Offensive Casting Cleric

[Commander_Vimes]

While I designed my character to be a melee cleric, with Ruby Knight Vindicator, I am now being relied upon as the primary offensive caster and so I'm trying to fill the roles of both wizard and cleric. I have a 20ft reach so trying touch spells negates one of my advantages. I've found a few good spells to cast but I'm looking to expand my list.

I can cast up to level 7 spells at the moment at a caster level of 18 all day (22 for my morning buffs)

So far I found:
Destruction- nice but I don't have very many 7 level slots
Earthen Reaver- Mediocre damage, but knocking the enemy prone is useful
Bolt of Glory- 15d12 is very nice against outsiders, which I expect to be facing.
Hypothermia- 10d6 is pretty meh, but fatigued is annoying. Most enemies are passing the fort save though.

I'd like to see some good save or suck spells or control spells if they exist.

[AslanCross]

-Ice Flowers (Spell Compendium). 5th level, 15d6 damage cap. Half cold, half bludgeoning.

-Opalescent Glare is a gaze attack, will save partial. If they fail it's fatal to creatures with less than 5 HD, if they succeed it has the same affect as the fear spell. Creatures 5 HD and up only get the fear effect if they fail the save.

-Moon Bolt is a really good control spell. No ranged touch required. 4th level, long range, 1d4 Strength damage/3 CL. (Max 5d4). Fort save half for living creatures. For undead it makes them helpless instead.

[Darrin]

I'd like to see some good save or suck spells or control spells if they exist.

Necrotic Skull Bomb from Champions of Ruin. Essentially Enervation with a 20' burst (yay!), a Fort save negates (boo!), and a swift action as a casting time (yay!). So with Divine Impetus and a couple metric buttloads of nightsticks, you become an Enervation Auto-Shotgun.

[Optimystik]

What are your domains/deity? Those are among the best sources of offensive power for a cleric.

[Doc Roc]

Moon domain is incredible. It offers moon bolt and moonblade, both of which will likely suit you.

A okay general list.

[erikun]

Sound Burst, Cleric 2, little damage but for save for stun

Bestow Curse, Cleric 3, you didn't want touch spells but effective -7 to hit and 50% chance to do nothing

Flame Strike, Cleric 5, ranged attack for 15d6 (reflex half though)

Blade Barrier, Cleric 6

Holy Word, Cleric 7, several status no save, make sure they aren't higher HD than you

Also, summons (including animate objects) can get you more damage at a range, or at least cause enemies to waste turns killing the summons.

[Commander_Vimes]

Domains are Undeath, Planning, Knowledge, and Travel

I'd love to use the holy word line but one of my party members is evil and I don't want to blast him with the badies.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I'd love to use the holy word line but one of my party members is evil and I don't want to blast him with the badies.

There is alwalys the law/chaos version Dictum and Chaos Hammer IIRC...but that presents other problems......

[Tanaric]

Nobody mentioned Streamers yet? It's no save or lose, but it's pretty close as far as damage spells go. Only without the save.

Hilarity ensues if you can maximize spells for little or no cost with your current setup.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Get a Greater Rod of Chain Spell from Complete Arcane to use with Destruction. Since the spell can deal damage, it would deal half damage to secondary targets rather than having a reduced save DC. You could save-or-die a whole room full of opponents, rather than trying to be lucky enough to pick a target with a low Fort save.

If you have DMM: Persistent, you can keep Holy Star (SC) up all day. Keep two of them up, have one contribute to AC and the other set to Spell Turning, and you can switch both to shoot bolts of fire when necessary. Note that the spell is (D)ismissable and while one effect of the spell can get used up, the spell itself does not discharge so it is a valid target for Persistent Spell. Once you get 8th level spells, DMM: Persistent Stormrage (SC) is just amazing. Forget using spell slots for ranged offense, use a few in the morning and have them fire at will for the next 24 hours.

[olentu]

I have thought it fun to persist the darkfire spell from the spell compendium and run around all day throwing 1d6/2 caster levels (max of 5d6 I believe) handfuls of partially invisible fire at people as a thrown weapon. I remember it being a viable target for persistent spell but then again might be thinking of something different.

[Keld Denar]

Darkbolt is not persistable. Its range is Medium and its duration is Instantaneous. Sorry.

[Ponce]

The Domination domain in SpC grants early access to Dominate Person and a bunch of other treats as well as a free Spell Focus (Enchantment).

Try Sandstorm/Frostburn, they have a bunch of blasty type spells that clerics can gain early access to.

[olentu]

Darkbolt is not persistable. Its range is Medium and its duration is Instantaneous. Sorry.

I have thought it fun to persist the darkfire spell from the spell compendium and run around all day throwing 1d6/2 caster levels (max of 5d6 I believe) handfuls of partially invisible fire at people as a thrown weapon. I remember it being a viable target for persistent spell but then again might be thinking of something different.

Not really what I was talking about.

[Aharon]

I don't get what's so good about Streamers!?
1) You have to make a touch attack, which is subject to miss chances, + most DMs whose players optimise a lot probably know the importance of deflection boni to armor.
2) They can be destroyed with a successful attack against AC 20, which any BSF should be able to make reliably.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1. You don't have to be in touch-range, and unless a DM wants to spend a lot of feats/spells/items stacking a creature's touch AC it's going to hit any creature most of the time.
2. Taking an action to attack it causes it to strike him for 5d10 damage, so it's probably at least an even trade plus he's wasted his action. Action economy > all else, and this spell has it.



Darkfire can indeed be Persisted, good find. It's almost identical to Produce Flame, but it doesn't have the pesky reduced duration per attack that eventually discharges it. The 5d6 damage at level 10+ is nothing to write home about, but it's still a useful all-day attack mode.

[Aharon]

1. So Displacement, Blur etc. don't apply?
2. Well, you could also interpret it as you wasting an action to cause HP damage. It's an SR:yes spell, so it might not take effect at all, and without Metamagic, it does an average of 25 damage at 9th level. If you're casting it at a meleer, it doesn't even take his whole action, but only one attack out of his full attack.

[AslanCross]

Moon domain is incredible. It offers moon bolt and moonblade, both of which will likely suit you.

A okay general list.

Actually, for all the Moon<noun> spells the Moon domain has, Moon Bolt is not one of them. It has Moonbeam, Moonblade, and Moonfire, but not Moon Bolt.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1. So Displacement, Blur etc. don't apply?
2. Well, you could also interpret it as you wasting an action to cause HP damage. It's an SR:yes spell, so it might not take effect at all, and without Metamagic, it does an average of 25 damage at 9th level. If you're casting it at a meleer, it doesn't even take his whole action, but only one attack out of his full attack.

1. You can't discount a spell because an opponent might have a miss chance buff. Very few monsters have such effects built in, and if your DM throws around a lot of spellcasting opponents who use those, all you need to do is throw around some Dispel Magics in return.
2. Average for a d10 is 5.5, so it's 27.5 damage on average. At level twelve this number doubles, at fifteen you get triple the original damage. You spend one action to give multiple opponents something they must deal with or face the consequences. This is not a spell you use against meleers in the first place, you hit creatures that use spells and spell-like abilities who are typically ill-equipped to destroy it without using a spell to do so, which would cause it to strike and disrupt the spell. The meleers could run over and destroy the ribbon for the caster, but they'd be wasting at least one round to do so. If you can't see where best to use a particular spell, then you probably shouldn't be arguing whether it's any good, because you're only assuming that it would be wasted on the worst possible targets.

[Aharon]

To clarify, I'm asking questions, not arguing. I'm not very experienced in actual play, not having had a gaming group until recently. It's just that, for example, it's much more obvious why grease, glitterdust or evard's tentacles are good (at least to me) than why Streamers are good.

1. Don't apply mischances to a targeted dispels, as well?
2. Thanks for the correction, I sometimes get sloppy with the averages, but those .5s sure add up.
3. I wasn't aware of the primary use. This thread was about offensive casting in general, so I assumed the spell is generally useful as an offensive spell, like other no save spells are. You clarified that it's primary use is against spellcasters - who is likely to have miss chances, again?

[Eldariel]

Cometfall [SpC] is a fine option. Darkbolt [LoM] is superb. Slay Living, Plane Shift (you can toss people to hostile planes...like Positive Energy Plane), Spiritual Weapon, Silence (v. good against casters especially as a readied area-effect version), Symbol of X (engrave your armor full of them, use a robe that you drop as a free action at the start of a combat; cue mass SoDs), etc. also form nice offense.

Don't bother with pure damage spells as a Ruby Knight Vindicator though; your simple attacks do more damage than the spells do, and don't consume spell slots to boot. Oh, and are undisruptable. If you want offensive casting, you need to use spells that fill in the blanks where hitting things isn't the best option, and/or Quickened spells (though as an RKV, your swift actions are already quite valuable, if abundant).


Cometfall, Darkbolt and company are nice 'cause they deal damage AND have auxillary effects. If your Wis is good, the Save-or-Xs are quite like to succeed if used against opponent's weak save making them very handy, and even against high save opponents, there's always the Nat 1.

[Doc Roc]

Darkbolt deserves an additional special mention because if you can get spells from off-list you can get it as a third level spell from the Teflammar shadowlord list.