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There are some cool options, but there could certainly be more cool options. We have a channel-loving cleric in our game who would like another feat or two, certainly.
I offered more feats along the lines of Quick Channel (sacrificing an extra use for empower, a use for widen, or two uses for maximize), but he hasn't bitten. He absolutely loves Quick Channel and did take the channel breath of life feat, though, which might come in handy.
Honestly, though, I think the main reason there aren't other metachannels is that quick channel makes them pretty obsolete. There's little need for an empower or maximize when you can drop two channels in a round. Widen would have been eh to begin with.
I'd certainly accept more channel feats, but I feel like at this point it's largely gilding the lily. There's space for stuff like clearing status effects or moving those healed (friendly equivalent to channel force), but it already does its core role so well I don't feel it needs much.
I'm kind of stunned by the negativity towards channel some people in this thread have, though. I mean, it's the internet, so I should expect that, but I personally point to channel as one of the best improvements between 3.5 and Pathfinder.
Cheers!
Landon
As I've said, there's already some great channeling feats. I didn't even know about force channel until I started this thread; now that I do my next cleric will need to be an Asimar. That being said, I'd love more stuff like that or the variant channel powers.
Spend 2 channels for a Dazing Channel? You damage undead and provoke a Will save or Daze for 1 round/# of channel dice you roll? Too much?
I don't know, it just seemed like clerics had this dusty old power laying around that they just didn't know what to do with. Then you all made your excellent contributions to this thread and I see that it's been developed a bit more than I thought. Yet even still it seems there might be just a little bit more that could be done.
When did I say never qualifies? I didn't. I said you don't automatically qualify and it isn't a houserule to disallow someone from taking one.
Might means it could be never depending on the circumstances. If you are a us citizen you might become president. If you weren't born on u.s. soil you can change that to never (unless you want to be really anal about it and say well if the constitution was changed so its only 99.9999%)
Actually it is a houserule. If you meet the prereqs of any feat then you can take that feat. <---That is in the CRB. The book is only saying that most PC's won't qualify. If they were "strictly" for monsters the book would say you can taken them with your GM's permission.
In order for these feats to not follow the general rule a specific exception would have to be written and then is no rule saying you need GM permission or that PC's are excluded from taking them.Before you counter just be aware a rules quote will be needed.
Spend 2 channels for a Dazing Channel? You damage undead and provoke a Will save or Daze for 1 round/# of channel dice you roll? Too much?
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it woudl be a really strong ability and way too cheap IMHO.
EDIT: I reconsiderate, I did not read about the wills ave the first time. if it only affect undeads it seems fine.
Spend 2 channels for a Dazing Channel? You damage undead and provoke a Will save or Daze for 1 round/# of channel dice you roll? Too much?
.it woudl be a really strong ability and way too cheap IMHO.
EDIT: I reconsiderate, I did not read about the wills ave the first time. if it only affect undeads it seems fine.
There actually is a bit of a precedent for something like this with the Ale/Wine alternate channel; you of course channel for half your dice by doing so, but creatures that fail their will save against channeled negative are nauseated for a round.
"Most of the following feats apply specifically to monsters." If that isn't giving you a prerequisite for the feats I don't know what is.
Sounds like a courtesy description of the type of feats, something like "PCs probably won't qualify for these because the prerequisites are only common to monsters or being of a certain monstrous race is a requirement." And then as you mentioned the book says that this is not always the case.
Ok, so some PCs may qualify for them. Where are the guidelines of how they qualify for them? There probably isn't one given for many,...
I would imagine the guidelines for qualifying are determined by looking at the prerequisites. I have a permanent fly speed, therefore I qualify for Flyby Attack. I have an SLA that I cast at 6th level or higher, therefore I qualify for Empower SLA. And so on. It really seems self-explanatory; why should these feats be any different than any others (with you saying they have invisible prerequisites)?
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RAW, the GM is never the determining factor for whether a PC qualifies for a feat. The prereqs for the feat are the only requirements.
Now, the GM can ban feats or change things as they see fit but that is all houserule territory.
The fact that it says "...although some PCs might qualify for them.." is proof enough that PCs can pick them. Otherwise, why even put that line there?
No I'm saying the brief description of what you are about to read does not trump what the feats actually say. The "invisible prerequisite" comment is what it sounds you are arguing for.
I would say that it saying most apply specifically to monsters would be referring to the fact that quite a few have "be this monster type" and "have this mostly enemy only ability"... and then it says this might not be the case.
As far as what is written in Pathfinder (and games in general) and the devs taking stuff into account, yeah, it's not a massive stretch for me to believe they were not always able to think everything through. Same thing with any argument of "they said it this strange way; if they meant insert-simplified-version why didn't they say that?" We have a whole rules board mostly devoted to those concepts in action.
So it saying MOST of these apply SPECIFICALLY to monsters is a "courtesy description" and an "invisible prerequisite"? You think they wrote the Bestiary without remembering there is polymorphing in the game??
Why are they different? Well for one they aren't in a Player's guide or part of a section for character creation and then the first thing they say is that they are SPECIFICALLY for monsters. There's that..
Now, define 'monster'.
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Spend 2 channels for a Dazing Channel? You damage undead and provoke a Will save or Daze for 1 round/# of channel dice you roll? Too much?
.it woudl be a really strong ability and way too cheap IMHO.
EDIT: I reconsiderate, I did not read about the wills ave the first time. if it only affect undeads it seems fine.
The Rulership variant channel has this ability already, but at the cost of half the damage instead of two channels. And you are correct, even with the will save, it can become incredibly strong if players optimize for it (with the right build you can get the DC up to 26 at level 12ish, or 32 if you use some jenky items). I would not recommend taking this variant channel, because its overpowered and you will wind up spamming this in your games (just like witch sleep hex). And it's basically a save or suck so you will likely piss off your GM.
If you're interested in building a cool channel cleric, check out the Envoy of Balance prestige class. That twinned channel ability, coupled with a Death domain cleric, can achieve some pretty ridiculous self healing (in theory, 4 channels worth in one round with quick channel). That's about as good of a negative channeler that you can get, as far as I can tell.
This is actually something that I was gonna build myself, but I've already made a death domain cleric in PFS, so... probably not gonna have an opportunity.
As a side note, pay close attention to the language on Channel Force- it only works when you channel to damage, which makes it somewhat limited if you focus on positive energy.
Hope you wind up making a fun cleric. My negative channeler is easily my favorite character.
I can't argue with that.Seems like they could have been thought out a little better at times.This can be said about a great many things in the game.
Sure you can. This is the Internet.
I'm running a positive channeling cleric of Ragathiel, who will have some 3rd party channeling feats:
Channeled Blast (Secrets of Divine Channeling, Rite Publishing) - you can unleash the energy as a 60' cone with a 30' base.
Maximized Channel (Secrets of Divine Channeling, Rite Publishing) - When you use your channel ability energy, you can choose for all variable, numeric effects to be maximized. Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected. Maximized Channeling requires the channeler to utilize two additional channeling uses in order to achieve this effect.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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At the risk of plugging my own work. I wrote a supplement for Rogue Genius games (Genius Guide to Domain Channeling) that covers much of this ground as well. So if you are willing to use 3pp material it might suit your needs.
In addition to a channel feat for each of the core domains I included a number of other channel feats including Channel Ray, Dual Channel and Shape Channel.
Hope it helps.
Locke, you should consider a second entry in this series, for subdomains. The cleric I mentioned above has Rage (subdomain of Destruction) and Leadership (subdomain of Nobility.) Your "Mantle of Radiance" works fine as is for Leadership, but "Touch of Ruin" suggests decay more than rage. There's always the three domain-independent ones, of course.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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Locke, you should consider a second entry in this series, for subdomains. The cleric I mentioned above has Rage (subdomain of Destruction) and Leadership (subdomain of Nobility.) Your "Mantle of Radiance" works fine as is for Leadership, but "Touch of Ruin" suggests decay more than rage. There's always the three domain-independent ones, of course.
I'm already working on a follow up (possibly two depending how we decide to break up the large number of RGG domains and official subdomains involved).