Update 56 Preview 1: Sacred Fist Archetype

[Nickodeamous]

Hey Lynn, looks cool.

As a monk, I'd try it, but I have to say, this should in no way be superior to a handwrap monk by any means. The fact that iconic tabaxi is stick only, and now we have a handwrap pally concerns me. I wanted to like Tabaxi, but I am a die hard hadwrap monk player, so that is just a flavor. (a fun flavor, but not for me).

This kinda feels like a tempest build where you are a wizard, but play like a monk (with ki). 18/2 split.

I'll try it, but lets get monks (handwrap) some love!!

Nico

[Khurse]

I'm not sure it works with the Paladin (apparently) attacking far more slowly than the Monk with the wraps.

I'd agree Kama's/Staves might be an option.

But- so far this is my favourite addition simply due to the glowing hands with Sacred Flame!

You really should add that to basic Monks...

[Pandjed]

No magical training here, so will be a pain to level, unless you use Fred to swap it later (as many EDs give it) or by adding a spellcaster into the multiclass mix, as passing on Feydark Illusionist for CHA to hit and dmg (you did it, after all) is too good to pass.

If the attempt is to make it work well with GMoF, then having all the damage bypass in the enhancement tree cores makes you feel really bad about taking the GMoF cores. Well, there is crystal at least? But nothing for alignment.

Can I feel a bit offended, that the Path of Life makes its debut in DDO before the kalashtar (only thing hinted at their existance is in Sorrowdusk DM-text!!!)? Also, make it a general religion, give it a level 6 that also works with other cleric/fvs enhancements (like warchanter/warpriest t5 PRR bonus). Pushing sacred fist into Path of Light is sensible, but doesn't need to exclude other believers (as the kalashtar do teach the philosophy to others and would bring such paladins into existance).

[Tanky]

No trance = no thanks.

[droid327]

Sac Fist could have some major impact on endgame healing builds...a Sac Fist/FvS split of some kind could get you Rad Serv, Sac Def, and Beacon trees. Even better than current 17 FvS/3 Pal splits

In fact, this might be another class that ends up better as a splash than as a main...the "side trees" together may be more useful than the unique new tree.../3 Sac Fist and just ignore the handwrap tree entirely, you get T3 Sac Def passive defenses and +20% HP, and Rad Serv for Divine Healing HOT, CMW SLA and Unyielding Sov. That's quite a juicy package to pair with, say, Fighter - makes a far better Warpriest than an actual Warpriest. Or Sorc EK, or ES Lock.

Or Inqui on any class for a tanky ranged turret, 3 Sac Fist/1 Fvs/16 XXX - 41 inqui 7 fey 14 rs 14 sac def 4 warsoul. Heck of a template for HTRing, or go 19/1 for RTRing

And Evasion with CHA bonus to saves for Heroic, use light armor since you wont hit 100 MRR anyway.

[Lotoc]

Big fan of Sacred Fist in other mediums, especially in NWN2
The Sacred Fist tree here is unfortunately an underwhelming combination of Shintao and KotC while sacrificing too much of the utility of each while not matching either in damage and not doing enough for its own identity.
Compared to Stormsinger and Apostate it is really rather underwhelming and comes across kind of aimless.

Problems so far are that Sacred Fist seems to be a semi bulky melee attacker tree, the other two archetypes removed a tree not exactly cohesive with their themes and kept supporting trees that help the theme feel fleshed out meanwhile Sacred Fist got rid of Knight of the Chalice in order to kind of be an inferior version of it while replacing Vanguard with a healing tree, leaving the only support to this Melee based damage orientated tree a tank tree and a healing tree which is kind of leaving the class aimless, unless you're very very keen on building a monk tank with a paladin icon.

There's the issue of Ki also, there are no real spenders on Lam but also nothing interesting to spend Ki from in OP summary, I would propose an ability that radiates holy fire to nearby enemies dealing your Sacred Flame dice to nearby enemies that spends an increasing amount of Ki and increases in damage as it lasts longer. Also lacking monk attacks and finishers (granting the class Path of Light attacks would be somewhat fitting) and much of the reward for being centered in the current game are the monk stances, Sacred Fist lacks an Equivalent right now and a charisma bonus stance could be interesting.

As far as building this class having class features locked behind a specific religion is going to cause issues with Morninglord and Bladeforged who strictly can only use Morninglord and Lord of Blades as deities even through lesser reincarnations, it also causes issues with multiclassing with any class which also has deity selection as Path of Life is locked behind Sacred Fist selection. Granting Handwraps as favored as the first core and the "Counted as in heavy armor for Sacred Defender enhancements" as part of the level 6 core would fix all those issues, due to the Sacred Fist tree lacking divine might multiclassing FVS or Cleric with this archetype is likely going to be a standard option which ultimately can lead to religion conflicts depending on your leveling order which is an issue.

[Targal]

Are their handwraps favored weapon?

[QuantumFX]

Is the plan to allow the Enhanced Elemental Dice feat and Draconic Incarnation's extra dice to work with Sacred Fist?

Bug Report: The Life-shaper is not allowing me to choose Sacred Fist on a Lesser TR.

[Alcides]

Here my feedback regarding this Archetype
- Divine Dreaming has a prerequisite of Vulkoor's Chosen which did not allow the full extent of the design to be play tested for bugs.
- The standard archetype for Paladin is also non functional since the UI forces you to always have to pick the Sacred Fist Archetype. I was able to do this on a fully leveled Paladin shifter I tred and on a Khorvaire Elf paladin that was Veteran boosted to level 7. This did not allow the standard Paladin archetype to be play tested for regression bugs.
- Allow the class to key their Sacred Flame to a specific element for use with items and abilities keyed to a monk stance (earth, air, fire or water).
- Allow the Sacred Flame dice to scale with Positive spell power or melee power
- There is no Trance for the Sacred fist tree. There should be one that keys off of Wisdom or Charisma since the Ki system was updated to use Wisdom or Charisma with this change.
- The first level of the tree should allow you to pick to key paladin abilities off of Wisdom or Charisma (including Spell casting, Divine Grace, Smite Damage, Turn undead calculations and Lay on Hands calculations)
- The capstone ability should be a multi selector which offers +4 Wisdom or +4 Charisma in addition to the other abilities
- There aren't enough options to perform a decent rotation with this tree (Cleave, Smite, Great Cleave).
- Consider adding spells to the paladin spell book at various levels that provide additional combat options that cost ki, so that this class feels fun to level with. Divine Disciple doesn't offer any combat options to throw in the mix so it is going to have a very boring game play style without some extra filler.
Devastating Smite - Another smite that uses ki to flesh out the rotation a bit. (src Forge of War)
Rhino Rush - A gap closer similar to spring attack is needed for this to work decently
Explosive smite - A cleaving smite that acts like the tremor spell
Replace paladin cure spells with healing ki like abilities such as Shintao monk gets

[Aaabbbcccddd]

I like the Idea of this tree but I think the cores are a bit bland and could use some spice. DR bypass is not bad but there are a lot of methoids to get it and one of them happens to be the epic destiny tree for monks.

Also for a new player this tree might be very hard to pull of, because you need so many different ability scores. Dex for two weapon fighting, con for hp, wisdom for mana and casting(on hardcore I actually ran into this problem and had to by wisdom pots for my ranger so I could cast spells), and char for saves and turning undead(jk). A change I would like to see is removing or at least reducing the abiltity score prerequisit for two weapon fighting, archer stuff and two handed fighting to 12 or 13 for all feats. For example you want to make a babarian with a bow and there is this feat called bow strength. But you still need 19 dex to get all the bow feats. Of course the easy answer is, just buy a supreme tome +8. Every one should get one at some point but I don't think it is good game design that it is a requirement to make not super standard build work.

Also bow strength, str to hit and dmg. Pretty please.

[Madja]

Looks good so far. I'd have loved to see more synergy with monk, though, so that you could still be a sacred fist even if you're wisdom based for all the stuff that monk has

Also I think War-priest would be a more fitting second enhancement tree than Radiant Servant.

It's mentioned that the special attacks are Light ki attacks. Do Sacred Fist get any benefit from this or is that purely for monk splits to use for finishers?

[Seph1roth5]

avenging cleave/whirlwind blows, please realize that 1 stack of vulnerability (or 1d2 in the other archetype) is garbage unless it has a 1 sec cooldown. Either raise the number like smite in warsoul/priest (4-7I think?) or just drop it altogether and give it an effect that actually does something.

[GramercyRiff]

oof subclasses are a fantastic addition but my beloved Paladin gets the Sacred Fist treatment. we probably won't see another Paladin subclass for awhile too.

the design of this game comes up with every idea i'd never want in a game.

[SpardaX]

To the people asking for this class to gain a weapon proficiency that isn't Handwraps, I don't see it as likely.

Why?

I know this game seems to be getting further and further away from RAW and Lore, but, assuming they stick to their guns on this, I'm going to guess they did what they did because as per the official class description:

Code of Conduct: A member of a sacred fist order refuses to use any weapon. A sacred fist who knowingly carries or uses a weapon loses all class spells and features and advances no farther as a sacred fist until he atones for his action (see the atonement spell, page 201 of the Player's Handbook).

It's a bit of a no no for them.

[SpardaX]

oof subclasses are a fantastic addition but my beloved Paladin gets the Sacred Fist treatment. we probably won't see another Paladin subclass for awhile too.

the design of this game comes up with every idea i'd never want in a game.

*Cough* *Cough*

I'm not saying anything so just ignore this entire post. *Cough*

Archetypes are not just 1 different enhancement tree, though. They can have different class feats (for example, a Warlock Archetype that has new pact choices, or limits your pact choices to something thematically appropriate), different spellbooks (for example, a Bard that focuses more on illusion spells at the expense of its sonic options), replace more than one tree or all of them (for example, a Druid that is a pure caster and forgoes its Wild Shape forms), and even different alignment restrictions (for example, a Paladin that would very much like you to NOT be lawful good).

We're trying to cover a variety of playstyles in the first batch, and will continue to spread outwards as the feature develops and players get used to the idea. Its worth noting that our goal here is NOT to make sure each class has a Archetype to start - we will be instead aiming for Archetypees that we think will be fun to build and to play with. Its possible - likely, even - that a class will end up with 2 or even 3 Archetypes before a different class gets its first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msG8yl9QN1Y


*Cough* Sorry that was a big coughing fit. I think I'm ok now though.

[SpardaX]

Tiny but relatively funny bug Im sure is already known and will be fixed

The Charisma to AC works, but in the AC drop down is still listed as a "Wisdom" bonus to AC.

[Infiltraitor]

Great in theory, bad in practice.

There's a ton of anti-synergy.

Firstly, Sacred Defender tree will put the sacred fist into MRR cap instantly. 25 MRR Angelskin + 25 Sacred Defender Stance and you are already at 50 MRR cap. Everything else is just wasted. The whole rest of the tree that gives tower shield armor bonus, shield armor bonus, armor max dexterity bonus, all of it is useless.

Secondly, handwraps take up two item slots. This puts the sacred fist at an extreme disadvantage if ever the player wants to utilize any support functions. You lose a prefix, suffix, bonus enchantment, two augment slots, and a set bonus.

Third, Monks can't actually reach viable endgame AC. They rely on DODGE, which is something completely missing from the sacred fist.

Fourth, Heavy Armor gives 50 PRR.


Suggested change:

Divine Dream: Your handwraps count as a shield for enhancement (sacred defender stance) AND epic destiny requirements (Legendary Shield Mastery in Unyielding). Your MRR is no longer capped while you are centered. Shield and Armor contribution percentage bonuses apply to your Charisma-AC-bonus instead.

[Alternative]

Divine Dream (6) This is the level 6 "special" deity feat. It makes you considered to be in Heavy Armor while centered for the purposes of the Sacred Defender tree.

What does this entail exactly? The only thing that requires heavy armor is greater sacred defense, is that it?

Does the mrr cap still apply? I can't imagine a dps cloth char run in a stance that generates more aggro so that particular addition seems rather pointless.

I'm also surprised so many people think this is a good tree. Paladin and wraps monk are the most struggling dps classes right now. Combining them in the current game state feels like a grim joke to me.

[Pandjed]

Basically, a good concept, but lacking a good way to mitigate damage, as MRR hits its cap quickly and having no armor also cuts into PRR, with no dodge to compensate. I guess, the MRR cap may be not much of a problem, when you get to use all the cap increases, but that takes some dedication and resourcs, that will be missed in offense.


Well, I guess it's good for leveling with radiant servant t5 for healing aura and capstone divine fist for epics.


Personal gripe is to start with fire damage, while swapping it to light later. Fire and light together reminds too much of Silver Flame, instead Path of Light. Just make it light from the get-go.

[Caarb]

The tree suffers from the same problem as Razorclaw shifter in that the power of the handwrap monk is baked into the monk class rather than the Shintao tree which is numerically fairly weak (good debuffing and cc abilities though)

Some possible solutions
nerf monk (but buff Shintao to compensate)
give the tree some reason to spend be centered (Ki spenders)
Uncap MRR for this archetype to make it play differently than a monk (lower damage but better defenses)
Add some debuffs