Thoughts on favoured souls

[Qbic]

Hi guys,

Lately I have been playing one of the many fabulous persistant worlds and I was thinking of trying a favoured soul. I found a nice build in one of the subforums here but I am wondering what the real pro's and cons are of favoured souls and if you like/dislike them. On the official forums someone claimed they are a more powerful version of a cleric while others seem to think it is vice versa and I would be better off sticking to a cleric/fighter build.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Martin

[kgambit]

moved this to the character optimizing section

[sirchet]

In my opinion a Favored Soul is a much better choice than your standard Fighter/Cleric build.

First you don't have to loose your spell caster level gains for the levels spent on Fighter.

A Favored Soul still gets many fighter benefits like Weapon Proficiency in their Deity's favored weapon followed by weapon focus at lev 3 and weapon Specialization at lev 12.

Then we have the Damage Reduction of 10/silver, or 10/cold iron at lev 20.

And also energy Resistance of 10 toward any chosen energy at lev 10, choose another type at lev 15.

Add being able to cast haste 3 times a day at lev 17 and we have the best of both worlds without giving up the fighter, or cleric benefits.

Remember that a Favored Soul uses Charisma not Wisdom when determining the strength and number of spells and abilities.

[kgambit]

Originally Posted by sirchet

Remember that a Favored Soul uses Charisma not Wisdom when determining the strength and number of spells and abilities.

Because of the charisma focus, you can cheeze the Favored soul build with a handful of levels of paladin to get the charisma boost to saving throws as well without gimping the FS levels.

(I can't believe i just said that ....)

[sirchet]

But if you CHEEZE a few Pally levels, then you would have a Pally/Favored Soul and not a Favored Soul as the original poster was asking about.

I think a Pally is the, (dare I say it?) old school way of having a fighter/cleric.


Heh heh, I said cheeze too.

[kgambit]

I'm thinking no more than 3 pally levels here, so it's not a Pally/FS at all.

You take 2 levels of Paladin to get Divine Grave or
3 levels to add immunity to disease and fear

Plus you make the FS an aasimar for the CHA and WIS bonuses and so you don't get a XP penalty.

The only thing you miss is the damage/cold iron or damage/silver immunities and the trade off in saves is well worth it. You still get haste at 17th level.

You lose all 9th level spells and two 8th level spells if you take three levels of pally and 2 9th level spells if you only take 2.

It's a VERY common build with favored souls.

And no - pallys are NOT old school fighter clerics in the least.

[Qbic]

Thanks for the help guys; I was looking at the build Krinn made being "Human Favored Soul 20 - Cleric 2 - Paladin 2 - Divine Champion 6".
I think I might try this but maybe replace the 2 cleric by 2 paladin; am not sure yet. I love pallies and play one as well on that PW.
What a damn addictive game this is

[Alyiakal]

New to the forums, but I've done some thought on Favoured Souls and this looked like a good place to ask.

I've thought about the FS26/Pal2/Clr2 build, and the advantage I can see is getting 2 domain feats, perhaps picking up some low level cleric slots (not sure what the use is there), and being able to pick up both Divine Might AND Divine Shield (the FS is a fighting character after all). However, this build has to be human as opposed to Aasimar, and by doing so, it really puts a strain on other stats if you ever want to qualify for EDM (again, we're talking about a fighting FS here).

I prefer to go Aasimar to save on Great Strength/Charisma feats, but that means 4 levels of Pally to get Divine Might, and another if I want Divine shield. Practiced spellcaster will cover 4 of those levels. It probably is worth it to eat an extra pally level for divine shield vs losing a few rounds off the buff durations, but I thought I might get some opinions on that one, since you also lose an FS Epic bonus feat.

A few more questions... Are Empower/Maximize Spell worth it for a fighting FS to get? There are precious few damaging spells to begin with, so I thought that may be in question.

Lastly, are any of the new spells in SoZ worth using? Stuff like Conviction and Darkshield seem interesting, but I haven't tried them out yet.

[kgambit]

Originally Posted by Alyiakal

I prefer to go Aasimar to save on Great Strength/Charisma feats, but that means 4 levels of Pally to get Divine Might, and another if I want Divine shield. Practiced spellcaster will cover 4 of those levels. It probably is worth it to eat an extra pally level for divine shield vs losing a few rounds off the buff durations, but I thought I might get some opinions on that one....

If you want the DM, DS and EDM powers then pally 5 is definitely a better way to go than pally 2 / cleric 2.

A few more questions... Are Empower/Maximize Spell worth it for a fighting FS to get? There are precious few damaging spells to begin with, so I thought that may be in question.

Extend and Persistent Spell are probably better choices.

Lastly, are any of the new spells in SoZ worth using? Stuff like Conviction and Darkshield seem interesting, but I haven't tried them out yet.

I haven't used a lot, but castigate, the Orb spells, nightshield, and conviction are nice.

[Alyiakal]

Thanks for the quick reply kgambit. Seems to be a lot of knowledgeable people around here. Wish I had found you guys sooner .

A few more questions if you don't mind...

FS level 20 gives you 10/(cold iron or silver), and Stone Body gives you 10/adamantine. Can this DR be defeated by anything? Mainly I ask because if FS level 20 is taken post epic, you can pick up an epic spell.

Does Blind Fight provide any benefit over using the Blindsight or True Seeing spells? I've heard you still get stuck with the concealment penalty, which is fairly important for a fighting character.

How important would Epic Resilience be to an FS/Pally build? (since it will have high saves all around)