Cleric/Mage

Frond

So I started a new game today with a cleric/mage. I EEKeepered my kit to wild mage and. to my suprise my divine spells were affected by a wild surge! I casted a command spell only to have it surge to a color spray. I thought that was very cool, certainly adds even more flavour to the multiclass.

GamingFreak

EE keeper is neat for unique multi-classes, despite my personal belief that it breaks the game even harder than it can normally be broken.

lunar

Hah, yeah, wild surges can occur even when you try to use special ability spells. And it is hillarious. You try to cast a healing spell on a wounded party member, and bam there goes a wild cow falling from the sky, blasting the poor sod to chunks. Bad medicine!

Pantalion

Playing Wild Mage/Cleric myself, asides from the occasional cow whilst self-buffing, and accidentally transgendering a Rakshasa into a troll, he's a blast to play, I never really appreciated how fiendishly powerful Polymorph Self + Sequencer'd Divine Might could be.

ReadingRambo

Wow that sounds like a blast, I think ill make a cleric wild mage for my next character

Silverstar

Kinda sounds like a cleric of Cyric or something (he's the madness one right?). The monks in Candlekeep must've loved you.

scorpiova

Mage/Clerics at low level are very difficult to play. At high level however... they are beasts. A lot of people don't give Aerie much credit... but at high level if you know your spells, she's a wrecking ball of magic.

Corvino

Cleric/Mages are actually very effective at low levels. Command and Sleep are great level 1 spells to disable foes and let your melee chunk them. Later on Glitterdust and Hold Person keep the AOE disables coming.

Once enemies start making their saves you're a buffing/debuffing/disabling machine. The ultimate support caster.

GamingFreak

Pretty much what Corvino said. And once you get level 7 cleric spells and level 9 mage spells... the pain train commences. Chain Contingency cleric buffs for a quick frontliner transformation, or go Time Stop + Harm for easy kills. I can imagine Black Blade of Disaster working with Cleric buffs too. Basically the high level combos are endless, to the point where Kensais, Fighter/Thiefs, and Fighter/Mages would look at the Cleric/Mage and go "Damn..."

nano

I can't wait to try out Chain Contingency Breach/Implosion/Harm ^_^

GamingFreak

Not sure it would work quite like that with harm since Harm has two phases, one being the casting the other being the "touch" confirmation. But you can certainly try to work it out!

nano

@GamingFreak Yep, you mentioned Time Stop/Harm to me and it was an awesome combo but I noticed that sometimes enemies will refresh their PfMW on the same round that you finish casting Time Stop. Usually it happens because I spend the round before taking down their defenses and Breaching them, then I spend my round casting TS, they spend their round casting PfMW. Anyways, once that happens I had no way of taking it down because Breach only hits after the TS ends, which is too late to slap them with Harm... but with something like Bigby's Hand (the level 8 one) or Implosion in place of Time Stop, it should Breach them on the same round that they get held so you can slap them immediately.

GamingFreak

Not a bad idea, I might have to try that out on my current run through the game once I get level 9 spells for Aerie.

nano

Yeah, I'm giving Aerie a go in my own game to try out some of the cool combos I've been missing out on. I have a cleric/thief too and if all goes according to plan, Aerie and I are going to go around terrorizing Faerun by touching everyone in uncomfortable ways during time stops and time traps.

GamingFreak

Cleric/Thief is more notorious for Cleric buffed backstabs. Holy Power basically gives you the thac0 of a fighter and lets you go in with a nice powerful Quarterstaff or club and just backstab the crap out of someone.

nano

That's what I'm using now, but we have more tricks up our sleeves!

karnor00

I find that cleric/mages are very effective as clerics because they get top level spells by level 14. And in a party of 6 this happens reasonably early in the game.

However as mages they are considerably less effective because they don't get top level spells until some way into ToB. This is due to the fact that they need 18 levels rather than 14, and each individual mage level requires more experience than an equivalent cleric level.