Help with Dwarven Cleric

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Hey guys,

I'm new to Pathfinder, but have been playing D&D for many years. I recently joined a campaign where I volunteered to be the party healer and picked a Dwarven Cleric to do so.

I'm just looking for some advice on the build and what spells and feats I should be taking. I'm not looking to wade into the fray, we have plenty of damage dealers in the group, so he's going all healing/buffing/debuffing.

He's level 1 and I've chosen CG alignment with domains in Travel & Good (his deity is Cayden Cailean). From what I've read, with spontaneous casting it's best to heal using the channeling positive energy he gets and go for buffs for the party/debuffs for enemies as far as spells go.

So I'm not really sure which are the best spells for this particular class, which feats I should be planning for and whether or not to multi-class him into something else a bit later on.

Any/all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Trav

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

1. If it's not too late, drop the Good domain, and take the Healing Domain with the Restoration subdomain. its granted power is phenomenal for curing really bad status ailments, aside from just the hp damage. It's especially great if there's a barbarian in the party, should he fall out of rage mid-combat and end up fatigued.

2. At first level, channeling is very powerful healing. It quickly falls behind, though. By level 8 if not sooner, I'd say it's pretty worthless in combat and by that point is just for "between combat" and "before bedtime" healing. If you don't expect to go past level 8, though, by all means grab Selective Channeling feat and the like.

3. Never prepare a cure spell. Prepare other spells, and drop them to spont. cast cure as needed. This way, you have the tactical flexibility of more spells of different sorts at the ready, but still able to drop it all for healing if needed.

Are you starting at level 1?

 

[Dingo333]

I would recommend going with pharasma and taking the Death and healing domains.

you already know to use your spells to buff/debuff, good.

Your channel ability does fall a bit behind of damage, but it is a very powerful bomb vs undead (say what you want, but 20-30 damage to 4-5 targets is good)

Selective channel, a tower shield if you are not planning to attack, heavy if you are, and then metamagic feats (like quicken spell when you can use it) are my feat suggestions

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

He's not proficient with tower shields, and it's definitely not worth a feat to learn to be.

20-30 damage would be 6d6 for 21.5 damage on average. Level 11. Not that impressive. Especially since it's a will save, which undead are AWESOME at. So you can basically expect to do half that every time.

Death is ok, but Travel is one of the absolute best domains there is, I'd keep it.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Travel and Magic domains.

are both awesome. 30 speed in heavy armor makes you better equipped than anyone on the battlefield, plus you can fly too. Oh, and you can throw your battle axe using your wisdom mod, and don't forget to pick the right favored cleric option from the advanced guide which lets you add 1/2 level to number of times per day you can do it. I think I'm at 11 now, at level 6.

The spell selection from Travel makes you a Dwarf of the world. You will be flying around to AOE heal people, and flying allows you that much better chance to pick a zone to avoid healing enemies. If you like a super good defense, fast, versatile, flying dwarf that is. I'm planning on taking Point Blank Shot and Rapid Shot (my DM is allowing me to combine this with Hand of the Acolyte from Magic Domain), and maybe 2 levels in fighter for extra feats and Bab and goodies.

If I didn't grab Magic it would definitely be Healing for the massive boost to all heals.

Is there a way in PF (no 3.5 stuff) to grab a 3rd domain ability? Like a prestige class or something.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

You could always dip Inquisitor to pick up the granted powers (but not spells) of one domain. But you'd use your Inquisitor level to determine the abilities of those granted powers, and almost all of them are level-based in some form or another, so it'd probably not work out too well...

 

[Gorgoroth]

doesn't seem to work

It looked good (aside from the fact that the cleric spell levels don't stack)

"If the inquisitor has cleric levels, one of her two domain selections must be the same domain selected as an inquisitor."

So, effectively, multiclassing into this can't be used to pick up a third domain power. I guess that's by design.

Are there any other ways?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Druid gets limited set of Domain choices. Not sure if it has similar language.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

1. If it's not too late, drop the Good domain, and take the Healing Domain with the Restoration subdomain. its granted power is phenomenal for curing really bad status ailments, aside from just the hp damage. It's especially great if there's a barbarian in the party, should he fall out of rage mid-combat and end up fatigued.

2. At first level, channeling is very powerful healing. It quickly falls behind, though. By level 8 if not sooner, I'd say it's pretty worthless in combat and by that point is just for "between combat" and "before bedtime" healing. If you don't expect to go past level 8, though, by all means grab Selective Channeling feat and the like.

3. Never prepare a cure spell. Prepare other spells, and drop them to spont. cast cure as needed. This way, you have the tactical flexibility of more spells of different sorts at the ready, but still able to drop it all for healing if needed.

Are you starting at level 1?

I am starting at level 1 and I picked up travel and good as being my two domains. I wasn't sure if I could pick up healing since it's not within Cayden Cailean's domains, does anyone know if you can take a domain outside what your god has listed?

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

are both awesome. 30 speed in heavy armor makes you better equipped than anyone on the battlefield, plus you can fly too. Oh, and you can throw your battle axe using your wisdom mod, and don't forget to pick the right favored cleric option from the advanced guide which lets you add 1/2 level to number of times per day you can do it. I think I'm at 11 now, at level 6.

The spell selection from Travel makes you a Dwarf of the world. You will be flying around to AOE heal people, and flying allows you that much better chance to pick a zone to avoid healing enemies. If you like a super good defense, fast, versatile, flying dwarf that is. I'm planning on taking Point Blank Shot and Rapid Shot (my DM is allowing me to combine this with Hand of the Acolyte from Magic Domain), and maybe 2 levels in fighter for extra feats and Bab and goodies.

If I didn't grab Magic it would definitely be Healing for the massive boost to all heals.

Is there a way in PF (no 3.5 stuff) to grab a 3rd domain ability? Like a prestige class or something.

Your dwarf sounds pretty awesome, I think I'll stick with Travel and take healing if it's allowed for me to take a domain outside of what my god represents (since currently I'm travel and good).