My opinion of Sacred Fist has been waffling back and forth between: “this archetype is meh” and “this archetype is dogshit.” After thinking about it more, I learn towards the former, although I still say it’s horribly designed. Anyway, let’s first keep in mind the GOOD things you get from Sacred Fist:
Evasion. This is the biggest one IMO; Evasion is the single best defensive feat in the entire heroic/epic games +1 BAB/level. This is especially good when compared to Sorc/Wiz EK, specifically with regards to obtaining feats at reasonable levels Cha to Hit/Damage at level 6, while centered. This is not so great when you consider that Feydark gets this for 7 AP. But if we want to conserve that 7 AP and spend it elsewhere, while still doing a Cha build, then this is worth noting. So let’s keep this in mind Cha as an AC bonus Wand and Scroll Mastery for 4 AP from Radiant Servant Access to the normal Paladin spells at their respective levels
…Yeah, that’s about it. Nothing really great, aside from Evasion.
And now for the bad, in case it wasn’t obvious:
NO DIVINE MIGHT, seriously wtf lynnabel? NO HOLY RETRIBUTION. This is lowkey the single biggest thing holding back Sacred Fist. Smites are the single biggest component of Paladin DPS, therefore being unable to regenerate 1 every 30 seconds is a HUGE disadvantage for Sacred Fist. Not to mention, Holy Retribution is an amazing cleave attack/insta-killer. Lynnabel REALLY dropped the ball on this one; no Holy Retribution singlehandedly makes SF unviable IMO No Divine Sacrifice No Lead the Charge Fewer +damage compared to KOTC 30 fewer Heal Amp compared to KOTC, and of course SF’s only heal amp is all locked to the cores… No Censure Outsiders, instead Sacred Fist gets a lame one which only works on Demons/Devils. This is especially noteworthy because KoTC will stun REAPERS on Vorpals; something SF cannot do. PSWF KOTC has a 10% chance of stunning any Reaper, even higher if using a Paralyzing weapon. SF is naturally that much worse in Reaper difficulty because of this. No Ascendency, which means SF situationally has anywhere up to -75 fewer MP compared to KOTC, and 15% less fort bypass at all times
In other words: Sacred Fist tree is hot garbage.
Keeping all this in mind, it seems fairly clear to me that SF is NOT suited for a pure build, or going T5 in it. It’s a very, VERY bad tree; ALL of the good stuff you get from SF are extrinsic to the tree itself, e.g. evasion, cha to hit/damage, cha as an AC bonus… these are all obtained with ZERO points spent in the tree
The following build is a real abomination of class splits and serves more as an indictment on how badly-designed the archetype is, but here we go. This is one of the strangest splits I've ever come up with:
”The Sacred Eldritch Vistani Fist-That's-Actually-Not-A-Fist" 14 Sacred Fist/5 Sorcerer/1 Cleric
8 Str, 16 Dex, 16 Con, 8 int, 8 Wis, 18 Cha
1 SF: SWF 2 Sorc: access to Eldritch Cleave; you want at least ONE AoE for early leveling 3 SF: free Evasion, take Precision 4 SF 5 SF 6 SF: Toughness 7 SF: Divine Dream (keep 7 points in Feydark until you get this) 8 SF 9 Sorc: ISWF 10 Sorc 11 Sorc 12 Sorc: Unlocks T5 EK, take Improved Critical Piercing 13 Cleric for Divine Might 14 SF 15 SF: GSWF 16 SF 17 SF 18 SF: Offhand Versatility 19 SF 20 SF 21 Overwhelming Crit 22 PSWF 24 Epic Toughness 25 Elusive Target 27 Force of Personality 28 Embodiment of Law 30 Arborea (as if there’s anything better to pick…)
For Destiny: this is a no-brainer. Go Fury of the Wild for burst-DPS with Eldritch Tempest’s insane crit multiplier. Divine Crusader could also work I guess, but the Smite stuff is kind of worthless on Sacred Fist because of no Holy Retribution, so I don’t think Crusader is a very good destiny for this build.
AP breakdown: 37 AP Eldritch Knight: you get wand mastery from this tree, so no need to dip 4 points in Radiant Servant. For T5, I would take Improved Knight’s Transformation, Knight’s Arcanum for +20 MP, and Eldritch Tempest 41 AP Vistani for a truckload of dagger enhancements + the Capstone 2 AP Warpriest for Divine Might. Yes, only 30s trance sucks, but we need to make room for the Vistani capstone. If you want to get a full 2-minute trance, you’ll unfortunately need to sacrifice 20 Melee Power from either EK or Vistani. On the positive side: if you have a +1 Universal AP tome, then you can save 1 AP on Vistani, put it into Warpriest, and get yourself Divine Might for 1 minute. i feel like I would NOT do this build unless I had that +1 universal AP tome, personally.
Yes, that’s right: not a single AP spent on the Sacred Fist tree. In essence, this split would take advantage of the fact that Daggers are Centering Weapons w/Vistani Deadly Blades. With this in mind, this build milks the best parts of Vistani/EK, while still being Cha-based; this is something which was previously IMPOSSIBLE before SF.
Uniquely, this build can take advantage of Vistani Capstone + Eldritch T5 + be Charisma based + have Divine Might; going 7 AP Feydark on any other build would render this impossible because then you’d be at 87 AP. Honestly, I feel this is perhaps the ONLY unique niche that SF has right now, and again: IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SF TREE FOR PETE’S SAKE!
Go SWF to take advantage of Vistani T4. Here are some of the things this split gets you:
Very good melee power: +20 Vistani capstone, +20 EK t5, +20 Vistani T4, +14 righteous command (74 total). This is before factoring in Mythic Boosts, Reaper Power, Crown of Butterflies, Set bonuses… with good gear, you’re probably sitting at >100 MP as soon as you hit 20. Plus, you'll have 45% standing Attack Speed + 30% haste boosts. +1 Crit Multiplier/Threat Range from Vistani Core 4 (the 14 Pal is for ZEAL, not Holy Sword). Granted, dagger crit profile is very “meh,” but with all the melee power and other goodies like Eldritch Tempest +3 multiplier, it’s excusable A shitload of doublestrike: 5% Vistani T4, 5% Vistani Core 3, 20% Rapid Attack, 10% Zeal, 3% Knight’s Transformation, 2% Eldritch = 45% before factoring in a set bonus, doublestrike item, reaper bonus, +15% past lives A decent amount of PRR: 22 PRR/MRR Vistani, 10 Improved Shield Elritch, 14 angelskin, + past lives and items and whatnot Eldritch Tempest, nuff said
Offensively, we have stupidly high attack speed, stupidly high doublestrike, good melee power, cha to damage, Eldritch Tempest, and a 16-20 x3 multiplier on basic daggers. Level 20 has some really good daggers too, so going 20-30 in one day would not be a problem at all.
Defensively, we have decent PRR, Radiant Forcefield SLA, 2 LoH uses per rest, Immunity to Energy Drain (from Vistani, so no need to spend any AP in SF), and +75% recovered with heal scrolls/wands for topping off in-between battles. Your saves will be through the roof, as expected of a Cha-based Paladin. The most glaring weakness with this build is lack of Heal Amp when compared to KOTC, but there’s no real way to remedy this, no matter what other multiclasses we take. Congratulations Lynnabel: you managed to make a Paladin tree that’s somehow worse than Kensei. Wow.
For race: if you have racial AP to spare, Aasimar could be good for supplemental healing, considering that healing is something that this build doesn't really have. Human or Helf could net you some much-needed Healing Amp, plus 1 extra point of Charisma. If you don’t have any racial AP yet, then the more obvious choice would be something like Tiefling or Dragonborn for the +2 inherent cha. Dragonborn nets you -1 dex modifier however, so I would prefer Tiefling for this build.
Is this build optimal in the grand scheme of things? Hell no. But it’s probably one of the better DPS-ing Sacred Fist builds I could think of. It could feasibly perform well up to 20 or 30, assuming you want to get that past life feat. That’s the main goal anyway: I doubt ANY Sacred Fist build is optimal for endgame, so the main goal here is just create a build that could sail to 30 smoothly before reincarnating. Which I believe this build should be able to do.
Any other thoughts/builds are appreciated. I really do not know the best way to work with SF seeing as it’s such a badly-designed class.
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