Healing Trap Monkey or Lockpicking Healbot

[Cutter1968]

I was thinking of trying to roll up a cleric/rogue character and was curious if anyone had had any succes with this combination. As far as play style, I would want this character to heal and buff the party and also be able to handle trap and lockpicking duties.

Does this work?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[JeffreyGator]

having both a dwarf cleric rogue and a halfling rogue with dragon marks, I like the halfling much better.

Both for the healing (even w/o maximize 4 heals, 6 CS and 8 CLW goes a far ways)

The halfling seems to sacrifice 4 feats but can better make up feats with fighter, ranger or monk levels than the cleric can.

The halfling gets to have many more rogue levels as well and can blow off wisdom mostly and so is less stat over spread.

However if you're not planning to fight at all you may have more success as a cleric/rogue.

[ShadowcatX]

IMO this is going to be pretty MAD. You're going to have wisdom for casting, int for skills, and of course Con. If you're a human and you take 16 int, 6 skill points a level in cleric and having to buy, cross class, spot, search, and disable device, and you're never going to be as good as a rogue because the rogue gets the enhancements to those skills.

You may consider instead using a level of rogue instead to unlock UMD and then go all the way cleric. A halfling could get a very respectable backstab damage on top of that and dragon marks would make you an amazing healer. Synergy FTW.

[Cutter1968]

Anyone have a good build for this combination? What to take and when to take it sort of thing? I only have 28pt builds (i dont have the favor for 32 yet and I refuse to spend the TP for it).

I am open to suggestions (other than suggestions that I should buy the 32 pt build)

thanks,

[Darkrok]

Just a bare outline...I'd go 1 rogue/19 cleric or 2 rogue/18 cleric. First level is rogue, if you take rogue 2 take it around level 9-11'ish. Human mainly for the extra skill points...you're going to be starved there since cleric is a 2 point per level class. 8str, 8dex, 14con, 16int, 16wis, 10cha. That will give you 6 points per cleric level which in all honesty isn't really enough but it will have to do. You'd want to max UMD, Disarm Trap, and Search at those levels. Your Open Lock will necessarily lag. Alternatively you could choose to allow the UMD to lag instead and keep up the Open Lock. You can't fit in Spot and you can't fit in Concentration or anything else such as jump, balance, etc (except for the 4 points at level 1). Assuming you take the 2nd rogue level you'll have 9 points left over after your 3 main skills to allow you to play some serious catch up on the 4th skill. You could even go rogue 3 and do the same catch-up again at the very end. This build would also benefit greatly from a +2 int tome at level 7 - you'd get 13 more skill points on a build starved for them.

I just opened up veteran status and have 32-point builds and I'm still torn as to whether I'd want to play this character. Yes, every group needs a healer and you usually need someone to get traps. Yes, it's very cool to be able to meet both of those with the same character - it frees you up to just take 5 of whatever else to fill out the group. The problem is that you bring nothing to the table as a rogue...you're just getting rid of the need for a rogue to get traps/locks. So basically you're a healer with the bonus of removing the requirement of having someone to do traps/locks. But lots of builds can do traps/locks and either not suffer for it or even gain some benefit (Tempest/Rogue builds especially). Clerics give up a ton for the rogue skills.

[Darkrok]

I did just notice mentioned in another thread the ability to use the Find Traps spell to assist your natural Search skill. Untrained and assuming 2 rogue levels and full search spent at level 1 your search would be lagging behind by (level - 1) / 2 rounded up. So at level 20 your search would lag by 10 points - you'd have your starting 4 + 9 points from the Find Traps spell cast as an 18th level cleric for a total of 13 instead of the 23 you could have had. What this means for you is that with a +2 tome at level 7 you'd have enough points to get your search up to the same level as a pure rogue (if not a point or two higher) and still get your concentration up to max as well. I'm still not crazy about it but the synergy there is a nice boon to a skill-starved build.

[LAWPRE]

What role is more important? That should dictate your plan. With a high enough, UMD, your straight rogue could use just about any wand, armor, etc. However, that makes the gear expensive. Likewise, with a straight cleric build, you can find the traps but can you disarm them well enough.

Now, there is one item that has not been mentioned yet - spell SA. I have not been able to get it to work but you should be able to SA with Rays. You MUST be within 30 feet - just like with a ranged weapon - (meaning close enough to get HURT!!) but I have read nothing that about whether or not this works even close to PnP. At this point, it becomes a question about how much SA do you want (You should get 9th level spells at 17th) versus what spells are useful.