Nature's Avenger
The warpriest is an interesting fusion of hardened warrior and divine spellcaster, which does a good job of capturing the flavor of warring religious ideologies duking it out on the field of battle. When looking over the class, I found myself wondering what it might have looked like if it were based on druids, rather than clerics, and before long, that led to the archetype below. If you want to be an uncompromising warrior willing to prove your faith on the field of battle, but would rather devote yourself to the natural world than to some paragon of good, evil, law, or chaos, then look no further than the nature’s avenger.
New Warpriest Archetype
Nature’s Avenger
Warpriests are valiant combatants who fight for what they believe in. While many focus on the struggles between good and evil, or between chaos and order, some choose to focus instead on fighting on behalf of the natural world. These warpriests have more in common with druids than with clerics, and though they are often far more militant than other advocates of the wilds, they still draw their power from the wild places of the world, and the forces of nature.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Nature’s avengers are prohibited from wearing metal armor; thus, they may wear only padded, leather, or hide armor. A nature’s avenger may also wear wooden armor that has been altered by the ironwood spell so that it functions as though it were steel. Nature’s avengers are proficient with shields (except tower shields), but may only use wooden ones.
A nature’s avenger who wears prohibited armor or uses a prohibited shield is unable to cast spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class abilities while doing so and for 24 hours thereafter.
This ability modifies the weapon and armor proficiency class feature.
Spellcasting: A nature’s avenger draws his spells from the druid spell list, rather than the cleric spell list. Further, he is not prohibited from casting spells based on their alignment descriptors. Finally, he cannot channel stored spell energy into healing spells. Instead of being able to spontaneously cast cure spells, he can spontaneously cast summon nature’s ally spells. As with other spontaneous casting, the spell that is cast must be of the same spell level or lower as the spell that is expended. Besides these differences, a nature’s avenger’s spellcasting is the same as the spellcasting of a normal warpriest.
This ability modifies the spellcasting class feature.
Blessings (Su): A nature’s avenger is limited in his choice of blessings. When choosing blessings, he must choose from the following list: air, animal, darkness, earth, fire, plant, scalykindACO, sun, water, or weather. Because of this limitation, the nature’s avenger must choose a deity who grants access to at least two of these blessings.
This ability modifies the blessings class feature.
Wild Fervor (Su): At 2nd level, a nature’s avenger can draw upon the power of his faith to heal or harm others, similar to most warpriests, although he does so in a slightly different fashion, befitting his status as a servant of the natural world. This ability can be used a number of times per day equal to 1/2 his warpriest level + his Wisdom modifier. By expending one use of this ability, the warpriest can touch a living creature to either heal it of 1d6 points of damage, plus an additional 1d6 points of damage for every 3 warpriest levels he possesses above 2nd (to a maximum of 7d6 at 20th level), or he can choose to inflict that much damage on the target, instead. Either way, this ability has no effect on undead creatures (or other non-living creatures, such as constructs). When this ability is used to harm living creatures, it is treated as negative energy, and when it is used to heal living creatures, it is treated as positive energy.
Additionally, whether it is being used to harm or heal, this ability is more powerful when used on creatures of the animal, magical beast, or plant types, and the amount of damage that is inflicted or healed in this way increases to 1d10, plus an additional 1d10 points for every 3 warpriest levels above 2nd, instead of the normal amount.
Beginning at 6th level, as a swift action, a nature’s avenger can expend one use of this ability to grant his animal companion a +2 enhancement bonus to each of its physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), and increase its natural armor bonus to AC by +2. These benefits last for one minute. At 12th level, the bonuses increase to +4, and at 18th level, they increase to +6.
This ability replaces the fervor class feature.
Nature’s Step (Ex): Beginning at 4th level, a nature’s avenger may move through any sort of undergrowth (such as natural thorns, briars, overgrown areas, and similar terrain) at his normal speed without taking damage or suffering any other impairment. This benefit does not apply to thorns, briars, and overgrown areas that have been magically manipulated to impede motion, but he does gain a +4 bonus on any saving throws, ability checks, and skill checks made to overcome or avoid such effects.
This ability replaces the channel energy class feature.
Sacred Weapon (Su): At 4th level, when the nature’s avenger gains the ability to enhance one of his sacred weapons with divine power, the weapon special abilities that he can add are somewhat different from those of a normal warpriest. He adds mighty cleaving, speed, thundering, vicious, and wounding to the list of weapon special abilities that can be added, but he does not gain access to any additional weapon special abilities based on his alignment (meaning that he cannot select anarchic, axiomatic, ghost touch,
holy, merciful, spell storing, or unholy).
This ability modifies the sacred weapon class feature.
Animal Companion (Ex): At 6th level, a nature’s avenger forms a close bond with an animal companion. This functions as the animal companion version of the druid’s nature bond class feature, except that the nature’s avenger’s effective druid level is equal to his warpriest level – 5.
This ability replaces the bonus feat gained at 6th level.