Hey all, My group and I are rejoining the ranks of D&D after a few year sabbatical and we are upgrading to 4E. I have taken on the role of the groups healer. It is my first time playing a healer, usually I play a damager/magic character. Any suggestion on first level feats/powers ect.? Also any play tips would be helpful. Thanks
First time Cleric... suggetions?
- Thread starter Ban1c
- Start date
D&D 4E features several different cleric builds. Straight out of the PHB, one can play a strength-based cleric or a wisdom-based cleric. Other supplements give you the ability to make a pacifist healing cleric and a "battle" cleric. I put "battle" in parentheses, because I feel like the PHB strength-based cleric is a damn fine "battle" cleric.
When I think cleric, I think of a character who can fight in melee with blunt weapons, turn undead, and heal. To this end, I went with the strength-based cleric, maxing her strength (or nearly so), but also giving her a high wisdom. Character optimization boards will probably tell you that it's more important to give your strength cleric a better dex or con than wisdom, and to tell the truth, I have felt the sadness of not qualifying for certain feats; but I have also been very happy with the fact that my cleric is pretty good at turning undead (and not shabby at healing-- which also benefits from the wisdom).
In addition to two melee oriented at-will powers, I took one ranged one (my cleric is a human). I think, on a hit, it grants a save which is nice, but Essentials gives humans a very nice racial power that has made me think long and hard about dropping my ranged at-will.
I think my first-level encounter was healing strike, because I wanted to bring more healing to the table than just the two healing words. My first-level daily was a melee attack that did ongoing fire damage; I dropped it as soon as I hit a level that allowed me to replace a low-level daily with a higher-level one (I hate retraining).
As for feats, I love the look of the triple-headed flail, so I spent a feat on that. I also think clerics look cool with shields, so I spent a feat picking up shield proficiency. Over the course of the character's career, I've mostly focused on feats that make her better at melee (focus, expertise, fighter multi-class stuff). I've picked up a couple that improve her healing and turning, but again, I mostly focused on melee when it comes to feats.
For utility powers, I mostly focused on cures. Again, I wanted the character to be able to do a lot of healing. She's an LFR (Living Forgotten Realms) character and I never knew if I was going to be the only healer at the table. Also, my first LFR character was a rogue, and she ran out of surges pretty easily, so I wanted my cleric to have powers that allowed for surgeless healing (to help protect the other frail rogues of the world).
For a paragon path, I picked up battle chaplain because it fit my idea of a shield-toting cleric.
Alright, so that was pretty one-sided. Maybe someone else can chime in and tell you about other cleric builds.
When I think cleric, I think of a character who can fight in melee with blunt weapons, turn undead, and heal. To this end, I went with the strength-based cleric, maxing her strength (or nearly so), but also giving her a high wisdom. Character optimization boards will probably tell you that it's more important to give your strength cleric a better dex or con than wisdom, and to tell the truth, I have felt the sadness of not qualifying for certain feats; but I have also been very happy with the fact that my cleric is pretty good at turning undead (and not shabby at healing-- which also benefits from the wisdom).
In addition to two melee oriented at-will powers, I took one ranged one (my cleric is a human). I think, on a hit, it grants a save which is nice, but Essentials gives humans a very nice racial power that has made me think long and hard about dropping my ranged at-will.
I think my first-level encounter was healing strike, because I wanted to bring more healing to the table than just the two healing words. My first-level daily was a melee attack that did ongoing fire damage; I dropped it as soon as I hit a level that allowed me to replace a low-level daily with a higher-level one (I hate retraining).
As for feats, I love the look of the triple-headed flail, so I spent a feat on that. I also think clerics look cool with shields, so I spent a feat picking up shield proficiency. Over the course of the character's career, I've mostly focused on feats that make her better at melee (focus, expertise, fighter multi-class stuff). I've picked up a couple that improve her healing and turning, but again, I mostly focused on melee when it comes to feats.
For utility powers, I mostly focused on cures. Again, I wanted the character to be able to do a lot of healing. She's an LFR (Living Forgotten Realms) character and I never knew if I was going to be the only healer at the table. Also, my first LFR character was a rogue, and she ran out of surges pretty easily, so I wanted my cleric to have powers that allowed for surgeless healing (to help protect the other frail rogues of the world).
For a paragon path, I picked up battle chaplain because it fit my idea of a shield-toting cleric.
Alright, so that was pretty one-sided. Maybe someone else can chime in and tell you about other cleric builds.
Ok my cleric was created using the character builder on WotC. He is a level 2 gold dwarf cleric (warpriest). I chose wisdom and constitution and strenght as my focus for abilities (reccomended by the builder). The builder say my racial features are cast-iron mind, and stand your ground along with dwarven resilience and weopon proficiency. My chosen domain is the sun domain. The first two feats I took are Battle healer which heals me my constitution mod every time I use my healing word and Amoth's Grace which is an immediate reaction to an ally within range being subject to a critical hit, that ally then can spend a healing surge.
I think my group is going to need quite a bit of healing at least at low level until we figure out our proper group mechanics and synergy.
I think my group is going to need quite a bit of healing at least at low level until we figure out our proper group mechanics and synergy.
Honestly, I don`t think Strengh-builds are too useful.They pack a surprising punch at early heroic and righteous brand is about as good as it gets for an at-will-buff, your strikers will love you for picking it. The strenght build only has one disadvvantage: It is MAD as hell and you need a lot of feats to be able to stand your ground in melee. You only get simple weapon proficiency, no shields and you get only chainmail. Battle Clerics Armament or some racial weapon feat can fix that up, as a melee cleric you definetely want a +3 proficiency weapon other than a dagger.
The real pain starts when you take a closeer look at the powers and class features available for clerics and you start to realize that Healer`s Lore lets you add your Wismod to he healing you grant. So a strong emphasis on your secondary attribute is somewhat preferable to make your healing powers more effective. With all the nerfs to surgefree healing you are sooner or later going to burn your teammates surges at an enormous rate, since you have access to a lot more more healing powers, but heal noticably less HP per surge you trigger in comparison to the Wis-cleric.
Quite a number of powers available to Strenght cleric have an additional charisma rider and lots of nice feats and PPs such as Holy Emissary make use of Charisma. And there are only two cleric PPs that trigger of Strenght. As a strenght cleric you can easily multiclass to fighter to grab some of their PPs (I like Dreadnougt for the toughness ), however, so this might not be an issue for you.
You are hard pressed for powers that grant saving throws that become more and more important as you level up, since you might not have the charisma to use the utilities for all they are worth. And Priest`s Shield is my personal nominèe for 4E`s worst at-will power. A +1 power bonus to AC? Seriously? Why would I ever waste a standard action
for that when I could use Righteous Brand instead? The deeceision between Wis and Cha for riders makes for tricky builds. And your at-will powers don`t deal radiant damage, so you won`t be good against undead unless you pick up a radiant weapon. And without a radiant weapon you cannot qualify for Radiant Vessel which is pretty much the boost to healing the cleric gets.
And your HP are a little low for a frontliner, so Toughness is almost a must have imho. Depending on your DM`s opinion regarding the lenght of an adventuring day, Durable might be neccessary as well, since your constitution won`t likely be good.
Oh and be sure to pick a deity of the skill domain so you can turn Righteous Brand into a MBA via the Power of Skill feat, so that you have an option for charging opponents and for more effective OAs. Again , pretty much a feat tax if you want to join the club of the true melees.
If you want to go the melee route with 4E, I would strongly recommend picking Sollinor`s Hammer, which is a MBA straight out of the box and look at some of the blast attacks the Wis cleric has access to. You will be a better healer, you can use Sacred Flame and actually hit something with it to grant saving throws or THPs and you will have an easier time qualifying for feats. Pick the Holy Emissary PP and go to town. +2 to saving throws for adjactent allies is plain awesome, your Defender will love you for it. For fun`s sake, convince your defender to pick the Justiciar PP, which lets allies reroll saves against charm and fear effects and watch your GM go mad
The way I feel about it, the designers pretty much tried to copy paste the WoW priest into the game and then deceided to offer the strenght build as an attempt to consolve nostalgic oldschool gamers who want their clerics to enter the fray. Only they totally failed to balance the two builds out against each other, offering much better options and much more support to one build, while neglecting the other almost entirely.
I mean, it took them until September 09 to finally realize the strenght cleric only had one PP available with attacks that trigger off strenght(1 1/2 if you generously ignore the fact the Encounter Power of the Angelic Avenger used Wis for attack rolls and you get 2 1/2 if you count Stone Keeper which s only available to dwarves). While there are 12 PPs for Wis-based clerics of any race. Oops.
Enough of the rant about the design of the cleric class and let`s hope somebody might be able to give you a quick tour of the laser and pacifist builds for i have no experience with these and thus cannot really comment on them.
The real pain starts when you take a closeer look at the powers and class features available for clerics and you start to realize that Healer`s Lore lets you add your Wismod to he healing you grant. So a strong emphasis on your secondary attribute is somewhat preferable to make your healing powers more effective. With all the nerfs to surgefree healing you are sooner or later going to burn your teammates surges at an enormous rate, since you have access to a lot more more healing powers, but heal noticably less HP per surge you trigger in comparison to the Wis-cleric.
Quite a number of powers available to Strenght cleric have an additional charisma rider and lots of nice feats and PPs such as Holy Emissary make use of Charisma. And there are only two cleric PPs that trigger of Strenght. As a strenght cleric you can easily multiclass to fighter to grab some of their PPs (I like Dreadnougt for the toughness ), however, so this might not be an issue for you.
You are hard pressed for powers that grant saving throws that become more and more important as you level up, since you might not have the charisma to use the utilities for all they are worth. And Priest`s Shield is my personal nominèe for 4E`s worst at-will power. A +1 power bonus to AC? Seriously? Why would I ever waste a standard action
for that when I could use Righteous Brand instead? The deeceision between Wis and Cha for riders makes for tricky builds. And your at-will powers don`t deal radiant damage, so you won`t be good against undead unless you pick up a radiant weapon. And without a radiant weapon you cannot qualify for Radiant Vessel which is pretty much the boost to healing the cleric gets.
And your HP are a little low for a frontliner, so Toughness is almost a must have imho. Depending on your DM`s opinion regarding the lenght of an adventuring day, Durable might be neccessary as well, since your constitution won`t likely be good.
Oh and be sure to pick a deity of the skill domain so you can turn Righteous Brand into a MBA via the Power of Skill feat, so that you have an option for charging opponents and for more effective OAs. Again , pretty much a feat tax if you want to join the club of the true melees.
If you want to go the melee route with 4E, I would strongly recommend picking Sollinor`s Hammer, which is a MBA straight out of the box and look at some of the blast attacks the Wis cleric has access to. You will be a better healer, you can use Sacred Flame and actually hit something with it to grant saving throws or THPs and you will have an easier time qualifying for feats. Pick the Holy Emissary PP and go to town. +2 to saving throws for adjactent allies is plain awesome, your Defender will love you for it. For fun`s sake, convince your defender to pick the Justiciar PP, which lets allies reroll saves against charm and fear effects and watch your GM go mad
The way I feel about it, the designers pretty much tried to copy paste the WoW priest into the game and then deceided to offer the strenght build as an attempt to consolve nostalgic oldschool gamers who want their clerics to enter the fray. Only they totally failed to balance the two builds out against each other, offering much better options and much more support to one build, while neglecting the other almost entirely.
I mean, it took them until September 09 to finally realize the strenght cleric only had one PP available with attacks that trigger off strenght(1 1/2 if you generously ignore the fact the Encounter Power of the Angelic Avenger used Wis for attack rolls and you get 2 1/2 if you count Stone Keeper which s only available to dwarves). While there are 12 PPs for Wis-based clerics of any race. Oops.Enough of the rant about the design of the cleric class and let`s hope somebody might be able to give you a quick tour of the laser and pacifist builds for i have no experience with these and thus cannot really comment on them.
On Puget Sound
First Post
The biggest change you'll notice right away is that your healing abilities are minor actions. This means you never have to choose between healing and making an attack; you get to do both in the same turn!
Encourage players to be willing to give up their own standard action to Second Wind and heal themselves, saving your precious 2 heals per encounter for when they are really needed. Dwarven teammates especially should SW before they bother you for healing!
Whether by SW or by your healing, at 1st level you want everyone who goes bloodied to get healed right away; the distance from bloodied to unconscious is surprisingly small at level 1, and monsters (at least when I'm DM) go after bloodied PCs by preference.
Once your party is around level 3, some characters (barbarians and a few others) that actually benefit from bloodied status can be allowed to bleed a bit; talk with those players about their expectations for healing.
If you're using books, some cleric powers, feats and items were nerfed by errata; "whenever you use a healing power" often now excludes surgeless healing. The character builder or compendium will have the current text.
Encourage players to be willing to give up their own standard action to Second Wind and heal themselves, saving your precious 2 heals per encounter for when they are really needed. Dwarven teammates especially should SW before they bother you for healing!
Whether by SW or by your healing, at 1st level you want everyone who goes bloodied to get healed right away; the distance from bloodied to unconscious is surprisingly small at level 1, and monsters (at least when I'm DM) go after bloodied PCs by preference.
Once your party is around level 3, some characters (barbarians and a few others) that actually benefit from bloodied status can be allowed to bleed a bit; talk with those players about their expectations for healing.
If you're using books, some cleric powers, feats and items were nerfed by errata; "whenever you use a healing power" often now excludes surgeless healing. The character builder or compendium will have the current text.
SensoryThought
First Post
In 4e, don't feel compelled to play a cleric if the party needs a healer. The other leader builds (bard, artificer, warlord) can all be very effective.
A cleric to me is about a character exploration of faith and a belief system. They can be interesting and challenging to play. Choosing a god and personality may help decide whether you want to be strength based, wisdom based, or balanced. The former is the best if you enjoy getting into melee, while the latter are better in support roles.
Note that if you think your DM is going to throw undead at you regularly, wisdom-based clerics have a lot of radiant attacks that disable a lot if killer undead powers and auras.
A cleric to me is about a character exploration of faith and a belief system. They can be interesting and challenging to play. Choosing a god and personality may help decide whether you want to be strength based, wisdom based, or balanced. The former is the best if you enjoy getting into melee, while the latter are better in support roles.
Note that if you think your DM is going to throw undead at you regularly, wisdom-based clerics have a lot of radiant attacks that disable a lot if killer undead powers and auras.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Well worth asking, although the simple answer is that it's hard to go wrong.
From the top it's worth pointing out that what a hit point actually represents has changed between older editions and 4e. In any form of D&D pre-4e a hit point was supernatural luck and protection that didn't ultimately make a lot of sense, but was a useful abstract. In 4e, your hit points are your Shock value - how much damage you can take right now before you drop. Think an action movie hero who is hit to breaking point in one scene and is staggering back to his feet, but is walking although bandaged the next scene. Your endurance is measured by your number of healing surges (and how many you have left) - this is closer to the old notion of hit points. And this is why all PCs have a Second Wind - instead of attacking they can take a breather once/fight to spend a healing surge for its value in hit points (i.e. catching their breath so they are ready for the next shock).
A lot of 4e leader (read: healer) builds actually provide no magical healing at all. They never allow a PC to recover hit points (i.e. shock) without using their own healing surges (i.e. endurance) to do so. They merely allow the PC to unlock his own endurance both efficiently and when the target PC needs to. (The classic PC leader operating this way is the Warlord - who often behaves like a drill sergeant to get the best out of people). Of course the ability to take a hit now is vitally important and doesn't actually lower the ability to take a hit in the future. Also hit points start counting up from 0, rather than from negative, so it's viable to let someone fall unconscious before spending a heal.
All leaders get two free "healing words" per encounter, allowing them to enable someone to turn a healing surge into hit points. And these free heals are minor actions, which is a huge innovation. As a minor action you can use it - and use your standard action to hit someone on the same turn. (There are no full round attacks). This isn't necessarily magical so fluff it how you like (no one will object if you want it to be magic).
Where clerics stand out is the amount of surgeless (i.e. magical) healing they get. But there are other healers depending what books you have available - Warlords (which work really well with many weapon-using classes), Bards, Druids (sometimes), Shamans, Artificers, and Ardents (psionic- don't ask) are also healers.
4e combat is very tactical - but one of the beauties of 4e character design is that almost any sort of tactics you want are viable. (One of my favourite leaders is the "lazy warlord" who never makes an attack roll himself, instead using his actions to grant attacks to everyone else). So the question becomes "what sources do you have available, and what concepts do you want to play?"
Tony Vargas
Legend
My suggestion would be to try one of the new non-cleric 'healers' (leaders).
The warlord is just awesome, for instance, but it's very much a fighter-type (melee warrior). It's also in the PH.
The Shaman has a caster feel, summoning a spirit that serves as an origin for some of it's powers, including healing, and can be of some use as a 'blocker.' It's in the PH2.
Also in the PH2 is the Bard, which has much the feel of the old '5th wheel' bard, but is a pretty good healer/leader, with both a melee-oriented and caster-oriented build.
There's also the more obscure Artificer (wizardish arcane leader), and psionic Ardent.
Finally, more recently, there's a Leader version of the Druid (HotFK), and an even more melee-oriented Bard sub-class called the Skald (HotFw).
If you do go Cleric, there are at least three very distinct sorts of clerics. There are high-STR melee clerics, who are pretty butch (especially with recent errata) in melee, and decent healers, and caster-oriented clerics who make with the radiant damage and are quite good healers, and, finally, theres the Pacifist Cleric, a caster build emphasizing non-damaging control spells and rediculously good healing.
The warlord is just awesome, for instance, but it's very much a fighter-type (melee warrior). It's also in the PH.
The Shaman has a caster feel, summoning a spirit that serves as an origin for some of it's powers, including healing, and can be of some use as a 'blocker.' It's in the PH2.
Also in the PH2 is the Bard, which has much the feel of the old '5th wheel' bard, but is a pretty good healer/leader, with both a melee-oriented and caster-oriented build.
There's also the more obscure Artificer (wizardish arcane leader), and psionic Ardent.
Finally, more recently, there's a Leader version of the Druid (HotFK), and an even more melee-oriented Bard sub-class called the Skald (HotFw).
If you do go Cleric, there are at least three very distinct sorts of clerics. There are high-STR melee clerics, who are pretty butch (especially with recent errata) in melee, and decent healers, and caster-oriented clerics who make with the radiant damage and are quite good healers, and, finally, theres the Pacifist Cleric, a caster build emphasizing non-damaging control spells and rediculously good healing.
Ferghis
Explorer
As someone above said, you can't really go wrong. So I'll add this: specialize. Put at least an 18 into str or wis, and at least a 16. Make your other selections based on those choices.
Before you get to paragon, make sure to take an expertise feat and a defensive feat (like improved defenses). I don't recommend spending any feats on channel divinity: you should get plenty of mileage out of Healer's Mercy.
Before you get to paragon, make sure to take an expertise feat and a defensive feat (like improved defenses). I don't recommend spending any feats on channel divinity: you should get plenty of mileage out of Healer's Mercy.
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