Grappler Cleric

[Humble Master]

A player in my campaign has been playing Cleric and really likes grappling enemies. He doesn't want to focus his entire character around grappling but is going to make it a major point of his character. What advice can the playground offer him so he can get some awesome grappling action going?

He is currently a 4th level Dwarven Cleric with the Earth and Protection domains. His feats are Extra Turning and Pious Spellsurge.

[Kennisiou]

CoDZilla can honestly grapple really well. Extend Spell > Persist Spell > Divine Metamagic: Persist Spell is the feat chain. You can persist Divine Power (4th level spell, access at level 7 Cleric) to gain an enhancement bonus to strength and a bonus to base attack (great for grappling), and you can persist Righteous Might (5th level, access at 9) to gain a size bonus to strength and increase in size (also both great for grappling). Persisting Righteous Wrath of the Faithful (5th level, access at 9) gives you various morale bonuses and additional attacks -- and all allies near you when the spell was cast as well -- all of which are useful for, you guessed it, grappling. If you have any other ways to increase size that aren't a case of magical buffs (like getting permanently polymorphed into a larger size creature, or rerolling/rebuilding the character as a creature of larger size or one with powerful build, or finding a template that can be applied after character creation that increases your size/gives powerful build) then those should be used as well to get bigger, since larger size = better grappler. Also, taking a level or two of crusader and prestiging into Ruby Knight Vindicator (or a campaign-appropriate non-Wee-Jas-affiliated refluffing of the class) is a bit roundabout, but helpful for grappling Clerics. It will cause your initiator level for maneuvers to increase faster than not being a non-martial-initiator class, which is important since there are a few higher level maneuvers that help in grappling. Granted, it's less useful since none of them are in disciplines the crusader can natively access, but you can take the martial study feat as an initiator to gain access to maneuvers from disciplines your class wouldn't normally have, and a higher initiator level will help you gain access to those maneuvers via feats more quickly. That said, the Crusader + RKV levelling strategy is not necessarily the best way to go for grappling, and it's a lot of resources to spend if you're just doing it to gain grappling maneuvers or stances, so he'll really, really want to plan every aspect of his build if he does this to make sure he has the levels and feats to spare.

Oh, and finding a way to get improved unarmed strike and improved grapple is also a must -- grappling without improved grapple is honestly just a bad idea, since a successful attack of opportunity on your initial grapple attempt will cause it to fail and the +4 bonus to grapple checks is super useful. A one-level dip in monk can accomplish both, or you can spend the two feats.

Edit: Expanding on the monk dip, you can "theurge" the two classes with the sacred fist prestige class, which is probably not a bad idea if you want to be a grappler cleric, since better unarmed damage is great for grappling.

[Urpriest]

There are a lot of great spells that damage those you grapple, and many of them are available to Clerics. Balor Nimbus in particular is a pretty impressive one.

[WhamBamSam]

If he can stomach the lost caster level to a Monk dip plus one feat, then Scorpion's Grasp could be pretty nice. Punch someone and automatically start a grapple. It also combines rather hilariously with Blood Wind (1st level spell, current version is in the Spell Compendium). Make a head-locking motion in the air and pull someone into a grapple from 30ft away.