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gnomas
2008-05-10, 05:21 PM
I'm currently DMing a game with a few of my friends. The party has high stats and not much in the way of builds. all are level 5

catfolk sorc (blaster)
catfolk rogue
human dragonfire adept
human fighter
human cleric

the focus of this thread shall be the cleric. there are two things i need help with: 1) he wants me to help him choose feats. I want to give him good ones, but the only ones I know of are too clericzilla for my game. what ar esome good ones, staying away from DMM persistant spell.

which brings us to 2) he wants to be a warpreist. we've already set up the fluff for becoming one, and he's working towards the requirements, but i have issues with it. first, it need combat casting. What's something I could change that to so he won't need to waste a feat? also, the damn thing loses 5 caster levels? worth it or no?

Kizara
2008-05-10, 05:44 PM
1) That class is garbage. Mystic Theurge does its role better, and that class is hardly amazing.

2) Quicken Spell, Divine Metamagic (Quicken Spell), Extra Turning, Power Attack is my standard starting cleric build. If you don't want to go DMM, take Divine Might (its only bad compared to DMM, its pretty good IMO).

3) I need to work on my warpriest fix, but I'll post it for you when I'm done.

EDIT: K done, here you go:

From my Tome of House Rules v1.56. (take 2, I revised this)

Warpriest

-Remove Sense Motive and add Intimidate 5 ranks to skill prerequisites.
-Reduce HD to d8.
-Gain casting progression at 3rd and 7th level.
-Gain Will as a good save.
-Inflame grants its bonus to all saves against all types of effects. Furthermore, it grants half its listed bonus to attack and damage rolls. It’s duration is in rounds instead of minutes.
-Chart should read “Inflame +8” at 8th level and “Inflame +10” at 10th level.
-Hero’s Feast ability is usable 3 times per day.
-Haste ability is gained at 4th level (instead of as written).
-Gain Mass Haste at 7th level, usable once per day.
-Mass Heal is usable 3 times per day.
-Gain Climb, Intimidate, Knowledge (religion) and Perform as class skills.

Griffin131
2008-05-10, 06:57 PM
Replace Combat Casting with Skill Focus: Concentration. Same flavor, much better overall imo.

Eldariel
2008-05-10, 07:13 PM
Primary issue with Warpriest:
-All the spell-likes are completely unnecessary if you just have a full casting instead; you'd get more spells, choice which spells to prepare and more powerful spells. Oh, and taking 7 levels of Warpriest means you won't ever see level 9 spells (aside from Mass Heal, which is per day).
-All his morale-bonuses to everything are easily replaced by spells. Also, they only work against Fear-effects. Frustrating; Remove Fear-spell makes them mostly obsolete. And that's Inflame AND Rally.
-He can cause Fear-effects. Unfortunately, many creatures are fearless by the virtue of being Mindless or More Scary Than You™ (Dragons). Fear Aura would be good if it were constant, but as once-per-day, it's sitiuational and derived off your secondary stat (Cha), which doesn't tend to be nearly as high as your Wis.
-Level 10 ability would be nice except again, there's a spell that does the same thing better and you really want as high a caster level for your spells as possible.

The intent of Warpriest is to be a mass buffer. Unfortunately, a straight Cleric does that much better through Magic. Also, Combat Medic does it quite well, giving the whole party a bunch of bonuses just by healing them. Anyways, you can flavour his straight Cleric into a Warpriest; he'll be much happier that way. Or apply some kind of a houserule such as what Kizara suggested.


Does he specifically want to be a buffer or rather a frontliner?

Paul H
2008-05-10, 07:20 PM
Hi

About the only reasons I can think of tho tak Warpriest is Full BAB & D10 HP/lvl. All the rest can be gained by feats or items.

Check out CD for more powerful PrC's. Rainbow Servant is powerful anti-undead class. Another good one is Storm Lord. Seeker of Misty Isle is excellent for Elf/half Elf Clerics. You gain 2 extra Domains; Travel & Magic plus other bonuses. (Travel domain power allows Freedom of Movement, Magic allows use of magic items as Wizard. This in addition to spells like Dim Door, Fly, teleport, etc). :smallsmile:

Currently playing Cleric of Llir in World's Largest Dungeon, with Magic & Travel domains. (ID Item is 2nd lvl domain spell, with no costly material components).

Lastly - if they want to play a combat divine caster - play a Druid. They get healing spells too.

Druid 7/Master Many Forms 2 allows you to shift into troll form, use Enhanced Wildshape from Spell Compendium to gain it's Extraordinary abilities (Rend, Regen, etc). Cast Shillelagh on your (free) oversized club so it now does 3D6 base damage. Plenty other awesome spells in SC and CM for even more cheese.

Cheers
Paul H

Aquillion
2008-05-10, 11:17 PM
Warpriest is indeed pretty underpowered. Honestly, Clerics are so good that in a low-powered group he might not be that bad... but if there's any other full casters, or even decently-optimized fighters, he's going to get overshadowed fast. (And when you're getting overshadowed by the fighter, even a somewhat optimized one, you have problems.)

You could try looking at this if you want ideas to change it: the original warpriest (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/mp/mp20010413d), the one they playtested. Note that that one is massively overpowered, so you certainly can't use it directly (the wording is very unclear, but I think it gets full casting, plus full BAB, plus useful class features...)

Impart Maneuvers looks fun, though. Notice how you don't have to have the maneuver you impart yourself, either... it's like a floating fighter feat for your entire party. If you want to get silly, it can technically bestow epic feats. If you disallow that (though honestly, the combat-related epic feats aren't that powerful, and the few useful ones have more than two prequisites, so it wouldn't be a game-breaker), it isn't that powerful, but it could be a lot of fun, and it's certainly something you can't mimick with anything else in the game... so you might want to consider giving him that. Of course, since he doesn't seem to know much about feats, it could be problem... but on the other hand, if you print out a list for him to pick from it could be a great way for him to learn which ones are useful for his next character.