In an upcoming campaign I'd like to be an archer. Since I'm usually the Divine guy, I'd also need to run something that is divine.
Usually our group is not really experienced and many times our players take mechanical decisions than from the outside world, suck. Like being a life oracle who only heals, doesn't buff and doesn't use weapons or summons. Or a 2WF Ninja with 10 STR and a 2WF Slayer.
This is not the subject of the thread though, but since I've never experienced hybrid classes I was wondering if Warpriest, Inquisitor and the like are classes that can be used, played and the party can still get all the perks of Breath of Life, Removal and the such.
So, in the case of playing APs, does not having a full spellcaster is a hindrance or one can just ignore it?
My experience on the matter is limited, but getting access to Breath of Life at level 13 seems horrible when you consider a normal Cleric.
So what is your experience on this issue?
A large number of classes can result in a weaker party.
An oracle, for instance, might not have spells like Restoration or Remove Blindness. A cleric could have waited a day and prepped the right spell. I played in an AP where monsters could permanently blind PCs at around 3rd-level. We had an oracle, not a cleric.
I wouldn't want to wait until level 13 for Breath of Life, etc.
That's kinda my issue. Party is small, I wanna play something Divine, but being stuck to a crap cleric every single time is annoying.
If the Warpriest doesn't get access to Breath of Life is it the system's fault or the party's for not getting a cleric?
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Stuff
Clerics are *boring*, in the sense that they don't get cool features, at all.
You get feats. Every class gets them. You get domains, but you cannot chose at your own whim, you're tied to your deities.So if you like Travel but your God doesn't give it to you, you fall under GM bias.
Spells are just spells. Inquisitor get spells, Warpriest get spells and they get SO MANY cool features. WIS to Initiative, to AC, Bane, Bonus Feats, 6 skill points.
If I wanna play an Archer Cleric I need to either worship Erastil or be an Elf/Halfelf and waste a Racial Trait to get proficiency.
At least Wizard are actually powerful, get Scribe Scrolls and can do funny and powerful stuff. Most cleric by default are relegated to buffers because making a Blaster cleric is hella hard and it doesn't work anyway.
My take is if the party lives or dies based on having a specific spell at 9th level, there are problems afoot that aren't solvable.
Particularly for APs, it doesn't seem an absolute necessity.
That said, in the class of things that are ridiculously effective, cleric archers are rather good.
Also, wands and scrolls good for emergencies.
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If you want to be a healer with full spellcasting but cleric is a boring option for you, have you considered a witch or shaman maybe? Not sure about the archer part but you at least get more "interesting" class features.
Yeah, we usually only have one full caster per party, and if the person who ends up drawing that straw is bored with the Cleric and doesn't want to play an Oracle, Witch with the Healing Patron or just any kind of Shaman is generally a lot more appealing in the "this looks like fun" department.
In an upcoming campaign I'd like to be an archer. Since I'm usually the Divine guy, I'd also need to run something that is divine.
Usually our group is not really experienced and many times our players take mechanical decisions than from the outside world, suck. Like being a life oracle who only heals, doesn't buff and doesn't use weapons or summons. Or a 2WF Ninja with 10 STR and a 2WF Slayer.This is not the subject of the thread though, but since I've never experienced hybrid classes I was wondering if Warpriest, Inquisitor and the like are classes that can be used, played and the party can still get all the perks of Breath of Life, Removal and the such.
So, in the case of playing APs, does not having a full spellcaster is a hindrance or one can just ignore it?
My experience on the matter is limited, but getting access to Breath of Life at level 13 seems horrible when you consider a normal Cleric.
So what is your experience on this issue?
Well, in our current RotRL party, we have 3 of our 5 characters who are Divine Spellcasters. A Warpriest, a Paladin, and an Inquisitor.
So far, the only thing their spellcasting has done so far is not absolutely screw themselves over (as they're our frontline). Everybody else is stuck dealing with any Divine Spellcasting problems by themselves.
Needless to say, the only thing Spellcasting will do if you aren't a Full Spellcaster is shore the come-uppance for yourself, whereas Full Spellcasters can do so for an entire party. Which, depending on party size, is either powerful for a larger party, or useful for a typical or smaller party.
Each AP assumes you will have 1 Full Arcane and 1 Full Divine Spellcaster. Anything more than that is extra and handy (and the GM will be required to accommodate for it so encounters aren't cake walks). Anything less than that, and you're going to be selling yourself short towards the mid-to-late game.
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Scrolls or wands can also make up for spell deficiencies if you want to play an oracle.
Or, depending on how you build it, you can make a pretty boss paladin healer/archer. They're not as versatile as a cleric or even an oracle, but they can do quite a bit once their mercies come online. Plus UMD can help you make up deficiencies, again, with scrolls and wands.
You get domains, but you cannot chose at your own whim, you're tied to your deities.
So if you like Travel but your God doesn't give it to you, you fall under GM bias.
You're talking like picking a deity is not part of the options
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Sure you can pick a deity... But good luck finding a deity that has a compatible alignment, both of the Domains you wanted, and a favored weapon that doesn't suck. Its usually a "pick two (or fewer) of the above" sort of situation.
Sure you can pick a deity... But good luck finding a deity that has a compatible alignment, both of the Domains you wanted, and a favored weapon that doesn't suck. Its usually a "pick two (or fewer) of the above" sort of situation.
I can almost always get three, and feel comfortable getting on with a morning star.
Compatible alignment isn't even vaguely difficult, given that you always have 3 or more options.
Good domains aren't exactly rare either, even among the core 20, even assuming 'a divine concept worthy of devotion' isn't an option on the table.
A large number of classes can result in a weaker party.
An oracle, for instance, might not have spells like Restoration or Remove Blindness. A cleric could have waited a day and prepped the right spell. I played in an AP where monsters could permanently blind PCs at around 3rd-level. We had an oracle, not a cleric.
I wouldn't want to wait until level 13 for Breath of Life, etc.
That's kinda my issue. Party is small, I wanna play something Divine, but being stuck to a crap cleric every single time is annoying.
If the Warpriest doesn't get access to Breath of Life is it the system's fault or the party's for not getting a cleric?
Since when are cleric crap? the one problem is when they serve as heal bots and don't do anything else... but if you act as a full cleric, with your not detestable fighting ability, and your interesting spell selection, you can dominate the game.
With all the option available there is no need to play any specific class. Not having full spell casting ability is not going to cause as much problem as you think. Warpriests get the full cleric list just get it a little later. This may mean that your party may have to shell out a little more in consumable items to shore up the weakness. But the other thing to consider is your increased combat ability is going to make it easier and faster to end fights. That may actually lessen the amount of condition removal you need to do. After all if the BBEG is killed of sooner than that mean he is not attacking the party as much.
Since when are cleric crap? the one problem is when they serve as heal bots and don't do anything else... but if you act as a full cleric, with your not detestable fighting ability, and your interesting spell selection, you can dominate the game
Crap is the sense that they don't gain any cool abilities at all. Most of the other classes gain cool features, you just gain spells.
Also, those spells most of the time take time to cast, and waiting 2-3 turns to be combat ready is not really optimal, might as well start casting buffs for the party instead of buffing yourself.
Inquisitor and Warpriest are fine replacements for a cleric.
Sure you wont have as much healing magic to throw around, but healing clerics aren't any fun in the first place.
As for breath of life...my party has never prepared it and we have been fine for the most part. We have an occasional death, but often breath of life wouldn't have made a difference. Many times the cleric is too far away for it to work, unless they prepare a reach breath of life. Even then, breath of life usually just means the party member is killed next instead of this round. Because the BBEG is going to keep trying to KO anyone who is a threat, and one who is near unconscious is a great target to keep attacking. Hell, this is why we as players tend to focus on one enemy at a time so as to try to knock them out so we have less enemies to deal with and effectively increase the action economy of the party relative to the enemy.
My final opinion, warpriest and inquisitor are great. They make great archers. Play what you want, and maybe convince you party to bring potions with them just in case.
Also, if Breath of Life really is so important tell your party members to buy a shawl of life keeping. It's not as good, but it can help mitigate the problem.
Why are you so sure you want to go Divine? Is it because of the roleplaying, the capacities...?
Because there are classes that, not being divine, could fit the role.
It depends on DM, but no, normally you don't need a cleric. I do recommend having SOME character that can cast some of the condition removal spells, but that can be as basic as a Bard or a Hunter (or as recommended earlier, a Witch can be an amazing alternative healer). Heck, you could probably go pretty far with a Paladin picking the right Mercies. Any character with UMD ultimately works, though.
Buy a wand of cure light wounds for your normal day to day healing. Cultivate a relationship with a high level cleric, which usually means finding a powerful local church and getting on good terms with them. Take leadership and grab a healbot cohort, if it's an option. Use Scrolls and UMD for those times when you get hit with, say, blindness in the middle of the dungeon.
Pretty much all of this requires money (other than Leadership, which just requires a nice GM) but if it means you can play the class you want to play it's worth it. The more you can cover with your own spells the less money you'll need to spend.
As for the rest of it, the buffs and such, 100% optional unless you have a particularly killer GM. I know most of the APs can be beaten without clerics with relative ease, and I know a lot of GMs who balance around 6th level casters as opposed to assuming full casters. If the raw power of the cleric is what's needed to keep the group afloat, you could try a Druid- much more entertaining class, and arguably just as powerful as the Cleric.
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My biggest problem with PF Core Clerics, are the Golarion Deities don't all have martial weapons for favored weapons. What is the point in having the line "Clerics are also proficient with the favored weapon of their deity" if the favored weapon is a simple weapon that they are already proficient with?
Anyway, to the point of the thread, talk to your GM. He/she should be balancing the game around what the party has, if an extra CMW wand needs tossed in from time to time, so be it. I've played a few games successfully where the party was 6th levels or lower, and it worked completely fine, as long as the GM wasn't assuming every fight and problem was full caster appropriate.
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That's kinda my issue. Party is small, I wanna play something Divine, but being stuck to a crap cleric every single time is annoying.
If the Warpriest doesn't get access to Breath of Life is it the system's fault or the party's for not getting a cleric?
It's no ones fault.
The game worked fine before Breath of Life came along. The game works fine if you bring a warpriest instead of a cleric.
What DOESN'T work fine is not changing your tactics in light of the differences. You can't continue to operate the same way you would with a cleric when you have a warpriest instead.
Play what you want. Realize you need to adapt to the new environment, or you will fail and not have as much fun. But it isn't the games fault in that case, it's yours for not being flexible.
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Also, if Breath of Life really is so important tell your party members to buy a shawl of life keeping. It's not as good, but it can help mitigate the problem.
If Breath of Life is so important, make these standard issue for the party.
Also, if Breath of Life really is so important tell your party members to buy a shawl of life keeping. It's not as good, but it can help mitigate the problem.If Breath of Life is so important, make these standard issue for the party.
It's not that they're super important, but eventually people die. And instead of having the cleric prep the spell, everything goes on a huge derail because we need to find a cleric that can use Raise Dead. Sometimes this is impossible because you're far away from a settlement and it becomes impossible.
Also, removal are important. Drains are quite common and having to spam Scrolls because you don't have the spell is not really fun, specially if that is tapping into your WBL.
archmagi1 brings a good point as well. Why give proficiency if most deities only have Simple weapons? If I wanted to be a Cleric archer, I'm forced to chose Erastil or play Elf/Half Elf. I could be human, but I'm wasting my feat, and might as well pick Martial Proficiency.
If I wanted a melee cleric I wouldn't have many issues, STR13, PA and I'm done. Reach clerics is doable but already struggles with feats, being the only advantage the fact that it can potentially use simple weapons.
CLW is not the issue, but having access to Remove/Lesser is. Raise Dead can save some time ingame or actually make it possible.
Overall, what I'd like to know how feasible is to play without 9/9 casting, without having to take 100 measures to help circumvent the fact that our party doesn't have a full caster.
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Druid. We have two in our Iron Gods campaign. They cover, healing, summoning, melee, ranged, scouting. The Bard handles the face work. The cleric is there for some buffing and occasional undead. Gunslinger is the cannon o' doom.
But those druids, very versatile, lots of toys. Don't want an animal companion, take a domain, and so on.
didn't we just have this thread a week ago?
So regarding character death and raise dead- it seems like player death is fairly common, enough to be annoying if you don't have raise dead. In that case, the cleric is a band-aid to the real issue: characters dying often enough to be annoying to rez them. Either the GM is running a harder campaign than the characters are able to deal with, or the party in general just isn't playing cautiously enough, or a combination. Neither of these are bad things, but they do lead to increased reliance on Raise Dead. And that just leads back to what TOZ said- you are going to need to change your playstyle to compensate for the lack of a 9th level divine caster.
(It's not possible to avoid character death entirely, as there is always a chance that characters will fail both saves on a Phantasmal Killer or similar situations. But if you reduce it to the point where only freak accidents, lucky crits, or climatic boss fights kill characters, then you should be ok if you just keep a scroll on hand.)
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Also, if Breath of Life really is so important tell your party members to buy a shawl of life keeping. It's not as good, but it can help mitigate the problem.If Breath of Life is so important, make these standard issue for the party.
That is an excellent item.
In 3.5 I used to give for free the Healing Gloves that had a limited amount of daily healing dice.
There's a bunch of non-core deities with longbow as their favored weapon (6 or 7 of them?) plus a couple with short bows if Erastil gets your blood pressure up. In my limited experience with APs the range of a longbow is irrelevant so a cleric of Desna with starknives or of Sinashakti with a shortbow should be an effective enough archer if the travel domain is required.
I have played a sorcerer as the primary healer tho' not as an archer at the same time. It's a bit rough getting started but works pretty well once you have mnemonic vestments and the right scrolls. I expect you could make another spontaneous spellcaster work the same way - feel like playing a bard?
Eh, you can get most if not all of the status fixing spells with an alchemist. Dispel magic and remove curse aren't limited to 9 level casters, Summoners get the teleports/plane shifts. I'm pretty sure you could play with only 6 level casters and be just fine.
I enjoy reincarnation for a simpler rez than raise dead myself.
Agreed. I was going to tag on another recommendation to play Druid or even Witch for Reincarnation... but then I remembered the topic is "Is It Possible To Stop Using Full Spellcasters", so those classes, while helping with the question of alternatives to Clerics, don't actually answer the topic as a whole.
Actually, I just realized Hunter would get Reincarnate only one level later than the Cleric gets Raise Dead. That's a pretty good 6th level caster solution to the Raise Dead problem. That just leaves the condition removal problem. Hunters have ok condition removal but they do have some holes. But honestly, if people are dying often enough that Raise Dead is considered a vital spell to have on hand, you should be saving enough money from using Reincarnate instead of Raise Dead to afford scrolls for condition removal. Then just have someone with UMD and boom, problem solved.
Warpriests get raise dead. Alchemists get true resurrection.
It can be done, but how well it can be done without making bigger adjustments to the game depends on the skill level of the players, and how the GM runs his games.
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In an upcoming campaign I'd like to be an archer. Since I'm usually the Divine guy, I'd also need to run something that is divine.
Usually our group is not really experienced and many times our players take mechanical decisions than from the outside world, suck. Like being a life oracle who only heals, doesn't buff and doesn't use weapons or summons. Or a 2WF Ninja with 10 STR and a 2WF Slayer.This is not the subject of the thread though, but since I've never experienced hybrid classes I was wondering if Warpriest, Inquisitor and the like are classes that can be used, played and the party can still get all the perks of Breath of Life, Removal and the such.
So, in the case of playing APs, does not having a full spellcaster is a hindrance or one can just ignore it?
My experience on the matter is limited, but getting access to Breath of Life at level 13 seems horrible when you consider a normal Cleric.
So what is your experience on this issue?
While I support the classical party composition I've got to ask you why do you need to be a cleric, unless you are playing an unusual campaign, in the event of a disabling event for your character (like blindness at lvl 3) the GM should provide for a way to solve the issue (for example have a small side quest where the party finds a capable healer who can remove the curse).
Clerics are great but a campaign should not depend on having one in your party.
While I support the classical party composition I've got to ask you why do you need to be a cleric, unless you are playing an unusual campaign, in the event of a disabling event for your character (like blindness at lvl 3) the GM should provide for a way to solve the issue (for example have a small side quest where the party finds a capable healer who can remove the curse).
Clerics are great but a campaign should not depend on having one in your party.
We only play APs due to time constraints. Usually we don't have very good mechanical characters. This mean having things like 2WF Ninja whose only damage comes from Sneaks or healbot oracles who only heals, not using buffs.
So, some people need to pull more weight than others.
While I support the classical party composition I've got to ask you why do you need to be a cleric, unless you are playing an unusual campaign, in the event of a disabling event for your character (like blindness at lvl 3) the GM should provide for a way to solve the issue (for example have a small side quest where the party finds a capable healer who can remove the curse).
Clerics are great but a campaign should not depend on having one in your party.We only play APs due to time constraints. Usually we don't have very good mechanical characters. This mean having things like 2WF Ninja whose only damage comes from Sneaks or healbot oracles who only heals, not using buffs.
So, some people need to pull more weight than others.
Nothing you mentioned prevents the GM from introducing stuff like healing services and scrolls (it's less entertaining than playing additional quests but it may be functional for your group).
APs are meant to be tailored, not played as if written in stone.
You shouldn't need full casters to get through a typical AP, at least not based on my experience playing half a dozen or so of them. As with most other topics, I'll suggest Hero Points as a kind of general panacea. If you use them you shouldn't need Raise Dead much unless you hit a run of bad luck or maybe just like jumping face first off of cliffs into spiked pits full of monsters (which some players seem to)
If Hero Points don't seem suitable for your group or you're just more worried about negative levels and Restoration I'll suggest the "Wand Tax" (which can also be used for scrolls). If you set aside a percentage of the party's treasure (say 10) for stuff like Cure wands and Restoration wands/scrolls the whole party can benefit.