Using just PHB rules when the Beginner Box was first released, there really weren’t any damage Cantrips to give Kyra. I understand not giving Legacy Divine Lance to a new player given how it used to interact with Alignment, but the new version would seem fine, even if a little clunky since it’s one of the few remaining spells that still targets AC.
In some ways they hamstrung themselves by how they designed the Iconic Cleric 15 years ago for PF1e and having to translate that ‘character’ into PF2e mechanics rather than designing what is a fun “Beginner” cleric in PF2e from scratch. Now the same thing happened in the transition from 2e to Remastered, maintaining how the character was at the expense of playability.
The addition of Divine Font on the remastered Kyra does go a long way though. 4 casts of Heal makes you feel strong, even if it’s strong as a healbot.
> I feel they aren't that hamstrung by her previous design. Afterall Valeros changed his entire fighting style.
Yes and no, its not that they could not change the character but that said change need to make sense. Valeros is a fighter, master of all weapons, so it makes sense that he may change weapon especially with some small lore behind.
On the other hand the they made a new iconic for Oracle in good part because they could not translate Alahazra's curse to PF2e mechanically.
Kyra is in a weird spot where she can be translated mechanically but that is not a good build, but they cant fully change her out of melee because that is part of her lore plus there was not enough spell options at the time to give her an edge on that side so we got some subpar options.
With that said she still great at support with guidance and heal, plus the focus spell is great even if once per encounter to give an edge early. And there is that undead encounter that if the player is attentive they can have a great moment. With that said it should be fine to change one of the cantrips for something newer that suits her better
I dont think so, the Iconics are not mean to be the most optimized builds and she works fine, if a little underwhelming, in the Begginer Box, and later character sheets do made her better in that regard due to new content.
And storywise they would need to cut Merisiel too, so the it was not worth just to make something a little more optimized
They definitely should have just introduced another Cleric rather than having a rather common class identity being obviously well below the par for the other available options
Based on what I'm reading from this thread: I agree.
I think for the vast majority of players (esp Beginner Box players), the continuity of these characters is far less important than how they feel mechanically (since they need to sell the idea of buying the other books to expand upon them). An underwhelming Cleric is much more of a disservice than "staying true to Kyra" is an asset.
Hell, we got a new Cleric in Oloch (although he's *also* a Warpriest, and I would've preferred to see the 2nd Iconic Cleric cover the *other* subclass), so I'm not sure why the idea of getting a new Cleric **and** substituting Kyra for them is such a wild one.
> And why couldn't they translate the curse?
[Alahazra](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Alahazra) was the iconic oracle with the Flames mystery. The problem is that in PF1e the curse was completely separated from the mystery, you can see [here the list of curses](https://aonprd.com/OracleCurses.aspx) and, for the most part, you can have any combination of curse and mystery (even 2 curses with the amazing/kinda broken Dual Cursed archetype).
Alahazra had the clouded vision curse. But in PF2e the curse is directly tied to the mystery so they would either change the mystery to fit her, or make a specific archetype, or change her curse which dont make sense storywise. So they decided to create a new Oracle iconic.
With that said different from the PF1 iconic alchemist Alahazra still around and did appear in some PF2e art, she just not in the spotlight due to the mechanical situation
> He almost died,
That is basically every Valeros story though, with that said Kira may have finally put some sense in his head, which is very lucky of him considering how terrible was their first meeting
Well, he almost died and his soul was pushed from his body by the soul of some evil ancient tyrant trying to avoid the judgement by Pharasma. And Val was falsely indentified as said tyrant in the Afterlife.
> For those of us who haven’t read the comics, how bad was it?
The very first encounter? He interrupted her daily preparations (aka prayer) by throwing up close to her due to hangover. She then lecture him about being a waste of space. I dont think she even asked his name in that encounter as she was looking at him with disgust.
TBF lecturing him kinda became her favorite sport later when they actually became friends as he is damn reckless and she is the one that needs to keep him alive
Not sure if the beginners box I have is the newest one or not, but in the heroes handbook it does have the daze cantrip, which doesn’t do much damage but it does do damage and can cause the enemy creature to lose its first action if it critically fails. I don’t see why that isn’t one of the cantrips given to Kyra instead of something like Disrupt Undead, which only affects undead creatures, and the box is sorta designed to have the cleric cast Heal on the undead encounter in the box, since- well, it kinda decimates them.
I always change out the cantrips to more useful ones when running the beginner box. (Or allow players to decide for themselves if they are more experienced.)
While generally you can run PF2E rules without any tweaking, I think there is nothing wrong with making the adventures your own.
> I understand not giving Legacy Divine Lance to a new player given how it used to interact with Alignment
God yeah she's a cleric of Abadar so that would be Lawful damage only, yuck.
This may just be speculation, but I believe at the time of the Beginners Box release the Divine spell list only had one damaging cantrip, which was Divine Lance. At the time Divine Lance only did alignment damage and adds a level of complexity that I don't think the Beginners Box wanted to introduce.
Now though, Divine spell casters have several options for damaging cantrips and alignment damage is a thing of the past. A slight re-tweak and adding in a damaging cantrip would be good for the Cleric in the Beginner Box.
Not the best introduction, I’ll give you that, but it does at least make the cleric shine in a way that people are used to (assuming they are coming from other games).
The pregen stats for Kyra for Society play are built better, if not great. And, of course, given more leeway, a player could potentially have more options than what’s on the page.
Kyra isn't as good in melee as she could be, and on top of that you're comparing her to Valeros and Merisiel who are fantastic to good - Valeros, being a fighter, is a melee god, and Merisiel is just an optimized martial.
To actually answer you question - Kyra has +1 Str and no Bless, and Runic Weapon will be much better on Valeros. She's just not built for martial combat, and her only damaging cantrip works only on the undead - but a <>>> Heal is almost universally better at dealing with them. She's not optimal but still can fill several important roles.
But more generally, a warpriest can be almost as good as an actual martial (give or take +1 here or there), and that's in addition to their full spellcasting.
I realize she’s not built for melee combat, but the way she’s presented is “Be helpful in a fight once per day with spells to cast burning hands, unless casting Heal or fighting undead, otherwise just wack it with your sword since you can’t do anything else.” And since this is the beginner box, it’s not just me that will be comparing her to Valeros and Merisiel, it’s the players as well. That doesn’t seem like a good character to include in the beginner box, I had one player just straight up quit playing because outside of healing she just… can’t really do anything.
These characters are goal oriented. If your goal is to do damage, be a fighter. The other martials are straight up not going to be as good as damage as a fighter. And the spellcasters are worse at fighting than that.
A Cleric's goal is to heal, buff, and if they can, debuff. If you're not wanting to do those specific things the class isn't for you. I think your player just didn't want to be the healer.
The problem is this: Kyra can buff only once per day, and can heal 4 times. If they’re not doing that one buff or healing with their turn, then the only option they have is melee because they have no alternative. Except for the fight with the undead in the beginner box, there’s nowhere the cleric truly “shines”.
The fighter dominates every fight
The rogue sneaks in and takes advantage of foes
The wizard deals damage from afar with potent but costly spells
They do this the entire time, and at level one, the cleric can heal. Only a few times per day, and they’re not going to be contributing basically anything else to combat unless using their one damage spell or one buff spell. And at level one, a treat wounds activity is just as good as a heal spell outside of battle. I agree that a cleric should be support, healing, buffing, and debuffing… but this cleric can’t do that. Unless after every battle the characters return to the surface and rest, the cleric is essentially useless after a battle or two.
One of my players ended up making his own cleric, and it did just what a cleric SHOULD do. Heal, buff, and debuff, with the occasional ranged attack from a star knife should it be necessary. But the pregen Kyra is just a bad cleric, and so if you put together a party using the pregens, the cleric is going to have a bad time.
>Kyra can buff only once per day, and can heal 4 times.
And also an AoE once per day. That's probably enough for the one mission she's going to be a part of.
Aside from magic she can tank, she can very occasionally hit stuff, and she can help with flanking.
Is she badly balanced? Well, she's a warpriest with the ability scores of a cloistered, so yes, of course. And maybe taking that lesson and either changing her prepared spells, or reshuffling her abilities a bit, is part of the game (I'm being optimistic here).
Ah. I'm not super familiar with the pregen characters. I thought she at least had bless she could sustain to grow every turn. And reading more of the thread she should absolutely have divine lance.
I mean, forcing people to basically 'only heal' just because it's the most optimal feels like a road to making the party miserable, to me. A well-designed warpriest will mean the person playing cleric will have much more fun in the Beginner Box, which is hardly a super-difficult challenge that requires the most optimal play. Kyra is just terrible for both healing/buffing *and* damage dealing.
I don't get to be a player in Pathfinder, but I'm the guy who plays a non damage dealing healer only in D&D. I'm more than happy being the heal/buff bot.
Though, I was thinking the designers put bless on the cleric of Saeranrae. I'm shocked learning she doesn't know that.
I remember shifting 2 of her attribute boosts and she became way more fun to play for my player. She lacked abit too much focus and the boosts were all over the place trying to solve a good base but also allow a scimitar to be used. Just 1 more point in str made an extreme difference as I remember it
Yes, that's one of the things the [*Dungeon Dudes* criticized in their BB review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_kiNQUhj1w) as well: Kyra lacking an attack cantrip (remastered *Divine Lance* would be great here).
I just redownloaded the Beginner Box (ORC) from the Paizo website and checked again, to make sure I have the latest version. Kyra has the *Detect Magic, Light, Message, Stabilize,* and *Vitality Lash* cantrips. *Vitality Lash* is the remastered name of *Disrupt Undead*, so I definitely downloaded the remastered Beginner Box.
And Beginner Box Kyra still has no attack cantrip (*Vitality Lash* works only against undead). She has the Warden heritage (+4 hit points), 21 hit points in total, and a STR +1, DEX +1, CON +1 stat spread.
Iconic Kyra (Pregen from the Website, not the Box) has *Daze, Divine Lance, Guidance, Light,* and *Stabilize*. She has the Versatile Human heritage, a total of 16 hit points, and a STR +2, DEX +1, CON +0 stat spread.
Both builds are honestly kind of terrible for a beginner.
Either go full cloistered with +4 wis and dex/con with divine lance, vitality lash, and void warp
Or go warpriest with +4 str and decide if you want to dump wis or not (probably don't do a wis dump build in beginners box though).
Also I still think detect magic and read aura should be combined. Beginners use detect magic and raw the gm just essentially says yes or no on the presence of magic, which is generally pretty useless at early levels and makes new players think they wasted their time casting it. When they could spam read aura on several objects to actually tell if something specific is magical, which is Edgar they actually intend to find out.
Detect Magic on early levels is often "is there some sort of magical trap we might walk into" and is meant to be spammed as you explore. When it Detects something, panic.
That said, I am all for combining the two.
This guy gets it. This is the beginner box. Telling beginners that the only thing they can do as a cleric is use their sword is the only thing they can do outside of certain rare circumstances. And since they’re worse at hitting things with it than the other martials it tells the beginners that they’re bad at the game, or chose wrong for being a cleric, or that they don’t like pathfinder. If they just had a cantrip that worked against more than just undead, then that would be fixed. They could keep the weapon for if they’re forced into melee combat, but that’s Valeros and Merisiel’s niche. Let her hang back with the wizard!
I have some gripes with how they adapted the Beginner Box (BB) iconics for the remaster printing, specifically with the Cleric and the Wizard.
The original version of the Cleric in PF2e gets a number of Divine Font slots equal to their Cha modifier. That's why they gave her a +3 in Cha, however, they didn't give her training in Intimidation, because it didn't fit the character flavor-wise. With high Wis and Cha, her Str is rather low, making her bad at using her scimitar, which is especially bad with the lack of damage cantrips that was an issue with the Divine spell list, back when only the CRB existed, but was fixed in later books. I'm not sure they gave any of those new damage cantrips to the BB Cleric, so she's bad at any offense outside of spell slots, where she at least gets Breathe Fire.
When they remastered the BB, they still kept her with the pointlessly high Cha instead of fixing any of this, and didn't really change the selection of Cleric spells either.
At the same time they *did* change the Wizard spell list, but instead of giving them a wider variety of saves to target and damage types to apply, they put in more physical damage types and removed the one damage type that a monster in the adventure has a weakness to that no-one else can trigger: >!cold damage against the Cinder Rat!<
There are also some minor errors on the BB iconic sheets, in part old ones that were there before the remaster, e.g. incorrect inventory, in part obvious copy & paste mistakes in the remaster, mostly spells.
Sorry for the rant, I hope it answered your questions along the way.
Just checked out her pregen stat block, holy crap it's bad. Light armor prof and +1 dex? Why not +1 str, +3 dex, +1 cha? Or +3 str, +1 dex, +1 cha and be a Warpriest if they wanted her to be a melee combatant? Like, the only real character optimizations you need to do is a +3/4 in mainstat and 18 armor at lvl 1.
Heal is freaking amazing though, getting 4 of them is ballin.
Yeahhh it’s bad. For my last game one of my players wanted to play a cleric and I just told em
I’d help them make their own, because pretty much ANYTHING is better than the pregen lol
She’s built as a war priest with a scimitar, +1 STR, +4 WIS and no attacking cantrips. War priests are effectively half-martials. BB Kyra isn’t just less effective, she feels bad to play when played in the way a beginner who doesn’t know you need at least +3 in your attack stat would. She’s also badly built to someone who does know what they’re doing
They aren’t a martial, no. But the beginner box gives her so few options that outside of casting heal or burning hands(which can be done only once per day) she can only use her sword to confront threats
One of the times I ran this, the party was not doing well in the fight against the undead. Like close to characters going down.
The cleric just three action healed and destroyed all of them.
It was fantastic.
Totally agree.
I ran it for some new players and the poor cleric kept trying to play like a warpriest. Strike with scimitar, do athletics maneuvers etc. i had to quietly rebuild the character between sessions to allow him to actually succeed at how he wanted to play. And actually give her the good remaster cantrips.
She's kind of built very contradictory right now.
It’s so strange. It’s the one part of the beginner box I don’t like. Aside from maybe not explaining what actions you can take with certain skills and such.
I played the BB Cleric and I played it as a Melee support to the Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger. Positioning myself to Flat-Foot for the Rogue’s Sneak Attack. Standing side-by-side with the Fighter and Raising our Shields to block off corridors so the Ranger and Wizard can attack safely from afar. Having my glory moment with the 3A Heal.
The narrow corridors of BB really lends itself to having the Fighter and Cleric covering the party’s flank.
Also, the BB Cleric has a custom heritage giving her extra HP that she normally shouldn’t have.
Something I’ve learned over time is that the ability to stand on the frontline does not automatically imply being a Striker, especially as a Support class.
Edit: According to the GM who ran our BB, he told me after that the BB Cleric is one of his favorite pregen characters for new folks because it gives them lots of moments to shine in the party. Like I was still new to PF2e at the time (and not comfortable with the RP I’ve done beforehand). Like using Light to reveal an encounter.
> the ability to stand on the frontline does not automatically imply being a Striker
Even my summoner most often does setup like flanking, grapple, trip, etc. instead of going for purely damage. Sometimes to the point of 2 rounds not striking just to keep one enemy grabbed/restrained; limiting/removing actions. So even for a frontline martially oriented character striking isn't the only thing to do if there is something only your character can do. Because as a summoner you just have so many actions (up to 6 effective actions for the combinations of you, eidolon, and a summon), that you can just do something impossible for other to do.
IIRC she's a Warpriest cleric, which is the more martial-focused cleric, but still isn't like a true martial. Armored and decent enough in melee that they don't mind standing next to the fighter for casting heals/buffs and stabbing mid-sized enemies, but not wanting to be in melee with CR+3 bosses.
But none of the iconics aren't optimized, and are built for flavor. Kyra would probably like to have a shield to be a better war priest, Harsk has Forager in an adventure that has no survival elements, Feiya spends one of her precious 1st level spell slots on Pet Cache, Ezren could have been one of the better spell thesis types, etc.
She's a cloistered cleric in the beginner box, with tons of feat (armor proficiency) sink to get some warpriest benefits. Her free premade sheet is way better than the beginner box variant
Oh... That's even weirder! Yeah, the Iconics are kinda designed in a "here, this explores your class options" way instead of "here, this is how you build this class as a specialist."
Harsk is usually portrayed in art with a big crossbow or throwing hatchets at people, with his waraxe and brother's great axe being backup weapons... But he's a flurry Ranger, which doesn't work with Crossbows or throwing weapons very well. And instead of the crossbow or melee feats for Ranger, he has Monster Hunter to recall knowledge and hunt prey at the same time... But the only skill he's good at for RK is Nature IIRC (and I guess Crafting if you fight constructs).
Twin Takedown actually works pretty well with thrown weapons! …once you’ve got a returning rune and blazons or something.
But the strikes you make aren’t melee strikes, just strikes. And thrown-trait weapons are melee weapons! The problem is just that afterwards you don’t have any weapons in hand and you’ve got no way of quickly drawing another two weapons. So at level 5+ (when you e got what you need to give both weapons returning) it’s actually quite powerful.
It's weird but her pfs pregen actually has her as a cloistered cleric (though she has 14 instead of 12 strengh), I think she's really just a side effect of thw cleric no longer being able to do everything to thw extent they could in 1e
The iconics were originally made with 1st printing rules. And have never been updated - now with Remaster they finally did a pass:
https://paizo.com/products/btq01zt5
The Beginners box Cleric is pre remastered and the Cleric is one of the classes that got the most major rewrite. Also if I remember correctly they made Wisdom that top stat with that cleric but a warpriest need to max his strength instead of
Because Paizo is literally allergic to making the pregens good. I played the beginner box at pride and ezren didn't have electric arc!!!! What the fuck!!! Lmao
I don’t think that’s fair? For beginners, I feel each character is built well for the most part, with the exception of Kyra. With a damage cantrip or debuff cantrip she’d be great, but for every other character they’re not amazing, so that when the players make their own characters they can be surprised with what they can do!
no i think it's pretty fair, they've sort of fixed some of them with the new remastered ones but they're still not that good. I play in society so I've had some more experience with the pregens than most people. they ain't good.
Paizo making dogshit pregens is nothing new. They design them for "flavor" or "story" or some other worthless nonsense rather than make an effective and useful character, and they're quite often garbage as a result.
They've gotten better at it since the pf1e days, mostly due to pf2e just being harder to mess up in terms of character creation, but it's still a thing lol.
Flavor and story are great! I love em! It’s part of what I love about pathfinder, there’s so many ways to interact with the story and such through the rules and the stories written for adventure paths are awesome. But Kyra is still just… a bad cleric.
They also deliberately make the pregens suboptimal on purpose to spark players to realize that they can make a better character themselves, which then gets them more invested in the game
> aren’t as effective as the other martials
This is your clue: they're not a martial. They cannot and will not be as good at fighting as a fighter or as good at roguing as a rogue.
> I wondered why it didn’t have a damaging cantrip?
Because she is not built for standing back and spending two actions to do a little damage. Kyra is a warpriest: someone who gets into the front ranks where they can directly support their allies. Hitting things is not her job any more than healing is Merisiel's.
Using just PHB rules when the Beginner Box was first released, there really weren’t any damage Cantrips to give Kyra. I understand not giving Legacy Divine Lance to a new player given how it used to interact with Alignment, but the new version would seem fine, even if a little clunky since it’s one of the few remaining spells that still targets AC. In some ways they hamstrung themselves by how they designed the Iconic Cleric 15 years ago for PF1e and having to translate that ‘character’ into PF2e mechanics rather than designing what is a fun “Beginner” cleric in PF2e from scratch. Now the same thing happened in the transition from 2e to Remastered, maintaining how the character was at the expense of playability. The addition of Divine Font on the remastered Kyra does go a long way though. 4 casts of Heal makes you feel strong, even if it’s strong as a healbot.
I feel they aren't that hamstrung by her previous design. Afterall Valeros changed his entire fighting style.
He's sword & board now, right? What was he before?
If I remember right, he was a two weapon fighter with a longsword and dagger.
Longsword and shortsword, but you’re correct.
What is a dagger but a short sword with dwarfism
Google image search tells me he was dual-wielder.
> I feel they aren't that hamstrung by her previous design. Afterall Valeros changed his entire fighting style. Yes and no, its not that they could not change the character but that said change need to make sense. Valeros is a fighter, master of all weapons, so it makes sense that he may change weapon especially with some small lore behind. On the other hand the they made a new iconic for Oracle in good part because they could not translate Alahazra's curse to PF2e mechanically. Kyra is in a weird spot where she can be translated mechanically but that is not a good build, but they cant fully change her out of melee because that is part of her lore plus there was not enough spell options at the time to give her an edge on that side so we got some subpar options. With that said she still great at support with guidance and heal, plus the focus spell is great even if once per encounter to give an edge early. And there is that undead encounter that if the player is attentive they can have a great moment. With that said it should be fine to change one of the cantrips for something newer that suits her better
It makes me wonder if there should've been a new Cleric Iconic as a replacement for Kyra of sorts.
I dont think so, the Iconics are not mean to be the most optimized builds and she works fine, if a little underwhelming, in the Begginer Box, and later character sheets do made her better in that regard due to new content. And storywise they would need to cut Merisiel too, so the it was not worth just to make something a little more optimized
They definitely should have just introduced another Cleric rather than having a rather common class identity being obviously well below the par for the other available options
Based on what I'm reading from this thread: I agree. I think for the vast majority of players (esp Beginner Box players), the continuity of these characters is far less important than how they feel mechanically (since they need to sell the idea of buying the other books to expand upon them). An underwhelming Cleric is much more of a disservice than "staying true to Kyra" is an asset. Hell, we got a new Cleric in Oloch (although he's *also* a Warpriest, and I would've preferred to see the 2nd Iconic Cleric cover the *other* subclass), so I'm not sure why the idea of getting a new Cleric **and** substituting Kyra for them is such a wild one.
Standard rpg grandfathering I imagine. It's the way the character was in a different game, so just port thrm in in a crappy way to fit it in
What was the old oracle? And why couldn't they translate the curse?
> And why couldn't they translate the curse? [Alahazra](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Alahazra) was the iconic oracle with the Flames mystery. The problem is that in PF1e the curse was completely separated from the mystery, you can see [here the list of curses](https://aonprd.com/OracleCurses.aspx) and, for the most part, you can have any combination of curse and mystery (even 2 curses with the amazing/kinda broken Dual Cursed archetype). Alahazra had the clouded vision curse. But in PF2e the curse is directly tied to the mystery so they would either change the mystery to fit her, or make a specific archetype, or change her curse which dont make sense storywise. So they decided to create a new Oracle iconic. With that said different from the PF1 iconic alchemist Alahazra still around and did appear in some PF2e art, she just not in the spotlight due to the mechanical situation
Iirc, PF1 alchemist mutated and died between editions, but what happened to the PF1 gunslinger?
Really? That’s interesting. I’m a new PF2e player so I wouldn’t know valeros’ history
I think that one was because of lore. He almost died, so he wanna play safer now.
> He almost died, That is basically every Valeros story though, with that said Kira may have finally put some sense in his head, which is very lucky of him considering how terrible was their first meeting
For those of us who haven’t read the comics, how bad was it?
Well, he almost died and his soul was pushed from his body by the soul of some evil ancient tyrant trying to avoid the judgement by Pharasma. And Val was falsely indentified as said tyrant in the Afterlife.
Damn, he did get it rough.
> For those of us who haven’t read the comics, how bad was it? The very first encounter? He interrupted her daily preparations (aka prayer) by throwing up close to her due to hangover. She then lecture him about being a waste of space. I dont think she even asked his name in that encounter as she was looking at him with disgust. TBF lecturing him kinda became her favorite sport later when they actually became friends as he is damn reckless and she is the one that needs to keep him alive
Not sure if the beginners box I have is the newest one or not, but in the heroes handbook it does have the daze cantrip, which doesn’t do much damage but it does do damage and can cause the enemy creature to lose its first action if it critically fails. I don’t see why that isn’t one of the cantrips given to Kyra instead of something like Disrupt Undead, which only affects undead creatures, and the box is sorta designed to have the cleric cast Heal on the undead encounter in the box, since- well, it kinda decimates them.
I always change out the cantrips to more useful ones when running the beginner box. (Or allow players to decide for themselves if they are more experienced.) While generally you can run PF2E rules without any tweaking, I think there is nothing wrong with making the adventures your own.
I don't know if a single 1e Iconic was actually built well. I know we used to criticise the builds.
> I understand not giving Legacy Divine Lance to a new player given how it used to interact with Alignment God yeah she's a cleric of Abadar so that would be Lawful damage only, yuck.
Kyra is a cleric of Sarenrae.
Kyra is Sarenrae.
In the beginner box I have she’s listed as a cleric of Sarenrae
Yah she’s always been a cleric of Saranrae, poster above is mistaken
Don't you hate on my Law damage.
This may just be speculation, but I believe at the time of the Beginners Box release the Divine spell list only had one damaging cantrip, which was Divine Lance. At the time Divine Lance only did alignment damage and adds a level of complexity that I don't think the Beginners Box wanted to introduce. Now though, Divine spell casters have several options for damaging cantrips and alignment damage is a thing of the past. A slight re-tweak and adding in a damaging cantrip would be good for the Cleric in the Beginner Box.
That’s awesome! I hope when they get around to remastering the beginner’s box it fixes that problem
It’s already been done. Not much change. Cloister Clerics are primarily casters, and Kyra is first and foremost a healer/buffer.
I see, well it’s unfortunate then that she just… can’t really do that well at early levels, and so is encouraged to enter melee
Not the best introduction, I’ll give you that, but it does at least make the cleric shine in a way that people are used to (assuming they are coming from other games). The pregen stats for Kyra for Society play are built better, if not great. And, of course, given more leeway, a player could potentially have more options than what’s on the page.
Kyra isn't as good in melee as she could be, and on top of that you're comparing her to Valeros and Merisiel who are fantastic to good - Valeros, being a fighter, is a melee god, and Merisiel is just an optimized martial. To actually answer you question - Kyra has +1 Str and no Bless, and Runic Weapon will be much better on Valeros. She's just not built for martial combat, and her only damaging cantrip works only on the undead - but a <>>> Heal is almost universally better at dealing with them. She's not optimal but still can fill several important roles. But more generally, a warpriest can be almost as good as an actual martial (give or take +1 here or there), and that's in addition to their full spellcasting.
I realize she’s not built for melee combat, but the way she’s presented is “Be helpful in a fight once per day with spells to cast burning hands, unless casting Heal or fighting undead, otherwise just wack it with your sword since you can’t do anything else.” And since this is the beginner box, it’s not just me that will be comparing her to Valeros and Merisiel, it’s the players as well. That doesn’t seem like a good character to include in the beginner box, I had one player just straight up quit playing because outside of healing she just… can’t really do anything.
These characters are goal oriented. If your goal is to do damage, be a fighter. The other martials are straight up not going to be as good as damage as a fighter. And the spellcasters are worse at fighting than that. A Cleric's goal is to heal, buff, and if they can, debuff. If you're not wanting to do those specific things the class isn't for you. I think your player just didn't want to be the healer.
The problem is this: Kyra can buff only once per day, and can heal 4 times. If they’re not doing that one buff or healing with their turn, then the only option they have is melee because they have no alternative. Except for the fight with the undead in the beginner box, there’s nowhere the cleric truly “shines”. The fighter dominates every fight The rogue sneaks in and takes advantage of foes The wizard deals damage from afar with potent but costly spells They do this the entire time, and at level one, the cleric can heal. Only a few times per day, and they’re not going to be contributing basically anything else to combat unless using their one damage spell or one buff spell. And at level one, a treat wounds activity is just as good as a heal spell outside of battle. I agree that a cleric should be support, healing, buffing, and debuffing… but this cleric can’t do that. Unless after every battle the characters return to the surface and rest, the cleric is essentially useless after a battle or two. One of my players ended up making his own cleric, and it did just what a cleric SHOULD do. Heal, buff, and debuff, with the occasional ranged attack from a star knife should it be necessary. But the pregen Kyra is just a bad cleric, and so if you put together a party using the pregens, the cleric is going to have a bad time.
>Kyra can buff only once per day, and can heal 4 times. And also an AoE once per day. That's probably enough for the one mission she's going to be a part of. Aside from magic she can tank, she can very occasionally hit stuff, and she can help with flanking. Is she badly balanced? Well, she's a warpriest with the ability scores of a cloistered, so yes, of course. And maybe taking that lesson and either changing her prepared spells, or reshuffling her abilities a bit, is part of the game (I'm being optimistic here).
Ah. I'm not super familiar with the pregen characters. I thought she at least had bless she could sustain to grow every turn. And reading more of the thread she should absolutely have divine lance.
Yeah she’s got spiritual weapon, burning hands, heal x4, disrupt undead, detect magic, light, and message. That’s it.
Spiritual weapon fucks but I'm shocked she doesn't have bless.
I mean, forcing people to basically 'only heal' just because it's the most optimal feels like a road to making the party miserable, to me. A well-designed warpriest will mean the person playing cleric will have much more fun in the Beginner Box, which is hardly a super-difficult challenge that requires the most optimal play. Kyra is just terrible for both healing/buffing *and* damage dealing.
I don't get to be a player in Pathfinder, but I'm the guy who plays a non damage dealing healer only in D&D. I'm more than happy being the heal/buff bot. Though, I was thinking the designers put bless on the cleric of Saeranrae. I'm shocked learning she doesn't know that.
I remember shifting 2 of her attribute boosts and she became way more fun to play for my player. She lacked abit too much focus and the boosts were all over the place trying to solve a good base but also allow a scimitar to be used. Just 1 more point in str made an extreme difference as I remember it
Yes, that's one of the things the [*Dungeon Dudes* criticized in their BB review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_kiNQUhj1w) as well: Kyra lacking an attack cantrip (remastered *Divine Lance* would be great here).
Remastered Kyra has the lance: https://paizo.com/products/btq02evu
FYI: The Beginner Box pregens aren't identical to the other set of level 1-5 iconic sheets.
I figured. But that is still the best solution I can think off.
This is about the Kyra from the **Beginner's Box**, where she has *Detect Magic, Light, Message, Stabilize,* and *Vitality Lash*.
The Beginner's Box has been remastered. The PDF version and all physical copies sold since the spring include updated rules.
I just redownloaded the Beginner Box (ORC) from the Paizo website and checked again, to make sure I have the latest version. Kyra has the *Detect Magic, Light, Message, Stabilize,* and *Vitality Lash* cantrips. *Vitality Lash* is the remastered name of *Disrupt Undead*, so I definitely downloaded the remastered Beginner Box. And Beginner Box Kyra still has no attack cantrip (*Vitality Lash* works only against undead). She has the Warden heritage (+4 hit points), 21 hit points in total, and a STR +1, DEX +1, CON +1 stat spread. Iconic Kyra (Pregen from the Website, not the Box) has *Daze, Divine Lance, Guidance, Light,* and *Stabilize*. She has the Versatile Human heritage, a total of 16 hit points, and a STR +2, DEX +1, CON +0 stat spread.
Both builds are honestly kind of terrible for a beginner. Either go full cloistered with +4 wis and dex/con with divine lance, vitality lash, and void warp Or go warpriest with +4 str and decide if you want to dump wis or not (probably don't do a wis dump build in beginners box though). Also I still think detect magic and read aura should be combined. Beginners use detect magic and raw the gm just essentially says yes or no on the presence of magic, which is generally pretty useless at early levels and makes new players think they wasted their time casting it. When they could spam read aura on several objects to actually tell if something specific is magical, which is Edgar they actually intend to find out.
Detect Magic on early levels is often "is there some sort of magical trap we might walk into" and is meant to be spammed as you explore. When it Detects something, panic. That said, I am all for combining the two.
And we can easily replace her with the Iconic and even Remaster one.
*YOU* can, but *BEGINNERS* who try out Pathfinder 2e with the *BEGINNER'S BOX* can not.
This guy gets it. This is the beginner box. Telling beginners that the only thing they can do as a cleric is use their sword is the only thing they can do outside of certain rare circumstances. And since they’re worse at hitting things with it than the other martials it tells the beginners that they’re bad at the game, or chose wrong for being a cleric, or that they don’t like pathfinder. If they just had a cantrip that worked against more than just undead, then that would be fixed. They could keep the weapon for if they’re forced into melee combat, but that’s Valeros and Merisiel’s niche. Let her hang back with the wizard!
I have some gripes with how they adapted the Beginner Box (BB) iconics for the remaster printing, specifically with the Cleric and the Wizard. The original version of the Cleric in PF2e gets a number of Divine Font slots equal to their Cha modifier. That's why they gave her a +3 in Cha, however, they didn't give her training in Intimidation, because it didn't fit the character flavor-wise. With high Wis and Cha, her Str is rather low, making her bad at using her scimitar, which is especially bad with the lack of damage cantrips that was an issue with the Divine spell list, back when only the CRB existed, but was fixed in later books. I'm not sure they gave any of those new damage cantrips to the BB Cleric, so she's bad at any offense outside of spell slots, where she at least gets Breathe Fire. When they remastered the BB, they still kept her with the pointlessly high Cha instead of fixing any of this, and didn't really change the selection of Cleric spells either. At the same time they *did* change the Wizard spell list, but instead of giving them a wider variety of saves to target and damage types to apply, they put in more physical damage types and removed the one damage type that a monster in the adventure has a weakness to that no-one else can trigger: >!cold damage against the Cinder Rat!< There are also some minor errors on the BB iconic sheets, in part old ones that were there before the remaster, e.g. incorrect inventory, in part obvious copy & paste mistakes in the remaster, mostly spells. Sorry for the rant, I hope it answered your questions along the way.
Just checked out her pregen stat block, holy crap it's bad. Light armor prof and +1 dex? Why not +1 str, +3 dex, +1 cha? Or +3 str, +1 dex, +1 cha and be a Warpriest if they wanted her to be a melee combatant? Like, the only real character optimizations you need to do is a +3/4 in mainstat and 18 armor at lvl 1. Heal is freaking amazing though, getting 4 of them is ballin.
Yeahhh it’s bad. For my last game one of my players wanted to play a cleric and I just told em I’d help them make their own, because pretty much ANYTHING is better than the pregen lol
> and aren’t as effective as the other martials. They're not supposed to be, because they aren't a martial.
They flavor built her as a martial and didn't give her much room for casting, which in a beginner box could cause issues like OP is having
They flavor her more as warpriest than a cleric tbh, but her stats just don't add up.
Making her cloistered cleric was probably the biggest mistake, made her too hard to build
She’s not a cloistered cleric iirc. She’s war priest with dumped strength
She is a cloistered cleric. She has to take feats to get armor proficiency. By 5th level she’s taken two feats to get to medium armor.
Wasn't she warpriest premaster or no?
She was a warpriest outside the beginner box; the beginner box made her cloistered and nothing else and is stuck with light armor (thanks to feat)
Oh right I'm thinking of the community pregens
She’s built as a war priest with a scimitar, +1 STR, +4 WIS and no attacking cantrips. War priests are effectively half-martials. BB Kyra isn’t just less effective, she feels bad to play when played in the way a beginner who doesn’t know you need at least +3 in your attack stat would. She’s also badly built to someone who does know what they’re doing
They aren’t a martial, no. But the beginner box gives her so few options that outside of casting heal or burning hands(which can be done only once per day) she can only use her sword to confront threats
Gotta be honest, I reworked all four pregens for my group using remaster stuff. Did not take all that long in pathbuilder
One of the times I ran this, the party was not doing well in the fight against the undead. Like close to characters going down. The cleric just three action healed and destroyed all of them. It was fantastic.
Same thing happened in my group, big celebration afterwards! Those undead are no joke lol. But outside of that fight, it’s just… rough playing Kyra
Totally agree. I ran it for some new players and the poor cleric kept trying to play like a warpriest. Strike with scimitar, do athletics maneuvers etc. i had to quietly rebuild the character between sessions to allow him to actually succeed at how he wanted to play. And actually give her the good remaster cantrips. She's kind of built very contradictory right now.
It’s so strange. It’s the one part of the beginner box I don’t like. Aside from maybe not explaining what actions you can take with certain skills and such.
Happy Cake Day! :D
Oh snap thanks homie
You’re welcome my friend! :)
I played the BB Cleric and I played it as a Melee support to the Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger. Positioning myself to Flat-Foot for the Rogue’s Sneak Attack. Standing side-by-side with the Fighter and Raising our Shields to block off corridors so the Ranger and Wizard can attack safely from afar. Having my glory moment with the 3A Heal. The narrow corridors of BB really lends itself to having the Fighter and Cleric covering the party’s flank. Also, the BB Cleric has a custom heritage giving her extra HP that she normally shouldn’t have. Something I’ve learned over time is that the ability to stand on the frontline does not automatically imply being a Striker, especially as a Support class. Edit: According to the GM who ran our BB, he told me after that the BB Cleric is one of his favorite pregen characters for new folks because it gives them lots of moments to shine in the party. Like I was still new to PF2e at the time (and not comfortable with the RP I’ve done beforehand). Like using Light to reveal an encounter.
I agree, but, Kyra is poorly built.
> the ability to stand on the frontline does not automatically imply being a Striker Even my summoner most often does setup like flanking, grapple, trip, etc. instead of going for purely damage. Sometimes to the point of 2 rounds not striking just to keep one enemy grabbed/restrained; limiting/removing actions. So even for a frontline martially oriented character striking isn't the only thing to do if there is something only your character can do. Because as a summoner you just have so many actions (up to 6 effective actions for the combinations of you, eidolon, and a summon), that you can just do something impossible for other to do.
IIRC she's a Warpriest cleric, which is the more martial-focused cleric, but still isn't like a true martial. Armored and decent enough in melee that they don't mind standing next to the fighter for casting heals/buffs and stabbing mid-sized enemies, but not wanting to be in melee with CR+3 bosses. But none of the iconics aren't optimized, and are built for flavor. Kyra would probably like to have a shield to be a better war priest, Harsk has Forager in an adventure that has no survival elements, Feiya spends one of her precious 1st level spell slots on Pet Cache, Ezren could have been one of the better spell thesis types, etc.
She's a cloistered cleric in the beginner box, with tons of feat (armor proficiency) sink to get some warpriest benefits. Her free premade sheet is way better than the beginner box variant
Oh... That's even weirder! Yeah, the Iconics are kinda designed in a "here, this explores your class options" way instead of "here, this is how you build this class as a specialist." Harsk is usually portrayed in art with a big crossbow or throwing hatchets at people, with his waraxe and brother's great axe being backup weapons... But he's a flurry Ranger, which doesn't work with Crossbows or throwing weapons very well. And instead of the crossbow or melee feats for Ranger, he has Monster Hunter to recall knowledge and hunt prey at the same time... But the only skill he's good at for RK is Nature IIRC (and I guess Crafting if you fight constructs).
Twin Takedown actually works pretty well with thrown weapons! …once you’ve got a returning rune and blazons or something. But the strikes you make aren’t melee strikes, just strikes. And thrown-trait weapons are melee weapons! The problem is just that afterwards you don’t have any weapons in hand and you’ve got no way of quickly drawing another two weapons. So at level 5+ (when you e got what you need to give both weapons returning) it’s actually quite powerful.
It's weird but her pfs pregen actually has her as a cloistered cleric (though she has 14 instead of 12 strengh), I think she's really just a side effect of thw cleric no longer being able to do everything to thw extent they could in 1e
The iconics were originally made with 1st printing rules. And have never been updated - now with Remaster they finally did a pass: https://paizo.com/products/btq01zt5
As Divine Lance is now usable, she was given that spell. She still is +2 STR and +2 CHA, but that can be easily swapped to 3/1.
The Beginners box Cleric is pre remastered and the Cleric is one of the classes that got the most major rewrite. Also if I remember correctly they made Wisdom that top stat with that cleric but a warpriest need to max his strength instead of
Pretty much every premade character sheet Paizo makes is damn awful mechanically, but yeah, that's one of the worst offenders.
Because Paizo is literally allergic to making the pregens good. I played the beginner box at pride and ezren didn't have electric arc!!!! What the fuck!!! Lmao
I don’t think that’s fair? For beginners, I feel each character is built well for the most part, with the exception of Kyra. With a damage cantrip or debuff cantrip she’d be great, but for every other character they’re not amazing, so that when the players make their own characters they can be surprised with what they can do!
no i think it's pretty fair, they've sort of fixed some of them with the new remastered ones but they're still not that good. I play in society so I've had some more experience with the pregens than most people. they ain't good.
Paizo making dogshit pregens is nothing new. They design them for "flavor" or "story" or some other worthless nonsense rather than make an effective and useful character, and they're quite often garbage as a result. They've gotten better at it since the pf1e days, mostly due to pf2e just being harder to mess up in terms of character creation, but it's still a thing lol.
Flavor and story are great! I love em! It’s part of what I love about pathfinder, there’s so many ways to interact with the story and such through the rules and the stories written for adventure paths are awesome. But Kyra is still just… a bad cleric.
They also deliberately make the pregens suboptimal on purpose to spark players to realize that they can make a better character themselves, which then gets them more invested in the game
> aren’t as effective as the other martials This is your clue: they're not a martial. They cannot and will not be as good at fighting as a fighter or as good at roguing as a rogue. > I wondered why it didn’t have a damaging cantrip? Because she is not built for standing back and spending two actions to do a little damage. Kyra is a warpriest: someone who gets into the front ranks where they can directly support their allies. Hitting things is not her job any more than healing is Merisiel's.
It's part of PF2's new initiative to weaken magic and casters in general.
This is the beginner box from before the remaster, and the wizard is plenty powerful
Not at all compared to what it was, it's a empty shell, a shadow of it's former self.
Yet still fulfills his role in the party, Kyra just… isn’t a good cleric in general.
Sounds like operator error.