help with a cohort

[paladinofawe]

im playing a dnd 3.5 campaign and im making a new character that has a cohort but i want him to be a sphinx but thats too high of a la to use. so my question is are there any other races that start with some cleric spells? the androsphinx starts with 6th level healing and protection cleric spells and i was going to make it a cleric of a different god so i could cast spells from 3-4 domains an thats what i want to do still but i cant find a race that has cleric spells.

[Blackhawk748]

Well Unicorns have a few cleric spells, AFB right now so im not sure what their LA is.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

im playing a dnd 3.5 campaign and im making a new character that has a cohort but i want him to be a sphinx but thats too high of a la to use. so my question is are there any other races that start with some cleric spells? the androsphinx starts with 6th level healing and protection cleric spells and i was going to make it a cleric of a different god so i could cast spells from 3-4 domains an thats what i want to do still but i cant find a race that has cleric spells.

A Lammasu is ECL 12 and casts spells as a Cleric 7.

If your character is already a Cleric, you should have taken Thaumaturgist (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/thaumaturgist.htm) 5 and gotten a Ghaele (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ghaele.htm) Eladrin as your planar cohort. If it can be called via the Planar Ally line of spells, then it can be a planar cohort regardless of its lack of an ECL.

If you just want a cohort who can cast divine spells that your character doesn't have access to, get a Human Archivist (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3), who can learn and cast any divine spell in the game (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1023251).

[paladinofawe]

my character is a level 8 paladin i can have any non evil aligned race an my cohort because of the code of conduct i wrote for him and my gm said hes ok with any non evil race as long as i can make a good backstory to explain it so i dont want it to be a humanoid cohort. but so far we have one healer that is switching characters when we leave the dungeon so we wont have a healer. which is why i want a creature with cleric abilities (like the sphinx because it could heal/protect and take 2 more domains of damaging spells like fire or ice) so i want a cohort that i can heal with and that can do lots of damage

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Your cohort is already going to be two levels behind your character. The most efficient way to do this is to pick a race with no level adjustment, and give it six class levels in something like Cleric or Archivist. Any monster race you pick is going to have a level adjustment, which will only serve to reduce their spellcasting capabilities, as there are no monsters with higher level spellcasting than their ECL. There are a few monsters that may be able to use Cure Light Wounds or similar at will, but those are also fairly high in ECL or not eligible as PCs or cohorts.

A Cleric cohort could use DMM: Persistent with Mass Lesser Vigor to give the whole party Fast Healing 1 all day long. That means after every encounter you'll all be back to full hp by the time you finish searching the corpses. Otherwise you could get the rest of the party to all pitch in for a Wand of Cure Light Wounds which anyone who has that spell on their class spell list can use, including yourself. A Wand of Lesser Vigor is more cost effective, but only someone with levels in a class that uses the Cleric or Druid spell list would be able to use it without UMD.