Cleric Critique

[Aelonwy]

I cannot download lamania, some error keeps preventing me. However, I sat down for several hours going over the textual information provided by Ellisdee and others.

General Over View
I was surprisingly pleased with the Healing Domain(?) for my cleric which appears to all intents and purposes to provide mostly what I already have from my Radiant Servant without any extremely onerous requirements or costs. Some improvements could be made certainly, but I can live with the tree as it stands. However, that being said there are some missing qualities from the cleric trees as a whole that I feel will further push my character into the role of support only – these being Cleric Smiting and Prayer of Smiting as well as Spell Penetration. Also the Protection Domain (?) is absurd in its focus on supporting others more than the cleric itself.

I’m not against having a couple abilities in each tree that help team mates. This can be played as a team game, or solo. Personally, I mostly duo with my hubby. However, Far too many AP in both trees are meant to help/aid or buff others rather than the character earning and spending these AP. (Martyrdom anyone?)

Again, a few enhancements per tree for others acceptable. Too much focus on support and you are denying me alternatives toward making my own character powerful. Yes I could just select those enhancements that do not help others but what could I possibly have also chosen if more of those enhancements meant for others were meant for myself?

[Aelonwy]

How I See Cleric being Divided:
The three parts to being a cleric are Healing, Offensive Casting, and what I like to think of as Offensive/Defensive Prowess. So you should focus the three cleric trees in this way. The Healing Tree is adequate, needs Light Spell crit enhancements among others and a few minor tweaks perhaps and you can set it aside. The Protection Tree should be more focused on the personal defenses of the cleric itself such as ways to build on the cleric shield and heavy armor proficiencies but also on offensive melee abilites such as Divine Might, ways to enhance the Divine Power/Divine Favor spells. Finally, many clerics focus on offensive casting in addition to healing and buffing the party. Now in this game that is more difficult than it should be simply because clerics don’t have many of the offensive spells they should have as per PnP ( looking at Insect Plague 5th lvl, Earthquake 8th lvl, Storm of Vengeance 9th lvl) nor do they have domains which can greatly assist offensive casting. This third tree must include Spell Penetration, and any Metamagic enhancments, bonus spell points etc. And where is my negative spell power? For Wounds, Harm and Slay Living?.

[Aelonwy]

Tweaks to Cleric Healing Tree:

Move Mighty Turning to either tier 3 between Improved Turning and Endless Turning or move Endless Turning to Tier 3 and Make Mighty Turning a Stand Alone at tier 4 after the Undead Turning Line completes. Either way all four Turn icons should appear on the left hand side.

Move Channel Divinity up to Tier 3, and Martyrdom (if you must keep it to tier 4).

This will give you two open spaces on Tier 2 to add Smiting (bonuses to light damge and light damage crits) and Cleric Divine Light which you might want to think about turning into generic light damage (that would hurt anything not immune to light damage instead of just undead).

As to balancing AP costs… not my area of expertise.

Edit: Some further examination of the Healing Tree…
Pacifism doesn’t give enough of a bonus to be useful even as a toggle, Bliss just isn’t worthwhile for its cost, why are Divine Healing and Divine Vitality an either/or enhancment now? I could see Divine Vitality being moved to the Offensive Casting Tree not because its offensive but because a couple of enhancements per tree could be to help the team and DV’s help your offensive casting teammates. Personally, I don’t think I would ever use Martyrdom - not only does it cost me AP, it costs my characters life, 4turns, and does nothing if I happen to not have 4 turns when I die. Not that I’m unappreciative but where does Divine Health come from? Isn’t that a paladin ability?

[Aelonwy]

Tweaks to Cleric Protection Tree:

First off this should be the melee and defense Warpriest/Battle cleric tree.

Every Protecor Core Ability is a waste except the final one (Ultimate Protector) and it simply isn’t worth the investment of the previous enhancements.

Please scrap the entire Shield Other Lines. Please. It would have been nice to receive the bonus to self but as its only useful on others you are making my character pay to make others more powerful seven-ways-to-Sunday and I will deliniate them to you.
My character earns the experience that earns the AP that pays to make someone else better.
My character earns the experience to level to spend my skill points so that this ability can last even remotely long enough to be useful to someonelse so that they can be better.
Its not enough that I spend my spell points to give someonelse energy resistance if they should be missing it but that I should spend further AP that I earned so they get a little extra umph from MY enhancements.
And don’t get me started on spending my AP for an effect on someonelse that has to stack to be useful and the stacks only last 3 seconds… 3 you know about the time it takes for me to drag my mouse over and click something because not everyone has 8 shortcut bars memorized.
I refuse to spend AP on the shield other lines. To me it is essentially wasted space and wasted opportunites in this tree.

Tier1 Toughness nice. Sacred Touch could be possibly something worthwhile if the bonuses were significant enough… especially as they only last 12 secs. I’m thinking 2/4/6 at least, for 12 secs should be reasonable. Essentially the cleric is spending AP to add this effect to their healing spells for an incredibly limited duration.

Personally I would ignore both Close Wounds, and Awareness.

Tier 2 only Energy Resistance and Efficient Metamagic are worthwhile and Efficient Metamagic needs to be split into each Meta so that someone could choose to invest in as many as they might wish. Also Efficient Metamagic ought to be in the Offensive Casting Tree.

Tier 3 only Ability Point and Armored seems useful and even then minutely so. I would suggest either improving the bonus to AC to 2/4/6 or maybe making it a percentage to armor such as 1%/2%/3%.

Tier4 Ability Point and Light Guard. Both are fine as is.

Tier 5 Arcane Encumberance and Dodge Elements could be useful. Would be helpful to know how long Dodge Elements is supposed to last for its 25sp pt cost.

What this tree needs are bonuses to the cleric selected Faith weapon, both damage and attack, bonuses to shields such as added PRR while shield blocking, something to reduce armor penalties to skills like jump and balance, Divine Might should be in this tree, turning the spells Divine Favor and Divine Power into SLAs or Toggles with offensive casting costs much like Pacifism but such that the cleric could heal and melee appropriately. Perhaps a new effect that uses Turns to create a Divine Shield that would absorb a certain amount of damage then expire or absorb a certain percentage of damage for a short duration.

If it were my choice points spent in the Prowess tree would give HP at a 3:1 ratio such that if there were a total of 60 available AP in this tree then if someone bought every single enhancement they would get 20 extra hp. Of course the ratio could be changed.

[Aelonwy]

Cleric Offensive Casting Tree: Brainstorming

For each action point spent in this tree, you gain 1 Universal Spell Power and 1.5 Negative Energy Spell Power. Efficient Metamagic should then be in this tree and each should be a separate possible enhancment. I would choose to put Divine Vitality in this tree as spell point focused enhancment that hepls teammates possibly offensively cast. Spell Penetration, Spell Points, Negative Energy Crits, perhaps some enhancements that could add to selective Spell School DCs such as Necromancy, and Evocation with or without requiring the Spell School Focus Feat. Brainstorming, it occurred to me that it would be neat to have an aura effect that decreased the spell resistance of enemies within the aura by a small amount - think of it like a Shattermantle effect that actually is a “mantle” over the character and it could be use up Turns.

[eachna_gislin]

Some very nice suggestions, well thought out.

However, if there's to be a melee box, a healing box, and a caster box, the smiting line should go in the caster box.

I think close wounds is okay, but instead of decreasing the cooldown, each point spent in it should increase the number of caster levels it counts (maybe 5/10/15 or at least 5/7/9).

Yes i know it's a tier 1 ability and so tempting for cleric splashes, but clerics WANT a few inexpensive ways to add self-healing to the game for "all" classes. A cheap SLA for blue bars here is perfect as one option.

Close Wounds definitely belongs in the Healing Tree, not the Protection tree.

I also dislike the Protection tree and the shield line being focused on other players. It should "at least" be cleric OR others, or it should be tossed out for something that makes the cleric a more effective individual (rather than another version of buffer).

[Aelonwy]

However, if there's to be a melee box, a healing box, and a caster box, the smiting line should go in the caster box.

I placed it in healing for two reasons... 1) they had already set up points spent in healing tree add to light spell power therefor it doesn't make much sense for light crits to be in another tree and 2) somewhat thematic that light spellpower is associated with a Radiant Servant. Yes, you could argue the 2nd point but remember that light spellpower, on items in this game, is referred to as Radience and light spell crits, on items, are Radience Lore. If anything the light crit spellpower in enhancements should be renamed to Radience or Radiant-something-or-other in keeping with the former labeling. Having it labled smiting almost brings to mind the paladin melee ability.

Yes i know it's a tier 1 ability and so tempting for cleric splashes, but clerics WANT a few inexpensive ways to add self-healing to the game for "all" classes. A cheap SLA for blue bars here is perfect as one option.

I hadn't thought of that... good catch. Good job devs on Close Wounds.

[artistx]

Cleric Offensive Caster pre could simply be pale master with it's focus on negative energy it'll likely have spell pen and boosts to necro DCs and even the lich form has a bonus to wisdom...