Abraham Spalding’s Guide to the Holy Vindicator (and channeling)

So you are interesting in channeling. However on first look it doesn’t seem like a great place to be focusing in on -- after all you’ll max out at 10d6, and there is a hard limit on how many times per day you can channel... not to mention the fact that only the cleric gets a choice on which energy to channel, and the other people that can channel are much more shoehorned into their roles. With all that said you can become a strong channeler and I can help.

The first thing you must decide when building a channeler is what you want to be doing: Do you want to heal, hurt or both? This will directly impact what class you choose for channeling, and what abilities you pick up on the way.

Healing

For a healing focused channeler there are three choices: Merciful healer (cleric), paladin (primarily the hospitaler) and the life oracle.

The Merciful Healer has a lot going for it: At level 3 it can apply mercies on those it heals helping alleviate status effects, and at level 8 you can instead choose to reroll 1’s on what you heal. However you cannot channel to harm undead at all. Still if all you are looking at is to channel to heal well the Merciful Healer offers it in spades.

The Hospitaler paladin and normal paladin are both interesting cases for channeling -- the normal paladin for its ability to increase the number of channelings it has in a day through the use of its lay on hands ability, and the hospitaler for its decoupled lay on hands and channel energy ability, allowing it two different pools of healing. The biggest problem for the normal paladin is how quickly he can eat up those lay on hands uses to channel energy, while the hospitaler isn’t getting quite as much out per channel due to his reduced cleric channeling level.

The life oracle doesn’t gain as much channel energy uses as a cleric does, however with another revelation the life oracle can grant temporary HP with their channel energy allowing a degree of proactiveness that isn’t available to any other healing channeler.

Harming

For a harm focused channeler there is two primary choices and then some options:

The standard cleric of non-good alignment is one of the two primary choices. The only real issue with using a cleric as a channeler in any situation is the fact that it makes you a MAD character -- you need charisma to channel, wisdom to cast spells, and anything else you want for whatever else you intend to do. However the standard cleric is still one of the only two easy ways to channel to harm as such it’s a blue choice here.

Your other option is the Anti-Paladin -- as a CE character however you are likely to find it hard to convince a GM to allow you to play this class. Of course as soon as I say that someone will say, “But my GM lets me!” Of course he does, which is why this is still an option... but even so I won’t say it’s a highly likely one for everyone (especially if you don’t want to be evil).

Your other choice is to grab feats like alignment channel to damage specific outsiders of specific alignments or elements. This is... problematic at best since you’ll only harm outsiders, and you need to spend a feat for each type of outsider you want to harm.

Versatile Channeling
There is only one real option here -- play a LN, N, or CN cleric of a non-good/non-evil god. Doing so will allow you to choose the Versatile Channeling feat and gain the ability to channel both positive and negative energy. However in doing so you’ll have to choose which is going to be your primary focus as the other will channel at a reduced rate. Personally I’m fond of this option, as I always like having more choices for what I’m doing.

Variant Channeling:
Don’t do it. You reduce your channeling by half to get a small (1+1/5 your level) bonus or penalty to go with your channeling. This is an interesting option if channeling isn’t your main focus... but if you are reading this guide it probably is and if it probably is you probably do not want to give up half of what you are focusing on. As such I wouldn’t take this. The limited list of ‘maybes include:
Disease -- healing ability damage could be useful, and sickened is a nice condition for harming.

Knowledge -- Harm -- intelligence damage is a not regular thing... but saving negates it entirely.

Luck -- Harm -- reduce all d20 rolls for the next round.

Poison -- Harm -- A point of ability damage isn’t bad in an AoE... still don’t think it’s worth giving up half your channel for though.

Undeath -- if you know you are going versatile and are going to have negative energy healed PCs in your party this isn’t too bad.

Feats:

Selective Channeling -- You do NOT want to harm your allies, and you do NOT want to heal your enemies. As such this is the only real way to channel in combat and not have your other PCs groaning on a regular basis.

Extra Channeling -- The number of times you can channel in a day is fairly static at 3(or 1) + Cha Mod times per day. Extra Channeling is going to be very helpful in getting a few more channels out in a day.

Versatile Channeler -- If you want to keep them guessing on what you can do this is the only way... however it can really limit down your options on what you can play too.

Improved Channeling -- Channeling allows a save throw if you intend to harm... as such if you want to be as effective as possible you are going to want this feat. Hey at least it’s one feat for a +2 instead of being like spell focus that costs 2 feats to get a +2 to a single school of magic.

Spell Penetration/greater spell penetration/Combat Casting -- Get out of here! Channeling is supernatural and as such we don’t need these feats. Now if you want to take them for your spell casting go right ahead, just know they won’t help your channeling at all.

Channel Smite -- I can’t say I’m very interested in taking an area of effect, and reducing it to an attack roll against a single opponent that then has a chance to save to reduce the damage. How about we stick to one way of failing, that will at least allow us half damage consistently.

Greater Channel Smite -- Alright you can spread the damage out -- that is nice and it’s not wasted unless it is your last attack of the round. However the save throw is still there too. IF you go Holy Vindicator, then you might consider this feat after you get channel smite for free.

Alignment Channel/Elemental Channel -- You really only have two reasons to take these feats... to get into Holy Vindicator, or if you channel positive energy and you want to harm evil outsiders specifically.

Channeled Revival -- Hey if you channel positive energy this is a fairly neat trick. A full round action however and three uses of channel energy is a LOT to pay to take AoOs to give someone just 5d6 of healing. If you are a paladin you might get some use out of this... otherwise I would simply use a spell to get them back up.

Channeled Shield Wall -- Alright if you are playing a low magic game, or E6 and know you aren’t getting over a certain level this might be useful... however I’m really doubting it -- a +2 deflection bonus isn’t much at all even if it’s going to last a couple of minutes. Especially when you are highly likely to have a first level spell that gives a higher deflection bonus easily (shield of faith I’m looking at you).

Channeling Scourge -- I am intrigued, however I have yet to find a really effective build that utilizes channeling and inquisitor levels... however I will keep my eyes peeled for some way to really use this.

Contingent Channeling -- IF you are fully rested, and you know you are going into a big nasty battle, and you have time to prepare and use this on your allies it can be very helpful. That’s a lot of ifs however.

Quick Channel -- HEY another decent feat! Yeah it uses up two channel energy uses at a time but sometimes you simply NEED to get out two channels in the same round.

Command Undead -- Well we could destroy them... but why not make them destroy our enemies? If you aren’t in a party that is squeamish about undead make use of them when you come across them. Worse comes to worse you can command them to destroy each other for your own amusement.

Alright as you saw there are a lot of feats you aren’t going to want to grab. But the good news is that means you don’t have to burn too many feats into your channeling.

Traits:
You are going to want exalted of the society as it gives you another channel energy use per day. If you can’t get that take sacred conduit. Unfortunately you can’t have both since they are both faith traits.

Stats

What stats you are going to want to focus on depends on what class you started with:

Cleric

Cha>=Wis>Str=Con>Dex=Int

Life Oracle

Cha>Con>=Str>=Dex>=Wis>=Int

Paladin/Anti-paladin

Cha>Str>Con>Dex=Int>Wis

Races
What race you want will also depend on what method you go about channeling.

Cleric:

Aasimar -- Aasimar make excellent channeling clerics since they gain a bonus to both wisdom and charisma.

Human -- Humans don’t do quite as well since they only get a single bonus, however the extra feat can help them channel more often and better earlier.

Half Elf -- Half elves don’t really make outstanding cleric channelers since their bonuses tend to go better on split class characters. But they are not horrible at it either.

Half Orc -- Much like half elves, except you can gain a luck bonus on save throws and have darkvision which is a nice combination.

Dwarf -- While dwarves normally make great clerics their charisma penalty hurts their channeling.

Halfling -- The strength penalty hurts only slightly, the low speed is more of a problem honestly. However the small size helps with hitting and with AC and the bonus on charisma is nice combined with the luck bonus on save throws halflings make nice channelers.

Gnomes -- Another decent choice like the halfling, though a little less so due to the lack of luck bonus. The Con bonus does help make up for this.

Suli -- A bonus to charisma isn’t a bad thing, and the strength bonus doesn’t hurt.

Dhampir -- If you are going to channel negative energy Dhampir has the added bonus of being able to heal yourself easily still... but that con penalty still isn’t fun.
Changlings -- A bonus to wisdom and charisma again as well as darkvision and natural weapons the changling can make an excellent cleric channeler.

Life Oracle:

Aasimar -- Does just fine here too, but doesn’t really offer anything outstanding to the oracle.

Suli -- Much like the aasimar, the suli does fine but doesn’t really stand out from many good options.

Human -- That extra feat can help you either get another revelation early, or get more channeling. Either way it puts you further ahead.

Half elf -- Unfortunately the half elf simply doesn’t offer enough to really make it stand with the better choices here.

Half orc -- Darkvision and a possible luck bonus on save throws as well as more weapon proficiencies means the half orc makes a nice oracle.

Gnomes -- Another decent choice like the halfling, though a little less so due to the lack of luck bonus. The Con bonus does help make up for this.

Paladin

Human -- more feats means you can get other stuff out of the way before becoming a channeler prime... but honestly this is one case where the bonus feat comes a bit too early in my opinion.

Half Orc -- the darkvision and possible luck bonus are a nice add on here too.

Suli -- Strength bonus with a charisma bonus is a nice combination for a paladin.

Aasimar -- It works, nothing special.

Dhampir -- Not a good choice, you channel positive energy and are healed by negative.

Halfling -- Halflings make solid paladins with their bonuses and favored class bonus.

Gnomes -- Are as good of paladins as halflings due to their lack of favored class bonus but are still not a bad choice.

Options for entering Holy Vindicator:
So you have a couple of ways to go about this:
Paladin 5 -- not a bad plan and really hard to screw up. You are in and going quickly, though you can only channel positive energy and you don’t really have too many feats to spend before you get in. A nice perk about paladin is the lay on hands to heal yourself while you are using your stigmata... however this is likely to hold back your channeling energy.

Hospitaler Paladin 5 -- A bit better than the paladin in that you can lay on hands without hurting your channel energy attempts.

Cleric 7 -- Takes a while but you don’t give anything up and you get everything you need. This offers the most choices in how to channel as well as helps make up for the spell levels lost in it by offering the fastest access to spell levels you can get.

Oracle of Life 7 -- Another easy choice, however it combines the worse parts of the paladin with the worse parts of the cleric and then slows down your spell acquisition to a crawl. Not good.

Cleric 4/Cavalier of the order of the star 2 -- The fastest entry method and one that offers a lot of benefits. Your fortitude save will be stronger for it, and you gain more weapon and armor training while still allowing you access to several good cavalier archetypes. In addition you only lose one channeling level. That’s not fun... but for what you get it’s not horrible either as you’ll still get your full 10d6 channeling.

Cleric (4 or 3)/Inquisitor (3 or 4) with channeling scourge -- IF you are playing a half elf this is an option I guess. On the plus side you get more spells and class abilities that make use of your wisdom. On the downside you are charisma focused! However the wisdom focusing you can conceivably need less in other stats and get more out of what you do have. If you aren’t a half elf... well you aren’t getting the favored class bonus that half elves get and I think you’d be better off focusing on cleric to get more spells of higher levels.