3.5 cleric help - feats?

[xPANCAKEx]

having very little experiance of playing clerics i was hoping some of you playgrounders can help with fleshing out a Level 2 PC im rolling up

so far i've got everything down in a way im comfortable, the only hole in the sheet is feats

so: 2 feats.
currently rolling a level human cleric of pelor
no idea what im going up against

any recommendation?

[Telonius]

Feat #1 - Extra Turning. Nice in and of itself, it fuels Divine Metamagic, and it's a prerequisite for the "Radiant Servant of Pelor" Prestige Class. (Make sure to take the Sun domain if you're angling for this).

Feat #2 - either Skill Focus (Concentration) or Combat Casting. You'll probably be up in melee casting quite often, and a boost to your ability to cast defensively is always good. Some people prefer the smaller bonus of Skill Focus because it's always on, others prefer the larger Combat Casting bonus if their DM rarely calls for Concentration checks other than casting in combat.

[Eldariel]

What kind of a Cleric are you planning on? Buffer? Melee? Offensive caster? What kind of a party are you working with? What sources do you have available? What are your future plans with the character? Radiant Servant of Pelor?

[JeminiZero]

What source material is permitted? Do you want to gun for DMM persist-nightstick cheese? If so, you will want to take extend Spell, Persist Spell and finally DMM persist spell somewhere along your career. Extra Turning is nice early on, but can be subsequently replaced by a stack of nightsticks, and you generally want to spend money rather than feats.

On level 3, consider taking Touch of Healing Reserve which can save a lot of spells.

Is the Deity fixed? Having your Deity be Mystra opens up the handy Initiate of Mystra feat for casting in dead magic and anti-magic zones.

Beyond that it depends on what role you want to fill. If you are going battle cleric, you will likely want some of the standard fighty stuff, like Power Attack, blindfight (and with your high wisdom you can even grab blindsight later on).

[xPANCAKEx]

sources are:
Core (PHB, DMG. MM is available on the SRD as well, so sure)
Tome of Magic

so fairly limited (no radiant servant of pelor)

Im not neccisarily looking to roll out any CoDzilla or nightstick cheese on this, although i guess i would be most comfortable with a combat ready cleric as so far most other applicants are going for Arcanists/skill monkeys

so i guess it boils down to being able to be a healbot that can hit things

[ericgrau]

Magic item creation - especially for making stat boosters - works very well for a cleric since they have a lot of the pre-req spells, but it's too early for that now. Metamagic is okay but also early. Depending on your focus the regular combat feats can be good too. Combat casting or skill focus (concentration) can be handy if you're casting in melee a lot. It becomes obsolete around level 15-20 but, seriously folks, level 20. Augment summoning can bring your (weak) summons closer to par. There's also improved turning and extra turning if you like to turn. If you take that and the right magic items your turning will keep up even at high levels.

EDIT: For the melee / healbot, try the regular combat feats and magic item creation feats. Boost ability scores and/or add weapon damage effects with gear, but use your spells for enhancement bonuses. Avoid wasting a round of combat on healing for anything less than a high level healing spell. Just attack something instead. Try to get out of melee when you do heal, or if you can't then boost concentration (see above). Ditto if you like to use the cleric's touch attack spells. You can also cast away from danger and hold the charge to avoid the AoO, but this takes 2 rounds and is best initiated before combat. Likewise buff in the morning or before combat but not during combat, unless it's a very long combat where the buff will be worth the round spent. A rod of lesser extend or the extend spell feat might be handy for some buffs.

[Curmudgeon]

The more important consideration is what domains you take. Domains for Clerics are a bit like specialization schools for Wizards; they establish what type of Cleric you're going to play. You stated a preference for being proficient in combat, and there are usually a couple of ways to go -- but you have limited sources, so the best bet is taking the War domain. The problem there is that Pelor doesn't have War in his portfolio. You might want to consider going with Wastri (LN) instead, to get that deity's favored weapon: a glaive. (Wastri also has Animal, Law, Purification, and Scalykind.) Add in armor spikes and you'll threaten both close and with reach, which makes you much better in combat.

Almost any non-Evil deity will work as far as being a healbot, so there's not much restriction in that regard.

[Draz74]

Clerics aren't proficient with armor spikes.

[Curmudgeon]

Clerics aren't proficient with armor spikes.

Oops! Thanks for the correction. You still threaten even with nonproficient weapons, but I think it's better then to buy Bracers of Striking (Magic of Faerûn) because they grant Improved Unarmed Strike, and are pretty moderately priced: 1,310 gp.

[Tempest Fennac]

Scribe Scroll would be useful for storing rarely used life-savng spells like Restoration and Neutralize Poison without you needing to use normal spell slots for them.

[Devils_Advocate]

Um, Curmudgeon, Wastri is pretty evil. Granted, his listed alignment is Lawful Neutral, but his actual alignment is pretty clearly LE. He's a genocidal human supremacist. A cleric of Wastri isn't supposed to form an adventuring party with members of other demihuman races, he's supposed to murder them. This is why PCs aren't allowed to worship Wastri in Living Greyhawk.

You'd do well to pay more attention to gods' dogma than their domains. The former influences what a cleric does more than the latter, unless the DM and players simply disregard the whole role of clerics. An' I don't mean as support spellcasters, berk, I mean their role as proxies of their respective deities!

What's wrong with Pelor's Strength domain, anyway? That's a perfectly good choice for a martial cleric!

xPANCAKEx, what deities are available? If you're playing in Greyhawk, there's a big online list of Greyhawk deities and descriptions of them that you can download. Not that Pelor isn't a fine choice, but just in case you're interested. Heck, even if you're going with Pelor, it tells you a fair bit more about him than the Player's Handbook does, so there's that.