D&D 4E PHB1 4e Human Cleric questions

[4eNub]

First I'll start off by saying that yes I'm new and yes apparently I'm easily confused. I've taken the time to read all the material my DM has given us. I've searched forum after forum. Still, I'm just as confused as ever. So here I am, asking for help.

The basics...
My neighbor, playing the part of DM, is trying to introduce a few of us to D&D. He has a short campaign planned as an introduction to 4e on Jan. 28, 2011 and has asked each of us to create a character to use. He's also added that we can use other builds we find online and that the character doesn't have to be a perm character and can just be a one time use character. The point of this campaign is to help us see how things work with encounters or something like that. Yes, I'm confused already. No, I've never played before.

The rules:
Our DM has asked us to keep it simple for this first run. To do that he has asked that we each roll a human and that we only use PHB 1 4e. Apparently that should keep us from getting too confused. Apparently I'm dimwitted lol.

My character:
I chose to roll a Human Cleric. Of course we started out as level 1. We were then instructed to roll 4d6 and use the highest three to determine our ability scores. Two of the 6 rolls had to be >15 to keep. I rolled a 16, 12, 11, 11, 17, 16.

After we rolled those he told us to roll 1d6, take 1/2 that number (round down) and add 1 to give us our new starting level. My character will be starting at level 4. We are supposed to increase our lvl 1 abilities accordingly.

So this is where I ask for help. Like I said, I've read so much I think I've become more confused then when I started. I'm better at the hands on learning from examples. I have 100gp and don't know what I'm supposed to buy, what weapons, armor, ritual book?, holy symbol?, I know we don't need food or tents for this campaign...I'm retarded. I have no clue what skills, feats, class/path/destiny features to choose. I have no clue what to put in my power index for at-will, encounter, daily, and utility. Don't even get me started on how stupid I feel when I start looking at defenses, action points, movement, senses, attack and damage. So I'm asking/begging, is there anybody out there that would be willing to create a complete character sheet for me. A character that I can look at on paper, play, and learn from. I haven't been able to find any builds that use only PHB 1, they all use other manuals also and I don't know how to substitute one for the other. They also seem to be formatted in a way that I can't seem to transfer it to the official 4e character sheet to figure out for myself how they got each number for each box.

I've probably just made this more confusing to everybody reading...Basically what I need is a level 4 Human Cleric character sheet that only uses what can be found in PHB 1 4e...

The level 1 ability scores are
16, 12, 11, 11, 17, 16

I would like to be able to heal my party as well as kick a little butt myself. Oh and I guess the Paladin and I HAVE to choose an Alignment and Deity.

I've wanted to participate in this game ever since I was a kid way back in the 80's but sadly I had a very ignorant close minded step dad who really thought it was some devil worship junk so he never let me near people that played D&D. Now that I'm the dad, I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm just too stupid to play and wont get a chance to get my kids into it...they'll be stuck with Warcraft like me lol.

If you're able to help I would be so so so grateful. I don't know what I can do to pay you back but if you can think of something please let me know. I can also promise that the character will only be used on this intro campaign and that after that I will only use it as a template to better understand how to create my own Cleric from scratch once we're allowed to use the other books.

I know it's a lot to ask and I'm sorry I have to but I don't know what else to do. Thank you in advance for the understanding and help.

 

[Aulirophile]

I would strongly encourage you to talk to your DM about getting advice online. 4e is built around different assumptions then earlier versions. Rolling stats, not giving out magic items (you should start with 3 at level 4), can really skew the game. For a level 4 one-shot with just the PHB that isn't likely to matter, however. Well, not much at any rate. ^.^

For the rest of your request, I believe just printing out the attachment and filling in a name will satisfy.

 

[Colmarr]

Welcome to 4e and ENworld! I'm sure you'll have a blast.

Don't worry about being a bit lost. There's a lot of information to take in when you first pick up the hobby. But it'll all be second nature before you know it.

In order for us to provide some tips, you'll need to give us some more guidance as to what you're looking for. You've mentioned that you'd like to heal your party and kick some butt yourself, which is a pretty neat fit for a cleric.

But let me ask you this: When kicking butt, do you prefer to do so with a mace to the face, or holy spells? The PHB allows you to build a battle cleric ("mace to the face"), a devoted cleric (spells), or a balanced cleric (a little of both).

So which would you prefer?

(And to the other ENworld regulars: Let's keep this simple, shall we? No need to super-optimise a one-off character or scare a newcomer with walls of jargon.)

 

[Aulirophile]

(And to the other ENworld regulars: Let's keep this simple, shall we? No need to super-optimise a one-off character or scare a newcomer with walls of jargon.)

It isn't even possible to super-optimized a PHB1 Cleric.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Welcome to the game! You shouldn't feel dumb. There's a lot of info to absorb at first, but like learning to cook or fix a car or whatever, you can pick up the basics pretty quickly.

First, a word about what's going to go down when your neighbor does his thing. "Encounters" are D&D-speak for what happens when your character interacts with other critters and characters. Fighting kobolds, talking to bar wenches, having a fancy dinner at the King's Festhall, whatever. Most of the time, it means "fightin' stuff." So you'll be learning the most mechanically involved part of the game.

Don't be afraid to "screw up" or to be inventive. D&D 4e has a lot of leeway for characters to make a few mistakes, and since you're new, I'd use the heck out of it.

As a cleric, your strategy is mostly going to be "help the other party members." Give them hit points, help them hit, increase their defenses, etc. Make sure they don't die. If you see a character go "bloodied," (which means they're at half health), throw some hit-point-increasing ability at them, and get them on their feet again.

Now, you can have us whip up a character sheet for you easy. It's actually something I do a lot for my own newbies, since having all those blank boxes and jargon terms can be kind of intimidating, as you're seeing. But I'd encourage you to TRY to tackle it, and then use us for some help, cuz you'll feel a lot less dumb when you do.

To give you a starting point:
Those stats you rolled? 16, 12, 11, 11, 17, 16? You're going to want to assign them to your six "Ability Scores", which are Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, etc. If you read the PHB text box at the front of your class's description, it should give you some solid guidance about what ability scores to put those numbers in (protip: put your 17 in Wisdom -- as a cleric, Wisdom will be used for a lot of your abilities, you need to be enlightened and reasonable to hear the gods communicate with you).

 

[Vilmond]

Since you have no clue what to buy I'll start there even though thats usually one of the last things you do when making a character.
First you need your weapon, for a cleric a mace would be a decent choice.
Next you'd need armor, likely you'll want chain mail.
To round it out you'd want an adventurers kit (its a premade kit with most basic things).
Finally you'd probably want to pickup a holy symbol you don't have to but you might aswell.
That should probably leave you with about 25gold or so, you can spend the rest on torches, extra food/water, or whatever else or you could save it.


As a cleric your primary duty is making sure your friends don't die, after that you mostly like to whack things over the head with your weapon.
Wisdom and Strength are your two big stats and Charisma is important aswell. Wisdom + Strength = healing + head whacking, Wisdom + Charisma = healing + holy prayers of destruction. Either way you should have abit of all three.


For skill choices you really can't go wrong. The primary skill that matters to a Cleric (religion) is manditory. Aside from that just grab whatever you want. Heal, History, Insight, and Diplomacy would be pretty well rounded. The thing to remember here is you don't lose the skills you don't pick you just get a bonus to the ones you do pick.
Even if you don't get athletics as a skill training you can still do athletic things.


Your powers will be based off what you picked earlier with strength vs charisma. If you went strength pick powers that use strength, if you picked charisma choose accordingly.

For a basic power line up at level one.
At-Will powers. Priests Shield, Righteous Brand, and Sacred Flame
Encounter, Healing Strike
Daily, Cascade of Light

That would be pretty rounded, notice you have 3 at-will powers because you are human (they get a third at-will).


For your feats, I'd consider toughness and durability. These would help make your cleric a beefier character who is abit harder to kill which could be really useful when you are first learning.
Think of it sorta like stacking stamina early on when in warcraft.
Naturally there are other options and feel free to pick what you want aslong as you feel it would benefit your survivability or how well you either heal or damage things then its likely not to bad.


As to the god you want to worship Pelor, Moradin, and Bahamut would likely be your go to gods as a standard holy and upstanding cleric.
Bahamut is basically about protection, order, and justice.
Pelor is there for sun, summer, and basically all that is good and happy.
Moradin is more about creation and artists/smiths and that sorta stuff.

You could obviously choose a different god, but I'd say those three are probably the most typical cleric god choices on the good end of the spectrum.



The most important thing to remember is that one of the more important things about D&D and similar table top RPG's is that how your character is built usually doesn't matter as much as how you play it.
Some examples would be using a torch to set a building on fire to burn the badguys out instead of just barging in fighting. Using diplomacy and religion as a cleric to try and reason with someone. A wizard using some illusion magic to make your enemy appear as food to a raging beast so you don't have to fight it.
Just as easily as you can solve a problem by bashing it with a hammer you can usually solve it in more peaceful ways aswell. Or less peaceful ways too if you were so inclined.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Vilmond: I don't have time to go into detail, but I don't like your suggestions very much. I know the OP has specified restriction to PHB 1 only, but even with that limited selection, Lance of Faith is better than Priest's Shield, which competes in the "worst PHB 1 power" race and always finishes in the top 10.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

In general, I find the Strength-based Cleric to be pretty unappealing. Given this is PH1, and the OP has rolled 3 "good" stats, he might as well make use of half-decent Strength, since there aren't too many other good options.

Strength Clerics seem like a throwback to older design philosophy that equate melee attack to Strength, regardless. The PH1 Paladin suffers from the same issue. It's not that the powers linked to Strength are inherently bad, per se (they're not... necessarily), it's just mechanically poor class design (V-class vs. A-class).

Compare this with the Warpriest Cleric from HotFL, whose melee attacks are all Wisdom-based, allowing for a much more focused build, both mechanically and thematically.

I agree with Prestidigitalis, in that Vilmond's suggestions are not the best, but if this is a one-shot (with randomly rolled levels?!?!) then it may not matter much.

 

[GameDoc]

(with randomly rolled levels?!?!)

Yeah, that caught my eye too.

I can't cite chapter and verse, but I beleive the DMG strongly suggests that all PC's be of the same level to keep encounters appropriately challenging (not too hard, not too easy).

That said, his DM may have a way to account for this and it could all make sense if we knew his thinking. And that last thing I want to do is send a newcomer who is still learning the basics off to challenge his DM's methods.

 

[Destil]

I would direct your DM to this thread.

4eNub's DM: Level 1. If you want things simple, start there. There is no better advice I can give.

[Also, I'd suggest using the default array for stats, but that's not nearly as big a deal]