Advice on Cleric build for Wrath of the Righteous


Advice


I'm making a Cleric for Wrath of the Righteous. I'm wanting to be a Cleric that uses spells for mainly summoning and buffing, and uses channels to heal allies and damage undead and outsiders. This is what I'm thinking:

Race: Aasimar

Cleric 18, Master Summoner 2 (I also thought about going Cleric 16, Master Summoner 2, Paladin 2)

Deity: Iomedae (gives really good buffs with domains and spells)

Str 12
Dex 14
Con 13
Int 10
Wis 16
Cha 16

Feats:
1 Selective Channeling
3 Alignment Channel
5 Sacred Summon
7 Summon Good Monster
9 Quicken Channel
11 Superior Summons
13 Improved Channel

The two levels of Master Summoner will give me Augment Summoning for free, so I plan to get those somewhere between 4th and 8th level. I've only picked feats for up to 13th level because I ran out of feats that just jumped out at me.

The party will consist of a Wizard, 2 Fighters, a Paladin, and a Rogue. With this group makeup, I don't see any need for me to be a melee character. From seeing a Summoner Wizard in action I also know that if we go up against a small number of monsters or just a single monster then I may not need to summon anything and just buff the group.

Any and all comments and suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks.


I do not think the two levels are summoner are worth it, especially since you won't be in melee. Methinks you'll have enough feats to get augment summons normally because you won't need combat feats.

How set are you on aasimar? The bonus feat from human would completely offset the feat tax of augment summoning (SF: conjuration).

Lastly, consider superior summons as a feat to take. An extra summons is never bad.

Silver Crusade

Your general approach to meshing with this party sounds right on. I'll suggest a few improvements.

Human is probably more effective than Aasimar. The benefits of being aasimar are worth less than the extra human feat. Also, for a supposedly rare race, one sees a lot of them ;-)

You're better off remaining full cleric than dipping summoner or anything else. The dips will gimp your cleric abilities (especially spells) without compensating enough. Dipping hurts most at high level.

Since you plan to mostly buff, summon, and heal, you can get by with less wisdom. You need just enough wisdom to cast your highest level spell. Starting Wisdom of 14 will work as well for you as 16.

You could trim your feat selection to the most useful and effective. If you stick with the no-martial-ability-at-all approach you might pick these feats:

Alignment Channel(vs Demons) (1st), Spell Focus (Conjuration) (Human), Augment Summoning (3rd), Sacred Summons (5th), Quick Channel (7th), Superior Summoning (9th), Divine Interference (11th), possibly replace Sacred Summons with Selective Channeling if you want to avoid healing non-demon foes.

Considering that your party is heavy on martials, Bard buffs would be incredibly helpful to the whole party. You're a Cleric, so Evangelist archetype is an obvious place to look. Inspire Courage stacks with Augment Summoning stacks with Cleric buffs. Evangelists don't channel well at all, but they make awesome summoners.

Iomedae has access to the very best Variant Channel available to Clerics: Rulership. Strict RAW interpretation might, or might not, allow you to Alignment Channel and Variant Channel versus Demons with a Harm effect that Dazes and damages all demons in your 30' radius. If your GM will allow this I suggest you jump at it, get Improved Channeling, Quick Channel at 5th, and pump your CHA. You will be an amazingly effective demon-hunter. Ask your GM while you are building the character. It looks legal to me, but others might reasonably differ.

Keep in mind that Demons are normally unaffected by your channel (without Alignment Channel), so you could possibly get by without Selective Channeling. If the GM will allow you to use Variant Channelling (Rulership) with Alignment Channel, you could gracefully combine this with Evangelist. Otherwise you need to choose between maximizing either channeling or summoning ability. Both allow you room to be martially competent.

Given that you worship Iomedae, I suggest you also whup some *&^" using weapons. A small investment up front can buy you non-trivial martial ability for your whole career. If you wield a reach weapon (longspear) you can strike from the second rank, without getting in harms way or interfering with the primary martials. Just one feat, Combat reflexes, plus a long spear (simple weapon) gets you up to three free extra attacks per round. If you have 14+ Strength you will actually be able to inflict considerable martial damage with AoOs, while still using your entire round to cast and/or channel. That might be useful versus hordes of demons. This reach cleric approach also fits perfectly with Sacred Summons.

Silver Crusade

Err, I see what you were doing with Aasimar. You plan to take all your Favored Class Bonus in extra channel damage to outsiders. Go for it!


Magda Luckbender wrote:
Err, I see what you were doing with Aasimar. You plan to take all your Favored Class Bonus in extra channel damage to outsiders. Go for it!

Would it be better for me to focus on the spells and channeling, and not focus so much on the summons?

I like the idea of Evangelist, and using a reach weapon. Would it be a good idea to switch to Shelyn and use her chosen weapon and take the Luck domain?

There are so many ways to make a Cleric, and they all seem fun. It's making it really hard.


Magda Luckbender wrote:


Considering that your party is heavy on martials, Bard buffs would be incredibly helpful to the whole party. You're a Cleric, so [b]

Bard with flagbearer feat and moment of greatness spell can do crazy buffs around. i like evangelist idea. Really nobody cares about buffs in a woTR party :(


A couple of notes:

1. A cleric's positive energy "channel" will heal living creatures, including outsiders. Alignment channel gives one the option of choosing between healing/damaging outsiders of the specified type each time a channel is performed. So, selective channel should still be very important.

2. There will not only be demons but multiple encounters with mythic creatures. I'm not sure how much good a bunch of strengthened level I monsters will do. If they can be used to keep a dmon stuck in place (teleport?) while ranged characters pound them then maybe.

3. Deskari is the demon lord of the locust host. I'm guessing that later on the ability to do area affect (preferably supernatural damage) will be at a premium.

4. Two levels of paladin will give extra healing. The ability to heal oneself as a swift action and then heal another as a standard could be useful, not to mention divine grace.

5. Taking any class other than cleric will put off when you first obtain big gun spells such as heal and miracle.

6. Speaking of miracle...Have you considered choosing the divine source mythic abilities as you are able to? You could choose it once at 3rd tier and then again at 6th tier, choosing "community" the second time. Then, once you reach 9th tier (an expectation for the beginning of te last adventure IIRC) you could cast miracle 1/day as a SLA which means you would not need to supply the material component for the powerful request form...25,000 gp in powdered diamond.

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