Cloistered Cleric vs. Seer

[Trekkin]

As my previous threads have indicated, I am attempting to build a PC whose goal is not combat prowess but knowledge mastery. After conferring with my DM and fellow players, I have narrowed it down to two possible classes:

1. Cloistered Cleric
2. Seer

As far as I can tell, the Cleric (of Boccob. What else?), via Guidance of the Avatar and Lore of the Gods is going to be better at Knowledge checks, while the Seer will be better, via things like Object Reading and Psionic Identify (financially free and takes 12 seconds with Linked Power), is going to be better at gaining more new knowledge.

Thus, my questions two:
1. If you've played either class, what has been your experience re: knowing everything?
2. From a purely theoretical standpoint, how might I work to make each class insufferably knowledgeable?

[Draz74]

Meh, either way you're going to need UMD to use Scholar's Touch. :smalltongue:

[Draken]

You should actualy add the factotum to your list. All skills as class skills, high skill points, and if you dig around you can find some good Wiz/Sorc spells for your purposes with Arcane Dilletante.

And last, but not least, Cunning Knowledge allows you to add your Factotum level to any one skill check once per day (per skill).

It starts at +1, it ends at +20.

Pretty nice, really.

[Trekkin]

For UMD, I have Wedded to History: Golden Ager from Dragon 354. It adds UMD to my class skill list and reduces the threshold for failure.

And I looked at the Factotum, but I'd like rather more spellcasting than that.

[Eldariel]

I've played both and I do prefer Cloistered Cleric. The big issue is the lack of Int-based casting meaning your Knowledge-checks won't be quite what they could be, but Knowledge-domain, domains in general and access to Lore (which happens to be pretty damn difficult to access and incredibly useful for the one who knows it all) and Divine Insight pulls them ahead IMHO. Do note that Cleric is not bad at Divination either, particularly not the Cloistered variant.

Spell-domain is the big one, giving you access to Contact Other Plane, the ultimate intelligence acquisition tool, among others. And you are a Cleric of Boccob so that's trivially available to you. And honestly, Divine Casting has incredible Divinations already. You'll miss out on...very few things, though Psionics has Metafaculty which is just incredible and completely irreplaceable. On the other hand, Psionics lacks much of what divine casting provides you in this regard.


And yeah, my experience as Cloistered Cleric...well, the "know everything"-part goes really well when you have appropriate Knowledge to roll on anything and Lore on anything at all. And a billion Divinations, cast at +1 CL with Knowledge-domain. Seer tends to have few less skill points overall (even with Int-focus), which makes it harder to max all Knowledges while still having Concentrations and such, but on the other hand, their powers do make up for some of that.

Ultimately, I think Cloistered Cleric is a bit closer to what you want; they're better at knowing everything but worse at seeing things for how they really are and locating things and so on. But for Knowing, I think they win.

[Trekkin]

Ah; thank you. So which would be better at finding out? The DM has thus far been rather tight-lipped on what we can find, so without being antagonistic I'd like a chance to satisfy my curiosity as much as possible.

[Kantolin]

I, very biased-ly, vote Seer due to: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/sensitivitytoPsychicImpressions.htm

Which is a ridiculously awesomely cool power, and may fit you a heck of a lot. ^_^ I don't know if there's a cleric analogue.

[Eldariel]

Ah; thank you. So which would be better at finding out?

I...cannot say. Their methods are so different and the limits of a Knowledge-skill are pretty unclear too (When using magical boosts, can you know something you couldn't know? What's the limit of what they can know?). On one hand, Psions have nothing akin to Contact Other Plane in their arsenal. On the other hand, as I said, Metafaculty is sublime, and e.g. Object Reading is extremely useful too. Hypercognition is very useful but ultimately the divine options tend to trump it in power outside the specific use of pumping the Int-check, for which divine casting has its own tools.

Seer's high-level abilities are very interesting and it gets some very useful information gathering much earlier than Cleric gains equivalent spells, but on the other hand Cleric works on a broader basis and has access to a greater variety of information sources, while Seer tends to excel at bruteforcing solutions on their own. Like, Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions is quite similar to Hindsight and yet Hindsight is a level 9 spell with a material component (you can replicate it with Miracle).


Ultimately, I don't think that question can be answered but it's worth pointing out that CC has more breadth in his ability while you could argue Seer has more raw power, at least personal power (CC can sidestep that by consorting with deities and the like).

[Trekkin]

Well, I'm always a sucker for raw power. Seer it is!

[Divide by Zero]

If you do go for cleric, you might want to consider the Academic Priest feat from Legends of the Twins (Dragonlance) if your DM allows it. It lets you use Int instead of Wis for bonus spells and highest level known, but not DCs. This doesn't seem like the type of character to use a lot of save-based spells, so that might not be a problem.

[Optimystik]

If you do go for cleric, you might want to consider the Academic Priest feat from Legends of the Twins (Dragonlance) if your DM allows it. It lets you use Int instead of Wis for bonus spells and highest level known, but not DCs. This doesn't seem like the type of character to use a lot of save-based spells, so that might not be a problem.

...Wait. Can Archivists qualify for that? That would fix their MAD issues.

[*.*.*.*]

You could also try Archivists and load up on the Dark Knowledge feats. Learning almost every creature type and exploiting their weaknesses? Awesome! Not to mention the fact they can learn every spell in the game with some tinkering.

[Divide by Zero]

...Wait. Can Archivists qualify for that? That would fix their MAD issues.

Yes, they can. It applies to any divine casting class. The equivalent feat for Charisma unfortunately does nothing to help Favored Souls.

[Trekkin]

My DM has specifically disallowed archivists.