Mines of Phandelver Custom Characters

[ArrixGrimm]

So a few weeks back our DM told us that our OotA campaign was being scrapped (It was out first attempt at 5e) So we are going with the Mine of Phandelver, which to my knowledge, is suppose to be played with pre-gen character we don't have, so Custom PCs will be used. Now I think one of our players if going to be a Knight of some sort, our DM said this will lead into his custom campaign centered around a Knight's Tournament. Since we will be having a marital character, I want to play something on the magic side and sorta skill monkey....and I have some to choices.

Cleric of Knowledge or Bard of Lore.

Both fit the flavor of character I wanna run, sorta a scholarly explorer sorts, but given I am blind to what we will run into, I have no idea which would work better skill and spell wise.

Anyone have insight to this?

[Kane0]

Both work fine.

I just finished running LMoP for a smaller group of Champion Fighter, Lore Bard and Life Cleric. There isn't that much to worry about apart from maybe getting cocky, some encounters can end badly if you approach them the wrong way.

General things to look out for:
- Make sure to have options. Have a melee and ranged attack available to you and make sure you don't rely on just one spell for all occasions (eg Sleep)
- Make sure someone has decent perception, pretty much all adventures make heavy use of it.
- Make sure someone can talk. There is always going to be some situation you can talk your way into or out of.

[Sigreid]

Bard has about the most versatile magic options in the game as well as after level 2 literally having access to every skill and tool in the game at at least half proficiency if that helps. That doesn't even take into account their ability to give an edge to rolls now and then.

[Armored Walrus]

Nothing about LMOP sets it apart as requiring any special character/party balance. It's got a pretty basic premise and a pretty normal WOTC module structure. Play either one.

Personally I had fun with a bard in it, but we didn't get very far because it was a pbp game here.

[Aymon]

Why not both? Level 1 cleric, the rest bard.....

[ArrixGrimm]

Why not both? Level 1 cleric, the rest bard.....

Starting to get a bit into MAD territory with that.

[Armored Walrus]

Starting to get a bit into MAD territory with that.

Only a little, and you gain medium armor and shields, so you don't need Dex as much. Needing to put a 13 in Wisdom isn't that big of an investment.

[Vorok]

I'd like to point out that the pregen characters are available for free: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets (down, the link 'starter set character sheets')

I think Cleric of Knowledge would fit the campaign nicely, if you take from the wizard background from the pregen characters.