I've seen a Wizard which started level 1 at 12 Int at PF1 and a couple of Oracles who started level 1 at 12 Cha. I didn't think there was anything wrong with that.Be that as it may, and I doubt that it was; did they ever increase those scores?
Just via headband, we didn't get high enough level for 9th level spells and a +6 headband will get you everything else. Doing this you'll lose out on a few bonus spells/day but little else that everybody else doesn't get from Int or Cha.
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Well, non-Goblin Clerics will always have Wisdom 12 at a minimum. But yes, if healing is your priority all versions of PF2 thus far encourage Charisma heavily.
However, the best healing is actually Wisdom and Charisma. The default caster Cleric having high ratings in both of those seems pretty reasonable, as does melee/buff Clerics maybe going Str/Cha as their primary stats.
I do think making it 1 + Cha for Channel would be better than the current version and do less to necessitate high Cha. Another option, particularly if they go with Charisma as Focus/Spell Points, would be to reassign Channel to Wisdom, but that might make it too powerful again.
Wisdom should definitely do more for Clerics than Spell DCs, but at the moment it determines Spell Points as well. As long as it's doing that, and they boost Powers a bit, Channeling can be Charisma without too much in the way of issues...but Wisdom would definitely need something of a boost if Charisma winds up determining both Channels and Spell Points.
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Thus far the mist common Cleric build I have seen was "get a big weapon" + use weapon surge (at higher level combined with Magical Striker).
That said Wisdom is not completely useless since it applies to your spell rolls which apply to any dispel checks and counteract checks.
Some spells that require such a roll:
-Neutralize Poison
-Remove Curse
-Remove Disease
-Remove Fear
-Remove Paralysis
-Dispel Magic
The way I understand how dispelling works, is that this would make it harder for the cleric to dispel something (unless he/she uses a higher level spell slot which I expect to be extremely rare) and make it easier for the enemy to dispel your spells.
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Those who argue for a Strength-based melee build do have a point, unfortunately, some relevant effects (Wisdom to AOE Heal) tend not to scale, so requiring casters to invest something into their primary score seems reasonable.
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Even before 1.6, I felt goblin was the best class for a front-line cleric. +2 Cha is great and a -2 Wis on your dump stat is lovely! And this is patently absurd.
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I concur with the original post.
My role in my playtest group has been to test the multiclass rules. I have found that if you want to mix in a caster class with a non-caster class, the best approach is to take the caster class as your choice even if your concept is heavily rooted in the other class.
When you do that, you can nearly always dump-stat the caster class's primary stat and not really suffer that much. For example, if you want a Ranger who casts, then build a Druid and ignore WIS in favor of STR, DEX, CON. If you try to build on Ranger, the Druid archetype will require a 16 WIS which you won't need.
That said, I don't think the archetype approach to multiclassing is bad or broken. The problem is it is the only form of multiclassing available. The rules need all THREE versions of multiclassing to be able to support a wide variety of character conceptions:
D&D 1e's MC system where you pursue multiple classes at once.
D&D 3e's MC system where you can choose other classes as you level.
D&D 4e/PF1e Unchained/PF2e's MC system of archtype feats.
And you need to be able to use more than one of those on the same character.
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It also makes me really sad that this makes a dwarf cleric one of the worst choices now. Which is supposed to be like... THE cleric.
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So one thing that comes to mind is seeing MAD being thrown around as a negative.
I think this is coming from PF1e, and it looks like it's something the design team is trying to move away from.
MAD characters are only "bad" in that they are weaker than SAD characters. Paizo's design strategy for 2e seems to be to try to eliminate SAD characters entirely.
If no character is SAD, then MAD characters are just characters that can be built in different ways depending on which attributes you decide to focus on, which is a win in my book.
I am also strongly in favor of being able to build a Cleric that is totally useless as a healer but still contributes meaningfully to the party.
If eliminating SAD is a goal, it's one that fails right out of the gate, because Dexterity.
So, yes, MAD is completely a negative in PF2.
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So one thing that comes to mind is seeing MAD being thrown around as a negative.
I think this is coming from PF1e, and it looks like it's something the design team is trying to move away from.
MAD characters are only "bad" in that they are weaker than SAD characters. Paizo's design strategy for 2e seems to be to try to eliminate SAD characters entirely.
If no character is SAD, then MAD characters are just characters that can be built in different ways depending on which attributes you decide to focus on, which is a win in my book.
I am also strongly in favor of being able to build a Cleric that is totally useless as a healer but still contributes meaningfully to the party.
This edition makes it easy to focus on multiple stats, but it's also more demanding that those stats are as high as possible, which often negates the first thing. Like yeah, you can get easily get 14STR as throwaway stat, but it might as well be 8 for how often it's coming into play given the math. If you can't super specialize to get the max DC/bonus, it's meh. This means each character can get 2 High stats (18/16) to build around and one is probably going to be STR/DEX unless you're a Wizard. So you really have to pick the second one carefully.
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This edition makes it easy to focus on multiple stats, but it's also more demanding that those stats are as high as possible, which often negates the first thing.
The bolded bit is almost certainly not gonna be true of the final system. It's true at the moment, but also very explicitly something the folks at Paizo have acknowledged as a problem, and one that will be fixed.
So, if we're talking about what the final version of the system should be like (and we are) this is probably not an assumption we should be operating under.
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1 extra channel heal is nice, but until higher levels the wisdom bonus to each heal is also very important. There is nothing stopping a dwarf from hitting 20 cha at level 20, do they really need 22 or even 20?. So yes dwarf cleric have one less channel/day until level 10, but it doesn't make the dwarf cleric unviable even as a healer.
At level 1, the difference between +1 on a Heal and another Heal is skewed towards CHA unless you cast Heal ~3.5 times (and casting it more is easier when you have more CHA, given the poor number of spell slots). When we had 3+CHA channel, that helped WIS because you were already up in that range with the castings from 10 CHA.
As soon as you get to level 3, it skews in favor of CHA. I mean, if you can get both of them that's even better. But if you have to choose, there is no choice. CHA trounces WIS for healing Clerics.
The Healing Domain's advanced power helps WIS but it takes twice as much WIS to get an extra casting as it does CHA, due to it costing 2 spell points and a feat. Still something though. Of course, if you're willing to spend the 4 feats, Channel Life becomes available and completely destroys any Cleric feat for raw power since it will more than double your number of Channel usages and CHA will scale both of them.
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This edition makes it easy to focus on multiple stats, but it's also more demanding that those stats are as high as possible, which often negates the first thing. Like yeah, you can get easily get 14STR as throwaway stat, but it might as well be 8 for how often it's coming into play given the math. If you can't super specialize to get the max DC/bonus, it's meh. This means each character can get 2 High stats (18/16) to build around and one is probably going to be STR/DEX unless you're a Wizard. So you really have to pick the second one carefully.So one thing that comes to mind is seeing MAD being thrown around as a negative.
I think this is coming from PF1e, and it looks like it's something the design team is trying to move away from.
MAD characters are only "bad" in that they are weaker than SAD characters. Paizo's design strategy for 2e seems to be to try to eliminate SAD characters entirely.
If no character is SAD, then MAD characters are just characters that can be built in different ways depending on which attributes you decide to focus on, which is a win in my book.
I am also strongly in favor of being able to build a Cleric that is totally useless as a healer but still contributes meaningfully to the party.
Yeah. You need CHA for Channel. You need WIS if you want your spells to have a usable save DC. You need DEX because you can't wear heavy armor out of the box, and it's not very good anyway. You need STR because Bulk is ridiculous and you get encumbered even with a fairly basic adventuring kit.
Fortunately it's easy to dump INT, but that still leaves CON and not enough points to go around. Choices have to be made. I just don't think "Dump WIS" is supposed to be as attractive an option as it is.
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I agree with Deadmanwalking - it feels right now like every attribute is critical, but that's more to do with the overly tight math.
With reasonable math, I strongly feel like "choose which attributes to specialize in, each has benefits and drawbacks for your character" is where the system wants to be.
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I agree with Deadmanwalking - it feels right now like every attribute is critical, but that's more to do with the overly tight math.
With reasonable math, I strongly feel like "choose which attributes to specialize in, each has benefits and drawbacks for your character" is where the system wants to be.
Another issue is that most non-feat class features are honestly pretty unexciting, and channel stands as possibly the single most dramatic class feature of any class except "spellcasting."
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If you go the paladin multiclass route wisdom will be very important because your spell point pool is determined by wisdom not charisma as a cleric, taking the paladin feats will just give an extra amount of spell points.
Actually both your channel pool and your spell point pool will use charisma.
If you already have a pool of Spell Points, you use the higher ability score to determine the pool, as normal, and your Spell Point pool increases by 1.
Lets conclude:
Wisdom is used in offensive spells, the removal and dispel spells, for some static + on spells (which is often only a small factor).It is used for the spell point pool if you don't multiclass.
That's all.
Of course Wisdom is a good thing for every character, but that is not cleric specific, and the cleric is already so MAD, that it is not really worth taking Wisdom.
Sure you can do a Wisdom-based fullcaster cleric, with having a few spells per day you are running out very fast and even less channel heals, and have to rely on cantrips (which are weak), so you will outperformed by almost every other character.
I am not saying Wisdom is useless, but it is not so important for the MAD cleric as Strength, Charisma and Constitution, and probably Dexterity.
Director of Game Design
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Hey there folks,
I think we see the problem here as it is one that is shared by most casters that have no reason to care about the spell DC.
This is something we will look into and make some corrections. Thanks for the feedback, but since this seems to be going around in circles now, I think it has served its purpose.
This thread is closed.