Optimized My Lesser Drow Fighter/Clostiered Cleric

[Bartmanhomer]

Hello everybody. I feel like I want to optimize my Chaotic Good Female Lesser Drow Fighter/Clostiered Cleric. Her name is Carrie Club (I know too human for a drow name) and this is her character sheet: https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1170862

My plan to optimized is to continue to level up in Clostiered Cleric and hopefully find a very good prestige class to add in her level. I'll go into full melee and range with her attack. Unless someone else has a better suggestion. I'm very open to taking notes. :smile:

[Afghanistan]

Alrighty, so it looks like you're going for that Cleric of Eilistraee type deal. I approve if only because she is the only Elf-type God/Goddess that doesn't make me wretch.

Good news: You're a Cleric, one of the best classes in the game. At 2nd level there is very little room to really min-max, but lets give it the old clown college try.

Bad News: "Cleric" is your only "optimal" choice that you've made on this entire sheet. The Bastard Sword is a terribly inefficient weapon, Power Attack on a cleric is highly inefficient, especially on a cloistered chassis and especially at 2nd level, your skill rank choices are questionable at best, and your choices in spell preparation are equally questionable.

I'd frankly do the following:


Drop the Exotic Weapon Proficiency for Improved Initiative, going first always matters regardless of what level you are at.
Replace Power Attack with a feat called "Intuitive Attack" from Book of Exalted Deeds (it is also a fighter bonus feat if that matters to you).
Replace your Bastard Sword with a Morningstar, and your choice of a Ranseur (disarming) or a Guisarme (tripping), or both if you'd like. Keep your other ranged weapons, but consider a crossbow (heavy ideally; You'll be dropping it in the first round of combat after firing it because reloading mid combat is for suckers).
Drop being Cloistered, you very clearly want your character to be a melee combatant of some sort or another and I don't see how that would be a problem for anyone.
Talk about swapping your Strength Score for your Wisdom Score with your DM.
Never take another level in Fighter ever again.
Add more levels of Cleric.
Repeat the previous step ad nauseam
Seriously, straight Cleric is ACTUALLY not that bad.
If must take a prestige class, not sure why you would, but if you absolutely must, try taking something that gives you almost any other domains besides the ones that Eilistraee gives you OR gives you full casting progression. You've already lost 1 caster level, try to lose as few as possible, while still staying true to your character concept. That said, the domains that she does give you are:

Drow gives Lightning Reflxes as a bonus feat which is alright.
Chaos and Good are boring and have spells you already have on your spell list for the most part.
Lust and Charm give you more charisma. Lust is objectively better in every way if you intend to take more than 6 Cleric levels, otherwise Charm all the way.
Elf Domain is pretty good and probably better than the Drow domain. Point Blank Shot as a bonus feat.
Portal is so specific it hurts.
Moon is so specific it hurts.

If you do get to change your domains though, I'd go with Elf and Lust given what I've suggested so far.


Beyond that, I'd go with the standard DMM (Persistent Spell) Cleric build. Throw Persistent Spell Divine Power and you'll be a Paladin with better options, more lenient alignment, and better spells.

Take a look at the Cleric Handbook (http://www.ruleofcool.com/smf/index.php?topic=694.0). Furthermore, talk things over with your DM to see what they would like to see from their players for game and their expectations for the performance level of their players.

[Bartmanhomer]

Alrighty, so it looks like you're going for that Cleric of Eilistraee type deal. I approve if only because she is the only Elf-type God/Goddess that doesn't make me wretch.

Good news: You're a Cleric, one of the best classes in the game. At 2nd level there is very little room to really min-max, but lets give it the old clown college try.

Bad News: "Cleric" is your only "optimal" choice that you've made on this entire sheet. The Bastard Sword is a terribly inefficient weapon, Power Attack on a cleric is highly inefficient, especially on a cloistered chassis and especially at 2nd level, your skill rank choices are questionable at best, and your choices in spell preparation are equally questionable.

I'd frankly do the following:


Drop the Exotic Weapon Proficiency for Improved Initiative, going first always matters regardless of what level you are at.
Replace Power Attack with a feat called "Intuitive Attack" from Book of Exalted Deeds (it is also a fighter bonus feat if that matters to you).
Replace your Bastard Sword with a Morningstar, and your choice of a Ranseur (disarming) or a Guisarme (tripping), or both if you'd like. Keep your other ranged weapons, but consider a crossbow (heavy ideally; You'll be dropping it in the first round of combat after firing it because reloading mid combat is for suckers).
Drop being Cloistered, you very clearly want your character to be a melee combatant of some sort or another and I don't see how that would be a problem for anyone.
Talk about swapping your Strength Score for your Wisdom Score with your DM.
Never take another level in Fighter ever again.
Add more levels of Cleric.
Repeat the previous step ad nauseam
Seriously, straight Cleric is ACTUALLY not that bad.
If must take a prestige class, not sure why you would, but if you absolutely must, try taking something that gives you almost any other domains besides the ones that Eilistraee gives you OR gives you full casting progression. You've already lost 1 caster level, try to lose as few as possible, while still staying true to your character concept. That said, the domains that she does give you are:

Drow gives Lightning Reflxes as a bonus feat which is alright.
Chaos and Good are boring and have spells you already have on your spell list for the most part.
Lust and Charm give you more charisma. Lust is objectively better in every way if you intend to take more than 6 Cleric levels, otherwise Charm all the way.
Elf Domain is pretty good and probably better than the Drow domain. Point Blank Shot as a bonus feat.
Portal is so specific it hurts.
Moon is so specific it hurts.

If you do get to change your domains though, I'd go with Elf and Lust given what I've suggested so far.


Beyond that, I'd go with the standard DMM (Persistent Spell) Cleric build. Throw Persistent Spell Divine Power and you'll be a Paladin with better options, more lenient alignment, and better spells.

Take a look at the Cleric Handbook (http://www.ruleofcool.com/smf/index.php?topic=694.0). Furthermore, talk things over with your DM to see what they would like to see from their players for game and their expectations for the performance level of their players.

Thank you for your suggestion. :smile:

[weckar]

Didn't you already have a character named Club, once?

In fact, don't you use playing card suits for names a lot? Why is that?

[Bartmanhomer]

Didn't you already have a character named Club, once?

In fact, don't you use playing card suits for names a lot? Why is that?

Yes I do. I just want to be creative.

[Anthrowhale]

Suggestions:

Fighter 1->Cleric 2. The net effect is something like Fort save-1, Will save+1, Damage-1, caster level+1, L1 spells+1 which is favorable. More importantly, you are setting yourself up to get second level cleric spells quickly, which is a huge benefit.

Knowledge Domain->Knowledge devotion. Make sure you take at least one rank in each knowledge before trading for the devotion. Every combat you'll role a knowledge check to get an extra +1 or +2 to hit and damage. When you get second level spells, you'll be able to shift this up to do even more attack/damage.

Good Domain->Portal, Night, or Charm Domain. Good gives you essentially no new spells and it's domain ability is kinda eh. Portal, Night, Charm both give good/excellent spells that clerics don't normally have access to.

The Drow domain is ok if you are taking it for character concept reasons. Keep in mind the 'substitute domain' spell is cleric level 2, so you really have access to every domain of Eilistraee. Hence, your domain choice is really only relevant for the first 2 levels.

Use the Spontaneous Domain ACF to make one of your domains spontaneous at the cost of losing spontaneous cures. Spontaneous [Elf] looks good because you might want to cast True Strike multiple times/day.

Change your default carry weapon to a longspear, then have a Morningstar/Heavy Shield backup combo for melee. Add in a Spiked Gauntlet so you always threaten adjacent as well as reach opponents.

Swap Power Attack for Combat Reflexes. Lots of low-level creatures are not very tactically capable so there may be many opportunities to strike them for 1d8+6(str)+2(knowledge devotion) damage before they even get a chance to attack. That matters more than +1 or +2 extra damage.

Buy some heavier armor. Something like a masterwork chain shirt + masterwork dastana helps.

[Bphill561]

Obviously straight cleric is better than a mutliclass, but I am assuming multiclass is what you want to go.

Eilistraee is a dancer, I would try the following if you can get away with these sources.

Spell Dancer From Magic of Faerun
Knight of the Raven from Expedition to Castle Ravenloft


Fighter 1/Cleric 1/Fighter 1/ Cleric 3/ Knight of the Raven 3/Spell Dancer 2/Knight of the Raven 3/Spell Dancer 1/ Knight of the Raven 4/Spell Dancer 1

Fighter 1 Dodge
Level 1 Endurance
Fighter 3 Mobility
Level 3 Combat Casting
Level 6 Extend Spell
Level 9 Persistent Spell
Level 12 Ocular spell
Level 15 Open (Practiced Spell caster)
Level 18 Open

This nets you a BAB of 17 or 16, depending if you go cloistered or not. At level 20 you end up with a caster progression of 17 for 9th level spells. Spell Dancer can metamagic any spell for free if you can make the perform check. Cast Sheltered Vitality from the spell compendium to make yourself immune to fatigue from spelldancing. With Ocular spell, you can later make Sheltered Vitality a 30 foot ray spell that can furthermore be made persistent. This also works for any other touch spells that you cannot normally make persistent. To keep you perform skill high, space out the spelldancer levels and put everything into perform. Spells that add skill bonuses are also useful.

For your weapon choice, a Greatsword is probably better since it does not take a feat. You can always plant it in the ground and hold with one hand on a round that you cast spells. Animated shield later if you want a shield.

Furthermore if you are going for the sword dancing theme, there is also "Hit and Run Tactics" in Drow of the Underdark book. You lose Heavy armor and Tower shields, but it grants a +2 initiative and Dex to damage on flat footed opponents.

There is also a fighter variant in Dragon #310 called the Pugilist. It loses martial weapons and shields to pick up endurance and unarmed strike as additional bonus feats. Probably not worth it for you going the sword route.

Another weapon option for later is the Swordbow from Races of the Wild. You can convert the sword to a bow and back again as a free action. The bow is metal, so that can be interesting for special materials. Each half is enchanted separately, but it is lots of fun to add Hank's Energy Bow to the bow side from the DND animated series handbook.

Overall you sort of end up with a build similar to Eilistraee's: Cleric fighter that can dance and effectively has bardic knowledge from cloistered cleric.

[Silvercrys]

If you're stuck with the Fighter/Cloistered Cleric chassis because you've already started playing, you'll want to find a prestige class for level 6+ but you haven't totally crippled yourself or anything. Fighter 1/Cloistered Cleric 4 has a BAB of +3, same as regular Cleric 5, but a lot of the purpose built prestige classes for Cleric require 3rd level spells which makes it a bit difficult (you absolutely want to avoid taking Cloistered Cleric 5 if possible because you lose BAB and saves).

Seeker of the Misty Isle has some rough fluff requirements but it will give you back most of the regular Cleric chassis with extra skill points for 4 levels. Requires 8 ranks in Survival but only 2nd level spells. You can theoretically take Apprentice Woodsman from the DMG II at level 3 to add Survival to your class skills and get a bonus skill point to put into it to qualify.

Sacred Exorcist and Divine Disciple require 4th level spells but have similar effects, something to consider once you take Seeker of the Misty Isle 4 (you'll have to take Cloistered Cleric all the way to level 7 to qualify without Seeker and you'll lose a bunch of base attack that way).

You could also just write the level of Fighter off and take More Cleric, though. I haven't been able to find any other casting prestige classes that seem to fit, sadly, other than ones that drop a bunch of caster levels like Ordained Champion.

[bean illus]

... prestige classes that seem to fit, sadly, other than ones that drop a bunch of caster levels like Ordained Champion.

Well, he did ask for fighter/cleric optimization. Ordained champion is a fine class. It's better without a fighter level, but, oh well.

The goal with ordained champion is to get 4th level spells for Divine Power.

[Silvercrys]

This character can't actually take Ordained Champion itself, though, requires any Lawful alignment or Neutral Good or Neutral Evil. Unfortunately. Think it's tied to deities, as well, is the reason for the weird alignment restrictions. It is a fine class, though, if you're mostly trying to play a castier Paladin and not a Cleric.

Hospitaler requires any nonchaotic. Fist of Raziel is LG only. Ruby Knight Vindicator requires Tome of Battle and drops a bunch of caster levels anyway. Hmm.

If Ravenloft is allowed I'd definitely play Bphill's build, Knight of the Raven is pretty much the best/only almost full caster full BAB class that can advance cleric spells besides Windwalker which is locked to a specific race and deity and has a bunch of feat prereqs.

Sanctified Mind is an okay 6 level class but you have to be Psionic and it has Iron Will as a prereq so that's two feats for a Drow and really hard to enter alongside Spelldancer (6 feats total).

Fighter 1/Cleric 2/Drow Paragon 3/Seeker of the Misty Isle 4 isn't a bad entry to Spelldancer 2/Sacred Exorcist 8, though, if you can't use Knight of the Raven. Only get +14 BAB though.

Actually, considering Sanctified Mind, Fighter 1/Cleric 4/Fighter +1/Sanctified Mind 6/Sacred Exorcist 8 gets you almost the same chassis as Bphill's build but it requires your DM to be okay with you making your character Psionic (which, you don't actually interact with the Psionics system at all, you just need a power point from the Wild Talent feat to get into the class). Cleansing Strike isn't helpful in a non-psionic game but you can ask to get it refluffed to Arcane Magic, maybe, or just suck it up since you're just here for the full BAB and 5/6 casting anyway. Also you lose Spelldancer this way, requires too many feats.