I made a cleric archetype, and just wanted some thoughts on it:
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Faith Guarded
Armor Proficiency
A faith guarded is not proficient with any kind of armor or shield. This alters the cleric’s armor proficiencies.
Faith’s Shield
At first level, a faith guarded makes a vow to her deity to be protected solely by her faith. She gains a bonus to her AC equal to her wisdom modifier (max ½ level). She loses this bonus if she ever wears armor or uses a shield.
Diminished Channel
A faith guarded cleric gains additional channel energy dice every three levels instead of every two. She stills gains channel energy at first level. This alters channel energy.
Diminished Spellcasting
A faith guarded receives one fewer spell slot at each spell level. If this causes her to receive no spells of a spell level, she may only cast spells of that level (excluding domain spells) if she has bonus spells.
Spontaneous Casting
A faith guarded does not gain the ability to spontaneously cast cure or inflict spells by sacrificing prepared spells. She insteads chooses a transmutation spell at each spell level that she can cast spontaneously by sacrificing a spell of equal or higher level. As an added limitation, she may only choose spells that affect her and/or her allies. She may replace any one spell she has previously chosen at each level where she achieves a new level of spells. She must still provide all components for the spells selected. This alters spontaneous casting.
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Please let me know what you think!
Losing your proficiencies should probably be enough of a trade to get the wisdom to AC. You might consider making that bonus typed, for examples an armor, sacred/profane, or shield bonus.
Limiting channel like that’s is “ok”, but also sometimes confusing. It might be clearer to just say something like you ”trade out the channel dice gained at levels 3,9 and 15.
I think this would be a dificult archetype to play, especially at low levels.
Clerics often play like martials at low levels, and like casters at high levels.
You've taken away armour proficiencies at low levels, and they don't get decent WIS to AC unti mid level, so they're extremely fragile at early levels.
Then if you try to play more like a caster you have to deal with diminished spell-casting.
I'm really struggling to see how you'd play this levels 1 - 7. I think you're losing too much. Maybe instead of diminished spell-casting you only get one domain? This lets this be a dedicated caster cleric at least. Thoughts?
Grim I'm afraid.....
Gives up too much for what it gets.... ironically this puts your one in good company with 90% of cleric archetypes!!
Alright, I've here's a revision:
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Faith Guarded
Armor Proficiency
A faith guarded is not proficient with any kind of armor or shield. This alters the cleric’s armor proficiencies.
Faith’s Shield
At first level, a faith guarded makes a vow to her deity to be protected solely by her faith. She gains an armor bonus to her AC equal to her wisdom modifier (max 3 + 1/2 level). She loses this bonus if she ever wears armor or uses a shield.
Diminished Channel
A faith guarded cleric does not gain additional channel dice at third, ninth, and fifteenth level. This alters channel energy.
Diminished Spellcasting
A faith guarded receives one fewer spell slot at each spell level. If this causes her to receive no spells of a spell level, she may only cast spells of that level (excluding domain spells) if she has bonus spells.
Spontaneous Casting
A faith guarded does not gain the ability to spontaneously cast cure or inflict spells by sacrificing prepared spells. She instead chooses a transmutation spell at each spell level that she can cast spontaneously by sacrificing a spell of equal or higher level. As an added limitation, she may only choose spells that affect her and/or her allies. She may replace any one spell she has previously chosen at each level where she achieves a new level of spells. She must still provide all components for the spells selected. This alters spontaneous casting.
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Changes:
Made channel change simpler.
Made faith's shield maximum 3 + 1/2 class level instead of 1/2.
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Yeah I think losing the diminished spell-casting would make this viable.
You're getting a different list of spontaneous spells - one that you cak customise. This is probably a slight upgrade, but the dimished channeling makes up for that.
You're losing Armour, but gaining WIS to AC. This is basically a side-grade as it saves you some money, but makes you much more fragile at low levels (when it matters).
All of this seems fairly balanced so far, and encourages you to be more of a caster.
Then you get diminished spell-casting, which is a huge nerf, and really makes it hard to work out what niche this character would fill. I think you don't need this. The archetype might be slightly more powerful than the base cleric without diminished casting, but it's not likely to be enough difference for people to pick this over others unless it fits their concept anyway (and I'm not sure it IS more powerful).
Alright, thanks for all the feedback!
FWIW here is my version of what the Ecclesitheurge SHOULD have been, since it seems similar to what you're aiming for.... instead of the half baked, just-about viable archetype that we got...
Eschewing physical armour for protection via the strength of his faith, an ecclesitheurge focuses on the miracles his deity bestows and the breadth of that deity’s dominion.
Weapon and Armour Proficiency
An ecclesitheurge is proficient with the club, dagger, light crossbow, and quarterstaff, but he’s not proficient with any type of armour or shield. This replaces the cleric’s weapon and armour proficiencies.
Ecclesitheurge’s Vow
At 1st level, an ecclesitheurge makes a vow to his deity to be protected solely by his faith, not by armour or shields. An ecclesitheurge who wears armour or uses a shield is unable to use his blessing of the faithful ability, use cleric domain powers, or cast cleric spells.
Bonded Holy Symbol (Su)
At 3rd level, an ecclesitheurge forms a powerful bond with a holy symbol of his deity, which functions identically to a wizard’s bonded object.
Channel energy
The ecclesitheurge does not gain the channel energy ability
Blessing of the Faithful (Su)
As a standard action, the ecclesitheurge can bless one ally within close range (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels). A blessed ally gains a +2 sacred or profane bonus (depending on whether the ecclesitheurge channels positive or negative energy) on attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, or saving throws or to AC until the ecclesitheurge’s next turn. If the ecclesitheurge uses the ability on themselves, the duration is ½ class level (minimum 1). The ability may be used 3+ WIS modifier per day.
Domain Mastery
An ecclesitheurge does not get a bonus domain spell slot for each spellcasting level. Instead starting at 1st level the ecclesitheurge, can each day when he prepares spells, select any 2 spells from their deity’s domains for each corresponding level of spell that he can cast and prepare them in their normal spell slots. In addition, each day he can select any 2 1st level domain abilities, and if at the appropriate class level, any 2 higher level domain abilities. This ability alters the normal domain ability.