Playing a Half-Elf [High heritage] Twilight Domain Cleric who takes to the front lines. My Ability Scores are 15/10/15/12/17/8. I was allowed to start with the Resilient feat for Con.
The party is coming close to hitting our 4th level, and I'm not sure what to do as for ASI. A 2, two 1s or a feat; I'm not sure what to choose. I'm concerned about winding up with odd ability scores in the long run if I take too many feats, but I'm pretty sure there are magic items that could help with that eventually. What do you recommend?
First off with that many odd scores the half feats should be great.
Elven accuracy is always fun. Give yourself a +1 to Wisdom and now you have even more advantage. Its not core to the Cleric's thing, but its certainly useful.
Both of the Touched feats should work well with you (Fey and Shadow). Again boost the Wisdom score to 18. As a full caster you don't need the spells as bad as others, but Misty Step and Invisible are both great. Choose the others from things you won't get from cleric. Enjoy.
Observant with a +1 to Wisdom will tick off your DM with its +5 to passive Perception and Investigation.
Finally on the Wisdom front both Telekinetic and Telepathic are worth the trouble. Telekinetic might be fun because you can pull and push things in and out of your globe later on (even allies).
If you want to boost your strength I would advise Heavy Armor Master. +1 to strength evens out the score and now nonmagical weapons do 3 less damage per attack. The +1 to strength will get you an extra +1 to hit, damage perhaps, and the save. Not a bad haul. At 8th level with Divine Strike you may want to tank a little.
With your front line build I would probably do Heavy Armor Master, or Fey touched so you can occasionally misty step to where you need to be in a fight. If you don't have heavy armor you might put that off for awhile.
WarCaster plus resilient is kind of a hat on a hat. Meaning that resilient already protects you from losing concentration. Adding WarCaster is great, but there are probably better things to do. The other features to Warcaster are VERY situational. At level 4, you have +2 from prof and +3 from your Wisdom for a total of +5. The most common DC for concentration is 10,(The DC equals 10 or half the damage you take, whichever number is higher). So at your level you have a 75% chance of maintaining with Resilient (80% if you increase your wisdom by 1). Warcaster reduces your 25% chance of failure in half.
Attacks of opportunity and casting spells: How many AoO have you been getting in your average session? In my case we don't get many, because monsters tend to either just die or do nothing but flee, so either you need to combine this with Polearm Master or Sentinel to get more AoO or its not very valuable.
"You can perform the somatic components of spells even when you have weapons or a shield in one or both hands." There is some use here for a cleric. Essentially if you shield is your holy symbol you don't have to have a free hand in a fight to cast anything that doesn't have an expensive material component.
Personally, I would not choose Warcaster. Given the number of odd stats you have I think you will get more mileage out of evening out one of your stats with one of the half feats. Its still a really great feat though, and being a front line fighter means having to make concentration checks. If you don't take Warcaster continue to invest in better armor. Twilight gets heavy armor and a shield so getting to Splint + Shield will get you to 19 AC. The best way to maintain concentration is to not get hit.
I think warcaster is largely going to depend on how strict your DM is with somatic components. As elfdope said, it's not going to do a lot for you in terms of concentration.
But when you say you are in the front lines, I'm going to assume you mean shield and weapon. If that's the case, spells with a somatic component get tricky, since you would need a free hand to cast spells, and you wouldn't have one. if your DM doesn't much care about somatic components, then warcaster won't matter too much. Or if you otherwise have a free hand for some reason, it won't help much. But if you follow that rule, then you probably should have it. Otherwise you're dropping your weapon, casting the spell, picking the weapon up again, or doing some kind of other juggling.
Also, Warcaster is great for cantrips as opportunity attacks. Your spell attacks are likely to be more effective than you melee attacks, both in terms of how often they hit and the kind of damage they do. So I think that Warcaster is a viable option. And, hey, it won't do a lot for you for concentration, but when it does, you'll be happy.
All that said, one of the options to boost your wis away from that odd number is probably better. I'd say one of the the half feats elfdope mentioned could be really interesting over just a straight ASi, since taking str to a 16 won't really do much of anything for you. and a dex at 16 probably won't help you too much either (assuming you are wearing medium armor and won't get the AC boost). Then do warcaster at level 8.
I'd go with ASI in Wisdom and Constitution (or strength, if you're using a melee weapon regularly), especially with already having Resilient Con. You will gain the most benefit in bumping those odd numbers up to the next modifier.
I missed a half feat that I absolutely love. Skill Expert. The reason why it is one my favorites is it is so versatile. A +1 to any ability, proficiency in any skill, and expertise is any existing skill you have. The ability and the proficiencies do not need to be linked. On a cleric it allows you to have expertise in Religion which is thematically cool, but is probably more useful to expertise perception or insight.
Right now you have 3 odd scores to be evened out. I would recommend one of two courses for your plans at 4, 8, and 12: 1. 1 half feat, 1 feat, and a +1/+1 ASI. If you take the half feat first in Constitution that leaves you with skill expert. This would improve concentration checks by 1 and your hit points which is a pretty good haul.
2. 3 half feats, 1 for str, 1 for con, and 1 for wisdom. I don't know what order to take them in. But with what you have available you don't really have a wrong decision.
I would not recommend counting on an ability increase item. Most of those only take you to 19. Usually they are highly prized and fought over among party members and tend to go to the person with the lowest score. For example if you find an Amulet of Health (con 19) and you want it, but so does someone with an 11 con its simply going to give them more HP than you. If they are a spell caster as well they definitely need it more. There is no Periapt of Wisdom in 5e, so you won't get help there. Gauntlets of Ogre Power you might have a chance on, but if you get them early enough they will probably make sense on someone with multiple attacks. In one game the fighter didn't get them because they already had an 18 strength, but the Blade Dancer was able to move from an 11 to a 19 with them drastically improving what they do.
The DM actually allowed me to do some small redistributing of AS's because I haven't actually used my Str or Con scores yet, so now my lineup is 16/10/14/12/17/8.
It’s good you were able to even put those odd numbers. I’d still either go with a half feat that boosts wis, or warcaster. Then at level 8, take whichever you didn’t at 4.
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Playing a Half-Elf [High heritage] Twilight Domain Cleric who takes to the front lines. My Ability Scores are 15/10/15/12/17/8. I was allowed to start with the Resilient feat for Con.
The party is coming close to hitting our 4th level, and I'm not sure what to do as for ASI. A 2, two 1s or a feat; I'm not sure what to choose. I'm concerned about winding up with odd ability scores in the long run if I take too many feats, but I'm pretty sure there are magic items that could help with that eventually. What do you recommend?
Insert interesting signature here.
First off with that many odd scores the half feats should be great.
Elven accuracy is always fun. Give yourself a +1 to Wisdom and now you have even more advantage. Its not core to the Cleric's thing, but its certainly useful.
Both of the Touched feats should work well with you (Fey and Shadow). Again boost the Wisdom score to 18. As a full caster you don't need the spells as bad as others, but Misty Step and Invisible are both great. Choose the others from things you won't get from cleric. Enjoy.
Observant with a +1 to Wisdom will tick off your DM with its +5 to passive Perception and Investigation.
Finally on the Wisdom front both Telekinetic and Telepathic are worth the trouble. Telekinetic might be fun because you can pull and push things in and out of your globe later on (even allies).
If you want to boost your strength I would advise Heavy Armor Master. +1 to strength evens out the score and now nonmagical weapons do 3 less damage per attack. The +1 to strength will get you an extra +1 to hit, damage perhaps, and the save. Not a bad haul. At 8th level with Divine Strike you may want to tank a little.
With your front line build I would probably do Heavy Armor Master, or Fey touched so you can occasionally misty step to where you need to be in a fight. If you don't have heavy armor you might put that off for awhile.
I appreciate the suggestions. What would you say about taking War Caster at this level?
Insert interesting signature here.
WarCaster plus resilient is kind of a hat on a hat. Meaning that resilient already protects you from losing concentration. Adding WarCaster is great, but there are probably better things to do. The other features to Warcaster are VERY situational. At level 4, you have +2 from prof and +3 from your Wisdom for a total of +5. The most common DC for concentration is 10,(The DC equals 10 or half the damage you take, whichever number is higher). So at your level you have a 75% chance of maintaining with Resilient (80% if you increase your wisdom by 1). Warcaster reduces your 25% chance of failure in half.
Attacks of opportunity and casting spells: How many AoO have you been getting in your average session? In my case we don't get many, because monsters tend to either just die or do nothing but flee, so either you need to combine this with Polearm Master or Sentinel to get more AoO or its not very valuable.
"You can perform the somatic components of spells even when you have weapons or a shield in one or both hands."
There is some use here for a cleric. Essentially if you shield is your holy symbol you don't have to have a free hand in a fight to cast anything that doesn't have an expensive material component.
Personally, I would not choose Warcaster. Given the number of odd stats you have I think you will get more mileage out of evening out one of your stats with one of the half feats. Its still a really great feat though, and being a front line fighter means having to make concentration checks. If you don't take Warcaster continue to invest in better armor. Twilight gets heavy armor and a shield so getting to Splint + Shield will get you to 19 AC. The best way to maintain concentration is to not get hit.
I think warcaster is largely going to depend on how strict your DM is with somatic components. As elfdope said, it's not going to do a lot for you in terms of concentration.
But when you say you are in the front lines, I'm going to assume you mean shield and weapon. If that's the case, spells with a somatic component get tricky, since you would need a free hand to cast spells, and you wouldn't have one. if your DM doesn't much care about somatic components, then warcaster won't matter too much. Or if you otherwise have a free hand for some reason, it won't help much. But if you follow that rule, then you probably should have it. Otherwise you're dropping your weapon, casting the spell, picking the weapon up again, or doing some kind of other juggling.
Also, Warcaster is great for cantrips as opportunity attacks. Your spell attacks are likely to be more effective than you melee attacks, both in terms of how often they hit and the kind of damage they do. So I think that Warcaster is a viable option. And, hey, it won't do a lot for you for concentration, but when it does, you'll be happy.
All that said, one of the options to boost your wis away from that odd number is probably better. I'd say one of the the half feats elfdope mentioned could be really interesting over just a straight ASi, since taking str to a 16 won't really do much of anything for you. and a dex at 16 probably won't help you too much either (assuming you are wearing medium armor and won't get the AC boost). Then do warcaster at level 8.
I'd go with ASI in Wisdom and Constitution (or strength, if you're using a melee weapon regularly), especially with already having Resilient Con. You will gain the most benefit in bumping those odd numbers up to the next modifier.
I missed a half feat that I absolutely love. Skill Expert. The reason why it is one my favorites is it is so versatile. A +1 to any ability, proficiency in any skill, and expertise is any existing skill you have. The ability and the proficiencies do not need to be linked. On a cleric it allows you to have expertise in Religion which is thematically cool, but is probably more useful to expertise perception or insight.
Right now you have 3 odd scores to be evened out. I would recommend one of two courses for your plans at 4, 8, and 12:
1. 1 half feat, 1 feat, and a +1/+1 ASI. If you take the half feat first in Constitution that leaves you with skill expert. This would improve concentration checks by 1 and your hit points which is a pretty good haul.
2. 3 half feats, 1 for str, 1 for con, and 1 for wisdom. I don't know what order to take them in. But with what you have available you don't really have a wrong decision.
I would not recommend counting on an ability increase item. Most of those only take you to 19. Usually they are highly prized and fought over among party members and tend to go to the person with the lowest score. For example if you find an Amulet of Health (con 19) and you want it, but so does someone with an 11 con its simply going to give them more HP than you. If they are a spell caster as well they definitely need it more. There is no Periapt of Wisdom in 5e, so you won't get help there.
Gauntlets of Ogre Power you might have a chance on, but if you get them early enough they will probably make sense on someone with multiple attacks. In one game the fighter didn't get them because they already had an 18 strength, but the Blade Dancer was able to move from an 11 to a 19 with them drastically improving what they do.
The DM actually allowed me to do some small redistributing of AS's because I haven't actually used my Str or Con scores yet, so now my lineup is 16/10/14/12/17/8.
Insert interesting signature here.
It’s good you were able to even put those odd numbers.
I’d still either go with a half feat that boosts wis, or warcaster. Then at level 8, take whichever you didn’t at 4.