I'll be playtesting this on Thursday with a group of 4th level characters currently making their way through the second book of Curse of the Crimson Throne.
The GM generously allowed me to temporarily replace my original character with a Warpriest but asked that the general feel of the character remain the same to avoid too big a break with reality for the other players. The previous character was a musetouched aasimar Dawnflower Dervish bard who used her spells primarily for backup, support and healing and tended to wreck people in melee combat. I decided to make a Warpriest of Sarenrae that focused on scimitars. The character is using average WBL and a PB of 20:
Vezra (Warpriest 4)
Female Aasimar (musetouched) Warpriest of Sarenrae 4
NG Medium outsider (native)
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +3
DEFENSES
AC 20, touch 13, flat-footed 17 (+7 armor, +3 dexterity)
hp 35 (4d8+10)
Fort +7, Ref +5, Will +7 (+1 Resistance)
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft.
Melee +1 scimitar +9 (1d6+4/18–20)
Ranged Longbow +8 (1d8)
Special Attacks Fervor 5/day (1d6), Channel Positive Energy, Imbue Weapon (4 rounds/day, +1 bonus)
Blessing Abilities 5/day
Good Blessing
Healing Blessing
Warpriest Spells Prepared (CL 4th; concentration +7
2nd—Aid, Weapon of Awe
1st—bless, Divine Favor (2), Shield of Faith
0th (at will)—detect magic, guidance, light, stabilize
Str 10, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 16
Base Atk +3; CMB +3; CMD 16
Feats Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (Scimitar, Longbow), Dervish Dance
Skills Diplomacy +10, Knowledge (religion) +7, Perform (Dance) +7
Languages Common, Celestial
SQ aura
Combat Gear wand of cure light wounds, scroll of resist energy, scroll of darkness, scroll of air bubble, scroll of diagnose disease, scroll of know the enemy, scroll of remove fear.
Gear +1 Breastplate, +1 scimitar, holy symbol of Sarenrae, longbow with 20 arrows, Pathfinder's kit, spell component pouch, 247 gp.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In the meantime I put the character together and ran him through some simple combats to get the hang of the mechanics. Here are some thoughts I jotted down along the way:
Even with full base attack with the focused weapon and better equipment than my bard (who is woefully under WBL at the moment) this character has worse to hit and much, much worse damage output than the bard. This is in part because I decided to split my focus between dexterity, constitution, wisdom and charisma whereas the bard could keep Wisdom at 10. The MAD aspect is painful.
The Armor Class is comparable to the bard - I chose medium armor because the strength is so low that encumbrance becomes a problem if I were to use a chain shirt. Admittedly I'm not playing a typical warpriest here (who would probably have high strength and wear heavy armor). It would be nice to have an archetype that trades heavy armor proficiency for some other feats akin to the Divine Hunter Paladin.
The saves are overall pretty solid, and one of the best save sets in the group, though still secondary to the paladin.
Sacred Weapon's heavily limited duration (1 round per level) will last, at most, through a single encounter. Considering the bonus it gives is identical to the Magus ability I'd love to see the enhancement duration get bumped to 1 minute, similar to the Sacred Armor enhancement.
Fervor spellcasting.
I was surprised to see that Weapon of Awe doesn't qualify for swift spellcasting since Weapon of Awe targets the WP's weapon instead of the WP. I'll probably prepare a different spell for Thursday. It seems appropriate and would be nice if Fervor allowed spells that targeted the Warpriest's weapon as well as the Warpriest.
Channel Energy.
This is so expensive to use, and has so limited output, that I'll probably only use this for downtime healing or just before we set up camp. Channel Energy feels kind of unnecessary, but it is useful for qualifying for cleric prestige classes.
Blessings.
Compared to the other class features where I feel like I'll run out of charges very quickly, I have tons of uses for blessings but I doubt I'll use them very often.
Why are almost all blessings exclusive to melee weapons?
The Healing blessing stipulates that the spell must be prepared. I think this means I have to have healing spells prepared instead of casting healing spells via Spontaneous Casting? If this is the case then I'll probably never use it.
Spellcasting in general.
Because I have to split my ability points between so many different scores, I won't be able to keep my Wisdom high enough to reliably land spells with saving throws. Instead I'll use my spell slots to prepare buffs and utility spells. Luckily the cleric list has quite a few of these.
I find that the WP spell list is kind of underwhelming compared to the Bard (which has a spell list balanced around being a 6th level caster). While the warpriest is limited to spells like Aid, the Bard is putting out spells like Allegro and Heroism.
Finally, ability scores. Even when using a race perfect for the character concept and a 20 PB this class was hard to get enough points to go around - Ideally I wanted 13 strength for power attack but that just wasn't feasible. With 15 pointbuy this is downright painful.
Thanks for the playtest, All good observations.
Wow that is a really high charisma. May I recommend a total of 14? It actually gives you those points you want for Power Attack.
Reducing cha from 14 to 12 might be an option to free up some points for strength, that would also give methe carry capacity to use light armor...
I'm a little worried about running out of Fervor though. 5/day for both LoH and swift action spells will fly by even without the channel options.
Reducing cha from 14 to 12 might be an option to free up some points for strength, that would also give methe carry capacity to use light armor...
I'm a little worried about running out of Fervor though. 5/day for both LoH and swift action spells will fly by even without the channel options.
I have a feeling 1 more Fervor isn't going to make too much of a difference. If it does and it gets you killed, blame me.
The Differences:
1 more use of Fervor Healing or casting a Swift Action spell that is most likely Divine Favor. It is 6 possible spells you cast with that Swift Action. Chances are you'll not want to cast Aid or Shield of Faith in battle if you can help it. Its also a possible 1d6 of healing which, I doubt you'll want to use as its a very small amount of healing.
Power Attack
A Composite Longbow that deals 1 more damage =)
Carrying Capacity leeway
Just got back from the playtest session! It's late so I'll type up something a little more detailed tomorrow but...
The class performs decently well in combat but it has some real limitations as far as general utility goes. The Fervor mechanic strongly encourages you to primarily prepare self-targeting buff spells with your limited spell slots, the blessings are pretty much all tied to combat, and the two skill points per level along with a strong MAD aspect where intelligence is your only real dump stat means your skill competence will be in the Abyss.
Compared to the other 6th level casters (Bard, Inquisitor, Magus) or even other frontliners (barbarian, ranger) I found that this class really, really struggles to contribute outside of combat encounters.
Phew! This took longer to type out than I thought it would... Right, here goes:
The playtest will contain some minor spoilers from the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path, specifically parts 1 & 2. Read at your own peril.
Last night's session was split in two - we went to back to a previous part of the AP (The Ambassador's Secret) to neutralize Devargo Barvasi (who has been trying to make our life hard for a while after we stole his pet pseudodragon), and then we got properly started with part 2, specifically:
Following up on the mysterious ship and discovering the story behind the scuttling
encountering the mysterious disease and curing Brienna Soldado
Smuggling Trinia out of Korvosa
I'll be making some comparisons to other characters in the party as we go - the party includes a (Preacher) Inquisitor of Gorum with the Conversion Inquisition wearing spiked full plate, and a Tiefling (Chirurgeon) alchemist who focuses primarily on bombs and buff extracts.
Quick off-topic note: The alchemist has refluffed his infusions to be uncomfortably large pills (hence the standard action to swallow) that are vividly colored but otherwise unlabelled. The alchemist's player gets an indecent amount of glee from shouting things like "take the red pill" and watching our worried faces as we swallow a completely unknown "buff" spell. It really doesn't help that the alchemist's wisdom is in the dregs so he occasionally mixes up color codes... The inquisitor's player has started a color code chart and keeps it attached to his character sheet.
In-Combat detailed Playtest
First things first, the battle at Eel's End. This was definitely the strong point for the Warpriest, a pitched battle between the party, Devargo, 6 of his merry men and occasional reinforcements of guards coming in from the rear door.
We had a chance to buff for one round before the encounter started. I spent this round casting Weapon of Awe (since this cannot be cast through fervor), the inquisitor cast Divine Favor. In hindsight using the Good Blessing would probably have been a better way to use the buff round than Weapon of Awe, but frankly, I forgot about the blessing. This is probably settling pains for playing a new class.
Battle was joined. We were already aware of the layout of the ship cabin from our previous visit and we had noticed the trapdoor the first time around so we were very careful to avoid stepping on it. Initiative was roughly (I lost the initiative track sheet >__<) like this: The inquisitor went first, then me, then the alchemist with the thugs and Devargo delaying to act as a pack after us.
Round 1 Status:
6 thugs
Devargo
The first round I cast (Fervor) Divine Favor and moved up to take a guarding position between Devargo and the alchemist.The inquisitor cast Judgement (Justice) and moved beside me, greatsword in hand. Both took a ready action to attack the first hostile to move within range. The Alchemist threw a bomb, not killing anyone but giving out a fair bit of hurt to anyone standing too close.
While I was expecting my damage output to be lower than the Inquisitor (scimitar vs greatsword, dexterity vs strength, one-hand v two-hand) I was surprised to find that the inquisitor also had a higher to hit than me: Justice Judgement (and having a charisma of 7, allowing him have str 19 and dex 13 to my str 10 and dex 17) meant the Inquisitor had the same to hit bonus before casting Divine Favor, and the buff round sent him in the lead with a +11 (+4 strength, +3 BAB, +1 Weapon Focus, +1 DV, +1 Judgement, +1 Greatsword) to my +10 (+3 dexterity, +4 BAB, +1 Weapon Focus, +1 DV, +1 Greatsword). However the Inquisitor won't be able to have Judgements active in all fights.
The thugs quickly swarmed us, though we took down one each in the first round. I took a hit (5 damage or so), the Inquisitor took a threat (thug rolled a 19 with a longsword) but negated it with the Preacher special ability, bringing his AC up to 25 vs that attack. The alchemist spectacularly failed a perception check to hear the sound of running boots rapidly approaching the cabin door from the outside. Devargo pulled out a potion, drank it, and disappeared.
Round 2 Status:
4 thugs (unharmed)
Devargo (Unharmed, Invisible)
I activated Sacred Weapon as a swift action, increasing my scimitar to +2. (The inquisitor looked on with envy, clearly longing for Bane at level 5). I made a melee attack while fighting on the defensive, trying to deny them more flanking chances than strictly necessary, and took down another Knivesie-enthusiast. The Inquisitor, feeling confident, continued attacking normally, taking down yet another gutterrat.The Alchemist threw another bomb, not downing anyone but doing a significant amount of splash damage to the remaining two thugs.
The remaining two thugs ganged up on and flanked me, one missed but the other one scored a critical hit and hit me for a whopping 17 damage- I'm hurting but there's still some fight in me. Devargo's was lurking somewhere, didn't reappear. The Alchemist finally heard the noise of pounding feet coming towards the door and moved to block it.
Round 3 Status:
2 thugs (hurting)
Devargo (Unharmed, Invisible)
I wanted to use my Healing Blessing to swiftly cast CMW, converted from Aid - but the Healing Blessing specifies that the spell must be prepared. Do spontaneously converted spells count as prepared? We weren't sure and the language doesn't seem to specify - this would benefit from clarification.
Trying to avoid the rules confusion I instead decided to cast CMW converted from Aid with Fervor, only to run into the exact same problem - Fervor only works with prepared spells.
To avoid further bogging down the game I opted instead to use Fervor with Lay on Hands but rolled poorly on the D6, it only healed 1 HP. At level 4 only having a 1D6 Lay on Hands is pretty underwhelming even by healing standards. I used my standard action to cast Glitterdust (racial spell) to find Devargo but misjudged his location - the Glitterdust didn't hit anything. The inquisitor downed another thug. The alchemist moved to the only entrance and spent a standard action bracing against the door.
Devargo finally reappeared, pinning the alchemist to the door (more or less literally) and unleashed a flurry of rather unpleasant sneak attacks. 6D6 sneak attack damage, a flurry of poison saves and one critical hit later, the alchemist was on the floor contemplating what pill would put his spleen back in place. The good news is that his unconscious body was still keeping the door closed.
The GM later admitted that he gave Devargo another rogue level to make him less of a push-over. It was this combined with spectacular attack rolls that did the Alchemist in - that's just the way the game goes sometimes.
Round 4 Status:
1 thug (unharmed)
Devargo (unharmed, visible)
Unknown number of assailants on the other side of the door
Alchemist bleeding out by the doorway
The inquisitor switched his Judgement to protection and elected to, and succeeded at, bull rush Devargo away from the alchemist (eating an attack of opportunity along the way). I killed the final thug and moved next to the alchemist with my move action, getting ready to get him back on his feet. The alchemist failed his stabilization save, further circling the drain.
Devargo made a full attack on the inquisitor with TWF and bladed gauntlets, only to find that TWFing, trying to hit 22 AC and having no flanking buddy typically means rogues kind of suck. All his attacks missed.
Round 5 Status:
Status: Devargo (looking worried)
Unknown number of assailants on the door being curiously inept at making strength checks
Alchemist bleeding out by the doorway
The inquisitor swapped his judgement back to Justice, activated power attack and proceeded to beat the living crap out of Devargo. I dismissed my sacred weapon, moved up next to the Alchemist, cast Cure Moderate Wounds (converting Aid) which brought him back up in the positives, then used Fervor to heal myself (rolled 3 this time. Still not particularly sold on the lay on hands aspect of this ability).
Devargo, staring death in the face, used the Withdraw action to run away from the inquisitor and moved to the only other door on the ship.
Round 6 Status:
Status: Devargo (badly hurt)
Unknown number of assailants on the door still being curiously inept at making strength checks
Alchemist is prone by the door but conscious
The Inquisitor delayed briefly to make sure I could handle the door, then chased down and absolutely mutilated Devargo, placing him soundly in the two-digit negatives. The Alchemist got back on his feet and moved away from the door. I moved in front of the door and took a ready action to attack anything hostile that comes through the door.
Round 7 Status:
Devargo (unpleasant stain on the ship boards)
Unknown number of assailants on the door perhaps being slightly less keen on entering the cabin now that the screaming has stopped
Alchemist shaken and hurting, but back on his feet
This is pretty much where the encounter ended - we used Devargo's bladed gauntlet (and the arm it was still attached to - he really did mutilate him) as a circumstance bonus on an already excellent intimidate check (Conversion inquisition ftw) to scare off the guards who had gathered outside, then proceeded to clear out the remainder of the ship. The spiders and the ettercap were speed bumps and this post is already growing monstrously long so I'll save you those recaps. The Alchemist used his Heal skill to counter the poison saves we'd all accumulated along the way.
Out-of-Combat playtest
Next, there is a series of non-combat problems and puzzles the AP calls for the players to figure out. This was clearly not the Warpriest's forte and I quickly grew frustrated with some shortcomings here compared to the Bard I normally play.
Following up on the mysterious ship: A 14 in charisma and ranks in diplomacy meant that I could help gather some information here, but I rolled very poorly, only gathering basic rumours. The inquisitor doesn't have ranks in diplomacy since this is a skill covered by the bard I normally play. We didn't learn anything particularly useful.
When encountering the mysterious disease plaguing Brienna I realized one of the issues with the warpriest - it has very, very few skill ranks and because of the way Fervor interacts with spells targeting the warpriest there's strong incentive in place to prepare self-targeting buff spells instead of general utility spells. Additionally with the slow spell level progression I get access to condition remover spells later than your typical cleric. While not generally a huge deal and I think the class is well balanced against losing the spell progression of a full spellcaster, the slow access to condition-removal spells is a bit of a bummer, especially since I'm worshiping a deity who has Healing in her portfolio.
Even with a scroll of Diagnose Disease I was absolutely no use here. Instead the Alchemist made the diagnosis and the party sprung for an NPC cleric to cast Remove Disease.
We realized that the money the little girl had squirreled away was important and it was fun to see the Inquisitor throw the Adventure Path completely out the window by rolling ridiculously good perception, survival and sense motive checks to follow up on the mysterious coin. The GM was clearly improvising (and doing a great job of it) in places to reward his persistence. The moment when a 7 foot, 7 charisma, massively muscled half-orc in intimidating spiked armor mused out loud "if I was a seven year old girl, which candyshop would I visit first" was absolutely priceless.
Finally, smuggling Trinia out of Korvosa. Again I found I didn't have any particularly useful spells prepared or skills capable of handling this. Luckily the alchemist had left an extract slot open and used a Disguise Self infusion (no bickering, swallow the green pill!) to turn Trinia into an appropriately colored half-orc and we walked out right past the city guard.
Overall thoughts:
The Warpriest was one of the classes I was most excited about and I participated heavily in the first warpriest thread - when the revised version came out I was very, very happy with the changes made. However, after having played it I'm sad to say I'm a little bit underwhelmed... Good things first:
The warpriest handles well in combat. It feels flavorful and it feels 'solid'. While I played worshiping a deity who already has an excellent favored weapon, I like the idea that it makes different favored weapons viable and I also like that it has the option of using different weapons irregardless of what deity it worships - this flexibility is very important to me. My numbers were a a little lower than the inquisitor's but this is at least partially because I use a build that's not ideal (Dexterity focus, Dervish Dance and Weapon Finesse) for the class - If I had built for a strength focus and taken Power attack and Cleave I would have benefited from Heavy Armor Proficiency and possibly shield proficiency (which were both wasted feats for me) and been much better off in the fight with the thugs and the spiders. We did find a few concerns with the class, I'll list these below.
The warpriest is unable to cast spells targeting his weapon while using Fervor - this might be an oversight? The idea of the Warpriest blessing his weapon is iconic and I doubt it would break the class.
We were unsure how Fervor and the Healing Blessing interacted with Spontaneously cast healing spells. It'd be nice if this language was cleaned up a little.
The option to use Fervor to heal (as in Lay On Hands) is very underwhelming. Healing spells scale poorly to levels as it is, healing 1D6 and potentially rolling poorly when you have 35 HP feels kind of pointless. Alternately this might be a good way to add to the utility of the class by giving it a variant of Mercies like the paladin does.
The warpriest burns two different limiters when he casts spells - both charges of Fervor and spell slots. This feels a little restrictive at times.
Sacred Weapon's duration is almost comically short compared to how little it brings to the table. A single +1 bonus for 4 rounds is very underwhelming. I'd like to see this get bumped to 1 minute per use akin to Sacred Armor and the Magus arcane pool ability. It would both be more useful and there would be fewer different durations to keep track of. This is already a buff-heavy class, so keeping tracks of even more different duration buffs can be confusing.
While it didn't really come up in this playtest, I'm a little concerned when I compare the paladin, the inquisitor and the warpriest (or rather, Cleric) spell lists. If I were to rank these classes in order of "martial focus" I'd probably place the paladin in front, the warpriest behind the paladin, the inquisitor third and the cleric fourth. However the paladin gets some unique spells to help in that role and the inquisitor gets access to some of these spells because of his unique spell list, while the warpriest does not since he uses the cleric's spell list.
While I don't think the Warpriest strictly needs a separate list it would be nice if some paladin and inquisitor spells were added to his list, much like you added some spells to the Bloodrager's. Examples of appropriate spells would be Bed of Iron, Litany of X, Unerring Weapon, Flames of the Faithful, Tactical Acumen, and so forth.
Compared to the inquisitor and the magus, this class does not bring a lot to the table when he's not fighting. Most of the time when we were solving problems outside of combat I felt like I was playing a fighter - this is not high praise. The warpriest gets very few skills, no class features that are useful outside of combat apart from his spell list, and with the way Fervor works he has strong incentive in place to prepare self-targeting buffs in those spell slots.
The inquisitor uses Bane and Judgement to do well in combat but also has a host of abilities available for doing well outside of combat - 6 skill points, detect alignment, detect lies, half level to survival checks, and most importantly - since Judgements and Bane are swift actions he has less incentive to use spells in combat, which means he has more incentive to use spells for utility outside of combat. Finally, the inquisitor is significantly less MAD than the warpriest.
Conversely, the magus relies on spells to do well in combat - but he also gets class features to offer out of combat utility and a great deal of flexibility (in the form of spell recall) and apart from spell slots there's no limitation on how many spells he can cast - he's not burning Arcane Pool points to use Spell Combat. He only gets two skill points per level but since Intelligence is a primary stat for him he'll probably have closer to five or six skill points per level. Like the inquisitor, the Magus is less MAD than the warpriest.
Conclusion
If this class was published today I'd probably still play it, but I think it would still benefit from a few tweaks. It could do with a more streamlined ability score setup and a bit more general utility - either in the form of more skill points or some unique class features that help define the class (like the Inquisitor's Stern Gaze and Detect Lies). Blessings, while more useful than I originally gave them credit for, are kind of dull, typically focus even more on combat, and I worry that (like Teamwork Feats and Words of Power) they won't get much post-launch support. I'd like to see the Warpriest have the option of selecting Domains or Inquisitions as well as blessings, that way I know there'll be a host of options available to me down the line and the Warpriest would be able to choose where to put his focus - Blessings focus mainly on combat, Domains mainly on spells and Inquisitions mainly on general utility.
I actually think that's what the designer's intended for this class. Less "save or die" spells and more combat boosty stuff. The way I'm looking at it Fervour is so good you have to invest points in Charisma (if doing a points build). You only really need Wisdom for saving throws, a few survival & healing type skills (and the overimportant Perception skill :p) and maybe a few low level spell slots. Because it's a 6 level spell access class you don't need a wisdom of 15 at 1st level to have access to 9th level spells before 20th level.
The need for physical ability scores means that you can afford to have wisdom in the 12-14 range and focus more on physical combat stats of your chocie and Charisma. I'd recommend high constitution for survivability with strength & charisma coming joint 2nd place. Wisdom would rate at 3rd place according to the current way the class is built.
Because you don't need a high wisdom you can probably afford to forget about "save or surrender" type spells and focus on the fighting. 'cause that's what this class seems to want to do.....
Just a few thoughts 'though. Feel free to ignore them if you disagree :).
Crap! I meant to reply to this and then completely blanked while writing that playtest report:
I find that the Warpriest's slow casting progression means you really want bonus spells, so wisdom 14 is about the sweet spot for me. 14 is high enough that you get bonus level 2 spells and hopefully you can afford a +2 wisdom item by level 7 without breaking the bank, but a DC 10+2+spell level DC is not going to intimidate anyone so the class will still focus on buff spells over combat spells.
After having played actually played the class I think I heavily overestimated how much I'd use Fervor (you only really use them for Swift Spells since the lay on hands and channel are very, very bad) so I agree with Scavion in that I could probably have gotten by with less Charisma - 12 would be painful at the very low levels (2 Fervor/day), while 14 seems to be a nice middle point. I still think it's a bit too MAD compared to the inquisitor and the magus though, it feels more like trying to build a monk. The Aasimar is unique in that it's the only race who offers two ability score bonuses and no penalties and I still had a really hard time working out the stats even with 20 PB.
Thanks for the playtest. I think the following quote says the most:
The inquisitor uses Bane and Judgement to do well in combat but also has a host of abilities available for doing well outside of combat - 6 skill points, detect alignment, detect lies, half level to survival checks, and most importantly - since Judgements and Bane are swift actions he has less incentive to use spells in combat, which means he has more incentive to use spells for utility outside of combat. Finally, the inquisitor is significantly less MAD than the warpriest.
While the Warpriest might slightly edge out the inquisitor over time (ie, when bane is used up) It is relying on fervor and spells to buff thus burning two pools of resources. Also it is not in the same ball park as the inquisitor when it comes to out of combat contributions.
note: A friend has level 8 Inquisitor in PFS and he comments that he never runs out of bane if used properly.
Thanks for the playtest.
Thanks for reading it! In hindsight I could probably have shaved off a fair bit of text here, I'm a little worried the wall of text is dissuading people from going through it.
I am a little concerned about the general utility of the Warpriest compared to the other 6th level spellcasters. It's especially noticeable when you compare it with the inquisitor, but the bard and the magus also heavily outperform it out of combat and don't have too much trouble keeping pace in combat either.
Making fervor key off of Wisdom and giving the class 4 skillpoints per level would help a lot, but I'd also like to see something akin to the inquisitor's very iconic and thematically appropriate Stern Gaze - something to help define the Warpriest outside of combat. I have no idea what would be a good fit though. Maybe... "Quiet Zeal", giving the warpriest a 1/2 level bonus to intimidate or even keying Intimidate to work off of Wisdom?
|
I suggested the same thing in my playtest. One thing I thought of would be to added an Associated skill (or possibly a choice of 2), to each of the Blessings that count as if the Warpriest had Max ranks in it. That would both help with the skills issue, but also help to differentiate one warpriest from anther to a point I think the class needs.
Is your playtest posted here? I'd love to read it :).
It'd be interesting to compare notes - the inquisitor comparisons dominate mine a bit since we play in a small group and the third member was an alchemist. I'd be curious to see how it performed next to other classes.
|
|
Is your playtest posted here? I'd love to read it :).
It'd be interesting to compare notes - the inquisitor comparisons dominate mine a bit since we play in a small group and the third member was an alchemist. I'd be curious to see how it performed next to other classes.
I didn't want to distract from your thread, so I PM'd you a link.
|
I think some observations on the class are colored by a playtest that includes a dex-based fighter style. If you went with a regular fighting build and focused more on str and wis, with con and Cha being secondary I think most of the complaints being leveled here would disappear. A straight-up strength based fighter/cleric would fair much better IMO.
I think some observations on the class are colored by a playtest that includes a dex-based fighter style. If you went with a regular fighting build and focused more on str and wis, with con and Cha being secondary I think most of the complaints being leveled here would disappear.
I agree (and I believe I stated) that the WP I built was unconventional since I was working with some restrictions from my GM - specifically that I was asked to maintain the general flavor and tone of the original character, which was a musetouched aasimar Dawnflower Dervish bard.
However, swapping strength and dexterity, ditching the scimitar for a Greatsword and replacing the two unnecessary feats with other options would (in my opinion) not dramatically change how the character plays in regards to the issues I found in my playtest.
Specifically those changes would mean Vezra's damage output would go up a fair bit (note that I commented that I was expecting my DPR to be lower than the inquisitor's since I'm using a 1h weapon), her AC would be roughly the same (wearing full plate instead of breastplate), her touch AC, initiative and reflex saves would be a fair bit lower.
Focusing more on Wisdom would not really help Vezra, since she only has access to level 2 spells at level 4. A wisdom of 16 would give her a +1 on her spell save DCs, which is not particularly useful for a warpriest, and a 3rd level bonus spell - which wouldn't come online till lvl 7.
The main problem I had with the Warpriest wasn't how it handled in combat (though there are some issues there as well), but rather that it had very little to contribute with outside of combat compared to other, similar 6th level spell progression classes like the bard, the magus, and the inquisitor.
A straight-up strength based fighter/cleric would fair much better IMO.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with this quote - do you mean a straight fighter 1/cleric x would function better than the warpriest?