General advice/minimum Cleric level to take for a self-buffing martial character?

[Windrammer]

To be more clear on what I'm asking:

1. How much Cleric is necessary for this build in the long run? 2. What's the best way to work in a martial class? Tome of Battle? A Fighter dip? 3. Are there other buffing/combat enhancing spells I should be aware of? 4. Any general advice for being a martial cleric?

I'm not trying to optimize, I'm just making a reasonably strong holy warrior, a melee focused tentative tribute to the SunBros of Dark Souls. I'm not interested in many of the powerful higher level spells that don't fit in with the swaggy flavor that I'm shooting for. As it stands, I'm going to take Cleric or Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor to either 7th or 9th level, for the Divine Power and Righteous Might spells, respectively. If I can find a really good way to work in a martial class I may not go Radiant Servant at all.

Bull's Strength, Divine Power, and Divine Favor are the main ones I'll be relying on. Will keep the Magic Weapons and Enlarge Person in pocket.

I'll be using the Strength domain because it's hilarious and underrated, and Sun because he's a SunBro (searing light will be reflavored as lightning spear, you know?). Don't care very much about what I use apart from that, but my god will be Lathander.


Feat Path (we're starting at 8):
1: Divine Metamagic
1 (human bonus): Quicken Spell (ain't bothering with persistent spell)
3: Extra Turning
6: Power Attack

It's pretty strong as full cleric already, easily gets over +20 to hit. Just looking to refine.

Also, how many Quickened Spells should I be able to get away with in a round?

[DMVerdandi]

Theoretically if you care more about martial stuff rather than spell caster levels, you know that you can get into ruby knight vindicator with a straight cleric build right? You can obtain maneuvers and stances with feats from TOB 2 feats from TOB.
Take the spontaneous domain casting ACF so you can always cast sun spells.

Ultimately you would loose 2 spell caster levels. 0 if you take practiced spellcaster and simply leave the divine metamagic thing behind. Get extend spell instead, and spend the rest of your feats on cool things.

Alternatively your build isn't bad in any way and you could just keep that up.

[sideswipe]

if you want a great self buffer you need 7 cleric levels for divine power.

there are some nice 2nd and third level spells too. so they could be helpful.

[Flickerdart]

I wouldn't recommend Cleric if what you're interested in is multiclassing. While a 1-level dip is fantastic for almost any mundane (spells, domains, turning, all great stuff) if you're interested in making a mostly beefy guy who has spellcasting, Divine Crusader (or Ur-Priest for the evil flavor) and then a full-BAB divine advancement class is the way to go. Something like Fighter 6/Full BAB class 1/Divine Crusader 1/Knight of the Raven 10/X 3 makes a pretty great gish. Sprinkle Contemplative and Prestige Paladin in there to expand your spell list.

[PseudoPanda]

Fourth level spells are mandatory for a melee cleric as it nabs you Divine Power which will nullify any loss in BAB and you can ignore getting a +6 Str item, you also get lesser holy transformation which gives you some nifty bonuses and flight (pretty important at mid levels). Fifth level spells are also good (as you probably realize) with Righteous might and Righteous Wrath of the Faithful but the latter is not so important to you since you're not persisting (but still viable if you don't have someone casting haste).

After that the buffs tend to be more defensive but there are some goodies like Heroes' feast, Visage of the deity (both 6th), Holy Transformation (7th), and Greater Visage of the Deity (9th). Also, if you get 9th level spells you can have Miracle duplicate any cleric spell (including domain spells) of 8th level or lower and any spell of 7th level or lower which allows you to cherry pick the buff that best suits you.

Now if you're not focused on casting too much I'd say a dip in Crusader and then Ruby Knight Vindicator is a good way to go especially since you're focusing on quicken spell as it gives you even more swift actions. Even if you don't want to do RKV, a dip in Crusader is still useful for martial weapon proficiency and a few maneuvers (which are recovered without any action). If you're going for prolonged martial class advancement, Swordsage works well since it uses Wisdom a lot (Wis to AC while in light armor? Perfect if you do Cloistered Cleric). Prestige Paladin from UA is a decent choice too if your DM allows it (it'll cost you a feat, though).

[Elric VIII]

There are a few ways to go about this:

My preferred way is to simply decline to use high level spells in favor of low level spell enhanced by metamagic. So even if you end up having 20/20 casting, you don't have to worry about those high level things that do not fit with your character. If this is your chosen path, Ordained Champion is an excellent option and you can ask your DM to make it focused on Pelor rather than Heironeous/Hextor (which actually requires 0 change).

The other option is to go for a few levels in cleric then move into a 1/2 casting class for a few levels. Cleric 6/PrC paladin 14 will give you 13th level casting, +18 BAB, and a bunch of paladin abilities, including the mount. Alternatively, fighter 1/cleric 4/PrC paladin 15 gets you 12th level casting, +19 BAB, and all 15 levels of PrC paladin (if that matters to you). Crusader/RKV could work, but you'd need to change RKV's flavor and a few abilities, namely making it focused on Desert Wind possibly.

The last option is to ask for a pathfinder back-port. Look at warpriest (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/warpriest). This has absolutely everything a holy warrior wants and as far as I can recall, is has nothing that requires any work/changing to fit into 3.5 (it doesn't use any of the combined skills, it doesn't reference CMB or anything, it uses the cleric's spell list 1-6, etc).

[aspekt]

I think a dip in Bard is highly underrated if you're not just trying to fully optimize. You get a load of skills, Inspirations, useful arcanes like Haste, plus some fun CC on top of it.

[Flickerdart]

I think a dip in Bard is highly underrated if you're not just trying to fully optimize. You get a load of skills, Inspirations, useful arcanes like Haste, plus some fun CC on top of it.
Unfortunately, in 3.5 skills are pointless unless you can max them out, Inspire Courage needs a ton of work to make useful, and arcane spells fail when you're wearing your favourite heavy plate.

[Rebel7284]

Cleric 4/Crusader 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 7+ is really your best bet for beating face. You are only down one BAB, and Crusader compliments Cleric wonderfully.

[Windrammer]

Cleric 4/Crusader 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 7+ is really your best bet for beating face. You are only down one BAB, and Crusader compliments Cleric wonderfully.

Why Cleric 4, if I may ask? For an even initiator level?