D&D 5E Best gish (PHB only)

[Esker]

Thank you for this suggestion.

Only thing is you get CON saves from both sorcerer and fighter.

Yeah, definitely a downside of the Cleric / Wizard route as I said. If you're going vuman for war caster though (which seems pretty important when you're a wizard with a shield and a weapon, since without it you can't use the shield spell) the concentration problem is mitigated: you'll be rolling +4 with advantage at the lowest levels, where you're unlikely to take more than 20 damage from a single source (if you're taking that kind of damage at those levels you have bigger problems than losing concentration). That's gives you only a 1 in 16 chance of losing concentration even without proficiency. If your concentration spell at those levels is shield of faith (which you wouldn't have as a fighter), it helps even more.

I think Cleric vs Fighter largely comes down to whether you want more spell slots and magic buffs or whether you want the fighting style.

 

[krunchyfrogg]

How is the nature cleric?

With the relatively low level cap, a hill dwarf could start with 16’s in CON and WIS and ditch STR, since dwarves have that heavy armor loophole.

With shillelagh, everything keys off of WIS, making this character concept very SAD.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

An elven dragon sorceror is also a respectable gish. You get good armor and saves from sorcerer, and a nice selection of weapons from the elf.
You can go dual short sword or longbow and have AC 16, more if you use the shield spell. A bit of Constitution and Charisma will make your spells good enough. I´d go wild elf for extra stealthyness and speed.

Dex 17
Con 14
Cha 12
Wis 14
Int 8
Str 10

If you want to multiclass, your first increase should go to dex and charisma. Otherwise dex and maybe wisdom for resilient wis later on. Maybe resilient dex if you think it might be useful. But you actually don´t have to worry too much since the game ends at level 8.

 

[FrogReaver]

Best Gish = Paladin + College of Whispers Bard (of course that's not PHB only)

Best PHB only Gish = Tempest Cleric (Paladin is honorable mention but tempest cleric will give you the most traditional gish feel for the level 1-8 progression).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Thanks for including that you're only going to level 8. That's critical for what to play.

Some options:
Fighter 1 / Wizard (Abjuration) X - good armor (go medium with shield and finesse weapon). Your spells can defend you plus charge your Ward for mroe HPs soaked.

Bard (Valor) - wish the spells lined up better. This is supposed to be gishy, but ...

Paladin X - as long as you ignore that "gish" was normally associated with arcane magic, Paladins are great gishes. And they are fun 1-8.

Paladin / Sorcerer - adding back in more arcane. Problem is PHB only is no SCAG cantrips, and that means that multiclassing and slowing (or missing) Extra Attack hurts.

Warlock (Pact of the Blade) - Ha, just put this in to see if you were still reading. Without Hexblade, Warlocks as gish just never materialized as holding their own vs. a replacement character.

Tome Warlock with a Familiar and Shillelagh does a great job in games that allow the scag options, but bladepact is pretty bad. Still, a good phb Bladelock just has to be careful. Variant human to still have shillelaghs from Magic Initiate. Shadow Armor invocation and Armor of Agythis spell gives decent AC and punishment for attacking you.

A variant human Arcane Trickster, OTOH, can be a perfectly lethal gish, and is no less durable than any other rogue. And with magic initiate, you can have magic from level 1!

 

[krunchyfrogg]

Tome Warlock with a Familiar and Shillelagh does a great job in games that allow the scag options, but bladepact is pretty bad. Still, a good phb Bladelock just has to be careful. Variant human to still have shillelaghs from Magic Initiate. Shadow Armor invocation and Armor of Agythis spell gives decent AC and punishment for attacking you.

A variant human Arcane Trickster, OTOH, can be a perfectly lethal gish, and is no less durable than any other rogue. And with magic initiate, you can have magic from level 1!

Shillelagh from magic initiate is considered a druid spell, and therefore keys off of wisdom. That’s not too useful for a warlock.

I think the best pre-hexblade blade pact warlock is still fighter 1/warlock X.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Shillelagh from magic initiate is considered a druid spell, and therefore keys off of wisdom. That’s not too useful for a warlock.

I think the best pre-hexblade blade pact warlock is still fighter 1/warlock X.

Forgot about the magic initiate deal. Gotta keep house rules straight!

I’d MC rogue over fighter for a Hexblade, tbh, but I don’t value added durability as much as a lot of gish thread posters do.

 

[Esker]

How is the nature cleric?

With the relatively low level cap, a hill dwarf could start with 16’s in CON and WIS and ditch STR, since dwarves have that heavy armor loophole.

What are you looking to gain by ditching STR? Your DEX could be 13 instead of 12, opening up some multiclass options that you probably don't care about, and you could get your INT and CHA modifiers up a bit, but is that worth it? You'd become completely dependent on shillelagh to use a weapon, since you don't get any finesse weapons beyond a dagger.

As far as choosing hill dwarf in general, yes, you can wear the heavy armor with no speed penalty, but your speed is still lower than a human (that doesn't dump STR), and the same as a wood elf that does (and they at least can get 14 DEX and CON, 13 INT (in case you wanted a level of wizard at some point for rituals, arcane recovery, and the shield spell) and access to some ranged and finesse weapons). You do get more HP as a dwarf, but your concentration saves will be worse than a vuman with war caster, or even a vuman with resilient CON who also gets their CON up to 16 (at the expense of STR going down to 13 instead of 14).

Edit: Realized a hill dwarf can get 13 INT for a potential wizard dip just as easily as a wood elf can so disregard that as a distinguishing factor.

 

[Esker]

Best PHB only Gish = Tempest Cleric (Paladin is honorable mention but tempest cleric will give you the most traditional gish feel for the level 1-8 progression).

The tempest cleric is a nice alternative to nature cleric. The domain spells are definitely gishier, and wrath of the storm is fun; you don't otherwise have a lot of uses for a reaction outside the odd opportunity attack. It's a less weapon-focused option than nature cleric since you don't get to use WIS when attacking with a weapon (though you could forego a shield and wield the maul of Thor or something, which admittedly is a cool image), but you didn't specifically say you wanted your magic to directly support your weapon attacks, and you do get some combat magic perks (thunderwave or shatter+destructive wrath). There is a tempest cleric at my table and she has attacked with a weapon maybe once since level 5, since toll the dead or sacred flame has better average damage than a single one-handed weapon attack by then, but since you don't have toll the dead available, the weapon could be better against high DEX monsters.

 

[Esker]

A variant human Arcane Trickster, OTOH, can be a perfectly lethal gish, and is no less durable than any other rogue. And with magic initiate, you can have magic from level 1!

I play an arcane trickster at my table, and she is a lethal gish, but she multiclassed into bladesinger, and uses booming blade and shadow blade heavily. Without any of those things on the table she'd basically just be a rogue in combat who gets advantage more often from an owl, and can choose to cast a debuff or fog cloud occasionally (very occasionally since she'd have hardly any spell slots) instead of attacking. I still love a single class arcane trickster, because rogues are really fun to play and some casting is lovely gravy, but I don't think it would feel so much like a gish, especially before level 7 when you're limited to 4 spells, all 1st level, and have to choose between shield and find familiar. I guess with vuman for magic initiate you can get find familiar there, and even more utility cantrips, but then you don't have darkvision, which is especially rough for a rogue.