Interesting and ironic to see that In ‘Faiths of Golarion’, one of the last PF1 products, that some love has been directed towards a cleric archetype – the Divine Paragon.
When this archetype came out, it largely struck me as “MEH!” because in many cases the domain powers it traded out were being replaced largely by boons that were underpowered and/or coming into effect too late to be level appropriate. Too many of the deities had limp boons so it wasn’t worth it as an archetype.
In this book, the Divine Paragon (and clerics as a whole to a lesser degree) gets a bit of indirect love because the boons and bonus spells gained by worshipping many of the deities mentioned are actually pretty good – thus making the archetype worthwhile.
The book for me really starts to grasp the whole point of a cleric worshipping a deity… clerics of different deities really should be quite fundamentally different from each other not only in terms of roleplay but also in terms of the available class mechanic. Too many times in PF1, clerics of different deities don’t play out differently in actual gameplay.
Here’s a few examples AON link:
1) Chaldira
Solid domains, a good set of Sentinel boons and a couple of useful low level bonus spells for clerics in general (Mage Hand, Expeditious Retreat).
2) Grandmother Spider
Solid domains, great Exalted boons (including more spells) and a selection of useful low level spells - Silent Image, Ventriloquism, Spider Climb, Web
3) Hei Feng
Solid domains, OK boons (would probably require Diverse Obedience to optimise). However getting Gust of Wind, Lightning Bolt and Hydraulic Push as bonus spells would also mean that any cleric could benefit from worship.
4) Kazutal
Solid domains, great Exalted boons and Beast Shape I-III as bonus spells
5) Nivi Rhombodazzle
Solid domains, great Exalted boons and the breaking of one of the sacred PF1 laws……”A cleric shall not gain access to Greater Invisibility!”
6) Shizuru
Solid domains and a nice set of bonus spells – Tail Strike, Colour Spray (again breaking one of the PF1 laws!), Scorching Ray, Unbearable Brightness, Prismatic Spray. The boons aren’t overall worth it which makes more suitable for general cleric worship rather than the Divine Paragon path.
7) Tsukiyo
Solid domains (Madness for a LG deity yes please!), great Evangelist boons (selective AOE Vision of Madness…. Errrrrm Oh yes!) and a few moderately useful bonus spells.
Kind of bizarre that one of the last books and one dealing with some of the minor/lesser known deities ends up providing some half decent options for a cleric archetype……something that in itself has been IMO sorely lacking in the lifespan of PF1!
Kind of bizarre that one of the last books and one dealing with some of the minor/lesser known deities ends up providing some half decent options for a cleric archetype……something that in itself has been IMO sorely lacking in the lifespan of PF1!
Not actually that surprising - in the Shifter fix-thread they basically admitted that they mostly stopped content editing book to focus on PF2. That means writers apparently have a lot more freedom. Planar Adventures has feats that are explicitly magical, Martial Arts Handbook allows equal cost enchantments for unarmed strikes, we're getting more archetypes that switch around spellcaster's key ability scores... granting signature arcane spells to Clerics fits right in.
It's also possible that the creation of the more modular approach to classes in PF2 (everyone gets selectable class feature à la rage powers) made more writers realize that having more selectable class features that allows characters of the same class to be notably different (something I call Character Shaping Choices, see below) is a good thing.
Such character shaping choices come in three forms:
1) Daily: Mostly spell preparation, Shaman's Wandering Spirit/Hexes, and the Medium's spirit.
2) On levelup: Spells known, rage powers, etc., doesn't have to be every level up
3) One time: Domains, bloodline etc., mostly done at first level
I don't count feats, skills, and equipment because it should be obvious that options that literally every class can take have to be relatively weak (otherwise almost every character would take them, cf. Leadership for what happens when this rule is broken). I also don't count choices that don't affect playstyle and only grant minor numeric bonuses, such as a Fighter's weapon training.
Archetypes are technically one time choices as well, if these are included depends on what we want to compare.
Naturally, the more choices you can make, the more you can (in general) shape your character. Also, the more often you can make choices, the more flexibility the character can have. Daily choices don't add power over on levelup choices, but they add a lot of flexibility.
The following classes are generally accepted to be the weakest ones in Pathfinder: Fighter, Brawler, Rogue, Cavalier, Samurai, Gunslinger, Swashbuckler, Monk.
Apart from the Rogue *, you'll notice that none of these classes have a daily or on levelup choice **. Cavalier and Samurai have a one time choice at first level, while the others don't get to make any character shaping choices at all. It's also noteworthy that there are no classes lacking daily or on-levelup choices that are generally considered good.
Now, choices don't automatically contain strong options (few rogue talents are better than feats), some fixed class features are fairly powerful as well (like rage), and there are options that offer choices to make on the fly, like wildshape or a Summoner's SLA (not character shaping by definition, but can be very powerful). But if you look at both power level and flexibility, there's almost no getting around having class features that allow character shaping choices fairly often.
*) Whoever thought that a pure martial with medium BAB, no accuracy increasing abilities, d8 HD, and the worst possible saves a PC class can have was a good idea?
**) Fighter got on levelup choices with AAT and AWT, while Monk got on levelup choices with UnMonk's Ki Powers and Style Strikes.
While Cleric is lacking neither power or versatility, free access to everything can lead to sameness.