I have a bad touch cleric I'm developing, and of course the problem is he has to get close to bad guys. That's not healthy. Right now my plan is to turtle up a bit and cast defensively, and when I can get Spellguard Bracers, but I found another possibility.
Wizards and witches get the spell Spectral Hand, which is a beautiful way to deliver touch spells. Is there a way a cleric can poach this without taking a level in another class? Be aware I will be taking the Evangelist PrC.
Any ideas? I've never built a melee touch attack spell caster before.
J
The Reach Metamagic feat could achieve this a lot easier in my opinion
My thought is, if I get the Guided Hand feat it will make it easier to deliver not only weapon attacks, but also touch attacks as well, is this correct?
Second q, can you take weapon focus for touch attacks? The description includes things like unarmed strike, grapple and ray, so I think it's feasible.
Third q, I don't really plan on being a battle cleric, but I do want to be able to hang in the front line if needed. I can give myself a 13 Str for power attack, just not sure if it's worth the stat distribution.
J
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Ooh, in fact... if you have UA as your favored weapon and spend a Swift action as you strike, you could use Wis as your attack roll bonus instead of Str or Dex, deal damage as with your UA, deal your Touch attack, AND stack on your channel energy damage through Channel Smite!
i seem to recall a post of a dev saying amulet of mighty fists with sharding ability work with unarmed strike, but i can't seem to find it now.
PCGen lets me take WF Touch Spells, that's good enough for me. Between that and Spellguard Bracers I should be ok.
You're right, Guided Hand only works for the favored weapon. Since that's a longspear and I can't find a way to wield it with one hand, I'd better get heavy armor. In fact since it's a reach weapon, I could make it a Conductive Weapon.
J
Clerics are a ¾ BAB class so should not have that much trouble hitting with touch attacks. If an arcane caster with ½ BAB can hit it a cleric should have an even easier time. Unless you are completely dumping your attack stat you should be able to hit most touch AC.
If your DEX is high enough to give you a decent bonus it might be worth taking weapon finesse. That would allow you to use your DEX bonus to hit on both ranged and melee touch attacks. If you have at least a 14 DEX, weapon finesse will be a better choice of feat than weapon focus. This would also allow you to use a belt of dexterity to further boost that with gold instead of feats. Having a higher DEX is going to increase your AC, Reflex saves and initiative all of which will be very helpful.
As Minigiant mentioned Reach Spell would allow you to turn any touch spell into a ranged touch spell. This means you will be using a slot 1 level higher but would not need to worry about taking weapon finesse.
Don't forget the main draw of a bad touch cleric isnt so much the spells but the domain touch abilities. Delivering no save, no sr, touchs of chaos or madness is an absolutely bad time for the victim and allows a lot of your other stuff to land more easily.
Familiars allow the delivery of touch spells in combat. There are a couple flying familiars that get Flyby attack; the owl leaps to mind as one. If you can get to short range w/an owl that has a 50' move, said familiar can move 25' feet, deliver the Touch attack, then move 25' more feet.
There are cleric domains that grant familiars. Also the Eldritch Heritage feat. If you're worried about your Tiny sized familiar causing AoOs b/c of no reach, the feat Evolved Familiar grants a 1-pt Eidolon Evolution to the familiar; one such Evolution grants 5' reach with one attack.
Sadly, the Evolved Familiar feat specifically calls out that it doesn't work with Reach. Doesn't work with Pounce either.
Huh. That's weird. I could have sworn that the feats were pretty much identical.