How would you go about making a combat cleric centered around the Flame Blade spell?

[Malik Gyan Daumantas]

I got the core components down.
Cleric of Saranrae, Guided hand at level 5, get Dazing spell just to make it even more stupid, but I'm not sure how to fill in the blanks.

Any ideas?

[Kasoh]

Flame Blade Dervish is the only useful piece of advice I have that doesn't include the usual cleric buff spells (Divine Favor, Divine Power, etc.)

[Malik Gyan Daumantas]

Kasoh wrote:

Flame Blade Dervish is the only useful piece of advice I have that doesn't include the usual cleric buff spells (Divine Favor, Divine Power, etc.)

I only have on issue with that, and that's that if buffs were all i cared about I'd just run a warpriest.

[Kasoh]

Malik Gyan Daumantas wrote:

Kasoh wrote:

Flame Blade Dervish is the only useful piece of advice I have that doesn't include the usual cleric buff spells (Divine Favor, Divine Power, etc.)

I only have on issue with that, and that's that if buffs were all i cared about I'd just run a warpriest.

There's nothing about the cleric chassis that lends itself to combat moreso than the spell buffs it receives, because otherwise its a medium armor, medium BAB, d8 chassis. A warpriest gets more feats and quicker buff spells. The warpriest is better at buffing up and fighting and its hard to argue otherwise.

The strength of the cleric is spells, armor, and its light class feature list. You can Prestige Class out of cleric into something and not miss much.

With Channel Smite, you can drop a load of dice on undead targets, but that's where its utility ends. And if you're loading up on WIS to the point where you want to attack with it, your damage isn't going to be great aside from that extra wisdom giving you more spells to cast more buffs for. Guided hand probably isn't worth it all told. Flame Blade already attacks touch AC, so a good Wisdom and moderate Strength--supplemented by your buff spells--will carry you through most encounters.

If you want Dazing spell to be a thing, then the metamagic traits to make that lower level will be useful, and spell focus [Whateverflamebladeis] to up the DC of it will be nice.

If you want the Dazing spell for battle field control, then you might want a way to get reach. Righteous Might makes you large, but otherwise its potions for clerics if I recall.

Craft Scroll might be useful to make sure you can always have ready access to Flame Blades all day, every fight. Or buy a wand. Math it out, that depends on your campaign and how hard it is to shop.

The Martial Focus Feat --> Advanced Weapon Training opens up some fighter stuff for you or interesting things like Cut from the Air

Dawnflower Anchorite is a prestige class that drops 1 level of casting (fixable with prestigious spellcaster) for a Bardic Performance clone to up your attack and damage and you can keep advancing your channel dice or domain powers.

Heavy armor will probably be nice, and you offset the speed penalty with Flame Blade Dervish.

Consider giving up a domain for the Sarenrae Divine Fighting Technique. The advanced benefit heals once per round on dealing fire damage and you can nonlethal with fire spells too.

Battle Cleric is pretty light on requirements--because of the strength of the cleric spell list. But with no bonus feats or other class features to supplement it, you have focus on something.

[Meirril]

A collection of Elemental Spell Rods to change the fire damage to something that might work vs outsiders you'll eventually end up fighting. And an adamantine scimitar for when you finally start facing monsters that 2d6 of elemental damage can't touch.

[avr]

The main advantage of a cleric over a warpriest is the spells - more spells/day, earlier. Dazing flame blade using Sarenrae's clerics ability to get FB as a 3rd level spell comes to a 6th level spell (without traits); for a warpriest that's something you get at character level 16, for a cleric character level 11.

Dazing spell is awesome to the point of being broken but the save DC tends to suck. This is especially true if you want a couple of physical ability scores for melee and Cha for flame blade dervish as well as getting Wis. I wouldn't go for it.

Rather than use Sarenrae I'd go for some deity which can get the lightning subdomain. A 2nd level flame blade means you can kick off this idea sooner. There isn't an explicit requirement for worshiping Sarenrae on Flame blade dervish so see if you can get that, but don't sweat it if that doesn't fly, that just means you can dump cha. Take the theologian archetype and you can boost a domain spell nicely. Guided hand is probably not necessary - touch attacks hit easily. This also frees up feats which are a clerics weak point.

[VoodooMonkey]

Gnome Pyromaniac alternate racial trait:

: Gnomes with this racial trait are treated as one level higher when casting spells with the fire descriptor, using granted powers of the Fire domain, using the bloodline powers of the fire elemental bloodline or the revelations of the oracle’s flame mystery, and determining the damage of alchemist bombs that deal fire damage (this ability does not give gnomes early access to level-based powers; it only affects the powers they could use without this ability). Gnomes with Charisma scores of 11 or higher also gain the following spell-like abilities: 1/day—dancing lights, flare, prestidigitation, produce flame. The caster level for these effects is equal to the gnome’s level; the DCs are Charisma-based. This racial trait replaces gnome magic and illusion resistance

(+1 CL for fire descriptor spells)

Starting traits:(for two free levels of metamagic

Wayang Spellhunter:

Requirement(s) Region-Minata
You grew up on one of the wayang-populated islands of Minata, and your use of magic while hunting has been a boon to you. Select a spell of 3rd level or below. When you use this spell with a metamagic feat, it uses up a spell slot one level lower than it normally would.

Magical Lineage:

Category Basic (Magic)
One of your parents was a gifted spellcaster who not only used metamagic often, but also developed many magical items and perhaps even a new spell or two—and you have inherited a fragment of this greatness. Pick one spell when you choose this trait. When you apply metamagic feats to this spell that add at least 1 level to the spell, treat its actual level as 1 lower for determining the spell’s final adjusted level.

[rorek55]

Meirril wrote:

A collection of Elemental Spell Rods to change the fire damage to something that might work vs outsiders you'll eventually end up fighting. And an adamantine scimitar for when you finally start facing monsters that 2d6 of elemental damage can't touch.

by that time, you likely have plenty of other things to do in combat anyway though.

[Ryan Freire]

Quote:

The Martial Focus Feat --> Advanced Weapon Training opens up some fighter stuff for you or interesting things like Cut from the Air

Sadly martial focus only counts as weapon training specifically for weapon mastery feats.