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. 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

[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.

1. The Easy Metamagic feat (Dragon #325) reduces the cost by 1.
2. 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.
3. A Spontaneous Cleric 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

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! 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! 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. 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.

1. The Easy Metamagic feat (Dragon #325) reduces the cost by 1.
2. 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.
3. A Spontaneous Cleric 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! 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".

[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