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They are a multiclass Monk/Fighter/Paladin.
Was that supposed to be a trick question?
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They are a multiclass Monk/Fighter/Paladin.
Was that supposed to be a trick question?
A pala-monk-ter? I think we're wandering into Man-Bear-Pig territory. ;)
Just a bit.
There were specific multiclass builds that gained their own monikers, and if that is one I'd probably call it that, but otherwise just calling it a multiclass character makes sense to me.
Even when I made an Inquisitor and I wanted him to be good at fighting, 4 levels of fighter I took or another +20 BAB class to get that fourth attack only BAB classes had without haste and such.
Why did you want him to be good at fighting?
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A Magus is a description of a mechanic. Prior to their release as a class, people were not calling anyone magus. A Fighter/Wizard is no Magus. You need to have levels in the Magus class to be a Magus.
An archer is a concept. Prior to the release of the archetype, archer was used and even after the release of the archetype the term archer describes a concept and not someone with the archer archetype.
The only questions is: Is Warpriest a class or a concept to you? It's a concept to Krispy, it's a class to Temperans. Both positions are fine.
Even when I made an Inquisitor and I wanted him to be good at fighting, 4 levels of fighter I took or another +20 BAB class to get that fourth attack only BAB classes had without haste and such.Why did you want him to be good at fighting?
Because mechanically speaking the extra attack was worth more than the last 4 levels of Inquisitor abilities. It was pretty rare that anyone played a base martial class all the way up save for perhaps a barbarian, though many barbarians did MC into fighter for weapon specialization.
I always started off with a concept, then figured out a class or a combination of classes to make it happen.
If I wanted to make some unhittable warrior type that didn't wear armor, I'd stack monk, swashbuckler or duellist, and build up his dex so he was stacking multiple stats to boost his AC.
If I wanted some super invincible guy who wanted to be practically immune to magic, I'd make an inquisitor, monk, and paladin MC, so I could get Fort save ability like evasion and invasion with paladin charisma bonus to saves.
I usually like to get GISH martial classes 4 levels of fighter for weapon specialization and the 4th attack. All your best buffs were lower level and you could get them fine without getting max level GISH class.
Concept supersedes class. So you mix the classes you need to make the most powerful character you can that fits your concept. Rarely did anyone play straight martials all the way up. They almost always dipped and fighter was one of the favored dips. 4 levels of fighters for specialization, usually a low cost investment for access to some nice fighter feats and weapon spec.
Nature of building powerful concepts in PF1.
A Magus is a description of a mechanic. Prior to their release as a class, people were not calling anyone magus. A Fighter/Wizard is no Magus. You need to have levels in the Magus class to be a Magus.
An archer is a concept. Prior to the release of the archetype, archer was used and even after the release of the archetype the term archer describes a concept and not someone with the archer archetype.The only questions is: Is Warpriest a class or a concept to you? It's a concept to Krispy, it's a class to Temperans. Both positions are fine.
Still doesn't change the fact people were making war priest concepts before the class existed. The war priest is not necessary to play a warrior priest aka war priest concept.
Plenty of people did it for decades before there was even a class named war priest. I made quite a few fighter/priests who were quite good at fighting combining with buff spells that would likely have killed a war priest in a fight using the very ability to fight that a war priest supposedly does better.
So who is the better war priest? The cleric with a few fighter levels or the war priest class? Which method in PF1 can be built into a more powerful warrior priest? I'd bet money on the cleric with fighter levels myself, but I'd give it a shot to see.
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A Magus is a description of a mechanic. Prior to their release as a class, people were not calling anyone magus. A Fighter/Wizard is no Magus. You need to have levels in the Magus class to be a Magus.
An archer is a concept. Prior to the release of the archetype, archer was used and even after the release of the archetype the term archer describes a concept and not someone with the archer archetype.The only questions is: Is Warpriest a class or a concept to you? It's a concept to Krispy, it's a class to Temperans. Both positions are fine.
Still doesn't change the fact people were making war priest concepts before the class existed. The war priest is not necessary to play a warrior priest aka war priest concept.
Plenty of people did it for decades before there was even a class named war priest. I made quite a few fighter/priests who were quite good at fighting combining with buff spells that would likely have killed a war priest in a fight using the very ability to fight that a war priest supposedly does better.
So who is the better war priest? The cleric with a few fighter levels or the war priest class? Which method in PF1 can be built into a more powerful warrior priest? I'd bet money on the cleric with fighter levels myself, but I'd give it a shot to see.
Clearly. Before the release of PF1 Warpriest, a Warpriest was just a Cleric/martial (Cleric/Fighter being the most common one). Then, the Warpriest arrived. So, there is both a concept for the term Warpriest and a class. The difficulty is: What are people referring to when they speak of warpriest?
There's another point: PF2 Warpriest does quite a bad job at representing the warpriest concept. As a result, you can say that: A Warpriest is no warpriest!
I think all of you are right. I would expect a player who never played D&D before PF2 to consider Warpriest as a class before a concept and an old player of previous versions to consider a warpriest as a concept before a class.
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There's another point: PF2 Warpriest does quite a bad job at representing the warpriest concept. As a result, you can say that: A Warpriest is no warpriest!
I mean, that's clearly debatable ;)
As a more combat oriented priest than the comparable Cloistered Cleric, its obviously and literally more of a 'War' Priest.
It only suffers in that role compared to Martial Characters, which is a comparison that is being pushed on it - not one it was designed to stand up to.
Remember, it was designed relative to other class options for the Cleric and not to stand up to a fighter.
Its like if there were a 'War Wizard' school for Wizards that traded Arcane Thesis for Armor and Weapon proficiencies. It'd clearly be more of a Warrior Wizard than any other Wizard, which is the point implied by the name.
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I mean, that's clearly debatable ;)
As a more combat oriented priest than the comparable Cloistered Cleric, its obviously and literally more of a 'War' Priest.
It only suffers in that role compared to Martial Characters, which is a comparison that is being pushed on it - not one it was designed to stand up to.
Remember, it was designed relative to other class options for the Cleric and not to stand up to a fighter.
Its like if there were a 'War Wizard' school for Wizards that traded Arcane Thesis for Armor and Weapon proficiencies. It'd clearly be more of a Warrior Wizard than any other Wizard, which is the point implied by the name.
If I were to argue I'd say that the "Warpriest" more or less is the Cleric of old while the "Cloistered Cleric" actually is a priest...
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I mean, that's clearly debatable ;)
There's another point: PF2 Warpriest does quite a bad job at representing the warpriest concept. As a result, you can say that: A Warpriest is no warpriest!
It's debatable.
But the current Warpriest doesn't embody well the martial part of the warpriest. It's basically a Cloistered Cleric with more armor proficiencies. That doesn't sound like PF1 Warpriest or a Fighter/Cleric multiclassed character who were not dabbling in weapon mastery.The playtest Magus has a better balance between spellcasting and martial proficiencies, and I think it's this kind of character that a Warpriest should be, trading the Arcane list for the Divine one.
The playtest Magus has a better balance between spellcasting and martial proficiencies, and I think it's this kind of character that a Warpriest should be, trading the Arcane list for the Divine one.
I think that if Inquisitor shows up someday, that's the space it will occupy.
That said, one of the problems with 2E is that its questionable if that is even necessary - you can build a fantastic 'divine hunter' inquisitor analogue from the Ranger chassis with Cleric or Divine Sorcerer multiclassing... yeah, you don't have Bane or Judgement, but those are just mechanics. And one's that are thematically just similar to a divine-bent Hunt Prey, by 2E standards.
We'll see though - ultimately, the fact is that everyone can have a opinion on what a warpriest 'should be', but that doesn't give anyone the right to tell someone else their character isn't a (conceptual) warpriest (in any context that isn't mechanics - it could not be a literal, cleric archetype warpriest) if they've build a character that fits that concept.
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Clearly. Before the release of PF1 Warpriest, a Warpriest was just a Cleric/martial (Cleric/Fighter being the most common one). Then, the Warpriest arrived. So, there is both a concept for the term Warpriest and a class. The difficulty is: What are people referring to when they speak of warpriest?Before there was a class for warpriest, I just called that concept Cleric with high strength and heavy armor prof. That used to work too.
I think a lot of this is just the poor decision to name the cleric doctrine after an old class.
Yeah. Temple Knight is right there, and even the church of Nethys has them hanging around.
Yeah, that's why my "I call things what they are" stance is going to quickly become impractical long term, but it'll still be how I see the game.
Edit: I expect with the elimination of Player's Companions, and archetypes now class agnostic, it'll go a bit further though.
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The OP of this thread raised concern primarily about the accuracy of casters with spell attack rolls, worried that their party’s wizard was considering switching characters to be a fighter because the wizard could go through an entire encounter without hitting and thing and the cleric focused on healing, leaving the fighting to the barbarian and the ranger.
The poster was particularly concerned with the accuracy of casters and asked for advice about how to be more successful being accurate as a caster.
As is often the case in threads like this, people try to chime in with the exact kind of advice the OP is asking for, and then others begin responding that casters shouldn’t have to do these things to be successful and that any type of caster should be able to have the kind of success that a fighter has fighting single targets, and then we almost always end up discussing how full casters should be able to do x,y,z other things than cast spells.
I think there is still a lot of general resentment from players that love the appearance of class flexibility in PF1 that are growing impatient with the development of PF2, because certain proficiencies are going to remain locked behind initial class selection, and the work arounds for issues that MC characters in particular, but even single class focused casters have limits placed on their accuracy with certain options, largely to avoid the ways in which having 10 different ways to equalize the situation, and then half of those options can stack on top of each other.
Everything about how these bonuses are better placed on full martial characters than hybrid casters was just as true in PF1, which is why a martial with a caster to support them has always been one of the most dangerous enemies in the game. In PF1, it was a lot easier for most of this support to come before combat, because durations were fairly lengthy, and thus casters had to do less in combat support casting.
The problem with that is that it heavily encouraged a 1 to 2 encounter work day with high level parties teleporting, fully buffed, on top of enemies caught off guard, or else having the same thing happen in reverse to the party.
As GMs, there is a whole lot that can be done, based upon the play style of the table to either turn up the extent to which magic can have a massive impact on the game, between home brewing options for items that boost spells, or using dual class or free archetype variants.
As players, your options are much more limited, and you really do need to lean into learning how powerful your caster can be if you use the options the game has available before calling for massive changes to that system that will not interact well with those options.
Casters get limited numbers of spells and only using spell slots to cast spells and expecting that to be the bulk of your power as a caster is INCREDIBLY unsatisfying for most players, especially at low levels. At higher levels, Wizards and Sorcerers can start to get by on their spell slots alone, but many players will have MC’d out of the class pursuing other options early on, and those options end up significantly setting the caster back on what they can accomplish as a caster, in much more subtle ways than you saw in PF1. It is important to help players understand this and to look at things like true strike, and scrolls in early levels to get the most out of your spell slot levels, and how not all cantrips are created equal, to help players get a feel what power levels are possible. Then, I think you are in a much better position to start offering useful feedback for options that might actually be possible, rather than demanding changes that would require massive restructuring of the rules.
Or talk to your GM about why casting is unsatisfying and see if they are interested in changing that structure for your table if you don’t like those options.
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As a more combat oriented priest than the comparable Cloistered Cleric
But it's really not all that more combat oriented. It picks up armor and shields, which may be more or less useful depending on your build (but is also no longer particularly difficult for a CC to grab), but in terms of swinging a weapon it's only actually better than the cloistered cleric from levels 7 to 10. For the rest of the game, the Warpriest isn't actually any better using weapons than their more magical counterpart.
Which leaves their only real unique feature their improved fort saves at 15. Which is definitely nice, but not something I'd really qualify as improving their ability to use weapons (although I suppose it does indirectly).
Honestly there's remarkably little different between the two of them at all for pretty large chunks of the game.
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It picks up armor and shields, which may be more or less useful depending on your build (but is also no longer particularly difficult for a CC to grab), but in terms of swinging a weapon it's only actually better than the cloistered cleric from levels 7 to 10.
Armor, Shields, and Weapons - all of which are quite valid to a martial concept.
A Cloistered Cleric can get access to those, at the cost of significant resources- giving a Warpriest a significant advantage when it comes to those sorts of traits.
Having to wait until level 4 to go into Bastion, or later if you also want armor from Sentinel, is a painful delay if you're wanting to play a Warpriest style character from level 1.
A Warpriest is capable of being fighty from level 1, and picks up weapons at level 3 for no additional investment. If they do want to invest more, they can do so at level 2 (and get more out of it, potentially, by going Sentinel if they don't qualify for Champion).
That may not hit your personal bar for being a powerful choice, but its a very long way from not being a meaningful advantage.
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@Unicore - thanks for a great rundown of the more relevant issues regarding the OP’s point, and how the issues are situated. I understand a lot more of what is perceived to be at stake, and what *actually* might be at stake.
I want to comment on this:
It is important to help players understand this and to look at things like true strike, and scrolls in early levels to get the most out of your spell slot levels, and how not all cantrips are created equal, to help players get a feel what power levels are possible.
I just looked at true strike again, and after hearing about it endlessly with regard to spellcasters and magus. It is a first level spell, restricted to the arcane and occult traditions, that uses 1 action. Given what it does, why is it restricted to those traditions, and why is it a 1st level spell - given its apparent necessary ubiquity, it seems like a “one true choice” for any caster. Seems like it should be a feat or a focus spell with some limitations baked in. Or excised from the game. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say.
On top of this, your point about scrolls also gives me pause - I never really engaged with scrolls (or potions) in PF1 because a) they were rare to come across in the games I played, and b) I could never understand how their costs were calculated so was always having to ask someone how it was calculated to buy them, and then really didn’t want to because c) I was wary of didn’t like the “magic shoppe” mentality or the flavour of a cure wand healstick etc. All is my bias, to be clear. My inadequacy, my foibles. I get that.
Now I understand these are all nothing at all to do with the system, or in which purchasing consumables is part and parcel - baked into the construct of Golarion and the baselines for the game. But I would hope that there might be some accommodation for playing casters where this is possible. I guess this is a long winded way of finally arriving at my niggle (yay! Thanks stream of consciousness I chased to stay on track and find what I was bothered by!) it appears to me that you could play martials without recourse to consumables that make your character effective, where it seems to me that casters almost require external investment, as well as an understanding that certain options are almost a must, not even to be effective, but to be complete. Is this at all a fair assessment?
It seems like the whole debate around the warpriest could be summarized and moved passed by saying, "Hey Paizo, people feel like there is not yet a class that provides the true hybrid feel of martial combat ability and divine casting, and if there are going to be 4 spell casters, making one that is divine but mostly martial focused would be cool."
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It picks up armor and shields, which may be more or less useful depending on your build (but is also no longer particularly difficult for a CC to grab), but in terms of swinging a weapon it's only actually better than the cloistered cleric from levels 7 to 10.Armor, Shields, and Weapons - all of which are quite valid to a martial concept.
A Cloistered Cleric can get access to those, at the cost of significant resources- giving a Warpriest a significant advantage when it comes to those sorts of traits.
Having to wait until level 4 to go into Bastion, or later if you also want armor from Sentinel, is a painful delay if you're wanting to play a Warpriest style character from level 1.
A Warpriest is capable of being fighty from level 1, and picks up weapons at level 3 for no additional investment. If they do want to invest more, they can do so at level 2 (and get more out of it, potentially, by going Sentinel if they don't qualify for Champion).
That may not hit your personal bar for being a powerful choice, but its a very long way from not being a meaningful advantage.
Fair points, and well made. I think the problem for me is threefold:
Firstly, it definitely doesn’t hit the bar for powerful choice; and the meaningful advantage is meaningless if I a) am not interested in ever playing a cloistered cleric and b) even if I did, being compared to something fairly poor doesn’t make me feel any better about powerful options I don’t have. I had a girlfriend whose out-there father used to say “comparison is the death of creativity”. I never understood that comment until this moment. Ulp, no, it’s gone, moment has passed. Not sure what it means again. Dangit. Not sure what I mean now except I feel the warpriest feels pretty lacklustre.
Secondly, being able to be a warpriest (small w) because you can pick up Archetypes/dedications/feats to enable you to be one also feels convoluted. I get it, this edition *is* providing conceptual choice, but its almost like it doesn’t offer enough meaningful choices that are in and of themself thematically complete. You almost have to follow a labyrinthine path over levels to just reach a thematic point, even before it helps you realise the conceptual framework. Maybe that really works for those who like evolution over time or apprentice/journeyman/master story arcs, but for me, telling me I can get to where I want to be at 4th level (or reading in the playtest aftermath blogpost that they are going to give Magus “useful thing x” at 7th level) makes me itchy and scratchy. And I don’t like feeling like part of me is chasing another part of me with an axe.
Thirdly, and to entertain the nomenclature wars: unfortunately, there are folks here who have seen classes from PF1 shoehorned in PF2 - the Warpriest has, apparently and, perhaps, only for the moment, been repackaged as a subclass choice for the Cleric; the Vigilante and the Cavalier are now archetypes. Now I’m fairly unfazed by this, none of those were particular favourites of mine, though I did play a few warpriests and homebrewed mountless cavalier to get that commander/sergeant soldier feel. But for those who really liked the concept-as-packaged-by-thematic-mechanics, these former classes are no way near meeting the level of enjoyment/wow factor of their former existence as classes. Which is a really long way of saying that, given any of the points I made in my first two points, there will always be the point at which your points, as well made as they are, aren’t going to ameliorate any of that disappointment.
I just feel that there are proponents of arguments here that fall into two camps “I hate how it is (sometimes with a side of: “and nothing you say will change that)” versus “It’s actually ok, here are the reasons you are wrong for hating it because it’s actually great/makes sense by the paradigm of this edition”.
If we could as a group work a little more to entertain both sides of a given conversation we might have more productive conversations, find solutions, lower the rage and argue less.
In this instance I see what Paizo are trying to do with the mechanics for this edition. I see why they make certain decisions - because they want to give people the options (that if they were old PF1 players they used to have; or if they are new to PF altogether, that will expand their level of choice). All well and good. Sometimes I think they fail old players and new, and I’m incredibly critical. But, I am also endlessly hopeful, in that I think there is a solution. Perhaps not for me. But for some people, who may not have a solution now, but may get one in the future. As for those folks who have no problems with the system, keep on truckin’!
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A Magus is a description of a mechanic. Prior to their release as a class, people were not calling anyone magus. A Fighter/Wizard is no Magus. You need to have levels in the Magus class to be a Magus.
An archer is a concept. Prior to the release of the archetype, archer was used and even after the release of the archetype the term archer describes a concept and not someone with the archer archetype.The only questions is: Is Warpriest a class or a concept to you? It's a concept to Krispy, it's a class to Temperans. Both positions are fine.
Still doesn't change the fact people were making war priest concepts before the class existed. The war priest is not necessary to play a warrior priest aka war priest concept.
Plenty of people did it for decades before there was even a class named war priest. I made quite a few fighter/priests who were quite good at fighting combining with buff spells that would likely have killed a war priest in a fight using the very ability to fight that a war priest supposedly does better.
So who is the better war priest? The cleric with a few fighter levels or the war priest class? Which method in PF1 can be built into a more powerful warrior priest? I'd bet money on the cleric with fighter levels myself, but I'd give it a shot to see.
Clearly. Before the release of PF1 Warpriest, a Warpriest was just a Cleric/martial (Cleric/Fighter being the most common one). Then, the Warpriest arrived. So, there is both a concept for the term Warpriest and a class. The difficulty is: What are people referring to when they speak of warpriest?
There's another point: PF2 Warpriest does quite a bad job at representing the warpriest concept. As a result, you can say that: A Warpriest is no warpriest!
I think all of you are right. I would expect a player who never played D&D before PF2 to consider Warpriest as a class before a concept and an old player of previous versions to consider a warpriest as a concept before a...
No one can quite explain why buffing your warpriest up in PF1 to do battle was worth doing, but buffing your warpriest up with available spells in PF2 is not.
You can make a potent warpriest one of two days.
1. Fighter Cleric MC which eventually gets 6th level heroism. So a few times per day a lvl 20 fighter Cleric MC can buff himself to +40 to attack with five attacks a round. Not sure how this is not a great war priest.
2. Or you can make a war priest with a fighter dedication to pick up some fighter feats eventually buffing yourself to +36 or 27 to hit with up to a 9th level heroism with full 10 lvl casting.
3. You could even make a cloistered cleric, get sentinel dedication for heavier armor, and go full on caster with Legendary casting warpriest.
I figure the best one for pure bash them hard war priest would be the fighter cleric MC warpriest, but the warpriest with fighter MC can do some real nice Channel Smite alpha strikes.
There's ways to make it. You can buff in combat and still attack now without Fervor.
I'm not sure why the above options aren't being looked at as a war priest concept unless someone just wants to play those mechanics.
...A lot of interesting questions...
So the first thing to understand about True Strike, is to take a step back and understand what happened to spell attack roll spells. From the play test to the final PF2 rule set, a lot of things changed about spells and targeting, including the removal of Touch AC, for overall game simplicity. The Vast majority of spells, including a lot of spells in PF1 that are touch spells, moved to targeting saves. I don't especially love the fact that any spells were left to target AC and be spell attack roll spells for reasons I talk about earlier in this thread, but the only ones left are cantrips, a couple of first and second level spells, a couple of divine spells that I don't fully understand why that happened for, and then Disintegrate and Polar Ray. The vast majority of casters can get by without ever casting a spell attack roll targeting spell, and be very effective, even at single target damage, if that is their goal.
Even with Truestrike, disintegrate (any any future spell designed like it) ais not going to be that reliable and effective an every encounter spell for high level casters. Having an attack roll and a very common high save makes it much more of a niche spell, and a fun and scary spell for NPCs to throw at players, without having too great a chance of actually disintegrating them.
A spell like Polar ray has some potential as an every encounter spell, but true strike doesn't give it the same boost because there is nothing gained from getting a critical hit.
A wizard, with a lot of spell slots, can get nasty with heightened shocking grasp, cast from a safe range with spectral hand, and a flanking ally and true strike, because it does double on a crit and has a damage die that can get nasty, especially when cast against target in metal armor, but again, that is a super niche build that has decided to focus on spell attack roll spells. Acid arrow is another good spell to use true strike on when attacking bosses, because it creates on going problems for them.
Otherwise, True strike is not that great of a spell for most casters, except for harm font warpriests that use channel smite, who have to really bend some hoops to get it.
Scrolls are not 100% necessary for casters, but using them can really help players new to PF2 get past the serious problem that can occur if you you start trying to ration your spell slot spell casting, especially for wizards and sorcerers. Wands are really bad for damage spells, but can work offensively for useful low level debuffs, but having 4 to 8 decent attack spell scrolls can probably reinforce your casting potential enough to get you to your next character level, by which time you should be able to easily afford more. Eventually staves are great options as well, but they are much better for the lower level debuffs than your top level attack spells as far as getting the most bang for your buck out of. Scrolls are kind of in a unique space for the blaster caster because you can actually afford to buy ones that are useful at the level you can afford to cast them.
In most adventuring days, past level 7, a wizard should be casting a top level spell and a second to the top level spell, every combat, as well as have plenty of lower level spells to fill in an extra two or three rounds of combat with spell slot spells, and still go 4 or 5 encounters a day. When you start doing this, you will really feel like you are a powerful caster and your allies will fell like they have a powerful ally on their side. Flaming sphere is a really good way to make sure you have a damaging 3rd action every round of combat after the first, but magic missile can be the even more hypercharged way to do it, although you have to get creative to keep it up for 4 to 5 encounters a day.
Clearly. Before the release of PF1 Warpriest, a Warpriest was just a Cleric/martial (Cleric/Fighter being the most common one). Then, the Warpriest arrived. So, there is both a concept for the term Warpriest and a class. The difficulty is: What are people referring to when they speak of warpriest?
There's another point: PF2 Warpriest does quite a bad job at representing the warpriest concept. As a result, you can say that: A Warpriest is no warpriest!
I think all of you are right. I would expect a player who never played D&D before PF2 to consider Warpriest as a class before a concept and an old player of previous versions to consider a...
I think the issue is that its technically more optimal to put Heroism on a Martial character - which is a true statement, and yet another example of a case where the goal isn't actually concept, because if it was, you'd just optimize that concept and not worry about the character not being optimal at its thing.
Because otherwise you're absolutely right. A Warpriest Cleric can absolutely pay a 2 action tax and be swinging just fine, relative to the 'bar' set by the encounter design rules.
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No one can quite explain why buffing your warpriest up in PF1 to do battle was worth doing, but buffing your warpriest up with available spells in PF2 is not.
There are a lot of reasons this worked well in PF1 but not in PF2. The 1E most divine spell lists had many strong self-only personal buffs that couldn't be placed on others. Warpriests specifically had the ability to cast spells on themselves as a swift action allowing them to buff and full attack on the same turn.
In 2E, outside of battle form spells, nearly all buffs spells can apply to allies and martial characters make far better use of accuracy buffs than a caster can. Also, when buffing an ally they are able to make use of the buff sooner than having to wait a full round if the buff was cast on the caster.
It seems like the whole debate around the warpriest could be summarized and moved passed by saying, "Hey Paizo, people feel like there is not yet a class that provides the true hybrid feel of martial combat ability and divine casting, and if there are going to be 4 spell casters, making one that is divine but mostly martial focused would be cool."
Martialmasters said that on page 15. Hasn't seemed to have slowed things down much (quote somewhat edited down to focus on the salient bits).
I want a balanced warpriest. Probably closer to what the magus was in the playtest.
what I'd probably do is take magus base kit, rip out spell strike and keep the font and make channel smite a class feature.
Because that's a warpriest
[There's ways to make it. You can buff in combat and still attack now without Fervor.
I'm not sure why the above options aren't being looked at as a war priest concept unless someone just wants to play those mechanics.
Not fervor specifically, but a single class (without archetyping or MC-ing) that delivers from levels 1-20 the same "smash heads get loot" but with spells is what is being sought, yes.
I personally hope that is not the Inquisitor that winds up sitting in this position. They can be a partial caster class as well, as Krispy suggests, but I'd hope they'd retain their secondary focus on being a skill class, and something else is pure head smashing. A class archetype for the Magus that swaps out arcane for divine and the class abilities as suggested in the post above seems like the simplest way to achieve that.
Besides the Champion, of course.
"Crusader" seems like a nice name for such a class.
* No heavy armor proficiency and delayed martial trained proficiency. (Seriously thou why no heavy armor?)
Heavy Armor proficiency a significant balance point, and likely outside the intended power budget of the class (or any full caster) when the character is spending zero additional resources.
With the rebalance of AC in general, and Heavy Armor granting access to an extra point of AC over all other forms of armor in general, its relative value
increased significantly.
Also, it grants access to Bulwark which is excellent and allows a character to essentially 'dump' Dexterity defensively and invest Attribute Boosts elsewhere.
It is in general harder to get proficiency in Heavy Armor if you don't have it by default, requiring either meeting the strict requirements for Champion or spending a Dedication on it while already having Medium Armor. There's technically the General Feat, but as it doesn't scale its not really a long term viable option.
Heavy Armor in 2E is not equivalent to Heavy Armor in PF1E. Its flat out The Best option, and is accordingly harder to use (see also its high Strength Requirements to avoid significant penalties).
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Or they just kept the same armor proficiencies that clerics had in PF1. That might be it as well.
Or they just kept the same armor proficiencies that clerics had in PF1. That might be it as well.
I mean, that's possible. Maybe even likely.
But as noted by Temperans, 1E Warpriest did have Heavy Armor.
So I pointed out there's also a significant case to be made for balance as well, since Heavy Armor versus the alternatives is actually a significant advantage now, opposed to a mostly cosmetic one.
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It seems like the whole debate around the warpriest could be summarized and moved passed by saying, "Hey Paizo, people feel like there is not yet a class that provides the true hybrid feel of martial combat ability and divine casting, and if there are going to be 4 spell casters, making one that is divine but mostly martial focused would be cool."
Thematically, Inquisitor is right there to fill this role, too. They'd need some Skill stuff as well, but it's very workable in theory.
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Given that they did not feel overly compelled to mimic the PF1 warpriest in any other manner, I'm not convinced they even thought about it too much in terms of armor proficiency.
Note: this is a completely separate discussion from if the warpriest subclass properly evokes the general thematic concept. I think we can all agree that it does not evoke the specific mechanical concept from PF1 without heavy use of multiclassing or archetypes.
Note: this is a completely separate discussion from if the warpriest subclass properly evokes the general thematic concept. I think we can all agree that it does not evoke the specific mechanical concept from PF1 without heavy use of multiclassing or archetypes.
Thats only true if you associate the 1E warpriest with its specific mechanics and rules, as opposed to the general concept and functionality.
I - and I'd bet others - wouldn't have any problem making the exact same character as a 'warpriest' in 1E and 2E, because specific mechanics (Fervor, Sacred Weapon, etc.) aren't what make any character for me. Its the description, backstory, writing, personality, and then finding rules that support those.
Even if I wanted a similar feel, you can pretty easily replicate it if you can gain access to haste, buff yourself with Heroism, and pick up lay on hands, etc. It doesn't have the same labels, but the functionality is available and absolutely every caster can now cast a spell and swing a weapon in the same turn because of the new action system, reducing the need for Swift-action buffing.
Yeah, its not as "good' as 1E warpriest - but my benchmark is the benchmark established by the game and creature creation rules, not the one set by another players character. And by that benchmark, Warpriests work perfectly well.
Doesn't seem too complicated. Hard to draw inferences from only two data points, but at the moment Partial casters seem to get 3 level one class abilities that are approximately or slightly stronger than a feat, another two at levels 7 and 17/19, their casting, and most martial proficiencies (if you count the eidolon as the real one). If most of their class feats lean into either upgrading an aura (to mimic judgement) or abilities that work like Communal sustain, where you spend an action to give another player an action, or abilities that give you a bonus when your teammates perform certain actions, it seems like there's enough room to build out an inquisitor.
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Thats only true if you associate the 1E warpriest with its specific mechanics and rules, as opposed to the general concept and functionality.
Note: this is a completely separate discussion from if the warpriest subclass properly evokes the general thematic concept. I think we can all agree that it does not evoke the specific mechanical concept from PF1 without heavy use of multiclassing or archetypes.
I literally said I was talking about the specific mechanical concepts. As in the same mechanics updated to PF2 terms.
This is why it's hard to take you seriously. You're so eager to tell people "you're wrong" you don't take the time to consider that they might be agreeing with you, or even just not disagreeing.
I literally said I was talking about the specific mechanical concepts. As in the same mechanics updated to PF2 terms.Thats only true if you associate the 1E warpriest with its specific mechanics and rules, as opposed to the general concept and functionality.
Note: this is a completely separate discussion from if the warpriest subclass properly evokes the general thematic concept. I think we can all agree that it does not evoke the specific mechanical concept from PF1 without heavy use of multiclassing or archetypes.
Sorry.
I differentiated between 'specific mechanical concept' (a war/fighter themed cleric who trades spellcasting proficiency for extra martial ability) and 'specific rules and mechanics'.
I may not have been clear, but I absolutely think the Warpriest Cleric accomplishes the 'specific mechanical concept' of being the fighting themed cleric that trades spellcasting for martial ability.
So its a matter of specificity to me? Things like Fervor or Sacred Weapon don't 'make' a warpriest to me at any level.
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Cool, but again I'm not talking about the general thematic concept of fighting themed cleric, but the specific mechanical concepts of the PF1 Warpriest class.
To reiterate, they did not seem to draw much on the specific mechanics of the PF1 warpriest when they made the mechanics of the PF2 warpriest subclass. What you point to more closely mimic the proficiencies of the PF1 cleric, including the eventual trailing off of base attack bonus/weapon proficiency, the medium armor proficiency as opposed to heavy, and the specific saves at 1st and carried through 1-20.
Given that the warpriest subclass so closely seems to mimic what the cleric class did in PF1 as far as proficiencies go, I'm more inclined to think that was what they were trying to style this subclass on, not the other class that it shared a name with.
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Cool, but again I'm not talking about the general thematic concept of fighting themed cleric, but the specific mechanical concepts of the PF1 Warpriest class.
To reiterate, they did not seem to draw much on the specific mechanics of the PF1 warpriest when they made the mechanics of the PF2 warpriest subclass. What you point to more closely mimic the proficiencies of the PF1 cleric, including the eventual trailing off of base attack bonus/weapon proficiency, the medium armor proficiency as opposed to heavy, and the specific saves at 1st and carried through 1-20.
Given that the warpriest subclass so closely seems to mimic what the cleric class did in PF1 as far as proficiencies go, I'm more inclined to think that was what they were trying to style this subclass on, not the other class that it shared a name with.
Disclaimer - I'm not implying you are incorrect or 'wrong'.
Its absolutely true that the mechanics of the 1E warpriest are gone. I'm not arguing that.
I will say that has a lot to do with them being essentially obsolete in 2E, since the action system removes the need for Fervor to cast and fight in the same turn, and buffing in general was seriously rebalanced. Things like self healing are now available to anyone with the investment in a Dedication. Deadly simplicity essentially is the 2E version of their Sacred Weapon mechanic. We're unlikely to see a copy of the 1E Warpriest mechanics for no greater reason than there's really not a lot to do there that wouldn't amount to 'free quickened spells' or similar.
Moreover, the very need for the 1E Warpriest is essentially vanished, as the 1E warpriest was one of the 'hybrid' classes that existed purely to make multiclass style archetypes more viable than they otherwise were... and PF2E made things like the 'Fighter/Cleric' that Warpriest existed to fulfil easier and better than ever before.
Due to how 2E multiclassing works where your primary class gives up zero raw power to pick up significant features of the second class, there's no existential need really to add the more basic hybrid classes at all. A Fighter/Cleric fills that gameplay 'need', even if it doesn't include the specific identifiable mechanics of the Warpriest - which are as noted, essentially obsolete or obtainable otherwise in 2E.
No one can quite explain why buffing your warpriest up in PF1 to do battle was worth doing, but buffing your warpriest up with available spells in PF2 is not.
There are a lot of reasons this worked well in PF1 but not in PF2. The 1E most divine spell lists had many strong self-only personal buffs that couldn't be placed on others. Warpriests specifically had the ability to cast spells on themselves as a swift action allowing them to buff and full attack on the same turn.
In 2E, outside of battle form spells, nearly all buffs spells can apply to allies and martial characters make far better use of accuracy buffs than a caster can. Also, when buffing an ally they are able to make use of the buff sooner than having to wait a full round if the buff was cast on the caster.
The war priest in PF1 cast only up to 6th level spells. A fighter with cleric Archetype can cast up to 8th level spells. So why isn't a fighter with a cleric MC a superior war priest? You can buff yourself up to +40 attack with an MC warpriest. You can even cast heroism on yourself and attack once in the same round. Then go crazy hammering.
And as I stated, a regular cleric/fighter at higher level was stronger than a war priest even without fervor. I made a cleric 16/paladin 4 and she destroyed what a war priest could do in battle.
The claim is specious at best. There is no basis for it other than that specific set of mechanics. I can't even fault it for power gaming because war priests weren't the most powerful priest warrior type. They were ok, but sort of weak if you want to build a full on divine class hammer. My paladin 4/cleric 16 was far more powerful than a war priest concept and better at making war.
It seems odd to make this idea the basis of the idea of a concept you can't supposedly build in PF2, when you very clearly can.
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The action economy does not equate to Fervor.
Fervor allowed a Warpriest to raise a shield, buff themselves, move, and attack. All 1 turn. Meanwhile, PF2 can buff and do 1 other thing.
This is why people complain that casters dont interact with the action economy. Warpriest had one of the best was to interact, which is now gone and not replaced by anything.
There was no raise a shield action in PF1.
What you stated is mechanics, not concept. Every class is limited in a similar fashion unless you takes feats to do otherwise.
It's an argument for the sake of arguing.
I told you how to make a powerful war priest concept using the fighter class and cleric MC which gets you up to Master casting proficiency and 8th level spells. That mechanical build will likely end up being far more powerful than a war priest class if the Magus and Summoner are any indication of how weak Paizo is making additional classes. They seem to have built classes to focus on the core rulebook classes by making classes from additional books weak in terms of damage dealing and overall power level.
Even the APG classes are very weak compared to core classes. Low end damage, overly complicated and limited mechanics (swashbuckler), and generally classes to avoid if you want to be highly effective.
From what I saw the Magus and Summoner, they are continuing this path of creating very limited and weak additional classes. Low end damage dealers with complicated, exploitable mechanics.
My buddy already stated he is never playing a Swashbuckler again after missing two panache checks in the same round by unlucky rolls. He has had his rounds ruined by low panache rolls so many times that he's given up counting. Fighting creatures with reach that just step away to make his opportune riposte fail. He's tired of keeping track of his movement based on whether he gets panache back. He doesn't like activating Reactions when using Tumble Through to get panache and having a feat tax to use it without provoking reactions. His damage isn't near what a fighter or barbarian deal on a consistent basis on top of running into creatures and physical problems immune to precision damage which defeats his heaviest damage. The main ability he loves is Perfect Finisher because it's swinging with advantage at least once a round.
One of my buddies does like the witch primarily because hex cantrips give him something to do, so he can preserve spells for important encounters.
I would hate to see how watered down and weak a war priest class in PF2 would be. Probably end up like the Magus, it's core ability so limited as to be inferior to a fighter or barbarian swinging a weapon with 4 spell casting slots for buffing. It would feel terrible.
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Disclaimer - I'm not implying you are incorrect or 'wrong'.
Its absolutely true that the mechanics of the 1E warpriest are gone. I'm not arguing that.
I will say that has a lot to do with them being essentially obsolete in 2E, since the action system removes the need for Fervor to cast and fight in the same turn, and buffing in general was seriously rebalanced. Things like self healing are now available to anyone with the investment in a Dedication. Deadly simplicity essentially is the 2E version of their Sacred Weapon mechanic. We're unlikely to see a copy of the 1E Warpriest mechanics for no greater reason than there's really not a lot to do there that wouldn't amount to 'free quickened spells' or similar.
Moreover, the very need for the 1E Warpriest is essentially vanished, as the 1E warpriest was one of the 'hybrid' classes that existed purely to make multiclass style archetypes more viable than they otherwise were... and PF2E made things like the 'Fighter/Cleric' that Warpriest existed to fulfil easier and better than ever before.
Due to how 2E multiclassing works where your primary class gives up zero raw power to pick up significant features of the second class, there's no existential need really to add the more basic hybrid classes at all. A Fighter/Cleric fills that gameplay 'need', even if it doesn't include the specific identifiable mechanics of the Warpriest - which are as noted, essentially obsolete or obtainable otherwise in 2E.
I don't think it really matters much their reasoning. I'm not (and haven't been) disputing that you can make a fighting cleric that can fulfil the general War Priest concept. I don't particularly agree that it has been rendered irrelevant, but again that's besides the point, which was that aside from the name, it doesn't really resemble the PF1 version at all.
You could very well be correct about the hows and whys, but if they aren't going to make the effort of bringing over PF1 class mechanics as class feats, I don't really see how naming the subclass "Warpriest" did much for them. Whatever the history of the term, in pathfinder that term is associated with a particular sack of mechanics, and there are perfectly reasonable substitute names they could have gone with instead that do not have that association but still evoke the general concept of "fighting cleric."
For instance, there is a PF1 cleric archetype called "Crusader" that gives up a domain and some spellcasting in favor of better fighting proficiencies. Naming the subclass that would have ruffled far fewer feathers, I think. Edit: Though my preference would still be "Temple Knight" or just "Templar". The former is more general, on the same vagueness as "warpriest".
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The war priest in PF1 cast only up to 6th level spells. A fighter with cleric Archetype can cast up to 8th level spells. So why isn't a fighter with a cleric MC a superior war priest? You can buff yourself up to +40 attack with an MC warpriest. You can even cast heroism on yourself and attack once in the same round. Then go crazy hammering.And as I stated, a regular cleric/fighter at higher level was stronger than a war priest even without fervor. I made a cleric 16/paladin 4 and she destroyed what a war priest could do in battle.
The claim is specious at best. There is no basis for it other than that specific set of mechanics. I can't even fault it for power gaming because war priests weren't the most powerful priest warrior type. They were ok, but sort of weak if you want to build a full on divine class hammer. My paladin 4/cleric 16 was far more powerful than a war priest concept and better at making war.
It seems odd to make this idea the basis of the idea of a concept you can't supposedly build in PF2, when you very clearly can.
Only getting 6th level spells matters less when spell scale by caster level, not just spell level and they aren't your main form of attack. Comparing spell levels across editions is very silly when 2E spells are very toned down from 1E spells (for good reason.)
I'm not going to scroll back through this 500 post thread to find where you statted your cleric paladin that "destroyed" warpriests but I'm guessing its because you had 16 levels in a full caster class and got to add you Cha to attacks and saves. It doesn't even matter if some divine multiclass build could out-math warpriests in some situations because warpriests were a strong class that played well and fulfilled the idea of a divine caster / martial hybrid as they were calling on blessings and boons and smacking face hard doing both parts more frequently than any other class could.
The 2E warpriest falls flat to some people (including myself) because 2e is typically more challenging with tighter math that the warpriest can't seem to catch up to. I would love to make a warpriest of Gorum slapping massive Channel Smite greatswords around but the character ends up too fragile, frequently missing, and still doesn't keep up with martials even on big turns. Going for Fighter with cleric multiclass feels like 90% fighter especially early on where you have basically no spells. It gets no divine powers other than spells and it gets very few of those. You can build the concept, it just feels very weak or that it doesn't actually fit well.
Maybe it's not a good idea to give power back to the Cleric, but I kind of wonder what the spectrum of classes would look like if it still had the general design of the playtest, where it was essentially Cloistered but with Medium armor (like PF1 Cleric). The story told about it almost suggests what amounted to a last-minute balance change from the playtest Cleric being seen as too powerful (which likely had more to do with Divine Font being 3+CHA): separating the armor and spellcasting proficiencies, throwing in a single extra martial proficiency, slapping on a PF1 archetype name and the name of an entire class (!) and calling it a day. I've heard...somewhere, that there was an element of players wanting a more "White Mage" option, but I don't know how true that is. Maybe it was a question on the parts of the playtest response I didn't get to. But given that Druids didn't turn out to bust the game open (but were still more endowed than Cloistered Clerics overall), I dunno, the step backwards in spellcasting proficiency for Temple Knights without giving more than catch-up at the highest levels feels as reactionary as picking the Warpriest name for them, and I don't think just taking away the default Medium armor on Cloistered Clerics makes for a super compelling White Mage. Maybe not entirely thought-through.
Generally, with how harsh the PF2 balance environment seems to be, I don't know how valuable it is to hang on to some of these proficiency differences. Does it make sense at this point for most casters not to be able to wear basic leather armor by default? It's been pointed out several times that Wizards being literally the only class to lack at least all simple weapons just feels like bullying. These are pretty simple changes to make, and there are already homebrew rules which adjust things here and there. Feels like a mix of some sacred cows being kept in and being unable to properly account for the fallout of several core mechanics and all of the core math being changed or removed.
For the record, I'm happy that the game turned out as well as it did given how turbulent the playtest was, and I still find that a concept reached through any other mechanical means is as sweet. But I also don't think Temple Knight stands the test of time as far as design goes, even without the mechanical legacy it ignores, and am really curious to see how commonly homebrew is adopted and/or what the game would look like with some concessions to the softer balance of earlier versions.