jaelis said:
Well, yes. I would have said persistant divine power was by itself rather broken at a cost of two feats and a 4th level slot. Even if you dropped the Str bonus and the temp hp. But I can't say I've played with it... if you have and didn't find it to be so great, that is interesting.
Well, the reason it works less well that you'd think is that there are quite a few hidden limitations. Really, a fighting cleric needs to buff himself with far more than just one spell. In effect, you're spending a lot of resources to be able to have a powerful buff on all the time - but without all those other buffs you
can't turn on all the time, you're still much weaker than a plain fighter. So what's the real gain here? Any non-persist cleric has much the same buffs for one encounter, and just like the normal cleric, you still need to buff before battle since the persist's alone don't cut it. This is the fundamental problem which you're unlikely to find a way around.
Now, a DMM cleric who could persist any number of spells would indeed circumvent that problem, but that's only specifically possible with, as far as I know, many copies of a very specific item (nightsticks). Without nightsticks, it's no go - and that's not an item you want in your game anyhow, and certainly you want the item not to be able to power turn-attempt consuming feats.
There are other practical problems for a DMM cleric. Firstly, despite all his buffs, he'll likely have worse stats than the fighter. A DMM cleric is pretty heavily MAD, since you need as high a charisma as possible to gain extra turn attempts, you need a high wisdom since you're a spell caster and wish to cast high level spells (and ideally gain bonus spells too). You need an exceptionally high Con, since your hitdie is lower than that of a fighter. You need a high strength, since that's what your character actually does - hit things. Preferably, you want a high Dex, for extra AC, and to boost your weakest save. It's pretty lame to be a 20th level DMM persist cleric just to be immobilized by the 1st level wizard casting
grease, but... well... that can actually happen pretty easily.
Then, you're very vulnerable to any antimagical effects, beginning with the simple dispel magic effects. And once your spells have discharged, you can't reset them until the next morning, which is at best a hassle, and at worst, a death sentence. A fighter doesn't have that problem nearly as severely.
Finally, there aren't actually that many spells that can be persisted and are OMG broken! Divine Power is probably the best, and that's just allowing you to catch up with the fighter's basics. Maybe, since you'll probably still have less strength due to your MAD and the fact that the fighter will also have serious strength boosts himself. Righteous Might, after the errata, is much less attractive (though still good). Divine Favor is much less attractive after the errata.
Certain fighter-only abilities such as weapon specialization and melee weapon mastery have also tilted the balance in the fighters favor lately. Then, there are the ToB fighter types which again have extra capabilities. So, years ago, the DMM cleric mopped the floor, but then DMM was errata'd, the spells most crucial for DMM were errata'd, and the fighter was improved. DMM Persist is no longer as unbalancing as it once was.
While you're expending a large number of resources just to catch up, you might instead just help your fighter and do what you're actually good at, and probably be better off.
DMM persist doesn't work on touch spells, nor on spells with range Close, Medium or Long, and finally also not on "Effect" spells. That precludes the use of the vast majority of spells. Only Range
ersonal, or Range:[some fixed number] is allowed, and even then, only if the effect is measured in minutes or rounds is it actually very useful.
So, there are a few very interesting spells to persist, but not in the old-style. You could persist mass lesser vigor, for instance, and grant people within 30ft fast healing 1. That's nice, but not very powerful, as healing is generally not problem when you have a cleric around, and in-combat a few extra hp just doesn't make a big difference.
So, DMM persist was broken, but is no longer, and Sudden Persist is less broken than DMM persist ever was, and would be an eminently usable feat right now.
If a player wanted it, I'd allow it.
