The question is in the title ^^
I was about to play a cloistered cleric for the third time in an upcoming campaign, but a friend is trying me to change for a warpriest - which is a class I never tried.
It looks very interesting and strong on paper, but I'm wondering whether it can work as the sole healer of our group. I'm afraid that, being engaged in melee, I will eat a lot of AOOs (sure, all monsters don't have it, but those that matter usually do) while trying to heal me or my friends or even trying cast down or channel strike. The medic dedication and its benefits are also less interesting since I'll go either board & shield or 2H and so won't have a free hand without jumping through hoops - plus I'm supposed to engage the enemy, not use doctor's visitation to help someone in it.
Restorative strike is good since it loses the manipulate trait, but you have to hit in order to target a friend, and said friend has to be next to your target, which looks to me unusable a lot of times.
I'd also love to get a reach weapon in order to alleviate somewhat the AOO and mobility problem, but favored weapons are far and few between. Apart from Shelyn and a couple others, I'm SoL. I was thinking Ragathiel for the bastard sword, haste and sure strike (plus his DEUS VULT approach looks fun to play) but that means no reach.
I mean, as a Cloistered Cleric, it was pretty simple: nuke or debuff when things are all peachy, heal and battle medicine when things go to hell. Doesn't seem so simple to switch as a warpriest.
In a nutshell, I'm concerned that either I will be a pretty lousy healer, or I'll never have time to strike.
So, did any of you play a warpriest that was also the main healer and can tell me about your experience ? Were you able to heal just fine ? How did you deal with the AOOs ? Did you deal respectable damage ? What was your routine ?
Thanks a lot, I have read various guides about the warpriest and I see how his abilities can be awesome, but I have a hard time picturing a regular fight, like with the rogue being crit by an arrow, while I'm being pinned down by the boss.
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First off - don't let your friends talk you into anything you don't like
Secondly - I have not played a warpriest myself, but I can give some GM perspecitve insight and thoughts
now to the topic at hand
Warpriest certainly has some small problems juggling the actions between proper attacking, movement and casting spell
but then again, if you go for a cloistered cleric you have to juggle your healing and other spells
with a decent weapon and the attributes to back it up you have a new third action option
Attacks of opportunity are dangerous of course, but so are they for the magus - and in the end something that is really heavily dependent on the gm
it should be something you could Recall Knowledge about and if you feel like 3/4 of all enemies are using AoO you should possibly talk to your gm
restorative strike should be of good value if your party (and you) properly consider tactics - flanking is easy and should be done whenever there in an opportunity
(that being said, 2 action heal is for immediate healing the strongest option, it is a tactical tool, not the go-to as you probably guessed)
as for weapons who are (imo) decent for warpriest, come with a god and support the playstyle
-Bladed Scarf has a lot of traits for maneuvers and is supported by Ashava and Sivanah
-Bo Staff gives you parry as additional option and is Sun Wukongs chosen bludgeon
-Glaive is also given by the lady of the north star, but forceful is not a very good trait if you are not a full martial or action starved (talk with your gm, the Naginata would work as variant glaive maybe)
-The Guisarme is the favored Weapon of Saloc, a psychopomp usher (those usually work well for good campaigns too)
-With Deadly simplicity the longspear offered by Lubaiko becomes a bit more interesting, although she might not be compatible with every campaign
-The Ranseur is availible to followers of the sarkorian stag mother of the forests and stones
-while not very good damage wise, the wip is a decent support weapon with a number of useful traits
this is from an incomplete list as the relatively new divine mysteries adds some more options for Halberds, Longspear, whips, Meteor hammer and others I have surely not seen spontaneously
Depends what you want to do as a healer, right?
Can you Heal as well? Of course! And if you were nuking & debuffing with before, but not now, that's even more slots available for Heal. And since you're better armored (& can Shield Block) you mitigate damage better.
Can you Counteract Conditions as well? Of course not. Having played two Cloistered Clerics, you'll know better than I how often that arose. And how often you needed to Heal in combat...which relies a lot on party composition and players' playstyle(s).
In fact, I'd say too much comes down to your companions to answer directly. Are you alone up front? Alongside a Rogue & Giant Barbarian? Have a Dex Monk & shield Fighter you can stand behind with your Reach weapon? Huge difference, right?
(And if anybody, one of the others should take Medic, or at least Battle Medicine.)
As you've noted, the trouble comes if you enter melee and the cost comes when you build to Strike too. You could just play as a sturdy healer in the back, perhaps with a thrown weapon & shield. How much Wis are you willing to sac for sturdiness, if any? Costly, but w/ you Striking and sharing/mitigating damage, the party might become one of the many with enough offense they do most of their healing out of combat. Or you might become the weak link, needing to Heal yourself!
Apologies for asking more than answering, but yeah, a melee Warpriest does involve more role-switching and tactical acumen than a Cloistered Cleric. You'll likely rotate through your own questions every session.
And I like Ragathiel too, for much the same reasons. And the bastard sword allows you to swap melee roles. Since you've played a Cloistered Cleric twice, I'd say lean into the martial aspects and take Cleric feats you've never taken before. And remember, you taking a Reactive Strike when your ally is wounded gives them more freedom to act without worrying about taking an RS (if y'all have your timing down that is).
ETA: Remember Athletics. You can perform those maneuvers as well as any 16/+3 Str martial can, swapping your okay Strike for their (hopefully) superior one. You may want a weapon with your favorite maneuver trait, and you might ignore a weapon completely and go shield w/ free hand (or free hand weapon for an opportune Channel Smite). Or shield bash.
I have a player currently playing a warpriest of Sarenrae as the party healer.
So far they picked up
Dual Weapon Warrior
domain initiate Fire (using natural ambition)
and Restorative Strike
I have 7 players in my group though so battles need to have more enemies to be challenging and we have had one big battle where they used up their entire healing font on healing. There was another filled with undead where they used up the font as well but it was mostly for the AOE vitality damage.
Early game the difference especially if you carry a shield is not being worried about moving in or if the battle comes to you. You will likely cast a spell and move along with the martials, you might not always have actions left to strike.
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Most healing, in my experience, is done out of combat with the treat wounds or a focus spell (like Lay on Hands). When you would use spell slots or other non-renewable resources to heal is "during combat, as needed." So to be a main healer, basically all you need is a good Medicine skill modifier and the Continual Recovery skill feat.
But in terms of "healing with spells" the downsides of the warpriest vs. the cloistered cleric are:
- If someone was inclined to counteract your heal spells they're going to have an easier time because of your lower proficiency.
- You might have some other combat loop you'd rather be doing than keeping people up, which is why you chose warpriest.
- The rare AoO, which is honestly not something you need to worry that much about.
But I've been in parties where the barbarian was the main healer, so a warpriest can do fine.
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Absolutely. There was a stretch there where Warpriest was considered the OP choice for Cleric, because it could heal just as well as a Cloistered Cleric, and *also* fight. I've seen *lots* of Warpriests fill the healer role.
Consider choosing a deity that will allow you to Versatile Font, so that you can Heal or Harm depending on the situation. Then Channel Smite and related feats start getting interesting.
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I find the question strange. A fighter can be a primary healer.
Thanks for all your answers, they are very helpful. From what I gather, it seems a healing warpriest can easily be a secondary tank, but not a secondary DPS. You all value his shield and his armor a lot, and the fact that he can give flanking, but most of you seem to say he usually lacks the actions for striking.
Which is what frightened me in the first place. Either:
1) You're using a shield - which means if you have to heal you now have just one action left to raise a shield, and you can't strike.
2) You're using a 2H weapon - which means you can strike but you're a d8 class with no extra protection sitting next to your opponents.
As for attacks of opportunities, a lot of monsters don't have them, true - but some do, and I have to be prepared for these times. We got a TPK a few months ago in a troll lair because the warpriest was fighting a two-headed troll when the rogue dropped. We were trying to retreat so he decided to try his luck with a big heal. Sadly, the troll stomped him with a crit.
I find the question strange. A fighter can be a primary healer.
I see a lot of people saying that, now that healing out of combat is a thing, you don't need a healer (as in: someone able to use healing spells) anymore. I honestly don't see how, unless you're playing PFS or with a very lenient GM.
Most APs as designed are brutal, and have a healthy dose of all types of encounters: trivial, low, moderate, severe and even extreme.
You certainly can waltz through trivial, low and medium encounters with barely a scratch, but severe and extreme are a whole other game, even with the best tactics in the world. How it swings will rely a lot on luck.
Who will win initiative ? Will the boss crit save against slow ? Will your fighter get one-shotted ?
A couple true stories from these last months, taken from three different AP:
- A Time Dragon (some know which AP I'm talking about) wins the initiative and uses his breath weapon (20d6 electricity) for a DC42 ref save. Most of us make our save or do a regular fail, but our wizard (who needed a 17 to succeed) critfails and gets hit for 182 damage, instantly dropping him to dying 2. So we start the fight with one man down and three of us at about half HP.
- Ralldar is infamous for TPKs and rightly so. Our barbarian critfailed against confusion. His turn was next, he mauled the ranger who was in his range.
- Hobgoblin archers in the troll lair shoot at us from the ledges while a big troll blocks our path. First hobgoblin to play gets lucky and crits, reload, hits our sorcerer for a total of 30 damage. Luckily, Healer is next to play, before the other hobgoblins, or our sorcerer would be a pincushion on the floor.
We won all those fights despite a terrible start - because of a healer. These fights became dangerous because of a random dice roll - but so many rolls are made that EVENTUALLY, even an unlucky DM will crit twice in a row, or a lucky player will critfail a save.
Sometimes it's the opposite: the monsters have average rolls, but us as players fail everything we try. Hero Points cannot help when you do a string of 1s, 4s and 6s, and some fights who were supposed to be perfectly balanced turn into a dangereous encounter because you simply - cannot - hit. I remember a fight who was supposed to be anecdotical, in a warehouse filled with heavy smoke that gave everyone 20% concealment. Enemies succeeded on all their flatcheck while we failed all of ours; it was brutal.
And that's when you need a healer: when the dice won't go your way in a severe or extreme encounter, which is bound to happen.
If you win the initiative, of course you can put your strategy into motion - maybe cast mist on the archers, calm on the barbarian, trip or grapple. But that doesn't prevent you from being one or two bad rolls away from a TPK if you have no way to heal your bad luck.
(As for scouting ahead, it can help us out but sometimes spells ugly doom for our scout - fail the blind GM stealth check and you're in a lot of trouble).
Most healing, in my experience, is done out of combat with the treat wounds or a focus spell (like Lay on Hands). When you would use spell slots or other non-renewable resources to heal is "during combat, as needed." So to be a main healer, basically all you need is a good Medicine skill modifier and the Continual Recovery skill feat.
But in terms of "healing with spells" the downsides of the warpriest vs. the cloistered cleric are:
- If someone was inclined to counteract your heal spells they're going to have an easier time because of your lower proficiency.
- You might have some other combat loop you'd rather be doing than keeping people up, which is why you chose warpriest.
- The rare AoO, which is honestly not something you need to worry that much about.But I've been in parties where the barbarian was the main healer, so a warpriest can do fine.
This is what I came here to say basically.
The baseline for "good healer" in my book is having the medicine skill and picking up the appropriate skill feats. Potentially taking the medic archetype too. Getting people back up to full hit points is for outside of combat and should be done without using limited resources (like spells).
Spells are emergency healing. It's good to have it for when things go poorly, but in my mind it shouldn't be the main plan. Potions are also valid to fill this role. And everyone in the party should carry a few (though I understand sometimes the action economy of actually using them mid combat can make them cumbersome, but equally so for a caster to use healing magic).
In any event, I say that to say don't worry about "healing". If you're already good with taking medicine and possibly the medic archetype everything else is icing on the cake. But make sure the party understands you're not a band-aid and they will be at least partially responsible for keeping themselves up in combat.
So play what you want to play.
I played a Core Rulebook Warpriest through Extinction Curse... had a blast doing so.
Was DPS secondary? Yeah, but it also wasn't nothing. There were a number of times when it was my guy's rapier that put something down, and that's what really counts in the end, right?
I did take the main Medicine Feats... heck, I spent a General Feat to get them faster.
I will say, on paper, I like the Player Core Warpriest even more than I liked the Core Rulebook one. Raise Symbol? I would've loved Raise Symbol for my guy's build.
I find the question strange. A fighter can be a primary healer.I see a lot of people saying that, now that healing out of combat is a thing, you don't need a healer (as in: someone able to use healing spells) anymore. I honestly don't see how, unless you're playing PFS or with a very lenient GM.
Most APs as designed are brutal, and have a healthy dose of all types of encounters: trivial, low, moderate, severe and even extreme.
You certainly can waltz through trivial, low and medium encounters with barely a scratch, but severe and extreme are a whole other game, even with the best tactics in the world. How it swings will rely a lot on luck.
Yes the intensity of the encounters can affect it. But if you do get resonable time between combats you really can do a tough campaign without a primary healer. If the players know what they are doing. By that I mean have a couple of strikers in the group and work with some synergy to focus fire, plus have effective control strategies to disrupt enemies tactics. On the other hand you can get a party of generalist characters who don't coordinate or focus and they can have trouble with moderate encounters. Both extremes can have fun but it is a different kind of fun.
For my groups the fight is often over by their 3rd turn. For sure it is harder if the enemy has successive fireballs - you can't just tank that with heals like a cleric can.
I typically add to encounters just to keep my players challenged.
A fighter is strong enough in their base chassis that they can spend most of their feats on something secondary like healing and not sacrifice much of their effectiveness. So all the medicine skills and feats, the Medic archetype and then archetype Alchemist for healing potions or Blessed One for focus point healing. It is pretty easy to be useful and level one, and fully setup by level 6. It is action efficient. Combine that with some other healing in the group (maybe another character with a healing effect and a backup scroll/potion) and it really is strong enough for a campaign.
A Time Dragon (some know which AP I'm talking about) wins the initiative and uses his breath weapon (20d6 electricity) for a DC42 ref save. Most of us make our save or do a regular fail, but our wizard (who needed a 17 to succeed) critfails and gets hit for 182 damage, instantly dropping him to dying 2. So we start the fight with one man down and three of us at about half HP.
That is not a balanced encounter.
Characters die when they critically fail saving throws. Especially when the enemy rolls very well. Do you want there to be no risk in the game. Just because you don't have healing doesn't mean you should be neglecting your defences. Many martials will be critically succeding on normal saves at that level. What did you waste your hero points on? What precautions did the wizard take? Note that hit points and health is not the only way that you can loose.
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When a character is in need of urgent healing to stay in a fight, normally a healing potion is enough. When you really need "someone else will use spells to heal you" is when the Barbarian has dropped and the thing that did that is coming over to where you are next"
Like basically "you do not generally owe other characters your actions for something their actions can do." Healers in this game are not like healers in MMOs.
That is not a balanced encounter.Characters die when they critically fail saving throws. Especially when the enemy rolls very well. Do you want there to be no risk in the game. Just because you don't have healing doesn't mean you should be neglecting your defences. Many martials will be critically succeding on normal saves at that level. What did you waste your hero points on? What precautions did the wizard take? Note that hit points and health is not the only way that you can loose.
Well, that's my point.
APs can be deadly and, at one point or another, you're bound to roll badly. I don't remember the exact rolls but the wizard DID use a hero point AND had disappearance on - sometimes, luck is not on your side, especially in a fight with a +3 boss. You roll a 6 which is a critfail, you try again and roll a 4, end of story.Same with all your vaunted tactics and strategy. You can have the best laid-out plan in the world, used recall knowledge to find your opponent's weaknesses, used trip and flanking and synesthesia and bard song and consumables and what have you, if the dice are not in your favour, they are not. We all have experienced this time when we miss everything because we can't seem to roll more than 7 in a whole fight.
I'm not saying it's always happening. But statistically, it WILL happen. You WILL eventually critfail despite a hero point. You WILL eventually get critically hit despite all your defense layers. The opponents WILL eventually resist your control spells. That's the variance for you.
And those are the times when you need some healing and condition removal - big time. Because, if a time dragon downs one of your players and put the others at half life, the best (level 18) potion will heal for 8d8+30 (average 66) AND provoke.
Also, PF2e is not DD5. You get wounded whenever you get back up, so healing someone back from inconscious with 10hp is very dangerous.
- I heal Bob for 10hp.
- K, the troll crits him back to dying 3.
Let's also not forget death effects. Sure, you're perfectly fine with only 30% of your HP left since the fight is almost over, let's not waste a heal on this. Wait, boss casts Vampiric Exsanguination and you failed your roll ? Well, you're dead now - as in, throw your character sheet away.
I'm all for killing enemies before they kill us, and I'm glad Paizo gave us so many tools to prevent someone from being a healbot. There's no healbot anymore, and every healing class is awesome in its own way.
But someone able to heal when the shit hits the fan is the only reason you can avoid a death or a TPK when the dice don't go your way.
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Which is what frightened me in the first place. Either:
1) You're using a shield - which means if you have to heal you now have just one action left to raise a shield, and you can't strike.
2) You're using a 2H weapon - which means you can strike but you're a d8 class with no extra protection sitting next to your opponents.As for attacks of opportunities, a lot of monsters don't have them, true - but some do, and I have to be prepared for these times. We got a TPK a few months ago in a troll lair because the warpriest was fighting a two-headed troll when the rogue dropped. We were trying to retreat so he decided to try his luck with a big heal. Sadly, the troll stomped him with a crit.
Given what your concerns are here, there's a few options:
1. Get a Reach weapon and stand behind a front liner. That gives an extra body between you and the enemies but still lets you "be in melee". And for things that themselves don't have reach, you're now out of range of AoOs. If there's a Champion in the party and you do this, you're probably fine because they can use their reaction to protect you.
2. If you have Free Archetype, get Bastion ASAP to get Reactive Shield. Now you can raise your shield as a reaction when you get attacked, so you get that AC even if you didn't have the actions to raise it on your turn.
Some of this really depends on just how "healer" you want to be. Do you want a free hand for Battle Medicine all the time? Are you using your entire Font for Heal exclusively?
But in my experience as a GM, groups that aren't reckless don't tend to need a "dedicated healer". You're capable of casting Heal as needed and you have Medicine for downtime? You're probably good. The other case where it can come up is very squishy groups, where your front line is a Thaumaturge and a Monk, you're probably going to need more healing than if your front line is a Fighter and a Champion.
Warpriest with Versatile Font (or just a couple of Heal spells prepared) is fully capable of being an effective healer while also dishing out some nice burst damage. I don't think I'd do it if my goal was "maximize raw healing potential at any cost" because Cloistered has the feats to get domains and Medic Dedication without giving as much up for more of that... but you don't actually need that to be a good healer.
What you really need is others in the group to help you out, either by having ways to prevent damage or by having some capacity for recovery that isn't entirely reliant on you.
For some examples of what I mean:
- My Kingmaker group has a healing/buffing focused Cleric and an Oracle with Heal as a signature spell. We can put out absolutely enormous amounts of raw healing, but the big upside here is having two characters capable of doing it at all: if one of us is tied up, the other one can do it. We need that ability far more often than we actually need the raw throughput.
I've actually negated more damage than I could have healed with spells like Roaring Applause taking away reactions, since AoO's that can no longer happen don't need to be healed.
- When we ran Shadows at Sundown, our "healers" were the Paladin and Thaumaturge with Redeemer Dedication (the only spellcaster was a Wizard). This is significantly less in combat healing than high rank Heal, but quite a lot of damage prevention. Downtime recovery took a while as we didn't actually have anyone past trained in Medicine (and this is a level 11 adventure), but in combat we did just fine.
- In the SoT campaign I'm running, the "healer" is the Investigator with the Medicine subclass with Medic Archetype. This works better than you might think, though again they have a second person capable of doing healing if it becomes necessary (a more offense focused Cleric).
- When I ran Extinction Curse, the "healer" was another Investigator. This group had a Paladin focused on defense and past a certain point he negated so much damage that there just wasn't a ton to heal (it was really something to behold). The Fighter and Bards (two) were focused on offense and since defeated foes don't do any damage, this worked quite well.
- Neither of my two Ruby Phoenix groups had a dedicated healer. Both had Bards. One had a Counterspell focused Wizard who also used Maze a lot (and stopped a ton of damage) and the other had a Summoner and Wild Shape Druid using a bunch of Stoneskin and otherwise controlling enemies.
- I'm running Abomination Vaults now and the healer is a Bomber Alchemist who invested in Medicine and keeps a versatile vial or two for elixirs of life as needed, along with a Bard that can cast Soothe.
The point here is really that what Warpriest brings to the table healing wise is pretty substantial, especially compared to some of what I listed there, and those groups all worked. What else folks are bringing to the table really skews how important in-combat healing is: if you're preventing damage through things like Champion reactions or debuffs, you need way less healing than you do if people without heavy armor are just running into melee and swinging.
Some of this really depends on just how "healer" you want to be. Do you want a free hand for Battle Medicine all the time? Are you using your entire Font for Heal exclusively?But in my experience as a GM, groups that aren't reckless don't tend to need a "dedicated healer". You're capable of casting Heal as needed and you have Medicine for downtime? You're probably good. The other case where it can come up is very squishy groups, where your front line is a Thaumaturge and a Monk, you're probably going to need more healing than if your front line is a Fighter and a Champion.
I totally agree with you. In most combats, healing is not necessary.
My issue was with the few times when it WOULD be necessary. A ranged caster can easily switch to healing mode (1-action doctor's visitation + 2 action heal is enough to avoid a disaster and get back to the regular routine). As a melee cleric, I'm afraid that doctor's visitation and/or healing puts me in harm's way as well.But yeah, like I said a reach weapon helps somewhat, as does a shield (although the problem of bastion is you get the AC bonus but you cannot block until later and another feat).
Anyway, thanks for your input, it seems most people think it's viable so I'll try it out and tell you how it works out ^^
Anyway, thanks for your input, it seems most people think it's viable so I'll try it out and tell you how it works out ^^
I think most people have said "You don't even need a caster to be the main healer"
So yeah. I would encourage you to tell your party members that they should also take healing potions/elixirs with them and be at least partially responsible for their own emergency healing needs in combat, rather than expect you to be their band-aid.
Anyway, thanks for your input, it seems most people think it's viable so I'll try it out and tell you how it works out ^^I think most people have said "You don't even need a caster to be the main healer"
So yeah. I would encourage you to tell your party members that they should also take healing potions/elixirs with them and be at least partially responsible for their own emergency healing needs in combat, rather than expect you to be their band-aid.
Well sure, but:
1) It doesn't happen this way in our games. Maybe we're that bad (but I don't think so, we use just about every tactics that has been discussed here), or the AP as written are deadly, or our DM is just lucky with his dice rolls, but sometimes (like maybe 1 in 10 fights), things don't go our way. And like I said, when someone takes 200 damage in a round, it's not a 40hp potion (that he cannot take himself anyway since he's dying) that will help. Also, taking a potion provokes AOO, giving a potion to someone provokes AOO, and sometimes that's annoying.
2) I don't mind being a healer, I still do tons of things and I don't even heal in most fights. My favorite class is the divine sorcerer because I can buff, debuff and blast while still being able to heal when needed.
So I wasn't asking whether a healer was mandatory, that wasn't my point. I'm just more used to healing at a distance when things go south, and I wanted to get some experience from people a) playing a warpriest and b) actually healing in combat.
I understand that you have a different experience than me, I do. I understand that in your games, a fighter with medic archetype is enough to save the day. That's not the case in my games, and we don't mind having someone on healing duty when in PF2 a healer is so much more than that.
I totally agree with you. In most combats, healing is not necessary.
My issue was with the few times when it WOULD be necessary. A ranged caster can easily switch to healing mode (1-action doctor's visitation + 2 action heal is enough to avoid a disaster and get back to the regular routine). As a melee cleric, I'm afraid that doctor's visitation and/or healing puts me in harm's way as well.But yeah, like I said a reach weapon helps somewhat, as does a shield (although the problem of bastion is you get the AC bonus but you cannot block until later and another feat).p
For sure. And when you need big burst healing, Warpriest has it. PRepare Heal in a couple of slots or have Versatile Font (or both!) and you've got the toolbox when it comes up. :)
Anyway, thanks for your input, it seems most people think it's viable so I'll try it out and tell you how it works out ^^
Cool, looking forward to hearing how it goes. :)
I play exactly this, and recently I had to ask my GM to allow me to change my source of Harm to Heal, because I simply couldn't use any warpriest damage "combo". What I do most is heal and buff, and I still have the Medic archetype (my original idea was to only use Medic to heal). It became really boring and disappointing to play as a warpriest in this adventure, so much so that: A) I can't wait to finish it. B) kill this warpriest. Lol. Of course, in a game where randomness is king, in this scenario it's bad because every round someone needs healing, which ends up "consuming" all my "War" side as the priest...
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we play BB and usually APs, which always ends up causing a certain annoyance to the players due to them being deadly.My fear is that this will end up driving away our players' interest in Pathfinder, anyway...
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It became really boring and disappointing to play as a warpriest in this adventure, so much so that: A) I can't wait to finish it. B) kill this warpriest. Lol.
That sounds really rough.
I don't think these issues could be resolved by playing a different class though.I am playing a divine sorcerer in Kingmaker, and when it hits the fan and i have to pump out healing it is not the most involved gameplay, but i usually have a lot of space to cast other spells or set up aid via one for all (swashbuckler archetype).
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I was about to play a cloistered cleric for the third time in an upcoming campaign, but a friend is trying me to change for a warpriest - which is a class I never tried.
Beyond the fact that every player has the right to play the class and subclass they want, if you’ve played any Cleric[/b] for three campaigns running, you have earned the [b][b]privilege[b] to play whatever on the Gods’ Green Golarion you want.
That said, a Warpriest is just fine as the primary healer, and might be a fun change of pace for you. But if you don’t want a change of pace, play a Cloistered Cleric. You deserve the choice.
I was about to play a cloistered cleric for the third time in an upcoming campaign, but a friend is trying me to change for a warpriest - which is a class I never tried.Beyond the fact that every player has the right to play the class and subclass they want, if you’ve played any Cleric[/b] for three campaigns running, you have earned the [b][b]privilege[b] to play whatever on the Gods’ Green Golarion you want.
That said, a Warpriest is just fine as the primary healer, and might be a fun change of pace for you. But if you don’t want a change of pace, play a Cloistered Cleric. You deserve the choice.
While I appreciate your concern, I love playing healers and support, and my friend wasn't forceful at all.
It was more like "hey, you played like 3 cloistered clerics in a row, wouldn't you like a change of pace ?"
And so I was thinking "sure, that might be fun, but would I still be able to help in a pinch ?".
So no pressure anywhere, we all can play the character we want (though we try to get some synergies in our groups). In others AP I've played Magus, summoner, imperial sorcerer or spell blending wizard so it's just a personal choice that I keep going back to the divine list ^^
I think one important thing to consider in this equation is positioning: the Warpriest will usually be positioning themselves very differently in battle compared to a Cloistered Cleric, which will affect how they'll be using their divine font. Because you'll be closer to your frontliners, you'll have more opportunities to cast single-action heal spells, but because you'll be farther away from your back line, you might be harder-pressed to heal a more distant spellcaster or archer. Importantly, you'll be especially well-positioned to cast three-action divine font spells to heal lots of teammates at once, including yourself, and also nuke some undead if you're fighting those. This pairs up well with a ton of different feats, including Communal Healing, Restorative Strike, Heroic Recovery, and Fast Channel for even better healing, but also Divine Castigation, Ebb and Flow, and Cremate Undead for more offense. You might not have the same counteract modifier as a Cloistered Cleric, and you'd be more vulnerable to Reactive Strikes, but you'd still get to be an amazing healer if you so choose.