Hierophant + Favored Soul - Broken Class Feats conditions

[Zeikari]

Reported this on Discord, forgot to make a thread here...


Version
Last experienced on newest version as of 15/02/2024 (also present in previous version, at least up to 1 year ago).

Severity
Moderate. The combination of these two classes is rare, but in the event of it happening it does cause a player to have a broken build. Also, if a player accidentally selects the wrong feat on Hierophant level 1, it'll also break the Favored Soul's spell progression.

The issue
There appears to be a faulty condition in the Hierophant class when handling Favored Souls multiclassing into it, which causes the player to be unable to select any of the Hierophant's class feats on level up. The ways in which the system is faulty are the following:
1) On Favored Soul 14 / Hierophant 1, the player is prompted to select any of the spell progression feats, despite NOT qualifying for any of the other classes (Druid, Cleric, Spirit Shaman).
2) Picking any of the feats EXCEPT the Favored Soul one will result in the spell progression being broken (no longer gaining new spells or increasing the CR of the ones already learned), but it WILL allow the character to select the Hierophant class feats at levels 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.
3) On the other hand, if the character picks the correct spell progression feat (Favored Soul), there will NOT be any special Hierophant class feats available at levels 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, only extra Metamagic feats.
4) When picking one of the other spell progression feats at level 1 the character will also see in the potential selectable feats at level 2 Animal Companion (Hierophant), despite having no levels in the Druid Class (or any that would provide an animal companion).

Steps to Reproduce
1) Log in on JEGS.
2) Make a new Favored Soul character (of any race/alignment/god), of at least 19 Wisdom.
3) Go to the XP Merchant and gain enough experience to level to level 20.
4) Take 14 levels in Favored Soul. When doing so, be sure to fulfill the requirements that will unlock the Hierophant Class (15+ Lore (Religion), one Metamagic Feat)
5) At level 15, multiclass to Hierophant.
6) Notice that unrelated Spell Progression Feats are available for selection on level 1 Hierophant, as well as Metamagic feats.
7) Notice that you could, potentially, permanently break your character's spell progression by either taking a Metamagic feat or the wrong spell progression feat.
8) Pick the Hierophant Spellcasting (Favored Soul) feat.
9) Take a second level in Hierophant.
10) Notice that only Metamagics are available on the bonus feat selection, and that all of the Hierophant's special perks are not present for your character to pick.
11) Leave and re-enter the server.
12) Start with the same character at level 14.
13) Multiclass to Hierophant again, and this time pick any of the other Hierophant Spellcasting (Class) feats. Notice that you can indeed pick them despite having no levels in any of those classes.
14) Get a second level in Hierophant.
15) Notice that all special feats are available for selection now, including one which shouldn't be: Animal Companion (Hierophant).

What should happen
1) When a Favored Soul picks its first level in Hierophant, ONLY Hierophant Spellcasting (Favored Soul) should be available for selection (as is the case for vanilla spellcasting prestige classes), UNLESS the Favored Soul in question already has multiclassed into Cleric, Druid, or Spirit Shaman, in which case ONLY the feats related to said multiclassing should be available to pick one spell progression instead of the other. A pure Favored Soul should have just one option. There definitely should not be any Metamagic feats up for selection in that screen regardless of class progression up to that point.

2) the Hierophant Spellcasting (Favored Soul) feat should NOT preclude a Favored Soul/Hierophant from accessing all of the Hierophant's class feats (Blast Infidel, Faith Healing, Mastery of Energy, Advanced Divine Spell Power, Gift of the Deity, Inscribe Rune, Spellpower (+1/+2/+3), Toll of Nature), it should however prevent it from taking Oaken Friend and Animal Companion Progression unless said character has previously multiclassed to Druid and fulfills the needed requirements.

Issue 1) is relatively harmless, since I assume most players would know that there is only one valid choice for them to make at level 1, but issue 2) breaks the build of a Favored Soul/Hierophant, since it completely prevents the character from gaining any of the benefits of the prestige class, thus making it a largely useless investment of levels.

Refer to the image below for a visual rendition of the problem:

[DaloLorn]

I think there's one PRC for which we stopped offering spell progression feats in the level-up menu in favor of some kind of other solution... but I can't remember which PRC it was, so I can't dissect its implementation for translation to Hierophant. So metamagics will still have to be offered at level 1, and players will still need to be careful not to take them.

But the rest of it was a straightforward fix, and should be in the next patch.

By the way, Hierophant Animal Companion will be available to favored souls too, in case it's used by Hierophants multiclassing into another class which does have animal companions, like a ranger. (Admittedly not a likely event, but what the hell.) It's currently available to clerics and spirit shamans because there's clerical domains and a shaman feat which grant animal companions.

[Zeikari]

Sweet, thanks for the fix!

The lack of special feats for pure Favored Souls was the major issue the way I see it.

Accidentally picking Metamagics at Hierophant lvl1 is just a minor thing which players can easily avoid (or that they can fix themselves with the XP remover should they make a mistake...).

[Zeikari]

Everything appears to work as intended following the latest update!
No out-of-place Spell Progression feats available for selection on level 1, spell progression proceeding normally when picking the Favored Soul Progression Feat, and Hierophant class feats available from level 2.