Leveling up a life cleric 2/druid 1 human cursed with lycanthropy

[Zhentarim]

If I'm a life cleric 2 with a level of druid, and my character is a natural-born werebear lycanthrope, whose base race is human. Would I be better off as a healer and/or direct damage caster continuing to level as a cleric or should I put levels into druid?

Roleplay wise, I'm a cleric of the Neutral Good Nature, Life, Wilderness, and Bear Goddess named Artio. I put Chaotic Good on my character's sheet because my character has the sailor background and they like to see new places, talk to new people, and tell sailor's yarns.

My backstory is that I was traveling on a merchant vessle as a deckhand when pirates killed my crewmates and crew. Meanwhile, my character cowardly hid until the pirates left. Left adrift, Brian Braveheart the werebear prayed to the racial god he was brought up with, promising to become one of her clerics if he made it back to shore. Artio intervened by providing food and water and a light breeze to get Brian back to shore where he became Father Brian Braveheart, Life Domain Cleric of Artio. While on the docks after returning, he found a wereraven named Brenna who was a lonely street urchin begging for food. Artio thought it would be in line with his new vocation to take her in and care for her. Brenna is played by an older woman in our gaming group--the only woman and older than the next oldest person in the group by 25 years. Brenna, however, is younger than Brian in-game.

[meandean]

If your sole goal was to do the goodberry/Life Cleric interaction, then one level in Druid suffices. If you had anything else in mind, Druid 1 by itself won't do much for you. What were you hoping to get out of Druid?

[animorte]

I've looked at this in a few ways:

Life Cleric 1/Shepherd Druid X - Unicorn scales with Druid level and you get all the best bonus you could ever need from Disciple of Life whenever you do cast a healing spell. Druid provides alternative summons depending on what you need. Lasts for 1 minute.

Stars Druid 2/Life Cleric X - Chalice scales with Wisdom and buffs any spell you may cast. It also provides alternative forms depending on what you need. Lasts for 10 minutes.

Twilight Cleric 2 (maybe 6)/Dreams Druid X - "Bubbles! AzqxdrbyuhjmniXCRFjnik... My bubbles!" -Bubbles (Finding Nemo)

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Seriously, I would take a second level in one of the awesome Druid subclasses that will really help with healing (probably Stars because Wisdom scaling) then just go straight Life Cleric.

[RogueJK]

There are two basic optimized builds for a Life Cleric/Druid combo: Life Cleric 1/Druid X or Druid 1/Life Cleric X.

You already have 2 levels of Life Cleric, so that put you in the latter build path off the bat. And you already have Goodberry and Absorb Elements, as well as hopefully taking Thorn Whip to use later for pulling foes into your Spirit Guardians aura, so you've gotten pretty much all you want out of Druid.

Additionally, your Channel Divinity from Life Cleric 2 scales off Cleric levels exclusively, so you'll need to continue to take Cleric levels to keep that effective. And you're just one more level away from 2nd level Cleric spells to boot. So I say stick with Life Cleric levels from here on out.


That said, there's an argument to be made for just one more level of Druid, if you're specifically wanting access to basic Wild Shape animal forms and to the Stars Druid subclass features Star Map and Starry Form. Stars Druid is the only subclass that would really make sense for a 2 level Druid dip, due to its Star Map Guiding Bolt ability scaling based off proficiency, and their other 2nd level abilities being independent of Druid level. Any of the other Druid subclasses' Level 2 abilities scale off Druid level, so they wouldn't be ideal.

Stars Druid can actually gets you quite a bit, including additional Guiding Bolt castings per day scaling off your Proficiency Bonus, plus the Starry Form Wild Shape options for boosted Concentration via Dragon Form (handy for wading into melee with Spirit Guardians running), or a non-spell WIS-based Bonus Action attack via Archer Form (good for saving Spiritual Weapon castings), or even further boosting your healing spells via Chalice Form (making your Life Cleric's potent healing spells even more potent). But that comes at the cost of further delaying your Cleric progression, so you'll need to decide whether the benefits are worth the cost.

In addition, Stars Druid doesn't necessarily seem to fit into your character concept... So in that case, we're back to just sticking to Life Cleric levels.

[meandean]

Sailors rely on the stars, so you could flavor it that way.

[animorte]

-Snip Stars Druid talk-

In addition, Stars Druid doesn't necessarily seem to fit into your character concept... So in that case, we're back to just sticking to Life Cleric levels.
Barely beat you to the recommendation, love it. The below answers the character concept brilliantly.


Sailors rely on the stars, so you could flavor it that way.
Yes, please do this. Actually the best idea of making this multi-class make perfect sense, obviously inspired by the backstory.

[H_H_F_F]

Is the entire party made of lycanthropes? Played as advised on the MM? What's the level of optimization here?

I don't know that you really need to worry about damage dealing with spells any time soon, given your multiattack doing 2d8+4 twice.

If this is a higher-op game, I'd recommend just leveling cleric and not losing too many casting levels. If it's not too challenging of a game (and especially if you didn't already take guidance) I'd second the recommendations to take a second level of druid and join the circle of stars.

[Zhentarim]

There are two basic optimized builds for a Life Cleric/Druid combo: Life Cleric 1/Druid X or Druid 1/Life Cleric X.

You already have 2 levels of Life Cleric, so that put you in the latter build path off the bat. And you already have Goodberry and Absorb Elements, as well as hopefully taking Thorn Whip to use later for pulling foes into your Spirit Guardians aura, so you've gotten pretty much all you want out of Druid.

Additionally, your Channel Divinity from Life Cleric 2 scales off Cleric levels exclusively, so you'll need to continue to take Cleric levels to keep that effective. And you're just one more level away from 2nd level Cleric spells to boot. So I say stick with Life Cleric levels from here on out.


That said, there's an argument to be made for just one more level of Druid, if you're specifically wanting access to basic Wild Shape animal forms and to the Stars Druid subclass features Star Map and Starry Form. Stars Druid is the only subclass that would really make sense for a 2 level Druid dip, due to its Star Map Guiding Bolt ability scaling based off proficiency, and their other 2nd level abilities being independent of Druid level. Any of the other Druid subclasses' Level 2 abilities scale off Druid level, so they wouldn't be ideal.

Stars Druid can actually gets you quite a bit, including additional Guiding Bolt castings per day scaling off your Proficiency Bonus, plus the Starry Form Wild Shape options for boosted Concentration via Dragon Form (handy for wading into melee with Spirit Guardians running), or a non-spell WIS-based Bonus Action attack via Archer Form (good for saving Spiritual Weapon castings), or even further boosting your healing spells via Chalice Form (making your Life Cleric's potent healing spells even more potent). But that comes at the cost of further delaying your Cleric progression, so you'll need to decide whether the benefits are worth the cost.

In addition, Stars Druid doesn't necessarily seem to fit into your character concept... So in that case, we're back to just sticking to Life Cleric levels.


Sailors rely on the stars, so you could flavor it that way.


Barely beat you to the recommendation, love it. The below answers the character concept brilliantly.


Yes, please do this. Actually the best idea of making this multi-class make perfect sense, obviously inspired by the backstory.
To the three people above: Stars is the druid subclass I'd pick if I did another

Is the entire party made of lycanthropes? Played as advised on the MM? What's the level of optimization here?

I don't know that you really need to worry about damage dealing with spells any time soon, given your multiattack doing 2d8+4 twice.

If this is a higher-op game, I'd recommend just leveling cleric and not losing too many casting levels. If it's not too challenging of a game (and especially if you didn't already take guidance) I'd second the recommendations to take a second level of druid and join the circle of stars.
he's using homebrew-- we get the natural attacks and str/dex boosts at level 5. Also, lycanthropy is common in this setting, so most enemies have silver weapons by default.