Looking for design input on new class.

[Thelemic_Noun]

The expositor functions similarly to the kineticist and 3.5 warlock, only for divine magic rather than occult or arcane.

It has the wizard BAB, good Fort & Will, 4 skills per level, d6 HD, no armor or shield proficiencies, is proficient with simple weapons and their deity's favored weapon, etc.

In exchange for no armor, they get the monk's Wisdom to AC and level-based AC bonus features.

They get an effect that's essentially the same as a ranged version of the paladin's lay-on-hands and graces, but with more uses per day and the ability to cure more things as they advance in level.

They also get an at-will ranged ability that deals damage and at later levels inflicts conditions. The damage is relatively modest, but the conditions can get nasty.

Then there are their investitures: (mostly) at-will supernatural abilities, many of which duplicate spell effects. (This section is by no means finished).

Does anyone have any design input on what you see? This is a very rough draft.

[Ciaran Barnes]

Gnostic Revalations
The first part is unclear. There are no items that require you to be a cleric to create or use it. Creating a magic item requires a caster level, and having the appropriate spells ready keeps the DC down to a minimum. So perhaps change how you wrote it to reflect that. As far as using Wis for all of those Int skills, I have toyed with changing the ability score used for skills in the past, but now I try to keep away from it. The only ability score he needs to pump up is Wisdom. Why would an expositor be better at religion checks than a cleric? I would scrap this part of it. Since he really only needs Wis, if he wants to be good at knowledge checks, he can invest in Int.

Blast Infidel
Love the name, but I have issues with other parts. You're adding Wis, but there's a save so I guess thats fine. I am completely against max damage on a 1. I can think of no precedence in the game for such an ability. You've snuck in two extras here that could very well be a capstone on their own, except you already have a capstone. Leave the max damage at 10d6, and scrap the all enemies with 1000 ft part. What kind of deity grants a power like that? A god of destruction maybe, but very few of them are. I'm not sold on the multiple targets with a single standard action part. A martial character would have to make a full-round attack, and the attack bonus gets lower as he goes. You have no such progression. I would like to see this class feature brought down to a more minimalist approach, like the original warlock ability. Maybe as levels are gained you allow the character to pick from a list of options that alter/improve how the ability works. Making some or all of them depenant on which domains his deity has would allow customizations. Choosing destructions would ramp up damage or the number of targets. Choosing undeath would ramp up damage against undead. Maybe healing grants some temp hp. They couldn't all have to affect this class feature.

Faith Healing
You've snuck in yet another capstone. Why would an expositor of a god of fire and destruction be so good at healing?

Other class features
You've really piled the number of features pretty high. For example, every three levels you gain wages of sin -and- redeeming grace. You should probably just gain one of those at each opportunity. Investiture is every other level. Every class feature is a constant ability or at-will. Its just too much. I'm not saying too powerful, just too much stuff to choose from. I would trim this all down and focus on making interesting/fun abilities, rather than having so many abilities. If your inspiration is the kineticist, then I advise against that. The class is a cluster.

[relativemass]

I suggest doing simulations to compare an Expositioner to similar classes. Have identical teams face off against each other with characters of the same classes performing the same actions. The only difference between the groups should be that one has an expositioner and the other should have have a classes that fills the same role as an expositioner. If the team with the expositioner wins statistically significantly more or less often then you will know that the exposnitioner needs tweaking until they both win about the same.

You can increase the speed of simulation convergence with the following techniques: 1) have classes of the same type (i.e. both group's fighter) act simultaneously, perform the same actions, and share the same rolls, 2) rather than using rolls for attacks, damage, and saves use the statistically averaged outcomes, 3) have the groups start out in mirror image formations compared to each other, 4) automate this process as much as possible to make things go faster since you may get tired of performing full simulations quickly.

Send me a personal message if you need help with the math or algorithms. If you do want help, please, let me know what computer algebra/language system you are best with (Excel, Mathematica, C, a hand calculator, etc.).

Good luck.

[Thelemic_Noun]

I've taken some of your suggestions into account and revised the class document.

Changes:

• No Wisdom modifier to blast infidel damage.
  
• No additional damage on a natural 1
  
• Faith healing and blast infidel are now strictly single-target abilities, and the die size increase is gone.
  
• Gnostic revelations has been completely rewritten.
  
• Some of the more confusing graces have been rewritten as feats.
  

Ciaran Barnes wrote:

Maybe as levels are gained you allow the character to pick from a list of options that alter/improve how the ability works. Making some or all of them depenant on which domains his deity has would allow customizations. Choosing destructions would ramp up damage or the number of targets. Choosing undeath would ramp up damage against undead. Maybe healing grants some temp hp. They couldn't all have to affect this class feature.

I've been trying for a while to come up with a more domain-based system for abilities, but there are a buttload of domains. I'm working on it, but slowly.

Ciaran Barnes wrote:

Investiture is every other level. Every class feature is a constant ability or at-will. Its just too much. I'm not saying too powerful, just too much stuff to choose from. I would trim this all down and focus on making interesting/fun abilities, rather than having so many abilities.

The investitures are gained at the same levels that 3.5 warlocks gained invocations. As to having too many abilities, most of Paizo's classes go on for pages and pages (avg. 10).

Anyone have any thoughts on the investitures?

[Ciaran Barnes]

The long lists are not what I refer to. Over 20 levels, you choose 23 abilities from three different lists. I think one or two lists would be better. Investatures have a weird progression, and it seems that at 6th level you choose one thing from all three lists. You could do investitures at every even numbered level and then combine be the other two lists and do one at every odd, starting at 3rd. Or make the options from one of those lists s more powerful and pick one every four levels.

[My Self]

I'd hesitate to add WIS to AC. Consider that the Psychic with the Faith discipline gets WIS, not INT, as the AC stat, and it doesn't get an extra dodge bonus based on level. Similarly, he Oracle with any of the CHA to AC revelations has to drop DEX from AC. Monk, Kensai Magus, Kineticist (with the monk-ish archetype), Paladin (with the Monk-ish archetype), Sacred Fist Warpriest, and the Worldscape archetypes all have a secondary stat to AC, which *might* be able to become a primary attack stat, but only through intense and specific investment in certain feats/gear. Also note how the Cleric has CHA to Channel Energy, not WIS, although that could be classified as a 3.5 holdover.

As for domains, why not start with the Core domains, or pick an even smaller list of related abilities, such as Inquisitions or Mysteries? Alternatively, perhaps each "domain" is merely a single power, and instead of specializing, you generalize, picking up more domains as you progress? So perhaps the Artifice power lets you do full damage to objects with Smite Infidel, and affect constructs with your healing or mind-affecting abilities? Or the blast has a slower natural scaling (+1d6/4 levels), and Destruction domain lets you up it to +1d6/2 levels? Perhaps the elemental domains let you convert it to an elemental type, or let it stew around as an aura that does minimum damage (WIS+1/2 level)? Or maybe the War domain lets you use it as a melee touch attack (and can get extra attacks from high BAB or haste), or have it as a rider on your regular attacks?

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Do something with the name... If I add one to my group, I'd feel like I'd be partying with a medical or sanitary implement. Like a Suppository that runs backwards.

[Here4daFreeSwag]

Good to have some free Expositer stuff out there. ;)

[My Self]

Perhaps you could have the Faith Healing be an extension or alteration of Blast Infidel? So instead of selecting a condition for both Faith Healing and Blast Infidel, you select one condition, and you can either heal or cause that condition. Switching Blast Infidel to Faith Healing would still be a limited uses per day thing. Also, perhaps Faith Healing should count as Lay on Hands for prerequisites? Corpselore could be a prerequisite for Unliving Hordes. For Soothsaying, there is no Nerveskitter, and no Great Peril. Also, It would be very nice if you could standardize the number of investitures you can get - maybe some are 1 use, some are 3+WIS uses, and some are infinite use.

[Thelemic_Noun]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Do something with the name... If I add one to my group, I'd feel like I'd be partying with a medical or sanitary implement. Like a Suppository that runs backwards.

Expositor is an official name for "preacher." It derives from the Latin "expositio" (whence "exposition" in English."

Trust me, I'd have preferred to use the Greek, but "exarch" (εξαρχον) has been used to death, and in PFRPG has too much baggage for it to be applied to a 1st-level character.

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I've been thinking, and I perhaps have an idea: The expositor chooses one domain/mystery/theme/sphere at 1st, 6th, 11th, and 16th level. Each theme/sphere has abilities for levels 1–20. The expositor gets the abilities from his first theme at his full class level. This second theme is class level –5, third at class level –10, and fourth at class level –15.

That might give more design space, in that daily limits or lack thereof can be individually tailored to a given power.

So, what domains are most integral to a campaign's religious system?

You've got Death, Destruction, Protection, Life, Lore, the four alignments, the four elements, Darkness (partially overlaps with Death and Evil), Light (partially overlaps with Life and Good), Nature (partial overlaps with Life and the four elements), and what else?

[My Self]

I'd avoid the additional choices being at -5, -10, and -15, so that they're not decreasingly meaningful, like the iterations of Fighter Weapon Training or Brawler Maneuver Training. Perhaps if they were staggered, like how the Shaman gets multiple spirits, one at 1, 8, and 16, the other at 4, 12, and 20. If you got 3 domain-like abilities, you could fit one at 1, 7, 13, one at 3, 9, 17, and the last at 5, 11, 19. That would leave you room for a domain-independent capstone, or perhaps a primary domain-specific capstone if you're into that.