My archer cleric of estrial (sp?) drove our GM insane starting at level three via shield other + extend rod + barkskin. Getting access to channel the gift so our arcane caster could spread around greater magic weapon and I could cast magic vestment using more extend rods with resist energy mixed in was considered OP. Magic circle against evil was worth teeth gnashing. I even avoided stuff like righteous might to not make our mellee feel sad.
Basically long duration buffs are amazing. Even a simple prot evil at level one can trivialize encounters.
This all started at level one and with a build I intentionally made weaker by minimalizing wisdom, taking weapon focus over rapid shot, not taking an animal companion, selecting weaker domains, and avoiding most of the aggressive battle buffs.
A battle cleric can replace a fighter in doing the fighter's job if they desire to. And then do other jobs if those are required.
Whereas the fighter can only do his own job, and doesn't have near the defenses a cleric does. Also, the fighter can't do near the damage a cleric can using his own class features. He MUST spend money, esp on consumables, to do so.
The cleric just casts them ahead of time.
Just, ugh.
The Dragon come near, roaring and charging the party.... Then.. A scream is shouted,!
STOP Mr dragon, said the cleric. " give me 15 casting rounds and than let's see who is the man ....."
The cleric return the fight, to see 3 dead party member and a dead Dragon next to the almost dead barbarian.
" well... " said the rightous giant cleric, " good thing I learned raise dead...
What you mean is:
The Dragon come near, roaring and charging the party.... Then.. A scream is shouted,!
"Buff up! We'll cover for you!" cries the party fighter nobly.
"No need!" said the Cleric, a quickened Righteous Might shooting him to giant size, and battle is joined.
After the fight, the party fighter looks at oversized cleric as he heals everyone in the party. "Don't you need time to buff?" he asks, as his burns and bruises are healed. He notes the cleric took MUCH less damage from the dragon's attacks then he did.
"Buffs? Oh, I cast most of those HOURS ago," the cleric says kindly.
Other than heroism on heroism domain WHAT buffs are cast pre combat ?
Non of the best... They are all minute per level maximum
Well, lessee.
Resist Energy.
Protection from Energy
Shield Other
Lesser Planar Ally
Planar Ally
Magic Vestment
Greater magical weapon
Magic Circle against Evil
Ride the waves * (situational, like Ward of the Seasons)
Air walk
heroes Feast
Spell Immunity/Greater
Gate
And of course, Heroism, Alter self, and other long duration domain spells.
I am pleased to see that many of the spells are now 1 min/level duration. But, with the advance of Quicken, it's still possible to get off a Divine Power and Righteous Might in the same round, which basically turns you into a base melee right there. WIth the ability to leverage GMW and MV for better armor adn weapons, and better defenses, esp against energy attacks, the cleric has NO problem at all performing the melee role if need be.
A quickened divine favor or divine shield can be cast in combat if desired, too.
Granted it used to be much worse, with persistent spell and the like. But remember the goal isn't to surpass what an optimized fighter can do...it's to perform the role of a melee character. And that's really not all that hard to do.
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Does anybody have any examples from their games of a cleric getting "out of hand"? I think it'd be interesting, and it might make more sense to me.
Depends on where your bar for "out of hand" is, but I played a cleric to almost 12th level in PFS a couple years back. In combat, Plan A was to fight very nearly as well as a fighter in melee, but unlike a fighter, he actually had options for Plan B. And out of combat (or in combats that had some kind of twist to them), he had all kinds of ways to engage.
In Pathfinder, your AC is about gear, not class, so I could buy all the same armor as a fighter. Plus, since I could cast greater magic weapon on my non-masterwork longsword, I actually had more wealth available to spend on defensive gear than most fighters would. As a result, I typically had the highest AC at the table. Offensively, by the time his lesser BAB started to "show" and I needed to be buffing for combat, I was at the level where lots of foes have multiple attacks, so you don't want to be moving forward and attacking on round 1 anyway (since that lets them full-attack you). Instead, I'd cast a single buff spell (which is all it takes) and move just far enough forward to get the baddies' attention. Then they move up and attack, and I return with a full-attack at full power. I was always one of the top melee combatants at the table.
Of course, there are some enemies where nobody can really go toe-to-toe with them. The fighter's option here is to just try and dump as much damage into it as possible before dropping, and hope the rest of the party can finish it off and then resuscitate him. But clerics have options. Big brutes like that tend to have low Will saves, so I'd pack a couple of plane shifts. When round 1 opened with a colossal titan centipede trampling the entire party to half HP or less, everyone else scrambled to try and come up with a plan (and started discussing resurrection options) while I just walked up and sent the encounter to hell. Poof. Did the same to an undead mammoth in another scenario, and again to a CON-draining ooze in another. Because honestly, 95% of enemies tend to come in two types: those you can go toe-to-toe with, and those who fold to plane shift.
So, combat is basically covered, and the only spells that are spoken for so far are a few 1st-level slots (divine favor), a couple 5th-level slots (plane shift) and a 4th-level slot (greater magic weapon). So I'm already leaving martials in the dust and I've still got the vast majority of my spell slots available. Since I didn't need them for basic functioning, I could fill them with situationally-ridiculous spells (like the time my GM boggled at learning I had stone shape prepared, after an enemy had wall of stone'd a party member into a cave alone with a harpy). I could also leave a few slots open for condition removal, etc. Give me a day to prepare and I can even raise the dead, or ask God what's up and expect a meaningful answer.
And that's before we even get to my Knowledge skills, my domain power to add my level to social skills, my domain power to auto-dispel all magical darkness, my domain power to get heroism as a swift action for the whole team, and so forth.
And ironically, people sometimes b@%*@ed that I wasn't standing in the back, ready to heal their fighter.
I think the tier system is overrated. It's tempting to use a system which boils down the overwhelming number of classes to a handy amount of 'tiers'. And it's beneficial as a first step for class selection - whether you want to be versatile, powerful or an underdog.
But, as any model, it has limits. It only describes versatility and power, but not the most important thing: Fun. 'Tier 1' doesn't mean tier 1 at fun. I usually prefer a rogue over a cleric, because it's much more interesting to play for me.
For comparing classes the tier system gives you a rough idea. But it doesn't take player skills, campaign quirks and interaction with other characters into account.
It was created to measure fun, but it does do what it was intended to which makes it not over rated, and yeah player skill is a large factor, but the tier system is purely about the classes, and it never pretends to be something its not.
If someone starts adding things to it that it was not meant to measure that is a user problem, much like if I tried to chop down a tree with a mallet.
I'm legitimately curious. At low-level play, they seem pretty on-par with the bard, barbarian and their peers. Hell, at low levels, you'd be pardoned for thinking cleric and rogue were entirely on equal footing.
Where does the hype come from? Are we sure it's not purely from very specific builds ("Well, this one cleric build can get to crazy amounts of power!") or 3.5's legacy? Is it only distinct at high levels?
"Tiers" are incredibly subjective and frankly I find they have very little to contribute to the game.
Minute pper level isn't a pre buff. A simple search the room and some walk end the duration.
10 per level is a bit better .
10 minutes/level is an entire smallish dungeon. 1 minute/level is the next fight, and more if you play SWAT instead of Minesweeper.
"Stupid b%&+&*!$ that makes no sense but nerfs caster PCs" dates back to Saint Gygax himself.
Depends... Our smart dm make sure to add a " mile long tunnel" from time to time10 minutes/level is an entire smallish dungeon. 1 minute/level is the next fight, and more if you play SWAT instead of Minesweeper.Minute pper level isn't a pre buff. A simple search the room and some walk end the duration.
10 per level is a bit better .
that's not smart
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CL 25 greater spell immunity = no wizard can reasonable save or die meIn what bizarre alternate universe do 20th level wizards have no more than six encounter-ending spells, none of which are 9th level?
The scenarios in which you are immune to the effects of some, and the others are banned in PVP (Mage disjunction ) due to the time they take to adjudicate.
I don't see prismatic spray on that list... It may not be consistent, but I had a 14th or higher paladin roll a 1 and get bounced to another plane. Took him RIGHT out of a BBEG fight.
Especially frustrating when the DM let me do all the rolling for it. I rolled the ray... then I rolled the save... Nothing I could even blame on him. It was all MY dice that screwed me over.
In runelords MY sorcerer used it to turn a dragon to stone...
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"Stupid b~@&##~+ that makes no sense but nerfs caster PCs" dates back to Saint Gygax himself.
To be fair, stupid b*@$+&*~ is a large reason why a lot of what Gygax believed in no longer exists in Pathfinder.
"Tiers" are incredibly subjective and frankly I find they have very little to contribute to the game.What's so subjective about them? 9-level spellcasters have a lot of ways to insta-win or bypass many scenarios, fighters don't have any a normal person wouldn't.
It measures the ceilings of classes and weighs versatility more than pure power. Its still very accurate, because versatility is very powerful, but for many games PCs play for the middle of their class' power (or use their power to make others shine) which makes the classes appear more balanced in some games than others. Houserules improving martials also do this. The tier system is about as accurate as it can be, but the game is subjective and thus all rating systems will be.
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Yeah, I mean, there can't really be that many wizard spells that basically remove an enemy from the fight unless they make a save, right?]
maze, suffocation (+mass), disintegrate, geas
That's pretty much all of that list that I'm concerned.
The rest of them are non issues, as most (if not all) my PVP characters have +42 to +52 on all saves after the typical 2 round buff session. So I honestly don't care or worry about save or X spells.
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Why is the cleric considered Tier 1, you say?
Simple answer: there is a spell chart with the number "9" on it.
Yeah, I mean, there can't really be that many wizard spells that basically remove an enemy from the fight unless they make a save, right?]
maze, suffocation (+mass), disintegrate, geas
That's pretty much all of that list that I'm concerned.
The rest of them are non issues, as most (if not all) my PVP characters have +42 to +52 on all saves after the typical 2 round buff session. So I honestly don't care or worry about save or X spells.
So, uh, a few questions.
1. How in the Infernal Planes are you even close to +42 on all saves? Are you playing 30th level, tristalt, 40 point buy games?
2. And the wizard kills you in those two rounds.
Martials are superb tool users. But Tools cost a LOT of money, and the good ones even MORE money.
Casters are average tool users. But their tools are awesome and basically free, they are called spells.
Money, the root of all disparity.
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1. How in the Infernal Planes are you even close to +42 on all saves? Are you playing 30th level, tristalt, 40 point buy games?
2. And the wizard kills you in those two rounds.
1) CoR+5, Bestow Grace, Bestow Geace of the Champion, CHA+15 mod, typically do Oracle (but can do legiti Cleric), 25 point buy, lucky horseshoe, fates favored, pale green ioun saves. 40+ on all saves is trivial.
2) wizard gets same 2 rounds of buffs. If you insist one 1 or 0 buff, I'll rearrange buffs. Or ignore and do empowered maximized stormbolts, then quicken empowered stormbolts.
Most unruffled wizards can't handle 30d8+160.
In all seriousness, I've yet to lose a PVP to a Wizard build with a cleric, oracle, or bard type build.
In 3.5, we fast forwarded a campaign from 5-ish to 20th. I had a cleric 10/shiny servant of Pelor 10, the rest of the party was a warlock (the first we ever saw), and a swashbuckler.
We were fighting a lich. It cast prismatic spray, which my guy saved or avoided somehow, but the swashbuckler got dumped to another pain and the warlock got petrified (or vice versa).
So I cast mass heal, rolled a natural 20 on my caster level check to overcome its Spell Resistance, then it rolled a natural 1 on its saving throw. DUST!
Then I was able to unpetrify one ally and plane shift back the other.
So that was quick!
So did you miss the clause that prevents Heal from reducing an undead's HP below 1? :)
Um, yes?
Oops!
I probably had one of those prepared. Quickened searing light.
Yeah that's it. That's the ticket!
It is difficult to claim cleric is a tier 1 class anymore. Yes, it has an amazingly versatile chassis. However, to even try to match what any other class is doing, whether it is blasting, meleeing, defending, skill monkeying, or whatnot, the cleric needs to invest all available resources to doing so. You will not even approach the damage of the martials without putting in the feats. All of them. Nor will you ever outblast a sorcerer or wizard who does it halfway competently, even with all feats invested in it. If you do not focus, what you have is a meleer who does too little damage, who takes too much damage and has too few hp. A blaster who is several levels behind the party wizard. The only thing you can actually do competently is buffing - and no, those do not last for hours - and healing. Buffing is extremely situational, and if the battle has begun, you have three rounds total, both for buffing and using the buffs. Healing, yeah, gratz, you are the walking bandaid everyone loves to have around. But the life oracle is better at it. Oh, and you are about as MAD as anyone can be.
That said, cleric is a great class. You just need to make sure you have a definite role in mind first. Play a meleer, blaster or summoner, accept that you won't outshine anyone, and compensate by adding some buffs and heals along the way.
It is difficult to claim cleric is a tier 1 class anymore.
I'm not an expert, but every class needs to focus on something. Wizard can have summoning or blasting, you can't get both, because of Spell Focus.
Clerics get access to 2 good saves, d8 and 3/4 BAB. You don't need high DEX, 12 cuts it because you go full plate.You don't need WIS if you're doing melee, just enough to cast spells, DC doesn't matter, you'll be focusing on buffs.
That basically means you mostly need to enhance STR-CON, DEX if you're going Mithral Full plate.
Feats? Power Attack, what else do you need? Weapon Focus. I think everything else is just a bonus, nothing more.
The only think you really lack besides Class Features/Feats, are skill points. Really poor on this. But you can get 1 extra being human, and giving up 1 HP/lvl you can get another one from FCB.
If there's a Wizard, you just need Perception and something else. Probably Spellcraft, though, honestly, you can live without it even, you don't have an INT bonus anyway.
Then it's all buffs. It's always been buffs. You need rounds to buff while Wizards control battlefield, full BAB wade into melee, and you join them at round 3 or 2, depending on severity.
Eventually you get Quicken (on rod up to 3rd level spell) or spellslot.
EDIT= and just because you focused on melee, you still have spells. You still do Condition Removal, you still leave slots open for versatility and depending on Domain get access to cool Wiz spells
Problem is, I have literally never not seen a buffer cleric be disappointed because the combats are too short. Joining on round three means mopping up the last miserable bugbear who has six hp left. Yaaaay. And even with the buffs up, you are STILL not more powerful than the fighter in melee. The people who claim that buffs make clerics powerful obviously never played one for long.
Problem is, I have literally never not seen a buffer cleric be disappointed because the combats are too short. Joining on round three means mopping up the last miserable bugbear who has six hp left. Yaaaay. And even with the buffs up, you are STILL not more powerful than the fighter in melee. The people who claim that buffs make clerics powerful obviously never played one for long.
Noob cleric.
You have one buff round: Buff, move into full attack range.
No you don't need to be doing fighter damage without having prebuff time.
But you should have prebuff time Mr. "I know all my divination spells"
And if all else fails: Summoning, summoning is the best buff spell.
Buffing yourself to be a martial is kind of terrabad. That's what the tier 3 classes do. In a big team situation, support allies, or summon
BUT what makes a T1 is what they do strategically not tactical play. Wizards and sorcerers aren't in different tiers because of in-combat decisions.
And yet here we have not one but several people actively claiming that clerics are hugely powerful because they can buff themselves to be martials, oh and they can remove conditions too. I just don't see that. Besides, a competent summoning cleric has no feats left over until lvl 10 or so for martial exploits, so summoning and getting in close seems extremely subpar to me.
Strategically, what is it clerics do that makes them tier 1? Find the path? Word of recall? Heal? Planar ally? And which divination is it that lets the cleric know when to buff up? Clerics do not get clairaudience/clairvoyance.
Clerics are hugely powerful, because they can buff anyone to be hugely powerful. That could be themselves, their allies or their summons.
But yeah, the cleric as fighter isn't that great of a fighter, unless he takes a chunk of the fight to get ready. Quicken rods can speed that up in an emergency though.
So now the cleric is uber powerful because they can BUFF OTHERS? Really? Even though them buffing themselves stinks to high heaven due to action economy, their ability to buff others makes THEM powerful???
Seriously, this still sounds like people want others to play clerics to buff and heal them. "Yeah, clerics are so absurdly powerful, you will see, you even have condition removal, plus you can heal and buff the rest of us - you will LOVE playing cleric! Oh, and there really isn't any other class we need, so if you'd just play a cleric, that would be GREAT... Yeah..."
Let's not forget these guys can spend one feat to get access to standard action summons. While not as powerful as the summoner class it's still a standard action to add another ally to the fight and depending on hat you go it can utterly break it.
Wizards can do this with a trait - and aren't limited on what they can summon with it.
Standard action summons in general aren't a miricle to the class nor do they give a prayer to the righteous might that is a cleric.
So now the cleric is uber powerful because they can BUFF OTHERS? Really? Even though them buffing themselves stinks to high heaven due to action economy, their ability to buff others makes THEM powerful???
Maybe, if that were the only thing they can do. But it's not. It's just one of the things they're really good at. Buffing others has better action economy, but if you need to have the ability to buff up yourself and wade into the thick of a big battle, then you also have that option. Having a ton of options is what makes the cleric tier 1.
Summoning is great... If your character is built for it. Spell focus (conjuration), Augment Summoning, Sacred Summons, and Superior Summoning, yeah, now we're talking. Without them, not so much. Take a look at the creatures summoned. The CRs are significantly lower than your CL. Use the wrong critter and you have extra bodies on the field that are safely ignored by the opposition because they don't hit, and everybody makes their saves against them. Drowning the battle mat in useless critters is, to nobody's surprise, useless. Oh, and without std action summoning, don't even try. The action economy is awful.
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Problem is, I have literally never not seen a buffer cleric be disappointed because the combats are too short. Joining on round three means mopping up the last miserable bugbear who has six hp left. Yaaaay. And even with the buffs up, you are STILL not more powerful than the fighter in melee. The people who claim that buffs make clerics powerful obviously never played one for long.
Sounds like you missed my story earlier, eh?
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So now the cleric is uber powerful because they can BUFF OTHERS? Really? Even though them buffing themselves stinks to high heaven due to action economy, their ability to buff others makes THEM powerful???
Seriously, this still sounds like people want others to play clerics to buff and heal them. "Yeah, clerics are so absurdly powerful, you will see, you even have condition removal, plus you can heal and buff the rest of us - you will LOVE playing cleric! Oh, and there really isn't any other class we need, so if you'd just play a cleric, that would be GREAT... Yeah..."
Alright for real though. Cleric isn't sexy so most people don't have full knowledge about it aside from that player being the only one not crying about their uselessness when you discover first hand just how busted wizards are.
Evil clerics are great at undead spam. Optimal TN clerics are also good at undead spam. Yet not all clerics are undead masters yet all clerics are T1 (or capable of T1).
We have established that clerics can fix all problems? OK good. Undoing bad juju is strategically important. But that isn't all there is.
They got good buffs. We all know this, but everybody got buffs now.
They also get really nice divination spells, but so does the wizard
Summoning, summoning is good even without feats. Virture of all fullcasters but all fullcasters are not tier one.
Spells:
2nd
Silence is cleric/bard cause F talky casters. Zone of Truth cause F bluff checks
3rd
Create Food and Water cause F mortal concerns, Stone Shape cause F castles, Speak with Dead cause F murder mysteries, Bestow Curse cause F parole just make the captured BBEG useless
4th
Air Walk cause F the fly skill and casting fly more than once, Giant Vermin cause F that one village, Lesser Planar Ally cause F having unhappy outsider servants,
5th
Plane shift cause F this plane OUT, Spell Resistance cause we can annoy the GM now too,
6th
Animate object way earlier than bard cause Woot, Antilife Shell cause F things, Quest cause I am only asking once, Wind Walk cause F travel, Planar Ally cause bigger happy servants are great too, Word of Recall cause poor man's teleport,
7th
Control weather cause I Zeus now,
8th
Anti magic field cause F wizard PvP, Greater Planar Ally cause happy help from serious cosmic entities is totally fair, Earthquake cause F dungeons
9th
Astral Projection cause WEEEEEEE, Gate cause I need my angel buddy's solar boss to help out, Miracle cause I might as well do most wizard things too for FREE, Storm of Vengeance cause F that army of mid level adventurers.
All of that comes free with levels and you don't have to commit AT ALL to get every narrative altering or smashing power you want plus all the other general buffing, healing bandaid, divination, summoning, undead fun you want.
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Low tier 1 is still tier 1. Cleric might not be packing the might of a Mega-Mewtwo, destroying everything by looking at them funny, but they got the versatility of an Aegislash, able to have a solution to any problem in its face at almost any time. If they had to get their spells like a wizard it'd probably drop a tier, but as it stands it's still an uber tier class that shouldn't be around the more balanced and weak classes.
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So what happens if a wizard/sorcerer uses Emergency Force Sphere to counter your limited castings of Stormbolts?
Buff up and ready for when they teleport out?
Destroy the 200 hp hardness 30 wall with 230 hp storm bolts with the first one and quicken the other to kill the wizard?
Ask the GM if that's a valid use of EFS as there is significant difference of opinion on whether or not it can interrupt an attack like that.
So what happens if a wizard/sorcerer uses Emergency Force Sphere to counter your limited castings of Stormbolts?Buff up and ready for when they teleport out?
Destroy the 200 hp hardness 30 wall with 230 hp storm bolts with the first one and quicken the other to kill the wizard?
Ask the GM if that's a valid use of EFS as there is significant difference of opinion on whether or not it can interrupt an attack like that.
I gotta ask...
1d8 points of electricity damage per caster level (maximum 20d8)
How are you getting 230 hp on a storm bolts.... 160 would be maximized, 160+80 = 230 - but that would require a maximized and empowered. Maximized is 3 levels higher. Empowered is +2 - so you can't memorize the spell with either - and you can only use one rod at a time.
So... how goes?
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Does anybody have any examples from their games of a cleric getting "out of hand"?
(Chokes and coughs.) I still hate myself for accidentally ruining Mundane's 7th-8th level "Underwater All-Stars" campaign. She told us it would be very challenging, so I dutifully rolled up a cleric, ignored Str and Dex, and jacked up my Wis and Cha as high as I could. We all had to play underwater races, which I took as a hint, and grabbed the Water domain. Our group also had an ubercharger cavalier and some kind of dashing skirmisher guy.
The adventure was mostly investigation and social stuff, which I inadvertently dominated, because after the skirmisher bought Dex, Str, Con, he didn't have much left for Int and Cha. I was making all the Sense Motive checks, and discerning lies and so on, and even untrained, Bluff wasn't that hard against mooks. I could also summon spies and minions, and cast divination, etc., etc. All this was effective enough that we got too close to the BBEG too quickly, and she attacked us with everything she had.
Which I'd expected. We allowed ourselves to be caught in an underwater place, and a lot of souped-up underwater monsters attacked. I told the cavalier who to charge and he 1-shotted the disguised BBEG. Then I cast lower water and a couple other choice spells, and the rest was anticlimactic. The skirmisher said, "Why am I even here? He just finished the entire adventure solo."
I tried to talk up the cavalier's killing of the BBEG as the real key to the adventure, but I don't think he believed me.
In retrospect, I wish I'd played a fire oracle or something. Even if we'd all died, I'd feel better about myself.