ECL 8 Cleric

[Boostaloo]

I was hoping that the board could help be build an optimized 32-point ECL 8 cleric using only SRD. Everything except Geshalt and Leadership is fair game. You guys are always so speedy, thank you for your help.

[Lhurgyof]

Beardy McBeer

Dwarven Cleric of Dionysus.

Possessions: Everfull Tankard x 400
Spell component pouch.

Feats: Great Fortitude, toughness x3

Have fun.


:smallwink:

[Il_Vec]

Cleric Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=420.0)

[Diarmuid]

Rather than be snarky or simply provide a link, I'll try to help.

Firstly, it would help if you told us what kind of role you want this cleric to fulfill.

Healer, Buffer, Blaster, Tank? Focused on a kind of enemy (undead perhaps)?

Depending on what you want to do will greatly impact what kind of character you build.

[Boostaloo]

Thank you.

Well, I will be the only healer in the group, but I would prefer to be more of a swiss army knife rather than a healbot. Ranged would be awesome, but I don't think Zen Archery is in the SRD. A friend of mine came up with a Half-Giant Build with Half-Celestial template, with Monk's belt and unarmed striking, but I don't know if that is my best bet.

I read the cleric's handbook, and I like alot of the ideas, it just seemed like optimization involved a lot more than SRD.

[Diarmuid]

That is indeed correct. Most of the heavy optimization utilizes many sources for interesting combinations.

Also, most optimizations involve a specialization in a specific thing. A Swiss Army Knife is OK at a lot of things but not great at any. This is sort of the anithesis of optimization.

[Greenish]

Well, I will be the only healer in the group, but I would prefer to be more of a swift army knife rather than a healbot.Observe.

Swift army knife: http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v125/kingfreek629/Fairbairn_Sykes.jpg

Swiss army knife: http://www.aceros-de-hispania.com/image/swiss-army-knife/swiss-army-knife.jpg
:smallwink:

[Boostaloo]

Thanks for the heads up...

[Shadowleaf]

Honestly, it's pretty simple.

Beef up your Wisdom, then your Constitution. Try to keep Dex and Int at 10. Dumb Cha.

Choose a lot of buff spells and remember to use them. If you expect combat, cast a buff or three. Choose buffs that boosts your combat performance - +AC, +damage and so forth.

Either spont. convert spells into Healing spells or buy Wands.

Go for a great big twohanded weapon. Smack enemies until they fall over.

[Eldariel]

If you have high stats, you can go Archer Cleric in Core. It takes:
- High Wis
- Decent Con
- Decent Dex
- Some Str

If you have those, you are set though you'll probably want to wait until level 9 to start actually shooting things hard a lot when you don't have preparation time. If you really want to go Archer you may have to cut down a bit on your starting Wisdom but like:

14 Str
14 Dex (16 for Elf)
14 Con (12 for Elf)
10 Int
16 Wis
8 Cha

Should work. All level-ups go to Wisdom, obviously. That's only 30 points so you could go 12 Int, 10 Int 10 Cha, 16 base Dex, 16 base Con, 17 base Wis, or some such. Also note that this high Str isn't strictly necessary as you have other sources of bonus damage, especially once Polymorph Any Object gives you access to basically any base stats permanently. At that point, you'd probably wish you took something like 10 Str and 18 Wisdom instead. Even now, it's only couple of points of damage so...something to keep in mind. Casters like maximizing their casting stat, after all.

10 Str
16 Dex
12 Con
10 Int
18 Wis
8 Cha

Seems very respectable, though 12 Con is always a bit of a pain.


Few pointers:
- In Core, turning is almost worthless so don't worry about your Charisma. There's nothing interesting that can be done with it.
- Elf actually isn't a terrible race for an Archer Cleric (though Con loss hurts, Dex boost helps) thanks to the free Longbow proficiency. As Ehlonna doesn't provide War-domain, that's the cheapest way to get it in class.
- Rapid Shot is the obvious power feat for an Archer Cleric; everything else is all gravy.
- Crafts are as good as ever if you have any downtime or simply have used them before the campaign, you probably want Extend Spell and Quicken Spell metamagic in your repertoire (Quickening Divine Favor really helps with buffing) and that's about it.


Some random assessment of Core Cleric Spells I have lying around:
Offense:
Level 1
Cause Fear: Nice Will Save-or-Lose as long as the HD limit isn't a problem; unfortunately single-target. Close range.
Command: Nice Will Save-or-Suck. Again, though, single-target. Close range.

Level 2
Hold Person: Humanoid SoL. Handy. Medium range.
Shatter: Destroy weapons, armor, etc. Nice combination with Dispels and such. Close range.
Silence: Caster Will SoL, or no-save effect if you have some control effects to prevent opponent from leaving the covered area. Also, nice readied action to screw spellcasting. Long range (!!) multi-target.
Sound Burst: Meh damage, with Fort-or-Stun. If you have someone to CDG the stunned guy, it's alright. The damage isn't the reason to pick it. Close range multi-target.
Spiritual Weapon: It's a decent damage spell, especially since Cleric BAB is pretty good; it'll keep attacking for effectively the entire combat and it takes only a move action to redirect.

Level 3
Bestow Curse: Will SoS. Clerics have lots of these. Good for debuffing Planar Bound creatures or such. Touch range.
Blindness/Deafness: Blindness is an excellent debuff. Fort SoS basically. Medium range.
Dispel Magic: Magic is very powerful, so ability to stop magic is absolutely incredible. Disable Fighter's gear, remove buffbots buffs, save your allies from variety of SoLs, infinitely powerful. Medium range multi-target.
Invisibility Purge: Well, not really offense, but still. 5'/level range.
Searing Light: Deals crap damage to living or slightly less crap damage to undead. Yuck. Medium range ray.

Level 4
Dimensional Anchor: Well, only way you'll ever kill those outsiders. Medium range.
Dismissal: Basically amounts to a limited Will SoD. Close range. It's nice 'cause you can make it notably harder than normal spell of yours to resist by using stuff the target hates with the spell.
Poison: Fort Save-or-BeHurtBad. Meh. Touch range. Yuck.

Level 5
Greater Command: Multitarget Command that lasts until they make a save. Pretty useful, if high level. Close range, 30' between victims, mind-affecting.
Plane Shift: Everyone knows of the spells transportation capabilities, but as long as your target cannot Plane Shift, sending someone to say...Positive Energy Plane is a very good way of killing people. Basically a Will SoD with Touch Range.
Slay Living: Fort SoD with some consolation damage. Touch.
Symbol of Pain: Symbols are fun. Paint a bunch of 'em on some item, reveal it and watch opposition roll saves. Rubber balls are pretty nice, for example. Your armor is a good place too. This one is practically a SoS.
Symbol of Sleep: See above. Nice little slumberparty here. Though Mind-Affecting begins to be a problem on these levels.

Level 6
Banishment: Like Dismissal, except stronger.
Blade Barrier: Meh, it's a solid battlefield morphing ability that's also Ref-or-Take-Some-Damage. Not bad. Medium range.
Greater Dispel Magic: See Dispel Magic.
Harm: Fort or Take Damage. Meh. Fine for e.g. channeling tho. Touch.
Symbol of Fear: See Symbol of Pain. Basically SoL version. Annoyingly Mind-Affecting.
Symbol of Persuasion: See Symbol of Pain. Basically SoL version. Annoyingly Mind-Affecting.
Undeath to Death: Great for killing undead. Medium range 40' bunch.

Level 7
Blasphemy/Dictum/Holy Word/Word of Chaos: Boost your caster level and world will tremble. No-save death or at least be screwed depending on your CL. Only SR can save people here (and with your buffed CL, rarely).
Destruction: Fort SoD. Close range. Nice 10d6 consolation damage.
Dimensional Lock: Like Dimensional Anchor, except gotta somehow restrict opponent's movement, but it offers no save.
Symbol of Stunning: See Symbol of Pain, SoL version.
Symbol of Weakness: See Symbol of Pain, SoS version (most characters can't carry their stuff after that Fort-damage).

Level 8
Earthquake: A rather versatile offense spell that can be used to lock down opponents or such depending on terrain. Damage isn't impressive but the conditions it can impose, often without save, are. Also nicely stops activity while it's going. If DM says the save stops the Pinned-condition too, it becomes much worse.
Fire Storm: Deals a bunch of damage. Meh.
Symbol of Death: See Symbol of Pain, SoD version.
Symbol of Insanity: See Symbol of Pain, Will SoD version. Meh at mind-affecting.

Level 9
Miracle: It does everything, most without XP cost. Just about the best level 9 spell in the game.
Gate: Solars are good.
Implosion: Boom Boom. Kinda expensive, but at least it can kill multiple folks.
Field Alteration + Ally Generation:
Level 1
Obscuring Mist: Nice way to stop annoying targeted spells, archery and such. Gives melee full miss chance thoo. Limits yourself too tho. Personal range.
Summon Monster I: See the Malconvoker Handbook.

Level 2
Darkness: Older version of Darkness. Touch range, can toss the object or such.
Summon Monster II: See the Malconvoker Handbook.

Level 3
Animate Dead: Material components are kinda meh. Eternally usable and faithful underlings are pretty handy though, if you can afford them.
Daylight: Mostly when dealing with Underdark races, Undead and such. Touch like Darkness.
Deeper Darkness: Sorta like Darkness. Unfortunately, it's not as Dark as it should be. Fogs >>> Darkness. Touch like Darkness.
Stone Shape: I don't honestly need to state in how many ways morphing stone can be useful, do I? Touch.
Summon Monster III: See the Malconvoker Handbook.
Wind Wall: Pretty nice especially in larger conflicts where large squads of archers are a concern. There are pretty few ways archers can by RAW shoot through this, though you could argue that big enough bows and force projectiles would.

Level 4
Control Water: Very nice when water is available for drowning places, killing waterbreathing creatures in shallow waters and such. Just, useful. Long range.
Giant Vermin: You shouldn't really bother with anything less than Gargantuans, but with CL buffs those are available pretty quickly and particularly Colossal Scorpion is very efficient even against CR 20 challenges as long as the area is thus that they cannot just fly away (you can help with that); they have very high Attack-stats and the poisons are extremely potent.
Lesser Planar Ally: Solid allies, even if it's expensive to call. Try to call 'em when it falls under the "strongly ties to creature's ethos"; that's free and the XP cost isn't really that major. And Outsiders are pretty darn good allies.
Summon Monster IV: See the Malconvoker Handbook.

Level 5
Insect Plague: Swarms are hardy, but unfortunately not very damaging at this point anymore. The Distraction-function is handy, but beyond that it's not very good. Long range tho.
Summon Monster V: See the Malconvoker Handbook.
Wall of Stone: One of Wizard's best battlefield control spells is no worse for Cleric. Isolate enemies, buy time, block entries, make death prisons, whatever. Reflex if used to encase people. Medium range.

Level 6
Animate Object: Unfortunately Animated Objects have horrible BAB and such so they don't hit much. The special attacks are somewhat usable tho. Generally best with Permanency. Medium range.
Antilife Shell: A very strong defensive buff, here because you can morph the battlefield with it. Living creatures simply can't approach the area around you. NO SAVE! 10' radius.
Create Undead: Some of the undead are very useful. This is an expensive spell, but as the undead can multiply, provided it's not against your alignment, this can be very very handy.
Planar Ally: See Lesser Planar Ally.
Summon Monster VI: See the Malconvoker Handbook.

Level 7
Control Weather: Slow to cast, but great for demolishing armies, cities and such. Not quite as strong as the 5th level Druid-spell Control Winds, but much more versatile.
Repulsion: Like Antilife Shell vs. anything, but with Will-save to negate. I don't like it nearly as much.
Summon Monster VII: See the Malconvoker Handbook.

Level 8
Antimagic Field: Magic's good, all that jazz. Also, Initiate of Mystra makes this the most one-sided, unfair spell ever. 10' radius (suggest Widening; see Rules Compendium for relevant stuff regarding rules on this, it always confuses people).
Create Greater Undead: See Create Undead.
Summon Monster VIII: See the Malconvoker Handbook.

Level 9
Miracle: It does everything, most without XP cost. Just about the best level 9 spell in the game.
Gate: Solars are good.
Summon Monster IX: See the Malconvoker Handbook.
Defense + Buff:
Level 1
Bless: Not amazing, but every bonus is a bonus. The more characters, the better.
Endure Elements: Eh, obvious utility.
Magic Stone: Handy buff for Sling-users. Note that sling is a solid ranged level 1 weapon for high Str types, being quite light, almost free and adding Str to damage.
Magic Weapon: Handy buff for anyone. If a bit small.
Protection from Alignment: Great buff, stops all mind control in addition to solid Deflection/Resistance.
Sanctuary: Obvious utility, you aren't attacking anyways, so... Also can be used to protect another, who's about to go down.
Shield of Faith: Touch-spell that grants nice Deflection-bonus to AC.

Level 2
Aid: Mostly just Bless with few additional Temp HP. Pretty weak beyond the first levels.
Align Weapon: Occasionally absolutely crucial with early opponents packing some pesky DRs.
Bull's Strength & al.: Handy early on.
Resist Energy: Great vs. casters and energy-based creatures and just environment.

Level 3
Magic Circle against Alignment: Like Protection, except area-of-effect and stops summoned creatures and such. Handy. 10' area.
Magic Vestment: One of the best buffs in the game, allows you to, especially in conjuction with Animated Shields and such, give everyone decent AC. Use with caster level boosters for early +5s all day.
Meld into Stone: Fine "Invisibility"-substitute that's not trumped by most spells. It's hard to detect your presence without heavy magical scanning.
Prayer: Short-duration Bless (with Luck-bonus tho) and a penalty to enemies. Meh.
Protection from Energy: Like Resist Energy except complete immunity to certain threshold. I prefer Resist Energy though sometimes, when taking huge blazing balls of fire, this is better.
Water Breathing: Too obvious.
Water Walk: Yeah.

Level 4
Air Walk: Obvious. Notably, you still walk so stuff depending on jumping and such should work normally. Nice duration, though not 1h/level. Touch.
Imbue with Spell Ability: Divine Favor is a nice one, for example. Personal spells in general.
Greater Magic Weapon: Like Magic Vestment, except for weapons. The nice part is that Clerics can buff their CL like crazy so you'll have +5s in the mid-teens. Close range.
Spell Immunity: Stuff such as Enervation and such is very solid to protect people from. Touch.

Level 5
Disrupting Weapon: Kills undead. Handy in Undead-heavy scenarios. With iteratives, it amounts to a whole ton of SoDs vs. Undead. Touch-range.
Spell Resistance: 12+CL is a nice amount, without cap, especially for a Cleric. It's Touch so it can be used to ward the entire party and it's nice 10 min/level (if it only were 1 hour/level...).
True Seeing: Too obvious.

Level 6
Mass Bull's Strength & al.: When you have hordes of servants/underlings/whatever, these can be worthwhile. Party will just buy gear.
Heroes' Feast: Extend it for 24-hour Fear-immunity and Morale-bonus to Hit and Will-saves. One is enough to feed the entire party and then some. Should be staple once you get it given the DCs of the fear auras some creatures have.
Wind Walk: Kinda like your version of Teleport. Nice travel-spell if actual Teleportation is not available.
Word of Recall: Solid replication of one function of Teleportation. Nice overall.

Level 7
Ethereal Jaunt: Decent escape spell tho only 1 round/level and Personal.
Refuge: Nice "Oh ****"-Contingency to give to e.g. party Rogue or someone else bound to get into trouble alone.

Level 8
Cloak of Chaos/Holy Aura/Shield of Law/Unholy Aura: Decent defensive alignment-buffs, though they unfortunately don't stack with common protective items. There's still the "successful attack requires will-save vs. Confusion" and multi-targeting going on for it tho. Again, very solid if you have unequipped underlings.
Greater Spell Immunity: Good for the same reason Spell Immunity is good.

Level 9
Astral Projection: You pay some for effective immortality, especially combined with Plane Shift. Basically, you create a clone of yourself, for which dying doesn't make any difference. It's great how Plane Shift is a level 5 spell for Clerics. Multitarget.
Miracle: It does everything, most without XP cost. Just about the best level 9 spell in the game.
Etherealness: Handy for bypassing places and spying on things and killing ethereal issues and so on. And for staying out. I don't like spending level 9 slots on this tho.


It skips over the self-buffs (notably Divine Power/Divine Favor/Righteous Might forms the core of key personal buffs available to a Cleric) as it was made with a caster Cleric in mind but the same things apply broadly and you'll still want some combat magic handy for when attacking isn't the best option. Also do note that Bull's Strength-line tends to have long enough duration to maintain. As one isn't available for Dex on Cleric's list, getting stat boost for it should be a priority (along with Wisdom, obviously).

And yeah, other than that, Greater Magic Weapon & Magic Vestment are obviously nice, especially once you get Beads of Karma (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#strandofPrayerBeads). Have your allies get you Pearl of Power IIIs/IVs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#pearlofPower) if they want those cast on their weapons before you can truly spare lvl 3-4 slots.

Oh, and Domains...Travel and Trickery are excellent. The rest are little less impressive but Luck is alright, Animal has Shapechange on level 9 (which, if you don't know, is the best spell in the game pretty much), Creation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/domains.htm#creationDomain) has friggin' Genesis & Air/Weather have some decent Druid-onlies like Control Winds (aka. "Destroy Target City"), Call Lightning and such. Trickery/Travel gives you the best coverage though; Teleports are very strong on an Archer (and having Fly on 3 certainly doesn't hurt) and very useful in general, Trickery comes with Invisibility/Confusion/Polymorph Any Object and Time Stop (!!), Travel has an excellent granted power and they expand your skill list with interesting stuff. Luck notably has Moment of Prescience. Oh, and Magic Domain has a great granted power if you're actually interested in lots of Wizard consumables (they're good), and it comes with Disjunction and early Anti-Magic Field for obvious benefits. None by 8 though.


So overall, I'd go:
Elf Cleric 8
10
16
12
10
18
8

1. PBS
3. Rapid Shot
6. Precise Shot
9. (Quicken Spell)

If not interested in Crafts; Craft Wondrous Items over Precise Shot is a very respectable option. Also, Craft Magic Arms and Armor would help you get that überenchanted bow you'll want (I'll say this: Most damage in Core Archer build comes from the bow being awesome). Also, if you plan on relying Divine Power a bit more (it'll be a while before you can Quicken it tho), Cloistered Cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantClasses.htm) offers lots of skill points at the cost of some BAB and HP.

Don't forget that in-combat healing is meh; before you get Heal it just isn't very efficient. Get a scroll of Heal for emergencies and rely on Wand of Cure Light Wounds. They're only 750 gp and heal an average of 275 HP per Wand.

[Starbuck_II]

I suggest Savage Species:

Be a Ghaele Eldrarin.
By level 8, (ECl) you get 8 cleric casting + spells from 5 domains added to spell list (no domain powers though).
In addition you get Chain lighting 1/day and other SLA abilities.
Did I mention full BAB and simple/martial proficiency?

[Eldariel]

I suggest Savage Species:

Be a Ghaele Eldrarin.
By level 8, (ECl) you get 8 cleric casting + spells from 5 domains added to spell list (no domain powers though).
In addition you get Chain lighting 1/day and other SLA abilities.
Did I mention full BAB and simple/martial proficiency?


using only SRD

:smallconfused:

[Starbuck_II]

Somehow I missed SRD only: sorry.

[Maryring]

If you want to play a caster cleric, may I add my weight behind Cloistered Cleric? You lose some BAB and get a lower HD yes, but that can be dealt with. The CC gains many more skillpoints, some very nifty extra spells, especially the free identify, AND the Lore ability.

Granted, the usefulness of these are highly dependant upon your GM, but I think they are most excellent.

[Boostaloo]

Eldariel, thank you so much for that breakdown! That sounds like exactly what I would want to play. Out of curiosity, if I modified the build and went Half-Elf, and then picked up 3 levels in Half-Elf Paragon, and Human paragon which would allow me to take longbow proficiency, as well as, let me have a 24 WIS and 2 more feats, would it be worth the lost caster levels?

[Greenish]

Out of curiosity, if I modified the build and went Half-Elf, and then picked up 3 levels in Half-Elf Paragon, and Human paragon which would allow me to take longbow proficiency, as well as, let me have a 24 WIS and 2 more feats, would it be worth the lost caster levels?Caster levels are a very precious thing. If you want half-elf, try getting half-human from DMG. It's essentially a half-elf raised among elves, and gets their weapon proficiencies.

[Eldariel]

Eldariel, thank you so much for that breakdown! That sounds like exactly what I would want to play. Out of curiosity, if I modified the build and went Half-Elf, and then picked up 3 levels in Half-Elf Paragon, and Human paragon which would allow me to take longbow proficiency, as well as, let me have a 24 WIS and 2 more feats, would it be worth the lost caster levels?

In short? No, not really. You can already get the proficiency by dropping one Caster Level and taking a level of any of the martial classes; Ranger, Fighter and Barbarian stand out as the most interesting of those options. But that means losing one caster level. Remember those spells I mentioned? You're barely getting to the good stuff now on 8. Divine Power is level 4. Quickened Divine Favor (and indeed, Divine Favor at full power) is level 5. Righteous Might is level 5. You'll eventually want to be able to quicken Divine Power on your own power and that's a level 8 slot.

And all the goodies? Polymorph Any Object, Time Stop, etc.? Way further down the line. You may never get there but if you do, you get to have lots of fun (not to mention, you'll be able to fulfill any party members' fantasies of being some majestic creature)! And Greater Magic Weapon and Magic Vestment are key buffs that get better with caster level. On level 12, with Beads of Karma you can be granting +4 across the board to everyone's weapons and armor, which is a really significant buff for the whole party. Also, being able to Extend Heroes' Feast and such is rather key. Add Orange Prism Ioun Stone and level 15 sees everyone with +5 weapons and armor. And you with 8th level spells.


In short, spellcasting gets so good that you really don't want to lose levels of it. Really, if I were to run a non-Elf Archer Cleric in Core, I'd just burn a feat on Longbow Proficiency. But Elf bonus to Dex is actually quite useful here. You could run Wild Elf (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm#wildElf) if you wanted hit to a slightly less crucial stat than Con, btw. That may actually not be a bad idea at all. But yeah, Half-Elf doesn't really give you much so I wouldn't bother with that. Most likely, I'd suggest Elf or Human here, going straight Cleric at least until level 17 (unless you take a PrC that fully advances casting like Loremaster, Thaumaturgist or some such).