I got to the session late, so got stuck playing a cleric. That was cool, as we were fighting Vampires, so i got to make a channel heavy undead ash kicking machine. But we've moved on, got a new arc, and someone took leadership so we have a cohort who is a dedicated healer. Now at lvl 12 i have a cleric who amounts to little more that a secondary healer, and a game flow that follows as fifteen minutes of everybody smashing the foes, then i roll 6d6 to channel heal everybody. Then the cohort does the same thing only better. Is there any suggestions on how i may retrain my Cleric to actually do something useful using the four feats i have available? I do have a lvl to play with to muliclass, but i'm shying away from that as my physical stats are weak. Any help would be hot.
Just curious how you only have 4 feats at 12th level? Is this for a 3.5 game?
Perhaps you could throw up your stats, feats, and gear so we can see where you are starting at?
|
I got to the session late, so got stuck playing a cleric. That was cool, as we were fighting Vampires, so i got to make a channel heavy undead ash kicking machine. But we've moved on, got a new arc, and someone took leadership so we have a cohort who is a dedicated healer. Now at lvl 12 i have a cleric who amounts to little more that a secondary healer, and a game flow that follows as fifteen minutes of everybody smashing the foes, then i roll 6d6 to channel heal everybody. Then the cohort does the same thing only better. Is there any suggestions on how i may retrain my Cleric to actually do something useful using the four feats i have available? I do have a lvl to play with to muliclass, but i'm shying away from that as my physical stats are weak. Any help would be hot.
Depends on your ability scores and feats mainly. If those are all slanted to healing (Selective Channel, 10 for STR, etc), then your players screwed you. A cleric can easily be a solid combatant with the proper spelled backed up by certain feats (like Power Attack or Deadly Aim). You still could be a good combatant, but your build does matter on how effective.
You'll have to try and work with the DM on allowing Leadership (a ridiculously powerful feat because it basically replaced your PC) so you get screwed over. You should be prepared for that DM to lock you into your choices, and then you'll have to tell him nicely that you are being screwed. Unfortunately he opened a door that messed things up, and might be resistant to admit that. Plus, it sets a precedence on players remaking their characters that he has to deal with (although he caused the original problem).
Can you give us some more info on your stats and domains?
At your current level, Divine Power and Righteous Might combine to make even a mediocre cleric into a a decent melee brute. You can get a fairly solid AC with armor.
You could always take leadership and get a tank cohort to heal.
Case in point why myself and nearly every GM I know of won't let anyone take the leadership feat (if we think you should have a henchman based on your efforts and status, you'll get one, ditto followers, but you can't get it with just a feat slot and if you do get it, we won't charge you a feat slot).
That said, I'd look to your spells. Clerics have quite a few of them, including some solid buffing, debuffing, battlefield control, and summon spells. And you've got the divination spells that make most GM's cringe.
True the divinations alone especially if you have a sorc/ wizard for the infamous "scry and teleport" AKA "directed nuke" method will make you a boon to your allies even if combat isn't your strong suit.
And find the path is just plain crazy.
It is my favorite spell in the whole game. <3 Find the Path.
That's four feats that i can retrain, including one i never took at 11th. And believe me when i say that the cohort was built mostly because i was bored with my cleric. I am aware of the divine spells that make me a better fighter, and use as many of them as my Dm will let me before we roll initiative. (He doesn't believe in buffs, but that's another grip for another time.) The problem is that My Cleric was channel focused-with the Improved, Selective, Extra, and Elemental Channel feats. Added is Greater Spell penetration and its Prereq, and i have a bunch of useless feats against anything other than undead. I want to keep the Extra and Selective Channel feats, but i can retrain all the others to combat feats. I have decided on Outflank, because two in our group use that one so it would really help in melee. What i want is suggestions for the other three.
He he is with Ability score items added: Str-14, Dex-14, Con-16, Int-14, Wiz-18, Cha-18. He fights with +1 Flaming scimitar. He's lame. Not with a gimpy leg, just not a lot of fun.
(you know, now that i've written this down, it occurs to me that what i need is a new character. If i wasn't sure that the party would totally fail without my timely channels, even with the cohort, i would just suicide this dude and make a witch.)
Vindicator.
|
That's four feats that i can retrain, including one i never took at 11th. And believe me when i say that the cohort was built mostly because i was bored with my cleric. I am aware of the divine spells that make me a better fighter, and use as many of them as my Dm will let me before we roll initiative. (He doesn't believe in buffs, but that's another grip for another time.) The problem is that My Cleric was channel focused-with the Improved, Selective, Extra, and Elemental Channel feats.
Having a GM that "doesn't believe in buffs" is going to make any divine caster's job more difficult. Taking a few extra feats may help a little, but without adequate buffing, you'll always be outshined by the fighter types. That's why I'm going to suggest going for the extreme.
Retrain to a different god. ;-)
As a possibly interesting change, if your GM would allow a deity switch go ahead and flip to the negative side of things. Sure you'll be less effective against dead, but against everybody else, selectively ignore your buddies and watch the damage start to stack. Add in a few more combative domains (and death, take death, specifically the "undeath" subdomain) and I think the result would be more to your liking.
If you feel you have been replaced then talk to the DM about making a new character. Sounds like you would have more fun and that is what is important!!
You could go for things like Alignment Channel, Elemental Channel, and Channel Smite if your fighting a lot of outsiders or elementals and use your channel abilities to deal extra damage in combat.
take leadership and pick up 5 fireball tossing wizards
You could respec to a negative channeling cleric, and use selective channel to not hit your allies.
My domains are Healing and Sun (Sarenrae). And yeah that wis score was pretty low to start, as a said i was focused on channeling, which uses Cha for it's DCs. The reason was that I was the party Cleric for the first part of the campaign, and we were fighting Vampires. Now we have a second Cleric, and no more undead. So time for me to get my fight on.
I was intrigued By the Vindicator Prestige Class suggested by Firstbourn, so I've checked it out, and pending DM approval i think that's the way ill be going. Thank you all for the feedback, i will be using this forum again thanks to the intelligent and thoughtful people i've found in it's populace.
Gang Up, Power Attack, Quicken Spell, Combat Casting: Pick three.
Gang up will let you use Outflank more often while Power attack will raise your damage by +8. Quicken spell allows you to get off a quickend divine favor for an additional +3 to hit and damage. Get the level of Vindicator ASAP so you can really get an AC boost out of that shield (at your level that's +6 sacred bonus to AC on top of the shield bonus you are already getting). With Magic Vestment and Greater magic weapon all your gear should be +3 at all times now (at least times that count).
If you fight a lot of evil you might want to look into getting a greyflame weapon, and a phaylacary(sp?) of positive channeling would be a great idea too.
For more damage use your spells. Specifically, summon monster, flame strike, blade barrier and harm.
If you're trying to be a roid monkey there is Divine Power, Righteous Might, Bull's Strength, and Shield of Faith.
Basing a cleric solely around channeling is pretty painful, but when they come up should be pretty nasty, especially considering the sun domain. I think channel smite would definitely help.
Clerics are hard to make into toe-to-toe fighters, but they can carry their own, heal themselves and can do a decent amount of offensive damage when you start using harm. Good luck.
|
Vindicator
+1
If you GM is letting you reselect 3 feats (plus your unused) see if he/she will let you change some levels and take them in Holy Vindicator instead. You can still throw down a heal and your channeling/spells still progress plus you are put onto a fast BAB progression and given abilities to help you go toe to toe and become quite a force to be reckoned with when geared. My Vindicator is often right in the middle of the action with the fighter using touch attack spells when baddies have such a high AC that they are a challenge for physical damage to hit. Also look at getting the Guided enchant on your weapon so you can use your WIS modifier to hit/dmg instead of STR. Then use owl's wisdom to bump it up even more for fights you don't want to use bigger spells on and chop stuff to pieces.
Another thing that has made things more fun for me at least is to come up with a character concept and build him into it. Whether it be an Indiana Jones that focuses on Whip and skills or a Zorro that is focusing on light weapons and finesse there is a way to do most concepts. Clerics are a little harder to find a famous persona for (at least for me) but coming up with your own is just as good and watching your character morph into that ideal I think is part of the fun. It kind of sounds like you started with a concept and it has since fallen short of what you expected it to be and now you don't know what to do. I've been there, and I when I was that is when I really didn't like my character or enjoy playing him. My advice would be to get your character some direction again. Perhaps analyze your party and come up with a new concept for your character and share it with at least your GM if not the whole group. Maybe your GM will let you change a few other things to try and let you fit a new concept.
If you don't have to worry about healing, a nice combo is to switch to negative energy channeling and using Righteous Might. As a player, you will very rarely come up against enemies that can bypass DR 5/Good (the DR is based on your channel type, not alignment and does not affect the alignment of the spell).
I'm not huge on the Glory domain powers, but they can be useful. It gives you all the best cleric buff spells though and also gives you access to Holy Sword, which is a very awesome spell.
Yeah we played last night and my DM let me train Holy Vindicator back a lvl, so i'm Cleric/10, HV/2. We also just killed a dragon and surprise there's a good +3 Vicious Scoimitar in his hoard, Very Handy for someone who just took Weapon Focus on that type of sword, and some halfplate that i can suddenly use. (Hooray!) Then he immediately regretted it when his monsters couldn't hit my 40AC once i used that Vindicator's Shield power. The main problem i'm finding now is that like i said, he doesn't allow time for more than one buff per encounter, and i'm still in a party of front line fighters that require healing more than another sword arm, even with the Outflank and Gang Up feats. But now i have the OPTION to jump in the fight, and really that's all i wanted. Now i do need Quicken spell so i can really smack it down, but I'm way more pleased with this character presently, and even if i still end of channel-healing every round i'll be having more fun on Wednesdays. So, there's that.
|
Destruction level 7 10hp damage per level or 10D6 on a save
Blade Barrier Level 6 area effect damage and blocking
Flame Strik level 5 area effect damage
Holy Smite level 4 area effect damage + Will save ( Evason dose not work )
Bestow Curse level 3 -6 to one ability or -4 on attack rolls saves and checks.
Just a few examples of what high level clerics can do. It just takes divine casters longer to get there then it dose arcane caster.
And wizards/sorcerers are the only one with powerfull spells? A divine caster with a high wisdom will do as well or better then a arcane caster if made rigth. Plus thay can heal them self.