Booming Blade Mage armor Druid Cleric? Bard...?

[Aaedimus]

I'm trying to come up with a super useful player concept.
The idea is: make the team more successful.

I want to balance jumping into the fray with lots of useful support concepts. Basically, i want an answer for every situation and don't need specialization. Thematically even though it's not the best idea I'll probably be hitting things with a stick for a bit too.

Useability throughout the entire game (lvl 1-9 or 11) is also considered. I don't want a "gets strong at 13" build.

Idea 1: human variant
Shephard Druid 2
Trickery (arcana/storm?) Cleric 1
Druid the rest of the way
No ability modifications. Feats only-
1) Magic initiate (Mage armor or find familiar) with booming blade.
5) Mobile
9) Warcaster

Suggestions?

Btw, although the shepherd druid is a summoner, I wanted it more for the level 2 ability, providing buffs for the group. I love the usefulness of having wildshape in the back pocket with buffs to help keep some usefulness

Which is why I also was thinking however about trying a similar concept, but with a glamour bard as a base instead... with either a warlock or cleric multiclass

[OverLordOcelot]

Not sure why you'd want to blow a feat for mage armor, as druids have medium armor and shield proficiency, so hide+shield is an easy start, once you get some money moving up to either 'scale made from actual scales' in most campaigns or 'spiked armor' in adventurer's league. Plus familiars fit druids really well. I think booming blade is grossly overrated, spending 2 feats to get a maneuver that will do cantrip damage to one melee target if you run up hit and move away and no one else is in melee with them is a bit much. It's not really going to be bad, but I don't think the 'zip-boom-run' thing is going to be as amazing as you're expecting, and I wouldn't get mobile for that. You'll probably want Warcaster earlier anyway, there are a lot of good concentration spells on the druid list.

What's the purpose of the cleric level? It seems pointless to me - druid will give you medium armor and shield proficiency, and better-than-martial proficiency (shillelagh). You've got heavy overlap with cleric spells, so delaying your spell progression by a level for one or two first level spells seems a bad deal. Also druid 2nd level spells are amazing, if you are going to MC I would probably go druid 3 before getting cleric 1, because Pass Without Trace, Moonbeam, Heat Metal, Healing Spirit, Spike Growth, Darkvision, and Locate Object are all extremely useful to have access to (some more situational than others).

[RogueJK]

What are you wanting to accomplish with the 1 level Cleric dip?

There are a few different types of builds that can make great use of a single level Cleric dip, but I'm not seeing the added benefit here.

[Man_Over_Game]

I was looking over it, and I came to a lot of the same conclusions as Ocelot . The Shephard, Moon and Spore Druids are all specialists, but the Dream Druid or Land Druid make perfect versatile support casters. Heck, the Dream Druid has several power features that have no synergies with one another.

It heals, has a supercharged version of Tiny Hut for resting, lets you teleport your allies, and it lets you spy on people or teleport your party home in an emergency. In the worst case scenario, you're a full caster with the maximum level spells available with medium armor, shields, and a 1d8 hit die.

It's the most versatile a support could probably be.

[BigPixie]

Build a coffee-lock and use your ridiculous amounts of slots to aid the team. :smallsmile:

[nickl_2000]

Yes, this can certainly work. I'm currently running a Level 10 Moon Druid, Level 4 Ranger and he can be a beast in combat (both literally and figuratively). The biggest problem is actually concentration, if you can pick up Resilient Con you are pretty much golden.

Tuesday, I dropped 56 damage in a single hit with his weapon. Sure it helped that at that point I had Guardian of Nature active, had just absorbed elements on a cone of cold, had a 1d10 valor bardic inspiration die waiting to use, and critted, but hey it was fun when the DM saw me rolling and asked what the heck I was doing with so many die.

All together:
2d6+2 Staff of the Woodlands Crit
+4 strength
2d10 baric inspiration crit
2d6 absorb elements crit
2d8 colossal slayer crit
2d6 Guardian of nature crit
4d8 booming blade crit

:smallcool:

[Aaedimus]

I always felt guardian of nature was a little lackluster

[nickl_2000]

I always felt guardian of nature was a little lackluster

For most Druids it is, it would be pretty strong for a Ranger. On my melee Druid, it's pretty strong in giving advantage to all his attacks

[sophontteks]

The cleric dip is giving you practically nothing besides slowing your progression, something you'll sorely feel at levels 2-5 espesially. Just go pure shepherd druid.

With the glamour bard going warlock is making you a much weaker support in exchange for making your character better at DPS. Bards have great support and control spells. Slowing the spell progression by 2 levels will be very noticable in a bad way. This isn't nessesarily bad overall, but it would detract from your goal of making the team better.

Instead of dipping cleric as a bard you can go valor bard and gain armor and shield proficiencies without hurting spell and ability progression.

[OverLordOcelot]

I always felt guardian of nature was a little lackluster

It's pretty weak in caster form. When you're wildshaped, getting advantage on your single big attack (like a giant constrictor snake's grapple+restrain) is nice, and advantage +1d6 on all attacks for something like giant scorpion is a decent damage boost. Great Tree making terrain within 15' of you difficult terrain is great at messing with enemy movement - it's kind of weak as a caster, but when you turn into a large or huge creature that covers a lot of ground. IMO usually you're better off summoning wildlife to help you out, but there are situations where that doesn't work well (lack of space, lack of visibility, conjuration suppressed, DM messes with summons, etc) and being able to buff yourself like that is a great benefit.

[Corpsecandle717]

One more for mostly in agreement with Ocelot with some caveats.

If you plan to spend a fair amount of time in melee as a caster Druid of Spores would probably be a better bet. I've been tempted by the Shillelagh/booming blade combo as well as it seems pretty fun, but yeah I think mobility would be a wasted feat. If you're going this route get Warcaster at level one and magic initiate at 4.

If you really want to go Guardian just assume a pure caster role and find ways to get out of melee.

Also agree that cleric isn't helping much, but there's the life cleric goodberry cheese that could be worth it if you really want to go that route as well.

[stoutstien]

I was looking over it, and I came to a lot of the same conclusions as Ocelot . The Shephard, Moon and Spore Druids are all specialists, but the Dream Druid or Land Druid make perfect versatile support casters. Heck, the Dream Druid has several power features that have no synergies with one another.

It heals, has a supercharged version of Tiny Hut for resting, lets you teleport your allies, and it lets you spy on people or teleport your party home in an emergency. In the worst case scenario, you're a full caster with the maximum level spells available with medium armor, shields, and a 1d8 hit die.

It's the most versatile a support could probably be.

the bonus action heal is not a spell so he can cast a spell and heal in one round.
I could see a 1-2 cleric dip for some good buff spells. Can't go wrong with sanctuary, command, or bless.

Grave domain could auto maximize ba healing feature due to not needing to be a spell.