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Figuring out a role for my 3.5e Cleric
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8942681" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>There's a few ways to build a Cleric in 3.5. You can build yourself for melee superiority or ally support fairly easily. I wouldn't bother with Turn Undead since it requires some investment to really pop off, and scaring away enemies is always a gamble- unless your DM is ok with the Divine Feats from Complete Divine, including the dreaded Divine Metamagic, as these let you transmute your Turn attempts into other benefits.</p><p></p><p>The melee build requires self-buffing, which can be hard to pull off in some games without Divine Metamagic + Persist Spell, since a lot of times by the time you realize you're in a fight, you're giving up valuable turns to do this. And the last time I played 3.5, I went pure support and basically broke the game by powering up the team by a good 20% across the board and plinking enemies with a Reserve Feat unless I really needed to heal someone. Which was a lot of fun for everyone but the DM, as it happened.</p><p></p><p>A lot depends on the power level of the game, and how much optimization your DM is comfortable with. If both of those are average, I'd suggest a secondary melee role, with just enough Wisdom to cast spells and lots of Strength and Constitution. Wear the heavy armor, and use a reach weapon- as a Cleric you can use a longspear. This lets you attack from behind the melee, provide flanking from a distance, and if an enemy closes with you, they typically provoke an opportunity attack for a free hit. This lets you help out and be relatively close for a quick heal if needed in combat.</p><p></p><p>Cast Bless in big fights, Aid and Bull's Strength are great early. Prayer isn't the greatest buff, but in a long fight it adds up. You want to avoid spells that require saving throws for the most part.</p><p></p><p>There is an archer Cleric build but it requires more work and you still need to wade into melee range to use healing in combat. I'm not a fan of most Cleric prestige classes; you can suffer a hit to your Base Attack Bonus if you're not careful, and they tend to treat you more like a full caster than a hybrid class- unless you're going for turn attempts and then there's Radiant Servant of Pelor.</p><p></p><p>A lot of your spell list consists of "bad thing happened to ally/remove bad thing". You'll be expected to have these available at all times, and they aren't generally useful otherwise, so you might not be doing a lot of casting. This does change when you start looking in other books, as a great many interesting spells are added to the class list, but again, the more you diversify, the less ability you have to deal with fatigue, ability damage, poison, disease, curses, and all that fun stuff people expect from a Cleric.</p><p></p><p>If you do decide to use your magic for other things, you really should ask your party if they are ok with that; there are quite a lot of terrible things that can happen to a character outside of hit point loss. Out of combat healing should be accomplished with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds (Or Lesser Vigor, if available). You can invest in Scribe Scroll if you want to have utility spells on hand to use as needed. I would avoid Craft Wondrous Item- this is a very powerful Feat, if your DM gives you reasonable gold and some downtime. So powerful, that it can break the game's economy and make you and your allies far stronger for your level than intended.</p><p></p><p>OTOH, without ample gold or time, it's literally a dead Feat.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 8942681, member: 6877472"] There's a few ways to build a Cleric in 3.5. You can build yourself for melee superiority or ally support fairly easily. I wouldn't bother with Turn Undead since it requires some investment to really pop off, and scaring away enemies is always a gamble- unless your DM is ok with the Divine Feats from Complete Divine, including the dreaded Divine Metamagic, as these let you transmute your Turn attempts into other benefits. The melee build requires self-buffing, which can be hard to pull off in some games without Divine Metamagic + Persist Spell, since a lot of times by the time you realize you're in a fight, you're giving up valuable turns to do this. And the last time I played 3.5, I went pure support and basically broke the game by powering up the team by a good 20% across the board and plinking enemies with a Reserve Feat unless I really needed to heal someone. Which was a lot of fun for everyone but the DM, as it happened. A lot depends on the power level of the game, and how much optimization your DM is comfortable with. If both of those are average, I'd suggest a secondary melee role, with just enough Wisdom to cast spells and lots of Strength and Constitution. Wear the heavy armor, and use a reach weapon- as a Cleric you can use a longspear. This lets you attack from behind the melee, provide flanking from a distance, and if an enemy closes with you, they typically provoke an opportunity attack for a free hit. This lets you help out and be relatively close for a quick heal if needed in combat. Cast Bless in big fights, Aid and Bull's Strength are great early. Prayer isn't the greatest buff, but in a long fight it adds up. You want to avoid spells that require saving throws for the most part. There is an archer Cleric build but it requires more work and you still need to wade into melee range to use healing in combat. I'm not a fan of most Cleric prestige classes; you can suffer a hit to your Base Attack Bonus if you're not careful, and they tend to treat you more like a full caster than a hybrid class- unless you're going for turn attempts and then there's Radiant Servant of Pelor. A lot of your spell list consists of "bad thing happened to ally/remove bad thing". You'll be expected to have these available at all times, and they aren't generally useful otherwise, so you might not be doing a lot of casting. This does change when you start looking in other books, as a great many interesting spells are added to the class list, but again, the more you diversify, the less ability you have to deal with fatigue, ability damage, poison, disease, curses, and all that fun stuff people expect from a Cleric. If you do decide to use your magic for other things, you really should ask your party if they are ok with that; there are quite a lot of terrible things that can happen to a character outside of hit point loss. Out of combat healing should be accomplished with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds (Or Lesser Vigor, if available). You can invest in Scribe Scroll if you want to have utility spells on hand to use as needed. I would avoid Craft Wondrous Item- this is a very powerful Feat, if your DM gives you reasonable gold and some downtime. So powerful, that it can break the game's economy and make you and your allies far stronger for your level than intended. OTOH, without ample gold or time, it's literally a dead Feat. [/QUOTE]
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