[3.5]First try on creating a Cleric. Starting at level 1.

[HuskySiberiano]

My friends decided to start a new campaign, with the lore centered around Draconic Deities. My friend asked if I could play a Cleric as we never had one in our adventures, and this combined with the chance of playing a Cleric Kobold that worships Tiamat made me give it a shot. So here are the things I have right now:

Starting at level 1, but planning to reach 20.

Our DM didn't vetoed anything, but no one wants to create a character that will simply overshadow the rest of the group. I'm not looking for hardcore optimization, I would love to add more flavor to the character before making him smack monsters harder.

The attributes I rolled are: 8,11,11,13,13,17.

Lawful Evil, Kobold (Maybe Jungle Variant?). I can pick domains that aren't from Tiamat as long as the DM approves them. Also, is the feat Dragonwrought still worth picking? I don't plan to abuse, but I do like the immunities and the extra attributes.

I don't want to focus on Summons/Necromancy, neither to focus on Melee/DMM Persist (I want to let others do the physical beating). But I'm unsure what are my other options. (Being the heal bot is out of the way as you guys can imagine)

Now my questions:

With everything I said here, what are my posible paths? I want to plan based on Prestige Classes, but I failed to find interesting ones that weren't melee or Summon/Necro focused. What domains would fit?

Are there any viable classes more focused on the spells?

Cloistered Cleric or plain Cleric?

How should I spend my attributes?

Any help is appreciated, and sorry if anything is unclear.

Thank you.

[ZeroSpace9000]

This will not by any means be comprehensive, but I do have a few nuggets to hand out.

First, Dragonwrought is very much useful, as with 5 out of your 6 attributes being odd-numbered, a +3 to 3 stats will give you a net +2 modifier to your mental attributes. Given that you seem to want more of a straight caster, setting your 3 mental stats as 13/17/13 before age modifiers will give you quite a boost, and help overcome the physical penalties of kobolds. Given Jungle Kobold modifiers, I would likely set stats as S8 D11 C11 I13 W17 C13 (pre-kobold modifiers).

Cloistered cleric is considered to be almost a straight upgrade from vanilla cleric, what with granting higher skill points and a free domain that gives you more options. As you don't plan to be a melee cleric, the loss of high-end proficiencies doesn't hurt, and you can just gain full BAB off of Divine Power when you get 4th level spells if you really need to.

As for what to do, you still have the usual information tricks like Scrying and Commune, you get a variety of offensive and defensive buff as well as debuffs, healing if you need it, and even a couple of decent blast spells, although those tend to do things besides blast. Given this, if you do decide to take Divine Metamagic, I would personally recommend DMM Quicken, as I feel it's better for caster supremacy.

I'm not too up on good cleric PrC's, and you've nixed most of what I would recommend off-hand, but that's not too big a deal. Straight cleric, while a touch boring, is more than serviceable.

[Gildedragon]

Buffing-Debuffing is a viable cleric role, as is support.

Prestige Classes that work with a lawful evil kobold sort:
Runecaster: you carve pretty little effects into your coin hoard, and pass those effects on to your minions and allies
Dweomerkeeper: Oughtn't be too hard, sorc 1 dip... or magical training (feat) or the anyspell spell
Shadowcrafter / Shadowcraft Mage: I know the latter is supposed to be Gnome Only, but being tricksy is a kobold thing... plus it gives a fair amount of battlefield control

Cloistered Cleric is a yes

You can be the party's skill monkey rogueish type

are you allowed templates? LA?

[HuskySiberiano]

As for what to do, you still have the usual information tricks like Scrying and Commune, you get a variety of offensive and defensive buff as well as debuffs, healing if you need it, and even a couple of decent blast spells, although those tend to do things besides blast. Given this, if you do decide to take Divine Metamagic, I would personally recommend DMM Quicken, as I feel it's better for caster supremacy.

I'm not too up on good cleric PrC's, and you've nixed most of what I would recommend off-hand, but that's not too big a deal. Straight cleric, while a touch boring, is more than serviceable.

Great, I was worried that dumping my physical attributes wouldn't be the way to go.

I'm going to take a look at Quicken, as if I'm keeping a high number on my Char, going for DMM seems like a good idea.

I'm aware that pure Cleric is powerfull and probably would be more than enough, but I love birnging cool features to my table.


Buffing-Debuffing is a viable cleric role, as is support.

Prestige Classes that work with a lawful evil kobold sort:
Runecaster: you carve pretty little effects into your coin hoard, and pass those effects on to your minions and allies
Dweomerkeeper: Oughtn't be too hard, sorc 1 dip... or magical training (feat) or the anyspell spell
Shadowcrafter / Shadowcraft Mage: I know the latter is supposed to be Gnome Only, but being tricksy is a kobold thing... plus it gives a fair amount of battlefield control

The Runecaster class seems pretty interesting, inscribing runes on my allies items seems really interesting, as most of the time our DMs love to restrict the amount of magic items we find.

Dweomerkeeper is a class that I stumbled upon after I created this thread, if I was about to take a deep in an arcane class, would Sorc be the better option? Or maybe something like a Beguiller to have access to more skills/skill points? Magical Training is a nice feat, but it's only level 1, and I'm already going to grab Dragonwrought, and our DM isn't fond of Flaws.

We're allowed basically anything, as long our characters stay with an effective level of 1. So, only LA+0 stuff.

[Incanur]

Note that dweomerkeeper is easily one of the most broken prestige classes in 3.5. Tread carefully.

Divine Spell Power is an option to consider.

[Gildedragon]

If you end up going sorcerer (for which kobolds have nice options) or beguiler (more fun for a sneakthief) magic blooded template boosts your Cha at the expense of Wis; but presuming cleric, the magic domain gives you anyspell which lets you qualify for dweomerkeeper.

[HuskySiberiano]

Note that dweomerkeeper is easily one of the most broken prestige classes in 3.5. Tread carefully.

Divine Spell Power is an option to consider.

Supernatural Spell is what makes Dweomerkeepers broken, right?

If yes, what kind of restrictions could be applied to "balance" it? I mean, I see how things like Supernatural Wish makes the ability completely broken, but besides Wish, what others spells are gamebreaking when abused this way?


If you end up going sorcerer (for which kobolds have nice options) or beguiler (more fun for a sneakthief) magic blooded template boosts your Cha at the expense of Wis; but presuming cleric, the magic domain gives you anyspell which lets you qualify for dweomerkeeper.

If I decide to go Dweomerkeeper, I'm probably going to roll with Anyspell or take a dip into Beguiller, I love skills.


Also, let's say that I decide to go for CC->Runecaster, is it worth to trade Knowledge domain for Knowledge Devotion or the Domain has some kind of utility that I fail to see?

What other domains are good with this character? Travel, Fire, Trickery, Celerity, Spell and Kobold look like my best bets, what are your thoughts?

[Incanur]

Supernatural Spell also makes buffs immune to dispelling and allows you ignore spell resistance.

[Gildedragon]

Kn dev is probably better than the kn domain. Magic and trickery domains are sound ones, or trickery and kobold. Sovereign speaker might be a good class if your pantheon were evil dragons...

[HuskySiberiano]

CC5/RuneCaster10 is a good progression for now, I'm sure that at higher levels I'm going to figure out how to spend another 5 levels.

I noticed that you need 8 ranks in some specific Craft for Runecaster (calligraphy, gemcutting, metalworking, stonecarving, or woodcarving). Which one is the best? Because by taking a quick look over it, I'm thinking about picking Calligraphy.

Trickery and Magic Domains.

Also, can I pick Spontaneous Domain Casting together with Cloistered Cleric?

If I can, I'm thinking about using it on the Magic Domain. Being sure that I will always be prepared to defend myself better from casters seems like a good choice.

Thank you guys very much, I'm really happy with all the feedback I got.

[Incanur]

Note that you probably lose access to some/all knowledge skills as class skills if you trade in the knowledge domain as a cloistered cleric. This can be awkward.

[Gildedragon]

Gemcutting. You can heal warforged
Though caligraphy has a couple prcs and spells that use it (scribe magic tattoo for example)
Stonecarving could be useful if you want to make a tunnel...
You can take spontaneous domain casting as a cloistered cleric, no reason why not.

[HuskySiberiano]

Note that you probably lose access to some/all knowledge skills as class skills if you trade in the knowledge domain as a cloistered cleric. This can be awkward.

In addition to any domains selected from his deity's list, a cloistered cleric automatically gains Knowledge as a bonus domain (even if Knowledge is not normally available to clerics of that deity). - Cloistered Cleric entry

Granted Power: Add all Knowledge skills to your list of cleric class skills.
You cast divination spells at +1 caster level. - Knowledge Domain entry

So, if I trade the domain, I keep the knowledges via the Cloistered Cleric. At least I guess.



Gemcutting. You can heal warforged
Though caligraphy has a couple prcs and spells that use it (scribe magic tattoo for example)
Stonecarving could be useful if you want to make a tunnel...
You can take spontaneous domain casting as a cloistered cleric, no reason why not.

No one on my table will roll Warfoged, so, I think that I'm going with Calligraphy. Will take a better look on what I can do with it later. Thanks!

[Incanur]

Class Skills
The cloistered cleric's class skill list includes Decipher Script, Speak Language, and all Knowledge skills (from the Knowledge domain, see below).

Based on this wording, a DM might well rule that you lose the knowledge skills by trading the domain away.

[HuskySiberiano]

Based on this wording, a DM might well rule that you lose the knowledge skills by trading the domain away.

My bad, I'm checking it with him later.

[Curmudgeon]

Based on this wording, a DM might well rule that you lose the knowledge skills by trading the domain away.
You do lose the Knowledge skills from your class list if you no longer have the domain. However, you keep any existing skill ranks at the time of the swap.

You can replace the class skills benefit of Knowledge domain with the Education feat (Eberron Campaign Setting), but you'll need to pick that up at level 1.

[dextercorvia]

Or you could just wait until level 3 and take Knowledge Devotion as a feat.