Cleric build advice (or druid?)

[Miele]

Hey guys,

I'd like to have some help building a twilight cleric. The character will begin at level 4, should be 5 in a couple of sessions tops. The campaign is quite slow in advancement, so I'm not planning for features I'll use in 1 year from now, realistically speaking, I want to think up to level 7 (total character level if multiclassing is used).

I tried building a few variations, in terms of race, feats, ASIs, but I cannot say "wow, this is great!". Is it worth to multiclass? Pick a Magic Initiate talent? Heavy or Medium armor route?
In 5e I played only a Light cleric several years ago and it didn't go very well, I found it a tad boring, but I was semi new to 5e back then and we didn't get past level 3 before the campaign required some adjustments.

Twilight sounded great because the channel divinity would let me do something else instead of wasting time healing (which shouldn't be done in combat most of the times except from 0 to 1) and it would take care of the party.

The party is BM fighter (two weapon fighting style), ancients paladin, lore bard, draconic sorcerer. They are not optimizers and most of them are not 5e experts.

P.S.: if you think a different class would serve me better, feel free to point it out. I kinda prefer druids, but this cleric thing on paper was pretty interesting, just not sure how it will translate to actual gameplay.

P.P.S.: I swear this is going to be the last time I swap character to please the rest of the party (and my DM friend that plays with me since 1988)!

[CTurbo]

5e Clerics are easy and great, and the best thing is, you don't have to take any healing spells.

Twilight Clerics get all weapons and armor, but I would personally recommend prioritizing Dex over Str and wearing medium armor with shield. Wis and Con are your two main stats. Warcaster or Res(Con) are your most important feats. You don't NEED both, but it wouldn't hurt.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

This largely depends on what you are wanting.

If just needing build advice for a Twilight Cleric, CTurbo has pretty much covered the basics. Twilight Clerics are one of the more combat domains so if going Dex, range weapons are in order. Likewise you could go more defensive along with the Paladin with multiclassing or feats for a shield.

If you are wanting a build that perhaps fills a role needed for the party, then of what you described what might be needed is perhaps either a more stealthy or utility character. A Lore Bard can fill either roles. Though if you are wanting this, then a Cleric/Rogue combo takes care of the stealth aspects while a Cleric/Warlock combo takes care of your utility needs, mostly via ritual casting with Pact of the Tome. That assuming if you still desire a Cleric.

Though if you are wanting Druid why not just play a Druid? You will have healing covered along with the Bard and Paladin (as a emergency back up) plus options to do other things. Or make a Druid/Cleric combo. Nature Domain pairs nicely with most of the Druid subclasses and you would be complementing the Paladin. So the question is what specifically are you wanting?

[kore]

My recommendations...

Abilities (assuming standard array): 12,14,13,10,15,8; the intention is to shore up your saves/skills while having a specific advancement plan in place.
- Athletics checks come up a lot on exploration but STR is also important in combat (not just attacks) and I like playing my cleric in close combat.
- For DEX I consider the give-and-take of saves in combat but also a focus on medium armor (and a shield) for AC, again because I'm usually in the thick of it.
- You're going to be using your concentration to support and eventually put the hurt on your foes, you can't neglect this. The plan here is to take Resilient (Contitutuion) at level 4 to round things out.
- INT is meh, though I suppose you could swap with the STR score if you wanted a bit of boost to knowledge checks.
- Your bread and butter, everything in the build (including attacks) will be based off this.
- Dump CHA, nuf said.

Race: custom lineage is the name of this game. You won't need darkvision because your class (Twilight Cleric) provides it and an extra skill proficiency is nice. But the real reason is the feat at level 1 which will be Telekinetic (Wisdom). I also like harengon because of it's initiative-affecting trait but you'll end up without proficiency in CON saves. You'll put 2 points into WIS (17) and 1 point into CON (14) and then take a WIS-based half-feat at level 4. With harengon you can spread the initiative-wealth of Vigilant Blessing (discuss with your party who should get it) or keep it for yourself to ensure you go first to pop Twilight Sanctuary turn 1 for all of your allies.

Feats: if you're looking at no more than level 7 for this character then you're only getting 2 feats, assuming assuming custom lineage.
- Telekinetic (WIS): whether you're doing custom lineage or harengon (per this posts recommendations) take this at level 4 to top off your WIS at 18.
- Resilient (CON): if you're doing custom lineage take this as your feat. You're likely using Bless until level 5 a playing mid-range but you will be more in the think of it soon enough; you're going to want to ensure Twilight Sanctuary coverage across the battlefield for your party.

Advancement: you can't go wrong with going straight cleric so for purposes of this advice I will just discuss the pros and cons of the whens and whys you might MC.

Level 5: a druid MC would be great for a number of reasons but delaying cleric 5 means delaying Spirit Guardians (SG). With SG you can now weaponize your bonus action using Telekinetic and tactical positioning to pull an enemy into SG. But if you decide to go druid you're going to pick up a lot of great new level 1 spells and more known spells (expanding your list) as well as swapping shared spell-list spells (e.g. Healing Word and/or Cure Wounds) to get some of the cleric spells you may have had to skip initially. Also, I really like thorn whip as a cantrip which, once you do get cleric 5, will allow more tactical positioning and pulling enemies into SG.

Level 6: if you haven't MC'd yet you would likely do it now. What you have to decide is how important is having 2 uses of Channel Divinity (i.e. Twilight Sanctuary) per short rest. Personally, I'd want to get all the aforementioned benefits of a druid now. With 5 party members your Twilight Sanctuary will be doing a lot of heavy-lifting even if for only 1 encounter per short rest.

Level 7: do you want more Twilight Sanctuary? If so, there is nothing left to discuss. But hear me out, what about taking a second level of druid and going Stars? It's super thematic and Starry Form (dragon) will just make it harder for your concentration to be broken. A bunch of free uses of Guiding Bolt is nothing to ignore. Also, in case you're wondering, I'd probably never use archer or chalice form. The archer form is nice but your bonus action is already weaponized (SG via Telekinetic or even Spiritual Weapon) and Twilight Sanctuary does so much in mitigating damage to your allies that you don't need to stack the rather lackluster bonus that chalice provides.

P.S. I forgot to mention that level 5 cleric also gets Aura of Vitality and Tiny Hut, so there's more reason to remain cleric; AoV is excellent out-of-combat healing!

[Frogreaver]

I always think about how my first 3 rounds are often going to go.

Turn 1. Channel Divinity: Twilight Sanctuary as an action. Bonus action: Spiritual Weapon
Turn 2. I'm leaning toward control here, or possibly status effect removal. Though inflict wounds or guiding bolt could work well if you have advantage (or lucky feat). Possibly fall to cantrip if believe more important to save resources.
Turn 3. Similar to turn 2 but even more likely to pick use a cantrip (sacred flame/toll the dead).

For encounters where you don't have or don't want to use your channel divinity, I'd suggest opening with a strong control or buff spell (bless or fairy fire could be good here as well). After that it will mostly be cantrips. The primary reason I suggest opening with spiritual weapon bonus action above is because pairing a good bonus action spell with your channel divinity is very strong.

I would rarely use spirit guardians with your character. Your party consists of many melee characters and what's likely a blasty sorcerer. Damage will mostly be covered. AOE damage will likely be covered. Control on the other hand may be fairly limited.

I don't think you actually need concentration boosting feats if you play this way in your current party - though the never can hurt. An Owl familiar would be pretty cool for your character. It just has the whole twilight vibe and would be effective in combat due to your temp hp and flyby for help action. Ritual caster or magic initiate can grab that for you. Assuming you choose variant human or custom lineage for the familiar feat, then i'd recomend the ASI for boosting wisdom (missing sucks) and more spells prepared helps alot. One other note is that the familiar can likely be used to set up highly accurate guiding bolts. That's not a bad use of your slots if you did want to contribute damage.

[Ogre Mage]

Do you have access to custom lineage in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything? You start with +2 in any one attribute and a feat at first level. I would recommend choosing a feat that gives +1 to wisdom. That way you can start with an 18 wisdom out of the gate. For 4th level I would recommend some sort of concentration protection feat.

I would also recommend starting with 14 Dex, medium armor and a shield.

For your first level feat that includes a stat bonus I would recommend fey touched. Misty step is a great spell to have in your back pocket and normally not available to a cleric. You also get a bonus 1st level divination or enchantment spell. Top choices include silvery barbs, gift of alacrity or dissonant whispers. None of these are normally available to clerics either.

So using 27 point buy I would build my stats like this:

Strength 8 (0 points)
Dexterity 14 (7 points)
Constitution 16 (9 points, +1 Resilient Constitution)
Intelligence 8 (0 points)
Wisdom 18 (9 points, +2 custom lineage, +1 fey touched)
Charisma 10 (2 points)

Feats: fey touched (1st level), resilient constitution (4th level).

[Sherlockpwns]

I want to take this design in another direction. Because in part it was talked about here recently: Skulker.

Your channel divinity creates dim light. Skulker let’s you hide in dim light. That’s the core concept here.

I’ve also selected this because the party lacks a rogue. The bard could do that role too, but it may be more fun to make the cleric the “rogue” and let the bard do non-rogue skills.

So key components

1) Goblin is the obvious race choice. Either version is fine, I kind of like the new one that lets you fury of the small more, but the old one for super-smite is probably at little better?

2) you’ll need a background for thieves tools and ideally stealth. Criminal / spy comes to mind. I think urchin or urban bounty hunter works too.

3) you’ll want more ways to create dim light and such beyond divinity.

4) while you won’t be as good as a rogue or bard due to lack of expertise, you can often make up for it with guidance.

You can certainly be armed with a Dex weapon and shield, but I’d consider also the rare light crossbow and/or the standard toll the dead. Skulker wording is kinda oddly specific about ranged weapon attacks only not revealing you. Crossbow still does the most damage until level 5 either way.

Beyond that medium armor without stealth penalty, find ways to hide and launch attacks from near the enemies- close enough you can still give allies temp hp. If you are good at finding ways to be lightly obscured (dim light, crowds, etc) you’ll often get advantage- so probably some spells like inflict wounds or guiding bolt would be good to have and then pick a concentration spell you like. Moonbeam comes with the class and is frankly a solid choice. As others pointed out though crowd control may be your best concentration asset. Remember, if they can’t see you they can’t break your concentration… ok well they could aoe you, but still!

I’m not saying this is some great min/max, but it’s a least different from the standard good guy healer. Focus on being a sneaky bastard for your sneaky bastard god. Pick locks, sneak into places with your spells and skills, and murder your enemies from the shadows.

[RogueJK]

[Zoidberg]Why not both?[/Zoidberg]

Assuming Point Buy, starting at Level 4, with access to Tasha's options:

Custom Lineage Druid 1/Twilight Cleric 3
STR 8
DEX 14
CON 15
INT 10
WIS 15+2
CHA 8
ASI: Fey Touched (18 WIS, Dissonant Whispers) at Level 1. Plan for Resilient CON (16 CON) at Cleric 4, then either 20 WIS or Warcaster at Cleric 8.
Racial Skill: Perception
Druid Skills: Survival, Animal Handling
Background Skills: Acrobatics and either Religion or Nature
Druid Cantrips: Thorn Whip and a utility cantrip like Mold Earth or Control Flames
Cleric Cantrips: Thaumaturgy and either Sacred Flame or Toll the Dead
Fey Touched 1st level spell: Dissonant Whispers
Fey Touched 2nd level spell: Misty Step
Druid 1st level spells: Absorb Elements, Entangle, Fog Cloud, Goodberry, Detect Magic (R), Speak With Animals (R)
Cleric 1st level spells: Faerie Fire*, Sleep*, Bless, Healing Word, Guiding Bolt
Cleric 2nd level spells: Moonbeam*, See Invisibility*, Aid, Lesser Restoration, Prayer of Healing, Spiritual Weapon

Wear Medium Armor and carry a Shield, but leave your hand free for casting. Keep a Rapier handy for times when you might need to draw it in preparation for an Opportunity Attack, but you won't otherwise be relying on weapon attacks at all.

Your party already has two frontliners (Fighter/Paladin), and two backliner casters (Bard/Sorcerer). You get to be the in-between. Your strategy will be to position yourself near but behind the frontliners, so that they can benefit from your Channel Divinity Temp HP. Since the radius is 30' from you, you can be ~20'-30' behind your frontliners, and the squishy casters can then be ~20'-30' behind you.

You're going to Concentrate on a spell like Entangle/Bless/Faerie Fire/Moonbeam, while whacking enemies with your Spiritual Weapon and tossing out Cantrips or the occasional non-Concentration leveled spell like Guiding Bolt/Dissonant Whispers. On some turns, you can also try to move forward to position yourself to do stuff like drag enemies into your Moonbeam using Thorn Whip. Thorn Whip has a 30' range and drags them 10', Moonbeam fill a 10' square. So you can stand 5' outside the Moonbeam and be positioned to drag a 30' distant enemy into the Moonbeam between you, triggering double damage both when they enter the Moonbeam and again when they start their turn inside it. This tactic also works with other forced movement options for double damage, like a beefy frontliner Shoving an enemy back into the Moonbeam, or the Sorcerer/Bard using a Telekinetic feat Shove, or the Battlemaster using Pushing Attack to force an enemy into the Moonbeam, or similar.

Outside of combat, you have a high Perception, Survival, and Animal Handling (plus Ritual castings of Speak With Animals), so you're the party's wilderness guide/survival expert/animal tamer. You also have Goodberry, Prayer of Healing, and Lesser Restoration, to be the party healer.

Since you'll be at Level 5 within a couple session, go Druid 2 next, and choose Circle of Stars. This gets you a handy damage option for your Bonus Action with Archer Form, without having to spend spell slots on Spiritual Weapon, as well as the Guidance cantrip and several free Guiding Bolts per day, which scales with Proficiency. You can then swap the prepared Guiding Bolt and Spiritual Weapon from your Cleric list to something else like Command and Blindness/Deafness. Your strategy doesn't change, though... You're still the midline guy, running interference for the squishy casters while buffing the frontliners and tossing out control/damage effects from short-to-medium range. You also now have 3rd level slots for upcasting stuff like Aid, Command, Blidness, Dissonant Whispers, and Moonbeam. (3rd level Aid is a nice day-long +10 HP boost for three party members, and it stacks with the Temp HP from your Channel Divinity.)

And now your out of combat healing is further boosted with Chalice Form. Plus you have the option to spend a Wild Shape to summon a Familiar for scouting.

After Stars Druid 2, take straight Twilight Cleric levels. Once you hit Cleric 5, you have the option to sometimes stand on the front lines leveraging your high Concentration from Resilient CON (potentially boosted further using Dragon Form), rocking both your Channel Divinity aura and Spirit Guardians aura, pulling enemies into Spirit Guardians with Thorn Whip.

Keep in mind that Dissonant Whispers' movement triggers Opportunity Attacks, so if there's an enemy that both of the frontliners are next to (or potentially all 3 if you're also adjacent with your Rapier out), you can hit that enemy with a Dissonant Whispers for some psychic damage from the spell plus additional weapon damage from 2x/3x OAs.

[Miele]

Thank you all for the suggestions! I have some thinking to do now.

[x3n0n]

[Zoidberg]Why not both?[/Zoidberg]

Custom Lineage Druid 1/Twilight Cleric 3

<snip>

Wear Medium Armor and carry a Shield, but leave your hand free for casting.

Just a note--by taking Druid, you're putting your AC at your DM's discretion, depending on whether metal is allowed or relevant non-metal Medium Armors will be available.

[RogueJK]

Just a note--by taking Druid, you're putting your AC at your DM's discretion, depending on whether metal is allowed or relevant non-metal Medium Armors will be available.

Yep, but even in a worst case scenario, you're looking at an AC of 16. Studded Leather or Hide Armor 12 + 2 Shield + 2 DEX.

16 AC is equivalent to the average Rogue or Monk, or a Breastplate wearer with a Greatsword, or a Mage Armor Wizard with a better-than-average DEX, or a 2H Heavy Armor Fighter/Paladin with the starting equipment Chain Mail, or similar. Not super optimized, but far from abysmal, especially in a party of non-optimizers playing primarily in Tier 1 and 2 as the OP described.

And you'll have the boost of extra Temp HP (plus potentially upcast Aid stacked on top). And you're not going to be hanging out in melee all that often, being primarily a ranged mid-liner. And when you do get into the thick of things (like when using the SG+SW combo), you can take the Dodge Action to help.

So this 16 AC Druid/Twilight Cleric mix is a bit like a Mountain Dwarf/Githyanki Abjurer... ~16 AC, but with an additional HP buffer to help make up for the middling AC.

Plus at times when you want to be even more defensive, you have access to stuff like Sanctuary/Shield of Faith/Protection from Good and Evil/Greater Invisibility/etc.


And I suspect many/most DMs would be willing to accommodate Druids with non-metal Scale/Half-Plate armor becoming available at some point. Or at least a Ring of Protection, Magic Hide Armor/Shield, etc.