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I would really like to see a Divine Tradition Magus, or just the choice to pick Strength as the main class stat with a Warpriest. I think it could open up a lot of fantasy archetypes. They're still possible, with a regular warpriest, I think, but I have been playing a lot of off-the-wall concepts, such as a "martial" Summoner with Sentinal for Medium Armor and a Greatsword focused on self buffing with a Dragon Eidolon, and it's been fun, but after awhile you do begin to really feel that math as a pseudo-martial.
I would really like to capture the fantasy of a more Warcraft Paladin than PF2E's almost no magic Champion. I think with Warpriest you can get really close, but I think just being able to push Strength to +4 at level 1, or simply a Divine Magus would take it all the way. Especially if the Magus's extra given spell slots at later levels could be filled with Heal, similar to Cleric Divine Font, or Sound Body/Cleanse Affliction, etc.
Almost all of the pieces are there to pull off at least a Wrath of the Lich King era Level 80 Paladin. I've personally chosen Warpriest anyway with a Maul to try my hand at it.
I don't think anything really captures seals, but the closest is probably:
Seal of Light -> Divine Weapon or Emblazon Armanents
Judgement -> Spiritual Weapon
Blessing of Might -> Bless
Blessing of Wisdom -> Divine Inspiration, Moment of Renewal (get those spell slots back)
Blessing of Kings -> Heroism roughly (raises several "stats")
I don't think there's much to say for auras, not a lot of interlap here (or I didn't look well enough, and it doesn't matter that much)
Hand of Freedom -> Unfettered Movement
Divine Protection -> Protection, roughly. No way to just cut damage in half that I know of.
Hand of Protection -> Sanctuary (the version where you couldn't keep attacking with it on you)
Divine Sacrifice/Hand of Sacrifice -> Share Life (there's a few others, like life pact)
Divine Shield -> Indestructability (roughly)
Avenging Wrath -> Avatar(?)
Holy Light/Flash of Light -> Heal
Crusader's Strike -> Channel Smiteish
Divine Storm -> Mauler Archetype Avalanche Strike
Purify -> Stuff like Sound Body, Clear Affliction and basically status effect removal spells
Sense Undead -> I believe there's a spell called Sense Spirits around level 5ish
Exorcism -> Searing Light or whatever it's called in the new remaster
Holy Wrath -> Divine Immolation or Divine Wrath
Redemption is 100% raise dead or revival but in the campaign I'm participating in resurrection is disabled and not allowed. Nobody can come back to life. Dead is dead.
As for stuff like Consecration or Hammer of Justice there's nothing I can really find, but honestly I got 80% of the class in divine spells and it fits really well IMO.
So then it's just a matter of how to execute the vision
I also would like to see more versions of the Magus chassis. I'd love to see a Charisma/Spontaneous version, to better align with a Sorcerer-type mix of martial and caster rather than Wizard. If we were going that route, a Divine blooded sorcerer half of the caster-martial equation is already really close. However, I wouldn't mind seeing a Wisdom based Wave Casting class, one way or another.
I do generally discourage doing a 1:1 feature comparison across game systems, and especially from video games to TTRPGs. It's usually much better to nail down the underlying story you're trying to tell with a character, rather than matching mechanical elements, because often the end result isn't going to actually play the way you hope.
I'm wondering why you didn't consider Champion multiclassed into Cleric, though. Champions advance Divine spellcasting at a pretty good rate, and you can get a lot of spells through multiclassing, scrolls, staves, wands etc if you want to fill out your list of features.
If the desire is for a character that's adjacent to what we have now with only a few minor adjustments, that's likely a good space for an archetype, or even just a bit of homebrew. Allowing a Warpriest Cleric to boost their Strength or Dexterity instead of their Wisdom, for instance, would likely enable the build you're looking for in a way that wouldn't be especially disruptive to balance.
As for a divine Magus, given how arcane is by far the best spell tradition for spellstriking already, switching the class to another spell list I think would also be completely fine if the table allows it. In fact, I'd wager that with a divine Magus, you could even key the class's spellcasting ability to Wisdom (or Charisma, if you're so inclined) and give it the Expansive Spellstrike feat for free at level 1, and still have a resulting character that is at most as powerful as the original Magus.
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I also would like to see more versions of the Magus chassis. I'd love to see a Charisma/Spontaneous version, to better align with a Sorcerer-type mix of martial and caster rather than Wizard. If we were going that route, a Divine blooded sorcerer half of the caster-martial equation is already really close. However, I wouldn't mind seeing a Wisdom based Wave Casting class, one way or another.
I do generally discourage doing a 1:1 feature comparison across game systems, and especially from video games to TTRPGs. It's usually much better to nail down the underlying story you're trying to tell with a character, rather than matching mechanical elements, because often the end result isn't going to actually play the way you hope.
I'm wondering why you didn't consider Champion multiclassed into Cleric, though. Champions advance Divine spellcasting at a pretty good rate, and you can get a lot of spells through multiclassing, scrolls, staves, wands etc if you want to fill out your list of features.
It's a bit difficult to express, I think. The underlying story is my take on an actual good and righteous person, who always tries to do what they believe is the right thing within their religion (The Light, i guess). They're a warrior AND a priest.
The way this plays out in WoW, the feeling of playing a Paladin, is that of a DPS class but that has incredibly helpful utility and support tools that, if keybound correct (and if you're really good), you can execute your rotation (output damage) and still heal people when they're low, protect someone about to die, share a tank buster with the tank so they don't get annihilated and basically rotate cooldowns and abilities to heal and really bring the team up.
Of course you can faceroll your keyboard and crap damage everywhere and just ignore half your buttons, but I think there's fulfilment in "not just being a DPS" and sort of taking the burden off of the healer.
So it's kind of both the gameplay aspect and the story aspect combined into one.
And I did actually consider doing a champion first, haha. Someone convinced me to swap to flex casting warpriest.
Why a Lizardfolk vs Human (and/or Orc) Nephilim? Ultimately was inspired by the Draenei. In D&D 5e Dragonborn felt very close to Draenei aesthetically, and now with mixed heritage a lizardfolk + kobold is pretty close. Otherwise I think a Draenei is a human or Orc with Nephilim stuff.
My current "campaign" is less a campaign, and more a living world with 2-3 hour "bounties" very similar to Pathfinder Society, except for a few rules:
- No Ressurrection.
- No Rare stuff
- No AP stuff (they don't want to get sued by Paizo as AP's are strictly Paizo property)
- Free Archetype is turned on
- Paragon Ancestry feature is turned on
- No Guns & Gears
- No Organization feats (Firebrands, Knights of Lastwall, Hellknights, etc..)
It isn't the ideal for many concepts but post-remaster Champions with cleric dedication are pretty good pseudo-healing martial if take some healing via scrolls/wands and some interesting domain spells specially know that you can easily refocus all your focus points.
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It just gets so tricky as a martial. The action economy is so tight. If you don’t start near your target you want to stride. So any number of actions may look like:
- get bless out
- stride into position
- strike
- heal a wounded ally
- cast protection or some other buff
Then with wands and scrolls etc
- draw the wand or scroll
- use the wand or scroll
- in the case of the wand or staff drop or stow it after use
And I find at least at level 1 I’m a bit frustrated with my action economy
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You should check out the Clerics+ warpriest doctrine on infinite. Their stuff is balanced and they beat paizo by a Longshot on publishing a non cha font class archetype that truly captures the divine bounded caster fantasy and is particularly good at the self buff action compression that the PF1E warpriest was known for. Their content on this class is far more compelling than paizos remaster warpriest because the doctrines give real abilities (not just proficiency bumps) and you are able to invest in casting other spells from your font. Beyond that it's pretty clear paizo cribbed some of their remaster feats from the Clerics+ teams content so clearly they're doing something right. They also have their modules in pathbuilder and I believe foundry (that last one might be a lie if my memory is just making stuff up) so it is essentially frictionless with the most common community tools.
Beyond the warpriest they also have an inquisitor archetype that is a cross between cleric and investigator. I think it's a great hybrid option that is sorely missing from the PF2E multiclass framework and I love seeing more of that in thei products (e.g., hey have a barbarian alchemist instinct for a real mutagen melee martial in Barbarians+)
If I ever find a home game I can commit to that’s a really good idea to save in my pocket to bring up to the GM.
As far as the living world I’m currently participating in I think we run as close to RAW on everything as possible with no homebrew.
I haven’t had much luck with regular campaigns mostly in this living world or Pathfinder Society. Even as a GM I can’t find players to test some dungeons out on.
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It just gets so tricky as a martial. The action economy is so tight. If you don’t start near your target you want to stride. So any number of actions may look like:
- get bless out
- stride into position
- strike
- heal a wounded ally
- cast protection or some other buffThen with wands and scrolls etc
- draw the wand or scroll
- use the wand or scroll
- in the case of the wand or staff drop or stow it after useAnd I find at least at level 1 I’m a bit frustrated with my action economy
The champion of my party thrown Tridents to solve this problem.
You always can make a dex based champion without any problem except a bit less Con or Str due MAD. But it works and is very fun (the champion of my party is a dex champion using trident with protection domain and is very happy with new Swap action and being able to recover 3 focus points. Because now he becomes the primary off-healer of the party using Lay on Hands and sometime scrolls of heal).
The action economy is a bit tight but he doesn't care too much to not Strike or Rise its Shield when he needs to heal someone.
Sometimes the people overthink about action economy for some eventual cases when you need to "sacrifice" some pre-planed action sequence in order to solve a more emergency situation.