So, if you haven't peruse the Triump of the Tusk player's guide yet, you probably don't know who Wulgren is.
So this got my creative juices flowing, and made me wonder, "How does a player build a warpriest of Wulgren using his favored weapon?" And honestly, I'm a little stumped. This is a very MAD build. You need a strength of +2 and as high a dex modifier as possible, and you still want wisdom and constitution. Plus you still have all the usual headaches of using a weapon with an effective range of 25-40 feet inherent to the barricade buster. And so I ask the forum, How would you build a warpriest of Wulgren?
Edit: Link to the Barricade Buster on AoN in case you're unfamiliar with this gloriously impractical Orcish Volley Gun.
When I read the Guide a little while ago, I knew this guy was going to be a real riot!!! Seriously, a deity with a cannon as his favored weapon?!?! Yes, please!!!!!
You probably want an ancestry with +Wis and either +Dex or +Str and no flaw to the other. Something like Lizardfolk. That allows you to start with +2 Str, +3 Dex and still get +4 Wis.
Pretty much all Warpriest feats are for melee only, so you might want to rely heavily on archetypes to increase your ranged abilities. I'd outright avoid trying to get any reload abilities since 8 shots is most likely more than enough for any given combat and you can always fall back on spells in a pinch. Since you already have decent Strength and Dex, how about going fighter? Point Blank Stance will help your accuracy in close quarters. Assisting Shot is a great addition to any ranged character and Lightning Swap allows you to switch to a melee weapon + shield in one action.
This goes for anyone but your best feats for making this weapon viable are:
Multiclass Ranger
- Hunt Prey doubles your range effectively by removing the penalty for shooting into the second range increment.
- The far shot feat (L4 ranger feat, L8 by multiclass) will double your range (so a lot more range with hunt prey).
- Gravity Weapon focus spell to get more DPR out of a single strike since you really don't want to have to reload this thing and lose 3 actions (it can be split across two turns, but it just sucks).
Multiclass Fighter
- Point Blank Stance removes the volley trait.
You best combo is fighter MC ranger or ranger MC fighter. But there may be a divine ranger/divine fighter class archetypes coming the upcoming war of immortals/divine mysteries books so you might have some options that provide a very similar feel.
Red Griffyn wrote: But there may be a divine ranger/divine fighter class archetypes coming the upcoming war of immortals/divine mysteries books so you might have some options that provide a very similar feel. Warrior of Legend Fighters would be spear/polearm focused, but Vindicator Rangers might be a good fit, given they get to treat the advanced weapon of their deity as a martial weapon for the sake of proficiency. There's also the Battle Harbinger Cleric, who might be a better fit in they still wanted to be more Cleric-ish, but with more martial prowess. That one, however, is coming in Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries in November.
Ezekieru wrote: There's also the Battle Harbinger Cleric, who might be a better fit in they still wanted to be more Cleric-ish, but with more martial prowess. That one, however, is coming in Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries in November. Battle Harbinger is all about using battle auras like Bless and Bane. Not sure how well that one would work with a ranged weapon. Seems more like a dedicated frontliner.
Blave wrote: Ezekieru wrote: There's also the Battle Harbinger Cleric, who might be a better fit in they still wanted to be more Cleric-ish, but with more martial prowess. That one, however, is coming in Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries in November. Battle Harbinger is all about using battle auras like Bless and Bane. Not sure how well that one would work with a ranged weapon. Seems more like a dedicated frontliner. I mean if your turns are basically cast a buffing aura like bless and strike. That is easier if you don't have to move with a ranged weapon (you'll just be a little bit more selfish). Its just that without PBS or hunt prey/far shot your very likely to need to move with this weapon because its a 20-40ft Goldilocks zone of no attack penalties.
But a spell + shot or cantrip + shot works really well for this weapon. Throw in a jolt coil for some more damage. That kind of turn rotation stretches your 8 shots and it becomes very unlikely you'll have to reload it since its rare to go 8 rounds in combat. Its just unfortunate that this is the only weapon volley AND a bad range. All other weapons either suffer from neither or only one of those issues.
The Remaster Cleric+ book actually has all your solutions in one spot. Which is quite normal because team+ produces amazing content. Here is how:
- Select the paragon class archetype, now your KAS can be DEX
- This gives you a Level 1 'decree' for which you can select a Level 1 fighter feat (PBS)
- At L2 you have to take the paragon dedication, but specifically it doesn't have the dumb 'special: you have to pay feat taxes to leave the class archetype clause that Paizo loves to brow beat with"
- If you have free archetype then pick the ranger multiclass dedication otherwise pick it at L4.
Now you're wave casting gun totting PBS hunt prey dude and can use this gun without it being painful. At L4 or L6 you want to pick up gravity weapon so you can pick up far shot at L8 (also casters with focus points are nice). Otherwise picking up the animal feature focus spell can give you a 1 minute flight options as well.
Team+ content is generally well received in the community so as long as it isn't PFS you should be generally okay to do this. They offer pathbuilder and foundry support as well. It is a fun fact that Tony Saunders is an additional writer for the War of Immortals book and Paizo clearly took a lot of inspiration for their remaster warpriest from his Clerics+ book (like nearly verbatim feat/name port over instances) so I'm hoping this means we might see a bit of a port over of some of his good work from Team+ to the relevant class archetypes in War of Immortals. But we'll have to wait and see.
Red Griffyn wrote: Blave wrote: Ezekieru wrote: There's also the Battle Harbinger Cleric, who might be a better fit in they still wanted to be more Cleric-ish, but with more martial prowess. That one, however, is coming in Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries in November. Battle Harbinger is all about using battle auras like Bless and Bane. Not sure how well that one would work with a ranged weapon. Seems more like a dedicated frontliner. I mean if your turns are basically cast a buffing aura like bless and strike. That is easier if you don't have to move with a ranged weapon (you'll just be a little bit more selfish). Its just that without PBS or hunt prey/far shot your very likely to need to move with this weapon because its a 20-40ft Goldilocks zone of no attack penalties.
But a spell + shot or cantrip + shot works really well for this weapon. Throw in a jolt coil for some more damage. That kind of turn rotation stretches your 8 shots and it becomes very unlikely you'll have to reload it since its rare to go 8 rounds in combat. Its just unfortunate that this is the only weapon volley AND a bad range. All other weapons either suffer from neither or only one of those issues. Sure, but keeping your target at the correct distance for the weapon while also keeping your allies in your auras can be a pain for the first two combat rounds or so. Which are usually the most important ones where you want your buffs/debuffs to stick.
For a player who specifically wants to be a warpriest, I think Archer is actually a better archetype than fighter, because it offers most of the ranged weapon feats you want at the same or earlier level than fighter. The dedication feat is a conplete tax instead of giving you one skill training, but I think it's worth it to have double shot at level 6 and triple shot at level 8.
I hadn't considered Battle Harbinger. That might be a good pick in a ranged heavy party, but we'll have to see. If Avenger Rogues get training in their deity's favored weapon even if it's advanced (Clerics do, but champions don't, which is why I didn't mention them before), an Avenger with a barricade buster is another weird concept that might make for a fun thought experiment, but we'll have to wait until the end of the month to figure out if that's valid.
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Squark wrote: For a player who specifically wants to be a warpriest, I think Archer is actually a better archetype than fighter, because it offers most of the ranged weapon feats you want at the same or earlier level than fighter. The dedication feat is a conplete tax instead of giving you one skill training, but I think it's worth it to have double shot at level 6 and triple shot at level 8.
I hadn't considered Battle Harbinger. That might be a good pick in a ranged heavy party, but we'll have to see. If Avenger Rogues get training in their deity's favored weapon even if it's advanced (Clerics do, but champions don't, which is why I didn't mention them before), an Avenger with a barricade buster is another weird concept that might make for a fun thought experiment, but we'll have to wait until the end of the month to figure out if that's valid.
I'd agree archer is a bit better because it has:
- PBS
- Assisting Shot
- Parting Shot
- Running Reload
All generally at Fighter level +2. But double/triple shot are bad feats until multishot stance (L18 in the archetype). They're even worse on a repeating weapon because it gets you down to the dreaded 3 action loss to reload turn faster. If you want to fire 3 times you're probably better with exacting strike (A L1 feat) than triple shot. I'll admit my commentary here is generally driven around a fighter taking it because a large part of the bow damage relies on that deadly d10 dice and it may present differently on a weapon with no damage built based on crits. But I don't think the general trend will be different. Taking an accuracy penalty to hit with not damage increased rider isn't great.
Lets do a bit of a handwaivy analysis. I like to assume that 60% of your DPR comes from a 0MAP strike, 30% from a -5MAP strike, and 10% from a -10 MAP strike. We can use this sheet to find the impact of a + or - to hit. On average fighters/gunslingers have a 70% chance to hit across all levels from 1 to 20 using a CR equivalent creature's AC, thus martials have a 60% chance to hit. Lets be generous and say the warpriest will be at 55% chance to hit due to KAS fluctuations/proficiency lagging (so we're looking at the 11 row for strike 1 and the 6 row for strike 2, and 1 row for strike 3). So we have:
Double Shot:
- Strike 1 at -2 = -18.18% DPR of 60% (loss of ~11% DPR)
- Strike 2 at +3 = +30% DPR of 30% (Gain of ~9% DPR)
- Net loss of 2% DPR
Triple Shot:
- Strike 1 at -4 = -36.6% DPR of 60% (Loss of 22%)
- Strike 2 at -1 = -10% DPR of 30% (Loss of 3% DPR)
- Strike 3 at +6 = +61% DPR of 10% (i.e. 1.45/0.9 - 1) (Gain of 6.1% DPR)
- Net loss of 19% DPR
So in most cases these feats are trap feats. It really isn't until those penalties come down to -1 or -2 from the L18 feat that you get net DPR gains (marginal as well) at levels 18+ with 3 feats of investment. Not only that, but you'd lose PBS so you probably can't get triple shot off reliably and that new stance needs you to stand in one place. Just a lot of anti synergies. The analysis above doesn't shift a whole lot if you adjust different numbers +-1 or +-5% because you end up paying an opportunity cost of up to 3 feats that you could have literally done anything else with.
I stand by the cleric+ content. That will get you exactly what you want. Taking the class archetype dedication comes with emblazon armament (so even a +1 to hit) which you can later grab emblazon energy with for +1d6 (also add in a jolt coil for another 1d4-1d8 per hit). It also is a proper wave caster/magus weapon scaling so you get your L5/L13 bumps and won't have 'hell levels'. Its the cleanest/best answer despite being 3rd party content.
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