Felon said:
Divine feats are pretty common in sourcebooks these days. Right now, I've got paladins and clerics who use their TU's strictly for Divine Ward and Divine Metamagic. Turning ain't just undead for undead anymore.
So compared to a regular cleric who can also take Divine Feats, or not, how does the RSoP gain an advantage?
Plenty of class features gained at the cost for an average of 1 HP/level.
The Monk gets class features at almost every level. This does not mean that they are very good.
Let's throw the brakes on that rationalization post-haste. I've seen it time and again. If someone argues that a prestige class has effortless requirements, and that point simply can't be contested, some folks try to counter-argue by making a loss of options sound significant even when they have negligible impact on a character's effectiveness. For instance, if a prestige class requires you to wear shoes, you've lost the precious option not to wear shoes, and that's a big deal--after all, when you were a cleric, you had the privilege of being barefoot.
It's a terrible form of equivocation that ignores the concept of pragmatism. At the end of the day, when totaling and ranking a cleric's assets, how does its class skill list rate? When a party doesn't have a cleric, do they suffer for the absence of certain skillsets that no other class provides? When a cleric winds up with an 8 in Int, is he significantly less effective than the cleric who winds up with a 16 INT because of all those skill points he gains? Is the latter cleric better off for that 16 being in INT than he would be assigning it elsewhere? Concentration is important for casting defensively, but what other skills are really essential? Looking at the big picture from all angles, throwing 14 skill points in a hole does not seriously hamper its effectiveness.
Which would you rather: have an option for 14 skill points, or not?
It may not be much of a disadvantage, and I don't argue that it is much of one, but since I'm being fair by listing everything that the RSoP
gets, no matter how quibbling Empower Healing is going to be in game-play, allow me the same. A single-classed cleric can choose where his skills go, a RSoP has
less of a choice.
Felon said:
Well, I hope you got some salt, because this is another rationale that lacks pragmatism. It ignores the fact that characters are built by player choices. Alignment and deity are not something randomly generated. If someone wants to be a RSoP, they'll make sure they write the proper alignment and deity in the right fields. That's not hard at all, unless it can demonstrated that being a NG worshipper of Pelor imposes some significant detriment upon how effectively a character can be what he is: as a divine-casting adventurer. It doesn't.
hong said:
See, I wouldn't actually call this factor "harsh" at all. In a stereotypical dungeoncrawling campaign, it's often entirely secondary what deity you worship, only what alignment you are. An NG Pelorian is as generic as you can get; heck, Jozan is a NG Pelorian IIRC.
Now perhaps in a campaign where deity issues are more prominent, or dungeoncrawling isn't the chief pursuit, this might be more significant. As it stands though, I doubt a lot of players would consider having to worship Pelor to be that big a deal.
Does alignment and deity matter to you? Are they utterly arbitrary when you make characters? Does it sit right with you that your honorable, just and forthright fighter revels in Erythnulian blood-frenzy orgies?
Do you care about what alignment your character is? Does your wizard hold more interest for you if you know that he is also a deacon at the Boccobite church and represents his commitment with ranks in Knowledge (Religion)?
If alignment and patron deity matter to you, this will be an enormous restriction. If you don't give a four-letter-word, then naturally: this restriction won't mean a thing to you. As I said:
Felix said:
Only if the choice of alignment, deity and domans means nothing to you can you delcare that this is not a signifigant restriction on the character. And if you believe that the choice of alignment, patron deities and domains means nothing, then there's nothing further to discuss.
Felon said:
But again, I have no real beef with the RSoP, it's just plain to see it's getting more effectiveness than it gives up.
If you don't believe requiring NG Pelorians is giving something up, you're right. And it's getting more effective at healing and turning. These abilities are not going to break a character or campaign.
hong said:
I think this is the main beef with the RSoP, really. Basically, it's just... a cleric. It gets new powers that beef up what a cleric would do anyway, and the requirement that you worship Pelor is a non-issue most of the time. Hence it shouldn't be a surprise that people are questioning why you need a PrC if all it is, is a souped-up cleric.
It's a souped-up cleric if patronage means nothing, sure. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Doc Midnight's Knights of Spellforge Keep, but Vek Mormont sure wouldn't make sense as a Pelorian. Grubber from JollyDoc's Age of Worms wouldn't make sense as a Pelorian. Eadric from SepulchraveII's Tales of Wyre, though a paladin, wouldn't make sense if he worshipped a NG god like Pelor.
It matters to me who my characters worship, and I think it should matter to players. I'll have a whole lot worse problems with a game whose characters are as faceless and vanilla as Jozan than if the Radiant Servant of Pelor is overpowered.
