I’m playing a variant human Forge cleric about to reach level 7. I’ve taken War Caster and Elemental Adept (Fire) previously. Since there isn’t anything exciting at 7th level I was considering a dip into another class for something interesting. If I choose even a partial spell caster I still get my 4th level spell slot. What would be a good choice or is it better staying true cleric?
4th level spells are not exciting? *Looks at level 4 cleric spells.* Hmm, yeah, I see your point.
But multiclassing will slow progression toward 5th level spells which actually are exciting. Not to mention your divine strike at level 8.
Plus cleric doesn't have a lot of good multiclasses without going MAD. If you are considering it, it would help if we knew what stats were over 13.
On that note, paladin is actually pretty good for stacking smites on top of divine strike. Warlock is great for diversifying your options (I like celestial warlock with cleric).
Normally if your a caster you try to raise your casting stat as high as you can as fast as you can till it max's out at 20. This is so your save DC is as high as it can be, so your targets dont keep on resisting or ignoring your spells.
Forge clerics can gain some of the highest ac in the game (without introducing magic items) Making excellent front line barricades.
Step 1 - wear the heaviest armour you can get hold of
Step 2 - heavy armour mastery (shave off damage with every hit)
Step 3 - enchant your armour or shield with the absurdly good forge ability to gain +1 for 24 hours.
Step 4 - at 6th level gain some more forge ac
Now cast shield of faith against nasty single monster heavy hitters and dodge whilst your ranged allies destroy it. Or cast spirit guardians and dodge melting most encounters with impunity. Concentration checks are a killer, resilient con and /or warcaster are excellent choices later on. Upcast Spirit guardians in that depressing fourth level slot for more mayhem, even with DMG recommended number of encounters per day, if any are close to each other you now have enough spirit guardians to have it running in all of them, and if you dont? Shield of faith.
You dont need to multiclass, but if you did I would suggest fighter for second wind and a defensive fighting style, because why not have a 7th level character in platemail with 23 ac? or 25 for 10 minutes with shield of faith.
I am curious as to why you took the elemental adept feat, was it for flavour or did you have something in mind?
Yeah Elemental Adept was for Forge cleric flavour and a little attempt to buff my damage output as I tend to charge enemy/searing smite/wallop! I had considered the possibility of Warlock or Sorcerer multi to gain extra fire spell damage output but I can’t quite justify it in story terms!
Your character has reasonable stats all around. I can see the argument for going Paladin as much as for going Fighter if you're willing to dip 2 or 3 levels. Keep in mind you need 2 levels in Paladin to get any spell slot bumps. If just for one level, Fighter generally better for Fighting Style. I could also see this there being a dip into Sorcerer instead. Having access to Shield, Lightning Lure, and Mending is very useful to a frontline battle Cleric.
As for backstory, I don't enough about this characters background. That said, you can always try to work with your DM to create a reason why your character would be exposed to some powerful magics that might permanent broaden his magical potential.
If you want to use your elemental adept feat and not use a spell each time, (a few if's there) Consider Magic initiate feat for create bonfire or firebolt and if you still want to melee attack green flame blade, they will use your intelligence or charisma for spell dc and to hit rolls, except greenflame blade which will roll to hit as a melee attack. Its not brilliant, but with bonfire and the all too common10' wide corridor you can discourage someone from going around you by placing it next to you. Firebolt requiring another casing statistic to hit will be awful, but you will be using your feat more often, and green flame blade will be a nice addition to your physical melee attack damage that doesnt require a spell slot and will use the feat. As for the first level spell you could gain? there are many to choose from that will be thematic from burning hands, to 'everyon picks it' find familiar (the owl delivered cure wounds at up to 100' is great for the emergency cleric call outs)
None of this (except medic-owl assistance) is optimising for an apocalypse threat game but it might make it more fun if you dont choose to multiclass and dont want to regret that elemental adept feat.
Normally if your a caster you try to raise your casting stat as high as you can as fast as you can till it max's out at 20. This is so your save DC is as high as it can be, so your targets dont keep on resisting or ignoring your spells.
Forge clerics can gain some of the highest ac in the game (without introducing magic items) Making excellent front line barricades.
Step 1 - wear the heaviest armour you can get hold of
Step 2 - heavy armour mastery (shave off damage with every hit)
Step 3 - enchant your armour or shield with the absurdly good forge ability to gain +1 for 24 hours.
Step 4 - at 6th level gain some more forge ac
Heavy Armor Master is honestly not that great of a feat. It's a static 3 DR for non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing. Past level 6, you're going to encounter more magical damage which bypasses this completely. The other thing is that the reduction happens prior to factoring in resistance. That might not be a big deal, but if you do have a source of resistance it diminishes the value of HAM.
Blessing of the Forge does not work on shields.
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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.
Erm, Thats 3 per hit from Ham, so if you are hit 10 times in one game, thats the equivalent of 30 extra hitpoints. If you consider toughness a good feat, then this is unconventionally a contender at the least. Thats amazing in a game edition where hits come in more often and damage is going up for monsters but plateau's out for players by tier. Ignoring mitigation in a tight tolerance game gets you killed chasing glory.
Resistance does come after 3 damage is removed, yes. So a hit that does 18 damage would now deal 15 damage, with resistance lowering that to 7 and Ham taking out the equivalent of 4 damage due to the rounding down. Thats better not worse.(if you have resistance in play which is not happening quickly for a forge cleric)
Magic weapon / magic imbued attacks in 5e from monsters are almost non existent compared to previous editions. Less creatures have magic imbued attacks and now if a creature is resistant or immune to magic weapons they dont automatically have the ability to overcome that resistance. No beast, dragon, plant or ooze has physical magic imbued attacks for example. Monstrosities with them? few and far between. Aberrations? not even mindflayers, although the brain suck will ignore HAM for other reasons. Now though Fiends and Celestials do have magic attacks, humorously not many of them do. Humanoids are little different, many DM have them kitted out in surprising gear but again, as written HAM does the job even against lycanthropes who as written cant hurt another lycanthrope, they just cant. Elementals and Constructs you might have issues, but if your game is just elementals and construct enemies for days then sign me up because the low intelligence and routine attack paths will make that easy to plan for. Old school incorporeal undead will ignore it due to the type of damage dealt, but physical waves of zombies or skeleton-a-likes are your bread and butter undead.
Long story short, HAM provides a cushion, not immunity and that cushion over a campaign means less healing needed allowing longer assaults before resting. Consider it mandatory for a tight tolerance game.
Blessing of the forge works on armor, shields appear in the armor section and table of the PHB, the DM should be consulted on the interpretation there before you assume either way. (yeah it will be different as often as not even when your right you lose nothing by politely inquiring, and gain some insight into the DM's methodology at the same time)
Regardless of whether you play in games where no one ever dies, or those with a body count of characters an abattoir would nod appreciatively towards enjoy your games!
Resistance does come after 3 damage is removed, yes. So a hit that does 18 damage would now deal 15 damage, with resistance lowering that to 7 and Ham taking out the equivalent of 4 damage due to the rounding down. Thats better not worse.(if you have resistance in play which is not happening quickly for a forge cleric)
Just want to pop in and correct some math. Heavy armor master prevents 2 damage due to rounding, not 4. In your example, you would have taken 9 damage without HAM. In other scenarios, such as if the starting damage is an odd number, HAM prevents effectively 1 damage (example 19-3=16÷2=8 with HAM, 19÷2(rounded down)=9 without HAM). So just worse.
Blessing of the forge works on armor, shields appear in the armor section and table of the PHB, the DM should be consulted on the interpretation there before you assume either way.
While I am here: shields appear in the "armor and shields" section and table of the PHB. Nowhere in the rules does it classify shields as armor.
SA compendium even mentions this:
Shields are grouped with armor in the equipment rules in the Player’s Handbook, but various game features distinguish between the armor you wear and a shield you wield.
Thats a downer of an interpretation of whats happening with HAM and resistance :). Even with the glass half empty it doesnt alter that you take less with HAM regardless of resistance than without. Any time that happens its a net gain only revoked by an alternative option which will help more.
As for armor and shields and interpretations, I agree that you can classify a chunk of metal that can be found in the DMG as something that can be enchanted as magical to add a defensive bonus as not armor, I agree that you can classify something that is found in the same category as armor as not armor. Im not sure you can without a chuckle say nowhere does it classify when you precede it with the point about it being in the same table and section. So again, ask your DM, or if your the DM ask yourself whether armor enhancement and enchantment is appropriately similar for your game world lore. SA, even backs this up: various features distinguish this - thats important, various features do. Not all. So ask away if your features dont specifically exclude it as is the case with Monk unarmored defence mentioning armor or shield.
You are still right about HAM providing some bonus even with resistance, I was just correcting math about how much.
Armor and shields are mentioned separately in every instance in the rules. In the PHB, they are in the "armor and shields" section (as they both increase AC) but shields are not on any armor tables, they are on the shield table, in the shield category, deliberately separated from the armor categories.
And in the very first paragraph of this section it says:
The Armor table collects the most commonly available types of armor found in the game and separates them into three categories: light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. Many warriors supplement their armor with a shield.
Both stating that all armor is either light, medium, or heavy and indicating that shields are not armor, but share a purpose.
Obviously, DMs can change this, but it is not a different rules interpretation, it would be a house rule that changes the rule.
Only if the damage doesn't bypass HAM entirely. If the damage is not entirely non-magical BPS, then HAM does absolutely nothing. Magic weapon? Total bypass. Spell? Total bypass. Creature with natural weapons that count as magic? Total bypass.
I'm not trying to completely dump on HAM either; it's a good feat, and you're absolutely right about the value of mitigation. It's a great feat for a tier-1 campaign.
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.
If I choose even a partial spell caster I still get my 4th level spell slot.
Unless you're Homebrewing this, no you Don't.
I'd still stick with cleric but if you really wanted to multiclass then I'd go with sorcerer. Meta magic is pretty cool. But honestly stuck with cleric. You have higher level spells coming, level eight damage feature, and plenty of other things to look forward to.
If I choose even a partial spell caster I still get my 4th level spell slot.
Unless you're Homebrewing this, no you Don't.
You are right. I was originally assuming that when counting spellcaster levels on the multiclass table, partial caster level being halved then rounded down would produce a minimum of 1 but actually that isn’t written that way so becomes 0. I would need a Level in a full magic user (Wiz/Sor/Lock) to make a Level 7 Spellcaster for that 4th Level spell slot. Hmmm.
Considering the options I might stay true cleric and just cope with no major boosts at level 7. But now I’ve noticed that Divine Strike at Lvl 8 for a Forge Cleric does fire damage which stacks nicely with Elemental Adept 😁
I'm not 100% sure how you're looking at the spell levels. You just need to follow the cleric table on their page for determining spell level slots. Clerics get a new spell level every odd cleric level. So if you hit cleric level seven, you unlock fourth level cleric spells. If instead you took a level in wizard, you'd unlock level 1 wizard spells and still only have level 3 cleric spells. If you took two more levels in wizard, you'd unlock level 2 spells and still only have cleric level three spells. I generally think spell casters are better off sticking to their class. The one exception might be levels in fighter or rogue, maybe monk if you want to me more Comcast focused. A dip in sorcerer for one level is ok too I suppose but still I like just sticking with the caster as a solo class.
I know you aren't excited about level four spells, but remember you can upcast many cleric spells using a higher level spell slot to achieve a greater effect. This can include more healing dice in the case of cute wounds or healing word, more damage dice in the case of spirit guardians or spiritual weapon, or more targets in the case of hold person or blindness/deafness. There are endless possibilities for that forth level spell slot! I also think banishment is a very good spell as is guardian of faith (the no concentration makes this spell pretty good!). The others have uses as well but are more situational.
Spell Slots. You determine your available spell slots by adding together all your levels in the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard classes, half your levels (rounded down) in the paladin and ranger classes, and a third of your fighter or rogue levels (rounded down) if you have the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster feature. Use this total to determine your spell slots by consulting the Multiclass Spellcaster table.
If you have more than one spellcasting class, this table might give you spell slots of a level that is higher than the spells you know or can prepare. You can use those slots, but only to cast your lower-level spells.
Multiclass Spellcaster
Level
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
1st
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2nd
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
3rd
4
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
4th
4
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
5th
4
3
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
6th
4
3
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
7th
4
3
3
1
-
-
-
-
So yeah, Cleric 6/Wizard 1 would give me a 4th level spell slot but no access to 4th level Cleric spells.
Spell Slots. You determine your available spell slots by adding together all your levels in the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard classes, half your levels (rounded down) in the paladin and ranger classes, and a third of your fighter or rogue levels (rounded down) if you have the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster feature. Use this total to determine your spell slots by consulting the Multiclass Spellcaster table.
If you have more than one spellcasting class, this table might give you spell slots of a level that is higher than the spells you know or can prepare. You can use those slots, but only to cast your lower-level spells.
Multiclass Spellcaster
Level
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
9th
1st
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
2nd
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
3rd
4
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
4th
4
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
5th
4
3
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
6th
4
3
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
7th
4
3
3
1
-
-
-
-
So yeah, Cleric 6/Wizard 1 would give me a 4th level spell slot but no access to 4th level Cleric spells.
Correct. Spell slots are determined by (spellcasting) character level(s). Spells known are determined by class level(s).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
I’m playing a variant human Forge cleric about to reach level 7. I’ve taken War Caster and Elemental Adept (Fire) previously. Since there isn’t anything exciting at 7th level I was considering a dip into another class for something interesting. If I choose even a partial spell caster I still get my 4th level spell slot. What would be a good choice or is it better staying true cleric?
4th level spells are not exciting? *Looks at level 4 cleric spells.* Hmm, yeah, I see your point.
But multiclassing will slow progression toward 5th level spells which actually are exciting. Not to mention your divine strike at level 8.
Plus cleric doesn't have a lot of good multiclasses without going MAD. If you are considering it, it would help if we knew what stats were over 13.
On that note, paladin is actually pretty good for stacking smites on top of divine strike. Warlock is great for diversifying your options (I like celestial warlock with cleric).
Normally if your a caster you try to raise your casting stat as high as you can as fast as you can till it max's out at 20. This is so your save DC is as high as it can be, so your targets dont keep on resisting or ignoring your spells.
Forge clerics can gain some of the highest ac in the game (without introducing magic items) Making excellent front line barricades.
Step 1 - wear the heaviest armour you can get hold of
Step 2 - heavy armour mastery (shave off damage with every hit)
Step 3 - enchant your armour or shield with the absurdly good forge ability to gain +1 for 24 hours.
Step 4 - at 6th level gain some more forge ac
Now cast shield of faith against nasty single monster heavy hitters and dodge whilst your ranged allies destroy it. Or cast spirit guardians and dodge melting most encounters with impunity. Concentration checks are a killer, resilient con and /or warcaster are excellent choices later on. Upcast Spirit guardians in that depressing fourth level slot for more mayhem, even with DMG recommended number of encounters per day, if any are close to each other you now have enough spirit guardians to have it running in all of them, and if you dont? Shield of faith.
You dont need to multiclass, but if you did I would suggest fighter for second wind and a defensive fighting style, because why not have a 7th level character in platemail with 23 ac? or 25 for 10 minutes with shield of faith.
I am curious as to why you took the elemental adept feat, was it for flavour or did you have something in mind?
Brilliant analysis, very helpful thank you.
Yeah Elemental Adept was for Forge cleric flavour and a little attempt to buff my damage output as I tend to charge enemy/searing smite/wallop! I had considered the possibility of Warlock or Sorcerer multi to gain extra fire spell damage output but I can’t quite justify it in story terms!
Your character has reasonable stats all around. I can see the argument for going Paladin as much as for going Fighter if you're willing to dip 2 or 3 levels. Keep in mind you need 2 levels in Paladin to get any spell slot bumps. If just for one level, Fighter generally better for Fighting Style. I could also see this there being a dip into Sorcerer instead. Having access to Shield, Lightning Lure, and Mending is very useful to a frontline battle Cleric.
As for backstory, I don't enough about this characters background. That said, you can always try to work with your DM to create a reason why your character would be exposed to some powerful magics that might permanent broaden his magical potential.
Thanks for your feedback!
If you want to use your elemental adept feat and not use a spell each time, (a few if's there) Consider Magic initiate feat for create bonfire or firebolt and if you still want to melee attack green flame blade, they will use your intelligence or charisma for spell dc and to hit rolls, except greenflame blade which will roll to hit as a melee attack. Its not brilliant, but with bonfire and the all too common10' wide corridor you can discourage someone from going around you by placing it next to you. Firebolt requiring another casing statistic to hit will be awful, but you will be using your feat more often, and green flame blade will be a nice addition to your physical melee attack damage that doesnt require a spell slot and will use the feat. As for the first level spell you could gain? there are many to choose from that will be thematic from burning hands, to 'everyon picks it' find familiar (the owl delivered cure wounds at up to 100' is great for the emergency cleric call outs)
None of this (except medic-owl assistance) is optimising for an apocalypse threat game but it might make it more fun if you dont choose to multiclass and dont want to regret that elemental adept feat.
Enjoy yourself!
Heavy Armor Master is honestly not that great of a feat. It's a static 3 DR for non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing. Past level 6, you're going to encounter more magical damage which bypasses this completely. The other thing is that the reduction happens prior to factoring in resistance. That might not be a big deal, but if you do have a source of resistance it diminishes the value of HAM.
Blessing of the Forge does not work on shields.
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.
Erm, Thats 3 per hit from Ham, so if you are hit 10 times in one game, thats the equivalent of 30 extra hitpoints. If you consider toughness a good feat, then this is unconventionally a contender at the least. Thats amazing in a game edition where hits come in more often and damage is going up for monsters but plateau's out for players by tier. Ignoring mitigation in a tight tolerance game gets you killed chasing glory.
Resistance does come after 3 damage is removed, yes. So a hit that does 18 damage would now deal 15 damage, with resistance lowering that to 7 and Ham taking out the equivalent of 4 damage due to the rounding down. Thats better not worse.(if you have resistance in play which is not happening quickly for a forge cleric)
Magic weapon / magic imbued attacks in 5e from monsters are almost non existent compared to previous editions. Less creatures have magic imbued attacks and now if a creature is resistant or immune to magic weapons they dont automatically have the ability to overcome that resistance. No beast, dragon, plant or ooze has physical magic imbued attacks for example. Monstrosities with them? few and far between. Aberrations? not even mindflayers, although the brain suck will ignore HAM for other reasons. Now though Fiends and Celestials do have magic attacks, humorously not many of them do. Humanoids are little different, many DM have them kitted out in surprising gear but again, as written HAM does the job even against lycanthropes who as written cant hurt another lycanthrope, they just cant. Elementals and Constructs you might have issues, but if your game is just elementals and construct enemies for days then sign me up because the low intelligence and routine attack paths will make that easy to plan for. Old school incorporeal undead will ignore it due to the type of damage dealt, but physical waves of zombies or skeleton-a-likes are your bread and butter undead.
Long story short, HAM provides a cushion, not immunity and that cushion over a campaign means less healing needed allowing longer assaults before resting. Consider it mandatory for a tight tolerance game.
Blessing of the forge works on armor, shields appear in the armor section and table of the PHB, the DM should be consulted on the interpretation there before you assume either way. (yeah it will be different as often as not even when your right you lose nothing by politely inquiring, and gain some insight into the DM's methodology at the same time)
Regardless of whether you play in games where no one ever dies, or those with a body count of characters an abattoir would nod appreciatively towards enjoy your games!
Just want to pop in and correct some math. Heavy armor master prevents 2 damage due to rounding, not 4. In your example, you would have taken 9 damage without HAM. In other scenarios, such as if the starting damage is an odd number, HAM prevents effectively 1 damage (example 19-3=16÷2=8 with HAM, 19÷2(rounded down)=9 without HAM). So just worse.
While I am here: shields appear in the "armor and shields" section and table of the PHB. Nowhere in the rules does it classify shields as armor.
SA compendium even mentions this:
Thats a downer of an interpretation of whats happening with HAM and resistance :). Even with the glass half empty it doesnt alter that you take less with HAM regardless of resistance than without. Any time that happens its a net gain only revoked by an alternative option which will help more.
As for armor and shields and interpretations, I agree that you can classify a chunk of metal that can be found in the DMG as something that can be enchanted as magical to add a defensive bonus as not armor, I agree that you can classify something that is found in the same category as armor as not armor. Im not sure you can without a chuckle say nowhere does it classify when you precede it with the point about it being in the same table and section. So again, ask your DM, or if your the DM ask yourself whether armor enhancement and enchantment is appropriately similar for your game world lore. SA, even backs this up: various features distinguish this - thats important, various features do. Not all. So ask away if your features dont specifically exclude it as is the case with Monk unarmored defence mentioning armor or shield.
You are still right about HAM providing some bonus even with resistance, I was just correcting math about how much.
Armor and shields are mentioned separately in every instance in the rules. In the PHB, they are in the "armor and shields" section (as they both increase AC) but shields are not on any armor tables, they are on the shield table, in the shield category, deliberately separated from the armor categories.
And in the very first paragraph of this section it says:
Both stating that all armor is either light, medium, or heavy and indicating that shields are not armor, but share a purpose.
Obviously, DMs can change this, but it is not a different rules interpretation, it would be a house rule that changes the rule.
Only if the damage doesn't bypass HAM entirely. If the damage is not entirely non-magical BPS, then HAM does absolutely nothing. Magic weapon? Total bypass. Spell? Total bypass. Creature with natural weapons that count as magic? Total bypass.
I'm not trying to completely dump on HAM either; it's a good feat, and you're absolutely right about the value of mitigation. It's a great feat for a tier-1 campaign.
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.
Unless you're Homebrewing this, no you Don't.
I'd still stick with cleric but if you really wanted to multiclass then I'd go with sorcerer. Meta magic is pretty cool. But honestly stuck with cleric. You have higher level spells coming, level eight damage feature, and plenty of other things to look forward to.
You are right. I was originally assuming that when counting spellcaster levels on the multiclass table, partial caster level being halved then rounded down would produce a minimum of 1 but actually that isn’t written that way so becomes 0. I would need a Level in a full magic user (Wiz/Sor/Lock) to make a Level 7 Spellcaster for that 4th Level spell slot. Hmmm.
Considering the options I might stay true cleric and just cope with no major boosts at level 7. But now I’ve noticed that Divine Strike at Lvl 8 for a Forge Cleric does fire damage which stacks nicely with Elemental Adept 😁
I'm not 100% sure how you're looking at the spell levels. You just need to follow the cleric table on their page for determining spell level slots. Clerics get a new spell level every odd cleric level. So if you hit cleric level seven, you unlock fourth level cleric spells. If instead you took a level in wizard, you'd unlock level 1 wizard spells and still only have level 3 cleric spells. If you took two more levels in wizard, you'd unlock level 2 spells and still only have cleric level three spells. I generally think spell casters are better off sticking to their class. The one exception might be levels in fighter or rogue, maybe monk if you want to me more Comcast focused. A dip in sorcerer for one level is ok too I suppose but still I like just sticking with the caster as a solo class.
I know you aren't excited about level four spells, but remember you can upcast many cleric spells using a higher level spell slot to achieve a greater effect. This can include more healing dice in the case of cute wounds or healing word, more damage dice in the case of spirit guardians or spiritual weapon, or more targets in the case of hold person or blindness/deafness. There are endless possibilities for that forth level spell slot! I also think banishment is a very good spell as is guardian of faith (the no concentration makes this spell pretty good!). The others have uses as well but are more situational.
From the PHB section on Multiclassing
So yeah, Cleric 6/Wizard 1 would give me a 4th level spell slot but no access to 4th level Cleric spells.
Correct. Spell slots are determined by (spellcasting) character level(s). Spells known are determined by class level(s).
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.
Whoop you're correct. My bad. I guess you could still upcast lower level spells to your higher spell slot.