Thank you so much again, for helping me with this. I'm kinda stumped as to where to go since I know 4e but not 3.5e that well.
Just curious. Why do you have to start 2 lvls behind the rest? Because you are less experienced they make you play a crippled character? What gives?
I start 2 levels behind... because the group is established and you can only come in at the lowest level of the party. There were a few joining and not showing up... so they were 5... hence I am 5. Mostly others are 7.
How does your DM do experience, by the way? The DMG has a table that shows various experience levels and notes on page 37 that lower level characters in a party actually get more experience (because the encounter was a tougher challenge for them) than higher-level characters in the party If your DM runs things that way then looking into Crafting feats might be a wise idea because you're somewhat compensated for cutting into your XP. If the DM simply hands out the same XP reward to everyone then crafting might not be as nice, but it'll still be useful since you're probably not likely to get all the magical doodads you or your party want or need.
The DM is pretty awesome. He breaks up the xp, based on the characters level. As 5th, I got somewhat more than the 7th level folks. I could catch up eventually I think.
As mentioned, Quicken Spell at 3rd level is meaningless. It's a +4 spell level modifier which means that normally you'll have to have 4th level spell slots to cast a quickened 0 level spell. If you're already stuck with that build then ask if you can swap it because of it being an oversight.
I took it so I could take Leadership at 6th... and be ready for Quicken at 8th - 9th. Coming from 4e back to 3.5e, I wasn't really sure what else was good. I did see where I'm allowed to buy a Metamagic Rod, not sure if that helps like the feat does. I doubt it.
Considering you haven't said non-core feats are available then, again, it's not going to help you.
If you're pretty well limited to PHB then I don't recommend taking anything from Tome of Battle because it's very, very likely going to cause problems with your DM or other players.
Yep, very limited to PHB & DMG. I can understand with a lot of players, you don't want people dragging in the most obscure things and outshine everyone else. I actually like the PHB stuff, but I can see where it keeps you out of DMM, which is very powerful.
Core melee won't work so well since you won't have quite the resources (mostly spells and feats, especially stuff like Persistent Spell and Divine Metamagic used for a 24 hour Divine Power) that make clerics better in combat.
You'll want to PrC out of cleric as soon as possible (within reason) since it doesn't have any class features gained past 1st level. I believe Church Inquisitor is the earliest PrC available since it has very low requirements, but that might not work for you since the fluff behind it is you're dedicated to weeding out corruption within your religion. Plus you have to be Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral and a member of a Lawful Good church so there's no way you're going to be using Animate Dead because it's an Evil spell.
Ordained Champion might work for you if you want to go more into melee, but it does lose caster levels at 1st and 4th. The War Caster ability gained at 5th that adds +2 to your CL for War domain spells thus makes you only as good as a full cleric at casting them unless you have the feat Practiced Spellcaster. You'd need to redo the fluff a bit if you don't have Hextor or Heironeous in your game's pantheon, but if you can refluff it such that you can be Lawful Neutral and worship a neutral or evil deity then you could still pull the Animate Dead stuff. Most people only go 3 levels into the class for the Channel Spell ability.
You raise a lot of valid points here. I thought about both of these classes. My worry with Ordained Champion is that I couldn't case heals spontaneously anymore. I almost went Church Inquisitor. I will likely just stay with Cleric and use my one out of PHB source for Contemplative. A group member said the party looks down on animating undead... but I still have summoning
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Unless you know you'll be facing many foes during most encounters instead of a single big one, drop Cleave. You've got better ways (spells) to take out multiple targets, especially if they're able to stick around for a bit and hamper a bigger bad in the encounter.
Gotcha, thank you for the advice. I'll drop Quicken Spell and Cleave and pick up something more useful.. maybe Skill Focus: Conjuration and Augment Summoning. Staying back a bit and using Undead/Summons to help augment my combat seems like the best route to go.
Again, I can't thank you guys enough for the direction! You're advice is invaluable!!
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Don't you need to hit that extra attack at 5 or 6 to stay competitive and not lag behind the curve? Other than that... I like the idea of having the maneuvers and the 2 invocations.