Newbie Building a Desna Cleric in Kingmaker

[Darkmoon250]

Howdy, folks. PF2e dabbler here, and I've finally got a chance to try the 1st edition of this great game! The group will be going with Kingmaker, and I'd like to play a Cleric of Desna from Issia. I've had the Core Rulebook for 1e since my middle school years, but I've never had a chance to actually build a character for this system.

I was wondering if anyone here had some suggestions about how to make a character like I have in mind that's both effective and fits nicely into the campaign world. I'm not looking for anything that's uber strong or super complex, just something thematic and fun.

If anyone has any suggestions about feats, archetypes or whatever that would fit well and help me out in the River Kingdoms, please let me know. Thanks :)

[Joynt Jezebel]

If you go to https://zenithgames.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-comprehensive-pathfinder-guide s.html you will find the guides for PF 1st ed.

There are a few guides for the cleric, try the most recent, Illzury's, I have read it and it is good. It should have the information you want, maybe rather too much.

I would have a read and put your character together. If you want some input from more experienced players post your draft build for input.

Answering "how should I build a Desna Cleric for Kingmaker requires writing an awful lot.

[I grok do u]

Desna has lots of fun support. Good domains are travel and luck (or fate subdomain).

If you take the deific obedience feat, hers is a pretty easy +1 to initiative (+2 with Fate's favored trait plus +4 against being surprised in ambushes.

There are some feat trees regarding using star knives, Dex to damage ( Starry grace - 3+ feats) or Cha to attack and damage (Desna's shooting star - 1+ feat), although the general Guided hand feat gives clerics WIS to attack with deity's favored weapon.

The variant channel option for luck is flavorful, and gives adds buff/debuff at the cost of healing power.

But yes, as Joynt Jezebel said, guides are helpful as there are a lot of options! Clerics can be played a lot of ways from frontline combat to pure caster. You'll need to narrow down what you want if you want more detailed build advice.

[Mysterious Stranger]

Most cleric archetypes trade away at least one domain. Desna has some really good domains so I would avoid any archetypes. For domains Imagination (from champions of purity) and travel seem to be very good. Imagination gives you a bunch of illusion spells which clerics normally do not get. Travel gives you so many useful spells, and at 8th level dimensional hop.

Take the feat divine fighting style to use your CHA to hit and damage when using a starknife. Going Aasimar for race gets you a bonus to WIS and CHA with no penalties. You can easily start with a 18 WIS and 16 CHA. This will give you a decent number of channel energy and a +3 to hit and damage with the starknife for only one feat. If you go the weapon finesse route adding DEX to hit and damage requires 3 feats.

If you want something more combat focused a warpriest would be good. If you do that, I would go the weapon finesse route and take Starry Grace and Guided Star instead of the Divine Fighting Style. You could also take the Champion of the Faith Archetype. As you level up you can focus on throwing your starknife by picking up quick draw, point-blank shot and rapid shot. By 9th level you could be getting 3 attacks at +10/+10+5 doing 1d8+18 point of damage without a magical weapon. Doing so would require using smite evil on the first round and then using guided star on the second.

[Dragonchess Player]

I would agree that an archetype that trades away a domain is probably not the best idea for a cleric of Desna.

You may want to consider a one (or possibly two) level dip in another class instead of an archetype. For example, a dip in flying blade swashbuckler could help for a cleric that wants to focus on using their starknife.

[Mysterious Stranger]

I disagree with the dip in flying blade. It is going to take more than a single level dip to make it useful. Desna’s divine fighting style allows you to use CHA to hit and damage. That makes having weapon finesse way less useful. To get DEX to damage with a swashbuckler is going to require 2 more feats and not available till at least 3rd level. Divine fighting style is way better for the character than going weapon finesse. That means the only real benefit to flying blade is subtle throw. Considering it requires spending a point of panache that means the character is going to have a very limited number of uses per day. That is simply not enough to justify the delaying of class abilities especially spells and domain abilities.

[Azothath]

PF1 is front-loaded on character design. Retraining was an effort to address that issue (as there are some good choices and many mediocre to poor choices).

Race: lots of choices. Human(feat, skill point, & multiclassing), aasimar(good ability scores, SLA). Halfling, half-elf, tengu, tiefling, shabti have their good & bad points.

Classes: Cleric, Clr-Varisian Priest, Clr-Ecclesitheurge {caster}. Warpriest is the more martial option. The main issue is the cleric spell list is mainly defensive rather than offensive or tricksy. I'll mention the Oracle(Life) for healing. As always it might be worth dipping into Wizard or Bard for the arcane spell list. Otherwise Monk(no armor) or Paladin(armor) for some boosting.

Weapons: honestly starknife is not a good weapon and certainly not worth investing feats into. As always look at your PC as a Fighter, does it say ranged, thrown, reach, or melee. Simple weapons are okay but you might try to wangle some weapon proficiency via a trait or magic. Otherwise heavy crossbow, spear, longspear, morningstar are good choices. Options; obsidian dagger, cestus, tonfa(blocking), sansetsukon(blocking). At first level you just want cheap, quarterstaff and sling fit that bill.

Armor: at first studded leather. You are aiming for mithral kikko or breastplate (as IF you had Dex, lol). It is usable by most party members (just in case). Quickdraw shields are great but a second level purchase.

Masterwork Transformation is the way to get your weapon/armor upgraded.

Traits: +1 Fort or Reflex save are hard to beat. Multiclassing means Magical Knack. Spellcasting metamagics want Magical Lineage & Wayang Spellhunter.

Feats: you'll want 1-2 martial and the balance aimed at your spellcasting/channelling. Trying to become an uber damage machine will just suck up feats and you'll never be as good as a Fighter.

Ability scores: personally I avoid negatives. 20 point buy will be generalist[14,10,10,10,16,14] to [12,12,10,11,16.14] or focused(one high score)[10,10,10,10,18,13].

Skills: 1)put 1 rank into class skills AND Prcptn (Lvl/2) AND Acro to 3 ranks along with some others will occupy you till about 5th level. Craft(alchemy) and Prof(merchant) are good choices. Ride to a total of +7 or so is necessary for an Advanced Horse war trained mount (in case it spooks in battle or you go unconscious on it).

With Kingmaker AP you'll want some skills so it depends on the party builds (to avoid too much overlap). This also makes Human appealing.

I'd check out the PF1 build guides on ZG
then Items that can save you thread, 2019

[Mysterious Stranger]

The one exception to the starknife being a poor weapon is for a warpriest. Sacred Weapon increased the damage for a starting character to 1d6 and scales up as you level up. A human warpriest can get Starry Grace at 1st level, so gets DEX to damage that works in melee and ranged combat. 3rd level allows you to pick up Guided Star which allows you to add DEX and WIS to damage. If you want a combat focused “cleric” of Desna this would be the way to go. If not taking her Divine fighting style allows you to use CHA to hit and damage. That is a pretty good investment for a single feat. Most of the time getting an alternate state to hit and damage requires 2-3 feats and usually only works with melee.

[thorin001]

What role do you wish to play? Clerics can be healers, melee beat-sticks, party buffers, or summoners. All have different stat, feat, and domain requirements.