For context I just completed my first session an hour ago or so and my level 3 tortle death cleric had some pretty busted stats at 17, 12, 15, 10, 18, 12. However, I got absolutely slapped in our first fight. Maybe it was just poorly balanced but I used all my spell slots just trying to kill a single dude and when we won I had nothing to heal the party so we all continued weakened. My question is (if the dm allows me to change domains or even classes) what is a good class/domain/multiclass for a tortle? the only requirment is that I'm able to heal my teammates. Customize your origin is an option as well. I would appreciate all help as I want to be an asset to my team. Thanks in advance
Death domain is already overpowered: it’s not intended for PCs but NPCs only. Maybe try Grave domain for a similar (but less evil/OP) approach.
It’s nice because, while it normally is weaker because it lacks heavy armor, your Tortle shell takes care of that problem. As a Cleric, you probably don’t want to use your spell slots to attack: Grave domain will help with that, since its ability encourages you to save your slots to cast a very strong Cure Wounds when an ally drops to 0. That covers your healing requirement as well. And Shield of Faith is a good spell pick for Tortles specifically, since it’s exponentially more powerful when you have a high AC.
P.S. A tactical tip: use short rests instead of spells to heal allies between fights, and try to keep yourself to a given amount of spell uses per fight. A lot of players look at each encounter as life-or-death and burn all their abilities, but remember, the average adventuring day uses two short rests and is all about attrition. Especially as a Cleric, you need to play conservatively and not blow everything on offense right away.
Actually I lied, I don't NEED to be able to heal the team. We'll be without a healer besides our paladin but I joined the campaign promising to play something martial not exactly a healbot. Feel free to offer any advice you can think of regardless of class or stuff
Oh dang the grave domain lacks heavy armor? I only picked death domain to take advantage of the tortles ac since it also doesnt get heavy armor. I'll have to look into that thanks
For context I just completed my first session an hour ago or so and my level 3 tortle death cleric had some pretty busted stats at 17, 12, 15, 10, 18, 12. However, I got absolutely slapped in our first fight. Maybe it was just poorly balanced but I used all my spell slots just trying to kill a single dude and when we won I had nothing to heal the party so we all continued weakened. My question is (if the dm allows me to change domains or even classes) what is a good class/domain/multiclass for a tortle? the only requirment is that I'm able to heal my teammates. Customize your origin is an option as well. I would appreciate all help as I want to be an asset to my team. Thanks in advance
Peace and Twilight are the most powerful cleric domains for anyone, maybe look into them. Peace's biggest tricks are absurdly high saves by stacking Emboldening Bond with Bless for +2d4 at level 1 and teleporting party members to each other basically at will at level 6, while Twilight's biggest trick is using Channel Divinity for more THP than anyone else in the game can provide. Both domains are just incredibly powerful.
If you want crazy-good healing, Shepherd Druid is really, really hard to beat for most of the level range.
Don’t overlook the classic Cleric 1-2 combo of spirit guardians & spiritual weapon. Yeah, you’ll have to wait for the 2, but still. One of them is excellent crowd control, the other is for the boss monster.
As a death domain, take advantage of chill touch and toll the dead. Well, do that with any of them I suppose, but with death domain those are both double barrel. Taking out the boss is nice, taking out the adds means fewer attacks coming in, means less to heal later. Instead of going all fight to take out one enemy, could you have instead taken out multiple weaker enemies and let someone else take on the singular foe? (I don’t know how the battlefield looked, I’m just asking.) Because maybe a slight shift in strategy would yield desired results.
Actually it wasn't even the boss, that's why i said maybe it was poorly balanced. There were about six of us vs 5 guards and it was a ridiculous battle with two of us at one health by the end of it. We used our last resources to heal then we went for the boss. That fight was a little better simply because it was only him and much easier to handle but it made me doubt my character if the *weaker* enemies were still very tough. We actually couldn't even kill the boss in the end, we were weak and he just knocked out one of us while the another abandoned us so we came to a compromise to never see each other again.
Hmm. What were you using? And not for nothing, but 3rd level you still don’t have much. 5th level when you can cast Spirit Guardians, that’s gonna be nice. Just be at the enemy. Besides, most magic healing is used in an emergency to pick someone up from 0 and then folks use hit dice to heal between battles, like NaivaraArnuanna said. So a double barrel spare the dying could be clutch.
I was just using a warhammer and the spells that I blew were inflict wounds. Part of the reason it might have been harder than it should have is we have a house rule where when you crit you roll max damage on whatever your weapon die is then you roll an additional one, so with a greataxe if you crit it would be 1d12+Str+12. With only 17 health (level 2 during the fight I leveled up afterward) a crit like that instantly puts you at deaths door. I believe that happened twice during our fight with just the guards. Maybe it was just that alone that made it a lot harder than it had any right to be.
Rules like tha always sound great when you think about rolling it, not so much when the DM actually does it. That’s why official RAW is double the dice, still feels cool, not so brutal on the receiving end.
Your character is already pretty high on the optimization scale. It sounds like your DM has over-tuned the challenges and needs to back off a bit TBH. Fiddling to make your character more powerful after your DM smacks you silly is engaging in an escalating battle that you, as the character, will inevitably lose to the DM, who is omnipotent and can kill you at any time on a whim.
Sometimes DM’s forget or have not realized that the ultimate goal of D&D is for the characters to succeed. They’re telling a story with the players through series a challenges to the characters, not flexing their authority or teaching anyone any lessons in respect. Instead of looking for ways to alter your character to “win”, speak to your DM about the difficulty of the encounters. Let him know that getting busted up so badly that you don’t even have the resources to recover before moving on to the next challenge is not your idea of fun. At the same time, you could consider marshalling your resources a little more effectively. If you are the healer, why are your precious spell slots being wasted on inflict wounds, which is a touch spell and has a saving throw for half damage (so really not that efficient)?
To be fair, inflict wounds is not the most efficient spell. Miss once and it’s wasted, and the damage doesn’t scale well. Something like Bane or Blindness/Deafness might have gotten you a bit more mileage. People like to focus on DPR, but often battlefield control is more cost effective.
In the fight everyone was within melee distance and we we're all pretty healthy till the end of the battle where I and one other party member got crit for a ton of damage. By then I didn't have any spell slots to recover.
To be fair, inflict wounds is not the most efficient spell. Miss once and it’s wasted, and the damage doesn’t scale well. Something like Bane or Blindness/Deafness might have gotten you a bit more mileage. People like to focus on DPR, but often battlefield control is more cost effective.
Yup. I’d even say bane isn’t so great. Now bless, where you are guaranteed to buff everyone you target, that’s a great low level spell. Then save the rest of your slots for healing word whack a mole.
And drop that houserule. The math which underlies the game is pretty finely tuned, and designed to favor the PCs. Changes to it will usually hurt you more than help you.
Tortles are really only useful for Medium Armor classes or Monks that want to dump Dex. That's it. If your class has lighter or heavier armor than that, Tortle AC is probably holding you back.
To be fair, inflict wounds is not the most efficient spell. Miss once and it’s wasted, and the damage doesn’t scale well. Something like Bane or Blindness/Deafness might have gotten you a bit more mileage. People like to focus on DPR, but often battlefield control is more cost effective.
Yup. I’d even say bane isn’t so great. Now bless, where you are guaranteed to buff everyone you target, that’s a great low level spell. Then save the rest of your slots for healing word whack a mole.
And drop that houserule. The math which underlies the game is pretty finely tuned, and designed to favor the PCs. Changes to it will usually hurt you more than help you.
Heck ya regarding Bless. Low level, multi-target, guaranteed results = super efficient. It is more or less the best bang for your buffing buck in the game.
Not intended for PC's, look buddy why would they give the option to play a death cleric for players if that was they case they would have made it dm exclusive or have text's that states that also relatively speaking its not that over powered I would argue its good but you very much over exaggerate things.
Tortles can be great with any classes or subclasses that don’t already have access to medium/heavy armor proficiencies. Shield proficiency is still incredible to gain from a source. If Tasha’s is being used then then the attributes can be swapped about.
Sorcerers, bards, wizards, and warlocks come to mind. They all rely on light armor or the mage armor spell with decent dexterity scores to maintain respectable AC. A tortle could potentially be used for a strength based rogue too. Dexterity is a great attribute to have though since it also affects that savng throw and initiative, so it’s much more of a compromise than a direct upgrade. Abjuration and war wizard are pretty awesome. If you’re trying to be tanky 1 lvl of artificer gives access to intelligence based sanctuary spell, bonus action cast and action dodge can be wildly effective and gives the shield proficiency.
Shell defense is an interesting feature for casters since it can help maintain concentration effectively. I don’t know if many people have talked about it but I’d also recommend your tortle character to sleep inside their shell. The advantage while being attacked from prone isn’t as bad if you were already unconscious and sleeping since the AC bonus and save advantages are still in effect.
For context I just completed my first session an hour ago or so and my level 3 tortle death cleric had some pretty busted stats at 17, 12, 15, 10, 18, 12. However, I got absolutely slapped in our first fight. Maybe it was just poorly balanced but I used all my spell slots just trying to kill a single dude and when we won I had nothing to heal the party so we all continued weakened. My question is (if the dm allows me to change domains or even classes) what is a good class/domain/multiclass for a tortle? the only requirment is that I'm able to heal my teammates. Customize your origin is an option as well. I would appreciate all help as I want to be an asset to my team. Thanks in advance
Death domain is already overpowered: it’s not intended for PCs but NPCs only. Maybe try Grave domain for a similar (but less evil/OP) approach.
It’s nice because, while it normally is weaker because it lacks heavy armor, your Tortle shell takes care of that problem. As a Cleric, you probably don’t want to use your spell slots to attack: Grave domain will help with that, since its ability encourages you to save your slots to cast a very strong Cure Wounds when an ally drops to 0. That covers your healing requirement as well. And Shield of Faith is a good spell pick for Tortles specifically, since it’s exponentially more powerful when you have a high AC.
P.S. A tactical tip: use short rests instead of spells to heal allies between fights, and try to keep yourself to a given amount of spell uses per fight. A lot of players look at each encounter as life-or-death and burn all their abilities, but remember, the average adventuring day uses two short rests and is all about attrition. Especially as a Cleric, you need to play conservatively and not blow everything on offense right away.
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Actually I lied, I don't NEED to be able to heal the team. We'll be without a healer besides our paladin but I joined the campaign promising to play something martial not exactly a healbot. Feel free to offer any advice you can think of regardless of class or stuff
Oh dang the grave domain lacks heavy armor? I only picked death domain to take advantage of the tortles ac since it also doesnt get heavy armor. I'll have to look into that thanks
Peace and Twilight are the most powerful cleric domains for anyone, maybe look into them. Peace's biggest tricks are absurdly high saves by stacking Emboldening Bond with Bless for +2d4 at level 1 and teleporting party members to each other basically at will at level 6, while Twilight's biggest trick is using Channel Divinity for more THP than anyone else in the game can provide. Both domains are just incredibly powerful.
If you want crazy-good healing, Shepherd Druid is really, really hard to beat for most of the level range.
Don’t overlook the classic Cleric 1-2 combo of spirit guardians & spiritual weapon. Yeah, you’ll have to wait for the 2, but still. One of them is excellent crowd control, the other is for the boss monster.
As a death domain, take advantage of chill touch and toll the dead. Well, do that with any of them I suppose, but with death domain those are both double barrel. Taking out the boss is nice, taking out the adds means fewer attacks coming in, means less to heal later. Instead of going all fight to take out one enemy, could you have instead taken out multiple weaker enemies and let someone else take on the singular foe? (I don’t know how the battlefield looked, I’m just asking.) Because maybe a slight shift in strategy would yield desired results.
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Actually it wasn't even the boss, that's why i said maybe it was poorly balanced. There were about six of us vs 5 guards and it was a ridiculous battle with two of us at one health by the end of it. We used our last resources to heal then we went for the boss. That fight was a little better simply because it was only him and much easier to handle but it made me doubt my character if the *weaker* enemies were still very tough. We actually couldn't even kill the boss in the end, we were weak and he just knocked out one of us while the another abandoned us so we came to a compromise to never see each other again.
Hmm. What were you using? And not for nothing, but 3rd level you still don’t have much. 5th level when you can cast Spirit Guardians, that’s gonna be nice. Just be at the enemy. Besides, most magic healing is used in an emergency to pick someone up from 0 and then folks use hit dice to heal between battles, like NaivaraArnuanna said. So a double barrel spare the dying could be clutch.
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I was just using a warhammer and the spells that I blew were inflict wounds. Part of the reason it might have been harder than it should have is we have a house rule where when you crit you roll max damage on whatever your weapon die is then you roll an additional one, so with a greataxe if you crit it would be 1d12+Str+12. With only 17 health (level 2 during the fight I leveled up afterward) a crit like that instantly puts you at deaths door. I believe that happened twice during our fight with just the guards. Maybe it was just that alone that made it a lot harder than it had any right to be.
🤷♂️
Rules like tha always sound great when you think about rolling it, not so much when the DM actually does it. That’s why official RAW is double the dice, still feels cool, not so brutal on the receiving end.
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Your character is already pretty high on the optimization scale. It sounds like your DM has over-tuned the challenges and needs to back off a bit TBH. Fiddling to make your character more powerful after your DM smacks you silly is engaging in an escalating battle that you, as the character, will inevitably lose to the DM, who is omnipotent and can kill you at any time on a whim.
Sometimes DM’s forget or have not realized that the ultimate goal of D&D is for the characters to succeed. They’re telling a story with the players through series a challenges to the characters, not flexing their authority or teaching anyone any lessons in respect. Instead of looking for ways to alter your character to “win”, speak to your DM about the difficulty of the encounters. Let him know that getting busted up so badly that you don’t even have the resources to recover before moving on to the next challenge is not your idea of fun. At the same time, you could consider marshalling your resources a little more effectively. If you are the healer, why are your precious spell slots being wasted on inflict wounds, which is a touch spell and has a saving throw for half damage (so really not that efficient)?
Tortle + Monk or Barbarian = AC+++++
I know that isn't helpful for a cleric, but still. Tortles wearing armor (Hi Clerics and Paladins and Artificer Armorers etc.) is a bad idea.
To be fair, inflict wounds is not the most efficient spell. Miss once and it’s wasted, and the damage doesn’t scale well. Something like Bane or Blindness/Deafness might have gotten you a bit more mileage. People like to focus on DPR, but often battlefield control is more cost effective.
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Now that I think about it I agree, If I was able to even blind one of them then they probably wouldn't have crit us which was the biggest issue.
In the fight everyone was within melee distance and we we're all pretty healthy till the end of the battle where I and one other party member got crit for a ton of damage. By then I didn't have any spell slots to recover.
Yup.
I’d even say bane isn’t so great. Now bless, where you are guaranteed to buff everyone you target, that’s a great low level spell. Then save the rest of your slots for healing word whack a mole.
And drop that houserule. The math which underlies the game is pretty finely tuned, and designed to favor the PCs. Changes to it will usually hurt you more than help you.
Tortles are really only useful for Medium Armor classes or Monks that want to dump Dex. That's it. If your class has lighter or heavier armor than that, Tortle AC is probably holding you back.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Heck ya regarding Bless. Low level, multi-target, guaranteed results = super efficient. It is more or less the best bang for your buffing buck in the game.
Not intended for PC's, look buddy why would they give the option to play a death cleric for players if that was they case they would have made it dm exclusive or have text's that states that also relatively speaking its not that over powered I would argue its good but you very much over exaggerate things.
Tortles can be great with any classes or subclasses that don’t already have access to medium/heavy armor proficiencies. Shield proficiency is still incredible to gain from a source. If Tasha’s is being used then then the attributes can be swapped about.
Sorcerers, bards, wizards, and warlocks come to mind. They all rely on light armor or the mage armor spell with decent dexterity scores to maintain respectable AC. A tortle could potentially be used for a strength based rogue too. Dexterity is a great attribute to have though since it also affects that savng throw and initiative, so it’s much more of a compromise than a direct upgrade. Abjuration and war wizard are pretty awesome. If you’re trying to be tanky 1 lvl of artificer gives access to intelligence based sanctuary spell, bonus action cast and action dodge can be wildly effective and gives the shield proficiency.
Shell defense is an interesting feature for casters since it can help maintain concentration effectively. I don’t know if many people have talked about it but I’d also recommend your tortle character to sleep inside their shell. The advantage while being attacked from prone isn’t as bad if you were already unconscious and sleeping since the AC bonus and save advantages are still in effect.