Description
Your Faith Shall Be Your Weapon.
Like a cleric, a priest is called to serve divine powers. But unlike a cleric, a priest enters the field of battle armed only with the divine might of her god. A priest’s connection to her deity forms the very core of her being—and through this unwavering reverence, she gains her power and her strength.
New Paths 9: Priest brings a non-battle, caster-only servant of the divine to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game! Designed by Marc Radle, this class includes:
- New class features including Divine Gift, Orisons, and Sacred Bond
- Two new feats, Extra Divine Gift and Powerful Channel
- A new archetype: Chosen of Nature, who protects and preserves the natural world
Let clerics have their hierarchies and temples: a priest ultimately answers only to her god. It is both a freedom and a heavy burden—but with it comes great power!
Megan Robertson –
If you’ve ever had dealings with real-world ministers of religion – be it a father or a vicar, an imam or a rabbi – you know they have very little in common with the average fantasy ‘cleric’ apart from devotion to their deity. This priest is a bit different from the clerics you’re used to playing, and wouldn’t dream of picking up a weapon to further his deity’s ends (spells, however, are a different matter!).
OK, so what do you get? Like any class, there’s some descriptive text explaining what it’s all about, the fundamental features of the class… and a rather good and dramatic drawing that suggests a spell is being cast. Then there is the usual game mechanical stuff: hit points, alignment, class skills and progression chart, then the class features are listed.
Spellcasting is a bit interesting. The priest has to prepare his spells in advance, but once he has cast a given spell it’s not ‘gone’ – he can cast it again provided he’s not cast his full allowance of spells at that level. The number of spells that can be prepared is a bit limited (and a high Wisdom doesn’t help here although feats do), however the choice is wide – pretty much any cleric spell is available. The number of spells the priest can actually cast does attract a wisdom bonus. Priests also get a bonus ‘cure’ (if good) or ‘inflict’ (if evil) spell on top of the others they may learn. Neutral priests can choose which type (cure or inflict), but once made that choice is permanent. To prepare spells, the priest needs to meditate or pray for an hour, which should be at the same time every day.
Another neat feature is the Divine Gift. The priest can pray, asking his deity for a specific blessing on himself or the rest of the party – there’s a list of benefits from which the priest can choose at the time of uttering the prayer. These include things like spell enhancements, the priest going invisible or being able to fly, and even calling down a divine intervention, allowing any one player to re-roll a single d20 roll with the addition of half the priest’s level to the result – and still being able to choose which roll, the new one or the original one, to use!
The book rounds off with a couple of new feats and a nature-based archetype, the Chosen of Nature. They use the druid spell lists rather than the cleric ones. There’s an interesting sketch of a rather punk-looking Chosen of Nature having a chat with a young fallow deer, too… although the best piece of art in the book is a white-robed fellow who really gives over the impression of having his God on his side. (Unfortunately it’s not signed so I don’t know which of the three artists credited is responsible.)
This makes for an interesting class, appealing to the player who enjoys getting into the role and playing a character using his powers in the service of his deity.
Endzeitgeist –
An Endzeitgeist.com review
This installment of the New Paths-series clocks in at 12 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 2/3 of a page SRD, leaving us with 8 1/3 pages of content, so let’s take a look!
The priest class receives d6 HD, 4 + Int skills per level and gets 1/2 BAB-progression, good Will-saves and proficiency in only simple weapons. The class begins play with an aura as per the cleric’s default and bonus languages include the respective languages of the alignment-related outer planes. Similarly, the restrictions we know regarding opposed alignment spells still apply. A priest draws her spells from the cleric spell list and must prepare them in advance; however, they are not expended upon being cast, instead consuming a spell slot available. The governing spellcasting attribute for the priest would be Wisdom and the priest begins with 1 + 1 spells of first level prepared, +4 orisons. Obviously, as a full caster, she progresses to learn up to 9th level spells and the maximum spells per day per spell level clock in at unmodified 4, with prepared spells capping at 4 + 2 per spell level.
The pluses in the list refer obviously to the domain spells; a priest selects 3 domains from her deity and she gains all domain powers of the chosen domains. The priest’s spellcasting is also tied to her holy symbol, with which she shares a sacred bond – much like an arcane bond, casting without it becomes problematic, but here’s the kicker: The priest may use the holy (or unholy) symbol to cast cure or inflict spells as though they had a range of close instead of touch – which is a huge boon. Back in 3.X literally EVERY cleric in my games had the feat to do just that.
Also at first level, the priest receives a so-called divine gift that can be used 1/day as a swift action. 10 such gifts are provided and all are available – you don’t have to choose. The priest may use the ability, as mentioned, 1/day, but may use it +1/day for every 3 levels beyond first. If a gift enhances a spell, it may only enhance cleric spells and only one gift may enhance each spell. The gifts include CL and DC-increases of the next spell cast, invisibility (that scales up to greater invisibility at 7th level), metamagic enhancements, immediate action rerolls, wings at 5th level, Ac and save bonuses with DR and SR or bursts of raw, divine power…or, well, spell-swapping.
The priest also receives access to channel energy at 2nd level, though it is governed by Wisdom for the class and 7th level decreases activation action to move, 14th to swift. Personally, I think the ability should have a catch here to prevent the priest from executing multiple channel energy uses per round – in spite of the limitations in daily uses, three channels in one round can be pretty devastating. 6th level and every 6 levels thereafter net a bonus feat from a nice selection and, as a capstone, the class becomes immune to death attacks and negative levels and may never reduced below 1 in any ability score. Additionally, she remains alive until 2 x negative Constitution score.
The pdf provides two feats: +1/day divine gift use and the option to channel energy as a full-round action, but instead roll d10s, but at the cost of being fatigues for a number of rounds equal to the channel dice rolled. I LOVE the visuals of this feat!
We also receive a brief archetype, the chosen of nature: These guys get an expanded class skills list(but oddly lose none) and draw their spells from the druid list instead of the cleric’s. The archetype replaces the channel energy progression beyond 6th level with progressively better beast shape and plant shape SPs. Decent, but honestly, not that cool – the archetype feels a bit like an afterthought.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no glitches. Layout adheres to a beautiful 2-column full-color standard and the pdf features gorgeous full-color artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
Marc Radle’s priest addresses a very crucial need I always felt: The need for a divine adherent that feels like a caster. I mean, when you think about agents of the divine in the context of our world, you probably won’t think of mace-wielding, armor-clad quasi-crusaders. You’ll think about men and women of the cloth. The priest fills this niche rather well. Divine gift also represents a cool mechanic, though frankly, I would have loved to see the whole thing go one step further; divine spells never really felt that “divine” to me and while the priest does a great job of emphasizing this component, I think the engine could carry more.
But I am rambling. Frankly, I feel that this should be the base class, with the more martially inclined cleric being something of a specialist. In my games, most clerics tend to not be too martially inclined (except when adventuring or when the background/deity fits), so the priest is guaranteed to see a lot of use. The divine gifts and at range cure/inflict casting also make for great balancing tools to offset the loss of the decent 2nd-line fighting options of the cleric. In short: I really, really like the class. Deceptively simple, fun and elegant. Similarly, the feat provided is nice and while I think channel spamming should be prevented with a cap, that operation’s pretty simple to perform. The one thing that left me somewhat disinterested herein would be the archetype, perhaps the space would have been better served with FCOs. Oh well, this is certainly a cool class for the fair asking price – my final verdict will clock in at 5 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.