Teach me the ways of Divine Metamagic

[Thoughtcandle]

Going to be playing a level 19 cleric in an upcoming game, and it’s my first time playing a cleric.

I’m thinking metamagic optimization is the direction I’m going.

Looking at Cleric + RSoP to optimize for turn undead attempts.

Single nightstick every 24 hours is allowed.

Give me all your down and dirty turn undead + DMM tricks and tips.

Honestly surprised there isn’t a DMM guide, but maybe this thread can serve as a pseudo one.

[gijoemike]

First a few questions so we can help you better....


1. Have you played wizard/sorc before?
2. How optimized will the other players be?
3. What sources other then PHB and complete divine are allowed?
4. Are flaws/non-standard means of gaining feats being used as part of character creation?

While RSOP is amazing, you want to spend your turn attempts on Metamagic, specifically persist. So taking a class that buffs the power of your turns and then not using it is somewhat of a waste. There are other Pcls that may be a better fit especially if they reduce the overall cost of the metamagic adjustment applied.

[Thoughtcandle]

First a few questions so we can help you better....


1. Have you played wizard/sorc before?
2. How optimized will the other players be?
3. What sources other then PHB and complete divine are allowed?
4. Are flaws/non-standard means of gaining feats being used as part of character creation?

While RSOP is amazing, you want to spend your turn attempts on Metamagic, specifically persist. So taking a class that buffs the power of your turns and then not using it is somewhat of a waste. There are other Pcls that may be a better fit especially if they reduce the overall cost of the metamagic adjustment applied.

1. I’ve played gishes before - Duskblade & then a monk/wizard multi class that turned out being really cool that definitely leaned into some metamagic stuff

2. They’ll all be pretty optimized

3. All books, dragon magazines are maybe the only thing that’s questionable

4. Yes

[Biggus]

I presume you're going DMM: Persist? If so, some key buffs include Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might (if you're pretty sure you're not going anywhere low or narrow), Recitation, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, Holy Star, (Lesser) Holy Transformation, Mass Lesser Vigor and Greater Visage of the Deity.

Be sure to buff your caster level as high as you can (Strand of Prayer Beads, Orange Prism Ioun Stone, Ankh of Ascension, Ring of Enduring Arcana) to minimize the chance of them being dispelled.

For extra turn attempts, a Reliquary Holy Symbol will give you two more for only 1000GP.

[smasher0404]

You'll want to gain access to as many forms of Turn/Rebuke Undead as possible (because Extra Turning increases all of your pools). This allows you to maximize the number of times you can use Divine Metamagic.

Class Feature Hunting:

Optimally, you want to be an Azurin (Magic of Incarnum) so you can take the Channel Essentia feature from the Racial Substitution levels trading away your original Turn Undead from Cleric. Channel Essentia grants Bonus Essentia rather than the normal effects of Turn Undead, but explicitly allows you to use uses of Channel Essentia for Divine feats as a Standard Action (except when the feat specifies otherwise, like Divine Metamagic actually does).

You can regain Turn Undead by taking a level of Sacred Exorcist (Complete Divine) which doesn't have any feat requirements and fairly minor skill requirements for a cleric (10 ranks of Knowledge(The Planes) and 7 ranks of Knowledge(Religion)). If you are willing to sacrifice a caster level, you can grab Rebuke Undead while remaining Good-aligned by going into Death Delver (Heroes of Horror) which has additional skill requirements (Concentration 8, Heal 2, and Knowledge Religion 4). Alternatively, Bone Knight (Five Nations) also grants Rebuke Undead at 1st level, and continues progressing casting after that level, but has skill requirements that are more out of the usual Cleric skill-set (Craft (armorsmithing) 6, Knowledge (religion) 4, Ride 6).

Domain Optimization:

If you aren't glued to the RSoP part (or your DM is a lot more lenient with domain selection), there are some things that you can use your domains for in order to maximize your Divine Metamagic usage.

You can take the Undeath domain (Spell Compendium) to gain Extra Turning as a Bonus Feat to gain extra Turn/Rebuke/Channel uses to use Divine Metamagic with.

The Planning domain (Spell Compendium) grants Extend Spell which is both a fairly decent Metamagic feat, but also one of the requirements for Persistent Spell (Complete Arcane). Persistent Spell is a really great feat to pair with Divine Metamagic because it allows your normally short buff spells last all day. That includes some nice martially aligned buffs like Divine Power (Full BAB), and Righteous Might (+1 Size Category, and a +8 to Str and +4 to Con).

If you are going DMM(Persist) Melee route, the War domain provides a Martial Weapon Proficiency, and Divine Power as a domain spell (allowing you to use your regular slots on something else). It also grants access to the feat Holy Warrior(Complete Divine) which grants a bonus to weapon damage rolls based off of the highest level War domain spell you have pre

Alternatively, if you want to pull back off of the full-ly abusing Divine Metamagic, you could take a look at the Devotion feats (Complete Champion). Remember, that Clerics can trade in one of their domains for the equivalent Devotion feat. This provides an alternate use for burning your Turn/Rebuke/Channel uses (which you were already optimizing for if you are abusing Divine Metamagic).


DMM(Persistent Spell) Specific Options:

This looks to be a fairly useful resource when looking for spells to persist using Divine Metamagic: link here (http://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=7543.0). There were a couple others that were floating around that may also be useful to look at.

In particular, I'd re-call out Divine Power and Righteous Might. Divine Power puts you at BAB equal to your Character Level (aka Full BAB unless you have very high LA), and a bonus to Strength which puts you on better terms than a Fighter/Barbarian (since you can still cast your full repertoire of spells). Righteous Might further increases that by giving you a large bonus to Strength and Con, and also making you a size category larger (which grants reach, and a bonus to a lot of combat maneuvers such as trip and bull rush).

I, personally, also really like the Stormrage (Spell Compnedium) spell as a DMM(Persistent Spell) target as it grants you a Fly Speed, immunity to thrown and projectile weapons, immunity to wind effects, and a 1/round ranged touch attack that does 1d6 per 2 caster levels of electric damage (so roughly equivalent to a Reserve Feat in damage). While fairly weak as an 8th level spell, the first two effects (Flight and Immunity to Thrown and Projectile Weapons) are fairly good persist effects and you don't have to persist two different spells to get both with Stormrage.

[RNightstalker]

There are other Pcls that may be a better fit especially if they reduce the overall cost of the metamagic adjustment applied.

You've got my attention at least.

[newguydude1]

divine metamagic is overrated. it doesnt do much but people just cry and freak out over it for no reason. the most impact ive ever seen it do is persist mass lesser vigor so the party fighter doesnt have to rest ever because his only resource is hp and he restores to full in a few minutes after combat.

on the arcane side, i did get a monster with pounce persistent wraithstrike and persistent bite of the weretiger and had him max out each of his attacks with power attack. i also gave him girallons blessing to give him 4 more natural attacks. but even this didnt really do much. 300 damage in a charge, but you do it against someone with 15 dr and the damage drops to like 50 a charge.

and worst of all one dispel magic on you and your done. and so many monsters have dispel magic at will.



these days i use persistent spell (not dmm:persistent spell) to boost caster level. consumptive field and greater consumptive field together double your caster level. you need to sacrifice a few monsters to do it so i polymorph into a great old master neogi and use his ex attack that spawns a ton of neogi and just kill all the neogi with the field. you can get infinite strength this way if you want. this is probably the strongest thing you can do with divine metamagic but you need access to polymorph to do so and clerics dont.

i also use persistent suffer the flesh but thats not accessible to clerics.

anyways dont get your expectation up. dmm:persistent spell is ok, not spectacular.

theres a multiple turning pools if your interested. look it up. there are prcs that give you a pool of turn undead without adding to your existing pool of turn undead. and arguable a single extra turning feat gives all of your turning pools +4 turning. i think the max was 3 turning pools? anyways you do that and youll have more turn undead than you know what to do with.

[Crake]

but you do it against someone with 15 dr and the damage drops to like 50 a charge.

Fun fact, Wraith Strike actually makes you bypass DR:

Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction)

[Asmotherion]

Divine metamagic in iteslf is very decent; Who doesn't want to spontaneusly apply metamagic to things they cast?

But the real game changer here is Persistant Spell. By Buffstacking great Buff Spells on yourself (And everyone knows Clerics have amazing Buffs), you become a living god, imune to all kinds of Damage, and able to hit things targeting their touch AC, with as many metamagic options stacked on a Persisted Weapon-like Spell.

All you need to worry about is Antimagic and Dispelling, but it's not something good strategising and having the right items won't take care off.

An other great application would be to persist Consumption Field, and gain a massive boost on your Caster Level by killing some Critters like flies, mice etc.

There's limitless great applications with Divine Metamagic, all you need is System Mastery to make the most out of it.


and worst of all one dispel magic on you and your done. and so many monsters have dispel magic at will.

There's a lot of ways to prevent that from happening. Unless the opponent is also optimised around dispelling (and, standard monsters are not optimised), he's gonna have big trouble dispelling you, even if he has it at-will.

[Anthrowhale]

An orthogonal approach is reducing the cost of metamagic. There are three general approaches which could work here.

The Easy Metamagic feat (Dragon #325) reduces the cost by 1.
Shapechange[Tome Dragon (Dragon #343)] can reduce the cost by up to 3. Normally, clerics access Shapechange via the Animal domain, but my understanding is that this is not possible here. An alternative approach is to have a party member you trust cast Magic Jar, possess you, cast Shapechange [Tome Dragon], and then end Magic Jar. Another alternative approach is to buy a very expensive ring of spell storing and have a party member cast Shapechange into it.
A Spontaneous Cleric (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) could reduce the cost by 1 via the Practical Metamagic feat.

Together, these things could reduce the cost to +1, implying just 2 turn undeads are required per persistent spell.

(A Sorcerer could go further by taking advantage of Halruaan Elder's Adroit Spellcasting to make it effectively +0 so only 1 turn undead is required per persistent spell.)

[newguydude1]

Fun fact, Wraith Strike actually makes you bypass DR:

Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction)

your gonna have to explain this a bit cause i dont see it. pretend your explaining to someone who would throw a fit at how op this would be.


There's a lot of ways to prevent that from happening. Unless the opponent is also optimised around dispelling (and, standard monsters are not optimised), he's gonna have big trouble dispelling you, even if he has it at-will.

the only ways to prevent it is by jacking up your caster level so high not even +20 greater dispel magic can take it out. but that can only be achieved either with consumptive field or with extremely expensive magic items. finding a supply of mice to sacrifice everyday is no easy task unless you use what i did which was neogi polymorph, and this is only available with evil characters because consumptive field is an evil spell.

but if you do take care of the logistics, cast consumptive field and greater consumptive field every single day to double your cl to more than 20, yeah i guess i could see you laughing at dispel magic. but again the end result isnt spectacular. uberchargers can one shot monsters too without all this maintenance and theyre not op. this cleric is more op because unlike ubercharger hes gonna be really tough to kill with all those cant kill me buffs he stacked. but im not impressed. he dies to an ubercharger just the same hahahah.

anyways persistent amf is a thing too and theres 0 reason why the dm wont throw this at you if you stack a ton of dmm everyday. i used persistent amf myself when dealing with annoying monsters.

um, i forgot what i was saying. whatever lol. i guess if your cleric is better than an ubercharger in every way imaginable then i guess that is "op".

but yeah, to the op, persistent consumptive field is what blows the whole thing out of this world. makes your stuff undispellable and give you infinite strength.

[InvisibleBison]

your gonna have to explain this a bit cause i dont see it. pretend your explaining to someone who would throw a fit at how op this would be.

The relevant section of the rules is:


Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.

I don't agree with Crake's interpretation of the bolded section. I think it means that damage reduction doesn't protect you from touch attacks that don't do hit point damage at all, like a roper's strand attack.

[Anthrowhale]

...
I agree with Crake's interpretation as the simpler one.

However, the Rules Compendium had another stealth change here. It says:


Damage reduction ignores some of the hit point damage from weapons, natural weapons, and unarmed attacks...Damage reduction doesn't reduce the damage from energy attacks, spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.

Assuming you believe in the RC, since touch attacks aren't listed, they aren't a special case. Hence Wraithstrike + melee weapon or Master Thrower (Weak Spot) + thrown weapon is still damage reduced. Somewhat more tricky are Darkfire "...you can hurl the flames ... as a thrown weapon... you make a ranged touch attack..." and Sun Scepter "...functions as a physical weapon ... strike with it as a melee touch attack." Do these do damage as weapons or spells?

[Endarire]

+1 to Persistent Spell AND Quicken Spell. Sometimes, you want a buff to last all day. Sometimes, you want a spell right now. (Flame strike + charge/full attack is a simple example. Swap that for another spell like mass heal + charge/full attack if you wish.)

+1 to shangechange but with the Shapechange Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517934-The-3-5-Shapechange-Handbook)! You could UMD a partially-charged staff of it fairly easily with your +CHA for turning and being level 19 to start. If a party member is a Spellguard of Silverymoon4+ with shapechange, he could use his SoS ability on shapechange to transform you.

[Biggus]

+1 to shangechange but with the Shapechange Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517934-The-3-5-Shapechange-Handbook)! You could UMD a partially-charged staff of it fairly easily with your +CHA for turning and being level 19 to start. If a party member is a Spellguard of Silverymoon4+ with shapechange, he could use his SoS ability on shapechange to transform you.

Not sure if it's worth persisting Shapechange, with a Greater Extend Rod it'd last 6-9 hours (depending how many caster level buffs you have) at level 19 anyway, and without multiple Nightsticks persists are going to be at a premium.

[Asmotherion]

your gonna have to explain this a bit cause i dont see it. pretend your explaining to someone who would throw a fit at how op this would be.



the only ways to prevent it is by jacking up your caster level so high not even +20 greater dispel magic can take it out. but that can only be achieved either with consumptive field or with extremely expensive magic items. finding a supply of mice to sacrifice everyday is no easy task unless you use what i did which was neogi polymorph, and this is only available with evil characters because consumptive field is an evil spell.

but if you do take care of the logistics, cast consumptive field and greater consumptive field every single day to double your cl to more than 20, yeah i guess i could see you laughing at dispel magic. but again the end result isnt spectacular. uberchargers can one shot monsters too without all this maintenance and theyre not op. this cleric is more op because unlike ubercharger hes gonna be really tough to kill with all those cant kill me buffs he stacked. but im not impressed. he dies to an ubercharger just the same hahahah.

anyways persistent amf is a thing too and theres 0 reason why the dm wont throw this at you if you stack a ton of dmm everyday. i used persistent amf myself when dealing with annoying monsters.

um, i forgot what i was saying. whatever lol. i guess if your cleric is better than an ubercharger in every way imaginable then i guess that is "op".

but yeah, to the op, persistent consumptive field is what blows the whole thing out of this world. makes your stuff undispellable and give you infinite strength.
My standard for a Consumptive Field activation is to carry arround a Zombie with me. The rotting flesh attracts Flies, and I don't see a reason they would not be a good target for it.

Also, consumptive field is only restricted to Good Clerics. A Neutral Cleric of a Non-good Deity has no problem casting Evil Spells. It's main problem is it prevents you from being Initiate of Mystra (Mystra is Neutral Good), but AMF is an Emanation spell. That means, as long as you're behind Cover you're safe from it. And, there's tones of ways to get instant cover; Also, instantaneus conjurations bypass it, as they are no longer magical once they are conjured. AMF is not such a big deal, as long as you know how it works, and how to counter it.

[newguydude1]

Also, consumptive field is only restricted to Good Clerics. A Neutral Cleric of a Non-good Deity has no problem casting Evil Spells. It's main problem is it prevents you from being Initiate of Mystra (Mystra is Neutral Good), but AMF is an Emanation spell. That means, as long as you're behind Cover you're safe from it. And, there's tones of ways to get instant cover; Also, instantaneus conjurations bypass it, as they are no longer magical once they are conjured. AMF is not such a big deal, as long as you know how it works, and how to counter it.

bovd says casting evil spells regularly threatens to change your alignment to evil. so neutral clerics can cast it, but do it often enough and their alignment changes to evil.

instant cover renders you worthless too. you may have your buffs but your not doing anything.

instantaneous conjurations like orb of whatever bypasses it but thats not what a dmm persistent spell cleric does or has access to.


I agree with Crake's interpretation as the simpler one.

However, the Rules Compendium had another stealth change here. It says:

Assuming you believe in the RC, since touch attacks aren't listed, they aren't a special case. Hence Wraithstrike + melee weapon or Master Thrower (Weak Spot) + thrown weapon is still damage reduced. Somewhat more tricky are Darkfire "...you can hurl the flames ... as a thrown weapon... you make a ranged touch attack..." and Sun Scepter "...functions as a physical weapon ... strike with it as a melee touch attack." Do these do damage as weapons or spells?

i think complete psionic has a slteath nerf here? it says those piercing powers are reduced by dr. extrapolation says dark fire no cause its still an energy attack, and yes to sun scepter.

[Anthrowhale]

i think complete psionic has a slteath nerf here? it says those piercing powers are reduced by dr. extrapolation says dark fire no cause its still an energy attack, and yes to sun scepter.

This is Complete Psionic page 79? That looks convincing as long as we equate Metacreativity and Conjuration. I guess the good news is that as an object the lightsaber can be enhanced via Greater Magic Weapon / Greater Might Wallop / Undead Bane Weapon.

[Asmotherion]

bovd says casting evil spells regularly threatens to change your alignment to evil. so neutral clerics can cast it, but do it often enough and their alignment changes to evil.

instant cover renders you worthless too. you may have your buffs but your not doing anything.

instantaneous conjurations like orb of whatever bypasses it but thats not what a dmm persistent spell cleric does or has access to.



i think complete psionic has a slteath nerf here? it says those piercing powers are reduced by dr. extrapolation says dark fire no cause its still an energy attack, and yes to sun scepter.

About BOVD: Yes, true, but that's not a problem; You can safelly be within 1 step from your Deity's alignment.

About Instant Cover: It enables you to relocate, use control spells like wall of stone around the target etc. As a caster, you have far better options able to cast spells than not, especially when you're the stronger caster (because of Consumptive Field). You don't always need to kill the oponent to win. But even if you do, just trap them with corporeal undead, and give each a poison or alchemist's fire or something (Creation domain gets the spells to mass produce those).

Seriously, there's tons of ways to counter AMF. It's a good spell, but people tend to overhype about it, just because it needs a bit of thinking out of the box to work around.

Never played a Good Cleric, but I'm sure there's something they can do instead.

[Anthrowhale]

Never played a Good Cleric, but I'm sure there's something they can do instead.
Hathran + Initiate of Mystra.

[Asmotherion]

Hathran + Initiate of Mystra.

Ah, yes, Circle Magic. Halruan and Thay also get it.

And initiate of Mystra. A classic. :)

[Thoughtcandle]

I presume you're going DMM: Persist? If so, some key buffs include Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might (if you're pretty sure you're not going anywhere low or narrow), Recitation, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, Holy Star, (Lesser) Holy Transformation, Mass Lesser Vigor and Greater Visage of the Deity.

Be sure to buff your caster level as high as you can (Strand of Prayer Beads, Orange Prism Ioun Stone, Ankh of Ascension, Ring of Enduring Arcana) to minimize the chance of them being dispelled.

For extra turn attempts, a Reliquary Holy Symbol will give you two more for only 1000GP.

Persist is most likely the choice I’d make, although quicken seems like it could also be beneficial.

Persist will probably be what I’d go with.

Great suggestions for the turn attempts.


You'll want to gain access to as many forms of Turn/Rebuke Undead as possible (because Extra Turning increases all of your pools). This allows you to maximize the number of times you can use Divine Metamagic.

Class Feature Hunting:

Optimally, you want to be an Azurin (Magic of Incarnum) so you can take the Channel Essentia feature from the Racial Substitution levels trading away your original Turn Undead from Cleric. Channel Essentia grants Bonus Essentia rather than the normal effects of Turn Undead, but explicitly allows you to use uses of Channel Essentia for Divine feats as a Standard Action (except when the feat specifies otherwise, like Divine Metamagic actually does).

You can regain Turn Undead by taking a level of Sacred Exorcist (Complete Divine) which doesn't have any feat requirements and fairly minor skill requirements for a cleric (10 ranks of Knowledge(The Planes) and 7 ranks of Knowledge(Religion)). If you are willing to sacrifice a caster level, you can grab Rebuke Undead while remaining Good-aligned by going into Death Delver (Heroes of Horror) which has additional skill requirements (Concentration 8, Heal 2, and Knowledge Religion 4). Alternatively, Bone Knight (Five Nations) also grants Rebuke Undead at 1st level, and continues progressing casting after that level, but has skill requirements that are more out of the usual Cleric skill-set (Craft (armorsmithing) 6, Knowledge (religion) 4, Ride 6).

Domain Optimization:

If you aren't glued to the RSoP part (or your DM is a lot more lenient with domain selection), there are some things that you can use your domains for in order to maximize your Divine Metamagic usage.

You can take the Undeath domain (Spell Compendium) to gain Extra Turning as a Bonus Feat to gain extra Turn/Rebuke/Channel uses to use Divine Metamagic with.

The Planning domain (Spell Compendium) grants Extend Spell which is both a fairly decent Metamagic feat, but also one of the requirements for Persistent Spell (Complete Arcane). Persistent Spell is a really great feat to pair with Divine Metamagic because it allows your normally short buff spells last all day. That includes some nice martially aligned buffs like Divine Power (Full BAB), and Righteous Might (+1 Size Category, and a +8 to Str and +4 to Con).

If you are going DMM(Persist) Melee route, the War domain provides a Martial Weapon Proficiency, and Divine Power as a domain spell (allowing you to use your regular slots on something else). It also grants access to the feat Holy Warrior(Complete Divine) which grants a bonus to weapon damage rolls based off of the highest level War domain spell you have pre

Alternatively, if you want to pull back off of the full-ly abusing Divine Metamagic, you could take a look at the Devotion feats (Complete Champion). Remember, that Clerics can trade in one of their domains for the equivalent Devotion feat. This provides an alternate use for burning your Turn/Rebuke/Channel uses (which you were already optimizing for if you are abusing Divine Metamagic).


DMM(Persistent Spell) Specific Options:

This looks to be a fairly useful resource when looking for spells to persist using Divine Metamagic: link here (http://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=7543.0). There were a couple others that were floating around that may also be useful to look at.

In particular, I'd re-call out Divine Power and Righteous Might. Divine Power puts you at BAB equal to your Character Level (aka Full BAB unless you have very high LA), and a bonus to Strength which puts you on better terms than a Fighter/Barbarian (since you can still cast your full repertoire of spells). Righteous Might further increases that by giving you a large bonus to Strength and Con, and also making you a size category larger (which grants reach, and a bonus to a lot of combat maneuvers such as trip and bull rush).

I, personally, also really like the Stormrage (Spell Compnedium) spell as a DMM(Persistent Spell) target as it grants you a Fly Speed, immunity to thrown and projectile weapons, immunity to wind effects, and a 1/round ranged touch attack that does 1d6 per 2 caster levels of electric damage (so roughly equivalent to a Reserve Feat in damage). While fairly weak as an 8th level spell, the first two effects (Flight and Immunity to Thrown and Projectile Weapons) are fairly good persist effects and you don't have to persist two different spells to get both with Stormrage.

A LOT of really great insight here.

I am, however, most likely going to stick with RSoP for flavor stuff and will be a human - so won’t be able to take advantage of everything listed here.


divine metamagic is overrated. it doesnt do much but people just cry and freak out over it for no reason. the most impact ive ever seen it do is persist mass lesser vigor so the party fighter doesnt have to rest ever because his only resource is hp and he restores to full in a few minutes after combat.

on the arcane side, i did get a monster with pounce persistent wraithstrike and persistent bite of the weretiger and had him max out each of his attacks with power attack. i also gave him girallons blessing to give him 4 more natural attacks. but even this didnt really do much. 300 damage in a charge, but you do it against someone with 15 dr and the damage drops to like 50 a charge.

and worst of all one dispel magic on you and your done. and so many monsters have dispel magic at will.



these days i use persistent spell (not dmm:persistent spell) to boost caster level. consumptive field and greater consumptive field together double your caster level. you need to sacrifice a few monsters to do it so i polymorph into a great old master neogi and use his ex attack that spawns a ton of neogi and just kill all the neogi with the field. you can get infinite strength this way if you want. this is probably the strongest thing you can do with divine metamagic but you need access to polymorph to do so and clerics dont.

i also use persistent suffer the flesh but thats not accessible to clerics.

anyways dont get your expectation up. dmm:persistent spell is ok, not spectacular.

theres a multiple turning pools if your interested. look it up. there are prcs that give you a pool of turn undead without adding to your existing pool of turn undead. and arguable a single extra turning feat gives all of your turning pools +4 turning. i think the max was 3 turning pools? anyways you do that and youll have more turn undead than you know what to do with.

I’ll most likely be sticking with DMM. Getting extra turning and additional pools is definitely something I’d like to maximize for.


Divine metamagic in iteslf is very decent; Who doesn't want to spontaneusly apply metamagic to things they cast?

But the real game changer here is Persistant Spell. By Buffstacking great Buff Spells on yourself (And everyone knows Clerics have amazing Buffs), you become a living god, imune to all kinds of Damage, and able to hit things targeting their touch AC, with as many metamagic options stacked on a Persisted Weapon-like Spell.

All you need to worry about is Antimagic and Dispelling, but it's not something good strategising and having the right items won't take care off.

An other great application would be to persist Consumption Field, and gain a massive boost on your Caster Level by killing some Critters like flies, mice etc.

There's limitless great applications with Divine Metamagic, all you need is System Mastery to make the most out of it.

There's a lot of ways to prevent that from happening. Unless the opponent is also optimised around dispelling (and, standard monsters are not optimised), he's gonna have big trouble dispelling you, even if he has it at-will.
Will definitely check out what you e suggested. Thank you for your input.

Building out level 19, so might as well lean all the way into demigod.


An orthogonal approach is reducing the cost of metamagic. There are three general approaches which could work here.

The Easy Metamagic feat (Dragon #325) reduces the cost by 1.
Shapechange[Tome Dragon (Dragon #343)] can reduce the cost by up to 3. Normally, clerics access Shapechange via the Animal domain, but my understanding is that this is not possible here. An alternative approach is to have a party member you trust cast Magic Jar, possess you, cast Shapechange [Tome Dragon], and then end Magic Jar. Another alternative approach is to buy a very expensive ring of spell storing and have a party member cast Shapechange into it.
A Spontaneous Cleric (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) could reduce the cost by 1 via the Practical Metamagic feat.

Together, these things could reduce the cost to +1, implying just 2 turn undeads are required per persistent spell.

(A Sorcerer could go further by taking advantage of Halruaan Elder's Adroit Spellcasting to make it effectively +0 so only 1 turn undead is required per persistent spell.)

Definitely looking for some suggestions like this, thank you.


+1 to Persistent Spell AND Quicken Spell. Sometimes, you want a buff to last all day. Sometimes, you want a spell right now. (Flame strike + charge/full attack is a simple example. Swap that for another spell like mass heal + charge/full attack if you wish.)

+1 to shangechange but with the Shapechange Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?517934-The-3-5-Shapechange-Handbook)! You could UMD a partially-charged staff of it fairly easily with your +CHA for turning and being level 19 to start. If a party member is a Spellguard of Silverymoon4+ with shapechange, he could use his SoS ability on shapechange to transform you.

Getting both persist & quicken seems super feat intensive. Feasible, sure, but not sure it’s worth it.

[Rebel7284]

Divine Magician to pick up some wizard spells is real nice and lets you pick up stuff like Mystic Shield (Anauroch: The Empire of Shade, p. 141) you can't be affected by spells/SLA of 6th level or lower. There goes Dispel Magic, Greater and a bunch of other effects.

Holy Star is nice to persist since it has various helpful modes.

Shield of the Archons is nice since it can block spells, SLAs and even supernatural abilities and the Archon component can easily be satisfied by casting Holy Transformation

[Thoughtcandle]

Divine Magician to pick up some wizard spells is real nice and lets you pick up stuff like Mystic Shield (Anauroch: The Empire of Shade, p. 141) you can't be affected by spells/SLA of 6th level or lower. There goes Dispel Magic, Greater and a bunch of other effects.

Holy Star is nice to persist since it has various helpful modes.

Shield of the Archons is nice since it can block spells, SLAs and even supernatural abilities and the Archon component can easily be satisfied by casting Holy Transformation

Never even heard of these, gonna check them out

[RNightstalker]

Holy Star is nice to persist since it has various helpful modes.



Holy Star is Dischargeable so it cannot be persisted.

Edit: So is Mystic Shield

[Anthrowhale]

Holy Star is Dischargeable so it cannot be persisted.

Edit: So is Mystic Shield

(D) is for "Dismissable". (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#duration)

[smasher0404]

A LOT of really great insight here.

I am, however, most likely going to stick with RSoP for flavor stuff and will be a human - so won’t be able to take advantage of everything listed here.


Is there a reason in particular to be sticking with Human? Azurins, by their default fluff, are born to Human parents and get the Human subtype (in addition to the Incarnum subtype). They are also described as living primarily in Human settlements (with the few Azurin settlements being near larger Human ones). Azurins also look almost identical to Humans except for their eye color (their sclera is sky blue instead of white). From a Mechanical perspective, they still get the Bonus Feat due to their human heritage, but trade away the extra skill point for a point of Essentia.

Either way, I'd still recommend considering a level in either Bone Knight or Death Delver to pick up Rebuke Undead, having a second pool basically doubles how many times you can use Divine Metamagic.

[Thoughtcandle]

Is there a reason in particular to be sticking with Human? Azurins, by their default fluff, are born to Human parents and get the Human subtype (in addition to the Incarnum subtype). They are also described as living primarily in Human settlements (with the few Azurin settlements being near larger Human ones). Azurins also look almost identical to Humans except for their eye color (their sclera is sky blue instead of white). From a Mechanical perspective, they still get the Bonus Feat due to their human heritage, but trade away the extra skill point for a point of Essentia.

Either way, I'd still recommend considering a level in either Bone Knight or Death Delver to pick up Rebuke Undead, having a second pool basically doubles how many times you can use Divine Metamagic.

Ah okay, I don’t think I was understanding correctly.

And this would give me a separate pool of turn undead? Still trying to understand what that actually means, cleric is new to me.

[Rebel7284]

Ah okay, I don’t think I was understanding correctly.

And this would give me a separate pool of turn undead? Still trying to understand what that actually means, cleric is new to me.

If you take the Azurin cleric alternate class feature (or was it substitution level? Whatever) you trade turn undead for turn essentia which has the same number of uses as turn undead and can also be used for divine feats. Then taking a single level of Sacred Exorcist gives you turn undead back. You thus effectively get double the uses of turn attempts for almost no costs since the prerequisites for SE are so easy. Repeat with a dip in a class that gives rebuke undead if desired.

[Thoughtcandle]

If you take the Azurin cleric alternate class feature (or was it substitution level? Whatever) you trade turn undead for turn essentia which has the same number of uses as turn undead and can also be used for divine feats. Then taking a single level of Sacred Exorcist gives you turn undead back. You thus effectively get double the uses of turn attempts for almost no costs since the prerequisites for SE are so easy. Repeat with a dip in a class that gives rebuke undead if desired.

Oh this is awesome.

So Azurin race, get turn ussentia, go cleric, dip sacred exorcist to get turn undead back, and then take radiant servant of pelor to continue progressing turn undead & get extra greater turning

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Radiant Servant does not benefit divine feats! It allows you to use the Sun domain power more often, which allows you to modify a normal use of turn undead to be a greater turning instead. A use of greater turning alone can't be used to power divine feats, because they can only be used when you're also using a normal use of turn undead.

There are three different pools of turning that can power divine feats: Turn Undead, Rebuke Undead, and Rebuke Dragons from Dragon Magic. Replace your Cleric Turn Undead with Rebuke Dragons, dip Sacred Exorcist for Turn Undead, and you've got two pools of turning attempts that can power Divine Metamagic. Taking Extra Turning will apply to both of those, and a Nightstick will apply to both of those, and a Reliquary Holy Symbol will also apply to both of those.

Be sure to get the Destiny domain in Races of Destiny so you can persist its 9th level spell.

Get a Greater Metamagic Rod of Chain Spell in Complete Arcane and use it to cast Destruction. Since that spell deals damage (on a failed save) secondary targets won't get a reduced DC.

Get a standard Strand of Prayer Beads with the Bead of Smiting removed. DMG pricing puts that at just 9,000 gp, despite what the SRD says, but most DMs will ignore that and go with the SRD price. Activate the Bead of Karma for +4 caster level before casting your buffs each day.

For what spells you persist, keep in mind that you can spend a higher level slot to persist a spell normally. Holy Star doesn't get entirely discharged when the spell turning effect runs out, it can be switched to another mode and still function, thus it's eligible for being made persistent.
Divine Favor (without DMM)
Healing Lorecall (without DMM) cast Close Wounds (SC) to remove a negative condition as an immediate action.
Divine Power (DMM)
Righteous Wrath of the Faithful (DMM, allies as well)
Holy Star (DMM) three times; keep one in each mode, if the spell turning runs out switch that one to a different mode and another to spell turning. Greater Rod of Maximize these if you can.
Stormrage (DMM)
Choose Destiny (DMM)
Greater Visage of the Deity (DMM)
That'll take more turning uses than you probably have, so prioritize as needed.

Other buffs to consider:
(Lesser Rod of Extended) Magic Vestment on your armor and (animated) shield.
(Extended) Greater Magic Weapon on your primary weapon, your +1 Defending Spiked Gauntlet, etc.
(Lesser Rod of Extended) Slow Poison (and also cast Detect Poison on yourself and use the Bead of Healing to cure it, as it had been delayed from the previous day.)

Each day alternate between preparing Energy Immunity twice, or Energy Immunity once and Superior Resistance once. Cast those under the effect of the Bead of Karma. Use a 6th level Pearl of Power to cast Energy Immunity an additional time, and a Metamagic Rod of Extend to make each of those spells last twice as long. This gives you constant immunity to all five energy types, and a +6 resistance bonus to your saving throws.

If you'll have an odd few turning uses left over each day, consider also taking the feat Divine Defiance in FC2. That allows you to spend a turn attempt as an immediate action to counterspell without readying an action.

You'll have the best AC by wearing a Monk's Belt (grants the entire Monk AC Bonus class feature, including adding your Wis bonus to unarmored AC) and casting Greater Luminous Armor in BoED every day.


Consider including Dweomerkeeper (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20041119a) 10, qualifying via the feat Magical Training in PGtF. That gets Supernatural Spell 4/day, and if you have four 9th level spells per day you can use that to Miracle a +4 inherent bonus onto each of your ability scores without paying the 5k xp per Miracle. Also get the feat Initiate of Mystra so you can ignore antimagic fields and dead magic areas. Look up the various incarnations of the "Cheater of Mystra" build for more details on this route.


You're level 19, so you can lose two levels of spellcasting and still start with 9th level spells. If you're not taking Dweomerkeeper, I recommend taking two levels of Ardent with Practiced Manifester and ten levels of Psychic Theurge (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040925b) to start with 8th level psionic powers as well. Ardent is proficient with heavy armor and shields, so use Cloistered Cleric (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#clericVariantCloistere dCleric) for more skill points. Keep in mind that Ardent's highest level powers known is based on manifester level instead of effective class level, so be sure to delay it by four levels for the highest level powers you can get. Go Cleric 3/ Ardent 2/ Divine Oracle 1/ Psychic Theurge 10/ Sacred Exorcist 1/ Contemplative 1/ Seeker of the Misty Isle 1, use the Frog God's Fane in CS to get the Skill Focus prerequisite for Divine Oracle without spending a feat on it.

Pick the Freedom, Time, and Destruction mantles, and use Substitute Powers (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) to fill in the gaps. Take Hidden Talent at 1st level for Synchronicity, and pick up Expanded Knowledge later for Psionic Contingency. Set that up with an augmented Synchronicity to be triggered whenever an opponent does something that you think will significantly harm or hinder your party. For example, you see someone casting a spell and your spellcraft check tells you it's a Disjunction, which will automatically dispel all of your persistent buffs. Your contingency fires, instantly giving you a readied standard action that you can use to do whatever you want. You can use that to teleport away, or (mass) time hop, or cast a Wall of Stone between your party and the enemy caster, or cast Silence on a point in space that catches the enemy caster within the area which automatically prevents them from completing a verbal component and ruins their spell, etc. Taking Hidden Talent at 1st level also allows you to take Practiced Manifester (a psionic feat) before your first Ardent level, enabling you to use and thus learn powers above 1st level when you first take the class. Also consider Expanded Knowledge for Null Psionics Field if not using magic/psionics transparency. For your other powers known, I'd go with the following:

1 Dimension Hop (freedom)
2 Hustle (freedom)
3 Dispel Psionics (destruction)
3 Time Hop (time)
4 Fly, Psionic (freedom)
5 Freedom of Movement, Psionic (freedom)
5 Anticipatory Strike (time)
6 Disintegrate, Psionic (destruction)
6 Temporal Acceleration (time)
7 Mind Blank, Personal (freedom, substitute powers)
7 Fate of One (time, substitute powers)
8 Greater Teleport, Psionic (freedom)
8 Time Hop, Mass (time)

[RNightstalker]

(D) is for "Dismissable". (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#duration)

Yeah my bad...I still get those two confused sometimes. Of course an argument could be made that since the spell-turning effect could be "expended", that would disqualify it for being persisted as well.

[Bphill561]

Radiant Servant does not benefit divine feats! It allows you to use the Sun domain power more often, which allows you to modify a normal use of turn undead to be a greater turning instead. A use of greater turning alone can't be used to power divine feats, because they can only be used when you're also using a normal use of turn undead.

There are three different pools of turning that can power divine feats: Turn Undead, Rebuke Undead, and Rebuke Dragons from Dragon Magic. Replace your Cleric Turn Undead with Rebuke Dragons, dip Sacred Exorcist for Turn Undead, and you've got two pools of turning attempts that can power Divine Metamagic. Taking Extra Turning will apply to both of those, and a Nightstick will apply to both of those, and a Reliquary Holy Symbol will also apply to both of those.



As smasher0404 mentioned earlier, Channel Incarnum is a 4th possible source. Rebuke dragons is superior since it has no racial requirements and is also an alternative available to Paladins. Plus since it lets you turn creatures, it benefits from Extra turning that Channel Incarnum does not. The same book as dragonblooded racial variants if you want a stronger connection to dragons.

A 5th source is the organization "Lightbringers" which can be found in Expedition to Caste Ravenloft. It allows clerics to swap out turn undead for Destroy undead which still qualifies for and powers turn undead feats (again not as useful for Extra turning).

So you can get turn and rebuke undead form the previously mentioned PrC's. Then you can have Destroy Undead, Channel Incarnum, or Rebuke Dragons. Now if you are gestalt or crazy and take one of the first two choices, 4 paladin levels could net you Rebuke Dragons. Obviously not ideal for clerical spell casting, but I mentioned it for completeness since you could do a cleric//paladin (or dip) type build in gestalt. Ha, unless you convince a DM you could take Rebuke Dragons as an alternative ability on a Prestige Paladin. So you could have 4 sources running at once with only a loss of 2 cleric caster levels, 3 that work with Extra Turning feats.

Maybe I missed it, but I did not see mention of combining Extend spell with Persistent spell. If you have a slot 1 level higher than the target spell, you can apply both (persistent with divine metamagic). 48 hour spells are useful since you can cast buffer on alternating days to have more buffs up at a time. Best if you can pair two spells of the same level to keep track of spell slots more easily (one cast on alternative days). Even if you don't need to have all the buffs at once, it still cuts down on turning attempts used in case you get dispelled.

Ocular Spell metamagic comes up as well since it fixes the range of spells to make the persistent qualifying.

Not as relevant to your cleric build, but the dragon magazine feat Alternative sourced spell and the forgotten realms feat South magician lets you change arcane to divine spells to qualify for divine metamagic. Errata changed divine metamagic to only apply to divine spells. This is more useful for Ur-Chord builds or any Sublime chord build that gains access to turn undead. Also fun with a ring of spell theurgy mixed with eternal wands on spontaneous arcane casters.

Really off the wall, Leadership with a Hierophant cohort that has gift of the divine could net you some more turning attempts. Gift of the divine lets the hierophant bestow any number of attempts on you per day that up to his max, plus the effect can last a week at a time. You even turn off his cleric level, which is funny since it could easily be higher than yours do to multiclassing. Lets say something like

Cleric 13/Hierophant 1/Death Delver 1 that is human

At level 15 he could have 6+1 (human bonus feat) feats. If they are all extra turning (I know abuse, but he really likes turning undead) with two pools, that could be a base of 3 + 28 attempts each for a total of 62 attempts (without taking into account equipment or Cha). Best part is you can leave him at home to run a church for a week at a time and he still gets xp based on the leadership system (and does not slow down game play). Even a cohort with one pool and you with 3, leadership still nets you more turn undead attempts than Extra Turning.