3.5 Core melee cleric

[championofdisto]

Hey all! So I was looking for advice on a level 3 cleric I'm starting pretty soon.
For the most part I'd like to be primarily melee, obviously spot healing when the need arises.

The stats I have to work with are: 16,15,14,13,12,11 2700gp to start

I have access to few books beyond core. Complete Divine and Complete Champion as well as Unearthed Arcana, Stormwrack and Underdark.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[ericgrau]

Core? That makes things simpler. I'll get this started and we can take it from there. All of the below are only suggestions of course.

Ability Scores
Str 16
con 15: increase to 16 at level 4
wis 14: +2 item before level 9, +4 item before level 13, +6 item before level 17
dex 12
int/cha 13/11. Cha 13 if you like turning. Int 13 if you like tripping, or if you like both.

Scrolls (300 gp):
2 comprehend languages
4 endure elements (or # = your party's size)
2 magic weapon (for early foes with DR/magic)
1 obscuring mist (oh #$*! button)
2 protection from evil (release from charm/dominate, or a +2 to saves/AC if you get a 2nd buffing round)
1 remove fear

Wand (375 gp): Cure light wounds x 25

Other Equipment (~2000+ gp):
Masterwork full plate
Heavy wooden shield
Masterwork weapon
Misc adventuring gear

I might get some flak for suggesting a shield, but it's the way to go in core. Less time wasted healing yourself, more time hitting, more damage overall. Plus since your best form of attack right now is inflict moderate wounds, there's no drawback most of the time anyway. You can always change your fighting style later. If you're not allowed half charges on a wand, then you have to choose between a masterwork weapon and the wand. Assuming your weapon is secondary to inflict moderate wounds, I'd downgrade the weapon for now. Either way get the missing item ASAP.

Possible Spells:
1: Bless (if 2+ other party members use weapons), obscuring mist, sanctuary (also targets allies)
2: bull's strength, inflict moderate wounds

Given how much better it is than your weapon right now, I'd probably fill level 2 with nothing but inflict moderate wounds. You can always spontaneously convert it into a cure too. When you get level 3 and higher spells I'd consider something similar, while putting other spells in your level 2 slots. Combat casting may be a good idea if you expect to cast in melee a lot. If you don't expect to cast much during fights, not so much. Buff only before fights, never in place of an attack. Before I suggest domains and domain spells, are you leaning towards any particular god(s)?

Later the bigger buffing starts with prayer and magic circle against evil. Then at there's divine power, and greater magic weapon. I actually prefer GMW over divine power. Why a +1 more to hit instead of a +4 and some hp? When you get a buffing round, divine power is awesome-sauce. When you don't, it's a trap. You get a +4 but you spent one less round attacking, and that could have been an inflict spell too. Overall it's a wash or often a net loss. Plus if your party and the enemy are full of melee/range attackers, prayer is a better use of the buffing round. GMW OTOH can be cast in the morning so it's all gain and no loss. And you can tag allies too.

[Seer_of_Heart]

Ability Scores
Str 16
con 15: increase to 16 at level 4
wis 14: +2 item before level 9, +4 item before level 13, +6 item before level 17
dex 12
int/cha 13/11. Cha 13 if you like turning. Int 13 if you like tripping, or if you like both.


I generally agree with this advice, however I'd switch wisdom and strength since it is only a +1 you are losing to attack and you will gain more higher level spells when you bump up your wisdom even more.

[Hua]

I'd not take a shield. You want a free hand to cast spells with. Go with a cleric of Kord to get luck and feat of strength. Use a 2 handed sword. Great melee power. Casting is fine since you can let go of sword with 1 hand as a free action to cast and then regrip. You lose the AC of the shield but that is pretty minor for the benefits. Also you get the 1.5 str bonus to weapon.

Luck domain rocks for a melee.

[ericgrau]

I generally agree with this advice, however I'd switch wisdom and strength since it is only a +1 you are losing to attack and you will gain more higher level spells when you bump up your wisdom even more.
Presumably he is attacking more than he is casting though. Even for melee touch spells touch AC isn't anywhere near an auto hit at this level. With medium BAB each point of attack bonus means around 10% more hits (e.g., 10 out of 20 => 11 out of 20 hit), which is very significant. Later he needs to pump strength first or losing that +2, +3, and eventually even +4 more to hit will be tremendous. Either his ability to hit with a weapon will fall way way behind or his bonus spells won't be able to keep up with his level. An extra inflict will be very nice at level 5, but not long term.


I'd not take a shield. You want a free hand to cast spells with.
If he opens with inflict spells he can leave his weapon sheathed to start. Same with buffing. Then soon will be the time where he can't quite blow 8,000 gp on a weapon, but 300 gp on a second masterwork weapon will be nothing. He can drop his weapon to cast, then draw the second one if needed. Later it might be good to pick up a light shield because he can hold (but not attack with) his weapon in his shield hand while he casts. By then it'll probably have magical enhancements too. By high levels he can grab an animated shield for both THF and shield AC. The nice thing about equipment is that you can switch it around at will.

He can't get shocktrooper so even power attack will be a net loss to damage at medium BAB pretty soon; it's already hard enough to hit without more penalties. Between that and being limited to simple weapons, you're looking at +1 damage to THF, vs. blocking 20% more of what would have been hits. When you're casting inflicts you don't even get the +1 damage. THF falls behind at this point by a good margin. If he runs out of spells and his allies are more vulnerable than him, then he could always put his shield away and THF for the rest of the day. A heavy mace does as much damage as any simple TH weapon, so he can TH with the same weapon he uses to SAB. Later with DMM persist divine power, maybe it'll be different. Again, switch around as needed and carry both.

[Namfuak]

Since Complete Divine is open, you should get Divine Metamagic. What it does is allow you to expend turn undead uses to reduce the cost of adding metamagic to spells. The usual trick is using it to put persist spell, but depending on how many levels you are planning on playing for that may not be the one you want to go after (see next paragraph for explanation). Even discounting that, it's still a powerful feat.

DMM allows spells like Divine Might, which you usually would have to prepare for every encounter, to be cast once at the beginning of the day and last all day using persist spell, even at level 7 when you get it, despite the fact that usually persist spell adds 4 to the spell's level (so a 4th level spell is prepared in an 8th level slot, usually). Keep in mind that the book's errata specifies that you have to have the actual feat before you can get take the DMM version, so for persist you would need 3 feats in total (extend spell, persist spell, and DMM: Persist spell). If you don't play a human, this means you would need to spend all of your feats to pull this off by level 7, so if you aren't planning on playing that many levels or many levels after 7 it may not be worth it.

[championofdisto]

I like what I'm reading so far, thank you!

Regarding race I was thinking I'd go with Stormwrack's Darfellan +2 strength -2 dex 1D6 natural bite attack.

I don't know if that changes the formula with weapon selection, but when Unarmed, using the bite attack yields the same 1.5 strength bonus to damage like THF according to the book.

[ericgrau]

Two attacks at low level is pretty special. Equal or better than inflict when you full attack, but not when you single attack of course. A trick you can pull is to hold the charge on an inflict moderate wounds for long periods of time. Then when you finally bite someone the inflict discharges into him automatically. Essentially you do a bonus 2d8+3 damage without ever spending a combat turn on it. You won't be able to buff, but your buffs aren't that special yet and half the time you don't get a buffing round anyway. Later you could pick up a couple 50 gp potions of protection from evil for the buffing round, so that you buff without discharging your inflict. They're cheap enough, anyway.

[Gavinfoxx]

Complete Champion, Unearthed Arcana, Complete Divine open?

Cloistered Cleric with Knowledge Devotion!

I'd go Gauntlet/Longspear as your weapon choices...

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=420.0

Lots of stuff from there is CD/CC/UA/PHB, just read the handbook.

[championofdisto]

A trick you can pull is to hold the charge on an inflict moderate wounds for long periods of time. Then when you finally bite someone the inflict discharges into him automatically. Essentially you do a bonus 2d8+3 damage without ever spending a combat turn on it.

Is this via metamagic or is it something that can be done innately? Can you put me in the direction of where it says this, just in case it becomes a point of interest? Also do you think the bite attack warrants feating into multiattack for the reduced penalty? If we live long enough (my group never does) it'll be a long term game, maybe even epic levels.

[Metahuman1]

Complete divine? Unearthed Arcana?

Ok.

Flaw: Shaky.
Flaw: Vulnerable.

Feats:

First: Extend Spell.
Flaw: Persist Spell
Other Flaw: Divine Metamagic Persist Spell.
Human: Power Attack.


After that just Grab extra turning as necessary.

You start the day buffing yourself up into the atmosphere. Maybe for low levels strength for one of your domains would be good to get Enlarge person.

[championofdisto]

DMM is not within the allowed books from as far as I can tell. Nor do I think my DM would let me get away with DMM:Persist.

[ericgrau]

Is this via metamagic or is it something that can be done innately? Can you put me in the direction of where it says this, just in case it becomes a point of interest? Also do you think the bite attack warrants feating into multiattack for the reduced penalty? If we live long enough (my group never does) it'll be a long term game, maybe even epic levels.

Anyone can hold a charge on a touch spell to attack with it at a later time:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#duration
See "Touch spells and holding the charge". The same rules are also in the Player's Handbook, in the magic rules, IIRC in the sections with the same names as the SRD. If you miss with a touch spell, you automatically hold it and can try again next round without expending another spell slot.

As for discharging it with a bite instead of a touch attack, I can't seem to find the rule in the SRD. I believe the Player's Handbook says any touch, even an accidental touch will discharge it. Complete Arcane specifically says that an unarmed strike will work. I presume that a bite will work as well. You may need to dig up the "any touch" rule in the PH and ask your DM about the specifics.

There's no official limit on how long you can hold the charge on a spell but an article suggests something "reasonable", like an hour. Technically there's no limit, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for your DM to say "Hold on, you aren't holding that all day long." Still a better use of the buffing round than buffs, at least for now.

Multiattack is essentially a +3 to hit, which is very nice, but only on one attack and only on full attacks, which isn't so nice. Assuming half your attacks are full attacks and half of your full attack is the bite that averages to a +0.75. It's not horrible but it wouldn't be my first choice. Plus your held touch spell stays until you finally do hit, whether you hit 4 times or only once. It only sucks if your bite misses for the entire fight... which is a real possibility. If your DM lets you hold touch spells all day long then multiattack seems good. Otherwise not so much. I mean if you can only do it in a buffing round later you might have buffs you prefer. At epic the damage on your bite isn't worth much, but likewise if you're allowed to hold a harm all day long it's worth quite a bit.

[championofdisto]

I'll push for it with my DM then, it seems fairly reasonable considering that they have at least some kind of fleshed out rules for it.

Another question I have is, which domains Should It take? I'm thinking Strength and War? Maybe there's a better two for a melee cleric, I'm just making the obvious choice.

[Namfuak]

DMM is not within the allowed books from as far as I can tell. Nor do I think my DM would let me get away with DMM:Persist.

Divine Metamagic is a feat in Complete Divine.

[Metahuman1]

Consider the Travel Domian. On demand freedom of movement is a life saver and some of the spells are spiffy.

[ericgrau]

That's what I thought until someone pointed out to me that its FoM only works against magical impedances. :smallfrown:

The spells it grants are nice though.

[AlanBruce]

That's what I thought until someone pointed out to me that its FoM only works against magical impedances. :smallfrown:

The spells it grants are nice though.

It works for him just like it works for the bard, druid, cleric, and ranger. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/freedomOfMovement.htm)

In fact, it is such a useful spell, that it is one worth persisting. Especially if you're fighting big monsters with imp. grab or crush (like dragons).

There is a build for your melee cleric if you are interested. Warning, I am not 100% sure if the entry is valid and there is bound to be cheese galore. But of your DM approves of it and waives the alignment restrictions, you will have a beast of a cleric.

This is for a 14th level build. As mentioned before, it uses a few PrC. All from Complete Divine, but you can probably get in Ordained Champion if you want to swift cast a few domain spells.

clr3/church inq. 4/RSoP 5/contemplative 2

Now, with this build and the purchase of nightsticks (again, a cheesy proposition, check with your DM) and the right DMM feats (Persist), you should be able to have:

Five Domains- 2 as starter and then 3 gained from PrC. That will open a slew of choices for spells.

bonuses to dispel magic checks

bonuses to Turn checks

raise the party's AC and yours

Self buff all day and effectively become the party tank.

Of course, many builds have an achilles heel. This one is no different. You must expect later on, with an Ac in the high 40's or 50's, for touch attacks to make an appearance, on top of dispel magic and its big brother GDM. Assassins with wraithstrike love to get close and personal with big metal men.

[Killer Angel]

I have access to few books beyond core. Complete Divine and Complete Champion as well as Unearthed Arcana, Stormwrack and Underdark.

As already said, DMM is a must have.
Core Only, You've got spells that can buff you, but you need time, and you couldn't have it.