Battle Cleric noob questions

[Ericnox]

Ok, so I have been playing PnP DnD for years, and on paper it was a Fighter/Cleric or Paladin/Cleric, usually only a few levels of the former then building on the cleric levels for their abilities.

I have a pair of builds in mind, does anything have anything set up already that they can show me as well as some advice?

[SlipperyPete]

1. Poke around the cleric forums, there's several good builds

2. Don't be too proud to drop back and heal when the time comes, it's all about what's best for the party and getting them thru the quest. This includes giving someone a backpack ride when their usefulness has worn out.

Help give battleclerics a good name.

[malthusian01]

A close friend of mine rolled up a battle cleric. We got to 18, this is the build she did I belive. Its been a pretty successful build.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=205859

Its the build at the bottem she went with.

[Ericnox]

I'm never too proud to heal people, right now, my issue is mana, I need to take that feat that gives mana like its crack. *sage nod* And thank you both for the advice and the build idea!

[Premier]

I'm a fan of 1 lvl in Ranger, the rest Cleric, max wisdom with lvl points into wisdom. Decent strength and con (14's at least) and dump charisma.

You'll have excellent survivability and melee capabilities throughout all your levels with minimal sacrifice to healing and spell dc's. You will not lose spell points going with 1 Ranger as opposed to 1 Fighter.

Plus a Cleric with Sprint Boost is tight!

[Xeriphim]

Or.... you could stay pure cleric .

Roll a human take weapon profficency great sword , extend for feats . Third level nab power attack . Six level empower healing , 9th level snatch up maximize , 12th pick up mental toughness for extra sp . 15 snatch up quicken , 18 your choice of toughness or improved mental toughness .

the first few levels you will be tough enough to take hits an melee on the front lines with healing capablity in a more support supplimentry role . By the time you hit 6th level , picking up boosts for your healing will let you heal like heal bots while still being usefull in melee . the maximize at 9 helps you with healing and helps set you up for blade barrier at 11 . By around 11 your focus will shift away from front line melee and more of an offensive caster / healer role . At the upper levels for end game you'd be diversifed enough to kill something with your big blade if mana were an issue . still have plenty healing power to keep parties alive as a main healer and be offensive enough to lay down blade barriers to greater effect .

Giving a party extra options with your versatility and not giving battle clerics a bad rap . Timing and knowing when to jump in on melee an when to pull back an heal . That just comes from 1) common sense , and 2) experience .

Plus at the later levels when your wanding and spell casting more an meleeing less ... You could always drain your free feat respec and swap out greatsword for something else or swap out extend for something else .

If splashing a class then you might want to consider paladin for lovely synergy . Or a fighter level for an extra feat . Or you could go a bit off the map an splash a barbarian level for the movement boost and extra hit points .

[BracchusBridgeburner]

I think the reason a lot of people splash 1 level of fighter/pally/ranger is that you don't have to burn a feat for martial weapons, get +1 more BaB. The only tradeoff is that you set back attaining all the spells you want by one level. Unless you wait a long time to take that splash and by then, there's not as much point because you'll be using melee less anyway. As far as other tradeoffs go, well there really aren't any of real siginificance. Your DC isn't affected by your cleric level it's based on wisdom. People don't generally care much about the extra level 9 spell slot you'd get by staying pure and the cleric capstone isn't anything to write home about.

On the other hand, you aren't getting anything that spectacular by splashing either other than a little more melee capability. Of course you could always go all-out and take most of your feats and enhancements to focus heavily on melee and pump STR, but offensive casting is generally stronger than melee for a high lvl cleric so I don't think that's a good idea regardless of the hype the proponents of those kinds of builds would have you believe.

So since you aren't really making deal-breaking gains by choosing either/or, what I'm getting at is that it really just ends up being a matter of taste. If you'd like to add a slight dash of melee to your diet it won't really affect your healing or your offensive casting ability by any amount you'll notice enough to care, and staying pure isn't going to drop your melee by a problematic degree either. I personally run a 32 point dwarven cleric with 1 splash of pally. starting stats are 16 8 16 8 18 6. With cleric buffs spells my STR goes up very high and you'll see I still max out WIS and have a very hefty CON. Charisma is a dumpstat (lol turn undead) dex will go to 12 for heavy armor with a +4 item, and a base 8 INT will still let you raise concentration as high as you want to. Take dwarven axe attack and damage enhancements at 1 each, grab power attack and a 2h greataxe, and call it a day. You'll not have to sacrifice any casting or healing ability this way and still be able to melee enough to keep you content if that's your wish.

[Corzak]

I think a good idea would be to take a look at what you see your character doing more at the higher level. Are you more interested in meleeing often/primarily and dropping back to throw heals on occasion? Or are you more interested in being primarily a healer with the hit points and melee capability to wade in when the need arises? Or maybe you like to dump some sick Maxed, Empowered, Extended Blade Barriers and melee mobs through them? (I have to agree with Bracchus that offensive casting clerics are more powerful than melee builds at higher levels, even though I built for melee myself. Just something to consider.)

If you're interested in hit points and survivability, Toughness is a must, especially if you're thinking of going the oldschool cleric/fighter, cleric/pally or cleric/ranger routes. However, if you've got the monk class unlocked, you might even consider doing an 18clr/2mnk build that's got higher dex and is focused on higher AC and good saves. It might be a bit more of an investment in equipment at later levels, but the clr/mnks I've seen have been nigh-unkillable, and do reasonably well in melee. This build can also be good for an offensive casting cleric, to keep you alive while you kite mobs through your BBs.

Now here's where I get bashed: I've been playing my dwarven Cleric/Maul Kensai for awhile on Khyber, and I'm up to lvl 19 now (14clr/5ftr 1 more lvl of fighter to go). I really like playing him, for a couple reasons. First, he's based on a character that I played in an old PnP game that I built as I went, and became one of my favorites. Secondly, the build allows me to solo most content, while hitting things with a big stick, which I find quite satisfying. He's alot of fun to solo or small group with, and he's was even doing Shroud regularly till that went down. At 19, I'm sitting at 465 hit points and 1354 spell points. Fairly weak as an offensive caster, but with the first 2 THF feats (soon to have all 3!) he can deal pleanty of damage and has enough staying power to melee in raids. This build isn't for everyone, and I'm sure some will think it isn't for ANYONE! Hah. But it's fun for me and that's what matters.

Like others have said, the standard multiclass option is to grab 2 levels of fighter (for the feats, BAB, Fighters Str 1 and Fighters Toughness), paladin (for the saves, auras, pally toughness), or sometimes ranger (for free twf, bow str and rapid shot: don't knock the ability to pick off enemies at range!). I'd say that pretty well all of those combos will start with high wisdom, followed by constitution and strength if melee is your interest.