Have there been any real stabs at this? I'm contemplating how to devise a simple mechanic that eliminates a spells/day mechanic, but doesn't allow the character to cure an infinite amount of damage or remove negative effects all day long or raise the dead at will without consequence. It's a lot more complicated thn the warlock. It's one thing to have unlimited offensive power; eventually, you run out of targets. But beneficial magic is really open to abuse.
Divine version of the warlock
- Thread starter Felon
- Start date
Aus_Snow
First Post
Hm, divine healing on tap = problem? Yeh, I can see that. Except if it was Cure Minor Wounds, maybe. 
Perhaps a similarly helpful but different package?
So ok, how about protection, spiritual cleansing, buff n stuff (for all) a-go-go. . .?
The One Thing to replace Eldritch Blast. . . hmmmm. Some kind of weakish buff/shield that gets better as class level increases?
I've certainly neither come across nor thought about such a class before now. Tricky, it is.
Perhaps a similarly helpful but different package?
So ok, how about protection, spiritual cleansing, buff n stuff (for all) a-go-go. . .?
The One Thing to replace Eldritch Blast. . . hmmmm. Some kind of weakish buff/shield that gets better as class level increases?
I've certainly neither come across nor thought about such a class before now. Tricky, it is.
I guess one approach would be to treat it like the paladin's lay one hands ability, though perhaps better.
Since I'd want such a class to be able to heal at least as well as a cleric with the healing domain, I'd start by figuring out how many hit points one of those could heal between rest stops.
Since I'd want such a class to be able to heal at least as well as a cleric with the healing domain, I'd start by figuring out how many hit points one of those could heal between rest stops.
Cheiromancer
Adventurer
Do you have a name for a "divine warlock"? Might I suggest "cabalist"?
Cabalists could have a huge effect on a campaign world; someone with remove disease as a SLA could single handedly stop a plague. To control this, you might say that a cabalist has to designate who he can heal at the beginning of each day. 3+cha mod living people, or some such. A cabalist couldn't raise a person unless they were part of their "cabal".
Parties with warlocks still have to stop and rest after a few encounters because the cleric runs out of spells. But if there is a cabalist in the party they could potentially go all day. On the other hand, a cleric can pull out all the stops and use all their high level spells in one important encounter; cabalists will not be able to match that intensity, though they can do great on duration.
In general a cabalist should be about as powerful in combat as a cleric who is holding back (i.e. one who is expecting there to be 4 or 5 encounters before a chance to rest). More specifically you have to figure out how well (and at what level) cabalists will handle the following kinds of clerical activities:
- in combat curing
- out of combat curing
- removal of status effects (blindness, deafness, disease, paralysis, curses)
- restoring of negative levels, ability damage and drain
- raising the dead
If a party has a cabalist instead of a cleric, they'll still have to meet the challenges that adventure designers consider appropriate to a particular level. An adventure for 7th level characters will assume that the adventurers have access to cure disease, and can probably neutralize poison as well. So you can't really limit the rate in which cabalists acquire abilities.
Not to mention the fact that you'll have to think about how you'll make it fun for someone to be a cabalist. If all your character can do is cast cure minor wounds it won't be much fun to play, even if you can cure 600 hit points an hour. Some kind of ability to turn or disrupt undead should be an SLA as well. Buffs are a common motif for clerics, and something like heroes feast is essential at high levels.
What you might want to do is to slow down their SLAs a little. Most SLAs can be used only every other round. A mechanic like psionic focus might work; they can use a SLA, but need to make a DC 20 concentration check to regain their focus; until they do so, they can't use their abilities. But other than that, they could be much like a cleric (BAB, armor, hit dice).
Cabalists could have a huge effect on a campaign world; someone with remove disease as a SLA could single handedly stop a plague. To control this, you might say that a cabalist has to designate who he can heal at the beginning of each day. 3+cha mod living people, or some such. A cabalist couldn't raise a person unless they were part of their "cabal".
Parties with warlocks still have to stop and rest after a few encounters because the cleric runs out of spells. But if there is a cabalist in the party they could potentially go all day. On the other hand, a cleric can pull out all the stops and use all their high level spells in one important encounter; cabalists will not be able to match that intensity, though they can do great on duration.
In general a cabalist should be about as powerful in combat as a cleric who is holding back (i.e. one who is expecting there to be 4 or 5 encounters before a chance to rest). More specifically you have to figure out how well (and at what level) cabalists will handle the following kinds of clerical activities:
- in combat curing
- out of combat curing
- removal of status effects (blindness, deafness, disease, paralysis, curses)
- restoring of negative levels, ability damage and drain
- raising the dead
If a party has a cabalist instead of a cleric, they'll still have to meet the challenges that adventure designers consider appropriate to a particular level. An adventure for 7th level characters will assume that the adventurers have access to cure disease, and can probably neutralize poison as well. So you can't really limit the rate in which cabalists acquire abilities.
Not to mention the fact that you'll have to think about how you'll make it fun for someone to be a cabalist. If all your character can do is cast cure minor wounds it won't be much fun to play, even if you can cure 600 hit points an hour. Some kind of ability to turn or disrupt undead should be an SLA as well. Buffs are a common motif for clerics, and something like heroes feast is essential at high levels.
What you might want to do is to slow down their SLAs a little. Most SLAs can be used only every other round. A mechanic like psionic focus might work; they can use a SLA, but need to make a DC 20 concentration check to regain their focus; until they do so, they can't use their abilities. But other than that, they could be much like a cleric (BAB, armor, hit dice).
The Thayan Menace
First Post
Classy Title / Political Correctness
While I admit that I actually like this title, it might be seen as a shot against the Sephardic Jewish community.Cheiromancer said:
Jackelope King
First Post
I'm actually working on my own divine warlock right now.
The problem with a divine warlock is that infinite healing is not a good thing. You must have some way to limit the healing that a divine warlock can do if you want a healing warlock, otherwise the party will always be at full health.
My fix to it was to take a page from the east. The eldritch blast of the divine warlock I'm designing is an ability called "purify". A "purify" attack is like turn undead, except that it damages spirits (who are more common than undead in the setting I'm developing the class for*). The divine warlock can basically do damage to all spirits at will within 30 feet of him. Now the divine warlock can learn invocatons to allow him to target new types of creatures. He could, for example, pick purify undead as one of his least invocations and target undead with his purification spell-like ability. Or at higher levels he can learn purify abberation to deal with other unnatural creatures.
I've also decided to let the divine warlock take invocations that alter the utility of purification, but at a cost. One that I am working on is an invocation which allows the divine warlock to strike an ally with a weapon to heal an ammount of damage that he would normally deal with his purify ability. The catch? The weapon is converted to healing energy in the process and destroyed. There will be similar invocations in this group: the divine warlock can target foes outside of his normal 30 foot range or specific foes by striking them with a purifying attack (again destroying the weapon in the process). My idea here is that a divine warlock can rely on ranged weapons, like a bow and arrow, to deliver these attacks, effectively limiting these purifying abilities to the number of arrows he has in a quiver. This means that the divine warlock can cover the normal role of a cleric (healing), but doing so requires some nominal investment in resources which ultimately requires the party to take some downtime between fights, if only to craft more arrows.
_________________________
*The foundation for the divine warlock varient I'm working on is actually the Spirit Shaman from Complete Divine.
The problem with a divine warlock is that infinite healing is not a good thing. You must have some way to limit the healing that a divine warlock can do if you want a healing warlock, otherwise the party will always be at full health.
My fix to it was to take a page from the east. The eldritch blast of the divine warlock I'm designing is an ability called "purify". A "purify" attack is like turn undead, except that it damages spirits (who are more common than undead in the setting I'm developing the class for*). The divine warlock can basically do damage to all spirits at will within 30 feet of him. Now the divine warlock can learn invocatons to allow him to target new types of creatures. He could, for example, pick purify undead as one of his least invocations and target undead with his purification spell-like ability. Or at higher levels he can learn purify abberation to deal with other unnatural creatures.
I've also decided to let the divine warlock take invocations that alter the utility of purification, but at a cost. One that I am working on is an invocation which allows the divine warlock to strike an ally with a weapon to heal an ammount of damage that he would normally deal with his purify ability. The catch? The weapon is converted to healing energy in the process and destroyed. There will be similar invocations in this group: the divine warlock can target foes outside of his normal 30 foot range or specific foes by striking them with a purifying attack (again destroying the weapon in the process). My idea here is that a divine warlock can rely on ranged weapons, like a bow and arrow, to deliver these attacks, effectively limiting these purifying abilities to the number of arrows he has in a quiver. This means that the divine warlock can cover the normal role of a cleric (healing), but doing so requires some nominal investment in resources which ultimately requires the party to take some downtime between fights, if only to craft more arrows.
_________________________
*The foundation for the divine warlock varient I'm working on is actually the Spirit Shaman from Complete Divine.
given that warlocks have access to use magic device and the ability to take 10 with it and the way that the character wealth system works the party 'should' be at, or near, full health after each battle if they have a few minutes of rest time.
I like the idea of a divine warlock, mainly to get access to different invocations, but I think it could easily be added by simply removing the alignment restriction ( I did this as soon as I put it in my game actually) and then adding some extra invocations.
If you have a least invocation that is cure minor with some flavor text and instead of actually healing it converts the damage to subdual I think it would be perfectly in line with what they do and the power level of the invocation.
That sort of thing shouldnt be too bad, they have such a limited supply to begin with that any individual invocation can be pretty potent.
I like the idea of a divine warlock, mainly to get access to different invocations, but I think it could easily be added by simply removing the alignment restriction ( I did this as soon as I put it in my game actually) and then adding some extra invocations.
If you have a least invocation that is cure minor with some flavor text and instead of actually healing it converts the damage to subdual I think it would be perfectly in line with what they do and the power level of the invocation.
That sort of thing shouldnt be too bad, they have such a limited supply to begin with that any individual invocation can be pretty potent.
Cheiromancer
Adventurer
The Thayan Menace said:
If it has the same kind of flavor as the arcane warlock, then yeah. But I was thinking of it more along as good and lawful where arcane warlocks are evil and chaotic. Celestial rather than fiendish.
If you don't want to go that way, the word "cultist" might work. One thing I liked about cabalist was the fact that there could be an associated cabal; that fits in with the designated healing mechanic. The people the cabalist is empowered to heal is his cabal. But, and this is true especially if the divine warlock is still chaotic or evil, cultist works well. Then it is the members of his "cult" that he can heal.
Another name that might work is "exorcist"- which would be good if you gave it abilities like the purification ones that Jackelope King mentions. Plus it sounds kinda like the opposite of a warlock/cultist.
Speaking of Jackelope King, I am not sure what the problem is with infinite healing. Parties with a few wands of lesser vigor effectively have bottomless hit point reservoirs as it is.
Kunimatyu
First Post
Perhaps the 'exorcist' has an invocation that grants one party member fast healing 1, but it can only be on one party member at a time? Healing 1 hp/round, 1 person at a time is nice but won't be overpowered. I also like the idea of a more potent healing SLA that converts lethal damage into subdual.
Or perhaps simply an ability to transfer level times Cha mod in damage as a standard action? The 'exorcist' could absorb wounds from others, and maybe transfer them to enemies via an eldritch-blast-type touch attack?
Perhaps you could call the ability Stigmata?
Or perhaps simply an ability to transfer level times Cha mod in damage as a standard action? The 'exorcist' could absorb wounds from others, and maybe transfer them to enemies via an eldritch-blast-type touch attack?
Perhaps you could call the ability Stigmata?
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