Need a quick answer

[ARHicks00]

Can Augment Healing and Practiced Spellcaster be picked as bonus feats when leveling a Hierophant?

[Lockonnow]

aye

[DaloLorn]

I don't think they should be available there... I'll check; Amaetha probably has Augment Healing already, but as a pure caster she's had no reason to take Practiced Spellcaster.

TBH, given the amount of other solid picks for a Hierophant, I don't know why you'd go for either of those unless it was an emergency.

[Theodore01]

As a Hierophant class gets no bonus feat, the answer is a no.
However it gets Special Ability feats, which can be spent on metamagic feats.

[DaloLorn]

Honestly, even metamagic seems like a waste on most Hierophants.

[ARHicks00]

As a Hierophant class gets no bonus feat, the answer is a no.
However it gets Special Ability feats, which can be spent on metamagic feats.

Okay so now I am confused. Can you or can you not get practiced spellcaster or augment healing around level 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10?

[Theodore01]

read my first line again.

(why not use the belt with augment healing from the epic BG store ?)

[ARHicks00]

So, you can't pick either Practiced Spellcaster and Augmented Healing as one of the bonus?

[wangxiuming]

Hierophants do not get bonus feats. They gain "special abilities" on every even-numbered level from a specific list (as described in the wiki). This does not include Practiced Spellcaster or Augment Healing.

They can, however, take Faith Healing, which sounds like a better version of Augment Healing. They can also take a metamagic feat, but Practiced Spellcaster is not a metamagic feat.

https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Hierophant

Blast Infidel
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1
Specifics: The Hierophant now deals double the damage for any negative energy spells that he casts (inflict wounds series, death knell, harm, slay living and negative energy ray). This does not apply to Vampiric Feast or Spell-like abilities.
Use: Automatic


Faith Healing
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1
Specifics: The Hierophant now heals for double the amount when casting any of the cure wounds spells (applies to all cure wounds or mass cure wounds spells).
Use: Automatic


Mastery of Energy
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1
Specifics: Available only to hierophants with cleric levels, this ability allows a hierophant to channel positive or negative energy much more effectively, increasing his ability to affect undead. Add a +4 bonus to the hierophant’s turning checks and turning damage rolls. This ability affects other creatures than undead if the hierophant can turn other creatures, such as with a domain power.
Use: Automatic


Advanced Divine Spell Power
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1, Divine Spellpower
Specifics: Available only to hierophants with the feat Divine Spell Power, the feat now uses your full turning roll to complement casterlevel and progress DC's (You can go beyond +4). You no longer suffer negative effects from rolling poorly.
Use: Automatic


Metamagic Feat
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1
Specifics: A hierophant can choose a metamagic feat in place of one of the special abilities described here if desired. This does not include improved metamagic feats.
Use: Automatic


Gift of the Deity
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 9
Specifics: Your visage of the deity line of spells are now automatically empowered by your deity.
Use: Automatic


Inscribe Rune
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 6 or Dwarven Runesmith
Specifics: A 6th level Hierophant can learn to channel his power into runes, storing the spell for later use. He may store one spell per spell level, to a maximum of six runes, creating and imbuing the rune at modest expense compared to scribing a scroll of similar level.
Use: Automatic


Spellpower
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1
Specifics: This special ability increases a hierophant’s effective caster level by 1 for purposes of determining dependent spell variables (such as damage and DC calculation). This ability can be selected more than once up to a maximum of 3 times, for a total casterlevel bonus of +3.
Use: Automatic


Toll of Nature
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1
Specifics: The Hierophant excels with spells that attack the nerve system of living creatures, being able to alter their lethality further. The following spells recieve a +2 DC bonus; Contagion, Infestation of Maggots, Poison, Quillfire (the DC is set right now), Mass Contagion, Swamp Lung, Blood to Water, Dehydrate, Hypothermia and Cascading Plague.
Use: Automatic


Oak Friend
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1, Oaken Resilience
Specifics: A druid who has the feat oaken resilience may learn to grant the benefits of that feat to a friendly creature. This creature becomes immune to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning and critical hits for ten minutes. Using Oak Friend costs one wildshape use.
Use: Selected


Animal Companion Progression
Type of Feat: Class Ability
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1, Animal Companion
Specifics: Your levels of Hierophant count towards your animal companion progression. You must have an Animal Companion already to profit from this feat.


Augment Form
Type of Feat: General
Prerequisites: Hierophant 1, Spell Focus Transmutation

Specifics: The character becomes skilled with spells and abilities that allow him to assume another form. For the duration, the character’s base attack bonus becomes medium (unless its already higher) but cannot exceed the character’s HD. As example, a 10 Wizard 10 Eldritch Knight will have 17 BAB.

Affected Spells and Abilities: Polymorph, Shapechange.
Contrary the feat description your base attack bonus does not become medium for your level. Nor does it matter if your new BAB would become greater than medium BAB of a character of your level. Instead, this feat actually just treats your low BAB classes as if they were medium BAB classes for the purposes of calculating your new BAB while shape shifted.

[DaloLorn]

Hierophants do not get bonus feats. They gain "special abilities" on every even-numbered level from a specific list (as described in the wiki). This does not include Practiced Spellcaster or Augment Healing.

They can, however, take Faith Healing, which sounds like a better version of Augment Healing. They can also take a metamagic feat, but Practiced Spellcaster is not a metamagic feat.

https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Hierophant

This does presume the wiki is 100% accurate (it is not, even on that exact page - Heal is covered by Faith Healing, and Mass Heal may also be affected), but would be my first answer.

That being said, I feel I should point out that - to my knowledge - Augment Healing and Faith Healing stack with each other. One is not technically an upgrade over the other if you can take both.

[ARHicks00]

One more question. Does it stop spell progression? Meaning do you stop at the 7th spell level?

[DaloLorn]

One more question. Does it stop spell progression? Meaning do you stop at the 7th spell level?

No. To be honest, I think that part's a holdover from the Archmage description - High Arcana feats require you to sacrifice a spell slot (still not a whole spell level, mind you!), but Hierophant has no such requirements.

[Tsidkenu]

PnP hierophant advances caster level but ceases spell slot progression in exchange for the hierophant special abilities and feats. BGTSCC decided not to incorporate the cessation of spell slot progession, thus making the BGTSCC version an almost essential addition to spellcasting cleric builds.

Also, quicken can be situationally useful as metamagic. Cleric (& druid/spirit shaman) is the only class with quickened death magic (Slay Living) especially given certain cleric builds can get DC 35+ on that spell.