Wizard needs Heavy Armor for CoS, cleric dip, and/or Theurgy

[SpiderWaffle]

Would there be any good combos for a Cleric 1or2/Wizard X with Thuergy to get two cleric domains basically, or just go Diviner?

So My Forest Gnome Wizard has stats of 14 Str, 5 Dex, 15 Con, 20 Int, 12 Wis, 11 Cha

trying round out of a team of a Paladin and Blood Hunter.

Was trying to go for utility and battlefield control, taking notes from Treant monk's God Wizard guide, getting just a small amount of damage spells for niche uses and giving our party some ranged attacks like fireball.

With the huge weakness being that -3 dex bonus, it seems the best way to mitigate that would be to get HA prof. via 1 level of cleric with a domain that has HA, would also get a shield.

But Maybe getting a 2nd Level in cleric at some point for turn undead since this is Cos?

There's a lot of Cleric domain to choose from with HA: Grave, Order, or Forge seemed liked I'd get the most value out of them at L1.

[Wildarm]

Yeah, dipping for Heavy armor would be a good idea. The cleric domains don't add a lot since your wisdom is pretty low and most key off it for number of uses. Knowledge is great but you only get medium armor from that. Order is likely your best bet. At least lets you give someone an extra attack when you use healing word.

Maybe just go straight Fighter 1/Wizard X.

Pros:

Heavy Armor and Shield + Martial Weapons(meh for you), Bit of extra HP, +1AC and 2nd wind will all make you more durable than the 1st level cleric options.

Cons:

Lose a level of spell slot progression, miss out on a Guidance cantrip, Bless and Healing Word.

For the specialization, I'd probably go Enchanter. You'll have a good AC and decent enough HP to go toe to toe and mesmerize foes with a really high DC early on.

[CTurbo]

You don't even qualify for a Cleric dip since 13 Wis is required.

Your best bet is to start Fighter 1, but the best heavy armor you can wear with a 14 Str is Chain Mail for 16 AC. Scale or Plate would reduce your speed -10ft.


Another fun option would be to start Stone Sorcerer which gets 13+ Con mod to AC. It'd be a good idea to boost your Con anyway.

[Lille]

You don't even qualify for a Cleric dip since 13 Wis is required.

Your best bet is to start Fighter 1, but the best heavy armor you can wear with a 14 Str is Chain Mail for 16 AC. Scale or Plate would reduce your speed -10ft.


Another fun option would be to start Stone Sorcerer which gets 13+ Con mod to AC. It'd be a good idea to boost your Con anyway.

Doesn't have enough CHA to multiclass Sorcerer, either.

[Bel-Torac]

If you could change your stats around I would go one level of cleric (grave or life) and the rest wizard (diviner, war wizard, evoker, or thurge). I personally went life/diviner at first, but it wasn't what I envisioned for my character so I switched to grave/war wizard. I'm loving it so far. It's too bad I had to pull my wizard out of Barovia because my game got cancelled.

[Wildarm]

You don't even qualify for a Cleric dip since 13 Wis is required.

Your best bet is to start Fighter 1, but the best heavy armor you can wear with a 14 Str is Chain Mail for 16 AC. Scale or Plate would reduce your speed -10ft.


Another fun option would be to start Stone Sorcerer which gets 13+ Con mod to AC. It'd be a good idea to boost your Con anyway.

Could take heavy armor master at 5th level to wear plate without penalty and get DR3. Mithril armor is another option

[CTurbo]

Doesn't have enough CHA to multiclass Sorcerer, either.

Oh yeah. I threw that in last minute.

[CTurbo]

Could take heavy armor master at 5th level to wear plate without penalty and get DR3. Mithril armor is another option

Yeah this is a solid option since it adds +1 Str.

Chain mail + shield is 18AC though. Good enough for a wizard.

[SpiderWaffle]

I could also at L4 get +1 Wis and +1 Strength, then have the wisdom to go Cleric at L5 and the strength to have Plate without speed decrease.
Or I might be able convince to the DM to let us trade 1 or 2 AS around.

OR the fighter idea but I could get L2 fighter after L5 wizard for action surge, I think the DM is going to be pretty generous with letting us take short rests, which work well action surge and arcane recovery and diviner to some degree. But giving up two levels of spell slot progression really hurts.

[CTurbo]

Why does the 5 have to go in Dex?

[SpiderWaffle]

Why does the 5 have to go in Dex?

It's the way he had us roll, I could also take a point buy but I think this could be better, but now I'm not so sure with being 1 wisdom short of cleric multi

[CTurbo]

Starting Fighter 1 as mentioned above will solve everything and give you Con proficiency.

[Wildarm]

I could also at L4 get +1 Wis and +1 Strength, then have the wisdom to go Cleric at L5 and the strength to have Plate without speed decrease.
Or I might be able convince to the DM to let us trade 1 or 2 AS around.

OR the fighter idea but I could get L2 fighter after L5 wizard for action surge, I think the DM is going to be pretty generous with letting us take short rests, which work well action surge and arcane recovery and diviner to some degree. But giving up two levels of spell slot progression really hurts.

I don't know if you'd survive to Level 5 with a -3 Dex penalty, no armor (AC 7!) and wizard HP. You'd be easier to hit than a Zombie! You don't qualify for Cleric multiclass so you can't take it early. I think you pretty much have no choice but to take Fighter at level 1. You'll have a really solid character if you go Fighter 1/Wizard X and pick up heavy armor mastery or a +1STR/+1CON ASI at Level 5. Plate + Shield, Con Proficiency and a +3 CON modifier is very good for a wizard. You can easily go toe to toe.

As I mentioned earlier, Enchanter is a good option for a wizard who can wade into melee range. With your high INT and terrible Dex, War Wizard may also be a good choice. Going first as a battle field control character is very important. Tactical wit gets your initiative back up into the positive range. Arcane Deflection gives +2AC or +4 to saves as a reaction(including concentration checks!) is nothing to sneeze at either.

[Nhorianscum]

If you can shift race around I'd suggest picking a +1 wis, race to scrape into cleric by the skin of your teeth Grave is ideal in CoS but forge and order are also very worthwhile. A +1 str or dwarf also lets us wear real armor.

We'd need to take +2 int over alert, lucky, or res (con) at the first ASI though.

[Hypno]

I'd go tempest without a doubt. Take it at 2, get your profs....and get channel divinity. You can now max the damage of a lightning or thunder spell once a day.

Taste that delicious max damage lightening bolt.

[SpiderWaffle]

What races would be good for a god wizard to get a plus +1/2 wisdom?
Is there a race sub class that can get +2Int and +1Wis?

Best I've found so far would be Gith >Githzerai
+1 Int
Githzerai
Ability Score Increase: Your Wisdom score increases by 2.
Mental Discipline: You have advantage on saving throws against the charmed and frightened conditions.
Githzerai Psionics: You know the Mage Hand cantrip, and the hand is invisible when you cast the cantrip with this trait. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast Shield once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the Detect Thoughts spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells. When you cast them with this trait, they don’t require components.

Then I'd have 19 Int, 14Wis and more cantrips and perks than Forest Gnome, 30 movespeed medium size vs 25 small. Could pick up the +1Int and +1Str at 5th or 9th level.

[CTurbo]

Variant human can get +2 Int, +1 Wis or vice versa to start with help from the free feat.

[Corran]

It's hard to justify not getting a starting level as fighter for heavy armor proficiency and shield proficiency, even though it might take some time before you can get your hands on the best heavy armor. The fighter level is also easier to dip into in contrast to a cleric level, since you already fulfill the multiclassing prerequisites (especially if the paladin is going devotion so they would end up covering turning undead). My first feat would be alert, and I would probably aim for spells like longstrider, absorb elements and misty step, even though it might be hard sparing the slots for them at the very first levels (especially in case of longstrider). Longstrider would be useful for improving your abysmal speed (due to being a gnome and possibly due to wearing heavy armor for which you don't have the required strength), absorb elements would make up for your very bad dex saves when the triggering effect dealt one of the common damage types (no necrotic though!), and misty step would be handy when what triggered a dex save restricted movement. For my second ASI I think I would go for resilient con wis (or maybe resilient dex if the paladin is devotion and gets access to aura of devotion).

If you really want to dip in cleric (most likely for a 2 level dip so that you will get turn undead, though that means that you would probably lose 5th level spells since I think the adventure levels you up to level 10), I would probably look at playing a variant human, so I could pick alert, resilient con, and a last ASI that would round up both my INT and something else (probably wisdom to 14, alternatively str to 15 for dealing with speed penalties), so basically I would start with stats (14, 4, 15, 19, 13, 11). I would still go for the wizard spells I mentioned above.

I'd be very tempted to change to point buy though, despite the very high starting INT of your array. Then again, I don't think I would have many chances to play a gnome(?) with a peck leg (= really bad dex) when I would already have enough benefits (high INT, high-ish STR and CON) to allow me to consider playing the array with the abysmal dex mod. Without being sure, I think that point buy might be slightly better though.

[SpiderWaffle]

Ya Variant Human is probably the best for every single build in 5E unless it's quite specific to something, but I'd rather not play partly broken race, we would have to nerf if to only one +1 stat at least.

CoS will only get us to L10? he was thinking it'd be high teens for some reason, he's listened to the whole campaign before too.

I could go fighter first, but would be giving up spell slots and prof. in investigation/arcana/history which I like better than the fighter ones, and giving up all the cleric spells like guidance, bless, healing word and the perks of something like order domain, would save getting the Con resil feat

[Bel-Torac]

I did variant human with +1 to int, +1 to wis, and the feat resilient con so +1 to con. It worked out well with 8 str, 14 dex, 14 con, 16 int, 14 wis, and 9 cha.

[Corran]

CoS will only get us to L10? he was thinking it'd be high teens for some reason, he's listened to the whole campaign before too.
Oh, I don't really know, but that's what I've heard. So yeah, I might be horribly wrong on this one.

[CTurbo]

5 Dex is going to be tough to play, but it's much more interesting than point buy. I like the peg leg idea mentioned above. I could see a Warforged with wheels instead of legs having a 5 Dex. Just because he has wheels doesn't mean he has to be fast and agile.

You do need some kind of backstory for why your Dex is so low.

I'd pick a race that gives at least a +1 Wis, and stick to a 1 or 2 level Cleric dip. The worst case scenario you start with a 18 Int? That's still great.

Firbolg solves both the Str and Wis problem. I believe Minotaur would also. Half Elf too.

[SpiderWaffle]

Vedalken is the only sub race (besides the OP one that can do anything) that can add +2Int +1Wis. Unforunately it has some of the lamest perks, espeically compared to something like Gith or even just one cantrip like forest gnome.

[Bel-Torac]

The githzerai with +1 to Wis and +2 to int doesn't give it much of an advantage unless you like it's racial abilities.

Yes curse of strahd goes until level 10 unless your dm finds ways to level you past it.

[Throne12]

Just play a bladesinger wiz. When you cast mage armor it gives you 13 AC then your bladesong gives you Int mod so 5 = 18 AC.

[djreynolds]

Reroll the stats? Take standard array

[bid]

Would there be any good combos for a Cleric 1or2/Wizard X with Thuergy to get two cleric domains basically, or just go Diviner?

So My Forest Gnome Wizard has stats of 14 Str, 5 Dex, 15 Con, 20 Int, 12 Wis, 11 Cha
If you don't want to start fighter 1, hill dwarf for 14 5 16 18 13 11 if I read it correctly.

[Lille]

Just play a bladesinger wiz. When you cast mage armor it gives you 13 AC then your bladesong gives you Int mod so 5 = 18 AC.

The problem is that with their DEX, they'll have -3 AC when using anything short of heavy armour. Which includes Mage Armour. With Mage Armour, their AC totals to a 10. With Bladesong, it would only go up to a 15.