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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6331657" data-attributes="member: 58197">You're right, it's not less than half. As long as you're comparing mace-and-shield to sword-and-shield, rather than, say, greatclub to greatsword. And you make the comparison at level 8, after the cleric gets Divine Strike but before the fighter's third attack comes online. And you max out Strength instead of Wisdom.You know what you get for all that? 56% of the fighter's damage output. Slightly more than half. I won't even bother with the calculation for sacred flame, it's strictly for laughs compared to a fighter with a longbow or javelin.Certainly clerics win against undead, but that's one narrow category of foes.Are you maxing out Strength or Wisdom? You can't do both, not at level 8 anyway; it takes you till level 16 before you can get them both up to 20. If you're pumping Strength, your spells will suffer for it. If you're pumping Wisdom, your melee damage falls even further behind.For example, say you go with a direct damage spell, one well-suited to comparison: Spiritual weapon cast in a 4th-level slot. With 16 Wisdom, that will just barely get you up to the sword-and-board fighter's damage output. Of course, you are at that point using one of your two fourth-level spells for the day. Then the fighter busts out Action Surge and blows past you again.Plus the fighter has a whole lot more hit points than you. Hit dice aside, you're trying to pump Str and Wis on a cleric's advancement schedule; you're not going to get to touch Con for a looooong time, while the fighter can start pumping it from level 8. And the fighter gets that nice little self-heal, which refreshes every short rest and doesn't require giving up an attack action. And better initiative (Remarkable Athlete, and the fighter can spare more starting ability points for Dex--unless you wanted to give up even more Con?).</blockquote>

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