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This is for Pathfinder Society, so keep in mind I'll never get past lvl 12 (if I live that long).
I just finished my first level and have yet to play a lvl 2 game so I can still change anything per the PFS rules.
My stats:
str 20 (including +2 human)
dex 12
con 12
int 7
wis 14
cha 8
The three feats I chose (1st lvl, human, fighter lvl 1)
Power Attack
Cleave
Cleaving Finish
For my lvl in cleric I chose a Theologian which focuses on the Strength Domain (my choice for that was basically entirely because of Enlarge Person).
My two skill points (I only get one for each level), I put into Perception and Heal--I'm not sure what to expect, though, from PFS games, these seem to be primary skills for my home campaign, but I don't know how that translates to PFS.
My strategy is to enlarge myself then beat on things with my Greatsword. I don't know how viable this strategy is or how long it will last, though.
One weakness I have is the movement restriction from Heavy Armor, though there seem to be any number of magic items that I will be able to buy and wear that can alleviate this.
My feats I'm looking to pick up later are
Furious Focus - I'm not worried about the -1 at this point, later when the bonus/penalty rises I'll want it more
Intimidating Prowess (seems like fun it'll help my sorely lacking skills, plus intimidate works better when enlarged so it might create fun scenarios).
Improved Cleaving Finish (won't be able to pick it up until lvl 9, though).
But other than enlarge & hit things, I don't have much of a strategy of what I should aim for. Does this seem viable? Am I missing something obvious?
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Yay another Cleric who grabs a big weapon and beats things to death.
Your over Min/maxing for PFS.
You should really read up on the Cleric Guides on this Sight. The sticky is on the top of the Advice Page. LEARN ABOUT THE REACH CLERIC.
You can bring your strength down some. Mostly because on the front lines you want A good Con. My recommendation is:
Str: 17, Dex: 13, Con: 14, Int: 10, Wis: 15, Cha: 8
Increase Strength @ 4 and Wisdom @ 8
A theologian is for a caster cleric. You are no caster cleric...your a battle Cleric. I would drop the Archetype all together. Not to mention you want 2 Domains and the Powers that come with it.
Go Vanilla Cleric with with Domains Strength(ferocity) and Travel. You will be able to Ferocious Strike for more damage and You will be moving faster/further Due to Travel Domain's +10 Feet movement and Longstrider.
I feel Fighter is not as good a dip as Ranger is. If you are going to dip anything for martial abilities the Ranger's Favored Enemies and Skills go a very LONG way in PFS. You will want Humans as your favored enemies as you will have Cleric spells to deal with outsiders and undead.
Cleave.....It dies off at level 6. Not much will line up to be cleaved at that point. I feel your wasting your feats on anything with the word Cleave in it.
My feats I'm looking to pick up later are
Furious Focus - I'm not worried about the -1 at this point, later when the bonus/penalty rises I'll want it more
Intimidating Prowess (seems like fun it'll help my sorely lacking skills, plus intimidate works better when enlarged so it might create fun scenarios).
Improved Cleaving Finish (won't be able to pick it up until lvl 9, though).
Furious Focus is the only O.K. feat on the list. Intimidating prowess is crap when you dump Cha and have a select amount of feats. Its good on fighters who have so many feats but you do not get that luxury.
Your going to want to change your weapon as well. Great-sword is poop compared to a Glaive or Long Spear with reach. Reach can be king.
Playing a reach Cleric you can easily round 1 Enlarge person (or other buff), Move to position, Wait for AoO. Take them when they come and then next round start attacking.
As for traits I know Fates Favored is one of the best for a self Buffing cleric. You can easily provide luck bonus to yourself via spells or your Jiang of the Fortunate Soldier.
Lastly Heavy armor Proficiency is good and All but Mithral Full Plate counts as medium armor and provides all the benefits without any draw back of not being proficient. Also with all your buffs you can buff up to numbers matching people wearing full armor without the abilities to buff. Medium Armor will be fine for the first few levels.
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Second using a reach weapon, at least until your CL gets higher and your buffs last longer. You do not want to run into a situation where you buff up for 2 or 3 rounds and don't get to hit anything. Buff > move to position > wait for AoO fixes that. You want at least 12 dex so Combat Reflexes does something for you.
I'd roll with... exactly what Fruian said.
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Lastly Heavy armor Proficiency is good and All but Mithral Full Plate counts as medium armor and provides all the benefits without any draw back of not being proficient.
This is 100% wrong - unless you want to take a -5 penalty to all of you attack rolls, since you aren't proficient with Heavy Armor. That's probably OK for a pacifist cleric, but definitely not for a combat cleric.
PRD says:
Nonproficient with Armor Worn: A character who wears
armor and/or uses a shield with which he is not proficient
takes the armor’s (and/or shield’s) armor check penalty on
attack rolls as well as on all Dexterity- and Strength-based
ability and skill checks. The penalty for nonproficiency
with armor stacks with the penalty for shields.
If you have access to the Gods of the Inner Seas book, I would suggest looking at a cleric of Iomedae and focusing on the versatility of the longsword: one handed or two handed, as needed, with the ability to take feats equivalent to Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapon Focus. Pretty slick for a melee cleric.
Take a look at the Crusader archetype, too: trading a domain and a little casting for 3 feats is probably a pretty good deal for a battle cleric.
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Reread mithral rules. There is a reason mithral full plate costs more then 10.5k gold. Because it is treated as medium armor.
Not for purposes of proficiency. To quote:
Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. This decrease does not apply to proficiency in wearing the armor.
It applies to everything else, so someone with Armor Training 1 can move at full speed in Mithral Full Plate, a Bard can cast in a Mithral Breastplate and a Ranger can use their Combat Style Feats in Mithral Full Plate...but you still suffer a -3 on attack rolls and other such things if you lack Proficiency.
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Reread mithral rules. There is a reason mithral full plate costs more then 10.5k gold. Because it is treated as medium armor.
While there are some examples of specific armors that do not follow the default rules for Mithral, such as Elven Chainmail, Celestial Armor and Celestial Plate Armor, there is no basic Mithal Full Plate listed as a specific armor, so you need to use the default Mithral rules (as Deadmanwalking points out) that do not change the armor type for proficiency purposes.
While Celestial Plate Armor does not follow the default Mithral rules, there's another Mithral Full Plate that does, the Mithral Full Plate of Speed, and that armor specifically says it follows the default Mithral rules: PRD - "It is considered medium armor, except that you must be proficient in heavy armor to avoid taking nonproficiency penalties."
In the absence of language stating the the specific armor does not follow the default Mithral Rules, the default Mithral Rules should apply.
I agree with a lot of what's been said, but I don't think a reach weapon is necessarily the way to go. Use the weapon you want.
I'd recommend stats more like:
17 Str, 12 Dex, 14 Con, 12 Int, 14 Wis, 9 Cha
Or maybe even go 18 Str and 7 Cha if you're so inclined. But I think 14 Con is important for a d8 hit die frontliner, and 12 Int will give you a little more usefulness with skills outside of combat.
Oh, and make sure you take the Fate's Favored trait if you have Ultimate Campaign, because it will crank your divine favor spells into overdrive.
(1st lvl, human, fighter lvl 1)...
For my lvl in cleric...
You might want to look at the Warpriest. It does a really good job of combining both of these classes. Granted right now it is kind of clunky. I would guess they are going to fix that when the book comes out. Still even as written its a powerful class.
I dunno if Hellknight Plate is allowed in PFS, but it has an ACP of 5. Combined with Mirhal (3), Comfort (1) and Armor Expert trait (1) it gets it down to -0 for ACP. Obviously expensive, but it might be worth it to save a feat or splashed level.
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For society, strongly suggest you shelf the character a while and wait for the ACG with the warpriest. The full bab classes might also have a better fit than the ftr.
Restat str to 18, not 17, not 20. Get the best value now on a two handed weapon, waiting to level 4 to boost is actually a long time to wait. You can really use that point buy for the extra con and/or wisdom, heck even cha for the extra channel heal.
I love combat reflexes on a reach weapon, but only if you can afford the feat for exotic weapon on something like the meteor hammer, dwarvern dorn-derger, or double karma, they can all attack either reach, or adjacent with different circumstances, terms, and conditions on each. The cleric us feat starved but that fighter level could be the key.
Cleave us too conditional, use it once ans watch the GM never line up the bad guys in that way again.
Power attack is hard to swallow in a 3/4 bab so that furious focus us a good follow up. At 2nd level, 18 str on a two handed weapon is good enough, you could postpone that feat till later. If you plan to take more than 4 levels if a 3/4 bab class, weapon focus really helps you hit at all while doing respectable 18 str 2handed damage.
You know you get a second skill point each level for being a human right? Despite int penalty.
Have you considered giving up heavy armor since you will never have good ac with the lack of a shield anyway?
Remember enlarge person us nit a general clr spell, it is a domain slot spell, so get pearls of power for it multiple times a day. As a 1 round spell, expect it to be disrupted often. Maybe buy scrolls/wand and hand them out to arcane casters and ask then to cast it while you screen the enemy and attack that round.
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For society, strongly suggest you shelf the character a while and wait for the ACG with the warpriest. The full bab classes might also have a better fit than the ftr.
Restat str to 18, not 17, not 20. Get the best value now on a two handed weapon, waiting to level 4 to boost is actually a long time to wait. You can really use that point buy for the extra con and/or wisdom, heck even cha for the extra channel heal.
I love combat reflexes on a reach weapon, but only if you can afford the feat for exotic weapon on something like the meteor hammer, dwarvern dorn-derger, or double karma, they can all attack either reach, or adjacent with different circumstances, terms, and conditions on each. The cleric us feat starved but that fighter level could be the key.
Cleave us too conditional, use it once ans watch the GM never line up the bad guys in that way again.
Power attack is hard to swallow in a 3/4 bab so that furious focus us a good follow up. At 2nd level, 18 str on a two handed weapon is good enough, you could postpone that feat till later. If you plan to take more than 4 levels if a 3/4 bab class, weapon focus really helps you hit at all while doing respectable 18 str 2handed damage.
You know you get a second skill point each level for being a human right? Despite int penalty.
Have you considered giving up heavy armor since you will never have good ac with the lack of a shield anyway?
Remember enlarge person us nit a general clr spell, it is a domain slot spell, so get pearls of power for it multiple times a day. As a 1 round spell, expect it to be disrupted often. Maybe buy scrolls/wand and hand them out to arcane casters and ask then to cast it while you screen the enemy and attack that round.
Thanks, this is definitely helpful while not outright telling me I'm wrong.
Heavy armor was for my AC defecit, I'm all for something else that'll help make up for at as long as I can still wield something with 2 hands. I'm thinking glaive/armor spikes may not be a bad idea. My answer to 1x enlarge person was theologian as I could prepare it my regular cleric slots, also, but the movement penalty really hurts.
Dumping CHA mean you''l be subpar at channeling (with the right feats this can be done faster) and social skills. Dumping Int just means you'll be subpar at skills.
There's a lot of rolling for skills in a game.
Finally, you're still a caster, and even one level of non-caster will hurt a lot.
As Furian sez "Your over Min/maxing for PFS.".
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Ok, after reading the above feedback here is what I'm going with
Str 16 (18 for human)
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 8 (end up with 2 skills per lvl for human)
Wis 14
Cha 10
First level as fighter for initial bab to use on feats (3 total, fighter, new char, plus human)
1st lvl fighter for martial weapon and heavy armor proficiency
using a glaive/greatsword/armor spikes
Power Attack
Quick Draw
Combat Reflexes (I know it's only 1 extra, but if that's not enough I'll up my dex, I've never seen it used more than twice a round anyways)
2nd lvl cleric sticking with Strength-Ferocity that I already had picked out, dropping theologian and picking up Travel domain to cancel out movement penalty of heavy armor.
(sticking with cleric until the end)
3rd lvl - Weapon Focus (not sure if for greatsword or glaive yet, I guess we'll see which one I end up using more)
5th lvl - Furious Focus
onward, I guess we'll see when we get there.
Yeah, I'll be a subpar caster, but this seems to be a bit better overall than what I was going with before. The character isn't about min/maxing anyways or being what I'm supposed to be, so we'll see how it pans out.
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Dump the int to 7 be use you end up with the same number if skill points as with an 8. You do get the extra penalty but that us negligible after already going down to 8. The 2 extra point buy cound be used on charisma for the extra channel a day or on wisdom do you can get a 3rd level bonus spell sooner.
I still have to emphasize 18 str. It us the sweet spot for 2 handed weapons.
Because you will likely kill everything at level 1 & 2 with a 2 handed weapon and 18 str, I really thin you are better off with tbat 1st level, fighter as weapon focus, then delay power attack till 3rd, or at least after weapon focud, even if at still as one of your 3 feats at level one if you forgo combat relexed and just go with a greatsword instead. Power attack damage is over kill at.level.one and two. Do not forget you do no damage at all when you miss in a power attack -1 to hit(-2 compared to having weapon focus instead).
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Dump the int to 7 be use you end up with the same number if skill points as with an 8. You do get the extra penalty but that us negligible after already going down to 8. The 2 extra point buy cound be used on charisma for the extra channel a day or on wisdom do you can get a 3rd level bonus spell sooner.
I still have to emphasize 18 str. It us the sweet spot for 2 handed weapons.
Because you will likely kill everything at level 1 & 2 with a 2 handed weapon and 18 str, I really thin you are better off with tbat 1st level, fighter as weapon focus, then delay power attack till 3rd, or at least after weapon focud, even if at still as one of your 3 feats at level one if you forgo combat relexed and just go with a greatsword instead. Power attack damage is over kill at.level.one and two. Do not forget you do no damage at all when you miss in a power attack -1 to hit(-2 compared to having weapon focus instead).
Oh I see what you're saying. Drop my int from 8 to 7 giving me 2 more points to spend which can get me from 10 to 12 charisma. Then at lvl 4 it only costs me the one extra ability to get my int back up to 8 giving me the skill points I would have lost.
I wasn't planning on using Power Attack much starting off anyways because as you noted it's pretty not useful for the first couple of levels. I wanted to delay weapon focus until 3 because I wasn't sure which weapon would be more helpful.. But I can definitely see how it'll be useful now, I'll have to think about which one I plan on using more.
I'm not sure what you mean about "I still have to emphasize 18 str". My str is 18 (16 with the point buy plus 2 more for being human). Unless you mean I should buy up to 18 and then bump it up to 20.
Overall really helpful feedback, thanks.
On a 2+ int skill points per level class there is no difference in skill points available between 7 and 8 intelligence. The only advantage of the 8 is less penalty, you will get no more skill points with an 8 than you would with a 7. So if you are dumping intelligence at all dump it to 7 for the 4 build points and grab a second skill point per level by being Human or from a FCB if you need it.
I would ignore the cleave line and grab maybe Improved Sunder and Pushing Assault. You can sunder everything you encounter to no detriment because of the way PFS handles treasure, and Pushing Assault gives you a way to move opponents without targeting CMD. Positioning is key and moving them with an attack makes it easier for you to cast and avoids all the problems caused by opponents with reach or Step Up.
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On a 2+ int skill points per level class there is no difference in skill points available between 7 and 8 intelligence. The only advantage of the 8 is less penalty, you will get no more skill points with an 8 than you would with a 7. So if you are dumping intelligence at all dump it to 7 for the 4 build points and grab a second skill point per level by being Human or from a FCB if you need it.
I would ignore the cleave line and grab maybe Improved Sunder and Pushing Assault. You can sunder everything you encounter to no detriment because of the way PFS handles treasure, and Pushing Assault gives you a way to move opponents without targeting CMD. Positioning is key and moving them with an attack makes it easier for you to cast and avoids all the problems caused by opponents with reach or Step Up.
I don't understand, how is 2-1=1 not greater than 2-2=0? By my calculations, including being human, 7 int gets me 1 skill per level and 8 int gets me 2 skills per level.
I hadn't considered Improved Sunder. And Pushing Assault is very interesting, I hadn't found that feat. Does pushing them back end their movement, or does it just make them move back up and get another AO or just get to me if I use up my AOs?
Also, I ended up dropping cleave, if you're interested see my most recent post for my updated character. I'll go ahead and edit the first post for anyone else interested, too.
The bonus skill point from being human is not factored by INT. So the minimum skill points from Class/INT combo is 1. Then you get one from being human.
Example: Human Fighter (2 pts per level) with 5 INT (-3 modifier)(from ability damage/curse/whatever) still gets 2 skill points per level.
+1 to Khrysaor's Post
I second the 17 strength. the extra points for other stats will be far more effective in PFS.
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+1 to Khrysaor's Post
I second the 17 strength. the extra points for other stats will be far more effective in PFS.
Dropping to 17 (actually 16 to 15, since +2 is already from human) str gives me 3 more points to spend. I could use those to go from 12-14 dex, but that really only gives me 1 extra AO with combat reflexes as I'll be wearing heavy armor. There's no need for me to buy up wisdom because as long as I get a +2 wisdom band by cleric lvl 9 I can cast both 5 and 6 spells, which is the cap for PFS. I don't see much reason to put extra points in charisma (12 to 14) because all I can see is that gives me one extra channel per session where the 1 extra str will be more to hit and dmg always.
So that's my rationale for that, feel free to point out if I'm overlooking something.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the growth subdomain grants the ability to cast enlarge person as a swift action, as a SLA.
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The dex gives you +1 initiative, +1 reflex saves, +1 AoO, and +1 AC until you wear armor that restricts it. The AC is all the armor will restrict. You could also get Mithral armor to allow you to keep that AC bonus or a sash of the war champion that'll do similar. The sash and the Mithral full plate gives you unrestricted movement.
I see more value in the dexterity bonus than the strength. A 5% bonus to hit and 2 points of damage aren't as good as a 5% bonus to going first in combat, shoring up your bad saves slightly, boosting your chance to be missed by 5%. The AoO is a bonus, but it could very well be circumstantial unless you can play tactics to make them worth it.
You're right, I hadn't even considered the rest. I keep forgetting that the dex cap on armor only applies to AC (though apparently I remembered enough to know I would get an extra AOO)
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the growth subdomain grants the ability to cast enlarge person as a swift action, as a SLA.
I hadn't noticed that, I'll have to look at what else that gives me vs strength-ferocity.