Cleric/theurge mutliclass idea help

[Seekergeek]

Whats up, guys.

Our most recent campaign has come to an end and in about three weeks we'll be starting a new arc. I know what I'd like to do, vaguely, but I don't know how best to make it work.

We are using a 28 point point-buy, which is going to probably be a bit of a stretch for a melee focused cleric/wizard, but I think it is still doable.

We only have one munchkin at the table, but otherwise we don't tend to worry too much about optimal choices and tend to focus on fun or character driven choices. As it stands right now we're going to have a cleric/artificer, a thief rogue, myself, and two TBDs. Everything is on the table UA wise, and we're going to be starting at level 7.

The notion is a cleric of gond with the forge domain and a theurge wizard using the war domain. Maybe. I'd like to be a bit gishy, which is why the War domain appealed to me.

One level of forge cleric gives me heavy armour, a +1 floating enchantment and a big expansion to my spell list. Six levels of wizard gets me the war cleric's +10 to hit, the addition of spiritual weapon and spirit guardians to my spell list (among other things), and the bonus action attacks from the domain's first level feature, which will allow me to save spell slots for a least one encounter (rather than casting spiritual weapon, I mean).

With 28 points, I believe I can manage unmodified stats of 15, 14, 14, 13, 8, 8. I'm at the office so that may not be quite right.

I'm on the fence racially - Variant Human or Rock Gnome seem like the obvious choices, but I'm not married to either if something jumps out as a better choice.

Would you recommend a different combination of cleric and theurge? I've seen much made of the Tempest Theurge which I could combine with, say, a nature domain to make a savage shaman type. I guess I need some sort of potential character synergy between the choices but I can worry about that if the mechanics seem tasty.

[EdenIndustries]

Without trying to derail your idea of Theurge (which is a very fun arcane tradition!) have you given any thought to the War Magic tradition? At level 2 you can use a reaction to get +2 to AC or +4 to a saving throw. Pretty great! And although you can only use cantrips on your next turn, if you're going for a gish you probably will having either BB or GFB to fight with as well so that's probably no big loss.

A fellow player in an upcoming campaign is planning on a Forge Cleric/War Magic Wizard and the build is SUPER tanky/gishy.

I'll give some more thought to Theurge ideas for you too, but I wanted to toss that idea out there as well!

[Seekergeek]

That's very much on my mind! I guess, honestly, I got blindly stuck on the war domain. Since posting initially, Abjuration and war mage have entered the fray.

[EdenIndustries]

That's very much on my mind! I guess, honestly, I got blindly stuck on the war domain. Since posting initially, Abjuration and war mage have entered the fray.
I think as far as a gish build for Theurge goes, the War domain is pretty awesome. So that's definitely a solid option. However, perhaps consider doing Theurge with Forge domain instead? You'd lose the +10 from War but gain +1 AC and resistance to fire damage through the 6th level feature and immunity to fire damage as the 17th level feature (that you get at level 14 instead), in addition to resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing that War would give you at that level. And you can still pick up Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians quite easily since only 3 spells on the Forge list are ones not on the Wizard list, meaning you can easily pick up those spells with your choices that can pull off the entire Cleric list. Compare that to War, which has 7 spells not on the Wizard list. Meaning you're forced to go through more mandatory spells before you can pick up any spells off of the Cleric list.

So overall, going War Cleric/Forge Theurge rather than Forge Cleric/War Theurge seems to give higher AC, better damage resistances, and better spell possibilities at the cost of giving up the +10 to hit. Something to consider!

Ok, on to Abjuration. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Abjuration for a couple reasons:

There aren't a lot of Abjuration spells that are going to fill your Arcane Ward. You're basically looking at Shield, Absorb Elements, Counterspell, and Banishment. Now granted, those are all handy spells. But personally, it's disappointing to me that it's so limited.
After the initial casting, each Abjuration spell you cast only refills the ward by the spell level x 2. This is probably my bigger complaint. Every time you cast Shield (a great spell that you'll probably use your whole adventuring career) the ward gains a whole 2 HP. Seriously? Even from the beginning that seems pretty unimpressive to me given that even a Goblin hits for an average of 5 damage. Now with a Cleric dip you'll have some beefy AC, so you won't be hit often. But even so, when you are hit you may need to cast 3 level 1 spells just to repair the ward after a single Goblin's hit. That...doesn't seem so fun.


Anyway I know other people that swear by the Abjuration Wizard. But that slow rate of replenishing the ward (outside of really cheesy stuff like casting the Alarm ritual over and over) would grate on me.

Regadring the War Magic tradition, you can get a sort-of permanent +2 AC and a situational additional +2 AC (the combination of which are pretty potent in the world of bounded accuracy, as far as I'm concerned), +4 to Con saving throws (huge for keeping up your concentration on spells while gishing it up), and finally at level 14 you can toss out automatic damage to anyone around you. Not a ton of damage, but automatic damage via reaction is a decent way of adding to your action economy. Personally I find it lacks some of the fun of Theurge (aquiring Cleric spells to improve your utility and versatility is pretty fun to me after all!) but it has solid numbers.

[jaappleton]

Here's the thing:

You saw War Domain as being a bit of a Gish. And it's normal to see that.

But it isn't a gish, at all.

You want to be in Heavy Armor. That means a Strength of at least 15. War Domain lets you get an attack with a Bonus Action, usable a number of times equal to your spellcasting modifier.

But Spiritual Weapon is better at doing it. 1d8 + Spell Mod damage, and the best part of it is that it floats around. It can move across the battlefield to finish someone off while you remain stationary. You can hang out in the back, or be up front taking a couple hits, whatever you want. Heck, interact with an object if the situation calls for it, you have a floating weapon ready to fly across the battlefield and hurt people.

If you want something to stretch your spell slots, I say go for Light Domain. Yes, most of the Domain spells are on the Wizard list already, but Warding Flare is the feature you want. Admittedly its channel divinity isn't top-notch if you are multiclassing, but IMO Warding Flare is an excellent feature. It's also one of the few things to negate a Crit.

[EdenIndustries]

Here's the thing:

You saw War Domain as being a bit of a Gish. And it's normal to see that.

But it isn't a gish, at all.

You want to be in Heavy Armor. That means a Strength of at least 15.

Well you need a Strength of 15 only if you don't want a movement penalty. Which isn't that horrible in my opinion, all things considered. Especially since there are quite a lot of ways around that, such as:

Be a Dwarf
Ride a mount (free disengage too)
Cast Longstrider



War Domain lets you get an attack with a Bonus Action, usable a number of times equal to your spellcasting modifier.

But Spiritual Weapon is better at doing it.
Yeah Spiritual Weapon is definitely better at that. Heck, casting either Booming Blade or GFB for your action and then using Spiritual Weapon for your Bonus Action is probably going to be way better than the Bonus Action attack from War.

Nonetheless, War does get some great spells and grabbing the 17th level ability at level 14 via Theurge for resistance to non-magical BPS is pretty cool. So probably not the ultimate gish, but it has some cool stuff going for it I'd say.

[Seekergeek]

Thanks for the feedback, fellas (I assume)! I'm on my phone now so that'll keep me brief. I really appreciate the various breakdowns. Here's a question that probably doesn't really matter because it's unlikely I'll use it but if one were to take the same domain for both their cleric choice and their theurgy choice would they get both applications of the first level feature?

[EdenIndustries]

Thanks for the feedback, fellas (I assume)! I'm on my phone now so that'll keep me brief. I really appreciate the various breakdowns. Here's a question that probably doesn't really matter because it's unlikely I'll use it but if one were to take the same domain for both their cleric choice and their theurgy choice would they get both applications of the first level feature?

Well the general rule is features of the same name don't stack, so I'm guessing no on that one unfortunately!

[Seekergeek]

Boo! Ok, well, our for this turn around DM is pretty lenient. Were it the case it was allowed at the table, aside from wrangling two floating +1 enchantments from forge, are there any other fun double ups?

[EdenIndustries]

Boo! Ok, well, our for this turn around DM is pretty lenient. Were it the case it was allowed at the table, aside from wrangling two floating +1 enchantments from forge, are there any other fun double ups?

Well Knowledge is pretty interesting since you would get 4 languages and expertise in Arcana, History, Nature, and Religion. That's pretty cool! But not really what you want out of the character probably.

As jaappleton mentioned, the Light Cleric's Warding Flare is kind of cool if you get double of it. But no heavy armor from the Light Domain.

Nature does give you heavy armor, and you'd get two Druid cantrips and two additional proficiencies. The Nature Cleric's level 6 ability Dampen Elements is cool, but the rest of it isn't all that much to my liking personally.

Doubling up on Tempest would give you twice as many uses of Wrath of the Storm, and again heavy armor.

And doubling up on War wouuld give you twice as many uses of of the War Priest ability, but that one doesn't seem as cool.

So basically you get double utility (Knowledge or Nature) or double uses of interesting features (Light, Nature, and War).

If you weren't doing gish, I'd say double Knowledge is pretty crazy. But otherwise I don't know if doubling up gives you too much, unless you have a really great Wis modifier and can really make use of Warding Flare, etc.

[Seekergeek]

Alright, I'm home again. I just wanted to thank the community for the feedback! I think Im on board for forge as a theurgy option. Has anyone come up with some shenanigans for the channel divinity creations?

[EdenIndustries]

Alright, I'm home again. I just wanted to thank the community for the feedback! I think Im on board for forge as a theurgy option. Has anyone come up with some shenanigans for the channel divinity creations?

I think it's pretty campaign dependant. For example I'm DMing for a player now who plays an archery-based Fighter and he's meticulous at tracking how many arrows he has (even though I as the DM don't really care). A Forge Cleric could make arrows in such a case I suppose? Although based on the wording, maybe just one per short rest? Maybe a quiver-full, if the DM is nice.

In a campaign where you're low on resources (like Out of the Abyss, as far as I understand?) you could craft usable weapons and armour from scraps that you find. And I suppose in general if you collect scraps from enemies in any campaign (which typically are too poor quality to sell for money) you could craft good quality items out of that refuse and sell it. So there are some money-making opportunities.

And I suppose if you're in a dungeon and really need a ladder, pulley-system, a spike trap, etc. I guess you could create it. Those aren't really shenanigans...but it might help you overcome a trap/puzzle or two that the DM tosses out.