I was wondering how viable it would be for a dwarf cleric to dump both strength and dex as he can get a high AC wearing heavy armor and not have his movement reduced. I am thinking something like:
Hill dwarf
Str 9 Dex 10 Con 15+2 Int 12 (useful for religion and investigation checks) Wis 15+1 Cha 10 (a slightly less extreme is Cha 8 and Str 11 to help with encumbrance)
A shield would add to AC and a light hammer or dagger would we kept any but rarely carried so a free hand is available for somatic spells.
In combat he could either keep back casting buff/ debuff or ranged attack spells or go to the front line to heal the melee guys or protect the squishy (if necessary toll the dead or sacred flame could also be used in melee).
ASI feats: ASI Wis (*2), Resilient Con (take you pick after that if you get to level 16)
Wouldn't work for war domain but thought it should be OK for most others.
I haven't seen such a build suggested and I was wondering if I have missed an obvious flaw in it.
I took a Human Variant with the Feat Magic Initiate (Druid) to get Shillelagh as a cantrip (Use Wis for attack and damage on a club which becomes 1d8+magical), and my Domain gives me Heavy armor.
The movement penalty for the heavy stuff can still suck, but the rules as written make Mithril Plate cheaper than standard plate and should solve that problem nicely, and make due with lighter armor until you have the coin.
The movement penalty for the heavy stuff can still suck, but the rules as written make Mithril Plate cheaper than standard plate and should solve that problem nicely, and make due with lighter armor until you have the coin.
I chose dwarf to avoid the movement penalty.
Regarding Mithril it depends on your DM I take the RAW referring to the price at which you can expect to sell magical items. Many DMs just do not allow you to buy magical items you only have what you can find (or maybe an NPC will reward you with the choice of gold or a specific magic item). If you buy standard plate it costs you 1500GP but if you try to sell it back very few DMs would let you get 1500 back for it. If you sell an uncommon magic item for 500GP the vendor you be mad to sell it on for the same price, alternatively players can expect to get much less than 100-500GP for uncommon items because that is the retail price for a new item.
There is a 2 part hiccup to your strategy of "ignoring" Strength and Dexterity.
Dropping Strength, you pretty much lose out on any damage potential through weapons. This may be unimportant, depending on how you play the character and what the party's make-up of melee vs ranged, but it's something important to consider. I'm in a party where my Aasimar Variant Life Cleric is the tankiest member of the party, so I'm constantly finding myself standing between the monsters and the 2 Warlocks. The Monk is helpful at sharing the load, but her dice really don't like her so she goes down a lot. So I spend most of my time swinging with my Mace rather than spellcasting, which kind of puts a damper on my magical contributions to the team.
Losing Dexterity has 2 problematic scenarios that arise. As has already been mentioned, Initiative is modified by Dex. My life cleric has 8 Dex, so I have -1 modifier. So I can literally move at Initiative 0. The other side of that, though, is that a lot of AoE spells use Dexterity for their save stat. So I will be getting that -1 modifier to all of them as time goes on and the campaign gets tougher (until I can 'fix' it, either through ASIs or magic items). You're in a slightly better position with no modifier. But something to be aware of.
There is a 2 part hiccup to your strategy of "ignoring" Strength and Dexterity.
Dropping Strength, you pretty much lose out on any damage potential through weapons. This may be unimportant, depending on how you play the character and what the party's make-up of melee vs ranged, but it's something important to consider. I'm in a party where my Aasimar Variant Life Cleric is the tankiest member of the party, so I'm constantly finding myself standing between the monsters and the 2 Warlocks. The Monk is helpful at sharing the load, but her dice really don't like her so she goes down a lot. So I spend most of my time swinging with my Mace rather than spellcasting, which kind of puts a damper on my magical contributions to the team.
Losing Dexterity has 2 problematic scenarios that arise. As has already been mentioned, Initiative is modified by Dex. My life cleric has 8 Dex, so I have -1 modifier. So I can literally move at Initiative 0. The other side of that, though, is that a lot of AoE spells use Dexterity for their save stat. So I will be getting that -1 modifier to all of them as time goes on and the campaign gets tougher (until I can 'fix' it, either through ASIs or magic items). You're in a slightly better position with no modifier. But something to be aware of.
Another problem with dumping dexterity in some cases of clerics is that it could also be your damage stat with weapons. An example is my Drow Life Cleric (Eilistraee so CG) who uses a Rapier which is finesse so I can use my Dex stat for damage and hit instead of str, so in this case i chose str to be my dump stat and thus I preserve my initiative bonus and better bonus for dex saves. It helps that Drow racial gave me Rapier as a weapon proficiency.
I think for pure optimisation 12 Dex and 10 Int would be better but many Strength based Clerics go with +0 to Dex as they have to put points into Str, Wis, and Con above it and 12 Dex would reduce one or more of these. They would also have to deal with the initiative and Dex save issues.
12 Int can be good for background reasons but also in a party without a wizard it is great is someone is competent at int based skill checks.
While Dex saves is a weakness, as I have said many characters, low dex and while dex saves are probably more common than wis saves they generally just reduce HPs and this character has plenty of those, many characters have Wis as a dump stat and the impact of a failed save (or series of failed saves as many of the worst affects give you a chance to save every turn) can be terrible. Dex saves and initiative is why I went with 10 rather than 8.
As far as the big saves are concerned by level 8 he would have +7 Wis +7 Con +0 Dex (if he went with resilient before maxing Wis) which I think puts him in a better position than most characters.
Regards losing damage through weapons unless there is something like an anti magic field cantrips do as much or more damage than a weapon attack (depending if you have access to martial weapons from your race) especially after level 5 when cantrips scale up (as clerics don't get a second weapon attack). Sacred Flame and toll the dead are saves so aren't disadvantaged if you are in melee range.
If you're planning on heavy armor, I believe it requires 13 to 15 strength to wear them. So, it can't be an entirely dump stat on that from. So, then, if you're going into Medium armor, to make the most use of Medium, you want to have at least 14 dex to make use of the +2.
The only heavy armor you could wear that does not have a strength requirement is Ring Mail.
I ran into this issue on my elf cleric, I had to put an ASI fully into strength in order to upgrade his armor late game. (8th level - my table almost never makes it past level 11)
I think the rule you are referring to is: Heavy Armor. Heavier armor interferes with the wearer’s ability to move quickly, stealthily, and freely. If the Armor table shows “Str 13” or “Str 15” in the Strength column for an armor type, the armor reduces the wearer’s speed by 10 feet unless the wearer has a Strength score equal to or higher than the listed score.
So any low strength character can wear chain mail or plate at the cost of 10 movement speed.
However a dwarf trait is: Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.
This is what made me think of dwarf for this character but most races would have an adjusted speed of 20 so not much less than a dwarf, and some like wood elf would have the same speed as a dwarf carrying heavy armor.
While variant encumbrance rules also remove weight restrictions for heavy armor in theory in practice they don't. Chainmail and shield add to 61lb so you need strength 13 to carry them, unless you can persuade another member of the party to carry your bedroll, rations etc you really need Str 16 to be functional in heavy armour without getting the 10 foot hit to speed.
Without variant encumbrance an 8 strength character in Plate and a shield is using 71lb of his 120lb max and a DM might start keeping tabs on how much other stuff he has but I think that is manageable.
consider this; heavy armour does not let you add you Dex penalty.
for this reason Dex becomes a better dump stat. there are only two hindrances, one being initiative, which may be advantageous considering an ally may suddenly need a heal that round. and the other being dex saves.
if you are a melee cleric in heavy armour then str is slightly less dumpable, giving regular attacks, shove, and grapple a negative modifier seems costly.
also, shield master may be of interest to this character as Dex saves are a vulnerability.
Regular attacks will be cantrips so will not have a negative modifier. However you make a good point with grapples. The role I imagined for this cleric is normally to work at range but being well protected against ranged attacks and if the barb goes down he can step up to the front line cast cure wounds and try and plug the gap to protect the wizard before the barb gets back up.
I knew Dec saves / initiative are a weakness but have not thought that worse than wis saves / perception which many characters have low.
Low strength and Dec does mean however that he would be very vulnerable to being grappled.
Another weakness that has just come to me is opportunity attacks, this has set me wondering if warcaster would be better than res con. This would also mean res Dex would be available though doing this after warcaster and 20 wis would mean not until level 16 and most campaigns do not go that far.
what cantrips did you go with? cleric is quite limiting, and it seems like you would have to sacrifice some utility to cover the cantrips for attacks thing
what cantrips did you go with? cleric is quite limiting, and it seems like you would have to sacrifice some utility to cover the cantrips for attacks thing
personally, I think you have alot of duplication in choosing three damage cantrips, utility is pretty well received as a cleric resistance and spare the dying are pretty great options given how rare you would need any one of those damage spells over the other.
tbh I am having a moment here.... is a spell that does not have an attack roll, like all of the clerics cantrips, cause disadvantage? e.g. sacred flame could be used in melee...no?
tbh I am having a moment here.... is a spell that does not have an attack roll, like all of the clerics cantrips, cause disadvantage? e.g. sacred flame could be used in melee...no?
Only ranged attack rolls get disadvantage when an enemy is within melee range of you. Spells that require a save are completely unaffected by that.
personally, I think you have alot of duplication in choosing three damage cantrips, utility is pretty well received as a cleric resistance and spare the dying are pretty great options given how rare you would need any one of those damage spells over the other.
Having 2-3 damage cantrips that each require a different save can be very useful. Maybe you're against a Dexy opponent and want to Wis save them. Or maybe they have high Wis so you want to Con save them and so on. It gives you flexibility you otherwise wouldn't have.
personally, I think you have alot of duplication in choosing three damage cantrips, utility is pretty well received as a cleric resistance and spare the dying are pretty great options given how rare you would need any one of those damage spells over the other.
tbh I am having a moment here.... is a spell that does not have an attack roll, like all of the clerics cantrips, cause disadvantage? e.g. sacred flame could be used in melee...no?
I didn't think they were suggesting you get all three, you had asked what attacking cantrips a cleric had available and dragon 77 listed the options. I would only go with one or two of them but which depends on the build.
I'm not a great fan of resistance but guidance is great and mending and Thaumaturgy can do fun things with a bit of imagination so yes you don't want to use all your cantips slots of attack options.
You "could" dump strength and Dex, but I enjoy putting my Cleric in hand to hand combat sometimes. And many domains offer some bonus in HtH . So I like to have either a good Dex or a good Str.
You won't have the strength to be able to even carry all your gear, much less wear it.
Negative Strength/Dexterity Saving Throw Modifiers means that you are susceptible to being dragged across a battlefield like someone's rag doll, or seeing a Fireball coming your way while your legs refuse to budge.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
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I was wondering how viable it would be for a dwarf cleric to dump both strength and dex as he can get a high AC wearing heavy armor and not have his movement reduced. I am thinking something like:
Hill dwarf
Str 9
Dex 10
Con 15+2
Int 12 (useful for religion and investigation checks)
Wis 15+1
Cha 10 (a slightly less extreme is Cha 8 and Str 11 to help with encumbrance)
A shield would add to AC and a light hammer or dagger would we kept any but rarely carried so a free hand is available for somatic spells.
In combat he could either keep back casting buff/ debuff or ranged attack spells or go to the front line to heal the melee guys or protect the squishy (if necessary toll the dead or sacred flame could also be used in melee).
ASI feats: ASI Wis (*2), Resilient Con (take you pick after that if you get to level 16)
Wouldn't work for war domain but thought it should be OK for most others.
I haven't seen such a build suggested and I was wondering if I have missed an obvious flaw in it.
Looks good.
I took a Human Variant with the Feat Magic Initiate (Druid) to get Shillelagh as a cantrip (Use Wis for attack and damage on a club which becomes 1d8+magical), and my Domain gives me Heavy armor.
The movement penalty for the heavy stuff can still suck, but the rules as written make Mithril Plate cheaper than standard plate and should solve that problem nicely, and make due with lighter armor until you have the coin.
Abide.
Depends a lot on what subclass you're going for and how important you feel having > average initiative is and your spellcasting style.
I chose dwarf to avoid the movement penalty.
Regarding Mithril it depends on your DM I take the RAW referring to the price at which you can expect to sell magical items. Many DMs just do not allow you to buy magical items you only have what you can find (or maybe an NPC will reward you with the choice of gold or a specific magic item). If you buy standard plate it costs you 1500GP but if you try to sell it back very few DMs would let you get 1500 back for it. If you sell an uncommon magic item for 500GP the vendor you be mad to sell it on for the same price, alternatively players can expect to get much less than 100-500GP for uncommon items because that is the retail price for a new item.
There is a 2 part hiccup to your strategy of "ignoring" Strength and Dexterity.
Dropping Strength, you pretty much lose out on any damage potential through weapons. This may be unimportant, depending on how you play the character and what the party's make-up of melee vs ranged, but it's something important to consider. I'm in a party where my Aasimar Variant Life Cleric is the tankiest member of the party, so I'm constantly finding myself standing between the monsters and the 2 Warlocks. The Monk is helpful at sharing the load, but her dice really don't like her so she goes down a lot. So I spend most of my time swinging with my Mace rather than spellcasting, which kind of puts a damper on my magical contributions to the team.
Losing Dexterity has 2 problematic scenarios that arise. As has already been mentioned, Initiative is modified by Dex. My life cleric has 8 Dex, so I have -1 modifier. So I can literally move at Initiative 0. The other side of that, though, is that a lot of AoE spells use Dexterity for their save stat. So I will be getting that -1 modifier to all of them as time goes on and the campaign gets tougher (until I can 'fix' it, either through ASIs or magic items). You're in a slightly better position with no modifier. But something to be aware of.
Another problem with dumping dexterity in some cases of clerics is that it could also be your damage stat with weapons. An example is my Drow Life Cleric (Eilistraee so CG) who uses a Rapier which is finesse so I can use my Dex stat for damage and hit instead of str, so in this case i chose str to be my dump stat and thus I preserve my initiative bonus and better bonus for dex saves. It helps that Drow racial gave me Rapier as a weapon proficiency.
Thanks for the comments
I think for pure optimisation 12 Dex and 10 Int would be better but many Strength based Clerics go with +0 to Dex as they have to put points into Str, Wis, and Con above it and 12 Dex would reduce one or more of these. They would also have to deal with the initiative and Dex save issues.
12 Int can be good for background reasons but also in a party without a wizard it is great is someone is competent at int based skill checks.
While Dex saves is a weakness, as I have said many characters, low dex and while dex saves are probably more common than wis saves they generally just reduce HPs and this character has plenty of those, many characters have Wis as a dump stat and the impact of a failed save (or series of failed saves as many of the worst affects give you a chance to save every turn) can be terrible. Dex saves and initiative is why I went with 10 rather than 8.
As far as the big saves are concerned by level 8 he would have +7 Wis +7 Con +0 Dex (if he went with resilient before maxing Wis) which I think puts him in a better position than most characters.
Regards losing damage through weapons unless there is something like an anti magic field cantrips do as much or more damage than a weapon attack (depending if you have access to martial weapons from your race) especially after level 5 when cantrips scale up (as clerics don't get a second weapon attack). Sacred Flame and toll the dead are saves so aren't disadvantaged if you are in melee range.
If you're planning on heavy armor, I believe it requires 13 to 15 strength to wear them. So, it can't be an entirely dump stat on that from. So, then, if you're going into Medium armor, to make the most use of Medium, you want to have at least 14 dex to make use of the +2.
The only heavy armor you could wear that does not have a strength requirement is Ring Mail.
I ran into this issue on my elf cleric, I had to put an ASI fully into strength in order to upgrade his armor late game. (8th level - my table almost never makes it past level 11)
I think the rule you are referring to is:
Heavy Armor. Heavier armor interferes with the wearer’s ability to move quickly, stealthily, and freely. If the Armor table shows “Str 13” or “Str 15” in the Strength column for an armor type, the armor reduces the wearer’s speed by 10 feet unless the wearer has a Strength score equal to or higher than the listed score.
So any low strength character can wear chain mail or plate at the cost of 10 movement speed.
However a dwarf trait is:
Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.
This is what made me think of dwarf for this character but most races would have an adjusted speed of 20 so not much less than a dwarf, and some like wood elf would have the same speed as a dwarf carrying heavy armor.
While variant encumbrance rules also remove weight restrictions for heavy armor in theory in practice they don't. Chainmail and shield add to 61lb so you need strength 13 to carry them, unless you can persuade another member of the party to carry your bedroll, rations etc you really need Str 16 to be functional in heavy armour without getting the 10 foot hit to speed.
Without variant encumbrance an 8 strength character in Plate and a shield is using 71lb of his 120lb max and a DM might start keeping tabs on how much other stuff he has but I think that is manageable.
Yeah, you're right Jegpeg, I had not put that together with the dwarf racial trait for armor.
consider this; heavy armour does not let you add you Dex penalty.
for this reason Dex becomes a better dump stat. there are only two hindrances, one being initiative, which may be advantageous considering an ally may suddenly need a heal that round. and the other being dex saves.
if you are a melee cleric in heavy armour then str is slightly less dumpable, giving regular attacks, shove, and grapple a negative modifier seems costly.
also, shield master may be of interest to this character as Dex saves are a vulnerability.
Jesus Saves!... Everyone else takes damage.
Regular attacks will be cantrips so will not have a negative modifier. However you make a good point with grapples. The role I imagined for this cleric is normally to work at range but being well protected against ranged attacks and if the barb goes down he can step up to the front line cast cure wounds and try and plug the gap to protect the wizard before the barb gets back up.
I knew Dec saves / initiative are a weakness but have not thought that worse than wis saves / perception which many characters have low.
Low strength and Dec does mean however that he would be very vulnerable to being grappled.
Another weakness that has just come to me is opportunity attacks, this has set me wondering if warcaster would be better than res con. This would also mean res Dex would be available though doing this after warcaster and 20 wis would mean not until level 16 and most campaigns do not go that far.
what cantrips did you go with? cleric is quite limiting, and it seems like you would have to sacrifice some utility to cover the cantrips for attacks thing
Jesus Saves!... Everyone else takes damage.
Toll the Dead is a staple. Sacred Flame is another option for single target. Word of Radiance is an AoE option as well, though does less damage.
A Cleric should absolutely have Inflict Wounds, though. 1st level rather than cantrip, but that sexy 3d10 Necro...
personally, I think you have alot of duplication in choosing three damage cantrips, utility is pretty well received as a cleric resistance and spare the dying are pretty great options given how rare you would need any one of those damage spells over the other.
tbh I am having a moment here.... is a spell that does not have an attack roll, like all of the clerics cantrips, cause disadvantage? e.g. sacred flame could be used in melee...no?
Jesus Saves!... Everyone else takes damage.
Only ranged attack rolls get disadvantage when an enemy is within melee range of you. Spells that require a save are completely unaffected by that.
Having 2-3 damage cantrips that each require a different save can be very useful. Maybe you're against a Dexy opponent and want to Wis save them. Or maybe they have high Wis so you want to Con save them and so on. It gives you flexibility you otherwise wouldn't have.
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I didn't think they were suggesting you get all three, you had asked what attacking cantrips a cleric had available and dragon 77 listed the options. I would only go with one or two of them but which depends on the build.
I'm not a great fan of resistance but guidance is great and mending and Thaumaturgy can do fun things with a bit of imagination so yes you don't want to use all your cantips slots of attack options.
You "could" dump strength and Dex, but I enjoy putting my Cleric in hand to hand combat sometimes. And many domains offer some bonus in HtH . So I like to have either a good Dex or a good Str.
All looks good
Point blank: If you dump Str & Dex, you will die.
You won't have the strength to be able to even carry all your gear, much less wear it.
Negative Strength/Dexterity Saving Throw Modifiers means that you are susceptible to being dragged across a battlefield like someone's rag doll, or seeing a Fireball coming your way while your legs refuse to budge.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.