I'm thinking about house ruling that Disrupt Undead is on the cleric list. I just want to make sure I haven't overlooked something.
Is there a reason its not a cleric spell? It fits thematically to be a cleric spell and not a sorc/wiz spell. Is there something broken a cleric could do with that spell that I'm not thinking about?
I can't think of anything that would cause it to be broken. Its only 1d6 on undead.
Because making cantrips unlimited screwed up the balance that had been in place for decades. The spells weren't designed to be infinite and the cleric had an ability that either affected all undead in a large area (turning or rebuking) or later just did 1d6 damage to every undead in a 30-foot burst (and only got stronger each level).
Because they deliberately messed with Turn Undead (turning it into Channel), they knew making an unlimited ability available that did the same damage, at least over the first few levels, and could critically hit (and potentially add Sneak Attack damage, since they also made undead vulnerable to all of those now)
... they realized just how useless people would find Channeling against undead (ie. not as a burst heal) except in cases with a lot of weak, low-level undead. As opposed to blasting over and over at lone or paired undead, at least until higher levels. Plus they get a saving throw for half damage.In short, they [messed] around with established game mechanics, realized they'd made one practically obsolete, and so keep disrupt undead away from clerics to obfuscate the fact and force their new 'unique class ability' to be used as default.
But no, giving cleric's access to disrupt undead very likely won't mess up your campaign in any way, unless you set up encounters that allow it to. And probably not after level 3 or 5.
That makes sense. Though in practice I've found PC's rarely channel to harm anyway. If the undead are numerous enough for it to be a better use than healing your allies outside of combat, then the undead are typically too weak to scare the PC's.
So PC's don't use it against a large number of weak enemies because they don't want to waste the resources, nor against one large enemy because its a group AOE. It only see it used if there is one big scary undead leading a lot of weaker undead.
Short answer is because clerics get Channel Energy and can spontaneously swap prepared spells to cast an equal level cure spell (assuming they channel positive energy). A negative channeling cleric using positive energy to disrupt undead also doesn't fit, thematically.
An easy way to have a cleric with disrupt undead is as a samsaran with the Mystic Past Life alternate racial trait (selecting the bonus spells from the inquisitor list).
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That makes sense. Though in practice I've found PC's rarely channel to harm anyway. If the undead are numerous enough for it to be a better use than healing your allies outside of combat, then the undead are typically too weak to scare the PC's.
So PC's don't use it against a large number of weak enemies because they don't want to waste the resources, nor against one large enemy because its a group AOE. It only see it used if there is one big scary undead leading a lot of weaker undead.
Weirdly, the calculations have always been reversed in all the games I played. In PF1 the general rule of thumb was: Offensive > Defense.
Players would rather use their channels to clear out a large number of undead and not have to heal at all. If you do need to heal, wands of cure light wounds are cheap.
If you've got the channel, you might as well use it and then finish healing up the barbarian using other means. But if they took the damage fighting a group of undead, the cleric will regret not having channeled to harm and finished the fight faster.
And yet, if the cleric is meditating for spells with channel uses leftover because you used a wand of CLW, you are wasting gold.
On a side note: The campaign with all those negative channeling cultists was tough. The attrition was brutal.
What it comes down to is that clerics already have a lot of ways to harm undead. Besides channeling energy and spontaneously converting heal spells they are a medium BAB class that can wear medium armor. They also have good Fort and Will saves so can resist many of the special attacks of undead creatures. They really don’t need disrupt undead.
Sorcerer’s and Wizards on the other hand have less ways to deal with undead, especially incorporeal undead. Most offensive arcane magic only deals half damage to incorporeal undead, and they if they make their save it is cut in half again. Most force spells do significantly less damage than other spells.
It should have that spell on it's list but for some reason it does not. I have been wondering about that for years.
