to getting SP; slightly better, really, but then you're giving up Inspire Competence as well. If I could have had room to keep this the way I'd wanted to build it, (with removing conditions = shaving off healing dice, depending on what/how many conditions you're ending with a performance.) I'd have preferred that, since then variations in healing would come at a cost. If I ever introduce this in a home game, that's how I'd do it, even if it then took several pages worth of write-up. :-)
As far as single level dipping- you're COMPLETELY right on target there. The choice of ability to sacrifice was between Inspire Competence (3rd level) and Inspire Courage (1st). I didn't want to give up Inspire Courage, since I don't think Faith Healing is really worth the iconic bard ability. BUT, that presents the issue of Courage being first level and Competence being 3rd. I could hold Faith Healing off till 3rd, but I really wanted it to be available from 1st onwards. It actually wasn't till writing out my responses here that a possible solution presented itself; it might help a bit:
Faith healing: still gained at 1st level, replaces Inspire Courage and Soothing Performance.
Inspire Courage: Gained at 3rd level; still scales up at 6th and 11th, but maxes out at +3 instead of +4. Replaces Inspire Competence.
So a single level dip doesn't get Inspire Courage, the seminal bard ability, IMO. It does get faith healing, which still scales with increased ranks in performance; I don't have a huge problem with that, since your number of bardic performance uses per day won't be increasing and you don't get glossolalia to boost it; but if it's still an issue, maybe it could be adjustable to be more like channel energy, with +1d4 per two evangelist levels; definitely more balanced, though a bit less flavorful.
But thanks for your constructive criticism, regardless!
On to questions and comments, then!
...Ask A RPGSupersuccubus:Spoiler:...Brother Marrowbone, evangelist of Orcus, would like a few words with you, Ma'am.
Thank you, very much, to everyone who voted me through to the next round. My first (and, I had thought, main) goal when I made it in this year was to at least do better than last year's contest. You guys made that possible, and I hope I can repay your faith in me by, at least, making a fun villain for you all to read.
Interestingly enough, though, in spite of having met that goal, I'm finding that I'm not completely satisfied and want more. Greedy little bugger, me, I guess. :-) So again, hope you'll all like my bad guy.
I still plan to do a step-by-step breakdown of my thought process in writing up the evangelist; but if the past is any indication, it will be rambly and meandering, so that will have to wait for the weekend after I have my villain squared away.
And since I wasn't confident enough to be cheesy and post a rallying cry fo my entry during the past week, I'll just give it here retroactively:
Believe in the evangelist! Can I get a witness?
Disagree on that one, simply because I was trying to keep it level in comparison to what it was being traded out for plus slightly weaker than a cleric's channeling.
I figured you were trying to keep it less impressive than channeling, and that isn't a goal I agree with. That no healer in 3e compares to the cleric is a flaw, not a feature, and it's one of the few things which Pathfinder made a lot worse. Channeling energy is really cool, but it severely reinforces the notion that every party NEEDS a cleric, and that no alternative will cut it. Plus as far as out-of-combat boosts go Inspire Competence is a pretty handy thing to lose.
At this point, however, I'm disagreeing with you less on a game design level and more on a sort of 'game ideals' or 'game politics' level. What you did was sound design for the kind of balance you were shooting for, and it's an easy enough thing to houserule.
Remember the mouth-monsters last year? Fun fact: if I had made it in my archetype would have probably been a 'minister' or cult leader.
Disagree on that one, simply because I was trying to keep it level in comparison to what it was being traded out for plus slightly weaker than a cleric's channeling.I figured you were trying to keep it less impressive than channeling, and that isn't a goal I agree with. That no healer in 3e compares to the cleric is a flaw, not a feature,
Huh. Okay, let me amend my 'I disagree' above, because in that case I agree completely. Here we're obviously getting into much larger issues than a single archetype, obviously, but part of the goal here was to give a different 'healer' option. The first couple drafts actually had d6 healing; honestly, the main reason I scrapped that was because I worried a lot of people would have the knee jerk reaction 'What? That's COMPLETELY stealing the cleric's shtick! DO NOT ADVANCE!' So what I'm saying is, a good chunk of my design decisions come from being a coward. :-)
That said, I did try and specifically balance it for the d4 healing by giving the glossolalia boost, the focused faith heal option and condition removal. If I were to rejigger things to give them d6, or to keep the d4 but give a bigger dice option if they 'heal' using temporary hit points or many of the other suggestions found in this thread, I'd probably want to retool those other additional abilities to be more in line with the extra base healing. But that's all academic for the moment.
But yes, I want to see more 'healer' options. Life Oracles actually can sub for a cleric as healer, I think, but I still want more. Bards focused towards healing? Sure. But more: Druids who can spontaneously heal. Paladins less focused on dishing out the hurt and more capable with the laying on of hands. 'White wizards' who can do arcane healing at the cost of some offense. (Really, if bards can cast cure spells as arcane spells, why can't wizards and sorcerors?) Anything so that a group doesn't sit around and go 'Okay, who's gonna play the cleric this game?' (While I'm not a 4E fan and don't ever want to see Pathfinder adopt the notion of 'healing surges', I do think that overall this is one of the things 4E did right; all the 'leader' classes seem more or less equally efficient at being the party healer.)
Remember the mouth-monsters last year? Fun fact: if I had made it in my archetype would have probably been a 'minister' or cult leader.
Heh. I was really wondering if I'd wind up submitting another kind-of-overlapping design again this year. Came close, really; the Evangelist's name was almost the Charlatan. And he was going to be slightly more flim-flam based, which would have put him dangerously close to three other archetypes.
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This was one of my top three, that I knew I was voting for right away.
Glossolalia is not only a fun word, but the use is both sensible and something useful to the class, and not just something 'cool.'
I love the idea of faith healing, as well.
And, as someone who has played a Bard as a 'priest' of Razmir (and, in the Scarred Lands, to make a 'priest' of Mormo as an adversary, providing 'holy inspiration' to his asaatthi warrior flunkies), it's just perfectly in tune with my own sensibilities.
If Evangelist evokes the 3.5 PrC, a name related to hymns or choirs could be used as an optional name, such as Sacred Choirist or something.
Honestly, what you did may have been a good move in terms of earning judge and voter approval; I can't say everyone would agree, just offering my own opinions. Honestly, I don't think that 1 HP per die makes a huge difference either way, but the impression I got was that it was trying to LOOK like less than the cleric's, and to me that's not a good enough reason to make someone roll so many unrollable object. ;)
My favorite thing about 4e healing is how it makes mid-combat healing more agile (by making it swift actions or making it part of other actions); there's a place for out-of-combat healing too though, and Faith Healing is WAY cooler than a wand of cure light wounds. Healing surges (or Iron Heroes 'reserve pool', basically the same thing) are also an elegant way to lengthen adventuring days, but if you're going to make people heal manually, do it with style.
I think that going with 'evangelist' instead of 'charlatan' was a really great decision, regardless of who else ran what. A lot of designers (possibly including myself) would have been more ham-fisted here, I think: "THIS ARCHETYPE IS ABOUT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF GULLIBLE PEOPLE."
In your approach the bluff bonus is still there, sure, and it's an important element of the class. But he's getting the same bonus to diplomacy and to legitimate knowledge skills. The most obvious portrayal is still probably a 'charlatan', but there are also ways to imagine him as heroic or even noble in a way, uniting people through shared belief, and I think that lends the archetype a certain depth and robustness which better captures the imagination
I think that going with 'evangelist' instead of 'charlatan' was a really great decision, regardless of who else ran what. A lot of designers (possibly including myself) would have been more ham-fisted here, I think: "THIS ARCHETYPE IS ABOUT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF GULLIBLE PEOPLE."
Hey, I was gullible enough to vote this into the top 16. ;-)
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Star Voter Season 6
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Congratulations on making it through, and getting the Godless Heathens (Urizen) to vote for it ;-)
GMTA
'Sean, what the hell were you THINKING?'- The evangelist edition.
OK, figure before round 3 starts and I spend the week avoiding speaking at all I'd jot down my thought process during the evangelist's creation. I feel somewhat more focused here, plus I already said a lot about what the concept was vs. where it went in my Q&A stuff above, so hopefully this will be less rambling and random than my item notes.
The origins of the evangelist probably came last fall when I picked up my APG copy. If I haven't mentioned in the past that bards are my favorite class and have been ever since 1st edition, let me do so now: Bards. Favorite class. Since first edition. So, the bard archetype section was the first thing I turned to. Now, being honest, I'd read the APG threads for a few months now, so there weren't any secrets by the time I got it, but still, it was cool to see the actual info laid out in front of me rather than distilled through reviews and discussions. And I loved the bard AT options, especially the ones that took the aspects of a bard that are versatile and focused in on them: arcane duelists, bards emphasizing their fighter-ish qualities. Sandmen, bards getting more thiefy. Magicians, bards who, well, focus on the magic side of the class.
The only thing that was missing, in my eyes, was a bard that focused on healing. I mean, it's already something they can do via spell selection, and they've been reasonable back-up healers since the start of 3rd edition, at least. (And, arguably, good healers back in 1st edition, too.) It just seemed a reasonable next step to do something with them that would help bring them closer to being a primary healer and giving the cleric a break. But then I shrugged, got distracted by all the other shiny new stuff in the APG, and thought no more of it.
Then came the contest announcement and the breakdown of the rounds, and I saw the archetype round and was intrigued. I didn't even recall my 'healer bard' concept at first; a couple other concepts came and went before I remembered this one. (And since some of those concepts were similar to some stuff other contestants did, it's just as well I didn't develop them.) Then I dinged back on the idea that had popped into my head back in the early fall and decided that this idea was more exciting to me than anything else.
So: healing bard. I brainstormed to see what KIND of healing bard he'd be. My first idea was for what I called the 'Temple Singer'. Pretty much just what it sounds like; a performer employed by clergy to do the sacred singing/instrument playing/whatever during religious services. Part of his job would be emulating some of what clerics do to make the services go smoother. The idea was... well, kinds too simple for my tastes. Okay, but meh. My second idea was for a guy called the 'Passion Player'. This one I actually liked, a LOT. Concept is someone who travels from town to town in a pageant wagon with a troupe of performers and... performs in passion plays. Except this guy is slightly more than just an actor; he actually is trained to play the parts of various gods, and thus is expected to learn certain abilities/performances/magic to emulate divine powers. I still might make him for kicks at some point; my main reason for not developing him past scribbled notes is that I thought it might be just slightly too out there, concept wise. Plus, since I was envisioning him having a whole list of variant performances available at each level, so he could customize himself; a bard who was a talented Asmodeus player would be totally different than one who was trained to play Torag. Which was a neat idea, but wouldn't come anywhere close to fitting under word count. Which brought me to the door of number three, the evangelist.
The inspiration is obvious and has been mentioned by most of the people who commented on this thread, so I won't belabor it. Televangelists, tent revivals, maybe a little bit of Jonestown tucked in there as well. I've actually got my initial brainstorming session saved in notepad, so let me save some time and just paste that here:
Faith Healer- charismatic evangelical minister- can be con man, sincere but deluded religious fanatic, or someone who's actually opened a new path to the gods. Preaches that people must find the power of the gods within themselves. Helps the masses do so via his performances- all which lead to a kind of religious ecstasy. (Different performance types, possibly, leaning towards the crowd control types; keep fascinate & suggestion, maybe sub in some group irresistable dance effect, also 'freeing from unclean spirits' i.e., mind control effects, in lieu of countersong.) Also has faith healing- can preach the gospel of the gods and listeners find their wounds closing. Acts as channeling positive energy, but only heals living targets, no harm to undead. Performance check to activate- DC 20 or so heals 1 point, 25 1d6, +5 DC per extra d6. (Placeholder numbers for now- check math later. Idea is for an average check to be slightly weaker than a cleric of the same level, while rolling 20 would be considerably better than said cleric.) Possibly moves on to disease & poison cure at higher levels, culminating in raising the dead. Also has laying on of hands (name change needed, obviously)- by physical contact, preaching (perfrom chack needed, maybe) can apply metamagic feats to healing spells without increasing spell level. (Still requires extra time.) ALSO gains 'speaking in tongues'- can now cast spells/use bardic performances that are language-dependent on any target that can hear them, regardless of languages spoken. MAYBE give him access to one domain- or possibly a 'floating' domain that he can choose at the beginning of the day.
Yeah, had a big ol' mindspew of ideas there, obviously more than I could have done in 450 words. (Actually, this was before the specific round 2 rules were announced; prior to that, I had been expecting 400 words would be the outside limit. So I would have had to trim even more off if I'd been right.) Some stuff actually did get written up in a first draft format and then was the victim of early cuts; I had an ability called 'Tear Down False Idols' which was the countersong/distraction mentioned above; I never fully balanced it, but it was intended to be more or less like countersong except instead of granting a better save versus sonic effects, it would aid versus spells cast from domains outside the one the evangelists patron god grants. Also had a fun replacement capstone for Deadly Performance; the evangelist just causing people to drop over dead felt weird. Instead had one called 'Miracle Show' that... well, by using up something like 20 rounds of performance, plus having a minimum audience of fascinated creatures for that whole time, allowed for the casting of miracle. Those were the ones I cut for word count; then there were a bunch that just never got developed at all, due to balance issues or feeling superfluous. Didn't really want to give him access to domains, since that seemed to bring him too close to treading on the cleric's coattails. Didn't really trust myself to play with metamagic stuff, since it's way too easy to go overpowered there without seeing it. Irresistible dance just didn't really fit the character. (Yes, there's sort of dancing at tent revivals and the like, but... no, not what I was going for here.)
I already addressed the name in a post above, so won't repeat myself too much. 'Faith healer' was the first solid name choice for the archetype, but he did more than just that, even though from the start that felt like it would be his signature ability. Evangelist was my second choice, but then temporarily discarded, not because of the prestige class, but because I worried it was too close to actual real-world religious terminology. After going through a few more (Preacher and Minister were both 'official' names for a day or two each; if I absolutely HAD to drop evangelist I'd probably go with preacher.) I came back around to evangelist and decided to go with it and damn the potential torpedoes. Then, of course, the torpedoes came from a different direction then expected. Shows me for trying to out-think possible complaints. :-)
I'll address his specific abilities on a case by case basis below; let me just say a word about creation. So obviously in my first brainstorming session I came up with most of the abilities I wanted him TO have; the question was what they'd sub out for. To determine that I went over the bard abilities level by level and just decided what felt WRONG for the evangelist to have; once I had a bunch taken out I filled them in with options from brainstorming. There was a lot of shuffling around over the course of his development as I tried to keep things more or less in balance; some people complained about his frontloadedness, (and in another post I gave a possible solution for that; maybe at some point I'll come back and put everything together in a 'revised evangelist' if people are interested.) so it wasn't ever quite perfect, I'd say.
Deleted Abilities
Right off the bat, I knew Bardic Knowledge (and, by extension, Lore Master) needed to go, just because this guy wasn't the gossipy, 'pick up a little tidbit here and a fun story there' type of bard. Versatile Performance was a tough one- it's such a great ability, by far my favorite thing Paizo gave to the Pathfinder bard, but... it just didn't fit. But axing that did give me a little bit more freedom to make some of his abilities a bit stronger; taking extra skills away from the bard leaves a fairly large gap to fill. Jack of All Trades was a goner too, again due to not fitting the type. Well-versed was strongly considered for removal, but ultimately I just didn't have room for an additional ability to put in it's place, so it got left. Out of his performance types, the only one that was marked for deletion right off the bat was Soothing Performance, simply because it was redundant with Faith Healing. Dirge of Doom & Frightening Tune were potential deletions, but ultimately I liked the evangelist being able to make his opponents soil their trousers by giving a nice, fire & brimstone sermon mid-combat. The mindbending performance types I didn't even consider touching, simply because fascination and suggestion were very much in tune with at least part of what I wanted this guy to be able to do. So that left the buffing performances; like I said in another note, I kept going back and forth between courage and competence for this; heroics and greatness might have been at risk if I'd had room for more replacements, but basically once the word count limit was official I knew I wouldn't be able to do more than one or two low level replacements. In the end, competence lost the battle, just because courage is too, too useful a bard ability to go without; if I had ditched it, I'd probably have given myself liberty to beef up faith healing even more.
Faith Healing
Okay, like I said, in pretty much every draft from the start this was his signature ability. Originally it was going to be a separate ability from bardic performance, but ultimately given the way I imagined it working, it seemed only fair to limit it to performance rounds/day. As mentioned above, I wanted an evangelist to be able to use this from level one onwards, since it was key to the concept. Having it replace an ability that a bard otherwise wouldn't gain till third level was thus maybe not the best choice, but like I just said, didn't want to touch Inspire Courage.
Once I'd made the decision to dump Soothing Performance as well, it made an interesting balancing act. Originally I'd wanted to just keep faith healing a little bit behind a cleric's channeling progression; now keeping it also had to not be significantly better than soothing performance too. I ran the math and thought I'd succeeded; other people ran the math here and it looks like I might not quite have. I always sucked at math. :-) I don't think it's TOO far off in any case; just not perfectly there.
And of course, one other thing that soothing performance does is removes various conditions, so I made sure to add that in as well so I wouldn't be flagging behind soothing performance. Plus it made sense, as well, for the archetype. Originally, as I've talked about a bit before, was that an evangelist would, at various levels, learn new sets of conditions he could choose to include in a faith healing, at a cost of healing dice. So a 3rd level evangelist would be able to remove the dazzled, fatigued, shaken or sickened conditions from an audience, at a cost of one healing die per condition removed. The entire audience would receive these reduced dice, regardless of whether every individual in the audience was afflicted with o condition or not. He gained a new set of conditions to remove at 8th level, and again at 12th. The 8th level conditions were 'stronger' so cost two healing dice each, the 12th level ones cost three each. This idea wound up being partially scrapped just because it was a little too complicated and took up too many words. Ultimately it was simplified to a small list (the ones that soothing performance can end, plus blindness & deafness) gained at 9th level, with only one condition removable per faith healing. I do think the reduced dice helped keep this more in line and balanced with equivalent healing abilities, and I'd probably reinstate that version of it if I ever played this in a home game, regardless of how complicated it comes off. :-)
And then focused faith healing, which was originally a separate performance entry altogether before I realized I could save some words just by folding it in to the main entry. Not much to say about it except that I really wanted it there because the evangelist holding the sick/wounded parishioner by the side of the head and loudly praying for his injuries to heal was too iconic for me not to go with.
I kept going back and forth on how healing dice increase for the evangelist, plus the exact die that would be used. Originally, as my blurb above shows, I was going with a performance check to determine the amount healed. I dropped that when I realized that really, no other bardic performance works that way anymore (except countersong & distraction, which weren't what I was trying to emulate here. So then just had it scale up every two levels like a cleric. Then I came back to the performance check because, well, it was fun. Then word count started getting in the way and I found I could save seven whole words by just going with cleric-style scaling! (Yes, seven words saved becomes HUGE when it's Thursday night and your entry is due tomorrow...)Finally managed to save words elsewhere and went back to the original plan. Glad I did, honestly, even if it is a bit of a throwback to 3.0 bardic music mechanics and is eminently dippable. Probably still a better way to balance it and still have it be fun, but it was good enough for the time being, I feel.
Glossolalia
No, I do not regret the choice of word here at ALL. :-) Like I said, fun word to use on those days you want to feel like the money spent on your education went somewhere. (Okay, I lie. My education didn't introduce me to the word; I learned it from a comic book. Grant Morrison's Invisibles. But I wasin college when that issue came out, so it counts, right?) Anyway, this didn't really change too much from my initial concept of it; the main purpose was that I wanted evangelists to smash the language barrier down with their performances. I realized that was probably going to start getting less useful as they leveled up, which was why I added in the 'shared language' benefit; yes, it means a bard adds +3 to language dependent spell DCs at 17th level, but I actually have no problem with that, since otherwise their most powerful spell DCs are coming out 3 points behind the primary spellcaster DCs already at that point. Giving them a slight boost with a few spells doesn't discomfit me at all. Of course, then I wanted to add a few more l-d descriptor spells onto their list to let them make the most of it...
Mysterious Ways
So I picked out a bunch of language dependent spells and added them to his list. The fact that some of them (the inquisitor ones in particular) worked really, really well for him was the cherry on the sundae. And then aside from giving him those options, it became the catch-all category for me to add things in that I had wanted separate abilities for, or else expansions on existing abilities. I wanted to have faith healing keep doing more and more as the evangelist progressed, including healing ability damage, negative levels, diseases, etc., culminating in raising the dead (though not resurrection). Once I realized I'd never have room for all that in the main entry, I figured it was just easiest to toss those in as options to add to spells known. One final note, just because it amuses me, is the name; originally it was 'The Word of the Gods', and I was never satisfied with that. Then while editing the evangelist one night, U2 came on my playlist and all of a sudden I had a new name. Thanks, Bono!
Convincing Faith
Or, rather, Convincing Piety, since I was supposed to change the name to that through half a dozen drafts and somehow forgot to every time. I just figured 'faith' was used too many times in the entry already, so wanted a new word for a new ability. Now, the question was whether he needed this ability at all; I really only added it in because, as I said above, Bardic Knowledge needed to go; unfortunately instead of replacing it with one of the abilities I scrapped, I went with this. Why? Because almost every bard AT in the APG scraps bardic knowledge for equal bonuses to other skills, and it just felt like I HAD to do the same. Now, mind you; I didn't give this one too much thought or study the APG replacements too well. The APG ones have much smaller lists of skills replacing knowledge, or else they limit the specific skills granted in some way. I didn't, I just threw some reasonable sounding replacements in there and never gave it a second thought. So any and all criticism given here was much deserved. If I were to redo the evangelist, I'd probably keep this for flavor as much as anything, but definitely edit the boosted skills.
And... that's all I have to say (he said two thousand words later) for the time being. (Oh, god, will he never shut up?) What with R3 entries going up tomorrow, I'll probably be spending the week mostly silent just out of excess caution, but if there's anything left I haven't addressed ask it here and I'll answer it eventually. Otherwise, looking forward to seeing you all over in my villain thread tomorrow night. Be gentle! (Well, not too gentle. It's a villain and if you go too soft on it it'll probably plot your death or something.)