Cleric tactics and tips.

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Please post your favourite cleric tactics. What spell do you recommend? Do you often melee? Do you use offensive spells? etc.

 

Harm is the most powerful attack spell for clerics in SoA, one hit=reduced down to single HP, with no saving throw allowed. Though you must roll to hit. Clerics have decent THAC0 progression (second best after fighters) so they can be decent warriors as well, it is a pity they are only allowed type B weapons, but they can use best weapons in the game:Flail of the Ages and Crom Faeyr.

Holy Smite is a very useful are-effect spell, if your party does not have evil-aligned NPCs, ofcourse. Most enemies are evil, so this spell packs a good punch.

Hold Person will compltely disable enemy clerics and fighters if they fail their saving throw.

Animate Dead is a very useful summoning spell once you reach lvl 15, that Skeleton warrior has %90 Magic Resistance so it can tank almost any enemy spell-caster, provided that they do not counter it with a nasty nasty Death Spell. (which kills all summons regardless of MR or saving throw)

Aerial Servant is very powerful:it does massive damage with its attacks:20-30 dmg per hit. It is really impressive, summon a lot of them, haste them via your mage, and they will quickly cream opponents.

One good strategy I like is:First cast Holy Power (lvl 4) which will raise your STR to 18/00. Then cast Draw Upon Holy Might (lvl 2) this will further boost your STR way above 19 STR, to inhuman 22-23 STR for a good duration. Dual-wield your favourite weapons, and improved haste your self:you will be an impressive melee force! Even weaklings like Aerie or Viccy can do massive melee-damage when buffed up to the max!

Armor of Faith stacks in some versions of the game, cast it a few times and check your resistances:you can make yourself immune to ALL damage if your version allows it. (can you smell the cheese?)

Anyway, these are the ideas for a SoA only game, if you had ToB, that was another story. (which is forbidden to discuss in this topic, sorry )

 

Cleric tactics:

Make sure you start off as a Berserker before dual-classing into Cleric.

Cleric/Ranger multiclasses are nice too.

 

But a single-classed cleric can still be very powerful, check thetruth's cleric solo campaign, he has survived immensely difficult battles!

 

Don't forget Righteous Magic as well. Now that you've boosted your Strength and thac0, you will want to be doing full damage with each hit. And for longer than a Kensai's Kai too...

 

Holy Smite is a great spell.

Harm is nearly unbalancing. With enough buffs to boost THAC0, Harm will lay low any opponent. Firkraag went down to one trap and one harm spell. The harm spell makes him hostile and before he can cast anything the trap kills him (although he must fail his magic resistance).

Do not forget about turn undead. Very powerful.

 

Turn undead is the only thing keeping me alive right now, when doing Korgan's quest a bit too early for my own good...

"Eek! Stay away, foul creature, we can barely take a cat scratch right now. No level drains, please."

 

I noticed a powerful spell called Greater Command. The casting time is only 1 and it is rather difficult to resist it.

 

Start from BG, dwarf C/F. read the tomes/manuals.

That is all.

EDIT:typo

[ September 12, 2006, 22:36: Message edited by: Trellheim ]

 

You'll need SK to do that. Only gnomes and halforcs can be C/T multiclass.

 

Sorry , typo , Cleric/Fighter, I'm so used to write F/T.

 

Berserkers dualled to clerics (especially wearing heavy platemail, a magic shield, and either Crom Faer or Flail of Ages) can be bad, bad, bad mothers. In the non-matriarchal sense.

 

So am I the only one who found Greater Command to be useful? Its really powerful, as I stated before. Only costs 1 to cast. Because it affects friendly creatures in the spell area, you can witness its uberness. Even your high level party members have difficulty resisting it.

 

Greater Command is nice enough spell as it is fast, but it affects friendly targets too, which sucks. Also, it is not THAT hard to resist. IIRC, an unmodified save vs spells is needed to resist it, which any worthy creature can do.

Now, mage's Chaos, on the other hand, is a better disabler as:it does not affect allies, and it is hard to resist:save vs spells at -4, if you also cast a GM beforehand, this will make -8 penalty, trust me even the toughest creature (dragons) will have hard time resisting this combo.

 

Why would we want to cast a spell that has a decent chance of taking out our own party members? Especially when there are far better level 5 spells anyway.

 

I've never tried, but wouldn't it work well in a spell trigger with Greater Malison and Doom? Maybe not the best trigger in the world, but should work quite often.

 

^There are better spells to stick into sequencers/triggers than a mere Greater Command for C/Ms, especially Chaos. A Greater Malison+Chaos+Slow combo is very potent, save vs spells at -8 twice or nasty nasty things happen.

 

^ Especially when followed by Emotion, Hold Monster and another of your choice.

Two Spell Sequencers working together is very nasty to behold.

 

Sling of seeking allows STR bonus to be applied to the damage the bullet causes. Use it with Holy Power+DuHM, smear some oil of speed, and you will be doing impressive ranged damage as well. Clerics are truly versatile fighters.

 

^ Magic bullets also add the strength bonus.