Build Challenge: Substandard Ability Scores

[Lokicometh]

New Poster!

For the years I've played/DM'd D&D, I've always harped to my fellow players that low ability scores do not make characters unplayable. Recently, I rolled the following ability scores: 12, 12, 12, 11, 10, 6. My DM gave me a huge grin and told me to put my money where my mouth was, and I took him up on it with trepadition.

I've accessed this forum countless times, it's a literal playground of amazingness, so I'm asking for some help for this.

Currently, I have a lvl 3 Cleric with stats as 10, 6, 12, 11, 12, 12 (usual order) and I have the experience to go to level 5, however, I'm still hesitant on picking a direction. I can't take most of the optomized builds; casting lvl 4 Cleric spells will be an issue. Where can I go from here?!

Assume the world is low-magic, and I doubt very much I'll get items such as periapt of of wisdom anytime soon.

Thank you in advance for ideas!

P.S. Yes, I run around with no armor for now. I am unmotivated to improve my AC 8, and instead I try to creatively position myself safely. Mixed results.

[Forrestfire]

Personally, I'd suggest going into Warlock and Eldritch Disciple if you want to stay in cleric. You do alright damage with eldritch blast as a ranged touch attack, and many invocations just don't care about what your charisma is.

Probably also want to pick up a buff or two to increase your Wisdom, though. Or just retrain all of your levels to Warlock, which could conceivably be run with negative scores in everything.

[Bickerstaff]

Seconding a Warlock.

Seriously, Warlocks don't care how bad your scores are. You can still make a playable, if not relatively good, Warlock with those scores.

[zlefin]

If you can't count on getting/buying the periapt of wisdom, then you just have to take make wondrous magic item feat, and build the periapt yourself.

As long as you can do that, and build better periapts as you can afford them, the only delay will be that your 4th level spells will come at level 8 rather than level 7.

[Maginomicon]

"Thirding" Warlock. It even makes sense thematically. Born with mediocre stats but dreaming of adventure, you first sought meaning in your faith. When that did not answer all of your questions, you sought out more meaning in the taboo of eldritch power. Now you wield both spell and blast to find your purpose in life.

Pick up the Spellfire Wielder feat for extra fun times.

[Raezeman]

or what about dragonfire adept?
only pick invocations without saving throw, don't be a front liner and focus on entangling and slow breath over dealing damage. Ability focus to boost the save DC and some nice draconic aura (that scale with level thanks to your dragon blood) to help your allies.

[Drachasor]

I would have done a Druid. Your bad physical scores wouldn't matter, and you can get higher level spells with +wisdom items and level-up boosts.

[Ydaer Ca Noit]

you realize that your scores are below low, and that by phb you should reroll bc your highest roll is lower than 13? :smalltongue: Or were you arguing you could play a straight 6's char?

[Spore]

Maybe MT sounds like an option? This character will suffer anyhow, so maybe you can benefit from the flexibility of an buffing Wizard/Cleric/MT?

It's also a great way to kill your character.

[prufock]

Fourthing warlock, or binder.

I'm actually playing a character right now that started with the non-elite array: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. I took 2 levels of warlock, and with early entry tricks entered anima mage with 0 levels in binder. It progresses EB, invocations, and soul binding, and my DM was nice enough to let me adapt the other anima mage features to fit a warlock (Exploit Vestige gives you one additional invocation known, Vestige Metamagic gives you additional uses per day, etc), and Vestige Casting applies to SLAs. Instead of a metamagic feat, he let me enter with a meta-SLA feat (Boost Spell-Like Ability from BoVD).

It has been working out okay. It might be that our DM is taking it easy on us (we started as level 1 experts), but the vestiges, eldritch blast, and invocations seem to work together pretty well. For the most part, of course, I avoid abilities with saving throws.

[Lokicometh]

Thank you all for your replies!