Being a long time lurker, now first time poster, I would like your feedback to a prestige class I have drawn up for one of my players. It is intended to be to celestial bloodline sorcerers what the dragon disciple is to draconic bloodline sorcerers, though the flavor should differ.
I would especially like to know:
- Is it too strong, i.e. overpowered?
- Is it too weak?
- Does it feel different enough from other classes and prestige classes, i.e. does not remove the need for them or make you wonder why you should play this class?
Note: This prestige class is aimed at good characters. Those of other alignments can also take it, but replace all good-themed features with chaotic, lawful or evil ones (e.g. Magic Circle Against Evil becomes Magic Circle Against Good for evil characters).
Requirements
- Alignment: Any good.
- Skills: Knowledge (Religion) 5 ranks
- Languages: Celestial
- Spellcasting: Ability to cast 1st-level arcane spells without preparation. If the character has sorcerer levels, he must have the celestial bloodline. If the character gains levels of sorcerer after taking this class, he must take the celestial bloodline.
- Special: Must worship a good or neutral deity. If the celestial servant ever ceases to be good or woship his deity, he loses all supernatural abilities and access to domain powers and domain spells gained through this class until he atones and reverts to good alignment.
Class features
Class skills: Diplomacy (Cha), Fly (Dex), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (all skills taken individually) (Int), Perception (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int).
Ranks: 4+Int modifier
Hit die: d10
Weapon and armor proficiencies: The celestial servant gains no armor or weapon proficiencies.
Base attack bonus, saves and spellcasting: As that of the dragon disciple class.
Features per level:
- Level 01: Celestial blood, celestial assistance +1
- Level 02: Bloodline feat, weapon proficiency, weapon focus
- Level 03: Domain powers, aura
- Level 04: Celestial assistance +2
- Level 05: Wings of Heaven, bloodline feat
- Level 06: Domain spells, divine health
- Level 07: Celestial assistance +3
- Level 08: Bloodline feat
- Level 09: Arcane mastery, greater weapon focus
- Level 10: Celestial protection
Spellcasting (as dragon disciple): At all levels except for 1st, 5th and 9th, a celestial servant gains new spells per day as if he had also gained a level in an arcane spellcasting class he belonged to before adding the prestige class. He does not, however, gain other benefits a character of that class would have gained, except for additional spells per day, spells known (if he is a spontaneous spellcaster), and an increased effective level of spellcasting. If a character had more than one arcane spellcasting class before becoming a celestial servant , he must decide to which class he adds the new level for purposes of determining spells per day.
Celestial blood: A celestial servant adds his level to his sorcerer levels when determining the powers gained from his bloodline. If the celestial servant does not have levels of sorcerer, he instead gains bloodline powers of the celestial bloodline, using his celestial servant level as his sorcerer level to determine the bonuses gained. This ability does not grant bonus spells to a sorcerer unless he possesses spell slots of an appropriate level. Such bonus spells are automatically granted if the sorcerer gains spell slots of the spell's level.
Wings of Heaven (Su): At 5th level, a celestial servant gains the wings of heaven bloodline power, even if his level does not yet grant that power. He also counts as having a flight speed for the purpose of selecting feats. Once his level is high enough to grant this ability through the bloodline, the celestial servant gains unlimited use and duration of this power.
Celestial assistance (Su): The heavens are watching and shielding you. At 1st level, you gain a +1 sacred bonus to your saves and to AC. This bonus increases to +2 at level 4 and to +3 at level 7.
Weapon proficiency: At 2nd level, the celestial servant gains weapon proficiency with his deity's weapon.
Weapon focus: At 2nd level, the celestial servant gains the feat weapon focus for his deity's weapon.
Greater weapon focus: At 8th level, the celestial servant gains the feat greater weapon focus for his deity's weapon.
Domain powers: At 3rd level, the celestial servant gets closer to his deity. He gains access to one of his deities domain. He gains all the benefits except for the domain spells. His effective sorcerer level (as per celestial blood) counts as cleric level, and he uses his charisma instead of wisdom as ability score for all domain-related powers.
Domain spells: At 6th level, the celestial servant sacrifices some of his arcane spellcasting ability to get even closer to his deity. For each level of arcane spells he can cast he permanently loses one spell slot which cannot be regained by any means. If he later gains access to higher levels of arcane spells, he also permanently loses one spell slot which cannot be regained by any means for those.
In exchange, for each spell slot so sacrificed he gains an extra spell slot which he can only use to cast the domain spells granted by the domain chosen at level 3. For these he uses his arcane caster level, and instead of wisdom he uses charisma to set the DC on spells (if applicable). The spells so cast are arcane spells, so he neither requires a divine focus nor qualifies for feats, prestige classes etc. that (explicitely) require the ability to cast divine spells.
Divine health (Ex): As the corresponding paladin class feature.
Arcane mastery (Ex): At 9th level, the celestial servant may take 10 on any caster level check, even in times of stress (such as combat).
Aura (Ex): As the corresponding cleric class feature, using cour effective sorcerer level (as per celestial blood) as your cleric level.
Celestial protection (Su) The heavens have rewarded your faithful service and marked you as one of theirs. At 10th level, you automatically stabilize if you are dying. Additionally, you are surrounded by a protective field. Treat this as a widened (as per the feat widen spell) Magic Circle Against Evil using your effective sorcerer level (as per celestial blood) as the caster level. You can suppress or reactivate this ability as a standard action. If not suppressed, this protection remains active even when you are unconscious or asleep, but not when you're dead.
Thanks for the quick reply, LazarX :-)
Don't see the reason for the following.
The three weapon feats,
D10 Hit dice
It is supposed to be a combat-capable class, just with a more divine flavor. It is not supposed to be as strong as the DD class in that regard, so I reasoned as follows:
- DD gets claws and bites, this one gets weapon proficiency.
- DD gets +4 Str, leading to effectively +2 attack and +2 damage. GWF gives with a specific weapon those +2 attack, but not damage
Since the class isn't really built to be the combat monster that the dragon disciple is. Unless the attack progression is medium instead of poor, in which case the spell prgression should be 8 levels over 10 the way the DD is.
DD has 7/10 spell progresssion, at least in all online sources I have seen (cf. link to DD class above).
Also why the 4 skill points per level? the pclass it seems to be modeled after only has the standard 2 and it's 8/10 spell progression. is it less than full spellcasting? does it match the dragon disciple progression? is there spellcasting progression at all?; it's not clear from the listing.
DD gets +2 to int, leading to 20 skill points in a 20 level career. Over the course of 10 class and 10 prestige class levels, this one gets as many, but not the Int check bonuses. The BAB, saves etc. all are the same as with DD - maybe it was not highlighted enough in the text above. Spellcasting is listed explicitely though...
Does this help? :-)
You're right on the 7/10. The lesser hit dice, the lower melee damage, and the apparant lack of any defensive bonus isn't going to put this character on the combat par level of the DD. You need to more specifically define the end goal of the design. You've stated it broadly but you need to refine your end game aims more precisely now.
I tried a write up before, but it did not sound so great, so I postponed it to later. I will try to come up with something soon. Essentially, I envision members of this class to be not as sturdy and powerfully built as a DD member, but to be more on the spiritual side. That's why their are alignment components, faith and deity-specific weapons included. Instead of the rather self-centered DD class, this class should also provide assistance to a group as a whole, thus the celestial protection and - again - the domain which makes a lot of these things possible IMO.
Regarding the lack of defensive bonus, I am not sure what you mean. Celestial assistance provides up to +3 sacred bonus to AC, where the DD gets +3 natural armor. Sacred bonuses are less easy to get by other means in the game, whereas an amulet of natural armor is rather readily available, so this might even be considered to be more powerful. Furthermore, instead of the high constitution bonus and the HP that come with it, I gave it divine health and up to +3 on saves. Last but not least, I thought that the lesser damage output would be outweighed by the flexibility of domain spells and domain powers.
You do not consider these features to be on basically the same level as the DD? What would you suggest there?
I will also modify the presentation above to be more easy to read. Regrettably, I am not so familiar with this forum's code, so I am open to suggestions :-)
Again, thanks for feedback. Hoping for more to come :-)
Note (Edit): I just realized I can't edit the original post anymore. :-( Apparently there's a time limit - or is there another way?
Bump to see if I can get some more feedback... :-)
Thanks in advance!
Coming from a guy that rarely (10%) uses deities in campaigns...
I understand the patron deity prerequisite (flavor), but it's still restrictive. That said, it's an easy toss if the GM feels it's unnecessary. Dragon disciple's name seems to translate to something closer to student rather than a kind of follower.
(Aside from what others have pointed out) This would be find as a campaign-specific (especially religion-specific) PrC, but the wording and deity requirements tend to push it away from what I think you had in mind.
If I were creating a celestial variant of DD, I'd focus on the species of good-subtyped outsiders (like DD's focus on dragon species) and go from there. However this does look good as a solution to sorcerer/clerics minus the multiclassing.