? -> Cleric
Nikomakkos
Member Posts: 44
Hi all ye denizens and lurkers.
Seeing as the Cleric kits are kind of meh compared to many other kits, I often find myself thinking of ways to improve the Cleric class by picking another class at first and then dualling early to a Cleric, possibly giving him way more interesting benefits than the kits give.
Here are the things I've come up with so far.
Fighter or Berserker 3 -> Cleric: A really quick dual that gives you Grand Mastery and one use of Rage if you go Berserker (sacrificing Slings somewhat). Grand Mastery is less penalizing for a Cleric I feel because of their limited weapon selection (basically you want to go for Flails I think).
Swashbuckler 5 -> Cleric: Another really quick dual that gives you -2 AC, -1 thac0, +1 dmg and some thief skill points (you could do Find Traps and Detect Illusions or just Pick Pockets or whatever). If you had another thief in the party this would free him up somewhat to go for other things, rounding out your party's thief skills.
Bounty Hunter 6 -> Cleric: This gives you some thiefs skills again and two uses of premeditated Slow.
Haven't thought of anything more, folks. Maybe I haven't given it that much thought, but I would love to hear your ideas. What other nifty things can you think of? What is best/coolest? Would you agree these are better than the Cleric kits?
Seeing as the Cleric kits are kind of meh compared to many other kits, I often find myself thinking of ways to improve the Cleric class by picking another class at first and then dualling early to a Cleric, possibly giving him way more interesting benefits than the kits give.
Here are the things I've come up with so far.
Fighter or Berserker 3 -> Cleric: A really quick dual that gives you Grand Mastery and one use of Rage if you go Berserker (sacrificing Slings somewhat). Grand Mastery is less penalizing for a Cleric I feel because of their limited weapon selection (basically you want to go for Flails I think).
Swashbuckler 5 -> Cleric: Another really quick dual that gives you -2 AC, -1 thac0, +1 dmg and some thief skill points (you could do Find Traps and Detect Illusions or just Pick Pockets or whatever). If you had another thief in the party this would free him up somewhat to go for other things, rounding out your party's thief skills.
Bounty Hunter 6 -> Cleric: This gives you some thiefs skills again and two uses of premeditated Slow.
Haven't thought of anything more, folks. Maybe I haven't given it that much thought, but I would love to hear your ideas. What other nifty things can you think of? What is best/coolest? Would you agree these are better than the Cleric kits?
5
Comments
and my favourite one is fighter 13-> cleric
99 times out of 100 my cleric is dedicated to missile weapons ( so hence the reason why i never do the berserker dual, although i did it once like 10 years ago ) and with a level 13 fighter you still hit around level 38 or so with your cleric, so no missing out on spells, and you get a huge HP boost, great attacks per round, great to damage, and great to hit
the only problem with doing swashbuckler to cleric is that you miss out on attacks per round, and even with the AC/to hit/to damage boost, a berserker cleric just does it better ( since berserk gives you +2 to hit/ to damage and to AC, plus a huge amount of great immunities ) and with being a berserker you of coarse get weapon proficiencies for even more to hit/ to damage and attacks per round
if you plan on playing the whole series, dual classing a cleric at low levels is kind of silly because once you hit SoA its almost a waste to have low levels of fighter in front, and even if you dont play SoD you can hit level 7 fighter ( or berserker ) in bg1 and when you transfer over to SoA you should hit level 8 cleric in the first dungeon of SoA, or if you play SoD you will hit level 8 in your cleric level very early
so with that being said you should never dual at a low level ( unless you are doing it for some whacky RP reason ) if you want to go to the true power game route level 13 fighter ( or berserker ) then cleric is definately the way to go, if you want to make great use out of your cleric then no less than 7 levels of fighter ( or berserker ) or if you want to do the swashbuckler thing i would suggest doing it at level 10 because as i said playing throw all of BG1 is slightly under half of the trilogy experience and sometimes when people make characters they don't realize that there is lots of game to play out there so its almost a waste to make a low level dual ( unless again its for some RP reason )
But your comment is appreciated and it is interesting to learn from your experience.
That would make for a more caster oriented Cleric.
Hit level 39 Cleric, get all of the Enchantment school spells in the game, get -2 save penalty to all of them, and pick up to level 5-6 mage spells. Also access to the Robe of Vecna, Staff of the Magi, and so forth.
Still works with Enchanter 2, but ideally you'd want at least level 4 spells they're so good.
EDIT: This also allows you to dual earlier. I've found the cleric stalling around level 9 if I can't take full advantage of those fighter levels, so I prefer 7 or 9 to 13. YMMV.
Alteration: Silence 15' Radius, Earthquake.
Conjuration: The Symbol spells, Cloak of Fear.
Divination: Know Alignment
Evocation: Flame Strike, Sol's Searing Orb, Globe of Blades, Implosion, Sunray, Blade Barrier.
Necromancy: Poison, Finger of Death, Holy Smite, Unholy Blight, Slay Living.
Glyph of Warding is listed as Abjuration and Evocation, Sunray is listed as Evocation and Alteration.
I put Blade Barrier in paranthesis because the save only happens the moment you cast it, which doesn't seem to matter much.
For comparison with the Enchantment school:
Enchantment: Command, Greater Command, Confusion, Mental Domination, Hold Person, Rigid Thinking and Miscast Magic.
Obviously a Diviner -> Cleric would be strongest. But aside from that, the Necromancy and Evocation school have some stuff to possibly rival Enchantment. Maybe it depends a bit on how you want to play your priest. This method makes him more focused on casting than melee (obviously you'd go for Berserker -> Cleric otherwise) but you could choose to either focus on crowd control or damage dealing.
Blade Barrier forces a save every time it tries to hit someone, it would indeed benefit from imposing a save penalty.
Then there are long-lasting mage spells you cast out of combat, like melf's minute meteors and stoneskin, where you can take off your armor, cast, and put it back on again. They are probably a higher level than you want for a quick dual. Low level useful spells out of combat include identify and mage armor - although you will probably do better with real armor than the latter.
The 4th lvl Enchantment spells for a mage are Confusion, Emotion: Hopelessness and Greater Malison. If my CHARNAME is on CC duty, I'd rather have someone else cast Greater Malison (that doesn't benefit from -2 to saves) so I don't have to wait an entire round to start debilitating the enemy. The Cleric already has Confusion and it seems to me that Greater Command is just like Emotion: Hopelessness. You would get Stoneskin so that's something.
Also, in order to cast the mage spells you can't wear armor (although when you get the Robe of Vecna that isn't an issue anymore). I might dual at lvl 7 max, to get Stoneskin. But ultimately, regarding the CC spells it seems to me you might as well use each opportunity to cast a priest spell instead of a mage spell.
EDIT: Also, the longer you wait the more Hit Points you lose out on. Yeah, the more I think about it, if I were to try this out I think I'd dual at level 3. That way you'd only lose out on 4 HPs and you'd get access to three caster only spells that are probably worth the 4 HPs: Vocalize, Blur and Mirror Image.
Emotion: Hopelessness has casting time 4 but Greater Command only 1.
Domination has casting time 5, Mental Domination 4.
Confusion has longer duration for a Cleric after level 16.
The mage has better Hold spells though and a few effects that the Cleric lacks. So it is possible that if what you are after is a dedicated crowd controller then perhaps simply a full on single class Enchanter is the way to go. Not to say that this idea wouldn't be good as a home made kit to make the Cleric in your party more potent but then I'd rather dual early and get it done with.
Level 6 spells gives you Contingency, to instantly cast spells you prepared beforehand, Death Spell, for handling summons, PfMW for being absolutely immune to incoming damage for 4 rounds, and iHaste for party support, not to mention anti-Lich pierce magic spells and Globe of Invulnerability to ignore anything below level 5.
As a level 12 mage you have 5/5/5/5/5/2 spells, while your overall experience investment is less than 1e6 Exp, will hit level 13 cleric just after the halfway point in SoA, and will hit level 39 Cleric in the end, just like a level 2 Enchanter would, with the last of their (pathetically few) HLAs acquired before 6e6 Exp.
Yes, it's worth the hassle. even no reload, because level 9-12 is the mage's sweet spot as a class, and a level 12 mage is fundamentally more survivable than a level 39 cleric.
If you want to slum it with only level 5 spells then the 250k you spend for level 10 gets you 5/5/4/3/3 spells, which is still a massive overall boost to survivability, and still gets you a decent number of defensive and utility spells for just over a single cleric level long term.
The point of an early dual is not to maximize efficacy, but tweak up a single-class with a different experience to a class kit, while still enjoying the first game as the class you really want to be. Look for the maximal benefit with the fewest levels, rather than the biggest end-game synergy.
As for "being the class you really want to be", note that unless you are literally taking Enchanter 2 for the save malus and the identify spell, you will be wearing cloth and casting spells throughout the trilogy, probably using a sling, and probably avoiding melee due to the aforementioned reasons. Your "class" is a bit of text on your character sheet, while the "character" you are playing is a spellcaster, and continues to be one through the entire game with a brief hiccup where they are actually a cleric for 10-13 levels.
It sounds to me like you're thinking more in terms of solo play. You could always have other mages in your party to cast some of those spells you mentioned like Breach, Lower Resistance et cet.
Again what comes to my mind is that if you are casting Breach, Lower Resistance, Death Spell, iHaste and Pierce Magic you are not casting your cc spells, which was kind of what the build was about. Or any other Cleric spells.
But I'll grant that the 5th lvl Enchantment spells would be nice, especially Feeblemind. Perhaps dualling at 9 wouldn't be too bad. Kind of like going Berserker 9 -> Cleric.
But no, my party play runs with the mentality "more is more" when it comes to vitally important spells for handling threats. The more mages that can cast level 5 and 6 spells the less generalised and more potent your party's spell selection can be.
Regardless, if you've cc'd a group with your first or second spell, the crowd should probably be controlled for awhile, especially at -10 save or suck from a GM'd Chaos. For the remainder of the combat you should not be doing the same thing over and over, but rather adapting to the situation and dealing with major threats, or the stragglers that made their save. iHaste doesn't really come into that, since it's generally pre-fight buffing, but Breach etc are great for handling specific problem individuals or working in tandem with other mages to open up your target for a Feeblemind (killing braindead Firkraag takes awhile, but is surprisingly gratifying).
Also, note that Death Spell is pure crowd control, it just kills the crowds in question, which is good for dealing with those pesky enchantment immune undead (clerics can handle them easy) and swords (which are a pain in the neck without either magic damage or a good summon killer), or just getting rid of trolls.
If you're going Enchanter 9, you'll get 2 slots and be able to complete your dual in early SoA, same as Enchanter 10. May as well get the extra D4 hitdie in my opinion, but it's certainly doable either way.
Anyways, back to topic:
I like ranger to cleric as well if you wanna go melee with dual wield since you can dual very early and still have specialization and three pips in dual weild waiting for you to activate your first class again. I've never finished a playthrough with one though.
I did experiment a bit with the early mage to cleric (and other classes) and often ended up pushing the dual further and further since there are so many great arcane spells and divine spells are just kinda "meh" to me. I'm not so good with clerics and often just end up using their spells to augment physical prowess (+STR, THAC0, AC etc). The ability to wear robe of vecna to reduce the casting time is by itself worth a dual though! It's by far more important to a cleric IMHO than wearing fullplate. AC on a cleric focusing on casting rather than tanking is completely redundant anyways. You can always stack up on damage reduction instead if you need it and wear a shield. You also have sanctuary (which I haven't tried myself, but should be cool to have as a "get out of jail freecard" in a contingency) if you are in over your head. The added benefit or wands is such a nice gravy on the top.
Fighter to cleric is a classic. Personally I prefer berzerker with flails or warhammers.
I've tried a couple of different combos of thief and cleric but usually I end up bored since the cleric adds to little and in itself is a kinda boring class to me. A thief ~7 to cleric is a very, very good class though since it lets you get all the best NPCs and still be able to open chests/disarm traps and boost the others with your buffing skills. I cannot be that char though since it's just too boring for me and I don't like to be a supportive role myself (I'm kinda egocentric that way).
My understanding of the original poster's intent was to focus on an early dual, which could play very well under your "unless..." scenario. Obviously, the later you transition, the more tempting it becomes to play as a spell caster rather than a straight cleric, giving up on a variety of cleric combat benefits - which is why I lean towards multi rather than a late dual. Also, a late dual is giving up around half your hit points, making the cleric's combat role even less appealing.
As for 'suboptimal', it always pays to understand the goals you are optimizing for before picking your strategy
This was not a value judgement. I am not being prescriptive as to the way people must play, merely providing the mechanically optimal variant and the reasons why that is the case, and people are welcome to make their characters as they see fit.
Ranger is an interesting dual if you have the "fix" disabled, since you'll get a super cleric with access to all things divine without Druid's "special" level progression. If you're working with the fix, you're typically better off going for Fighter for the ability to go beyond specialisation. It's pretty good in BG1 only runs where the 2 free pips come in handy though. There are parts where your statements are misguided or inaccurate.
You talked about being the class you want to be and the lateness of the dual changing the feel of the character.
I pointed out that this was misguided, as your "class" is largely irrelevant compared to what your actual character does. If you have moved beyond the "level 2 Enchanter" option I have mentioned, then whatever level you dual involves playing a spellcaster wearing cloth rather than armour. The difference comes from the class you dualled from, not how deep you went into that dual.
Likewise, if you do stick to the level 2 enchanter then I feel no need to discuss it, as I already mentioned the option in my first post.
A legal multiclass loses the ability to become an Enchanter, and thus all the benefits to Cleric spells as a result. I agree they are a superior option in terms of overall power, but beyond level 5 is largely irrelevant to an Enchanter (though you can easily sneak level 12 into a dual in SoA).
As for Hitpoints and melee, note that the Enchanter dual is actually far better at surviving in melee than a pure cleric, as well as potentially being several times better offensively. Hitpoints are largely irrelevant in that particular consideration.
Re-reading your answer and the ensuing discussion, I just want to make sure I understand this fully, and leave the answer here for the benefit of others:
Will dual-classing any specialist mage to a cleric result in the specialist's saving throw penalties being applied to divine spells that are of the same school (for example, necromancer-> cleric: divine necromancy spells also benefit),
OR
Does this trick only work with Enchanters specifically?
If 1), I'll want to go through divine spells carefully with an editor, noting which spell school each spell belongs to - as you indicate above, regardless of how many schools are mentioned in the text (perhaps a legacy from the 2nd ed PnP hame), each spell only belongs to one school in the Infinity Engine.
It doesn't matter what your class/combination is, as long as your kit is Enchanter. This includes being an inactive dual class. Technically you don't even need to be any kind of mage class, if you edit the character with EEkeeper/NI.
When your idea is to be a cleric with a kit, (say maybe a Cleric of Mystra or Oghma), and you plan to spend the whole game wearing armor, fighting with slings, maces, hammers, and flails, and casting cleric spells, you will also be able to use all wands and scrolls. At the inns, you can remove your armor and Identify items. You can get some save penalties on some of your cleric spells.
I think that's actually a pretty good idea for getting an arcane-magic type cleric kit.
The highest number of enchantment spells to work with (they only miss out on Druid in terms of casting).
A highly versatile and support oriented spell list to work with (including spells to offset their evocation restriction).
Chant and Doom. If IWD spells there's Prayer and Recitation as well, for a total of -6 to saves, -10 with Malaison, -12 on enchantment spells, which are overall the most dependent on failed saving throws. (I can't actually remember if Chant, Prayer and Recitation break Sanctuary, but if they don't, that's -6 to saves they can set up in advance, break with Malaison, and follow up with Chaos Save at -16.
Turn Undead: Inbuilt crowd control for Undead, which otherwise give the enchanter trouble, plus an array of anti-undead spells if they don't want to use their inbuilt crowd control, plus Holy Word, which crowd controls mages with an AOE 50% instant spellcasting failure that stacks with itself. Not boosted by Enchanter specialisation bonus, but it dovetails perfectly to bolster its weak spot.
A pure mage will be stronger overall, obviously, because you won't find a class in the top ten mechanically strongest classes that isn't a pure mage, but in terms of crowd control specialisation I don't see a pure 31 Enchanter being as good as this dual.
Honestly, that's kind of a sticking point for dualing into Cleric generally: you're going to get more evenly distributed benefits from a multiclass anyways, simply because the high-level cleric abilities aren't as exceptional as they are for mages or fighters or even thieves. With all that in mind, I'm inclined to prefer the Fighter if you dual, since it makes you less squishy, not more so.