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Demons_eye
2008-07-05, 11:55 AM
Well I am a 2nd level cleric and I want to be more help in fights. I was thinking a 1 level dip in the kensai fighter variant (DR) witch like the PrC, helps if you are using one weapon. I was thinking of taking it and that mean I get +1 to attack and damage also I get two feat (1 from level 3 and 1 from the class). IF I did take it I was thinking weapon focus and another. What do you guys think?

Hal
2008-07-05, 11:58 AM
You may find this hard to believe, but you'll be better off staying in cleric if you want to help in a fight.

Get some divine metamagic feats (such as DMM Persist) and then buff your party and yourself. At least, that's the conventional wisdom.

Demons_eye
2008-07-05, 12:06 PM
Well its only 3 of us and I got healing down. I can also do that later if not sooner but I wanted to be a help in fights now so we dont get below 0 hp every fight.

Edit: what book is DMM?

Kurald Galain
2008-07-05, 12:20 PM
I'd recommend against it.

Fighter is a poor class. Weapon focus is a poor feat. If you want to be useful in combat, avoiding the two is best.

Besides, cleric is one of the strongest melee classes, given a few of its self-buff spells like Divine Power. Grab quicken spell, use the first combat round to buff yourself twice, and the remainder of combat you're out-meleeing the fighter.

Hal
2008-07-05, 12:41 PM
Divine Metamagic is in Complete Divine. CDiv and Complete Champion are going to be your best bets for finding good feats to improve your cleric. It just depends on what you're looking to do.

I DM'd a game with only 3 people, one of them a cleric. The player there made great use out of DMM (Maximize). This allowed him to get the most out of his healing spells when they were needed most. If you're worried about HP, then this one isn't a bad choice, especially since at level 3 you won't have a lot of your best buff spells yet.

I don't know what kind of campaign you're playing in, but you're probably not using a lot of your Turn Undead attempts. Feats which let you burn them to get some sort of effect really give the cleric (and to a lesser extent, paladins) a leg-up when it comes to being useful.

PHB2 and Complete Warrior also have some divine feats as I just described, but CDiv and CC are the best for that.

kamikasei
2008-07-05, 12:56 PM
The conventional wisdom is that if you want to keep the party from being knocked out, it's better to use your in-combat actions to buff and fight so that the enemies are down faster and have less time to deal damage. Save your healing for after the fight when the healed ally isn't going to immediately be hit again.

Eldariel
2008-07-05, 01:48 PM
You could either make a Divine Metamagic: Persistent Spell-Cleric (from Complete Divine: keeps you buffed 24/7 with a few extremely potent buffs - take Extra Turnings few times and you can Persist 3-4 spells every day; Divine Power, Righteous Might, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, etc.), Ruby Knight Vindicator (from Tome of Battle: a great way to combine divine casting and Tome of Battle maneuvers) or Ordained Champion (from Complete Champion: just a great Cleric/Fighter hybrid - what Paladin always wanted to be, but was unable to).

Jack_Simth
2008-07-05, 02:54 PM
Well I am a 2nd level cleric and I want to be more help in fights. I was thinking a 1 level dip in the kensai fighter variant (DR) witch like the PrC, helps if you are using one weapon. I was thinking of taking it and that mean I get +1 to attack and damage also I get two feat (1 from level 3 and 1 from the class). IF I did take it I was thinking weapon focus and another. What do you guys think?
Don't multiclass; it's not worthwhile for a 3.5 Cleric (although there's a couple of PrC's that are handy). What you want is to take more levels in Cleric, and use cleric buffs, such as Divine Favor, Magic Weapon, and Bless. Debuffs (such as Bane or Doom) also do well at that level.

Oh yeah - and all my suggestions are 1st level spells. You don't even need to wait to level up.

Gavin Sage
2008-07-05, 03:11 PM
The only reason to take a Fighter level would be if it was part of the background for your character. Getting religion later in life or what have you. Which means you'd start that way, which doesn't seem to be the case. Only game reason is for using a weapon you couldn't normally, and that is easily handled with Weapon Proficiency. Even then the benefit isn't that great unless your DM is going to let you cheat that way on getting to use some fancy holy sword that's only for paladins or the like.

Demons_eye
2008-07-05, 05:34 PM
The only reason to take a Fighter level would be if it was part of the background for your character. Getting religion later in life or what have you. Which means you'd start that way, which doesn't seem to be the case. Only game reason is for using a weapon you couldn't normally, and that is easily handled with Weapon Proficiency. Even then the benefit isn't that great unless your DM is going to let you cheat that way on getting to use some fancy holy sword that's only for paladins or the like.

IF I took the level I could RP it easy. Also who even said useing other weapons? IF I took the level it would focus on the mace. The way I figured it I would be geting about +4 to hit and +1 to damge from this one level. Also not having to buff my self EVERY fight would be nice. Or even this and a good buff would be insane.

But I gess codzila is the favored argument here. IF the dm lets me that is....



You could either make a Divine Metamagic: Persistent Spell-Cleric (from Complete Divine: keeps you buffed 24/7 with a few extremely potent buffs - take Extra Turnings few times and you can Persist 3-4 spells every day; Divine Power, Righteous Might, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, etc.)


Were is Persistent Spell its not in Complete Divine

Bob the Urgh
2008-07-05, 06:29 PM
complete arcane

Kurald Galain
2008-07-05, 06:47 PM
IF I took the level I could RP it easy. Also who even said useing other weapons? IF I took the level it would focus on the mace. The way I figured it I would be geting about +4 to hit and +1 to damge from this one level.

Not really. More like, you're getting +0.25 to hit, at the cost of delaying all your spells by one level.

Why 0.25? Because the cleric has 3/4ths BAB by itself. And note that every feat that a 1st-level fighter can take, a cleric can also take of his own accord.

Thurbane
2008-07-05, 07:20 PM
Some combat oriented Divine feats:

Glorious Weapons (CD)
Divine Armor (PHB II)
Divine Justice (PHB II)
Divine Might (CW)
Divine Shield (CW)
Divine Vigor (CW)

Demons_eye
2008-07-05, 08:46 PM
Not really. More like, you're getting +0.25 to hit, at the cost of delaying all your spells by one level.

Why 0.25? Because the cleric has 3/4ths BAB by itself. And note that every feat that a 1st-level fighter can take, a cleric can also take of his own accord.

this makes no sense.....

IF I took the level I get 1 bab so that evens out ok.... BUT I can also get the fighter feat for FREE and the Kensai fighter gets +1 to damge and to hit NOT gained by feat. Begin the 3rd level I get a feat so I could take the devine meta magic.

So I come out with 1 less cleric level and an extra 2 or 3 to hit and some to damge AND I can still take a devine feat.

Also delaying my spells? No..... Making them shorter maybe.....

Eldariel
2008-07-05, 09:10 PM
If you want to be a combat Cleric, you should shoot for level 7 and 4th level spells as soon as possible. At that point, you can Persist (with Divine Metamagic; pick it as a normal feat) Divine Power and all problems just go away.

That means taking 7 levels in Cleric or a full casting advancement prestige as your first 7 levels. Any split from the path further postpones the fulfillment by one level. Not taking Cleric-levels also makes your buffs weaker; Divine Favor is great at +6/+6, but not-so-great at +1/+1 (still usable though).

Any bonuses Fighter gives you don't scale, so they get downtrodden by bonuses just taking Cleric-level would've given you as taking Cleric-level not only makes all your buffs better, it also gives you better buffs and more of them. Fighter gives you one-two things that don't advance; Cleric gives you 3+ things that do advance. Really, on mechanical basis, there's no reason to multiclass in non-ToB martial classes from Cleric (and even ToB-classes just to qualify for Ruby Knight Vindicator). Flavourwise? Knock yourself out. Mechanically? Pointless.

Demons_eye
2008-07-05, 09:17 PM
No no I do agree and will stay full cleric (maybe go Servent of Pelor), but I do think that a dip in fighter for any class can do good if picked at the right time.

Thats said Its just my though, no need to banter back and forth. Thanks for all the pointers and things.

Edit: sorry to nit pick but devine favor only goes up to 3