Optimizing the non-optimal - how to make the best of a bad situation

[Theodoxus]

I'm probably going to be playing a cleric in an upcoming Rise of the Runelord campaign, and it's been decided the group is going to be a band of dwarves as an homage to The Hobbit.

However, no one in the group is particularly happy with being slow, so they're all looking for various ways to over come it (most often by taking a level in barbarian).

I've decided, since the cleric hand has been shoved at me, to grab a deity with the travel domain. Sadly, all of the dwarven gods are homebodies, so I'm ranging into the humans and Abadar really has my attention.

Now, on to the really non-optimal part of this - I'm thinking of playing a battle-ish type cleric with secondary push into support. For that, I'm for sure, going to take up the tower shield and be the frumpy turtle that annoys the enemy by healing up the party.

I'm toying with going with the Crusader archetype, just for the free feats - which allows me to skip the Fighter levels that typically boost the military prowess. Grabbing tower shield at 1st, heavy armor at 5th and greater shield focus at 10th (regular shield focus along the way).

The other idea was to grab Tower shield prof as my 1st level feat and dipping into Unbreakable for endurance and diehard - two feats that, along with Toughness would really make this guy a very hard nut to crack.

Abadar is great, except for his divine weapon of choice. Caiden seems like another great choice - though I have a hard time wrapping my brain around rapier and tower shield... but I'm not expecting to be wading into combat too much (else, I'd just go classic Gorum and Greatsword, obviously)

So I guess my primary question is, has anyone played a tower shield wielding battle/support hybrid and what class/archetype options did you use, and what feats - bonus and level did you take?

Off the top of my head, I'd like Scribe Scroll, Steel Soul, Weapon Focus (Warhammer or d.waraxe for dwarven flavor) - but should I grab Elemental Channeling and go into Holy Vindicator? Should I grab Spell Focus: Conjuration / Augment Summoning and go the summoning route?

I'd read about taking 5 levels of Fighter - Tower Shield Spec for the bonuses, but eating 5 levels of spell casting seems really harsh.

Anyway, any advise would be appreciated. Trying to have a fun quirky character, but don't want to shoot myself in the foot and be completely unplayable.

Oh, as for the rest of the party, the only other person who has provided a character is a barbarian 2 / Two handed Fighter /x Which is the primary reason I didn't go full on battle cleric - I figured we'd need a tank and flank buddy for him.

[Wally the Wizard]

Why are you forced to play a cleric? If your party needs healing there are several other options that you could choose.

Second, If you're still set on playing a cleric there are a few options for offsetting your speed.

If you want to play a somewhat unusual cleric play a cleric of the dragon god Aspu.

A separatist can chose any domain even if their god doesn't have it. Chose whatever dwarf god you like and pick the travel domain up as a slightly weaker 2nd domain.

Boots of striding and springing are pretty cheap at 5500 and give you a 10ft bonus. If you want them even cheaper craft wondrous items halves the price and is a great crafting feat to take.

Use weapons that offset your speed such as a reach weapon or a bow.

Reach weapons make flanking easier, and if you dip to a class that gives you melee weapons you can use the dwarven longaxe from the apg to keep your dwarven flavor. I would suggest a one level fighter dip for the weapons, heavy armor and bonus feat if you decide to go this route.

However if you take 3 levels of zen archer you get a ton of goodies for an archer cleric; 2 bonus feats, flurry of blows with a bow, decent unarmed damage, weapon focus and point blank master, wisdom to ac and wisdom to "to hit" instead of dex and you get 10ft to your speed. 3 levels is a big hit to your spell casting but you do gain quite a lot.

Finally I wouldn't recommend the crusader archetype. A one level fighter dip gets you most of the feats initially offered (heavy armor, tower sheild, martial weapon) plus a bonus feat. Diminished spell casting really hurts and legions blessing isn't great since you need to burn 2 spells to use it (and you're already short because of diminished spell casting) If you're looking at archetypes evangelist is a great one if you don't have a bard in the party. Inspire courage is a great buff and losing the spontaneous and channel isn't too big of a deal if you mainly use CLW wands out of combat to heal.