Cleric/Fighter build

I am fond of Clerics in their style and the current 5e designs. For several reasons I wanted to run a Light Cleric, but I needed more defense and resources to make him into the design I wanted. I love the combo of spells and defensive protection they have, but I want to expand upon it.

The ability to defend my teammates is important, but early levels don't really provide much. The Flares don't do much for them until lvl 6.
Fireball is nice to look forward to.

I am currently mulling over the option to multiclass into Fighter to pick up the "Protection" ability to go with my shield and AC 20. Protecting myself with Flare and my teammates with the shield is really nice. Getting Heavy Armor and martial weapons is also nice.

My question is, is dipping into Fighter a good option for Cleric?

The role playing explanation is that he is questing for his Orders' lost armor , spear and book and has determined that he needs to learn how to fight better in order to achieve his goals.

PS - I am a lvl 2 Cleric looking at either going lvl 3 or dipping lvl 1 into fighter. Human variant w/ Feat to dip into Druid for Shileagh.

Honestly, I wouldn't dip Fighter. It will delay your spell slot increases.

You have all the armour and proficiency you need. (You get medium armour and simple weapons, which you won't need to use as Sacred Flame is better)

The light Domain is far more offensive than defensive.

The flares are just a minor thing, the radiance of dawn is where it's at. It's pure awesome.

Most of the spells are damaging, or focus on debuffing the enemy. Faery Fire is pretty good.

cdarracq said:

I am currently mulling over the option to multiclass into Fighter to pick up the "Protection" ability to go with my shield and AC 20. Protecting myself with Flare and my teammates with the shield is really nice. Getting Heavy Armor and martial weapons is also nice.

My question is, is dipping into Fighter a good option for Cleric?

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From experience, Protection is great at low levels but begins to lose its luster quickly. If I could, I would much prefer to "retrain" that Fighting Style. What makes it less great is that enemies start to get multi-attack and you can only impose Disadvantage 1 time before a die is rolled. Plus this would compete with your Reaction-Flares.

Multi-Classing into Fighter also does not give you Heavy Armor proficiency, but you would get Martial. The only reason to dip into Fighter would be to go 2 Levels and get Action Surge. Other than that you aren't getting much and like Rynic said, it delays your spell progression.

An alternative you might consider is dipping your toes into Paladin. You're still slowing your spell progression, but not as much (at least when considering spell slots). You would get the same Martial Weapon proficiencies and a Fighting Style (I'd recommend Defense or Dueling), also you could Divine Strike with those extra Spell Slots. If you're concerned about protection, you could also take 3 levels of Paladin to get the Oath of the Crown (SCAG) for a big AoE "Taunt".

The best fighter dip for clerics is to START in fighter, getting the all important con save proficiency for those pesky concentration checks, so many of the best cleric spells are concentration based.

I'm currently setting up a lizard folk fighter/life cleric grappler, shield master at lvl 4, the bite attack combined with a prone and grappled opponent is a powerful combo.


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