domainsoptimizationpathfinder-1e
An exercise of thought:
Let's say I wanted to make a level 20 multi-class abomination of a character. What classes would I take to give me access to the most domains?
Only looking for Paizo material. Partial access like bloodline powers or bonus spells can be mentioned.
Also, let's ignore how many deities would I have to worship.
Okay once again not much of a pathfinder player, but dexterity it is then.
(dex/cha with minimum 13 int)
The character is a Catfolk (see racial notes) Rogue. Take the Clever Cat alternative racial (for the +2 bluff), take the rogue talent Without a Trace, get the Improved Feint Feat, an enchanted Longbow with Fog Cloud (your location) and put skills points into bluff and stealth. Nothing about Feint says it has to be in melee so this is your turn.
Since you made a bluff check and created an area of total concealment now you can make a hide check under the diversion rule. Any reasonable DM will see that this combination of effects is exactly what a feint is by definition, but even a purist should allow you to exchange the Feint effect for the stealth check.
Diversion Rule: “You can use Bluff to allow you to use Stealth. A successful Bluff check can give you the momentary diversion you need to attempt a Stealth check while people are aware of you.”
Now take your DM aside and ask them not to reveal what comes next since the other players can destroy you with this information, and they cannot see you anyway.
Racial Notes: If you want to use Halfling instead of Catfolk then take either Shiftless or Swift as Shadows alternative racial, but then you have to use a shortbow or crossbow. Human is also just fine for this build. A Ratfolk with the Burrowing Teeth feat would make your hidden 5ft step absolutely incredible, and since the cloud lasts your opponent will think you are still inside the cloud somewhere.
Other Devilish Equipment: The Pharmaceuticals Hype (optional it depends on if the DM agrees it prevents spell casting), Vive (intelligence and wisdom damage), Zortaphen (expensive! But instant 1 shot knock out for most casters on a failed save). The poisons Drow Poison (cheap knock out! Yes please and now for the Coup De Grace), Black Adder Venom (cheap repeating constitution damage).
Attributes (I recommend that your level 4 bonus be in dexterity)
All of this is 3.5. Note that you are going to need a ton of turn undead uses to make this viable, which means taking Extra Turning, and that’s a serious problem because you also need a ton of feats for the divine feats themselves, plus any options you want. You are going to be amazingly feat-starved and none of the usual approaches are going to work for you since none of them are on any significant bonus feat lists. Cleric can get you two of them if you go for devotions (and you should), but not with your chosen domains.
Great Divine and Devotion Feats
Niche or Conditional Divine Feats
Awful Divine Feats
Things that would be awesome for you:
A second non-marshal level
Divine Grace
Intimidation
Inspire Courage, Dragonfire Inspiration, gauntlets of heartfelt blows
Things that are worthless to you:
Divine feats are pretty awesome. Many Devotion feats from Complete Champion also use turn undead uses, and are frequently awesome. Here are some of the best for you:
This is the best mobility available in the game. Every single melee character who lacks pounce should have this feat. Even those who have pounce should consider it.
This is the big one, the reason you care about divine feats at all. You get +Cha to damage for one round per use of turn undead.
Note that Power Attack is potentially eh for you. If you are using a two-handed weapon, it’s OK, but if not, strongly consider Tome of Battle’s Stone Power. It’s awesome survivability, and counts as Power Attack for prerequisites. You definitely should want mountain hammer at a minimum from Stone Dragon anyway.
This is a sizable bonus to attack; one of the better devotions to have.
Shields are a bad idea when they’re actually in your hands. They become a much better option once you can afford an animated one. At some point, an animated heavy shield should be something you own, and once you do you might consider this feat.
Note Divine Shield improves the shield’s shield bonus to AC, and thus does not cover touch attacks. Parrying Shield from Lords of Madness fixes that problem. Shield Ward from Player’s Handbook II does the same, but requires Shield Specialization, which is terrible.
“Great” may be overly enthusiastic here, but an effective +4 to Constitution for the purposes of HP isn’t awful. It’s kind of a mini-Rage. Rage itself would be much better, but eh. You wouldn’t have as many uses of that, either.
These feats are maybe worthwhile in certain circumstances, but not generally.
If you go for a fear-based build (see below), this is half-decent-ish maybe? The only reason it’s worth considering is because it stacks with demoralizing: after a round with your enemies cowering, they continue to be shaken for a while. Use this to up that to frightened, which is way better.
In the right campaign, this is worthwhile; giving your whole team good-aligned weapons can totally turn some fights around. But only if you are fighting a lot of foes with DR /good. And at some point, if enough of your foes are affected by this, your allies should be buying holy weapons, so this is only good when you are seeing a lot of DR/good but not an overwhelming amount of it. Thus, niche and “awful” in the general case.
If your Will saves are less than stellar (which they shouldn’t be since you should have divine grace, but anyway), this is somewhat substantial bonus to them as an immediate action. Will saves are important, so it’s kind of valuable. But there are just better ways to protect yourself here.
Immunity to ability damage, drain, and energy drain is awesome. And this gives that for a reasonable amount of time. But that immunity is so awesome that you absolutely should get soulfire from Book of Exalted Deeds sooner rather than later. But before you have that, if you are seeing a lot of these kinds of attacks, and you either can retrain or don’t think you’ll ever be able to get soulfire, this could be worth it.
The reactive version of Sacred Vitality. Healing is way worse than prevention, but this also lets you deal with these things if you failed to prepare, and you can use it on others. The undead-only restriction kind of sucks but that’s the primary use anyway. Regardless, this is worse than Sacred Vitality, which itself was only of dubious value, but it is somewhat more appropriate. Really, though, just buy items that let you do this.
Without going into too much detail, not all divine feats are great. Since many of them are thematically appropriate, I wanted to mention the ones that just don’t give enough to be worth a feat slot, even if they are appropriate.
Divine Accuracy – unless you are fighting a ton of incorporeal foes, but even if you are your party should just invest in ghost-touch weapons.
Divine Alacrity – worthless.
Divine Armor – just too small.
Divine Cleansing – only Fort saves, not worth a feat
Divine Fortune – +4 is nice-ish, but only for you.
Divine Intercession – as dimension door and self-only mean this sucks
Divine Justice – you don’t want to encourage your foes to attack someone else as it is
Divine Spellshield – +2 is just too small for a feat and a standard action.
Divine Spirit – Tiny healing is tiny. Immediate action makes this better than a lot of these “awful” feats but it’s still not worth it.
Divine Vengeance – small-ish amount of damage against only the undead. Maybe consider it if you expect to fight pretty much only undead.
Divine Warrior – Much, much better than Divine Vengeance, but still ultimately not a huge amount of damage against only a subset of possible foes. In the right campaign, holy can be valuable, but if holy is valuable to you, just get a holy weapon.
Persistent Refusal – A good effect, but Luck feats are better at this. Forcing you to use a swift action is a real problem, since the really valuable uses for rerolls are to prevent things that aren’t going to let you act at all.
Sacred Healing – just buy wands of lesser vigor.
Sacred Vengeance – This... is literally identical to Divine Vengeance. What’s that about? Well, different feat, different source: they’d stack. Still not worth it.
Sacred Radiance – There are so many cheaper options for light. Liquid sunlight vials literally cost 20 gp a pop and shine light like a torch indefinitely.
True Believer – While there may be relics worth using, that goes beyond the scope of this question. Without a relic to use, this feat is very poor.
Some things you are missing that would massively improve your use of Charisma that you lack.
Because initiators add half their level in non-initiating classes to their Initiator Level, it typically makes sense to take an even number of non-initiating classes when multiclassing as one.
The sublime marshal learns new maneuvers on even levels. That means you are best off multiclassing, and taking two levels (or six or whatever: 4n+2 for some whole number n), because then you get your new maneuvers on odd levels.
Consider: a single-classed marshal learns his or her first 2nd-level maneuver at ECL 4th. A something-else 2/marshal 2 is also ECL 4, and has Initiator Level 3 – also enough to learn a 2nd-level maneuver.
Better, the 19th level of marshal is a dead level, which means if you multiclass at all – such as with cleric – and are not getting the 20th-level capstone anyway, the only thing you miss out on from 19th level is your tenth minor aura.
So you really should find another single-level dip to take after cleric.
Bard or (harmonious knight) paladin could get you inspire courage.
Crusader can still be dipped for steely resolve and furious counterstrike, not to mention five maneuvers. It would be best to do this as Cleric 1/Marshal 3/Crusader 1/Marshal 15 however, so you can pick up 2nd-level maneuvers. Most importantly, marshal gets only White Raven, and as amazing as it is, it would be very valuable to pick up stuff like martial spirit, crusader’s strike, and mountain hammer.
I assume you are still going for Lawful Neutral, which means barbarian is not going to work for you, but for anyone else doing something similar: barbarian is a natural choice here. Large ability bonuses, great mobility from the lion spiritual totem in Complete Champion.
Fighter gives a bonus feat, which is definitely valuable to you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help with the feats you need most. It also has an ACF that combines very well with a Snowflake Wardance, Intimidate build, though it requires losing cleric or cutting into marshal to do both those and this for your character in particular.
Considering your linked question, I assume you have already rejected paladin as an option for some reason, but it has to be said: divine grace is the single best use of Charisma in the game. It is well worth considering losing the cleric level or cutting into marshal class features to get it.
If the Paladin’s Code or alignment requirement are what hold you back here, note that the hexblade from Complete Warrior gets arcane resistance, +Cha to saves vs. spells. That qualifier sucks, but it’s still pretty good.
The hexblade also gets a Charisma-based curse, and the hexbands from Magic Item Compendium can give you +Cha to damage (stacking with Divine Might) against cursed foes. Four levels also allow you to take the dark companion variant in Player’s Handbook II, which is awesome.
Unfortunately, hexblade is a really weak class. Two levels for a weaker divine grace and no inspire courage is sad, and four levels is an extremely steep price to pay for the dark companion, as cool as it is. Unlike paladin, I’m not sure I can recommend this over cleric or marshal.
The tried-and-true way to use Charisma in a melee build is to focus on Intimidate. Between the Imperious Command feat and fearsome armor from Drow of the Underdark, and the never outnumbered skill trick in Complete Scoundrel, you can start each fight by forcing everyone around you to cower in fear as a move action. In other words, your opening move in most fights gives your whole team an entire round in which to act with impunity. Move wherever they want, set up any flanking they need, nail all of them with a big AoE save-or-suck: anything.
Not necessarily for this character, but for the sake of the title question: nine levels of Zhentarim soldier fighter grants you, in addition to typical fighter options, a free Skill Focus (intimidate), Extend applied to your demoralizing, and the ability to demoralize as a swift action.
Again, something I assume you have consciously decided against for whatever reason, but it has to be mentioned: inspire courage is the best party-wide buff in the game outside of spellcasting. Dragonfire Inspiration substantially improves it. And for this particular question, having it means you can use the gauntlets of heartfelt blows, gaining +Cha to damage (stacks with Divine Might). For those playing at home, this means you could have +Cha to damage up to three times.
Also, unlike divine grace, you can get this without losing anything from cleric or marshal (well, one of ten minor auras).
This does get away, a bit, from your concept, since it limits your ability to use armor, but it’s worth mentioning: you have +Cha to damage, potentially three times over, and this gets you +Cha to attack. And not just one or two attacks per day, as with smite: this lasts all battle.
Snowflake Wardance from Frostburn allows you to start a special bardic music performance as a free action, and for as long as that lasts add Charisma to your attack rolls with slashing weapons that are wielded in one hand. It does not work if you use medium or heavy armor, or carry a shield (an animated shield is still fine), but there are still really solid options for decent armor in this case. A mithral breastplate is solid armor that counts as light, for instance. Two-Weapon Fighting is probably desirable since you cannot use two hands on one weapon or use a shield, but note that you can get the feat (or the Improved version if you already have it) from the gloves of the balanced hand in Magic Item Compendium.
If you want to, you can also dump Strength here and go for high Dexterity. This works well for light armor (even if it’s actually medium armor that’s mithral), and you can avoid taking Weapon Finesse if you do not want it by using feycraft weapons from Dungeon Master’s Guide II, which allows you to use Dexterity in place of Strength even if you lack the feat.
Drow of the Underdark also has a solid fighter ACF here, great if you’re already doing Zhentarim soldier: replace medium and heavy armor proficiencies with +2 to Initiative (awesome) and +Dex to damage against flat-footed foes (...liiiike those that are cowering!).
So, for your stated goal of a supporting, Charisma-based melee build, several of your choices are wasteful; they do not offer anything that furthers those goals.
The War domain grants you Weapon Focus in your deity’s weapon, and proficiency in it if necessary. Except that cleric is also ¾ BAB, so getting Weapon Focus this way is literally worse than just taking a full BAB class, and marshal already provides proficiency in all simple and martial weapons. Thus, it literally provides nothing you don’t already have or couldn’t easily get more easily some other way. Weapon Focus is an awful feat in any event, and you can do far better than +1 to attack rolls from a domain.
The Nobility domain isn’t amazing, but it does support your central goal and it’s not awful. That gets a pass.
Note that there is an exception here, if the following are true:
you can convince your DM that you worship some deity that has the Dungeon Master’s Guide kusari-gama as favored weapon (note: no published deity does)
that deity offers the War domain
your DM agrees that the War domain grants whatever proficiency is necessary to use a favored weapon, rather than explicitly martial weapon proficiency only
you are doing a Snowflake Wardance build
Then War domain becomes more interesting, because you are actually getting proficiency in something useful. The DMG kusari-gama is an exotic light slashing weapon that deals 1d6 damage, and is treated as a spiked chain for most purposes beyond its statblock. That is, it’s a light, continuous-reach, disarming, tripping, slashing weapon. If you can get proficiency for free, grab this thing and never look back. If you weren’t so awfully feat-starved, I might even recommend paying for the EWP the normal way on a Snowflake Wardance build.
If your Snowflake Wardance build is Dexterity-based, feycraft kusari-gama are possible, and the kusari-gama’s statement that it operates as a spiked chain may make it valid for the Shadow Blade feat in Tome of Battle which adds your Dexterity to damage while in a Shadow Hand stance. You don’t really have the feats for that, but it’s worth mentioning.
Also, while we’re on the subject, the War domain is much less suck if you use a better Weapon Focus. I have played many times with that homebrew, and it’s been very successful.
Best Answer
Well for starters, we can get to 9 domains with an 11th level character.
Cleric 1 / Druid 1 / Hunter 3 / Paladin 4 / Occultist 1 / Medium 1.
At first level, a chooses two domains granted by their deity. There are some alignment-based restrictions, but otherwise the choices are limited by the deity you chose.
A 1st level druid gets the Nature Bond class feature, and choose either an animal companion or a cleric's domain. The choices are limited, although some of the splat books (Ultimate this, Ultimate that) enable more domain choices.
Just kidding! If you have levels in cleric, then you can't dip into Inquisitor to get an extra domain.
At 3rd level, this Hunter archetype lets them choose an additional domain. Unlike the inquisitor, there are no restrictions if you multiclass.
Either option involves a 4th level paladin. Sacred Servant lets you pick a cleric domain and get the additional spells, whereas the Temple Champion lets you pick a cleric domain and get the 1st level domain power. Both seem to qualify here.
Occultists are weird, and this one is weirder because it's also a divine caster.
Even weirder than the Occultist, this Medium archetype can choose a different domain each day. There are plenty of options. You gain the domain powers and the domain spells.
The Advanced Class Guide introduced Believer's Boon, a loosely worded feat. Pick a deity, get one of their domains. There are no restrictions if you're already a cleric. Plus, you can take this feat at 1st level and again at 3rd level, for a sum total of two additional domains.
Total = 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 +1+ 1 + 2 = 9
Not included, because they aren't "Domains":