Talk:Sacerdote (Apath)

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Spells

A sacerdote casts divine spells, which are drawn from the cleric spell list and from clerical domains. His cleric spells and domain spells make up two different spell lists, and a sacerdote prepares spells from each category separately. A sacerdote must choose and prepare his spells in advance. His alignment may restrict him from casting certain spells opposed to his moral or ethical beliefs; see domains and chaotic, evil, good, and lawful spells, both below.

To prepare or cast a spell, a sacerdote must have a Wisdom score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a sacerdote's spell is 10 + the spell level + the sacerdote's Wisdom modifier.

Like other spellcasters, a sacerdote can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. His base daily spell allotment is given on Table: Sacerdote. A sacerdote prepares this many cleric spells each day and this many domain spells each day. In addition, he receives bonus spells per day if he has a high Wisdom score, and this bonus applies both to cleric spells and domain spells. The sacerdote thus has two sets of spells per day and receives his Wisdom bonuses to each of them.

Example: A third level sacerdote with a Wisdom of 12 can prepare three first-level and one second-level cleric spell, and the same number of domain spells from among those listed for his domains.

Sacerdotes meditate for their spells. To prepare spells, they must get eight hours of sleep and then spend 1 hour in quiet contemplation to regain their daily allotment of spells. A sacerdote may prepare and cast any spell on the cleric and domain spell lists respectively, provided that he can cast spells of that level, but must prepare the proper type of spell in cleric and domain slots and choose which spells to prepare during his daily meditation. See below for what domain spells each sacredote has access to.

Class Balance

Current class balance compared to Wizard is -4. 20150415

Vestments

To casts spells, a sacerdote must be wearing the correct vestments, a ritual outfit consisting of a robe worn with various belts, vests, and sashes. The exact configuration of these vestments varies according to the day and the kind of ritual to be performed, but generally conforms to a courtier's outfit. The sacredote begins play with these vestments for free, but must maintain and replace them himself. An observer with Knowledge (Religion) can deduce quite a lot from observing a sacerdote's vestments, such as the fact that he is a sacerdote (DC 10), his pantheon or creed (DC 15), his patron(s) (DC 20), the highest level of spell he can cast (DC 25) and even his exact domains (DC 30). It is not possible to wear armor of any kind with vestments. Donning vestments correctly is a complex procedure, but it can be done hastily as a full-round action. Vestments can also be hidden under a voluminous cloak or cape using the Disguise skill, but this prevents spellcasting until they are revealed (a move action). A Perception check opposed to the sacerdote's Disguise check can spot such hidden vestments.

Designer's Notes

As an aid to myself and to editors I decided to make extensive design notes for the sacerdote class.

The base assumption this class is built upon is that a divine spell is worth about half as much as a same-level arcane spell. Thus, instead of improving the divine spell list, the sacredote "gestalts with itself" and has the casting ability of two clerics. To flavor things up, the extra set of spells do not use the cleric spell list, but is instead based on domain spells. This emphasizes the sacredote's patrons and adds the odd non-cleric spell to the list.

I have put a lot of effort into this, many many hours of polish. Thinsg that might like accidental, like the difference between a wrath feat with non-good alignment requirement and one with ability to channel negative energy are generally thought out, in this case it has to do with which archetypes can use the feat.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency

The sacerdote is not a warrior, even less so than the wizard, and the lack of weapon ability reflects that. I could add crossbows so that they have a ranged option, but crossbows are worldly weapons - I prefer them to stick to the walking stick and to strictly incidental weapons. I like that they can use devices like the dagger-crucifix (which counts as a dagger).

Spells

The sacerdote casts using Wis, to maintain the link to other divine casters. Prepared divine casters should be Wis. It only gets Wisdom bonus to spells per day once to not over-emphasize a single attribute.

Advanced Spellcasting

This basically makes the sacerdote an arcane spellcaster, which works out for balance reasons. If this had not been here, he could just have taken 3 armor proficiency feats and use heavy armor.

Bonus Languages

Mostly fluff, but helps with summon spells.

Calculated Targeting (Ex)

This is one of the most controversial abilities. The reasons it exist is manifold:

  • Low-level casters often have trouble with touch attacks. This is a front-heavy help against that problem.
  • The cleric has some spells that attack against AC rather than touch AC (spiritual hammer, sacred ice). This makes those viable.
  • The sacerdote is supposed to be an intelligent class. This emphasizes intelligence.
  • The second (reach) part of the ability is to make the cleric's touch-range spells viable. Sacerdotes are not tough enough to enter melee as much as their spell list would require.

The reasons against are more diffuse. To my mind, they are not enough to kill the ability.

  • It is an "4E-ism" and against the Pathfinder paradigm to use one attribute in place of or in addition to another. There are precedents; smite evil is the closest parallel, but that has a limited number of uses per day.
  • Removing 3/4 BAB only to replace it with a hefty bonus kind of removes the point of the change in the first place.

Chaotic, Evil, Good, and Lawful Spells

The sacerdote cares less about alignments than the cleric does. Thus, the wording mentions nothing about the patron's alignment. This gives a true neutral sacerdote an advantage, in that he can access all spells. This is compensated by wrath feats that give an advantage to strongly aligned sacerdotes. Also notice that the sacerdote does not have the cleric's aura ability (neither does the oracle or inquisitor).

Domains

I've been alternating between 5 and 6 domains. I settled on 5 to make it possible for the sacredote to worship a single patron, tough it is still something of an oddity as noted in the text and generally a poor option.

Mage armor and the rule allowing the sacerdote to further enhance this ability is there to make the sacerdote closer to the wizard in terms of defense, without adding armor. Most sacerdotes don't have spells like shield or mirror image that wizards use to enhance their defense.

Divine Wrath (Su)

With almost twice the spells per day of any other class, the sacerdote needs something to spend this multitude of spells on. And using the cleric spell list, it needs a solid offensive ability to stay competitive. Divine Wrath expands on the concept of Channel Energy, makes it Int-based and uses spells to power it. The damage is comparable to what a wizard can achieve without metamagic. It has great advantages in that it ignores most resistances and has a malleable manifestation. Still, it won't touch on what a specialized evoker can do. I consciously strove to make it different from simple evocation, using burst rather than spread, Will save (inherited from channel energy) and unusual areas.

Things that are questionable about this:

  • As a Will save thing, this ignores Evasion.
  • The difference between positive and negative energy channel is mostly cosmetic. Should this be a Force effect, for simplicity? It began as a force effect, but I changed it to positive/negative energy for the divine magic flavor.

Bonus Feats

Divine Wrath has developed so far from channel energy that I felt it was best to start over with the feats, so there is a slew of wrath feats in an appendix. Many of these feats work off domain, for further flavor.

Manifestations

Adding shape and range to divine wrath, the manifestations allows the sacerdote flexibility without truly increasing power greatly. I avoided ball and line shapes, the shapes that are most common to arcane spells.

Favored Class Bonuses

I've left these up to you so far, but felt I wanted to think these through myself for this new class.

Archetypes

I wrote more archetypes than these, but only included what I thought were the best ones. I have another semi-druid archetype and a subterfuge archetype with more skill points.

Augur

This archetype can pour an almost unlimited number of spells into changing the die rolls. This ability has a rather harsh Intelligence requirement; the augur is perhaps the most Int-intense of the archetypes. The idea for this came from my internet search for a good name for the class.

Druid Sacerdote

This one casts druid spells and channels spells into transformations and summon nature's ally. Basically it is a hybrid class with the druid.

Elemental Sacredote

For flavor, this archetype channels elemental energies rather than positive or negative energy. This is a pretty big disadvantage, so it recoups this by gaining resistance and the ability to pierce resistance. There are many wrath feat this archetype can't use.

Invoker

Perhaps the most powerful archetype, the invoker summons creatures instead of channeling divine wrath.

Healing Sacerdote

This develops healing abilities rather than divine wrath. It doesn't heal as much as its aggressive counterpart, too good healing abilities make the game dull. It has an excellent ability to negate conditions, and while it focuses on healing, it still has the huge number of spells per day and is not restricted to buffing spells, tough it lacks the normal sacerdote's accurate spell attacks.

Proselytizer

Giving up bonus feats for the ability to put blasts on top of allies and give them minor buffs while simultaneously hurting enemies, the proselytizer is more team- and combat-focused than the normal sacredote.

Spirit Sacerdote

A sort of shaman, the spirit sacerdote can change domains from day to day, subject to what creatures he meets. If you want to cut any archetype, this is probably the one. It is rather complex for what it does and requires a fair degree of GM judgements. Personally I am fond of spirits are a power source, so I kept this in the list for flavor.

Theurgist

All sacerdotes are free-thinkers, but the theurgist takes this to an extreme. He is an arcane caster with access to the whole cleric list, only limited by his spellbook. While this is controversial for old-time DnD gamers, I find this a natural compliment to the wizard. The theurgist is actually how this class started in my head; the divine angle came later.

Wrath Feats

Originally, I had the sacredote use channeling feats, but the list of feats which would work got shorter and shorter and needed special rules for using Int instead of Cha. In the end, I decided to begin from scratch. Wrath feats basically come in two varieties.

  • Targeting feats, which allows the sacerdote to ignore friends in the area he blasts. For me, this is a way of making the blasts more divine; unlike physical which naturally hurts everything and everyone, divine wrath is a manifestation of a sentient will.
  • Placate and rebuke feats, similar to controlling undead, allows the sacredote to influence various kinds of creatures depending on domain. This makes the choice of domain and patron(s) that much more interesting.

References

Not sure if you are allowed to mention Paizo books outside of the OGL section 15. I put in two races from Fehr's Etnologies and Heroes of the Siwathi Desert becasue they fit, and as a bit of product placement.