Need help with PF cleric. Game starts tonight!

[Zach J.]

I'm working on a cleric for a Skype run Pathfinder campaign. I need to have it finished by 8 pm. I would have made the character much sooner, but after talking again to the DM I had to make so many changes to my original character that it made more sense to make a new one.

The character in question is a cleric. The DM uses a homebrewed setting so he worships the god of the sea and justice. Fights with a trident.

The other characters include a rogue/noble scion, a bard and a barbarian/druid.

My stats: Str 16, Dex 13, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 20, Cha 15

I'd like to make a character who can hold his own in a fight, but can stand back and throw some spells out if necessary.

EQUIPMENT
+1 Returning Shocking Trident
+1 Moderately Fortified Breastplate

We only have a quarter of the starting level 12 gold so I'm going to have to use Magic Vestment and Greater Magic Weapon to bring my weapons up to par. Any other suggestions to make up for poor wealth would be appreciated.

[Psyren]

What domains does your homebrew deity offer? Are subdomains of those domains allowed?

[RaviStrife]

Hmm. Well, good news is that the channelling built into the PF cleric covers a large portion of the healing role. Standard advice for out of combat healing applies...


One of the biggest problems with a cleric is choosing what to do. Nearly any role you choose can be handily managed with a few choice feats and spells.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of summoning (particularly the lantern archon from SM 3) in swarms, then allowing them to attack en masse. Bonus points if you do this with Superior Summoning which adds another minion to a group summon (1d4+2 archons from a single level SM 5 slot).

I've also heard good things about the standard Rightous Might and Divine Power spells used in combination, essentially making you THE big bad fighter for at least one combat.

On reflection, there's no good reason you can't do both. In fact, as this was the subject of your post, by all means do both. Welcome to the most resilent casting class.

[Zach J.]

What domains does your homebrew deity offer? Are subdomains of those domains allowed?

Kiros covers a lot of domains, being one of the major gods worshiped in the character's homeland, but some of the domains the DM pointed out as being most appropriate were Glory, Good, Law, Nobility, Travel, Water and Weather.

Travel leaps out to me as the best in the bunch so I'll definitely be taking that. Still undecided on the second domain.

Edit: I haven't talked with the DM about non-core material. I'd rather stick to the core rulebook, having decided to drop the crusader archetype and make a vanilla cleric.

Possible Feats: Combat Casting, Extend Spell, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Quicken Spell, Selective Channeling

I won't be able to do much with the trident at range, but that's okay.

[Zach J.]

So the plan for the character is to use buff spells before combat and either attack with my trident or cast crowd control spells during combat.

The rogue/noble scion normally sneaks attack with her rapier, using her cavalier cohort to flank enemies. The barbarian/druid prefers to fight in wild shape (I do not know if he has Natural Spell, doesn't look like it from what I've read of their session logs) and the bard uses inspire courage and favors the blistering invective spell.

Would it perhaps serve this sort of party better to play a more spell focused caster and use save or suck spells with my crowd control?

I could drop Str to a 14 and raise Wis to a 20 if this is the case.