Hi,
I'm building a for my first PF2e character, a Leshy Cloistered Cleric of Pharasma. Love the system but I'm a bit overwhelmed by the options at the moment. I've noticed many of the Cleric feats are oriented around either war priest, healing, or harm blasting, so I'm wondering what I should take if I'm looking to focus on spells
I have poor charisma (12, aiming to improve it as part of my character arc), so I am to use Medicine for primary healing. Since I get Phantasmal Killer, I figured I could be a debuffer with Intimidate and other fear spells.
I realize archetypes crack this wide open, opening up an ocean of other feats. Druid archetype? I see you can get an impressive amount of spell slots from taking the 3 casting feats for a caster. I won't have the stats for Champion archetype until level 10, so that's out.
And then there's domains, I understand I'll want around 3 to get max focus pool? I've started out with Death to be a health battery.
Also any general cleric advice or anecdotes are welcome.
Hi Overclockworked,
The first thing you need to know is that PF2 Cleric's are healers (I put aside Warpriests and Harm builds as it doesn't look to be your focus). Clerics obviously cast spells and are good at it but if you don't want to focus on healing then Cleric may not be the best choice for you. Their main class feature is their Font (Healing Font in your case).
So, my first question will be: Do you want to play a healer with good spell abilities or do you want to play a character with good spell ability and healing on the side? Because in the second case, Sorcerer is definitely a far better choice.
Welcome to PF2. For some advice: don't stress too much about optimization. Your base class handles most of that for you with being a full divine caster. If you've maxed wisdom, you'll be able to cast spells offensively just as well as anyone else. Your 12 charisma will give you two top level heals per day -- probably for emergencies especially if you're leaning into medicine for out of combat healing. Nothing stops you from preparing additional heals too.
Spell choice will be the biggest thing to drive your build (probably more than feats). The divine list isn't super diverse, but you do have some decent options to do what you're trying to do with Fear, Agonizing Despair, and Phantasmal Killer (thanks to Pharasma). Calm Emotiions is also quite strong as a debuff if you have good initiative (clerics generally do with high initiative) and if you keep it in your top slot.
Those all focus on Will saves, so you'll want some backup spells known to target other saves if you want to be more of a debuffer. Concordant Choir is a very flexible variable action sonic damage spell which targets fortitude. If you can't use that spell or want to restrict yourself to Core, Sound Burst also works. It's not sexy, but until your party gets striking runes, Magic Weapon is probably the biggest heavy hitter especially if you're going against something immune to mind affecting and not undead.
At 1st level: Fear and Magic Weapon + 2 Heal spells is a pretty decent arsenal to bring.
As a cloistered cleric, you're probably going to be a little easier to hit so may want to stay at range. Death's Call may not see quite as much value for you since you need to be within 20 feet. That said, of Pharasma's domain that's a pretty strong pick. You may want to look at grabbing Expanded Domain Initiate at level 4 and pick up the Time Domain. The focus spell is a very powerful reaction (something you probably lack) which will help you maximize your heal spells. It's sort of another way to achieve what you were trying to do with Death's Call.
Otherwise, I'd definitely recommend looking at some archetypes. Don't be afraid to diversify. Rogue Dedication can be a simple addition that'll make it easier for you to wear armor, get you extra skill trainings, and additional skill feats. Druid can work if you want additional spells. If you tell us more about your concept and what you want to do, we may be able to help suggest others.
How did I miss sound burst on my cleric and bard? It seems so much better than concordant choir.
Bigdaddyjug wrote: How did I miss sound burst on my cleric and bard? It seems so much better than concordant choir. I personally think Concordant Choir is better for a few reasons:
1) Flexibility. 1, 2, or 3 action casts in a single spell is situationally useful.
2) Consistency. 4d4 (AVG 10) vs. 2d10 (AVG 11) is mostly equivalent on average but also has a better floor. I personally prefer more smaller dice even if the upper limit is lower (16 vs 20) since you're probably multiplying that by multiply opponents anyway.
3) No deafened effect. This can be valuable if you're trying to follow up with spells like Command or any other Sonic or Auditory ability.
But ultimately they sit in a repertoire about the same. Given the flexibility on Concordant Choir it's probably stronger a signature spell for a spontaneous caster.
SuperBidi wrote: Hi Overclockworked,
The first thing you need to know...
Yeah I definitely got the idea that Cloisters are healing focused based on the font.
I'm fine being a healer, I just want to have a secondary function (debuffing) because I recognize I'm handicapping myself with 12 charisma. We'll fix it over play, but for now I only have the 2 healing slots, Medicine skill, and like Spirit Link.
I'd be fine with Harm build being a secondary function as well, but Pharasma is Heal only so I figured I'd be bad at that as well. I did notice Cast Down, which was quite tempting!
cavernshark wrote: Welcome to PF2. For some advice: don't stress too much about optimization. Thank you for this in depth reply! I'll be sure to prep those spells as they become available, especially Concordant Choir (all sources are available)
I recognize Death's Call is pretty risky, but we have a great front line so I was hoping I could get away with it anyway haha. It does seem like Pharasma doesn't have optimal domains, but some of them seem decent. I'll pick up Time for sure.
The concept is pretty close to the mechanical stuff, a Fungal Leshy Cleric of Pharasma, with the Empty Whispers background. We're in Sigil, but I came from the Feywild. My creator was a druid who is also in Sigil, which is how I was justifying the druid archetype. My current personal arc is revolving around me learning empathy and mortal ways, since as a Leshy I have a very different view on life and death. In this homebrew Sigil we have Pharasmins accompany adventurers to make sure their souls (and equipment) don't get snatched by evil powers while adventuring.
I was initially wary of multiclassing into another spellcaster since its been so bad historically, but it seems like PF2e has largely fixed that problem. The problem now is parsing all the spell lists to see which one would be good, since we now have Occult. Druid does seem thematic, maybe Leaf Order? How is the Primal list, would it overlap much with Divine?
Thanks again, amazing input!
Okay, so a few options.
The Blessed One dedication would give you lay on hands. This would help offset your slightly lower divine font and also give you a secondary use for your focus point when Death domain isn't relevant or prudent. You could just focus on cleric feats after that or keep boosting your lay on hands.
The Medic archetype can help boost your focus on non-spell healing, boosting your medicine proficiency and offering faster ways to get people up with Battle Medicine. This leaves you more flexibility to choose non-support spells. A nice feature of this archetype is that you can be done with it and move into other archetypes quite quickly since it has Skill feats.
Soul Warden is a specific archetype for Pharasmins. It'll focus heavily on stopping undead (which you're probably already pretty good at without the archetype) but it might be of interest.
For Druid, there will only be a bit of overlap with your Divine list -- mostly in the restorative side of things. You'll gain access to a lot of useful utility. For example, you could use the level 2 primal spell to cast heightened Longstrider giving you a significant movement speed boost all day. The divine list doesn't really give you ways to solve 'worldly' problems often, but primal gives you that even if you only have one spell per slot until you pick up the later feats.
For example:
Level 1 -
Gust of Wind: always relevant to blow away hazards or flying creatures
Pest Form: useful scouting utility
Jump: Quick maneuver or bypass hazard
Level 2 -
Longstrider: 8 hours of a good movement speed buff
Enlarge: Useful for some front liners (talk to your party)
Loose Time's Arrow: Mini haste for a round for the party
Spider Climb: Climb speeds can get you and your party around hazards
Level 3 -
Earthbind: Bring flying creatures down for melee to engage
Haste/Slow: Amazing spells
Wall of Thorns: Helps control the battlefield
As a bonus, it's wisdom based for you so your DC's won't be terrible even as the spell levels lag behind. You could use the cantrips granted to pick up some additional attack cantrips that Divine lacks (Electric Arc, Scatter Scree, Produce Flame, Ray of Frost, etc) to let you target reflex and / or more easily trigger elemental vulnerabilities.
You can also pick up a Druid focus power to offset your Death domain instead of grabbing Time or something else. Leaf order may be the most thematic, and it's focus power are also restorative (Goodberry) so it'd be a bit like grabbing the Blessed One dedication, except at level 4. The Stone or Storm orders might help you debuff opponents for your front line.
cavernshark wrote: Bigdaddyjug wrote: How did I miss sound burst on my cleric and bard? It seems so much better than concordant choir. I personally think Concordant Choir is better for a few reasons:
1) Flexibility. 1, 2, or 3 action casts in a single spell is situationally useful.
2) Consistency. 4d4 (AVG 10) vs. 2d10 (AVG 11) is mostly equivalent on average but also has a better floor. I personally prefer more smaller dice even if the upper limit is lower (16 vs 20) since you're probably multiplying that by multiply opponents anyway.
3) No deafened effect. This can be valuable if you're trying to follow up with spells like Command or any other Sonic or Auditory ability.
But ultimately they sit in a repertoire about the same. Given the flexibility on Concordant Choir it's probably stronger a signature spell for a spontaneous caster.
Figured out how I missed sound burst. It's a level 2 spell and my bard is only level 1.
My thoughts on Cleric after having seen one in play:
Cleric struggles a bit at lower levels to have things to do when people don't need healed. The Cantrips don't do much damage generally, or are situational (such as touch range, damages undead only, or alignment damage that may not affect the enemy).
Heal slots and Divine Font should be saved for emergency in-combat healing. There are usually better ways of healing between battles.
When doing emergency healing, a 2-action heal is better than a 1-action or 3-action heal because of the boosted healing.
Thoughts on the system as a whole:
Yes, optimization of feats and abilities is less important. The system has and (for the most part) provides automatically some baseline effectiveness of all characters.
Also, multiclassing - or archetypes in general - are fantastic.
I would not recommend Primal for the one reason that the list is mostly about dealing damage. Either directly through energy damage, or indirectly through polymorph spells. There are some good area control spells too as well as some reasonably good defensive spells. The problem is that you will have few spell slots and they will be lower level spells than what is available as a full caster of that tradition. Spell slots lower than your highest two levels available won't deal as much damage, so it will feel like your spells don't have much punch to them. You could certainly make a Druid multiclass work - especially with focus spells from the Druid feats. But don't make the mistake of thinking that a level 8 Cleric throwing out a level 2 Burning Hands is going to feel very impactful.
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