Talk:Priest (3.5e Class)

Hello and welcome to Talk:Priest

WHY MAKE THIS CLASS?

The cleric and druid excel at combat due to their combination of physical prowess AND magical prowess. The wizard excels at magic due to arcane spells being a bigger list of slightly stronger and more versatile spells and only needs one attribute to excel in it.

If you want to play a more balanced class, you probably looked at the Favored Soul and/or the Healer. The Favored Soul is exactly like the cleric in every way but worse (No domains/turning/heavy armor and a spell level behind). The Healer lacks most off the above as well, but has such a limited spell list that you cannot in any way even hinder your opponent. The versatility of a caster is completely drained out of the Healer Class.

So here comes the priest, with the same abilities as a cleric, but the frailty of a wizard. A class that for some reason is quite missing from D&D.

DESIGN REASONING

Weapon & Armor : I had to be careful that you couldnt just level-dip something else and get your heavy armor and weapon profiencies. Play a paladin instead you dirty, dirty minmaxer!

Praycast : Because many cleric spells are close-ranged, Praycast is actually a very natural solution to the problem and fits nicely within the lore of a priest.

Domains : Clerics love their domains, but the domains are so good clerics it is sometimes worth it to take a level of cleric JUST for the domains! Therefor I decided to only give one domain to the priest and have this domain become better as more levels of priest are taken. The result means that this one domain is even more important to choose than before, because you get all variants of the spells in this list at later level.

Spells : I decided to kill multiple birds with one stone in the way the Priest's spellcasting is designed. Domain slots were a hassle, Chosing spells at night was a hassle, Getting interrupted while sleeping was a hassle. I wanted to give more spells to the Priest for being a fullcaster but was also scared of spells with a long duration. Therefor I decided that recovering spells would only take 10 minutes but would cancel any spell already in effect.

Turn or Rebuke Undead : Turning undead itself is pretty useless, but the feats associated with it, mainly divine metamagic, are insane! I put it at 4th level to avoid dipping and since recovering spells cancels any spell still in effect, these permanency spells shouldn't be too crazy. I decided to make it wisdom since full-casters usually only require one high ability score for their abilities.

Divinity : If you are better at helping your allies, you will feel more inclined to do so. Something that should be encouraged more often in D&D, rather than turning into CoDzilla yourself.

Divine Self/Protection : At higher levels, you will quickly succumb to bad situations, it is important in those scenarios that the person who is equipped to deal with those things, is unhindered and still able to deal with those things. Since outright immunity was too much, these two class features are the next best thing. And I worded them cleverly so they synergize together :)