Pathfinder 1E Diving in to Pathfinder

[OnlineDM]

I don't have access to my character sheet at the moment, so I'll have to check the favored class bonus later (I may have overlooked it entirely). My stats are along the lines of:

16 Str
11 Con
10 Dex
12 Int
15 Wis
14 Cha

Maybe that's a bad stat array, I don't know. I'm not a fan of dump stats, so it was just a question of where I put my bonuses. I originally thought that Wisdom would be extremely important (based on experience with 4e clerics) and later realized that I'd need SOME Wisdom, but it's not the end-all, be-all for a Pathfinder cleric. Strength seemed more important.

I also tend to think of clerics as being melee characters to some degree, but maybe that's the wrong way to think of my Pathfinder cleric. Like I said, I have much to learn.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Remember that you'll need at least a 19 Wisdom score to cast all of your spell levels (min Wis: 10 + Spell Level), but that can be papered over by Wis-enhancing magic items.

You're kind of in a tough spot with your stats - you don't have the Wis to be a casting-focused Cleric, and you don't have the Con to be a melee-focused Cleric. Also, Clerics don't start with proficiency in heavy armor, so your low-Dex score will make you a bit more vulnerable to attacks than you otherwise would be.

So, you'll be kind of in the middle.

 

[OnlineDM]

Hmm. I have a weird thing for liking balance in characters more than I really should! Well, no one can accuse me of munchkining.

The party found a Ring of Protection +1 in our last combat, which I happily accepted, so my armor's a little better now.

I don't know much about Pathfinder magic items, so I don't know how easy it will be to get to a 19 Wisdom by the time I can cast 9th-level spells. I'd like to get there, of course.

Where does Strength come in for most Pathfinder clerics? Do they tend not to make weapon attacks? If you're a melee cleric and you have decent Con, does that mean that you have either lousy Wisdom or lousy Strength? Or do most people embrace the idea of a dump stat and put Intelligence or Dexterity in the toilet? It seems like clerics do need some Charisma, so I imagine that wouldn't be dumped.

 

[IronWolf]

I don't know much about Pathfinder magic items, so I don't know how easy it will be to get to a 19 Wisdom by the time I can cast 9th-level spells. I'd like to get there, of course.

There are magic items and you can throw your ability score increase at every 4th level to WIS if needed to help bring it up.

Where does Strength come in for most Pathfinder clerics? Do they tend not to make weapon attacks? If you're a melee cleric and you have decent Con, does that mean that you have either lousy Wisdom or lousy Strength? Or do most people embrace the idea of a dump stat and put Intelligence or Dexterity in the toilet? It seems like clerics do need some Charisma, so I imagine that wouldn't be dumped.

Self-buffs can work well in the lower levels until you start acquiring strength boosting items at later levels. I wouldn't drop WIS as that is your casting stat. INT is something I would consider leaving at a 10 and I might have only gone 14 on STR.

Your character will work just fine though and there isn't anything wrong with your stats. Self-buff spells can help temporarily boost whatever you need at the moment, watch where the ability score boosts go as you level up and keep an eye out for magic items that boost the stat that most reflects the character you want to play.

 

[Shisumo]

16 Str
11 Con
10 Dex
12 Int
15 Wis
14 Cha

Given that you plan to be in melee (and there is certainly nothing wrong with that plan as a general rule) I would probably have gone with Con 13 and Int 10. That said, Desnan clerics often like more skill points than a typical cleric might (Perform, Survival, Perception - all skills Desna prizes that most deities don't care about) so there's a strong case to be made for an above-average Int as well.

At this point, however, the question is moot unless your GM would allow a rebuild, so I'd prefer to look forward. The heaviest armor you can find, the Toughness and Heavy Armor Proficiency feats, and a wand of cure light wounds - these should all help you be on the front lines a bit more effectively. What's your primary weapon?

 

[OnlineDM]

My GM would probably allow a rebuild if I wanted one, since I'm brand-new to the game, but I think I'm okay as-is. If it's just a question of getting a +1 Con modifier and I have a +0, I don't feel like I'm that far off.

Yes, I wanted my cleric to be somewhat skillful (he's a gypsy), hence the 12 Int.

As for a weapon... Starknife, naturally. He's quite devoted to Desna, you see.

 

[Shisumo]

The problem I'm having now is my brain trying to find a way to rebuild for a much more Dex-oriented character, since "skillful gypsy" and "guy encased in multiple layers of hammered steel' aren't working in my head very well. I'm not sure it's possible without completely annihilating your damage potential, though, so perhaps I should just let it lie.

 

[OnlineDM]

I've finished my second session of Pathfinder now and blogged about it. My cleric is doing great and developing some real character. Having a fantastic GM is wonderful.

I'm finding Pathfinder mechanics to be a bit fiddly for my tastes so far; I guess I'm more on the "gamist" rather than "simulationist" end of the spectrum. But it's still lots of fun.

 

[Shisumo]

In a lot of ways, 4E and PF are both built on an exceptions-based system - i.e., the rules work like *this* unless you have *that* special trait that changes it, at which point it works however *that* works. In 4E, the "special traits" are pretty much all powers of one flavor or another - which is why power cards are so beloved in that system - and anything that can't readily be encoded into the powers system just doesn't really have a lot of exceptions. (There's really nothing in 4E that really changes how saves work, for instance. Slight tweaks, yes, but nothing that really rewrites the system on a fundamental level.) in PF, though, there "special traits" are spells, feats, innate class abilities, racial bonuses, and more - and in a very real sense, nothing is off-limits for modification.

One basic trait of exceptions-based systems is that overall the "baseline" rules tend to be somewhat punishing to PCs, so that the characters with the ability to overcome those baselines are much cooler. 4E's focus on the power system means that the baseline is more forgiving, though, because there are fewer ways to tweak the baseline to begin with; this is coupled to a design goal that explicitly wanted PCs to be more heroic and capable from the very beginning of their careers than they were in 3.X (a goal that, incidentally, PF shares, albeit to a lesser extent) and a design philosophy that completely divorced NPCs and monsters from PC mechanics (meaning that it's no longer necessary to show how much cooler the PCs are than the NPCs by showing how the NPCs still have to labor under the restrictions the PCs have outgrown). The end result is a game that is far friendlier and with fewer "you can't"s for low-level PCs than PF is.

It doesn't take very long for the balance to redress itself, however. By level 3 or so, most PCs have already managed to shed the worst of the obstacles in the way of whatever their primary focus might be, and from there on out it's just "how can I do this even better?"

 

[OnlineDM]

Thanks for your input! I'm sure that everything you say is correct. I haven't really run into most of those issues though. I understand that low-level PCs in Pathfinder are "low-powered" compared to 4e PCs, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest (even the low hit points aren't so bad; two good shots will drop a low-level PC in either Pathfinder or 4e if you're using updated monster damage in 4e).

My issues are more that things tend to be simpler in 4e, such as the use of powers printed with the character sheet (or monster stat block) rather than spells that you have to reference in books. I freely admit that I'm spoiled by the Character Builder. Limitations and all, it's still way easier to make a character in 4e with the Builder than it is to make a Pathfinder character (though I'm trying to get better with PC Gen).

Just to be clear, though, I'm still having tons of fun with Pathfinder.

Edit: By the way, the reason that I clarified that I'm having fun with Pathfinder wasn't that I thought Shisumo was saying I wasn't having fun. It was because I didn't want anyone to think I'm a 4e fanboy who's hating on Pathfinder. I think I'm discovering that the more "gamist" 4e is closer to what I like in an RPG, but I still love a lot about Pathfinder and have fun playing it.