Champion (new Cleric), Let me know what you think

This is a variant Cleric that I came up with based on the ideas presented in the thread about Spontaneous Domain casting. Some things are shortened, and there's no table for Spells per day. Just reference the Cleric. Faith Points came from Turn Undead. Please let me know how you think it lies in terms of power and, more importantly, if you think that it looks fun. Thanks.

Champion

Hit die: d8

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Champions are proficient with light, medium and heavy armors. They are also proficient with all shields (except tower). They are proficient with all simple weapons.

Skills: Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Heal, Knowledge (arcane), Knowledge (history), Knowledge (religion), Knowledge (the planes), Profession and Spellcraft.

Skill points per level: 2 + Int modifier

Saves: Good Fort and Will, Poor Reflex

Base Attack Bonus: Medium

Aura: A Champion has an aura as appropriate to their deity’s alignment.

Domains: At first level, a Champion receives four domains, as appropriate for his chosen god. He receives all domain powers associate with these domains. The Champion also receives Faith Points equal to 3 + Cha modifier. These may be used to fuel his Domain powers. If a Domain power says that it can be used “once per day”, it instead costs one Faith Point. Faith Points may only be used once per encounter.
Example: Thrax is a Champion of Kord and has the Strength domain. He has a Charisma of 13. He can use the power of the Strength Domain 4 times per day.
It is possible for a Champion to cast spells without a god. If a Champion has a strong enough belief in SOMETHING, he may choose 4 domains as normal. The only restriction is that there must be a reason for the Champion to have these 4 domains. The DM is the final judge when it comes to the Domains chosen by a godless Champion.

Spells: A Champion can spontaneously cast a selection of divine spells as chosen from the Cleric spell list. The Champion must have a Wisdom score equal to 10 + spell level cast the appropriate spell. The saving throw is 10 + Wis modifier + spell level. The Spells per day are equal to the Cleric, except that 2 + 1 is instead 3.
The Champion has access to his Domain spells. These are his spells known. Each day he is able to choose from among these spells when he casts. He also receives a bonus spell if his Wisdom score would allow it. The bonus spell of each level is cast spontaneously from the entire Cleric list.
Example: Thrax is a 1st level Champion of Kord and has the Chaos, Good, Luck and Strength Domains. He also has a Wisdom of 18.
He knows Protection from Law, Protection from Evil, Entropic Shield and Enlarge Person. He can choose from among these 4 which 2 to cast during the day. Because he has a Wisdom of 18, he may also cast one bonus spell per day. This one bonus spell can be any 1st level Cleric spell. It could be Cure Light Wounds or another Enlarge Person.

0-level Spells: You may choose 2 + Wis modifier 0-level spells. These are the only 0-level spells that you know. At levels 10 and 20, you may add one more 0-level spell to your list of known spells. At your 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th levels you may choose to swap any of these 0-level spells for any other 0-level spell. If you find that there is a spell that you never use, or there is a new spell that is available, these are the times available to change these spells. The number of times per day that you can cast 0-level spells is equal to your Wisdom modifier.
Example: Thrax has a Wisdom of 18. At level 1, he chooses 6 0-level spells. He chooses Create Water, Cure Minor Wounds, Detect Magic, Light, Mending and Read Magic. Upon attaining 5th level as a Cleric, he decides that he would rather have a new spell, so he changes Mending for Amanuensis. At 10th level, he adds Virtue to his list.

I like this - it seems basically balanced in terms of spontaneous casting verses smaller spell pool (the major difference between Wiz and Sorc) - and this would make a good companion to the cloistered cleric so you could remove the standard cleric from the game!

My only criticism is that it doesn't seem to add any value staying in the class - ie theres nothing thats level dependent other than spell casting

so my suggestion would be

start with two domains, add one at 4th, one at 8th level, one at 16th

start with 3 + cha faith points, gain 1 extra at 5th, 10th and 15th levels

(making numbers up as i went along, so just for discussion)

I see that. The basic idea was for use in a game where you do 1-20 without prestiging. There are hidden bonuses with staying in the class. There are a lot of domains with abilities that can be used once per day, and a number of those rely on Cleric (Champion) level. As such, a 20th level Champion could, with a 20 for Charisma and the Strenth Domain, add 20 to his Str 8 times per day. The class is focused on domains and their powers. There's also the 0-levels, which aren't a major draw. What keeps people in the Cleric, though? Just Turn Undead? This class can get that ability if a Domain power is changed, which is something that I highly recommend. I do like the idea of another Domain at a higher level, though. With a class like this, that could be a major draw. As it stands, though, the class will theoretically have access to quite a few spells by 20 anyway. With a 30 in Wisdom, a 20th level Champion could choose from 5 different 9th level spells to cast, one of which can be ANY spell from the Cleric list. That seems pretty good.
I was actually looking at this class as something that would be focused on its domains. Entirely. Cleric PrCs are for specializing. This class is already specialized. I know, though, that there would be games where it would be used to utterly break everything. The Eberron Cleric PrC from Faiths of Eberron that gets access to 6 or so more domains, PLUS extra domain spells to cast per day, would probably ridiculously overpower this character. I don't typically believe that anything beyond special builds are overpowered/broken, but I could understand how a player who doesn't exercise restraint could shatter a game.

Maybe i should have double checked domain powers first before leaping in, but i still think that growing the character as you level up 'feels' better, and increasing the uses per day gradually doesn't seem to unbalance it. Since most of the domain abilities are not level dependent (+1 caster level seems to crop up a lot...) its only strength (+ protection and travel) where you get this effect. In a campaign you'd probably want to specify which domains belonged to which faiths to keep the correct flavour - or the god of art and poetry would suddenly develop strength domain if the PC was feeling aggressive.......

Since the 'faith points' per day is based on Cha, and Spells are based on Wis, then you have two mental stats you have to keep high, which means you're relatively weaker on the physical and skill side so I'm not sure you'd necessarily max out on these stats (though you'd certainly invest in items that stat boost)

My comment above was that i'd be tempted to scrap the cleric base class and force priests to choose between this and the cloistered cleric - if they multi-class you probably need a rule that you cannot choose different domains, and i'd change cloistered / base cleric to utilise faith points as well (maybe a rule that you add the levels for the purpose of when you get bonus faith points?) Other than that you'd have two different spell lists (like a multi wizard / Sorcerer) so i'm not convinced it would be a particularly inviting build.

Feats that give additional domains might have to be looked at seriously though - I can see that being a potential problem if abused

I'm assuming simple weapon proficiency (like the cleric) so the only disadvantage i see with this class is that you only get one misc spell per level so unless you have the healing domain that limits the healing available to the party - not necessarily a bad thing, but something to bear in mind

This is the best / simplest alternative cleric i've seen for some time, I'm now going to play around with some of the faiths IMC to see what they look like so thanks for the idea!

Not a problem. I don't see this as being any more focused on Charisma than the normal Cleric. Turn Undead was removed in Favor of those numbers becoming Faith Points. As I've said, I could see going through and slightly redoing some Domains. There would need to be one for Turning and another for Rebuking Undead. Or the same one. The "+1 caster level" Domains could probably take some minor changes to become a bit better for this alternative.
I also tend to have games that allow more than the PHB. When one looks at all of the Domains out there, the usefullness of the class suddenly opens up. Maybe even giving Faith Points the ability to increase bonuses granted by Domains. Hum.... I'll see how it plays and keep these ideas in mind. If it works out fine, I'll be sure to say something.
I'm just glad that some has finally posted SOMETHING. The D&D boards go a response or two. You're the only person who has posted here. I see crap posts getting pages and pages, but something like this gets a perusal and ignored. Maybe if I said something about 4th edition. Oh well.

It was just good timing - i've been looking to try and revamp the cleric for some time now and this suggestion hit all the right buttons - I've e-mailed it out to my players to get some feedback (most of them dont post on EN) so I might be back in a day or 2

Domain powers could be improved - my suggestion would be to make turn undead the domain ability for GOOD (that'll teach PC's to pick CN gods), and where it says +1 caster level you could replace that with (or add) Spell Focus or Spell Penetration as a faith point ability or even a meta-magic type feat (with poss two faith points for the +2 level effects) - you could pre-define it or just let the player decide when he picks the domain (I'm going to go with gaining domains and faith points with levels btw - feels better for my campaign)

And the good news is this has forced me to start defining Domains for the various faiths in my campaign - few gaps appearing so there might be some spontaneous god / goddess generation going on in the next few weeks....

Let me know what it finally looks like over the course of play. I might make minor changes as well. We'll see how this eventually ends up.
One of my original thoughts that I didn't follow up on was improving Domain powers in certain ways. The War Domain gives free Weapon Focus with the deity's favored weapon. Maybe at level 6 or so you can spend a Faith Point to add Weapon Specialization for as many rounds as you have Cleric levels. At 12 you could add Greater Weapon Focus and at 18 you could add Greater Weapon Specialization. Now, you're main problem with the class has been fixed. As people level up, there is a possibility of their Domain powers actually becoming better.

Phlebas said:

Domain powers could be improved - my suggestion would be to make turn undead the domain ability for GOOD (that'll teach PC's to pick CN gods)

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If Turn Undead becomes a feature of Good domain clerics/champions, then you'll have to think of something else for the Sun domain to do. Otherwise, you have a domain that's totally dependent on another domain to have any use.

Hmm, could differentiate them with Sun destroying, and Good just turning them, (And Evil controlling them) or come up with a different ability for sun - possible dispel darkness ?

or you could just revise sun to say it either gives the ability to turn undead (if not possessed) or enhances it if it is already possessed

so champions with either sun or good domains turn undead, champions with them both become true turning specialists.....

Engilbrand said:

One of my original thoughts that I didn't follow up on was improving Domain powers in certain ways. The War Domain gives free Weapon Focus with the deity's favored weapon. Maybe at level 6 or so you can spend a Faith Point to add Weapon Specialization for as many rounds as you have Cleric levels. At 12 you could add Greater Weapon Focus and at 18 you could add Greater Weapon Specialization. Now, you're main problem with the class has been fixed. As people level up, there is a possibility of their Domain powers actually becoming better.

Click to expand...

Ooh, nice - there are some feats that give enhanced domain abilities (they're in some of the non-core books so i don't have many details) which would give options - perhaps one idea would be that you could either take another domain, or enhance the domains you already have at certain levels (every 4th i was thinking? that seems about right). Means you have to work out a 'plus' ability for each domain, but the mechanic for it coming into play is fixed by the domain gain.....