[3.5] Need help with Favored Soul Feats, PrC and weapons choices

[Lendário]

I'm new to D&D.
A week ago i made a thread asking for help with a Tripper. By the end i was going Horizon Tripper, but things changed. Turns out the party needed a Divine caster. So i was going Favored Soul still using the Spiked Chain. But things changed again.

Due to setting, i won't have acess to a deity with Spiked Chain. So i need your guys help with the following:

30 Point buy.
Human or Aasimar, can't use Lesser Aasimar. I can only use gods from the PHB.
My book choices are also very limited (That may change during the game) i can only use the Core Books (No srd) and Complete Divine.

- Which weapon/god do i choose? Bastard Sword looked good, but i'm told Shields are bad so i should pick a two handed weapon.

- What feats should i get? DMM:Persist is out of my reach.

- PrC/Multiclass wise, where do i go? Should i try to dip in something to acess Heavy Armor?

[Shadurak]

Well, if you still want to trip, I'd say go with Hextor - his favored weapon is the flail, which allows you to trip with a 1h weapon. This deity may cause IC conflict with fellow party members, however. As for race, go with human. Unfortunately, there are no good PrCs for FS in your limited selection of books. The only ones I can think of are the Thaumaturgist from DMG(196) and Divine Oracle(CD 35). They both require a feat tax, though.

Str - 14
Dex - 10
Con - 14
Int - 14
Wis - 10(it only affects the DC of your spells and trust me, you should buff yourself/your allies instead)
Cha - 15(level up points go here, obviously)

Feats:
1) Combat Expertise, Improved Trip
3) Spell Focus(Conj.) - for Thaumaturgist, earliest entry point is lvl 9 if you pick lesser planar ally as known spell at lvl 8. If you don't like the PrC, go with Extend Spell for longer buffs or Exotic Weapon Proficiency(spiked chain) for tripping goodness. It only requires BAB 1, no MWP needed.
Bonus Feat: - Weapon Focus(Deity's Favored Weapon)
6) Spontaneous Healer
9) Extend Spell/Augment Healing
12) Skill Focus(Knowledge-Religion) - feat tax for Divine Oracle. It comes so late because FSs don't have knowledge(religion) as a class skill, for some reason, and DivOr requires 8 ranks in it. If you convince your DM to house rule them so it is a class skill, then take this at level 3 and the PrC at level 6. In any case, I suggest dipping Divine Oracle for 2 levels to get pseudo-evasion. Go as far as 6 levels for Imp. Uncanny Dodge, if it rocks your boat.

If you want to go for damage, pick Kord as your god, get a greatsword, Power Attack and Cleave as lvl 1 feats and you're done. Drop 2 points from Int and add 1 to Cha if you go this route.

[mastermisha1]

If your DM is ok with it there is an online article (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20070227x) that swaps out knowledge arcana for knowledge religion.

[Zaq]

Unless your GM is enforcing a houserule, there's no rule saying that a Favored Soul has to use their deity's favored weapon. You can worship whatever god you like and still just spend a feat for EWP: Spiked Chain like everyone else. The free Weapon Focus is wasted, but that only matters if you were using it for a prereq (losing a +1 to hit will not make or break your character). If you have access to PHB2, you can use the Deity's Favor ACF to trade away the free Weapon Focus, but even if you can't do that, it's not the end of the world to not be able to use a minor class feature.

I wouldn't dip out of Favored Soul just for heavy armor. You're a full caster, and your power comes from your spells. Any level that doesn't make your spells better needs to offer you something really, really nice to make up for it, and a couple points of AC isn't nearly nice enough to make up for delaying your access to higher-level spells.

What feats make sense for you really depend on your stats. If you've got enough physical stats to get in melee, you can certainly benefit from melee feats, though it'll be hard for you to go the tripping route—Improved Trip requires Combat Expertise, which requires 13 INT. You already need WIS and CHA for your spells, and if you're going melee, you're going to want at least STR and CON, and maybe DEX too, which will make it hard to spare the points for INT as well. It's not impossible, but you'll be spreading yourself thin. (One option is to focus on spells that don't have saves to resist them, meaning mostly buffs and friendly spells; WIS is needed for your spell save DCs, but if you aren't casting spells with saves, you can ignore WIS and just use CHA for your casting. I personally like to have the option, but I also recognize that you can't have everything.)

If you can't use online material, you'll have a hard time qualifying for PrCs, since Favored Souls don't get K:Religion as a class skill without that "dead levels" article letting them trade out K:Arcana for it. Most divine casting PrCs require K:Religion, so that kinda sucks. If you had a wider book access, you could fix that with feats (like Educated or Knowledge Devotion) or maybe with some very careful dipping into easy PrCs like Ruathar, but with just PHB + CDiv, there's not going to be a lot of options for you. Pretty much no easy way around that, I'm afraid.

All of this doesn't mean you can't have an interesting and useful character. Just being a full caster gives you a lot of cool tricks even if you stay a straight-classed Favored Soul and don't PrC out for anything. You can still do melee if that's something you'd like to do. There's nothing stopping you from going with your original plan of using a spiked chain, even. Just pick a focus and build around it, and you should be okay.

[Lendário]

I forgot to add but, DM is considering giving me knowledge relegion instead of arcana.

Thanks for the responses and suggestions.
Looks like my options are going for the Greatsword or trying to convince my DM about me using Kossuth as a deity.
But i don't know if its worth it, is the FS bab good enough for Tripping?

If i did go the Greatsword way, is 14/12/14/10/10/16 good enough?

And it's a shame a dip for Full Plate not being worth.
I should probably go War Domain Cleric, but i don't wanna be that guy.

[Troacctid]

Tripping doesn't use BAB, it uses a melee touch attack and an opposed Strength check. Grapple is the one that uses BAB, and disarm, sort of.

Do you think your DM would be amenable to the spontaneous Cleric variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm)? It could be better for what you want.