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I was looking at playing a device sorcerer as a healer but I see that at 1st level.
They both get the same amount of spells.
They both get powers with their powers.
.... clerics get channel energy at 3 plus cha!!!
I see no fair trade for that.
Yes there is the anathema, but you can choose the anathema and you can cherry select the one to your play style but the 2 classes "div sorc" vs cleric the cleric has a huge perk.
Am is missing some thing? I really would like to know.
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clerics, as raw healers, heal more than anything else in the game. That's because channel is a completely separate, additional, pool.
That said, divine sorcs, especially demonic, make mean "divine gishes" through magical striker (that far outclasses weapon surge), main Cha allows you to levy staffs of healing more heavily (after a point, you don't even need to have heal as one of your 2 heightened spells since staff has most of the healing spells in it)
additionaly, spontaneous casters always have the edge when it comes to reactionary spells, that most remove X is, since you can have that remove curse, disease, poison, without wasting a prepared slot for it. Tbf, clerics can get that with a level 8 feat by swapping channel for remove X as well though.
and they do get some nifty tools later on, like that vicious concentration being really nasty with spiritual weapon type of spells, or even the resistance concentration feat that pairs really well with ward, or effortless concentration and etc.
This argument makes no sense because:
1. Divine Spellcasting has very little to no damaging spells, or usable one-action spells. There is Shield, perhaps, but that's about it. Not very great for a typical PF1 Magus "gish," which could both melee and lob damaging spells all at once, making for a strong "nova" character. Not happening here. In addition, abilities like Dangerous Sorcery, Reach Spell, and so on, have no application to a Divine Spellcasting Sorcerer since their spell selection matches very little to the mechanics of their chosen feats, meaning the class features fail hard outside of Magical Striker.
2. Sorcerers have garbage weapon and defensive proficiencies, making them unsuitable for being in the thick of things. They are already disadvantaged by being a 6 HP class, and most likely will have 6-8 HP Ancestries chosen. Combined with having practically zero armor, crap Strength, and mediocre to passable Dexterity, their ability to get into the thick of things compared to a Cleric is quite a joke, whom have Medium Armor proficiency, Shield proficiency (not a big thing, but can spare a Cantrip selection at the cost of a 4th level feat), 8 HP, and access to what can possibly be a very cool/useful weapon of choice that the Sorcerer doesn't have.
3. Spontaneous spells are only useful if you select spells commonly choosable. The Divine spell list has very few of those starting out (literally, the only worthwhile spell for said Sorcerer to take is Heal/Harm), and it doesn't expand very much later in their career. It's also only useful if you want the flexibility of casting spells as the situation calls for. If you're an experienced player who can adequately predict the outcome of certain things when utilizing your spells, this is a false advantage, and if you're an inexperienced player, not having at least the access to prepare for challenges ahead that vary from time to time, means you will more often than not come across challenges you cannot overcome with your current spell output that cannot and will not change to suit the needs of the adventure.
4. 90% of Divine Sorcerer class feats and their base features suck nuts. You can either: Get a Familiar that is literally worthless and doesn't work with any of your features whatsoever, get 2 metamagic features that are garbage due to your failure of a spell list, get a feature that is absolutely worthless unless you fully invest in it, which requires levels and other expenses to do so, or take a multiclass that gives you almost anything and everything better than these features combined. You are literally better off spending your feats on anything other than your class sans Magical Striker, which tells you just how badly Divine Sorcerers as a class are. And it's not like Primal, Occult, or Arcane Sorcerers are going to be doing too much better than their counterparts (Druid, Bard, and Wizard, respectively).
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To the OP, Sorcerers actually get an extra spell per day of each spell level beyond what's on the spells per day table.
An extra spell of each level will never be as good as 4-8 spells of your BEST level.
This doesn't measure up to Channel energy at early levels but later on it evens out, especially considering that you can use the extra slots to cast spells other than heal.
Clerics can use their spell slots for things other than Heal, too. And in fact can cast Heal without dipping into spell slots.
(Spiritual Weapon is excellent!)
My experience with spiritual weapon:
WhiffWhiff
Whiff
Whiff
Smack!
Whiff
Whiff
Whiff
Smack!
Whiff
But this isn't a problem with spiritual weapon per say, but with the general base mechanics (I'm not kidding: in 10 rounds of Spiritual Weapon across 2 castings, it hit twice).
Also, clerics can cast this spell too.
and Dangerous Sorcery can aid those
Dangerous Sorcery isn't bad, but it's pretty mild as far as abilities go. Compare to Communal Healing and Healing Hands (works with Channel!)
Oh, and a cleric who splashes into sorcerer can have that feat too.
So yeah, if you're wanting a Healer then Cleric is the way to go. But if you want a powerful Divine Caster and want to try something distinct from Cleric then Divine Sorcerer really has its merits. Had someone play one in Doomsday Dawn part 3 and it worked out great.
How many times did your Divine Sorc cast Heal? Did they run out of spells? Did they run out of high level spells? What cantrip did they use most?
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stuff
I played one at 1st level, as part of the Doomsday Dawn playtest, and will be playing it again in the respective parts, so yes, I have some playtest evidence to support my claims, and there will be more to come.
Powers, like spell slots, are limited and precious. That being said, the Angelic Sorcerer, specifically, has the worst bloodline powers of every bloodline available, and the Demonic bloodline isn't much better.
On top of that, strike with what? A spear? A dagger? Some other simple weapon garbage? Whereas a Gorum Cleric can swing a super bad Greatsword and deal wicked amounts of damage with better powers to amplify his gish capabilities.
Never got to use spiritual weapon. I've also seen it in action by a Cleric, and it fails to be solid damage.
Heal is useful when you get hit. Sorcerers having the least HP and AC means they are very much likely to get critted and put into the Dying phases. It also takes spell slots which can be used to buff or sling spiritual weapons. Now you're stuck budgeting spell slots, which a Cleric doesn't have to do thanks to channel.
Cool, so now I'm using a staff instead of an actual weapon like a gish would? Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Either I'm a gish or I'm a pure spellcaster.
Bad proficiency in armor means I have bad AC which means auto crits by enemies. Having lowest HP in game means I have to constantly use my strongest spell slots to stay alive, which end very quickly if I do it every round, and based on AC, it will happen.
Also, thanks for proving the point that most of the Sorcerer class feats are extremely trash and niche except for the one or two that can be grabbed via multiclassing. Cleric into Sorcerer is better than Sorcerer into Cleric and all that. Talk about stupid design.
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I didn't miss it because it still falls under a simple weapon that deals garbage damage. A bite that doesn't scale worth a damn, has limited usage, and does a fraction of the damage a dedicated gish cleric does, is by no means comparable or even worthwhile to consider using as a weapon, hence my rhetorical statement of questioning what weapon, since it doesn't matter due to whatever option the Sorcerer has being vastly inferior in every way to Cleric choices.
Also, not everyone is a Demonic Sorcerer; Angelic ones exist too, but let's be realistic here, Divine Sorcerers suck nuts no matter what one you pick, because bloodline powers are largely a joke, eat away at your feats (not anymore, but as feat options they still suck), and are apparently comparable to Channel Energy and Domain Powers, or Champion Powers, or any other class specific resource feature, when they're not whatsoever.
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Clerics get channel, better proficiency, a better list of powers to pick from, class feats that better synergize with the divine spell list, off-list spells known from their deity, the religion skill matches with their primary ability score so they have an easier time learning uncommon spells, possibly get proficiency with a martial weapon from their deity, and they don't need to multiclass to gain expert proficiency with that weapon. Magical striker is a nice advantage for the sorcerer, but the cleric can multiclass in to snap that up. Divine Sorcerer has a niche at low levels, but is just completely inferior to a cleric/sorcerer multiclass at higher levels.
As an aside I like that Div Sorc can get 1/day Channel with a class Feat but it kinda feels like maybe they should be able to get at least a bit more.
If you're willing to spend a few more feats, there's a much better option. Paladin dedication->healing touch->basic benediction (deity's domain)->advanced benediction (channel life) allows you to cast the heal spell at your highest spell level at the cost of 1 SP. In addition, this feat chain gives you 3 extra SP. In effect, this turns your spell point pool into an equivalent of the cleric's channel pool at the cost of 4 feats (one of which gives you much-needed weapon and armor proficiency). Notably this does not require you to be a divine sorcerer, and you probably don't want to be since you won't need to spontaneously cast heal with your own spell slots anyways.
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I would absolutely play a buff centric divine sorcerer (not a healer) with maybe some Magical Striker and so on over a Cleric.
I like casters but Vancian casting is terrible. Any caster that isn't Vancian is automatically more fun to me than a Vancian caster.
That... sounds like a rough Spiritual Weapon experience. I've seen it cast a few times and usually it hits about half the time, I'm curious if there's a differential in luck here or some other factor.
Part of it has to do with using it on Big Things that have higher-than-average AC (so hitting on a 13 or 15 instead of an 11) and partly luck. The one casting I couldn't roll above a 7 to save my life.
As to your question, I don't remember exactly but I think it was only 2 or 3, they did run out of level 4 spells near the end (partly because they used one of their three slots of that level during the Out-of-combat portion of the campaign), they ran out of level 3 spells a bit after that, they still had a couple level 1 spells and I think a level 2 when all was said and done
If they'd been a cleric they would've still had 3-7 casts of Heal left from Channel (depending on how you feel that used spell slots convert to using channel instead, remembering that each conversion leaves the cleric with an unused spell slot).
Sure, a divine cleric can do things, but compared to a cleric they have NO benefits. Nothing they can "do better" than a cleric.
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Oh and agreed that for straight power the extra spell slot per spell level isn't gonna exceed the straight strength of Channel, what I meant was that their above-and-beyond-the-spell-per-day-table ability had more versatility than the Cleric's in exchange for the lesser power. And now that we have Treat Wounds I think it can be argued as a closer to fair trade because you aren't as likely to need a bunch of Heal spells in a day. Whereas before update 1.3 the straight healing of Channel was way more needed.
As an aside I like that Div Sorc can get 1/day Channel with a class Feat but it kinda feels like maybe they should be able to get at least a bit more. Maybe more at later levels? I don't think having it be equal to Cha mod would be good because that'd awkwardly make Div Sorc a better healer than Cler in addition to their extra slots but maybe more than just 1/day?
Even that is a misnomer as well because having the extra spell per day just means they can cast more of their same stuff an extra time each day, and if we did a direct Heal comparison, the Sorcerer loses out big time. It's not like they get anything extremely useful for their bloodline spells known that a Cleric can't already prepare, and it's not like they can use that spell slot for anything other than the spells they already know.
As for them being better than a Cleric for their Channel feat if it was adjusted to be equal to their modifier, not really. Clerics get 3 + Charisma (which is usually 6 starting out), whereas Sorcerers get flat Charisma (which is usually 4, and as high as 7 by 20th level, though a Cleric can get 8 or even 9 by 15th level, meaning even against a max level Sorcerer, a Cleric with 3/4 the levels will have more Channels outright, though not as strong of healing). In terms of raw channeling, the Sorcerer will still have less to use, meaning the Cleric still heals the most (which is fine, but Divine Sorcerer healing is a complete joke otherwise). The biggest thing at 20th level is if the Cleric decides to take the 10th level spell feat (who the hell wouldn't?), he will always outheal any class with his Channels due to those now casting at 10th level spell power (which is ~19D8+Wisdom, or 9D8+Wisdom AoE healing), whereas a Sorcerer can maybe do that once per day, at the cost of burning his other 10th level spell slot. (Oh, and Cantrips/Powers can scale up to 10th level, for the ones that actually can, with that feat.) This also doesn't include feats like Healing Hands or Domain powers that can increase that amount of healing even more, something that Divine Sorcerers have no way to match.
But can they do more damage than a Cleric? Not really. With spells, perhaps, but that damage bonus is negligible for what the Cleric gains with melee potential, and the Cleric isn't really out anything for being proficient in what they're proficient in. On top of that, if I wanted to focus on spell damage, Divine Sorcerer is the absolute worst way to execute that.
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There is a related topic to this, the comparison gets even worse when you are multiclassing into a divine casting class.
The spellcasting dedication feat gives you a single known spell and a single spell slot. So why to limit yourself to 1 spell, when you can just pick up the Cleric dedication and use that spell slot everyday with a different spell you might need?
I opened a topic to expose that specific problem of the dedication feats and propose some ways to try reduce the gap.
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It's hard to make ultimate judgement on current halfway done playtest incarnation, it's easy to think new Sorceror Feats etc could establish even more unique niche. But it still must be asked if this is best approach in end? Is undercutting role of future Oracle necessary? An arcane list Angelic option but with off-list access to Cleric spells (expandable via multiple Feats, which could also allow Spellpoint casting of these) as well as Channel and other Angelic stuff is on it's face easily viable and distinguished from Cleric/Oracle.
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When multiclassing feats are better than 90% of your class feats, and better than any class feature you get sans spellcasting itself, your class is a failure and should be completely gutted and revised. Like seriously, if I was a Sorcerer, and could take Sorcerer dedication and the respective Spellcasting feats, I would simply because getting more of my spellcasting is the only good class-related stuff I can get with my class feats.
I would be so happy if they just reverted the Sorcerer back to its PF1 counterpart, where it was pure arcane spellcasting, and the bloodlines merely gave you bonus spells known that can be cast as Arcane spells; I wouldn't even care if it complicated things a little. Oh, and if they made their bloodline powers and stuff actually cool and worthwhile features that can, at the very least, be considered as an option to invest in without being a complete waste of your precious feats. (They didn't cost feats in PF1, why should they cost feats here?)
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Because you want to play a divine sort but hate Vancian casting or don't want to worship a Deity. Then you end up getting punished mechanically for that.
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Because you want to play a divine sort but hate Vancian casting or don't want to worship a Deity. Then you end up getting punished mechanically for that.
It's not a fair trade off.
As far as the vancian system, if you play correctly you have a wide variety of spells. And I've seen the system played incorrectly too many times when players are not logging their spells and when the DM ask what they are going to case players are spontaneously casting from the core rulebook.