D&D 5E Maximum Shillelagh

I was playing with ideas about how to be a melee combatant with just cantrips, and I think I hit on a pretty good one. This isn't so much a build as a one-trick pony that's a really good trick.

Take Nature Cleric and choose Shillelagh as your cantrip. Now you can make melee attacks based on Wisdom. Also take Magic Initiate (Wizard) for Green Flame Blade and whatever else tickles you.

Shillelagh is a BA and GFB is Standard, so you can make this work in Round 1 even if surprised.

Further, the damage from Shillelagh and GFB stack with your Divine Strike, since they are all keyed off of making a weapon attack, not being part of the attack action. And on top of that, you get the secondary target damage from GFB. Of course the Divine Strike damage is the same for Life and Tempest clerics, but those aren't keyed off Wisdom, so you have to pump your ASIs Str or Dex to get the same attack and damage modifiers.

So the total damage you do looks like this (assuming a secondary target is available and a +1 Int modifier):

Level 1: 1d8+3 plus 1 (Median: 8.5)
Level 5: 2d8+4 plus 1d8+1 (Median: 18.5)
Level 8: 3d8+5 plus 1d8+1 (Median: 24)
Level 11: 4d8+5 plus 2d8+1 (Median: 33)
Level 14: 5d8+5 plus 2d8+1 (Median: 37.5)
Level 17: 6d8+5 plus 3d8+1 (Median: 46.5)

Not too shabby! And you can do that with a 1 SP club. And that's just your at-will Cantrip stuff. Any spellcasting you do is in addition to that.

If you take Warcaster at some point you can OA for GFB damage but the Divine Strike doesn't apply, since that only works on your turn.

Another good Shillelagh Cleric is Arcane. Take GFB or BB as your Wizard cantrips and Magic Initiate Druid for Shillelagh. After level 8 you'll be dealing 2xWis damage on each swing with Wis rider damage instead of Int.

Irda Ranger said:

I was playing with ideas about how to be a melee combatant with just cantrips, and I think I hit on a pretty good one. This isn't so much a build as a one-trick pony that's a really good trick.

Take Nature Cleric and choose Shillelagh as your cantrip. Now you can make melee attacks based on Wisdom. Also take Magic Initiate (Wizard) for Green Flame Blade and whatever else tickles you.

Click to expand...

That gives you Wis to hit, and Int to damage.

A tome warlock and bard can get both using Cha (lore get's it earlier). Then you MC shadow sorcerer for twinned (booming blade only, not GFB) and quicken, giving you 3 attacks per round (while SP lasts). As well as advantage from darkness.

You still probably want cleric for armor though.