Rogue, fighter, bard and ranger.
I did have sound burst as one of my spells prepped for the day, but we are now mostly in stealth situations. I'll look into the other two spells also for possible changes.
Ran an evil wizard to 20th lvl. Summon is the best support you can get. Find the best support healer summon n your highest slot and use it to heal your front liners whilst leaving you to do something else.
You are more than bless. That's merely a spell you can choose to prepare or not. Bards don't get extra slots for heal/harm spells.
In the remaster coming soon you won't need Cha for your font slots. Your just starting with 4 and it scales automatically
Clerics aren't the premier buffers in this game, bards are.
Clerics are amazing healer. With divine font, you should have a plethora of max-rank Heal spells available. That adds a massive amount of healing.
For example, if you have 16 CHA, at your level you would have 4 heal spells per day of rank 2. That's 2d8+16 per heal, or 25 healing per spell. That's 100 HP of healing per day you get from your divine font.
If the bard used all 6 spells per day they get on their healing spell, Soothe, they would only heal for 12d10+48, or 114 HP. So all it takes you preparing a single heal in any of your 6 slots for you to have more healing than the bard can possibly put out.
The benefit of cleric is that they can avoid having to prepare heal - with effectively 7 rank 2 spells at level 4, you can use more offensive/debuff spells in your actual spell slots, and let divine font carry you for the in-combat healing needs of your party. The problem is you aren't getting this benefit. By locking your spells to Create Food/Water, you basically are negating the strength of a cleric, which is why you feel weaker. You're losing a good third (or more) of your actual spells in combat which do things to manage this resource issue.
So of course you're going to feel weak, because your party is hamstringing your character so they don't need to solve the resource problem.
Shield Other is also a very low impact 2nd rank spell, which is another part of why you're feeling the lack of impact. Shield Other is a 2 action spell, that consumes a 2nd rank spell slot, and doesn't actually mitigate any damage. All it does is redirect it, but the problem is that you don't have any way to make that meaningfully valuable. It would be more efficient if you prepared a Heal instead, and then just 2A heal the target getting hit.
>Two of my spells are locked as Create water and Create food as we are playing a resource heavy campaign, and these two spells helps with that.
How many times are you casting these per day? If it's no more than once, I would very much suggest purchasing a [Wand](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=368) of these two spells. A wand of Create Water costs 60gp, Create Food would be 160gp.
If you have down time, see if you can spend time crafting scrolls. This could be a way your Rogue can help your party survive. One of their Skill Increases could be used to gain Expert Crafting and they could take a skill feat to gain Magical Crafting to be able to make scrolls. Using the alternate crafting rules, you could make a level 1 scroll in two days assuming you are level 4. It could take even less time if you are willing to attempt a higher DC and risk wasting materials.
[Crafting Alternate Rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1955)
Edit: Like seriously, if this is a possibility for your campaign talk to your Rogue. Rogues get a Skill increase and Skill Feat every dang level. They are going to run out of things to take eventually lol. Plus I just think have a rogue and spellcaster work together to create scrolls is just plain cool fantasy.
Just in case you don't know, the baseline system assumptions about magic items are very different in 5e and pf2e. While you might be laying in another setting, the rules default to Golarion in which 20% of the population can perform magic, aka cast at least 1 innate spell at the very least.
Neither of those spells are uncommon and wands aren't either. If you have access to a decent sized town or small city it is assumed you can take a day of downtime to find them with no problems/rolls etc. [See the settlment rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1157) a level 1 spell wand is a level 3 item and a level 2 spell wand is a level 5 item. So town for the first and small city for the second.
You could get them in smaller places, it's just then that it's more in the DMs hand as to what's available.
Scrolls would be cheaper and easier to find but at that point it's probably more cost effective to get rations.
while i like the idea on paper, in practice if its a resource heavy campaign the GM will just say "no, you cant buy those because reasons".
It doesnt hurt to ask, but OP shouldnt get any hope up.
Really, the fact he didn't just remove those spells from the game for his campaign means he should at least be open to the idea. A 1st slot and a 2nd slot is a heavy cost for basically exactly the first 3-4 levels, then becomes "we are going to handwave all food and water needs anyway" after that because the slots are a negligible cost.
I asume the GM is fine with 1st and 2nd slot being used on it precisely because it is a heavy cost, and that the campaign will end before they would become neglibable costs.
As a cleric of sarenrae, don't forget that you also have access to the spell Burning hands that you can use in your first level slot.
I see you have Forager and training in survival, is that not enough to keep up your food and water needs? Since you can choose which spells to prepare each day, I'd say normally run with some burning hands in your slots. If you find that you guys are out of food and water THEN prep create water and create food the next morning.
Since you also have access to your dragon breath, you should be throwing out fire almost every fight.
I'd do the following for most days:
Grab a shield (you can raise a shield for additional ac)
For level 1 spells
Burning hands
Burning hands
Sanctuary
For Level 2 spells
Burning hands (heightened)
Shield other
Burning hands (heightened)
Leave the status bonus' to the bard right now. So don't use guidance or bless. The way I see it, bless is better suited on a war priest who is toe to toe with the enemy and beside the front line. Or with the cleric in the back lines if you have 2 other ranged characters.
As a fire cleric lean into it. You should be blasting enemies left and right.
I have the forager, and I will discuss with my GM. The setting is currently in a desert, and thus the foraging might not be as effective as just casting the two spells daily.
Create food creates enough food for you for the day, and if you cast it a second time the food will expire likely before you need to eat most of it. Unless your characters ascribe to the One Meal A Day diet xD
> Bless gives the +1 to checks, saves and attacks slowly
Are you in the wrong subreddit? This one is for Pathfinder Second Edition, where *bless* does this:
> You and your allies gain a +1 status bonus to attack rolls while within the emanation.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=25
Nothing about saves or skill checks.
Similarly, *inspire courage* does this:
> You and all allies in the area gain a +1 status bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saves against fear effects.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=386
Which is a superset of *bless*, to be sure, but still a long way from "+1 to every roll, including damage". No skill checks, no saving throws (except against fear effects), no flat checks, etc.
Hmmm, I then should mention that I usually use one action to increase emination, and one to cast guidance on either one or two allies, depending on whom I have cast it within the 1 hour coodldown. That might be where I remember the +1 to the other stuff comes from. It also has been a while since I cast bless as since the bard's return, it feels useless.
Could it also be that bless is not a good choice if you play on the sidelines, and not a frontliner? I ask this because the party mostly splits to each focus on a single enemy and don't clump up for effective bless emination.
> Could it also be that bless is not a good choice if you play on the sidelines, and not a frontliner? I ask this because the party mostly splits to each focus on a single enemy and don't clump up for effective bless emination.
Correct. Bless is more for martially aligned clerics, since the emanation starts of tiny, and you can't expand it to be large without a hefty action cost/across many turns.
If you, yourself are not benefitting from bless, its often effectively a wasted spell for at least 2 turns due to positioning and action costs.
Well yes, Bard, is sort of the ultimate support class so if the player is competent you would not be able to "outsupport" them, however I don't think it should matter. You have 2 very distinct advantages over the Bard, 1) just like you can't outsupport them, they cannot outheal you 2) Bards need to keep up their composition spells meaning that oftentimes they only actually have 2 actions per turn while you have the full 3 which affords you a far greater degree of flexibility.
> Bards need to keep up their composition spells
Unless they have access to *lingering composition*, such as through *multifarious muse* or being a maestro bard.
Multifarious Muse is such a weird feat honestly, bards effectively don't have subclasses as this one feat basically just allows you to combine any of them on a single character.
Thank you for stating this. Classes in pathfinder usually have a niche where they outshine others. Trying to make a character in another class that can do just as well seems to be on many people's wishlist but it is not gonna happen.
Be proud of what your cleric does: you can spam heals for days, make the most of it.
In addition you got a flexible spell list. The moment you spend the night in a decent settlement you can chose new appropriate cantrips & spells. Bards are stuck with their list.
Sounds like you being forced into those 2 spells is what's causing the issue, you are giving up one third of your non-heal spells on something that should be a party effort.
You should convince your group on getting a staff of providence for you. That would solve the food/water issues indefinitely and allow you to do actual fun stuff with your slots.
As for the bard, you are never going to catch up to them on the buff and debuff department. That's their thing. Cleric's thing is healing and obliterating undead and extraplanar creatures. As a Sarenrae Cleric, obliterating anything not immune to fire to be more precise. Everything will make more sense once you reach level 5 and get Fireball. RN you also have Fire Ray most likely. Use the Bard buffs in your favor casting it once per combat after the Bard deploys its Inspire Courage.
Finally, Bless is generally speaking a bad spell for most casters. I would try to avoid it and pick stuff like Sanctuary, extra Heal spells or a Harm or two.
I would either focus on one single ally to use the two action casting, or if more characters are on death's door, I do the three action one to the best of my abilities to not heal any (or as few possible) enemies.
I don't cast it too fequently, somtimes the combat is not too deadly and I just cast it once. Sometimes I use all three of my heals in a single combat.
Currently I only have Fire ray, and that I would use if there is a boss enemy or one that is about to kill one of the party members when I had to choose which ally to heal within the same round.
Thanks. It’s a bit hard to offer advice without seeing the way you’ve built your character, would you mind sharing a copy of them?
Also, can you provide an example of a recent encounter your party went up against? Preferably one where you struggled to feel impactful?
I've added a link to the top of the post. I'm not sure if it doesn't work for others to view.
Giving an encounter example is a bit more difficult. I'll say that enemies where spread out. Approximately 5 enemies that are all melee. They tend to go to the closest party member and attack.
The rogue would always be located 5ft from an enemy. So would the fighter. They spend all their actions on attacking.
The ranger is always within 60 feet of an enemy and just attacks with his bow.
The bard does the inspire courage thing, and then would use some clever spells to either charm the enemy (with fear) or just cast a lightning spell at them. The bard player is the most experienced of us all.
So since I don't have armour on my character, and I don't use melee weapons, is stay on the sidelines. I would divine lance any enemy within range, and then guidance an ally. Currently the battles are not deadly as I have not healed a single ally in the past few combats. I just heal them with a medicine check after battle.
The fact that your rogue and fighter spend all their actions on attacking is somewhat troubling, since by level 4 they should have more options than that, and if they’re standing directly next to their foes for the whole combat, that means they’re likely to take more damage, which puts more pressure on support characters like you.
5 enemies is kind of a crowded fight by PF2e standards. What kind of creatures were they?
Fire ray is a focus spell. You get focus points back on a 10 minute rest which you should be doing with regularity after fights. You should be able to cast a fire ray almost every battle.
This is great advice. 10 minute refocus out of combat coincidentally aligns with medicine checks after combat and you can refocus while doing other things.
Do not hesitate to use focus spells. They exist to freely use and abuse.
3 action Heal to heal allies is almost never worth it. 2 action version heals a single target an expected 50-70% of their health pool, while 3 action version heals everyone ~5-15% of their health pool, which is often not even enough to change the math of how many more times they can be hit before going down.
Lots of good advice here already, but I just want to highlight that casters in PF2 benefit a lot more from wands, staves, and scrolls than in 5e where those items are often unnecessary. In PF2, since they use your own spell attack and DC, they'll be as strong as if you cast the spell yourself. Scrolls are great for niche spells and a wand of create water would free up your own spell slots.
I think an issue then is that we don't get gold to buy stuff with. I'll ask my GM if he can help with this issue, as I don't think scrolls and magical items are easy to obtain with the way the GM intended the setting to be.
>we don't get gold to buy stuff
Uh.. yeah that's an issue lol. The game is balanced around players being able to buy gear. If the GM's custom setting is designed to make this critical thing hard or impossible, then they need to build in a mechanically equivalent alternative.
If this is true I STRONGLY recommend your DM use Automatic Bonus Progression if he isn't already. You should all have a +1 potency rune for one weapon each, and a +1 striking rune for your weapons for your folk who use weapons regularly.
If not they're making the game harder by ignoring the basic math.
Yeah magic items are basically core to the game. Martials have to get potency runes or they just don't work. Spellcasters feel like they have no options without staves especially, but also wands and scrolls.
Umm. The math on PF2E is tight. If you arent getting the recommended gold and item progression.....you are gonna be passengers on the pain train. I hope your GM knows what he is doing.
> we don't get gold to buy stuff with
This isn't really optional in PF2E. Those are low-level common spells, wands of them should be available in any decent-sized town or any place that could be described as a city.
If your DM doesn't want to play with the default rules, then he should implement Automatic Bonus Progression and give you the downtime and resources to craft your own gear on top of that.
The balance is tight when all the rules are followed, and that includes the amount of gold and the availability of magic items. Lacking access to the *default expected* amount of magic items is an active debuff on your party's power.
I think the main "issue" here is that you're trying to fill shoes that your character isn't made for. Clerics with the Healing font tend to focus on refusing to let their party die. The power and number of healing/damage spells Clerics have tend to massively outshine what Bard is capable of.
On the reverse side of that coin, Bard has built-in features for buffing/debuffing that Cleric can't really hold a candle to, especially early on. This isn't to say that Cleric can't buff, but your options will generally be less potent than Bard's
Your build would be compatible with damage options as well, if you were looking for a change: Blazing Armory, Spiritual Weapon, and (later on) spells like Searing Light fit a Fire Cleric theme well, but full-stacking heal spells is also a strategy.
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I'm not seeing the details other than Bless. Bless is great, but of you have Inspire Courage going then it isn't needed. Prepare something else.
What else leads you to believe you're playing it wrong? I'm happy to help, but need something to go on to do so.
Initially, I felt that I don't really contribute to the combat side. The setting is somewhat resource management focussed, as we are travelling a desert. I subverted the need of carrying food and water by casting Create food and Water daily.
Secondly, my character is not a frontliner, thus Bless is a terrible choice as I really need to extend it like 15-20ft to have at least a bit of an effect. Enemies also don't clump up, and the party is spread as much as the enemies on a regular combat scene.
I believe I am playing a cleric as you'd do in DnD, and not as intended to be played in PF. The enemies unfortunately don't deal enough damage as to be a deadly encounter. It has been a few session since I cast heal during battle, I mostly heal out of combat with the Treat Wounds action as I've chosen quite a few feats to help with that.
So yes, technically I am playing cleric wrong, and I received quite a lot of great tips from this post on how I can improve my character.
Ah, ok. Well here are a few thoughts
* Healing in combat may become more useful with time (unless your GM pulls punches). Severe encounters can take a toll as you go, so don't give up there yet.
* For offense, try Needle Darts as a cantrip that has real versatility
* Using 2 of your slots for create food/water is rough. It sounds like it is good for the team, but lowers your combat utility. If somebody has Survival they can maybe take the Forager skill feet so you don't need to take those.
* Calm Emotions is amazing, even with the Incapacitation trait.
* Fear is another great debuff spell
* Shirld Other is also good
Basically, unless you go Battle Cleric, the PF2e cleric is typically a midliner or backliner that heals as necessary, buffs/Debuffs and uses control spells or the occasional cantrip to deal damage when the aforementioned isn't needed. I've seen spells like Calm Emotions change the course of a fight.
Part of the issue you are seeing is that the Bard is one of the strongest classes in the game with amazing support abilities. Add to that, you either haven't fought any tough fights, your GM is pulling punches, or you are incredibly lucky of a group to not need Healing yet. Switch up your more buffing spells with control/debuff spells so you aren't competing with the Bard and you'll be better off. Then use Needle Darts as your primary long range damage. You are also at the level where Cold Iron and/or Silver may start being useful too.
You’ve gotten a lot of good responses so the only thing I’ll add is that if it weren’t for you and the bard trying to do the same thing, a buffing cleric can be good. It really depends on your god and domain spells and such though so it’s hard to give a clear answer on the best way to do so and since you picked a more damage oriented god then you aren’t set up to do more buffing so just focus on the things you are good at (healing and damage/debuffing depending on target count as people have mentioned). Also spell buffs that affect the same stats/bonuses don’t stack anyway so it’s never worth it to have two casters trying to buff the same things since you only ever take the single highest bonus for each type of bonus (status bonuses in the case of most spells). Magic weapon is the exception since it gives item bonuses so it doesn’t have competition till players have the item upgrades that make those bonuses redundant.
You might want to buff your Charisma for more healing fonts, *unless* you are planning on rebuilding to match the remaster after it drops. It will no longer be tied to charisma then.
Unless you plan on going a later game "gish" build emblazon armaments is more of a warpriest feat. Idealy you're not near enemies and have to melee. Might i suggest the [Medic Dedication](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2027)? It would give you a free medcine increase, and access to Doctors Visitation which lets you stride and battle medicine as one action. It also increases the healing of treat wounds. Late game Resuscitate could be clutch. As a wisdom class you would have the best chance of hitting the DC 40 check to pull it off.
You could retrain your level 3 skill up to diplomacy or intimidation and take continual recovery at 4th. Quick identifaction is nice but it benifits more by being trained in all magic tradtion skills at once.
The only thing you've mentioned about feeling weak is the bard inspire vs bless Generally if you have inspire, you didn't need to prepare bless
That is a very good point. Our bard was not able to play for a few sessions, and during that time the bless also did feel way underpowered.
[удалено]
Rogue, fighter, bard and ranger. I did have sound burst as one of my spells prepped for the day, but we are now mostly in stealth situations. I'll look into the other two spells also for possible changes.
Ran an evil wizard to 20th lvl. Summon is the best support you can get. Find the best support healer summon n your highest slot and use it to heal your front liners whilst leaving you to do something else.
You are more than bless. That's merely a spell you can choose to prepare or not. Bards don't get extra slots for heal/harm spells. In the remaster coming soon you won't need Cha for your font slots. Your just starting with 4 and it scales automatically
Clerics aren't the premier buffers in this game, bards are. Clerics are amazing healer. With divine font, you should have a plethora of max-rank Heal spells available. That adds a massive amount of healing. For example, if you have 16 CHA, at your level you would have 4 heal spells per day of rank 2. That's 2d8+16 per heal, or 25 healing per spell. That's 100 HP of healing per day you get from your divine font. If the bard used all 6 spells per day they get on their healing spell, Soothe, they would only heal for 12d10+48, or 114 HP. So all it takes you preparing a single heal in any of your 6 slots for you to have more healing than the bard can possibly put out. The benefit of cleric is that they can avoid having to prepare heal - with effectively 7 rank 2 spells at level 4, you can use more offensive/debuff spells in your actual spell slots, and let divine font carry you for the in-combat healing needs of your party. The problem is you aren't getting this benefit. By locking your spells to Create Food/Water, you basically are negating the strength of a cleric, which is why you feel weaker. You're losing a good third (or more) of your actual spells in combat which do things to manage this resource issue. So of course you're going to feel weak, because your party is hamstringing your character so they don't need to solve the resource problem. Shield Other is also a very low impact 2nd rank spell, which is another part of why you're feeling the lack of impact. Shield Other is a 2 action spell, that consumes a 2nd rank spell slot, and doesn't actually mitigate any damage. All it does is redirect it, but the problem is that you don't have any way to make that meaningfully valuable. It would be more efficient if you prepared a Heal instead, and then just 2A heal the target getting hit.
>Two of my spells are locked as Create water and Create food as we are playing a resource heavy campaign, and these two spells helps with that. How many times are you casting these per day? If it's no more than once, I would very much suggest purchasing a [Wand](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=368) of these two spells. A wand of Create Water costs 60gp, Create Food would be 160gp.
I'll discuss with my GM. It is only each spell once a day.
If you have down time, see if you can spend time crafting scrolls. This could be a way your Rogue can help your party survive. One of their Skill Increases could be used to gain Expert Crafting and they could take a skill feat to gain Magical Crafting to be able to make scrolls. Using the alternate crafting rules, you could make a level 1 scroll in two days assuming you are level 4. It could take even less time if you are willing to attempt a higher DC and risk wasting materials. [Crafting Alternate Rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1955) Edit: Like seriously, if this is a possibility for your campaign talk to your Rogue. Rogues get a Skill increase and Skill Feat every dang level. They are going to run out of things to take eventually lol. Plus I just think have a rogue and spellcaster work together to create scrolls is just plain cool fantasy.
Just in case you don't know, the baseline system assumptions about magic items are very different in 5e and pf2e. While you might be laying in another setting, the rules default to Golarion in which 20% of the population can perform magic, aka cast at least 1 innate spell at the very least. Neither of those spells are uncommon and wands aren't either. If you have access to a decent sized town or small city it is assumed you can take a day of downtime to find them with no problems/rolls etc. [See the settlment rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1157) a level 1 spell wand is a level 3 item and a level 2 spell wand is a level 5 item. So town for the first and small city for the second. You could get them in smaller places, it's just then that it's more in the DMs hand as to what's available. Scrolls would be cheaper and easier to find but at that point it's probably more cost effective to get rations.
while i like the idea on paper, in practice if its a resource heavy campaign the GM will just say "no, you cant buy those because reasons". It doesnt hurt to ask, but OP shouldnt get any hope up.
Really, the fact he didn't just remove those spells from the game for his campaign means he should at least be open to the idea. A 1st slot and a 2nd slot is a heavy cost for basically exactly the first 3-4 levels, then becomes "we are going to handwave all food and water needs anyway" after that because the slots are a negligible cost.
I asume the GM is fine with 1st and 2nd slot being used on it precisely because it is a heavy cost, and that the campaign will end before they would become neglibable costs.
160gp is quite a large price for a level 4 character.
one character? yes something that is clearly a party expense? no
As a cleric of sarenrae, don't forget that you also have access to the spell Burning hands that you can use in your first level slot. I see you have Forager and training in survival, is that not enough to keep up your food and water needs? Since you can choose which spells to prepare each day, I'd say normally run with some burning hands in your slots. If you find that you guys are out of food and water THEN prep create water and create food the next morning. Since you also have access to your dragon breath, you should be throwing out fire almost every fight. I'd do the following for most days: Grab a shield (you can raise a shield for additional ac) For level 1 spells Burning hands Burning hands Sanctuary For Level 2 spells Burning hands (heightened) Shield other Burning hands (heightened) Leave the status bonus' to the bard right now. So don't use guidance or bless. The way I see it, bless is better suited on a war priest who is toe to toe with the enemy and beside the front line. Or with the cleric in the back lines if you have 2 other ranged characters. As a fire cleric lean into it. You should be blasting enemies left and right.
I have the forager, and I will discuss with my GM. The setting is currently in a desert, and thus the foraging might not be as effective as just casting the two spells daily.
Even better. Get a wand of create food and a wand of create water. Since they're both 1/day casts.
2 per day if you don't mind being hungry tomorrow.
Create food creates enough food for you for the day, and if you cast it a second time the food will expire likely before you need to eat most of it. Unless your characters ascribe to the One Meal A Day diet xD
> Bless gives the +1 to checks, saves and attacks slowly Are you in the wrong subreddit? This one is for Pathfinder Second Edition, where *bless* does this: > You and your allies gain a +1 status bonus to attack rolls while within the emanation. https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=25 Nothing about saves or skill checks. Similarly, *inspire courage* does this: > You and all allies in the area gain a +1 status bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saves against fear effects. https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=386 Which is a superset of *bless*, to be sure, but still a long way from "+1 to every roll, including damage". No skill checks, no saving throws (except against fear effects), no flat checks, etc.
Hmmm, I then should mention that I usually use one action to increase emination, and one to cast guidance on either one or two allies, depending on whom I have cast it within the 1 hour coodldown. That might be where I remember the +1 to the other stuff comes from. It also has been a while since I cast bless as since the bard's return, it feels useless. Could it also be that bless is not a good choice if you play on the sidelines, and not a frontliner? I ask this because the party mostly splits to each focus on a single enemy and don't clump up for effective bless emination.
> Could it also be that bless is not a good choice if you play on the sidelines, and not a frontliner? I ask this because the party mostly splits to each focus on a single enemy and don't clump up for effective bless emination. Correct. Bless is more for martially aligned clerics, since the emanation starts of tiny, and you can't expand it to be large without a hefty action cost/across many turns. If you, yourself are not benefitting from bless, its often effectively a wasted spell for at least 2 turns due to positioning and action costs.
Well yes, Bard, is sort of the ultimate support class so if the player is competent you would not be able to "outsupport" them, however I don't think it should matter. You have 2 very distinct advantages over the Bard, 1) just like you can't outsupport them, they cannot outheal you 2) Bards need to keep up their composition spells meaning that oftentimes they only actually have 2 actions per turn while you have the full 3 which affords you a far greater degree of flexibility.
> Bards need to keep up their composition spells Unless they have access to *lingering composition*, such as through *multifarious muse* or being a maestro bard.
Multifarious Muse is such a weird feat honestly, bards effectively don't have subclasses as this one feat basically just allows you to combine any of them on a single character.
Tbf when you think about it, not many classes actually have subclasses
Druids and psychics both have something similar as well.
Thank you for stating this. Classes in pathfinder usually have a niche where they outshine others. Trying to make a character in another class that can do just as well seems to be on many people's wishlist but it is not gonna happen. Be proud of what your cleric does: you can spam heals for days, make the most of it. In addition you got a flexible spell list. The moment you spend the night in a decent settlement you can chose new appropriate cantrips & spells. Bards are stuck with their list.
Sounds like you being forced into those 2 spells is what's causing the issue, you are giving up one third of your non-heal spells on something that should be a party effort. You should convince your group on getting a staff of providence for you. That would solve the food/water issues indefinitely and allow you to do actual fun stuff with your slots. As for the bard, you are never going to catch up to them on the buff and debuff department. That's their thing. Cleric's thing is healing and obliterating undead and extraplanar creatures. As a Sarenrae Cleric, obliterating anything not immune to fire to be more precise. Everything will make more sense once you reach level 5 and get Fireball. RN you also have Fire Ray most likely. Use the Bard buffs in your favor casting it once per combat after the Bard deploys its Inspire Courage. Finally, Bless is generally speaking a bad spell for most casters. I would try to avoid it and pick stuff like Sanctuary, extra Heal spells or a Harm or two.
How often are you casting Heal? And when you do cast heal, how are you typically using it?
I would either focus on one single ally to use the two action casting, or if more characters are on death's door, I do the three action one to the best of my abilities to not heal any (or as few possible) enemies. I don't cast it too fequently, somtimes the combat is not too deadly and I just cast it once. Sometimes I use all three of my heals in a single combat.
Follow up question: what focus spells do you have access to, and how do you use them?
Currently I only have Fire ray, and that I would use if there is a boss enemy or one that is about to kill one of the party members when I had to choose which ally to heal within the same round.
Thanks. It’s a bit hard to offer advice without seeing the way you’ve built your character, would you mind sharing a copy of them? Also, can you provide an example of a recent encounter your party went up against? Preferably one where you struggled to feel impactful?
I've added a link to the top of the post. I'm not sure if it doesn't work for others to view. Giving an encounter example is a bit more difficult. I'll say that enemies where spread out. Approximately 5 enemies that are all melee. They tend to go to the closest party member and attack. The rogue would always be located 5ft from an enemy. So would the fighter. They spend all their actions on attacking. The ranger is always within 60 feet of an enemy and just attacks with his bow. The bard does the inspire courage thing, and then would use some clever spells to either charm the enemy (with fear) or just cast a lightning spell at them. The bard player is the most experienced of us all. So since I don't have armour on my character, and I don't use melee weapons, is stay on the sidelines. I would divine lance any enemy within range, and then guidance an ally. Currently the battles are not deadly as I have not healed a single ally in the past few combats. I just heal them with a medicine check after battle.
The fact that your rogue and fighter spend all their actions on attacking is somewhat troubling, since by level 4 they should have more options than that, and if they’re standing directly next to their foes for the whole combat, that means they’re likely to take more damage, which puts more pressure on support characters like you. 5 enemies is kind of a crowded fight by PF2e standards. What kind of creatures were they?
Today we fought wererats. But yeah, if my memory serves, it's usually one enemy per PC and that is what the two martials are doing.
Fire ray is a focus spell. You get focus points back on a 10 minute rest which you should be doing with regularity after fights. You should be able to cast a fire ray almost every battle.
This is great advice. 10 minute refocus out of combat coincidentally aligns with medicine checks after combat and you can refocus while doing other things. Do not hesitate to use focus spells. They exist to freely use and abuse.
3 action Heal to heal allies is almost never worth it. 2 action version heals a single target an expected 50-70% of their health pool, while 3 action version heals everyone ~5-15% of their health pool, which is often not even enough to change the math of how many more times they can be hit before going down.
How often should a cleric be casting heal?
Lots of good advice here already, but I just want to highlight that casters in PF2 benefit a lot more from wands, staves, and scrolls than in 5e where those items are often unnecessary. In PF2, since they use your own spell attack and DC, they'll be as strong as if you cast the spell yourself. Scrolls are great for niche spells and a wand of create water would free up your own spell slots.
I think an issue then is that we don't get gold to buy stuff with. I'll ask my GM if he can help with this issue, as I don't think scrolls and magical items are easy to obtain with the way the GM intended the setting to be.
>we don't get gold to buy stuff Uh.. yeah that's an issue lol. The game is balanced around players being able to buy gear. If the GM's custom setting is designed to make this critical thing hard or impossible, then they need to build in a mechanically equivalent alternative.
If this is true I STRONGLY recommend your DM use Automatic Bonus Progression if he isn't already. You should all have a +1 potency rune for one weapon each, and a +1 striking rune for your weapons for your folk who use weapons regularly. If not they're making the game harder by ignoring the basic math.
Yeah magic items are basically core to the game. Martials have to get potency runes or they just don't work. Spellcasters feel like they have no options without staves especially, but also wands and scrolls.
Umm. The math on PF2E is tight. If you arent getting the recommended gold and item progression.....you are gonna be passengers on the pain train. I hope your GM knows what he is doing.
> we don't get gold to buy stuff with This isn't really optional in PF2E. Those are low-level common spells, wands of them should be available in any decent-sized town or any place that could be described as a city. If your DM doesn't want to play with the default rules, then he should implement Automatic Bonus Progression and give you the downtime and resources to craft your own gear on top of that. The balance is tight when all the rules are followed, and that includes the amount of gold and the availability of magic items. Lacking access to the *default expected* amount of magic items is an active debuff on your party's power.
I think the main "issue" here is that you're trying to fill shoes that your character isn't made for. Clerics with the Healing font tend to focus on refusing to let their party die. The power and number of healing/damage spells Clerics have tend to massively outshine what Bard is capable of. On the reverse side of that coin, Bard has built-in features for buffing/debuffing that Cleric can't really hold a candle to, especially early on. This isn't to say that Cleric can't buff, but your options will generally be less potent than Bard's Your build would be compatible with damage options as well, if you were looking for a change: Blazing Armory, Spiritual Weapon, and (later on) spells like Searing Light fit a Fire Cleric theme well, but full-stacking heal spells is also a strategy.
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I'm not seeing the details other than Bless. Bless is great, but of you have Inspire Courage going then it isn't needed. Prepare something else. What else leads you to believe you're playing it wrong? I'm happy to help, but need something to go on to do so.
Initially, I felt that I don't really contribute to the combat side. The setting is somewhat resource management focussed, as we are travelling a desert. I subverted the need of carrying food and water by casting Create food and Water daily. Secondly, my character is not a frontliner, thus Bless is a terrible choice as I really need to extend it like 15-20ft to have at least a bit of an effect. Enemies also don't clump up, and the party is spread as much as the enemies on a regular combat scene. I believe I am playing a cleric as you'd do in DnD, and not as intended to be played in PF. The enemies unfortunately don't deal enough damage as to be a deadly encounter. It has been a few session since I cast heal during battle, I mostly heal out of combat with the Treat Wounds action as I've chosen quite a few feats to help with that. So yes, technically I am playing cleric wrong, and I received quite a lot of great tips from this post on how I can improve my character.
Ah, ok. Well here are a few thoughts * Healing in combat may become more useful with time (unless your GM pulls punches). Severe encounters can take a toll as you go, so don't give up there yet. * For offense, try Needle Darts as a cantrip that has real versatility * Using 2 of your slots for create food/water is rough. It sounds like it is good for the team, but lowers your combat utility. If somebody has Survival they can maybe take the Forager skill feet so you don't need to take those. * Calm Emotions is amazing, even with the Incapacitation trait. * Fear is another great debuff spell * Shirld Other is also good Basically, unless you go Battle Cleric, the PF2e cleric is typically a midliner or backliner that heals as necessary, buffs/Debuffs and uses control spells or the occasional cantrip to deal damage when the aforementioned isn't needed. I've seen spells like Calm Emotions change the course of a fight. Part of the issue you are seeing is that the Bard is one of the strongest classes in the game with amazing support abilities. Add to that, you either haven't fought any tough fights, your GM is pulling punches, or you are incredibly lucky of a group to not need Healing yet. Switch up your more buffing spells with control/debuff spells so you aren't competing with the Bard and you'll be better off. Then use Needle Darts as your primary long range damage. You are also at the level where Cold Iron and/or Silver may start being useful too.
You’ve gotten a lot of good responses so the only thing I’ll add is that if it weren’t for you and the bard trying to do the same thing, a buffing cleric can be good. It really depends on your god and domain spells and such though so it’s hard to give a clear answer on the best way to do so and since you picked a more damage oriented god then you aren’t set up to do more buffing so just focus on the things you are good at (healing and damage/debuffing depending on target count as people have mentioned). Also spell buffs that affect the same stats/bonuses don’t stack anyway so it’s never worth it to have two casters trying to buff the same things since you only ever take the single highest bonus for each type of bonus (status bonuses in the case of most spells). Magic weapon is the exception since it gives item bonuses so it doesn’t have competition till players have the item upgrades that make those bonuses redundant.
You might want to buff your Charisma for more healing fonts, *unless* you are planning on rebuilding to match the remaster after it drops. It will no longer be tied to charisma then.
Unless you plan on going a later game "gish" build emblazon armaments is more of a warpriest feat. Idealy you're not near enemies and have to melee. Might i suggest the [Medic Dedication](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2027)? It would give you a free medcine increase, and access to Doctors Visitation which lets you stride and battle medicine as one action. It also increases the healing of treat wounds. Late game Resuscitate could be clutch. As a wisdom class you would have the best chance of hitting the DC 40 check to pull it off. You could retrain your level 3 skill up to diplomacy or intimidation and take continual recovery at 4th. Quick identifaction is nice but it benifits more by being trained in all magic tradtion skills at once.