My character currently is Cloistered Cleric3/Church Inquisitor3/Divine Oracle2. I'm thinking of taking Paragnostic Apostle as well, although being a medic would be really useful. I've only got 1 feat slot free to spend to get into the class, so I'd need to get at least one of the feats another way. I'd prefer to get both of them another way, but as long as I can get 1 in I'll be happy.
So are there any ways to get Dodge and Combat Casting without spending the feats? Thanks!
I know a continuous item of heroics could be crafted and would cost 2*3*2000*1.5=18k. Not bad, but also not great. Is there anything else?
My GM may allow Skill Focus (concn) to count instead of CC, so is there a way to get SF instead maybe?
Are there any (max +1LA) races that grant any of those feats?
If you're able to play with your choice of race and have at least one level free to spend on a +1 LA class, couldn't you just be a human (for the bonus feat) and/or take a level in fighter (to pick up Dodge or a substitute as a bonus feat)?
You'd still be effectively spending the feats, but if you've got the bonus feats to cover it, it's not so bad, and the fighter level would give you weapon and armour proficiencies you lack due to being a cloistered cleric.
But no, I don't want to take a level of fighter, because I don't want to lose a level of casting.
See if your DM will let you work the frog god's fane intro your backstory. It's a magical location in Complete Scoundrel that can give you skill focus (knowledge [religion]) as a bonus feat. This benefit is assigned a value of 2,000 gp to count against wealth-by-level. That takes care of the feat necessary to qualify for divine oracle, which means you have two free.
1: Divine Spell Power
Hu: Combat Casting
Flaw (gained at 1st lvl): Expeditious Dodge
3: Initiate of Mystra
6 Divine Defiance
Flaw (gained at 8th lvl):Craft Wondrous
9: Arcane Mastery
I've got Wis 24 with a +6 item, Prayer beads Karma. During buffing, I get spells to CL 14-18. I use 1/2 my spells buffing others in the party. In combat my primary role is healing, with maybe some slight buffing like Righteous Wrath etc., and some counterspelling/dispelling with divine defiance.
I need to be able to heal more. What can I be doing? Or do I just wait until I can cast Heal, and I'll catch back up?
There should also be some kind of 5th level healing spell that makes up for the lack of healing power until Heal. Maybe something that healed 7 or 8hp/CL, but didn't heal any effects. Or a spell that made all subsequent (rd/lvl) healing spells work twice, once that round, and once the next (on the same person), a bit like repeat spell.
I dunno, it just seems there aren't enough divine options, especially since most PrC don't stack with cleric for turning or domain-related effects.
Likewise, you're complaining about lack of options for divine casting classes? The ones who already get the biggest bang for their buck, who have a preponderance of 10/10 spellcasting ability classes with miniscule prerequisites, and often contain the most ZOMG class features or spells in the game? (Complete Divine and Complete Champion were the single largest jumps in power ever published in 3.5. Post-Complete-Divine, clerics literally had to hold back and make sub-par choices if they didn't want to steamroll everything, and Complete Champion only made it worse. Only the ToB made a comparable splash, and that's more because of how poor core melee was than how powerful the Tome was.) Arcane options are about as diverse, but absolute must-haves are harder to find, and they're prone to dipping (and several of them are even more limited than cleric god/alignment ones are. You're just an atonement away from changing those, while no wizard can ever change their specialization, and no sorcerer can ever specialize). And we won't even talk about psionic classes here - I think there's exactly one full-manifesting PrC, and it's so badly designed it'll never be taken by its intended class (and in fact makes that class obsolete)... instead, every single prestige class employs some form of drawback, meaning Psion 20 is actually a valid choice despite having a very sparse "Special" column on its class table. Divine gets more than enough already. (Likewise, Turn Undead is freaking useless, even with Radiant Servant of Pelor, unless you're burning turn attempts to fuel divine feats, and those don't care about your level so much. The only mechanics that do really care about your turning level are those who Rebuke undead, and there are enough ways to boost that despite being barred from Good clerics.)
In the case of healing spells, I can pretty much guarantee you'll prevent more damage with Hold Person or Fog Cloud than you would with Cure Serious Wounds. See my link above - Heal is a wonderful spell, but more for its ability to remove conditions than for its ability to restore hit points. Meanwhile, except in the case of dire emergency, you should never be casting any Cure spells in battle beyond Cure Light, and even then that's just at the lower levels. (Although this won't work for you, here's a simple example: Compare Cure Critical Wounds (costs you 1 standard action, burst-heals an average of 25 damage when you can first cast it) to Summon Nature's Ally IV: Unicorn (costs you 1 round to cast, but casts Cure Moderate Wounds (average 14) and three Cure Light Wounds (average 28) any time over the next seven rounds, *and* is still able to charge enemies and absorb up to 42 damage that would be aimed at your team, while you still fight). The latter is a far more efficient spell in terms of healing delivered, damage prevented, damage delivered, and so on, and gives you a significant tactical edge because, while it takes slightly longer to cast, it gives you extra actions for the next several rounds.)
I'd suggest focusing on crippling effects - i.e. getting your DC pretty high and casting spells that either deny your opponent the ability to act, or limit what they can do when they act, such that they can no longer hurt your party. These tend to last for multiple rounds, and as such the damage that the monster doesn't do during that time is essentially "cured" (and, as a side effect, your team gets free attacks on them, or can bypass them to focus-fire other opponents down before returning to this one, and so on). I guarantee you will be more effective this way than you would be if you were sitting back and healing.
If you're in a situation where you're needing to heal more, and you're high enough level to cast spells like Divine Power, Hold Person, Silence, Lesser Planar Ally, or similar, then I question the veracity of the team you're fighting with. Mind if I ask their breakdown?
it is not anything diffucult to put Cure Greivous Wounds back into the game healing 5d8 +level.
but yeah. 3rd ed made combat healing obsoelete as everything you fight should be dead before anybody needs any healing.
the first.. id say 3 levels are the only time that in combat healing is actually useful after that though, just walk around with a couple of wands of cure light wounds.
Remember that characters can continue to fight, without penalty, even down to 1 hit point remaining, and thus healing in combat is usually only done if the ally is about to die (HP lower than incoming expected monster damage). Curing spells cast to "top up" the ally are almost certainly a waste of actions - actions which could be better spent crippling the enemy.
Cure Light is useful because you don't have many other options at the lowest levels to keep the party alive, and single-hit monster damage is significant relative to your HP. For example, against the AC 18 first-level fighter, even a mere orc warrior is expected to deal 4.25 damage per round, or 35.4% of the fighter's HP. Since they're CR 1/2, you can expect to fight two of them as a "moderate" challenge for a level 1 party, and that's a whopping 70.8% of the fighter's HP per round if you don't take them down before they get to melee range. That's pretty significant, and even if your team downs one of the orcs before their next turn, the other is expected to deal enough damage to knock the fighter unconscious. As a cleric, you have a decent reason here to cast Cure Light Wounds if the fighter's already taken two hits.
(However, I'd like to note that a stock Cleric - assuming a +2 Wisdom modifier - could also keep his distance and cast a DC 13 Command spell, ordering one of the orcs to flee. This would work 70% of the time and not only prevent the orc from attacking for a round (i.e. "curing" the fighter of 4.25 damage, which is only slightly less than the Cure Light Wounds spell) but also force the orc to run away, which may provoke attacks of opportunity (i.e. giving your team extra attacks against it) and forcing it to close to melee again on the next round (wasting even more of its actions and potentially provoking more AoOs, meaning more actions for your team). Since the orc runs away "as quickly as possible", that's a run (x4 movement), so he's out of charge range (x2 movement), meaning you also prevent the 4.25 damage he'd be delivering on the following round too. That's far better at both curing damage and killing the enemy than Cure Light Wounds or the wizard's Magic Missile could be at this level! You DO have options in the same vein as I suggested, even at the lowest levels!)
At higher levels, the cure spells simply do not keep pace with expected monster damage, and your highest-level spells tend to restore a similar percentage of "expected" fighter HP (around 40% for a burst-heal). The exception is Heal, which restores significantly more hit points than any Cure spell at every level (in fact, it restores more HP to a single target than any Mass Cure spell restores to an entire party of 4 at the same level, except for a 20th-level Mass Cure Critical, at which point Mass Heal has been outperforming it since level 17), AND it removes a whole host of debilitating conditions while it's at it.
Cure spells look like they scale nicely: +1d8 cured, and +5 to the caster level cap, with each spell level. However, that only matters if the two things related to curing - hit points and incoming damage - also scale at roughly the same +5.5/level rate. They do not. (Any warrior class gains +5.5+Con HP per level at least, for instance.) Furthermore, most campaigns do not realistically hit any level where the increase in CL cap beyond, say, +15 actually matters. (In other words, until level 16, the difference between Cure Serious and Cure Critical is just +4.5, which is miniscule for an increase in spell level.)
I'm kind of curious as to why you're looking to get into Combat Medic at all. It really isn't all that good, especially when you realize how sub-optimal in-combat healing really is.
While many of the abilities are just garnish, you get full spellcasting and the rather excellent 5th-level ability, which gives you spontaneous access to the one curing spell you always want. It's a very nice addition that adds to the flexibility of your spell use since you no longer need to prepare the heal spell (and the mass versions of it are generally redundant) and can therefore put other spells in those slots. Obviously, if you take the trouble to enter the class, this means that you want to take all five levels.
Domain Spontaneity (healing) would be a more straightforward way of achieving something similar, but that restricts your choice of domains, requires you to burn turning attempts that might be more profitably spent powering other divine feats, and restricts your potential use of Charisma as a dump stat if you don't care about divine feats. And compared to a straight cleric with Domain Spontaneity (healing), it's only one extra feat that you're sacking for that flexibility.
Domain Spontaneity (healing) would be a more straightforward way of achieving something similar …
Alternately, you could use the spontaneous domain casting alternative class feature (Player's Handbook II). This trades a cleric's normal spontaneous casting for spontaneous casting of spells from one of his domains (without limit, like his normal spontaneous casting).
If you make this exchange keyed to the healing domain, you lose spontaneous casting of cure minor wounds, mass cure moderate wounds, and mass cure serious wounds, but you gain spontaneous casting of heal, mass heal, and regenerate.
Of course, this still requires taking the healing domain.
I'm kind of curious as to why you're looking to get into Combat Medic at all. It really isn't all that good, especially when you realize how sub-optimal in-combat healing really is.
While many of the abilities are just garnish, you get full spellcasting and the rather excellent 5th-level ability, which gives you spontaneous access to the one curing spell you always want. It's a very nice addition that adds to the flexibility of your spell use since you no longer need to prepare the heal spell (and the mass versions of it are generally redundant) and can therefore put other spells in those slots. Obviously, if you take the trouble to enter the class, this means that you want to take all five levels.
Oh, absolutely. I didn't mean to imply the class was worthless - in fact, its fourth* and fifth level abilities are amazing. Just not "Combat Casting and Dodge on a healer" amazing. My point was that needing to be amazing as a healer is usually symptomatic of a different problem.
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Or rather, it would be, if it didn't reference the monk. In other words, your cleric gets a class feature that he can't use while wearing armor. Divine Oracle is usually taken if this is necessary; as I was saying earlier, it's only useful if you actually need Evasion and casting - for instance, you're using a weird entry route to Fochluchan Lyrist or Magelord (the latter almost certainly needs Arcane Disciple, and preferrably the unofficial notice-from-the-author that it should need 4th, not 5th, level spells).
Oh, absolutely. I didn't mean to imply the class was worthless - in fact, its fourth* and fifth level abilities are amazing. Just not "Combat Casting and Dodge on a healer" amazing.
I think of it as more like getting Signature Spell (heal), except that you don't need to be a wizard. The irony is that getting it through combat medic actually means preparing fewer of your spell resources as healing. So, for the combat medic, you can read "healer" as "a person who uses heal".
It's very sensible, since prevention is better than cure.
Or rather, it would be, if it didn't reference the monk. In other words, your cleric gets a class feature that he can't use while wearing armor.
It's a significant downside, the tendency of Wisdom-based casting classes to love the monk's belt notwithstanding.
I'm a cleric of Mystra, so won't be getting the healing domain. I've used the PF Separatist archtype to pick up the travel domain (the party will be relying on me for teleport, so I need this), and I think I'll go with Domain Spontaneity with that. Spontaneous DimDoor sounds nice. And fly.
I'm quite happy to take a few Heals once I get to that level. Obv spontaneous heals would be nice, but it's not worth the costs to me, i.e. I don't want 5 levels of combat medic!
I'm going to be picking up Rapid Spell and bringing in summons. They allow me to be contributing decently without soaking up all my resources. I suspect we'll be going through several combats/day (up to 5), so I need things that stick around.
Turning undead becomes useful with the Lightbringer (ECR) alternative, as it then allows Lvl-d6 damage with no mis-chance to incorporeal. I'd never bother using it on corporeal undead.
Divine Oracle is purely for evasion, although I won't be wearing heavy armor as I want to move at full speed (speed50 with longstrider and ParaAp's spatial awareness). I guess eventually I could get a monk's belt and replace my chain shirt, although I don't think I'll ever bother to get high AC. I'm hoping for a ring of invis eventually, or another way to stop things coming after me at all (suggestions?). But at the moment, I'm not actually pulling any threat, so nothing is bothering to attack me. Which is nice.
The party (which is NOT optimized in any way) is:
Rogue/Warlock (useless in combat, mainly annoys us with Web)
Rogue (TWF)
Paladin (Decent AC, decent Dam)
Barbarian (AC10, massive Dam)
Psion (sub-par for a psion)
It was the Barbarian who I need to heal sometimes, as things like to go for him since they know they can hit. Even 150hp gets down pretty quickly when you're pulling all the threat. I think until I can Heal I'll just cast delay death and finish the combat without him.
so can a dragonborn fighter be a medic?
No; you have to be able to cast divine healing spells.