Heavenly Smith

So, I got this idea for a new character concept and been fiddling with a build sheet to make it both fit the concept in question and also able to deal some damage out without dying horrible 9 times out of 10...

The concept I had in mind is a mixed melee and caster type. Hence the Spell Opportunist feat and greater smithing abilities. Wasn't sure of how to work in the Spell Focus (Evocation) feats in the original build because of the Charisma needed to take Great Smithing, but might work when I get access to tomes and Store Bought ability increases...

Full Name: Céleste Lefévre
Meaning behind the Name: Heavenly Smith

Subrace: Winged Human (Since she won't be able to get the holy paladin wings, I found a work-around which allows her the blessed wings anyway + the extra feat for human ancestry )


STR: 16 (After +3 STR Tome)
DEX: 10 (After +2 DEX Tome)
CON: 11 (after +3 CON Tome)
INT: 12 (After +2 INT Tome)
WIS: 14
CHA: 18
_{^Still a work in progress...}

For Skill Points I imagined something like: Concentration, Discipline, and Spellcraft to be the majority investment. With the rest spread out as I see it fit into the concept...

Once I get the first custom voucher I'll be requesting an item (warhammer for holy forging needs  ) with the Enchant Arms and Armor feat.

Level	Level Progression	Picked Feat(s)	Class Feat(s)	Ability Increase
1st	[P]	1st Level Feat: Weapon Focus (Warhammer), Power Attack	Divine Grace, Divine Health, Lay of Hands, Detect Evil
2nd	[P]		Aura of Courage, Smite Evil, Charge
3rd	[P]	2nd Feat: Divine Might	Remove Disease, Turn Undead
4th	[P]			1st: Charisma
5th	[P]		Summon Mount
6th	[P]	3rd Feat: Divine Shield
7th	[P]
8th	[P]			2nd: Charisma
9th	[P]	4th Feat: Extra Smiting
10th	[P]
11th	[P]
12th	[P]	5th Feat: Cleave		3rd: Charisma
13th	[P]
14th	[P]
15th	[P]	6th Feat: Great Cleave
16th	[P]			4th: Charisma
17th	[C]		Domain Feat x2 (Protection, Strength), Turn Undead
18th	[C]	7th Feat: Spell Opportunist?
19th	[C]
20th	[C]			5th: Charisma
21th	[C]	8th Feat: Great Charisma I
22nd	[C]
23rd	[C]
24th	[C]	9th Feat: Great Smiting I		6th: Charisma
25th	[C]
26th	[C]
27th	[CoD]	10th Feat: Great Smiting II	Lay on Hands
28th	[C]			7th: Wisdom
29th	[C]
30th	[CoD]	11th Feat: Great Smiting III	BF: Great Smiting IV, Sacred Defense +1
31th	[C]
32nd	[C]			8th: Wisdom
33th	[C]	12th Feat: Great Smiting V
34th	[C]
35th	[C]
36th	[C]	13th Feat: Great Smiting VI		9th: Wisdom
37th	[C]
38th	[C]
39th	[C]	14th Feat: Great Smiting VII
40th	[C]			10th: Wisdom

+ Dead Stalker Semi Class.


Ideas are as always welcomed...

Clerics in Aenea don't get domains, so whatever bonuses you intended to get from those... you won't be getting them

I would drop the spell opportunist.   Opportunist really doesn't offer that much benefit for clerics, it's really more use to focused wizards who have spells that can actually be used with it, and have bonus feats to burn on it as well.

The build is not bad on AB/melee damage per-se, but not great enough to justify great cleave; you'll really need a super AB and damage to one-shot kill tougher mob enemies and get off more than one cleave per round.  I'd drop both cleave and great cleave.  You can always grab cleave as a bonus feat on a voucher item, or as dwarf upgrade quest.

I would also consider dropping a great smiting or two to grab epic weapon focus/epic prowress.  Your AB will be decent on the smites, but you'll only have a coupe uses of that per day.

Or I would mix-match in some evocation focuses to boost your spell DCs (which may be a bit on the bare min side depending on how much wisdom you get in.

I would also drop divine shield.  It will be useful at lower levels, but once you get epic spells, your AC will be extremely high.  With full plate, a +5 shield, +5 boots, and a dusty rose ioun, you'll have an AC in the upper 80's when you got all three epic armor seeds going.  DIvine shield would only be giving you an addtional +14 on top of that, and is a bit of overkill.  Even horaxona and Nemesis will whiff a bit when you're AC's near the 90 mark.

I'd drop the Champ levels, go 23 cleric, 17 paladin, grab epic skill focus and use the bonus cleric epic feat to grab mystical insight to help with your epic spell cast DCs.

MannyJabrielle wrote:Clerics in Aenea don't get domains, so whatever bonuses you intended to get from those... you won't be getting them

Ah, knew there was something I had forgotten about. Wasn't anything particular I wanted from the domains, just the only ones which I found fitted best into the concept I had thought up...no lose there (although both stoneskin and energy buffer are nice spells).

MannyJabrielle wrote:I would drop the spell opportunist.   Opportunist really doesn't offer that much benefit for clerics, it's really more use to focused wizards who have spells that can actually be used with it, and have bonus feats to burn on it as well.

The build is not bad on AB/melee damage per-se, but not great enough to justify great cleave; you'll really need a super AB and damage to one-shot kill tougher mob enemies and get off more than one cleave per round.  I'd drop both cleave and great cleave.  You can always grab cleave as a bonus feat on a voucher item, or as dwarf upgrade quest.

I would also consider dropping a great smiting or two to grab epic weapon focus/epic prowress.  Your AB will be decent on the smites, but you'll only have a coupe uses of that per day.

Or I would mix-match in some evocation focuses to boost your spell DCs (which may be a bit on the bare min side depending on how much wisdom you get in.

I would also drop divine shield.  It will be useful at lower levels, but once you get epic spells, your AC will be extremely high.  With full plate, a +5 shield, +5 boots, and a dusty rose ioun, you'll have an AC in the upper 80's when you got all three epic armor seeds going.  DIvine shield would only be giving you an addtional +14 on top of that, and is a bit of overkill.  Even horaxona and Nemesis will whiff a bit when you're AC's near the 90 mark.

I'd drop the Champ levels, go 23 cleric, 17 paladin, grab epic skill focus and use the bonus cleric epic feat to grab mystical insight to help with your epic spell cast DCs.

The feedback is a great aid, thanks a lot, on the feat suggestions; I have been considering both Mystical Insight and Weapon Specialization, but wasn't sure how to fit them into the build since it doesn't got that many feats to make good of...also, wasn't sure how useful +2 AB to the weapon would be over the ability to cleave.

I have never had a high level cleric before, so not quite sure of the AB of them. Great Cleave really won't be of much use at all? ^^' Hmm...  Maybe I'll replace them with the Spell Focus feats then.

The only reason why I chose to take two levels of CoD was because I wanted some more epic feats to make use of...figured it couldn't hurt. Epic feats are always nice to have; the more the merrier!

On the wisdom matter; I was going to pour in as many points I can from creation. Just haven't gotten around to calculate the stat attributes out yet. ^^;

Clerics aren't too bad on AB.  The 4th or 5th level spell "divine power" is nice for help there.  It boosts you up to the same BAB as a fighter of equal level (you get 4 base attacks per round), and boosts your STR up to 18 if not already at that point.

Great cleave can be useful, but as I mentioned, to really benefit from it, you need enough AB and damage to consistently one-shot kill an enemy to get in a string of great cleaves.  If you don't have that, just cleave would be enough (one free attack per round on a second opponent after you've killed the first one).

CoD's can't take weapon specialization.  I think they've been tweaked to get *epic* weapon specialization, but only if they have 4 fighter levels and have already taken the non-epic specialization on that 4th or higher fighter level.  Without that, CoD's are limited to weapon focus/epic weapon focus.

I would also consider improved critical.  Warhammers have a low low low crit range (base 20 roll only, 19-20 keened or with imp.crit, 18-20 with both keen and imp.crit).  But that would be later on after I had gotten a feel for how the character does.  If I feel he or she is doing alright without, I'd opt for spell focuses.

And yeah.... the feat-starved nature of the build is something.  I would almost consider dropping enough paladin levels to take 10 levels of champ.

That could actually work to your benefit.  Maybe something like 7 paladin, then 3 champ, 10 cleric, 7 more champ post-epic, then fill the rest out with cleric.  That would get you 5 bonus feats in the epic levels (4 champ, 1 cleric), give you enough BAB pre-epic for 4 base attacks per round (without divine power).  You could still get divine might, divine shield, power attack, weapon focus, extra smiting, spell focus, greater spell focus, epic spell focus, epic skill focus, mystical insight, epic weapon focus, and still have enough feats for great smiting 8, OR, switch out a couple of those great smitings for great-wisdoms (champs can take great wisdom as bonus feats in epic levels).

You'd lose a couple levels of turning power, but between the dead stalker levels and a greater turning amulet, you should still have some pretty hefty punch on the undead.  You won't lose any smite power as the champ levels stack with paladin for that and for lay of hands.  You'd get some more kick out of divine wrath as well, which would help push your AB into very excellent ranges.

MannyJabrielle wrote:That could actually work to your benefit. Maybe something like 7 paladin, then 3 champ, 10 cleric, 7 more champ post-epic, then fill the rest out with cleric.

As far as I can see by looking at the NWNWIKI the Paladin does not get access to 3rd level spells before level 12 at the latest, I opted for 16 levels for the benefit of 4 attacks per round (also, for some reason I had my mind set into thinking I needed the Holy Sword spell to craft Holy Avengers, but now that I check the magic item list I see it's only the Prayer spell and 21 cleric levels which are needed for that ^^'). This may change things. . .

If you're *really* hard on for higher level paladin spells, you could always do the bonus spell slot thing  It works right off the bat for divine casters as long as you got the minimum wisdom score for the spell level.

Worked things around a bit and think I am pretty satisfied with the modifications currently, will try to get in game soon to start her up and see how it works out - Opted for Great Smiting V in exchange for Epic Spell Penetration...may need a tweak somewhere in the later levels, but pretty satisfied with the pre epic side of her. Thanks for the brainstorming! ^^

Angel of Death wrote:
... for some reason I had my mind set into thinking I needed the Holy Sword spell to craft Holy Avengers...

No, there was a thread discussing why NOT, but it turned out the reason is simply because only Dalix's clergy can create Holy Avengers (and they don't have access to that spell). The Paladins can channel Dalix's divine flow into a weapon but only for a limited time (hence the spell). It takes a direct Prayer (cleric spell) to her to infuse something permanently.


I like this build a lot, and was thinking of doing something like this with Wanda. Just to get that exclusive ability to forge Holy Avengers, but think it would be better to create a new PC, which is something I just don't have the time for at the moment... ...

I would also aim for the cleric levels first, then the paladin. This is so that you could RP a devotion to Dalix and learning to forge weapons.. then one day you forged an almighty Holy Avenger and heard the calling to be a protector of the realm etc etc.... .... ... it all depends on how you want to build stuff up.

RustyDios wrote:I would also aim for the cleric levels first, then the paladin. This is so that you could RP a devotion to Dalix and learning to forge weapons.. then one day you forged an almighty Holy Avenger and heard the calling to be a protector of the realm etc etc.... .... ... it all depends on how you want to build stuff up.

I have already sorta got most of the background thought of from before I made the build which works for this concept. Just need to get around to type it down...right now it's all in my head. ^^'

The first thing I got down was finding the name. (*random burst* French names rocks btw!   )
Second is thinking up an appearance and background to go along with less important stuff like build, etc.

And, now that you mention it. I might remember that thread...from somewhere...still, my mind was set in the 'holy sword spell + 21st cleric is needed for holy weaponry creation' the other day. XD