cleric spells

pipinho

what are your favorite cleric spells? how do you use clerics? do you usually multi/dual class them? I have a cleric/mage and i find it difficult to use her effectivly at the lower lvls

Freche

Command (2 slots) and Cure Wounds.

irendie

Cleric/mege with high stats is very good. You have spells for attack from mage and spells for heal or defense from cleric. It is very good multi-class.

Favorite spells? I keeping spells by situation so I used each spell at least 1. But in finall battle is best spell Cure Critical Wounds.

Tinter

Ignoring her mage side- there are many excellent mage spells- here are some good low level cleric spells. I usually use multiclass clerics; a cleric/mage should basically be treated like a mage, i.e. stand at the back and cast spells; but some of those she might want to do before combat to "buff" the party or specific warriors.


Good low level cleric spells for a back-rank cleric:
Lvl 1- Doom- useful against bosses. Protection from Evil and Remove Fear- both nice buff spells. Sanctuary- effectively invisibility- always useful
Lvl 2- Hold person- nice area disabling spell. Always useful. Chant- decent party buff spell.
Lvl 3- Holy smite- Party friendly area damage with chance of blinding enemies. Fantastic spell. Animate dead- excellent summons. Strength of One- can easily give your whole party over 18 strength, excellent buff spell.

ZanathKariashi

Harm - Reduces the enemy to 1d4 hp on hit, no save. (Note, priests are only slightly behind warriors in total thac0...though the rate they gain it is wonky...2 thac0/3 level, so it doesn't seem that way at times).

Given that healing in DnD is largely useless during battle, I don't usually bother, save a handful of spells for cleaning up truly nasty conditions, Heal is the only spell that actually has enough Umph! to make a difference. Clerics are also quite potent in melee, only really being held back due to their lack of extra base attacks. But given the ease with which they can buff themselves to high str levels, their shear defensive powerhouse nature, and several touch spells that can heavily damage or outright kill enemies...they're overall just a little slower at getting their murder on then warriors are.

Dwarf F/C (god saves) + DoEH + AoF + Hardiness + regeneration spell (3 hp/second) = Damn near immortality.

C/M takes a while to shine, and the mage half ends up weakening the cleric half (due to their wonky thac0 progression, while the mage lacks the ability to use their truly powerful spells...and then there's 1 spell per round limit) till the sequel, when you can begin to use both classes to devastating effect.

ajwz

level 1: Cure light wounds
level 2: Hold person
level 3: Summon undead

Nic_Mercy

Outside of healing spells my favorite cleric spells consist of:

Lvl1: Command, Bless
Lvl2: Hold Person, Chant
Lvl3: Holy Smite, Strength of One
Lvl4: Holy Power, Free Action, Defensive Harmony

Beyond that is BG2 territory where I like:

Lvl5: Chaotic Commands, Magic Resistance
Lvl6: False Dawn, Bolt of Glory, Wondrous Recall
Lvl7: Holy Word, Shield of the Archons
HLA: Summon Deva, Globe of Blades, Storm of Vengeance

atcDave

I think Holy Smite is my favorite. Although any of the Cure Wounds spells and Slow Poison are the most useful. I also use a lot of Draw Upon Holy Might, Bless, and Protection From Evil - 10' radius.

Ignatius

One that was not mentioned is lvl.2 spell Silence. Devastating in BG1 vs most ennemy spellcasters, can be cast out of range while spotting ennemies under sanctuary. Even more effective if preceeded by Doom.

lunar

Doom and command are great. Doom is for those big tough enemies, every spell/wand will have +%10 chance to affedt them fully after casting this spell, also they will suffer -2 to attack rolls.

Silence is golden. No, really, it has a huge -5 to save which makes it very hard to resist.

Hold person has area effect, but very little. Wait until enemies cluster together then fling it, you may catch a lot of enemies!

pipinho

Yea I use silence alot

Ignatius

Silence is really, really great. So much that I think the SCS mod implements mages scripted to open up with Vocalize as the fight begins. Also you can cast it from out of range since it is an AoE spell which does not need a specific target (unlike Hold Person, for instance). It could be used in a sort of blitz-cleric run where the cleric would dedicate all lvl.1 slots to sanctuary to scout around, and all lvl.2 slots to silence which would be repeatedly cast until everything on the map is quiet. And then finish off the fight with wands/special items or send in the summons/rest of the party. Not much would resist. The only slight drawback is a limited duration at lower levels (2r/lvl).

Another interesting one is lvl.3 Glyph of Warding. The drawback is that a save negates. But at higher levels the damage sky-rockets, and you can cast several, and they never expire once laid. Again here, a cleric of Talos for instance with electrical immunity, can power-blast tough fights, luring group of ennemies into mulitple glyphs. With a lvl.8 cleric an unsaved glyph will deal 8d4 dmg. Lay 4 of them in one spot, and on failed saves they will deal 32<dmg<128...

AHF

Ignatius said:

Another interesting one is lvl.3 Glyph of Warding. The drawback is that a save negates. But at higher levels the damage sky-rockets, and you can cast several, and they never expire once laid. Again here, a cleric of Talos for instance with electrical immunity, can power-blast tough fights, luring group of ennemies into mulitple glyphs. With a lvl.8 cleric an unsaved glyph will deal 8d4 dmg. Lay 4 of them in one spot, and on failed saves they will deal 32

All clerics can use these to great effect with the protection from lightning 4th level spells that gives you total immunity. Add the boots granting 50% immunity and you can use them to heal yourself as well.

Wilbur

My absolute low level favorite is hold person, which I always turn to when I stumble upon a challenging enemy party.
I have always liked Draw upon holy might as well even if it's not very effective on a pure cleric. Fighter/cleric on the other hand...

Rhaegar

I always found cleric spells cast too slow so I tended to use them as heal bots..

Making an effort to get better use out of them

Ignatius

@Wilbur: DUHM is fantastic, and keeps getting better. With a pure-class Cleric, combined with Holy Power (lvl.4) which lasts quite a while at high levels (1r/lvl), you got yourself a god-like F/C for one full turn. Besides this, DUHM can be used as healing because of the high CON, or to open locks (not so many locks will resist STR>20), or in the beginning of BG1 as a way to carry very heavy load for those not so strong characters - such as when you need to carry a body, etc... extremely useful on a solo-run.

The only pain is that you cannot reach lvl.9 in BG:EE with a 161K xp cap, thus limiting the bonus of DUHM to +2 STR, DEX & CON. Still very much worth a spell slot.

Finally casting time = 2. That's not much, it is one of the rare self-buffs you can afford to cast in the midst of a battle.

mjs

command knocks anything out, even pesky mirror image mages! silence ends any mage heavy fight quickly. hold person is debilitating and lasts for ages and chant which is a great area buff.

Wilbur

@Ignatius

You're right. I didn't remember the Holy Power spell at all and that is a deadly combo.

Ignatius

Wilbur said:

You're right. I didn't remember the Holy Power spell at all and that is a deadly combo.

And you can further combine it with Righteous Magic in BG2 (lvl.5 spell). The classic "holy triumvirate" for clerics which turns them, albeit for a limited period of time, in the most formidable combattants. Just be sure to always cast Holy Power first, because it will set your STR to 18/00, and then DUHM and any other STR bonus will come on top of 18/00.

Obviously the Fighter/Cleric (MC or DC) can do all this and more, since it goes beyond specialization in weapon proficiencies.

Ignatius

On Chant: an issue I have with this spell is that it is caster-centric, and then with a 30-ft AoE. That's a bummer, because Chant raises allies' rolls and penalizes ennemies', so ideally you should cast it right in the middle of the brawl. Which means your cleric should be right there in the middle, and take a full round to cast it. Not convenient at all. Used as a pre-buff, you lose half the benefits of the spell. Still nice to have, but would have been better had it been centered on any point within a 30-ft AoE (like Silence is, for instance), enabling the caster to stand away from the battle or even out of sight (where he can more easily afford to waste a full round).

Kaltzor

For favorite cleric spells, while not the best and not so much a "cleric" feeling spell, I like Flame Strike.

Ignatius

Kaltzor said:

For favorite cleric spells, while not the best and not so much a "cleric" feeling spell, I like Flame Strike.

1d8 fire dmg/lvl, save for half - is indeed great. Furthermore clerics do not have that many direct single target damage spells. Not available in BG1 due to the cap, but Wand of the Heavens does the job just fine!

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Corvino

Cleric/mages (especially cleric/illusionists) are the bomb. They're fantastic support casters and work best backing up a more specialised party.

Sit your cleric/mage at the back with sleep/blind and command/hold person in your quickslots. Whenever your tanks run into something scary throw a spell or 2 at it and watch as your melee tear it to bits. This will get you through your first few levels pretty easily.

As you level up the tactics remain similar. Prebuff whenever possible and crank up your disabling spells whenever you can. Horror, slow, greater malison and chaos all work on groups of enemies. For neutral/good cleric/mages holy smite is also a good area damage spell. Sitting at the back also means you can cast dispel magic without losing your own spell protections.

For animating dead - use a pure cleric if you've got one as they scale with level.

Ignatius

The moment you unlock lvl.3 spells up until the end of BG1, Animate Dead is such a boost. The last upgrade of the skeleton warriors (at lvl.7) are tough and hit hard, with long swords +1. The only issue with always having undead around is that they get blasted by Holy Smite if you cast it....

pipinho

i think since it takes so long for my c/m to lvl up it feels so weak compared to my other characters. :S especially considering i have edwin in my party and he is a beast... I