Whoa! Priests of Helm are so strong!

Stormvessel

I am rediscovering Clerics it would seem (I've been out of the loop a while). And today I noticed Priests of Helm - wow, they seem so strong. Have they always been this way? I don't remember back in the day ever seeing +4Thac0 and 3 APR!!! Okay so you can't cast during but can you beforehand? What's stopping you from casting Champions Strength as a high level Cleric and then popping it for 3APR and +4 thac0???

And how are Preists of Lathander supposed to compete against this? I don't remember Priests of Helm being this strong...Am I overlooking something?

You could dual to mage at level 9, still max arcane spell casting, cast stoneskin, champions strength and pop that ability. As a 500k XP character you would be invincible for that portion of SoA! Am I missing something? Isn't this vastly OP???

TheArtisan

Priest of Helm/Mage is pretty awful... the Seeking Sword disables your mage spells as well when it's wielded which means you're utterly crippled if your buffs get dispelled/time out. Or the sword goes with your buffs which makes it redundant...

Personally I just think the lack of damage bonus on the weapon kills it. Priests of Lathander has 1 less attack but compensates with the ability to wield far more powerful weapons which means the difference in damage output is pretty meager in the end, plus they get a slew of immunities and still get to cast spells in the process.

Stormvessel

So it's not just cleric spells but mage spells, too. Well that stinks but still...as a 500k XP character +4 weapon w/ stoneskin, champions strength and 3APR seems very strong for that portion of the game. I don't know - I have a history of wanting to dual clerics for no other reason than a higher HP mage. It just seemed really strong to me for some reason. But I've been lost in NWN2 builds for the last year so maybe I'm just out of it a little.

TheArtisan

I really don't think it's that good. Seeking Sword is a 2d4 weapon with no damage bonus so the most damage it can deal in a round, strength bonus aside, is 12 damage. Ashideena, a weapon you can get at the very start, can deal 5-8 damage per hit. For a Priest of Lathander (2 attacks per round) it can deal anywhere from 5-16 damage per round.

Yes, Seeking Sword has decent scaling with the wielder's strength due to the extra attack. But the difference is pretty meager without an extremely high strength stat (19+). Don't forget Boon of Lathander also gives +1 to hit/attack so that closes the gap even more. Does dealing maybe 2-3 (maybe 5 with high strength) extra damage make up for losing all your spells? Eh, maybe for a half-orc PoH in early BG1 I can see it being alright. But it's a crutch spell that scales worse the better your equipment gets so I don't really see the point tbh.

Abi_Dalzim

I think the great equalizer here is Righteous Magic - which not only can increase your STR to 25, but also gives you max damage on every hit, so we're talking a guaranteed 22 damage a hit (plus any other damage buffs you may come up with), so 66 damage per round, plus whatever offhand weapon you may have. It may waste your wizard spells if you go that way, but for a pure cleric, it seems impressive.

Stormvessel

Abi_Dalzim said:

I think the great equalizer here is Righteous Magic - which not only can increase your STR to 25, but also gives you max damage on every hit, so we're talking a guaranteed 22 damage a hit (plus any other damage buffs you may come up with), so 66 damage per round, plus whatever offhand weapon you may have. It may waste your wizard spells if you go that way, but for a pure cleric, it seems impressive.

A 9PoH>Mage can cast righteous magic and champion strength (provided the wis is high enough for extra 5th and the /00 from CS doesn't supersede the 25str), barkskin and then pop SS....surely it doesn't sync w/ improved haste because then it really does get laughably ridiculous. You're basically a vanilla mage with super melee ability, better HP, better divine spellcasting than a Paladin, true sight for free and zero downside.

There is literally ZERO reason to EVER roll straight, unkitted Mage. Even being an Elf it's not worth it. Anything9>Mage dual class will always be the logical way to play vanilla mage IMO.

Arctodus

I think that PoH are better to dual from, because the drawback of the Seeking Sword is then not too heavy. I agree that high level PoH must be a pain though, being stuck with the sword for so long.

Dual at 7 or 9, and you're not that gimped casting-wise, because you're not stucked with the sword too long, while it's still useful. When you use SS, if your buffs are dispelled, then you can cast again, if they're not, you can deal good damage for a while and, most importantly, touch everything in SoA (+4 weapon). It's good but situationnal, in my opinion.

I prefer to dual PoH into thief though, because, while you can't cast, you can nontheless use your thieves skills (like backstabbing). It's a better synergy in my opinion.

Abi_Dalzim

Stormvessel said:

A 9PoH>Mage can cast righteous magic and champion strength (provided the wis is high enough for extra 5th and the /00 from CS doesn't supersede the 25str), barkskin and then pop SS....surely it doesn't sync w/ improved haste because then it really does get laughably ridiculous. You're basically a vanilla mage with super melee ability, better HP, better divine spellcasting than a Paladin, true sight for free and zero downside.

There is literally ZERO reason to EVER roll straight, unkitted Mage. Even being an Elf it's not worth it. Anything9>Mage dual class will always be the logical way to play vanilla mage IMO.

The timing of the Improved Haste might be tricky...unless you cast it in a Contingency to activate upon seeing the enemy, which solves that issue. Of course, a cleric/mage that can't use Contingency: Heal seems blasphemous to me, and Contingency: Remove Paralysis is a nice escape button as well, so maybe just cast IH with the other buffs.

elminster

Personally I've played through BG2EE with a single class Priest of Helm. The Seeking Sword was sweet at first but eventually it does get kind of tiring to cast it before battles (and is extremely limiting from a strategy standpoint).

BelgarathMTH

"There is literally ZERO reason to EVER roll straight, unkitted Mage. Even being an Elf it's not worth it. Anything9>Mage dual class will always be the logical way to play vanilla mage IMO."

@Stormvessel, If you do that, you will not get to be a mage for the entirety of BG1. Better to roll a multi-class mage-cleric if that's how you want to play, so you can be what you want to be in BG1. I'm not a fan of dual classing at all. Too much game content goes by with you not getting to play what you want to play.

People roll a straight mage when they want to play the mage role in their party without losing access to any spell schools. Extra spell slots are overrated. Taking into account wands, you don't really need to use memorized spell slots that often, especially since BG has very light resting restrictions.

Stormvessel

BelgarathMTH said:

"There is literally ZERO reason to EVER roll straight, unkitted Mage. Even being an Elf it's not worth it. Anything9>Mage dual class will always be the logical way to play vanilla mage IMO."

@Stormvessel, If you do that, you will not get to be a mage for the entirety of BG1. Better to roll a multi-class mage-cleric if that's how you want to play, so you can be what you want to be in BG1. I'm not a fan of dual classing at all. Too much game content goes by with you not getting to play what you want to play.

People roll a straight mage when they want to play the mage role in their party without losing access to any spell schools. Extra spell slots are overrated. Taking into account wands, you don't really need to use memorized spell slots that often, especially since BG has very light resting restrictions.

I see your point but do respectfully disagree with some of what you said. Okay. So you don't want downtime. That's understandable and perhaps I wouldn't recommend a full-fledged dual-class for new players. But hey, if they want pure, unkitted mage, they can still take a fighter and dual at level 7. I mean, come on! I can hit level 7 as a fighter within two hours of starting out and get those fighter levels back in even less time than that. Surely you can spare two hours. And what do you end up with? A Mage with high mastery in a weapon, two pips in a fighting style, an extra 1/2 APR, Berserker Rage (excellent against Mages, Sirens, Undead, etc - which saves spell slots that would be used for defensive spells)...and most importantly, assuming 18 con, a whopping 98HP! And you can still hit max level mage in BG2. Dual-classing at level 7, I promise you, you'll gain those levels back so fast you won't notice any difference whatsoever.

Even if you were to only dual at level 3 (which you can reach within 15 minutes), you get the benefit of mastery of a weapon, two slots in a fighting style, Rage, and 42HP!!!

So IMHO, there is never, ever, EVER a reason to roll straight class mage from a powergaming perspective. Not if you know the game and know what you're doing. But I do agree that multiclassing is better. I am actually playing a fighter/mage multi right now (Fighter/Illusionist is best but I didn't want to give up Horrid Wilting).

tbone1

I can see this being an setup if you dual to a fighter or thief, depending on how the APR work with a fighter. I'm not sure this would be worth it, but it would be worth investigating.

Stormvessel

tbone1 said:

I can see this being an setup if you dual to a fighter or thief, depending on how the APR work with a fighter. I'm not sure this would be worth it, but it would be worth investigating.

I don't think Priest of Helm would sync well with a fighter, because a level 13 fighter with Grandmastery in a weapon of his choosing will already have 3APR - all the time. So Seeking Sword is pointless with a fighter, seeing as how the 3APR replaces your regular APR. You'll basically end up as a poor man's Paladin - low level divine spells and bad HP. Dualing Priest of Lathander to Fighter on the other hand might seriously be worth it - I don't know though.

As for dualing to thief, I definitely agree with you! It's something that needs investigating.

Abi_Dalzim

Could a POH/Thief actually backstab with the sword? You generally can't with anything that a regular thief can't use. Maybe you'd have to backstab with a normal weapon and then cast the sword to stand and fight. All of that said, Righteous Magic plus backstab sounds intriguing, generally.

Arctodus

You can backstab with the Seeking sword. I tried it.

semiticgoddess

@Stormvessel: A level 13 fighter with GM will indeed have 3 APR, but a Priest of Helm->Fighter will have 4 APR. Seeking Swords sets your APR to 3, but a fighter's 0.5 APR bonuses at level 7 and 13 still apply, just like with bows, darts, and other weapons that set your APR to a given value.

Granted, in almost all situations, a Priest of Helm->Fighter would still probably be better off using a normal weapon rather than Seeking Sword, but it's worth pointing out that clerics don't get to use speed weapons. This means the only way for a Fighter/Cleric to achieve 10 APR without Greater Whirlwind Attack is to use the Seeking Sword combined with an off-hand weapon.

Damage bonuses from friendly bard songs could make the Seeking Sword the more valuable option due to its higher APR.

Stormvessel

semiticgod said:

@Stormvessel: A level 13 fighter with GM will indeed have 3 APR, but a Priest of Helm->Fighter will have 4 APR. Seeking Swords sets your APR to 3, but a fighter's 0.5 APR bonuses at level 7 and 13 still apply, just like with bows, darts, and other weapons that set your APR to a given value.

Granted, in almost all situations, a Priest of Helm->Fighter would still probably be better off using a normal weapon rather than Seeking Sword, but it's worth pointing out that clerics don't get to use speed weapons. This means the only way for a Fighter/Cleric to achieve 10 APR without Greater Whirlwind Attack is to use the Seeking Sword combined with an off-hand weapon.

Damage bonuses from friendly bard songs could make the Seeking Sword the more valuable option due to its higher APR.

Be that as it may, I would still think if you're going to dual a Cleric to a Fighter, the Priest of Lathander is the way to go. Dualing at level 11 gives you the ability to cast level 6 divine spells, and most importantly, two uses of Boon - and you can pop them both at once (they stack) for +2Thac0, +2dmg, and +2APR...and at caster level 11 it will basically last for a turn after you pop the second one. You can use it with any weapon (Flail of the Ages or Crom Faeyr for instance), you can cast spells during (though doing so would be stupid), and the immunity to level drain that the boon grants really helps out in certain areas of the game. Seeking Sword doesn't come close IMO. You can cast righteous magic, BoonX2, fighter HLAs...holy crap that's strong.

All in all, I was initially very impressed with the Priest of Tempus (from IWDEE), and this thread was created after I became impressed with the Priest of Helm...but I've been away from Baldur's Gate for quite a while (over a year), and the more I am becoming reacquainted with Baldur's Gate, the more I am absolutely reminded that Priest of Lathander is far and away still the best Cleric kit available. And the Stormlord is easily the worst (and I used to think it was the best *rolls eyes*).

All said, I find it very hard to dual class out of Cleric - or any caster for that matter - when dualing into a non-caster. It just doesn't seem right to me for some reason. But considering how these bonuses could sync well with a fighter, I can see why someone might do it and have success with it.

Arctodus

semiticgod said:

@Stormvessel: A level 13 fighter with GM will indeed have 3 APR, but a Priest of Helm->Fighter will have 4 APR. Seeking Swords sets your APR to 3, but a fighter's 0.5 APR bonuses at level 7 and 13 still apply, just like with bows, darts, and other weapons that set your APR to a given value.

Granted, in almost all situations, a Priest of Helm->Fighter would still probably be better off using a normal weapon rather than Seeking Sword, but it's worth pointing out that clerics don't get to use speed weapons. This means the only way for a Fighter/Cleric to achieve 10 APR without Greater Whirlwind Attack is to use the Seeking Sword combined with an off-hand weapon.

Damage bonuses from friendly bard songs could make the Seeking Sword the more valuable option due to its higher APR.

I'm always coming back to this but it's also true for the thief. Seeking sword with a speed weapon and improved haste put you up to a more than respectable 8 APR. For a thief. Imagine the results with Assassination. You now have a thief who can fight really hard without having a single level in fighter's classes.

The more I think about it, the more I see that the best dual from PoH is indeed thief. There's about no drawback. The flexibility (priest spells, thieving, ...) and the potential damage output seems rather interesting for a really well rounded Charname.

I'm sorry if I always talk about this combination, but I'm playing this exact build right now in SoA. All this talk made me realize the real potential of PoH --> thief. Can't wait to be in HLA territory...

Arctodus

Damn ! Made a mistake ! With a speed weapon it's 10 APR ! Even better ! I have to learn how to count...

Arctodus

I'm sorry if I'm confused, clerics can't use speed weapon. So it's 8 APR. It's just that in my install I have relaxed restriction on cleric weapon installed (so they can use blade weapon). Thus my confusion.

... Ok, I'm out.

Kurona

You can use a speed weapon with a Cleric/Thief once they get UAI. You can't put any point in the relevant proficiencies however.

Lord_Tansheron

Kurona said:

You can use a speed weapon with a Cleric/Thief once they get UAI. You can't put any point in the relevant proficiencies however.

It's been a long time since I went with a Thief that was not also a Fighter in some way, but from what I recall doesn't UAI also unlock all proficiencies? Or am I just misremembering?

Not that it matters. Even at literally 0 offhand damage, a +APR offhand is the best (offensive) offhand choice. Pips are largely irrelevant.

As for PoH, while the APR on the Sword is great (especially in BG1) I do feel that with the myriad of truly ridiculous weapons in BG2 you are simply better off with a PoL instead. Math will tell exactly, as it always does. Setup matters.

elminster

Lord_Tansheron said:

It's been a long time since I went with a Thief that was not also a Fighter in some way, but from what I recall doesn't UAI also unlock all proficiencies? Or am I just misremembering?

You are misremembering.

Arctodus

Lord_Tansheron said:

As for PoH, while the APR on the Sword is great (especially in BG1) I do feel that with the myriad of truly ridiculous weapons in BG2 you are simply better off with a PoL instead. Math will tell exactly, as it always does. Setup matters.

In the end, I think you're right. In bg1 and early SoA, Seeking Sword is definitively good, but will eventually lose it's usefulness. Any other weapon with more damage and/or effect-on-hit will outshine SS when used by a Priest of Lathander.

Don't want to derail the thread but a quick question : does stacking Boon of Lathander is suppose to be a bug ?

Lord_Tansheron

elminster said:

You are misremembering.

Very possible. Literal years since I rolled pure T. Thanks for the clarification!

Arctodus said:

Don't want to derail the thread but a quick question : does stacking Boon of Lathander is suppose to be a bug ?

Not sure, but intuitively it would seem to me that spells are not supposed to stack with themselves. I guess it's case-by-case and not a blanket rule?

WarChiefZeke

Meh, not really. A single class priest is gonna get ganked hard by a fighter/priest multi or dual.

Stormvessel

WarChiefZeke said:

Meh, not really. A single class priest is gonna get ganked hard by a fighter/priest multi or dual.

I wasn't talking about single-class priests. I was talking about using the PoH to dual from. PoH > Thief or PoH > Mage is what I would advocate. Being able to buff up with divine/arcane spells and then pop seeking sword seems strong to me.

In BG original, Cleric/Ranger multis or Dwarven Fighter/Clerics are what I would go with when it comes to divine magic. Maybe Ranger > Cleric dual if I want less fighting and more spellcasting. In the Enhanced Editions Berserker 13>Cleric will always be the king of divine casters IMO.

Lord_Tansheron

Stormvessel said:

In the Enhanced Editions Berserker 13>Cleric will always be the king of divine casters IMO.

Surely you mean B9->C. I would hate to have you flogged for heretical preachings.

FinneousPJ

@Lord_Tansheron Even that is quite underwhelming in BGEE, so let's make that B7 -> C

Lord_Tansheron

FinneousPJ said:

@Lord_Tansheron Even that is quite underwhelming in BGEE, so let's make that B7 -> C

*takes out the whip and chains*
Oh, you mean BG1. Different cake, different slice.
*sad that there will be no flaying the heretics today*

FinneousPJ

@Lord_Tansheron @Stormvessel did say Enhanced Editions plural. Hence I would argue a high level dual doesn't qualify "the king"