I’m looking for some suggestions for evil clerics in my games. Now using an evil cleric designed out of the book that teams with undead works well, being that he can heal the undead or harm the party. Where I am encountering difficulties is when I create evil factions of living creatures and have a priest among them. Although channeling negative energy to harm the party works well, unless coupled with undead they seem to be far less effective than a normal priest from my experience.
I have worked with using CN clerics to get around this but sometimes this can be a real stretch. I am currently working to restart a campaign that has groups of mercenary Norsemen being lead by a worshiper of one of my designed Chaos Gods. It’s not really possible to make him CN because he’s just too evil.
Should I bend the rules here to fit the campaign or just accept that this is one of the drawbacks to an evil character?
I would say no.
Thats the trade off for playing an evil Cleric. Of course you could take the Selective Channel feat to keep "friends" safe.
Although channeling negative energy to harm the party works well, unless coupled with undead they seem to be far less effective than a normal priest from my experience.
Take the feat Selective Channeling and give Mr.Evil a decent Charisma. He'll be able to exclude several minions from his effects when he needs to, and if some minions die, well, he's EVIL - does he care if some minions die to take down his enemies? Charisma 16 would be good - he'll be able to exclude his 3 best minions from his negative channel, and he can save it for after he's launched a few nasty spells and the good guys have taken down most of his crappy minions anyways.
|
That's just it- A higher-up cleric won't have armies with him, he'll have his trusted bodyguards that he raised from children and twisted into highly effective killing machines.
There was also a feat from Libris Mortis that made you heal from negative and hurt by positive as if you were undead. You needed to take one feat before that, but it could be a requirement for all of this person's human soldiers to take it. The first feat made you not need to sleep, and the second was the heal from negative energy. Seems like a match made in heaven (or hell) for the servants of an evil god to never rest and grow strong from the very form of attack that they use to slaughter others with.
I think the death domain allows the cleric to heal with negative energy, and it has not mention of being hurt by positive energy.
|
|
Yes, but that's at 8th level IIRC
EDIT: My main point was that all of the level 1 Human followers could be required to take those two feats as a requirement to join the church's squads. It's not that huge of an investment, and with Selective Channeling your big bada$$es that couldn't be bothered to take these feats won't be taken down by the good clerics with their silly "positive energy".
|
Negative energy channeling, for someone surrounded by undead / constructs / people who blew a feat to be unharmed by negative energy rocks. If you want multiple living allies, say, a party of them, you'll need to put a large chunk of your point buy into Charisma, and blow a feat on Selective Channeling, making you strictly worse at *being a cleric,* since you'll have a lower than expected wisdom. Your spells will fail more often, and you'll cast less of them, to compensate for the suckage of channeling negative energy.
With living allies, you'll be better off if you just mark that class feature off the character sheet, rather than try to 'make it work.' Barring something funky, like a template that gives the Cleric a free +6 to Charisma, it's just not worth messing around with it, unless you can surround your Cleric with allies that it won't hurt.
Just stick to surrounding the character with undead, and keep the living allies out of range. You'll be able to keep your skeletons or whatever functioning, using ranged attacks, while any living cultists fight those pesky adventurers and their dumb druid. Once your living cultists fall, as they inevitably will, stay surrounded by skeletons so that nobody can get within melee range of you, and start unleashing the negative energy novas.
You can have up to eight skeletons in the spaces around your Cleric, and they can provide him with cover against ranged attacks, as well as
switching to Aid Other actions to try and prevent any reach melee attacks snaking past them. Those not performing Aid Other actions can stick to throwing centipede-envenomed javelins, alchemical fire, tanglefoot bags, flasks of acid, thunderstones, smokesticks or various other annoying spoilers at the enemy. (Don't expect them to be meaningfully useful, and feel free to equip them with serviceable weapons, shields and armor, since the cleric can pick that stuff up after the fight, assuming he survives, and use it to equip the next group of skeletons he animates.)
Feel free to make it harder to wade through your skeletons by sowing the area with caltrops. It's piercing damage, and your skeletons will just ignore it, while living foes will find it harder to get through them, to your Cleric.
Using channel negative energy, combined with decent tactics, such as having front rank skeletons taking the total defense action, while the second rank uses longspears and third ranks use javelins and alchemical goodies, can cause even wimpy skeletons to be relatively effective at softening up a party, while the living cultists fight out of reach of the clerics 'zone of death.'
Yeah I think his honor guard would work well with the feats from librim mortis make them Fighters like 2 levels lower then the party and so he can harm the party or heal his guards
And he is an evil cleric so if they are not part of his honor guard then who cares
Ive got an idea for an evil cleric, in my history of running and playing in evil themed groups is the cleric "withholds" healing and granted they are not as refined a healer as there sissy la la counterparts but ive been toying with a new toon soon to be ran. Im going to play a NE Pharasma devoted cleric with the healing domain and death domain. My reasoning behind this is to have a healer thats skilled at cure spells (as per the healing domain) aswell as liberal (ab)use of negative channelings and random inflict spells we all love. My justification is my character will be a morbid plague doctor of sorts whos role in the church would be learning the nature (for himself atleast) of the mortal animial and ultimately death. On a plus side in an evil group, a cleric thats not strappted/stingy with the healy goodness makes friends or at least is is of higher value and last to be turned on. :) Im sorry for the shoddy wordsmithing as it its 4a.m. here, Cheers.
Homebrew? 3.5 has a feat in Libris Mortes that allows you to heal off of negative (and damge off posative).
Additionally, try to match up energy attacks with undead immunities.
Flame Strike and Flaming Skeletons? I think yes.
Yes, Dhampirs are fine alies to evil cleric (and fine evil Clerics, extra self healing when things go bad is always welcome) - they are healed by negative energy and harmed by positive despite being living creatures.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
I played a duergar cleric that the GM later used as reoccurring baddie. He would often send in a swarm of minions, who he didn't care about. He could buff up out of sight, turn invisible and sneak in while the party was distracted. Evil clerics aren't interested in keeping their minions alive in most cases. They use their followers to weaken the party, then emerge only when they think they have the advantage.
