Necromancy is a solid option, but problematic for groups and GMs alike.
Debuffing comes with all the strengths and weaknesses of any SoS playstyle (if it works, it's great; if it doesn't, nothing happens).
Summoning is pretty solid, but you're not as good as a Wizard or Summoner.
Calling is strictly worse than the Wiz/Sor option (Planar Ally < Planar Binding).
Buffing has a handful of really solid spells and then a metric ton of spells that just won't stack with the magic items you'll definitely have access to if your GM doesn't hate you (becomes significantly better in a game with low or no magic items, but that's one sadistic GM - there are better systems to run that game in than PF!)
Direct Damage options are both rare and generally too weak to make a fuss over.
Better healing options than almost anyone else, but healing really just comes down to "kill it faster and remove ailments" ... which is just a couple of situational spells (very important ones, but not enough to carry the class).
And that's basically the vast majority of the list, yeah?
Most of the time you're just pretending to be a melee or ranged character until one of the small handful of good spells becomes viable... or you're ruling over an undead army and clogging up the turn-based system, yeah?
lol
Am I wrong?
The cleric is primarily a support class and as such it's spell list reflects this. The base class is a secondary fighter/secondary wizard who can also heal.
If you are trying to play a cleric as something other than support you're bound to be disappointed with the results. I mean heck even if you go the necromancy route you are still acting as support, it's just you're supporting your undead minions.
in addition to the healing spells, clerics get a handful of buffs,debuffs, offensive and defensive spells. They also get access to everything so long as they can pray meaning they can easily switch things up when circumstances change. Alot of other casters are limited in which spells they can "have" from their spell list.
if any list has ever felt weak to me it was the druid spell list. Most of their spells are weaker versions of wizard and/or cleric spells. The 3.0 spell Waterball epitomized this for me. It's Fireball, but it does subdual damage, gets everything wet instead of setting it on fire AND it's 4th level.....
If any list has ever felt weak to me it was the druid spell list. Most of their spells are weaker versions of wizard and/or cleric spells.
Out of the three Core prepared casters, Wizards get the best spells, and Druids get the best class features. Clerics are in the middle.
A Cleric can buff and heal and summon and remove statuses with no investment while being less fragile than a wizard. On top of that, they have ways to specialise using domains or feats (like Sacred Summons). At high levels they can use Heal and Harm, and Plane Shift enemies into other dimensions.
They're not intrinsically exciting, but losing your Cleric tends to hurt more than losing any other character class.
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There is 2 ways to think about a spell list. First is coverage. What roles at each level can the spell list cover. I would put forth that a great spell list would have summoning (clerics do well because of sacred summons and buff), multi-target buff, blasting, single target buffs, SoS multi-target, SoS single target, control, support (resist, protection, way to see invis etc), healing/removal spells, and SR no spells. There may be others but that's a good starting point.
In this respect the way we rate a list may deviate from common belief. The shaman list may start looking really strong as it has removal, support control, blasting, SoS, summoning, buffing all starting at level one. The problem is that many of the spells are second tier spells doom is not a good as command and as SoS, but Grasping Corpse can be pretty good and is on all three lists.
If you look at the best spells on the list and not how many roles does the shaman list cover and then compared to say the cleric list, or the witch list you get different story. The witch has command and enlarge person 2 really good first level spells. The cleric had divine favor one of the best low level buffs in the game, command, shield of faith, moment of greatness. So, when playing to the lists strength you can make a really strong character.
Neither way to rate a list is right or wrong. The variety of the list may be more important to a divine prepared caster in PFS because they may need to change their focus more often. By having access to their whole spell list they can fill gaps in the party, if imperfectly, which maybe much more important to them. Where a spontaneous caster in a stable group may only care about how powerful the 5 best spells at any level are, as long as they can buy some scrolls to cover other situations.
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So realistically, how many buffs is a Cleric throwing?
Most are limited to one target and have bonuses that don't stack with magic items (MW/GMW, Shield of Faith, etc.), are really solid but self-only/can't be shared/eat up a ton of turns "fully buffing" (Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might, etc.), or are better cast by the Arcane caster (Haste vs Blessing of Fervor - the Blessing might be better, but the 4th lvl slot is less available).
What's that reliably leave you with? Prayer, methinks, which is a solid spell but it's just one spell.
Other then that the defensive spells are mostly garbage except for a small, key, few: Communal Resist Energy, Communal Protection from Energy, Magic Circle/Protection from X, and... no, that's about it.
The "status ailment" spells are incredibly important, but we're talking another very small list here: Greater/Dispel Magic, Remove "Condition", Lesser/Restoration, and Breath of Life... and everything except the Dispel and Breath works best in Scroll or Staff form.
This is what I mean when I say the spell list feels overrated. There's some staple stuff in there, but doesn't everyone's Cleric basically look the same? (Necro as the exception).
There's some staple stuff in there, but doesn't everyone's Cleric basically look the same? (Necro as the exception).
Utility cleric with decent intelligence and charisma for skills, using buffs and summons and heals in combat.
Melee cleric.
Reach-weapon melee cleric.
Archery cleric.
Channelling specialist cleric.
Save-or-suck cleric.
Etc.
So realistically, how many buffs is a Cleric throwing?
Most are limited to one target and have bonuses that don't stack with magic items (MW/GMW, Shield of Faith, etc.), are really solid but self-only/can't be shared/eat up a ton of turns "fully buffing" (Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might, etc.), or are better cast by the Arcane caster (Haste vs Blessing of Fervor - the Blessing might be better, but the 4th lvl slot is less available).
What's that reliably leave you with? Prayer, methinks, which is a solid spell but it's just one spell.
Other then that the defensive spells are mostly garbage except for a small, key, few: Communal Resist Energy, Communal Protection from Energy, Magic Circle/Protection from X, and... no, that's about it.
The "status ailment" spells are incredibly important, but we're talking another very small list here: Greater/Dispel Magic, Remove "Condition", Lesser/Restoration, and Breath of Life... and everything except the Dispel and Breath works best in Scroll or Staff form.
This is what I mean when I say the spell list feels overrated. There's some staple stuff in there, but doesn't everyone's Cleric basically look the same? (Necro as the exception).
I've found most clerics rely on their domains and any archetype class features to differentiate themselves, as the spells are mostly there for utility. I've seen a great number of clerics who face this exact problem of "man, these spells all seem to suck" who then turned it into "may as well cast things like Shield of Faith and Barkskin, because it saves me money, nets a higher bonus than the items would that are available at my level anyway, and I don't really have anything better to do with these spell slots."
Of course, going beyond the core release adds in a lot of gems, versatility, and it saddens me that there is not yet an equivalent choice to 3.5's spontaneous domain option from PHB2. If they put something like that in a book that covered a whole bunch of alternate class features and reprinted the already existing alternate class features in a hardcover release, I'm sure it would sell well.
*cough* Erik Mona *cough*
Utility cleric with decent intelligence and charisma for skills, using buffs and summons and heals in combat.
Melee cleric.
Reach-weapon melee cleric.
Archery cleric.
Channelling specialist cleric.
Save-or-suck cleric.
Etc.
1 feels like a wannabe God Wizard (solid with no wizard in the group; hardcore 2nd fiddle if there is).
2-4 seem to all share the same spell selection, realistically. (And it will only be minor in difference with the above, won't it?)5 prob shares the same spell list with 1, except with a different focus on Feats.
6 will legit have a different list, but will probably hate life as most of their spells fail and have no secondary effects.
;)
Utility cleric with decent intelligence and charisma for skills, using buffs and summons and heals in combat.
Melee cleric.
Reach-weapon melee cleric.
Archery cleric.
Channelling specialist cleric.
Save-or-suck cleric.
Etc.
1 feels like a wannabe God Wizard (solid with no wizard in the group; hardcore 2nd fiddle if there is).
2-4 seem to all share the same spell selection, realistically. (And it will only be minor in difference with the above, won't it?)
5 prob shares the same spell list with 1, except with a different focus on Feats.
6 will legit have a different list, but will probably hate life as most of their spells fail and have no secondary effects.;)
I agree that regardless of type of cleric you play, the spells you have prepped are largely the same. summoning, animating and trying for saves are the 3 that would be a little different.
I also agree that the spell list seems rather lame, with lots of their buffs being in 1 minute per level or round pre level, thus not letting you do the buff and forget that things like heroism or barkskin do.
But do we really want DMM-Persistant Spell to come back?
Lets have a look
Level 9
Mass Heal- Keep your party fighting forever
Miracle-- Its a Miracle
Overwhelming Presence-- SoS Many targets and staggers them on a save
Gate Summon Monster IX
Scourge of the Horsemen- AOE damage and energy drain
Evulsion-- D4 rounds of stun even if they save and 20d6 damage if they save
Energy Drain-- Good debuff
Astral Projection-- Home of the unkillable caster shenanigans
Communal greater spell immunity
Level 8
Greater spell immunity
Stormbolts AOE with no freindly fire
Soulreaver- Untyped damage AOE
Rift of Ruin
Greater Planar Ally
Orb of the Void
Nine Lives
Firestorm
Death Clutch
Create Demiplane
Angelic Aspect Greater
Heart of the Mammoth
All of these are effects as good or better than anything a Wizard gets , this is a massivly powerful spell list
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Lets have a look
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All of these are effects as good or better than anything a Wizard gets, this is a massively powerful spell list
Okay, so you just need to wait till really high levels that most people never play at to get your casting to be good. I see.
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I could go through with every class in the game and come up with a similar list of all the things that seem mediocre and complain about them too. But I think that is a terrible way of looking at things and just gets me feeling sad.
I could also go the other way and look at all the bs op abilities that each class gets. How about them aoe channel stunlock clerics?
Or we can look at what fun, useful, solid abilities they bring to the game. Here's a few:
1) removing debuffs. This is always the thing I miss when there is no cleric at the table.
2) versatility. A cleric can swap out their spells each day for any cleric spell, they don't have the limitation of a spellbook or spells known.
3) domains. Specialize by adding spells you want and cool special abilities.
4) healing. They do it best.
All said and done, you don't have to like every class. This is a game, you know, for fun. So choose something you like and play that. Nothing wrong with simply not playing clerics yourself.
1. Effect Removal- clerics can literally remove any effect in the game with an open slot of high enough level
2. Summons- they make arguably even more powerful summoners than wizards due to their aura giving them access to standard action summoning spells
3. Domains- these allow as much customization as archetypes. There are some pretty amazing domain abilities not to mention basically every good wizard spell list is available. Also there are some that are frontloaded allowing almost free PRC entry
4. Full Spell List Access- judge based on the best of their spells not the number of bad spells. Yes there are tons of sub par spells. However considering the number of useful spells they have those are really just more options. Also it means they don't have to pay to learn all of those interesting utility spells, several of which are at a lower level than on the wizard list
5. Buffing- they have the best buffing spell list along with some of the best buff support abilities. This is both on offensive and defensive buffs
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Have you ever meet the Gunslinger who got buffed by a Luck Cleric with a bit of luck?
"High Noon"
And lots of dead enemies.
Also try some higher level games where you get ability drained/damaged to the 1 digit level.
Remember to NOT ask the cleric for spells then. Cos the party cleric would be too busy "pretending to be a melee or ranged character"
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I agree with you. I was recently looking at making a buffing based character and looked for the best buffs that i wanted to give out (to others).
Nearly all of them were on the wizard list rather than the cleric list: haste, displacement, heroism, fly, stoneskin, invisiblity/greater, and magic weapon greater (at 1 lvl lower). And if you include alchemist extracts you can start giving out shield and mirror image extracts as well.
Its kind of a bummer that one of the cleric's main niche's have been minimized so much. I'm kind of surprised that people haven't rallied to change the type bonuses for a lot of cleric buffs to something that stacks with the big six similar to some of the newer designed spells which usually type the bonus as a sacred bonus.
4) healing. They do it best.
I don’t disagree with your attitude in general but I thought it worth pointing out that unless something changed very recently I’m pretty sure this isn’t true. And hasn’t been for some years.
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I'm totally with you on this. Clerics have always been thematically my favorite class, but they always leave me disappointed.
Wanna play the beater? You don't have nearly enough feats or BAB or almost any class feature supporting it. Yeah, you have 9 spell levels, but there is this thing called 'action economy', so if you're beating, you're not casting (and apart a couple of personal buffs, there aren't many spells worth to be cast anyway). So you'll be better off foregoing the extra 3 spell levels and go Warpriest. You won't be casting Miracle at high level, but you'll gonna have more fun waiting to get there.
Wanna play full caster? No blasts, no battlefield control (apart from summons). But hey, at least you have 3/4 BAB, armor proficiency and personal buffs such as Divine Power you're never gonna use anyway. What do you say? Domain spells? Wow, that 1 spell slot per level is very useful indeed! Oracle is better (true even for the wannabe Healer).
Wanna play support guy? Ok...but doing what? Just waiting for bad things to happen so that you can remove or heal them away? How about a more proactive attitude?
Skills? 2+Int on a non-Int based character. And Perception is not even a class skill. Just go Inquisitor already.
I mean, let's compare them with druids: same HD, same BAB, divine, prepared spellcasting. If you want to go melee, Wildshape into a huge beast for increased damagepower, cast Barkskin and Magic Fang and go to town. If you want to cast, Wildshape into a tiny pet for increased elusiveness and mobility and summon lightnings from the sky. Meanwhile, the Cleric:
"Anyone needing a Restoration?...No?"
Archetypes help a lot of course. Theologian/Ecclesitheurge can be acceptable casters for example, but I think the class has been left a bit behind, unable to find its own spot, and this saddens me :(
Okay, so you just need to wait till really high levels that most people never play at to get your casting to be good. I see.Lets have a look
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All of these are effects as good or better than anything a Wizard gets, this is a massively powerful spell list
Every campaign I run or play in gets to this sort of level.
Also when deciding on the power of a casting class (certainly when comparing to none caster classes) it is the vast power of their high level spells which is brought up. I am illustrating here that a High level cleric is not substantially weaker than a high level wizard and of course a high level cleric actually has access to all these spells while a Wizard is only guaranteed access to 6 9th level spells and has to get access to others via found spellbooks, or purchasing spells which depend on the GM's wishes.If you look at other lower levels the comparison works the same way with Cleric spells matching the ability of wizard spells, the problem of comparing the lower levels is the sheer number of spells available from all sources which again works in the Clerics favour.
Picking a random 4th level spell Red Hand of the Killer, great niche spell but unless you expect to be solving murders regularly not a spell you would seek out if you have to pay for each spell, but a Cleric who has never had any interest in investigation can have this spell on a day's notice.
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The difficulty with the Cleric is not the spell list. Instead it is how people tend to build Clerics as a support character with middling ability scores and little focus on what they want the character to do.
This is understandable as all Clerics can fight, cast and channel but a player will need to focus in order to be effective at what he wants to do.
Caster Clerics really need to start with a 20 in Wisdom (or at least an 18) and you will need to invest in feats like Spell Focus/Gr. Spell Focus to help their spells stick. Even at 1st level spells like Murderous Command, Command or Cause Fear do not suck if the DCs are high enough.
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There's a number of SoS cleric spells which do still do something on a successful save, starting with burning disarm and doom. If you're a cleric of Torag with blessed hammer then your melee spells do warhammer damage, save or no save.
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Cleric spellcasting looks pretty good to me -- if you get the right Domains, you can even be a bit of a blaster (for instance, Fire Domain for Burning Hands, Fireball, Wall of Fire, etc.). Not saying this is necessarily the best idea, but the option exists. And as noted above, you don't have to go hunting around for Scrolls or a looted spellbook. I find the Cleric to be a bit boring, but it doesn't lack in power.
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The difficulty with the Cleric is not the spell list. Instead it is how people tend to build Clerics as a support character with middling ability scores and little focus on what they want the character to do.
Yes, this! I think we have all seen a lot of bad cleric builds. So when we think about cleric, we think about the examples of other peoples' characters and go man, they suck. I have seen a lot of unfocused cleric builds. I think this comes from the idea that one person in a party "has to" play the cleric. I see a lot of groups where one player begrudgingly makes a cleric, like they pulled the short straw and have to play the loser character, and these clerics are universally terrible. They spread their focus way out and end up with a mediocre at everything character.
Clerics have bad spells because when they have good spells the game breaks.
See: 3.5
Clerics are great summoners. Sacred Summons, yo.
Sacred Summons gets a lot of love... But c'mon, let's be a lil real - If you're not evil, your Standard Action summon options is really really weak. lol
i would argue both the wizard and cleric have better class features then the druid, all it has going for it is access to a tiger animal companion, while wild shape can be useful its generally used more by multiclass builds that build around it then by full druids so the druid as a strait 20 level class falls short on class features
Wild-Shaping can be pretty awesome. It gives you things such as:
Size changes.Flight.
Scouting while looking like a harmless animal.
Earth Glide.
Natural attacks.
Attribute bonuses.
And it lasts for many hours.
And while Wizards get one or two good class features, they also get bad Fortitude saves, low hit dice, spell-book dependence, and no armor.
You are very much mistaken...
Cleric spell list is #2 behind Wiz and definitely better than the Witch.
Healing = Y
Self buffs = Y
Party buffs = Y
Summons = Y
Single target SOS = Y
Single target damage = Y
Debuffs = Y
Within these it has some spells that are amongst the best in the game that even Wiz doesnt get.
Traditionally clerics have lacked AOE damage spells (eg fireball) but in recent times that has improved a bit.... Burst of Radiance is useable all the way uptil 7-8th level.
The Wiz spell list is #1 mainly on the basis of Lv1-3 spells.
But TBH you cant really discuss a spell list by itself without looking at the class. And cleric domains whilst lacking power a bit IMO can at least be used to plug a few of the missing gaps.... and TBH there arent that many.
If you really want to prep these spells then archetypes can help (although Theologian and Ecclesitheurge are both lacking IMO).
Fireball is an overrated spell.... but even a bog standard cleric with fire domain as one of the two can cast it 2/day at 7th without hassle.
HOWEVER.... the huge problem with the cleric is (and has always beeen) variety. For any given level it has a small pool of excellent spells and this leads for clerics of every deity to keep picking the same spells over and over again....
Its a huge contribution to the generally boring nature of the class...
Clerics are great summoners. Sacred Summons, yo.
#
A Sacred Summoning Herald Caller can be a frightening thing indeed...
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Clerics are great summoners. Sacred Summons, yo.#
A Sacred Summoning Herald Caller can be a frightening thing indeed...
Sacred summons Evangelist is also quite 3 terror. SpontaneousLy casting some SoS spells is also great. The addition of a domain with some control, more SoS, or an animal companion is amazing. Strategically, picking a god to get access to good hope or hunter's blessing continues to increase the versatility of the build.
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Sorry for pulling the topic off track a little, but what's bad about the ecclesithurge? If specced right, they have another spell list on top of their own through domains, an ability that allows them to trade their channel for a single target buff, and I'm sure through the right domain, they can cast mage armor just fine. Considering you'd build a ecclesithurge just like a wizard, but you'd never need the spellbook, wouldn't that make it better?
The cleric list is largely combat buffs and out-of-combat utility. At higher levels, they get some decent blasts. They're also good summoners.
The best part about a cleric is that they automatically know all spells on their spell list. They get much more mileage out of situational spells than other classes because learning that spell comes at absolutely no cost.
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I guess a buff cleric could be built to look like a bard - evangelist for inspire courage and taking Milani (or some other god with it) to cast good hope.
Hunter's blessing can be taken by any cleric (any of the spells in inner sea gods can).
Good call one hunter blessing I went through the spells but skimmed the intro paragraph. Thanks for the heads up.
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Sorry for pulling the topic off track a little, but what's bad about the ecclesithurge? If specced right, they have another spell list on top of their own through domains, an ability that allows them to trade their channel for a single target buff, and I'm sure through the right domain, they can cast mage armor just fine. Considering you'd build a ecclesithurge just like a wizard, but you'd never need the spellbook, wouldn't that make it better?
If you manage to get the right combination of Domains and Deity (for alternate Domains to plug in place of your Secondary Domain) (admittedly not an easy combination to achieve) and take Scribe Scroll to make Scrolls of various spells from alternate Domains), this could be good.
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Excuse me, nonevil summons are "really weak"? Go on, check out mr lantern archon. He and his forty pals want words with you.
Lantern archons will mess you up.
Sorry for pulling the topic off track a little, but what's bad about the ecclesithurge? If specced right, they have another spell list on top of their own through domains, an ability that allows them to trade their channel for a single target buff, and I'm sure through the right domain, they can cast mage armor just fine. Considering you'd build a ecclesithurge just like a wizard, but you'd never need the spellbook, wouldn't that make it better?If you manage to get the right combination of Domains and Deity (for alternate Domains to plug in place of your Secondary Domain) (admittedly not an easy combination to achieve) and take Scribe Scroll to make Scrolls of various spells from alternate Domains), this could be good.
Not mage armor, no, though the night domain gives you shadow conjuration as a 4th level spell which could be used to cast it.
Shield, barkskin, invisibility, mirror image and fly do appear on some domain spell lists and there are spells like shield of faith, protection from evil (etc.), magic vestment and blessing of fervor on the base cleric spell list to defend yourself with.
Lantern archons will mess you up.
...eventually. They're good for long battles and enemies who are hard to hurt by normal means, but they only do a few points of damage per round each.
+3 touch attack for 1d6. Times two. Per archon. Which a good summoner can churn out some 1d4+2 per round. Starting round 1. Oh, and no DR works against it.
I've accidentally killed character by throwing a few to many of those little singing light balls at someone.
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It's also important to look at the Clerics' spell list in reverse from how you'd look at the Wizards'. Wizards check their list looking for the gems, the best spells at any one level. But Clerics have all their spells anyway. They need to look for the bad apples, the worst ones for that level so those can be ignored.
Whatever is left, is the best they have.
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+3 touch attack for 1d6. Times two.
If you're summoning 1d4+x of them, you're probably at least level 9. Typical touch AC of a CR9 monster is 12 or so. Most of the time you're firing into melee, so that's effectively a 13 to hit (assuming no actual cover). In that situation, each one that can full attack provides an average of 2.8 DPR. If you summon four of them, as a level 5 spell, that's about 11 DPR total, against opponents who probably have over a hundred hit points. In a short battle, that's not going to add up to much.
Since they can provide other stuff as well (like blocking enemies and casting Aid), it's still a good option - a great option when conditions are favorable - but I wouldn't oversell it.
Drowning the battlefield in trampling aurochs is always a fun alternative.
But the point remains: Clerics are great summoners, easily on par with wizard summoners.
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If you manage to get the right combination of Domains and Deity (for alternate Domains to plug in place of your Secondary Domain) (admittedly not an easy combination to achieve) and take Scribe Scroll to make Scrolls of various spells from alternate Domains), this could be good.
Bastet would work really well for this. Trickery for the primary domain, Animal or Animal/Fur for the permanent secondary domain so you're got a meatshield, Chaos/Protean when you want displacement, Protection/Defence when you want shield and barkskin, Charm or Charm/Lust for some more mind-affecting spells - and not wearing armour should fit her followers pretty well.