Breaking the Ruby Knight Vindicator

[Cephei]

I've got this idea guys.  I want to be a holy templar of I kick your ass and then sprinkle holy water on you as you become purified.  I want this character to be so cheesy he is french.  Here's my idea and I would love it if everyone knocked their shoes off trying to cheese this out. 
Cleric X\Crusader X\RKV 10\Something else X
I have a template war going on in my mind.  I have this template from Dragon 307 called Air element.  I want a flying cleric of doom.  This template as outlined provides a fly speed of 100ft, immunity to poison, paralysis, can't be subject to critical hits, +6 dex, and fly by attack feat for free.  +0 LA requires me to be an abberation.  So I picked the Elan race because that's the only way I can make a good aligned (Neutral Good is my alignment) character and maintain the requirements.  So then I thought well why not apply mineral warrior before to boost up my damage immunities.  Well then I got stuck because I don't delve into templates as much as I want and when I do I can't find many GREAT resources on them. 
So my question is this, what else can I add to this character in order to min/max him to the roof.  I'm already taking some negatives from the templates I have now.  My effective Character level is 3 when I start so I'm already down a level.  No level buy offs in the game but I can accept some negatives for more positives.  Ok guys, cheese me to France.

[Cephei]

Also I forgot to mention we have totally access to all books that wizards made so SRD and Wotc books are allowed.  Some small restrictions on stuff like playing warforged.  Has to be human looking.  I also forgot to ask "Please min/max this guy out".  I've hit my wall on creativity.  Anything to max output of damage and spells.  Thanks.

[sirpercival]

RKV is pretty cheesetastic as is, but the real question is, what do you want to do with it?  Gish?  Spellcaster?  You can have a ton of swift actions (btw, do nightsticks stack in your game?), but what you do with those actions is governed by what you want to do.

If you go with mineral warrior, you'd better be okay with gish, since you'll be losing at least 3 spellcaster levels from RKV and the template.  Unless, is there LA buyoff?

[linklord231]

Drop the templates.  If you go anything other than Cleric 4/Crusader 1/RKV 10/Divine Fullcasting PRC 5 you'll never get 9th level spells, which are made of awesome. 

Personally, I like Cleric 4/Crusader 1/Prestige Paladin 1/RKV 10/Church Inquisitor 4 (requires you to be Lawful Good).
Grab Battle Blessing at level 6, this lets you cast all your Paladin spells (which are all of them, since you're a Prestige Paladin) as swift actions, which synergizes amazingly with Divine Impetus.  Consider spreading out your RKV levels so that you get higher level maneuvers - your final Initiator Level will be 15, so you could get a single 8th level maneuver if you time it right.  You'll also get 9th level spells by level 20, which is fantastic.  Final BAB is +18, so you get 4 attacks per round on a full attack, plus a swift action spell (or more, with Divine Impetus), with options for maneuvers if you don't feel like full attacking. 

Ruby Knight Vindicator is an amazingly powerful class, and one of my favorites.  Have fun playing it, and don't break the game too hard 

[Cephei]

RKV is pretty cheesetastic as is, but the real question is, what do you want to do with it?  Gish?  Spellcaster?  You can have a ton of swift actions (btw, do nightsticks stack in your game?), but what you do with those actions is governed by what you want to do.

If you go with mineral warrior, you'd better be okay with gish, since you'll be losing at least 3 spellcaster levels from RKV and the template.  Unless, is there LA buyoff?

I imagine nightsticks stack if that can be interpreted at RAW and I can explain it to my DM.  I can drop Mineral Warrior because clerics are already so overpowered but I'd like to have a little "Brokenness" to fall back on.  No LA buy off.  [/quote]No level buy offs in the game but I can accept some negatives for more positives.[/quote].  I notice the race Synad is also an abberation so I can change to that to avoid a -2 cha for really mediocre abilities.  I'll never have the PP reserve to eat the damage that I could with a elan.  The thing I took mineral warrior for was the Heavy Heavy DR and the natural armor.  Here is a link to the one template I have to keep.
http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/airelement.shtml
I'd be okay with Gish or spellcaster I just want a holy flying crusader who uses his divine might to crush his enemies.  This character is a body guard to a avatar like character and so he should be a powerhouse and be able to take damage for his friends when they can't eat it them selves.  That's at least part of his RP background and how I'm going to play him.

[littha]

I can drop Mineral Warrior because clerics are already so overpowered but I'd like to have a little "Brokenness" to fall back on. 

Mineral warrior is actively making your character less powerful.

[Cephei]

Ok fair enough.  Any +0 LA cheese I can throw other than what I already have?  I don't mean to add whine to my cheese but we've got some heavy hitters at the table and I'm trying to keep up.  As a cleric I can smash everything with my god (literally) but I'm looking for some kind of edge, either through magic items or feats or SLA's or something that just makes him shine more than I can think of.  I play casters alot and I don't think so much about melee characters until I get in there and I have to build one.  DM said "play your weakness", and I responded by saying "alright, melee it is".

[linklord231]

According to the link, Air Element has no listed Level Adjustment meaning it's not suited for player characters (another hint to this is the type requirements, which at the time of printing were for the most part unavailable to PCs).  This means you'll have to have a conversation with your DM about what kind of level adjustment this is worth as a PC template, if it's allowed at all.
On the other hand, becoming a Necropolitan (Libris Mortis) would give you undead immunities and d12 Hit Dice.  It also opens up the interesting roleplaying opportunities of being a Good aligned Undead Cleric - you'd probably be accepted within the faith since you're a cleric of Wee Jas (I'm assuming you didn't adapt RKV to another deity), but most people outside your organization would probably look at you funny.  Especially when you, as an undead, Turn Undead.

Edit:  Oh, forgot to mention.  Necropolitan costs a flat 2,000 XP and otherwise has +0 level adjustment.

[Cephei]

I may go at that.  He is allowing some homebrew templates like Nephelum.  I'm going to have to think hard about this.  I may or may not drop that template or do something.  I'm sort of stuck on a fence here.  I want awesome rp abilities like some "I fly around check me out" but I want it to be legitimate.  I'm not sure on a race if I drop the template.  I have no idea....All I have is an idea for a character and no real solid ideas on how to make him happen. 

[sirpercival]

If you want to fly around, you could start as a Silverbrow Human and take the Dragon Wings feats.

[Cephei]

Flaws are allowed so feats are always something cool I can manage to get in.

[Cephei]

Another thing I wanted to ask from anyone is what kind of things are allowed to be done as swift actions?  Where does the RKV start to break himself by using swift actions?

[linklord231]

Swft actions are things like initiating boosts, casting spells with a swift action casting time (most of these are single round buffs), or casting quickened spells.  A RKV with DMM: Quicken and all his money invested in Nightsticks can nova like a Psion.  It's kinda scary.

[Cephei]

So if I can take 2 flaws to allow more feats into my character build.  Should I take DMM:  Quicken or DMM: Persist?

[linklord231]

It depends.  When I said "all his money invested in nightsticks", I meant all his money.  Using DMM Quicken costs 5 turn attempts, then using Divine Impetus to get another swift action costs another Turn Attempt for a total of 6 per spell.  Even assuming an 18 Charisma, you'll only get 7 Turn attempts per day, +4 per 7500gp you invest in a Nightstick. 

On the other hand, the Battle Blessing feat from Complete Champion reduces the casting time all your "paladin spells" to Swift actions (if they were Standard before) or Standard (if they were full-round before).  If you decide to go into Prestige Paladin, then you can try to convince your DM that any of your cleric spells are also paladin spells, because you're progressing Cleric casting with Paladin casting.  That basically gets you the equivalent of an Epic Feat (Automatic Quicken).

[Cephei]

How do I go about progressing cleric spells as paladin spells?

[linklord231]

By taking the first level of Prestige Paladin.  Instead of gaining its own spellcasting, a Prestige Paladin advances the divine casting of a previously existing class. 
Since "paladin spells" is not a well-defined term in D&D, you could make an argument that it means "any spell you know by virtue of being a Paladin," and that list includes any spell you know as a Cleric too.  The counterargument to this is that "paladin spells" could equally refer to "any spell from the Paladin Spell List."  However, this is still probably worthwhile because there's significant overlap between the Paladin and the Cleric spell list.

[Cephei]

Sounds like a wonderful RAW vs RAI argument.  I will try it and see how it goes.  I think you're on to something.  So you're saying that the feat allows all paladin spells to be swift actions.  Prestige paladin says I advance all my spells by 1 at first level basically.  And RKV says I increase my caster level as though I had a level in that class.  By Virtue, because I cast as a paladin, all the spells I can cast are paladin spells.  Sounds believable.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

How about anthropomorphic bat if you're looking for a fly speed with +0 LA.  The +6 Wis, blindsense and darkvision are just gravy.

[SorO_Lost]

Grab Battle Blessing at level 6, this lets you cast all your Paladin spells (which are all of them, since you're a Prestige Paladin) as swift actions,

No.

Prestige Paladin adds +1 to existing class. That's advancing Cleric spellcasting not granting Paladin spellcasting.
Likewise, you add the Paladin unique spells to your list of Cleric Spells, something that at the moment you attempt to claim is ambiguously meaning any damn spell you think, loses all context of use. For one thing, you wouldn't exactly have "Cleric Spells" at that point to add to thanks to your earlier assumption to ignore the terminology...

"Paladin Spells" is a defined term even if it lacks a flashing neon sign the size of the sun for you. This is seriously a basic concept as well, like since you missed chapter 10 or 11 of the PHB you could read the numerous examples in the FAQ that in several ways specifically addresses this. You know, in case you're next post in a gish thread was going to be a suggestion about dipping Cleric to ignore ASF with your Sorcerer Spells.