D&D 5E Powergamer Cleric= Variant Human?

Ashrym · Jun 30, 2019

Zardnaar said:
Cast shileleagh every round outside combat. It will always be up with 9 rounds renaing on its duration.

I think a lot of people Nova from the sound of it. If you're using spiritual weapon and guardians your going to be out if spells very quickly.

Spells with duration like that tend to be an efficient use of spell slots. Two spell slots per encounter isn't that much of a nova. We're talking roughly 8-10th level given the feats and ability scores discussed and that gives room to do both 4 or 5 encounters of the day. Healing might dip into it but that just means swapping out guardians for bless a couple of times. It doesn't have to be all encounters either. In a level range where the character has 12-15 spell slots and the standard expectation is 6-8 encounters per day then 1-2 spells per encounter is pretty typical. That's rationing it instead of going nova.

The competition for shillelagh comes from spiritual weapon, which is hard to give up unless a person has big plans for that bonus action. Casting shillelagh would cost that one attack.

Constantly casting shillelagh carries similar issues to constantly casting guidance. It's hard to be stealthy when one of the party members won't shut up and keeps casting spells and impacts stealth and surprise. Walking through towns and in social encounters someone constantly casting magical spells is going to be viewed with suspicion at the very least and quite possibly open hostility.

I would also point out again (if it wasn't clear) that using shillelagh with a domain that gives potent spellcasting instead of divine strike is using a melee attack that gives up damage. Those cleric domains would be better off looking at attack cantrips over weapon attacks, outside of the possible arcana outlier. Using a spellcasting ability score for attack and damage doesn't offset the bonus damage from divine strike even if there is a small gap between the two ability scores.

There is an error in your OP as well.

Zardnaar said:
The Nature cleric can cast chillagh since it picks up a Druid cantrip. You can wear medium armor, soak up 1 less AC and similar to things like light and arcana clerics you can key everything off wisdom including your melee attacks. This matters latter on where the "melee" cleric should be using spiritual guardians, clerics that don;t basically stink at melee. This is also why I think nature clerics are better at melee than things like war and tempest clerics. The way a staff+ shillelagh interacts with polearm master is also funny. If you want a beat down cleric that is good at spells and spell buffing play a nature cleric in medium armor.

Nature clerics gain heavy armor proficiency as a bonus at 1st level.

PHBpg62 said:
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]Acolyte of Nature
At 1st level, you learn one druid cantrip of your choice. You also gain proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Animal Handling, Nature, or Survival.

Bonus Proficiency
Also at 1st level, you gain proficiency with heavy armor.

Taking PAM and shillelagh seems okay because PAM is competing with spiritual weapon for that bonus action anyway, but casting shillelagh would still cost a bonus action attack. It this case it's at least not costing a feat/ASI so the tradeoff isn't so bad. PAM doesn't scale up in damage through spell slots like spiritual weapon, but it also doesn't cost spell slots and it increases the chance of landing divine strike.

Or you could just take HAM, start with a 16 STR and 16 WIS, and fill the bonus action with spiritual weapon. Or numerous other useful feats.

It's hard to argue variant human power gamers use shillelagh on clerics.

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Zardnaar · Jun 30, 2019

Ashrym said:
Spells with duration like that tend to be an efficient use of spell slots. Two spell slots per encounter isn't that much of a nova. We're talking roughly 8-10th level given the feats and ability scores discussed and that gives room to do both 4 or 5 encounters of the day. Healing might dip into it but that just means swapping out guardians for bless a couple of times. It doesn't have to be all encounters either. In a level range where the character has 12-15 spell slots and the standard expectation is 6-8 encounters per day then 1-2 spells per encounter is pretty typical. That's rationing it instead of going nova.

The competition for shillelagh comes from spiritual weapon, which is hard to give up unless a person has big plans for that bonus action. Casting shillelagh would cost that one attack.

Constantly casting shillelagh carries similar issues to constantly casting guidance. It's hard to be stealthy when one of the party members won't shut up and keeps casting spells and impacts stealth and surprise. Walking through towns and in social encounters someone constantly casting magical spells is going to be viewed with suspicion at the very least and quite possibly open hostility.

I would also point out again (if it wasn't clear) that using shillelagh with a domain that gives potent spellcasting instead of divine strike is using a melee attack that gives up damage. Those cleric domains would be better off looking at attack cantrips over weapon attacks, outside of the possible arcana outlier. Using a spellcasting ability score for attack and damage doesn't offset the bonus damage from divine strike even if there is a small gap between the two ability scores.

There is an error in your OP as well.

Nature clerics gain heavy armor proficiency as a bonus at 1st level.

Taking PAM and shillelagh seems okay because PAM is competing with spiritual weapon for that bonus action anyway, but casting shillelagh would still cost a bonus action attack. It this case it's at least not costing a feat/ASI so the tradeoff isn't so bad. PAM doesn't scale up in damage through spell slots like spiritual weapon, but it also doesn't cost spell slots and it increases the chance of landing divine strike.

Or you could just take HAM, start with a 16 STR and 16 WIS, and fill the bonus action with spiritual weapon. Or numerous other useful feats.
It's hard to argue variant human power gamers use shillelagh on clerics.

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It's going to be a while before you can drop spiritual weapon alot. Spamming cantrips might effect use of stealth outside that's it's not gonna be much worse than clomping around in heavy armor.

I'm also well aware nature clerics get heavy armor but to get 16 str and wisdom your con will be 13 at best.

Nature cleric with PAM can key everything off wisdom and have 14 Dex and con. And deals almost double the damage level 1 than the HAM nature cleric.

You also have an extra spell ( would recommend faerire fire or absorb element) and another druid cantrip.

As I said more worried about low level than say level 8 which let's face it a lot of games won't reach.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 30, 2019

Ashrym said:
Word of Radiance specifies targets that you can see. You wouldn't get all 8 surrounding you unless you have eyes in the back of your head.

I interpret "can see" purely mechanically - if you have line of sight and the target isn't invisible or hidden, you can "see" it. 5e doesn't have facing and field of vision rules.

But I agree that it a situation where you can hit at many as 8 targets with Word of Radiance would be unusual. It's just an extreme example, using a cantrip that goes from rubbish to good with Potent Spellcasting.

Zardnaar · Jun 30, 2019

It's also a con save. Not a fan of spells with con saves.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 30, 2019

Zardnaar said:
It's also a con save. Not a fan of spells with con saves.

So does Thunderclap (and that can hit friendly targets).

But not everything has good con saves. You gain most benefit from Potent Spellcasting with cantrips that affect multiple targets or apply damage multiple times. Bonfire could be an interesting choice for an Arcana cleric. Shame they can't dip into the warlock spell list! Shame their higher level bonus spell list is so sucky too.

Ashrym · Jun 30, 2019

Zardnaar said:
It's going to be a while before you can drop spiritual weapon alot.

4th or 5th level. About the same time that first ASI hits. It'll be a lot longer before shillelagh makes a significant difference.

Zardnaar said:
Spamming cantrips might effect use of stealth outside that's it's not gonna be much worse than clomping around in heavy armor.

Heavy armor causes disadvantage on the checks when a person is trying to be stealthy. Castings spells is not even trying to be stealthy. It's deliberately making noise instead of trying to be quiet. Your armor analogy is the equivalent of not caring how much noise the armor makes instead of attempting to be stealthy.

It can also be catastrophic in social settings.

Zardnaar said:
I'm also well aware nature clerics get heavy armor but to get 16 str and wisdom your con will be 13 at best.

Which matters little but is also the reason to go for resilient con over war caster. Top up.

My sample stat spread (1st level):

16 STR
8 DEX
13 CON
10 INT
16 WIS
12 CHA

Your sample stat spread:

12 STR
14 DEX
14 CON
8 INT
16 WIS
10 CHA

Something like that. I'm not sure where you were putting your dump stat but you gave up AC and damage reduction in order to not have a better attack and damage bonus. The CON difference in hp is low at low levels and gets bumped up with a partial bonus on a feat.

Zardnaar said:
Nature cleric with PAM can key everything off wisdom and have 14 Dex and con. And deals almost double the damage level 1 than the HAM nature cleric.

So we're playing to level 1 now? Moving the goal posts from when it was an under level 10 game. It's also misleading because DPR drops to 0 when the character is a puddle. The PC is giving up AC and damage reduction for that bonus attack.

It also ignores the option for TWF. Granted, TWF isn't much of a benefit and it also gives up AC but the damage reduction is still there and there is still one bonus action attack used in TWF that is being spent casting shillelagh.

While it is technically true that the damage benefit is there at that low level, it doesn't last and it comes a lot more from PAM than it does shillelagh. It's decent enough with nature domain because of the easy access but untrue with other domains, keep relevant to the topic. It's also a short term gain that doesn't hold out in the long run for most of the game.

Zardnaar said:
You also have an extra spell ( would recommend faerire fire or absorb element) and another druid cantrip.

Every domain has benefits. This is a just one of the differences. I wouldn't recommend faerie fire because it competes with concentration and different forms of advantage don't stack.

Zardnaar said:
As I said more worried about low level than say level 8 which let's face it a lot of games won't reach.

The argument seems to be that because nature clerics can easily take shillelagh and use it with PAM on a human variant then all clerics should take shillelagh with a human variant and then take PAM at 12th level even though you don't expect to get to 8th level anymore after arguing 10th level earlier. That's all based on your comments.

Moving the goal posts to even lower levels in order to ignore the spirit weapon argument does not demonstrate that this is something a power gamer would do. Let me repost your premise.

Zardnaar said:
So my arguement is should every cleric under the sun be using the magic initiate feat to pick up shillagh? At least from a min/max PoV.

What you are demonstrating is that it's advantageous for nature clerics who acquire it through a method other than magic initiate at low levels before bonus actions come on board for other builds.

Ashrym · Jun 30, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
I interpret "can see" purely mechanically - if you have line of sight and the target isn't invisible or hidden, you can "see" it. 5e doesn't have facing and field of vision rules.

But I agree that it a situation where you can hit at many as 8 targets with Word of Radiance would be unusual. It's just an extreme example, using a cantrip that goes from rubbish to good with Potent Spellcasting.

5e does have facing. It's not explicit until we read the option rules on page 252 of the DMG. "If you want the precision of knowing which way the character is facing, consider using this optional rule." It then goes on to codify changing facing. One can only change what already exists and the optional rule only creates the precision of knowing character facing as opposed to creating it to further demonstrate facing is already a thing. There's references to line of sight in other places, such as seeing farther after climbing a hill for example. Facing is simply a common sense discretion up to that point.

Plus.... It doesn't make sense to see out the back of your head. You can call it total concealment if you like. Your head provides total concealment between your eyes and anyone behind you.

Ashrym · Jun 30, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
So does Thunderclap (and that can hit friendly targets).
But not everything has good con saves. You gain most benefit from Potent Spellcasting with cantrips that affect multiple targets or apply damage multiple times. Bonfire could be an interesting choice for an Arcana cleric. Shame they can't dip into the warlock spell list! Shame their higher level bonus spell list is so sucky too.

Sword burst. It's doesn't require seeing the targets and it's a DEX save instead. Easily available to arcana clerics. It also has the perk of being verbal only. Carrying a CON and a DEX save version of similar spells covers the caster better.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 30, 2019

Optional rules is optional. And even the optional rules have nothing on field of vision.

Ashrym said:
Plus.... It doesn't make sense to see out the back of your head.

The rules assume you can turn your head! It says "can" see - i.e. it is possible for you to see the target. It doesn't say "must be looking at" at the instant the spell is released. Otherwise most spells and all ranged weapons would be limited to a 120 degree arc - assuming human, other races could well have different fields of vision. Then you have the complications of helmets, rear view mirrors attached to armour, etc.

Zardnaar · Jun 30, 2019

Ashrym said:
4th or 5th level. About the same time that first ASI hits. It'll be a lot longer before shillelagh makes a significant difference.[/FONT][/COLOR]

Heavy armor causes disadvantage on the checks when a person is trying to be stealthy. Castings spells is not even trying to be stealthy. It's deliberately making noise instead of trying to be quiet. Your armor analogy is the equivalent of not caring how much noise the armor makes instead of attempting to be stealthy.

It can also be catastrophic in social settings.[/LEFT]

Which matters little but is also the reason to go for resilient con over war caster. Top up.

My sample stat spread (1st level):

16 STR
8 DEX
13 CON
10 INT
16 WIS
12 CHA

Your sample stat spread:

12 STR
14 DEX
14 CON
8 INT
16 WIS
10 CHA

Something like that. I'm not sure where you were putting your dump stat but you gave up AC and damage reduction in order to not have a better attack and damage bonus. The CON difference in hp is low at low levels and gets bumped up with a partial bonus on a feat.

So we're playing to level 1 now? Moving the goal posts from when it was an under level 10 game. It's also misleading because DPR drops to 0 when the character is a puddle. The PC is giving up AC and damage reduction for that bonus attack.

It also ignores the option for TWF. Granted, TWF isn't much of a benefit and it also gives up AC but the damage reduction is still there and there is still one bonus action attack used in TWF that is being spent casting shillelagh.

While it is technically true that the damage benefit is there at that low level, it doesn't last and it comes a lot more from PAM than it does shillelagh. It's decent enough with nature domain because of the easy access but untrue with other domains, keep relevant to the topic. It's also a short term gain that doesn't hold out in the long run for most of the game.

Every domain has benefits. This is a just one of the differences. I wouldn't recommend faerie fire because it competes with concentration and different forms of advantage don't stack.

The argument seems to be that because nature clerics can easily take shillelagh and use it with PAM on a human variant then all clerics should take shillelagh with a human variant and then take PAM at 12th level even though you don't expect to get to 8th level anymore after arguing 10th level earlier. That's all based on your comments.

Moving the goal posts to even lower levels in order to ignore the spirit weapon argument does not demonstrate that this is something a power gamer would do. Let me repost your premise.

What you are demonstrating is that it's advantageous for nature clerics who acquire it through a method other than magic initiate at low levels before bonus actions come on board for other builds.

Don't get me wrong I'll happily use Spiritual Weapon, but below level 7 or 8 it's a good way to burn spell slots.
If you're doing 5MWD that's great.

I assume you're playing from level 1, probably won't make it past 10. That whole 90% of games don't go past that.

I probably wouldn't bother with clerics with potent spelkcast arcane one being an exception.

If you need another asi to bump con from 13 to 14 probably via resilient con that's one less asi spent to buff strength.

My build will have 18 or 20 wisdom maybe warcaster feat. At best you have 18 strength and 16 wisdom.