I was considering a Light Cleric for my next character and realized that they might be a decent Gish.
With High Elf to get a Rapier and Green-Flame Blade, I can wear Scale -> Breastplate and a Shield to have a basic equipment package. Warding Flare helps me tank even better by making my 18 AC more effective (the main reason to go Light over another domain).
At level 5 I get Spirit Guardians and my cantrip improves. At level 8 I get the variant Blessed Strikes, which allows me to get the damage bonus on weapons despite Green-Flame Blade not being a cleric cantrip.
I don’t expect any campaigns to last too much longer past that point, but I transition into a more casting-focused role in the late levels.
Any suggestions on how to improve the build, especially a way to make Green-Flame Blade wisdom-based without being an Arcana Cleric? I already have my flavor and RP decided, which is why I’m interested in this character.
I've found warding flare of very limited use on my cleric, you have to declare you are using it before the attack is made so with a decent AC more often than not it would have missed anyway and using it means you can not use your reaction for something else.
Arcane Domain would allow you get Green Flame Blade and use Wisdom for the attack modifier and I think that would be a better option, this would also allow you to not be tied to high Elf if you have better ideas (It you are using Tasha's customised origins you can choose any race with an aromr or weapon proficiency and swap it to Rapier (or other martial weapon). As Green flame Blade is then a cleric spell you would be able to opt for potent spellcasting for slightly more damage if your wis is +5 (though I admit Radiant damage is nice)
If you are worried about survivability go with Twilight Domain,this domain is so powerful it puts DMs in a difficult situation. Compare Twilight Santuary with Warding flare:
Warding Flare means once per round you can reduce one attacks chance to hit, if they have a 50% chance to hit this is reduced to 25% Twilight Sanctuary means every turn you can get 1d6+cleric level temporary hit points this effectively turns the first hit you get in a round to a miss as it will just go through the temporary hit points. This will automatically happen on the first hit of the round
Warding flare uses your reaction Twilight Sanctuary means your reaction is free for something else
Warding flare can only be used a number of times per day equal to your Wis modifier so probably initally 3 and maxing out at 5. Twilight sanctuary can be used every round of combat
Warding flare can only be used on yourself until you hit level 6 and even then using it on someone else counts as one of your limited uses per day. The totally insane thing with twilight sanctuary is it applies to everyine in the party within 30ft of you. so everyone gets 1d6+cleric level temporary hit points at the end of their turn.
Add onto that twilight domain grants you 300ft of darkvision, heavy armor proficiency and advantge on initiative t owhoever in the party needs it most and it has become the Cleric deomain of choice for all power-gamers.
I am fully aware that Twilight is busted, I like to optimize setups that are normally weaker, putting me around the same level as the rest of the party, who generally aren’t optimizers.
I’m not going Arcana because I have to get weapon proficiency anyways, so might as well pick up a cantrip while I’m an Elf anyways. Race is the least important part for me RP wise, it’s the light and fire theme that’s important, which is lacking in Twilight.
You did specifically ask how to make Green Flame Blade wisdom based and though only way I can think of doing that is going Arcana domain. You also said the main reason you were going light domain was for warding flare which I have found a very weak feature on my light domain cleric.
If the light and fire theme is important then go for light domain and either stay at a distance flinging fireballs or play it as a gish. If you go for the later it is very MAD, you need Int for your Green Flame Blade, Wis for your other spells, 14 Dex for AC and a decent Con.
To optimise as a ~bible based basher, mountain dwarf gives str and con mods +1 (and slightly less height to enable your elven archer/caster friends to shoot over your head) and variant human gives a feat.
High Elf is flavourful for a light cleric and my flavour preference with this would be to add the prestidigitation cantrip.
A fighter 1st lev start would give prof for finesse weapons as well as con save proficiency though perhaps a DM may allow a swap in save proficiencies with a belated fighter dip.
I was pondering a bugbear. Melee spell attacks could then occur at 10 ft for inflict wounds/contagion/vampiric touch. To get that trio you would need to go grave or death domain.
Personally I wouldn't worry too much about the ability score for Green Flame Blade as the damage isn't amazing early on anyway, and as it scales up the modifier becomes less and less important. Personally I prefer to pick it up later though to do so when it's not on your normal spell list means you might be looking at picking up Magic Initiate (Warlock) to tie it to Charisma instead of Intelligence? Might be a better fit for your Cleric depending on how you expect to setup your scores, as decent Charisma is nice to have on a cleric who wants to use persuasion, and to take advantage of your save proficiencies. I wouldn't worry about getting the score that high though, +2 or +3 is plenty IMO, it's the d6's of damage that you want GFB for.
Regarding Warding Flare I actually think it's still a good ability despite its limitations; the time to use it is when you are low on health (or an allyis , once it improves at 6th) as this is when you don't want to take the chance of the enemy hitting you at all. I prefer to think of it like a Monk's Patient Defence (Dodge as a bonus action) except that it's a reaction you can use when the situation is "oh crap, I might get KO'd". After all, the only thing worse than a player being KO'd, is your party's best healer being KO'd 😉 Because of the way it's worded there's a weird little wiggle room in the fact it says "before it hits or misses", which suggests you could potentially ask your DM to tell you the dice roll (not the total) before deciding whether to impose disadvantage; this is very much up to your DM though as I doubt it's rules as intended, but would let you use it a little bit more like a Lore Bard's Cutting Words.
On which note, it's always worth asking your DM about GFB with Wisdom; if they like the character idea a lot they can allow whatever they want, in which case all you'd need to do is copy the spell in homebrew and add Light Domain (or whatever else you pick) to the lists it appears on so you can add it as a Cleric pick. This is a thing people all often forget; if you're not playing in Adventurer's League then the first rule for players is "if in doubt, ask your DM!".
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The difference with patient defence is it works for all attacks against you that round. After about level 4 most monsters have multi attack, so you warding flare the first attack and then find the 2nd knocks you unconcious.
The difference with patient defence is it works for all attacks against you that round. After about level 4 most monsters have multi attack, so you warding flare the first attack and then find the 2nd knocks you unconcious.
So use it when two attacks risks KO'ing you? The whole point is you use it when you (or someone else) is in danger of going down if you don't stop an attack. Sure, it's not as good as a core Monk class feature that costs Ki and a bonus action (which are both valuable commodities to a Monk), but this more specialised feature costs only a reaction and an additional resource instead; it's more than fair as a trade off.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Or just pick up silvery barbs at this point which has a lot of better uses....I would suggest picking it up with Fey Wanderer so you get to cast it with any spell slots.
Now THAT spell is kinda crazy good for a 1st level slot.
Now THAT spell is kinda crazy good for a 1st level slot.
It's very much brokenly good for 1st level; not unlike the Twilight Domain for Clerics, and really hurts College of Lore Bards given that now any Bard (or Sorcerer or Wizard or anyone with free picks) can do what they do but better.
I really despair at the poor balance coming out of Wizards of the Coast lately in their rush to publish more than they can clearly handle. Would not recommend relying on that spell in any build without discussing with your DM first.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Now THAT spell is kinda crazy good for a 1st level slot.
It's very much brokenly good for 1st level; not unlike the Twilight Domain for Clerics, and really hurts College of Lore Bards given that now any Bard (or Sorcerer or Wizard or anyone with free picks) can do what they do but better.
I really despair at the poor balance coming out of Wizards of the Coast lately in their rush to publish more than they can clearly handle. Would not recommend relying on that spell in any build without discussing with your DM first.
My understanding is they don't want balance. Jeramy Crawford was proud of the fact that the Strixhaven backgrounds were the most powerful backgrounds ever added to D&D.
I worry that initially people bought new sourcebooks because it gave more options for character builds. WotC are now concerned that there are so many options out there that people can play all the builds they want within the current sourcebooks and in order to encourage people to buy more sourcebooks the character options within them have to be more powerful so they are more desireable than the existing options.
My understanding is they don't want balance. Jeramy Crawford was proud of the fact that the Strixhaven backgrounds were the most powerful backgrounds ever added to D&D.
The weird thing with the Strixhaven backgrounds is that they chose to implement them that way at all; I feel like nobody had any problems with the theming on the UA sub-classes, people just didn't like that they didn't tie into their class mechanics (since they were designed to work for multiple classes). All WotC had to do was either release class-specific versions of those sub-classes (keep some features in common, but tweak others to work with the class features more) or release spellcaster sub-classes with options that tailor them to one of the colleges (e.g- different bonus spell lists). Adding it as backgrounds with a free feat was just weird, though if you don't actually add the feat they're still okay as backgrounds outside of Strixhaven (the background feature is the added spell list), but with the feat they absolutely cannot be allowed unless everyone else gets a free feat as well.
Bit off topic really, but back to Silvery Barbs specifically what's weird is that it is the only overpowered spell out of the book; unless there are some exploits I've missed, all the others seem reasonably balanced. It feels more like they desperately wanted a Silverquill signature spell, wrote down the first thing they thought of but didn't bother to re-read or playtest it.
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Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
My understanding is they don't want balance. Jeramy Crawford was proud of the fact that the Strixhaven backgrounds were the most powerful backgrounds ever added to D&D.
The weird thing with the Strixhaven backgrounds is that they chose to implement them that way at all; I feel like nobody had any problems with the theming on the UA sub-classes, people just didn't like that they didn't tie into their class mechanics (since they were designed to work for multiple classes). All WotC had to do was either release class-specific versions of those sub-classes (keep some features in common, but tweak others to work with the class features more) or release spellcaster sub-classes with options that tailor them to one of the colleges (e.g- different bonus spell lists). Adding it as backgrounds with a free feat was just weird, though if you don't actually add the feat they're still okay as backgrounds outside of Strixhaven (the background feature is the added spell list), but with the feat they absolutely cannot be allowed unless everyone else gets a free feat as well.
Bit off topic really, but back to Silvery Barbs specifically what's weird is that it is the only overpowered spell out of the book; unless there are some exploits I've missed, all the others seem reasonably balanced. It feels more like they desperately wanted a Silverquill signature spell, wrote down the first thing they thought of but didn't bother to re-read or playtest it.
I didn't mind the idea of the subclasses just some of the features were on the strong side (it was UA after all) and the more I think on it the more interesting they would have been.
However, I think they would have had a harder time making them work in another setting potentially....which based on their trend they want to make things more "setting agnostic" as much as possible to get as many people to buy the books as they can.
Overall it was an interesting take on subclasses though and I wouldn't be opposed to them trying the idea again.
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I was considering a Light Cleric for my next character and realized that they might be a decent Gish.
With High Elf to get a Rapier and Green-Flame Blade, I can wear Scale -> Breastplate and a Shield to have a basic equipment package. Warding Flare helps me tank even better by making my 18 AC more effective (the main reason to go Light over another domain).
At level 5 I get Spirit Guardians and my cantrip improves. At level 8 I get the variant Blessed Strikes, which allows me to get the damage bonus on weapons despite Green-Flame Blade not being a cleric cantrip.
I don’t expect any campaigns to last too much longer past that point, but I transition into a more casting-focused role in the late levels.
Any suggestions on how to improve the build, especially a way to make Green-Flame Blade wisdom-based without being an Arcana Cleric? I already have my flavor and RP decided, which is why I’m interested in this character.
I've found warding flare of very limited use on my cleric, you have to declare you are using it before the attack is made so with a decent AC more often than not it would have missed anyway and using it means you can not use your reaction for something else.
Arcane Domain would allow you get Green Flame Blade and use Wisdom for the attack modifier and I think that would be a better option, this would also allow you to not be tied to high Elf if you have better ideas (It you are using Tasha's customised origins you can choose any race with an aromr or weapon proficiency and swap it to Rapier (or other martial weapon). As Green flame Blade is then a cleric spell you would be able to opt for potent spellcasting for slightly more damage if your wis is +5 (though I admit Radiant damage is nice)
If you are worried about survivability go with Twilight Domain,this domain is so powerful it puts DMs in a difficult situation. Compare Twilight Santuary with Warding flare:
Warding Flare means once per round you can reduce one attacks chance to hit, if they have a 50% chance to hit this is reduced to 25% Twilight Sanctuary means every turn you can get 1d6+cleric level temporary hit points this effectively turns the first hit you get in a round to a miss as it will just go through the temporary hit points. This will automatically happen on the first hit of the round
Add onto that twilight domain grants you 300ft of darkvision, heavy armor proficiency and advantge on initiative t owhoever in the party needs it most and it has become the Cleric deomain of choice for all power-gamers.
I am fully aware that Twilight is busted, I like to optimize setups that are normally weaker, putting me around the same level as the rest of the party, who generally aren’t optimizers.
I’m not going Arcana because I have to get weapon proficiency anyways, so might as well pick up a cantrip while I’m an Elf anyways. Race is the least important part for me RP wise, it’s the light and fire theme that’s important, which is lacking in Twilight.
Thanks for the advice, though.
You did specifically ask how to make Green Flame Blade wisdom based and though only way I can think of doing that is going Arcana domain. You also said the main reason you were going light domain was for warding flare which I have found a very weak feature on my light domain cleric.
If the light and fire theme is important then go for light domain and either stay at a distance flinging fireballs or play it as a gish. If you go for the later it is very MAD, you need Int for your Green Flame Blade, Wis for your other spells, 14 Dex for AC and a decent Con.
To optimise as a ~bible based basher, mountain dwarf gives str and con mods +1 (and slightly less height to enable your elven archer/caster friends to shoot over your head) and variant human gives a feat.
High Elf is flavourful for a light cleric and my flavour preference with this would be to add the prestidigitation cantrip.
A fighter 1st lev start would give prof for finesse weapons as well as con save proficiency though perhaps a DM may allow a swap in save proficiencies with a belated fighter dip.
I was pondering a bugbear. Melee spell attacks could then occur at 10 ft for inflict wounds/contagion/vampiric touch. To get that trio you would need to go grave or death domain.
Personally I wouldn't worry too much about the ability score for Green Flame Blade as the damage isn't amazing early on anyway, and as it scales up the modifier becomes less and less important. Personally I prefer to pick it up later though to do so when it's not on your normal spell list means you might be looking at picking up Magic Initiate (Warlock) to tie it to Charisma instead of Intelligence? Might be a better fit for your Cleric depending on how you expect to setup your scores, as decent Charisma is nice to have on a cleric who wants to use persuasion, and to take advantage of your save proficiencies. I wouldn't worry about getting the score that high though, +2 or +3 is plenty IMO, it's the d6's of damage that you want GFB for.
Regarding Warding Flare I actually think it's still a good ability despite its limitations; the time to use it is when you are low on health (or an allyis , once it improves at 6th) as this is when you don't want to take the chance of the enemy hitting you at all. I prefer to think of it like a Monk's Patient Defence (Dodge as a bonus action) except that it's a reaction you can use when the situation is "oh crap, I might get KO'd". After all, the only thing worse than a player being KO'd, is your party's best healer being KO'd 😉
Because of the way it's worded there's a weird little wiggle room in the fact it says "before it hits or misses", which suggests you could potentially ask your DM to tell you the dice roll (not the total) before deciding whether to impose disadvantage; this is very much up to your DM though as I doubt it's rules as intended, but would let you use it a little bit more like a Lore Bard's Cutting Words.
On which note, it's always worth asking your DM about GFB with Wisdom; if they like the character idea a lot they can allow whatever they want, in which case all you'd need to do is copy the spell in homebrew and add Light Domain (or whatever else you pick) to the lists it appears on so you can add it as a Cleric pick. This is a thing people all often forget; if you're not playing in Adventurer's League then the first rule for players is "if in doubt, ask your DM!".
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The difference with patient defence is it works for all attacks against you that round. After about level 4 most monsters have multi attack, so you warding flare the first attack and then find the 2nd knocks you unconcious.
So use it when two attacks risks KO'ing you? The whole point is you use it when you (or someone else) is in danger of going down if you don't stop an attack. Sure, it's not as good as a core Monk class feature that costs Ki and a bonus action (which are both valuable commodities to a Monk), but this more specialised feature costs only a reaction and an additional resource instead; it's more than fair as a trade off.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Or just pick up silvery barbs at this point which has a lot of better uses....I would suggest picking it up with Fey Wanderer so you get to cast it with any spell slots.
Now THAT spell is kinda crazy good for a 1st level slot.
It's very much brokenly good for 1st level; not unlike the Twilight Domain for Clerics, and really hurts College of Lore Bards given that now any Bard (or Sorcerer or Wizard or anyone with free picks) can do what they do but better.
I really despair at the poor balance coming out of Wizards of the Coast lately in their rush to publish more than they can clearly handle. Would not recommend relying on that spell in any build without discussing with your DM first.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Agreed
My understanding is they don't want balance. Jeramy Crawford was proud of the fact that the Strixhaven backgrounds were the most powerful backgrounds ever added to D&D.
I worry that initially people bought new sourcebooks because it gave more options for character builds. WotC are now concerned that there are so many options out there that people can play all the builds they want within the current sourcebooks and in order to encourage people to buy more sourcebooks the character options within them have to be more powerful so they are more desireable than the existing options.
The weird thing with the Strixhaven backgrounds is that they chose to implement them that way at all; I feel like nobody had any problems with the theming on the UA sub-classes, people just didn't like that they didn't tie into their class mechanics (since they were designed to work for multiple classes). All WotC had to do was either release class-specific versions of those sub-classes (keep some features in common, but tweak others to work with the class features more) or release spellcaster sub-classes with options that tailor them to one of the colleges (e.g- different bonus spell lists). Adding it as backgrounds with a free feat was just weird, though if you don't actually add the feat they're still okay as backgrounds outside of Strixhaven (the background feature is the added spell list), but with the feat they absolutely cannot be allowed unless everyone else gets a free feat as well.
Bit off topic really, but back to Silvery Barbs specifically what's weird is that it is the only overpowered spell out of the book; unless there are some exploits I've missed, all the others seem reasonably balanced. It feels more like they desperately wanted a Silverquill signature spell, wrote down the first thing they thought of but didn't bother to re-read or playtest it.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I didn't mind the idea of the subclasses just some of the features were on the strong side (it was UA after all) and the more I think on it the more interesting they would have been.
However, I think they would have had a harder time making them work in another setting potentially....which based on their trend they want to make things more "setting agnostic" as much as possible to get as many people to buy the books as they can.
Overall it was an interesting take on subclasses though and I wouldn't be opposed to them trying the idea again.