Support Cleric: The “Default” build. A support caster that can wade into melee with weapon and shield to dish out some beats on his own when needed.
Battle Cleric: The melee beast that at one point was a better fighter than the class by the same name.
Archer Cleric: Part support caster, part long range threat a good balanced build that works for every situation.
The Lord of Undeath: Necromancers got some very nice upgrades in Pathfinder that makes this build worth taking into high levels.
The Bad Touch Cleric: The total opposite of the support cleric. Where he buffs, you debuff, where he remains outside of combat, you flit in and out of danger flirting with disaster and sewing chaos and discord with every step you tread.
The Pure Casting Cleric: You’re no wizard harry. But you don’t necessarily have to be. The caster cleric focuses almost entirely upon the cleric’s casting ability making him ideal for low point buy games or just badly rolled characters.
Thoughts on Stat arrays and what a cleric really needs: It’s often been said that a cleric is a MAD class. In a sense this is absolutely correct. In order to take full advantage of everything a cleric has to offer in terms of buffs, offensive spells, energy channeling, and domain powers a cleric is likely going to want high strength, con, wis, and charisma. Intelligence might look like a dumpstat but you also want skills like Knowledge (Religion), Spellcraft, Heal, Perception, etc.
So does this mean that a cleric is nearly broken and that a player should gravitate towards the class when given excellent rolls or high point buys? No. Of course not.
What a player needs to understand is that the cleric, like the druid, is a class that can be played a large number of ways and will need to adjust themselves to fit into whatever role or capability they envision for their cleric.
Here’s some food for thought. If you cast nothing but buff spells, heals, utility spells, and spells that do not call for a save you can easily start with a 14 wisdom and still be able to cast 9th level spells by throwing ability points into wisdom and grabbing an item that increases it. If you are going by twenty point buy this costs you only about 5 points. That leaves you with the other 15 to do with as you will. This is going to feel like sacrilege to some of the more pure minded caster players out there but it makes sense not to bother getting this stat, even if it’s a main stat, so high if you will not be getting all that much use out of it. It’s simple common sense.
Likewise with charisma. Charisma is nice to have when you are building a channeling focused build or a face for the party but what good does it serve an intelligence dumping battle cleric who takes no channeling feats and whose only skill is Spellcraft or Perception? Not much.
The key point to take away from this is to play to the strengths of the class you wish to exemplify while taking away only that which you want to use regularly. Cut out as much of the crap from the class that you don’t want and worry more about what you want to do. If you can afford to take on secondary roles with your build choices and party makeup than great. If you can’t make it clear to yourself and to your group that you are simply not a great healer but built to accomplish something else.
That being said those aspects don’t simply cease to exist just because you did not build for them or memorize them. Even if you dumped your charisma to 7 you can still channel energy at least once per day. Even if you made this hard ass battle cleric of iomedae who has zero charisma and has the heroism domain you still have a touch power that provides a bonus on all charisma based checks. These little bonuses and powers may not facilitate the taking on of a role (such as the aforementioned charisma dumping cleric) but can be used to support others in that particular role.
So ultimately you do not have to be great at everything a cleric can do. You only need to be sufficient enough to do your chosen occupation well whether it is an archer providing fire support or a necromancer adding a horde of mindless killing machines to the mix you need only be concerned with what you are about.
The Support Cleric:
Otherwise known as the “Cop-a-feel Cleric”
The Default cleric build is the one that many groups unfamiliar with the subtle strengths of a cleric tend to think of when the word priest is mentioned. Sadly you are a walking talking band aid according to the party fighter. Thankfully this isn’t always the case.
Offense:**
Defense:****
Support:*****
Suggested Races: No race that has a Wis penalty. In my opinion humans make the best choice of support cleric since the extra skill points and feat won’t go to waste. Gnomes and Dwarves are a close second.
Abilities: CON>WIS>CHA>STR>INT>DEX
You’ll want lots of hit points to ensure that you can take hits. Since you’ll have a very low reflex you need lots more hp. Wis is not the highest priority since you’ll be focused more on group or individual buffs rather than spell DC’s. Charisma is there to give you a role outside of combat and give you a few more channel energy’s to save on spells. Strength is important because you will be occasionally walking into melee particularly if someone threatens the back line of archers and casters. Your int should be at least ten but you’ll want every skill point you can grab so 12 or higher is ideal, 10 is doable, 7 should only be done if you are human and get extra skill points anyway. Dex is sadly a dump stat but don’t drop below ten here. You can drop below 8 if you can get a good way to bump up your dex or have lots of melee to cover for your low AC. Alternatively you can go with strength but as with dex don’t drop it below ten as you’ll want to be carrying lots of spare scrolls, wands, and rods on top of your weapon and armor.
Suggested Domains: As a support cleric buffs are your best friend. Good, Law, Luck, and Nobility, provide the best buffs in the default book particularly in earlier levels. Heroism and Leadership out of the APG provide more good buffs. Of these I would go with Good and Law or Leadership if you don’t want to play a lawful good cleric. The weapon buffs are very good in letting you spare spells you’d otherwise be using to give yourself a quick buff before tearing into opponents.
Feats: These feats are in no approximate order as you’ll likely be adjusting to fit the DM’s campaign style.
Scribe Scroll: More often than not a character will be hit with a status effect or flavor of pain that you simply don’t have something prepared for. More often than not having a scroll of the appropriate spell will save the group. This is actually a better feat for clerics than nearly everyone else since they know the entirety of their spell list right from the start allowing you to make scrolls of all the situational spells you’ll ever need and keeping your own slots filled with spells that you’ll need more often than that. Get it early and use it often.
Extend Spell: Handy to have in the lower levels for getting more “fire and forget” buffs. That is, ones that last long enough time for an entire dungeon run.
Extra Channel: Is it worth the feat? Only if you like to channel a lot. In my opinion though if you have to channel more than 4 times a day to heal the group than you need to rethink your strategy.
Selective Channel: A must for the channeling focused cleric otherwise get something better.
Heavy Armor Proficiency: The 3.5 cleric had heavy armor which made him a veritable rock defensively. While they now only get medium armor you’ll still be going around with a low dex making this feat a worthy investment
Improved Initiative: The earlier you dump your buffs the sooner they can be taken advantage of. It’s hard to argue with the benefit of a high initiative.
Toughness: As a support cleric you’ll want tons and tons of hp as it won’t take long for enemies to come after you once they realize you are the backbone of the group’s offensive and defensive strategy. As such, make yourself very difficult to deal with. Also you’re going to have a very low reflex save and since reflex saves typically deal HP damage this feat will come in very handy.
Quicken Channeling: Spend two channels to make one channel a move action. This is honestly one of the best ways to channel especially if you have alternate channeling.
Turn/Command Undead: Try to get this after level 5 since at that point the damage you’ll deal won’t be worth it compared to the sheer game ending power of this ability. However only get it if your DM makes use of the undead.
Combat Casting: Like it or not sooner or later you may be forced to cast in melee.
Power Attack: Like it or not sooner or later you’re going to have to just draw your weapon(likely a long sword or scimitar) and go to work. Thankfully between your high HP, good AC, and Divine Power you can do this much more easily than all the other primary casters except perhaps a druid based on wildshape.
Heighten Spell: Purely a prerequisite for…
Preferred Spell: Chances are there’s a favorite buff or healing spell down the line you’ll want to cast over and over again. This lets you cast said spell spontaneously. My suggestion is for Lesser Restoration since it’ll be a spell that gets casted a lot when people fail their saves. I’ve seen groups stop their adventuring day just to memorize multiple castings of this when the party fighter decided to go hug a wraith. This is also a false extension of your domain spells as it can allow you to cast that spell outside of its domain slots.
Lightning Reflexes: As always it’s all about shoring up a weakness. With a high Con and Wis a good fort and will save are easy, but, as said before a high reflex you will have not.
Channeled Revival: A trap. Why you ask? You’ll be able to actually cast breath of life when you can finally qualify for this. So if you really really need it why not just make a scroll or three?
Equipment: A good shield, a good set of heavy armor and your deity’s favored weapon are good starts. Definitely invest in some quicken, extend, and possibly empowered/maximized metamagic rods as soon as they become available. Get stat boosting items for WIS and CHA as soon as possible along with some CON and DEX boosting items. Also pack plenty of wands of healing spells to save on having to cast them yourself and also plenty of healing kits to save on spell casting period. Beyond that get as many defensive items as you can cram on you. The goal is to become the rock, the core from which the group can emerge from and conquer.
Playing the Support Cleric: The support cleric is one of the easiest builds to play since it’s very intuitive. All you do is lay down some necessary buffs on your parties beat sticks then draw your own weapon and go to town. I tend to think of the support cleric not unlike the medic from Team Fortress 2. He spends most of his time dodging and weaving bullets not too far from the subject of his attentions and then when he really needs it he unleashes the Uber.
However don’t get too spell casting heavy. Once your fighter has the fight well in hand draw your own weapon and help with the mop up. This actually serves a support function too since you’re a flanker and every enemy you take down is an enemy the rest of the group doesn’t. Pace yourself.
Most importantly remember that healing is a role for out of combat purposes. The fighter can deal with having a few hit points shaved off his total. Only heal when a party member is in danger of dying or if that particular party member falling is what will turn the tide against you. Proactivity is the key word here the best way to heal is to never have to heal at all.
Advantages: Easy to play and use. Easily one of the most powerful builds purely for its solid defenses and great contributions to the group. It’s difficult to make a bad build.
Disadvantages: Kind of boring to play plus you’ll find it’s difficult to keep your spell list full with the constant healing after every combat. You’re also pretty much stuck in a support role since you lack all of the fighters or even battle clerics killing capacity.
A brief look at buff priorities:
Levels 1-3: During these levels rolls tend to have more meaning than bonuses. You will have little in terms of real buffs to toss out so your spell focuses will be more on utility and individual buffs rather than any mass buffing. 1st level domain powers are vastly important at these levels particularly Law, Luck, Trickery, Liberation and other such non-scaling bonuses and miscellaneous domain powers will be far more useful to you than small bonuses provided by other domains.
In terms of spell selection in all likelihood your first spell should be Bless which is a safe option that benefits a number of classes. After that you will either move on to a utility spell or a different kind of buff in the second round once you have a better understanding of your opponent. Past that is too far for this guide to cover. In all likelihood you will be pulling your own weapon and dropping people or using your domain powers on people with better weapons.
Levels 3-6: This is more or less the sweet spot for channeling of any sort. Your damage will still be notable on the foes you face and many adventures still favor hordes of small low hp enemies. In terms of healing it will still be fairly decent particularly when combined with the shield other spell.
You still don’t have access to any fairly decent mass buff spells outside of bless but communal protection and magic circle spells become available allowing you the luxury of adding some potent defensive ability to the party. Domain powers are still exceptionally important but less useful as classes start getting into their own and bonuses start to matter more.
Levels 7-10: The sweet spot for many. This is the point where you get access to blessing of fervor, freedom of movement, great magic weapon, lesser planar ally, wall of stone and other powerful spells granted by your domains.
By this point only 1st level domain powers that scale well such as Good, Nobility, Glory will continue to matter and will go a long way in helping you conserve spells for long or tough encounters. This is particularly true since by now you will have your second domain powers.
By this point you should be stockpiling scrolls of emergency spells and rarely if ever running out of spells over the course of the day. For this reason you may never feel the need to wade into melee. If this is the case then don’t worry. It simply means that your group is doing its job without the need of your direct hand.
Levels 11-15: This is where things like rods and staves start to become much more common items for casters to have hold of. This is also the point where high armor class starts to become meaningless (lower levels for some). So defensive spells such as sanctuary, debilitating portent, freedom of movement, spell immunity, and so forth start to have greater value. 1st level domain powers tend to be rarely used as you can typically drop more relevant spells. 8th level domain powers still tend to see use especially aura powers since they often have very solid effects with no cost of spells.
By now you should have a fairly good 2 round routine going for you based on your choices of domains and makeup of your group. You should almost always open up with blessing of fervor if possible to give your group those choices of options. After that, activating auras, using quickened spells, or quickened extended spells are all options. One of the best sequences I can think of actually belongs to Evangelists with the heroism domain. Just as an example here’s what that sequence would look like at level 11 for me:
Round 1:
Standard: Blessing of Fervor
Swift: Start Inspire Courage (+3 Competence bonus on attack and damage rolls. 1d6 sonic damage from song of discord feat.)
Move: Channel Positive Energy (With selective channel, quick channel and justice alternate channeling to provide a +3 channel bonus to AC, and attack rolls made on a charge (This is amazing for pouncing characters and mounted characters as this effectively eliminates the downside to charings while giving an added incentive))
5ft shift closer to better position.
Bonuses at the Top of Round 1 at start of your turn:
+3 Competence to Attack, Damage, and Saves against fear.
+2 Morale bonus to Attacks, saves, and skill checks. (For those within range)
+3 Channel Bonus on AC, Attack rolls on a charge.
Round 2: By now most of the group should be in positions to start dealing damage if they haven’t already started wiping people out after that big bunch of bonuses you just dropped on them.
Free: Maintain inspire courage.
Swift: Quicken (rod), Extended (BOF) Sanctuary.
Standard: Depends on situation and build sometimes Communal Air Walk, Bless Weapon, or status removal. Often like to summon things at this point.
The Battle Cleric:
“I’ll show ye what happens ta people who call it a skirt!”
The battle cleric brings the will of his gods through the swing of his blade. The battle field is his church, his weapon is his holy book, and the strikes he makes against his foes are a fiery sermon. One of the funner builds to play most definitely.
Offense: ****
Defense: **
Support: ***
Suggested Races: Humans and half orcs work best for the battle cleric followed by dwarves half elves are good if you want a unique weapon. Small races need not apply.
Abilities: STR>CON>WIS>DEX>INT>CHA
Charisma is going to be totally ignored by the battle cleric. He’ll be using the blunt instrument in his hand, not his channeling capabilities to mete out holy vengeance. As such STR and CON will be our main focus followed by WIS. You want a WIS of about 14 or 15 at the start to ensure you can cast all your spell levels. Ideally DEX should at least be a 12 but if you plan on combat maneuvers and are running out of points switch this for INT of 13. Cha is your dump stat.
The exception to this rule is Holy Vindicator. Holy Vindicator focuses on your channeling in which case you’ll want as many channels as you can get your hands on in which case we’ll switch things out like so.
STR>CON>WIS>CHA>DEX>INT
Suggested Domains: Demon(replacing chaos) and Destruction let you pump out loads of damage. The neat part is that both 1st level domain powers work beautifully in conjunction together. If you really want to go the combat maneuver route than replace the destruction domain with ferocity. If you’d rather play to a good deity you can get away with wielding a long sword two handed and worship Iomedae for the Heroism and Tactics domain. Gorum is another option for good characters with Ferocity and Rage or Destruction. Lastly Erastil with the Feather and Growth domains provides a pocket flanker with the amazing enlarge power provided by Growth. If you’re GM will allow it the Plains domains is an amazing choice for nature based clerics.
Feats: There are lots of ways to play the battle cleric. I personally prefer the path of blunt force trauma. That is dealing the most possible damage in a handful of blows. Clerics are fairly feat starved meaning you’ll have to consider carefully what kind of battle cleric you want to be. One who deals a lot in combat maneuvers will most definitely want the Tactics or War domain to get the most use out of their feats. Those who want to go down the vital strike line will probably want to get domains like Ferocity or Destruction to get their smite on.
Scribe Scroll: Like it or not you are still the party’s main source of band aids when it comes to the end of the fight. This will actually come in handy more for you than the support cleric since you’ll be spending a lot of spell slots on buffs for yourself. This is a good feat for first level since you won’t be able to qualify for Power Attack just yet. Still, your job is to hurt things not heal them.
Power Attack: The main source of pain to come from you. The drawbacks are negated in part by your buffs and domain abilities. The results mean more damage.
Furious Focus: More often than not the first attack you’ll make in a round will also be a smite with a full power attack behind it. This feat ensures that attack will hit.
Improved Bullrush: If you’re a war or ferocity cleric you never need take the greater version since you can use your war ability to make use of the greater version at any point.
Improved Overrun: As with bullrush only with running people over. Can be just as good if not better than a trip in the right circumstance.
Toughness: You’re going to have a much lower AC than your support counterpart. Between a two handed weapon, medium armor and the penalty to ac from the demon domain you can expect to have an AC roughly equivalent to a barbarian without the big hit dice to back it up. As such it pays to have plenty of extra hp on hand.
Improved Initiative: Like the support cleric you’re going to want to drop your buffs early and often.
Extend Spell: Most of your buffs have a fairly short duration. As such it doesn’t hurt to make such durations much longer.
Combat Reflexes: More attacks of opportunity means more attacks. More attacks mean more damage.
Cleave: The simplest way to get yourself two attacks a round. While not on the same target this does let you clear out multiple enemies quickly.
Improved Sunder: You can repair stuff you break without too much bother and this does have lots of uses in some campaigns.
Equipment: Invest heavily into your weapons and carry multiple kinds of your favorite weapon or weapons to ensure you can bypass DR easily enough. I’m a personal fan of the Spell Storing enchantment as it allows you to inflict some rather crippling spells on targets with a minor amount of prep time. You can get a lot of versatility out of this enchantment. Barring that I also like the vicious enchantment. The damage it deals to the wielder is minimal and the damage it deals is type less so it won’t get resisted into oblivion.
Definitely invest in a quicken magic rod so you can drop buffs on yourself quickly. Beyond that simply standard gear you’d put on any fighting character such as a good breastplate, plenty of armor class buffing equipment (amulet of natural armor, ring of protection, etc). There’s nothing in particular that pops out for clerics who go the fighting route.
Playing the Battle Cleric: The battle cleric is an offensive beast. In the early levels you’ll rely on the bonuses granted by spells like divine favor and bless. Later on you’ll be casting things like Divine Power and the awesome righteous might. As a battle cleric your spells are less of a main feature and more of a toolbox to draw from for particular situations making you a versatile and potent combatant. Keep in mind your longest duration buffs and try to keep them on yourself as much as possible to save time in combat you’d be spending buffing yourself. The key thing to remember is timing. Unlike most frontline fighters you’ll want to take your time rushing into the frontlines and spend a round or two laying important buffs on yourself and allies.
Advantages: With the right buffs up and running you’ll be a better fighter than any of the primary combat classes. Tacked on with the advantages of being a full spell caster you’ll also be among the most versatile.
Disadvantages: You won’t be appreciated as much as the support cleric and you won’t be able to leap directly into combat like others since you’ll require a round or two to buff and you won’t have the hit points to back up your offense. You also lack the primary fighting classes BAB meaning you’ll miss more often than they will.
The Archer Cleric:
“Come here and make fun of my hat to my face. Actually go ahead and make fun of it from there.”
The middle ground between support and offense the archer cleric is one of the most balanced and popular builds out there.
Offense:***
Defense: ****
Support:*****
Suggested Races: Elves make some of the better archer clerics as they are automatically proficient in composite longbows making them automatic winners for this class. The con penalty is balanced by the int bonus. Humans as always make a solid choice with their bonus obviously going towards dex. Half elves can get an alternate racial ability to get bow proficiency so they’re not a bad option either.
Abilities: DEX>STR>WIS>CON>INT>CHA
Dex is your stat of choice since it determines much of your offense and defense. It also helps shore up your weakest save. STR pumps out the beats and Wis lets you cast bunches of spells. Your Con can afford to suffer since you’ll be staying out of the fray. Cha and Int still need to be at least 10 since you don’t want your skills or channeling to suffer too much.
Suggested Domains: Heroism and Good are some pretty solid domains to take. If you need to stick to gods within the pathfinder setting you’ll unfortunately be forced to take Erastil as a god in which case you’ll be want to take the Law or Feather domains. I would personally take feather since flying about and popping arrows into people is preferable to running around.
Feats: Archery is arguably the best fighting style available in Pathfinder. This is in large part to feats like Deadly Aim which increases your damage and allows the ability to shoot from a long distance. You’ll also want to focus on your support capabilities to some degree since you’ll be spending half the time casting buffs.
Deadly Aim: The obvious feat here since it lets you quickly eliminate lightly armored targets. Between your buffs and your high dex score hitting people shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Precise Shot: Part of being support artillery is not shooting your allies in melee.
Point Blank Shot: The start of the archery feat tree, and thus your first feat in all likelihood.
Rapid Shot: More attacks are always good. Especially when combined with…
Manyshot: More damage is always good particularly when that damage is applied to your highest attack mod.
Pinpoint Targeting: By the time you get this you’ll likely just have spells to deal with things you can’t hit. Or just buff the fighter so he can deal with it.
Elven Accuracy: Aren’t you getting improved precise shot already?
Improved Precise Shot: Soft cover is surprisingly plentiful especially when your own group gets in the way.
Extend Spell: By and large you are mostly a buff slinging utility cleric. So making your buffs last long is never a bad thing particularly if you can get them to stretch over multiple encounters or even a full day.
Craft Magic Arms and Armor: I only suggest this for one reason; bane arrows. Like any good archer you’re going to want a wide variety of arrows for many situations. A little bit of foreknowledge will actually let you craft a dozen or so arrows for the upcoming situation in relatively little time. Add to the fact that bane arrows will only be taking up a first level spell you don’t use often anyway then chances are you’ll be making bane arrows a lot. Add that the damage is typeless and you have a very good incentive to make arrows in batch of ten or twenty depending on what you expect.
Equipment: Like any good archer you should get the best bow you can buy with a good variety of arrows for any situation. Items that increase your dex and wis are of course vital. You’ll definitely be wanting an efficient quiver to be storing the large variety of arrows, staves and rods. A glove of spell storing isn’t a bad idea at all since you can switch to your favorite metamagic rod, cast a spell, then pick your bow back up in time for more arrow slinging.
The Lord of Undeath
Offense:***
Defense: ***
Support:****
Necromancy is a far underrated style. A true scavenger, you force your gm not only to consider the amount of gold you are being given but the relative power of the corpses you are capable of raising up to your service. Oracles arguably make the best necromancers since they get their command undead feat for free, the relevant paths aren’t bad and their primary casting score is the same as the one for commanding the dead. Combined with the fact that the stat used for commanding undead is the same as the one for casting spells in terms of raw power an oracle is doing quite well. In terms of versatility however the cleric has the oracle beat. The cleric doesn’t have to expend precious spells known to get the proper spells for making things like fast zombies. You already have them.
Abilities: CHA>WIS>CON>INT>DEX>STR
This is a build unconcerned with hitting people, you have minions to do that for you. What you are concerned with is making people as dead as possible so you can make them serve you without fuss, or make the already undead serve you anyway. You’ll be spending a ton of spells (three alone on average just to get a fresh minion) so Wis becomes important, after that you’re concerned with survival and having the necessary skills to remain a good cleric. You don’t need strength as a high number. Just enough to carry your scrolls and armor. Everything else can be packed on to spare undead.
Necromancy in a nutshell.
Necromancy is complicated in Pathfinder. In 3.5 all you were concerned about was getting the biggest nastiest critter and making them a skeleton or, rarely, a zombie. Now you have several different varieties of undeath to choose from like Fiery Skeletons, Plague Zombies, Blood Skeletons, Fast Zombies, etc. etc. You have to keep up with how much onyx you require and how many HD you can control. It can be quite a mess to the enterprising necromancer. So here are a few quick and dirty tips.
Bigger is Better: It’s easier to deal with one or two really big and heavy HD critters than many small ones. You don’t want to waste every one’s time at the gaming table by rolling a lot of small numbers to little effect.
If it Spawns, don’t command: Command Undead has lost much of its oomph in pathfinder with the allowance of a new save every day. Therefore a smart necromancer has to be aware that what he’s commanding is an unwilling and hateful abomination who would love to suck out the life of everything it comes across. If that thing makes spawns, like a Shadow or Specter, than you’re dragging a potential TPK with you everywhere. You could command your slave to not get the final blow on foes or to command its spawn to leave you unharmed. But one day he’ll make his save and on that day the party will be in big trouble. So don’t command anything that makes spawns or can’t be killed by the party under normal circumstances. It’s too much trouble and risk otherwise.
Desecrate Everything: More HP for your created undead and bigger too. That means you should be taking a dump on all that’s good and holy every time you make a new minion to your service.
Convert the Willing: Things get a bit sticky with GM’s and Create Undead spells. Talk to them about it. Because the creature you make will not be automatically under your control like Animate Dead and as I said before Command Undead is an unreliable means of controlling the rampant flesh eating hordes. So the obvious solution is to convert dead friends, followers, and party members into the undead upon death via these spells. This tends to be taken issue with by most GM’s since it essentially allows you to artificially boost the power of the group significantly with little cost to yourself. My solution, as a GM, is thus.
1. Undead created from former friends of the necromancer do not resurrect hostile to the caster or its allies but does not follow their commands.
2. Characters that become undead by this means are reduced to NPC’s until such time they can be resurrected or rejoin the group with a new character.
3. If a necromancer wants to control his newly created undead he must command it as normal. However a formerly friendly or willing target can (and typically will with a successful diplomacy check) choose to not make a save. Alternatively the leadership feat can allow the undead to be taken as a cohort.
There’s simply far too much to cover when it comes to necromancy in this article about clerics. So sooner or later expect a full necromancy guide from me.
Suggested Domains: Death allows you to take advantage of your negative energy channeling as a form of healing so it’s not a bad option. Domains that can allow you to mass buff your allies are best since they can affect your undead. Of the Pathfinder deities, Asmodeus, followed by Urgthoa.
Feats: As of this writing there are no really good and viable necromancy based feats. However there are a number of feats that are worth considering.
Command Undead: If this isn’t your first level feat then you’re doing it wrong. But let’s discuss this feat for a moment. This feat is based off of your charisma score, which besides your skills does not really benefit you. It also has a growth rate just under your spells at around 3rd level. It also allows intelligent undead a new save every day and it targets said undead's strongest save. Lastly you are limited in the number of undead things you control by your cleric level. All these things put together means that while potent the command undead ability has lost quite a lot of its original oomph.
What this means is that the necromancers prime ability to control intelligent undead is not as strong as one would like. So what can you use it for? Ultimately it’s not going to give you big nasty bruisers the same way that making fast zombie giants will or walking village torchers like fire skeleton squirrels. However what it does do is allow you to command creatures for utility purposes. Shadows make excellent scouts and are just weak enough that you can maintain control of one for a long time. Since they deal strength damage it’s unlikely they’ll make spawn since many creatures have rather high strength scores while simultaneously weakening said creatures offensive abilities. Other creatures make good fodder to hurl at the opposition to get quickly cut down and waste an opponents action.There is quite a bit of good ideas you can take with this.
Improved Channeling: If you plan on making extensive use of command undead than this becomes a must have. It increases the DC of your channels and by extension your commands.
Leadership: So how do you control even more undead? With an undead controlling cohort of course! If the GM allows you some choices when selecting a cohort a necromancy specialized wizard is the best choice since he’ll cover a lot of things you can’t while simultaneously having spells that you don’t. He can also take control of your lower hit die undead with his own command undead capabilities.
Extra Channeling: More channels means more commands and additionally more heals for your minions.
Scribe Scroll: You’re going to have a lot of throw away spells like desecrate, remove paralysis and others when making your minions. Trouble is those spells take up precious spell slots you might want to be using for other things. Scribe scroll lets you keep said spells for when you get to making undead.
Undead Master: Very good. Treats you as four levels higher in determining the hit dice of undead you can animate or control.
Equipment: Get the best armor you can buy and wear. Get plenty of scrolls of the spells you need and save the rest of your money for onyx and keeping your undead army equipped and maintained. Fitting your undead with the best gear they can use is important since it’ll be the only way you can make them advance without creating new undead.
The Bad Touch Cleric:
“I NEED AN ADULT!”
Offense:*****
Defense:**
Support: ****
The bad touch cleric is an offensive cleric with a twist. This cleric isn’t all that concerned with dealing raw hit point damage. Rather the cleric is much more concerned with debuffing opponents, slapping them in the face with save-or-dies or save-or-sucks until they curl into a ball and crumple beneath the combined force of arms your group provides. The bad touch cleric hops into and out of melee range casting a series of nasty debuff spells while simultaneously making use of his domain powers to cripple an opponent’s ability to act.
Abilities: Wis>Dex>Str>Con>Cha>Int
More than any other you want a high wisdom so you can get your DC’s high. Secondly you want a relatively high dex score to qualify for certain feats and to have a high AC bonus. Strength isn’t as important since touch attacks are relatively easy to make but you want a positive bonus. Con needs to be positive as well. Intelligence and charisma aren’t as important to the bad touch cleric.
Suggested Domains: Clerics get a wide variety of bad touch stuff. For good or evil clerics the chaos domain is amazing since it forces unfavorable rolls for a full rounds worth of actions including saving throws, attack rolls, skill checks and what have you. In terms of good subdomains you have Archon (Law), Daemon (Evil), Decay (Plant) is particularly good for unarmed strike bad touchers, Protean (Chaos) is hilarious, Nightmare (madness), Repose and Storms (Weather). Any combination of these shouldn’t be too hard to get .
Feats: Pathfinder added a host of decent metamagic feats for you to consider. At the same time however you want to be concerned with things like defense and mobility. There are a couple of ways to go about this style of cleric.
Bad Punching: Suitable for lower level games or games where getting a Conductive weapon is unlikely.
Improved Unarmed Strike: If you go this route it opens up the possibility of Stunning Fist later which should be easy for you to get. This also allows you to threaten squares even while unarmed. Especially important if you are using a shield.
Dragon Style: This provides a lot of great benefits. It allows you to essentially charge across the battle field and punch someone as if using a two handed weapon (since it adds 50% of your strength modifier to the damage on top of the normal amount). You ignore a lot of the things that prevent charges and gain some beneficial save bonuses as well. The issues might be the 3 ranks of acrobatics but that isn’t the worst skill to take so it might be worth it.
Domain Strike: Another must have if going the unarmed strike route this allows you to pound a touch power into someone with an unarmed strike. This is significant as it allows you to safely activate the touch power (they’re nearly all spell like abilities and thus provoke AoO’s)
Bad Poking: This route is better for games going into higher levels where getting a conductive spellstoring weapon is much more likely.
Spring Attack: A heavy investment in feats but it does allow you to weave into an opponent’s reach, slap them with a held charge and then weave out while keeping them within your debuffing auras.
Channel Smite/Guided Hand: If you happen to worship a god that has a reach weapon and excellent domains for bad touching (I’m looking at you Calistria) then this route is practically made for you. Grab alternate channeling and a conductive weapon and you can deliver chaos touchings from a long way away.
Lunge: Takes a while to get (level 9 before you qualify) but worth taking
General Stuff: If only one or two of the above feats appeal you can exchange some of it for what’s below.
Bouncing Spell: Sometimes people make their saves. When they do the spell bounces to another valid target. Again that’s perfectly fine.
Reach Spell: Extremely handy. Sometimes the last thing you want to be doing is entering melee range. This feat will allow you to deliver spells from a safe distance. Though you may be better off getting this on a rod.
“debuff” Spell: This is just covering all the various feats from the apg that add a status effect to your spells. The trick here is to understand that many of the feats require the spell to deal damage. There are few worthwhile damaging spells on the clerics list so unless you have a favorite don’t worry too much about these.
Lingering Spell: Clerics don’t have much in terms of instantaneous aoe spells however this gets a mention since any spell with a visual effect will also provide concealment for a round.
Equipment: Good armor and shields are essential as you don’t want to be getting hit. Weapon wise you’ll likely go with a spiked gauntlet or your deity’s favored weapon. Any kind of way to up your DC’s is huge as well. A shield will come in handy to help with your AC as you may be favoring lighter armor to keep your move speed decent.
Playing the Bad Touch cleric: The key to playing the bad touch cleric is cooperation with your party’s dedicated meleers. Play smart, keep the bad guys in range of your various debuffs and be mindful of the range of your spells. Your goal is not to kill the enemy. Rather, your goal is to make the enemy easier to kill. So every negative you give to them is a bonus and every status effect is a double bonus. One thing to consider is offensive alternate channeling. Some of those have very good penalties they inflict and when combined with other means of dropping saves you can
Advantages: As a battlefield controller you’re doing pretty good. As offense you’re doing alright. As support you’re doing not so bad.
Disadvantages: You might feel spread a bit thin. With the emphasis on spellcasting and needing to get in close to do any damage you’ll want a lot of feats for a feat starved class. My suggestion is to pick a style with this archetype and stick to it. Figure out what works for you and your campaign and build accordingly. The other thing is that this build doesn’t stand alone as well as other builds. Even the support cleric can get by on pumping himself up and going to town on someone but the bad touch cleric often has a spell list designed to inconvenience rather than buff or kill.
Equipment: If you are going the unarmed route than light armor might be the way to go to keep your move speed up along with a heavy shield to help make up for the AC loss.
The Casting Cleric
This man is your friend. He fights for justice.
Offense: ****
Defense:***
Support:**
This part of the guide is a long time in coming. This is primarily due to the difficulty of making an effective casting cleric. To be sure it is possible but compared to some of the easier to understand options (melee, touch debuffing, support) an offensive casting cleric is a tough one to nail down and nigh impossible in core. This is primarily due to the rather defensive and situational spell list that lies at the clerics core. It has plenty of alignment hoses, a few good battlefield control spells, but mostly what it has are heals, buffs, and touch of utility here and there.
However this all changed with the release of the Theologian archetype and my subsequent reading of Kbrewers excellent guide on exploding wizards. Suddenly a casting cleric doesn’t just become something viable but possibly absolutely terrifying in the right circumstance.
What the casting cleric is all about is, well, casting, whether summoning, blasting, controlling the battlefield the actual differences between a wizard and a cleric might get skewed by the similar capabilities given the right choice of domain(s), feats, and archetypes. Before we build our casting cleric we have to choose between one of three potential options. The first option is summoning. In this clerics can be very good, between Sacred Summons, Summon Good Creature (in the Blood of Angels book), and Superior Summons clerics can drop some very powerful critters on the field at a speed that would make your GM wonder why he even bothered to ban the summoner class. The second option is blasting. Normally this option would be utterly bad for you, but the Theologian makes this not only tempting, but a fantastic idea for someone who just wants to unleash the wrath of the gods. The final option is raw debuffing. With negative alternate channeling, numerous good debuffs at your disposal (that aren’t touch spells) and potentially good battlefield control spells you are left with a number of great ways to mess with an opponent that only a witch can rival.
Abilities: Wis>Int>Con>Dex>Cha>Str
It’s rare for me to flat out call strength a dumpstat but here you are. We want intelligence since skills might prove more useful to us and we want to be able to qualify for things like Spell Perfection and Spell Specialization much more easily. Channeling is a fools errand for us so we don’t mind ignoring if not straight up dumping it. The choice between Con and Dex is a matter of personal preference. I like hit points more than armor class and reflex saves on my clerics whether or not you agree makes little difference in the end. Do what works.
Suggested Domains:
Blasting: Fire or Ash are our domain’s of choice here. Fireball is going to prove to be a very flexible spell for us here so going for Smoke only kills that option. If you want to try a different way of blowing stuff up you also have the Sun domain which gives you searing light and flamestrike both spells that arcane blasters lack.
Summoning: Heroism is a good start since the heroism aura will benefit many of your summons. If you can get Void (Dark Tapestry) as a domain you’re in strong shape especially if you worship the Black Butterfly since she’ll let you have access to Summon Good Creature and strong options for Sacred Summons as well. Beyond that you’re fairly open on your second domain.
Debuffing: Madness, Smoke, Plant, and Decay are likely the best choices in terms of spells that can do debuffing well.
Feats: We’re spellcasters first and spell casters with a focus on top of that. To this end I do highly suggest the Theologian archetype if you’re not going to summon. Beyond that we have a number of options.
General Stuff: This is stuff I recommend (or not) for every form of castery cleric.
Spell Specialization: Having a higher caster level in your favorite spell of the level can have a good deal of meaning. Longer time on your summons, more damage on your blasts, more targets or range for your debuff of choice. Overall very useful to you. I want to make a special note to human summoners who can get this feat at level 1 and absolutely should take it over augment summoning. Why? Because having three rounds of angry birds will work out far better for you than 1 round of slightly stronger bird.
Spell Perfection: Good? Oh yes. Free metamagic, doubled bonuses on things like Glorious Heat, Spell Penetration and Spell Focus. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
Spell Focus, Spell Penetration and their greater variants: Bread and butter feats for every caster. True a summoner could get away without like, most of these, but you still need spell focus to even get augment summoning and for that reason alone it shows up on this list.
Channeling anything: Spending a standard action to channel is a pretty lousy way to spend your action. Which would you rather be doing healing someone for 6d6 or dropping a persistent bouncing bestow curse on the BBEG (that’s a 4th level spell for a theologian with magical lineage btw)? Even with quick channel it’s usually in your best interest not to waste the feat. In general channeling as a caster cleric (as always in my humble opinion) is an out of combat perk.
Summoning Stuff: Summoning clerics are very versatile and potentially very powerful. While a summoner can certainly have longer lasting summons that are often more readily at hand as a standard action a Cleric can bring to bear a number of powerful buffs that can aid his own summons in much more meaningful ways. Any summoner can spam summon monster 4 to continually get lantern archons on the field, but only a cleric can also have inspire courage and aura of heroism up to support them as well.
Specific Stuff:
Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning: The core of any build this is essentially what makes you a summoning specialist. If you’re human this is your fist set of feats. If not than augment summoning becomes your second feat. Simple as that.
Summon Good Creature: Considerably expands your list of summoned critters. Pretty mucha given choice for good clerics who aren’t lawful especially if they’re looking at sacred summons later.
Superior Summoning: Summon more critters per spell. Why only stop at 5 sacred dire lions?
Sacred Summons: A late game feat since most early lists will not have the right subtypes for you. Heck chaotic good clerics can’t use sacred summons effectively until 9th level without Summon Good Creature. So it’s best to wait.
Blasting Stuff: Typically blasting things is in the range of sorcerers and wizards. Afterall they have the spells and abilities that support this notion. However clerics have versatility where they have raw power. And thanks to the Theologian archetype we can get the specific blasting spells we want to go along with our normal list. I mentioned long ago how Theologian might be worth using for someone wanting a blasting focus and thanks to some other optimizers effectively working the problem out with wizards we have a path to follow on our clerics.
Specific Stuff:
Spell Specialization: This let’s our first level burning hands hit for 3d4 damage. By third level if we get our hands on Glorious Heat our burning hands will deal 5d4 points of damage and heal someone a point of damage and give them a morale bonus for how awesome we are.
Intensify Spell: Ironically while a wizard will want to get this as a Theologian you’ll never have want or need to actually get it. Modify perning hands at level 5, fireball at level 10 and you’re set. If you went with sun domain instead than the only spell you might honestly need this for is flame strike at level 15.
Empower Spell: The only real reason to take magical lineage for fireball or burning hands. Empowered Intensified Fireball as a fourth level cleric spell? Sign me up! Oh wait glorious heat. Now you’re healed 3 damage and get a morale bonus because I’m awesome.
Glorious Heat: Okay so the bonuses this provides are pathetically small. But, it’s a free bonus and let’s you kind of sort of keep pretending your a support cleric for a bit (“Of course I’m a good healer I just cast burning hands didn’t I?”)
Burning Spell: Crap. Empower Spell will do a whole lot more damage for the same rise in level.
Lingering Spell: Situationally useful and rather handy in getting more bang for your buck out of spells like burning hands. It provides concealment and causes creatures who enter the area during that round to be affected as if it was cast on them. A fairly decent way to get more damage out of the spell.
Maximize Spell: Arguably better then empower. Same effect really but at a higher cost. I leave it to you decide what you like better. I will say that using both if at all possible is great. (Here’s an idea MAgical Lineage Burning Hands. Intensify it at level five. As a 6th level spell it will deal 5d4+40 damage. An equivalent unmodified Cold Ice Strike at this level will deal 13d6 damage or 39 average. If you dipped a level of crossblooded sorcerer you can add about 30 damage to said burning hands. That’s hot.)
Advantages: A good late game option when melee has long been put to pasture in all but the most extreme cases. In the early game you have the advantage of not being as paper thin as a wizard or sorcerer and you have access to excellent archetypes that can support your preferred casting style (Evangelist for summoners, theologians for blasters). BEing one of the few full casters that can wear thick armor and a thick shield you’re set up nicely to survive until the late game.
Disadvantages: You’re fairly feat starved unlike wizards and sorcerers. You need to plan carefully if you don’t want to make mistakes. Summoners are more forgiving than blasters and debuffing clerics. You also tend to be at the mercy of spells like protection from (your alignment here) and high saving throws so you have to find ways around that as well.
Equipment: Typical caster stuff is all you really require. Early on you’ll play more like a support cleric with even lower strength. As time goes on and you grow into your power step further back in line and start trading in armor and weapons for staves and pearls of power.