Advice on how to make my cleric more useful


Advice


So I'm playing the carion crown ap and I've noticed that in combat I've done really nothing but healing. What can I do to make myself more useful/not have to heal as much


Having a high strength score and hitting things with weapons is the best way to be useful at low levels. See if you can switch your stats to have a strength of 18 and use a longspear.


Healing is reactive. If you're healing a lot, it means you're reacting to your party getting hit a lot. If that's bad luck, bad tactics, or whatnot, you have to decide. But there's an old saying: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." So the best way to prevent that damage is to kill the enemy before they get to deal damage. So debuff them (bane, command), hit them, whatever it takes. A longspear for reach and Combat Reflexes for AoOs lets you get potentially a couple AoOs a round with good positioning.


Dated but still useful guide for you. (However, DON'T feel you have to dump Intelligence as hard as they tell you to.)


buff spells on allies debuff spells on enemies


Preventing damage is more powerful than fixing damage after it's taken. Think about the foes you fight and how you can reduce enemy damage output (or increase your party's damage output so they can kill the enemy faster and take less damage).


I'd say, if you're spending a lot of time healing the party, you ARE being useful. That means they're getting hurt a lot and can die if they aren't healed. Clerics don't have to be field medics, but they are very good at it. Are the other players complaining that you don't do enough? See what happens if you stop healing as much. True, if you kill the enemy faster, you take less damage, but it's hard to judge what you need to do without sitting at the table with you and see what's happening. Are you preparing spells to attack, but are forced to sub them out for CLW when somebody gets hurt? To me, that's being useful and I would thank you for your healing.


Also never cast a healing spell, always channel.

At level 5, selective channel + quick channel means you don't have to compromise, you can heal every turn and cast a buff or debuff every turn.

Some feats even allow your channeling to buff allies, depending on where you want to go.

What's your deity? What are your domains? What's your level? What are your stats?


Sorry if I was unclear, we have a party of 5
Elf wizard 7
Human ranger 7
Human paladin 7
Nagaji barbarian 2/Sorcerer 3/ dragon disciple 2 (I think)

We play where when you die you come back at the level you where when you died. And 25 point buy

And seeing your recommendations, I'm not sure if I built him right, stats are:

Level 7 gnome cleric of desna
Str: 10
Dex: 12
Con: 14
Int: 8
Wis: 18
Cha: 18

Domains are travel and good

Extra channeling, selective channeling, iron will, leadership (doing it more as some role play rather than a power trip)

Wearing breastplate and buckler, I have a starknife, Mithral Dagger, light crossbow

Inventory: handy haver sack (rope of climbing 60', wand: hold person (8 charges), wand: lesser restoration (4 charges), wand: acid arrow (21 charges), potion: cure light wounds x2 potion anti-plague, potion: fox's cunning, potion: invisiblity, potion: spider climb, spirit planchette, brass, crossbow bolts +1 x7)

Headband of alluring Charisma (already included in stats) ring of the ram (40 changes) rod of flame Extinguishing

Sorry if this is all messy, thus is my first time doing this


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Pristis wrote:

Sorry if I was unclear, we have a party of 5

Elf wizard 7
Human ranger 7
Human paladin 7
Nagaji barbarian 2/Sorcerer 3/ dragon disciple 2 (I think)

We play where when you die you come back at the level you where when you died. And 25 point buy

And seeing your recommendations, I'm not sure if I built him right, stats are:

Level 7 gnome cleric of desna
Str: 10
Dex: 12
Con: 14
Int: 8
Wis: 18
Cha: 18

Domains are travel and good

Extra channeling, selective channeling, iron will, leadership (doing it more as some role play rather than a power trip)

Wearing breastplate and buckler, I have a starknife, Mithral Dagger, light crossbow

Inventory: handy haver sack (rope of climbing 60', wand: hold person (8 charges), wand: lesser restoration (4 charges), wand: acid arrow (21 charges), potion: cure light wounds x2 potion anti-plague, potion: fox's cunning, potion: invisiblity, potion: spider climb, spirit planchette, brass, crossbow bolts +1 x7)

Headband of alluring Charisma (already included in stats) ring of the ram (40 changes) rod of flame Extinguishing

Sorry if this is all messy, thus is my first time doing this

Hey don't you worry about it, we're here to help not judge.

Ok so you have a good chassis but there's some things that need to be adressed:

1-Stats: You have a good stat spread, but you really need to focus wisdom over charisma. Charisma is your channeling ability, an ability that doesn't often require high DC's and that usually has an overabundance of uses per day. You should definitely get a headband of wisdom as high as you can and put all your leveling up stats in wisdom.

2- Feats: Selective Channel is good, I'd scrap iron will, you don't need it your will save is high enough. Take Quick channel instead, and start healing your team every turn as a move action. You also don't really require extra Channel but with the build and race you have it's not that bad. If your DM allows it, craft wondrous item would probably be much much better though, as it allows you to make yourself a decent headband of charisma and wisdom (Also a phylactery of positive channeling). Leadership is broken and banned by most DM's, but if you took it for flavor reasons and it's allowed by DM then don't touch it :)

3: Spells: NEVER AGAIN SHALL YE CAST A CURE X WOUNDS IN BATTLE, is a pretty hardcore clerical optimisation tenet. The only healing spell worth casting mid combat is Heal, which you don't have yet. For in combat maintenance channeling is more than enough (and by that I mean that channeling is a suboptimal strategy, but it's what you're built around and it's fun so we're going that way). Let's look at your options for level 4 shall we:

1-Holy smite: you have it as a domain spell. In one go you A: Damage ennemies B: Blind them, thus mitigating damage to your party, thus conserving healing ressources. C: Do not harm your party (assuming they are good) This is a good middling control spell

2:Blessing of Fervor: A vital buff for your party, if your wizard casts haste every fight then this loses SOME utility but not all. Your party will be able to either buff up defenses if they need it or shell out additional offense if they need it, and they can change as a non-action every round. This is worth infinitely more than a cure serious wounds spell.

3:Freedom of movement: This is a good combo spell. Ask your wizard to cast the black tentacles or solid fog spell on a group of ennemies, and cast this on the msot melee chars you can beforehand, and then laugh as the ennemies desperatly try to reach your fighters, who can pick and choose their fight because they ignore your control effects.

4: Protection from energy, mass: If you know you are going to fight elemental based monsters, or elemental themed casters (DEM EVIL FIRE WIZARDS) this will save your party an insane amount of healing required. you can choose the element when you cast the spell.

5: Wall of Bones: A good control effect, create chokeholds on the map so that your frontliners can engage the ennemy in a 3vs1 basis.

All of these spells will benefit your party much much more than a cure spell. They will prevent damage by controling ennemy actions and they will protect your party from damage. And when your party DOES take damage, simply use a move action to heal them.

Also for OUT OF COMBAT healing, grab one or two wands of cure light wounds, one charge heals an average of 5.5 hp, and it has 50 charges for a total of 275 hp healed for 750 gp. A good tradeof that frees up almost all of your spell slots.

**TO FELLOW POSTERS** I know these aren't the best spells, but they're decent enough and simple to apprehend considering the party's optimisation level.


As a follow up:

Buffing and debuffing are better uses of your standard actions than healing, almost all of the time.

But your core character theme is healing, so in these subtle changes we make you a healer that is almost as effective, a crafter of magic items for your party, and a caster to be reckoned with, all without changing your stats.

If a PC is near death you can always use spontaneous conversion to slap a heal on him but TBH it's probly a better idea to let him fall unconscious and heal him with either a quickened channel on your round or a cure light wounds after the battle. They need to know that you being a healer is no excuse for them being kamikazes, if they are at very low hp, they should retreat and rotate away from the field.

Don't hesitate to ask a lot of questions, it's our pleasure to help.


What book is wall of bones from?


Pathfinder Player Companion: Magic Tactics Toolbox © 2016, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Alexander Augunas, Steven T. Helt, Thurston Hillman, and Ron Lundeen.

Silver Crusade

You want to start each combat by buffing your allies, or possibly debuffing your enemies. Blessing of Fervor is one of the best buffs in the game (better than Haste IMHO), and should be cast at the start of every important fight. At your current level, Bless lasts 7 minutes, and can often be cast ahead of time.

You don't need to even think about healing your allies until they're below half hit points, and it's generally best to wait until they're below 1/4.

If you can possibly change your feats, I'd trade out Iron Will for Improved Initiative (and I'm someone who likes boosting saving throws).


Channeling is not always superior to casting cure spells: when there are more foes than you can select out or only one person in your party needs healing, for example. Attacking is not always superior to healing: when you have a 10 Str and a 12 Dex so your accuracy and damage are very low, for example.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with Chuck Mount: if you want to do something other than healing, go for it but you should not feel like you aren’t contributing because you are “only” healing. I also agree that Iron Will is overkill on a cleric. If I was to go with a save boost on a cleric, it’d be Great Fortitude instead.


Any standard spells I should prepare almost always? And for the most part it's not so much that they are getting hurt, it's that if no one is hurt I'm not doing anything


And the theme I'm going for with leadership, a traveling church of Desna.
Any ideas on how to go about it?


If you want to contribute more on the front lines, I’d recommend giving the Guided Hand or Divine Fighting Style feats a look. Either of those feats will allow your gnome cleric to fight more effectively using a Starknife.


born_of_fire wrote:

Channeling is not always superior to casting cure spells: when there are more foes than you can select out or only one person in your party needs healing, for example. Attacking is not always superior to healing: when you have a 10 Str and a 12 Dex so your accuracy and damage are very low, for example.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with Chuck Mount: if you want to do something other than healing, go for it but you should not feel like you aren’t contributing because you are “only” healing. I also agree that Iron Will is overkill on a cleric. If I was to go with a save boost on a cleric, it’d be Great Fortitude instead.

Even if you only need to heal one target channeling is superior since you can do it as a move action. And if there are more does than you can select out you should be either clearing then with aoe damage, debuffing them with aoe debuffs or regrouping your party in an effective positioning rather than be healing.

And unfortunately if you're not trading actions on a 1 for 1 basis it's considered a loss of a turn. If you heal 25 (on average with a csw at cl 7) then you are healing less than an attack from a cr7 monster and so you have wasted your turn except in very niche situation.

Also, don't take great fortitude, or any other save boosting feat, you're a cleric, you need the feats.


Pristis wrote:

And the theme I'm going for with leadership, a traveling church of Desna.

Any ideas on how to go about it?

Perhaps you could look at advanced profession ? It establishes how to run a business with followers and employees. It should be close to running a cult (and free up a feat to boot)

...

Damn there's some RL truth to what I just said!


Bless, prayer, and blessing of fervor are all very good combat-opening buffs, if the party doesn’t already have belts of strength, then bull’sstrength on a melee type is very good.

Defensively, magic circle against evil (or whatever your foes’ alignment is), or resiste energy if you’re up against someone who throws energy around. Both of these can be cast well before combat begins.

There’s a lot of ways to mess with enemies, but I like buffing since your friends seldom save against your spells. Debuffing is a different type of build.

As it happens, I like boosting saves on a cleric - play to your strengths, and you can just about always ave versus everything...


Pristis wrote:
Any standard spells I should prepare almost always? And for the most part it's not so much that they are getting hurt, it's that if no one is hurt I'm not doing anything

Yeah that's one of the biggest problems I have with my shaman channeler, I had built an entire character around maximum healing, and then we had a flawless run in dragon's demands where no one lost even 1 hp.

Fortunately, you're a full caster, you can remake reality as you see fit, you're always going to have more valid options.

The best way to make sure you get a useful action everyturn would probably be a more drastic change to your build however.

The Evangelist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/cleric/archetypes/paizo-cleri c-archetypes/evangelist/) archetype trades away a domain but allows you to use inspire courage, and inspire courage is really, really good. If you want to be a buffer, this is the best way about it.

If you want versatility, making a summoner is complicated but really fun, trade in leadership iron will and extra channel for spell focus conjuration, augment summoning and sacred summons. this will allow you to always be relevant whatever you do.

To keep your current build (which works just fine btw) and just select fun spells, I'll draft you up 5 fun spells per level:

1-
Bless
Bless water
Command
Shield of faith
Grasping corpse

2-
Spiritual weapon (attacks every round)
admonishing ray (for los damages)
Hold person
Sound burst
Resist energy

3-
Chain of perdition (just loads of fun)
Dispel Magic
Speak with dead (allows a kill first ask questions later philosophy)
Wind wall (because f*** archers)
Archon's aura

4-
see above

Of course there's loads of better spells depending on situation but these should get you through most days and allow you to have some fun.


Any ways to make stone shape useful? I have liked using that one in the past


Stone shape is always useful, always keep it on hand and drive your gm crazy!

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