Ordained Champion smite clarification (3.5)

[Miras]

Hey fellow DMs.
I have some doubts about Ordained Champion prestige class from Complete Champion handbook. It would be helpful if anyone could share their opinion on this case.

There is cleric/ordained champion character with destruction domain. His domain granted power let's him turn one melee attack into a smite gaining +4 to attack roll and bonus damage. Ordained champion has his own smite ability: as a swift action he can spend one turn undead attempt to turn next melee attack into a smite gaining bonus attack (equual to Charisma modifier) and damage. This ability is quite different from most smiting abilities as it requires swift action.

The question is: can both this abilities be combined in a single attack? Technicaly both smites provide untyped bonuses, one requires a swift action other is no action at all, so I think by RAW there is nothing wrong with this. Game balance-wise I have serious doubts about allowing this in the game though. Cleric is already a powerfull class and Ordained Champion is full of other almost cheesy abilities.

[Darrin]

The question is: can both this abilities be combined in a single attack? Technicaly both smites provide untyped bonuses, one requires a swift action other is no action at all, so I think by RAW there is nothing wrong with this.


Looks ok to me. Smite is actually a (Su), as is the Destruction domain ability, so it's really a standard action + swift action. So you could stack these two smites together. Hope you don't miss!



Game balance-wise I have serious doubts about allowing this in the game though. Cleric is already a powerfull class and Ordained Champion is full of other almost cheesy abilities.

Meh. You don't really break the game by doing more damage. And since you're limited to one melee attack per round this way, I'm not all that convinced it would throw things out of balance. There are plenty of other ways a Clericzilla could end an encounter that don't involve an attack roll.

[Zanos]

Looks ok to me. Smite is actually a (Su), as is the Destruction domain ability, so it's really a standard action + swift action. So you could stack these two smites together. Hope you don't miss!
Agreed, they should work together just fine.


Meh. You don't really break the game by doing more damage. And since you're limited to one melee attack per round this way, I'm not all that convinced it would throw things out of balance. There are plenty of other ways a Clericzilla could end an encounter that don't involve an attack roll.
I fundamentally disagree. Damage is one of the easiest ways to break the game. Unless your DM is posting forth some major cheese enemies, doing damage is the most reliable way to make anything dead, and a character built for damage can pretty easily put anything in the MM in the grave in 1 round. That's pretty game breaking for most campaigns.

That said, I don't think a single attack at +4+cha to hit and +4+cha to damage is really going to break the damage meters. Especially on a battle cleric, who usually have fairly low charisma.

[Miras]

Thank you for your opinions guys.

I'll also try to briefly discuss this with other players before the next game (I try to make sure everyone around the table is ok with certain interpretations) but you're right - there are other things to clerics than powering multiple 'limited use per day' abilities into single melee attack (which can actually be a miss).

[Troacctid]

The bonuses are from different sources, so they stack. However, since it is still only one attack, your Awesome Smite feat (for example) would only apply once.