OgataiKhan
2019-08-25, 09:23 AM
Greetings everybody. I have recently planned a build that I would like to share with you in order to hear your opinions.
The Concept
The idea is to create a melee-focused Cleric who uses a combination of Booming Blade, Spiritual Weapon, and Spirit Guardians to maximise melee damage and offer a bit of battlefield control.
We will ask the DM to reskin our cleric to be a Warcraft-style shaman: a master of the elements who gets his powers not from a deity but from the spirits of the natural world and of his ancestors.
Why Tempest?
Except for the obvious thematic fit for a shaman, there are mechanical reasons to pick Tempest over the other cleric domains.
Since we are going to be on the frontlines we need three things: heavy armour, martial weapons, and Divine Strike.
This gives us two main choices: Tempest and War. War gives us Guided Strike, which is nice, but in my estimate Tempest's Destructive Wrath synergises better with a thunder damage focused build; War Priest is useless since we are not going to be using the Attack action and our bonus action is already occupied by Spiritual Weapon; as for the level 17 feature, I consider flight superior to resistance to non-magical damage, especially since there are reliable ways of getting complete immunity to that sort of damage.
A special mention goes to the Forge and Order domains. The former is great at early levels, but becomes much weaker once everybody has magic items.
Order on the other hand can deal more damage than Tempest on non-Channel Divinity turns thanks to the level 17 feature Order's Wrath, has an amazing Channel Divinity feature, and works great with Rogues thanks to Voice of Authority. Overall it is comparable in strength to Tempest, I chose the latter because of flavour and access to flight.
The Build
We are going to be playing a Firbolg. This gives us perfect stat boosts, extra spells, and a very useful one turn invisibility. Plus they seem perfect for the role of shaman.
We are also going to be using a shield and a warhammer, which we will obviously refer to as Doomhammer. Our AC with no magic items will be 20, with perfect magic items we can reach 26.
Now for the controversial part: after we reach level 14 we are going to take one level in Druid.
Yes, yes, I know. We lose improved Divine Intervention. I've never really liked that feature.
It's very DM dependant and beyond our control, even if everything goes perfectly it only works once a week, and even if it works... isn't it a boring way to defeat a boss? I'd rather use honest, fair combat.
On the plus side, we gain Shillelagh. This is essentially equivalent to two +2 Str ASIs by the time we get it, and if we cast it pre-combat we don't even need to waste a bonus action.
Point buy:
Str 15+1
Dex 8
Con 15
Int 8
Wis 14+2
Cha 10
You can put the last two points anywhere, I like being at least decent at talking to NPCs.
ASI
Magic Initiate: Wizard for Booming Blade, Find Familiar, and Green Flame Blade. Now GFB will work off our intelligence, which is 8, so before level 5 this doesn't deal any extra damage. Later on however, if we are sure the enemies won't trigger the extra BB damage, GFB still outdamages BB.
+2 Wis
+2 Wis
War Caster: keeping concentration on Spirit Guardians/Conjure Celestial is essential, and using BB on opportunity attacks is a neat extra bonus.
Resilient Con: this brings our Con up to 16 at level 20 and further protects our concentration. Plus, Con saves are numerous and nasty.
Spell selection
I am only going to list the key spells we need for our build, everything else is up to you.
Guidance: best cantrip in the game.
Toll the Dead: good ranged option.
Sacred Flame: for when you need that radiant damage.
Light: we don't have darkvision.
Booming Blade: duh.
Green Flame Blade.
Shillelagh: to attack with Wisdom.
Bless: great buff for its level.
Healing Word: to save allies at 0 hp.
Aid & Death Ward: you cast these just before the end of a long rest. As per Sage Advice, you immediately regain the spent slots but still have the spells active for the day.
Spiritual Weapon: to weaponise our bonus action.
Spirit Guardians: our go-to concentration spell for most fights.
Contagion: great against powerful single targets.
Heroes' Feast: non-concentration buffs are great.
Conjure Celestial: in my opinion the second best spell in the game after Wish, and only slightly less versatile.
Anything else is just a bonus.
Into battle
Now here's how we fare in actual combat at level 20. Most of this works far earlier than that, of course.
In a difficult fight this is our sequence of choice:
Turn 0: Shillelagh. We want to have this on all the time since it's a cantrip. We always want to cast it pre-battle whenever possible.
Turn 1: We upcast Spirit Guardians with a 6th level slot and charge into battle. All enemies in range take 6d8 = 27 damage at the start of their turns. We then use our racial invisibility with our bonus action since we can't cast Spiritual Weapon in the same turn as Spirit Guardians.
Turn 2: We cast a 4th level Spiritual Weapon as a bonus action for 2d8+5 damage. With our action we cast Booming Blade with advantage from our familiar for a total of 4d8+2d8 (Divine Strike)+5. We are rolling thunder damage, so we can activate Destructive Wrath to deal maximum damage equal to 1d8+45. If we then get hit we'll deal 2d8 lightning damage as a reaction and push the enemy 10 ft away (great against multiattack, since moving back in range will trigger the extra Booming Blade damage). Spirit Guardians is still active for 6d8 damage on the enemy's turn.
Assuming we only hit one enemy with Spirit Guardians and don't crit, all this equals 2d8+5+1d8+45+2d8+6d8 = 99.5 average damage.
If the enemy, having been pushed away, then triggers the extra Booming Blade damage we add 4d8 for a total of 117.5 damage in one turn, for at least three turns. It later becomes slightly less after we run out of Channel Divinity and Wrath of the Storm.
What do you think of the build? Do you see any way to improve it?
The Concept
The idea is to create a melee-focused Cleric who uses a combination of Booming Blade, Spiritual Weapon, and Spirit Guardians to maximise melee damage and offer a bit of battlefield control.
We will ask the DM to reskin our cleric to be a Warcraft-style shaman: a master of the elements who gets his powers not from a deity but from the spirits of the natural world and of his ancestors.
Why Tempest?
Except for the obvious thematic fit for a shaman, there are mechanical reasons to pick Tempest over the other cleric domains.
Since we are going to be on the frontlines we need three things: heavy armour, martial weapons, and Divine Strike.
This gives us two main choices: Tempest and War. War gives us Guided Strike, which is nice, but in my estimate Tempest's Destructive Wrath synergises better with a thunder damage focused build; War Priest is useless since we are not going to be using the Attack action and our bonus action is already occupied by Spiritual Weapon; as for the level 17 feature, I consider flight superior to resistance to non-magical damage, especially since there are reliable ways of getting complete immunity to that sort of damage.
A special mention goes to the Forge and Order domains. The former is great at early levels, but becomes much weaker once everybody has magic items.
Order on the other hand can deal more damage than Tempest on non-Channel Divinity turns thanks to the level 17 feature Order's Wrath, has an amazing Channel Divinity feature, and works great with Rogues thanks to Voice of Authority. Overall it is comparable in strength to Tempest, I chose the latter because of flavour and access to flight.
The Build
We are going to be playing a Firbolg. This gives us perfect stat boosts, extra spells, and a very useful one turn invisibility. Plus they seem perfect for the role of shaman.
We are also going to be using a shield and a warhammer, which we will obviously refer to as Doomhammer. Our AC with no magic items will be 20, with perfect magic items we can reach 26.
Now for the controversial part: after we reach level 14 we are going to take one level in Druid.
Yes, yes, I know. We lose improved Divine Intervention. I've never really liked that feature.
It's very DM dependant and beyond our control, even if everything goes perfectly it only works once a week, and even if it works... isn't it a boring way to defeat a boss? I'd rather use honest, fair combat.
On the plus side, we gain Shillelagh. This is essentially equivalent to two +2 Str ASIs by the time we get it, and if we cast it pre-combat we don't even need to waste a bonus action.
Point buy:
Str 15+1
Dex 8
Con 15
Int 8
Wis 14+2
Cha 10
You can put the last two points anywhere, I like being at least decent at talking to NPCs.
ASI
Magic Initiate: Wizard for Booming Blade, Find Familiar, and Green Flame Blade. Now GFB will work off our intelligence, which is 8, so before level 5 this doesn't deal any extra damage. Later on however, if we are sure the enemies won't trigger the extra BB damage, GFB still outdamages BB.
+2 Wis
+2 Wis
War Caster: keeping concentration on Spirit Guardians/Conjure Celestial is essential, and using BB on opportunity attacks is a neat extra bonus.
Resilient Con: this brings our Con up to 16 at level 20 and further protects our concentration. Plus, Con saves are numerous and nasty.
Spell selection
I am only going to list the key spells we need for our build, everything else is up to you.
Guidance: best cantrip in the game.
Toll the Dead: good ranged option.
Sacred Flame: for when you need that radiant damage.
Light: we don't have darkvision.
Booming Blade: duh.
Green Flame Blade.
Shillelagh: to attack with Wisdom.
Bless: great buff for its level.
Healing Word: to save allies at 0 hp.
Aid & Death Ward: you cast these just before the end of a long rest. As per Sage Advice, you immediately regain the spent slots but still have the spells active for the day.
Spiritual Weapon: to weaponise our bonus action.
Spirit Guardians: our go-to concentration spell for most fights.
Contagion: great against powerful single targets.
Heroes' Feast: non-concentration buffs are great.
Conjure Celestial: in my opinion the second best spell in the game after Wish, and only slightly less versatile.
Anything else is just a bonus.
Into battle
Now here's how we fare in actual combat at level 20. Most of this works far earlier than that, of course.
In a difficult fight this is our sequence of choice:
Turn 0: Shillelagh. We want to have this on all the time since it's a cantrip. We always want to cast it pre-battle whenever possible.
Turn 1: We upcast Spirit Guardians with a 6th level slot and charge into battle. All enemies in range take 6d8 = 27 damage at the start of their turns. We then use our racial invisibility with our bonus action since we can't cast Spiritual Weapon in the same turn as Spirit Guardians.
Turn 2: We cast a 4th level Spiritual Weapon as a bonus action for 2d8+5 damage. With our action we cast Booming Blade with advantage from our familiar for a total of 4d8+2d8 (Divine Strike)+5. We are rolling thunder damage, so we can activate Destructive Wrath to deal maximum damage equal to 1d8+45. If we then get hit we'll deal 2d8 lightning damage as a reaction and push the enemy 10 ft away (great against multiattack, since moving back in range will trigger the extra Booming Blade damage). Spirit Guardians is still active for 6d8 damage on the enemy's turn.
Assuming we only hit one enemy with Spirit Guardians and don't crit, all this equals 2d8+5+1d8+45+2d8+6d8 = 99.5 average damage.
If the enemy, having been pushed away, then triggers the extra Booming Blade damage we add 4d8 for a total of 117.5 damage in one turn, for at least three turns. It later becomes slightly less after we run out of Channel Divinity and Wrath of the Storm.
What do you think of the build? Do you see any way to improve it?