How To Nerf the Apostle of Peace enough to be useable?

[RedDragons]

So the Apostle of Peace is....let us say rather annoying in the fact it takes peace to the very core and kills your parties rp with it ironically.


How can you nerf an already OP level PRC to a point that it is still strong, and opens you up to roleplay that says yes we go kill the bad guys, but we do it humane ways.

[ArcturusV]

Just reword the Vow of Peace and Vow of Non-Violence to work the way you want? The vows are the only real bad part of the class to speak of. So say something like you must always OFFER a peaceful solution, but you aren't needed to FORCE a peaceful solution.

Thus your Apostle might start every combat offering the enemy a chance to surrender or negotiate. If an enemy is clearly wounded and on their last legs you might offer them quarter.

But losing your powers due to someone else's actions is just stupid. It's when you ask someone to play "mommy" for the party that the RPing gets stupid. Have it so that you allow your party to kill people in battle, or to execute them cleanly (Coup de grace, etc), but you cannot abide torture or long drawn out "show" executions (e.g.: Edward Longshanks, which if you don't know involved piping hot embers up his ass).

[ZamielVanWeber]

I went crazy with the little part about having party members swear a vow. Instead of allies it was meant to be used on fallen enemies; they took the same penalties except the duration was permanent and could only be removed by an atonement spell cast by a good cleric. Removal of the vow was only via a quest from a good cleric or via miracle.

[Psyren]

Your first step is to drop Vow of Peace and make them only need Vow of Nonviolence. VoN should have the flavor the player wants but is much less restrictive on the rest of the party, even allowing you to kill a foe that has betrayed your trust once.

[GreenSerpent]

an already OP level PRC

Actually Apostate of Peace is by far the weakest fast progression class. Fixed unchangeable spell list (unlike Ur Priest and Sublime Chord), the Vow restrictions, and the Censure Fiends ability (compare that to the Ur Priest's ability to steal spell-like abilities like Wish, or the Nar Demonbinder's Blasphemy/Holy Word/Dictum/Word of Chaos interchangeability, or the Blighter's Undead Wild Shape).

Yes, it's strong compared to a martial class... but then it's a fast progression spellcasting class.

[Karnith]

Actually Apostate of Peace is by far the weakest fast progression class. Fixed unchangeable spell list (unlike Ur Priest and Sublime Chord), the Vow restrictions, and the Censure Fiends ability (compare that to the Ur Priest's ability to steal spell-like abilities like Wish, or the Nar Demonbinder's Blasphemy/Holy Word/Dictum/Word of Chaos interchangeability, or the Blighter's Undead Wild Shape).

Yes, it's strong compared to a martial class... but then it's a fast progression spellcasting class.
Additionally, unlike other fast-progression classes, you can't take levels in Apostle of Peace until a character is at least level 8 (it requires Concentration 10 ranks), so up until the class's 7th level (character level 14), it's behind on spellcasting, and it only comes out ahead at class level 9 (character level 16), when you get access to 9th-level spells one level early. And after that it's just kind of worse than being a regular wizard or cleric because you don't have very many relevant spells per day.

[Callin]

Friend of mine played one once. First encounter of the adventure and its us walking along the tundra when a bullete pops out the ground. All of us fail our saves and the bullete passes. He was grappled and drug into the earth to never bother us again.