Update 56 Preview 1: Sacred Fist Archetype

[misterski]

Played with it a bit more -
Pros
+The added damage on wraps from the sacred dice feels pretty good
+Getting cleaves will be nice
+The visuals are sick
+You can get really really tanky in mid heroics and still have damage
Cons
-Getting Improved/Greater TWF is a real pain with the dex requirement even with tomes since you basically need every stat at that point
-Smite needs some added damage to make up for the fact you are losing your offhand strike

Bugs
*The +5W cleave does exactly the same damage as a single attack
*My ranger spellbook is empty (I have spell slots but no spells to slot into them). I took class levels in this order (p=paladin, r=ranger, m=monk): prrmppprprrr

Suggestions
*Add a total of 40% offhand strike chance as part of the cores. This would allow players to forgo taking Improved/Greater TWF and only take TWF/Perfect TWF. This lessens the stat requirements for the class and makes it reasonable to play without dex to hit/damage.
*Add a way to increase the number of sacred fist dice in epics either via augs or eds
*Add some ki attacks, here are some ideas:
-Spend ki to ignite your inner ability for some stat bonus also makes you flamey think like ultra instinct or something
-Spend ki to explode doing damage around you that scales with sacred fist dice
-Convert all ki into temp HP
-Spend ki to subject a single target to a turn undead effect
*Some way to get turns back by punching things would be nice

They could do what they did with the other archetype spellbooks and add sacred flame spells to the pally spellbook. Make them like the druid animal form spells. Would be nice to have something else to do with all that ki, though. Only thing to do without taking monk levels is stunning fist as it stands now.

[Zuldar]

They could do what they did with the other archetype spellbooks and add sacred flame spells to the pally spellbook. Make them like the druid animal form spells. Would be nice to have something else to do with all that ki, though. Only thing to do without taking monk levels is stunning fist as it stands now.

I'd like to see them get a version of mass cure light wounds that costs ki as a level 3 spell and a mass cure moderate as a level 4 spell. Sacred Fist could have a solid niche as a support melee who runs in punching with mass heals and maybe the healing aura if they go T5 radiant servant.

[Lynnabel]

They could do what they did with the other archetype spellbooks and add sacred flame spells to the pally spellbook. Make them like the druid animal form spells. Would be nice to have something else to do with all that ki, though. Only thing to do without taking monk levels is stunning fist as it stands now.

I really do want to call this out as a great idea, nice work.

[misterski]

I really do want to call this out as a great idea, nice work.

Thanks. I was trying to think of ways to add more to the archetype other than taking monk levels and it was the first thing that came to mind.

On another note I was doing some more evaluating of the class and noticed that the original post says that Sacred Flame does not get martial weapon proficiencies but that leaves simple weapon proficiencies. That means they are proficient with quarterstaves, which are also counted as monk weapons. I tested it out and yes Sacred Flame works with quarterstaves. I then thought, "Hmm, kama's are monk weapons also, but Sacred Flame isn't proficient in them. I wonder if.....?" Yes even though they're not proficient in them, kamas also work with Sacred Flame. I imagine shuriken are the same way but I haven't tested that yet.

Edit: Ok tested shurikens. Sacred Flame doesn't work with them but shurikens don't uncenter you even when you're not proficient.

Edit: This also means that you can work in VKF with the Tier 3 Deadly Blades without having to spend a feat slot on dagger proficieny, for now

[Rehmlah]

"Hmm, kama's are monk weapons also, but Sacred Flame isn't proficient in them. I wonder if.....?"

Don't forget racial proficiencies and feats that let you stay centered with other weapons; I've also tested this with longswords and Whirling Steel Strike just for fun. The Sacred Flame tooltip states "Your melee attacks while centered..." and does appear to act as stated (yay, options!).

Small thing: Paladins (and Sacred Fists) get the Divine Health feat at level 3 which gives them immunity to natural, magical, and supernatural diseases. Sacred Fists can also take the Radiant Servant T4 ability Divine Health for double immunity, which sounds really useful during this continuing pandemic. Since neither Eberron nor the Forgotten Realms are currently experiencing such a pandemic (that I'm aware of), could this be changed to something else like poison immunity, or at least removed?

[misterski]

Don't forget racial proficiencies and feats that let you stay centered with other weapons; I've also tested this with longswords and Whirling Steel Strike just for fun. The Sacred Flame tooltip states "Your melee attacks while centered..." and does appear to act as stated (yay, options!).

Small thing: Paladins (and Sacred Fists) get the Divine Health feat at level 3 which gives them immunity to natural, magical, and supernatural diseases. Sacred Fists can also take the Radiant Servant T4 ability Divine Health for double immunity, which sounds really useful during this continuing pandemic. Since neither Eberron nor the Forgotten Realms are currently experiencing such a pandemic (that I'm aware of), could this be changed to something else like poison immunity, or at least removed?

Yeah I tested that too, just doesn't seem worth it with all the feats you have to take to make it work. Better to stick with KoTC for that.

As for RS Divine Health, yeah it would make sense to change it to something else since it's a special version of RS for paladins. I wonder if they would work in more bonuses to the paladin aura here or in Sacred Flame. I do want to say that the idea of adding an enhancement tree from another class this way is really cool and opens up a lot of other possibilities in the future. For example, you could do a Samurai archetype for monks and replace one of the enhancement trees with a modified version of the Kensei tree and some other modifications at the class/feat level.

[SWCarter]

I've also tested this with longswords and Whirling Steel Strike just for fun. The Sacred Flame tooltip states "Your melee attacks while centered..." and does appear to act as stated (yay, options!).

Did you have to take a level of Monk to have Whirling Steel Strike as an option? I tried going down this path with a pure PDK Sacred Fist and the feat was not an option for me, even after taking Weapon Focus: Slashing and Proficiency: Longsword.

[misterski]

Did you have to take a level of Monk to have Whirling Steel Strike as an option? I tried going down this path with a pure PDK Sacred Fist and the feat was not an option for me, even after taking Weapon Focus: Slashing and Proficiency: Longsword.

Whirling Steel Strike requires 1 level of Monk in addition to the other feats you've taken. It's also a bonus Monk feat, which they get at level 1,2, and 6. It's still a bit too expensive feat-wise for my tastes to go that route.

[Arsont]

Did you have to take a level of Monk to have Whirling Steel Strike as an option? I tried going down this path with a pure PDK Sacred Fist and the feat was not an option for me, even after taking Weapon Focus: Slashing and Proficiency: Longsword.

I tried this as well. I think the issue is that WSS specifically requires monk levels, not Flurry of Blows. It could be changed for that. Other centered weapon options were working (Including daggers and bows).

[SWCarter]

If you see a bug that's not on this list, let me know! Happy testing

If you Lesser Reincarnate and choose Paladin, you only have the option to select "Standard Paladin". I just hit this trying to pick Paladin at Level 3 using a +3 heart on a Purple Dragon Knight.

[Sorccadin]

First of all, good stuff. It's a fairly unique class and was fun to play around with.

I'd like to see a few things:

Stunning fist with charisma scaling - as is we don't have ki spenders
Level 6 religion feat: pls consider makingit count as both wearing heavy armour AND a shield for synergy with the crusader tree - low mrr and mm sux. Getting free shield effect could be cool.
More ki spenders: was pointed out fairly often, some extra spenders would be cool. For inspiration of this the dndhandbook "time of battle: book of the nine swords" provides a coherent system system for ki casters that could work quite well here. May or may not write up smth for archetypes for a fun theory craft post down the line.

To add to the proc type damage of the imbue dice you could consider giving smth like dance of death in t5. This would give a great reason to go for fist over shintao for pure offensive prowess. You could increase the duration a bit and add like a 30-50 ki cost to it to make players actually care about their current ki and not spam it mindlessly.

Getting TWF on the attack and damage enchantments would also a welcome change. This class is MAD and without tomes and past life's will struggle quite a bit to hit benchmarks otherwise. KoTC gets knight's training and shoot on the run for free, so this tree could also give out some goodies like that or two weapon defense.

Generally speaking the initial concept of archetypes seems like a great way to get more classes without running into issues for now. Very cool, thanks lyn!

[Deivonte]

Sacred Fist is a great idea but I think there are two issues:

• It's dependent on way too many stats. You need Strenght for hit/damage, Dexterity for Two-Weapon Fighting, Constitution for the hit points, and Charisma for the Ki/Lay on Hands/Saves/Armor.
• They Generate Ki, but they don't spend it on anything.

For the stats issue, I see 2 solutions to this. The easy one is to add Charisma to hit/damage in the tree. It's a boring but effective solution. The other solution is to create some sort of feat line (like natural fighting) that allows unarmed fighters to get an offhand hit chance off of an alternate feat that requires Charisma (or make it /Cha or Wis so that monks can benefit as well).

The bigger issue, in my opinion, is the lack of anything to use ki on. I believe that there should be ki spenders both built into the main class and in the tree itself. If I decide I want to ignore the sacred fist tree, I should still have something to spend ki on. One solution is to change Lay on hands/Remove Disease/ Turn Undead From charges to ki spenders. I would like smite evil to be this way too, but that might be too strong. Another idea is to make a toggle-able aura that allowed your current Ki to convert into a shield. Something like "For every 10 ki points, gain 1 temp hp. If you take damage and lose temp hp, you lose 10 ki. In epics, this ratio becomes 5:1" As for Ki spenders in the Sacred Fist tree, I think the cleaves are great avenues for that. Make exalted cleave cost 15 ki and apply 1d4 stacks of armor destruction in addition to what it already does. Make exalted cleave cost 30 ki and apply 1d4 stacks of armor destruction and reduce enemies damage by 4% in addition to what it already does. For an additional Ki Spender in the empty T5, you can add an attack like the following:
Divine Assault:
Cost: 50 Ki
Single Target Melee: Perform three holy strikes that deal +5[W] and your sacred dice + 3 additional dice. In addition, every strike creates a shockwave (I'm partial to a cone behind the target) that deals damage equal to your sacred dice +3 additional dice. Damage scales with 200% Melee Power. Enemies caught in the shockwave must make a Reflex Save (DC 10 + Sacred Fist Level + Charisma Mod + Stunning Bonuses) or be knocked down.
Cooldown: 30 seconds

A final avenue to add a ki spender is to make a sacred fist version of Stunning Fist that scales with Charisma and Sacred Fist Levels.

A suggestion I'd like to give is to make the philosophy of Sacred Fist be Light. As it stands, GMoF capstone gives no (additional) bonuses to sacred fist and neither does Duality, the Moral Compass (which is an issue because the other raid handwraps are Fetters of the Forgewraith, which give sacred fist a negative level). Its thematic and you can even make the sacred fist religion and antirequisite for dark path monk.

Another suggestion is to add handwraps to the simple weapons tier bonuses for the level 3 and 12 deity feats.

[donblas]

Long Sword is a possible option for Sacred Fist through the Follower of the Sovereign Host and the Whirling Steel Strike feat. But you'd also want to take Knight's Training, and now we're talking two feats for a feat starved class. Also, personally, I'd rather have the 50 PRR from Heavy Armor and not be restricted to 50 MRR. Even on a first life hardcore SWF Paladin, 267 PRR and 169 MRR is achievable. Giving up 35 PRR (net) and 119 MRR for Evasion is not worth it. Plus, the non-Sacred Fist has access to Divine Might for higher damage and tactics, and an insta-kill at T5.

Isn't it a problem that weapons other than handwraps won't be favored weapons?

Losing KotC loses the extra favored weapons options it gives.

And although when you chose Sacred Fist the feat selector allows you to chose deities other than Path of Light, Path of Light is the only class feat and if you don't chose it (thus locking out the other deities and their favored weapons), you can't click "next" on the selector screen.

You can chose races with other weapon proficiencies, but those weapons won't be favored weapons.

[Hara]

So Ghost Touch is missing from a tree that replaces Knight of the Chalice, or did I miss it somewhere hidden? Seems to me that this Archetype should have Ghost Touch.

[misterski]

So Ghost Touch is missing from a tree that replaces Knight of the Chalice, or did I miss it somewhere hidden? Seems to me that this Archetype should have Ghost Touch.

It's there in the version on Lammania. Lynnabel posted an older version of the enhancement tree. I posted the differences earlier in the thread. Ghost Touch is added by Light of Hope in Tier 3.

[misterski]

Isn't it a problem that weapons other than handwraps won't be favored weapons?

Losing KotC loses the extra favored weapons options it gives.

And although when you chose Sacred Fist the feat selector allows you to chose deities other than Path of Light, Path of Light is the only class feat and if you don't chose it (thus locking out the other deities and their favored weapons), you can't click "next" on the selector screen.

You can chose races with other weapon proficiencies, but those weapons won't be favored weapons.

It's a minor problem, the real problem is making them centered weapons for the Sacred Flame toggle (the whole point of the tree really).

[Lynnabel]

Howdy friends, happy Thursday! I'm here to post some of our preliminary design changes! Note that all of this is subject to change, as are all things on the preview server.

Sacred Fist:

• Step 1: Actually post the real version of the tree that's on Lamannia and not an early version. If you take a look at the original post, you can see that it's now radically different!
• Step 2: Add places for players to spend Ki:
  
  • Sacred Whirlwind and Exalted Whirlwind now cost Ki
  • Sacred Whirlwind and Exalted Whirlwind now also provide a small light and fire debuff to better synergize with the new Ki spells
  • Add new Ki spells to the spellbook to greater increase utility and allow for better active Ki spending
    
    • Sacred Fist is a paladin, which is a spellcaster, so this is a perfect place to put a source of reliable ki drain!
    • The spells are a combination of short-duration, quick-activation personal buffs and explosive ki fire attacks that scale with melee power
• Step 3: Boost Handwraps a bit across the board for everyone. The feat Swords to Plowshares will now provide Handwraps a +1 Morale bonus to Threat Range.

Thank you for the amazing feedback so far! If you have any further comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to post them here

[Willan]

Howdy friends, happy Thursday! I'm here to post some of our preliminary design changes! Note that all of this is subject to change, as are all things on the preview server.

Sacred Fist:

• Step 1: Actually post the real version of the tree that's on Lamannia and not an early version. If you take a look at the original post, you can see that it's now radically different!
• Step 2: Add places for players to spend Ki:
  
  • Sacred Whirlwind and Exalted Whirlwind now cost Ki
  • Sacred Whirlwind and Exalted Whirlwind now also provide a small light and fire debuff to better synergize with the new Ki spells
  • Add new Ki spells to the spellbook to greater increase utility and allow for better active Ki spending
    
    • Sacred Fist is a paladin, which is a spellcaster, so this is a perfect place to put a source of reliable ki drain!
    • The spells are a combination of short-duration, quick-activation personal buffs and explosive ki fire attacks that scale with melee power
• Step 3: Boost Handwraps a bit across the board for everyone. The feat Swords to Plowshares will now provide Handwraps a +1 Morale bonus to Threat Range.

Thank you for the amazing feedback so far! If you have any further comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to post them here

What are your thoughts on re-introducing divine might back into the tree?

A cha based stunning fist or stunning blow.

Do the cleaves get offhand hit and double attack yet? Can you make that change for all cleaves so TWF feels like an option again?

[droid327]

You are completely correct, I accidentally posted an old version of the tree.

Could we maybe get Ranged Exalted Smite multiselector then, like with KotC?

For the same reason - Silver Flame gets Longbow, which is potentially a Ki weapon. Since the rest of the tree doesnt exclusively require Handwraps, I think it could make room for Longbows too

[QuantumFX]

Thank you for the amazing feedback so far! If you have any further comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to post them here

You still need to add some multiselector magic to the Sacred Defender tree. The upward progression in that tree is extremely limiting.

Examples of things to try:
- Sacred Armor Mastery or Sacred Dodge Mastery.
- Sacred Shield Mastery or Sacred Two Weapon Defense
- Greater Sacred Defense: Magical Defense - Grants +10/+15/+20 MRR cap