Vampire Spawn Cleric

[kudosmog]

Hoping for some interesting ideas since the last time I played D&D was ~15 years ago.

Friends and I started a campaign where we're all evil characters, and we ended up turned into vampire spawn.
As the game progressed, our master was slain and we now have our free will back.
We're currently low level but will be progressing our vamp levels to max during a long break(OOG) we have for holidays.

Group composition is:
myself as a level 4 cleric/ level 8 vampire spawn
level 2 wizard/ level 8 vampire spawn
level 2 ninja / level 8 vampire spawn

plus, a lich of unknown level(probably 3rd level warlock, max level lich).

I end up being the fighter/buffer/healer/damage caster. The Lich and Wizard can handle the physical damage casting, the ninja can handle the physical damage dealing, and I have to somehow keep the attention of the things we're fighting without getting my butt handed to me.

The feats I chose so far were Extra Turning, Profane Vigor, Profane LifeLeech.
Originally I wanted to go for divine metamagic which is why I chose Extra Turning, but realized it would be a long time before I got anything good, so I dropped the idea. Maybe I shouldn't have...I dunno. I picked up Profane Vigor and LifeLeech because they sounded like fun and fit the character.

Basically, any pointers on how to continue the progression of the character and be somewhat of a decent fighter while still maintaining healing? I don't mind having a non min/max character (evident by my feat choices lol) for better roleplay, but I also want to make sure I am as useful as possible within the constraints I've put myself in.

Oh, I also had considered the undead leadership feat because we currently took over the old masters castle and I wanted maids and to still have the ability to attract living followers to move caskets during the day.

[Flickerdart]

You may want to take Improved Turn Resistance, to stop enemy Clerics from dusting you.

One of your party members may want to retrain to a Dread Necromancer - Charnel Touch would keep the lot of you in tip-top shape all day for free. Wightblade (Dr348) and Life Drain (LM) will make your energy drain attack useful - the first lets you drain with a melee weapon instead of only your natural attack, the second adds your Charisma modifier to the amount of HP a negative level drains from the victim. With a high enough Charisma (which you want for turn attempts anyway) you'll be keeping yourself hale and hearty while your enemies lose more and more HP.

[kudosmog]

Oh, we're using 3.5(e?) rules with a bunch of supplemental's available

Improved Turn Resistance will be looked into for sure.
I guess a cleric turn would destroy us outright, as in no chance to turn to gas and escape?

The character who plays the wizard in the party is very much trying to play as a necromancer, and loved the idea of summoning/controlling undead to fight for him.

[gbprime]

Well turns just scare you off unless they can double your hit dice, so some turn resistance is pretty much proof against anything but being scared away. UNLESS... They have the Sun Domain or a handful of other ways to upgrade their turning to Greater Turning. That dusts you if it equals your HD, so yes, turn resistance is important to get.

Though I'm thinking that if the whole group is undead, the DM won't throw a lot of Greater Turning at you, because it pretty much destroys characters.

[kudosmog]

That is a good point. If a turn has the chance at just dusting us instantly, I dunno if he'd be so evil to put us in that situation without a way out.

Still, being able to shake off turn attempts which would normally cause me to flee would still be nice.

I looked up Dread necromancer and it seems like more of a melee focused necro. Am I reading it wrong? I don't think our necro/wizard would go for it(assuming that's accurate). He likes sitting in the back and getting undead to fight for him.

[Keld Denar]

Its not really THAT melee focused. You DO get one martial weapon proficiency, but the Dread Necro handbook recommends spending it on Longbow proficiency to stay in the back. The defenses are neat, but not really strong enough to mix it up in melee much after the first couple levels, and especially not since you guys are starting with 8 levels of not-PC classes. Charnal Touch isn't really that good for meleeing past low levels, but it is REALLY useful for healing your party and his minions during downtime between combats. And don't forget, its still a full caster. Plus, it gets rebuke undead, for even greater degrees of minionmancy. Pick up an Incorp undead like a Shadow, which will be incredibly useful for scouting and in combat.

[kudosmog]

The idea on dread necro prompted me to look up some info on it, and I found a bunch of cool stuff from http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872726/Revised_Necromancer_Handbook

Namely, the Uttercold Assault Necromancer (Wizard) build.

Our entire party is undead, and casting the uttercold spells means our wizards spells are going to end up giving us some healing and blasting the crap out of anything we'd actually fight.

He's still going to be just as crappy summoning undead, but his crappy summoned undead plus all my awesome undead will be staying up a lot longer in fights. Plus if I go melee cleric then I'm going to be getting healed by the negative energy of his spells.


What are some good ways of increasing Base Attack Bonus for my cleric?
I believe we're going to be ECL 14 after the break (8lvls vamp spawn, I have 4 levels cleric, so 2 more levels to choose what I need).
I believe I can re-structure my feats as well. Some of us are just playing for the first time so the DM is being cool about learning our classes and picking what we want. Once we start from the long break though I think we're set on our path.

[Elfstone]

Improving BAB you ask? Why quite simply a persisted Divine Power would do the trick.

Makes your BAB= to your Character Level. Quite nice. And if you can make it last all day with DMM fun, its really nice.

[Flickerdart]

A 6th level Cleric can't persist Divine Power, and even if he could, he would get a whopping +2 BAB from it.

[kudosmog]

Right now I get +4 BAB from 8th lvl vamp spawn
+4 BAB from 6th level cleric

Once I hit 7th level cleric I can then persist a Divine Power

From my understanding, that would make my BAB = +11 (7 from cleric, 4 from vamp)

So for the cost of two feats, and having to choose the undeath domain + planning domain for the Extend and extra turning feats, I can get a +2 BAB(lvl 7 cleric is +5BAB), a little STR and 7 extra HP.

I dunno if that's worth it.

I *am* going to pick up the wightblade feat and life drain. I really like that idea. I'll also be picking up leadership (DM is allowing me to recruit both undead and living humanoids with it, just no bonus like with undead leadership).

Since my god got fubar'd, I am devoting myself to another god. I can choose any NE, LE god. One domain must be from their list, and one domain is my own to choose.

I've been reading this a lot to try and find the best choices, but being an evil campaign and being a vamp spawn lots of these options just don't seem to fit:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=420.0