Level Up (A5E) Making a Warpriest

[Khelben7]

This is my first dip into Level Up. I need help for my stats for a Warpriest. Is it true that my primary stats are Wisdom, Strength and Charisma? Kinda hard to choose. My dwarven Warpriest is suppose to be in the front of hand to hand combat (Strength). Wisdom is for spells and then there is Charisma.
Maybe
STR 15
DEX 10
Con 12
INT 8
WIS 14
CHA 13

 

[aco175]

I would normally welcome people to the boards for their first post, but I see you have been here awhile.

If you are a front-liner, I would swap the Con and Cha to put the 13 in Con so it would be easier to bump up for more HP at 4th level along with Str. You may end up with most of your spells being healing word so a high Wis is not as important to me. Although those stats look like it may be point buy before racial modifiers.

 

[VenerableBede]

Clerics are full casters with Wisdom as their primary casting stay. With that in mind, and with the knowledge that (to my memory) warpriests never get Extra Attack, I would recommend prioritizing Wisdom over Strength unless you campaign won’t get last tier 1. You’ll get a lot more mileage out of your spells than swinging a mace in the long run.

 

[Khelben7]

I would normally welcome people to the boards for their first post, but I see you have been here awhile.

If you are a front-liner, I would swap the Con and Cha to put the 13 in Con so it would be easier to bump up for more HP at 4th level along with Str. You may end up with most of your spells being healing word so a high Wis is not as important to me. Although those stats look like it may be point buy before racial modifiers.

I believe I joined the board at the start of 4th ed. Very cool edition as characters did their own thing. 5th is a bit back to basics but Level Up looks very interesting so far.
I haven't tried a Warpriest before and got perplexed by needing more than two good stats. The stats are based on points buy and is of the suggested values. No racial modifiers But my Guard Origins gives me +1 Strength and I chose +1 for Wisdom. In 6th level I get the Clerical Precision which lets me have advantage after a swing and miss - that would help with the lower Strength for hitting.
Str 14 +1
Dex 10
Con 12
Int 8
Wis 15 +1
Cha 13

Or would you rather Points Buy?

 

[Khelben7]

Clerics are full casters with Wisdom as their primary casting stay. With that in mind, and with the knowledge that (to my memory) warpriests never get Extra Attack, I would recommend prioritizing Wisdom over Strength unless you campaign won’t get last tier 1. You’ll get a lot more mileage out of your spells than swinging a mace in the long run.

How would you Points Buy by what you wrote?

 

[Satirical Bard]

If you want to optimise that build a bit better, drop your strength to 13+1 (in 5e and a5e, even numbers are where the modifiers go up). As per Venerable Bede, you could then switch the 13 from Cha to Con, and then use that point [technically, those 2 points] you took from Str to make it 14. Thus:

Str 13+1=14
Dex 10
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 15+1=16
Cha 12

BUT: take care not to optimise the fun out of your game! Each +1 represents a 5% increase, and in most sessions you won't make 20 rolls in any single type of roll, so you might not even see the difference. I'd encourage you you to build what you think will be fun, and what fits your idea for who this war priest is. [but if optimising is where the fun is for you, that's cool too]

 

[VenerableBede]

@Khelben7
Satirical Bard beat me to how I would stat it, roughly, and I think he also makes good points about tweaking as needed to make the character fit your vision. I don't know what your exact vision is or what your character's story is, but if you want to maximize the natural strengths of the cleric class while also giving your character some functionality in combat, I would recommend prioritizing Wisdom, Constitution, Strength... and after that I think I would prioritize Dexterity over Charisma and dump Intelligence, so slightly different than Satirical Bard did it, because I predict that most Narrators will use Dexterity to determine initiative nine times out of ten, most of us being accustomed to how O5e determines initiative, while only using other ability scores or skills to determine initiative when it's a no-duh situation. That would basically entirely gear your character toward combat, however, so if you want a little more flexibility in diplomacy (or information gathering) you might want to put your 12 in Charisma or Intelligence.

My big question is, how much emphasis do you want to put on being in the front line, swinging your mace and crushing people's skulls? If you think you'll have more fun focusing on being a melee combatant and attacking with a weapon much more often than spells for most of the campaign, you might have more fun as a Herald than a Cleric, as Heralds get more class abilities that reward them for being in the middle of a melee, but you still get some magic and healing abilities that give them a cleric-like feel. If this sounds appealing, I would recommend prioritizing Strength > Constitution/Charisma > Dexterity/Wisdom > Intelligence. (Prioritize Constitution over Charisma if you want to be tankier, prioritize Charisma over Constitution if you have fun casting spells and want your spells to be more powerful. Prioritize Dexterity over Wisdom if you are concerned about winning Initiative more, prioritize Wisdom over Dexterity if you are more concerned about spell saves.)

If you think being a Cleric and being a focused caster sounds more fun, I'm not trying to get you to switch into something that you don't think you would enjoy. I'm just pointing out one of the options you have if you want to play a class that's got a holy warrior theme (which is basically what a melee cleric is trying to do) and class abilities that reward melee combat more than the cleric's abilities do.

 

[Timespike]

I'd actually swap the DEX and INT scores. A heavy armored cleric isn't going to need DEX for much of anything; your ranged damage should be spells (guiding bolt, sacred flame, etc.), and that's aimed with your Wisdom. You're a healer and support caster, so going late in the initiative is arguably desirable. You're a healer, so taking damage from stuff you can DEX save against isn't that big of a deal. INT covers a bunch of useful knowledge skills, so for a cleric, it's probably better if you at least don't have a penalty in it. Cleric is one of the few places where you not only can dump DEX, I'd actually argue that you should.

Other than that, I think others have covered most of it.

 

[VenerableBede]

I'm not going to argue with your logic—it is true that a cleric that goes late in the initiative order will likely go after all of his allies, in which case he can heal them right after damage is dealt. So if that's your preference, that's an effective way to handle healing. But a cleric that goes first can cast a buff spell that may prevent damage from happening in the first place, damage an enemy that hopefully an ally can finish off before that enemy gets a turn, or attempt to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict before anyone actually gets stabbed. So, depending on your preferred tactics with your cleric, being heavily-armored and going first in combat is still really useful.

 

[Timespike]

Yeah, but we're talking about the difference of a +0 and a -1 here. If you decide to make a dex-based cleric (extremely viable in Level Up!) that's one thing, but if you're picking a dump stat for a melee-focused warpriest, I feel like dex is the better choice.

I will also admit that the idea of playing a mentally dim character annoys me more than the idea of playing a less-than-graceful one, so that's also a factor in my calculations.