At the risk of being considered an optimization loser I'll admit that the Magus looks pretty cool to me. In fact, when my girlfriend played one a while back half the other players were kind of outraged at all the cool stuff she could do (how did she attack and cast a spell? how did she get a +20 to trip the BBEG with her whip? how can her Shocking Grasp do so much damage?)
At the risk of being considered an optimization loser I'll admit that the Magus looks pretty cool to me. In fact, when my girlfriend played one a while back half the other players were kind of outraged at all the cool stuff she could do (how did she attack and cast a spell? how did she get a +20 to trip the BBEG with her whip? how can her Shocking Grasp do so much damage?)
Don't worry, you're not alone. I'm more than happy with the class.
Yeah, I've never seen an issue with the magus as far as effectiveness goes. I think a lot of the problem is that the Dervish-Dancing Shocking Grasp Magus build became so ubiquitous that the class started to look like a very shallow one-trick pony.
Magi are great!
At some point though you'll start to feel like a mere mortal next to the true casters. But as far as being an effective martial goes, magi actually do it.
the big weakness of the warpriest, is the inquisitor has more skill points, has a better spell list, and while dealing more damage, has the ability to benefit from more loot options than the warpriest who is stuck with one weapon
not that i have anything to prove it, but the warpriest is so much weaker than the inquisitor that the inquisitor is the superior choice, the warpriest should have been at least be given the ability to outdamage the inquisitor by at least 30 percent to justify the inquisitors superior utility.
Citation needed.
So the Warpriest is stronger as a Summoner than a Warpriest.
Also sounds like a huge waste of spell slots to be popping buffs every round. A lot of the worthwhile buffs don't target self (You can't Fervor spells that target weapons or armor), are AOE and thus hilarious if you fervor them because they wont hit anyone else, or last for minutes/hours per level and thus should already be lighting you up like a Christmas tree.
I'll grant Sacred Fist as that is unique, but that's all I will grant.
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The few Inquisitors I've played have been very adept martial combatants. The Sanctified Slayer makes them even better at that aspect. The Sacred Huntsman, too, actually. The thing is that an Inquisitor is not a martial class: it's a true jack of all trades. It fights well, it skills well, it casts well, and it has numerous class abilities that are all flavorful and useful.
The Warpriest is pretty much struck with the same problem the Fighter is: the majority of its THING is that it gets a lot of extra feats. But feats, as a general rule, suck, and are boring. And that's why the Warpriest feels really meh to a lot of people. At least the Warpriest has six levels of spellcasting, Fervor and Blessings on top of its Fighter stuff, so it's not anywhere near as hard up.
Citation needed.People keep saying this but it's really not hard to see. Quickening spells does more damage than bane and the pathetic joke that passes for judgements.
Okay, let's put aside the animal domain v fast summoning for a second. Here's what I'm looking at for an inquisitor at level 10:
Bane gives you +2 to hit and +2d6 damage for an average of 3.5+3.5= +7. Justice/Destruction Judgement gives you a +3 sacred bonus to hit, +4 sacred bonus to damage and +6 to confirm critical hits. So with two swift actions we have +5 to hit, +11 damage, and +8 to confirm critical hits - we'll break that down to +5/+11.
Assuming the ubiquitous Fate's Favored trait The WP would get +4/+4 luck bonus to hit and damage from Divine Favor and... Another +2/+2 from another spell? Blessing of Fervor or Channel Vigor seem like the best option, but as you note they are not good spell if the party already has Haste available (and at level 10 that seems a safe bet). So with two swift actions the warpriest has +6 to hit, +4 damage, and +2 to AC and reflex saves. He could instead use Sacred Weapon to make his weapon +2 (+6/+6), +1/shocking (+5/+8.5), Holy (+4/+11), or shocking/frost (also +4/+11).
Interestingly there are a lot of great buff spells that don't qualify for Fervor since they target the warpriest's weapon instead of the warpriest - the class would improve a bit if you house-rule that Fervor casting can target the warpriest's weapon.
Part of my issue with the class is that there's nothing stopping the Inquisitor from casting 90% of the same spells the Warpriest does, and a lot of spells the warpriest can't because they're not on his spell list - most of the great cleric personal-range buff spells are also on the inquisitor list, while the inquisitor also gets some fantastic buff spells that the warpriest does not. If neither class have the chance of a buff round their modifiers look to be about the same.
If both classes have the chance of a single buff round the inquisitor casts Divine Favor as well, and near as I can tell annihilates the warpriest.
IE the warpriest relies on your party constantly getting surprised so no one gets buff rounds - not really the best starting point.
One thing I should note is that the warpriest has more flexible options than the Inquisitor in combat - as long as he burns fervor he can swift action cast Freedom of Movement or Air Walk, which is fantastic.
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The few Inquisitors I've played have been very adept martial combatants. The Sanctified Slayer makes them even better at that aspect. The Sacred Huntsman, too, actually. The thing is that an Inquisitor is not a martial class: it's a true jack of all trades. It fights well, it skills well, it casts well, and it has numerous class abilities that are all flavorful and useful.
The Warpriest is pretty much struck with the same problem the Fighter is: the majority of its THING is that it gets a lot of extra feats. But feats, as a general rule, suck, and are boring. And that's why the Warpriest feels really meh to a lot of people. At least the Warpriest has six levels of spellcasting, Fervor and Blessings on top of its Fighter stuff, so it's not anywhere near as hard up.
If the WP had only blessings, fervor, and 6 levels of spell casting I'd be happy to play it. All the other abilities are icing. That's why I like the sacred fist so much. It trades all the icing for even better stuff.
The problem is other people view fervor/spells as secondary because the table emphasizes sacred weapon and feats as the "Big draw" which are both largely filler to fill out the class.
- Pre-level 10, most Blessings are not all that good. There are some that are definitely neat, but nothing that really feels like a super powerful option, something that you would play a Warpriest just so you could have it. So that's another option that doesn't come online until very late in most games.
- Fervor is absolutely the Warpriest's banner girl, the thing you play a Warpriest to have. But it's also kind of boring. It's a swift action to buff yourself, which is awesome for action economy, but it's not like you NEVER get a chance to buff yourself before combat. Which means that is value goes down the more prepared you can be. Unlike a Magus' Spellstrike + Spell Combat, buffing yourself is just kind of a necessity and not so much something cool. Still an amazing ability and the reason I (and I imagine many others) want to play a Warpriest.
- The spell casting, by itself, is kind of meh. The first six levels of Cleric spell lists have lots of neat spells, but there are entire levels where you don't really get anything that isn't super specialized (almost all of 3rd level spells, I'm looking at you!) and since you don't get any discounts, and slower progression, this is another feature that just feels kind of uninteresting.
So, for the most part, the problem is that they took the two most boring classes in the game (Fighters legit have like 4 class abilities: bonus feats, armor training, weapon training and bravery; Clerics have the two domains and channel and that's it) and stuck them together to make a slightly less boring, but reasonably effective hybrid.
I think if the Warpriest had more WOW factor (not the game, the exclamation) people would look deeper to see that it actually does have some neat nuances to it. But, as-is, it doesn't really do all that much to grab people, and it's an entry to an already crowded class niche - and most of those other classes already do the job very effectively. The Warpriest is pretty much the Fighter of the Holy Warrior classes: he's great at damage, but his other stuff kind of pales in comparison (though obviously not nearly to the same degree). And that other stuff is a very significant portion of the game.
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Actually the Sacred Fist doesn't have that line that makes his Unarmed Strikes count as manufactured weapons...
No Greater Magic Weapon for you :(
A Numbers Comparison
A good comparison, though to be fair, in the most mundane case the Warpriest has his weapon(s) defaulting to a 1d10 (say +2 damage if they both wield scimitar) and has taken the focus and specialization stuff for a permanent additional small bonus of 2/2. As I mentioned before though, if there's anything that can redeem the Warpriest its taking the non-mundane road with his feats. The Inquisitor you're breaking down there simply can't do all sorts of things the Warpriest can; whether that redeems him in the numbers game I don't know, but it certainly goes a long way to justifying his existence. I like trying to do feat-intensive things with Divine classes and often have to resort to multiclassing - usually before throwing out the concept as unworkable - so myself I'm not at all sad to have the class around.
At this point you need a haste from someone else and are not self sufficient which means in actual game play the highly likely event you go before the haster you lose an attack and the WP does not. You've just lost damage in actual, practical situations.
Not really - boots of haste are a thing. The 12k price puts the warpriest ahead in WBL, but since we're assuming there's no arcane caster on hand to provide buffs the inquisitor's constant +2 to everything from Heroism seems to balance that cost quite nicely. Truth be told, if there is no one on hand to cast Haste then the Warpriest should probably cast Blessing of Fervor with a standard action, not only on himself.
I understand that, although based on RAW you can use those "Target weapon spells" if you are a sacred fist since you are the weapon. Just another reason to love the SF.
Agreed - like I've said several times, the Sacred Fist is a great archetype. At times I kind of wish it was the baseline Warpriest.
If you have a chance to use abilities before combat at level 10 there's the UNquickened summon blessings and the +5 damage destruction blessing, the vicious blessing, and the nobility major blessing for +4 to hit and gives the +4 to hit for allies.
I did say I was putting aside the summoning blessing and animal companion for a while - I assumed that animal domain and summoning blessing are taken and cancel each other out, but if we want to include those then the inquisitor is further ahead in the numbers game since he doesn't need to use a swift action to summon his companion in the first round of combat.
Spending a standard action for +5 damage from destruction would put the Warpriest at +6/+11 to the Inquisitor's +9/+15. Lead By Example is interesting and puts the Warpriest at +10/+6 to the Inquisitor's +9/+15, but it's also hard to evaluate and quite narrow in application - ideally you want whatever you're targeting to die, not survive for another round. Using both Nobility and Destruction would give you +4/+5 and be an excellent buff round, but then you don't get Summoning blessings.
In my experience you get surprised or do not get a buff round far more often than not.
Flexibility helps but I think the biggest difference between my evaluation of the WP and other people's evaluations is the frequency in which they are surprised or at least get no buff rounds. Mine is like 90% no buffs 10% get the drop/buffs. Generally fights where you can buff are trivial in nature because you can dump any amount of the spell list you want on them before starting.
That may be a difference in gameplay. A while ago I'd agree with you that parties rarely pre-buff, but my gaming community has gone through a bit of a revolution in the last couple of years. My parties have thoroughly embraced the concept of scouting and are usually well aware of the enemy before they start a fight - especially when they reach the mid levels. When playing APS or modules I'd say they're caught unawares less than 30% of the time. The main reason they don't nova through an encounter is that they want to conserve resources for the next fight down the road. I'm not claiming my groups are setting the gold standard for the typical adventuring party or anything, just saying that your mileage may vary.
A Numbers ComparisonA good comparison, though to be fair, in the most mundane case the Warpriest has his weapon(s) defaulting to a 1d10 (say +2 damage if they both wield scimitar) and has taken the focus and specialization stuff for a permanent additional small bonus of 2/2. As I mentioned before though, if there's anything that can redeem the Warpriest its taking the non-mundane road with his feats. The Inquisitor you're breaking down there simply can't do all sorts of things the Warpriest can; whether that redeems him in the numbers game I don't know, but it certainly goes a long way to justifying his existence. I like trying to do feat-intensive things with Divine classes and often have to resort to multiclassing - usually before throwing out the concept as unworkable - so myself I'm not at all sad to have the class around.
I'd expect both the Warpriest and the Inquisitor to either use bows (the previous comparison used archers) or a large weapon like a greatsword or glaive if they want to deal damage in melee, though if they're using a one-handed weapon then the extra damage from Sacred Weapon is definitely attractive.
Greater Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization is a good point (I assume the Inquisitor already has Weapon Focus), and one I failed to take into consideration. Thanks for pointing that out. :)
I feel your pain on multiclassing divine classes to make a character concept come online, paladins in particular have so many great options available that it's really hard to pick between them. My thoughts on the Warpriest is that it makes for an interesting archer and a fairly good dex-based TWF character - it shines when it uses its bonus feats for the combat styles that are too feat-intensive for paladins and inquisitors. It's also a great class if you want to play a character that uses an otherwise really underwhelming weapon, like the rope gauntlet, nunchaku or the battle poi.
To be fair animal ally and summons matchup favorably to animal companions especially with that 12k you can spend on the animal companion as it's yet again a case of "More attacks". Secondly double alignment blessing WP's laugh comically at anyone elses damage.
True, if you really want to go all out on the minionmancy you could play a warpriest with Animal Ally, Quicken Blessing (Major Good) and Quicken Blessing (Major Law), but by then I think you're pretty far from what most people want to play a warpriest for - better to just make a master summoner.
Our groups are extremely paranoid and highly optimized as a result because the GM's tend to allow "Whatever you do is fair game for all bad guys" means that after one session of scouting the bad guys start doing the same thing and ambushing you. Sort of a surprise round arms race if you will.
That sounds like an unpleasant gaming environment to me, but people like different things. Do whatever floats your boat. :)
Also observing the sneak rules means without invisibility you basically can't scout most things. If your scout gets caught by something with tremor sense it's near definite death for the scout.
Obviously scouting should involve the use of abilities to counteract detection - invisibility and flight at low levels, divination spells at later levels.
Since I've got nothing better to do but work I should be doing, I'll post another somewhat-optimized flavor-concept that exploits the Warpriest's advantages to do what an Inquisitor couldn't:
Harun ad-Din ibn Kor-addah, Warpriest of Korada
Plumekith Aasimar
Traits: Fate's Favored, Magical Lineage: Admonishing Ray
STR 13
DEX 16/18
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 12/14
CHA 8
1.+Improved Unarmed Strike (deity bonus) / +Weapon Focus: Scimitar / Weapon Finesse
3.+Dodge / Dervish Dance
5. Crane Style
6 +Crane Wing
7. Metamagic: Consecrate Spell
9.+Crane Riposte / Angelic Blood
11.Angel Wings
12.+Power Attack
Scimitar by 10 (+6Dex item): 5.5+1 +2sacwep +8dex +4divfav = 19.5.
Say what people will about the Crane nerf, it's still a style with serious combat advantages - and more aggressive than before, as a solid AC character no longer needs to be 'hit' to counterattack. Throw that in with the minor advantages of a Scimitar with specialization and an enlarged die, and you've got a fairly dangerous melee-superiority take on Divine Dervish Dance. With all the feats lying around Angel Wings becomes an easy grab instead of being too expensive, and Consecrate Spell allows for a specialized 4d6+4x3 maximized = 86nonlethal nuke of holy tough love just begging to be spell-stored. Now an Inquisitor could do some of this, but without all the bonus feats and level-as-bab picks he's going to do a lot less of it a lot later.
Edit: Oops, had to rearrange some things... more than some. Oh well.
Harun ad-Din ibn Kor-addah, Warpriest of Korada
Plumekith Aasimar
Can you do a Plumekith Scion of Humanity Aasimar?
Because Scion of Humanity is just a bonkers race for a Warpriest - all the joys of being an Aasimar AND you get the Racial Bonus Ability to get an extra 2 Bonus Combat Feats at 6th and 12th level (and another at 18th level if you go that far).
There is never a reason not to take that wonderfully-busted race.
@BadBird - You don't just like Crane style because you're a bird, do you? Seriously though, that build looks pretty cool, and I'm happy to see somebody saying something positive about both Crane and the Warpriest (and all in one post!)
@BadBird - You don't just like Crane style because you're a bird, do you?
Crane Style has an awesome flavor, and I'm maybe the one person who liked the change to it - once they put back the riposting. It's too bad I seriously messed up on the prerequisites on that build, I had to edit it a couple times...
RAW most of the Cleric spells that target weapons do not work on the Sacred Fist's unarmed strikes.
Blood Crow Strike targets an enemy and creates an area that allows your Unarmed attacks to be made at a distance against that enemy for as long as they are within the area of that spell.
You don't swift-cast it with Fervor, because you'd just be doing damage to yourself; you cast it either with Quicken Spell via Spell Perfection or with a Quicken Metamagic rod, then attack all-out while it's on.
Keep in mind, ANY spell qualifies for Fervor as long as it has a target; however, you usually will only want to use buffs with it because casting Flame Strike on yourself is just silly.
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Blood Crow Strike targets an enemy and creates an area that allows your Unarmed attacks to be made at a distance against that enemy for as long as they are within the area of that spell.
You don't swift-cast it with Fervor, because you'd just be doing damage to yourself; you cast it either with Quicken Spell via Spell Perfection or with a Quicken Metamagic rod, then attack all-out while it's on.
Keep in mind, ANY spell qualifies for Fervor as long as it has a target; however, you usually will only want to use buffs with it because casting Flame Strike on yourself is just silly.
...I think that would be the absolute most cinematic way for a Warpriest to go out, possible.
It targets an area, instead of enemies or allies, so I think you could technically cast it on yourself and get everyone around you (because it's not specifically targeting anyone, and is simply using the Warpriest as the target of its emanation point, if I'm reading this correctly). Again, probably not a good idea, but very IF I'M GOING DOWN, I'M TAKING EVERYBODY WITH ME.
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From the Last part of Fervor: "As a swift action, a warpriest can expend one use of this ability to cast any one warpriest spell he has prepared. When cast in this way, the spell can target only the warpriest, even if it could normally affect other or multiple targets. Spells cast in this way ignore somatic components and do not provoke attacks of opportunity. The warpriest does not need to have a free hand to cast a spell in this way."