And for flavor I am really leaning towards Two-Weapon Fighting, so the damage would have to come via enchantments I assume.
Either way, these are the books available to us.
3.5 Core,
Complete Warrior,
Complete Divine,
Complete Champion,
Masters of the Wild,
Sword and Fist.
We're level 1 and my stats are as follows
18
16
16
17
12
15
Great for this kind of build IMO.
So far, I've just chosen Two-Weapon Fighting and have 1 more feat to choose.
In addition, I'm thinking of doing War Domain for the awesome blinds, stuns, kills, etc and Weapon Focus / Prof of Longswords and the Travel domain for activated Freedom of Movement and nifty teleports / dimension doors, etc to close the gap between the enemy and I.
The general flavor of the character is to buff with with Divine Favor, Prayer, etc etc, Summon Monster to flank, Teleport into close the gap, summon Spirit Weapon for flavor and beat away with awesome Attack Bonus.
The major concern is dishing out damage later on, which will have big diminishing returns.
Any suggestions?
I'd choose a Morningstar as your weapon.
Good domains are Luck and Travel.
If you want to keep in melee at higher levels, pick up Extend Spell, Persist Spell, and Divine Metamagic for Persist spell, and make your best buffs permanant.
You'll want to get more turning attempts somehow. I suggest going into the Contemplative PrC from CD and picking the Undeath domain, which grants Extra Turning as a bonus feat. I think Extra Turnings stack, so you may want to pick up a few if you have spare feat slots. That and Nightsticks.
So for the first two feats do something like...
Power-Attack
Cleave?
Divine might makes a good opening choice, and I'm also a big fan of the animal devotion early in life for giving ludicrously early access to flight among other things. It's great!
Divine Might seems decent,
it seems with the high strength, the self-buffs and having a bard in the party (who trips), power attack is a little more easily used?
With those thats the whole reason I went dual-wielding was because there was going to be massive +'s to Attack
I really recommend travel devotion or getting access to the psionic power Hustle somehow, if you want desperately to play a TWFer. I really can't recommend TWF at this level, though, to be perfectly honest, simply due to the difficulty in hitting accurately.
If you're going to be the primary healer/divine caster, then you'll probably want to stick with full casting though. I would recommend avoiding persistant spells if you don't want to get into the overpowered arena. Travel Devotion is a good place to spend your turns in this case though-- swift action moves are very nice once you have multiple attacks per turn.
At 3rd level, depending on how your game is going, I would consider Touch of Healing for your feat. If you are consistently ending up with low hit points after battle, it can at least ensure you're always at half. Holy Warrior is also decent if you do end up going with Two-Weapon Fighting.
Since it sounded like you wanted something simple, you could try Cleric 8/Church Inquisitor 8/Ordained Champion 4 (not necessarily in that order). That will get you 16 BAB, caster level 18, and a fair number of special abilities at 20th level. Going even simpler, you could go with almost any of the classes that have 3/4ths base attack (you're not always going to want to spend a divine power in battle) and a decent hit die. (Church Inquisitor, Sacred Exorcist, Seeker of the Misty Isle, and possibly Holt Warden are possibilities.)
Another option, if your DM is willing to allow the Rebuke ability that Holt Wardens get to substitute for Plant Defiance/Control would be to go Cleric 5/Holt Warden 2/Verdant Lord 10/Holt Warden 2/Cleric 1. That will allow you to wild shape into a treant at higher levels and give you a base attack bonus of 17 with full cleric casting. (Plant control was renamed plant command for the prerequisities incidentally.)
I like TWF a lot, but the issue is one of mobility more than anything else.
Well, with the Travel domain, Dimension Door, Longstrider and most of the group being melee anyways, not sure if mobility is going to be a massive issue.
If you want to dilute your spellcasting a bit, Ordained Champion
From Complete Champion? That could be a possibility!
If you're going to be the primary healer/divine caster, then you'll probably want to stick with full casting though. I would recommend avoiding persistant spells if you don't want to get into the overpowered arena.
We have a healing cleric, so I'm suppose to be full on damage. I don't get why Persistent spells are so good, just having long lasting buffs are the awesome?
At 3rd level, depending on how your game is going, I would consider Touch of Healing for your feat. If you are consistently ending up with low hit points after battle, it can at least ensure you're always at half. Holy Warrior is also decent if you do end up going with Two-Weapon Fighting.
Yeah, Holy Warrior seems pretty epic, but does it require from a book not listed above?
Since it sounded like you wanted something simple, you could try Cleric 8/Church Inquisitor 8/Ordained Champion 4 (not necessarily in that order). That will get you 16 BAB, caster level 18, and a fair number of special abilities at 20th level.
Going even simpler, you could go with almost any of the classes that have 3/4ths base attack (you're not always going to want to spend a divine power in battle) and a decent hit die. (Church Inquisitor, Sacred Exorcist, Seeker of the Misty Isle, and possibly Holt Warden are possibilities.)
Will for sure look into those options, i like the first build you listed :D
Another option, if your DM is willing to allow the Rebuke ability that Holt Wardens get to substitute for Plant Defiance/Control would be to go Cleric 5/Holt Warden 2/Verdant Lord 10/Holt Warden 2/Cleric 1. That will allow you to wild shape into a treant at higher levels and give you a base attack bonus of 17 with full cleric casting. (Plant control was renamed plant command for the prerequisities incidentally.)
Ehhh, he'll for sure be against that. Too complex, I remember trying to make a Melee Bard via Snowflake War Dance, that was a conversation and a half lol
"Travel domain"
The two are mutually exclusive, as OS requires Hextor/Heironious worship, neither of which get travel (or indeed Luck).
Cleric 20. Extend, Persist, DMM Persist. TWF, since you want it. Quicken, too. Won't actually be decent past level 15 or so, will be more of a Zilla, then.
We have a healing cleric, so I'm suppose to be full on damage. I don't get why Persistent spells are so good, just having long lasting buffs are the awesome?
Persistant spells can throw off balance quite a bit when you use them far before you could otherwise expect to do so. Divine power is the iconic example of this, where you're essentially getting a 36,000 gold item and eliminating your base attack bonus as a balancing factor in your classes for a single spell slot. That's something you couldn't do without Divine Metamagic until you were 21st level and had spent an epic feat.
Maybe not, but most GMs would only allow them with very similar styled deities, and I can't see many of those having Travel. Most sensible GMs keep deity-restricted classes to fairly restricted deities, rather than 'pick 'n' mix' domains. (Sensible ones do, anyway!)
"I don't get why Persistent spells are so good, just having long lasting buffs are the awesome?"
Well, for starters you can have fighter BAB for 24h a day, making your cleric essentially as good as a fighter, but with spells, better saves and only 1HP less per level (on average). 24h duration buffs are good to the point of getting a 'just no' from a lot of GMs.
We have a healing cleric, so I'm suppose to be full on damage. I don't get why Persistent spells are so good, just having long lasting buffs are the awesome?
You can pre-cast buffs (saving you actions, which are in fact one of the most valuable assets in D&D), and you can make spells that are supposed to only last a few rounds instead last all day (saving you spell slots, which is another of the most valuable assets in D&D).
Also, many of the short duration buffs are much more powerful than spells that last longer by default. Having those up all day instead of having to waste actions in the middle of combat to cast them is a HUGE advantage.
So yeah, it's uber powerful to the point that Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell) is probably one of the most banned combinations in all D&D games. It doesn't become excessively powerful until the later levels, and even then only if you can buy and use as many Nightsticks as you want. But even as early as level 5 it can be quite powerful, if you pick the right spells.
Look through the spell list for all the good self-buffs that are only 1rnd/lvl or 1 min/lvl, you can probably find 10 or more of them. Now, instead of imagining a scenario where you have to spend the first 10 rounds of every fight casting them, you instead have them up all day. That is why it's overpowered.
to the OP:
It's probably going to get balked at, but for damage, if you can get a bludgeoning 2hander (like Goliath Greathammer) and have Greater Mighty Wallop cast on it, you're going to be rolling in the 8d8 range for base weapon damage. If you can get away with it, that's the way to go. TWF is generally for rogue types that get extra damage dice.
I've got a recommended TWF/Unarmed build...
Cloistered Cleric 2/Monk 2/Human Paragon 3/Sacred Fist 10/Contemplative 2/Divine Agent 1
(A solid melee cleric for TWF/Unarmed with DMM-Persist. Knowledge Devotion, lots of bonus feats, 2 bonus domains (in addition to Knowledge), recommend trading one for Law Devotion, and if possible getting the Planning domain (for free extend spell), and Pride domain (for the re-roll saves and Divine Power). Base Monk unarmed damage of 12th level monk (higher with gear, obviously). Caster level 17 (9ths).)
There's also one that someone suggested to me...
Cloistered Cleric 1/Human Paragon 3/Church Inquisitor 2/Divine Oracle 2/Divine Disciple 5/Contemplative 2/Ordained Champion 5
Which has like 5 bonus domains and a whole bunch of juju.
If you're playing in FR, also, the Red Knight has planning (for extend), law (for law devotion), and war (for Ordained Champion). She also has Nobility (for weird Inspire Courage analogue).
Given that he isn't the primary divine caster, Fist of the Forest might be worth looking at as well, even though it's another lost caster level. Constitution, Dexterity, and Wisdom to AC is fairly nice.
Greater Mighty Whallop isn't in his booklist and neither is Human Paragon, so the first build wouldn't be available.
I did specify, "if you can get away with it" for GMW.
Human Paragon and Cloistered Cleric are both in the SRD, which is '3.5 Core', and in his available book list.
We have a healing cleric, so I'm suppose to be full on damage. I don't get why Persistent spells are so good, just having long lasting buffs are the awesome?
Yeah that is pretty much as 'pwnsauce' as things get.
Just to add to what PhaedrusXY and the others already said, it allows you to take your Turn Undead attempts, which would otherwise be a wasted class feature unless you are actually fighting undead that day, into something massively useful.
Divine Power was already mentioned but also consider:
-Mass Lesser Vigor: Normally a level 3 cleric spell, your party now has Fast Healing 1 all day... in other words every time combat ends, sit around for a few minutes and you're all at full health... with just one spell. Though you might make your healing cleric feel like a waste of space.
-Righteous Might: Physical stat bonuses, go up one size category, other goodies.
-Freedom of Movement: Mobility issues solved. And nobody can grapple you anymore.
I must strongly recommend the Red Knight, as well. Ordained champion is made of win. Really, literally, just constructed out of huge hunks of it.
I can only emphasize that. Strong class features plus the ability to swift-cast spells (along with other swift combat options) make it an excellent choice for melee clerics.
The synergy with DMM-Persist is not so great, as OC opens up several other good uses for your turn attempts (smite, for example). However, at 4th level of OC you can cast Divine Power not only swift, but also spontaneously, which is a decent replacement for having it up all day.
A simple and strong build is something like:
Cleric4/OC5/Sacred Exorcist++
Strong feat options are:
- Practiced Spellcaster [CArc], not on your list of books, but still *very* useful
- Holy Warrior [CC]
- Travel Devotion [CC], if you can make it work with OC
- Improved Buckler Defense [CW]
- Perhaps Improved Toughness [CW]
"Hext and Heir are the standard deities, but adaptation rules are given as they are not common to all settings."
Maybe not, but most GMs would only allow them with very similar styled deities, and I can't see many of those having Travel. Most sensible GMs keep deity-restricted classes to fairly restricted deities, rather than 'pick 'n' mix' domains. (Sensible ones do, anyway!).
While not among the listed books, the dwarven deity Hanseath [RoS] has both the War and Travel domain, making a good choice for Ordained Champs with Travel Devotion.
A flexible DM might work with you here.
It's also conceivable that OC can be houseruled to not be associated with a particular church, opening it up to domain clerics (clerics not following a particular god, as explained in the PHB).
Yeah, it's best to think of Persist like this...
Look through the spell list for all the good self-buffs that are only 1rnd/lvl or 1 min/lvl, you can probably find 10 or more of them. Now, instead of imagining a scenario where you have to spend the first 10 rounds of every fight casting them, you instead have them up all day. That is why it's overpowered.
That's it right there. Actions are probably a PC's most valuable asset in 3.5. That's also one of the reason OC is a strong class despite the reduced spell progression.
It doesn't matter much that a cleric can be a competent fighter after X rounds of self-buffing if the fight is over by that time.
Also, long-term buffs mean that you are always prepared, having the extra HP / AC / saves / etc. to deal better with surprise attacks.
If you're sold on TWF, I recommend quarterstaff. That way you can choose to attack with a single two handed weapon if the enemy's AC makes the TWF penalties prohibitive, or even TWF with your spiked armor and still get the full 1.5x STR and power attack bonuses. It also works nicely with some druid spells for buffage, of course.
Given the choice of books, it is likely that you can use the pre-SC version of the Spikes spell [CD], which is available to Clerics, too. That's pretty nice since it lasts 1 hour/level instead of 1 round/level.
It makes your ends +2, doubles threat range and adds up to +10 damage. That's pretty decent extra damage (to justify TWF) right there. All for the cost of two mere 3rd level spell slots.
For the 3.5 Core question, whether that is talking about the SRD or the three core books is up to the DM. He might have them available or not. I don't think Divine Agent is available either though-- that's Deities and Demigod.
For the 3.5 Core question, whether that is talking about the SRD or the three core books is up to the DM. He might have them available or not. I don't think Divine Agent is available either though-- that's Deities and Demigod.
Which is also in the SRD, but that's not where divine agent comes from (I thought it did too). It's actually in Manual of the Planes, so that one's completely my bad.
If I read his list wrong, it's my bad, but I've always read 'Core' as the SRD, since it's available for free in a number of places (for download, even) and includes all the original 'Core' books (for the most part, there are a few things missing) including Errata.
You are correct, though, that some people say 'Core' when they mean, PH/DMG/MM1 (Core Rulebooks 1 2 and 3). If he can't use it, for those reasons, I am sorry I wasted his, and your, time.
Which is also in the SRD, but that's not where divine agent comes from (I thought it did too). It's actually in Manual of the Planes, so that one's completely my bad.
If I read his list wrong, it's my bad, but I've always read 'Core' as the SRD, since it's available for free in a number of places (for download, even) and includes all the original 'Core' books (for the most part, there are a few things missing) including Errata.
You are correct, though, that some people say 'Core' when they mean, PH/DMG/MM1 (Core Rulebooks 1 2 and 3). If he can't use it, for those reasons, I am sorry I wasted his, and your, time.
You gave valuable information, as did lots of people in this thread.
I do have access to the SRD, so I am most likely taking the OC route with some of those persistant feats, since OC is only 5 levels just continue with cleric after?
Thanks
Oh and I also have the complete arcane too
That will determine much of my advice for your post-OC progression.
You are correct, though, that some people say 'Core' when they mean, PH/DMG/MM1 (Core Rulebooks 1 2 and 3). If he can't use it, for those reasons, I am sorry I wasted his, and your, time.
I didn't mean to imply that you were wasting anyone's time-- I was just pointing where the build might not be feasible in case it wasn't available to him.
I didn't mean to imply that you were wasting anyone's time-- I was just pointing where the build might not be feasible in case it wasn't available to him.
And I didn't mean for that to sound like my feelings were hurt by your very valid critique.
Which deity will you follow? :: tilts head genteelly ::
That will determine much of my advice for your post-OC progression.
Well which is required, because I like war, travel, and trickery
Just my 2 cents
Well which is required, because I like war, travel, and trickery
Which setting are you playing in? Off hand, I don't think you're going to find that combination together. In Eberron, worshipping the Sovereign Host would probably enable you to take the domains though and Surtyr in the Forgotten Realms (giant deity) has War and Trickery together, which could enable you to use Seeker of the Misty Isle to pick up Travel. (Though an elf or half-elf worshipping a giant deity will take some explaining.
)I could definitely see a deity with that set of domains though, as a general principle-- a deity who inspires the type of mercenary general who leads his enemies into trap after trap, letting them wittle their own numbers down. (If anyone has read the Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts, I'm thinking of Arithon, the Master of Shadow, here as the epitome of that concept. Hmm... I should make him as a character some time...)
The Dm made his own world with his own gods
I actually haven't seen the Ordained Champion. Does it require specific deities?
It does and it doesn't.
It lists Hextor or Heironious as required deities, but in the adaptation it lists out additional deities for Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and says that it can be used for any 'appropriately themed', church or deity.
In Eberron campaign setting their is a feat called powerful charge which adds +1d8 whenever you charge to damage. Chosen Foe is a feat in Drow of the Underdark which adds a +1 to hit and a +1 to dodge against the same opponent. In Races of Faerun there is a feat for orcs or half-orcs that's called I think headlong rush which doubles the damage you do when you charge. You could just make a leap attacking charging build that uses a reach weapon to minimize the risk of getting into the thick of combat.
Best of all, no prestige classes! Stick to 20 levels of cleric. Multi-classing is for the godless. (and optimizers)
- Take Planning Domain, trade Law Domain for Law Devotion.
- Take Persist Spell, DMM(Persist), Power Attack and Extra Turning for the rest. If you really want, take EWP(Spiked Chain) or (Bastard Sword) or even (Goliath Greathammer) if you can get your hands on Races of Stone. But a greatsword or any two-handed weapon works. Travel Devotion is worth looking into as well. Full Move + Full Attack = Win.
- Persist Divine Power and Lesser Mass Vigor.
- Win.
If you had access to Tome of Battle I'd recommend my Ordained Sword Tosser: Warblade 2/Cleric 4/Ordained Champion 3/Bloodstorm Blade 2/Cleric Spellcasting PRC of your Choice 9. Channel spells into longswords and then power attack throw them at people. You could even minimize your lost caster levels by taking an Iron Heart strike and stance with feats and come out with CL17 instead of CL15. Interesting schtick at least.