I have a player who, in an upcoming game, would like to play a devoted/Varisian pilgrim cleric of Cayden who uses Charisma as her casting stat for character concept reasons.
After giving this a fair bit of thought, I'm extremely inclined to allow it, as it frankly seems like a strict downgrade from having Wisdom - an excellent stat - as your primary casting stat.
However, I'm curious if there are any unintended implications of this that perhaps I'm missing - the character won't be multiclassing, and intends to progress into the Exalted PrC.
(We're aware of the various Charisma-based casting class alternative options, but the player specifically wants to be a cleric. For what it's worth, I also know the player well enough that I can say with absolute certainty the player isn't trying to sneak anything cheesy or broken in through the back door. He just wants to play a cleric that uses her charm and force of personality as the stat that connects her to Cayden.)
Having Cha is the casting stat will ensure that this particular cleric has at least a few more channels than your average cleric, and will be able to qualify for channel feats such as Selective Channel quite easily, though as long as the only change is casting stat, but everything else stays the same, it should be OK.
Only question, the high Cha will also open up a number of feats that many clerics would not otherwise have access too, though this may NOT be the purpose, it is a possibility.
Have a talk with your player, long as you do not feel any alarm bells going off, go for it I say.
I also know the player well enough that I can say with absolute certainty the player isn't trying to sneak anything cheesy or broken in through the back door. He just wants to play a cleric that uses her charm and force of personality as the stat that connects her to Cayden.
I think player's attitude is more important than the concept's theoretical potential, so I'd allow it. A lower WIS score has a price anyway - weaker Will saves comes to my mind, also weaker Perception.
I would charge him a feat for it, at least. There is a 3rd party feat called "Spell Finesse" that lets you change your spellcasting stat to whatever you like. Give your player permission to take that feat and you are done.
I also know the player well enough that I can say with absolute certainty the player isn't trying to sneak anything cheesy or broken in through the back door. He just wants to play a cleric that uses her charm and force of personality as the stat that connects her to Cayden.I think player's attitude is more important than the concept's theoretical potential, so I'd allow it. A lower WIS score has a price anyway - weaker Will saves comes to my mind, also weaker Perception.
This is what I was looking at - I'm surprised by the seeming consensus that this would somehow be more powerful.
He can have either an 18 Wis/12 Cha or a 12 Wis/18 Cha; he'd prefer the higher Charisma so that his character is more - well, charismatic.
From where I'm looking at things, having Charisma as his casting stat gives him a -3 to Will and -3 to several mechanically advantageous skills including sense motive and heal, but most especially notably perception, which is often one of the best/most important skills. In addition, it gives him 3 fewer daily uses of his Charm (Love) domain ability (which he's planning on using with devoted pilgrim) and also reduces its save DC by 3.
In exchange, he'd enjoy 3 more uses of channel energy per day, and be a bit better at social skills. That seems like - to me - actually a terrible tradeoff, even with it opening up some channel feat options (which wouldn't be take until level 7 at the earliest anyway.)
So far, none of the concerns mentioned - which I'd considered - seem to make up for the loss of a good Wisdom score.
I think I'll end up writing up a quick Archetype that requires you to select Charm (or one of its subdomains) as one of your domains, and in exchange, it'll maybe alter a couple class skills and swap the casting stat to Charisma.
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It's probably a wash. One of the few advantages of Cha is that it's good for a few useful skills, but a cleric doesn't have enough skill points for that to matter. Will is probably the most important save in the game, so losing that is bad. And likewise Perception is the best skill in the game.
There are a few good feats and dips that use Cha, but clerics should never dip and the most abusive feat (Divine Protection) was nerfed hard.
I reckon you'll be fine.
I've homebrewed two variant cleric classes that use Charisma. In each case the class was given a little more than a standard cleric, but I also made them spontaneous casters. In your case, just swapping Wis and Cha will not make the cleric more powerful. The character will have a great Diplomacy, but downgrading stellar Will save to just a good Will save will more than offset that.
I've wanted the cleric to be based on CHA for a while.
It's arguably the most MAD class in the game, with the monk coming in second only because it gets more skills per level.
It's always made more sense to me that a cleric's casting is based more on their ability to venerate and outwardly profess their religion than WIS.
WIS makes sense for druids.
It also adds to class parallelism in the CRB, since we would then have prepared full casters based on each attribute.
I'm all for it.
This is the quick archetype I put together:
Apostle (Cleric Archetype)
An apostle is a cleric sent out into the world to proselytize and promote her faith, particularly among foreign lands. Apostles differ from many other clerics by forming a bond with their deity not through strong will and intuition, but force of personality and a strong spirit.
Class Skills: An apostle adds Knowledge (local) to her class skills.
Mission: At 1st level, an apostle must select the Charm, Community, or Good domain (or the Love, Cooperation, Education, Family, Home, Friendship, or Redemption subdomain) as one of her domains. An apostle gains no special access to these domains: she must still worship a deity that grants access to one of these domains in order to select it.
Cult of Personality: An apostle uses her Charisma in place of her Wisdom to determine her ability to cast spells.
This ability alters spellcasting.
I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone; I didn't mean to come off as dismissive, I really was looking for whether or not there was anything obvious I was overlooking.
@Mudfoot - I'd completely forgotten about Divine Protection, and had it not been changed, I think that was precisely what I was looking for/was concerned about.
Moving to CHA from WIS for a cleric is a heavy nerf IMO.....but then if its for RP reasons why not!!
There a couple of benefits from CHA as the casting stat but the heavy loss to the most important save and things like Perception and Sense Motive (both useful skills) overdoes it IMO.
Moving to CHA from WIS for a cleric is a heavy nerf IMO.....but then if its for RP reasons why not!!
There a couple of benefits from CHA as the casting stat but the heavy loss to the most important save and things like Perception and Sense Motive (both useful skills) overdoes it IMO.
My thoughts, too, but since the player requested it, it seemed pretty reasonable.
May want to warn the player that unlike normal cleric, Will save is going to be kinda sad, and nothing good ever comes of failing a Will save.