Sounds like your best bet is to stick with cleric but you mentioned taking Druid initiate which gives me an idea. You could pick up goodberry and thorn whip with that feat and use thorn whip to drag unlucky fiends into both your spirit guardians and your new aura. Might give you some of that melee action you are wanting and pair well with your aura.
Sorry, I did not respond to everyone earlier - life got really busy for a while.
Holy cow, though! You guys really came through. Special thanks to Chicken_Champ and OptimusGrimus for putting a lot of thought and effort into their responses.
As for feedback:
The aura is this: Any fiend within 10 feet of me gets disadvantage on all saving and ability rolls. So, I definitely intend to wade into melee a lot. It seems a little too powerful, to me, but I think our DM is increasing the difficulty of our encounters to counter-act this and other effects/boons that other players have.
I think I will focus on increasing the damage around me, rather than melee weapon damage. I don't find myself at a lack for damage, generally, I just have to wade into melee range more frequently. So, emphasize my use of spirit guardians, keep using inflict wounds (I really like that spell), keep my allies up and running.
My dwarf has a stat spread of 14/8/16/10/18/10. I dumped DEX for character reasons - it makes sense that this Dwarven monk (religious monk, not the class monk) of the God of Joy - generally the party/celebration god - would have high wisdom followed by constitution then strength. He probably would not be particularly agile (he's a portly fellow).
My AC is 18 at the moment - I have chain mail armor and use a shield.
That aura is quite powerful. At level 8 with your bonus to cantrip damage being available, your cantrips will be very competitive with your inflict wounds spell. If the disadvantage on the saves holds up you’ll actually be doing more damage, but a decent amount of fiends will have magic resistance. Comparable damage with a cantrip for no resource cost is pretty nice and will conserve your slots for healing and utility.
this build sounds very effective and seems the at appropriate that your life cleric would be the counter to representations of death. As optimus said, till the dead would work very well especially since spirit guardians with its half damage vs successful saves would atleast slightly reduce hitpoints to lower up the cantrip. Toll the dead would also stay effective even when you are proned or restrained since it’s not an attack roll.
your character seems very interesting. If you want to focus on melee combat, I suppose you could flavor toll the dead as you physically striking the creature in some way, perhaps even with a giant bell?
I would have assumed that Fiends would generally be more likely to be resistant to necrotic but vulnerable to radiant... but just randomly clicking around, that doesn't seem to be the case (generally they're pretty resillient against elemental stuff like fire, ice, and lightning, and poison). So I guess either cantrip would work, and toll certainly does more damage. Unsure whether Dex saves (Sacred Flame) or Wis saves (Toll) are usually better for Fiends? Otherwise they're both V/S spells with 60 foot range that can be used without issue in melee... I suppose you can take your pick!
But yeah, Spirit Guardians is going to be great with that other aura overlapping it :)
Disadvantage on ability rolls means that minoring in grappling might not unreasonable too, wrestle the devil! Mediocre strength can be compensated for with Expertise in Athletics, so you're really only a couple feats away from being a dwarven wrassler who pins demons in your holy meat grinder. Still probably not as "good" direction to take your build as just focusing on maximizing wisdom score and constitution/HP/concentration saving throws, but if you want to go crazy...
Nice aura. Powerful against fiends for sure.
Sounds like your best bet is to stick with cleric but you mentioned taking Druid initiate which gives me an idea. You could pick up goodberry and thorn whip with that feat and use thorn whip to drag unlucky fiends into both your spirit guardians and your new aura. Might give you some of that melee action you are wanting and pair well with your aura.
Good luck
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
That aura is quite powerful. At level 8 with your bonus to cantrip damage being available, your cantrips will be very competitive with your inflict wounds spell. If the disadvantage on the saves holds up you’ll actually be doing more damage, but a decent amount of fiends will have magic resistance. Comparable damage with a cantrip for no resource cost is pretty nice and will conserve your slots for healing and utility.
this build sounds very effective and seems the at appropriate that your life cleric would be the counter to representations of death. As optimus said, till the dead would work very well especially since spirit guardians with its half damage vs successful saves would atleast slightly reduce hitpoints to lower up the cantrip. Toll the dead would also stay effective even when you are proned or restrained since it’s not an attack roll.
your character seems very interesting. If you want to focus on melee combat, I suppose you could flavor toll the dead as you physically striking the creature in some way, perhaps even with a giant bell?
I would have assumed that Fiends would generally be more likely to be resistant to necrotic but vulnerable to radiant... but just randomly clicking around, that doesn't seem to be the case (generally they're pretty resillient against elemental stuff like fire, ice, and lightning, and poison). So I guess either cantrip would work, and toll certainly does more damage. Unsure whether Dex saves (Sacred Flame) or Wis saves (Toll) are usually better for Fiends? Otherwise they're both V/S spells with 60 foot range that can be used without issue in melee... I suppose you can take your pick!
But yeah, Spirit Guardians is going to be great with that other aura overlapping it :)
Disadvantage on ability rolls means that minoring in grappling might not unreasonable too, wrestle the devil! Mediocre strength can be compensated for with Expertise in Athletics, so you're really only a couple feats away from being a dwarven wrassler who pins demons in your holy meat grinder. Still probably not as "good" direction to take your build as just focusing on maximizing wisdom score and constitution/HP/concentration saving throws, but if you want to go crazy...
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.