Right now I'm currently playing in a different Ravenloft campaign with a pure healing/turning Radiant Servant of Pelor, but due to a lack of a cleric in our new campaign I've decided to play a cleric yet again. This time, however, I want to be a 'battle' cleric. Running up with either a sword and board or a twohander(preferably) to chop stuff up while also being a good spellcaster. My girlfriend is also joining and she wants to play a wildshaping focused druid.
The problem we have is that we are very limited in what books we have access to. Right now we can only use the Player's Guide, Dungeon Master's Guide, Player's Guide to Faerun, and Races of Faerun. I have not yet asked which Monster Manuals we will have access to (for a list of creatures to wildshape into) but I'm near 99% sure it will just be MM1.
Now, with this limitation, I've found it rather difficult to make a skilled frontline cleric, not to mention trying to make a druid wildshaper powerful enough to justify focusing in it (it's hard to accept anything less than Fleshraker Dinosaur
).My current preliminary build for a cleric is a Human Cleric of Mystra 6, with 16str and 16wis, with feats: initiate of mystra (for anyspell/greater anyspell), exotic weapon prof. G.Falchion, weapon focus G.Falchion, and Power attack. Obviously this isn't the best build available for being in melee all the time but I simply couldn't pass up the initiate of mystra feat. The other option would to be a cleric of Kord and go with a greatsword, while freeing up a few feats on the way.
For the druid, I don't even know where to start except maxed out Wisdom, Natural spell feat, and go Druid every level. I'd need some serious help with this one I think.
So, in essence I would like your help optimizing (read: min-maxing) these characters with the limited options we have available. There is one thing to note, though: if there is a prestige class that fits the bill perfectly, it is maybe possible for me to talk my GM into letting me have access to it specifically. He would never allow full access to any other books, nor any feats in any other books, but he seems ok with specific prestige classes for some reason sometimes. Also we can use any race within the book limitations up to +1 LA.
Summation for those who didn't want to read all the above:
Book Access: PG, DMG, PGtF, RoF
All races within those books up to +1 LA
Characters starting at level 6
Wanting to make a frontline Cleric and Wildshaping Druid
Thanks in advance for your help, this forums has been an invaluable resource to me for many months.
EDIT: Oh, and I should mention, I'm not very interested in turning undead for this campaign, as another player is taking care of that, so starting with 8 charisma wouldn't bother me in the slightest.
I fiddled with the druid and ended up with 6 levels Druid, Natural spell, spell focus: conjuration, and augmented summoning. I'm not sure where to go from there though.