Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 nestor1079 Feb 13, 2009 6:09:29	A project I've been trying to build for some time for a certain campaign has been bothering me for a while and I was hoping to get some feedback. The Concept: A "Frost Knight"- plate wearing, dual wielding melee buld with frost spells for DPS/ crowd control. The Restrictions: level 11 is max level, unless there's Divine intervention/ assistance. No Necromancy. My build: I went with two levels of fighter (for proficciencies and bonus feats) and then nine levels of cleric, to avoid arcane spell failure and get some damaging spells, as well as not taking too hard of a hit on my dice. Because he's supposed to be a "frost knight" I went with the frost based cleric spells in Frostburn, supplemented with more "normal" spells from the cleric spell list in the core books for heals and buffing. my tentative feats are 2 weapon fighting, improved 2 weapon fighting, Oversized Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (bastard sword), Exotic weapon proficiency (Bastard Sword)... and that leaves 2 more feats for whatever. This is about as far as I've gotten, though I'm considering taking the domains Strength and Cold for Cleric. Cold for the domain spells, and Strength for the STR buff. If anyone could help refine my character, i'd be appreciative.
#2 oprick Feb 13, 2009 9:55:12	disciple of thrym from frostburn fits this flavor nicely. conversely, with 9 levels of cleric, you could easily have a persistent ice axe (as the spell) for 2d12+9, and hits as a touch attack. i really have no idea if you could make two of these, but if so, that would be awesome.
#3 khorus Feb 13, 2009 10:31:29	Persist it and make it of the utter cold (meta magic feat)
#4 phoenix00 Feb 13, 2009 10:39:36	If you are doing Cleric never never take two level of fighters. Swap out 1 level of fighter for 1 level of Ordained Champion. You gain the same number of feats or more, and since you are going to lose a caster level with fighter anyway you lose no caster levels. In addition it puts you that much closer to the awesome Ordained Champion 3. Channel spells are great. And if you don't mind sacrificing another caster level you get spontaneous quicken war domain spells such as divine power.
#5 khorus Feb 13, 2009 14:24:57	cleric and ordained champ seem the best way to go to me. Take quicken spell and Divine metatmagic quicken in the beginning so you can instantly throw up your ice axe or whatever. Or apply energy sub or energy admixture with Divine metamagic. In PH2 there is a meta magic feat that adds 2d6 cold dmg and makes the area where it was cast Icy. Uttercold makes half the dmg negative energy dmg. If you take ordained champ you get to trade out some feats for domain spells, it is a 3/5 class though, I think 1st and 4th level are the non casters so I'd only take 3 level's of it, 1st lvl is the feats for domains spells and 3rd is channel spells. Oh and I think there is an armor or material that +1cl to cold spells.
#6 volatris Feb 13, 2009 14:43:39	Blue Ice Armor (Frostburn, pg. 80) allows you to cast [Cold] descriptor spells without arcane spell failure Icemail Armor does this as well and also increases the save DC of a [Cold] descriptor spell by +2.
#7 nestor1079 Feb 20, 2009 1:12:11	If you are doing Cleric never never take two level of fighters. I don't understand why not. Wouldn't two levels of fighter be in my benefit for the bonus feats, as well as the d10 hit die? Can you clarify this for me? Swap out 1 level of fighter for 1 level of Ordained Champion. Unfortunately I don't have access to this PrC's materials, can you give me information as to why this'd be beneficial?
#8 khorus Feb 20, 2009 7:44:37	http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070710
#9 tytalus Feb 20, 2009 8:25:48	I don't understand why not. Wouldn't two levels of fighter be in my benefit for the bonus feats, as well as the d10 hit die? Can you clarify this for me? Unfortunately I don't have access to this PrC's materials, can you give me information as to why this'd be beneficial? The power of spells grows exponentially with spell level. If you delay your spell progression, you are giving up a lot of power. Two bonus feats and a few proficiencies do not make up for the loss of a whole spell level. Ordained Champion is perhaps an exception to the rule "never give up caster levels", because you gain a variety of very powerful abilities instead that sort of make up for it.
#10 phoenix00 Feb 20, 2009 9:20:19	What Tytalus said. Spells grow exponentially in power and it isn't worth what you are giving up. Grab a wand of heroics if you need the extra feats. 5 levels of Ordained Champion though kicks the ass out of 3 levels of cleric and 2 levels of fighter. Here are some of the cool abilities d10 hit points, and full bab *You gain another domain *You can swap out two of your domain powers for fighter bonus feats (such as chaos domain allows you to cast spells at 1 higher caster level, or animal domain gives you speak with animals 1/day.) *You can cast war domain spells as a swift action *You get a smite attack *You can channel spells into your weapon as a move action. These can be bad spells for your enemy, or they can be good spells as buffing. For example this can be your first round buff routine. 1) Swift Action Divine Power 2) Standard Action Righteous Might 3) Move Action Channel Spell. You channel a buff spell into your fist (not your main weapon), at any time you want to use that buff spell all you have to do is attack yourself with the fist for subdue damage. The buff spell will then go off automatically. This gives you more actions, and sometimes you have iterative attacks that are too low to hit things, or you already killed the enemy this takes advantage of those actions giving you more actions pure round. 3 spells per round without the use of items is frickin awesome. There is also one or two more abilities which I am forgetting, one of them was tied to wisdom... --- Sorry you don't have Ordained Champion in Complete Champion, but now you see why I was recommending it ;)
#11 phaedrusxy Feb 20, 2009 11:24:09	I don't understand why not. Wouldn't two levels of fighter be in my benefit for the bonus feats, as well as the d10 hit die? Can you clarify this for me? Not even remotely as much as more spellcasting. I wouldn't recommend taking even a single level of fighter... And what good are those proficiencies doing you, when you aren't even using them? You're using bastard swords, which you had to burn a feat on anyway, and clerics get plate proficiency. The difference between a fighter level and cleric level for hit points is 1 hit point on average... my tentative feats are 2 weapon fighting, improved 2 weapon fighting, Oversized Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (bastard sword), Exotic weapon proficiency (Bastard Sword)... and that leaves 2 more feats for whatever. You are wasting all of your feats on a sub-optimal fighting style. You'd be better off just using a morning star (which clerics are proficient with), swinging it with two hands, and taking a single feat (power attack) than you are with all of this crap. Go read the cleric handbook, and the 10 commandments of practical optimization, which you can find in here, and come back. I'd suggest: go with Divine Metmagic: Persistent Spell, and wield a persistent Ice Axe (with other metamagics applied to it, if you want). Wear the Icemail armor. There is your frost cleric.