Anama Priest

[WorshipSatan]

So I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the exile/avernum games by spiderweb software. I happen to love them and one thing that I like about them is a "cult" of priests known as the Anama. They're pretty nonviolent religion, displaying a preference to bookish learning, prayer meetings and diplomacy over military confrontation (though steal their holy relics and you'll soon find yourself lying in a puddle of what was once your own goo). One thing that they absolutely despise though, is arcane spellcasting.

Seeing as I'm not the greatest optimizer that ever lived, I was wondering how the playground might go about building a relatively high-op character with this flavor in mind. (I was thinking something along the lines of no DMM-persist due to their nonviolent nature but yes to IoM because the ability to cast inside an AMF screams of arcane hate to me, though I might drop that as Mystra is a god of magic.)

[Eldan]

I'd have a look at the Cloistered Cleric for the basic idea: they give up some of their melee power for more skill points and the Knowledge Domain as a bonus. And they can be found in the SRD.

After that, I'd look into feats that help with combat dispelling.

[Psyren]

I love the Exile games :smallsmile: one of my fondest wishes would be to adapt the Exile III engine to run Pathfinder, grid-based map and all.

Anyhoo, in addition to Eldan's excellent suggestion - for "bookish, diplomatic priests" the Paragnostic Assembly from Complete Champion seems like a great fit. They have a nice PrC called the Paragnostic Apostle that gets gets a bardic knowledge-esque lore ability, which works very well with the Cloistered Cleric's learning focus.

[Urpriest]

See, I totally thought that you just misspelled Anima Priest, which is an adaptation of the Anima Mage from Tome of Magic. But if anything that's the opposite of the fluff you're going for.

Also, Inquisiton Domain (achievable from Church Inquisitor PrC, Complete Divine) gives +4 on dispel checks, which might be nice for these guys to have.