Crashing Wave (Cleric Archetype)
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Powerful and destructive, yet also gentle and life-nurturing, the ocean is something that has been revered and reviled since ancient times. In Pathfinder, while there are many deities of the ocean, few are more widespread and well-known that Gozreh, the deity of both wind and waves, having a different gender aspect for both.
Those priests who revere Gozreh in their female, watery aspect exclusively sometimes take the title of Crashing Wave, and are blessed not only by command over the water, but also by Gozreh’s nature as a creature of balance.
As we will see, this archetype is heavily tied to this specific deity, but in theory you could use it with any largely neutral ocean deity.
Regardless, this archetype is favored not just by coastal folk, but also by aquatic races as well!
Naturally, without homebrewing, this archetype requires the cleric to be a worshipper of Gozreh. They do, however, learn how to speak the elemental tongue of water.
Rather than channel positive or negative energy in the traditional sense, these devotees instead channel an energy associated with balance, allowing them to heal at least partially neutral beings, or to harm foes that deviate too far from neutrality.
Finally, these clerics do not gain the ability to convert their spells into healing or harming. Instead, they convert their spells into an array of water-themed spells, everything from those that directly manipulate water for attack, defense, or utility, to water breathing, to transforming into a fluid state, or even summoning vast numbers of elementals to fight.
A simple archetype, but one that does change the utility of the cleric to be more about control and support than they are about healing, though they can still do that with the right party composition, but you’ll want to take the same care when channeling healing energy in a party with a lot of strong alignments as you would if there were a dhampir in the party with a standard goodly cleric.
Since Gozreh is a neutral god, one can imagine that clerics of different neutral alignments might interpret their teachings differently. Goodly ones might spend most of their time providing soothing seas, but still bring down the wrath of the storm; while evil ones may seek to bring down suffering with their divine gifts. Lawful ones may seek to teach others how to live in harmony with the sea and master it, while the more chaotic may simply revel in the wild and unpredictable nature of the water.
Ships that use the Whitetongue Cape as a shortcut had best take heed that a clan of grindylows lives in the waters there. Possessing a tradition of priests of the waves there, they often ambush passing ships using the very water against them.
On moonless nights, the skum of Mephist Reef rise from the water and chant prayers to their god, a mindless brutal thing of wind and wave. During such nights, any encounter with sailing vessels is treated as a blasphemous invasion, the penalty of which is death.
A hurricane lingers over the city of Mesha, literally holding the city hostage, for this is no ordinary storm. Indeed, the storm is the work of a wicked and powerful crashing wave cleric using the forces of nature to punish the people for some slight.