Priestly Blasting (Not fire)

[Endless Query]

Okay, designing a "BBEG" (as I've come to understand them to be called around here) for a game I'm helping with. The god he follows is vaguely Rovagug-esque, less "Destroy everything" and more "Destroy the sun, stars, and natural order and usher in an era of monsters and darkness" but at the end of the day it's about breaking stuff.

Because of this, I'd like him to be good at breakin' stuff with magic. Destruction variant casting, Shatter, w/e w/e, but the problem I've been having is, if you're not willing to go the Theologian/Fire Domain route (which I just can't justify for a deity trying to CONSUME THE STARS. Kinda anti-fire really), there's not a lot of great "I'm going to use magic to destroy your face from over here" builds. No sweet Sunlight Spear equivalents (for you Dark Souls fans out there), which'd be realllly nice (even if I'd have to reskin them, could probably get away with that without too much trouble).

Now, I'm trying to make this as legit as possible (because, again, helping GM, not primary, meaning 1) GM has to be able to check how stuff works when I'm not around, meaning less stuff I make up = better, and 2) some of the players can get a bit rules-lawyer-y and while the GM is perfectly capable of smacking them down, I'd rather not gift them a bunch of occasions where they'd have to), and I'm having trouble finding ways to BRING DOWN THE MALEVOLENT THUNDER as it were. Honestly, don't do a lot of cleric/priest-ly sorts, so I'm sure I'm missing something (lots of somethings, I bet), so I'm hoping someone can give me a hand on this one.

Thanks for your time and potential help in advanced!

[Troacctid]

You could always deal damage with cold, which is, like, the opposite of fire, so it should be fine.

[Endless Query]

Yeah, finding a decent set of clerical ice blasty spells would be decent, and Water (Ice) has a decent number looking at it (don't know why I didn't think of that, definitely makes sense) but nothing too handy for these purposes until like... What, 5th level? I mean, I guess throwing an Ice Storm or two at the party could be pretty good, not quite the dark annihilation I was thinking of, but it's definitely a decent rules and fluff compliant starting place.

Dread Bolt is okay, I'm always a little leery of assigning characters alignment hose spells (for all that they're the heroes, the players may decide to play a bunch of neutrals or something).

Oh, though, if it matters, I want to say the GM wants to stick with stuff from pure Pathfinder, on the SRD if possible, or officially released otherwise (Like, may be snagging some form of Divine Obedience and, I dunno, Evangelist or something [Exalted just seems like it loses too much] borrowing Rovagug's or something), and I thiiink Darkbolt and Entropomancer are just 3.5? Can't find 'em on the SRD as such, though if they're in a non-3rd party book, send me that way and I'll see what they look like these days.

[THEChanger]

Reach Spell with the Inflict line? Blasty Clerics are hard, especially in pure Pathfinder. You could switch over the class to Witch? They have better blasty spells, especially if you pick the Elements or Winter Patrons, and both classes receive power from dark, mysterious forces. Hell, nothing says a Witch's Patron can't also be a deity. Just a little different relationship from the one a Cleric might have. Or not. In the end, you can call a thing a Cleric, use a total different class, or no class at all. I hear Trumpet Archons make excellent High Priests of Good Deities. Perhaps using a reskinned Devil or Demon might fill the role you're looking for?

[Endless Query]

Mmnh, makes sense, I'll have to talk to the original GM since I know they were kinda feeling the divine magic angle. Maybe I'll suggest like a Darkness shadow spell sort of thing (since I know they get Shadow Evocation and stuff), make it more anti-light, get a rather literal army of darkness on or something. It's not quite as, er, world shattering, but should work for a BBEG type, and works reasonably well with the anti-sun identity.

Though I'm sure they'd prefer I help them nail their original idea, so if anyone else has a suggestion, I'd love to hear it.

[Florian]

You can do some good blasting with the Darkness domain and the Ecclisitheurge archetype. 1 level of Umbral Court Agent and 4 levels of Divine Scion should push that further.

[Endless Query]

Interesting, what gods (or other available Domains) as it were, do you suggest being able to swap stuff in for using the Ecclesitheurge? Since that's the other big advantage they get for losing armor usage, it seems like having the right Domains with, say, impressive spell lists but less impressive powers, would be important to making that function.

Er, also, what's the trick to doing good blasting with Darkness? It doesn't seem to have any particularly damaging spells on it, got some shadow minions, with Shadow Conjuration and then Summon Monster 5, but the only way it has to do damage seems to be Shadow Evocation (Greater) at 8th? Or am I just totally missing something obvious?

[Florian]

You didn't specify a level so I was aiming at Greater Shadow Evocation.

[Endless Query]

Ahhh, okay, I suppose that makes sense, I'll admit I'm not 100% sure on level, but I suspect having some appropriate toys in lower level slots would be appreciated one way or another (either to just give random stuff to throw around while being a baddie, while keeping the best stuff for a proper showdown, or because the adventure doesn't end up scaling that high). Which honestly has been a large part of my problem. If it was just, for sure, level HIIIIGH could just go Ice and get ye Cone of Cold, Polar Ray (... To a lesser extent Ice Storm maybe?) I'd just like to make sure there were some appropriate toys in 3rd-ish level, but just haven't found anything to rival Fire's, er... Fireball. Or hell, even Sun's Searing Light. (Still surprised I haven't found some sort of Chilling Darkness equivalent for that anywhere)

[Florian]

Ahhh, okay, I suppose that makes sense, I'll admit I'm not 100% sure on level, but I suspect having some appropriate toys in lower level slots would be appreciated one way or another (either to just give random stuff to throw around while being a baddie, while keeping the best stuff for a proper showdown, or because the adventure doesn't end up scaling that high). Which honestly has been a large part of my problem. If it was just, for sure, level HIIIIGH could just go Ice and get ye Cone of Cold, Polar Ray (... To a lesser extent Ice Storm maybe?) I'd just like to make sure there were some appropriate toys in 3rd-ish level, but just haven't found anything to rival Fire's, er... Fireball. Or hell, even Sun's Searing Light. (Still surprised I haven't found some sort of Chilling Darkness equivalent for that anywhere)

Well....

Give him the Vile Domain: Darkness trait (+1 CL for all domain spells), Spell Focus Illusion (+1 DC), Varisian Tattoo (+1 CL), he gains the upgraded Tenebrous Spell (+2 Cl, +2 DC).
Kit him out with lesser and greater metamagic rods of Echoing Spell and Intensify Spell and maybe use Wayang as race (+1 DC), wielding a Rod of the Wayang (+1 DC).

Even low level spells like Snowball or Acid Arrow will become an immediate thread then.

[Endless Query]

Hrmm, kind of an inverted way to go about it, but makes sense, I'll have to see what they think...