My in-depth Cleric/Mage guide, tell me what you think

Khen_sai

Hey everyone, long time lurker reporting for duty.

As a long time Cleric/Mage fan, I wanted to share my knowledge of one of my favorite (but sadly underrepresented imo) character builds ever conceived.
I've tried to cover both party-play and solo aspects well as I can, although I'll fully admit I haven't soloed entire BG through with any class (except the mandatory Kensai/Mage, of which I solo'ed until ToB). I also covered some of the C/M's polymorph/shapeshift + self-buff potential, even though I'm not a fully-fledged expert on the subject.

Regardless, I hope this guide offers useful info for newcomers, and possibly some neat tidbits for old veterans.
This guide is strictly based on EE versions of the game, but most of the information should apply to vanilla-BGs too.

I'd greatly appreciate any feedback you folks have to offer!
It was fairly well received in BG Reddit, so I felt comfortable advertising my content here as well.

sarevok57

the cleric/mage is actually one of my favourite classes, especially with the scripts I made they are brutally awesome, just raining down havoc all over baddies

SomeSort

I mentioned this over on Reddit, but
(A) I really appreciated a lot of the strategy content, and especially the shapeshift section you added. I'll admit that I never knew about the awesomeness that was Cloak of the Sewer's Rat Form.
(B) I think you sell the Cleric>Mage dual-class a little bit short.

To me, arguably the two reasons to play a C/M over a different class are the insane metamagic combinations and access to critical Divine-only spells without having to bring along Aerie/Jahiera/Viconia/Anomen/Cernd. And in exchange for those two great benefits, you get severely hampered Arcane spell progression, (e.g. you aren't getting access to your level 9 spells and HLAs until *6 million XP*, which in a full party of six is going to be in the latter stages of ToB).

I think the Cleric>Mage dual can still get you those two benefits while still maintaining the much faster Arcane progression of a pure-class mage. Plus it lets you use one of the fun Cleric kits: Boon of Lathander, in particular, is suh-weet.

Probably the points that make the most sense to dual are level 9 (full HD and access to 5th level spells), level 11 (access to 6th level spells, an extra use of your Cleric kit innate ability), level 14 (access to 7th level spells), or level 15 (upgraded Skeleton Warriors). You could also dual at 10 (an extra 4th/5th spell) or 12 (an extra 6th spell and an extra +1 from DUHM), depending on what you're looking for and how long you want your downtime to be. (Heck, you could dual at 7 and have no downtime at all, but then you miss out on Chaotic Commands.)

The Level 14/15 duals take a long time to unlock and are best for experienced players or small-party playthroughs, but a level 9/10/11 dual is cake even for a new player. C(9)>M takes 475k experience to complete and C(10)>M takes 825k experience. With both of them, you can restore your Cleric levels immediately simply by booting all of your party members and scribing all of the level 1-6 spell scrolls, (without even resorting to erase/re-scribe cheese, and which should net you somewhere in the neighborhood of a half million XP). C(11)>M takes 1.425m, which is substantially longer, but also still achievable in a party of six before leaving for Spellhold.

In terms of what they offer:
C9/10 gets you full-powered Minor and Major sequencers, and Spell Triggers / Contingencies / Chain Contingencies with up to level 5 cleric spells, (mostly just lacking Heal, Aerial Servant, and Blade Barrier).

C11 gets you full-powered Minor and Major sequencers, Triggers, and Contingencies, you really only lack fully-upgraded Skeleton Warriors, (you can still get the level 5 arcane version, but you can't stuff that version into a Spell Sequencer), and the ability to stick level 7 Cleric spells into a Chain Contingency, (which a C/M wouldn't be able to do until 6m experience, anyway).

C>M also loses out on Cleric HLAs, but that's no big deal because Cleric HLAs are probably the worst in the game; there's not really anything Cleric HLAs can do that mage HLAs can't do better.

In exchange, the dual gets you access to all that tasty metamagic that's the biggest selling point of the class combination literal millions of experience points earlier. Here's where the C/M, C(9)>M, and C(11)>M get each new piece of metamagic.

Contingency:
C/M: 1.5m XP
C(11)>M: 1.42m XP
C(9)>M: 975k XP

Spell Sequencer:
C/M: 3m XP
C(11)>M: 2.18m XP
C(9)>M: 1.73m XP

Spell Trigger:
C/M: 4.5m XP
C(11)>M: 2.93m XP
C(9)>M: 2.5m XP

Chain Contingency, (and the ability to use level 6 spells with Contingency):
C/M: 6m XP
C(11)>M: 3.68m XP
C(9)>M: 3.23m XP

The multi will have better THACO, saves, and scaling on the cleric spells that scale, though the latter is kind of rendered irrelevant by the fact that the dual has better scaling on the mage spells that scale. The biggest scaling cleric spells I can think of are Animate Dead, Holy Smite, and DUHM. The dual-class actually maxes out his skeleton warriors (on the arcane side) about a million XP before the multi-class maxes his on the divine side, and the slower Holy Smite scaling is a small price to pay for faster Skull Trap scaling (and much, much earlier access to ADHW / Dragon's Breath).

It seems unintuitive to dual-class *away* from a spellcasting class, and I was resistant to the idea for a long time, but while I find the C/M multiclass to just be too slow for my tastes the times I've brought Aerie along, I've had a lot of fun with the C>M duals in the past.

Anyway, I don't mean to disparage the work you did, which is quality. Like I said, I just felt like you're overlooking how user-friendly the dual-class can be and wanted to mention it for the sake of thoroughness.

elminster

I wrote the spells and abilities guide on Steam (and the NPC guides). Just wanted to say your guide looks good

BelgarathMTH

I love your guide, but stacking multiples of the same save-or-else spells in the same sequencer or contingency is a waste. There is only one save made against the sequencer/contingency, and the enemy either saves or fails against all of the spells with one roll. Casting multiple save-or-else spells at once does not cause the enemy to roll separate saves against each one.

Possible exception: stacking Webs or Clouds, because once placed, each Web or Cloud will cause a saving throw to be made every round.

Hadar

@Khen_sai

I'm not specialist and I just look hurriedly through your guide, but few years ago I discussed this topic on forum.

Catch: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/17545/the-most-epic-mage-cleric/p1 - maybe you will find something useful there

Khen_sai

Thank you for comments, glad to hear I've managed to put up something others find useful

@SomeSort: I expanded my view on C>M in the guide, hopefully acknowledging your input in a form you want.


@BelgarathMTH:
I could have sworn seeing two "Save vs Spell" rolls in the combat log whenever I tossed "2x Blindness" Minor Sequencer, I used it fairly regularly in SoA portion of the game... I haven't installed any mods besides Dungeon-Be-Gone, but I doubt any EE fixpack would cause that either.

Come to think of it, I definitely saw multiple "Save vs Spell" (against same target) whenever I pull triple "Horrid Wilting". Are you absolutely certain you've seen those symptoms in un-modded EE version?
Still, I'll have to keep an eye on that in the future.

SomeSort

BelgarathMTH said:

I love your guide, but stacking multiples of the same save-or-else spells in the same sequencer or contingency is a waste. There is only one save made against the sequencer/contingency, and the enemy either saves or fails against all of the spells with one roll. Casting multiple save-or-else spells at once does not cause the enemy to roll separate saves against each one.

Possible exception: stacking Webs or Clouds, because once placed, each Web or Cloud will cause a saving throw to be made every round.

Would this mean that if you created a triple Ray of Enfeeblement spell sequencer, enemies would get one saving throw and if they failed it they'd lose 15 strength? Because if so, that'd be potentially useful. Hell, against enemies with 10 strength or less it could turn a Minor Sequencer into a straight-up Save or Die, (although I'd imagine most enemies with <10 strength would be mages, who would have awesome saves vs. spells).

TheArtisan

@SomeSort

No that doesn't work, Ray of Enfeeblement doesn't reduce your strength by 5, it sets it to 5 which means casting it multiple times has no effect beyond resetting the duration. I can't think of a spell with a saving throw effect that might be useful stacked three times because most of them don't have cumulative effects that can be abused.

semiticgoddess

@Somesort: You can get stat drain kills using Ray of Enfeeblement. However, it can't do it on its own; you need an Archer at level 12 to drain STR using Called Shot. The good news is that an Archer's Called Shot also decreases the target's save vs. spell, making Ray of Enfeeblement much more likely to succeed.

In Icewind Dale 2, Ray of Enfeeblement does drop STR by 15 in one casting, and I believe it stacks. However, stat drain kills are impossible in IWD2, so all it does is severely weaken an enemy's melee attacks.

semiticgoddess

About the guide itself: This is really spectacular. @Khen_sai covered all of the bases; I can't think of anything to add.

And considering how often I play cleric/mages, that's saying something.

BelgarathMTH

Maybe EE changed the rules I'm used to. Confirmation is needed, I guess. It's not a huge deal. But I'd advise anyone counting on multiple save rolls being made to check the feedback scroll very carefully after casting a sequencer/contingency.

It could be that Horrid Wilting counts as a Cloud effect. What I'd not count on is, say, something like Feeblemind x 3, or Horror x 2, or Charm Person x2. Any save-or-else that doesn't do damage is suspect if you're counting on multiple save rolls. Actually, all spell saves could stand to be checked.

One of our resident experts could probably come along and clarify things.

Blackorb

Good guide well done!

Aasim

Nice guide. One thing I'd add; Storm of Vengeance. While this spell's damage output is rather pathetic overall, the variety of damage types, poison effect, large AoE and duration ( + it bypasses bypasses Lich immunities and Globe spells) make this spell arguably the best spell disruptor in the game.

SCARY_WIZARD

- Place Cleric spells in Sequencers, Spell Triggers and Contingencies. Some of these combinations are real blast.

This alone is my favourite part.

You do a good combination justice!