Jeremy Ackerman-Yost
Explorer
I'm with you on that one. And I like the article overall. Any battle cleric who doesn't worship Moradin is golden with maces now, which is great.
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Battle Cleric Options is up
- Thread starter Colmarr
- Start date
I'm with you on that one. And I like the article overall. Any battle cleric who doesn't worship Moradin is golden with maces now, which is great.
Give an eladrin templar the battle lore feature, all the Str+1 vs. AC attacks with the +2 two-handed damage bonus rider, eladrin soldier and spear expertise with an 18 Str.
So at 2nd level you'd have +9 to hit and do 1d8+9 (13.5 average) damage on your at-will attack. That's before any magic items are added. Then add in a 20 AC.
Compare to, say, an eladrin fighter with the same str, feats and a greatspear at 2nd-level. +9 to hit and do 1d10+6 damage (11.5 average) and have an 18 AC.
The only way a fighter could compete would be to make a sacrifice somewhere. They'd either have to get the +1 to hit (probably the best option), or go battlerager dropping AC for more damage.
The fighter would have reach but reach by itself doesn't really mean much unless it's paired with options to utilise the advantage, which don't really come into play until paragon.
Now we need some Trident love.
That sounds painful.
Nullzone
Explorer
The simple weapons restriction is the most arbitrary and ridiculous thing I've seen in a long while. It makes the whole article frustrating to me.
If they want to empower the battle cleric to be an offensive leader, then why can't my dwarf use a hammer or my drow use a fullblade?
Giving simple weapons some love is great, but you give them love by giving incentives to use them, not by cutting all the other groups out of the picture and saying "You want to be cool? Use a crappy weapon."
Hell, I wouldn't even mind if the base cleric only had simple weapons as proficiencies, if you want to go this route. And leaving the extra buffs when using simple weapons is fine, it makes them competitive. But don't restrict an entire set of really good exploits to them!
If they want to empower the battle cleric to be an offensive leader, then why can't my dwarf use a hammer or my drow use a fullblade?
Giving simple weapons some love is great, but you give them love by giving incentives to use them, not by cutting all the other groups out of the picture and saying "You want to be cool? Use a crappy weapon."
Hell, I wouldn't even mind if the base cleric only had simple weapons as proficiencies, if you want to go this route. And leaving the extra buffs when using simple weapons is fine, it makes them competitive. But don't restrict an entire set of really good exploits to them!
I'll reread the article when I get home, but I was under the impression that the powers didn't explicitly exclude non-simple weapons, rather it gave bonuses for using simple weapons to put them on a much more equal footing as the non-simple weaps.
That being said, even if it doesn't allow non-simple weaps, I still think this works as its giving each of the different leader builds their own little niche. Battle clerics use simple weaps with two hands while handing out an assortment of buffs. Warpriests likely use a shield. Runepriests will likely use superior weapons to deal large amounts of damage, etc. With luck, when they are all done (still anticipating some runepriest love) each of the different classes/builds will have their own little niche and be relatively balanced with each other as they'll each have their own pros and cons.
That being said, even if it doesn't allow non-simple weaps, I still think this works as its giving each of the different leader builds their own little niche. Battle clerics use simple weaps with two hands while handing out an assortment of buffs. Warpriests likely use a shield. Runepriests will likely use superior weapons to deal large amounts of damage, etc. With luck, when they are all done (still anticipating some runepriest love) each of the different classes/builds will have their own little niche and be relatively balanced with each other as they'll each have their own pros and cons.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Half of the powers require a simple weapon. The other half provide a pretty hefty damage bonus if you use one. Either way you'd be pretty much crazy to waste resources on using a superior weapon with any of these powers, even assuming you didn't want the "simple weapons only" line of powers.
It isn't bad, just creates a sort of an oddity in the game. I mean I don't know what other possibilities Mike looked into. I'd assume he wanted something that would make a STR cleric effective with a weapon right from the start.
[MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION] Your analysis sounds about right. There are one or two little cracks here they're going to have to fill in... OTOH the comparison to fighter isn't 100% relevant, they are still quite different characters and the fighter has other advantages that make it more suitable to its role. Still could be an issue with hybrids though (they are definitely going to have to drop in some errata to keep the Battle Cleric's Lore option out of the hands of hybrids).
Klaus
First Post
There *are* other Str-based cleric powers that you can use with a fullblade or mordenkrad.
The powers that don't *require* a simple weapon are those that give +1d6 damage if you use a simple weapon. If you have access to a d12 brutal 2 weapon superior weapon, you can use that instead of a 1d8 + 1d6 simple weapon.
Klaus
First Post
Or the dwarf can play a runepriest instead...
