[PF] variant channel

[khachaturian]

greetings playground

i am building a negative energy channeling cleric who is taking variant channel in the rulership (leadership) subdomain. my question is this:

if i try to use negative channel offensively against undead, it will heal them- this is a given. but... does it still provide the daze effect? i figure that this build is fairly vulnerable against undead, but throwing out an area of effect daze might be a useful first round tactic.

thanks!

[NamelessNPC]

No, I don't think you can do that:


A variant channeling either modifies positive channeled energy when used to heal or modifies negative energy when used to harm. When using positive energy to heal, affected creatures gain only half the normal amount of healing but also receive a specific beneficial effect. When channeling negative energy to harm, affected creatures take only half the normal damage but take an additional penalty or harmful effect; a successful saving throw negates the additional penalty or effect but does not reduce the damage any further. Creatures that would normally ignore the effect of a particular channel (such as undead with respect to a positive energy channel used to heal) ignore the variant effect of that channel.

If you choose to modify your negative channeling offensively it will not affect undeads.

In any case, I used the same variant with a cleric I'm playing. It's a great tactic against mooks and "bruisers". Remember they take full damage even if they make the save.

[khachaturian]

thanks for the reply. i am glad to hear from somebody who has tried this sort of build out. if i could indulge upon you for a couple more questions:

- for variant channel, is the damage from a phylactery of negative channeling still 2d6, or does it get reduced to 1d6?

- do you ever use desecrate to pump up the DC? even without any effect on undead, the bonus to DC with the great duration looks like it might be worth the material cost in certain situations

- starting from level one, do you think this feat progression is ok?
1. selective channel
H. scribe scroll
3. improved channel
5. quicken channel
7. command undead
9. ability focus (channel DC)
11. quicken spell
haven't thought past this point yet, but would probably depend on how the campaign and my role in it pans out