#warpriest

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Conclusions

And so we’ve come to the end of this review special and of the hybrid class group of classes to review in Pathfinder 1e, and it’s been a bit of a trip. I find some classes more interesting than others, but none of them expressly bad at their job.

Indeed, despite the negative stuff I had to say about it yesterday, it’s still only my second least favorite of these classes, preceded only by the slayer, albeit purely because the slayer’s claim to fame is arguably a better, more versatile equivalent to favored enemy that can be applied to any foe as long as you set it up first. Useful, but not exactly inspiring.

But this week isn’t about the slayer or any other hybrid class, this week is about the warpriest. Ultimately, the warpriest’s claim to fame is their incredible action economy when it comes to buffing up in the middle of combat, potentially snowballing even as foes crowd around them. However, outside of having two-thirds of the entire cleric spell list, warpriests are not really strong in the ways of utility or social situations.

And that I think helps define the class and it’s struggles. The story of a warpriest can be as simple as finding purpose in a cause that they fight for as part of the militant arm of their faith, but depending on the story, they may struggle with their sense of value outside of a combat setting, particularly if they belong to a faith that is not especially warlike. You might be the readied hand of the faith that answers when diplomacy fails, but what about when it succeeds… or when you’re the one having to do it? And what does all that mean when you follow a faith that is not militant in nature?

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Thoughts

So…. The Warpriest.

I want to preface this by letting you all know that the warpriest is a very good and competent class, and you are valid if you like it.

But… I don’t have any particularly strong appreciation for it.

Admittedly, a big part of that is that I rarely play the “true” divine classes like cleric, but that’s just one small part. I also find it annoying that a class that presents itself as a more combat-oriented cousin to the cleric has the same base attack bonus as a cleric. Yeah! They have the same three-quarters progression that a cleric does. Admittedly that makes sense for an equivalent of the magus as a mixed martial and spellcaster, but the cleric has always had it’s roots in the idea of a crusader chaplain that was willing to get their hands dirty while also being a beacon of faith even as the idea of the magical priest character expanded beyond Gygax and Arneson’s vision and the blatant Christian influences.

The only things that really make the warpriest more combat-oriented is their ability to apply buffs to themselves and their armaments more quickly and the fact they can turn somewhat low-damage deity favored weapons into something good (or just ignore that weapon and pick up weapon focus for one with the traits that suit your build instead. Screw theming, let’s be optimal.)

And while the cleric may require more setup and have less combat feats, they instead get a full 0 through 9th spell selection, with even more variety thanks to domains, which while blessings are useful, they pale in comparison to true domains. And like, of all the new hybrid spellcasting classes, one that trims down an existing spell list rather than copies over or even combines older ones (to say nothing of coming up with an entirely new one) feels somewhat disappointing.

Additionally, casting buffs faster when combat is joined, that’s literally something that bloodrager eventually gets but much earlier with a resource, which admittedly isn’t saying much given that hybrid classes by nature overlap with other things.

And yet at the same time, I know that these takes are the most pessimistic, cynical takes one can make with the Warpriest class, and that it is, in fact, a perfectly fine and good class.

Yes, a cleric can swing a mighty mace just as easily as a warpriest, but the warpriest knows more numerous combat techniques, and has already bolstered his blow with at least one divine blessing before the cleric had the chance to, even if they forgo the greater divine mysteries in doing so. Like all classes, it’s a matter of preference and the story that you want to tell with the character, whether they match the early hobby crusader or a more varied and interesting priest from a religion with other priorities, but is still willing and able to fight for their faith and their people.

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Archetypes

The warpriest didn’t get many, but it did get it’s fair share of archetypes, so let’s have a look!

Some warpriests tailor the power they gain to smite the enemies of their faith, such as champions of the faith, that gain a paladin-like smite, or divine champions, that are blessed by the rewards of deific obedience in their pursuit of such foes.

Others have the power of authority, either in terms of zealous faith for cult leaders, or strategic authority as divine commanders, giving commands to troops.

For some, the implements of the divine are most important to them, such as shieldbearers that wield mighty bastions of defense to both attack and defend, or forgepriests that focus on creating wonders of defense and offence, guided by the hand of their deity.

Many others invoke their power in specific ways. Disenchanters specialize in deflecting and dispelling the magic of their enemies, while proclaimers charge into battle and invoke the power of their deity to smite all fiendish foes near them. Proselytizers opt for nonlethal options first to try and spread the word of their deity, while sacred fists would rather use monk-like might to smite foes with nothing but their divinely-empowered bare hands.

Some, however, tap specifically into primal magic in addition to the divine. Elven calamity callers create miniature natural disasters to smite their foes, while feral champions tap into druidic magic to shapeshift claws and alternate forms.

Plenty of these archetypes are associated with nations and groups within setting, such as Jistkan Magistrates that summon elementals and unleash the fury of the elements on foes, Liberty’s Blades of Andoran channel power geared towards punishing and resisting the tyranny of devils, and Molthuni Arsenal champions focus on bolstering the fighting prowess of their allies over their own ability to fight.

Of course, there are those tied to specific faiths as well. Fists of the Godclaw evoke the raw power of law to quash chaos in the service of their order, while Mantis Zealots become warrior-assassins in the name of the Mantis God. On the polar opposite morally are Sixth-Wing Zealots: followers of Ragathiel that empower their shields with the power of flight to defend others in addition to themselves.

As we can see, there’s a good handful here, but nothing that really changes the formula too much. It is nice to see this many options though.

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Utility and Builds

So now that we know what a warpriest is, let’s talk about what they can do.

Warpriests are a middling base attack class with a d8 hit dice and low skill points, which puts them along the same ability as the magi they are meant to be a reflection of.

They also gain mid-level prepared spellcasting from 0 to 6th level, but unlike the magus, the warpriest takes a page out of the hunter book and instead gives them the whole cleric spell list up to 6th level. This means they get some pretty solid healing, buffing, debuffing, but somewhat limited damage spells. Naturally, they use wisdom as their casting stat.

As a reflection of the domains of a cleric, warpriests instead gain blessings: more combat-oriented abilities, one at first level, one at 10th, from both of their two blessing choices. Naturally, the warpriest can only take blessings that match one of the domains of their deity if they have one, though there are also “focused” domains in lieu of cleric subdomains that replace one of the granted powers. These blessings range from buffing a weapon or allies to summoning monsters to aid the warpriest, debuff enemies, or straight up do some damage.

They also train with a particular weapon, mastering it. For many this is the favored weapon of their deity, but it can be any weapon as long as it works for them.

Where things become interesting is when they designate a weapon as a sacred weapon. This applies to the favored weapon of their deity and any weapons they’ve trained to master, allowing them to enhance the weapon to deal damage well above it’s weight class. What’s more, they gain a reserve of power to enhance weapons magically, stacking with any existing magical blessings and even temporarily grant specific enchantments, similar to what a magus can do. They even gain specific enchantments on the list based on their alignment. However, they can only maintain this power for a limited time each day, and having multiple blessed weapons expends the energy faster.

Like a cleric, warpriests can convert their prepared spells into either healing or harming magic when they need to.

Their moral alignment also makes learning the languages of the fiends and celestials important to them, and determines what morality-based spells are available to them.

Something that sets warpriests apart is their reserve of fervor, an energy that can heal or harm with a touch as a paladin’s healing hands or antipaladins touch might. However, they have another use for this energy, allowing them to speed up the casting of their spells as long as they target only themselves, allowing them to apply their combat blessings and charge into the fray in the same breath.

They also gain various extra combat training, and prove gifted at learning even techniques normally known only to fighters.

Similar to how paladins can expend more energy to channel a pulse like clerics, warpriests can do the same with their fervor, though the energy channeled varies.

While magi and paladins must receive special training to enhance armor, warpriests can do so with ease, and make it last all day or until the armor is removed. They can even enhance weapon and armor at the same time with a little bit of fervor.

Finally, the most powerful among them can call upon the aspect of war, becoming more lethal, durable and mobile, as well as using blessings freely for one minute.

But if you don’t want that, there are alternate capstones for the warpriest thanks to Chronicle of Legends. The one specifically for warpriests being becoming a Hammer of God, gaining two more blessings from their deity and able to use blessings more times per day.

More generic options include Old Dog, New Tricks to represent their mastery of more combat techniques; Perfect Body, Flawless Mind for those physical and mental paragons blessed by their faith; Soul Channel, for those that can channel energy much more often and with greater results; The Boss for those that become great leaders among the militant parts of the faith; With This Sword for those with a possession that has become a true blessed relic of the faith; and Won’t Stay Dead, for seemingly immortal saints of the faith.

The warpriest has a lot of fun ideas, able to gain fighter-requisite feats even faster than a magus can, having a resource that can be used for simple healing or quick-casting buffs as needed, not to mention hitting really hard with their weapon of choice. With so many ways to apply buffs as swift actions, the warpriests are very much all about being ready to fight at a moment’s notice. While a cleric would have to spend rounds before or during combat to fight on par with a full combat class like fighter, a warpriest can be buffing themselves up basically for free while still fighting.

As such, the exact build you’ll have as a warpriest can vary by what blessings you pick and whether you’re a healer or a harmer, but a few ideas do come to mind. Some might be a solo juggernaut focused primarily on casting as many buffs as possible, gathering momentum as they grow stronger and stronger in combat to crush lesser foes on their way to stronger ones, trusting the rest of the party to support them. Others might focus on supporting in addition to combat. Meanwhile, some might make their own friends by focusing on summoning allies by way of spells or certain blessings to make use of the combat benefits or spell-like abilities of such conjured allies. They might focus more on tanking or more on dealing as much damage as possible. You’ve got plenty of options here.

The thing to remember with warpriest is that your uses of fervor and blessings are limited, so playing one is very much a matter of managing your uses of spells, blessings, and fervor to match the situation. With their bonus feats they’re not halfway bad when they run out of juice, but you still don’t want to be caught without juice if you can help it.

So playing a warpriest is very much about gaining momentum and keeping it, and recovering it quickly when you lose it. If you can’t reach your foe this round, lay down some blasting or a debuff, and when you get into range, fervor to buff up and go to town.

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Overview

And so we’ve come to the last of the hybrid classes, and I’ve got to say that we’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of them. “Let’s mash two pre-existing classes together into something so that players don’t have to multiclass as much” sounds a lot more banal on paper, but it gave us ten classes that not only developed their own identity, but several made the jump to second edition, either as their own classes, or as archetypes (even if they had to name them something different, looking at you, arcanist-turned-flexible spellcaster).

Today’s subject, however, got regulated to being a subtype of the base cleric class. Whether that’s better or worse is up to interpretation, but some interpretation of the mechanics of today’s subject have been lost to time, it seems, and honestly I can’t blame them, but we’ll talk more about that in the conclusion.

In any case, the warpriest! This final hybrid class combines the cleric and the fighter classes together, meaning of all the base classes, fighter has the most hybrid classes associated with it. “But DCO, I thought the paladin was a hybrid of cleric and fighter!” True, it does possess divine power and that lovely full base attack progression that everyone adores, but aside from the full BAB and the ability to channel energy at an albeit more costly rate, paladin doesn’t actually share many bones with the fighter or cleric classes. It has plenty of toys of it’s own and doesn’t borrow that many from the other two. They don’t even naturally gain access to the lovely combat feats that have a “fighters only” sticker in the prerequisites.

Now the warpriest, that’s a true hybrid class, taking elements from both parent classes while adding something new to the mix, and the best part is, they can be of any alignment! That is until 2e reconfigured paladins into champions with multiple causes, and then later did away with alignment entirely.

Enough jokes though, the warpriest is exactly what you’d expect it to be, a divine caster with more martially-focused abilities and the concept that these are the warriors of the faith. Less martially-focused than paladin or champion, instead retaining more of the divine magic that clerics swing around. They are the sword of their faith against it’s enemies.

Now, this is interesting, and can cover a lot of concepts, from the classic warrior priest leading and supporting soldiers on the field of battler to the dark apostle that would rather don the armor of darkness than support another champion, to the holy medic of a more benign god that will fight to the last to protect those under their care. Unlike inquisitors that have a lot of baggage and mental gymnasitics required to justify their existence in some faiths, every belief system has those willing to fight for what they believe in, even if it’s pacifistically fighting off those that cannot defend themselves without killing such interlopers.

But from a more technical standpoint, it’s basically meant to be what magi are to the wizard/fighter eldtrich knight combo, but without the actual prestige class to be making a replacement for. (Unless perhaps we count the holy vindicator, but that’s a bit of a stretch)

Whether you view them as a separate sort of training to a cleric or someone with cleric training that neglected some of that training to instead focus on martial pursuits likely varies from individual congregation, faith, and/or individual, but they do bring with them a holy fervor that few can match on the battlefield.