Some gain additional uses per day or extra +1s at levels 12, 16, and 20, but I think paizo really dropped the ball with domains, and clerics in general.
Domains should have a 20th level capstone ability like pretty much every other class.
Think of it as an opportunity to start multiclassing out of cleric at lvl 8.
A simple fix might be to just allow 20th level clerics to spontaneously cast spells from their domains, in the same manner they may spontaneously cast cure or inflict spells.
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This is actually the reason I ported my first 3.5 character over to PF as a Life Oracle.
Had to change his fluff and such a little bit, but Oracles just have so much more nifty stuff beyond "okay, your Channel gets better."
Heeey the most powerful class in the game really does need more boosts! ;_
Powerful or otherwise, the Cleric class looks intensely bland to me.
I run a cleric in 3.5/PF game and after 6th level PrC'd out. Going to get some Divine Oracle, Loremaster, and Contemplative. I wouldn't keep to Cleric even if Domains did scale to 20 with powers. They (clerics and domains) -ARE- very bland. Domains aren't even unique to Clerics and barring some really amazing Domains, which you generally don't get unless you're optomising for them, they're not very good.
Mind you, I'm a small race and my character only has 10 Str. So, anything that adds to my casting I'm going to take over anything else.
Bloodline traits go all the way until the end because all Sorcs get are spells and bloodline traits.
Clerics are full casters as well, and get medium armor and 3/4 BAB as well as a pretty badass supernatural healing/damage ability that scales with level.
They don't need -more-.
I realise I'm in the minority here but I personaly enjoy classes that don't have a bunch of fiddly bits poking out everywhere. I see the cleric as sleek and streamlined rather than vanilla and boring.
Even having said that though they should have a capstone ability like everyone else.
- Torger
What about wizards they don't get a capstone they just get more spells. It isn't fair.
Also the witch doesn't get a capstone ability either.
What about wizards they don't get a capstone they just get more spells. It isn't fair.
Also the witch doesn't get a capstone ability either.
A wizards first school ability becomes much better at level 20 and the which's grand hexes are allmost like capstones.
Not quite the same things in either case but both much closer than what the cleric gets.
- Torger
Meh I have a thing against clerics but I have to say that the archetypes for cleric are rather nice in general.
My thought would be that spells are kicking in pretty good by 8th level and you are getting most of your flavor from that. I think that gets missed a lot in looking at stat blocks and class lists.
Sean Mahoney
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LOL, mark me down in the "OMG! You think clerics aren't powerful enough?" camp...
Agreed Dan. Clerics get sod all after 8th apart from channeling and spells.
To be quite honest, very few core classes get interesting new abilities at higher levels:
There's nothing unique about clerics, IMO.
Spells aren't good enough?
Not really, in the sense that there are a variety of prestige classes that gives spells + something else. But spells + channeling are good enough for me.
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Not when compaired to Bloodlines, in my opinion. Schools are similar, in that they offer limited abilities, much more powerful as Wiz olny get 1 School an Clerics 2 Domains, but only the animal and 4 Elemental Domains really increase after their power is gained. Everything else is the same thing, just slightly getting better (and not keeping up or is too much to use anyway).
Upper level Cleric spells are notoriously not great, too, with a few exceptions, and looking back at the Beta cleric, (which my understanding is people really, really liked) Domains are less than great.
Paizo dropped the ball with Clerics and Domains, trying to uber boost Sorcerers and Paladins.
While I do agree clerics are rather bland they are supposed to be to support many different deities I guess, ideally a basic cleric should go into a deity appropriate PrC at level 8 or so.. if only we had a few appropriate ones.
Creative Director
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I find it curious; is there a particular reason for this? It seems like it would make sense for Domain powers to keep climbing as you level up, but I can't seem to find any Domain power that kicks in after 8th level.
Am I missing something? I figured they would be more like the Sorcerer's Bloodline, which keeps granting stuff all the way to the end.
We capped the domain powers at 2 per domain mostly because there are SO many domains in the game. And after capping it at 2, we decided that they'd both be powers that kick in relatively early so that more players would have a chance to use those powers (since the higher level you get, the less those rules are used because there are proportionally fewer people playing at high level).
Cleric is already taking up more pages than any other class as it is. Even if we only added one more power to each domain... that would probably increase that footprint to about 14 pages.
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I find it curious; is there a particular reason for this? It seems like it would make sense for Domain powers to keep climbing as you level up, but I can't seem to find any Domain power that kicks in after 8th level.
Am I missing something? I figured they would be more like the Sorcerer's Bloodline, which keeps granting stuff all the way to the end.
We capped the domain powers at 2 per domain mostly because there are SO many domains in the game. And after capping it at 2, we decided that they'd both be powers that kick in relatively early so that more players would have a chance to use those powers (since the higher level you get, the less those rules are used because there are proportionally fewer people playing at high level).
Cleric is already taking up more pages than any other class as it is. Even if we only added one more power to each domain... that would probably increase that footprint to about 14 pages.
Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
I like you.
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Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
James, an alternate approach to this problem is to consider whether there are too many gods in the game.
There's really no compelling reason every race should have their own god. That's a holdover from older versions of the game. All those gods creates all sorts of complication in your theology and, not coincidentally, drives you towards a bland implementation of clerics as a class.
Fewer gods, more compelling cleric archetypes based on gods... everyone wins.
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Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
Archetypes, perhaps? Each deity has a specific Archetype for his/her clerics. They're not required to take the archetype, but gain bennies if they do.
Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
Did you ever play the Arcanis setting before they went off and made their own system? They had aa series of divine base-classes like that in their 3.5 handbook. It was pretty cool.
Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
Archetypes, perhaps? Each deity has a specific Archetype for his/her clerics. They're not required to take the archetype, but gain bennies if they do.
Yes!!!!!!
Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
I agree! Some of my favorite gaming books have to be the 2e Forgotten Realms deity books, and the different 2e cleric kits for specialty priests of each Forgotten Realms deity. Archetypes in Pathfinder are the closest thing to 2e kits I've seen, and seem perfect for this sort of thing, at least for a home campaign that can take the time to do that for their gods and not worry about page numbers.
I remember when 3.0 came out, Greyhawk was going to have PrCs for clerics of different deities, and Forgotten Realms was going to have multiclass options for clerics of different deities (or vice-versa).
I think both eventually went the PrC route because a cleric 5/PrC 5 is going to be a lot more effective than a cleric 5/barbarian-fighter-rogue-wizard-whatever 5.
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Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
2nd editions Specialty Priests were an interesting notion, particularly as time went on and they started tip-toeing farther and farther afield from the 'cleric +X -Y' template.
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James, an alternate approach to this problem is to consider whether there are too many gods in the game.There's really no compelling reason every race should have their own god. That's a holdover from older versions of the game. All those gods creates all sorts of complication in your theology and, not coincidentally, drives you towards a bland implementation of clerics as a class.
Fewer gods, more compelling cleric archetypes based on gods... everyone wins.
+1
When there are umpteen bajizillion gods, I don't really know anything about any of them. So it is very difficult to make anything specific for them seperately. So most temples are just a generic temple with some generic priests.
Fewer gods, more compelling cleric archetypes based on gods... everyone wins.
Except those who don't play in Golarion and enjoy having a decent number of gods (with decent number of gods being defined as at least 120 well described and uncounted number of less known).
Frankly... my personal preference for how to handle clerics would have taken up even MORE room.
That preference being each god having their own unique cleric base class. We, alas, didn't have room for 30 base classes in the game.
Could we have a campaign supplement with archetypes for every deity perhaps ? I'd like something like the specialty priests of former editions.
I realize similar supplements have already been done with the Faiths of balance, corruption and purity, but I'd really like to see some clerics that feel less bland and 'god appropriate'.
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Honestly, I do not think Archtypes would work, as the issue with Clerics is they don't really have much to trade. Actual variant classes might do it, but I'm honestly not sure each deity, (even each main deity) needs this as much as concepts and general perviews.
Ignor alignments and aspects that are too restrictive to a particular deity (in some ways similar to how the Oracle works, though the Cleric woud still be devoted to a single deity only if that's how it works in your game), and a variaty of priests (Clerics) could take a Death/Necromancy focused dark priest, while a battle-priest of vengence could work eqully well for Iomedae, Ragathiel, Abadar, or Calistra.
Doing something like this would help make the Class a lot less generic, offer options for all the deities, (not just the main ones, but even demigods and non-Golarion), and it would only take like 5-10 to really cover just about everything fairly well.
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One thing I have heard mentioned that I kind of liked for clerics, is changing the spontaneous spells from cure (or inflict) wounds to the domain spells.
Alot of the domain spells are pretty good, but are still mostly already on the cleric list. So the cleric didn't really get that much by taking it. But if you make the sponteous spells the domain spells then clerics with different domains will really have different capabilities.
The cleric with the fire domain really will be lighting up the world.
Downside is that it will probably polarize the popular domains even more than it does now, since some of them clearly have what are percieved as 'better' spells than others. But I think that is more an adjustment of the list than anything else.
I run a cleric in 3.5/PF game and after 6th level PrC'd out. Going to get some Divine Oracle, Loremaster, and Contemplative
And this is why I switched to Pathfinder and never looked back.
Toadkiller Dog
That name is from the old Black Company books, isn't it?
{ I don't remember the author. }
I loved those books. Managed to be believable, dark, and gritty with out being depressing.
Glen Cook, specifically book 2 of the Black Company series ("Shadows Linger"?).
Yeah, that's him.
I wonder if I've still got those books in the attic someplace to re-read.
He also appears in The Silver Spike (it's a spin-off).
It's a great series and I loved the character. Glen Cook really has talent for making odd and cliche names awesome.
I wouldn't mind seeing some Deity-specific archetype-abilities/feats that can alter the way Channel Energy functions, similar to Turn Undead or Channeled Smite. The feats/abilities could also function similarly to Variant Channeling for that matter, but at the player's discretion. Further, Channel Energy uses/day could easily become a cleric's new resource, like a paladin's lay on hands uses/day.
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He also appears in The Silver Spike (it's a spin-off).
It's a great series and I loved the character. Glen Cook really has talent for making odd and cliche names awesome.
He's one of the few who could name a villain 'The Limper' and have it be terrifying.
And The Silver Spike is one of my favorite standalone spinoffs of any series ever.
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I run a cleric in 3.5/PF game and after 6th level PrC'd out. Going to get some Divine Oracle, Loremaster, and ContemplativeAnd this is why I switched to Pathfinder and never looked back.
So you replaced PRC bloat with Archetype bloat. Gotcha.
I understand some disliked the PRC hopping but for quite a few avid pathfinders (me included) PRC's where something missed. I enjoyed combining and mixing stuff to come up with unique builds.
Other than that however, I could easily see adding something to Domains without adding much power. More flavor stuff.
Or Pathfinder could just add more Prestige classes!