All that magic, bonus feats, and swift action buffing easily makes up for being 3/4 BAB.
And that's the sticking point for me. Clerics have the same HD and BAB as Warpriests, and their class features are just better versions of what the Warpriests get or are just overshadowed by the better spellcasting.
If the Warpriest had a better HD or BAB, I'd consider the combat feat stuff trade possibly worth it, but when they both have a lot of the same features, comparisons are going to be made.
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The thing about the Warpriest is that it's not meant to be compared to the Cleric. It's meant to be compared to the fighter, and other martials. And when you look at the Molthuni Arsenal Chaplain archetype and start to crunch numbers, the martials have a hard time keeping up. Durability is the only edge the fighter really has, and that has to compete with all the divine spells the Warpriest doesn't use for himself.
Closer to the actual thread topic, the Medium really is a good example of a flawed class that's oozing with potential. I've been looking toward playing a Storyteller in a future campaign, that's going to be an interesting but very entertaining challenge.
The thing about the Warpriest is that it's not meant to be compared to the Cleric.
You say that, except a lot of its class features are basically "cleric, but worse." I mean, if it had a unique spell list, or if its blessings were not worse versions of cleric domains, maybe I wouldn't think to compare the two so often.
The thing about the Warpriest is that it's not meant to be compared to the Cleric.You say that, except a lot of its class features are basically "cleric, but worse." I mean, if it had a unique spell list, or if its blessings were not worse versions of cleric domains, maybe I wouldn't think to compare the two so often.
Its actually, Cleric, but better at non magical combat. It buffs faster, gets better access to feats, better weaponry, does better damage with low die weapons, and gets 15 feats over 20 levels instead of 10.
Its also, Paladin but with way better spellcasting.
The thing about the Warpriest is that it's not meant to be compared to the Cleric.You say that, except a lot of its class features are basically "cleric, but worse." I mean, if it had a unique spell list, or if its blessings were not worse versions of cleric domains, maybe I wouldn't think to compare the two so often.Its actually, Cleric, but better at non magical combat. It buffs faster, gets better access to feats, better weaponry, does better damage with low die weapons, and gets 15 feats over 20 levels instead of 10.
Its also, Paladin but with way better spellcasting.
It's not really a Paladin at all except that it can use weapons and armor. In that regard, the Cleric is also a Paladin but with way better spellcasting. Paladins have a better natural fighting talent, auras which they don't have to worry about activating at all, and are just tougher in general.
The warpriest chassis doesn't give me the tools I think I need to play the holy warrior archetype.
Really? Fervor=lay hands, heavy armor and martial weapons, two divine bond esque class abilities, one for weapons one for armor and an archetype that gives you a holy mount if you'd rather. Its closer to paladin than it is to cleric.
Fervor is a worse version of Lay on Hands if that's all you're using it for and Divine Weapon bond doesn't last as long as the Paladin's weapon bond so that's worse too. And none of those things address my main complaint that Warpriests are squishier than Paladins and lack the Paladin's natural combat prowess.
Huh. I guess the Grey Paladin was redundant after all.
Some of the combat maneuvers are decidedly suboptimal to invest in. Reposition, drag and steal mainly
Yeah, these aren't easy. I will give it a shot:
Less favorable places can include putting them into flanking, out of reach (especially if the party has a reach advantage) or into a hazard created by the party (e.g. wall of fire).
Steal is a tougher story. If I played with a GM who tends to say 'NO' to everything, I wouldn't bother. It might be most useful against full casters: Steal their component pouches, holy symbols, scrolls, wands and rods. Martials and especially alchemists might have potions with them, at least. Stealing such things has double benefits: They can't use it and you can - maybe even in the same battle.
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I wouldn't compare warpriest to paladin. Paladins are the most durable class in the game, but when they're not smiting, they're actually weaker than other full martials. No bonus feats or other abilities to make them more effective at damaging things, except for the one BIG ability, smite evil, which they can only use a couple of times per day. And that's fine, but it's completely different than a warpriest.
All that magic, bonus feats, and swift action buffing easily makes up for being 3/4 BAB.
And that's the sticking point for me. Clerics have the same HD and BAB as Warpriests, and their class features are just better versions of what the Warpriests get or are just overshadowed by the better spellcasting.
If the Warpriest had a better HD or BAB, I'd consider the combat feat stuff trade possibly worth it, but when they both have a lot of the same features, comparisons are going to be made.
It's not just the bonus feats, though those are plentiful, not to mention allowing them to qualify for combat feats at an earlier level than a cleric could. It's the fact that they can buff with fervored spells, divine weapon, and divine armor as swift actions. You're clearly overlooking that action economy.
Put it this way: You talk about cleric and warpriest having the same 3/4 BAB and HP. But let's say both want to cast Divine Favor and Shield of Faith, and then go wade into melee. The cleric has to spend two rounds buffing before making their first attack. By the end of two rounds, the warpriest has not only cast both of those spells as swift actions, but also made two full attacks. And the warpriest has extra combat feats at levels 1, 3, and every 3 levels after that to make those full attacks better than a cleric could pull off.
They're VERY different classes. Clerics are full casters who can use a weapon, but nowhere near as effectively as any full martial. Warpriests are full martials who cast cleric spells, but nowhere near as effectively as a full caster.
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I wouldn't compare warpriest to paladin. Paladins are the most durable class in the game, but when they're not smiting, they're actually weaker than other full martials. No bonus feats or other abilities to make them more effective at damaging things, except for the one BIG ability, smite evil, which they can only use a couple of times per day. And that's fine, but it's completely different than a warpriest.
They still have divine bond, spells, and lay on hands.
so with nothing they are the same as a non-FE with a rangerwith divine bond or divine favor they are boosted to like that of a slayer.
SO yeah, they are definitely worse off when not smiting, but they compete with a lot of full bab classes. It's when compared to fighters and barbs, the "always on" classes that they might not look as good.
Some of the combat maneuvers are decidedly suboptimal to invest in. Reposition, drag and steal mainlyYeah, these aren't easy. I will give it a shot:
** spoiler omitted **
Suboptimal/least optimal isn't the same as impossible. You can do something with those but they're worse than other options.
Drag has a horribly restrictive placement problem. The hazardous terrain needs to be not too harmful to you & preferably immediately beneath you, if not it needs to be on the opposite side of you from the enemy in a straight line away and you need to beat their CMD by 5 per 5' away it is.
Stealing a spell component pouch requires that the GM have selected mainly spells with material components to be effective. Even if picked at random this isn't too likely - V, S is more common than V, S, M. Stealing a holy symbol can be more effective, but it's both easy and in character to have more than one. Stealing random items in the hope that they're magic, not knowing what they do is probably not going to be effective.
^Never could figure out why Drag and Reposition are separate combat maneuvers, let alone associated 2 separate feat chains.
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Given how many people have problems with 9th level casters, now complaining about the option of a 6th level (prepared) divine caster looks a bit misplaced. It's clearly meant for those who don't want to go through the trouble of balancing a game around 9th level casters, and that's fine. They have an option.
Warpriest should be compared to Magus if anything.
I personally like playing prepared 9th level casters, so I'm going to continue to play them.
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My experience with multiple Warpriests is that they often felt like playing a Battle Cleric Lite. The extra Feats, and even Fervor makes them spike a little at certain levels, generally low levels in viability, but the fact that they do not follow a similar spell progression, the self-buffs that the Battle Cleric can start pulling out levels before a Warpriest just starts to hurt. When we get to 3rd and 4th level spells though, it is very, very noticeable, both for the self buffer and the party buffer type of Battle Cleric.
Fervor is also just far too limited of a resource, I think, and I think it would have been better to simply make it a 1/encounter (maybe 2/encounter), sort of ability than how limited in per day uses that it actually is.
A good deal of playing a Battle Cleric is prebuffing and plannimg/preparing, whicg granted, is not always posssible, but generally is. That means that Fervor really isnt as awesome as people tend to think it is. It can be, like in a surprise ambush when prebuffing is not really as likely, but I find that those sorts of encounters do not happen too often. Additionally, longer lasting buffs like Magic Vestment and Greater Magic Weapon both favor the Cleric and downgrade Sacred Armor, and to a lesser degree Sacred Weapon abilities.
Battle Clerics tend to also use a lot more Self Buffs that also help the party, which exponentially increases their usefulness. Clerics, even those that give one of them up for something like an Archetype also have access to occasional spells not normally on their list, wherw Warpriests do not, to my knowledge, have any means of doing so, and severely hinders what they can pull out of their sleeves.
It may also just be my own frustration, but I find that Warpriests are far too Swift Action dependant, and I have found multpile times that my Warpriests really wish they could upgrade one of those Swift Actions to a Move or even Standard Action, but as far as I am aware, can not do so.
I tend to find even that a Warpriest vs a Magus is even worse. In many ways, the Warpriest chasy works against itself, being split between a defensive and offensive class. It also tries very poorly to accomplish too many things, (Paladin of any Alignment, Cleric/Fighter, uncommon weapon specialist, Favored Weapon "kensai" wannabe), whereas the Magus is really designed to intergrate most of its abilities together and works with itself.
The Magus gets abilities to do things that a Fighter/Wizard, or even a straight Fighter or Wizard can not, and has some ability to add extra spells to their list. Warpriests do not. Warpriests makemformreally crappy "divine magus" characters, and can not really do anything significant that a Battle Cleric or Cleric/Fighter can not also do, sometimes better.
I think one of the biggest issues with the Warpriest is that it tried to focus too much on making a Cleric/Fighter even split rather than either a Fighter that dips Cleric <or Oracle or Paladin>, or more likely the Cleric that dips Fighter, (in both cases more of a 2-4 level dip rather than a 10/10 split).
It also sort of feels like it wasted a lot of those Fighter benefits by not getting Armor Training. I'd trade out a Bonus Feat, Sacred Armor, and Sacred Weapon to bemable to remove the ACP from Mithral Fullplate and move at full speed at 7th level. Magus really doesn't have that issue as again, it is built, in my opinion, to work with itself more than against itself.
In my opinion, the heightened damage from Sacred Wepon is a wasted ability for any deity/build I would want to make as a Warpriest, (basically it favors deity or weapon options that I think should have no business being called a "war" priest). For those that actually have "warriory" weapons like the Greatsword, Scythe, Battleaxe, etc, Sacred Weapon Damage doesn't help until retirement levels, and even then, it's nothing too significant.
Worse, the ability is poorly written so that it probably doesn't stack with bigger weapons, size equivalent increases, and any of the common tactics for upping weapon damage.
And lastly, the fact that the class qualifies for taking Feats with a psuedo-full BaB, but not for using them is actually a hinderence. You can, for instance take Power Attack, but you still use it at 3/4ths BaB, meaning he very limited extra damage for your actual level, and the Warpriest is a lot more dependant on needing To Hit bonuses than Damage bonuses than the general Fighter, Paladin, Magus, or even Battle Cleric.
Lastly, pretty on par with the average Fighter, but significantly worse than the Paladin, Battle Oracle, Battle Druid, Battle Cleric, Ranger, Magus, or basically anyone else, the Warpriest has very, very little that they can really meaningfully contribute or do outside of straight combat. Even with boosting Skill Points, their Class Skills just suck, even to a Fighter or Cleric, and that they do not get Armor training means that they can have a lot of trouble even making it to many combats if climbing, or swimming, or jumping is involved. If they can't charge, Fervor is not that great, probably buying them only an extra Move Action, but not a Standard or Full Attack.
All that being said, it is an ok class, but not a great one, outside a few specific low levels of play.
At 3rd level, the Battle Cleric is rocking Aid, Bull's Strength, Silence, Sound Burst, and/or Burst of Radiance, while the Warpriest still Divine Favor.
At 5th, Cleric has Sacred Armor up all adventuring day while the Warpriest waits until 7th. Cleric is rocking Magic Circle, Prayer, Protection from Energy, while the Warpriest is probably still going with mainly Divine Favor and now has Bull's Strength, too. Cleric might also have something like Fireball,. . .
At 7th is when the divide is really noticeable, as the Cleric gets Blessing of Fervor, (Warpriest waits until 10th, which sucks, badly). Cleric is rocking Air Walk, Divine Power, Freedom of Movement, or Holy Smite, and the Warpriest is still stuck with mostly some of the things from the prior list, but likely mainly still Divine Favor and Bull's Strength. This is also about the point where the martial aspect of both the Battle Cleric and the Warpriest start to take more of a back seat in play, and spellcasting tends to start being a lot more beneficial. Warpriest can keep that going a bit more, but, generally, the nature of the game tends to favor spell options over martial ones for many encounters, (combat and non-combat).
If you build a competent Battle Cleric and a competent (or even "OP") Warpriest, and compare them side by side, (as far as what they can pull off, what overall options they have, damage potential, etc. . .), or even play a Battle Cleric in the same party as a Warpriest, (again assuming competent builds for both, even favoring the Warpriest), I think most people will find the Warpriest just does not keep up very well after around 4th levelish. YMMV, but I doubt it will be too significantly. Similarly, if you either build or play a Warpriest with a Magus, the Magus just seems to do it all better, with the possible exception of self-healing, which even the Warpriest is mainly mediocre at, but Infernal Healing 8 or so times out or 10 does better than other equivalent sources.
The Magus has a significantly better mechanic for both "quick casting", but also for attacking and buffing or attacking and adding a spell to the damage than the Warpriest can even dream off. It's also not (significantly) limited other than by how many spells you have.
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This thread has sold me on making a War Priest that kicks butt. Sacred Fist since they were called out as being pretty bad. Should be fun.
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This thread has sold me on making a War Priest that kicks butt. Sacred Fist since they were called out as being pretty bad. Should be fun.
Same! ^_^
Good luck with yours!
To me war priests aren't weak they're just sort of in this weird flavor void where I don't understand how they aren't just a Paladin or a Cleric light and their abilities do basically nothing to change that.
Swift action casting with fervor is great mechanically but I don't really understand what it is the war priest is doing.
Inquisitor's on the other hand, are both powerful and full of flavor. So not appropriate for this thread xD
This thread has sold me on making a War Priest that kicks butt. Sacred Fist since they were called out as being pretty bad. Should be fun.Same! ^_^
Good luck with yours!
Would love to see what you come up with if you're willing to post it. Will post my idea as well.
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and a much more obvious fluff Niche.
Basically as a DPR combatant inquisitors and war priests are similarly power (with war priests having a definite advantage in switch hitting and such)
but inquisitors make much better utility casters/skill monkey/knowledge based character/face character (probably all at once).
I believe there are even archetypes which can make them powerful casters, there is one for summoners at least.
Meanwhile war priests make equally (or sometimes more) capable DPR characters but inquisitors can do those things too and many more things and have better fluff.
It's similar to "why play fighters and not some other martial" though. The thing the Warpriest has over the Inquisitor is "piles of feats chosen from a large set of feats."
At 6th level a Human Inquisitor will have 6 feats, 2 of which must be teamwork feats (which might not be the feats you want.) A Human Warpriest on the other hand can have 8 feats 3 of which must be combat feats.
So just like how in terms of skills or utility you'd (at least back in the era the ACG was printed in) almost never want to play a fighter versus a Ranger, Paladin, Bloodrager, Swashbuckler, Swashbuckler, or Barbarian, sometimes you just want to play a fighter. It makes sense that a hybrid with the fighter as one of its parent classes would inherit some of the fighter's issues, after all. Unfortunately (save for the arsenal chaplain, maybe) the Warpriest doesn't benefit from many of the "fixes" to the fighter.
I've also never played a or felt like playing a fighter one would have to work quite hard to find something they do obviously better than another more flavorful class with more utility. Arguably more hard work than finding something a war priest does noticeably better than an inquisitor, and by that I mean, noticeably enough that it justifies having generally worse class features outside of combat and less skills.
But as I understand it fighters are meant to have this fluff as like the none magic combat expert or something? I don't really get them either.
Warpreists niche is even less clear than that. Like its a cleric that went to fighter school for a while and skipped his advanced spell casting prayers?
Anyway you seem to have miss interpreted my purpose in being here in this thread. I am not in the least interested in arguing the virtues of the war priest with you I was just trying to explain why people don't like the class. You point out similar objections are made of the fighter well yeah lots of people don't like that class either, be interesting to see if there was a lot overlap in the people who dislike the fighter and the people who dislike the war priest.
Over 270 posts and no one mentioned the Scroll master wizard? Ok, maybe trading off arcane bond isn't so bad, but what good are magic weapons in the hands of a 1/2 BAB character with no armor and the lowest hit points in the game?
Great 10th level ability though, and a free action to treat a scroll as a magic shield is nice.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Greater Weapon Specialization in Net.
At 6th level:{. . .}
At 6th level a Human Inquisitor will have 6 feats, 2 of which must be teamwork feats (which might not be the feats you want.) A Human Warpriest on the other hand can have 8 feats 3 of which must be combat feats.
{. . .
- Both get 1 bonus feat for being Human.
- Both get 3 feats for leveling.
- Both get 2 semi-flexible bonus feats from their class (Teamwork for Inquisitor; Combat for Warpriest).
- Warpriest gets 1 fixed feat (Weapon Focus for Sacred Weapon).
So I get 6 feats for Inquisitor and 7 feats for Warpriest, not 8, unless your deity has Unarmed Strike as a favored weapon, in which case the Warpriest also gets Improved Unarmed Strike (another fixed feat).
You're skipping the human FCB for the Warpriest, which is 1/6 of a bonus combat feat (and a really strong FCB that's fairly easily accessible.) That's where the extra feat is coming from.
I mean, first off, teamwork feats are pretty amazing if you have the means to activate them (as hunter and inquisitor do) So there's really no "might not be the feats you want" as there are a number of teamwork feats that provide effects far more powerful than just standard feats.
But at level 6, the warpriest has his greater maneuver feat if he wants those, improved two weapon fighting if he wants that, lunge, manyshot if he's an archer, vital strike at a time when it has 0 consequence on his iteratives. The inquisitor has to wait 2 more levels to get those.
And im sorry, the inquisitor has some neat spells but unfiltered access to the cleric list beats the pruned + some unique choices of the inquisitor list any day of the week.
the war priest has to prep their spells though and isnt have the casting score bonus of a cleric for DCs or Bonus spells.
I played with a friend using a war pries from 3-7 he pretty much prepared the same spells every single day with the occasional restorative thing like lesser restoration.
They could prepare the control/utility spells rather than self buffs if they wanted (not the ones with DCs) but then why on earth of they playing a war priest?
I honestly think the inquisitor benefits from spells known in this comparison because if he wants 3 divine favors he can have them and still have other spells known in case they come up.
The war priest prepared 3 divine favors and can do nothing if he needs something different. And given fervor he probably wants 3 divine favors.
Also Inquisitors get some nice early access stuff.
Yeah but there are points in the adventure where you KNOW you aren't likely to need, frexample divine favor at all, let alone X3 and you can replace it with wonky crap like cultural adaptation, or one of the specific detections, or to use sanctify corpse to keep your companion from raising as a shadow or vampire long enough to get to civilization and a raise dead spell. Stuff that is clutch in the niche situations its intended for (a number of which can be planned for or delayed until memorization), but a terrible choice for a spell known on a constrained list.
So you are saying if a Warpriest got a few spells early access that might help each spell level?
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I personally think it would very much help, yes. Well, at least in one of the two big issues that the Warpriet has as far as Spellcasting goes. The other is lack of any real diversity.
I don't believe that the Warpriest should get any spells before the Cleric does, (reproducing the issue with the original Summoner), but I do think that both should have access to a few key "battle" spells at or very close to the same level, such as Divine Might.
Perhaps something like at 8th level, a Warpriest can cast Divine Power OR (not and) Blessing of Fervor 1/Day as a Spell-Like Ability. The Warpriest does not need to "prepare" one Spell-like Ability or the other the way they do preparing spells, but they can only use one or the other in any day. Fervor can not be used to speed up casting the Spell-Like Ability, and a Warpriest may not increase the number of uses they can use this Spell-Like Ability, such as through Feats or Traits. This ability is replenished when a Warpriest receives new spells for the day in their normal manner.
At 10th Level, a Warpriest looses the ability to cast Divine Power and Blessing of Fervor as a Spell-Like Ability, but gets Righteous Might OR Flamestrike instead. This functions exactly like the 8th level ability. A Warpriest may not choose to keep Divine Power or Blessing of Fervor instead of changing. The DC for Flamestrike is 15 + the Warpriest's Wis Modifier.
At 13th Level, the Warpriest looses the ability to cast Righteous Might OR Flamestrike, but instead gets the ability to cast Blade Barrier as a Spell-Like Ability 1/day, DC 16 + Warpriest's Wis Modifier. This functions exactly like the Spell-Like Abilities gained at 8th and 10th level, except it is completely lost at 16th level and not replaced.
In each case, as soon as the Warpriest would be able to cast the spell normally, they loose it as a Spell-Like Ability.
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Yeah but there are points in the adventure where you KNOW you aren't likely to need, frexample divine favor at all, let alone X3 and you can replace it with wonky crap like cultural adaptation, or one of the specific detections, or to use sanctify corpse to keep your companion from raising as a shadow or vampire long enough to get to civilization and a raise dead spell. Stuff that is clutch in the niche situations its intended for (a number of which can be planned for or delayed until memorization), but a terrible choice for a spell known on a constrained list.
Something to keep in mind is that as long as those spells are on their Spell List, the Warpriest, just like the Cleric can still utilize scrolls and wands for these sorts of spells. A scroll of Comprehend Languages lasts for 10 minutes, and is probably one of the better utility spells I could see a Warpriest wanting sort of like you are describing. Similarly spells like Lesser Restoration or even Remove Disease or Curse. Many times wise Clerics parties will fork up the money to have these on hand, and just because the Wapriest can't actually cast them personally, they can use Wands and Scrolls of them easily.
Yeah but there are points in the adventure where you KNOW you aren't likely to need, frexample divine favor at all, let alone X3 and you can replace it with wonky crap like cultural adaptation, or one of the specific detections, or to use sanctify corpse to keep your companion from raising as a shadow or vampire long enough to get to civilization and a raise dead spell. Stuff that is clutch in the niche situations its intended for (a number of which can be planned for or delayed until memorization), but a terrible choice for a spell known on a constrained list.Something to keep in mind is that as long as those spells are on their Spell List, the Warpriest, just like the Cleric can still utilize scrolls and wands for these sorts of spells. A scroll of Comprehend Languages lasts for 10 minutes, and is probably one of the better utility spells I could see a Warpriest wanting sort of like you are describing. Similarly spells like Lesser Restoration or even Remove Disease or Curse. Many times wiseClericsparties will fork up the money to have these on hand, and just because the Wapriest can't actually cast them personally, they can use Wands and Scrolls of them easily.
This is true but at that point it becomes a crap shoot of occupying WBL in items of niche usefulness. Not such a big deal for level 1 spells but at some point the gold cost is going to outweigh the inconvenience of simply waiting 8-24 hours for a memorization.
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I think the issue with the WP can be summed up in one thing, the arsenal chaplain is the best choice 95% of the time, with the other 5% being a unique combo with a blessing. Meaning that a lot of it's features just aren't valuable to most players.
Like getting a super weak channel that uses two of your precious fervor, or getting a fighter's weapon training. Picking a deity that has two blessing that aren't useful, to having all deities have 1 blessing that is one of the better ones, but odds are you're not using either so who really cares?
Most of their other archetypes are just as good if not worse than the base WP. Like sacred fist is now basically just grabbing TWF feats, but the base class can do it better cause they get their extra attacks faster and still have armor for AC. So the sacred fist is fine for a beatdown character, will probably out-combat lots of things, but it's a downgrade.
The warpriest though, especially arsenal chaplain, will have higher attacks and damage than a fighter(which also means most other full bab characters).
I agree that the niche of it isn't that great, but the numbers it can pop out are quite amazing.
Tossed this together and War Priest is looking pretty good to me.
Fighter 1/War Priest 12 (Sacred Fist) CG, Deity:Reymenda
Bless: Heal&Destruction
Weapon: Falchion
str 16+2,+2lvl,+6enh=26
dex 12
con 12
int 10
wis 14
cha 9
Fighter 1 wpn focus, Fey foundling, Lifebound
Warpriest 1 IUS
Warpriest 2 Power Attack
Warpriest 3
Warpriest 4 Crusaders Flurry
Warpriest 5
Warpriest 6 Wpn Sp, SnakeStyle
Warpriest 7
Warpriest 8 C. reflexes
Warpriest 9 Gr wpn focus
Warpriest 10 Snakesidewind
Warpriest 11
Warpriest 12 gr wpn sp,Snakefang
ToHit bab10, +8str, +4 D.Power, +2gr,Wpn.focus
22+,22+,22+,17+,17+, if attacked and missed 20+, 20+ unarmed
Dam
2d6 L.falchion, +2d6 vicious, +2d6 holy,+8str,+5destruction, +4gr.wpn sp,+4D.Power = 6d6+21 15-20crit(+any weapon bonuses)
Nothing cooler than a Falchion or G.Sword flurry.
Giant shield of temporary HP.
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Something to keep in mind is that as long as those spells are on their Spell List, the Warpriest, just like the Cleric can still utilize scrolls and wands for these sorts of spells. A scroll of Comprehend Languages lasts for 10 minutes, and is probably one of the better utility spells I could see a Warpriest wanting sort of like you are describing. Similarly spells like Lesser Restoration or even Remove Disease or Curse. Many times wiseThis is true but at that point it becomes a crap shoot of occupying WBL in items of niche usefulness. Not such a big deal for level 1 spells but at some point the gold cost is going to outweigh the inconvenience of simply waiting 8-24 hours for a memorization.Clericsparties will fork up the money to have these on hand, and just because the Wapriest can't actually cast them personally, they can use Wands and Scrolls of them easily.
Firstly, I just wanted to point out, if it wasn't clear, I was expecting the party to contribute their resources to these items, (for the party's benefit), and NOT the Cleric or Warpriest who would likely be using them on other people, or when they go down.
Secondly, A 4th Level Spell scroll costs 700gp. A 5th level spell scroll costs 1,125gp. Assuming no special components or costs, having a scroll or two of Remove Disease, Remove Curse, Lesser Restoration, and a few things like that really shouldn't be touching the party's overall WBL all that much at roughly the time that those issues start to appear. Well, not in comparison to the cost of death, at least. :P
The other side to that is that a lot of these scrolls will retain their value throughout the levels. Well, to a point. Even just looking at the Cleric, it's unlikely that they will have a Remove Curse normally prepared. Again, normally. So, at 5th/10th/15th/35th level, a really cheap scroll, even if the DC to beat is higher than the min CL, is better than nothing at all, and probably better than waiting until tomorrow, which the Cleric would need to do anyway.
stuff about how good a sacred fist is with a 2h weapon and gleaning prof from something besides classyes, it's pretty well known that it can do well with a fat 2h
but, it's the sacred fist and was meant to be the unarmed warpriest archetype, which it blows at in comparison
Challenge accepted!!
The difference between getting 1x str on a THW and using a fist is quite small. Slightly less DPR is all, but opens up dragon style for bonus str to damage to get back up if desired.
Bladelock make sure you compare to normal warpriest doing unarmed twf. That's another main issue, the unarmed archetype does it worse than base, and worse than molthuni
I believe his entire point is making characters from bad options to show that they are "playable"
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I don't get what "meant to be unarmed" means when he made it into a character more than viable, fist or not.
"Playable" is great considering this was about archetypes that weren't playable "at all."
I think he proved his point wonderfully. That's a playable war priest right there. And as chess pwn pointed out with mild variation the unarmed version works too.
I think we are nit picking something that we dont need to.
Good work bladelock
See, if he was going for "unplayable" options the the WP was a bad choice. The WP is one of the highest DPR characters around, rivaling fighters and barbarian and smiting paladins. So it's really easy to make a playable one, that's like saying build a playable barb.
People were saying there wasn't a point to the WP, which is kinda true, it's niche is the divine warrior of any alignment, but not full bab so still not the any alignment paladin people want, and not different enough from the cleric to not feel like a downgraded cleric with extra feats, but people don't really like feats as class features. It's big draw and thing that makes it amazing is fervor for quicken spells at lv2.
But even without it it's still a great base, less good than a cleric, but 3/4 bab with 6th level cleric casting and nothing else is still able to contribute and is "better" than a core rogue/monk. Like it's basically just being the hierophant medium.
You don't understand that the sacred fist archetype was designed as an unarmed focused warpriest?What I "understand" is that it is focused in a route he chose to not go in and still made it viable.
Like a fighter choosing to not use the hardest hitting weapon. He had the option, went a different route using the exact same archetype and came out great.
And that's the point. Unplayable? No. Clearly not. Not every option given by any class needs to be taken or used.
General census is that unarmed combat is worse than weapon combat. Like going fists is a downgrade from using a weapon for the sacred fist.
That's basically like saying "this is a wizard archetype focussed on illusions that he built to be using summons, haste, pits, tentacles and whatnot." It's ignoring the theme of the class for a mechanically better option.