[3.5] Show Me Your War (Spell) Face!

[Red Fel]

Okay. A recent thread got me thinking about reserve feats. This, in turn, got me thinking about the Holy Warrior feat. (Not to be confused with the Paladin ACF.) The short version is that you get an untyped bonus to melee damage based on the highest level War spell you have available. (You also get a competence bonus to CL on Force spells.)

Note that it does not require you to get War spells from a domain; it simply requires a War spell. Looking over the list of spells from the War domain, several of them (Magic Weapon, and PWs Blind, Stun and Kill) can be acquired normally by an arcane spellcaster.

So here's the question. How would you optimize a build around the use of Holy Warrior? Would you go Cleric/Paladin, and take the obvious route, likely also jumping into Ordained Champion? Or would you sneak around through the arcane gish route, maybe diving into AbChamp for some extra punch? Or, looking at the scaling melee damage bonus and the CL boost to Force spells, would you simply shrug, and say "Not worth it?"

[Nettlekid]

You do need access to the War domain to take the feat, so that does limit your options a little more than just "prepare a spell in the War domain." Honestly, I think the maximum of +9 damage isn't that amazing. You're a caster, so you have better ways of dealing damage than being in melee, and better ways of beating foes than dealing damage. Maybe this feat would be flavorful/thematic on an Ordained Champion, who focuses on the War domain anyway. But apart from that, a Cleric or whatever would be better served by another feat.

[Ellowryn]

Unfortunately, you need access to the War domain to get the feat, now for a wizard there is an ACF that can do that, or you will have to grab a PrC that gives you a domain.

As for your question, it is a nice feat, as getting the war domain is not bad. Getting martial weapon proficiency and weapon focus with a weapon is not bad at all. Plus you can get feats like spontaneous domain or domain spontaneity to make sure you always get the bonus as long as you have spells to cast.

Aaaaaand ninja'd :smallfrown:

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, well lets go with Arcane Deciple and Planer touchstone will give you both the granted power and the spells.

I would do this maybe for an incantrix gish. Getting persistant divine power is nice. The flat +9 damage is kinda a wasted feat at this point, but that is the challenge.

[Red Fel]

Yeah, I'm aware of both Sorc and Wiz ACFs that grant the domain; sorry, I just assumed them without explicitly stating them. Although looking back, it occurs to me that there's really no way to qualify without having both the Domain and the spells, so I feel a bit silly in that regard.

And I agree - when you can tell reality to go sit silently in the corner and think about what it made you do, a maximum of +9 to melee damage doesn't seem like an awful lot.

The questions, then, are:
- Is there a gish build for whom this would be valuable?
- And, secondarily, would such a build also benefit from the +1 CL to Force spells?

[Fouredged Sword]

+1 cl to force spells is... nice, I guess. I mean, it's useful to a lot of casters, but really, +1 CL. Not a huge deal.

[Vaz]

You need to actually have the spell prepared as a Domain Spell. Without Domain spells, it's useless. Simply having a spell prepared that is on the War Domain list doesn't count.