So the other day I noticed something odd about the Tortured Crusader's Torment alternate class feature. It reads:
This ability alters the paladin’s spellcasting, smite evil, and lay on hands.
Notice especially the bold part: Smite Evil gets altered, but it is not by any means mentioned in the text. This might imply, though that the ability essentially reads "everything Charisma abou a Tortured Crusader is now Wisdom, including his smite Evil ability". It is very important to distinguish, whether this is just a typo or Smite Evil is now too changed to Wisdom and they just forgot to mention it in the text.
Now, you might think: "what an idiot, Tortured Crusader doesn't use Charisma anyway because of his other alternate class feature, why is he even asking?" Well, let us have a look:
This ability replaces detect evil and divine grace and alters smite evil.
So Smite Evil (if it is not a typo; see above paragraph) first gets changed to wisdom and then suddenly in this ACF it loses her Charisma bonus. This is weird. And it pops a new question:
What if both changes apply?
Then I would read it in the following priority order:
(1) Torment changes the Paladin's key ability score. This change is so fundamental that it applies before anything else. If the Smite Evi alteration is not a typo, it, too gets changed (the devs probably didn't bother to mention it in the first place, because All is Darkness changes it anyway).
(2)All is Darkness removes the key ability score modifier from Smite Evil. It explicitly reads Charisma in the text, but this may be due tot he fact that,when reading the ACF surperficially, it makes the most sense. Smite Evil would still retain the property "dependent on key ability score, although the scaling is removed by All is Darkness.
Now, why am I asking this? Well for me, it's all about two 2nd tier Sentinel boons from Iomedae and Shelyn. I won't cite the exact wording here, because I think its not OGl, but in short, Iomedae gives a Paladin a stun on his Smite Evil ability with a Will save of a DC equal to 10 + your Charisma modifier + 1/2 your Hit Dice. Shelyn, on the other hand, gives you twice your Charisma bonus on attack rolls and your Charisma bonus + your paladin level on damage rolls, which replaces the previous scaling.
Since a tortured crusader of both these deities is a flavorful character, I am worried as to how these boons interact with the changes that the ACFs make. If Smite Evil gets and retains the descriptor "now governed by Wis instead of Cha", everything should be fine, because then The Cha mods on the boons should be replaced with Wis, at least by RAI. I mean, those boons were clearly written with having in mind "okay,a Paladin uses Charisma, let's give him more of that". A Paladin uses literally NO other ability score than Charisma on anything except his attacks and that isn't even true anymore if he uses Smite Evil. So why shouldn't a Tortured Crusader use those abilities with his Wisdom modifier instead? It would only make sense to me, since they would be super useless if they didn't.
But maybe I am wrong on everything and the Smite Evil alteration in Torment is just a typo. Oh well. I would love to hear your opinion on this, because it is a super specific, but complicated topic. I already asked on the Pathfinder reddit, but no one really read my post thoroughly and I only got one-sentence answers and downvotes *roll eyes*(it's reddit after all).
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Strictly as written, the way I read it neither boon would use Wisdom because these special features from the feat boons give a very specific benefit that isn't from your paladin class features (technically if you had smite evil from a non-paladin class that scaled completely differently and on any old stat, Shelyn still says it's replacing you completely and Iomedae is independently a Cha-based DC).
In my game, assuming a character was using that combination, I would 100% allow the Iomedae boon to scale off Wisdom, and I would work with the player to replace the Shelyn boon altogether for any character with any archetype that changes the smite evil benefits, since it clearly wasn't written thinking about that possibility (imagine an archetype that super-boosts smite evil to be more powerful than the numbers in Glorious Might and then the sentinel boon weakens you, or another archetype that weakens smite evil benefits in exchange for lots of cool powers and then Glorious Might sets you to the same place on smite evil as a paladin who didn't take that archetype; both of these are bad results).
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Strictly as written, the way I read it neither boon would use Wisdom because these special features from the feat boons give a very specific benefit that isn't from your paladin class features (technically if you had smite evil from a non-paladin class that scaled completely differently and on any old stat, Shelyn still says it's replacing you completely and Iomedae is independently a Cha-based DC).
In my game, assuming a character was using that combination, I would 100% allow the Iomedae boon to scale off Wisdom, and I would work with the player to replace the Shelyn boon altogether for any character with any archetype that changes the smite evil benefits, since it clearly wasn't written thinking about that possibility (imagine an archetype that super-boosts smite evil to be more powerful than the numbers in Glorious Might and then the sentinel boon weakens you, or another archetype that weakens smite evil benefits in exchange for lots of cool powers and then Glorious Might sets you to the same place on smite evil as a paladin who didn't take that archetype; both of these are bad results).
THANK YOU FOR THE TORTURED CRUSADER!!!
It’s one of my favourite Archetypes and made actually interested in playing a Paladin :3
Chaining ability score changes does not work.
Tortured uses wisdom, Shelyn is unaltered, uses charisma
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Notice especially the bold part: Smite Evil gets altered, but it is not by any means mentioned in the text. This might imply, though that the ability essentially reads "everything Charisma abou a Tortured Crusader is now Wisdom, including his smite Evil ability". It is very important to distinguish, whether this is just a typo or Smite Evil is now too changed to Wisdom and they just forgot to mention it in the text.
I vote for they forgot it in the text. It would be weird to change the other stuff to Wisdom and leave smite as Charisma.
So Smite Evil (if it is not a typo; see above paragraph) first gets changed to wisdom and then suddenly in this ACF it loses her Charisma bonus. This is weird.
I vote for the writer messed up again and should have said Wisdom.
EDIT: Actually it would have been best to say "they get no bonus to their attack rolls or AC vs the target," thus making it independent of the other feature.As for the boons, I'd say by strict RAW they affect Charisma and you lose, but RAI they change to Wisdom and you win. You're clearly in a home game (since you can only worship one deity in PFS), so your GM is free to go with RAI.
In summary, I believe I agree with you on all counts. I would have stuck to saying that but I wanted to reassure you that I'd actually read your post. :-)
Thank you SO much for responding so fast, I very much appreciate your input!
However, as you designed the archetype, may I ask you what your intentions were when writing Torment and All is Darkness? Is the mention of Smite Evil in the alterations of Torment an oversight or intentional?
@Fuzzy-Wuzzy:
Oh, I don't want to worship two deities. I just took those two as examples because the boons are the only thing that really produces weird effects with a non-charisma paladin :)
Also, thank you for taking the the time to read the whole post!
EDIT 1: As for the issue of balancing: Imagine an Oath of Vengeance Paladin of Shelyn (which absolutely does not make any sense fluff-wise because Shelyn is super peaceful and wants to redeem everyone) with this boon. He also gets to swap lay on hands uses, and gets the crazy increased damage from glorious might, but retains his divine grace class feature and has all auras working as normal. To me, this would be more powerful than allowing a tortured crusader to change the Charisma to wisdom.
EDIT 2: The Sentinel PrC and all of its boons is from Inner Sea Gods, published in 2014. The Tortured Crusader, however, is from Horror Adventures, published in 2016. So since the Shelyn and Iomedae 2nd Sentinel boons clearly refer to paladins multiple times and Paladins usually use Charisma, it would only be fitting to convert that to Wisdom for a Tortured Crusader, because the archetype was not yet published at the time the boons were written.
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Claiming that torment alters smite evil in the alters line is a mistake; it doesn't mention smite evil in the text. As I said, I find it fitting to use Wisdom for the Iomedae boon, but technically it's not a paladin class feature, so it wouldn't change by default, and the Shelyn boon I just would rework from scratch for an archetype that changed the usual smite evil bonuses.
Claiming that torment alters smite evil in the alters line is a mistake; it doesn't mention smite evil in the text. As I said, I find it fitting to use Wisdom for the Iomedae boon, but technically it's not a paladin class feature, so it wouldn't change by default, and the Shelyn boon I just would rework from scratch for an archetype that changed the usual smite evil bonuses.
Thank you for the clarification! However, since the Shelyn boon was obviously designed with Paladins in mind (it specifically mentions the Smite Evil Class Feature and Paladin level) it IMHO would not hurt anyone to change the Boon to Wisdom, considering the stuff a dex-based Oath of vengeance Paladin can do with it, a 1-Level Swashbuckler dip, combat reflexes and casting bestow grace on himself (there are other very powerful combinations out there, too).
I think you can argue, that, since Shelyn is a goddess of art and grace, adding Wisdom instead of Charisma would not be fitting, but especially a tortured crusader might need some divine help to be more fabulous :D