Trying to keep my tempest cleric 9 alive

As my tempest cleric advances in level and we face tougher enemies, I am failing Dex/Con saves so often that I can barely keep myself healed, let alone the party. Did I build my character poorly, am I playing him wrong, or is failing your saves at higher levels just a feature of 5e D&D? This is my first 5e character after a long hiatus from AD&D where all of your saves got better as you leveled up. I would appreciate any advice on how I might play/use spells differently with my cleric.

My half elf tempest cleric just made level 9 at the end of our last session. Keeping him alive is becoming a challenge because I literally can't make a saving throw to save my life. In recent sessions I have been baned and restrained by kuo-toa whips, poisoned by gas, and hit by all manner of spells like fireball, cone of cold, flame strike, and disintegrate which required my party to spend all its treasure to have a high level cleric resurrect me (I guess they like having me around). I'm supposed to be the party support but I'm more like the party liability. It doesn't help that we don't have a bard or paladin.

I used point-buy to start and my stats are 16/10/14/8/20/10 having used two ASI's to max out Wis. I'm starting to feel that a str build for heavy armor was a trap. Now that I've played this character for about 6 months, I think I overestimated the value of a high AC. My AC is 21 (plate, shield, cloak of protection) but I am rarely on the front lines unless using Spirit Guardians/Dodge so my AC is not targeted very often. I'm tough to hit when I dodge, but easy to damage with spells and the ratio of attacks against my saves to attacks against my AC is at least 3:1. With a low dex I often don't get a chance to get my support spells up before the first enemy spell or effect has gone off. I don't think I've used my warhammer since level 5. My AC could have been 10 and I would have taken almost the exact same damage our last two sessions. The str build was great at tier 1 - I was as good at melee as anyone else. At tier 2 I feel like I get more mileage out of hanging back and using concentration spells, taking the Dodge action, and then attacking with spiritual weapon which has a better chance to hit than my melee attack. After reaching 7th level my tactic has been to try to banish the enemy spellcaster but if they make their save I naturally become the target for all sorts of nasty spell attacks (that's how I got disintegrated). At level 12 I plan on taking the Resilient (Con) feat if I live that long.

I suppose if I could start again I could dump strength to 8 and to start with a 16 Dex and 15 Con, or play a variant human that starts with the resilient (con) feat but that wasn't the character I wanted to play and even then I'd still be failing a fair amount of DC 13+ saves. How do players compensate for saves that are the same at level 14 as they were at level 1? Is a character without proficiency in either Dex or Con saves even viable at higher levels? Having the outlander background and a high Wis and all the Wis skills plus athletics has been incredibly useful outside of combat, but so far having a great Wis save hasn't been as helpful as I thought it would be. Wis saves don't come up very often in our game. Will that change against higher CR monsters?

Well, about 13% of monsters in MM have spellcasting, but your saves are 3:1, and almost none is agaist Wis, even if at least 40% of sace spells are against wis.
Looks like your DM have a good plan to drop you down, and probably if you do another Character he'll start to target your AC or Wis.
What is the rest of the party? Are you sure that you're the obly obe with that problem? If you're the powerful piece that can keep your team alive and fighting, intelligent enemies will strike you first.

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It's intentional design that only 2 of 6 (two proficient) to 3 of 6 (if your advancing ability score doesn't line up) of your saves go up over time, while save DCs increase. I'm not sure I call that a feature, but it is intentional design. Trying to work around it mechanically is hard and not rewarding as there is an opportunity cost.

It sounds like most encounters have casters, I'd probably only expect 1/4 to 1/2 to have offensive casters but that's dependent on DM and what you are doing. If they are focus-firing on you, that's damage you are taking for the team - they are getting hurt less. Not the best "healing" but if you can keep yourself up it'll do.

If you are in area effects that's a different story. Try not to position yourself too close to allies, so either you or multiple allies get hurt - if they still come after you, you're "preventing" a whole lot of damage to everyone else. If not, well, that's what mass cure spells are for. Or just killing the foe.

It *sounds* like the DM is cherry picking and specifically targeting your weaknesses. Maybe he feels the game is not challenging enough and wants to make sure the players feel like they are winning by the skin of their teeth. If so then that's a tough challenge to overcome since perspectives change depending on what side of the screen you're on. If that is the case, then you are screwed because no matter what you *could* rebuild as, the DM will simply target the new weakness.

I do have a couple of suggestions though. Number one, get your party to help! If you have any casters then they obviously need to get Counterspell since you are getting targeted by so much magic. Secondly, consider having your opening spell be Sanctuary (you won't be able to attack, but you CAN support unless the enemy makes some hefty Wisdom saves). Thirdly, consider taking the Lucky feat when you can. We all roll poorly from time to time, and this can be the thing that saves you from death.

zaratan said:

What is the rest of the party? Are you sure that you're the obly obe with that problem? If you're the powerful piece that can keep your team alive and fighting, intelligent enemies will strike you first.

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The two barbarians, the rogue, and the moon druid are better at taking/evading spell damage. We were missing our evoker wizard one session and that is when I was getting targeted the most.

WarpedAcorn said:

I do have a couple of suggestions though. Number one, get your party to help! If you have any casters then they obviously need to get Counterspell since you are getting targeted by so much magic. Secondly, consider having your opening spell be Sanctuary (you won't be able to attack, but you CAN support unless the enemy makes some hefty Wisdom saves). Thirdly, consider taking the Lucky feat when you can. We all roll poorly from time to time, and this can be the thing that saves you from death.

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We had our evoker back tonight and Counterspell definitely helped a lot. This was also my first session at level 9 and having a DC 17 seemed to shift things in my favor. I was rolling better and the DM was rolling worse so for a change I was making my saves and the monsters weren't. Also for the first time in a couple of sessions we were above ground and outside where I could make better use of my lightning magic.

Our DM includes at least one spellcaster in almost every encounter which seems fair since we are bringing spellcasting to every encounter ourselves. We've come to expect that a hobgoblin warlord will have his hobgoblin war mage with him. We roll a lot of saving throws in the course of a session.

I find you need to make alternate plans for issues you have weak saves against as you get to higher level. Here are some strategies I've used in 5e with one character or another...

o Ring of Evasion (three free dex saves a day)
o Protection from Good & Evil (immune to fear and charm from certain creatures)
o Sticking close to a Paladin (for the save boost)
o Blink (takes you off the field between turns)
o Counterspell (suppress spells)
o Cube of Force (anti-magic setting)
o Misty Step (escaping grapples)
o Feather Fall (mitigating dex saves where falling is involved)
o Antitoxin (cheap, lasts a long time and advantage on poison con saves)
o Tough Feat (more HP helps)
o Resilient Feat (get proficiency in important saves)
o Bless (1d4 bonus to saves)
o Ring of Protection (+1 to saves)
o Bardic Inspiration (applies to all saves)
o Heroes Feast (immunity to fear & poison + adv on Wis saves)
o Playing a monk

And that's just a short list. You need to find methods other than good, inherent saving throw bonuses to get through higher level challenges. Teamwork and planning for covering your weaknesses are necessary. For example before one battle against a dragon our party as a group discussed how we were going to handle its' Frightful Presence and breath weapon. Those contingencies had to be covered if we were going to succeed and because of some good planning were able to minimize the effect of those threats.

If you know you're in for a long day, Death Ward (lvl 4) yourself. Also, get on the front line and look like any other martial character until you really need to reveal your spellpower. between Divine Smite, thunderous rebuke, high AC, and spiritual weapon you're not horrible on the front lines. Warhammer is 2d8+3, spiritual weapon is 1d8+5 (unless you uplevel it), and you have a reaction 5 times per day to inflict another 2d8 and knockback. Against a strong caster, don't underestimate the effectiveness of a well-placed fog cloud.

Ask your DM if you can redo your last ASI to take Resilient Con instead.

Having that and Running Bless are the surest ways to defend against spells. In an optimized party, the Paladin would be running it.

Thanks. This was very helpful.