Dark Hellion wrote:Since you sound unfamiliar with 3.5 Stormin would you mind my quick input on your char?
Advice is always welcome, I may not take it but it is welcome.
Despite their D8 hit dice the Cleric has trouble going toe to toe with a lot of melee monsters in attrition warfare. This is especially hampered by the 3/4 BAB advancement, meaning after a couple of levels it is generally much easier for them to hit you than you to hit them, and they will have more HP and higher Str bonuses. Thus the cleric is much better in an off-tank role, standing close-ish to the BSF (Big stupid fighter) to prevent flanking, break charge lines and drop cures on him mid-battle.
Pretty much what I was planning.
As such, sword and board tends to be pretty good until you get 4th level spells and can just divine power yourself into a big badass fighter. Since you are using a saint for your god, you could choose to give him favored weapon of Warmace from Complete warrior. It is a two-handed martial weapon that can be used 1 handed if you have exotic weapon proficiency for it. It give -1 AC but it does d12 damage. Since you are human you have free feats to use so that you can 1 hand it and take a heavy shield which nets you +1 AC overall and lets you hit like a ton of bricks while still having good defense. The Warmace is only 25gp and a heavy wooden shield is 7gp so it should be well within budget. Besides, you are a warrior of god, it is only right and holy that you beat shit with a giant cudgel. If you need to hit harder it is only a move action to drop or pick up the heavy shield so you can still use the warmace two-handed if you need the 1.5 Str.
Eh, gonna keep the greatsword. It's something I'm carrying over from another story where Lord Black was a leader in a big war and eventually had a large following which was absorbed into one of the major churches to create the Martial order of the Black Priests. Here the origin will be a lot more humble but I'm going to try to keep as close as possible.
Speaking of Str you can cast spells to enhance it. It would probably be better to switch the 16 to Con and the 14 to Str. Con is simply a more important stat because it helps you not die. You are the Cleric, when you want to kill things you have spells so you can hulk out. You don't need to rely on your base stats as much as a fighter or a barb so take the better stat. Con not only would give you +1 HP at every level but better Fort saves, and let you hold your breath longer (as you are a cleric and not a witch you instantly sink in any water deeper than a puddle).
Agreed and done.
Skills, max concentration. You are going to have to cast spells defensively and you need to nail that conc. check. Screw swim. You take armour check penalties to it that are so bad that you will never actually be able to swim anyways. If you fall in the water (in the desert?) just hold your breath and someone will fish you out eventually, or you can just zombie it out and walk across the bottom until you reach dry land again. Eventually you get freedom of movement and you laugh heartily as water is a bitch to your divine might.
Agreed and done. I was considering the trip between the continents really and wanted to have a chance at surviving if I fell in the drink <shrug>
Just some quick thoughts. All will make your character more powerful, but how powerful you want him to be is entirely your decision. If you want him to be utterly badass, I can provide you some even better things to do, but they would require some major restructuring and I am loathe to tell someone to remake their whole character to squeeze out a bit more juice. You seem to have a decent hang of it anyways and he'll probably work fine as is.
Yeah, I'm not looking to be the guy in the gimp suit or the one who does everything while everyone else feels useless. Supposedly to get the super overpowered characters one usually needs the extra books I never bothered getting.
Edit: Heal is worthless after the first few levels right? When I played the groups never got out of the lowb zone where stuff like that was useless. I might drop that skill or lower it a fair bit for something more useful.