Start new game as Cleric?

[dodger]

I got through Act 2 as a half-Orc Paladin, before taking a break to let the game get Act 3 all patched up. Now I'm going to start a new game, and I'm considering going with a Cleric. Just to do it. My hesitation is, will that be too much of a struggle, in the first few levels of the game? Any comments or feed back would be appreciated.

[Favonius]

That pretty much depends on the difficulty you're playing / your ease with the game and on your build.

I did play as Shadowheart on custom honor mode, keeping her as stealth cleric and it was a cheese. I dumped her STR to imrprove her charisma to improve dialog options, making her a pure spell caster. At some point i had to use a monk hireling though, to add an OP melee fighter to my team.

I know many people use tempest cleric builds, but i never really tested.

[dodger]

I will play normal difficulty. I've played lots and lots of RPG games, although very little of "pure" D&D. ( I use the term "pure" because I have read that some of the games I played used D&D, under the hood, but did not advertise that fact.)

[Mike Garrison]

Clerics are one of the more OP classes in D&D. It's a big mistake to just play them as support healers. Don't play them as if they are fighters, because they are not. Make use of their potent abilities like inflict wounds, guiding bolt, and (later on) spirit guardians.

[Sonic Titan]

Originally posted by dodger:

will that be too much of a struggle, in the first few levels of the game?

No.

[RollerPig]

I think Clerics are BEAST, especially tempest with a few levels in sorc or wiz....but early game not so great (as many casters). clerics have by far and away the most dog poop cantrips in the game which you will be relying on early unless you want to long rest after every minor scrape

I play mostly HM so bless is basically mandatory in most fights making a cleric more support role early on....but on reg mode I think you can honestly make anything work

Personally I cant play without Shart as a cleric. too iconic.

maybe play her origin

[✘෴♡✘2♡෴✘]

Cleric is super strong lol, I can only beat the entire ship intro with Cleric and max exp early. I love it but usually play it as Solo as I just kill everything easily.

[alanc9]

I played a cleric first. I always play clerics in D&D games since my first PC back in 1980 was a cleric. It's a good class. Not as OP as, say, swords bard, but quite playable.

[Chaosolous]

Should be easy.

[[TG] zac]

The only down side is that the game will shunt many conversations to your main character so if your not playing a charisma character it will kind of suck for charisma checks.

There is a mod to make clerics use charisma though that works fine.

As far as actual power goes though cleric is fine.
Tempest, War & light are currently probably the better ones in game.

And if you want to be more martial you can always do a multi class split.
Ranger 5+ 7 cleric works quite well.

BTW if you are open to modding the mod for divine soul sorcerer is amazing.
You get meta magic like a normal sorcerer but access to both the wizard and cleric spell lists.
You also get 2d4 that you can add to any d20 roll once per short rest.

[TheLuckyAce]

Originally posted by dodger:

I got through Act 2 as a half-Orc Paladin, before taking a break to let the game get Act 3 all patched up. Now I'm going to start a new game, and I'm considering going with a Cleric. Just to do it. My hesitation is, will that be too much of a struggle, in the first few levels of the game? Any comments or feed back would be appreciated.

Overall I would agree with the others here.
Specially on Normal - everything works.

BUT maybe you should consider waiting for Patch 8?
It should bring the last big Content Update for BG3 (I personally wait for my next real palythrough for this as well) adding new Subclasses and I guess more stuff (not checked all information) but than the Game should be "Complete" (besides mods).

[Ababinili]

You shouldn't have any problem. Clerics have, even before of choosing domain:

Guidance, best or almost best cantrip in game.
Crowd control since very start
Good dmg spells
Medium armor + shield
Not bad HP like (some) other casters
Healing
NOT stat/feat greedy. ASI ASI ALERT/WAR CASTER (Depending on what potion you have less) and to the moon.

+ that, depending on domain, clerics have cools stuff. Here my favorites:
-Tempest. Heavy armor, wider range of dmg spells. Crazy spikes of dmg.
-Life. Heavy armor, STRONGEST healing in game (btw, remember: you'll still have CC and DMG if you don't need healing)
-Light. wider range of dmg spells. Defensive trigger. Great sinergy with radiant orbs.
-Knowledge. Proficiencies!!


Clerics only have 1 bad thing: not charisma. Beware of this if you want to make your Tav a cleric.

[jonnin]

Clerics are just going to take you into a sleep the game away type experience. Nothing wrong with this, but if you are casting useless floaty weapon and spirit guardians every fight, you will be sleeping every 2-4 fights depending on what level you are (yea, yea eventually you can restore a few spells with toys before you need sleep, at least twice per sleep). And if you are not casting spirit guardians and running through everything, the class starts to suck the way that paladins who run out of smites or barbarians who run out of rage start to suck, only about twice as bad because the paladin and barbarian can still fight somewhat without their gimmick, but cleric really cannot. Glyph is amazing too, aoe sleep is very powerful in a few fights and its ability to hit with something besides fire is also very good (esp if you are doing the wet shock or wet cold min/max stuff). The stronger subclasses (light, shock, nature are all solid) can manage quite well.

In the first few levels, if you are open to doing a respec a bit later, you can dip 1 level of monk to get some extra physical attacks until your spells become more useful. Around level 5 you can redo from the ground up and go pure cleric. Its a crutch but it works really well and keeps your sleep-fight-sleep-fight cycles down in act 1.

The only real downside is the first 10 min with 2 clerics, one that has poor stats, is a bit weak but since its just the easy intro and beach you will be fine.

[Solomons Proxy]

Cleric is comically broken early game bro. You are all good.

[dodger]

Originally posted by TheLuckyAce:

Originally posted by dodger:

I got through Act 2 as a half-Orc Paladin, before taking a break to let the game get Act 3 all patched up. Now I'm going to start a new game, and I'm considering going with a Cleric. Just to do it. My hesitation is, will that be too much of a struggle, in the first few levels of the game? Any comments or feed back would be appreciated.

Overall I would agree with the others here.
Specially on Normal - everything works.

BUT maybe you should consider waiting for Patch 8?
It should bring the last big Content Update for BG3 (I personally wait for my next real palythrough for this as well) adding new Subclasses and I guess more stuff (not checked all information) but than the Game should be "Complete" (besides mods).

I thought Patch 8 had already come out? If it hasn't, maybe I'll just fiddle around until Patch 8 comes out. Then see if the mod for Clerics with Charisma works. I really liked having that with the Paladin. Then I would probably just go with a Tempest Cleric.
Edit: Sorry, I just saw the bit where Patch 8 is under testing. That's what I get for scanning headlines on news sites and not reading article.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by dodger:

I thought Patch 8 had already come out?

No. It is in a "stress test" and some people have access to a development version. But it has not been released as stable yet.