Favored Soul or Cleric

[Xcalber]

I'm trying to decide which class to pick for a new D&D campaign. We tend to be overpowered and are allowed to make use of any spells, feats, classes, or exploits we can think of. Right now I'm torn between a Cleric or Favored Soul. What do you think is better and what build should I go with? Thanks!

[Oko and Qailee]

Cleric is much better mostly because of one reason

Turning.

yes, preparing spells is better than spontaneous casting, but in most groups the difference doesn't show itself that largely.

But turning is HUGE. Because the feats you can power with turning are very strong. Divine Meta Magic is one of the best feats in the game (I put it in my top 5) and Devotion Feats are powerful (and get bonus usage via turning.)

Furthermore Clerics get Domains, and domains are awesome. You can trade them for Devotion feats (HA! Behold, my level 1 cleric has more feats than a fighter!) or choose some REALLY nice domains (Envy Domain, enjoy Anyspell, Greater Anyspell, and eventually WISH. Or perhaps you like Time domain, for Improved Initiative, Haste, Time stop, Contingency and some other nice things. Want to teleport? Travel Domain!)

To make this even better, clerics can swap their domains via Substitute Domain.

Need to teleport tomorrow? Swap domains.

Edit: I've worked with both FSouls and Clerics, and you can easily feel the difference.

[eggynack]

Cleric is all the better. You get both a much better casting mechanic, especially when you consider the fact that you have perfect list access, and much better class features. Oko mentioned a lot of the class feature stuff, but I think that the prepared casting difference is also ridiculously relevant, probably even moreso. Clerics rely on a great number of spells that you don't require on an immediate basis, and favored soul cuts off access to most of them.

Losing full list access means likely losing the ability to cure specific long lasting status conditions over after a day's lag, as well as access to the most efficient raise dead effects (unless you want to hamper your other spell use), and it also means losing most access to divinations of various kinds. People often focus on the idea of tailoring your list to encounters when discussing the difference between spontaneous and prepared, and while that's a very valid difference, what you're really losing is all of those out of combat spells. Consider how trivial it is for a cleric to launch animate dead+desecrate, or other minionmancy of various kinds, or how cheap it is to always have the latest summon monster. You're missing out on a lot.

[Oko and Qailee]

good point.

Too add to the gap, Clerics can spontaneously cast any Sanctified spell provided they're good aligned and the can spontaneously cast cure/inflict spells.

Favored souls can't learn sanctified spells at all (save Extra Spell feat) and you either need to blow a feat to learn all the cures/harms or learn each one individually.

[Extra Anchovies]

Cleric is much better mostly because of one reason

Turning.

This. If anything, the Favored Soul should be better at channeling energy than a Cleric, but they don't get it at all and thus can't access divine feats without PrCing.

[Kelb_Panthera]

From a purely optimization standpoint, archivist. Both cleric and favored soul are limited to the cleric spell lists, archivist is not.

That detail not withstanding, you should probably make this a stylistic choice rather than an optimization one. Do you handle spontaneous or prepared casting better? I can do both but I tend to favor spontaneous just a little bit. Selecting a set of generally useful spells and picking up a few scrolls or maybe a wand for those spells you need rarely but really need them when you do need them is usually more than adequate and a -lot- less bookkeeping.

The turning thing is easily covered wtih a dip into sacred exorcist unless you just have to have DMM as early as possible.