Interesting cleric builds

[Invader]

Has anyone played any fun or unique cleric builds? I've seen the various average healer, melee, and archer build but is there anything really interesting you can do with clerics?

[yoshi67]

If you don't mind being evil or possibly neutral there are some cool Necromancer builds that allow you to raise and control undead. There's even a class in Heros of Horror called Dread Necromancer that is a suped up Necro cleric. Nothing like walking onto a battlefield when half the orcs are dead, raising them and making them attack orcs still standing, or being carried around by your personal bodyguard of bugbear zombies!

Note: I've never done this, but the first chance I get to play an Evil game, I'm going Necromancer.

[Invader]

I was thinking something a little more out io the box than just taking a cleric prestige class. More along the lines of interesting ways to use the cleric chassis.

[Red Fel]

I was thinking something a little more out io the box than just taking a cleric prestige class. More along the lines of interesting ways to use the cleric chassis.

Want to do something interesting with the Cleric chassis? Out-class other classes.

Build your Cleric as a Paladin. Take a dip of Prestige Paladin to get Paladin spells. (Or don't. You don't need Paladin to Paladin.) Go into a PrC like Fist of Raziel. Get a domain-based Smite. Get a fancy prancy pony, a lance, and some sparkly armor, and make Paladins cry.

Build your Cleric as a Fighter. Get the War Domain. Maybe taken Ordained Champion. Abstain from spellcasting above the bare minimum of self-buffs. Spend the rest on combat feats. Still be better than a Fighter.

Build your Cleric as a Rogue. Optimize Hide and Sneak. Grab some Use Magic Device. Go into Ruby Knight Vindicator and play a Holy (or Unholy) Batman. Use Shadow Hand to deal Sneak Attack damage.

Build your Cleric as a Monk. It's not hard; Wis is your casting stat, so go ahead. Take levels of Swordsage or Ninja to get Wis-to-AC. Take Intuitive Attack to get Wis-to-attack as well. IUS and SUS to grab a Monk's basic combat utility and dangle it over his head like a dangly-toy. Then cast spells on top of it. Heck, go into Fist of the Forest and be a Cleric of Chuck Norris. You know you want to.

Want to do something interesting with the Cleric chassis? Freaking do it, man. You can. Cleric has premium spellcasting progression, solid BAB and saves, a slew of ACFs and prestige classes and feats available. You can literally play your Cleric as almost anything.

Except a Truenamer. Because nuts to those guys, is why.

[yoshi67]

A necromancer is just a cleric with feats, domains, and spells centered around raising and controlling undead. It's a standard cleric, just specialized in necromancy. The Dread Necromancer is a full class, not a PrC, that is built on a cleric foundation.

Depending on level, you might want to check out PrCs. They might not be optimized, but add a lot of flavor and roleplay potential, and some are just fun. Most of the interesting stuff for clerics is backstory, motives, and morals. Hammer of Moradin is a PrC for elite dwarves that gives you favored enemies and the ability to throw a warhammer and have it magically return, along with some fun other stuff. Another build I've heard of uses the Goliath race and Strength domain along with DMM Persist to give crazy strength boosts, then moves to the Hulking Hurler PrC, allowing you to throw holy boulders on enemies.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You could make a tanky, close-range damage dealing spellcaster. Get the Cold domain with the PH2 spontaneous domain casting ACF for it, and the Winter's Blast reserve feat in CM. Get DMM: Persist with Ice Axe in SC for when you need to hit a single target, and buff yourself with (Lesser Rod of Extended) Magic Vestment on your armor and shield. You'll have some good crowd controls in (Extended) Sleet/Ice Storm, Wall of Ice, Ice Slick in Frostburn, and you can use Chill Metal to get an opponent to drop their weapon (Heat Metal worked on Aragorn in Fangorn Forest!). Between Winter's Blast, Persistent Ice Axe, and later on Cone of Cold, you'll be good at using spells to deal damage at close range all day long.

You can pick up Fell Drain and/or Fell Frighten in LM to add its effect to your Persistent Ice Axe every time it hits. You can also use those with Persistent Fire Shield (Sun or Retribution domain) so every time something attacks you it takes damage and suffers the effect of whichever of those metamagic feats you used. You can even have Fire Shield active twice, for double the effect! Note however that one interpretation of Fell Drain and Fell Frighten is that a creature can only receive the feat's effect once per spell that's cast with that feat. This would make Fell Frighten a better choice IMO because your two Fire Shields would automatically escalate their condition to Frightened, or Panicked if you already hit once with the Ice Axe.

If you want to go a different direction with it, consider Energy Substitution: Electric and Born of the Three Thunders in CA with your Persistent Ice Axe and Fire Shield. Every time someone takes damage from one of those, they'll have to make a Fort save vs stun, then failing that they'll have to make a Reflex save or be knocked prone. Note however that one interpretation of Born of the Three Thunders is that those effects only occur when the modified spell ends, affecting every creature that received damage from it at some point, rather than every time it damages a creature. "...the spell concludes with a mighty thunderclap that stuns..." It does make the spell deal half sonic damage though, indicating that the thunderclap occurs every time damage is dealt by it.

[tadkins]

How about a cleric with the Animal, Plant, or similar domains? Be a cleric pretending to be a druid.

[Jergmo]

Does it count if it's a DMPC?

I tried to get my party to kill a low-level cleric boss, I really did. She was a cleric of a God of Tyranny that focused on Enchantment magic, and they went and turned her Neutral and kept her around.

The campaign only went to about level 9, but her build seemed really effective. She multiclassed into the... Church Inquisitor?

Her build was focused primarily on making people falling down with magic and staying down, and counterspelling basically as a free action. That is, until she fought undead.

[atomicwaffle]

Cleric of Kord. Walk around with a 2h greatsword. Mess stuff up. Make sure to get the Feat Divine Vigor (Complete Warrior)

[Ellowryn]

I like the idea of a cleric that walks around without any arms or weapons, just a backpack and a few other magic items who when its time to go fight stuff creates a full set of gear to wade into battle with such as with luminouse armor and ice axe and such. The only thing is i cant think of a non-wand, non-caster level loss way to get the shield spell, and even if i could can you even cast magic vestment on it?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Cleric of Kord. Walk around with a 2h greatsword. Mess stuff up. Make sure to get the Feat Divine Vigor (Complete Warrior)

Kord doesn't offer the War domain, so that won't get you proficiency with that greatsword, but Zarus is ideal for a greatsword-wielding warrior cleric. Start with the War and Strength domains, visit the Frog God's Fane in CS to get the feat prerequisite for Divine Oracle, and go Cleric 6/ Divine Oracle 4/ Contemplative 10, taking the Law and Destiny domains from Contemplative. With DMM: Persistent Choose Destiny from the Destiny domain, you get to make every d20 roll twice and keep the best result. With Strength Devotion and Law Devotion available, Evasion and Uncanny Dodge from Divine Oracle, and all the standard buffs, it makes the perfect heavy armor two-handed warrior who's still useful outside of combat.

[atomicwaffle]

Kord doesn't offer the War domain, so that won't get you proficiency with that greatsword, but Zarus is ideal for a greatsword-wielding warrior cleric. Start with the War and Strength domains, visit the Frog God's Fane in CS to get the feat prerequisite for Divine Oracle, and go Cleric 6/ Divine Oracle 4/ Contemplative 10, taking the Law and Destiny domains from Contemplative. With DMM: Persistent Choose Destiny from the Destiny domain, you get to make every d20 roll twice and keep the best result. With Strength Devotion and Law Devotion available, Evasion and Uncanny Dodge from Divine Oracle, and all the standard buffs, it makes the perfect heavy armor two-handed warrior who's still useful outside of combat.

2 things:

1. A dm has to be pretty salty to not houserule that clerics gain weapon proficiency with their deity's favoured weapon automatically. Most dms ive played with (as well as myself) allow this. In pathfinder it's allowed.

2. IF a dm was that salty, i would still probably be a human and use a bonus feat to gain weapon proficiency: greatsword ANYWAYS! I don't even have to justify why my character has that proficiency, it's the weapon of his/her god.

[heavyfuel]

How about a cleric with the Animal, Plant, or similar domains? Be a cleric pretending to be a druid.

Don't forget that ACF that lets you spontaneously use domain spells instead of cure/inflict spells!

[The Insaniac]

1. A dm has to be pretty salty to not houserule that clerics gain weapon proficiency with their deity's favoured weapon automatically. Most dms ive played with (as well as myself) allow this. In pathfinder it's allowed.

War domain gives you weapon proficiency and weapon focus with your deity's favored weapon(s).

[Thurbane]

You can make a decent Skillmonkey (Cloistered) Cleric, especially if you pick domains that add skills to your Cleric skill list.

Able Learner or feats that add skills (i.e. City Slicker) can help too.

Not to mention Cleric spells that add big boosts to skill checks (Guidance of the Avatar and similar).

...

1. A dm has to be pretty salty to not houserule that clerics gain weapon proficiency with their deity's favoured weapon automatically. Most dms ive played with (as well as myself) allow this. In pathfinder it's allowed.

Kind of makes the War domain granted power redundant. In a game with this rule, does the War domain get a boost? Or does it just stay as Weapon Focus?

[Kaeso]

Build your Cleric as a Rogue. Optimize Hide and Sneak. Grab some Use Magic Device. Go into Ruby Knight Vindicator and play a Holy (or Unholy) Batman. Use Shadow Hand to deal Sneak Attack damage.

Guilding a cleric as a rogue is actually far easier to do... as a side project.
Buy a wand bracer from Dungeonscape, fill it with one wand of "find trap", one wand of "divine insight" and three other, perhaps entirely unrelated wands. Good job: you can now find traps like a rogue and have a bonus of +5 to +20 on every single check (even the untrained ones). For the cheap, cheap cost of two low-level wands and a single wand bracer, you can be a better rogue than a rogue. For overkill, take the magic domain and add a wand of knock.

And that's just three wands, one wand bracer (which you should always take anyway IMHO) and one domain. You can still take a wand of cure light wounds for healing duty, and still take any other build you want. You can make the fighter, the healer and the skillmonkey feel redundant without even trying.

EDIT: As thurbane said, guidance of the avatar is a good boost to skill checks. Perhaps it would make for a better wand than divine insight.

[Psyren]

For a cleric/rogue, I recommend either Shadowbane Stalker from CAdv, or the Giant's own Divine Trickster.

One of my favored unsung routes for a cleric is to stir in Incarnum, particularly with the Azurin Cleric racial sub, and the Sapphire Hierarch PrC.