Thoughts on Build. Cloistered Cleric.

[Elder_Kin]

Hey. I'm finally getting back into REAL table top (not that online forum non-sense, only nerds do that :smalltongue: ) and I'm going to be playing a with a new group of folks who I work with. The DM is willing to allow me to play stuff from official sources provided I provide them. Hey also asked if I could play a divine caster as the party lacks a proper healer. I plan on a cloistered cleric/human paragon that'll go cleric until I can work bone knight in there somehow. It's starting at 3 but will probably make it till higher. My planned build is as follows.

Domains: Planning, Time, Knowledge*
ECL1//Cleric 1: Extend spell(Planning), Improved Initiative(Time), Persistent Spell(1st), Extra Turning(Human).
ECL2//Paragon 1:
ECL3//Paragon 2: Divine Metamagic (Persist), Human Paragon(*).

Here's the deal. I don't know what to do with that last feat. I can take Knowledge Devotion as a feat and keep the knowledge domain or I can get rid of the knowledge domain (removing the spells and extra skills). Is the domain power and extras skills really worth it, especially considering of the knowledge skills I'd lose that would be applicable to monterers (Dungeoneering, Local, Nature) I can take one of anyway as per the feat?

[Urpriest]

A thought: Since you're starting at 3rd, why not make Human Paragon your first level for the increased skill points? You'd then use the Human Paragon bonus feat at 3rd to get Persist so you can get DMM Persist. Makes it a bit easier to get the Ride ranks for Bone Knight. Your free feat slot gets moved to 1st, which unfortunately prevents you from taking Knowledge Devotion with it, but there are other options.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The answer to an open 3rd level feat is always Item Familiar. Another Extra Turning would be useful if you can't stack Night Sticks. Practiced Spellcaster is another option since it looks like you plan to squander at least two caster levels.

Why Bone Knight? Why on a Cloistered Cleric? Crusader 1/ Cleric 4/ Bone Knight would be a lot easier to do, with an equal number of lost caster levels. If you absolutely have to use Cloistered Cleric, maybe go with something that has a bit more synergy with that, preferably with fewer/no lost caster levels. Cloistered Cleric trades combat ability for better spellcasting; if you lose levels of spellcasting to make up the lost combat ability, you'll end up at a net loss.

As the 'party healer' you want to get 3rd level Cleric spells as early as possible, for DMM: Persist Mass Lesser Vigor. That means not losing any caster levels until after 5th. Until that point you're likely to be reduced to a walking box of band-aids, so the sooner you can get yourself out of that role the better off you'll be.

[Godskook]

The answer to an open 3rd level feat is always Item Familiar. Another Extra Turning would be useful if you can't stack Night Sticks. Practiced Spellcaster is another option since it looks like you plan to squander at least two caster levels.

Item Familiar, like Leadership, is *NEVER* assumed to be available.


Why Bone Knight? Why on a Cloistered Cleric? Crusader 1/ Cleric 4/ Bone Knight would be a lot easier to do, with an equal number of lost caster levels. If you absolutely have to use Cloistered Cleric, maybe go with something that has a bit more synergy with that, preferably with fewer/no lost caster levels. Cloistered Cleric trades combat ability for better spellcasting; if you lose levels of spellcasting to make up the lost combat ability, you'll end up at a net loss.

Cloistered Cleric trades nothing for something, and is thus better than not taking it in 99% of builds.


As the 'party healer' you want to get 3rd level Cleric spells as early as possible, for DMM: Persist Mass Lesser Vigor. That means not losing any caster levels until after 5th. Until that point you're likely to be reduced to a walking box of band-aids, so the sooner you can get yourself out of that role the better off you'll be.

Wands of L.Vigor work just fine to keep the cleric from being a glorified bandaid box, and is available by level 2 if the party pitches in for it.

[Shadowleaf]

Cloistered Cleric trades nothing for something, and is thus better than not taking it in 99% of builds.
You trade your d8 HD for d6, medium BAB for poor and you give away medium/heavy armor and shield proficiencies. In return, you get skill points, skill, Lore, the knowledge Domain and some (kind of useless) utility spells.

You should never take Cloistered Cleric if you plan on being in melee range and/or plan on getting hit.

[Telonius]

You trade your d8 HD for d6, medium BAB for poor and you give away medium/heavy armor and shield proficiencies. In return, you get skill points, skill, Lore, the knowledge Domain and some (kind of useless) utility spells.

You should never take Cloistered Cleric if you plan on being in melee range and/or plan on getting hit.

BAB doesn't matter to a melee cleric. If he's a melee cleric, the assumption is that he's going to be using Divine Power most of the time; if he's going to go into Bone Knight that takes care of armor and shield proficiencies.

[hex0]

You trade your d8 HD for d6, medium BAB for poor and you give away medium/heavy armor and shield proficiencies. In return, you get skill points, skill, Lore, the knowledge Domain and some (kind of useless) utility spells.

You should never take Cloistered Cleric if you plan on being in melee range and/or plan on getting hit.

If you are in the position to take DMM Persist for Divine Power soon,
then Cloistered Cleric is so much better than regular cleric.

Also, Prestige Paladin.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You trade your d8 HD for d6, medium BAB for poor and you give away medium/heavy armor and shield proficiencies. In return, you get skill points, skill, Lore, the knowledge Domain and some (kind of useless) utility spells.

You should never take Cloistered Cleric if you plan on being in melee range and/or plan on getting hit.

This is exactly what I was talking about, though the part about not being in melee range sort of depends on the character.

With the Spell domain to cast/persist Shield, (Extended) (Greater) Luminous Armor, and (Extended) Magic Vestment on both, you can easily make up the AC loss and then some. The biggest part of that is Luminous Armor though, which can only be cast by exalted characters, so dealing with the undead would automatically disqualify you from using it.

The BAB loss can be made up for with Ice Axe, and later on Divine Power, then eventually persistent Draconic Polymorph via Greater Anyspell. You could also get a 3rd level Pearl of Power to recover Anyspell, and use it a second time each day to prepare/cast/persist Wraithstrike.

However, you can't fake the +4 BAB prerequisite of Bone Knight, so Cloistered Cleric is only delaying your entry into that. Furthermore, it doesn't look like you're going to make up that armor proficiency loss until you finally start taking Bone Knight. Plus losing caster levels is only worthwhile if you gain a significant benefit, and for a Cleric, Bone Knight doesn't really offer anything more than what you should already have. Human Paragon's caster level loss is almost never worth it for any character, unless you were already losing a caster level to make up some BAB (i.e. Fighter 2/ Wizard 4/ Spellsword vs Fighter 1/ Wizard 2/ Human Paragon 3/ Spellsword).

[Andion Isurand]

You could take a levels in prestige paladin (of tyranny or slaughter) to boost your BAB and gain paladin spells to your cleric spell list. Not sure how the Bone Knight's "paladin conversion" would interact with the above paladins... but it might be worth a shot.

[Elder_Kin]

A thought: Since you're starting at 3rd, why not make Human Paragon your first level for the increased skill points? You'd then use the Human Paragon bonus feat at 3rd to get Persist so you can get DMM Persist. Makes it a bit easier to get the Ride ranks for Bone Knight. Your free feat slot gets moved to 1st, which unfortunately prevents you from taking Knowledge Devotion with it, but there are other options.

Cloistered cleric give 6+Int + 1 (human) . Paragon gives 4 + Int + 1 human.


The answer to an open 3rd level feat is always Item Familiar. Another Extra Turning would be useful if you can't stack Night Sticks. Practiced Spellcaster is another option since it looks like you plan to squander at least two caster levels.

Why Bone Knight? Why on a Cloistered Cleric? Crusader 1/ Cleric 4/ Bone Knight would be a lot easier to do, with an equal number of lost caster levels. If you absolutely have to use Cloistered Cleric, maybe go with something that has a bit more synergy with that, preferably with fewer/no lost caster levels. Cloistered Cleric trades combat ability for better spellcasting; if you lose levels of spellcasting to make up the lost combat ability, you'll end up at a net loss.

As the 'party healer' you want to get 3rd level Cleric spells as early as possible, for DMM: Persist Mass Lesser Vigor. That means not losing any caster levels until after 5th. Until that point you're likely to be reduced to a walking box of band-aids, so the sooner you can get yourself out of that role the better off you'll be.

Crusader is out because I'm not trying to scream "Hey I'm minmaxing my character and I don't even know you guys yet." Paragon trades 1 CL for 2+ bonus in an ability score. It's like getting a LA +1 template only more HP and I get a feat. Additionally I'm not completely knowledgeable on the rest of the party. All I know is the front line is strong, so I don't need the extra armor proficiency because at best I'll be hanging back shooting **** with a bow (martial wep from Paragon). Depending on the skill make up of the rest of the party I might need to snag UMD as a skill with the paragons adaptive learning. If not I can use adaptive learning to hang on to a monster relevant knowledge skill or pick up tumble if I need to get out of melee for some reason.

As for the item familiar bit, I'm not going to do it, unless I see someone else in the party doing it right off the bat. As other said leadership and item familiar aren't assumed to be allowed ever.

As for Bone Knight I can't think of any other cleric prestige class that offers so much (9/10 casting, turning, rebuking, full BAB, armor, weapons, a **** ton of immunities). Granted I won't be able to take it until level 8 but that's only two levels behind when I'd be able to do it as a straight cleric so I'm not really worried.


You trade your d8 HD for d6, medium BAB for poor and you give away medium/heavy armor and shield proficiencies. In return, you get skill points, skill, Lore, the knowledge Domain and some (kind of useless) utility spells.

You should never take Cloistered Cleric if you plan on being in melee range and/or plan on getting hit.
I spent the last day an a half researching cloistered cleric, SRD cleric, and archivist. The CC is the best of the three. 3 Domains or 2 and a free feat. Still have DMM and a bunch of nice PRC's too.

I've decided to dump the domain instead of taking devotion as a feat because I'll keep all but 2 of the monster relevant knowledge skills which can turn into 1 if I use adaptive learning for it.

[Elder_Kin]

You could take a levels in prestige paladin (of tyranny or slaughter) to boost your BAB and gain paladin spells to your cleric spell list. Not sure how the Bone Knight's "paladin conversion" would interact with the above paladins... but it might be worth a shot.

The entry requirements are the same BAB wise and more stringent feat wise. It'd be a waste.

[Urpriest]

Bone Knight is 3/4 BAB.

[Godskook]

You trade your d8 HD for d6, medium BAB for poor and you give away medium/heavy armor and shield proficiencies. In return, you get skill points, skill, Lore, the knowledge Domain and some (kind of useless) utility spells.

You should never take Cloistered Cleric if you plan on being in melee range and/or plan on getting hit.

You lose:
-HP
-BAB
-Proficiencies

Why those don't matter:
-HP doesn't matter cause by the time you're a competent melee, you're also capable of getting enough temp-HP to make small HD adjustments not matter. Plus, any good cleric build prestiges out rapidly, making this loss even more laughable.
-BAB: If you're not using Divine Power for melee, you're not a melee cleric. If you are, you don't care about what your 'normal' BAB.
-Shield/Armor proficiencies only matter if you've got an ACP. ACP is easy enough to lower and/or eliminate. Alternatively, the single best AC granting spell is a cleric spell, and grants an effective +12 AC against melee. The lesser version is available as a 2nd level spell.

[eggs]

This really confuses me. You're taking Human Paragon, whose only draw here is a bonus feat, but you don't have anything you want to spend the bonus feat on. And you're using DMM Persist because you don't want to use anything broken or abusive like a Crusader.

On-topic, Knowledge Devotion works fine without the domain. Unless you're in the ballpark of level 9 spells, I wouldn't hesitate to swap (you can actually even make the swap in play, if you want, but that might be a bit metagamey and I'm not positive what would happen to any skill points you'd invested in Know: Dungeons/Nature/Psionics).

If you don't mind waiting a level or two for the build to develop, Radiant Servant of the Burning Hate will give you your bow and armor proficiencies, and won't cost much beside a couple skill points.


As for Bone Knight I can't think of any other cleric prestige class that offers so much (9/10 casting, turning, rebuking, full BAB, armor, weapons, a **** ton of immunities).
Where are people getting this? Seriously. I'm curious.

Anyway, Church Inquisitor offers a very strong domain, a robust framework and some usefulish resistances and immunities, available at level 4. Knight of the Raven offers a domain, full BA, 9/10 casting and a bunch of melee abilities, with very easy prerequisites and Ordained Champion offers a gob of powerful melee abilities in its first 3 levels and is available at level 5. Those are the top 3 prestige classes I'd look at with a basic combat cleric like this.

[Elder_Kin]

This really confuses me. You're taking Human Paragon, whose only draw here is a bonus feat, but you don't have anything you want to spend the bonus feat on. And you're using DMM Persist because you don't want to use anything broken or abusive like a Crusader.

On-topic, Knowledge Devotion works fine without the domain. Unless you're in the ballpark of level 9 spells, I wouldn't hesitate to swap (you can actually even make the swap in play, if you want, but that might be a bit metagamey and I'm not positive what would happen to any skill points you'd invested in Know: Dungeons/Nature/Psionics).

If you don't mind waiting a level or two for the build to develop, Radiant Servant of the Burning Hate will give you your bow and armor proficiencies, and won't cost much beside a couple skill points.


Where are people getting this? Seriously. I'm curious.

Anyway, Church Inquisitor offers a very strong domain, a robust framework and some usefulish resistances and immunities, available at level 4. Knight of the Raven offers a domain, full BA, 9/10 casting and a bunch of melee abilities, with very easy prerequisites and Ordained Champion offers a gob of powerful melee abilities in its first 3 levels and is available at level 5. Those are the top 3 prestige classes I'd look at with a basic combat cleric like this.

Paragon is for the feat and ability score. Bone knight works with my char concept better and does not conflict alignment or god wise. I had honestly thought that the Bone Knight had full BAB. I was posting from work and forgot.

[erikun]

BAB doesn't matter to a melee cleric. If he's a melee cleric, the assumption is that he's going to be using Divine Power most of the time; if he's going to go into Bone Knight that takes care of armor and shield proficiencies.

If you are in the position to take DMM Persist for Divine Power soon,
then Cloistered Cleric is so much better than regular cleric.

Also, Prestige Paladin.
We're talking about a 3rd level character that has already lost a spell level; he won't be seeing Divine Power (persisted or otherwise) anytime soon.

On the other hand, with the Knowledge Devotion feat - even with just the minimal +1 bonus - the Cloistered Cleric ends up ahead until 7th level, when the spell will be coming online.

[Andorax]

Well, for what it's worth...I often recommend that clerics (cloistered or otherwise) invest in Scribe Scroll.

One of your great strengths is that you can prepare just about anything. Given raw materials and a couple days of downtime, you can cover a ton of those spells that you hate to waste a slot for, but also hate to not have when you need them (remove blindness, slow poison, remove paralysis, align weapon, etc.)

Milage may vary depending on the availability and reliability of your local Magic Mart.

[Elder_Kin]

Well after having spoken to the DM apparently no one in the party is has a CL past 2 anyway. So I'm confident in my choice build wise I've decided to go

Cloistered Cleric 1/Human Paragon 3/Cloistered Cleric 1/Divine Oracle 3/Bone Knight 10/Divine Oracle 1

assuming we get that far. I could always finish on Divine Oracle 4 before going into Bone Knight but that all depends on how the game goes anyway. That extra feat will probably be spent on skill focus (Knowledge Religion) a bit of a waste but necessary requirement for Divine Oracle.