Illusionist Tank Cleric Build

[Elykscorch]

I've come up with an idea to have a character that is an illusionist tank. He'll start as a cleric with the Love and Trickster domains tanking with the Copycat and Adoration abilities. He'll use stuff like Compel Hostility and Sanctuary to bring attacks his way. At level six he'll go Veiled Illusionist and gain illusion spells through the human veil at the start of each day. At that point he'll gain some illusion defenses like Mirror Image, Displacement, and Greater Invisibility to help take hits.

Now, he won't be any good at swinging a weapon (which I'm slightly worried about). But I think he'll be able to keep attention off his party by constantly making illusions of monsters and walls and all kinds of stuff to keep enemies swinging anywhere but at his party. Throw in some enchantment spells like confusion and murderous command and I'm hoping he'll be successful.

He'll be using Heighten Spell to keep things like sanctuary and compel hostility relevant along with Reach Spell. He'll of course still have medium armor, toughness, and a shield to keep himself alive along with hopefully a +CON item if the spells don't work out.

He'll take the alternative racial feats Keeper of Secrets and Arcane Focus for defensive casting bonuses and an enchantment DC buff. He's an elf.

Attributes:

STR-7 Dex-16 Con-12 Int-14 Wis-19(+2 4th,8th) Cha-9

Feats:

1(Race) Spell Focus: Illusion
1-Combat Casting
3-Reach Spell
5-Toughness
7-Heighten Spell
9-Greater Spell Focus: Illusion
11-Quicken Spell

Any ideas on improvements or spell selection? Anyone play something like this before and have it fail or succeed?

[Secret Wizard]

Why not having more even STR / DEX, and going with Heavy Armor? Seems like an easy way to have better AC.

Medium armor + 7 STR don't go well together.

[yukongil]

make sure your table is okay with this. Some of the fun of combat is surviving the enemy and if they are all off constantly swinging at shadows, that doesn't sound like a very fun encounter to me. Your group might be different, but I'd still ask.

[TheMilestone]

Much better idea...

Divine Paragon of Nivi Rhombodazzle, and take the Exalted boons as part of your class feature.

Now you already get access to Mirror Image and Greater Invis through your domains and deity... no need to PrC at all.

And if you want a cherry on the cake, the 3rd boon is a stormer even with it kicking in at 14th level...... with the 'Fates Favoured' trait at 14th level you can add a +8 to any D20 roll as an immediate action, for your CHA bonus x per day.

AND if you want to keep things thematic but also make your GM weep on a regular basis.... take Peacemaker as a feat and Mediator as a trait and use them with the spell Charitable Impulse on your enemies.

Ps I was going to suggest using a Persistent MM rod too with the above but I figured its not worth getting murdered by your GM over. ;)))

[avr]

Veiled illusionist isn't explicitly a PrC for Sivanah-worshipers but the implicit requirement is hard to miss. Sivanah doesn't do Love, at least as a domain.

If you can get mirror image and a decent AC you are very hard to hit with physical attacks, yes. Expect that your GM may start getting annoyed eventually and will create enemies or use odd tactics specifically to get you.

But yes, veiled illusionist gives you useful stuff to do in combat or out of it.