Last lvl, rogue or cleric?

[Atree]

I currently have a 28pt human lvl 17/1/1 cleric/fighter/rogue which I solo or PuG in about equal measures. Playstyle is a buffer and front line melee with healing aura, occasionally stepping back to group heal. Since this is my highest char, gear is way underlevel but will hopefully get better over time (ran my first shroud this week). Only has access to +1 tomes for now.

Stats: starting (current with items,buffs etc)
str 16 (26) <- all lvl ups here
dex 8 (13)
con 14 (22) <- used a +1 tome
int 14 (14)
wis 14 (20)
cha 8 (16)

Current hp is ~400, sp ~1200

Skills:
21 conce, 21 DD, 16 search (compensated by find-trap spell), 6 OL, 6 UMD, 4 balance


For my next, and last lvl should I go with a 2nd lvl of rogue or 18th lvl of cleric?

Rogue:
Evasion, more UMD or OL, possibly +1 ref save

Cleric:
More sp, +1 lvl 8&9 spell slots, +1 fort save

I get the impression that my reflex save is too low for evasion to make much of an impact, and from perusing the forum I'm not sure how meaningful UMD will be even if I raise it to 12-14. Conversely an extra high lvl spell will likely not matter much either since my DC is low and I only use sp for buffs and group healing (the aura+burst is sufficient for self-healing when soloing)

[Sinni]

I don't know what your reflex save is, but with this number of cleric levels and only a dex of 13 with items i'd also say your reflex save is too low to make much of a difference.

UMD needs to be at pretty high levels to be really useful, if you can only get it to 12-14 ranks and have a lowish cha (which you do) it won't become too useful imo

but i think you'll profit from a third lvl 9 spell slot, even without any useful DC there are still 4 useful spells:

mass heal
energy drain (2d4 negative levels, no DC, but SR, which does not depend on stats. cast at the beginning of a fight you can knock of quite a bunch of hitpoints of a mob with a single cast. and lower it's saves, attack and damage rolls as well)
true resurrection
summon monster 9

and more SP are always useful, you get about 100 additional SP which is about 2 mass heals


i'd say go for the cleric level

[unbongwah]

With base INT 14, what the heck were you spending your skill pts on other than UMD? EDIT: ah, I see, trap skills.

[kinar]

Why not fighter? More hp plus another feat and access to fighter str 1 (good synergy with your lvl 20 stat point)

You have already said that you are primarily a melee character and don't need the extra sp or spell slots (could you really use more high-end spells?).

I love a good clogue build but your rogue skills already aren't stellar so another lvl of rogue isn't going to entirely fix that...you could max search and DD but thats about it. You don't have the reflex save to make evasion really even a factor in the discussion unless you are content running low lvl content (anything lvl 15 or less) on your capped character.

[sephiroth1084]

Let's see...
+0 base from fighter
+5 base from cleric
+3 base from rogue (assuming 2 lvls)
+3 Dex (8 +6 item +2 tome)
+4 GH
+2 luck (Head of Good Fortune/epic blue slot--drop to +1 if you have neither of these: Voice)
+1 Haste
+4 (?) Holy Aura
+5 resist item
____
27 close to maxed-out Reflex

I think that's useful in pre-epic content on normal, and may be useful on Hard vs. spells in some quests post-Vale. Don't believe it's of much use in elite Amrath/IQ or Epics, but I could be mistaken. A bard could raise that by another few points, as could a Yugo Dex potion, epic and exceptional Dex items, and a Dex tome.