Front line Cleric vs Fighter vs Barbarian

[Atalius]

How does the Cleric hold up on the front lines with the two other primary martial classes? Gorum seems like a solid Deity for this type of Cleric. What class feats do you like for the Cleric here? I could see him being massively MAD which is hugely detrimental.

[Claxon]

Dishing out melee damage? Not so great from what I've seen in the playtest, but plenty survivable due to healing. So they can "face tank" and heal the other front liners. They aren't much of an offensive threat in my experience, but it probably depends on exactly how the character is built, it wasn't my character.

[Edge93]

They are just about as good as any character that doesn't get weapon proficiency boosts as part of their class.

That is to say, they can be perfectly competent if you max their attack stat. Accuracy will lag a point or two between not having your attack stat as your key stat and not getting proficiency boosts (Though you can get Expert at 13th with ancestry feats or at 14th with a certain Cleric feat), but your damage per hit should be almost as good as martials. Your HP is a bit lower but self-healing can easily cover. You also have some buffs to help the difference, Heroism at your best level will actually make up most of the accuracy difference for a good 10 minutes.

While their accuracy and damage are close to martials, they won't have as many combat tricks of course, which is where their weapon combat effectiveness falls off. But they can be plenty effective at basic weapon-swinging and the rest is what their spells are for. XD

[Edge93]

TBH for a melee focused Cleric it's probably good to grab Fighter Dedication for all martial weapons and for heavy armor. Then you can max Str and Wis, get Dex to 12, and then your 4-score boosts can all be Str Con Wis Cha from there. They are MAD to be sure, but the system is nice to MAD characters and a heavy armor Cleric's MADness is just within what the system best supports.

I'd have to take a look around before I could give good advice on class feats, it really depends anyway on what exactly you want your focus to be and also possibly what type of energy you channel (For example Cast Down is great for negative but unless you fight a lot of undead not so good for positive).

[Atalius]

Good advice thanks. Sorry for the noobery but what is this fighter dedication you speak of? Does that mean multiclassing into Fighter?

[Greg.Everham]

Gorum for Zeal domain's Weapon Surge power + going into Wiz/Sorc for Magical Striker will keep you competitive with the Fighter for accuracy, but crush them on damage.

[Shady Stranger]

Atalius wrote:

Good advice thanks. Sorry for the noobery but what is this fighter dedication you speak of? Does that mean multiclassing into Fighter?

Kind of, yes. The way it works in the Playtest is that instead of picking a Class feat at any level AFTER level 1, you can pick up a Dedication feat instead. So at level 2, a cleric could pick up the fighter dedication feat, which grants the cleric access to fighter feats, through other fighter dedication feats, such as the fighter dedication feat "Basic Maneuver" which lets the cleric pick a level 1 or 2 fighter class feat(such as power attack, sudden charge or double slice).

[Edge93]

As above, and Fighter Dedication, the first fighter multiclass feat, gets you trained in all martial weapons and trained in armor one category heavier than what you already have.

[PossibleCabbage]

Fighter (or other multiclass) dedication is a good choice for a combat oriented cleric since the cleric feats have very minimal relevance to "hitting people with weapons."

[Yesterday's Hero]

I made a Cleric of Gorum for the 7th lvl DD part and it was very powerfull. You might have to drop WIS to 16 to get enough STR and CHA and I agree that FGT multiclass is a must. Stats for a first lvl human cleric:

STR 16
DEX 12
CON 10
WIS 16
INT 10
CHA 14

CON 10 seems dangerous, but since the 1 action Heal heals just sooo much you'll be good (otherwise, further drop WIS to 14).

[Draco18s]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Fighter (or other multiclass) dedication is a good choice for a combat oriented cleric since the cleric feats have very minimal relevance to "hitting people with weapons."

My ch3 cleric, Nicht Kleriker, was this build.

Worked pretty well, even if half the stuff we fought was "immune to being hit with weapons"

[citricking]

Fighter will be much better at holding the line, especially at low level. At level 3 a fighter has +3 to hit over the cleric, that's 50% more damage. I think it's best for a party to have each specialized in their role, the low level cleric with 18 Wis 16 cha.

[Draco18s]

citricking wrote:

Fighter will be much better at holding the line, especially at low level. At level 3 a fighter has +3 to hit over the cleric, that's 50% more damage. I think it's best for a party to have each specialized in their role, the low level cleric with 18 Wis 16 cha.

I'm not sure how you arrived at this number.

[Edge93]

Draco18s wrote:

citricking wrote:

Fighter will be much better at holding the line, especially at low level. At level 3 a fighter has +3 to hit over the cleric, that's 50% more damage. I think it's best for a party to have each specialized in their role, the low level cleric with 18 Wis 16 cha.

I'm not sure how you arrived at this number.

1 from Str as key stat, 2 from getting Master proficiency at 3rd, most likely.

Unless you mean the 50% more damage, I'm less sure about that.

[citricking]

If the cleric hits on a 10 they expect to do 60% of their damage on an attack, do fighter would hit on a 7 doing 90%. That's 50% more (also 1 more on a hit from higher strength).

[Lyee]

+3 to-hit is 50% more damage if the fighter hits on a 13, cleric on a 16, or if the cleric hits on a 10 and the fighter a 7