Epic Cleric

AmorFati · Jul 4, 2005

I'm creating an epic cleric, and am now working on feats. I am not really sure what Metamagic Feata to choose, if any. Same with epic feats. What are some good feats for a healing-focused epic cleric?

Jack Simth · Jul 4, 2005

Level & Alignment might help, as could Domain Choices (Healing is a given, but others?)

Epic: Ignore Material Components. Nothing like being able to True Ressurect your comrades, for free. Requires the non-epic Eschew Materials, though. Master Staff is handy, as it lets you simulate a Sorceror's spontaneous casting of any spell stored in the staff, without eating up the staff's charges. Planar Turning could be useful. Positive Energy Aura could be useful (if highly campaign dependant), Spontaneous Domain Acces is a nifty for a Cleric, as is Improved Spell Capacity, or Bonous Domain. Depending on your DM, how much down-time you are likely to get, and how co-operative the other players are, Epic Spellcasting can be very useful, especially with Epic Leadership.

Really, depends.

Non-epic, don't forget Maximize and Empower - great for increasing the amount of healing you can do. The Divine Reach feat is handy, although it's probably a better idea to get it for "free" from the Herophant PrC, as the PrC adds to caster level (although not spell slots - but no new spell slots once you hit epic anyway....). The various Craft feats are useful, depending on your epic mix, they can even be pre-requisites. Leadership is particularly useful if you have Epic spellcasting (ritual spells)

AmorFati · Jul 4, 2005

As of now, it looks something like this:

Half Celestial template.
Cleric 5
Monk 2
Divine Oracle 10
Contemplative 10
Radiant Servant of Pelor 10
Sacred Fist 3

Domains: Healing, Sun, Oracle, Good, Glory.

The Radiant Servant of Pelor already makes all healing spell Empowered and Maximized, without using a higher level slot.

As for feats I already have:
Skill Focus (Knowledge(Religion) - pre-requisite to Divine Oracle
Extra Turninh - pre-requisite to Radiant Servant
Combat Casting - pretty much a given, no?
Intuitive Attack - Will "probably" have a higher wis than str, so...
Leadership & Epic Leadership - Aiming for some kind of Celestial cohort.
Eschew Materials - Yeah, good one.
Ignore Material Components - Better one, hehe.

IndyPendant · Jul 4, 2005

The Radiant Servant of Pelor already makes all healing spell Empowered and Maximized, without using a higher level slot.

Note that the Radiant Savant only makes healing spells cast from your *Domain* spell slots Empowered and Maximized. Read the ability carefully.

Can't really comment on epic stuff though; never really looked at it myself.

AmorFati · Jul 4, 2005

IndyPendant said:
Note that the Radiant Savant only makes healing spells cast from your *Domain* spell slots Empowered and Maximized. Read the ability carefully.

Can't really comment on epic stuff though; never really looked at it myself.

Yeah, I know, forgot that - again

Thats only like the 3rd time since beginning building this character that I've gone "Oh, thats right, it is only for healing spells in the Domain slots..."

Jack Simth · Jul 4, 2005

You might get the epic feat Spontaneous Domain Access (Healing) so that you can spontaneously heal on Domain spells to do the Empowered/Maximized thing from your PrC.

If you are going Epic Leadership, you will likely want to look into Epic Spellcasting - especially the Ritual mitigating factor - you will have lots of followers anyway, and as a cleric, it's likely that many of these followers will be low-level clerics themselves; 30 2nd level spell slots from your 3rd level followers gives a -90 to the spellcraft DC's. Make it take an extra 10 minutes and you tack another -20 on, for -110 DC. Let's see... assuming a leadership score of 40 (chances are it WILL be higher....), you will get 1000 lvl-1 followers, 100 2nd, 50 3rd, 25 4th, 13 5th, 7 6th, 4 7th, 2 8th, and 1 9th - if 1/4 of them are either wizards or clerics, you can get.... 275 1st level slots, 18-20 2nd level slots, 4-6 3rd level slots, 1-2 4th level slots, and perhaps a 5th level slot for your ritual. That's -275 DC for the 1st, -54 to -60 for the 2nd, -20 to -30 for the 3rd, -7 to -14 for the 4th, and 0 to -9 for the potential 5th; bringing them all together, you can get -356 to -388 to spellcraft DC's for Epic spells just from making it a ritual with your followers. Make it take an extra 10 minutes (hey, it will take a while to gather all your followers in one place anyway....) and that's another -20 on top. A permanent (*5) Ward (+14) against Disjunction (9th level spell, +16), Greater Dispel Magic (6th level spell, +10), Dispel Magic (4th level spell, for a Druid, +6), and AntiMagic Field (8th level, for a straight cleric, +14) would have a base DC of 5*(14+16+10+6+14)=5*60=300. You can mitigate that all the way down to 0 with ritual participants from your leadership, and then you won't have to worry about most dispell attempts. Additionally, with a final spellcraft DC of 0, it costs you no gold nor xp nor time to create the epic spell. And the next day, you can do some other nifty permanent-buff epic spell (all your followers are already present, you see....). Of course, your DM might just nerf that (with cause - that's downright abusive).

AmorFati · Jul 4, 2005

Jack Simth said:
You might get the epic feat Spontaneous Domain Access (Healing) so that you can spontaneously heal on Domain spells to do the Empowered/Maximized thing from your PrC.

If you are going Epic Leadership, you will likely want to look into Epic Spellcasting - especially the Ritual mitigating factor - you will have lots of followers anyway, and as a cleric, it's likely that many of these followers will be low-level clerics themselves; 30 2nd level spell slots from your 3rd level followers gives a -90 to the spellcraft DC's. Make it take an extra 10 minutes and you tack another -20 on, for -110 DC. Let's see... assuming a leadership score of 40 (chances are it WILL be higher....), you will get 1000 lvl-1 followers, 100 2nd, 50 3rd, 25 4th, 13 5th, 7 6th, 4 7th, 2 8th, and 1 9th - if 1/4 of them are either wizards or clerics, you can get.... 275 1st level slots, 18-20 2nd level slots, 4-6 3rd level slots, 1-2 4th level slots, and perhaps a 5th level slot for your ritual. That's -275 DC for the 1st, -54 to -60 for the 2nd, -20 to -30 for the 3rd, -7 to -14 for the 4th, and 0 to -9 for the potential 5th; bringing them all together, you can get -356 to -388 to spellcraft DC's for Epic spells just from making it a ritual with your followers. Make it take an extra 10 minutes (hey, it will take a while to gather all your followers in one place anyway....) and that's another -20 on top. A permanent (*5) Ward (+14) against Disjunction (9th level spell, +16), Greater Dispel Magic (6th level spell, +10), Dispel Magic (4th level spell, for a Druid, +6), and AntiMagic Field (8th level, for a straight cleric, +14) would have a base DC of 5*(14+16+10+6+14)=5*60=300. You can mitigate that all the way down to 0 with ritual participants from your leadership, and then you won't have to worry about most dispell attempts. Additionally, with a final spellcraft DC of 0, it costs you no gold nor xp nor time to create the epic spell. And the next day, you can do some other nifty permanent-buff epic spell (all your followers are already present, you see....). Of course, your DM might just nerf that (with cause - that's downright abusive).

So I could use Spontaneous Domain Access that way? I wasn't sure.

Umm... I was thinking of using leadership for cohort, not followers, as that won't suit the game at all.
ANyway, I didn't get half that stuff... I guess my head is too tired

Jack Simth · Jul 4, 2005

AmorFati said:
So I could use Spontaneous Domain Access that way? I wasn't sure.

It becomes a domain spell:

SRD said:

SPONTANEOUS DOMAIN ACCESS [EPIC]

Prerequisites: Wis 25, Spellcraft 30 ranks, ability to cast 9th-level divine spells.
Benefit: Select a domain the character has access to. The character may spontaneously convert any prepared cleric spell (except a domain spell) into a domain spell of the same level in the selected domain, just as a cleric channels energy to convert spells into cure spells.

Special: A character can gain this feat multiple times. Each time a character takes the feat, it applies to a different domain.

Click to expand...

(Emphasis added)

AmorFati said:
Umm... I was thinking of using leadership for cohort, not followers, as that won't suit the game at all.
ANyway, I didn't get half that stuff... I guess my head is too tired

All right....

Epic spellcasting is a method by which very powerful spells can be crafted - there are a specific set of rules, base "seeds", a set of enhancements (which increase the Difficulty Class), a set of mitigating factors (which decrease the Difficulty Class), and a final Difficulty Class for a spellcraft check that you have to pass to be able to both make and cast the spell. It also has expenses involved in development - GP, XP, and time based linearly on the final DC of the spell.

One of the mitigating factors is additional participants. You get -1 to the DC for a 1st level spell slot, -3 for a 2nd, -5 for a 3rd, -7 for a 4th, and so on. No limit is listed for how much mitigation you can get from additional participants, but normally that's okay, as you won't be able to round many up. Epic Leadership, however, gives you lots & lots of followers. Followers can have levels in unspecified classes, some of which could be spellcasting classes. If you make an assumption, such as 1/4th of them are either Wizards or Clerics, then you can estimate how many spell slots your followers will have available to put into your epic spell. With a leadership score of 40, you have a particular number of followers of a given level. Dividing each of those numbers by 4 to get the assumed number of spellcasters at that level gives the number of additional participants (and the highest level of spell they have available) you can get, just from your followers, for cutting down the DC of your epic spells. With 1/4 Wiz/Cleric followers (Druid would work just as well, but cleric followers are likely with you being a cleric base yourself) you can get a DC modifier on your Epic Spellcraft DC's for making Epic spells in the range of -356 to -388 (depending on rounding - is 7/4 1 or 2? is 1/4 0 or 1?). Thus, any Epic spell you develop, before mitigating factors, that has a base Spellcraft DC of under 356 can have a final DC of 0 just by roping in your followers to aid your spellcasting. With a final Spellcraft DC of 0, the spell takes no time to research, no gold to research, and no XP to research. To cast it, however, you need all your followers to gather round and give you their highest spell slot - which you can likely do, what with them being your followers.

The specific example was a spell to make you pretty much immune to dispelling (epic spells, however, can still dispel your defense against dispelling via the Destroy and Dispel seeds). This is a nice spell to have up because it's a pain to get hit by a Disjunction or a Dispel Magic. The Ward seed has the option of making you immune to a specific list of spells, by rules laid out in the Ward entry. A Ward against Dispel Magic, Greater Dispel Magic, Disjunction, and AntiMagic Field gives a base DC of 60 before enhancements and mitigating factors. With the Permanent Enhancement (which multiplies the pre-mitigated DC by 5) that's a DC of 300. Without Epic Leadership, there's pretty much no way you are going to be able to make that for a long, long time (well.... if it's a 100 day ritual, you can squeeze out a -220 (-20 for 10 extra minutes, -200 for 100 extra days), and get the different dispel defenses one at a time (ward against a 9th level spell has a base DC of 30; making it permanent makes the DC 150; an extra 10 minutes (-20), and an extra 65 days (-130) put that DC to 0), but that takes a year or so of continuous down time, while Epic Leadership can get all four anti-magic spells stopped in under a day with a leadership score of 40). Your followers can spend most their time off-screen (they are building a town for you, say, and maintaining a base of operations - a safe retreat point), and only come into use when you want to cast a spell, pick up a few wands, or whatever.

However, that same DC reducing resource can be used for a good many epic spells - want to Transfrom into a dragon, with all the Su and Ex abilities? A Gold Dragon Wyrm takes a DC of 21 (base seed) +18 (size difference) + 5 (Type change -> Dragon) +10 (Supernatural Breath Weapon) + 10 (Crush, Ex ability) + 10 (Ex Tail Sweep) + 10 (Ex Frightful Presence) +10 (Ex immunities) + 10 (Ex Spell Reistance) + 10 (Ex Blindsense) + 10 (Ex Keen Senses) + 10 (Su Alternate Form) + 10 (Ex water breathing) + 46 (23 HD over 15) for a base spellcraft DC of 169. To get that to 0, you need mitigating factors worth 169 points (Transform is permanent by default, so no need for that pesky *5 Permanent enhancement). 169 1st level spell slots from your 1st level followers will cover it. With the Gold Dragon's Alternate Form ability, you can even follow the party into dungeons by shaping yourself into a human as a standard action up to three times per day (for as long as you wish - you could spend all your time shaped as a humanoid form, if you wanted). The only things missing from being an actual Gold Dragon would be the spell like abilities (Luck, Detect Gems, bless, geas, sunburst, foresight), the hit points, class skills, feats, and inherent Sorcerous spellcasting... but you would still have all of your cleric spellcasting available.

As a half-celestial Cleric, however, you may want to go the Solar route:
21 (base Transform Seed) + 10 (Su Protective Aura) + 10 (Su Tounges) + 10 Regeneration + 10 (Ex or Su Damage Reduction) + 10 (Ex Darkvision) +10 (Ex Low Light vision) + 30 (Ex Immunity to Cold, Acid, and Petrification) + 20 (Ex Resistance to Electricity and Fire 10) + 14 (7 HD over 15) for a base DC of 145. Additional Participants can drop that down to 0 for you with 145 1st level spell slots from your followers.

Nifty, no?