Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Divine Power revealed!

It looks like somebody has been able to get their hands on Divine Power already, since there's a forum thread on rpg.net talking about the contents of the book. Forgive the messy writing and format, as I'm writing this a bit too late. Here are some of the items I found the most interesting, and my take on them:

Avenger

The new, leaderish build really makes the avenger more of a team player than before. Its new Censure rewards attacking surrounded foes, and is my favourite so far just because it triggers off actions you (rather than your target) can control. You will start to see avengers actually getting bonus to damage. It works off Intelligence, and has a very playable at-will that grants extra damage to allies. Also, there is a ranged at-will that benefits from Oath of Enmity, though it is a bit lacking in damage.

Other random stuff includes a feat for marking your OoE target.

Paladin

Oh. My. God. (No, not that Tempus guy, some of us still have principles). I'll just say this - I'm looking forward to building and playing a paladin, somewhere. It seems they have addressed brilliantly every single flaw the class previously had. There's a Cha-based at-will that you can use as a basic attack, removing the immediate need to take the Melee Training feat. Also, the previously discussed Divine Sanction can be applied from another at-will that, appropiately enough, uses either Strength or Charisma. This completely changes (for the better) a Paladin's defense against groups!

It doesn't end there, though. Strength paladins are finally recognized as a legitimate build with a feat that adds Str mod to Divine Challenge damage. Of course, this also means that Cha/Str builds, and dragonborn PCs in particular have potentially huge challenges, and may be very successful despite ignoring Wisdom. Then again, there are great rewards for high-Wisdom characters, in the form of alternatives to (the already pretty good) Lay on Hands: one was already previewed, and removed conditions on you or your allies, whereas the third one, Ardent Vow, allows you to apply Divine Sanction until the end of the encounter and grants some extra damage.

So, we have three different, viable ability distributions to build a Paladin (Str/Wis, Cha/Wis, Str/Cha)? I can't believe they have managed to find an upside for the class having two main ability scores...

Cleric

Most awesome feat ever: Pacifist Healer greatly improves your healing but introduces a huge drawback: you get punished -a LOT- for hurting bloodied enemies! To support this, there's a new at-will that deals no damage but reduces defenses and grants some healing. In addition, Strength-based clerics get a much needed second playable at-will, a melee strike that heals allies. Someone clearly wants clerics to become top healers again.

The new, alternate Channel Divinity power weakens you to heal an ally - a cool option for all clerics, and plain awesome for the pacifists who couldn't care less that they are weakened. Finally, another, very relevant feat is Healer's Implement, which adds implement bonus to your healing powers.

Invoker

Controller at-wills continue their slow, but unstoppable power creep - Someday we will have no choice but to recognize the controller as an essential party role. We have a ranged attack dealing slightly low damage to up to three targets (what happened to Divine Bolts?), a blast 3 inflicting a minor penalty to enemy defenses, and Mantle of the Infidel (what a cool name!), which has a very long range and increases the penalty from the marked condition.

I have seen some really worthwile powers for the Malediction Invoker build, and you will feel the urge to hurt your invoker to achieve supreme power.

Covering all divine classes, you have also the new Domain feats. These all seem to provide very useful bonuses, though I couldn't analyze them in detail as each one triggers off several different at-wills, making them harder to evaluate on first sight.

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