Improving Solar Channeler

[Ravial]

Heyo!

This will sound self-serving (but frankly, most suggestions start like that), but I wanted to broach the topic of improving Solar Channeler PRC. I've been playing it for months now and have shaped an opinion based on my gaming experience with it.

Basically, roleplay-wise it's fantastic.


Mechanics-wise, it's... okay. It's not very great, but it's okay. This brings me to want to suggest a single improvement:

Allow Spellcasting while in Solar Shape

First of all, it makes no sense that you can't cast spells while, you know, being a humanoid angel/pseudo-angel.

Second of all, I think that would solve most of any immediate issues the PRC has because you can just cast situational spells whenever such a situation comes up.


What do you think about that?

[Rhifox]

I'd be okay with this.

[Planehopper]

Shifter can cast in shape only when they take natural spell feat, which is available to shifters. Maybe it should be open to Solar Channeler.

Shifters, after all, are casters that cannot cast even when in humanoid shape without that feat. Seems comparable.

[Steve]

Subject: Suggestion: Increase Channel Solar uses per rest

The Solar Channeler PrC is so very interesting in terms of RP potential.

But it’s bread & butter feat, Channel Solar, has a serious limit/cap that ruins the fun (as I see it, and as other players who leveled a build have publicly stated).

Currently, it is limited to 3 Uses per Day + 1 Turn Undead use each time. And, with a 3 minute duration.

Based on some suggestions from Discord, an idea to have regeneration of Uses per day, like Ki Step, was floated.

But I’d like to suggest either: a) upping the per Day used to 5; b) make a Use cost 2 Turn Undead uses and no per Day limitations.

What both these suggestions do is require the builder/player to invest more in CHA or Feats for TU uses, to reach 5/day or as many per day as you can squeeze out of 2 TUs per use.

If however a form of Use per day regeneration was implemented, please consider something like every 7 RL minutes a Use is returned, up to max 3.

Anything that can extend the usage of Channel Solar would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for considering.

[DaloLorn]

Ravial's original proposal seems to open a pretty big can of worms, IMO. There's tons of shapes that should logically (and per PnP rules, for that matter) be capable of spellcasting but aren't, even as a 20-level Shifter with Natural Spell. Are we planning on reconsidering that in general? Otherwise, this seems like a pretty significant targeted buff to a class that might be better served by something like the proposal Steve linked to.

At the same time, if we do want to reconsider that, we probably also want to look at the statblocks of various shapes, lest shapechanged gishes become the new meta. (... I mean, they sort of already are, in that it's one of the best ways to run an arcane gish... but they don't otherwise dominate the server.)