Strength Clerics Getting Away With Warpriest Domains

[Nahat Anoj]

Although you have a point, you can also try to see the strength clerics as powered by the gods. In other words, their strength coming from the gods.

I could, and would prefer to interpret a strong physique by having high Constitution, as in the case of the Warpriest, or even having a decent tertiary stat in Strength.

In a hypothetical 5e or a massively revised 4e, I could see all clerics as being Con based. As alluded to by Zaphling, the cleric's fervor and zeal could make them more vigorous and pugnacious - a reinterpretation of Con to be focused more on energy and the propensity for action would work well for this IMO.

The more mystical priests would be another, Wis-based class, like invokers (these days I think seeing a leader or striker build for invokers could be a possibility).

 

[Zaphling]

The devs should have just made the original cleric into pure wisdom, but still kept the difference between a melee and a ranged version. started with charisma as the second ability for ranged, and Con or Str for melee.

With your arguments, I don't see any more reason why WotC should continue supporting Strength clerics. Should at least post a banner in the Wotc website like this, "All strength clerics' powers are now using wisdom!" or maybe reprint a whole errata, like the weaponmaster or warlord, on the templar cleric basing every power on wisdom.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is the biggest problem with the Divine power source... in that each god from whom you get your prayers should change those ability scores that you should be higher in.

So sure, the war gods you worship should mean you have a high STR and would use it to attack with... but what about those clerics who worship Ioun or a god of magic? Shouldn't they get to have a high INT without gimping their character? Why do the hunting or thievery gods give the cleric a high DEX that is actually useful? I think the case can and should be made that every god should make your secondary and/or tertiary stat be determined based upon the god's domain, and which should have a useful effect upon build. But the fact that the system as it stands basically says "WIS primary, STR or CHA secondary regardless of who your god is" removes some of the reason for having multiple gods with multiple types of domains.

(I'd even go so far as saying that each god should also be allowed to have one floating skill on each divine classes skill list, so that a character can have at least one applicable trained skill to take without having to blow a feat on Skill Training or a multiclass. After all, if you follow the god of storms, you should at least be able to be trained in Athletics so that you can swim.)

 

[WalterKovacs]

This is the biggest problem with the Divine power source... in that each god from whom you get your prayers should change those ability scores that you should be higher in.

So sure, the war gods you worship should mean you have a high STR and would use it to attack with... but what about those clerics who worship Ioun or a god of magic? Shouldn't they get to have a high INT without gimping their character? Why do the hunting or thievery gods give the cleric a high DEX that is actually useful? I think the case can and should be made that every god should make your secondary and/or tertiary stat be determined based upon the god's domain, and which should have a useful effect upon build. But the fact that the system as it stands basically says "WIS primary, STR or CHA secondary regardless of who your god is" removes some of the reason for having multiple gods with multiple types of domains.

(I'd even go so far as saying that each god should also be allowed to have one floating skill on each divine classes skill list, so that a character can have at least one applicable trained skill to take without having to blow a feat on Skill Training or a multiclass. After all, if you follow the god of storms, you should at least be able to be trained in Athletics so that you can swim.)

If they had wanted to, they could have easily gone the mage's school route for domains. Considering all the at-wills and encounters are locked in, they could easily integrate the domain specific secondary stat that way, give any extra skill training or proficiencies, etc as domain features. Doing it via domain would probably be the easiest way of doing it, instead of having to come up with an implementation for each Diety (they'd just have to pump out more domains). Technically, they could always do it with new domains, they may need to make some dailies that are either secondary stat independent (which there already are) or that work off the new domains, since the rest of the encounter/dailies will be baked in to use the secondary stat.

 

[Incenjucar]

Honestly, the day they proclaim "secondary ability score" to be a thing, they'll vastly increase the game's modularity and flexibility.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the mistake was in making a STR cleric and a STR paladin. There should have simply been 2 things, cleric (uses wisdom, harnesses the divine might of the patron deity), and paladin (uses strength, bashes the heads of the patron's enemies to mush).

Once THAT was cleared up then you can deal with secondary stats. You could have a somewhat more melee oriented cleric ala the Warpriest with STR secondary, or a more 'laser' type with CHA secondary. Domains could be the way to decide the difference and there could then be other possible builds with other different secondaries. They could be domain based themes.

Paladin would also obviously benefit, with whatever variations were desired with different secondaries. Domain based themes could simply apply to both cleric and paladin. This would have created 2 classes that were about half the size of the existing ones, but containing 100% of the existing options.

Anyway, as it stands now I don't know why you'd want to make the STR cleric use a domain, just be a Warpriest. OTOH I'm not sure that swap type feats are absolutely a bad deal. One feat is not really a huge cost. It is when you have to pile on 2 or 3 to get an effect that it gets bogus (like the wizard->mage feats, those are garbage).

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I think the designers may have had trouble with the idea of characters using non-physical stats to make melee attacks, at least at first. Or perhaps they were worried about players having issues "buying" the idea.

In any case, I'm glad they got that sorted out.

 

[BobTheNob]

Feats which give the right to swap a power have always been a sub-par choice to me. Not only do you pay a feat, you have to give up a power you already have. Its like paying twice, and is one of the major reasons multi-classing is so naf.

 

[Zaphling]

The reason WotC started making strength melee clerics an option in PHB1 is because during 3e, clerics actually use STREnGTH for their melee attacks and having a higher Wisdom only gives them access to spells depending on their wisdom score. It was only in 4e that you can do melee attacks with another ability aside from strength.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Feats which give the right to swap a power have always been a sub-par choice to me. Not only do you pay a feat, you have to give up a power you already have. Its like paying twice, and is one of the major reasons multi-classing is so naf.

There are some cases where the new power is worth the feat. For example, the spiked chain specialization multiclass gives you a daily stance to get threatening reach. That kind of power is probably worth spending a feat and giving up a utility (there is probably a level where there seems to be no good options for utilities, or anything close to that value).

It is a suboptimal choice, but only if the power being taken isn't better than the other options the class already has. Paragon multiclassing is the real pain, since odds are you won't have options for all three that would have been good enough to take the feats originally, instead you just have to make the most of them becaue you needed it to get the paragon multiclass (presumably to get the at-will swap, or maybe to get the half-elf super paragon multiclass and be able to grab stuff from any class.)