Solo cleric spells

[Kaeso]

I'll keep it quick, but I need to create a 4th or 5th level cloistered cleric as sort of miniboss for a campaign. I want him to be solo and though to take down, yet defeatable. His domains will be madness, trickery and knowledge, I've already decided on that. Now I'd just like to know what cleric spells are good for him, as well as what feats. I need him to be able to both neutralize enemies and deal direct damage to them.

[hymer]

I'll keep it quick, but I need to create a 4th or 5th level cloistered cleric as sort of miniboss for a campaign. I want him to be solo and though to take down, yet defeatable. His domains will be madness, trickery and knowledge, I've already decided on that. Now I'd just like to know what cleric spells are good for him, as well as what feats. I need him to be able to both neutralize enemies and deal direct damage to them.

Sounds like a job for INVISIBLE MAN! Trickery gets you invisibility, which you can combine with summoning to great effect. You could focus on summoning feats and just pump out the beasties.

[Abemad]

Assuming the combat will take place in the cleric's base, he could have a descerated altar, allowing you to animate and control up to 20HD of undead, should give you plenty of options - assuming he can get his hands on enough corpses...

[Kaeso]

Assuming the combat will take place in the cleric's base, he could have a descerated altar, allowing you to animate and control up to 20HD of undead, should give you plenty of options - assuming he can get his hands on enough corpses...

Sorry, I don't think a necromancer would be viable right now for RP reasons. It's an interesting idea though!

[Gemini476]

To be a viable solo encounter he needs to have action economy. The PCs already have a big lead there, so you need to fix that.

First of all, make him immune to death, stunning, and daze. Making him undead or some refluffed version of the same might be a good start for immunities. This stops your party from defeating him in a single spell/stunlocking him.

Next, load up on AoE attacks. He's going up against overwhelming numbers (four PCs would be a CR+4 encounter, for reference) and desperately needs some ways to spread the damage without splitting it too much. Or spread the Color Spray, as the case may be.
The other option is to just give him a lot of attacks/turn or high damage output, but then you run into issues with focused fire.

Consider just giving him an extra round each turn - make him a Dvati if you really need some kind of reasoning for it, but honestly it's just so that he can keep up with the PCs attacks.

Solos don't really work that well in 3.5, since focused fire let's PCs kill them pretty quickly. A 5th level Cloistered Cleric only has 5d6+5*Con HP, which probably averages around 27 hp with 14 con. A 1st-level Barbarian can put out an average of 15 damage/round with extremely low amounts of optimisation, and this Cleric is going up against an entire party. They will focus fire.

To be honest, the most important question is "What are your PCs?" It's hard to make a challenging boss fight when you don't know what he's up against.

[Yogibear41]

Give him the craft wondrous item feat and fill the room full of magic traps that either specifically help him or specifically damage the people trying to kill him. If hes undead you could have the whole room rigid with inflict minor wounds spells so basically everyone in the rooms gets hit by the spell every round, thereby healing him and damaging them. Or you could just fill the room with normal traps, have a giant boulder trap set to crash down in the narrow entry way into his chamber potentially separating the party in half, or leaving one guy completely alone vs the cleric. If he is good or neutral there is a 3rd level spell in PHB2 he could DMM persist to give himself DR 10/evil.

[weckar]

Solo bosses are a thin line to walk. They can teeter from cakewalk to impossible with the most minor changes. Good luck.

[TSED]

As stated earlier, the action economy is the key.

My favourite trick is to make the terrain IMMENSELY favourable to him. If none of the PCs fly, give him airwalk and flood the place with acid. Not drowning levels, mind you, just... you know, a foot deep or whatnot. Have a couple of pillars that people can climb or jump onto... with repeating dispel magic (targeted) traps on them. Throw a couple of other traps onto the ground that are unrelated to the acid, and make the priest try to guide the PCs onto them. Then when the PCs start wising up, they will try to guess where the trap is and take new approaches instead of whatever was getting them trapped before. The priest then adjusts for this, and so it goes for a bit.

You do, after all, have trickness AND madness as domains. Make some really stupid traps, too, that nobody would be able to guess about beforehand because they're insane. Like portcullis traps that shoot out of the wall and then just... do nothing, because they work by gravity (of course they can then trigger some other trap when they land which could be on a delayed timer...). Traps that throw fireballs at other locations. Scintillating Spheres are really good ones if you decide to go Lesser Mechanitrix as a race (heals him, hurts party, as long as SOMETHING gets hit he's happy) but they're not on the cleric list. Maybe somewhere halfway through the fight he steps on a pressure plate that makes all of the acid drain out of the room... and then dives down there himself (no he doesn't; programmed illusion trap also tied to the pressure plate + invisibility = $$$).

Basically, he uses all his resources to keep himself alive, and the room is what's actually trying to kill the PCs. Bonus points if you put in stupid ambush monsters (the floor attacks you, the roof attacks you, one of the portcullises or pillars happens to be a mimic).