So, my Cleric is evolving and gaining in momentum. I'm hoping to learn more about great spell combos that I can employ in battle.
So far, my best combo seems to be :
Toll The Dead + Spiritual Weapon for small/medium action
Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon has been hit or miss for me.
Looking for ways to get some better action out of Insect Plague and a few others. Hoping more experienced players will give me some great food for thought.
My personal favourite Cleric is a Half-Elf Arcana Cleric from SCAG, with the Gruul Anarch background from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
Swap out a few skills and tool proficiencies gave me a dex Cleric 8/16/14/10/16/10, with proficiencies in stealth, perception, insight, persuasion, survival, and acrobatics, thieves tools, and herbalism kit. Thinking about it pretty much all my characters are high dex with proficiency in perception, stealth, and thieves' tools. It might be an addiction. Studded leather with a shield, a dagger (which he never uses because he has Shocking Grasp) a couple of ranged cantrips, Chill Touch from the Wizard list and Fire Bolt from Gruul, then the usual Cleric stuff.
Turn 1: Action: Cast Spirit Guardians. Turn 2: Move right next to your enemy, who is hopefully not next to one of your teammates. Action: Dodge. Bonus action: Spiritual Weapon.
Now your enemy is in a difficult situation: Attack you at disadvantage and take Spirit Guardians damage, or flee and get hit from Toll the Dead or whatnot.
Upcast that Spiritual Weapon if you have the spell slots. You only use one slot but continue to do the bigger amount of damage, and it's force damage which is something most enemies cannot mitigate in any way!
If you are a melee cleric, or at least good with being close to the action, think about Word of Radiance as a really good AOE cantrip. It's "Each creature of your choice" so you can exclude allies, and radiant damage is always nice.
And Healing Word is a must have, because bonus actions are hard to come by, bonus action healing is amazing, and once you cast your Spiritual Weapon you can attack twice AND heal all in the same turn!
Finally on a personal note, choose a dragonborn and then have a non-spell attack aoe to employ in case you want to upcast that bonus action.
An obvious combo is booming blade and tempest cleric - BB can be maxed by channel divinity, and stacks with the thunder damage from the level 8 ability.
I've been so enamored with Plant Growth + Spike Growth that I hadn't even thought about the rammifications of doing Insect Plague, instead.
Pure brilliance! I love posting things like this in the forum because it adds to my bag of tricks and helps kickstart my brain into thinking more outside-of-the-box, which I sometimes have trouble doing.
If you want a defensive combo go for spirit guardians on turn 1 + dodge and sanctuary on yourself as bonus action on turn 2. You make yourself realy hard to hit and continue to deal damage through spirit guardians. If you have the material components you can cast Warding Bond beforehand on the party's tank and just cure party allies the next turns. This will make your party goddamm hard to kill. Specially good for life domain clerics if they want to play on a support role.
If you want a defensive combo go for spirit guardians on turn 1 + dodge and sanctuary on yourself as bonus action on turn 2. You make yourself realy hard to hit and continue to deal damage through spirit guardians. If you have the material components you can cast Warding Bond beforehand on the party's tank and just cure party allies the next turns. This will make your party goddamm hard to kill. Specially good for life domain clerics if they want to play on a support role.
Sanctuary was (long ago) errated: it ends if you deal damage, so this combo won't work.
So, my Cleric is evolving and gaining in momentum. I'm hoping to learn more about great spell combos that I can employ in battle.
So far, my best combo seems to be :
Toll The Dead + Spiritual Weapon for small/medium action
Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon has been hit or miss for me.
Looking for ways to get some better action out of Insect Plague and a few others. Hoping more experienced players will give me some great food for thought.
Why has Spirit Guardians been hit or miss? It uses the same Saving Throw as Toll the Dead, it's AOE and it does a hair more damage. You can use all three together, btw.
Passive AOE Damage: Spirit Guardians
Main Action: Toll the Dead (or the Dodge action for a big defensive buff)
Bonus Action: Spiritual Weapon
For later levels Spirit Guardians scales very well when you upcast it. You can use this combination for an entire combat encounter, expending only 2 spell slots.
Cast Glyph of Warding + Sleet Storm or Plant Growth on a doorway that separates you from somebody you want to lead into a trap.
Alternatively, combine Glyph of Warding with Zone of Truth for near-automatic interrogation success without letting your opponent see you cast the spell.
So, my Cleric is evolving and gaining in momentum. I'm hoping to learn more about great spell combos that I can employ in battle.
So far, my best combo seems to be :
Toll The Dead + Spiritual Weapon for small/medium action
Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon has been hit or miss for me.
Looking for ways to get some better action out of Insect Plague and a few others. Hoping more experienced players will give me some great food for thought.
Why has Spirit Guardians been hit or miss? It uses the same Saving Throw as Toll the Dead, it's AOE and it does a hair more damage. You can use all three together, btw.
Passive AOE Damage: Spirit Guardians
Main Action: Toll the Dead (or the Dodge action for a big defensive buff)
Bonus Action: Spiritual Weapon
For later levels Spirit Guardians scales very well when you upcast it. You can use this combination for an entire combat encounter, expending only 2 spell slots.
^^ THANK YOU ^^ I am a Grave Cleric so what would the order of operations be for me to cast this combo please?
So, my Cleric is evolving and gaining in momentum. I'm hoping to learn more about great spell combos that I can employ in battle.
So far, my best combo seems to be :
Toll The Dead + Spiritual Weapon for small/medium action
Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon has been hit or miss for me.
Looking for ways to get some better action out of Insect Plague and a few others. Hoping more experienced players will give me some great food for thought.
Why has Spirit Guardians been hit or miss? It uses the same Saving Throw as Toll the Dead, it's AOE and it does a hair more damage. You can use all three together, btw.
Passive AOE Damage: Spirit Guardians
Main Action: Toll the Dead (or the Dodge action for a big defensive buff)
Bonus Action: Spiritual Weapon
For later levels Spirit Guardians scales very well when you upcast it. You can use this combination for an entire combat encounter, expending only 2 spell slots.
^^ THANK YOU ^^ I am a Grave Cleric so what would the order of operations be for me to cast this combo please?
1st round: Spirit Guardians:
2nd round: Spiritual Weapon and Toll the dead or Dodge
I just use guiding bolt and spiritual weapon. First round cast a cantrip and use spiritual weapon, subsequent turns cast guiding bolt first to possibly get advantage on your attack with spiritual weapon.
An even more fun combo is take a level in Druid or magic initiate and take thorn whip and have Spirit Guardians active with spiritual weapon up. You can pull them in with whip and they take the whip AND SG dmg (BA Spiritual weapon too) then when they start their turn in the SG they take dmg again.
I think my favorite was a combo I got off near the end of ToA. Without spoilers, it was a room quite deep into the tomb where you have to fight off waves of enemies, with the group partially separated in our case. First turn was getting Spirit Guardians off for some area damage and to make us harder to approach. Second turn was followed with Spiritual Weapon, to get a bonus action. Guardian of Faith on the third as enemies were getting stronger, and to further discourage the enemies from rushing. Following turns were Guiding Bolt to give the party Rogue advantage on the sturdy enemies, or Sacred Flame to chip away at the weakened enemies.
I was in a pretty damage heavy team, so it was nice to have a couple of turns to set that one up!
If you are a Tempest Cleric then do as said above with Spirit Guardians, then move to the enemy and Dodge. Add Spiritual Weapon. Bam....also no hp region from Spirit Guardians radiant damage. If you have Warcaster, when they try to move out of the damage, area hit with Booming Blade as a reaction At level 5 it is weapon damage plus d8...another d8 if they continue moving, which they will if they don't want Spiritual Guardian damage again. Thats a lot of d8's.
If you are a Tempest Cleric then do as said above with Spirit Guardians, then move to the enemy and Dodge. Add Spiritual Weapon. Bam....also no hp region from Spirit Guardians radiant damage. If you have Warcaster, when they try to move out of the damage, area hit with Booming Blade as a reaction At level 5 it is weapon damage plus d8...another d8 if they continue moving, which they will if they don't want Spiritual Guardian damage again. Thats a lot of d8's.
I completely forgot about the warcast booming blade! oh youve given me fun ideas for my Hex Clock (took Orzhov background for spirit guardians).
So, my Cleric is evolving and gaining in momentum.
I'm hoping to learn more about great spell combos that I can employ in battle.
So far, my best combo seems to be :
Toll The Dead + Spiritual Weapon for small/medium action
Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon has been hit or miss for me.
Looking for ways to get some better action out of Insect Plague and a few others.
Hoping more experienced players will give me some great food for thought.
It depends what you have access to.
My personal favourite Cleric is a Half-Elf Arcana Cleric from SCAG, with the Gruul Anarch background from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
Swap out a few skills and tool proficiencies gave me a dex Cleric 8/16/14/10/16/10, with proficiencies in stealth, perception, insight, persuasion, survival, and acrobatics, thieves tools, and herbalism kit. Thinking about it pretty much all my characters are high dex with proficiency in perception, stealth, and thieves' tools. It might be an addiction. Studded leather with a shield, a dagger (which he never uses because he has Shocking Grasp) a couple of ranged cantrips, Chill Touch from the Wizard list and Fire Bolt from Gruul, then the usual Cleric stuff.
Take the War Caster feat.
Turn 1: Action: Cast Spirit Guardians.
Turn 2: Move right next to your enemy, who is hopefully not next to one of your teammates. Action: Dodge. Bonus action: Spiritual Weapon.
Now your enemy is in a difficult situation: Attack you at disadvantage and take Spirit Guardians damage, or flee and get hit from Toll the Dead or whatnot.
As for Insect Plague, you really need your teammate's assistance in keeping enemies in the Plague. Wall spells work well! So does Plant Growth.
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InsiderUpcast that Spiritual Weapon if you have the spell slots. You only use one slot but continue to do the bigger amount of damage, and it's force damage which is something most enemies cannot mitigate in any way!
If you are a melee cleric, or at least good with being close to the action, think about Word of Radiance as a really good AOE cantrip. It's "Each creature of your choice" so you can exclude allies, and radiant damage is always nice.
And Healing Word is a must have, because bonus actions are hard to come by, bonus action healing is amazing, and once you cast your Spiritual Weapon you can attack twice AND heal all in the same turn!
Finally on a personal note, choose a dragonborn and then have a non-spell attack aoe to employ in case you want to upcast that bonus action.
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
An obvious combo is booming blade and tempest cleric - BB can be maxed by channel divinity, and stacks with the thunder damage from the level 8 ability.
I've been so enamored with Plant Growth + Spike Growth that I hadn't even thought about the rammifications of doing Insect Plague, instead.
Pure brilliance! I love posting things like this in the forum because it adds to my bag of tricks and helps kickstart my brain into thinking more outside-of-the-box, which I sometimes have trouble doing.
Very exciting options.
If you want a defensive combo go for spirit guardians on turn 1 + dodge and sanctuary on yourself as bonus action on turn 2. You make yourself realy hard to hit and continue to deal damage through spirit guardians. If you have the material components you can cast Warding Bond beforehand on the party's tank and just cure party allies the next turns. This will make your party goddamm hard to kill. Specially good for life domain clerics if they want to play on a support role.
Sanctuary was (long ago) errated: it ends if you deal damage, so this combo won't work.
Why has Spirit Guardians been hit or miss? It uses the same Saving Throw as Toll the Dead, it's AOE and it does a hair more damage. You can use all three together, btw.
Passive AOE Damage: Spirit Guardians
Main Action: Toll the Dead (or the Dodge action for a big defensive buff)
Bonus Action: Spiritual Weapon
For later levels Spirit Guardians scales very well when you upcast it. You can use this combination for an entire combat encounter, expending only 2 spell slots.
Cast Glyph of Warding + Sleet Storm or Plant Growth on a doorway that separates you from somebody you want to lead into a trap.
Alternatively, combine Glyph of Warding with Zone of Truth for near-automatic interrogation success without letting your opponent see you cast the spell.
^^ THANK YOU ^^ I am a Grave Cleric so what would the order of operations be for me to cast this combo please?
1st round: Spirit Guardians:
2nd round: Spiritual Weapon and Toll the dead or Dodge
I just use guiding bolt and spiritual weapon. First round cast a cantrip and use spiritual weapon, subsequent turns cast guiding bolt first to possibly get advantage on your attack with spiritual weapon.
call it "troll the dead." just started a cleric and super excited to get to the point when i can pull this move.
An even more fun combo is take a level in Druid or magic initiate and take thorn whip and have Spirit Guardians active with spiritual weapon up. You can pull them in with whip and they take the whip AND SG dmg (BA Spiritual weapon too) then when they start their turn in the SG they take dmg again.
I think my favorite was a combo I got off near the end of ToA. Without spoilers, it was a room quite deep into the tomb where you have to fight off waves of enemies, with the group partially separated in our case. First turn was getting Spirit Guardians off for some area damage and to make us harder to approach. Second turn was followed with Spiritual Weapon, to get a bonus action. Guardian of Faith on the third as enemies were getting stronger, and to further discourage the enemies from rushing. Following turns were Guiding Bolt to give the party Rogue advantage on the sturdy enemies, or Sacred Flame to chip away at the weakened enemies.
I was in a pretty damage heavy team, so it was nice to have a couple of turns to set that one up!
If you are a Tempest Cleric then do as said above with Spirit Guardians, then move to the enemy and Dodge. Add Spiritual Weapon. Bam....also no hp region from Spirit Guardians radiant damage. If you have Warcaster, when they try to move out of the damage, area hit with Booming Blade as a reaction At level 5 it is weapon damage plus d8...another d8 if they continue moving, which they will if they don't want Spiritual Guardian damage again. Thats a lot of d8's.
I completely forgot about the warcast booming blade! oh youve given me fun ideas for my Hex Clock (took Orzhov background for spirit guardians).
Thank you all for these combos and ideas I am taking LOTS of notes :)