Consecrated Harrier, Revisited

[Lago_AM3P]

This PrC in the Defenders of the Faith often gets ignored, since you give up all of your class abilities to take levels in a class that will only allow you to kill one enemy really well.

... or that's what I thought.

Blessing of Scripture is horribly written. As written, you could gain a +10 bonus to attacks and damage against all creatures if you use it correctly. All you have to do is start up your own religion (read: cult) or have your leader define any enemies of the church in vague and far-reaching terms (all of the enemies of the church are anyone whom you don't feel like sparing from violence).

Assuming you find a DM who lets you play like that, is this PrC suddenly good in that case?

[Username17]

If: your game is "Church sends you to fight Banites, you fight Banites" - then the Consecrated Harrier is decent.

Otherwise, it's not.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

+10 to hit & damage can be gotten through warhulk more easily

[Lago_AM3P]

But Warhulk also slaughters your BAB. The only thing a Warhulk has over a real combat class is a +15 to damage with a two-handed weapon and huge bonuses to trip.

And it's not like the guy who took levels in a real PrC can't be polymorphed into something as big and ugly, while actually gaining BAB and honest-to-god class features.

[MrWaeseL]

1083593747[/unixtime]]But Warhulk also slaughters your BAB. The only thing a Warhulk has over a real combat class is a +15 to damage with a two-handed weapon and huge bonuses to trip.

And it's not like the guy who took levels in a real PrC can't be polymorphed into something as big and ugly, while actually gaining BAB and honest-to-god class features.

True, but I never said it was the best option, just a way to get +10 to hit/damage without starting your own cult or whatever.

[Username17]

You really don't need to start your own cult or anything. If the enemies of the game are, for example, the Temple of Elemental Evil - just get consecrated into a Good Earth Cult and you are good to go.

There are many specific campaigns in which the Consecrated Harrier is decent. It's never brokenly powerful, and unfortunately the DM can turn off the abilities at any time by having you face off against the Harpies of Nethermarsh or some other ungrouped enemy that your church evidentally does not care about one way or the other.

Which is why it essentially never shows up in min/max builds. Not because it can't be playable - but because in the "abstract" it doesn't do anything. Without solid input from the DM it has few meaningful class abilities.

-Username17

[Wrenfield]

You know what sucks about the CH? You can't sneak attack with it (see Code of Conduct) and Blessing of Scripture cannot be used with ranged attacks. Making Rogue and Ranger baseline builds totally pointless. And both of those core classes have some interesting and viable synergy with the CH too.

And for some odd reason, you need the Track feat as a pre-req., yet you don't get Survival (or Wild. Lore per 3.0 nomenclature) as a class skill. Which is stupid because the PrC is all about tracking down your enemies - and Track needs Survival. There are other skill discrepancies as well - why no Sense Motive? Why no Knowledge: Religion?

It's PrC's like CH and Bloodhound (from MotW) that are best used with cooperative DM's who will give you before-hand assurance that your character's build will be accomodated in the upcoming adventure. Which sucks because you should not have to have that kind of metagaming in order to make sure your character will be fully viable on its own.

Otherwise, the rest of the PrC is pretty cool. Nice class abilities, and fairly well-balanced in regards to power level. It just looks like it suffers from the Master of the Shrouds syndrome ... that being it was put together shoddily, with little playtesting, and with apparent haste...