Help with Drow "Cleric" of Lolth

[Albions_Angel]

So 5e is not my wheel house. I don't like 5e in general. Ok, frankly, I hate it... most of the time. And while my friends are slowly getting bored of it and trying other editions and systems, I like playing with them more than I hate 5e. And when I throw out all my inhibitions and just go for it, its kinda fun. And it just so happens that in between a couple of other games, they wanted to take a load off and do a mindless dungeon crawl with our most regular DM. He picked dungeon of the mad mage. We have put 0 thought into the characters, several of them are randomly rolling EVERYTHING during creation (race, class, background), I initially went with just riffing on dynasty warriors characters (as ill suited DW is for the D&D system!), and we had a blast.

But with lack of planning comes a lot of party wipes.

The latest (4th) party to "continue" the adventure are now all Drow. Now, I already have a character. An accidentally effective one. Zealot Barbarian (male - because no female drow would EVER stoop so low to be a barbarian!) with a "spiked chain" (spear) of spider venom (stole the enchant from the poison dagger). Playing the comedy masochist. "Yes mistress" "My mistress hits harder than that", etc. Loving it.

But I doubt he is long for this world. There are a lot of intellect devourers and while somehow I 1) dont have terrible int, and 2) have int in the middle of the party, I do stand at the front. I lost Guan Thae to intellect devourers, and a couple NEARLY took out my new drow last night.

I made the drow barb in about 30 min, and I did have another concept, that I want to roll up just in case. Only, after a day of digging, the concept doesnt work AS IS.

Turns out, building a blasting/debuffing/verminking Cleric of Lolth might be super easy in 3.5e, but its next to impossible in 5e. There are SOME things I could use, but not enough to fill out the spell slots to my liking. The spider climbing, spider summoning, spider venom spitting lady cleric of my dreams simply cant exist in 5e.

And before you all jump in, refluffing a weapon and flipping an enchant from one weapon to another is one thing. Refluffing spells and even shifting them from one class to another. And while I am quite happy to do it, the DM likes rules he knows and this is not up for negotiation. Sorry guys.

So, how best to get my spider/poison themed "cleric" drow up and running. Has to be viable, flavourful, and fully functional at the current level (7) as it might only get one or 2 sessions before death. Already have a wizard in the party, and an astral druid, but no summoning to speak of yet, and seemingly no poison.

Obviously I need access to spider climb. Web too. Can giant spiders be summoned at level 7? Does spiders kiss exist? Is Warlock best for this? (I have a feeling it is). Or sorcerer?

[Eldariel]

So 5e is not my wheel house. I don't like 5e in general. Ok, frankly, I hate it... most of the time. And while my friends are slowly getting bored of it and trying other editions and systems, I like playing with them more than I hate 5e. And when I throw out all my inhibitions and just go for it, its kinda fun. And it just so happens that in between a couple of other games, they wanted to take a load off and do a mindless dungeon crawl with our most regular DM. He picked dungeon of the mad mage. We have put 0 thought into the characters, several of them are randomly rolling EVERYTHING during creation (race, class, background), I initially went with just riffing on dynasty warriors characters (as ill suited DW is for the D&D system!), and we had a blast.

But with lack of planning comes a lot of party wipes.

The latest (4th) party to "continue" the adventure are now all Drow. Now, I already have a character. An accidentally effective one. Zealot Barbarian (male - because no female drow would EVER stoop so low to be a barbarian!) with a "spiked chain" (spear) of spider venom (stole the enchant from the poison dagger). Playing the comedy masochist. "Yes mistress" "My mistress hits harder than that", etc. Loving it.

But I doubt he is long for this world. There are a lot of intellect devourers and while somehow I 1) dont have terrible int, and 2) have int in the middle of the party, I do stand at the front. I lost Guan Thae to intellect devourers, and a couple NEARLY took out my new drow last night.

I made the drow barb in about 30 min, and I did have another concept, that I want to roll up just in case. Only, after a day of digging, the concept doesnt work AS IS.

Turns out, building a blasting/debuffing/verminking Cleric of Lolth might be super easy in 3.5e, but its next to impossible in 5e. There are SOME things I could use, but not enough to fill out the spell slots to my liking. The spider climbing, spider summoning, spider venom spitting lady cleric of my dreams simply cant exist in 5e.

And before you all jump in, refluffing a weapon and flipping an enchant from one weapon to another is one thing. Refluffing spells and even shifting them from one class to another. And while I am quite happy to do it, the DM likes rules he knows and this is not up for negotiation. Sorry guys.

So, how best to get my spider/poison themed "cleric" drow up and running. Has to be viable, flavourful, and fully functional at the current level (7) as it might only get one or 2 sessions before death. Already have a wizard in the party, and an astral druid, but no summoning to speak of yet, and seemingly no poison.

Obviously I need access to spider climb. Web too. Can giant spiders be summoned at level 7? Does spiders kiss exist? Is Warlock best for this? (I have a feeling it is). Or sorcerer?

Well, the obvious choice...just make it a Druid; they're just a Cleric kit after all. Druid can turn into Spiders, summon Spiders, deal poison damage, etc. Spores Druid (http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/druid:spores) is the most poisony of all the poisoners (and gets Animate Dead as a notable Clericy spell) - well, the on-hit got turned from Poison to Necrotic in Tasha's but you might ask if you could play the somewhat weaker version in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. The other option is any generically good Druid like Moon or Shepherd or Land; but one of the former probably since you're kinda focused on few specific things (Moon could turn into a Giant Spider immediately while Shepherd could summon a bunch of Spiders). Land: Underdark isn't bad either though. You could take the Poisoner-feat [Tasha's Cauldron to Everything] to ignore poison resistance though sadly there's nothing you can do about the all-too-common poison immunity. It's not amazing, but it's not worthless either especially if you can extract poison from your summons or wildshape forms. Land: Underdark would get you the spells you want and obviously level 3 Conjure Animals can get you two Giant Spiders easily enough.

With Tasha's you also get all sorts of nice new spells. Revivify is among them. You also have access to all the key Cleric utility effects like Guidance, Healing Word, Restoration-line, etc. So you can do a pretty good Cleric impression (though you won't get Animate Dead unless you go Spores Druid, but that denies you Web and Spider Climb).


So given your specific desires, I recommend Land (Underdark) Druid. You can use your level 4 ASI to add something you want to the mix: there's the poisoner feat if you wanna use poisons personally or there's stuff like Fey Touched to pick up Bless or some such if you feel so inclined. Most of the time you'll obviously just be Conjure Animaling two Giant Spiders with your Concentration and thus focusing on your non-Concentration spells with other stuff. But you do have Web and Spider Climb at all times at will so that's nice at least. Also few other handy somewhat thematic spells. Shepherd would get you better spiders but, again, that would cost you the spells.

[Emongnome777]

Divine soul sorcerer is another option, getting you access to spells from both lists (I assume sorcerer has all the spells you want and can’t get from cleric). Still pretty cleric-y if you choose mostly cleric spells except for the thematic ones you mentioned.

Land druid was my first suggestion as I read the first post, but that was already aptly discussed.