Arelith

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:49 pm

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 10, 2023 4:27 pm

Could seeker gain access to summon creature 9? I would swap to the path in a heartbeat, it supports everything that I do with my character, I'm playing a rogue utility cleric. Except I'm playing a caster and not melee. I don't care about gate or conduit, as long as I have summon creature I can get by just fine in basic pve.

Bumping this. For the sake of build diversity could Seeker gain access to summon creature 9? This shouldn't be overpowered. Summon creature is irrelevant in end-game content and pvp, even with conjuration focus. And that's a 3 feat tax on a feat starved class, any melee character has something better to take than conjuration feats that only buffs summon creature.

I'm playing a caster cleric with rogue levels, I hope you will consider this.

I can, at best, consider allowing both seekers and warpriests to obtain summons in the form of scrolls or items with enough lore/UMD (treating them as if they don't know the spells).

This way it'd require 80 lore to utilize the Gate spell, like any other mundane.

On the other hand, seekers/warpriests would then be able to utilize lower-level summon creature scrolls to help the early levels with enough lore investment.

So does that mean summon creature 9 will be basically unattainable without massive feat investment into lore? Because that's disappointing. I really don't care about gate, I just want summon creature. I hope you will reconsider so I could play a caster seeker.

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 30, 2023 10:07 pm

So does that mean summon creature 9 will be basically unattainable without massive feat investment into lore? Because that's disappointing. I really don't care about gate, I just want summon creature. I hope you will reconsider so I could play a caster seeker.

Maybe 50 lore for Summon Creature 7 is attainable with that change for most.

That is a very deep lore investment. I'm very feat starved, there's no way I could fit the feats in if I took seeker, because I'd also be taking more rogue levels so I could grab hidden persona. All of the feats I need just barely fit when I was playing around on PGCC.

It doesn't take much to attain 50 lore: 33 skill points into the base rank, 2 from int modifier (14 base), 15 from 2 lore rings and 1 lore helmet should do. No feat expenditure needed.

If I can weigh in, I think summon monster VII would suffice for most lower level content. It might be a bit pricey, but I think the cost is fine; divine casters are generally pretty coddled when it comes to expenses due to their robust suite of defensive spells, and despite warpriests and seekers often having depraved gearing requirements, I do generally think it's not too difficult to accumulate wealth on them.

Edit: A problem, though. I think the clerics who will want summon monster VII might find it difficult to hit 50 lore before 30, which might be the problem. If I want to cast that from a scroll at say, level 16, it's going to be about 14 points of gearing more difficult than at 30.

Great change for seeker. Thank you. I'm going to assume I'll have 8 APR for a brief moment until the monk changes, cause I'd say 8 APR is a little wild tbh.

Most seekers and warpriests aren't going to have gsf conjuration and probably won't have animal domain to raise the summon a tier. A summon 7 with bare minimum buffs isn't going to last long in post level 10 PVE, you might as well just keep churning out summon 3 monsters if you're just using them as a 2 or 3 round distraction.

Which is all probably what's intended but I think there's going to still be a difficult hump before you can handle the no-summon life. On my seeker that didn't feel like it kicked in until epics.

I wish seekers could use shadow conjuration shadows which would synergize amazingly with their style combat.

Thank for the seeker changes, especially the skill points. The APR increase seems bit wild and it limits the incentive to sacrifice CL to pick a high BAB class as dip, but let’s see how it plays out.

Having recently made a cleric, I spent a fair bit of time considering domains. Some domains are consistently better and recommended (eg War), while many are rarely chosen. To that end, I’d suggest some spell swaps to create more genuine choices.

Magic: Greater Dispelling at L9 (replacing Banshishment) and / or Spell Mantle at L8 (replacing Silence)
Animal: Spider Skin at L3 (replacing Hold Animal), Predator at L5 (replacing Hold Monster)
Vermin: Barkskin at L2 (replacing Poison), Spider Skin at L5 (replacing Healing Sting)
Strength: Blood Frenzy at L8 maybe with an additional -1 AC (replacing Bigby's Grasping Hand)
Suffering: Blade Thirst at L8 (replacing Evil Blight) and / or Greater Life Transference at L1 (replacing Ray of Enfeeblement)
Law: Bless Weapon at L1 (replacing Charm Person) and / or Good Hope at L6 (replacing Hold Person)
Good: Bless Weapon at L1
Luck: Good Hope at L3 (replacing Stone to Flesh)
Forge: Blackstaff at L8 (replacing Inferno)
Knowledge: Amplify at L1 (replacing Identify) and / or Greater Mage Armor at L7 (replacing Power Word Stun)
Evil: WoF at L9
Mind: Clarity at L1 (replacing Charm Person)
Travel: Mass Haste at L9 (or double-duration haste; replacing Slow)
Air: Haste at L4 (replacing Wounding Whispers)
Fire: Mass Bull's Strength at L7 (replacing Inferno)
Chaos: Blur at L2 (replacing Chromatic Orb), Improved Invisibility at L5 (replacing Bigby's Disrupting Hand)
Cold: Mass Bear’s Endurance at L6 (replacing Cone of Cold)
Darkness: Wraith Stride at L2 (replacing Blindness/Deafness)
Death: Predator at L5 (replacing Undeath to Death)
Sun: Ethereal Visage at L7 (replacing Sunbeam)
Destruction: Harm at L5 (replacing Wounding Whispers)
Earth: Mass Bear’s Endurance at L8 (replacing Bombardment)
Illusion: Blur at L1 (replacing Color Spray), Ethereal Visage at L7 (replacing Phantom Wound)
Ooze: See Invisibility at L1 (Grease), True Seeing at L3 (replacing Poison)
Storm: Energy Buffer at L4 (replacing Scintillating Sphere)
Trickery: Shadow Shield at L9 (replacing Otto's Irresistible Dance)
Undeath: Negative Energy Flood at L1 (replacing Chill Touch)
Water: Mass Cat’s Grace at L8 (replacing Horrid Wilting)

Domains I’ve not touched as I think they’re strong enough already: War, Healing, Protection, Plant, Moon.

That would remove camouflage and serene visage from trickery which would be a severe nerf to the domain, please don't do this. And this would remove the invisibility spell from illusion. Please don't touch invisibility on either trickery or illusion, it's my most slotted spell.

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:44 am

That would remove camouflage and serene visage from trickery which would be a severe nerf to the domain, please don't do this. And this would remove the invisibility spell from illusion. Please don't touch invisibility on either trickery or illusion, it's my most slotted spell.

All of the above were intended as additions, not replacements. Or is there a mechanical restriction on 1 domain spell per level? If so I'll tweak the suggestions!

There is a mechanical limitation, yeah. So if spells are changed, they're generally swapped out. Kenji said there might be a way to work around that limitation though. If it's possible that would really help give domains a more robust spellbooks to support the needs of the different paths.

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 31, 2023 12:36 pm

There is a mechanical limitation, yeah. So if spells are changed, they're generally swapped out. Kenji said there might be a way to work around that limitation though. If it's possible that would really help give domains a more robust spellbooks to support the needs of the different paths.

Good point - I wasn't aware of this!

I updated my list tweaking the suggested spell slots and being clear about what it would replace (I've tried to replace things that I see as weaker with something that is better but still thematic).

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 31, 2023 12:36 pm

There is a mechanical limitation, yeah. So if spells are changed, they're generally swapped out. Kenji said there might be a way to work around that limitation though. If it's possible that would really help give domains a more robust spellbooks to support the needs of the different paths.

There is a work-around, but it is currently off the table due to concern for server performance from the implementation. It’ll remain in limbo until it is properly tested and server stability remains unaffected.

Would it be possible for Seeker Clerics have 2/3 cleric levels count towards animal companion progression if they take more than 4 levels of Ranger? It would make the companion a little better than useless -- though perhaps not useful enough to warrant the effort on your part to make such a change.

hugolino wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 12, 2023 8:04 pm

Would it be possible for Seeker Clerics have 2/3 cleric levels count towards animal companion progression if they take more than 4 levels of Ranger? It would make the companion a little better than useless -- though perhaps not useful enough to warrant the effort on your part to make such a change.

I’ll have to check on the technical side, if animal companions have transitioned to CNS’ summon library, then yes, it’s possible.

But on the design side, Seekers aren’t meant to have summons in general.

I can however already see the counterargument in that animal companion or even familiar may fit the theme for Seeker, so we’ll see.

Given the recent purported player fatigue, Seekers have already been adjusted and therefore there will be no changes made to Seekers other than bugfixes for a while. I’m thinking to revisit this next year.

Kenji wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 13, 2023 12:14 pm

Given the recent purported player fatigue, Seekers have already been adjusted and therefore there will be no changes made to Seekers other than bugfixes for a while. I’m thinking to revisit this next year.

That sounds wise. Thank you for all the work you've done thus far. I'm grateful Seekers exist.

Warpriest since the changes to divine power/divine favor seems like it does fine solo against a lot of content in Skal at least. I've been able to do the myconids at level 10 and minotaurs at 13 alone due to riding a constant high of divine favor and divine power -- the constantly refreshing temp HP of divine power keeps Warpriest afloat. Based on my previous experiences on Skal, I don't think I'm going to struggle with anything solo other than perhaps the dragon -- if only because it casts Disjunction, which is basically the anti-warpriest.

The particular build I'm going with gimps itself until about level 26, too, as the weapon I'm currently using is 1d6 and x2 crit until I manage to get proficiency in the weapons I really want. Despite this, I feel fairly capable of preparing for any challenge thrown at me.

Because of this, at least for leveling from 1-20, I don't think warpriest needs summons as long as the player of the warpriest knows when to heal, what consumables to bring, and how to ration out their spells properly. I'll probably post something else when I start getting to the epic content, because I think there, the story probably starts to be different, especially with places like the Reavers and the Shadowplane writs, which can be vicious alone.

Seeker is in a weirder, more awkward spot. I think it might be able to suffice off of crossclassing AE with the new skillpoints it gets in order to deal with the difficult early level curve, but mid-level and late level are still going to be incredibly tough. It could probably still use limited access to summons.

Edit:
One caveat is that warpriest suffers from the problem that most gishes suffer from, but since you don't have a summon, it tends to be exacerbated. Enemies that can KD you -will- KD you. It doesn't matter if their AB is 20 or 6. If they crit, you're going down. This can be pretty damn dangerous in larger packs of enemies, and you have no way to mitigate this until you take your dip. This is incredibly dangerous solo, and can often lead to death. I've been lucky enough that most of the knockdowns I've experienced have been harmless, but there is the constant threat of getting KD'd in the wrong pack of enemies.

I don't really know if there's a good solution, but I do think that it sucks that you're so vulnerable until you take a discipline dip. Seeker suffers in the same way, of course, but the seeker playstyle, at least from my experience, lends itself better to cheekier tactics where dealing with an entire group of enemies is just never a problem.

Edit 2 -- The Revenging:
This also means that if you ever see a pre-epic warpriest and want to kill them, the first thing you should do is KD-check them. If you manage to beat their AC, you win the fight.

Cloistered Cleric is generally considered one of the weakest, if not the weakest, path. While it's pretty good with very specific domains (like fire/forge/cold), the other paths tend to it's job of being a spellcasting focused cleric, but better; often with less sacrifice.

They get:
1 DC to domain spells
Refunding of domain spells (only under divine power/favour)
Scribe Scroll
Spontaneously cast domain spells to 4th level
Greater Spell Penetration

Greater Spell Penetration is rarely actually beneficial, as either SR is too low to matter or too high to matter. Scribe scroll is nice, but mostly flavour.

Everything else is based on your domains. A lot of the domains have little use in spontaneously casting the level 1-4 spells, and refunding is rarely worth it for such a small selection of spells - especially since it doesn't refund with spontaneous casting.

The main issue is that while Cloistered can be -decent-, but it relies on picking only a handful of the domains, typically those with offensive spells. With such an inflexible refund system, it doesn't feel like you can rely on them other than the first few spell levels (anything past 4 is a nice surprise, not reliable). These are also the same spells you'd want to spontaneously cast to be more flexible.

So a few ideas for improvements to bring it to par with the other paths (or at least not being -worse- than pathless). I don't think -all- of these should be done, but one or two would be a nice quality of life/power improvement:

1. Give cloistered clerics one extra domain. This would synergise well with being so domain focused, and allow more flexibility in domain choices and make the domain spell based abilities feel more potent.

2. Allow spontaneous casting of all domain spells. This gives flexibility in casting, allowing you to use domain spells without needing memorize any (outside of metamagic). This makes the more subpar domains much more useful, as they often get higher level spells that are valuable, but don't really benefit from 10-30% refund chance.

3. Lower the duration of divine power/favor but increase the refund chance by 20-30% across all levels. This allows them to cast their domain spells more especially at lower levels, but it'd need to be balanced with divine power/favour being much shorter. Probably same length as warpriest. This would allow level 1-3 or 1-4 spells to always be refunded, allowing for more consistent use of domain spells.

4. Allow spontaneously cast spells to refund. This would remove the need to choose between a flexible spellbook and a consistent spellbook. As it is, let's say you have forge domain. You could memorize 4 hammer of the gods and have an 80% chance to refund them, giving you effectively 16 castings. But if you're unlucky it could be only four, and using up a chunk of your spellbook. Alternatively you could spontaneously cast it and guarantee you have a certain number of castings but no more than your level 3 spell slots. By allowing spontaneous spells to refund, it allows them the flexibility of having a spellbook with different spells and also spam-cast their domain spells.

Practically speaking, extra refund chance isn't going to unbalance things for PVP. Getting 1 extra casting of Weird isn't going to suddenly change things around, especially when you can't guarentee it, and an extra 4 castings of hammer of the gods is achievable with a spellbound wand anyways (or at least, sound lance is which does same damage). As it is, you can more optimally play a "cloistered cleric' by going pathless, defiler, evangelist or healer depending on your spellfocus, and just pickup spellbound wands for the low level spells.

WanderingPoet wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 23, 2023 5:42 pm

Cloistered Cleric is generally considered one of the weakest, if not the weakest, path. While it's pretty good with very specific domains (like fire/forge/cold), the other paths tend to it's job of being a spellcasting focused cleric, but better; often with less sacrifice.

They get:
1 DC to domain spells
Refunding of domain spells (only under divine power/favour)
Scribe Scroll
Spontaneously cast domain spells to 4th level
Greater Spell Penetration

Greater Spell Penetration is rarely actually beneficial, as either SR is too low to matter or too high to matter. Scribe scroll is nice, but mostly flavour.

Everything else is based on your domains. A lot of the domains have little use in spontaneously casting the level 1-4 spells, and refunding is rarely worth it for such a small selection of spells - especially since it doesn't refund with spontaneous casting.

The main issue is that while Cloistered can be -decent-, but it relies on picking only a handful of the domains, typically those with offensive spells. With such an inflexible refund system, it doesn't feel like you can rely on them other than the first few spell levels (anything past 4 is a nice surprise, not reliable). These are also the same spells you'd want to spontaneously cast to be more flexible.

So a few ideas for improvements to bring it to par with the other paths (or at least not being -worse- than pathless). I don't think -all- of these should be done, but one or two would be a nice quality of life/power improvement:

1. Give cloistered clerics one extra domain. This would synergise well with being so domain focused, and allow more flexibility in domain choices and make the domain spell based abilities feel more potent.

2. Allow spontaneous casting of all domain spells. This gives flexibility in casting, allowing you to use domain spells without needing memorize any (outside of metamagic). This makes the more subpar domains much more useful, as they often get higher level spells that are valuable, but don't really benefit from 10-30% refund chance.

3. Lower the duration of divine power/favor but increase the refund chance by 20-30% across all levels. This allows them to cast their domain spells more especially at lower levels, but it'd need to be balanced with divine power/favour being much shorter. Probably same length as warpriest. This would allow level 1-3 or 1-4 spells to always be refunded, allowing for more consistent use of domain spells.

4. Allow spontaneously cast spells to refund. This would remove the need to choose between a flexible spellbook and a consistent spellbook. As it is, let's say you have forge domain. You could memorize 4 hammer of the gods and have an 80% chance to refund them, giving you effectively 16 castings. But if you're unlucky it could be only four, and using up a chunk of your spellbook. Alternatively you could spontaneously cast it and guarantee you have a certain number of castings but no more than your level 3 spell slots. By allowing spontaneous spells to refund, it allows them the flexibility of having a spellbook with different spells and also spam-cast their domain spells.

---

Practically speaking, extra refund chance isn't going to unbalance things for PVP. Getting 1 extra casting of Weird isn't going to suddenly change things around, especially when you can't guarentee it, and an extra 4 castings of hammer of the gods is achievable with a spellbound wand anyways (or at least, sound lance is which does same damage). As it is, you can more optimally play a "cloistered cleric' by going pathless, defiler, evangelist or healer depending on your spellfocus, and just pickup spellbound wands for the low level spells.

Generally it seems to be less that cloistered itself is bad but more that divine casters as a whole tend towards the sad side. They have nothing like IGMs and their damage spells are often middling at best. Their big schtick is still just wof and maybe gate if your planar conduit is done away with.

Unless they get a form of spell flux I imagine little can be done unless better offensive spells to cast can be added. Some spell flux could be nice though. Or potentially free arcane defense abjuration

Two connected suggestions for cloistered: Give clerics a wider variety of spells, and change the refund mechanic so it is based on a selection of spells related to the domain instead of just domain spells.

A problem is cleric doesn't get enough offensive spells all around. The vast majority of cleric's offensive spells are necromancy. This is what makes defiler work so well, their spell refund mechanic is based on all of the main cleric offensive spells.

So if the cloistered refund mechanic is changed to work with a spell list unique to each domain, and the class gets a whole bunch more offensive spells with varying themes, it would free up having to balance domains for the cloistered path. Because that's not really possible, domains need to be functional for a lot of different playstyles.

I wrote up a bunch of new spell ideas to go with this here:
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=40810&p=320254#p320254

My only opinion on cloistered cleric is that it was so boring I couldn't force myself to play one to 30. I had to get inventive to find ways to have fun leveling a cloistered cleric. The RP was interesting, at least.

Paint wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:52 am

My only opinion on cloistered cleric is that it was so boring I couldn't force myself to play one to 30. I had to get inventive to find ways to have fun leveling a cloistered cleric. The RP was interesting, at least.

I wish I had your time lol. It feels like you have played all the things to 30 that are on my list of "eventually's".

Paint wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 24, 2023 12:52 am

My only opinion on cloistered cleric is that it was so boring I couldn't force myself to play one to 30. I had to get inventive to find ways to have fun leveling a cloistered cleric. The RP was interesting, at least.

Having played a Cloistered Cleric since they were released, I can agree that the path is boring compared to the other paths. I already had scribe scroll before the changes came out, so all Cloistered changed for me was removing my shield proficiencies (though I can use light now), giving me a feat back and letting me spontaneously cast a few spells. Only pathless is more boring, and even then only marginally.

In my particular case, my character's deity doesn't have good domains for Cloistered; it's worthless for me to ever use divine favour/power because the refund is too inconsistent and unreliable for any spells that I'd actually want to refund. The spontaneous casting is okay, but most of the domain spells from Air/Animal aren't useful from 1-4, other than true seeing (which just got nerfed to eagle sight) and deafening clang and very occasionally gust of wind. The refunding on buff spells is also worthless, why would I need to refund one with the land? And the refund on useful spells like Hold Monster is too low to rely on it.

Which I think is part of why it's boring. Why would you ever need to spontaneously cast camouflage or one with the land? Or resist elements, glyph of warding, persistent blade, good hope, magic circle against alignment, water breathing, etc. So many of the 1-4 spells are buffs that are long lasting and make more sense to just memorize, or even extend. Or are effectively useless in the case of ghostly visage and hold animal. I guess it could save you from needing to rest if you just buffed everyone and someone else showed up, but that's a very limited use case.

Don't get me wrong, I have always have had fun RP - but that's more the character than the path, since the only RP the class entails directly is scribing scrolls and by extension dweomercrafting T3. It's the same RP I had when pathless before the release, just with a free feat.

I like pathless. I feel like it could use a cookie or something, but even without pathless is still my fav, with defiler second.