Persisted Magic Jar?? and Other Shenanigans

[McToomin]

Hey everyone. I'm still fairly new to D&D, and we've just begun a game where I am playing my first necromancer. So far I am an anthropomorphic bat Cloistered Cleric 2 / Monk 1 (to qualify for Master of Shrouds early, also gives Wis (best stat) to AC). My planned build is to go for MoS until level 8, where I take Mystic Wanderer (a faerun book, I don't remember which atm) to gain Cha (2nd best stat) to AC and a familiar. Obviously, I will be focusing heavily on spellcasting, buffs, and I'm going for undead mastery. The other two players are baleen whale cleric going into a smiting prestige class (although at level 3, she's currently just a baleen whale with 3 RHD (she'll begin cleric next level), and an anthropomorphic monkey cleric going into sacred fist ("Go team cleric!"). So yeah, they have melee covered.

So basically, I was interested in tying the invisible magic jar trick I read about in the dread necromancer's handbook. Basically, do magic jar, hand it to your quasit (or imp) familiar that can fly and go invisible at will, and stuff your body in a haversack/portable hole while you fly around as an invisible magic jar. 1) Grab control of rebuked undead bodies, 2) ???, 3) Profit! Unfortunately, as I'm coming from cleric, there are a few problems here.

1) I already have access to DMM: Persist, an I'm going to be collecting turning attempts like they're pokemon. However, can magic jar be persisted? The text as I understand it indicates that it can't be, but I don't have much familiarity with metamagic, so I wanted to double check. If not, it does seem like I can extend it, at the very least.

2) At least according to d20srd.org, magic jar is only a sorcerer/wizard spell. Is there any way to add it to the cleric list? Maybe a domain? Right now I have Deathbound, Knowledge (from cloistered cleric), and Planning. Should I switch one out (assuming that it does appear in a domain). Is there another way to pull this off?

3) What happens if my body is in a portable hole/haversack and the magic jar does get destroyed? Does my soul return to my body since the sack/hole is nearby, or am I instantly slain because my body is technically on another plane? In that case, is it better to just put my body in some kind of mostly indestructible (but not completely airtight) container that the whale can carry around normally? With a starting Str of 24, I doubt she'd have any trouble with it. If this is the better route to take (by which I mean if I would be instantly killed if the magic jar was destroyed while my body was in extradimensional space), are there any spells (including ones that could be persisted) that could protect such a container as to make it impervious to most forms of harm, but wouldn't totally screw me over if I got stuck in it somehow?

Keep in mind that I won't be getting my familiar until level 9, so this isn't too crucial right this moment. I just want to know if it can be done.for the early levels, I plan to backpack the whale : hide in her backpack wiu some holes cut in it so I can heal her in combat and spellcast without exposing myself to too much harm.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help me!

[ScionoftheVoid]

Persist only works on spells with a fixed range, which I believe Medium is not (it scales by level). I could be wrong, however (I'm fairly sure the term is never spelt out, causing some debate as to whether or not touch-range spells count), and I think there's a metamagic called Ocular Spell which might help with that anyway.
There's a Cleric ACF in, I think, Complete Mage (don't have it on me to check) which can add a spell of certain schools (definitely including Necromancy, which is all you need) from the Sorcerer/Wizard list to your spell list. It's probably only able to be taken at level one and does involve a trade-off, however, if either of those is relevant.
I think you're probably best to ask your DM as to whether or not an extra-/non-dimensional space counts as being across a planar boundary (in this case or in general).

[Namfuak]

1. You shouldn't have any trouble persisting it, except that it is an arcane spell and not a divine one, and therefore does not qualify for DMM.

2. I know there are some tricks to put arcane spells on your list as a cleric, but I honestly don't know what they are, and even so you would need to make sure you were casting them as divine spells and not arcane spells (see point 1).

3. Honestly, this is up to your DM. In my opinion, the portable hole is non-dimensional space, but you are also always at the top of it when you might reach in, so it would depend on whether you consider the portal to only separate the non-dimensional space from the dimensional space as a matter of inches, or to actually transport whatever goes through it some indiscriminate distance where it ends up exactly on the other side in the non-dimensional space. I'd probably say that it's fine, but I'm lenient.

If you really want to transport yourself via bag of holding though, why not just DMM persist water breathing and stick your head in a bucket of water before you go into the portable hole?

[Aharon]

1.) You don't need to persist it, it has a 1 hour/level duration anyway.
2.) Already answered (ACF Divine Magician in Complete Mage, p. 35)
3.) RAW, your body isn't "technically" on another plane, it's on another plane, period. That means it's not within the range of Magic Jar, so you die.

[ScionoftheVoid]

1. You shouldn't have any trouble persisting it, except that it is an arcane spell and not a divine one, and therefore does not qualify for DMM.
-snip-

We appear to have opposite readings. I don't see anything to say that Divine Metamagic must only be used with Divine spells (as I read it, it affects the metamagic, not the spell), but think that Magic Jar misses the requirements of the metamagic due to not fitting the required range. Do you have a source on Divine Metamagic only working on Divine spells? I can't find it in the book (which I actually have in front of me, for once), but it might be in the book's errata, which I have not read.

Edit: Apparently it's in the errata, never mind.

Edit 2: But if gained in the manner I suggested, it would be a Divine spell anyway, and it still doesn't meet the requirements for Persist. Regardless, on an hours per level spell you may as well use Extend, which is cheaper and actually longer-lasting once you're casting with a caster level of 13th or higher.

[McToomin]

There's a Cleric ACF in, I think, Complete Mage (don't have it on me to check) which can add a spell of certain schools (definitely including Necromancy, which is all you need) from the Sorcerer/Wizard list to your spell list. It's probably only able to be taken at level one and does involve a trade-off, however, if either of those is relevant.

The DM has said that since we haven't started combat yet, we can still mess with our characters, so it should be fine. I found the ACF you were talking about, it's called Divine Magician. Basically, you lose one domain at lvl 1, and then at every spell level you can add a Sorc/Wiz spell from one school to your list of preparable spells. So it's basically a domain you build yourself, except without a domain power.

My Travel domain was free for Cloistered Cleric, so my options to get rid of are Planning or Deathbound. I'm heavily going for a master of the undead build here, so the 3 times caster level (instead of 2 times) controllable undead seemed really lucrative. On the other hand, Planning has great domain spells and gave me Extend Spell for free, from which I grabbed DMM at level 1. Maybe it's not that useful now, but oh well.

Does anyone have experience with the Deathbound domain. How much of a boon is 3x caster level controllable undead vs. 2x? Is it worth it to just take Extend Spell as a normal feat and grab DMM as my next feat? I've planned to spend a lot of my feats on more turn attempts. However, if I lose the Planning domain, I'd keep the 3x caster level controllable undead, which fits my character better.

Would adding the spell to my spell list make it a divine spell? I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to post the full text (correct?), but the relevant info. says that you can take one 1st-level abjuration, divination, or necromancy wizard spell and add it to my cleric spell list. So does that mean that, since I'm preparing it from my cleric spell list, it is now a divine spell and thus usable with my metamagic? Or does it remain an arcane spell since it doesn't specifically say that it becomes divine?

[Aharon]

As Scion already said, you actually can't persist it because it's not fixed range. And you don't need to because of its duration.

@spell list discussion
Ask your DM. There's no definite ruling, and if you ask this specific question in any D&D-related forum, you'll get a huge discussion about wether adding a spell to your list also makes it a spell on the cleric (/sorcerer/wizard/...) list.

[Namfuak]

Granted, if your DM rules that it does not count as a divine spell, you can just pick up Southern Magician from Races of Faerun so that you can cast it as a divine spell.

[McToomin]

In any case, it sounds like this ACF is the way to go to get in on my list, even if it doesn't become divine. Does anyone have any suggestions for other necromancy spells at each level that don't appear on the cleric list? Also, anyone know of any spells to make an untouchable container to keep my body in in case the haversack method of body storage doesn't work?