D&D 5E (2024) Is the War Cleric Being Slept On?

[Tigris]

Also because Tier 3 campaigns are best as psuedo-sandboxes where you have a set of themed encounters a DM can snag to throw at the PCs depending on what the players decide to go.

I think only 4e pushed this and made creating mid level encounters dumb easy.

13th age has less levels, but that one also works to "high level", and with its mid level progression each level has 4 mini progressions so it can feel more like 4 levels.


And also PF2 has high level mechanics follow the same relative simple guidelines.


Bug sure its relative rare. And 5e just really does not look balanced enough to wanting to try tier 3. 5.5 may be better but original 5e was so bad that people wont really try, except for one shots.

 

[Zardnaar]

13th age has less levels, but that one also works to "high level", and with its mid level progression each level has 4 mini progressions so it can feel more like 4 levels.


And also PF2 has high level mechanics follow the same relative simple guidelines.


Bug sure its relative rare. And 5e just really does not look balanced enough to wanting to try tier 3. 5.5 may be better but original 5e was so bad that people wont really try, except for one shots.

Problem seems to predates 5E all the way back to TSR days.

Thats with vastly lower power scaling and a completely different layer game meta with domains.

I suspect most 4E games didnt go that high either. They probably wasted a lot of phb space that probably shoud have been devoted to cut content. About 40 pages iirc.

 

[Tigris]

Problem seems to predates 5E all the way back to TSR days.

Games can and should learn. We are not 50 years ago we are in the age where modern gamedesign exists, and there is no reason to repeat errors from a time which should just not matter anymore.

The problem is people still try to reimagine old outdated games... there should just be a cut, especially now with enough 5e players around who dont even know what TSR is.

Thats with vastly lower power scaling and a completely different layer game meta with domains.

I suspect most 4E games didnt go that high either. They probably wasted a lot of phb space that probably shoud have been devoted to cut content. About 40 pages iirc.

Well its not wasted if it works. Its wasted when it does not work like in 5E.

In many games a lot of content is only seen/used by a small number of people.
Also the epic destinies in 4E are an absolute great idea and cool gamedesign and many RPG books are more read than actually played, and epic destinies are a cool dream to read.


Also the problem with "page counts" is mostly because we still have books. Kill them and there is no need to cut content as much anymore. But again we keep this outdated stuff alive, because of old people.

 

[Minigiant]

Dupe

 

[Minigiant]

I suspect most games in 4E didnt reach those levels either. Abigail reason it failed was it fixed a lot of roles that weren't actual problems

Probably not.

But I think a lot most 4e games started in the 10s.

The best way to run mid levels is to have an easy pre-made encounter for area. At mid levels, the party could teleport or fast travel to sn are in the beginning or middle of a session so you needed to be able to spit out a trap, obstacle, group encounter, or solo boss at a moments notice.

Again a Martial5/WarClericX is a GREAT PC if your campaign starts at level 8-12. You get 1-2 feats and are a 4th-5th level caster.

 

[ECMO3]

Personally, I wouldn't particularly focus on picking up either GWM or True Strike. True Strike has become a real cliché in 5.5, and the extra bonus action attack doesn't benefit from it anyway. I roughed up a war cleric build last night, something like this:

Of course it does not work with the Warpriest attack, but Truestrike is significant for a few reasons:

In tier 1 it brings an option for Radiant damage which is pretty awesome to have against Swarms, Zombies or Shadows, all common enemies in tier 1.

In tier 2+ it brings extra damage, especially after level 11. When you combine the extra 1/2/3d6 Truestrike gives with the extra 1/2d8 from Divine Strike it starts to get competitive with most versions of extra attack, and similarly when you cast a leveled spell and then use Warpriest as a bonus action you get to add the 1/2d8 to it, which is pretty significant damage for a Bonus action.

Also if you take a feat to get Truestrike, that is not all you get. You also get the Shield spell (and another Cantrip). The Shield spell makes Magic Initiate the best Origin Feat for any full caster that does not already have Shiled on their spell list.

Whether you like War Cleric or not, it is going to be rare that another Origin feat is going to be better than Shield for a Cleric who is in melee range.

Spices: Goliath (Hill Giant, good for blocking passages), Background: Guard

Cleric: Protector
Skills: Athletics, Perception, Insight, Medicine
Point buy ability scores at level 1:

STR 17
DEX 10
CON 14
INT 8
WIS 16
CHA 8

Feats: Alert (from background, to make up for low DEX), Weapon Master (or something similar) +1 STR, +2 WIS, +2 WIS, +2 STR

I think Goliath with Magic Initiate and Shield and Truestrike beats this at every single level from 1-20 even if you keep everything else the same.

It is cliche' for a Reason!

Notes: I would be on the lookout for a Girdle* of Giant Strength and the best available magic weapons and armour

Magic Weapons are going to benefit a Warpriest more because they are using them more often to attack. The problem with Girdle of Giant Strength is by the time they become available you are usually limited on attunement slots and other things offer more (Wand of Fireballs for example).

 

[Tigris]

Probably not.

But I think a lot most 4e games started in the 10s.

That for sure especially after DMG2 which focused on these levels. And we can also see it by how popular Paragon Classes where and how many of them were created.

The best way to run mid levels is to have an easy pre-made encounter for area. At mid levels, the party could teleport or fast travel to sn are in the beginning or middle of a session so you needed to be able to spit out a trap, obstacle, group encounter, or solo boss at a moments notice.

Yeah having good encounter building especially on higher levels is a necessity!

Again a Martial5/WarClericX is a GREAT PC if your campaign starts at level 8-12. You get 1-2 feats and are a 4th-5th level caster.

I am still not sure if this is a great PC, but definitly easier to run similar things on these levels.

Are they? I do not see it honestly.

Well the monk subclasses dont have much power budget, but Ranger and Fighter for sure have more power in the subclasses than clerics. Rogues are a bit strange, there it feels like most subclasses have mostly non combat power...

But I don't want to waste my feat on Guidance and I don't want to rely on someone else constantly doing it for me.

But thats the point of playing a team game, that you dont have to do anything yourself!
Also a feat is much less dramatic than 3 class levels, especially when fighter gets bonus feats.

You are already making 3 attacks, is it a loss really?

Yes? Burst is the most important part. Early damage in fights is important. And doing 1 less attack can make the difference between enemy getting 1 more turn.

Polearm Master bonus action for 1d4 is not as good and it locks you on specific weapon type. maybe I don't want to play a polearm build?

1d4 but still all bonuses and again for a much smaller cost. Also you can swap weapons in combat so you can still attack mostly with another weapon and then swap in the polearm for that attack.

Your loss, what build would you bring if I am bringing that one to the table then?

If I would want to have a bonus action attack I would either bring a polearm build, which only costs 1 feat, or use longtooth shifter which only costs subrace. And I would bring most likely a martial subclass which has a really strong level 6 feature, like Giant Barbarian (for polearm build).

 

[ECMO3]

I was assuming you were using Attack action attacks with GWM until Tier 3. Then you swap it out and stick to True Strike.

Because my assumption was that you picked War Cleric to attack with weapons. You have Wis Mod War Priest attacks and 1 CD Spiritual weapon a Short rest.

That lets you CD Spiritual weapon one fight encounter and War Priest the other fight. If you have less than 10 or so Combat rounds per Short Rest, then you could go harder on STR and rely more on War Priest.

You can't use GWM on your War Priest attacks and you can't use it on reactions. It only works when you take the attack action.

Truestrike would better damage at almost every single level except 4th. It is better level 1-3 because you don't have GWM yet and it offers a better damage type. It is better level 5+ because it does more damage than GWM would do (it does more damage in tier 2, 3 and 4).

You would be getting a feat that would offer +2 damage more than Truestrike on your action at level 4 and +0.5 at level 9 and 10 only. Every other level it is lower damage than truestrike.

But not taking any Martial Feat for weapons before Tier 3, just seems odd.

There are other better Martial Feats for a Warpriest. Slasher, Crusher, Weapon Master, Sentinel, Heavy Armor Master. There are all pretty good on this character.

 

[ECMO3]

Saying "I want to build a character that hits hard with a big weapon while being divinely inspired" is perfectly fine, than you can leverage cleric, or paladin, or some kind of fighter with feats and subclasses, or even something more esoteric if you're open to reskinning.

One level of Paladin with 19 levels of Whispers Bard and Green Flame Blade!

Full caster levels for smites all the way to level 20, Psychic Blades on top of that. Prayer of Healing at level 10 to recharge your Psychic Blades!

 

[Zardnaar]

Probably not.

But I think a lot most 4e games started in the 10s.

The best way to run mid levels is to have an easy pre-made encounter for area. At mid levels, the party could teleport or fast travel to sn are in the beginning or middle of a session so you needed to be able to spit out a trap, obstacle, group encounter, or solo boss at a moments notice.

Again a Martial5/WarClericX is a GREAT PC if your campaign starts at level 8-12. You get 1-2 feats and are a 4th-5th level caster.

Maybe/speculation.

Level 10+ in 4E is almost level 5ish with more hp. Vastly lower power scale.

4E also created new problems. Bigger one being people didn't want to play lvl 1 (we made it to 7th hit enough xp for 8th).

I don't think its an edition design issue as such. If anything its a casual/hardcore difference. Only hard core players with stable groups will probably hit lvl 10 let alone 20.

My groups generally do but it takes almost a year (bit weekly plus a few extra sessions). We are lvl 8 game started last December.

4e being slower irl for combat to resolve and the amount of fights required would be even slower. Still faster than 2E.

I suspect its a real life time issue. Even if you have all the time required you're probably a bit bored by 10 vs sexy new options you want to try.

It would take 12 years to play all the subclasses in the 5.5 phb if you did 4 per year. Generally the numbers just get bigger vs something new in all editions. Complexity/fun ratio for most gets out of whack.