D&D 5E Strength Clerics

[Flamestrike]

It's been done before.

Ok, lets go with Level 9 then.

Vuman Zeal/ Tempest/ War/ Forge Cleric, Feat: Magic initiate [Booming Blade] +4 Wisdom.

S: 16
D: 8
C: 14
I: 8
W: 20
Ch: 10

Skills: Athletics, Medicine, Insight, Perception, Religion.

Uses Greatsword (plus divine strike and booming blade), Full Plate, and isnt tied into using Shilleleigh (so can use magic weapons).

 

[Zardnaar]

Ok, lets go with Level 9 then.

Vuman Zeal/ Tempest/ War/ Forge Cleric, Feat: Magic initiate [Booming Blade] +4 Wisdom.

S: 16
D: 8
C: 14
I: 8
W: 20
Ch: 10

Skills: Athletics, Medicine, Insight, Perception, Religion.

Uses Greatsword (plus divine strike and booming blade), Full Plate, and isnt tied into using Shilleleigh (so can use magic weapons).

2 dump stats no warcaster. If using Vuman.

Death Cleric. 9

Strength 10
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 8
Wisdom 20
Cha 12

Uses toll the dead instead of weapons. Can often get two targets as well, 3d8 or 3d12 minimum

Uses warcaster with spiritual guardians.

Channel divinity +23 damage 2/shirt rest

Necrotic isn't resisted that much and you can switch to radiant easy enough.

Better at range. Better at skills, initiative, spell DCs connect more than 16 strength. Higher AC since you're resorting to two handed weapon.

Or your character same feat, arcane cleric potent cantrip, shillelagh and green flame blade or booming blade.

Potent cantrip with the 4E type cantrips. 1d8+10 damage is more than 2d6+3 and you get the same riders with +5 damage on them.

Arcane cleric better stats, more damage, higher AC, better initiative. Better in every way except strength checks and saves (+3 dex save counters that imho).

It's also magic damage. And I hit more often than you, -5 vs +3.

Spiritual guardians up kinda combos with booming blade. Take an extra 5 points if damage when I cast booming blade and an extra 5 points if you want to move away from my spiritual guardians.

 

[Flamestrike]

2 dump stats no warcaster. If using Vuman.

Death Cleric. 9

Strength 10
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 8
Wisdom 20
Cha 12

What armor are you wearing with a Strength of 10?

Half plate and a shield (alone) has you pushing your encumbrance limit of 50lbs before factoring in any other adventuring equipment, and imposes disadvantage on Stealth checks (negating your slightly better Dex score).

The Strength Cleric hits harder (at least 2d6+3+2d8, eventually increasing to 2d6+5d8+5, plus whatever the weapon is doing) and isnt relying on a 'Save or nothing happens' spell.

 

[Flamestrike]

Potent cantrip with the 4E type cantrips. 1d8+10 damage is more than 2d6+3

Its not 2d6+3. You're forgetting Divine strike (instead of Potent cantrip) adds an extra 1d8 (further increasing to 2d8 later on).

 

[Zardnaar]

What armor are you wearing with a Strength of 10?

Half plate and a shield (alone) has you pushing your encumbrance limit of 50lbs before factoring in any other adventuring equipment, and imposes disadvantage on Stealth checks (negating your slightly better Dex score).

The Strength Cleric hits harder (at least 2d6+3+2d8, eventually increasing to 2d6+5d8+5, plus whatever the weapon is doing) and isnt relying on a 'Save or nothing happens' spell.

You're counting on a hit or nothing happens, saves scale worse than AC. Death clerics channel divinity also works with spells like vampiric touch so not hard to spike their damage and gain hp.

Arcane cleric gets same riders as you but +5 savage on the hit plus rider and gets +2 to hit over you dealing more damage and hitting more often.

I can throw the 12 in strength no big deal or wear lighter armor and have same AC as you.

 

[Flamestrike]

You're counting on a hit or nothing happens, saves scale worse than AC. Death clerics channel divinity also works with spells like vampiric touch so not hard to spike their damage and gain hp.

Arcane cleric gets same riders as you but +5 savage on the hit plus rider and gets +2 to hit over you dealing more damage and hitting more often.

I can throw the 12 in strength no big deal or wear lighter armor and have same AC as you.

You're forgetting my Zeal channel divinity which lets me toss out a Maximised fireball every short rest or maximising thunder damage (such as from Booming blade and Divine Strike).

Arcane clerics dont deal more damage. Presuming Shilleligh and Booming blade and Wisdom at 20 it's 2d8+10 damage (19 damage) at 9th level. Greatsword plus Booming blade plus Divine Strike is 2d6+2d8+3 damage (19 damage).

You've literally only just caught up to my damage, which has been higher than yours from 1st level through to 7th.

The hit bonus is slightly better which ups expected damage by a fraction, but you're splitting hairs at that point.

Your damage is also capped at this point (and you were stuck at 1d8+Wisdom to 5th level). Mine increases by another 1d8 over yours when improved Divine Strike is online at 14th.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I'm currently playing a hill dwarf arcane cleric with 18 CON and the tough feat. 12 HP/lvl is a massive amount of damage they can soak up. You can worry free use the spells that share damage with a front liner OR the spell that hurts you to heal double that damage to an ally to really keep the front line going in battle.

That being said...there really wasnt much reason to go with STR and a weapon over their arcane damage cantrips.

A Strength/Destruction half-orc cleric was my all time favorite 3e character, and may e my favorite of all time.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're forgetting my Zeal channel divinity which lets me toss out a Maximised fireball every short rest or maximising thunder damage (such as from Booming blade and Divine Strike).

Arcane clerics dont deal more damage. Presuming Shilleligh and Booming blade and Wisdom at 20 it's 2d8+10 damage (19 damage) at 9th level. Greatsword plus Booming blade plus Divine Strike is 2d6+2d8+3 damage (19 damage).

You've literally only just caught up to my damage, which has been higher than yours from 1st level through to 7th.

The hit bonus is slightly better which ups expected damage by a fraction, but you're splitting hairs at that point.

Your damage is also capped at this point (and you were stuck at 1d8+Wisdom to 5th level). Mine increases by another 1d8 over yours when improved Divine Strike is online at 14th.

Zeals not really a proper domain though. Good luck finding va DM that allows it.

It's a mish mash of 2-3 other domains cherry picked in a MTG pdf that's not AL legal and banned in most home games from the sounds of it.

MTG PDFs hot mess that's not the only one.

 

[jgsugden]

One of my first 5E characters was a Human Variant War Cleric. He had a 16 Strength, 16 Wisdom, and Great Weapon Master at first level.

In his first real action, he came across an ogre guarding a cave. He cast bless. And then snuck up on the ogre, getting a surprise round, and then beat the ogre in initiative.

He used his war cleric ability to make an attack as a bonus action during the surprise round, so he was doing: 2 attack rolls of d4+d20 to hit versus AC 11 and each hit did 2d6+13 damage. He hit twice. And did about 40 damage.

Then, in the next round, because he won initiative, he went before the ogre. He attacked and missed, but then used the War Cleric ability a second time and did about 20 damage - killing the ogre. Solo, At 1st level.

As we were new to the edition, it sparked some controversy about how broken clerics were. That talk faded at about 5th level, but up and until that point the group was quite upset that the war cleric was so overpowered. After 5th he was effective, but not seen as overpowered (until he multi-classed to paladin.

 

[Flamestrike]

Zeals not really a proper domain though. Good luck finding va DM that allows it.

You're relying on the Death domain above, which is explicitly a NPC choice.

Im just not seeing it. Strength clerics are totally viable.