War Priest or Paladin?

[Ashuran]

Hello everyone. Am planning for a holy warrior themed run on my next playthrough and choosing between War Domain Cleric or Paladin. Which do you guys prefer in your opinion between the two? Is the Oath mechanic of paladin restricts playstyle too much? War Domain cleric still very weak to play as a melee holy warrior?

[Aurite]

I respecced Shadowheart as a cleric of war. As you have already done a playthrough it isnt a spoiler to say the mace of lathander is a great weapon you get at the end of act 1. My war spec shadowheart is lvl 11 now (no multiclass) attacks twice, has some great melee attacks, has excellent spells, heavy armour and a shield. I have to watch what concentration spells I use, Spirit guardians is an amazing spell and is usefull in pretty much every situation particularly beating swarms of things like rats.

With Shadowheart specced to war I always take her in my party.

So for a main character I would be inclined to make a face character with high charisma. I have a bard8/paladin3 at the moment who dual weilds shortsword and scimitar and is great in melee, excellent damage ( I hit for a total of 60 damage in my turn recently, and was grinning ear to ear, usually its just 30-40 damage in a turn from my melee attacks unbuffed), college of swords bard so I get 2 attacks like a fighter class does. Smites and lots of spell slots. High armour from high dex.

I think for a main character i want to be a class none of my companions are so paladin would be my pick for you. But remember bard/paladin can be awesome and do everything from talking to lockpicking.

[Ashuran]

Publicado originalmente por Aurite:

I respecced Shadowheart as a cleric of war. As you have already done a playthrough it isnt a spoiler to say the mace of lathander is a great weapon you get at the end of act 1. My war spec shadowheart is lvl 11 now (no multiclass) attacks twice, has some great melee attacks, has excellent spells, heavy armour and a shield. I have to watch what concentration spells I use, Spirit guardians is an amazing spell and is usefull in pretty much every situation particularly beating swarms of things like rats.

With Shadowheart specced to war I always take her in my party.

So for a main character I would be inclined to make a face character with high charisma. I have a bard8/paladin3 at the moment who dual weilds shortsword and scimitar and is great in melee, excellent damage ( I hit for a total of 60 damage in my turn recently, and was grinning ear to ear, usually its just 30-40 damage in a turn from my melee attacks unbuffed), college of swords bard so I get 2 attacks like a fighter class does. Smites and lots of spell slots. High armour from high dex.

I think for a main character i want to be a class none of my companions are so paladin would be my pick for you. But remember bard/paladin can be awesome and do everything from talking to lockpicking.

Yes my first character was actually a bard. Very good as face of the party but i rerolled to monk after I learned a bit how to play the game. I rerolled because although I liked bard I missed a bit of content and did not enjoy his playthrough as much since he basically was my learning curve character.

For my future charisma run I think I might make sword pact warlock in medium armor. Kind of a spellsword as well. Great sword wielding warrior with spells and high charisma.

[Ashuran]

Publicado originalmente por Aurite:

I respecced Shadowheart as a cleric of war. As you have already done a playthrough it isnt a spoiler to say the mace of lathander is a great weapon you get at the end of act 1. My war spec shadowheart is lvl 11 now (no multiclass) attacks twice, has some great melee attacks, has excellent spells, heavy armour and a shield. I have to watch what concentration spells I use, Spirit guardians is an amazing spell and is usefull in pretty much every situation particularly beating swarms of things like rats.

With Shadowheart specced to war I always take her in my party.

So for a main character I would be inclined to make a face character with high charisma. I have a bard8/paladin3 at the moment who dual weilds shortsword and scimitar and is great in melee, excellent damage ( I hit for a total of 60 damage in my turn recently, and was grinning ear to ear, usually its just 30-40 damage in a turn from my melee attacks unbuffed), college of swords bard so I get 2 attacks like a fighter class does. Smites and lots of spell slots. High armour from high dex.

I think for a main character i want to be a class none of my companions are so paladin would be my pick for you. But remember bard/paladin can be awesome and do everything from talking to lockpicking.

That mace is really good. Am still using it till now. Although I recently swapped shadowheart with the spear of selune for rpg purposes and gave that mace to wyl haha.

[Miravlix]

Publicado originalmente por Ashuran:

Plus am interested what extra story I can unlock as a cleric of selune since the story seems to involve selune a lot.

Custom characters doesn't get story. If you play a gith, no gith sees you as a gith, your just another of Laz's "human pets".

The NPC's and companions is written to interact with ANY type of custom character, the only real exception is playing a drow, chapter 1 is a dritz fantasy, most of chapter 1 reacts differently to a drow MC. (Though you can use SH race change spell to get the same)

All the bad guys walk up to you and spill the beans on all their bad deeds, but not even that is consistent, the dying true soul you meet early, doesn't react to you being an evil man eating drow. No one expect a drow to "take care" of anyone.

[Teddy]

Publicado originalmente por Ashuran:

Publicado originalmente por ᛊᚨᛁᛚᛟᚱ ᛗᛟᛟᚾ:

Paladin, War Cleric isn't good at melee

ok thanks. I thought War Cleric can still be a decent melee class even though I know paladin is surely the superior melee class of the two. But I did read in some other forums that war cleric is still mostly spell oriented so wanted to ask here in steam since the bg3 community here is as active as their official forums.

Honestly Id take both, respec your waifu Shadowheart and roll a loladin. That just can't go wrong lol

[Ashuran]

Publicado originalmente por Teddy:

Publicado originalmente por Ashuran:

ok thanks. I thought War Cleric can still be a decent melee class even though I know paladin is surely the superior melee class of the two. But I did read in some other forums that war cleric is still mostly spell oriented so wanted to ask here in steam since the bg3 community here is as active as their official forums.

Honestly Id take both, respec your waifu Shadowheart and roll a loladin. That just can't go wrong lol

haha yes. on my next playthrough I will use respec on my companions. On my current playthrough I want to keep it pure by keeping their default classes etc as they are. Am a bit disappointed they did not change Shadowheart's Cleric domain after she converted back to Selune even though they did change her deity to selune. I expected her to become Life domain instead of trickery haha.

One character I will definitely change in my next playthrough is Halsin. I like his character and he is a hunk haha. But right now I find his druid spec useless to my party. Will probably change him to barbarian haha. I will RP him as embracing his warrior side while adventuring with us since he did say he finds leaving his responsibility as archdruid liberating even if only temporarily.

[Ashuran]

Publicado originalmente por dantrag28:

I'm currently rolling WD Dwarf Cleric of Moradin. The DPS is average.

But it's decent? I do not expect to be super high dps as war domain cleric but just enough to enjoy meleeing like a holy warrior. One of my other purpose to want to try to be a cleric is so I could bring a different set of characters in some parts of the game without shadowheart to see different interactions etc. So that when I let SH stay in camp I could do back up healer for the group while SH is in camp.

[Verde]

You can do both. Paladin 5/Cleric 7 or Paladin 2/Cleric10 are very strong options for Multiclassing. Just be aware the some features are currently bugged and won't work as intended.

[Dailao]

Publicado originalmente por Ashuran:

Hello everyone. Am planning for a holy warrior themed run on my next playthrough and choosing between War Domain Cleric or Paladin. Which do you guys prefer in your opinion between the two? Is the Oath mechanic of paladin restricts playstyle too much? War Domain cleric still very weak to play as a melee holy warrior?

Play cleric for (much needed) party support and for awesome spells like guardian that pretty much wipes out shadows and undead. It also has no restrictions on what to do decision-wise.

Play paladin if you want to be dps and support, but are willing to live with some restrictions decision-wise. On the plus-side, paladin can be the front/talker of your party too.

Or as some people mentioned, you can be both at once by multiclassing, which is what I usually do.

[thanoskulo]

Paladin has the highest burst damage but for overall usefulness I prefer clerric

[Mijj]

Publicado originalmente por Ashuran:

Thanks everyone. I decided to go war cleric on my next playthrough since I want to be able to use different composition of teams unlike now where I basically have shadowheart permanently with me haha. At least as a cleric if I do not bring shadowheart I can still off heal a bit. Plus am interested what extra story I can unlock as a cleric of selune since the story seems to involve selune a lot.

Are people aware they can change companions' class ?

[Teddy]

Publicado originalmente por Mijj:

Publicado originalmente por Ashuran:

Thanks everyone. I decided to go war cleric on my next playthrough since I want to be able to use different composition of teams unlike now where I basically have shadowheart permanently with me haha. At least as a cleric if I do not bring shadowheart I can still off heal a bit. Plus am interested what extra story I can unlock as a cleric of selune since the story seems to involve selune a lot.

Are people aware they can change companions' class ?

yeah but most want it to be pure and fit their personality. Shadowheart really acts like a cleric, and some might find it odd if she was anything else.

[Ashuran]

Publicado originalmente por Dailao:

Play cleric for (much needed) party support and for awesome spells like guardian that pretty much wipes out shadows and undead. It also has no restrictions on what to do decision-wise.

Play paladin if you want to be dps and support, but are willing to live with some restrictions decision-wise. On the plus-side, paladin can be the front/talker of your party too.

Or as some people mentioned, you can be both at once by multiclassing, which is what I usually do.

Yes this is one of the major reason aside from the Selune deity specific interactions that a selune cleric might have. The paladin restriction while sensible can restrict my choices haha. But I can still go paladin in the last minute though. I want to make a paladin named Casavir since he was one of my favorite paladin character in Neverwinter 2 back when I was very young haha. I mostly play as a good character anyway so I think there is not much scenario where I would be breaking my oaths.

[Spikem59]

BG3 players really seem to underestimate the power of Cleric. It's the most OP class in 5e and it boggles my mind how people on this forum talk about it. Yes, it doesn't have smite and some of the best burst damage in the game, but the spells it has access to make up for it in other ways. I can't cast spirit guardians as a paladin and that's an insanely useful spell.

The first character I made was a tempest cleric, the second was a paladin. I'm loving both of them and find them both quite powerful and fun as hell to play but for different reasons.

When it comes to paladin vs. war or tempest cleric, the proper answer is which fits your roleplay more? What do you like the style of better?

[Ashuran]

Publicado originalmente por Mijj:

Are people aware they can change companions' class ?

I do not like changing companion classes because one of the reason I like to play RPG is well to RP. They are their certain classes for a reason based on their stories and I do not want to touch them as much as possible. I do plan however to probably change Halsin to Barbarian on my second playthrough since I really want him to be a permanent part of my party but his druid class is not good for my style of play. And maybe shadowheart, I will just change her domain to Life if ever she again goes the path of becoming a selunite but I will keep everything else about her intact.