Author Topic: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help  (Read 11099 times)

Offline New-to-PF

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Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« on: July 20, 2015, 06:56:02 PM »
CALLING ALL PATHFINDER EXPERTS!

Hey all, I'm new to pathfinder...I've never played. I was invited to start a game in 2 weeks and I was thinking about playing a cleric because I really liked them in 3.5, I'm worried they are not as good though without the Divine Metamagic and other powerful stuff available only in 3.5. The stipulations of the new campaign are completely wide open, all books allowed (no advanced card game) and the only thing I'd like to do is be non-evil, although if an evil cleric is better I would just need to be able to conceal my alignment. We are starting at level 5 and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to break the world with the most powerful cleric build, I've not seen anything like the Clericzilla for a level by level build in Pathfinder. Any and all help would be appreciated, if there are any other more powerful divine classes I would be open to playing them as well. I don't wanna be a straight healer with no other usefulness though so I'm not sure oracle is the way to go. Thanks in advance everyone
« Last Edit: July 20, 2015, 09:28:41 PM by New-to-PF »

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2015, 12:10:29 PM »
Actually PF Oracles are easily broken in a huge number of ways.

If you want to be as broken as possible Cleric though, I suppose we can start with using the Samsaran race for the Mystic Past Life alternate racial trait. With 20 wis (22 if you're willing to start as old age) this should give you 5 (6) spells from another divine caster's list as a Cleric. Pick Inquisitor and you can get goodies like Overwhelming Presence far sooner than normal. If you worship a Great Old One or Outer God you can also take the Dreamed Secrets feat at level 7 which gives you access to the Wizard spell list. Now if we add the Sacred Geometry feat (expect a swift ban here both for being hideously OP and a massively onerous timewaster) you can get 2 extra metamagic feats for free. For your deity, I'm partial to Shub-Niggurath since he gives you the the Feather subdomain and you can take Void for your second domain. This gives you an animal companion and with the Boon Companion feat it should be a fully leveled animal companion. You may want to consider taking the Worthless Pawn religion trait so that you can cast spells with the good descriptor.

If you go the Summon Monster route, consider taking the Sacred Summons feat, and in this case it maybe better to worship Mhar with Earth (Caves -> Create Pit OP) and Fire (Smoke -> Stinking Cloud OP) domains so that you can take Summon Neutral Monster and prestige into Envoy of Balance 2 for the Planar Parity endowment. Neutral is best as a summoner because this way you can summon monsters with Celestial or Counterpoised templates so they can smite enemies silly for bonus damage equal to their hitdice.

You can also take advantage of your evil spells as a Cleric to go around using Desecrate and Animate Dead to make your own undead army. For Animate Dead it's better to summon templated Fast Zombies.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 12:48:22 PM by Power »

Offline Mr. woop woop

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2015, 11:18:25 AM »
If you want to be as broken as possible Cleric though, I suppose we can start with using the Samsaran race for the Mystic Past Life alternate racial trait. With 20 wis (22 if you're willing to start as old age) this should give you 5 (6) spells from another divine caster's list as a Cleric. Pick Inquisitor and you can get goodies like Overwhelming Presence far sooner than normal. If you worship a Great Old One or Outer God you can also take the Dreamed Secrets feat at level 7 which gives you access to the Wizard spell list. Now if we add the Sacred Geometry feat (expect a swift ban here both for being hideously OP and a massively onerous timewaster) you can get 2 extra metamagic feats for free. For your deity, I'm partial to Shub-Niggurath since he gives you the the Feather subdomain and you can take Void for your second domain. This gives you an animal companion and with the Boon Companion feat it should be a fully leveled animal companion. You may want to consider taking the Worthless Pawn religion trait so that you can cast spells with the good descriptor.

I'm just going to add to this post because it's a good base.
First you have played d&d before and know the basics to a point. SO word casters are on the table. And believe me... they... are... FUN. :eh
A word caster is a variant rule added in Ultimate Magic. where you pick the effect(what the spell level is based on), the target(this includes range), and optionally a meta effect(adds to the spell without having to take a metamagic feat(limited use per day))
all word spells have a casting time of 1 standard action, and can have metamagic feats applied to them normally.

So if you go word caster cleric 7/ word caster wizard 3/ Mystic Theurge 10 you can swap out all the wizard word(up to level 5) with cleric and visa versa. AND because of mystic thurges level 10 ability you can double, THAT'S RIGHT DOUBLE, your spell casting.

And thats without using any feats!
For feats you can specialize into channeling, grabbing; Channeled Revival, Quick Channel, Versitile Channeler, Channel Hate, Channel Surge, Command Undead, Liberation Channel, Selective Channeling, Steelskin Channel
Of these feats stealskin and liberation both take 7d6 channeling and the above class suggestions only do 6d6 max(buy a phylactery of positive channeling to get to 6d6). Just thought they were cool and you might benifit from them even if you don't use anything else from this post.  :tongue

So you can cast 2 spells as a standard, channel energy as a move, then cast 2 more spells as a swift with quickened spells.
Woop woop woop woop woop woop

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2015, 07:31:01 PM »
Not that Words of Power isn't abusable (it certainly is), but there's a lot of "what the fuck am I reading" badness in your recommendations:
  • Recommending Words of Power on prepared casters. WoP is practically tailored to spontaneous casters given how WoP casters can easily obtain their entire class list as words known and how the WoP specialty is cobbling together various effects to do whatever you need at the moment.
  • Recommending Mystic Theurge like losing all those spell levels is somehow worth it. Also misreading the Mystic Theurge capstone (it's only usable once per day).
  • Recommending a ton of shitty channel feats when Charisma is the Cleric's dump stat.
Typically if you want to use Words of Power you're better off taking the Experimental Spellcaster feat for the specific wordspell you're interested in. For instance the Undeath effect word if you're interested in free Animate Dead as a 2nd level spell and standard action (only a single undead raised per cast unless you boost the selected word and make it a 5th level spell). Or Servitor if you want to summon monster as a standard action, but as a cleric Sacred Summons should have you covered.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2020, 06:21:15 AM by Power »

Offline New-to-PF

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #4 on: July 24, 2015, 03:00:37 AM »
Wow.  You two really know your stuff. I admit, I'm lost in a lot of the terminology. I dont even have a core rulebook yet, i just downloaded a pdf and did a little research to become familiar with PF versus 3.5. My DM finally gave me some of the info I need though. He says this is a high powered campaign and encourages us to optimize. Me being new to the PF version though, I would like the ability to break his game but not necessarily do it without batting an eye. Anyway,  he gave me a Stat array of 18,16,15,14,13,12 to put whatever I want in any ability. We get max HP, but so do his monsters and npc's. He suggested I be a dwarf, not sure why but he said a dwarf of Sarenrea would be good. Maybe he has something planned down the road, maybe he's partial to it for other reasons, or maybe hr doesn't know anything.  I couldn't tell you for sure. He said we have 10,000XP to start the game with, I'm assuming that's minimum for lvl 5, not sure why that was in the information but also 10,500gold to spend how we like. He also said we will get a 1 on 1 session with him to role play out our 1-5 levels and depending on our course of action we may get bonus items or gold. Also don't forget that I have a level 4 ability point, I assume to put it in my main Stat but from what I've seen Clerics can need a lot so it may be more beneficial to put it in my 15 Stat and get that +3 bonus.

Anyway, if there was some sort of build or guide from lvl 1-20 on what domains and feats or routes to take I would greatly appreciate any and all input.  I may also need references so I can show I qualify for prerequisites.

I am not 100% partial to the dwarf of Sarenrea so if you see that as a bad choice I will gladly take your advice into consideration, the DM seems pretty relaxed and I'm sure he will fudge things around if I need him to.

  Thanks again for all the information, you are life savers.

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #5 on: July 24, 2015, 08:21:56 AM »
Dwarves get a couple of solid bonuses (+2 to all saves) and their stat penalty hits your dump stat but if you want to optimize through the roof as a cleric, your best bets are either the Samsaran race for Mystic Past Life or the Svirfneblin race for that batshit insane list of racial perks. Svirfneblin is largely superior to Dwarf since they get also +2 to all saves, stonecunning, and darkvision in addition to a lot of other stuff like +2 to AC. And Sarenrae's domains are just bad to be honest, so I would not recommend worshiping her.

If you're wondering about how to play spellcasters, here are two guides about how to intelligently select your spells for the day:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xjPIOH8F8a0l74BdDF7Q23nCfZ-YX68Xr6JmmtznMw4/edit?pli=1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?104002-3-5e-The-Logic-Ninja-s-Guide-to-Wizards-Being-Batman

These guides are for Wizards, so the specific spell selection isn't as useful (the 2nd guide in particular is for 3.5, not Pathfinder), but pay attention to the general principles of the advice. More important than a ready-made guide telling you which spells are good (and a lot of PF guides are often written by people lacking proper system mastery) is understanding the principles by which you should judge spells to be good or not.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2015, 03:12:25 PM by Power »

Offline Chrononaut

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #6 on: July 24, 2015, 09:23:11 AM »
Man, is there some hidden PF version of minmaxboards floating around somewhere, or do you just charop that hard on your own Power? Apart from guides for newer classes I never see stuff like this referenced (because no one updates their old PF google doc handbooks U:) but it's clear someone is doing research.

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #7 on: July 24, 2015, 11:42:36 AM »
There actually is a bunch of secret PF optimization that we don't really mention but also I just charop that hard on my own. And I didn't really do research for any of that (well, deities, sure).

Incidentally if you want to do damage with attacks as a Cleric, the best way is to play a reach Cleric where you use Combat Reflexes with a reach weapon (and armor spikes) to hit enemies with attacks of opportunity outside of your turn while you spend your standard action casting spells. Actually attacking with your own actions is not really recommended, especially as melee since in Pathfinder you do not get to collect full attacks when you need move actions to maneuver into place first.

Another important thing to note about playing a prepared caster is spell preparation: You don't need to prepare all your slots first thing in the day. You can leave some of the slots for later. See Preparing Divine Spells:
Quote
Spell Selection and Preparation: A divine spellcaster selects and prepares spells ahead of time through prayer and meditation at a particular time of day. The time required to prepare spells is the same as it is for a wizard (1 hour), as is the requirement for a relatively peaceful environment. When preparing spells for the day, a cleric can leave some of her spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes. During these extra sessions of preparation, she can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if she prepares more than one-quarter of his spells."

This is important because as a prepared caster one of the important tricks to keep up your sleeves (particularly at higher levels) is the ability to prepare a few spells on demand when someone scouts ahead and you have a little time to prepare.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2015, 12:45:16 PM by Power »

Offline Chrononaut

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #8 on: July 24, 2015, 03:08:27 PM »
I do remember the reacharound build, is legit.

If you go summons, see about picking up proxy summoning too. I'm sure there's plenty of things in there that can debuff enemy saves just being nearby to make that bestow (greater) curse or finger of death land.

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #9 on: July 24, 2015, 05:39:09 PM »
Proxy Summoning is a waste of a feat as far as I can tell. There are stronger options for your feats than that. I'd sooner pick up a metamagic rod of reach spell if I felt compelled on melee touch spells.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2015, 05:43:20 PM by Power »

Offline Chrononaut

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #10 on: July 24, 2015, 08:09:19 PM »
Really? I guess it's better for people to load killers onto their Eidolon like a super familiar than clerics onto their beasties.

Ofc if you're using an eidolon, in a purely optimal sense, you're doing it wrong, since you should be spamming a new summon monster every round as a master summoner anyways, right?

Yeah it's not very good inasmuch as it's a feat to get an okay familiar feature. I'm sorry, please continue.

Offline New-to-PF

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #11 on: July 25, 2015, 01:57:36 AM »
So what I got thus far is without choosing race yet -->

Cleric: 5

Alignment: CN (channel negative energy)

Diety: Shub-Niggurath

Domains: Animal (feather) and Void

Abilities: (can be altered upon race selection)
Str 15
Dex 14
Con 16
Wis 18 +1= 19 ( level4 ability point)
Int 13
Cha 12

Saves:
Fort 7 (4 base + 3 con)
Ref 3 (1 base +2 dex)
Will 8 (4 base +4 wis)

Religion Trait:
Worthless Pawn

Feats:
1) Sacred Geometry
3)
5) Boon Companion

Here's some more questions though:
1) why is CHA the dump stat, is channel energy really not that good?
2) Reach cleric sounds interesting but I'm not sure melee is the route to take,  should I take combat reflexes for my 3rd level feat just to have the extra trick up my sleeve or maybe selective channeling so I don't kill my group in combat.
3) Is there a recommended best animal companion? I know in 3.5 it was fleshraker with the combination of venomfire.
4) Prestige Classes, it doesn't look as if I'm set in any particular path, is Cleric 20 the best route to take? I liked the holy vindicator but it's not a full progression spell casting class
5) what type of cleric is this besides totally badass. I read Tarks book and it specifies types as--> battle, support,  archer,  necromancy, pure caster, and bad touch

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #12 on: July 26, 2015, 08:24:32 AM »
Ability scores look good. As do feats. I think Sacred Geometry would have to be your 3rd level feat (requires 2 ranks of Knowledge Engineering), otherwise Craft Wondrous Item would be the strongest pick (since it breaks WBL in half). If your GM allows feat retraining to take multiple feats with a higher level requirement, perhaps you could get both. For traits, in hindsight, only Great Old Ones qualify for Worthless Pawn, not Outer Gods, so either change the religion trait or change the deity. However, Shub-Niggurath is the only deity that qualifies for Dreamed Secrets with the animal domain. A Separatist Cleric could get add the Animal Domain to any deity but your animal companion will be at -1 level (-2 if you prestige for a level). If you get the Beacon of Faith faith trait, depending on how the GM interprets it, that may give you an extra 2 levels of animal companion (up to a limit of your character level) and let you dip a level (or three if you're not separatist).

1) Charisma is a dump stat because the only thing it affects are your character's social skills and UMD, which is pretty negligible in the first place (except UMD - if you're determined to exploit it, it is hideously OP - but I guess that goes for social skills too) but with the right traits and/or feats you can pretty much make all that Int-based instead (Paizo has a hard-on for Wizards, you see.) at which point charisma is well and truly useless. And given how often GMs would rather have you roleplay social encounters instead of rolling skills, those social skills frequently might as well not even exist. And if you have Wis, taking a rank in Profession (Barrister) will let you argue your way out of tight spaces as well. Since a point buy or just dice rolls will leave you with some garbage low stat, Charisma is where low numbers go because charisma barely matters, unless you are a cha-based caster (in which case you max charisma).

On to the issue of channeling: Whenever you could channel, you could also cast a spell. Spells are better than channeling. This means combat channeling is bad, unless your spell selection is worse. In order to make combat channeling decent, you would have to take the Quick Channel and Selective Channeling feats so that you can channel as a move action (which does not compete with spells) and not hit the wrong targets with friendly fire. You can always just relegate yourself to out-of-combat healing with channel energy instead and invest zero feats. Since you channel negative energy, out of combat healing is not possible, but you can take Command Undead, which is actually better than casting a spell for CCing undead, provided you have a solid charisma to make a decent DC (and decent daily uses). Since your character has an absurdly high stat array, it would be possible to do this. However, once you get Dreamed Secrets you could also just cast the wizard spell Command Undead instead (this one only lets you target 1 undead, however).

Speaking of Dreamed Secrets, remember that it is possible when preparing spells to leave spells from the previous day, and with a Pearl of Power it is possible to restore an expended spell. For Dreamed Secrets this effectively gives you a way to prepare more than 2 wizard spells.

2) Melee is not really the route to take. You shouldn't attack with your standard action. But if you get a reach weapon and combat reflexes (hell even without combat reflexes you still get 1 attack of opportunity, so might as well make use of it with a reach weapon aka longspear) you basically collect free attacks during combat. However, if you choose not to use attacks, you can take advantage of a Tower Shield and Heavy Armor since the nonproficiency penalty to attacks and arcane spellfailure chance doesn't exactly mean anything when you're a divine caster. Take your pick. Alternatively you can get the Armor Training combat trait (and/or the Sargavan Guard region trait) to reduce armor check penalties by 1 then pick up a +1 Comfort Mithral Hellknight Plate at high levels (costs 17k gp) but if you have both traits you can pick up a regular Mithral Hellknight Plate (costs 11k gp, 12k if +1) and this way since your armor check penalty is zero the nonproficiency penalty does absolutely nothing while you still get to wear plate armor (and as mithral you still get the +2 AC bonus from 14 dex instead of +1). Forsaking attacks however is the easiest way to get a strong AC because a Full Plate and Tower Shield will only run you 1530 gp while you get 13+1 (dex bonus) AC for 24 total before any magic bonuses (26 if you burn 2k on a +1 shield and +1 plate). Otherwise you are looking at using a Four-mirror Armor (or breastplate if you want to spend 155 gp for -1 armor check penalty and -15 lb weight) for 18 AC until you can afford that mithral plate to bump it into 22 (21 if not +1).

3) Warcat of Rull seems to top out, however a Deinonychus or Velociraptor doesn't need the Narrow Frame feat for 5-foot squares and they have a charisma high enough to take Eldritch Heritage feats (better at 11th level), but their strength sucks. Alternatively you can get an ape, put an ability score increase in int, and deck him out in a bunch of weapon feats (so Weapon Proficiency (Longbow), Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot). Remember you can always dismiss your animal companion and perform a 24-hour ritual to get a new animal companion as desired, for free.

4) Tark's prestige recommendations suck. There actually are a lot of strong prestige classes in Pathfinder, and for Clerics too, but if you have an animal companion you can only prestige one level without losing animal companion advancement (boon companion has a level left over) and when you stack Samsaran Mystic Past Life to steal another divine class's list and Dreamed Secrets to steal the Wizard list you kinda already have the good stuff without prestiging. Pathfinder Savant isn't worth the loss of a spellcaster level when you already have a massive spell selection, Veiled Illusionist doesn't do much either with Wizard spells at your disposal (Thematically it seems Sivanah should be your patron deity for it but the PrC itself has no such restriction afaict), etc. Exalted doesn't advance domains (inexplicably) and there is no Deific Obedience for your patron deity. Demoniac doesn't work either with your patron deity (and is really only worth it if you are building a level 13/16 character for fast Demonic Obedience boons, some of which are pretty sick).

If you go Neutral Evil you could pick up Diabolist prestige class for 1 level (which is all you need) without losing animal companion levels and obtain an Imp Companion which scales off of your caster level on top of your animal companion. This is hands down the strongest option at your disposal, since the Imp Companion is a second animal companion, except on steroids. However, the imp companion is ultimately loyal to Hell so it might give you a spot of trouble with your campaign. I suppose you could also prestige into Green Faith Acolyte (which is weak until high levels - at 8th you get Wild Shape I and at 10th you get 10 extra spell levels to prepare - and you do get minor perks) since Shub-Niggurath has a strong nature theme and you lose only a few animal companion levels. Hell you can get both. I would use backstory to cover Diabolist's requirement or you can wait until 8th level to take it and cast a Planar Binding or Planar Ally at 7th.

If you're willing to lose more companion levels, Veiled Illusionist (gives you illusion spells, including Shadow evocation/conjuration, simulacrum, etc. I'd say, except you can cast the real deal because Dreamed Secrets hell you can cast the illusions too) and Soul Warden (Worthless Pawn lets you cast Consecrate and Dreamed Secrets lets you cast the Command Undead spell) are options I suppose. I'm not sure if Genie Binder is worth the loss of animal companion levels though.

Really there's nothing much good left for you (except Diabolist) since you already have access to damn near all the spells in the game short of bard-specific ones, depending on how you use Samsaran Mystic Past Life.

5) Support/Necro/Caster I suppose. Battle/Archer is dumb because you'd be burning standard/full-round actions on fighting instead of casting, and you already have a companion (or two) for this but I suppose you could do that if you cast Ancestral Gift for a martial weapon (with a decent bane property or seeking if it's a bow to negate firing into melee and soft cover penalties) and then maybe a Greater Magic Weapon on it and then in combat you cast Divine Power on yourself. Better yet you could get yourself an ape and/or imp and use Share Spells to give them the martial weapon with proficiency. I also don't recommend blaster casting as a Cleric (see: Wizard guides I linked above) - unless you get Dazing Spell metamagic because dazed is a disgusting OP condition.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2015, 06:46:25 AM by Power »

Offline New-to-PF

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #13 on: July 27, 2015, 08:37:30 PM »
Ok. So basically at level 7 I am a full progression spell caster with access to both the wizard and cleric spell lists,  on top of getting spells from other classes like bard or inquisitor depending on which divine class I choose from the Mystic Past Life feature.

How do I gain access to share spell? This is probably a noob question but I thought that was a druid special feature.

Now all I have to do is make up the character sheet and hope my DM approves it. I will get back asap if there are any conflicts that the DM addresses.

Thanks again, you have been extremely helpful

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #14 on: July 27, 2015, 10:32:04 PM »
No, it's part of the animal companion feature. You obtain an animal companion as though you were a Druid. Also, you cannot get Bard spell access through Mystic Past Life, since you can only pick other divine caster lists, and there is no Divine Bard in Pathfinder (actually there's the Evangelist archetype for the Cleric which is basically trading out a domain and medium armor for bardic performance).* Your options are Paladin/Antipaladin/Inquisitor/Hunter/Shaman/Druid (if you're not interested in Druid spells above 6th level, just use Hunter).

Aside from that, if you get a solid Profession (Blacksmith) or Craft (Armorsmithing), I think you can use backstory crafting to hand yourself a nonmagical self-crafted Mithral Hellknight Plate at 1/3rd price (3667 gp) and then you double-stack Armor Expert combat trait with the Sargavan Guard region trait to reduce the armor check penalty to zero which also makes your non-proficiency penalty zero. This would give you AC 21 (9 from suit, 2 from dex since mithral lets you get upwards of +3 dex bonus) with just the plate. With 5 ranks in Craft, +3 from class skill bonus, and +1 from int, you would just barely have enough to craft the hellknight armor while taking 10 (it's DC 19), and your backstory gets to account for 6 years of making your own mithral hellknight plate. If you decide to get a heavy shield, go for a Darkwood Heavy Wooden shield - 257 gp with 0 armor check penalty.

Remember that you can start with 3 traits (+2 if you take Additional Traits) by taking a drawback. Popular drawbacks include Anxious, Meticulous, and Paranoid.

Also, speaking of gear, you should get a Ring of Sustenance and perhaps a Headband of Wisdom (you could wait for next level to buy this if you're pressed for higher priority items).

*EDIT: There is now the Filidh Bard archetype which is indeed a divine bard.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2020, 06:46:31 AM by Power »

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #15 on: July 30, 2015, 12:00:50 AM »
Ok. So I talked to the DM and gave him my character. He didn't ban the sacred geometry feat but he did warn me about the ability drain for dreamed secrets and how hard it is to recover (I assume I will have restoration at hand hahahaha). Also you are right about the bard spells being arcane, that's always been a thing I forget because they can cure.

Downside, when the DM suggested me being a dwarf of Saranrae,  he was telling me no evil characters  and Saranrae is the Diety the campaign revolves around. I wish he would have came right out and said it because now i have to change the dynamic and that also rules out diabolist for an imp companion.That being said, do you know of any good deities that allow dreamed secrets that are similarly good to Shub-Niggurath, or maybe I can get by with not worshiping a specific Diety and just picking 2 domains?  Also you said oracles are OP in various ways, maybe that would be a better route to take if I have to be good aligned?

Sorry for all the trouble you went through, I know you said you didn't do a lot of research except dieties but it's still a pain to basically have everything you worked on turned down.

Ok, ring of sustenance and headband of Wisdom. Is the hell knight armor an evil type or just a name? If it's a name I'm sure I can get the DM to change it to celestial something or another (basically the good equivalent)

Thanks again  :)

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #16 on: July 30, 2015, 09:33:42 AM »
Hellknights are basically extreme lawful. There are even Paladins who are Hellknights, lorewise. There is no requirement for you to be a hellknight however just because you have a hellknight suit of armor.

Mhar as I listed above is a Chaotic Neutral Great Old One if you want to take your Cleric into that route. Ability drain is not really a problem since you can cast restoration on yourself and since we are going broken, you should probably cast Restoration with Blood Money to negate the pricey component. Also if you are playing a Cleric your Wis saves are going to be pretty strong anyway. Of course, you could also play a Druid instead and worship a CN Great Old One and use Samsaran Mystic Past Life to mooch any cleric/inquisitor/etc spells you were interested in while getting an animal companion (plus Wild Shape) and take Dreamed Secrets as your feat.

The downside of playing an Oracle is that as a spontaneous caster they cannot use Sacred Geometry (since the feat is retarded and wants spontaneous casters to spend 2 turns casting a modified spell at which stage you are certainly paying more than you get). To break Oracles there are a number of routes. First off, you want the Spirit Guide archetype so that you can get the Shaman's Lore Spirit for the Arcane Enlightenment hex. This basically gives you Dreamed Secrets except as an Oracle you're going to get your choice of 6 Wizard spells per day and you can get Wizard spells at your highest level (you do need 10+spell level int to cast them, however). Next you may be interested in playing a Half-Elf for the Paragon Surge racial spell.  This can be used to spontaneously obtain feats like Expanded Arcana to give yourself extra spells known when you need that odd spell on your own class list that you did not actually prepare. Okay, now you have access to all the Wizard and Oracle spells again. Alternatively you can play an Aasimar and use the Scion of Humanity alternate racial trait to qualify as a human to take the feat Racial Heritage to qualify as a Half-Elf. This has its uses since aside from an Aasimar's stats and racial perks, the Aasimar Oracle favored class bonus is exploitable, plus you can get Lesser Age Resistance which means you can go middle age for another +1 to all mental stats without any penalty.

To stomp combats, we have a couple of mysteries that could be good: First, there is the Heavens mystery with the Awesome Display revelation. This one is pretty simple: You cast Color Spray. Since you have 20+1+2 charisma, treat everything as though it had 6 less hitdice courtesy of Awesome Display. Basically anything you fight might as well have 1HD for the purposes of Color Spray. Color Spray does the following to anyone who fails a will save: "2 HD or less: The creature is unconscious, blinded, and stunned for 2d4 rounds, then blinded and stunned for 1d4 rounds, and then stunned for 1 round. (Only living creatures are knocked unconscious.)" Basically it's game over for them.

Next there is the Lunar mystery which among other thing packs an animal companion (Aasimar Favored Class bonus can pump this something fierce, especially if you first take the Animal Ally feat then grab Primal Companion so you can stack your animal ally levels with your primal companion levels with your favored class bonus which at level 7 when you take that revelation would give you a level 14 animal companion, and at level 8 a level 17 animal companion but that's a buncha feats). It also has Prophetic Armor revelation (Cha replaces Dex for AC and Reflex) at which point a Mithral Kikko armor alone would give you 21 AC (and count as light armor for purposes of movement while having 0 armor check penalty, no traits needed). And it has the Moonlight Bridge revelation which lets you make a 24-hour 10-foot wide bridge which may extend in any direction and is treated as a Wall of Force if attacked. So obviously you make vertical 10 foot wide walls of force that last 24 hours and basically wall off an enemy for 24 hours (or less if you have a ladder or grappling hook to "cross" it and end the wall of force.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 12:04:15 PM by Power »

Offline Roadie

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #17 on: August 05, 2015, 12:37:19 AM »
He didn't ban the sacred geometry feat
Just warning you here that you may want to self-ban it pretty quick. It's a huge time sink to try and do a math puzzle every turn in the middle of combat and you may start getting squinty-eyed looks from your fellow players.

Also you said oracles are OP in various ways, maybe that would be a better route to take if I have to be good aligned?
One fun trick with oracles, if you do want to heal the party, is to use the Life Link revelation out of the Life mystery. It lets you bond to up to one party member per level, and each turn you transfer up to 5 hp each to your bonds if they're wounded. Then you only have to heal yourself in combat.

Is the hell knight armor an evil type or just a name? If it's a name I'm sure I can get the DM to change it to celestial something or another (basically the good equivalent)
Hellknights are organizations (mostly) based in Cheliax, the nation with a lot of demon blood in their nobility and outright worship of Asmodeus in some places. They're basically extreme-Lawful-Neutral paladins. Think like Judge Dredd, with a willingness to fight to the death to take down criminal organizations but caring about the law for its own sake more than for individual people.

It's also noteworthy that hellknights do work with evil outsiders, usually devils, as a combination of a national religious thing (given Asmodeus) plus devils usually making better mercenaries/summon, both socially and in terms of not getting distracted from the job at hand, in a country where a substantial amount of the population is at least a little Evil.

If you like the general theme, you may want to take a look at the hellknight signifier class (the different name and missing hellknight orders on the d20pfsrd wiki are because those bits aren't OGL). The class gives full progression of spellcasting and stacks for domain powers, inquisitions, and mysteries (you don't get new ones but the ones you already have also count your hellknight signifier level), so it can be almost a straight upgrade for a cleric past 6th level or so (once you get your first batch of domain powers).
« Last Edit: August 05, 2015, 12:40:34 AM by Roadie »

Offline Power

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Re: Pathfinder Clerics - I need help
« Reply #18 on: August 07, 2015, 08:05:38 PM »
Life Link is weak as fuck. That's just a shitty damage transference to give everyone else fast healing 5 at the cost of wasting your turns healing yourself. It's trash. I'm not sure whether the Wizard guides above cover the issue of wasting your turns on heals, but I suppose I may as well spell out the problems:
  • CC and killing is a superior form of damage mitigation than healing.
  • Healing vs damage is a losing race for the healer.
  • You drag out combats, which slows down your session progress and forces everyone to spend more resources (barb rage rounds, bard song rounds, spells per day, etc.) which causes the party to need more frequent rest stops.
Basically healing is a waste of time and actions. Sure, you'll do it if it's necessary, but if it isn't, don't do it.

When it comes to stunts like that, a Skald could easily get Lesser Celestial Totem and cast Path of Glory to give his party (caster level)+1 hp heal per turn in combat from level 4 without needing to spend all his standard actions on self-healing (and at level 7 he can do it in 1 turn by raging as a move action and casting path of glory with his standard). He could also just use Exquisite Accompaniment spell with the Life Budding in Salted Earth masterpiece from level 7 to give his whole party Fast Healing (bard level / 2).

As for Hellknight Signifier, it's a decent PrC but I didn't mention it since a lawful alignment was beyond his reach at the moment and the PrC isn't that impressive either. For clerics prestiging out is generally a good deal since you have no class features aside from spells and domain powers (most of which do not scale and/or suck) anyhow.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2015, 08:54:10 AM by Power »