Update 56 Preview 1: Sacred Fist Archetype

[Lynnabel]

Howdy all! Please be sure to check out both the Producer's Letter and the Archetype Overview page before diving in here

Sacred Fist is a Paladin Subclass, joining Stormsinger and Dark Apostate as the first wave of 3 subclasses.

Changes from Base Class
Feats:
Added:
Armor Class Bonus: (1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20) This version scales off of Charisma instead of Wisdom. If you are part-monk this will use the highest of Cha or Wis.

Flurry of Blows (1)

Unarmed Strike (1, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20)

Evasion (2) (note: they do not get Improved evasion except as a t5 in the Sacred Fist tree.)

Path of Light (1) This is the Handwraps deity feat. As with all deity feats it grants proficiency with its weapon (in this case Handwraps)

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. This does NOT let you be centered in heavy! Also, in preview 1 it is missing unless you happen to have the Undying Court religion and also happen to be an Elf. Weird, right? :P

Removed:
Sacred Fist Paladins do not gain Shield, Armor, or Martial Weapon Proficiency of any kind. Note that because they get the Path of Light this means they can use Handwraps!

Spellbook:
None for this subclass.

Skills:
None for this Subclass.

Misc Class Attributes:
Ki Ability: Charisma

Ki Progression: Monk

Note: If you are part-monk (which uses Wisdom for ki), the Ki system will ever so politely take the highest of those modifiers. So don't worry that you'll end up wis-based if you multiclass.

Past Life
Sacred Fist: +5 Healing Amp and +5 Pos Spellpower per stack

New Tree: Sacred Fist
Replaces Knight of the Chalice

Themes: Punch paladin! Burn enemies with your sacred fists.

Cores:

• Core 1: Sacred Flame: Toggle: Your melee attacks while centered deal an extra 1d6 Fire damage, scaling with Melee Power. Each core ability in this tree grants you +5 Healing Amplification and +5 Positive Spellpower.
• Core 3: +1 Saves and AC. +1 Sacred Flame dice. Your weapons while using Sacred Flame now bypass Lawful + Good DR.
• Core 6: +1 Saves and AC. +1 Sacred Flame dice. Gain +3 Remove Disease Charges and your Remove Disease now applies Greater Restoration to your target.
• Core 12: +1 Saves and AC. +1 Sacred Flame dice. You gain Immunity to Energy Drain.
• Core 18: +1 Saves and AC. +1 Sacred Flame dice. When you use Turn Undead, you and nearby allies gain +1 Ki on hit and +3 Ki on crit for 20 seconds.
• Core 20: +4 Charisma, +3 Saves, +1 Sacred Flame dice. +10 Melee Power. +1 W with Weapons. You absorb 25% of all Fire damage.

Tier 1:

• Sacred Strike I: +1 to hit and damage with Favored Weapons.
• Extra Smite: +2/4/6 bonus to Smite Evil.
• Disciple of the Fist: +1/2/3 Heal, Concentration, and Intimidate. Rank 3: You gain +1 Reflex saving throws.
• Deft Strikes: You gain +3/6/10% chance to make offhand attacks while centered.
• Ki Shout: Ki Activate: Intimidates nearby enemies, encouraging them to attack you. This ability uses your Concentration skill, and shares a cooldown with the Intimidate skill. (Activation Cost: 5 Ki. Cooldown: 6 seconds)

Tier 2:

• Sacred Strike II: +2 to hit and +1 to damage with Favored Weapons.
• Sacred Whirlwind: Make a sweeping attack against all nearby enemies for +3[W] damage. Shares a cooldown with the Cleave feat. Cooldown: 5 seconds.
• Critical Mastery: +1/2/3 to confirm critical hits and critical hit damage
• Fast Movement: You run 1% faster for each of your Paladin levels.
• Action Boost: Doublestrike: Activate to gain +10/20/30% Action Boost bonus to Doublestrike for 20 seconds.

Tier 3:

• Sacred Strike III: +1 to hit and damage with Favored Weapons.
• Sacred Smite: An improved smite that adds +1/2/3 to your weapon's critical damage multiplier and +1/2/3 to your weapon's critical threat range. In addition, this applies 1d2 stacks of Armor Destruction and 1d2 Stacks of Vulnerability unless the enemy makes a Fort Save (DC 10+Cha Mod+Sunder bonuses). Cost: 15 Ki (note: this is a Light ki melee attack)
• Light of Hope: +1 Sacred Flame dice. Your Sacred Flame toggle now allows you to strike Incorporeal enemies as if you had Ghost Touch.
• Instinctive Defense: You take 5/10/15% less extra damage when struck while helpless.
• +1 Str / Cha

Tier 4:

• Sacred Strike IV: +2 to hit and +1 damage with Favored Weapons.
• Deflect Arrows: You gain the benefits of the Deflect Arrows feat, knocking aside one incoming projectile that would have struck you every 6 seconds. (Antireq Tempest + Swash Deflect Arrows)
• Light of Glory: +1 Sacred Flame dice. Your Sacred Flame damage is now Light instead of Fire.
• Iron Skin: While centered, you gain an additional 5/10/15 PRR.
• +1 Str / Cha

Tier 5:

• Sacred Strike V: +3 to hit and damage with Favored Weapons, +10 Melee power.
• Evasive Dance: Improves your Evasion ability so on a failed Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, you only take 85/70/50% damage.
• Avenging Whirlwind: Make a sweeping martial arts attack against all nearby enemies for +5(W) damage. Damaged enemies gain one stack of Vulnerability. Shares its cooldown with the Great Cleave feat.
• Violence Begets Violence: While Centered, when an opponent misses you in melee, you gain +1 critical threat range for 6 seconds. This stacks up to 5 times and is reset if you critically hit.
• (this space intentionally left blank)

Added Tree: Radiant Servant
Replaces Vanguard

Changes from base Radiant Servant: All things that say "Cleric Level" now work off Paladin Level.

[TPICKRELL]

On paper at least, this looks like a much better fist fighter chasis than monk. That's assuming that it uses the monk handwrap animations.

[Epicsoul]

Just to be clear, Sacred Fist isn't intended to have access to 'monk' stances as a pure class?

[Lynnabel]

Just to be clear, Sacred Fist isn't intended to have access to 'monk' stances as a pure class?

That's correct. They only have the monk feats that are listed.

[Epicsoul]

The tree looks solid, and I'm excited to play it.

I am concerned with the lack of CC in the tree, and I have a suggestion. Following the theme of the tree and pulling a bit from Divine Crusader, what if instead of a stack of vulnerability, Avenging Whirlwind had a chance to Cower mobs for a couple of seconds on a failed save that scaled with sunder bonuses? Throw in a cool Cauldron visual for good measure.

Regardless, it looks fun.

[misterski]

Will Path of Light be added to the Axiom of Faith in Divine Crusader? Also this is outside the scope of this thread but DC core 1 could use something, maybe proficiency with a deity weapon since Axiom of Faith doesn't give it. Thanks.

[Yamani]

If this tree replaces Knight of the chalice, and radiant servant replaces vanguard.

Can you add divine might into sacred fists?

[Triaxx2]

Will this let me be centered with any favored weapon? Or could I use say, Whirling Steel Strike and other feats like it to be centered?

[LightBear]

While the paladin is in the works, any chance to look at why a full blown cha based paladin isn't able to turn undead?

[Willan]

Its a good start but needs a strong finish. The T5s besides sacred strike (because of the melee power) and Avenging Whirlwind (assuming this uses the WW animation and hits 3 times with hw) are lacking. Evasive dance is a newb trap with multiple ways to get no fail on a 1 in epics/ improved evasion from SD. Violence begets violence is also a horribly dated ability and no longer holders up to other T5s like Mist Stalker 5, Holy Retribution, Censure Outsiders, Ascendency, Eldritch Tempest, ect.

The tree is also missing divine might? Is that intentional?

Since the lvl 6 diety feat seems to be slanting this archetype towards a defensive monk/paladin hybrid, how about adding in some defensive clickys elsewhere in the tree and in the T5, maybe give the t5 a grandmaster earth stance variant with more PRR/dodge and +cha so players don't feel they have to take monk levels for stances.

Sacred fist should also get uncanny dodge.

Stunning fist is also part of the class requirements for dnd, maybe give them a stunning fist that works off paladin/character level and charisma?

[Ipsum]

Couple of initial bugs and thoughts:

You seem to be locked into taking fists as a favored weapon and are locked out of other deities - not sure this is intended.

Stunning fist is still wisdom based

Starting equipment for veteran status doesn't include handwraps for paladin

Bladeforged can't selected sacred fist, but other iconics can LR into it.

This could turn out to be a really strong tank class with how much self healing it gets

[ZJEPane]

I've been wanting to play a pali-monk again like I did 10 years or so ago, and oh my goodness! This sounds amazing.

[toapat]

can Sacred Fist get Kama proficiency in addition to handwraps? as it is you dont have a native single weapon ki proficiency to weld Feydark Illusionist together with Radiant Servant

[Zuldar]

So the archetype gets a ki bar and pretty much nothing to spend it on. I'd like to suggest changing the cure spells for it to use Ki instead of SP, that would give it something to spend Ki on and add a bit more synergy with the Radiant Servant tree.

[Arkat]

can Sacred Fist get Kama proficiency in addition to handwraps?

Palamonk with kamas...I like it.

[Ipsum]

can Sacred Fist get Kama proficiency in addition to handwraps? as it is you dont have a native single weapon ki proficiency to weld Feydark Illusionist together with Radiant Servant

qstaff would be nice too

[Propane]

Stunning fist is also part of the class requirements for dnd, maybe give them a stunning fist that works off paladin/character level and charisma?

The lack of CC hurts staff monks as well... maybe use feats to fill the gap?

Stunning Stick (uses highest of DEX/STR/WIS) for stunning DC

Charming Stun (stunning fist that uses highest of STR/WIS/CHR) for DC

Adjust cool downs to balance...

[Stravix]

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. This does NOT let you be centered in heavy! Also, in preview 1 it is missing unless you happen to have the Undying Court religion and also happen to be an Elf. Weird, right? :P

Quick question: I am assuming this will not increase your MRR cap as if you were in heavy armor. Is that correct?

[droid327]

- You really want people to buy Tabaxi dont you? And...you really want to shaft Shifters, who have to go through a triple store reincarnation to go from Barb to Paladin and make use of the new Handwraps subclass:P

- So....does Ki Shout actually work now?

- I'm assuming all the attacks in this tree are Handwraps-only? I could see, e.g., Sickles or Kamas being particularly deadly with a splash of Ninja and +3/+3 crit profile on Sacred Smite...

- Evasive Dance...is this specifically not Improved Evasion, for things like the Shadowdancer Core 4? You called it Improved Evasion by name in the notes, but it doesnt say it actually grants Improved Evasion per se

- VBV: this is a super weak T5 and its a good time to revisit it...there was a thread a few weeks ago about it. "On miss" is an incredibly slow proc condition, and just grants a single count of +1 range...which may not even matter if the crit that wiped it would've been a crit still without it. It comes out to like +0.02 crit range on average or something abysmally small. Both the Monk and the new Sacred Fist should probably get the Swashbuckler Exploit Weakness version instead, which ends up coming out to something like +1 crit range, which is more appropriate for a T5 on a Handwraps-dedicated build.

- Did I miss the CHA to dmg/hit? Apostate got WIS...this is definitely a CHA tree, so that pretty much handcuffs you to Feydark, which also handcuffs you to taking Magical Training if you're pure Paladin

- Avenging Whirlwind: I get where this is just a cut-and-paste from the KOTC tree, but how about a Handwraps-only version of Dance of Death instead? I feel that's a more rewarding way to add AOE, and gives the build's playstyle a bit more distinction from KOTC pals.

- Losing Divine Might pretty much guarantees you'll run this as a /1 Clr or FvS/1 Monk splash, and pick up Stances too, even if its just Lesser Fire for bonus Ki gen on hit

[TPICKRELL]

Does the healing amp from Sacred Fist past life stack with the Pally heroic past life?

I assume so since past lives generally all stack. But since its all HAMP, I wanted to verify.