I am fairly new to the D&D realm of roleplaying, and have just been invited into a campaign of 5 other guys (6 counting the DM) that are running through a Castle Ravenloft campaign. My only other experience was an Eberron campaign, where I ran a dwarf monk that was about to prestige into an Heir of Syberis. I REALLY liked the flavor of that guy and his ability to run in, throw some heavy blows, and get out. I am not sure I want to go that route again, especially since I won't have access to Heir.
The current play group consists of a Half-Orc Barbarian, a Human Fighter, a Human Ranger, and 2 Human Paladins.
Due to the flavor of Ravenloft and the make-up of the current party. I am leaning towards Cleric or Druid. My DM says I have a 33 point buy... whatever that means. We have access to all of the base hard-cover books, including the ones that have the prestige classes for the base classes. (Like fighter, monk, wizard, etc.) I, myself, only own the Eberron Player's Book, and the base Adventurer's Book... or whatever it is called.
I have read numerous posts about druid builds and cleric builds, but can't really follow where all of this information is coming from.... or if my DM will even allow it (since I don't recognize all of the abbreviations used to ask him about it).
Not sure if I should be trying to be a front-line attacker, or more of a back-up support-type role. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Be a cleric of Pelor. Take the Sun and Healing Domains to help you deal with healing and undead.
33 point buy is pretty basic. Have your DM explain to you what the point buy system works out to be, that should be in his DMG, he should have a chart to point out to you in it. Given a 33 point buy however, I would do your stats like this:
Str 14
Dex 11
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 16 (+2 for levels 4 and 8, so 18)
Cha 14
Not a fully optimal cleric build, but this will boost your Cha, make you reasonably durable, and let your cleric wear medium armor without a fuss. Your Charisma and Wisdom are the most important attributes you will need for this character. Charisma helps with turning undead. Wisdom governs your spellcasting. Boost Wisdom before Charisma, but if you keep running into undead, it may be wise to cast Eagle's splendor on yourself in order to deal with them more effectively.
I would suggest seeing if you can get your hands on a copy of Complete Divine from a friend or something. Not necessary to do so, but Augment Healing might be helpful for you. Its a basic feat that improves the amount of HP you heal with ever spell cast. I'll avoid going into the Divine Metamagic cheese thing. It seems like your party is relatively low powered, and might resent having their cleric become godly and leaving them in the dust.
Some spells you will want to prep:
Magic Vestment (lvl 3) to boost your shield or armors enhancement bonus for the day.
Eagles Splendor (lvl 2) to boost your Charisma when you see undead pop up. It will assist with turning them.
Divine Power (lvl 4) or Righteous Might (lvl 5) when you get to it. Blend these with Bears Endurance (Lvl 2) and Divine Favor (level 1), these will make you a better fighter than your fighters. It will just take time to put them all up on yourself when you know you will be entering a fight shortly.
Remember, you can cast healing spells by spending a full round action from any prepared spell you have. However, sometimes its better to have a few healing spells prepared in case you absolutely need to heal someone quickly in battle.
- With a DEX of 11, you have little to gain by limiting yourself to medium armor. Sure, Heavy armor will slow your speed to 20' per round, but the added AC will make up for that.
- I don't recall reading in the PHB that losing a prepared spell to spontaneously cast a Cure takes any more than a standard action.
- Point-buy is a standard alternative method of generating ability scores. Lots of DMs prefer this method because it takes the randomness out of generation, makes it easier for players to get the most out of any class, and is impossible to cheat. Rolling, on the other hand, by its nature results in a rather large variance between rolls and between characters. It also has an element of "no way did you roll 3 18s" - even if you did - unless you rolled in front of the DM.
Go here for an online tool to help you manage point buy.
Thanks again. I will spend some time digging deeper into Cleric and the Complete Divine book. A lot of the other players are looking into Prestige classes. When I was going to be a druid, everything I read said to stay pure druid. Is that the same case for Cleric?
Really, all you get advancing as a cleric are spellcasting and better turning. 9Which is what you want anyway.) If you can find a PrC that advances both, then everything else it offers is gold.
I think you'll want to look at the Radiant Servant of Pelor in Complete Divine. I think it has just about everything you'll want.
Well your party is missing a Rogue. And the best way to make a rogue is to have the Players hand Book and the complete scoundrels guide. They can be very good fighters if you can get in a sneak attack. And also think about taking the prestige class of an assassin they get sneak attack as well and it will stack with the sneak attack you get from Rogue. If you dont want to do that then become a rogue/mage and then take a prestige class out of the scoundrels guide you can get some pretty nasty things from their and make it very hard on the DM to kill you.
i'd just like to point out, once again this is a ravenloft game, sneak attack is useless (basicly) there.
even though in expedition to castle ravenloft is techniqually in faerun.
well, i see you've basicly got all the help you need, the rest is just to make up the awesome flavor for the character and your good, oh, and on a feat note, i suggest taking extra turning for this character, it gives you extra turning attempts each day, and that can really help in undead heavy places.
you can run a dread necro and pretty much control everything you run into if your DM see's that its legal. or an apostle of peace that can destroy everything with no hardship because he IS the embodiment of good, and doesn't have to do non-lethal damage to undead. he can blow them up!
or you can always go for the idiot proof cleric, or the more flavorful druid build. every time you attack its pretty much a "rawr" fest
let me elaborate for you.
level 1 human.
sacred vow
vow of poverty.
1 level cleric- turn attempts+2 domains
2 levels marshal- minor+major aura. good for helping party!
2 levels fighter- bonus feats=win. combat expertise maybe, and imp disarm/trip. for those nasty undead to be all prone and such
2 levels monk. why monk? evasion! and imp unarmed strike, and wisdom to AC, and blah blah blah.
thats 7. you will have a will save of +5 easy by this time, and do your ranks in concentration by level 7, so level 8+ you can be an apostle of peace.
with VOP(vow of poverty) and these class levels, you should be pretty freakin hard to hit, and should be able to mess stuff up with all the exalted feats your gonna get.
hmm druid i would do a straight build. get a fleshraker animal companion(dude so sexy...) and wildshape into whatever you need at the time.
While I appreciate the suggestion of rogue, and even considered it briefly, being hard for the DM to kill doesn't really help when everyone else in my party is dead.... since nobody was able to heal them.
This is a valid point.
As far as dealing with Undead, access to Complete Adventurer and Complete Scoundrel gives a wide range of ways to deal with undead, constructs, and plants. Grave Strike, Razing Strike (I think that's the one), and Vine Strike are all Swift spells which allow the application of Sneak Attack damage to undead, constructs, and plants respectively. Activating a swift spell from a wand is still a swift action.
Access to other resources, like the Magic Item Compendium, can make this even easier. (Greater Truedeath Crystal, anyone? :D )
Ignore Zillah's cheese. Sticking with Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor is a potent enough combination for an undead-heavy game. Massively multiclassing with a full-casting class like cleric is generally a bad idea. His build leaves you with the spellcasting and turning of a Level 1 cleric. This rather defeats the purpose of playing a cleric in an undead-focused game...
If you jumped into Radiant Servant as quickly as possible (level 7) your BAB would be one less than going straight cleric, but your Will and Fort saves will be better. And, starting at level 8, you’ll have two levels of Radiant goodness: immunity to disease, Empowered Healing, etc.
Another cost exists if your second domain is Strength. (Your first has to be Sun). The benefits of the Strength Domain are tied to cleric level, so the sooner you get out, the lower your bonus will be. Of course, that is once per day, so, I don’t consider it a big deal compared to what you gain.
I am going with Sun and Healing. Is there any reason why I have to wait until level 7 to go Radiant? Could I do it at level 6? Haven't walked through each level with my skill point spends and such... so I am not sure I could meet the pre-req's.
All the requirements have to be met before you can enter. Which means that you have to have 9 ranks in Knowledge (religion) before taking any levels of the PrC.
You cannot have 8 ranks in a skill, take the PrC, and then put the prerequisite 9th rank in the prerequisite skill.
You don't allocate skill points until you have chosen a class. You can’t choose the PrC until you have that last rank.
So Druid it is. Now I just have to decide how to spend my 33 points. I will have to make my character tomorrow while at work, so I grabbed the following books from our DM: Book of Exalted Deeds, Complete Adventurer, Complete Champion, Complete Divine, Defenders of the Faith, Masters of the Wild, Tome of Battle, and Sword and Fist. Any last minute advice would be greatly appreciated. Leaning towards total wild-shaper-type that takes a Vow of Poverty. Not sure what other feats to go with, or what skills are important. Handle Animal, Knowledge Nature, Heal, Concentration, Spellcraft come to mind.
If you are focusing on Wild Shape (and not spellcasting and Wildshape), Master of Many Forms from Complete Adventurer is the way to go. You could complement that with Warshaper or Nature's Warrior from Complete Warrior. And you arn't going to need/want Masters of the Wild, Defenders of the Faith, or Sword and Fist. Those are all 3.0 books and are mostly updated to 3.5 in the Complete series.