Lord of Your Domain - 21 cleric domains in 20 levels

[Nightgaun7]

I was tinkering around with making a backup character for a campaign I'm in (Hi Palanan) and I got to wondering how many domains you could possibly take. A couple of cursory searches didn't turn up much, so I decided to make a build of my own. Please be aware before you read that this is purely optimized around the number of domains. All other considerations were secondary, and it is not extremely powerful. It loses out on 8th and 9th level spells, as the most noticeable downside. I think it would be a very fun build as a beatstick cleric, though.

Here's the build:
Cloistered Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 1/Ordained Champion 1/Sovereign Speaker 9/Divine Disciple 1/Divine Oracle 1/Contemplative 1/Sacred Exorcist 1/Seeker of the Misty Isle 1/Divine Agent 1. The 21st comes from the Planar Touchstone feat.

List of Domains:
Knowledge, Inquisition, Oracle, Exorcism, and 17 open domains.

Now, there are some issues with this that I acknowledge. You lose a couple of caster levels, you have to be an Elf or Half-Elf, it uses material from both Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and just what the hell deity or even ideal are you going to follow with 21 domains? Your saves and BAB are all kinds of weird (you actually have ok hit die - 3d6 and 17d8. Oh, and 78 skill points. Assuming you swap out Seeker of the Misty Isle, you can have upwards of 90. Not heaps, admittedly, but enough for all the requirements. And that's before any INT bonus). You also don't advance too many class features, but on the other hand you have approximately 2.39 metric buttloads of pseudo-class features in the form of all the domains you have. Unfortunately you can only add an extremely limited number of domain spells to your list, but c'est la guerre. You have to spend a feat on Worldly Focus (and Weapon Focus if you don't take the War Domain before entering Ordained Champion).

Nevertheless, I present it to you.

Options and Enhancements:
You can use one of the domains to open up Divine Magician.
You can trade one out using Substitute Domain
You can trade one out for Divine Restoration
You might get away with using Heretic of the Faith on one of them
You can take up to three devotion feats

If you don't like some of the dips in there, you can always try:
Swift Wing - gets you Dragon domain
Dracolyte - Gets you Glory or Domination
Wavekeeper - Given that your hypothetical GM is letting you play this hypothetical monstrosity, you might possibly be able to take Wild Cohort and use it to fulfill the Animal Companion requirement of Wavekeeper, netting yourself (hoho) the Blackwater, Storm, Ocean, or Water domain
Warpriest - Glory or Domination again

Now, what you do with your 21 domains is up to you. I hope you have at least gotten a chuckle out of this. And Palanan, if you let me play this I will make that pesky halfling stop bugging you about the loot.

If you spot any errors, please speak up!

[Nightgaun7]

PS: There are a number of Evil classes that would work for a non-good version of this. There are also classes like Silverstar and Holt Warden that simply add domain spells to your list. I'm not counting them as domains for my purposes, but if you do, then they might also fit. There are also at least a couple of classes in Dragon magazines that work, but I haven't included them either, since I know a lot of people don't allow it. One such example is the Earthshaker from Dragon 314, which I ran across while reading up on the Heartfire Fanner.

[Erik Vale]

and just what the hell deity or even ideal are you going to follow with 21 domains?

God, AO, Pun Pun, [Insert Overdiety here]

I'm not likely to use and not the one to use, but interesting.

[Slipperychicken]

You lose a couple of caster levels, you have to be an Elf or Half-Elf, it uses material from both Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and just what the hell deity or even ideal are you going to follow with 21 domains?

Worship balance, or power itself, or just the universe as a whole. Something vague and new-agey like that. Maybe worship yourself and act like a total badass like Kamina.

[andromax]

Interesting idea, I'm only seein 12 class levels there.

[TiaC]

Interesting idea, I'm only seein 12 class levels there.

I think he meant to go Sovereign Speaker 9 not 1

[prufock]

Cloistered Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 1/Ordained Champion 1/Sovereign Speaker 1 9/Divine Disciple 1/Divine Oracle 1/Contemplative 1/Sacred Exorcist 1/Seeker of the Misty Isle 1/Divine Agent 1. The 21st comes from the Planar Touchstone feat.

List of Domains:
Knowledge, Inquisition, Oracle, Exorcism, and 17 open domains.

Conflicts:
- Sovereign Speaker requires that you worship the Sovereign Host, Ordained Champ requires that you worship Heironious or Hextor.
- Church Inquisitor requires that you are a member of an LG church, while the Sovereign Host is LN.

Other Issues:
- Sovereign Speaker has a weird domain restriction that means you can't take more than 2 domains granted by a single deity. This doesn't actually restrict the number of domains you can get, but requires some tedious paperwork to figure out how best to spend those domains. Depending on build, it could mean you hit a point where you have no viable domain options left.

I'm not really familiar with Divine Disciple or Divine Agent, so I can't really comment on those intelligently.

[Nightgaun7]

Interesting idea, I'm only seein 12 class levels there.

Well spotted, fixed. Thanks.


Conflicts:
- Sovereign Speaker requires that you worship the Sovereign Host, Ordained Champ requires that you worship Heironious or Hextor.
- Church Inquisitor requires that you are a member of an LG church, while the Sovereign Host is LN.

Other Issues:
- Sovereign Speaker has a weird domain restriction that means you can't take more than 2 domains granted by a single deity. This doesn't actually restrict the number of domains you can get, but requires some tedious paperwork to figure out how best to spend those domains. Depending on build, it could mean you hit a point where you have no viable domain options left.

I'm not really familiar with Divine Disciple or Divine Agent, so I can't really comment on those intelligently.

By necessity this involves some handwaving for both alignment and deity, thanks to the campaign setting variations. However, I didn't see anything in Faiths of Eberron saying the Sovereign Speaker had to be LN, simply that you not favor one god over another. Also, Church Inquisitor can be LG or LN.

[Palanan]

As the DM for this campaign, I am here to say this is a very interesting thought experiment.

:smalltongue:



(And nothing will stop the halfling from pursuing his fixations. Nothing.)

[Nightgaun7]

As the DM for this campaign, I am here to say this is a very interesting thought experiment.

:smalltongue:



(And nothing will stop the halfling from pursuing his fixations. Nothing.)

True, we'd probably need to use the greatsword on the player.

[Metahuman1]

Ok, I'm curious now. What would it take to get a cleric that has War, Strength, Travel, Planning, Time, Healing, Sun, and Dragon Domain? How many levels of the posted build would that list need? Would it be possible to make the build, if those are the only domains your trying for, Get it's 8th and 9th lvl spells? Or at least the 8th lvl ones?

[Answerer]

War, Strength, Travel, Planning, Time, Healing, Sun, and Dragon Domain?
Well,

War & Strength are covered by Dol Dorn, so you can get those from Sovereign Speaker.
Travel is a domain of Kol Korran, so again, you can get that from Sovereign Speaker.
Sun can be gotten from Dol Arrah; Sovereign Speaker.
Healing is Olladra's thing among the Sovereign Host, so again Sovereign Speaker.
Planning, Time, and Dragon are not found among the Sovereign Host; two can be gotten as your basic Cleric Domains if you can somehow still finagle entry to Sovereign Speaker afterwards.
Contemplative can get any one Domain, which gets you the one you didn't take initially.
This requires four levels of Sovereign Speaker and one of Contemplative (i.e. ECL 10), though your levels 2-5 are free so long as you manage 8 ranks in Knowledge (Religion).

I doubt it can be done faster than that.

[Metahuman1]

Ok, so that sounds promising. What would be needed to finagle entry into soverine speaker if I dropped my two starting domains into planning and dragon?

[prufock]

By necessity this involves some handwaving for both alignment and deity, thanks to the campaign setting variations. However, I didn't see anything in Faiths of Eberron saying the Sovereign Speaker had to be LN, simply that you not favor one god over another. Also, Church Inquisitor can be LG or LN.
Sovereign Speaker doesn't require that the character be LN, but Church Inquisitor requires:

Special: Must be a member of a lawful good church or religious order
The Sovereign Host is a LN church, so they are incompatible. If handwaving prerequisites in your campaign, it's not a problem, but it's not RAW legal.

Domain Spontaneity is a decent feat option here. Take it as many times as you want, applying it to a different domain each time. Now you can cast spontaneously from those domains just like you can with healing spells. Bonus points if you have the Spell domain!

Also, just so I'm clear: the Planar Touchstone feat (for Catalogues of Enlightenment, presumably) only grants the domain power, not access to the spells, correct?


Ok, so that sounds promising. What would be needed to finagle entry into soverine speaker if I dropped my two starting domains into planning and dragon?
Nothing else really, except 8 ranks in Know: Religion and the Worldly Focus feat.

[Metahuman1]

:smallamused:

Oh, that does sound sexy. I think I can set up a pretty solid build on this. Oh, I'll add a couple of things. Dmm: Persist or Quicken, Power Attack, the usual.

And adding the Spontaneous Domain casting AFC is very juicy.

[Answerer]

Ok, so that sounds promising. What would be needed to finagle entry into soverine speaker if I dropped my two starting domains into planning and dragon?
So the issue is that you want three Domains that the Sovereign Host doesn't grant. Clerics and Contemplatives (the easy, pick-your-Domain options) require that the Domain be one available to your deity, if you have one. You don't have to have a deity (and thematically combining Time, Planning, and Dragon is not hard), but if you don't have a deity, you cannot really be a member of the Sovereign Host and therefore can't take Sovereign Speaker levels to get the other Domains.

So you need some way to have your cake and eat it too. Most likely, this will involve a change of faith at some point, which is... messy. Hence finagling. I cannot actually find rules for a Cleric changing his faith: all the Ex-cleric rules seem to assume that you want to continue your old faith and tell you how to do that. Similarly, the Sovereign Speaker doesn't even have Ex-speaker rules. Which probably means getting your DM to accept this concept to begin with, and that probably means you don't need to fight this hard for it anyway; the DM can just give the missing Domains to the appropriate deities within the Sovereign Host.


The Sovereign Host is a LN church
It doesn't really hurt your case any, but the Sovereign Host is NG, not LN. That's still not LG, of course.

[Slipperychicken]

It doesn't really hurt your case any, but the Sovereign Host is NG, not LN. That's still not LG, of course.

If you parse the sentence as as "[lawful good church] or [religious order]", then it's all good. Of course you're a massive rules-lawyering munchkin to do that, but you never know.

[Fortuna]

I can't help but see this as a Carl Sagan style character, enraptured with every possible mystery of the universe.

[Nightgaun7]

If you parse the sentence as as "[lawful good church] or [religious order]", then it's all good. Of course you're a massive rules-lawyering munchkin to do that, but you never know.

I just want to point out that other than the acknowledged fluff issue and the slight alignment difficulty, there's no real munchkinning going on here : P

[prufock]

So the issue is that you want three Domains that the Sovereign Host doesn't grant. Clerics and Contemplatives (the easy, pick-your-Domain options) require that the Domain be one available to your deity, if you have one.
"The character can choose any domain made available by her deity or alignment."
It's sort of arguable that Contemplative doesn't require it to be a domain your deity grants, but I think RAI is that it has the same restrictions as cleric.

If your DM is cool with the RP rationale, claim that you were previously unaligned, instead being devoted to a cause (whatever cause makes sense for you to get Planning and Dragon) but were later influenced by the Sovereign Host. If he's a stickler he may make you retrain those domains, but if not you're good to go.


It doesn't really hurt your case any, but the Sovereign Host is NG, not LN. That's still not LG, of course.
Thanks, you're right.

[Axier]

Couldn't you be apart of multiple churches? I could put the Sovereign Host as priority one but still head over to a Lawful Good church and work with them.

[prufock]

Couldn't you be apart of multiple churches? I could put the Sovereign Host as priority one but still head over to a Lawful Good church and work with them.

I believe that would come under a cleric "not devoted to a particular deity." In a polytheistic setting like most D&D worlds, it is possible and even expected to pay tribute to more than one deity, but clerics have the singular "deity" as opposed to "deities" in their description. Presumably that means that even if they pay respect to more than one, they have one deity to which they are devoted above the others.

The Sovereign Host is kind of a weird exception to this.

[Metahuman1]

My thinking would be to fluff it with two of the domains to start with, and then have my philosophy evolve to be broader and pick up the sovereign host speaker and Contemplative with a fluff adjustment to both to fit what ever concept I worship.

[Nightgaun7]

Just for fun, here are the other class features you get:

Turn Undead, Bardic Knowledge
Detect evil
Lose spontaneous cure, Spontaneous War Domain
3 x Extra domain slot
Scry bonus
Disease immunity
Exorcism

Nothing too special.

EDIT: Doesn't include the class features from the last couple of levels, since those are fairly malleable. Although to be fair, so are some of the other dips as well...

[Jeff the Green]

For Church Inquisitor and Sovereign Speaker, couldn't you be a member of a LG religious order within the NG Church of the Sovereign Host?

[Arcanist]

Special: Must be a member of a lawful good church or religious order

Surprised nobody mentioned how you could worship Heironious (a Lawful Good church) and still qualify for this by being Lawful Neutral. It does denote that you cannot technically be a Cleric of a Cause (unless in your campaign world that cause has a religious order which can be fluffed away).

EDIT: I was technically swordsage'd by Jeff... not sure :smallconfused:

[Tokuhara]

Here's my 2c:

You started as a Heretic of the Sovereign Host, then made peace with the church and dabbled in a racial order, then wound up being among the most powerful of your order.

[prufock]

For Church Inquisitor and Sovereign Speaker, couldn't you be a member of a LG religious order within the NG Church of the Sovereign Host?
Nope. You can be devoted to a single deity within the Sovereign Host, rather than the Host as a whole, but that disqualifies you from the Sovereign Speaker PrC, since it states you must worship the Host without favouring one deity over the others.


Surprised nobody mentioned how you could worship Heironious (a Lawful Good church) and still qualify for this by being Lawful Neutral.
No, the Sovereign Host is a NG church. Heironious is a LG church. Can't belong to both. Either you qualify for Sovereign Speaker by worshiping the NG Host, or you qualify for Ordained Champ and Church Inquisitor, but you can't qualify for all three.

[willpell]

Got a major kick out of this one. Might actually build it one day, and it's maybe the third time at most I've had that reaction to a progression I saw online. Too hilarious not to at least consider.

[Nightgaun7]

Here's my 2c:

You started as a Heretic of the Sovereign Host, then made peace with the church and dabbled in a racial order, then wound up being among the most powerful of your order.

That would work well with the Heretic of the Faith Feat, which you might be able to use to trade out exorcism or something.


Got a major kick out of this one. Might actually build it one day, and it's maybe the third time at most I've had that reaction to a progression I saw online. Too hilarious not to at least consider.

Glad you liked it. I'd quite like to take this for a spin too.

[willpell]

Glad you liked it. I'd quite like to take this for a spin too.

Wish I could offer but this thing is way outta my league. I can barely handle straight Clerics. Plus I'm not exactly generous toward the class as a DM. Still, good luck getting him field-tested, and feel free to come back and say how it goes.

[prufock]

A similar idea was bandied about between a few of us a while back. Thread is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12836247) with my class progression in post 13 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12839386&postcount=13). It gets 16 domains, CL 17 so you still get 9ths at level 20, and is overall a decent build in my opinion.
(Note: in my linked post I miscounted or mistyped the number of domains.)

Domains are: Knowledge, Oracle, Travel, Glory, War, and eleven more of your choice.

Two undefined class levels at the end that should be full casting for CL 17. One could be Divine Disciple for another domain, though I'm not sure if the Sovereign Host conflicts with the requirement for a patron deity. At the time I made this build I wasn't aware of DD.

I also did a build without Forgotten Realms material, since my DM usually doesn't allow it. It goes:
Cloistered Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 1/Ordained Champion 1/Divine Oracle 1/Seeker of the Misty Isle 1/Warpriest 1/Seeker of the Misty Isle 6/Contemplative 6
It gets 11 domains, of which 7 are required: Knowledge, Inquisition, War, Oracle, Travel, Magic, and Glory.

[Zubrowka74]

AO


That was my first reflex but then I remembered Ao doesn't grant spells :



If it were not for Ao's involvement in the Time of Troubles, he would most likely be forgotten by the mortals of Faerûn. Ao does not want to be known, for cults once dedicated to him only a decade ago have begun to die out, and Ao's name is disappearing from written records. What goes on in Toril and what the other deities do are of no concern to Ao [...]

The cult of Ao is led by ministers instead of clerics, since these cultists never receive any spells from the Overgod [...] His followers are likely considered "faithless".