Something else that could make forge cleric's channel divinity useful. If you or your DM are the type to keep track of encumbrance, then using your spare uses of channel divinity at the end of the day to convert 100gp into light, valuable objects will save you on weight over time. It's kinda funny too. Imagine a party of adventurers lugging around sacks of coin, and the forge cleric is just casually strolling, covered in bling.
Find familiar is particularly good on clerics because they actually have numerous useful touch spells like restoration, revivify, freedom of movement, etc.
Gosh these non-multiclass build videos and your spell level analysis videos are my favourite! You've also made me real interested in D&D Beyond, the levelling process seems so smooth and intuitive. Everything is super clean, even the spell descriptions! Side note: Honestly never had an issue with the audio, even before you changed it...
Notably Spirit Guardians does NOT create difficult terrain - it halves the speed of the targets you designate as enemies - so the speed effect not only doesn’t effect your party, but it can be stacked by being in an area of difficult terrain!
Forge Cleric is a solid build, it seems! I like how you explained the choice between spirit guardians and animate objects. Personally, my favorite aspect of Forge is that at 17, you get immunity to fire and resistance to ordinary damage; I love the image of a single dwarf marching down into the Lonely Mountain and smashing Smaug to pieces bit by bit, unmoved by his fire breath and barely stirred by his claws. The build works even better if you come across one of a number of Strength-boosting items; those belts of giant strength or even gauntlets of ogre strength can let you bump up your wisdom guilt-free, and as a dwarf, it doesn’t matter if you should somehow lose the item; you’ve got the dwarf fortitude to wear the heavy armor and just switch to spells until your strength bumps up again.
1) Blessing of the Forge - When I no long need it for party armor or weapons, I use it for barding. 2) Channel Divity - I tend to use it to convert scrap weaponry and armor into platinum or gold trade bars, or into silver trade bars for grinding into silver dust for use with the Ceremony spell *ritual) to make holy water. :) 3) Light cantrip - I always try to get this incase we need to fight shadows, of shadow creatures in dim light . . .
Good advice. Btw I'm having a blast playing a Cleric without a holy symbol, just looking for whatever component I can find! Latest was a strip of white cloth which I got from the tunic of a party member, a reward for being observant.
For animate objects, saying attack the X as a general action, against one enemy allows you to combine it with spiritual weapon, as only first round ba is used
Number 2 depends heavily on DM fiat. Since the rules say that most weapons and armor wielded by the enemies are shoddy and would not sale to any merchant, what are they exactly "worth" since Artisan's Blessing requires the metal be worth the same as the creation. I'd make a case (and did in my forge cleric game) that scrap metal has some per pound worth regardless of the quality of the item as an actual weapon, but this is largely going to be up to DM.
Unrelated, but you can actually make a meme firbolg rogue. If you take the spell Magic Stone and deliver the rocks with a sling, you can make a spell attack with a ranged weapon and qualify for sneak attack on an attack that uses your Wisdom mod for attack and damage rolls. It's mostly good for laughs, but you can do worse than a rogue who's really good at Wisdom skills.
Would a Warforged still get the benefits from wearing heavy armor granted by Soul of the Forge and Saint of Forge and Fire? Integrated Protection: Your body has built-in protective layers, which determine your Armor Class. You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you apply its bonus as normal. I could see this just meaning that you can't use the armor itself to calculate AC, and I guess it doesn't stop you from wearing it. Personally I would rule it if they were using the Heavy Plating option for Integrated Protection it would count, but I know that isn't RAW. What do y'all think? In the same vein would a Warforged benefit from the Defense fighting style if they choose to wear armor?
Yay, I can hear you now on the bus/train! I was struggling to hear you over the noise of the bus in my headphones before. Thanks so much for addressing the volume. This half-deaf old man appreciates it.
Slight possible mistake with the guardian of faith spell. The spell fades when the guardian has dealt a total of 60 damage, not three attacks of 20 damage, save for half. Now you didn't say that it only deals three attacks, but when you spoke of the saves for halfsies and that it might only do thirty, that's the idea people might get. Theoretically, the spell might do no damage at all, so saying only thirty enhances that idea.
Neat stuff! BTW, I always thought one of the first cleric domains you would cover would be the Arcana domain, due to how thematically similar it is to wizards, lol. Also, regarding the volume, no complaints here, besides, it's always easier to lower than to raise volume on our end.
Ended up building a Warforge Forge Domain cleric and sure I didn't have the warhammer/other martial weapons but jesus that AC was ridiculous. Very fun character and using inflict wounds was so fantastic.
Minor point: Guardian of Faith will deal 60 damage regardless of enemy saves, it just might take more hits to do it. I know you've mentioned this in past videos so I was surprised there wasn't correction-text over it. I think it can do 70 damage if the saves work out so it skips 50-->70, but that'd be up to the DM. The main way the damage is limited is combat not lasting long enough or the enemies avoiding it (which is battlefield control, at least).
Channel divinity can turn weapons into gold. Rapiers and scimitars are the default weapons for lots of rogues. For full plate, I think making it peice by piece should work.
Volume is now great. Before I had to max my volume on speakers and computer and can still had hard times hearing. I'd much rather have to turn down the volume. Many thanks.
This build is nearly identical to my own. However, I went full Cleric and had a more generous stat allocation. It makes no sense to me to dilute the Cleric with Fighter levels. On aaverage you get 3 extra hit points from this build. You miss a 3rd channel divinity usage, an ASI/Feat and a 100% chance for Divine Involvement. You miss out a 7th and 6th spell slot. Now, the Fighter's Action Surge, Fighting Style and techniques are worth the swap for the spells and channel divinity, but missing out on an +2 to max out Wis or add to Con and a 100% chance for divine help? Nope.
I sort of built the same thing (melee Cleric) but using Tempest. It was highly worth taking SOR at first level then Cleric from there to get CON saves and then the spells you need. Shocking grasp becomes better with Tempest chassis.
This build is already quite MAD without adding a minimum Charisma requirement of 13 to it. How would you pull that off with point buy? You would have to roll for stats, and roll well above average.
Carlos Devoto I don’t have it in front of me but I am a Dragonborn. I will use an array. S- 14 (16) Dex 8, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 15, CHR 13 (14). SOR at first, then Cleric rest of way. You take warcaster or Res (wis) for first feat, then the other for your second feat. Resilient wisdom has the benefit of adding wisdom saves. You have less HP but Con saves, your wisdom is lower until second feat, more cantrips, Shield, absorb elements, etc. Since it was a tempest I took shocking grasp since it can push once you get 6th level in Cleric class, then you get the extra d8 damage as a Cleric and make sure you search for a lightning weapon and use booming blade
We can lower the volume really easily on our end, but especially when watching on a phone its difficult to raise it above a certain point. I used to have to have volume set all the way up to hear you over background noises. A lot of youtube channels have similar issues. Of course, whenever an ad comes up it’s then comparatively very loud. So, I appreciate the change.
just started a campaign as a forge Cleric. I went with warforged and acolyte background, i have him worship the broken god from the SCP lore. not sure how to build him yet so this was helpful.
So I am a big fan of the Trickery cleric and having a caster cleric, full props for that video. I would also like to point out a couple things. First as a Human Variant, you can choose Healer as a feat, which if you are focused on end game con checks, is a sub optimal choice but at levels 1-5 having a 1d6+4 +1 per hd heal/ per character/ per rest is great and saves spell slots. It also performs as an action, so that can leave you to use healing word as a bonus action. You can get two characters back into the fight.... level 1 or 20. a good option for a free feat.
Imagine not taking a brewer's kit when you can. What do you think a low-level party will thank you more for on those long rests? Did you lose a war? Are you to be spared nothing?
@@TreantmonksTemple That sounds too much of getting the booby prize treasure of a Murlynd's Spoon. Instead of that cool dinner setting from L1 (oh wait, I just gave away *The Secret of Bone Hill* - that it contains a kewl dinner setting).
@@Porphyrogenitus1 lol. I had a friend who (in a previous edition) had his character cast Heroes feast at the beginning of each day, but he deliberately reskinned it to healthy and nourishing gruel because it fit his character.
@@TreantmonksTemple Funny thing, the others reskinned their characters to someone who beat his severely after every meal, because it fit *their* characters! Good times, good times.
Nice! I'm playing a Forge Cleric right now, only lvl 3 so far but I like it alot. I went with Mountain Dwarf and got lucky with my rolls. Started with str 20 con and wis at 17
I think Shillelagh is a huge addition to a build like this, it allows us to use Wisdom instead of strength for our attack rolls, eliminates the need for a martial weapon, and because we're often casting Spirit Guardians or Animate Objects on the first round, we have the time to use a bonus action to set it up. The problem is that no class gets both Shillelagh and Booming Blade, so here are some options to get it: 1. Dip Druid: You're setting your class progression behind 1 level, but druid is another class with full spellcasting, so you'll still eventually get all of your spell slots. 2. Be a wood elf and take the Wood elf Magic feat. This feat gives you, among other things, the Shillelagh spell. As a wood elf, you have 35 base speed, so even with the heavy armor speed penalty you're moving at the same speed as a dwarf in plate mail. 3. Be a Half-elf of high elf descent, take Booming Blade as your wizard cantrip, and Magic initiate (druid) for Shillelagh. Half-elves can get +1 Strength to allow them to more easily wear heavy armor, though you might be stuck with splint mail in this case.
I did a Nature Cleric Build (written guide) Regarding Shillelagh, unfortunately you can't cast it in the same round as Spirit Guardians or Animate Objects. The rule is weird, but whenever you cast a bonus action spell (even a cantrip) any other spell you cast on your turn can only be a cantrip.
Love the video. One thing I noticed is the build is not AL legal. Forge is from Xanathar’s and Booming Blade (or my choice Green Flame Blade) is from SCAG. But not important in Homebrew campaigns. Keeps the videos coming!
I would consider Shocking Grasp as an alternative to the Scag cantrips. It's then possible to just play a Forge Cleric the regular way. Plus since it's a melee spell attack it not only can crit it depends on your wisdom for hits. You may even get a use from Divine Strike if you go EK 7 - every time you cast a cantrip your can make a melee attack as a bonus action. It's also reasonable to argue you don't have to drop your weapon to deliver the cantrip as you can try to "touch" with the back of your hand. Or have a wrist chain - I think a GM will grant you discarding / re equipping your weapon as a Free Action.
About the hear metal affecting a spear, I wouldn't consider that at my table, but a sword is fine. Reason: The sword's actual handle is made of metal and it's only covered with a different material (wood, vines, straws) for anatomical purposes. The spear is made of wood, and only the tip is metal. I could even think of a creative use of the spell for a buff, using it at the tip of the spear or an arrow to give it a +1 or +2 fire dmg =)
if you have the time, you can use his channel divinity to condense 10,000 CP or 1,000 SP into a 100 GP object made of Platinum or Mithril or Adamantium. Granted, it isn't worth a lot of money, but it is much easier to carry! Also, the idea of a forge cleric making his own Mithril or Adamantium is awesome.
I would either stick with Cleric until 20 or multiclass way earlier. The build really comes together at 9th level. You have Booming Blade + Find Familiar + Divine Strike for your melee swings. You have Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, and Animate Objects for very solid damage spells. This is when I would probably think about multiclassing. But if you get all the way to 17th level I think your best bet is FOR SURE to get to 20th level so that your Divine Interventions have a 100% success chance rather than 3 levels of Fighter or some other class. Unless your DM hates you there is no way some Battlemaster maneuvers are better than Divine Intervention.
With Tasha's coming up, you could also go for a high elf, who can get booming blade as a racial, and relocate your +2 into wisdom and your +1 into either strength or con. You lose out on a +1 in that same stat, you need a strength of 15 for plate, no warhammer proficiency and a little bit less health and no poison resistance.. However, you do get perception proficiency and you don't have to burn an ASI for magic initiate, which is huge.
Great thank you. Just made a dwarven, mature forge cleric as backup character - tough spots in CoS but I hope my main character (wizard) makes it, she has been with me long - but now I feel more ready for my cleric in whatever campaign, having heard your reasoning. Enjoy your videos and insights
With Tasha's allowing custom ability score increases from race, the best option to take is probably the high half-elf. You can get Booming Blade from the start, and then take Magic Initiate: Druid instead for Shillelagh to attack with your Wisdom instead of Strength.
At around 13:23 you mentioned that Guiding Bolt has a verbal and somatic component, and thus you would need to put away your warhammer in order to cast it. However, to my understanding this is not the case. In the PHB pg. 49, it specifies that “A cleric or paladin can use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus”. Since your holy symbol is on your shield, you would be able to use that as a focus, meaning you wouldn’t need to put away your war hammer.
@@SapphireSandwichBoys Might be wrong but as I recall there's something about the RAW that you need the material component of a spell for the focus clause to activate. Without it you technically don't have a free hand (war hammer and shield) to do the somatic components and thus need to put away the warhammer to get a free hand for the somatic (unless you have war caster). It's really silly but hey that's not the only weirdo rule in 5e.
@@SapphireSandwichBoys "Correct me if I'm wrong", yeah, unfortunately you are wrong. I did a video on this that goes into detail on exactly what you can cast: ruclips.net/video/nk1Up4hXUko/видео.html
I think it’s a horrible rule but the short version is that you can cast VSM spells with two hands full if one of those hands is holding a focus, but for VS spells you need one empty hand to perform the gestures. It’s not really clear why you can wave your staff/wand/shield focus around for the somatic component of the former but not for the latter.
I'd love to see an Artificer build in the future. It's such an interesting class with many options. I know is UA for now but its gonna be published soon, any opinion about?
I stay away from UA, but if it's published officially, I will absolutely be checking it out. Be aware that most stuff takes a heavy nerfing from UA once published (which is part of the reason I stay away, don't want my judgement affected emotionally)
Treantmonk's Temple One of my current characters is a forge cleric / artificer build. Despite the need for a decent intelligence, it's been a joy to play so far.
@@foolfan83 Yeah, turns out I completely understand, It must be hard knowing more than one system/edition that are similar and not get these mixed up (you see it with matt mercer on CR) After only doing 5e Im learning now pathfinder Wish me luck XD
This appears to be overselling the effectiveness of Spiritual Weapon and it's need for inclusion in this build. While Spiritual Weapon is a really solid option when 2nd level spells become available, its limitations begin to make it a far less attractive option by mid-level play. By 8th level, the math overlay @45:00 shows it is the lowest contributor of damage per round (only 3.75 out of 29.63) of the three damage sources. That won't improve unless it's upcast, but upcasting Spiritual Weapon is terribly inefficient in terms of damage improvement for spell slots. It also doesn't factor in that the bonus action will need to be used for other spells at times, such as casting Healing Word, Shield of Faith, or potentially Sanctuary or Mass Healing Word if those are prepared. It also assumes you can easily reach targets to attack beyond the first use. Due to it's slow movement (20' round), there are many situations where foes are either too spread out or mobile enough to continually move and avoid being hit by its effect. As a result, the actual damage per round from Spiritual Weapon will often be significantly lower depending on game situation. By contrast those big hitters like Spirit Guardians, Animate Objects and your weapon attacks + Booming Blade will tend to be far more reliable damage sources, and those are the key contributors for this type of build.
The problem with this is you have to see the metal object. If it's embedded in an enemy, how can you see it? You could only see the wooden shaft sticking out, not the arrowhead itself.
I have a Vedalken forge cleric that I just took into Conjuration wizard. Plan on being Cleric 3 / Wizard 17 by the end. Won't get the immunity to fire, but bypasses some of the more subpar spells later on.
Michael Fabrey I always love having a level of Knowledge Cleric on my Wizards! Even if it delays your spell casting progression, you can still take some spells that upcast well to make up for it. And the best part: the skills! You can get the Knowledge skill proficiencies to be crazy good, allowing your character to act like a walking dictionary! All the lore is mine!
I wanted to call out a dm for always saying things like "this is going to be super hard, have backup characters ready from day 1" and then making the whole campaign easy. So I built a forge cleric. At level 6 i got my resting ac to 21 and was able to use shield of faith to get 23 ac during fights. All his creatures had a 10% or less chance of hititting me and I never got hit. Plus i was a cleric so i was broken in every other way too. He finally gave us the challenging campaign we hoped for.
Just rewatching this a year later... thinking about the options offered here, it would seem that this basic build would be essentially the same for any Cleric that wanted to be melee centered. That got me thinking about the different spell lists and CD options that other domains offer, and how this same build would look with a different domain. While Tempest and War seem obvious, I don't necessarily think they're the best options. I think that Light would be interesting, given that the CD would be used much more regularly. Arcana might give an interesting spin, since you could get your BB without a feat, meaning you could use that feat right away for something you'd have had to wait on. Order domain could be interesting, if you tend toward the party leader role. One thing that occurred to me is that using BB as a primary attack means that you get to add the level 8 feature, regardless of whether it benefits melee or cantrips -even if your table isn't using the new Tasha's rules.
At some point, I’d like to see a Divine Sorcerer build just to see what kind of spell selection you’d make if you had both Sorcerer and Cleric spell lists available.
Treantmonk's Temple I am a huge fan of Divine Soul. I like the idea of upcasting Aid and using extended spell to bolster party members for the whole adventuring day, concentration free. Plus, Flexible casting lets you make lvl 4 spell slots at sorc 6, and lvl 5 slots at sorc 7. So at level 7, you can use 6+1 sorcery points to cast Aid at 4th level lvl, increasing the hit point total of 3 party members by 20 pts for 16 hours.
I’ve played Divine Souls (always dipped with Hexblade) extensively and in my opinion most optimal builds will end up with primarily Sorcerer spells with a splash of Cleric thrown in since your spells known are so limited.
Main point of difference for me would be starting with 15 strength instead of 14 (one of our other ability scores goes from 10 to 8) and then at the point where we increase strength to 16, take a half feat instead- such as heavy armor master. The -3 damage from attacks combos really nicely with the 17th level ability that gives us resistance to those same attacks. With the options in Tasha’s, I would also take artificer initiate rather than magic initiate. This gives us access to booming blade as well as one 1st level artificer spell that we can cast multiple times. I would probably take either longstrider or absorb elements. This is partly because my table doesn’t allow the ‘familiar-grants-advantage-every-round’ cheese, but also it gives us something useful to do with our first level spell slots which gets tricky to do at high levels. The extra tool proficiency is thematic for the character and also expands the kinds of things we can create with the fabricate spell (definitely niche, but cool nonetheless, I think).
Are silver pieces tiny or are they diminutive? In previous editions or at least in 3.5 the cutoff was something like three apples in height. It's not looking like diminutive or fine is even mentioned in the core books.
My favorite way to build a forge cleric is to take a hill dwarf with 17 con, 14 str and 16 wis. Take Resilient (con) at 4th lvl, then get both con and wis to 20. I don't take Warcaster or other feats, just Resilient. Combined with dwarven con and proficiency, you'll be auto-passing most concentration saves, not to mention other con saves. Melee damage is not the point of that subclass anyway, you're better off just Dodging with Spirit Guardians on.
@@Iamstrad it feels a little redundant with the cleric class, to be honest. In a tight spot you can cast healing word, possibly with a higher spell slot, or other healing spells. And it's a half-feat, which would bring you to 19 con - no better than 18 in this case. If you manage to snatch a Periapt of Wound Closure, however, this feat is king.
Chris: I really enjoy your videos and I love the depth that you go into not only providing options but also explaining your choices. however this video I think does point out one thing that I wish that you would talk about more often, and that is building a character in games using the PHB+1 restriction. I know your videos are about making the most optimal character you can and so therefore you're pulling from whatever resources are available, but a lot of players play in ADL games where PHB+1 is the rule and I found that a lot of DMs (myself included) prefer the PHB+1 for home games as well. And I think that because you have this character that is in some ways built around using booming blade to supplement low cleric damage, as much as I'd like to recommend it to people, I know that most of the people I know wouldn't be able to use it because it wouldn't be a legal character in their games. I noticed that a lot of the time people are dipping into books like the SCAG or Volos to pick up booming blade or a race they really want to play, and that's really it. The rest of the build is usually pulled from out of the handbook or xanathar's guide. What I would really appreciate, and I think a lot of others would too, is if your videos discussed at certain points "Hey if you're playing in a game that is restricted to the PHB+1, here is a solid alternative." And maybe, if the build just doesn't work with the PHB+1 restriction, let us know early on. Also I found the volume increase to be very helpful. I can always turn the volume down if it's too loud but I can't push it up past maximum. As always, thanks for the incredible work that you do.
@@peterosborne8315 Forge Cleric is from Xanathar's, but not Booming Blade, that is only in the SCAG. Therefore, you cannot use it in a PHB+1 game, as you can't have both Xanathar's and SCAG. Chris is using the booming blade spell to boost the melee effectiveness of the cleric quite a bit. Now I don't think that this build is bad without booming blade, but it makes it less effective at melee.
@@Elamdri Yeah, I'm not used to PHB+1 because I don't do AG play, but if that was the restriction, and I still wanted to do a Melee Cleric build, I would probably skip Xanathar's since BB is so central to the build. This obviously would be a very different build.
I think you neglected to mention another big advantage about having an owl familiar. It can do a Flyby 'Attack' on a Downed Ally and deliver a cure spell. Three levels of Eldritch Knight also has some definite advantages. You would save a feat as ur not having to take Magic Initiate. You get the Shield spell. And your two favorite weapons you will never ever be without. I love the Battle Master, but I'd rather have an extra ASI to pump up my wisdom or strength in this particular build. And I find the volume to be at a good level for this video.. 👍
That is true, but this build has 3 healing spells which are Healing Word, Heal and Mass Heal, none of which are touch spells. However, for Greater Restoration or Revivify, you are totally correct.
@@TreantmonksTemple yes but some healing cantrips are delivered by touch, and you can deliver other buff spells this way as well. In addition you gain another caster level. I pick Battlemaster 95% of the time when I have Fighter levels in a character, but in this particular case I would go EK.
Does this work on lvl 1? If you dont have a war caster fit you cant use both Warhammer and shield and cast the spells, right? You will have AC not 18, but 16 if you plan to cast smthing in fight and use your Warhammer
Wait, you mention how a dwarf doesn't need the Str for heavy armor and then go into putting points in Str. Why? Have you thought of making a Dex build with medium or somehow light armor and then you have the important Dex saves?
Its a utility I used it to create barbed arrows and give it to my ranged party members to use it. When they hit the enemy I always use heat metal to the barbed tip of the arrow and the nightmare begins.
Forgive me for being late to the game and I haven't listened ahead but if you wanna help people listening only, why not just actually say the numbers instead of "this much?"
On the subject of silver and Animate Objects, you can technically make ammunition that is adamantine AND silvered and have it work. That does cost 600 gp on top of the cost of the ammunition to buy it (500 gp to be made of Adamantine, 100 gp to be Silvered), or +300 gp to the cost of raw materials if you're crafting it yourself, such as through Fabricate. Individually that's 60 gp added to the market price for an individual piece of ammunition, +30 gp for making a single piece of ammunition. Conveniently, the cost to make ammunition Adamantine or Silver it covers 10 pieces of ammunition, the exact maximum number of objects you can animate with Animate Objects! It's 4 copper pieces for 20 sling bullets, so 10 sling bullets are 2 copper pieces, the individual cost of a sling bullet would be something like 0.2 or 1/5th of a copper piece. Arrows work out to be 5 cp per arrow or 5 sp for group of 10 arrows based upon their 1 gp = 20 arrows price, and the same goes for Crossbow Bolts. So for 300 gold and either 25 or 2 copper pieces you can Fabricate up a way to make Animate Objects more effective against a hefty chunk of foes. You can even use Artisan's Blessing to turn things you were going to sell for half price into 60 gp 5 cp Silvered and Adamantine Arrows or Crossbow Bolts OR 60 gp Silvered and Adamantine Sling Bullets to use with Animate Objects. Just one at a time. Even if the silver coins trick works, you could still use this in conjunction with adamantine ammunition to be able to put the hurt on if you're up against a solo golem.
Built a Silver dragonborn forge cleric. The dual resistances is dope, and the +1 magic weapon is amazing at level 1 for AL. My standard AC at 1 is 18, shield of faith to 20. You do not need war caster because the focus is the patron insignia or holy symbol, correct? If not that the only downside You're not maxing str/wis, but you can get there. I hang out near the squishier players and can protect them from the inevitable difficulties that arise, so I'm thinking of taking a few levels of fighter as well but not sure when. Maybe after 6 and I get the dual resistances
On Aid: First it’s underrated. Remember you get more then 5 HP as you can refill that pool through healing or rest. Second, it’s a great scroll spell. If you have any downtime just make a scroll of it at highest level you can. It only costs money, which should be taken from the group pool. Third, if you tell your DM that “I am taking the blood of troll to make ink for Aid spell scroll, your DM will see you are involved in the campaign and appreciate it. Fourth, if you are asked by some in-game group to do some task for some reward, ask for a scroll of Aid spells. It’s a cheap ask in the negotiations, certainly affordable for any person of power.
Ok so i watch these on my tablet while on a bus or other locations . The problem with the small screen it's very hard to see the spell list or features etc. Could you possibly zoom in so we don't have massive white borders but could instead see the spells clearer ? Please?
Love the guide! Question about the armor.. plate has a strength requirement of 15, and it looks like you left yours at 14. Are you ignoring the requirement or is there a mechanic I'm not aware of? For this reason I've dumped both int and cha to get my strength to 15. Am I wrong?
Good str is always useful for Athletics and the occasional save (for instance holding a door, rescuing a party member). On non-dwarves 14 str is more than enough for Chainmail at no movement cost.
Volume is good! Question for any Optomizers, I just rolled a new character to replace my level 6 who retired, we do 4d6 drop the lowest and I got 10, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17. I'm trying to play a Bladesinging Eldarin Wizard so I'm wondering what's the way to go about that. If I go for Dex and Int, than I can start with 18 INT 18 DEX before the ASI but my HP is just so low. I'm tempted to put the Dex into the 12 to make it 14, start with 16 CON, and then use the ASI on my INT to get to 20. Any thoughts?
Warforge Forge Cleric 15, 8, 14+2, 10, 15+1, 8 A little min-maxey but the 8 in Dex & Cha are just as much RP as it is power budget At 4, Wisdom is bumped up to 18. 20 would be nice but not CRUCIAL At 8, Magic Initiate for Shield, Green Flame Blade & a 2nd Cantrip of your choice. Auto Attacks will be hitting for 3D8+3 or even 6D8+7 At 12 & 16 bump Constitution by 2 for HP & saves At 19 get Tough to cap out HP at 243 by level 20
To be clear on Guardian of the Faith, the movement that triggers its damage does not need to voluntary. You can move people into it, which is highly recommended. It doesn’t trigger if a creature starts its turn there, so only on movement. The area is a 5 x 5 squares, so its pretty big and should be easy to get that 60 damage in.
@@smbakeresq Makes it tempting to go get thornwhip instead of booming blade to bring the enemy back into your spirit guardian and/or guardian of the faith
Somewhat late to the party but I really like this build. For flavour purpose, is it possible to run the same core concept but instead swinging a two handed maul or would it alter the build too much?
The free version of D&D beyond will only give you access to the basic ruleset. You can buy individual classes, or the complete Xanathar's guide to be able to access those. It sucks to buy all those books again, though I only buy books on Beyond now.
I'm creating a forge cleric right now. With the stats I've rolled, I'm starting with 15 12 15 13 17 11, so I'm taking the Mark of Sentinel Human for that sweet sweet counterspell, I'm going to take warcaster at 4th lvl and at 6th lvl I'm going to dip 1 lvl into wizard to get booming blade, shield and absorb elements. That way I've already hit my 3rd lvl spell slot powerspike, do not delay my spell slot progression and free another ASI at lvl 9 to bump both Con and Str in a single lvl (or take 2 feats that bump con and str, like Resiliant and Crusher). Any feedbacks?
I'm in a game where the whole party has to play as fighters for the first three levels. My eventual build will be almost the same as yours (Hill Dwarf Fighter 3 Forge Cleric X) except I took Eldritch knight instead of Battlemaster at level 3 with Shield, Absorb Elements and Longstrider, plus mending (RP) and Booming Blade. This means I have proficiency in Constitution (and Concentration) saves and will not need the magic initiate feat that you took and can get Wisdom to 20 instead. I just hit level 4 now and will probably feel a little underpowered from level 5 to 7 but Booming blade gearing up will help. I didn't need find familiar as two other players already took that. Dodge tanking has actually been helpful for the party full of fighters with lower AC.
I know you'd have to get a 13 CHA somehow... But if you're going to multiclass into a melee class from you forge cleric, what do you guys think about dipping paladin?
Would you just use a short sword if you went variant human? I was thinking you could also go with high elf or high half-elf for the cantrip. Both would be very viable now with customize your origin, but they don't get access to the Warhammer. Any help would be much appreciated
Considering the Addition of Tasha's Rules, are there things you would change about this build now? For instance going Warforged for even more AC, Half Orc for Crits and Endurance, etc?
I think now that Tasha's is out, you could make the case for a half high elf since you can move the charisma bonus to wisdom and take booming blade from the start. Spirit shroud arguably would be another go-to single target combat spell for boss battles at the very least until you pick up animate objects. It pairs well with spiritual weapon so even at its base you're getting two more d8s of damage. I'm not sure if its worth switching out the divine strike with blessed strike or not. I'm leaning toward yes. I'd also change from the battle Master dip to a eldritch knight to get find familiar, shield, and absorb elements, as well as prestidigitation. You can pick up a battle Master maneuver as the fighting style instead of defense. I figure a +5 reaction to ac and some spell progression with a pinch of battlemaster beats the alternative but that's just my opinion
So if you went, variant human instead of dwarf, would you take war caster at level 1, magic initiate at level 4, and then WIS +2 at level 8? I know I am way late to the party, but an advneturing group I am playing with has a module where everyone has to be single class clerics.
Eh. At lvl 1 I'd prepare cure wounds (or a utility spell) over shield of faith. Bless is better in all situations to concentrate on over concentrating on SoF, Cure doesn't have the range of healing word but does add more HP if you heal yourself or are near to the party member that needs healing.
Coming back to the forge cleric 2 years later in a post-Tasha world where I'm going to be joining a game that allows all the Tasha race customization and a free starting feat, and I cannot wait to try a High Elf Forge Cleric with Booming Blade and the Crusher feat with racial stat bonuses that wont hinder me. I can't wait for all the CC shenanigans....
Something else that could make forge cleric's channel divinity useful.
If you or your DM are the type to keep track of encumbrance, then using your spare uses of channel divinity at the end of the day to convert 100gp into light, valuable objects will save you on weight over time.
It's kinda funny too. Imagine a party of adventurers lugging around sacks of coin, and the forge cleric is just casually strolling, covered in bling.
You are a genius
Volume sounds good to me!
Now that he has it fine-tuned, we'll be getting Treantmonk ASMR: "What is the sound of one leaf brushing against itself?"
It's too low
Find familiar is particularly good on clerics because they actually have numerous useful touch spells like restoration, revivify, freedom of movement, etc.
Gosh these non-multiclass build videos and your spell level analysis videos are my favourite!
You've also made me real interested in D&D Beyond, the levelling process seems so smooth and intuitive. Everything is super clean, even the spell descriptions!
Side note: Honestly never had an issue with the audio, even before you changed it...
Notably Spirit Guardians does NOT create difficult terrain - it halves the speed of the targets you designate as enemies - so the speed effect not only doesn’t effect your party, but it can be stacked by being in an area of difficult terrain!
It also bypasses abilities that allow enemies to ignore difficult terrain.
@Elamdri
that is precisely part of why the distinction matters.
Great to stack with, say, web and repelling blast (+grasp of hadar, if you feel especially sadistic)
@@jainabraina nah spike growth and repelling blast
Forge Cleric is a solid build, it seems! I like how you explained the choice between spirit guardians and animate objects. Personally, my favorite aspect of Forge is that at 17, you get immunity to fire and resistance to ordinary damage; I love the image of a single dwarf marching down into the Lonely Mountain and smashing Smaug to pieces bit by bit, unmoved by his fire breath and barely stirred by his claws.
The build works even better if you come across one of a number of Strength-boosting items; those belts of giant strength or even gauntlets of ogre strength can let you bump up your wisdom guilt-free, and as a dwarf, it doesn’t matter if you should somehow lose the item; you’ve got the dwarf fortitude to wear the heavy armor and just switch to spells until your strength bumps up again.
Or getting punched into a pool of lava only to step out of it like nothing happened! The fire immunity is incredible for flavour and mechanics.
I like mine so far but I always use my Blessing of the Forge on our Paladin and cantrip foes to death.
New drinking game: take a shot every time Chris says ‘Spirit Guardians’.
Can I play? Spirit Guardians!
Trying to kill me? :D
Not without a cleric on hand to cast revivify.
Update: I died of alcohol poisoning.
Still going
1) Blessing of the Forge - When I no long need it for party armor or weapons, I use it for barding.
2) Channel Divity - I tend to use it to convert scrap weaponry and armor into platinum or gold trade bars, or into silver trade bars for grinding into silver dust for use with the Ceremony spell *ritual) to make holy water. :)
3) Light cantrip - I always try to get this incase we need to fight shadows, of shadow creatures in dim light . . .
Good advice. Btw I'm having a blast playing a Cleric without a holy symbol, just looking for whatever component I can find! Latest was a strip of white cloth which I got from the tunic of a party member, a reward for being observant.
you could also create some good counterfeit currency if you are playing an evil PC or more morally ambiguous
@@skymanta1222 Barding is horse (mount) armor.
For animate objects, saying attack the X as a general action, against one enemy allows you to combine it with spiritual weapon, as only first round ba is used
Number 2 depends heavily on DM fiat. Since the rules say that most weapons and armor wielded by the enemies are shoddy and would not sale to any merchant, what are they exactly "worth" since Artisan's Blessing requires the metal be worth the same as the creation. I'd make a case (and did in my forge cleric game) that scrap metal has some per pound worth regardless of the quality of the item as an actual weapon, but this is largely going to be up to DM.
I hear ya better now!! Also your Lighting is better. Keep on Forging ahead!!
As a side note for players interested in non-PHB races, Firbolg and Envoy Warforged are excellent for Forge Clerics.
Centaur too, right?
Unrelated, but you can actually make a meme firbolg rogue. If you take the spell Magic Stone and deliver the rocks with a sling, you can make a spell attack with a ranged weapon and qualify for sneak attack on an attack that uses your Wisdom mod for attack and damage rolls. It's mostly good for laughs, but you can do worse than a rogue who's really good at Wisdom skills.
@@Eyro_Elloyn
I was ignoring Ravnica
I really wanna play a Firbolg who was raised by Fire Giants now... kinda like a pre-5e actual giantkin Firbolg
Would a Warforged still get the benefits from wearing heavy armor granted by Soul of the Forge and Saint of Forge and Fire?
Integrated Protection: Your body has built-in protective layers, which determine your Armor Class. You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you apply its bonus as normal.
I could see this just meaning that you can't use the armor itself to calculate AC, and I guess it doesn't stop you from wearing it.
Personally I would rule it if they were using the Heavy Plating option for Integrated Protection it would count, but I know that isn't RAW. What do y'all think?
In the same vein would a Warforged benefit from the Defense fighting style if they choose to wear armor?
Oh yeah volume increase. Sick. :3
AAAAAAnd the math has been put in the description. Yesssss.
I may be slow, but I get there...
Treantmonk's Temple With ArsArma on this one; the adjustments to consider your listening audience are very considerate and appreciated!
@@Adurnis Well, Treantmonk's Temple is for everyone.
Yay, I can hear you now on the bus/train! I was struggling to hear you over the noise of the bus in my headphones before. Thanks so much for addressing the volume. This half-deaf old man appreciates it.
Slight possible mistake with the guardian of faith spell. The spell fades when the guardian has dealt a total of 60 damage, not three attacks of 20 damage, save for half. Now you didn't say that it only deals three attacks, but when you spoke of the saves for halfsies and that it might only do thirty, that's the idea people might get. Theoretically, the spell might do no damage at all, so saying only thirty enhances that idea.
Neat stuff!
BTW, I always thought one of the first cleric domains you would cover would be the Arcana domain, due to how thematically similar it is to wizards, lol.
Also, regarding the volume, no complaints here, besides, it's always easier to lower than to raise volume on our end.
Ended up building a Warforge Forge Domain cleric and sure I didn't have the warhammer/other martial weapons but jesus that AC was ridiculous. Very fun character and using inflict wounds was so fantastic.
Probably better to have slightly higher audio, people can always lower the volume easier.
A dwarven forge domain cleric has been on my dream wish list for a while now. This video makes me want to play her even more.
I would actually pick up EK as a subclass. You get another spellcasting level+shield+absorb elements.
Minor point: Guardian of Faith will deal 60 damage regardless of enemy saves, it just might take more hits to do it. I know you've mentioned this in past videos so I was surprised there wasn't correction-text over it. I think it can do 70 damage if the saves work out so it skips 50-->70, but that'd be up to the DM. The main way the damage is limited is combat not lasting long enough or the enemies avoiding it (which is battlefield control, at least).
Channel divinity can turn weapons into gold.
Rapiers and scimitars are the default weapons for lots of rogues.
For full plate, I think making it peice by piece should work.
100 gp of weapons into 100 Gold
Volume is now great. Before I had to max my volume on speakers and computer and can still had hard times hearing. I'd much rather have to turn down the volume. Many thanks.
This build is nearly identical to my own. However, I went full Cleric and had a more generous stat allocation. It makes no sense to me to dilute the Cleric with Fighter levels. On aaverage you get 3 extra hit points from this build. You miss a 3rd channel divinity usage, an ASI/Feat and a 100% chance for Divine Involvement. You miss out a 7th and 6th spell slot. Now, the Fighter's Action Surge, Fighting Style and techniques are worth the swap for the spells and channel divinity, but missing out on an +2 to max out Wis or add to Con and a 100% chance for divine help? Nope.
I can turn the volume down as much as I want. But I don't want. Keep up the good work- loud and proud!
I like the higher audio, thank you.
Good video as always. Don't love the red and yellow writing on top of the white webpage, but that might just be me.
I sort of built the same thing (melee Cleric) but using Tempest. It was highly worth taking SOR at first level then Cleric from there to get CON saves and then the spells you need. Shocking grasp becomes better with Tempest chassis.
This build is already quite MAD without adding a minimum Charisma requirement of 13 to it. How would you pull that off with point buy? You would have to roll for stats, and roll well above average.
Carlos Devoto I don’t have it in front of me but I am a Dragonborn. I will use an array. S- 14 (16) Dex 8, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 15, CHR 13 (14). SOR at first, then Cleric rest of way. You take warcaster or Res (wis) for first feat, then the other for your second feat. Resilient wisdom has the benefit of adding wisdom saves. You have less HP but Con saves, your wisdom is lower until second feat, more cantrips, Shield, absorb elements, etc. Since it was a tempest I took shocking grasp since it can push once you get 6th level in Cleric class, then you get the extra d8 damage as a Cleric and make sure you search for a lightning weapon and use booming blade
@@carlosdevoto798 very fair point. If I had to build such a Sorc/Cl I would take the Kalashtar race - +2 Wis +1 Cha for the win!
We can lower the volume really easily on our end, but especially when watching on a phone its difficult to raise it above a certain point. I used to have to have volume set all the way up to hear you over background noises. A lot of youtube channels have similar issues. Of course, whenever an ad comes up it’s then comparatively very loud. So, I appreciate the change.
Fantastic Videos! And now that I can hear them they make so much more sense!
just started a campaign as a forge Cleric. I went with warforged and acolyte background, i have him worship the broken god from the SCP lore. not sure how to build him yet so this was helpful.
So I am a big fan of the Trickery cleric and having a caster cleric, full props for that video. I would also like to point out a couple things. First as a Human Variant, you can choose Healer as a feat, which if you are focused on end game con checks, is a sub optimal choice but at levels 1-5 having a 1d6+4 +1 per hd heal/ per character/ per rest is great and saves spell slots. It also performs as an action, so that can leave you to use healing word as a bonus action. You can get two characters back into the fight.... level 1 or 20. a good option for a free feat.
I love this guide. Great way taking it step by step
Imagine not taking a brewer's kit when you can.
What do you think a low-level party will thank you more for on those long rests?
Did you lose a war? Are you to be spared nothing?
They get healthy and nourishing gruel.
@@TreantmonksTemple That sounds too much of getting the booby prize treasure of a Murlynd's Spoon.
Instead of that cool dinner setting from L1 (oh wait, I just gave away *The Secret of Bone Hill* - that it contains a kewl dinner setting).
@@Porphyrogenitus1 lol. I had a friend who (in a previous edition) had his character cast Heroes feast at the beginning of each day, but he deliberately reskinned it to healthy and nourishing gruel because it fit his character.
@@TreantmonksTemple Funny thing, the others reskinned their characters to someone who beat his severely after every meal, because it fit *their* characters!
Good times, good times.
Nice! I'm playing a Forge Cleric right now, only lvl 3 so far but I like it alot. I went with Mountain Dwarf and got lucky with my rolls. Started with str 20 con and wis at 17
I think Shillelagh is a huge addition to a build like this, it allows us to use Wisdom instead of strength for our attack rolls, eliminates the need for a martial weapon, and because we're often casting Spirit Guardians or Animate Objects on the first round, we have the time to use a bonus action to set it up. The problem is that no class gets both Shillelagh and Booming Blade, so here are some options to get it:
1. Dip Druid: You're setting your class progression behind 1 level, but druid is another class with full spellcasting, so you'll still eventually get all of your spell slots.
2. Be a wood elf and take the Wood elf Magic feat. This feat gives you, among other things, the Shillelagh spell. As a wood elf, you have 35 base speed, so even with the heavy armor speed penalty you're moving at the same speed as a dwarf in plate mail.
3. Be a Half-elf of high elf descent, take Booming Blade as your wizard cantrip, and Magic initiate (druid) for Shillelagh. Half-elves can get +1 Strength to allow them to more easily wear heavy armor, though you might be stuck with splint mail in this case.
I did a Nature Cleric Build (written guide)
Regarding Shillelagh, unfortunately you can't cast it in the same round as Spirit Guardians or Animate Objects. The rule is weird, but whenever you cast a bonus action spell (even a cantrip) any other spell you cast on your turn can only be a cantrip.
@@TreantmonksTemple Imagine taking Sorcerer 3 just so you could get around this limitation :) or top-three levels of Fighter for Action Surge
Love the video. One thing I noticed is the build is not AL legal. Forge is from Xanathar’s and Booming Blade (or my choice Green Flame Blade) is from SCAG. But not important in Homebrew campaigns. Keeps the videos coming!
I've noticed a lot of the top D&D channels do Adventurers League legal builds only. Personally I find it refreshing to find some builds that don't. 😁👍
I would consider Shocking Grasp as an alternative to the Scag cantrips. It's then possible to just play a Forge Cleric the regular way. Plus since it's a melee spell attack it not only can crit it depends on your wisdom for hits. You may even get a use from Divine Strike if you go EK 7 - every time you cast a cantrip your can make a melee attack as a bonus action. It's also reasonable to argue you don't have to drop your weapon to deliver the cantrip as you can try to "touch" with the back of your hand. Or have a wrist chain - I think a GM will grant you discarding / re equipping your weapon as a Free Action.
I am the anvil. I am the hammer. I shall draw you out. Quote from a dnd green text I read.
I was thinking of doing a mechanicus character (warhammer 40k) i was thinking a War forged forge cleric/artificer. What do you guys think?
About the hear metal affecting a spear, I wouldn't consider that at my table, but a sword is fine. Reason: The sword's actual handle is made of metal and it's only covered with a different material (wood, vines, straws) for anatomical purposes. The spear is made of wood, and only the tip is metal. I could even think of a creative use of the spell for a buff, using it at the tip of the spear or an arrow to give it a +1 or +2 fire dmg =)
if you have the time, you can use his channel divinity to condense 10,000 CP or 1,000 SP into a 100 GP object made of Platinum or Mithril or Adamantium. Granted, it isn't worth a lot of money, but it is much easier to carry! Also, the idea of a forge cleric making his own Mithril or Adamantium is awesome.
I would either stick with Cleric until 20 or multiclass way earlier. The build really comes together at 9th level. You have Booming Blade + Find Familiar + Divine Strike for your melee swings. You have Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, and Animate Objects for very solid damage spells. This is when I would probably think about multiclassing. But if you get all the way to 17th level I think your best bet is FOR SURE to get to 20th level so that your Divine Interventions have a 100% success chance rather than 3 levels of Fighter or some other class. Unless your DM hates you there is no way some Battlemaster maneuvers are better than Divine Intervention.
With Tasha's coming up, you could also go for a high elf, who can get booming blade as a racial, and relocate your +2 into wisdom and your +1 into either strength or con. You lose out on a +1 in that same stat, you need a strength of 15 for plate, no warhammer proficiency and a little bit less health and no poison resistance.. However, you do get perception proficiency and you don't have to burn an ASI for magic initiate, which is huge.
Great thank you. Just made a dwarven, mature forge cleric as backup character - tough spots in CoS but I hope my main character (wizard) makes it, she has been with me long - but now I feel more ready for my cleric in whatever campaign, having heard your reasoning. Enjoy your videos and insights
With Tasha's allowing custom ability score increases from race, the best option to take is probably the high half-elf. You can get Booming Blade from the start, and then take Magic Initiate: Druid instead for Shillelagh to attack with your Wisdom instead of Strength.
Forge Clerics can't use martial weapons. I can't believe I missed that!
Sound is perfect
At around 13:23 you mentioned that Guiding Bolt has a verbal and somatic component, and thus you would need to put away your warhammer in order to cast it. However, to my understanding this is not the case. In the PHB pg. 49, it specifies that “A cleric or paladin can use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus”. Since your holy symbol is on your shield, you would be able to use that as a focus, meaning you wouldn’t need to put away your war hammer.
Correct me if I’m wrong about this
@@SapphireSandwichBoys Might be wrong but as I recall there's something about the RAW that you need the material component of a spell for the focus clause to activate. Without it you technically don't have a free hand (war hammer and shield) to do the somatic components and thus need to put away the warhammer to get a free hand for the somatic (unless you have war caster). It's really silly but hey that's not the only weirdo rule in 5e.
@@SapphireSandwichBoys "Correct me if I'm wrong", yeah, unfortunately you are wrong. I did a video on this that goes into detail on exactly what you can cast: ruclips.net/video/nk1Up4hXUko/видео.html
I think it’s a horrible rule but the short version is that you can cast VSM spells with two hands full if one of those hands is holding a focus, but for VS spells you need one empty hand to perform the gestures.
It’s not really clear why you can wave your staff/wand/shield focus around for the somatic component of the former but not for the latter.
I'd love to see an Artificer build in the future. It's such an interesting class with many options. I know is UA for now but its gonna be published soon, any opinion about?
I stay away from UA, but if it's published officially, I will absolutely be checking it out. Be aware that most stuff takes a heavy nerfing from UA once published (which is part of the reason I stay away, don't want my judgement affected emotionally)
Treantmonk's Temple One of my current characters is a forge cleric / artificer build. Despite the need for a decent intelligence, it's been a joy to play so far.
It's Magic Initiate feat, not Magical Affinity
Just saying :) (cool video)
I think Magical Affinity is the 3.5e name.
@@foolfan83
Yeah, turns out
I completely understand, It must be hard knowing more than one system/edition that are similar and not get these mixed up (you see it with matt mercer on CR)
After only doing 5e Im learning now pathfinder
Wish me luck XD
Magical Affinity sounds badass
This appears to be overselling the effectiveness of Spiritual Weapon and it's need for inclusion in this build. While Spiritual Weapon is a really solid option when 2nd level spells become available, its limitations begin to make it a far less attractive option by mid-level play. By 8th level, the math overlay @45:00 shows it is the lowest contributor of damage per round (only 3.75 out of 29.63) of the three damage sources. That won't improve unless it's upcast, but upcasting Spiritual Weapon is terribly inefficient in terms of damage improvement for spell slots. It also doesn't factor in that the bonus action will need to be used for other spells at times, such as casting Healing Word, Shield of Faith, or potentially Sanctuary or Mass Healing Word if those are prepared. It also assumes you can easily reach targets to attack beyond the first use. Due to it's slow movement (20' round), there are many situations where foes are either too spread out or mobile enough to continually move and avoid being hit by its effect. As a result, the actual damage per round from Spiritual Weapon will often be significantly lower depending on game situation. By contrast those big hitters like Spirit Guardians, Animate Objects and your weapon attacks + Booming Blade will tend to be far more reliable damage sources, and those are the key contributors for this type of build.
1) Make barbed Arrows/Bolts for the ranged attacker
2) Have them shoot the Monster
3) Cast heat metal on stuck Arrowhead/Bolthead
4) Profit
The problem with this is you have to see the metal object. If it's embedded in an enemy, how can you see it? You could only see the wooden shaft sticking out, not the arrowhead itself.
@@mattg9483 Ok, make full metal bolts, then. Or cast it before shooting with a held action.
I have a Vedalken forge cleric that I just took into Conjuration wizard. Plan on being Cleric 3 / Wizard 17 by the end. Won't get the immunity to fire, but bypasses some of the more subpar spells later on.
My Rock Gnome knowledge cleric is about to go 19 levels of War Mage lol
Michael Fabrey I always love having a level of Knowledge Cleric on my Wizards! Even if it delays your spell casting progression, you can still take some spells that upcast well to make up for it. And the best part: the skills! You can get the Knowledge skill proficiencies to be crazy good, allowing your character to act like a walking dictionary! All the lore is mine!
I wanted to call out a dm for always saying things like "this is going to be super hard, have backup characters ready from day 1" and then making the whole campaign easy. So I built a forge cleric. At level 6 i got my resting ac to 21 and was able to use shield of faith to get 23 ac during fights. All his creatures had a 10% or less chance of hititting me and I never got hit. Plus i was a cleric so i was broken in every other way too. He finally gave us the challenging campaign we hoped for.
Just rewatching this a year later... thinking about the options offered here, it would seem that this basic build would be essentially the same for any Cleric that wanted to be melee centered.
That got me thinking about the different spell lists and CD options that other domains offer, and how this same build would look with a different domain. While Tempest and War seem obvious, I don't necessarily think they're the best options. I think that Light would be interesting, given that the CD would be used much more regularly. Arcana might give an interesting spin, since you could get your BB without a feat, meaning you could use that feat right away for something you'd have had to wait on. Order domain could be interesting, if you tend toward the party leader role.
One thing that occurred to me is that using BB as a primary attack means that you get to add the level 8 feature, regardless of whether it benefits melee or cantrips -even if your table isn't using the new Tasha's rules.
Great video for my favorite class! Hope you do Arcana cleric one day, I’d like to hear your picks for Arcane Mastery.
Booming Blade or something similar should really be on the Cleric spell list.
Sucks in the game currently playing in DM doesn't allow feats. But allows over time training to mimic some feats or to gain proficiencies.
Could cast Bless on my self to counter non prof...
At some point, I’d like to see a Divine Sorcerer build just to see what kind of spell selection you’d make if you had both Sorcerer and Cleric spell lists available.
I haven't done a pure divine sorcerer build yet, but check out my Soradin build. (Ultimate Spellsword Guide)
Treantmonk's Temple
I am a huge fan of Divine Soul.
I like the idea of upcasting Aid and using extended spell to bolster party members for the whole adventuring day, concentration free.
Plus, Flexible casting lets you make lvl 4 spell slots at sorc 6, and lvl 5 slots at sorc 7. So at level 7, you can use 6+1 sorcery points to cast Aid at 4th level lvl, increasing the hit point total of 3 party members by 20 pts for 16 hours.
@@44tuck3r If you like that, then you should also check out my Eternal Cockroach build.
I’ve played Divine Souls (always dipped with Hexblade) extensively and in my opinion most optimal builds will end up with primarily Sorcerer spells with a splash of Cleric thrown in since your spells known are so limited.
Main point of difference for me would be starting with 15 strength instead of 14 (one of our other ability scores goes from 10 to 8) and then at the point where we increase strength to 16, take a half feat instead- such as heavy armor master. The -3 damage from attacks combos really nicely with the 17th level ability that gives us resistance to those same attacks.
With the options in Tasha’s, I would also take artificer initiate rather than magic initiate. This gives us access to booming blade as well as one 1st level artificer spell that we can cast multiple times. I would probably take either longstrider or absorb elements. This is partly because my table doesn’t allow the ‘familiar-grants-advantage-every-round’ cheese, but also it gives us something useful to do with our first level spell slots which gets tricky to do at high levels. The extra tool proficiency is thematic for the character and also expands the kinds of things we can create with the fabricate spell (definitely niche, but cool nonetheless, I think).
Are silver pieces tiny or are they diminutive? In previous editions or at least in 3.5 the cutoff was something like three apples in height. It's not looking like diminutive or fine is even mentioned in the core books.
My favorite way to build a forge cleric is to take a hill dwarf with 17 con, 14 str and 16 wis. Take Resilient (con) at 4th lvl, then get both con and wis to 20. I don't take Warcaster or other feats, just Resilient. Combined with dwarven con and proficiency, you'll be auto-passing most concentration saves, not to mention other con saves. Melee damage is not the point of that subclass anyway, you're better off just Dodging with Spirit Guardians on.
In that case would you not also take the Dwarven Fortitude racial feat that gives +1 Con and on dodging in combat you heal 1 hit die + Con mod?
@@Iamstrad it feels a little redundant with the cleric class, to be honest. In a tight spot you can cast healing word, possibly with a higher spell slot, or other healing spells. And it's a half-feat, which would bring you to 19 con - no better than 18 in this case. If you manage to snatch a Periapt of Wound Closure, however, this feat is king.
Chris:
I really enjoy your videos and I love the depth that you go into not only providing options but also explaining your choices.
however this video I think does point out one thing that I wish that you would talk about more often, and that is building a character in games using the PHB+1 restriction.
I know your videos are about making the most optimal character you can and so therefore you're pulling from whatever resources are available, but a lot of players play in ADL games where PHB+1 is the rule and I found that a lot of DMs (myself included) prefer the PHB+1 for home games as well.
And I think that because you have this character that is in some ways built around using booming blade to supplement low cleric damage, as much as I'd like to recommend it to people, I know that most of the people I know wouldn't be able to use it because it wouldn't be a legal character in their games.
I noticed that a lot of the time people are dipping into books like the SCAG or Volos to pick up booming blade or a race they really want to play, and that's really it. The rest of the build is usually pulled from out of the handbook or xanathar's guide.
What I would really appreciate, and I think a lot of others would too, is if your videos discussed at certain points "Hey if you're playing in a game that is restricted to the PHB+1, here is a solid alternative." And maybe, if the build just doesn't work with the PHB+1 restriction, let us know early on.
Also I found the volume increase to be very helpful. I can always turn the volume down if it's too loud but I can't push it up past maximum.
As always, thanks for the incredible work that you do.
Elamdri isn't the forge cleric itself from xanathars? Or am I being an idiot?
@@peterosborne8315 Forge Cleric is from Xanathar's, but not Booming Blade, that is only in the SCAG. Therefore, you cannot use it in a PHB+1 game, as you can't have both Xanathar's and SCAG.
Chris is using the booming blade spell to boost the melee effectiveness of the cleric quite a bit. Now I don't think that this build is bad without booming blade, but it makes it less effective at melee.
@@Elamdri Yeah, I'm not used to PHB+1 because I don't do AG play, but if that was the restriction, and I still wanted to do a Melee Cleric build, I would probably skip Xanathar's since BB is so central to the build. This obviously would be a very different build.
@@TreantmonksTemple ty for the response!
My preferred build for a front-line fighter cleric/fighter multiclass:
Hill Dwarf
STR 14, DEX 8, CON 14+2, INT 12, WIS 15+1, CHA 8
Eldritch Knight 6 / Forge Domain 8 / Eldritch Knight 12
Fighter 1: Second Wind, Defense Fighting Style, CON save proficiency
Fighter 2: Action Surge
Fighter 3: Shield, Absorb Elements, Find Familiar (can deliver touch spells or provide help)
Fighter 4: War Caster
Fighter 5: Extra Attack
Fighter 6: STR 16
Cleric 1: Blessing of the Forge, 2nd level slots
Cleric 2: Turn Undead
Cleric 3: Spiritual Weapon, 3rd level slots
Cleric 4: STR 18
Cleric 5: Spirit Guardians, 4th level slots
Cleric 6:
Cleric 7: Wall of Fire, 5th level slots
Cleric 8: STR 20, Divine Strike
Fighter 7: War Magic
Fighter 8: WIS 18, Misty Step (mobility is important for a front-line fighter)
Fighter 9: Indomitable, 6th level slot
Fighter 10: Eldritch Strike
Fighter 11: Extra Attack
Fighter 12: WIS 20
This sounds badass!
my man really got plate male at lvl 3
I think you neglected to mention another big advantage about having an owl familiar. It can do a Flyby 'Attack' on a Downed Ally and deliver a cure spell.
Three levels of Eldritch Knight also has some definite advantages. You would save a feat as ur not having to take Magic Initiate. You get the Shield spell. And your two favorite weapons you will never ever be without. I love the Battle Master, but I'd rather have an extra ASI to pump up my wisdom or strength in this particular build.
And I find the volume to be at a good level for this video.. 👍
You also need a 13 intelligence to take the magic initiate feat.
@@jimmyhill5079 No you don't. Magic Initiate has no prerequisites.
@@340bul, You're right. My bad. I confused it with ritual caster.
That is true, but this build has 3 healing spells which are Healing Word, Heal and Mass Heal, none of which are touch spells. However, for Greater Restoration or Revivify, you are totally correct.
@@TreantmonksTemple yes but some healing cantrips are delivered by touch, and you can deliver other buff spells this way as well. In addition you gain another caster level. I pick Battlemaster 95% of the time when I have Fighter levels in a character, but in this particular case I would go EK.
you can use artisans blessing to make large ladders (with metal nails etc)
Would multi-class into Rune knight be a good mix?
Does this work on lvl 1? If you dont have a war caster fit you cant use both Warhammer and shield and cast the spells, right? You will have AC not 18, but 16 if you plan to cast smthing in fight and use your Warhammer
Plate mail at lvl 3, man in the main campaign I am playing atm we are lvl 7 and can't afford it lol
if you're using xanathar's skill rules, mason's tools helps you damage buildings.
Wait, you mention how a dwarf doesn't need the Str for heavy armor and then go into putting points in Str. Why? Have you thought of making a Dex build with medium or somehow light armor and then you have the important Dex saves?
The channel divinity option for a forge cleric is total trash.
Its a utility I used it to create barbed arrows and give it to my ranged party members to use it. When they hit the enemy I always use heat metal to the barbed tip of the arrow and the nightmare begins.
Forgive me for being late to the game and I haven't listened ahead but if you wanna help people listening only, why not just actually say the numbers instead of "this much?"
On the subject of silver and Animate Objects, you can technically make ammunition that is adamantine AND silvered and have it work. That does cost 600 gp on top of the cost of the ammunition to buy it (500 gp to be made of Adamantine, 100 gp to be Silvered), or +300 gp to the cost of raw materials if you're crafting it yourself, such as through Fabricate. Individually that's 60 gp added to the market price for an individual piece of ammunition, +30 gp for making a single piece of ammunition.
Conveniently, the cost to make ammunition Adamantine or Silver it covers 10 pieces of ammunition, the exact maximum number of objects you can animate with Animate Objects! It's 4 copper pieces for 20 sling bullets, so 10 sling bullets are 2 copper pieces, the individual cost of a sling bullet would be something like 0.2 or 1/5th of a copper piece. Arrows work out to be 5 cp per arrow or 5 sp for group of 10 arrows based upon their 1 gp = 20 arrows price, and the same goes for Crossbow Bolts.
So for 300 gold and either 25 or 2 copper pieces you can Fabricate up a way to make Animate Objects more effective against a hefty chunk of foes.
You can even use Artisan's Blessing to turn things you were going to sell for half price into 60 gp 5 cp Silvered and Adamantine Arrows or Crossbow Bolts OR 60 gp Silvered and Adamantine Sling Bullets to use with Animate Objects. Just one at a time.
Even if the silver coins trick works, you could still use this in conjunction with adamantine ammunition to be able to put the hurt on if you're up against a solo golem.
Built a Silver dragonborn forge cleric. The dual resistances is dope, and the +1 magic weapon is amazing at level 1 for AL. My standard AC at 1 is 18, shield of faith to 20. You do not need war caster because the focus is the patron insignia or holy symbol, correct? If not that the only downside
You're not maxing str/wis, but you can get there. I hang out near the squishier players and can protect them from the inevitable difficulties that arise, so I'm thinking of taking a few levels of fighter as well but not sure when. Maybe after 6 and I get the dual resistances
On Aid: First it’s underrated. Remember you get more then 5 HP as you can refill that pool through healing or rest.
Second, it’s a great scroll spell. If you have any downtime just make a scroll of it at highest level you can. It only costs money, which should be taken from the group pool.
Third, if you tell your DM that “I am taking the blood of troll to make ink for Aid spell scroll, your DM will see you are involved in the campaign and appreciate it.
Fourth, if you are asked by some in-game group to do some task for some reward, ask for a scroll of Aid spells. It’s a cheap ask in the negotiations, certainly affordable for any person of power.
Ok so i watch these on my tablet while on a bus or other locations . The problem with the small screen it's very hard to see the spell list or features etc. Could you possibly zoom in so we don't have massive white borders but could instead see the spells clearer ? Please?
Maybe, I'll see what I can do.
Love the guide! Question about the armor.. plate has a strength requirement of 15, and it looks like you left yours at 14. Are you ignoring the requirement or is there a mechanic I'm not aware of? For this reason I've dumped both int and cha to get my strength to 15. Am I wrong?
Dwarves do not suffer penalties for heavy armor if they don't meet the requirements, it's one of their racial abilities.
Good str is always useful for Athletics and the occasional save (for instance holding a door, rescuing a party member). On non-dwarves 14 str is more than enough for Chainmail at no movement cost.
> A spear with a metal spearhead.
And a helmet? Spear and magic helmet?
ruclips.net/video/5kH0Bag0akc/видео.html
On using silver pieces, it could depend on the purity of the coin, especially if you are playing in a historical campaign.
That could be an entire plot hook!
Volume is good! Question for any Optomizers, I just rolled a new character to replace my level 6 who retired, we do 4d6 drop the lowest and I got 10, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17. I'm trying to play a Bladesinging Eldarin Wizard so I'm wondering what's the way to go about that. If I go for Dex and Int, than I can start with 18 INT 18 DEX before the ASI but my HP is just so low. I'm tempted to put the Dex into the 12 to make it 14, start with 16 CON, and then use the ASI on my INT to get to 20. Any thoughts?
Yeah, a bladesinger kind of needs 3 good stats. That Dex is so important, I would keep the 12 Con, maybe get toughness as a feat later on.
How much does it cost to activate all the stuff he does for my character sheet on dndbeyond?
Warforge Forge Cleric
15, 8, 14+2, 10, 15+1, 8
A little min-maxey but the 8 in Dex & Cha are just as much RP as it is power budget
At 4, Wisdom is bumped up to 18. 20 would be nice but not CRUCIAL
At 8, Magic Initiate for Shield, Green Flame Blade & a 2nd Cantrip of your choice. Auto Attacks will be hitting for 3D8+3 or even 6D8+7
At 12 & 16 bump Constitution by 2 for HP & saves
At 19 get Tough to cap out HP at 243 by level 20
To be clear on Guardian of the Faith, the movement that triggers its damage does not need to voluntary. You can move people into it, which is highly recommended. It doesn’t trigger if a creature starts its turn there, so only on movement.
The area is a 5 x 5 squares, so its pretty big and should be easy to get that 60 damage in.
That's good advice!
@@TreantmonksTemple most players don't know that since most spells are carefully worded and not written consistently.
@@smbakeresq Makes it tempting to go get thornwhip instead of booming blade to bring the enemy back into your spirit guardian and/or guardian of the faith
Somewhat late to the party but I really like this build. For flavour purpose, is it possible to run the same core concept but instead swinging a two handed maul or would it alter the build too much?
Hard for a cleric to get proficiency in a maul. This build only gets warhammer from the racial.
How did you get access to forge domain? It only gives me the option of life domain
The free version of D&D beyond will only give you access to the basic ruleset. You can buy individual classes, or the complete Xanathar's guide to be able to access those. It sucks to buy all those books again, though I only buy books on Beyond now.
I'm creating a forge cleric right now. With the stats I've rolled, I'm starting with 15 12 15 13 17 11, so I'm taking the Mark of Sentinel Human for that sweet sweet counterspell, I'm going to take warcaster at 4th lvl and at 6th lvl I'm going to dip 1 lvl into wizard to get booming blade, shield and absorb elements. That way I've already hit my 3rd lvl spell slot powerspike, do not delay my spell slot progression and free another ASI at lvl 9 to bump both Con and Str in a single lvl (or take 2 feats that bump con and str, like Resiliant and Crusher). Any feedbacks?
Start with an odd Wisdom score and take Telekinetic (Wisdom) feat at level 4... pull an enemy into your Spirit Guardians?
I'm in a game where the whole party has to play as fighters for the first three levels. My eventual build will be almost the same as yours (Hill Dwarf Fighter 3 Forge Cleric X) except I took Eldritch knight instead of Battlemaster at level 3 with Shield, Absorb Elements and Longstrider, plus mending (RP) and Booming Blade. This means I have proficiency in Constitution (and Concentration) saves and will not need the magic initiate feat that you took and can get Wisdom to 20 instead. I just hit level 4 now and will probably feel a little underpowered from level 5 to 7 but Booming blade gearing up will help. I didn't need find familiar as two other players already took that. Dodge tanking has actually been helpful for the party full of fighters with lower AC.
I know you'd have to get a 13 CHA somehow... But if you're going to multiclass into a melee class from you forge cleric, what do you guys think about dipping paladin?
Would you just use a short sword if you went variant human? I was thinking you could also go with high elf or high half-elf for the cantrip. Both would be very viable now with customize your origin, but they don't get access to the Warhammer. Any help would be much appreciated
A Warforged Forge domain is the perfect combo.
Lich: How do you know you have a soul construct?
Warforged cleric: *branding smite* just a feeling.
Considering the Addition of Tasha's Rules, are there things you would change about this build now? For instance going Warforged for even more AC, Half Orc for Crits and Endurance, etc?
I think now that Tasha's is out, you could make the case for a half high elf since you can move the charisma bonus to wisdom and take booming blade from the start. Spirit shroud arguably would be another go-to single target combat spell for boss battles at the very least until you pick up animate objects. It pairs well with spiritual weapon so even at its base you're getting two more d8s of damage.
I'm not sure if its worth switching out the divine strike with blessed strike or not. I'm leaning toward yes. I'd also change from the battle Master dip to a eldritch knight to get find familiar, shield, and absorb elements, as well as prestidigitation. You can pick up a battle Master maneuver as the fighting style instead of defense. I figure a +5 reaction to ac and some spell progression with a pinch of battlemaster beats the alternative but that's just my opinion
I don’t get the skills athletics and perception. They are not in the cleric list
Volume is much better. Could even be a little louder
word of radiance is preety good for forge cleric as you wade in and get surrounded :P
So if you went, variant human instead of dwarf, would you take war caster at level 1, magic initiate at level 4, and then WIS +2 at level 8? I know I am way late to the party, but an advneturing group I am playing with has a module where everyone has to be single class clerics.
Eh. At lvl 1 I'd prepare cure wounds (or a utility spell) over shield of faith. Bless is better in all situations to concentrate on over concentrating on SoF, Cure doesn't have the range of healing word but does add more HP if you heal yourself or are near to the party member that needs healing.
Coming back to the forge cleric 2 years later in a post-Tasha world where I'm going to be joining a game that allows all the Tasha race customization and a free starting feat, and I cannot wait to try a High Elf Forge Cleric with Booming Blade and the Crusher feat with racial stat bonuses that wont hinder me. I can't wait for all the CC shenanigans....
You get protection from energy as forge domain anyway don't you?