Which class/build should I play?

[Huldaerus]

I'm joining a new game soon as a 5th man. The DM told me that I should play a cleric because the party is needing more healing. But I'm not sure. I think they are lacking crowd control and debuff in combat and perhaps some sneaking out of combat, but I'm looking forward to some ideas of what to play.

The party is:

- Elf duskblade 7/abjurant champion 1 with knowledge devotion and versatile spellcaster. His skills are knowledge, spellcraft and some sense motive. The only decent build.
- Human cleric 7/divine disciple 1, domains luck and trickery, mostly a healbot with augmented healing, divine vigor and touch of healing Packing some diplomacy, knowledge religion and some listen.
- Gnome wizard 8, pretty weak, with a lot of blasting and self-buff spells, he has some metamagic feat he doesn't use, combat casting... His skills are mostly spellcraft and knowledge.
- Dwarven fighter 8, sword and board, with toughness, improved toughness and shield ward. Physical skills, some intimidate.

[Waker]

I'd say Beguiler would fit well. Skillmonkey, some illusions/enchantment spells for cc and debuffs.

[Xerlith]

Beguiler is fine, but a BARD! Oooh, a Bard will do so well. A Dexterity-focused Spiked Chain/Glaive wielder with a level or two dip in Crusader would rock their world (heh).

Bard6/Crusader 2 ACF'd to hell and back: Healing Hymn, Eberron Bard (Song of the Heart instead of Inspire Competence), Healing Hymn (instead of Fascinate), Bardic Knack, Spellbreaker Song (20% spell failure for verbal component spells).

Thicket of Blades + Combat Reflexes + Reach Weapon mean you can Zone of Nope someone hard, you are a level away from 3rd lvl spells, grab some White Raven/Devoted Spirit maneuvers, and you're the ultimate supporting machine.

Here's a character I made (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=144537) a long time ago, basing on that exact premise.

[Huldaerus]

Forgot to say I'll start at level 9.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Well, here's a build I designed for use at level 8 with 1 LA bought off (I had to cram it into 3 levels in the end, which was a bit sad). It's a crowd controller with healing ability, but it doesn't do so well without decent stats (str/dex/con and 13+ int). The idea is to dump AC and buff self-heals, DR and counter-attacks.

Azurin Crusader 4/Incarnate 4
Add a strength-boosting template, but don't reduce dexterity (at all) or intelligence (below 13). I used Draconic, also for the flavour, but half-ogre half-minotaur is stronger - if you can deal with the intelligence issue. With a grey elf base, you'd be Large with +6 str, +2 dex, -2 int, -2 cha, which is quite usable when added to starting stats of 14/14/14/15/8/8 (26 points equivalent, that).

Feats
Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Extra Granted Maneuver, Improved Trip, Karmic Strike, Midnight Dodge.
You can replace Extra Granted Maneuver with Expanded Soulmeld Capacity. Take Double Chakra at 9th, and Robilar's Gambit at 12th.

Flaws
Shaky, Vulnerable

Trait
Aggressive

Maneuvers
Stances ― iron guard’s glare (1st), martial spirit (1st)
Strikes ― battle leader’s charge (2nd), charging minotaur (1st), crusader’s strike (1st), douse the flames (1st), leading the attack (1st)
Boosts ― white raven tactics (3rd)

Soulmelds
Airstep Sandals (bound), Planar Ward, Spellward Shirt, Therapeutic Mantle.
If using Double Chakra, Mantle of Flame is neat.
If you're not facing spellcasters, use Astral Vambraces, instead of Spellward Shirt.

Now, this is a complex build, and you need to be aware of several combinations that provide you with the stats and tricks you need.

1. Martial Spirit (stance) + Therapeutic Mantle (soulmeld) + Improved Trip (feat)
You can heal a lot of damage. Let me put up the text:


Therapeutic Mantle
Whenever you are the target of a spell or effect that heals hit point damage, the spell heals additional damage equal to its spell level. [...]

Essentia: Every point of essentia invested increases the additional healing by 2 more hit points.

Martial Spirit
While you are in this stance, you or an ally within 30 feet heals 2 points of damage each time you make a successful melee attack.

Improved Trip
If you trip an opponent in melee combat, you immediately get a melee attack against that opponent as if you hadn’t used your attack for the trip attempt.
Note: to trip, you must first make a melee touch attack.

The combination is simple: whenever possible, your attack is a trip attempt. If you make your melee touch attack, you heal 9 hit points. If you then make your follow-up attack, you heal another 9 hit points.
The healing is computed as follows: 2 base, +2 per point of essentia (3), +1 because Martial Spirit is a first-level maneuver.
Note that the latter is a reasonable house-rule, as Martial Spirit is not, technically, a first-level equivalent spell.

2. Steely Resolve (class feature) + Astral Vambraces (soulmeld) + combination 1
You're hard to kill.
You have delayed damage (10), damage reduction (8/magic) or spell resistance (17), and healing (9 hp per attack).
Spellward Shirt can really use Expanded Soulmeld Capacity, because SR 21 is just a lot more relevant at level 9, though it's not perfect by any means.

3. Large size (race or spell) + Guisarme (weapon) + Combat Reflexes (feat) + Improved Trip (feat) + combination 1
It sucks to be near you.
You threaten a 50' diameter area - 10' base size, and 10' reach, which you use with a guisarme, to double to 20'. Whenever an opponent provokes an AoO, you get to trip them, and take your follow-up attack, healing 9 hit points each time.

4. Karmic Strike (feat) + low AC (various) + Mantle of Flame (soulmeld) + all of the above
It sucks to attack you in melee.
Mantle of Flame simply deals 4d6 fire damage to anyone attacking you in melee (except with reach weapons).
You can take an AoO whenever an opponent hits you, which will be often, because your AC sucks - you have a -6 penalty from Vulnerable, Aggressive, and Karmic Strike itself. This AoO will be a trip-follow-up-heal combo, as per combination 1, and the damage from the provoking attack will be reduced, as per combination 2, so enemies will not succeed in killing you with melee attacks, but still take damage.

Keep in mind that you can't use them all at once. You have only 6 essentia and 4 soulmelds, so you can't fill your Shirt, Mantle and Vambraces all at once. In addition, both Mantles take the same slot - hence the Double Chakra feat at level 9 - so you must decide which one you prefer. For example, if the cleric handles the healing, you might as well go with the Mantle of Flame (and switch your stance to Iron Guard's Glare), to deal that extra damage.

Weaknesses
Anything beyond 20' is annoying, anything beyond ~80' is potentially problematic.


I hope that's useful.

[Name1]

Hmm... How much gold do you have? I mean, you could go Human cleric 7/divine disciple 2 and then True Mind Switch with a Greater Doppelganger (and kill your old body, making you a Cleric 7/Divine Disciple 1) and use it's superatural ability to consume the other three (the Elf, Dwarf, Gnome).

That way, you can play all of them. I think...

[DMVerdandi]

I say archivist.
It's a wizard, but instead of wizard spells, they cast cleric spells(and every other divine spell list).
It's got all the cures you want, BUT just look at how many awesome spells there are in the domains.
Just having that "gotta scribe em all" attitude is enough to drive your character to go to any height.

Good divine classes to pilfer for spells
-Shugenja
-Divine Bard
-Druid
-Paladin
-Ranger

[Kelb_Panthera]

Ignore your DM's advice on this one. You've already got a straight-up cleric in the party.

If there's anything your party is currently lacking, it's someone adept at skill use. Lockpicking, trapfinding, stealth infiltration, etc are things your party can only ape with spells right now. Have you considered a rogue/ wizard/ unseen seer sort of thing?

[Huldaerus]

Have you considered a rogue/ wizard/ unseen seer sort of thing?

Yeah, that's what I was considering: rogue 1/wizard 4/unseen seer 4 or beguiler 8/mindbender 1.

[Thaneus]

How about:
Factotum -> because skills and versatility
Chameleon Prc -> more versatility, spells and heal up to level 6 (or be a fighter, rouge, ranger... what ever)

[Kelb_Panthera]

How about:
Factotum -> because skills and versatility
Chameleon Prc -> more versatility, spells and heal up to level 6 (or be a fighter, rouge, ranger... what ever)

That sounds better on paper than it actually is. You'd generally want to pick either chameleon or factotum as the center piece and, for the former, pick up some goodies from front-loaded classes or classes with abilities that scale with character level, though a 1 level dip in factotum because "all of the skills" is a useful idea. I actually like incarnate from magic of incarnum so that you can, effectively, shuffle your skills around to go with the class features you pick up for the day.

Go with changeling as a race and be a different person every day :smalltongue:

[Fouredged Sword]

Well a druid hits all the notes. Crowd control + healing. Sneaking can be done through human able learner and spending a small amount of money on + hide and +move sci items and wildshape to be tiny/small.

I love chameleon. I also love bard entry into chameleon. Maybe mix in a little rogue for evasion + sneak attack/craven. Rogue 2 / bard 4 / chameleon 3 is a perfectly valid build. Take healing hymn as an ACF and make those first level cure spells heal 1d8+18 damage and double natural recovery. This will go UP as you level so long as you keep sticking ranks in preform and it applies to ALL healing spells your allies cast. Grab some memento morri to give you plenty of first level spell slots. Even those chameleon cantrips are useful as cure minor wounds spells that heal a flat 14 damage.

[Eldariel]

I think one great option is indeed playing a second Cleric - the class can provide everything this party wants. More precisely, I recommend a Cloistered Cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#clericVariantCloistere dCleric) picking domains for arcane crowd control access and skills. Perhaps branch into summoning too for some frontliner brawn and additional spell access; the investment is pretty minimal for a Cleric. All you need is the Dragon Below-domain (can be acquired through Planar Touchstone by visiting Catalogues of Enlightenment, which can be done before the adventure starts) for Augment Summoning and you're already pretty well off. Then you could enter Malconvoker (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2791.0) if you wish to further pursue that angle, but just a crowd control/caster Cleric would be more than fine. Hell, it could be combined with Cloudy Conjuration [Complete Mage] to added effect.

For crowd control, you already have spells like Ice Slick [Frostburn], Silence, Nauseating Breath [Spell Compendium], Dark Way [Spell Compendium] (basically Wall of Force), etc. in your arsenal which combined with summoning spells (especially since you get Summon Monster, Conjure Ice Beast and Summon Undead-lines) is pretty nice. You could also play a Neutral Cleric channeling evil energy and further expand your arsenal with Animate Dead, thus keeping a bruiser or two around for frontline support. And of course, you could use PHBII variant "Spontaneous Domain Casting" to swap your useless Spontaneous Inflicts/Cures for spontaneous casting of some nice spells from some Domain. This handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3927) does a decent job of listing the domain options.


Then to top it all off, you get 6+Int skills per level, decent list (which can be expanded via. Domains and multiclassing; you can be Human with Able Learner [Races of Destiny] if you desire to go down that road), and access to Divine Insight [Spell Compendium] and Guidance of the Avatar (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) making you a very, very versatile skill monkey indeed. Every skill you can attempt checks in, you can get very good checks if desired. Of course, if you use buffs you'll have to coordinate with the other Cleric and Wizard to avoid excessive overlap but that's probably easy enough.

EDIT: Oh yeah, picking the "Divine Magician" ACF [Complete Mage] might be a nice idea for adding some extra debuffs (and potential Undead control spells if that happens to interest you) to your spell list. Standouts include Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Exhaustion, Enervation, Command Undead, etc. They're actually added to your Cleric-list so this leaves your Domain slots open.

[LoyalPaladin]

I'm obligated to recommend you play a paladin. But whenever I see that someone is joining a party, I will also recommend playing a bard. You can't really go wrong with bard. Just remember that paladin is always the [Good] choice. :smallwink: