Char build questions

[Soulos]

So i have an idea for a character with some easy speed boosts.

Cleric (domain Clerity for +10 bonus)
Barbarian (for another +10 bonus)

say standard medium size race, that's 50 feet right there.

I was thinking of going 4 levels of barb total and taking Practiced Spellcaster.

The questions with that is: is it that useful for a cleric, and does the feat add to class level for purposes of determining level of spells/number of spells per day, or just improve effects of spells i qualify for off my cleric levels.

Thanks- Soulos

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, first off, that wouldn't be such a great combo. If you plan on using the barbarian's rage, you won't be able to cast cleric spells or even make concentration checks while in one. Of course, if you don't care about rage, there are plenty of alternatives to swap it for.

As for the question, the feat is useful if you multiclassed out of cleric more than a level or two, and it does not add to your spells known/spells per day, or even the highest level spell slots you get. What it does is modify your effective caster level for the parameters of the spell. So a Wizard 6 / Fighter 4 could still get 10d6 Fireball damage, and the range of a level 10 Wizard (and count as CL 10 against any creature's SR, for that matter), for example.

 

[aboyd]

If you added the Spring Attack feat to your cleric/barbarian, you'd have someone who could move in, attack, and get possibly completely out of their movement range before their turns ever happened. And if they were dumb enough to close ground with you, you could run up, attack, and retreat back out of range again.

That's not a bad play style. The possible problem is that it's a one-trick pony, like a spiked-chain trip fighter. But then again, those builds are very effective (just unfortunately, sometimes they're so effective & repetitive that they annoy people).

Travel domain gets you the longstrider spell, which adds another 10' to your movement speed for hours on end, putting you at a ridiculous 60' for normal movement speed. Cast Expeditious Retreat with no intention of retreating, and you're moving 90' as a move action each combat round for... well, a lot of rounds.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, this is almost so good that it's broken. You could practically wipe out a small group of enemies, and none of them could retaliate. They'd need to give up melee, and/or start triggering attacks on your approach rather than normal initiative. Interesting. Something to think about.

 

[Runestar]

Spring attack can be countered simply by having the enemies ready actions to attack the barb when he comes within reach (and combat spiked chain by using foes with 10ft+ reach themselves).

The benefit is fairly minimal to a spellcaster, since there are few features worth giving up for access to higher lv spells. You may want to consider playing a scout instead.

 

[aboyd]

Spring attack can be countered simply by having the enemies ready actions to attack the barb when he comes within reach

I kinda knew that when I mentioned it:

They'd need to give up melee, and/or start triggering attacks on your approach rather than normal initiative.

However, it's metagamey for enemies to know to do this right away. Every single one, every single time, would need to experience this problem for him/her self and react to it, at which point a couple rounds of damage would have already been done.

and combat spiked chain by using foes with 10ft+ reach themselves

That's really metagamey. A spiked chain build appears in your game world and suddenly the enemies are equipped with 10+ reach weapons? If a barbarian pours all his feats into his axe proficiency, do your enemies suddenly gain DR? If a player wants to play an Ignus build and torch the planet, is the game world suddenly populated by Efreeti?

Anything can be countered. That's not a good reason to say "don't bother with the build, try something else." The real question is, how easy & frequently will it be countered?

Trip builds? Sometimes they win, sometimes they need other tactics. But it IS a viable build, unless you have a DM who isn't fighting fair. And someone moving at inhuman, and frankly, even faster-than-scary-monster speeds? That should surprise people. Lots of them. Frequently.

Consider that such characters would be moving at what -- to them -- felt like a normal walking speed but was actually a 3-minute mile. They would outpace our world's best runners, and they'd do it without breaking a sweat. If you let this build run -- barbs get 5x speed -- that's 4500 feet in 1 minute. That's what, 55 miles per hour? This person would run onto a highway and keep up with traffic. To me, I either have to accept that the player has done something interesting and surprising -- and admit that they get some benefits from pouring feats and spells into it -- or else I have to declare the build taboo because it breaks the game even though it follows the rules.

The benefit is fairly minimal to a spellcaster, since there are few features worth giving up for access to higher lv spells.

With 4 levels of barbarian and what looks like a combat cleric, he hardly falls into the spellcaster arena. This isn't the kind of build where I'd say "you're losing spell levels!" It's more like a few dips into cleric domains to get some (surprising) buffs.

 

[Runestar]

That's really metagamey. A spiked chain build appears in your game world and suddenly the enemies are equipped with 10+ reach weapons? If a barbarian pours all his feats into his axe proficiency, do your enemies suddenly gain DR? If a player wants to play an Ignus build and torch the planet, is the game world suddenly populated by Efreeti?

I am not saying that the DM should suddenly populate his entire campaign with 10-ft reach enemies. I am simply pointing out the limitations to the effectiveness of spring attack, because as pointed out, it is a one-trick pony which won't always work, and you will ideally want a back-up plan for when such scenarios pop up.

This tactic is far from flawless, and I feel it is better to go in knowing fully well what to expect, rather than thinking yourself invincible, only to start crapping in your pants when you discover that it is not necessarily as efficacious as you had earlier envisioned.

Plus, a lot of the monsters in the MM have some form of reach anyways. Nor do I think that knowing when/how to ready attacks is some sort of ultra-complicated tactic. Enemies should know what they are getting into by the 2nd-3rd attack and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Likewise, many monsters in the MM also tend to have superior str scores and are of larger size than you, which may restrict the effectiveness of a tripping build. This is the sort of thing you will want to iron out with your DM beforehand. I won't know what his game will entail, so the best I can do is to give as general an advice as I can and let him adjudicate it accordingly to best fit his game.