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So Cleric in book, receives a class archetype that changes their spellslots progression to be the same as the Magus and Summoner so they can get proficiency increase of the average martial character, expert at 5 and Master at 13.
It also changes their font from Heal/Harm to Bless and Bane with the option to add Benediction and Malediction with a level 4 feat. It gets legendary class DC that can be used in the place of spellcasting for battle auras, but the spellcasting dc by itself caps at expert.
The feats resolves mainly about sustaining the battle auras, but have one that gives studious spells like slots of Magus that have a few buff spells and Sure strike, as well another that works like the runes on weapon of champion (pre-remaster).
It's a cool archetype, though I don't really like the fact that the font are rank 1 spells without heightened effects outside of counteract their opposites.
So, just to be clear:
This strikes me as a bit too harsh on the tradeoffs. I would've been fine with a Magus chassis that kept the spell DC the same as for the Warpriest in exchange for wave casting and the normal Divine Font, or alternatively a Warpriest with better martial proficiencies in exchange for the downgraded Divine Font or losing those slots entirely, but shifting to a wave caster chassis with worse-than-wave-caster spell progression and worse Divine Font slots feels like overkill. It also just strikes me as very strange for a full caster archetype to have such poor spellcasting proficiency that they could archetype into another spellcaster to cast spells better. Perhaps I'm missing some tremendous bit of power in this class archetype that needed to be worked around, but for the time being I'll probably stick to the Warpriest.
My biggest criticisms are
- Without shield block, deities with one handed favored weapons are at a noticeable disadvantage conpred to those who favor two handed weapons
- Bendiction and Malediction should be available at level 1. Otherwise you're stuck with just bane for auras if your party has a Bard, and that's awful.
-Strength and Dexterity should be options for your class attribute. This is especially awkward compared to the Magus since...
-Greater Weapon Specialization was forgotten or omitted.
The rest of the feats are interesting, but I do wonder if the ability to improve your battle auras' bonus/penalty should come sooner and be more consistent.
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It's a big pile of crap. Gaining Reactive Strike and a slightly better martial progression for your Font, spell slots and spell DC is an atrocious deal. I don't expect anyone to play a Harbinger more than a couple of levels before realizing how bad it is.
It's best to play a Fighter with Cleric Dedication.
Level 12 to increase the bonus of the aura is indeed late, and you need to crit and then use your reaction to increase it, and because of how battle aura spells work, can only be sustained on subsequent turns of the cast, you will only see the benefit of it after 2 turns of setup (2 actions cast the battle aura, then next turn hopefully crit then use the reaction to increase by 1).
Comparing Warpriest and Battle Harbinger, I would say that Warpriest is better for around 10 levels (1-4 and 7-12 range), so if the table will not play or reach the level 13-18 range I would say go Warpriest for the divine gish. You can pretty much put all the rank 1 slots on the battle aura spells at some point on Warpriest (like level 5).
I'll wait until I can read it all before making a judgement.
That said, I have low expectations for class archetypes. I have yet to see one published that is on par with the class options it replaces. They've all been worse. Which is kind of baffling since it locks you into a second level dedication feat and requires you to take 2 additional feats from it before you can take another archetype.
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Especially if you take the Bane and Malediction spells, this strikes me as very helpful, even if you never sustain to enlarge. you are a character built to charge the front line and then punish enemies for being near you, not by hurting them, but by making them hit less, and easier to hit. You're an amazing martial support.
I think this is really cool, and could lead to a lot of interesting builds.
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Honestly, not sure why people are being so negative about this. It's a supporting martial caster with abilities dedicated to buffing/debuffing and letting it keep on doing that and even doing it better while fighting.
Because it's bad at doing exactly what you describe. Bless, Bane, Benediction and Malediction can be cast by any character in sufficient number once you reach mid levels. So what's left then? Martial proficiency with no class support. Wave casting at expert proficiency?
It needs a serious buff to be just playable. As is it's just a bad joke.
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Honestly, not sure why people are being so negative about this. It's a supporting martial caster with abilities dedicated to buffing/debuffing and letting it keep on doing that and even doing it better while fighting.Because it's bad at doing exactly what you describe. Bless, Bane, Benediction and Malediction can be cast by any character in sufficient number once you reach mid levels. So what's left then? Martial proficiency with no class support. Wave casting at expert proficiency?
It needs a serious buff to be just playable. As is it's just a bad joke.
Okay then, here's a question for you: Would you have your "any character" be doing that in battle? Can they sustain their spells just by striking? Do they get extra spell slots for casting those spells? Can they increase the penalties with crits?
If they can, then you're probably right.
If not, then I think you need to reevaluate your idea of what constitutes a joke.
Honestly, not sure why people are being so negative about this. It's a supporting martial caster with abilities dedicated to buffing/debuffing and letting it keep on doing that and even doing it better while fighting.Because it's bad at doing exactly what you describe. Bless, Bane, Benediction and Malediction can be cast by any character in sufficient number once you reach mid levels. So what's left then? Martial proficiency with no class support. Wave casting at expert proficiency?
It needs a serious buff to be just playable. As is it's just a bad joke.
Okay then, here's a question for you: Would you have your "any character" be doing that in battle? Can they sustain their spells just by striking? Do they get extra spell slots for casting those spells? Can they increase the penalties with crits?
If they can, then you're probably right.
If not, then I think you need to reevaluate your idea of what constitutes a joke.
The Battle Aura spells often don't need to be sustained at all. And by 5th level, your battle font slots aren't really extra anymore- Without built in scaling, they're just hard to counteract 1st rank slots.
I'm still not in the, "Battle Harbinger is trash" camp, but it's feeling more half baked the longer I think about it. I think there's a good idea in the class archetype, but it needed more work, and might just need more page space in the book, too.
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Having in-class spellcasting cap at expert is extremely dumb, because it means you can buy better spellcasting proficiency with feats.
I'm not saying that you should (it's probably not a great idea), but buying better combat proficiency has been something Paizo has always taken a hard stance on (to the point where that one AP feat to get master in unarmed is one of the few AP materials to ever get developer commentary on).
Paizo established all the way back in the CRB that Master at 18 was the bare minimum for spellcasting. It feels weird to try to back on it now.
Having in-class spellcasting cap at expert is extremely dumb, because it means you can buy better spellcasting proficiency with feats.
I'm not saying that you should (it's probably not a great idea), but buying better combat proficiency has been something Paizo has always taken a hard stance on (to the point where that one AP feat to get master in unarmed is one of the few AP materials to ever get developer commentary on).
Paizo established all the way back in the CRB that Master at 18 was the bare minimum for spellcasting. It feels weird to try to back on it now.
I think they didn't want to give the class master when warpriest already gets it so late (19th level with their last doctorine)
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Couple of things stood out to me in this class:
1. It gets an extra rune effect that doesn't take up a rune slot. Champion used to get that but in PC2 the wording changed and now it appears to take up a rune slot. I don't know if that hints that Champion errata is coming or if this version is now just flat out better.
2. Although you have to crit to do it, being able to increase the effect of a spell like Bless can be quite nice if you have martial buddies.
The big appeal is going to be for people that really want to play a martial focused Cleric since it does that better than Warpriest does. This does that fantasy better.
I don't think its crap, though you do give up a lot since all those Harm font spells add up to a lot of damage (you're pretty much never using an offensive spell with this progression unless it's Bane/Malediction).
It's a big pile of crap. Gaining Reactive Strike and a slightly better martial progression for your Font, spell slots and spell DC is an atrocious deal. I don't expect anyone to play a Harbinger more than a couple of levels before realizing how bad it is.
It's best to play a Fighter with Cleric Dedication.
That does sound like a really bad deal. Lose 4 to 6 heal spells, 23 spells and a 10th level slot with no spellstrike or summoned enemy for master weapon proficiency. That is not great at all.
Okay then, here's a question for you: Would you have your "any character" be doing that in battle? Can they sustain their spells just by striking? Do they get extra spell slots for casting those spells? Can they increase the penalties with crits?
If they can, then you're probably right.
If not, then I think you need to reevaluate your idea of what constitutes a joke.
I would say a good point of comparison here would be a Bard, who can use lingering composition to make their courageous anthem cantrip last a whole encounter, or fortissimo composition to increase its bonus to +3 immediately. The cantrip itself only costs a single action, is resourceless, has a range of 60 feet, and applies to damage rolls and saves against fear as well as attack rolls, so it just blows bless out of the water. If you're a warrior muse, you can even extend the cantrip's duration by another round when you Strike, and once you get expert weapon proficiency this lets you apply the weapon's crit spec effect. You may not have martial-grade proficiency scaling, but you still get to have a basic level of competence, while having access to far more utility spells and a better spell DC to apply them, as well as access to many more casts of heroism when needed to make up the difference.
Looking at the class archetype in greater detail, I have to say I agree with the assessment that it's half-baked: it's not just that it's poorly-balanced, misses important martial features that even the Warpriest gets (i.e. Shield Block), and meshes poorly with Cleric feats that often assume plentiful access to harm or heal, it also comes across like someone copy-pasted bits of the Warpriest and the Magus without really understanding the "secret sauce" that makes wave casters work: the Magus can use magic competently despite a physical key attribute, for example, because Spellstrike lets them bypass their own mediocre spell attack modifier and use their much better weapon attack modifier instead. The Summoner, by contrast, has a mental key attribute that makes them a competent caster, but also an eidolon that makes Strikes with martial-level proficiency, but also martial-grade attributes, bypassing their own mediocre weapon attack modifier in the process. The Battle Harbinger has an awful spell DC, but also still uses Wisdom as their key attribute, so rather than levy one strength to bypass the other weakness, they're just mediocre all around.
I do like the class archetype by the fact this fell like what other class specific archetypes should be, in that they do indeed change the base class enough to play different, as most of the others feels more that could be a subclass
Power wise though is kinda of a mess, having to use 2 actions on a rank 1 spell every battle to have your features feels really bad, could have used a feat or two of like strike and cast the battle aura or raise a shield and benediction and so on.
Power wise though is kinda of a mess, having to use 2 actions on a rank 1 spell every battle to have your features feels really bad, could have used a feat or two of like strike and cast the battle aura or raise a shield and benediction and so on.
Thankfully the class archetype has a feat for that! With Live the Creed, you get to cast one of your battle auras for one less action, once every 10 minutes... at 20th level. It's like courageous anthem, except worse in every way, and it still costs you a daily resource!
I'll also say that of all the class archetypes we've had, this one doesn't really feel like a terribly necessary departure when its niche is basically the same as the Warpriest's, and switching away from harm/heal on the divine font makes the Battle Harbinger far worse at accessing a great deal many Cleric feats, including Channel Smite, which would've otherwise been perfect for the archetype. A lot of the feats also seem aimed to compensate both for the archetype's extremely lacking features, and the fact that bane and bless don't improve their effects when heightened. Neither I think was a terribly good choice of spell for a divine font-type feature, and if the intent was really to make the Battle Harbinger this aura-based gish, that could easily have been achieved by a feature (or even just a feat) that gave you an always-on aura with comparable effects. This is something the Marshal archetype does, for instance, and so with greater variety, no real risk of getting counteracted, and no resource expenditure.
From a first glance, this seems fine. I'll reserve my final thought for actually getting the book and looking it over of course.
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So Cleric in book, receives a class archetype that changes their spellslots progression to be the same as the Magus and Summoner so they can get proficiency increase of the average martial character, expert at 5 and Master at 13.
It also changes their font from Heal/Harm to Bless and Bane with the option to add Benediction and Malediction with a level 4 feat. It gets legendary class DC that can be used in the place of spellcasting for battle auras, but the spellcasting dc by itself caps at expert.
The feats resolves mainly about sustaining the battle auras, but have one that gives studious spells like slots of Magus that have a few buff spells and Sure strike, as well another that works like the runes on weapon of champion (pre-remaster).
It's a cool archetype, though I don't really like the fact that the font are rank 1 spells without heightened effects outside of counteract their opposites.
This is just a worse trade-off compared to what I initially proposed they treated the Warpriest several months ago, which was to make Warpriest a Wave Caster with Channel Smite baked into the class and proper full Martial progression (they would still have their Fonts). AKA Divine Magus without the cantrip spam.
All they really get out of this is Legendary Class DCs (not Spell DCs, big difference there, especially since they cap at Expert, but that can be fixed with spellcasting MCDs), relatively faster weapons progression, and Master Armor. It's not worth losing the full casting, Font nerf, and still maintaining somewhat useful progression.
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Overall, for the Harbinger to be playable, the GM needs a few house rules.
As of now, the Harbinger lasts 2 fights as it's expected to cast multiple aura spells per fight. I'd regenerate a battle aura every time the Harbinger refocuses. So you can last all day long.
The Harbinger also faces impossible action economy, as it needs to Strike and cast a 2-action spell most turns so it can't move or anything. I'd add that you gain a free Strike every time you cast a Battle Aura.
With the free sustain you can grab from a feat it'd make the archetype playable. Nowhere close to strong but at least you can do what you're supposed to do.
If the GM doesn't want to modify the archetype then just play a Warpriest with Marshall Dedication and you'll be better than a Harbinger in nearly everything.
Overall, for the Harbinger to be playable, the GM needs a few house rules.
As of now, the Harbinger lasts 2 fights as it's expected to cast multiple aura spells per fight. I'd regenerate a battle aura every time the Harbinger refocuses. So you can last all day long.
The Harbinger also faces impossible action economy, as it needs to Strike and cast a 2-action spell most turns so it can't move or anything. I'd add that you gain a free Strike every time you cast a Battle Aura.
With the free sustain you can grab from a feat it'd make the archetype playable. Nowhere close to strong but at least you can do what you're supposed to do.If the GM doesn't want to modify the archetype then just play a Warpriest with Marshall Dedication and you'll be better than a Harbinger in nearly everything.
Having even less staying power than every other Cleric doctrine is a big yikes in my book, especially since they buffed the attribute reliance of the Cleric in the Remaster, and the Harbinger doesn't even get that out of it.
The Harbinger's action economy is also an issue with the likes of Warpriest, especially if they have to decide between healing or Channel Smite, but having the free Strike when activating an aura is a pretty neat feature not really replicated elsewhere (other than maybe Kineticist when they activate their aura and can either make a free one action Kinetic Blast or Stance feat).
I do agree that this feels like it's a solution in search of a problem that was already (mostly) solved.
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After furiously homebrewing a different implementation for the Battle Harbinger and looking at the Cleric's existing doctrines and features in the process, I've come up with a few more observations: the Battle Harbinger, by all rights, should have been a Cleric doctrine, but it's difficult to implement new doctrines for the Cleric because the only two doctrines we got were designed around each other, without much room for anything else. Had pretty much all of the Cleric's core class features been moved to doctrines, including their save bumps, their AC increase, weapon specialization, and even their 10th-rank spell slot, and had the class just had doctrines at every odd level (though nothing at 17th level for the Cloistered Cleric and Warpriest), that would've future-proofed them a lot better and allowed the Battle Harbinger to be implemented much more easily, instead of requiring a bunch of kludges to get martial-level attack proficiency and different save progression.
I'm also starting to get the impression that the implementation of class archetypes is doomed to disappoint somewhat: class archetypes are meant to be power-neutral switches in playstyle, yet despite only being able to pick one class archetype at a time, you're still required to commit to a 2nd-level dedication feat and then pick two more feats as if you had picked a regular archetype. This in my opinion is quite stifling, but also not very appropriate given how class archetypes are about altering your class's strength-and-weakness profile, rather than just adding more strengths when picking a normal archetype. Were these archetypes slightly more powerful to compensate, perhaps that could've helped, except the class archetypes we've received are invariably weaker than the main class, and the dedication feat often is just flat-out weak itself or only gives something that was taken away by the class archetype's changes (e.g. Flexible Spellcaster Dedication). If the rule had simply been that you could only pick one class archetype at a time, but then didn't have to pick a dedication feat or commit to archetype feats, that in my opinion would make class archetypes feel a little less bad to pick, even if their features remained unchanged.
I discovered some months ago that the two doctrines we have were based on frontliner vs backliner.
Not much room for a third one.
They said, in a thread discussing a Cleric class archetype with their own, separate doctrine.
I think most (but not all) problems of the archetype would be solved if it changed how bane and bless work. Let's say a battle harbinber can cast those two spells as one action, but instead of lasting for 1 minute they last for 1 round. Now the pseudo free sustain you have feels more useful.
I think most (but not all) problems of the archetype would be solved if it changed how bane and bless work. Let's say a battle harbinber can cast those two spells as one action, but instead of lasting for 1 minute they last for 1 round. Now the pseudo free sustain you have feels more useful.
Or just let them cast it as 1 action, full stop. That's a level 20 feat for this archetype right now. If that was available way earlier, it would make it feel a lot better.
I feel that in addition to rolling several of the feats directly into the class archetype, it would likely have helped quite a bit if the mechanic of increasing the status bonus or penalty on bane/bless had been baked directly into those spells. Pathfinder 2e is a game where divine and occult casters have access to heroism, a straightforward +1 to all non-flat checks you make that lasts long enough to be used to prebuff, and importantly increases its bonus to up to a +3 at higher ranks. With this in mind, a Warpriest can buff their party more consistently with lower-rank slots than a Battle Harbinger with bless in their font, even when factoring in Empowered Onslaught. In fact, I would go as far as to say that even if bane and bless let me empower their effects on a critical hit at higher ranks, I'd still hesitate to use those over heroism, or even over a harm or heal font given the choice. An immediate +3/-3 aura at 9th rank, with none of the finicky setup, would have made both spells worth heightening in the same way as heroism, which would still offer plenty of benefits of its own, and would have made them much more worthwhile font spells too.
With all of that said, though, I also just don't see why there even was a need to change the font in the first place. Channel Smite is such a perfect fit for a divine gish that you could have kept the regular font, given the class that feat for free at level 1, and let players have fun smiting much like the Paladins of other tabletop games. If there was a strong desire to include auras into the mix, that could've been something to implement with pseudo-studious spells, or just a class feature offering an always-on aura in the same style as the Marshal archetype.
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Hmm. One thing I notice with Warpriests is that they spend most of their time casting spells. They just have a lot of spellcasting to use up between slots and font.
IF a martial oriented character is going to actually have the time to swing a weapon around they would need to have a lot less spell options taking the focus away from swinging a weapon around.
This class archtype does strip away a lot of the spellcasting.
It does have a spellcasting gimik with auras but it also allows sustaining with strikes and later just starting battle with one up right? This means it has a lot more actions for moving into melee and swinging.
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The bless of Eternal Blessing does not work with Battle Harbinger feats, the feat calls for battle auras and battle auras are specifically bless and bane (also malediction and benediction if you pick the feat) casted from spells slots or font.
And about Warpriest casting and not having time to strike, that is only if you wish to do that, as Cleric and the divine list itself have a bunch of options to strike and even use slots to aid the striking.
Channel Smite is a way to expend extra spell slots striking, Restorative Strike is also a fun one, Warding Agression and Blink Charge are spells that strike and Zealous Rush let you Heroism + Stride and Strike right on the first turn. Also Cast Down that let you trip (that the enemy needs to critically succeed to not be prone) + strike.
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"My class is too good at spellcasting, and I wish I had fewer spell slots so I could Strike more" is a really weird way of justifying the Battle Harbinger, but there's a valid point to be made that the Warpriest is more of a spellcaster with some gishy elements than a full gish. A Warpriest will want to Strike when they can, but they also have a lot of power to leverage via their spell slots and of course their divine font, so even a Warpriest who leans heavily into the Striking aspect of their playstyle will still cast spells. It's valid to want a Cleric doctrine that goes full gish, and trades off that spellcasting power for proper martial power.
Trouble is, the Battle Harbinger doesn't do that very well, and in fact it doesn't even do that better than a Warpriest. Despite the former's faster scaling, both end up with the same attack modifier, because the Battle Harbinger gets stuck with a Wisdom key attribute and is thus behind most other martials in accuracy half the time. When either hits with a Strike, they end up dealing the same baseline damage, because the Battle Harbinger still only gets weapon specialization at 13th level, and doesn't get greater weapon specialization, putting them significantly behind other martials. A Warpriest could use any 6th-rank or higher spell slot the Battle Harbinger doesn't get to prebuff with heroism and match or exceed the latter in accuracy, and could use any of their many lower-rank slots to cast bane, benediction, bless, and malediction on-tap, also to the same effect as a Battle Harbinger in any instance that doesn't involve counteracting. Effectively, the Battle Harbinger falls short at its intended assignment compared to existing options, and whatever feats the archetype picks to make up for it, the Warpriest can do equal or better, such as by picking Channel Smite for divine Spellstrikes (the Battle Harbinger is also behind a feat due to their dedication requirement).
In my opinion, here are the changes the Battle Harbinger ought to receive:
All of this would be, in my opinion, the bare minimum required to make them work properly as a gish, and justify the tradeoffs they make compared to a Warpriest. Beyond that, you could give them more "nice to have" base benefits like creed slots, but in my opinion an easy win could be to give them Channel Smite for free at level 1: it's not just that the feat is a perfect thematic and mechanical fit for a divine gish (you smite foes with divine power, and get to bypass your spell's weak save DC with your much stronger weapon attack), in my opinion it's a great asset to have in a larger tabletop gaming environment where some players really love the Paladin's Divine Smite from another popular TTRPG, and want to experience that playstyle when considering switching systems. If someone came to me and asked "I want to play a character that smites enemies with their attacks, just like my favorite Paladin in this other game, does Pathfinder let me do this?", which has happened a few times, I could just point to this version of the Battle Harbinger and offer them a character that does exactly what they want right out of the box.
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Teridax basically mentioned everything I been ranting about for the last little bit since I found out about this Cleric Archetype. War Priest just fits this role better and the only upside is the +2 you get on Attack Rolls earlier then War Priests 13th vs 19th level but like you give up sooooooooo much for that master proficiency in your Deity's favored weapon that it's not even close. Also gettign rid of Heal/Harm and the possibility of Channel Smite is 100% a deal breaker for me. If you want Cleric to rival any martial, give it ways of burst damage because you only have 8 hit points per level, you're not a 10 hit point martial...Buddy.
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"My class is too good at spellcasting, and I wish I had fewer spell slots so I could Strike more" is a really weird way of justifying the Battle Harbinger, but there's a valid point to be made that the Warpriest is more of a spellcaster with some gishy elements than a full gish. A Warpriest will want to Strike when they can, but they also have a lot of power to leverage via their spell slots and of course their divine font, so even a Warpriest who leans heavily into the Striking aspect of their playstyle will still cast spells. It's valid to want a Cleric doctrine that goes full gish, and trades off that spellcasting power for proper martial power.
Trouble is, the Battle Harbinger doesn't do that very well, and in fact it doesn't even do that better than a Warpriest. Despite the former's faster scaling, both end up with the same attack modifier, because the Battle Harbinger gets stuck with a Wisdom key attribute and is thus behind most other martials in accuracy half the time. When either hits with a Strike, they end up dealing the same baseline damage, because the Battle Harbinger still only gets weapon specialization at 13th level, and doesn't get greater weapon specialization, putting them significantly behind other martials. A Warpriest could use any 6th-rank or higher spell slot the Battle Harbinger doesn't get to prebuff with heroism and match or exceed the latter in accuracy, and could use any of their many lower-rank slots to cast bane, benediction, bless, and malediction on-tap, also to the same effect as a Battle Harbinger in any instance that doesn't involve counteracting. Effectively, the Battle Harbinger falls short at its intended assignment compared to existing options, and whatever feats the archetype picks to make up for it, the Warpriest can do equal or better, such as by picking Channel Smite for divine Spellstrikes (the Battle Harbinger is also behind a feat due to their dedication requirement).
In my opinion, here are the changes the Battle...
Battle Harbinger really would have fit better as a Champion archetype, but nooooooooo...
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So I have just started Triumph of the Tusk and my GM (who is awesome by the way) has allowed me to play this and we have had one combat so far.
We are level 3.
I play with a scimitar and a bladed gauntlet.
During combat my first turn was getting into position to flank with our barbarian and do a Strike. Second turn was casting Bane and Shield because I got flanked. Both enemies in the Bane failed their saves so -1 to attacks which saved me from getting crit. The rest of the combat was sustain Bane to make it bigger and catch more enemies in it, make Strikes, and using Shield when I thought it was needed.
So the basic loop was to Strike, Sustain, Flank, Shield, Strike, Repeat.
I found it fun and simple, also it was funny as s%%$ to see a forty foot aura on screen LMAO!!!
I understand this is not everyone's cup of tea and it could have been done better.
40ft aura, that's just called Bard & Courageous Anthem. However I don't think +2 to attacks doesn't equal a trade to be reduced to bounded casting. Heck, Expert Spellcasting, full caster, earlier master, this half sounds like Battle Harbinger would be better as a new class or as a Champion archetype like someone here mentioned.
"Full Martial Proficiency?" - If I recall they don't get Greater Weapon Specialization. Meaning they deal less damage over-all then other classes which have the 8 hit point per level trait. Even Inventor can sustain more damage but that is more luck based on your ability to roll your DC.
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What did everyone expect in a gish class?
Im confused by all this expectation a gish class wouldnt have bounded casting.
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Heck given that they are kind of expected to have an aura spell going in each combat, and two of them literally make their enemies easier to hit (bless and malediction) IT's also like they have slightly better than full martial proficiency. It's not fighter, but it is better than average. Especially since, with two feet, you can have both bless and Malediction active at the same time, sustained with the same action, or sustaining one with a strike.
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What did everyone expect in a gish class?
Im confused by all this expectation a gish class wouldnt have bounded casting.
The criticism comes from the fact that
1) The class fights worse than any other martial due to the worse weapon specialization growth combined with not getting a physical attribute as a key attribute.
2) The spell save DC progresses worse than summoner or magus, the two existing Bounded casters, and in order to make your font slots more than just rank 1 spells most casters would retire by level 5 or 7, you need to invest a ton of feats, while other clerics' fonts scale without any investment.
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What did everyone expect in a gish class?
Im confused by all this expectation a gish class wouldnt have bounded casting.
Everyone doesn't exist. If you take each poster's posts independantly you'll just realize that people want different things.
And to that you add that not everyone is either reasonable or able to theorycraft and you get crazy discussions.My main criticism is that the archetype doesn't work. I consider that "working" is a pretty basic expectation.
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That's a good point, while you get the full martial proficiency, this is still a support class, hence the lack of crit spec. You don't need spec because you are enhancing the chances of your allies landing crits, and thus you get partial credit for your allies crits
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The chassis proficiency is fine, the problem is everything else. The font being a rank 1 spell that don't heightned effects just sucks and you don't even have the option reduce the number of actions to cast it until level 20.
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To build a functional Battle Harbinger, the easiest way is to just grab Monk, Cleric Dedication at level 2 and then Wands of Bless/Benediction. You'll have crazy survivability (you can even go Dexterity-based if you want to maximize survivability as your main asset is your Auras), you'll have a functional action economy (FoB + casting a spell has always been an outstanding round), nice damage output compared to a Battle Harbinger and so much more Auras per combat/day.
You just lose the wave casting, but wave casting at Expert proficiency isn't exactly stellar.
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Well, I agree about the ability to lower the action count for casting. Frankly I would have you expend a focus point to do it as a single action.
But the reason the spell doesn't scale is that... well it doesn't need to. with the way the game is balanced the +1 for the resource consumed is well worth it.
That's a good point, while you get the full martial proficiency, this is still a support class, hence the lack of crit spec. You don't need spec because you are enhancing the chances of your allies landing crits, and thus you get partial credit for your allies crits
The problem is the opportunity cost of casting a font spell. If you spend two actions to cast one, that's two actions you could have used for something else. By the time you have 3rd rank spells, the opportunity cost of what you could have cast if you were a regular cleric (Heroism, Heightened Fear, Infectious Ennui, Roaring Applause, or any number of excellent spells your god might grant). And as you level up, the disparity gets exponentially worse.
And then compare the Bard. The Bard spends one action and a focus point to create a much larger aura with better bonuses for most of the fight, and they still have all the regular spells.
Sure, Battle Harbinger has better martial proficiencies than non-Wave casters, but they can't use them effectively and cast spells at the same time.