Would you play this modified cleric class?

[Umael]

As DM, I like to be flexible and look outside the mold.

So what if a god hated the idea of being encased in armor? He would not want his followers, particularly his clerics to be encased in armor either. Or maybe a jungle-based cleric.

I was thinking lose the Armor Proficencies, light, medium, and heavy (but keep shields, except maybe tower shield - that can go). Furthermore, a cleric of this god (or a cleric of this jungle) suffers like the druid suffers - wearing any armor for this cleric forces the cleric to forgo spellcasting abilities for one entire day.

To compensate, I would say the god protects his followers, granting them a deflection bonus like what the monk gets (Wisdom bonus plus 1 for every five levels (I believe)). Furthermore, the cleric gets to start with an extra feat.

Does this sound balanced? Does this sound like a cleric-variety you would want to play, wouldn't mind if someone else in your game played?

[sktarq]

Actually I'd like it...then again i have about a half down less cobative versions of clerics floating around my world....but Yeah this would be a good trade and highly thematic....leave the paladins to be the tin cans

on review yoink the extra feat to balence it....didn't see that part

[Wih]

Making it so they lose all spellcasting and supernatural abilities of the class if they wear armour, in exchange for the Monk's AC bonus is balanced.
Letting them also use a shield and giving them a bonus feat, however, is not.

[Winged One]

Just give them arcane spell failure chance and the monk AC bonus, and take away their armor and shield proficiencies.

[catfan]

I like the idea, but its too strong. Wisdom to AC alone is a very strong ability, especially for a wisdom based caster. The bonus feat is over the top.

Monk AC doesn't allow the use of shields. It also isn't a deflection bonus.

I would suggest that the cleric lose turning (possibly), all armor and shield proficiencies, and gain the class AC bonus + Wisdom bonus to AC of a monk.

Changing the type of the bonus to deflection is weaker than the default monk ability, since it would then not stack with a ring of protection or the shield of faith spell, so if you choose to make that change, the shield being allowed without losing the AC bonus would be reasonable.

Problem: Doing so would allow someone to take a level of monk and basically double up their AC bonus from wisdom.

[CharPixie]

Without the feat, I think it works well... Do remember that you've just saved a cleric a lot of money, though. And that they could wear bracers of armour without any trouble.

[Jerthanis]

Well, I kinda like the concept, but I'm so fond of the Cleric as-is that it's hard to give that up. I don't think they normally get Tower shield proficiency without a feat, but I'm not entirely sure. The thing is, I kinda prefer the Cloistered cleric alternative from Unearthed Arcana (I think) giving up more martial aspects for greater spellcasting. Which is an interesting way to play a cleric, more as a defensive, buff-centered wizard with healing... but forsaking armor for an AC bonus to wisdom seems A.) weaker and B.) Doesn't change the core method of the cleric... he'll still be a melee fighter, but he'll have less AC which would be harder to enhance magically. I guess they could potentially become more ranged focused, since without armor they'd probably have more dex to help make up for it, and thus might have to sacrifice strength making ranged the better option, but clerics don't have a lot of ranged weapons, just the crossbows and some throwing weapons, so if you gave them bows as well, it would probably be worth it if you wanted to make a ranged specialist cleric with lots of mobility... like a battlefield medic more focused around getting the big tanks up and moving than in causing destruction himself, but with a bow as backup... hmm, that's actually not a bad idea... I actually talked myself into it... I kinda like this varient Cleric now.

[Wih]

The reason that the Monk's AC bonus is a lot more powerful than Heavy Armour is that the Monk's AC bonus works in every situation, unless you're helpless. It works when you're flatfooted, when you lose your DEX bonus. It works against touch attacks and ranged touch spells.
Considering a Cleric is already going to have his highest stat in WIS, this is a significant bonus to the cleric - I'd say that the cleric should have to use a domain power to get this, and the total bonus to AC should be limited by 1/3 of his class level+2, or something similar.

[Umael]

Obviously the idea is good, or at least, these reviews have something positive to say about it, but how it exactly works is going to need to be tweaked.

From a style viewpoint, there would be a difference between a cleric to a god who disliked being encased in armor and being a cleric of a jungle. It would be easy to expand that idea so that one version would be able to use shields and the other would not.

The question is, what is the trade-off?

Removing the ability to wear armor, both as removing the Feats and assigning a taboo to armor costs the cleric about 4 points of armor at 1st level, 8 points at 3rd, and then slowly but steadily increasing as the cleric gets that magical full plate enhanced. At higher levels, the special abilities to armor are also lost.

The bonus for removing this armor (without any other additions) is that the cleric is more likely to use skills that suffer from an Armor Penalty and that the cleric has more disposable coinage to allot to different equipment.

If the cleric can regain that lost Armor Class, then the cleric is in good shape. Making the bonus a deflection bonus means that the cleric could take a level of monk to get double the Wisdom bonus. It also means the cleric could take bracers of armor.

Since a good shield can add up to 7 points of armor (large shield +5), let's just say no shield for now.

What about making the bonus based on Charisma instead? That's the same kind of deflection bonus ghosts get. This eliminates the cleric getting double advantage from Wisdom by taking a level of monk.

Even with the deflection bonus, the cleric-variant is still going to be behind the regular cleric for AC on average. The cleric-variant has more disposeable cash, but cash is only as good as the items you can buy. The variant also gets more incentive to use things like Tumble and Swim, but since neither skill is a class skill and the cleric-variant still has 2 + Int for skills, I'm not sure this is much of a bonus.

If the bonus feat is too much, what would be a good equalizer?

[Wih]

A deflection bonus to AC based off CHA is, IMHO a more logical idea. But it would be incredibly broken if they took a level of monk beforehand, or even worse, if they purchased a Monk's Belt o.O

[Umael]

A cleric with a monk's belt is broken anyhow. What's your point?

[Wih]

That a cleric with a Monk's belt and CHA to AC is even more horribly broken.
Though not as broken as a Succubus with CHA to AC.

[Jerthanis]

The reason that the Monk's AC bonus is a lot more powerful than Heavy Armour is that the Monk's AC bonus works in every situation, unless you're helpless. It works when you're flatfooted, when you lose your DEX bonus. It works against touch attacks and ranged touch spells.


Armor works in every one of those situations except touch/ranged touch... and considering fullplate gives you relatively cheap, nonmagical AC of +8, a value that to get magically from a bracer of armor would cost a whopping 64,000 gold peices... even if you consider an 18 wisdom cleric you need to spend 16,000 gold and fill the bracer slot to get the same AC as a 1000 gp suit of fullplate cleric. When an armor wearing character can spend that same 16,000 on a "slotless" bonus to his AC which will make his AC 4 points better than the other cleric (then can make use of bracers of Giant's strength or something) Sure, there are circumstances where touch AC is good to have, but there's no way of knowing which spells an enemy mage has memorized, and there's no way of knowing if they'll cast it at you... but you DO know that there will be plenty of melee monsters looking to hack you to peices if you're always getting up in their sauce and the better AC is always going to help you against them. Maybe I'm wrong, but it always seemed to me that the higher AC was, the better it was...

[catfan]

Cleric. 18 wisdom. +6 periapt (eventually). +5 book (eventually). 5 level bumps by level 20.

34 Wisdom at level 20, or +12 AC.

That's one less than +5 full plate, and it lets you get your full dex bonus to AC (can assume say 14-16 starting dex for this brand of cleric, +6 gloves, for a 20-22 dex, +5-6 mod).

Add to this your +1 ac per five levels, and you have a +22 AC from dex and 'monk' bonus.

+5 full plate and +5 heavy shield would provide +20 AC, +1 from dexterity. +21. And, again, unlike full plate and other armor, there is no limit to the cap to AC from dex or wisdom

Also, when you account for the +8 bracers of armor, you have a +30 ac from dex and monk bonus, versus your +21 from full plate and shield. It would not be unreasonable to even include a +4 or 5 book for dexterity for that matter, bumping your 'monk' cleric AC even more.

High level monks are scary. Clerics are scary, period. Clerics with monk AC...

Personally, I see this as allowing a cleric to save the 1 caster level loss from multiclassing to monk, and that is a not inconsiderable bonus.

[AtomicKitKat]

Just do what they did with the Ninja base class and say it doesn't stack with the bonus from the Monk.

[Jerthanis]

Stuff

Okay, so maybe you have a point, throw rediculous amounts of money at your stats and magic items and you can have a higher AC by a few points, but your offense will suffer for it... and it's never going to be as good in the early and middle levels. Your required magic items to push the cleric with the wisdom to AC higher than Fullplate-sheild was 383,500 gold, and +5 to armor/shield is only 50,000 gold... available FAR earlier on than ANY two peices of your combination. High level monks are scary in melee because of 5 hits/round at 2d10 a peice... not so much because they're difficult to hit. I do concede however, that at high level (about 15 - 20 or so) Wisdom to AC will start being better than All armor proficiencies.

[Rigeld]

Okay, so maybe you have a point, throw rediculous amounts of money at your stats and magic items and you can have a higher AC by a few points, but your offense will suffer for it... and it's never going to be as good in the early and middle levels. Your required magic items to push the cleric with the wisdom to AC higher than Fullplate-sheild was 383,500 gold, and +5 to armor/shield is only 50,000 gold... available FAR earlier on than ANY two peices of your combination. High level monks are scary in melee because of 5 hits/round at 2d10 a peice... not so much because they're difficult to hit. I do concede however, that at high level (about 15 - 20 or so) Wisdom to AC will start being better than All armor proficiencies.

Offense wont suffer much at all. Persistent Divne Metamagic Divine Power. Full BAB, +6 Str, and some free hps for 24 hrs for 1 lvl 4 spell and 6 turn attempts.

[JimmyDPawn]

How about this?

Make the armour bonus more like the bonus one the monks get (1 per five levels or something) and limited by their charisma.

Then you make the bonus an actual deflection type. Im imagining this more as a 'Protection of the gods' rather then a 'Dang, I'm fast' sort of bonus. So even though it does stack with that monk bonus, it won't stack with certain other ones, like certain magic items.

This might seem a bit of a weak, but remember, Wizards and Sorcers have to get along with nothing like that.

Keep the restirtion on armour that they lose spellcasting for a day.

Going with this jungle cleric theme, remove turning undead (unless this is a jungle of the undead.) Then maybe add some minor ranger abilites. (Pass without Trace, and Woodland Stride fit the theme)

And then, if you really think they need something else, grant them either Plant or Animal domains for free.

There ya go, Jungle-Cleric

[catfan]

Jungle Cleric = druid...

[sktarq]

Just do what they did with the Ninja base class and say it doesn't stack with the bonus from the Monk.
Oscam's Razor! I like it.