|
I really like the flavor of the inflict wounds spells. A holy man who can deliver a devastating strike of negative energy and bring a warrior to his knees. I was particularly influenced by this interpretation.
However, Pathfinder has changed the ways that SoD spells work, and because they ripped off harm to do it, they decided to nerf harm because harm was not supposed to be a SoD in their world, for some reason.
So here's my question. How do you optimize a cleric (or an oracle, I guess) to dish out that negative energy damage? I checked the guides, but the Bad Touch cleric turned out to be not what I thought it was.
Here are some specific questions:
1. The inflict spells scale with the cleric's caster level, but they only add one damage rather than one dice of damage per level, and their caps are abysmally low. How do you increase the damage of these spells, other than the obvious Empower Spell feat?
2. How do you cast touch spells while threatened? Are there ways to increase your concentration check other than with Combat Casting or traits? Is there an easy way to just not provoke when you cast while threatened? (I want to be in the fray, I don't want to rely on Reach Spell or anything. Again, this is for flavor)
3. Other than constructs and undead, are there any other creatures who are immune/healed by negative energy?
|
You don't really increase the damage of the low level inflict spells. You just move on to the next higher level version. Also, if you're a cleric, you'll probably be channeling negative energy along with inflicting, which does improve with level, though it's not good enough by itself.
Other than Combat Casting, there are other feats that improve concentration checks. There's Uncanny Concentration from Ultimate Magic. I could swear there's another one, but I don't remember what it is. And since concentration is based on level and casting stat, it'll go up as you level up and boost your wisdom, at just a slightly better rate than the DC for defensive casting (which is based on double the spell level).