| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I would guess because Weapons can have advantages and more dmg then a cantrip - which can be increased with a lvl 1 cleric feat.
Except your favored deitys weapon is anything other then a simple...sucks to be a desna cleric (d4 and no possibility to enhance it).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Antimagic areas
Magic resistance (if that is a things still)
Frost resistance
+X weapons that do X+1 dice of damage and are just fun to hit with
They used dex as a dump stat
Character concept
Intelligent weapons
Dancing weapons
Probably some others
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
if you go dexterity either way grab a finesse weapon
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't see why you'd want Charisma as a cleric... or Wisdom, really. Put a little bit in each, then pump your combat attributes. Unless you plan on going for a Channel Smite build, in which case your stat distribution looks very Paladin-y, it looks very much like a Warpriest, just without the feat support.
Cantrips don't deal nearly enough damage to be considered a fall-back combat option. If they added your casting modifier baseline and then added an extra die at 5th, 10th, etc. it would be palatable. As is, they're pretty tame.
On that line of reasoning I was helping a player make their bard tonight and we noticed that Telekinetic Projectile does a fat d10 of damage of whatever type the player can rationalize! And they can do that at will. I mean, she bought a weapon for her character but I doubt she'll need one. She also got Disrupt Undead just in case she runs into anything incorporeal.
On that line of reasoning I was helping a player make their bard tonight and we noticed that Telekinetic Projectile does a fat d10 of damage of whatever type the player can rationalize! And they can do that at will. I mean, she bought a weapon for her character but I doubt she'll need one. She also got Disrupt Undead just in case she runs into anything incorporeal.
It cost 2 action, so double a single attack.
|
On that line of reasoning I was helping a player make their bard tonight and we noticed that Telekinetic Projectile does a fat d10 of damage of whatever type the player can rationalize! And they can do that at will. I mean, she bought a weapon for her character but I doubt she'll need one. She also got Disrupt Undead just in case she runs into anything incorporeal.It cost 2 action, so double a single attack.
Precisely. Actions look like they're going to be very important to bards.
One action per round for inspire courage.
Two actions for a cantrip.
That leaves you no actions to move, use a shield, etc.
Don't get me wrong, a weaponless bard is clearly very viable.
But so is a weapon using bard.
Say, a melee bard. Likely multiclasses into fighter for all the bennies.
Goes sword and board route. 1 action hit, 1 action shield, 1 action inspire courage. That seems, at first blush at least, a quite viable character to me. You've got a character that gets in one good hit a round AND inspires its friends AND has full spell casting AND has all the skills.
Yea, every single spell requires somatic or material if not both, so to casta a spell with s&b you need to drop the weapon, cast the spell, then draw the weapon again. 4 Action divvied up in 2 rounds to cast a single spell.
|
|
Yea, every single spell requires somatic or material if not both, so to casta a spell with s&b you need to drop the weapon, cast the spell, then draw the weapon again. 4 Action divvied up in 2 rounds to cast a single spell.
If I built that way my spells would primarily be for OUT of combat stuff. Or buff spells before entering combat, with perhaps some other spells like faerie fire there for emergencies. My combat contribution is Fighting and Bardic song.
I have a Core Archer Cleric who is similar. Most combats he just shoots his bow. He only rarely throws magic in combat. Of course, he DOES use a buckler so the issue is less for him. He is also, of course, overpowered (yes, I firmly believe in the PF1 C/M disparity)
Or I find some way to enchant my flute to survive combat and do damage :-) :-)
Yea, every single spell requires somatic or material if not both, so to casta a spell with s&b you need to drop the weapon, cast the spell, then draw the weapon again. 4 Action divvied up in 2 rounds to cast a single spell.
That's not literally true, but the only exception for the Bard that I can think of right now is True Strike. That and the Wizard's Diviner's Sight school power are obvious two hand gish enhancers only requiring one verbal action.
|
It seems to me that people overestimate the importance of advancing weapons proficiency. Between trained and legendary it is only a +3 differences, and since most of the damage will come out of the magical weapons, it means that all character using a weapon as a secondary option are actually in a great place.
The bab bonus in 1ed was a lot harsher than the new system, and cleric should be able to defend themselves quite well!
|
|
It seems to me that people overestimate the importance of advancing weapons proficiency. Between trained and legendary it is only a +3 differences, and since most of the damage will come out of the magical weapons, it means that all character using a weapon as a secondary option are actually in a great place.
The bab bonus in 1ed was a lot harsher than the new system, and cleric should be able to defend themselves quite well!
you underestimate a +3 bonus on a bounded accuracy system. That's 15% chance increase and 15% crit increase.
in most cases (read 90%+ of them) that +3 matters much more than anything we had in the old system for weapon accuracy.
again, bounded accuracy means that even +1 matters a lot, let alone +3.
I'm not underestimating it. I'm comparing with first edition where at level 5 a cleric had a bab of +3 and fighters had +5 and at level 20 the fighter had a +5 compared to clerics.
Clerics always were supposed to hit less than fighters, that didn't change, and it's wrong to say that PF2 makes weapons useless for bards and clerics. In fact, if clerics shouldn't bother using weapons, it means that fighters shouldn't bother trying to hit with their second and third attacks, which is wrong.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Right, right. Every +1 matters.
I now direct your attention to magic weapon, the spell.
Tadah, +1 to hit and an additional damage die on top.
1st level spellcasters now compensate for having only a 16 str or dex, putting them not behind martials at all, and do 2d6 damage (if using finesse) or 2d8 or 2d12 (for sword/board and two handed, respectively).
For clerics specifically, Clerics of Gorum should also invest in the zeal domain, which can give them another +1 to hit and a third damage die, albeit on individual attacks.
And don't forget clerics have an easy route to never caring about somatic or material components. (Emblazon Symbol feat)
Everybody but druid also has access to the shield cantrip as well.
The idea that pf2 spellcasters are somehow bad at combat is absurd.
|
|
It seems to me that people overestimate the importance of advancing weapons proficiency. Between trained and legendary it is only a +3 differences, and since most of the damage will come out of the magical weapons, it means that all character using a weapon as a secondary option are actually in a great place.
The bab bonus in 1ed was a lot harsher than the new system, and cleric should be able to defend themselves quite well!
you underestimate a +3 bonus on a bounded accuracy system. That's 15% chance increase and 15% crit increase.
in most cases (read 90%+ of them) that +3 matters much more than anything we had in the old system for weapon accuracy.
again, bounded accuracy means that even +1 matters a lot, let alone +3.
I'm not underestimating it. I'm comparing with first edition where at level 5 a cleric had a bab of +3 and fighters had +5 and at level 20 the fighter had a +5 compared to clerics.
Clerics always were supposed to hit less than fighters, that didn't change, and it's wrong to say that PF2 makes weapons useless for bards and clerics. In fact, if clerics shouldn't bother using weapons, it means that fighters shouldn't bother trying to hit with their second and third attacks, which is wrong.
that's underestimating it.
you see, with scaling armor and attack for everyone by level, that +3 can easily be 400% more critical chance (17-20 to crit instead of 20)
that's not even far fetched.
if you play the playtest, you'll see how close toghether attack bonuses and AC is. Every +1 matters WAY MORE than 1st edition
And we are talking about spellcasting classes. Being able to cast a spell + make an attack is great even if you are less likely to crit. If cleric were as good as fighters, no one would bother playing fighters.
It also doesn't matter for a long time.
No one gets +3 until 13th level, and that's only fighters.
Master (+2) happens at third for fighters (for one weapon group), which is pretty impressive, but no one competes with that.
Barbarians and Rogues get a +1 to hit (expert) at 13th level.
Paladins get expert (+1) at 5th, master (+2) at 15th.
Rangers and Rangers get expert (+1) at 3rd, master (+2) at 13th.
For most of the game, the comparison to be made is trained vs expert, with the fighter as a happy anomaly of being slightly better at the one thing they're allowed to do.
----
If you want to revisit the discussion in the teen levels, you need compare mostly +2 to hit with weapons with 'Oh, gods they're ripping out our minds, taking/transforming/disintegrating our bodies, or just blowing up an area and vanishing.'
At that point, spellcasters not needing a weapon is entirely viable.
On that line of reasoning I was helping a player make their bard tonight and we noticed that Telekinetic Projectile does a fat d10 of damage of whatever type the player can rationalize! And they can do that at will. I mean, she bought a weapon for her character but I doubt she'll need one. She also got Disrupt Undead just in case she runs into anything incorporeal.It cost 2 action, so double a single attack.
When you first said this, I hadn't run any games yet and it made sense. Having run the game, here's my counterpoint. It costs two actions, the same as two attacks, but it doesn't take the -5 for the second attack which usually is a big enough hit that it causes second hits to usually miss. It also doesn't require an action to reload like a crossbow. The extra round casting seems to always justify itself. Our bard in the playtest was absolutely fearsome! She flew her crowbar through a goblin and nearly decapitated their commando leader with her grappling hook.
We started calling her Carrie White. Do not mess with our telekinetic gnome bard!
Why? Page 408: spellstrike ammunition...
I'm tentatively in the camp that WIS is an underwhelming option because it apparently no longer gates your spellcasting.
It does a lot of good things mechanically (perception, saves, save DCs), but you can just opt to cast buff spells that don't need saves instead and just do better in combat. Not like cleric needs buff rounds before fighting anymore, either (rip divine favor). May as well just whack people and be a buff/utility bot.
This is just my kneejerk reaction, mind -- might be inaccurate -- but still.
WIS is as good as your domain power, I think. I tripped over this problem when I was trying to make a Cleric of Gorum - zeal has a very good domain power for melee clerics, but I wanted to pump charisma as my #2 stat which meant I was getting at most 2 uses of the power per day and my constitution would suffer for it. I'd have to invest a lot of character resources into other domain powers I had no interest in using just to increase my spell point pool to counteract that problem.
Multiclass feats are going to be a big deal. I think most spellcasters that want to be gishy will take fighter dedication to get the extra hitpoints amd combat ability.
I think a hands-off cleric or bard being the standard is fine.
Yeah, meet Nef, my Goblin Cleric of Iomedae (Level 1 Playtest):
Str 16, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 12
Longsword (+4) 1d8+3
AC: 18 (Chain Mail 4, Dex 3, Level 1), 20 with Heavy Steel Shield
Spells: 2x True Strike, 1 action, roll twice for the next attack.
Domain Power: Weapon Surge: 1 action, increase Weapon Bonus on item +1Against the boss, it's Weapon Surge, True Strike, Swing at +5 taking the better of both rolls for 2d8+4 damage (even better if I manage a flank beforehand). Most of the other time I'm tanking for the party and using my shield to make sure I don't get hit.
This gets better as I go up, as I'll have access to:
Emblazon Symbol: I can cast spells (namely heal) while holding my weapon.
Deadly Simplicity: Longsword's Damage goes up to 1d10.
Advanced Domain(@4): Literally just for +3 SP.
War Priest (@14): Expert in deities weapon, Critical Specializations.1st level is a *bit* lackluster, but still, not too shabby, but it gets a lot better. It's a solid build... Tank/Fighty-type Clerics seem to work. Bards, however, don't really get any useful combat stuff, which is rather unfortunate. They're actually worse-off than Sorcerers/Wizards, who at least get Magical Striker. I'm hoping this gets remedied in the final version, as Bards should *not* be worse combatants than Wizards...
And yeah, go ahead, tank Wisdom as a cleric, it's completely unnecessary if you're going to be a buffer. Despite the people who were insisting this was a corner case that no one would ever do when I first proposed it... turns out it's actually a pretty solid build.
Deadly simplicity doesn't work with longsword as it isn't a simple weapon/
Bards get true strike which is really helpful. Use it as your third action and then next turn you get advantage on your first attack.
Bards I could see go weaponless but clerics if they want to use weapons have a lot of options. One of their first feats is if they use their gods favored weapon the basically get the old warpriest boost of bump your damage dice for the weapon up a notch. That makes a lot of weapons pretty darn strong. Also you can swing up to three times in a round you can only cast one attack cantrip in a round.
Clerics also tend to be armored and up in the fight and using weapons does not provoke a lot of various reactions like casting spells does.
You can make a stand back pure caster cleric as well it really depends how you want to play it but weapon usage is very viable for clerics.
Bards it is more of a question TK projectile is really strong and it makes a lot of sense for bards who just want to use instruments to do their bard cantrip and then TK projectile a lot.
Stil there are going to be rounds when a bard wants to move so bard cantrip then move then you probably wind up attacking with a normal melee or ranged weapon.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm really happy to hear that "tanky, low-Wis cleric" is a viable build, but a little sad to hear that fighty-bard is less so.
Bard really needs an equivalent to Emblazon Symbol, in my opinion.
Yea, every single spell requires somatic or material if not both, so to casta a spell with s&b you need to drop the weapon, cast the spell, then draw the weapon again. 4 Action divvied up in 2 rounds to cast a single spell.
Clerics get around this pretty easily. There is a low level cleric feat that allows them to make their weapon or shield their holy symbol. So the main somatic thing priests do you can do with what you are already wielding. I would assume that feat gets picked up by the vast majority of priests as it makes combat casting way easier to pull off without having to do the equip/unequip hokey pokey.
SnB with full spelllist sounds bad, forget your somatic materialsOn that line of reasoning I was helping a player make their bard tonight and we noticed that Telekinetic Projectile does a fat d10 of damage of whatever type the player can rationalize! And they can do that at will. I mean, she bought a weapon for her character but I doubt she'll need one. She also got Disrupt Undead just in case she runs into anything incorporeal.It cost 2 action, so double a single attack.Precisely. Actions look like they're going to be very important to bards.
One action per round for inspire courage.
Two actions for a cantrip.That leaves you no actions to move, use a shield, etc.
Don't get me wrong, a weaponless bard is clearly very viable.
But so is a weapon using bard.
Say, a melee bard. Likely multiclasses into fighter for all the bennies.
Goes sword and board route. 1 action hit, 1 action shield, 1 action inspire courage. That seems, at first blush at least, a quite viable character to me. You've got a character that gets in one good hit a round AND inspires its friends AND has full spell casting AND has all the skills.
One last thing to note is bards have access to the shield cantrip. 1 action to raise the shield and it works like a normal shield but it does not take up a hand so you can do sword/free hand/shield pretty reasonably.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Bards get true strike which is really helpful. Use it as your third action and then next turn you get advantage on your first attack.Nope! True Strike only lasts to the end of the current turn. They switched that one up on us...
Oops, well then you just switch the order around. Cast the spell, then attack twice. No delay in your damage this way. Verbal casting only also doesn't trigger AOO
Bards get true strike which is really helpful. Use it as your third action and then next turn you get advantage on your first attack.
Use it as your first action, then attack with your second action. No need to go cross turn.
True strike only works on one attack now its basically your next attack before the end of the turn. So you could potentially inspire or other bard composition cantrip/true strike/ attack all in one turn. Or move true strike attack in some combination.
One thing I really like with bards and other casters is the way the new action economy works lets you do some interesting turns of either casting multiple different things or setting up combos and then attacking with a weapon.
Bards seem really solid this go round and it seems pretty viable to go just pure music caster as well as their more traditional melee/inspire spell caster.
I am half tempted to make a halfling bard get him a hand organ and just polka things to death. But it also looks pretty viable to wade into combat with them as well which is nice so people can play it the way they want to.
I don't see why you'd want Charisma as a cleric... or Wisdom, really. Put a little bit in each, then pump your combat attributes. Unless you plan on going for a Channel Smite build, in which case your stat distribution looks very Paladin-y, it looks very much like a Warpriest, just without the feat support.
Cantrips don't deal nearly enough damage to be considered a fall-back combat option. If they added your casting modifier baseline and then added an extra die at 5th, 10th, etc. it would be palatable. As is, they're pretty tame.
Charisma determines resonance, which limits both your buffs and your magic usage.
While what you're saying about Bards is true, the problem is that Wizards and Sorcerers do it better with True Strike + Magical Striker. It's not a feature of the Bard list, it's a feature of this one particular good spell, and other classes have access to it (including clerics of Iomedae).
Oh yes if you have that feat it is a really solid combo of true strike then magic strike.
It seems like melee is a lot more viable option for casters than in PF1. They can even armor up pretty well if they choose to without gimping their spell casting. You can pull off a magus or warpriest type build pretty well with just what is in the new core book.
I'm really happy to hear that "tanky, low-Wis cleric" is a viable build, but a little sad to hear that fighty-bard is less so.
Bard really needs an equivalent to Emblazon Symbol, in my opinion.
A performance based bard can do ok with a bow or sword and shield, do 1-2 (with Harmonize and Lingering Composition) compositions plus attack, you still have Shield (if bow) and True Strike (if melee) as verbal only spells you can cast with your hands full. If you're a bow user you can always free action remove a hand if you want to cast a spell.
For your performance you need Acting, Dancing, or something similar, and a Dancing Scarf or Persona Mask as your skill boosting item. I like Acting, as it seems to cover both auditory and visual for Counter Performance.
Unless you have a magical or special shield I am not sure there is a lot of reason for a bard to use a physical shield. Their cantrip shield fills that role well enough and does it without needing a hand tied up.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unless you have a magical or special shield I am not sure there is a lot of reason for a bard to use a physical shield. Their cantrip shield fills that role well enough and does it without needing a hand tied up.
I wouldn't do it myself, but it does give you an extra point of AC and can absorb more than one hit every 10 min, if not a lot more.
Bards get Inspire Heroics which is better than legendary proficiency with weapons. If they take fighter dedication, by level 12 they can have expert proficiency with all simple and martial, and they are the best combat builds in the game.
They also get to be full casters with access to healing.