What are some good cleric builds?

[themazingness]

I'm thinking of trying a cleric out in SoU, HotU, and a couple of Ravenloft campaigns I've downloaded. What are some good cleric builds for solo play?

[ThatKoboldGaming | #FixTF2]

Battle Healer

[wendigo211]

There are a few:

• Bard 4/Cleric 26/RDD 10 is probably the gold standard. Crazy offense, better than average defense, gets to max all the major skills. High enough caster level to avoid all the dispels other than Mordenkainen's Disjunction.
• Bard 4/Cleric 26/PM 10. Gets immunity to critical hits and a slightly higher AC than the RDD, but a bit weaker.
• Fighter 10/WM 7/Cleric 23. Combine a Cleric's high AB with a WM's large threat range for a ton of critical hits.
• If you aren't going epic, then pure Cleric or Cleric with a couple levels of Paladin (for charisma boost to saves, martial weapon proficiency and discipline as a class skill) or Bard (discipline and tumble as class skills) are pretty good options.

If you want details about any of the combos, just let us know.

[themazingness]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

There are a few:

• Bard 4/Cleric 26/RDD 10 is probably the gold standard. Crazy offense, better than average defense, gets to max all the major skills. High enough caster level to avoid all the dispels other than Mordenkainen's Disjunction.
• Bard 4/Cleric 26/PM 10. Gets immunity to critical hits and a slightly higher AC than the RDD, but a bit weaker.
• Fighter 10/WM 7/Cleric 23. Combine a Cleric's high AB with a WM's large threat range for a ton of critical hits.
• If you aren't going epic, then pure Cleric or Cleric with a couple levels of Paladin (for charisma boost to saves, martial weapon proficiency and discipline as a class skill) or Bard (discipline and tumble as class skills) are pretty good options.

If you want details about any of the combos, just let us know.

The Bard/Cleric/RDD build sounds fun (even aside from your description of it being powerful, it sounds like a fun combo). Do you have a link or could you type up more details?

[wendigo211]

Originally posted by themazingness:

The Bard/Cleric/RDD build sounds fun (even aside from your description of it being powerful, it sounds like a fun combo). Do you have a link or could you type up more details?

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/nwnecbguild/mith-s-blood-and-faith-cleric-26-bard-4-rdd-10-t515481.html

[themazingness]

Perfect. Thanks!

[jonnin]

Clerics are good at nearly everything in this game, they are a little unbalanced.

-A fighter/cleric (any high BAB fighter type will do) is like a mega paladin. With any alignment and a host of great options (including the RDD or WM setups).

- Elf/HE cleric with animal and a single caster level can make a nasty arcane archer with super-buffed pets holding the line while you shoot. Zen archery...

- A cleric can be a rogue surrogate: they can domain grab the knock spell and find-remove-traps spell will do the job. Or you can have a modest dex, trickery domain, and a few levels of rogue.

- Monk heavy, cleric light can be *very* potent. The wis ac bonus to monk, the stat buff spells (++ wis, ++ dex, ++str all running with stoneskin (until reaching monk innate reduction), prot from evil, etc? And heal if you get in trouble...)

And really more of the same. Think about what clerics offer:
- armor/shield
- medium bab
- healing, buffing, debuffing, damage spells
- domains to round out your spells or abilities
- capable of reasonable stealth / rogue utility (silence? Invisible available) but no innate backstab.

With the above you can mix and match a very large variety of either specialist (combat heavy with buffs, etc) or generalist jack of all builds and all will be quite strong. Domains matter: you can't get all of them, so the 2 you choose have to boost your build significantly. Remember that a lot of domains require at least a 0 cha bonus, if not better, for their powers to be useful. That makes the RDD combos some of the ultimate ones, so you can make up for lost stats. The bard/RDD is reversable too. You can go high bard levels, gaining song and different spell mix with high CHA domain boosts, and lower cleric levels, but I would swap back to cleric after hitting max bard spell levels and 10 RDD stat bonus cap.

[Lady MacBeth]

Yeah clerics are one of the few classes that mesh with almost every class very welll. Hell a pure lvl 40 cleric is a powerhouse as well if someone wanted to stay pure class. I typically go for the old combo of Fighter 4, cleric 36 cause Im not very original lol.

[red255]

Cleric is a class that got a hard nerf for NWN 2.

the general Cleric Build I consider depends on the level the campaign is going to.

For the Original campaign I take cleric to 12, then take a level of monk.
this allows me to pick up some robes of the dark moon in chapter 2, which I can cast divine vestment on. and carry a kama in my main hand with flurry of blows and some off hand weapon this gets me 10 attacks per round at Cleric 16/monk 1 with improved two weapon fighting.

Casting the divine strength spell the cleric has to raise its base attack bonus to that of a fighter.

lets just assume 2 kamas with 1d4 acid damage on them

greater magic weapon, Darkfire on the kamas making them +4 with 1d6+6 fire damage at level 12.

Divine Favor adding +5 attack +5 magic damage per hit.

Divine Might could be used to get +8 Divine damage for 8 rounds added to the weapon

Its a munchkin build.
Human Lawful (good) cleric
Starting stats.
14 STR
14 DEX
14 CON
10 INT
14 WIS
14 CHA
Domains of Magic and war

Level 4 take +1 dex for improved 2 weapon fighting. Rest WIS. take a level of monk when robes of dark moon become available in shops.

I think I went Cleric 12 Monk 2 Fighter 4 for weapon specialization for the Original campaign. taking Fighter to 6 for Epic weapon specialization in a HotU campaign.

Level 1 you want Power attack and extend spell
level 3 Divine Might
Level 4 +1 Dex
Level 6 ambidexteritiy
Level 8 WIS +1
Level 9 Two weapon fighting
Level 12 WIS +1 Improved two weapon fighting.
Level 13 Monk 1. (gets cleave and flurry of blows switch to robes of the dark moon.
Level 14, Fighter 1, Weapon focus Kama
Level 15 Fighter 2.... Uh... Toughness? Improved critical Kama.
Level 16 Monk 2
Level 18 Fighter 4 Weapon specialization Kama. ...extra turning?
Level 19 Monk 3.
Level 20 Fighter 5.
Level 21 Fighter 6. epic weapon specilization Epic weapon focus Kama.

Kinda want to get cleric to 15 and Monk to 6 to get improved knockdown from the monk and get rid of the XP penalty....but you don't *need* it.

You are done, you got stone skin. you got STR and CHA to damage, you got DEX and WIS to AC. you got buffs for days. We could go for strength base it and consider it a fighter with level 6 cleric spells.

anyways its abusing Kamas and the monks absurd number of attacks per round with cleric buffs. A champion of Torm could be used to avoid XP penalties but then you wouldn't get the +6 damage with kamas.

And its a munchkin build because I can see making a cleric/Monk or a Cleric/Fighter but I got no good lore excuse for this monster.

its just for maximizing damage and attacks per round.

in Hotu you get some extreme enchantments on weapons making them +10 with 2d6 elemental damage and the cleric drops back to only slightly stronger than the other classes.

but yeah a cleric/fighter 4=>6 (epic) is pretty standard. it could use enduiku's armor and stoneskin and divine vestment pretty well.

[claudius]

I wonder if Cleric/Sorcerer/RDD would be any good? RDD to have Wis/Cha/Str stats for spells, domains, melee. I forget if NWN1 has the divine power spell on the cleric list which would convert the low and medium AB to high AB for the spells duration.

[jonnin]

I guess it depends on what you want to do. If you mean to use the cleric only for domains, its a strong build (animal for summoning isnt a bad idea here). If you try to take both sorc and cleric up as casters, it will suffer from the caster level problem, and its a while before you can use your plate armor, early levels, not so much.

[wendigo211]

You can kind of pull it off with Cleric 9/Sorc 21/RDD 10, if you get the cleric strength domain for the level 3 divine power. You would have +3 Divine Favor and could cast an 18 round Divine Power so those two would handle your melee ability. You could also pick up Divine Shield to help with AC. The problems would be:

• your caster level is low so you could get dispelled, the Sorc would be a bit better off, but those Cleric buffs would be gone against anything that could cast dispel or greater dispel. Those cleric buffs would also be short duration (no Practiced Spellcaster in NWN unfortunately)
  
• You would probably hit the +20 AB cap, unless if you went cleric+RDD heavy pre epic (say Cleric 8/Sorc 2/RDD 10).
  
• You would have low HP.

[Incantus]

Caster Cleric is generally just a few levels of monk and the rest in cleric, and there are several good caster domains. Air, Magic and Sun to name a few. It's a bit monotone, but it packs a punch that's more than good enough.

[red255]

Originally posted by claudius:

I wonder if Cleric/Sorcerer/RDD would be any good? RDD to have Wis/Cha/Str stats for spells, domains, melee. I forget if NWN1 has the divine power spell on the cleric list which would convert the low and medium AB to high AB for the spells duration.

So not to be a sorc?

I'd use a Bard instead because the bardsong is moderately useful and it gets tumble as a class skill for additional AC. as well as appraise. and use any item

the RDD is basically just 8 points of strength, and a few other stats, its a 3/4 BAB progression class and not the greatest for HD. great for qualifying for devestating critical earlier.

only reason to use a sorc is you want to use sorc only items, maybe robes?

But I'm guessing you are doing a split of Cleric29 /sorc1/RDD 10.

you do get the spell, with the strength domain you get the spell one level earlier so you can extend it basically for free.

there are issues with your class split for base attack bonus.

if you make a cleric 9/Sorc1/RDD 10.

thats a BAB of 13. whereas a sorc would have 10 and fighter would have 20 and cleric would have 15 at 20.

So I'd split the levels cleric 12 Bard 1 RDD 7
and take the last 3 RDD post epic. would push you up to 14 BAB at least.


High strength means we want a high strength weapon like a 2H weapon, simple is spears and staffs so you'd need to spend a perk if you wanted something else.

I'd push a few levels of Bard periodically to upgrade your tumble and appraise.

[claudius]

Hi I'm going to make a new thread exploring Cleric/Sorcerer/RDD. I didn't want to derail this thread to that discussion. But I'll make a new thread to share my ideas.

Thanks for commenting on Cleric/Sorcerer/RDD I just don't want to derail from other discussion on the Cleric class.