General Cleric Questions

[dodrudon]

I'd like to make a cleric, but I can't decide whether to go with Zen Archery as a caster cleric or without it as a battle cleric. I'm leaning towards battle cleric because I'm planning my cheese holes to include anywhere from 6 to 15 levels, so SR will suck. Also, I was wondering which domains would be good to take (definitely taking Earth or Fire for Energy Buffer, Earth gives Stoneskin and Fire gives Wall of Fire), whether Turn Undead (or outsiders or elementals, or, heck, even vermin) is useful considering the levels of the enemies.

I've never played a cleric before, so any help is appreciated. Now I'll go read up on some builds... Thanks!

[Yomi]

In my opinion, a caster cleric would want at most 2 non-cleric levels. Every cleric level you drop hurts a lot in terms of SR. By yourself you have no way of dropping their SR (no mords, no frailty or nature's balance). I've made mine with 1 monk level (for tumble, discipline, and evasion) -- some people also splash Paladin in especially with a Fallen Angel subrace for saves, or Fighter for an extra feat, and I've also seen people use ranger instead of monk to get the feats.

With all that focus on casting, Zen archery is totally unnecessary. You use a staff just like a traditional wizard or sorc. You implode, earthquake, harm, etc. things into oblivion. Once you get the SR and DC up, implode is very effective at making masses of things disappear (including lots of things wail doesn't work on).

Stoneskin is unfortunately not very useful in most places since they all seem to hit right through it. This may change with mob weapon rescaling sometime in the future. Even then, only pure clerics at level 60 would get +15 (and it'd only soak 20 max 900, so noticibly less than premonition).

For domains, Fire is awfully nice for both Wall of fire and Energy Buffer -- both of those are useful throughout your character's life. I took Magic on mine as the second, giving me mage armor, neg burst, stoneskin, and ice storm. But realistically it's not that great given the stoneskin issue. Some have suggested Plant instead as this gives you Barkskin and Creeping Doom. Both those seem useful up through Raz and then I'm not sure you'd ever use them again (without transmutation focuses Barkskin is only +13). I've also seen Sun suggested for the extra Searing Lights, but I'm not sure it'd get much use in the later LLs.

See this build along with discussion for some ideas: Zero's Caster Cleric, though it's different than the ones I've made.


Battle Cleric is another way to go. I've not played one, but I've seen a few and they're effective and the players say they're fun. Of course this will be totally different than a caster cleric. Almost like comparing a baneknight and a sorc. Sure, they both have sorc levels, but the play style is not at all the same. An example would be: Yue's Cheese Battle Cleric. You want the 4 levels in a max-ab class to get the maximum number of attacks -- in this example Paladin since it adds a lot to your saves as well, and then the single monk level at 40 to get evasion and max skills. It still tries to put most levels in cleric to get the SR and damage as high as possible. Also, and this is a key point for battle clerics -- divine power is your equivalent to the melee-mage build's tensers. Not only does the spell buff you up a bunch, but it gives you extra attacks at caster levels 45 and 55. Aha -- by putting at most 5 levels of non-cleric classes, you can get the maximum two extra attacks at level 60. If you put any more in (like you indicate) you miss out on that, and throwing away extra attacks better have darn good returns in trade.