Hammer and Prayer: The Battle Cleric

By Zed

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How many times, in MMO's have you thought, I'm not playing the healer because they're wimps?  The first time your little healer enters battle or gets aggro you end up as a smear on the ground facing a trip from your resurrection point to your body, only to find it camped by the monster that killed you, right?

In my previous article we looked at the cleric class and talked, in passing, about the battle cleric. This article takes a look at the battle cleric, offering tips and strategies for building and playing one.

What is a Battle Cleric?

The battle cleric joins the front rank fighters in the thick of battle. His spells focus on self and party combat buffs. For all accounts, he would be as armed and armored as any fighter--heavy weapons, shields, full plate. Healing is secondary to the battle cleric, only being used when group members drop dangerously low in health. 

Is that it? Simply put, yes. However, sacrifices need to be made in the process of building a battle cleric. The focus is placed on offensive ability scores, enhancement selections and spell selections. We shall review these next.

Ability Scores

With only 28 points to spend it's critical that the selection be right for your concept of a battle cleric. There are, however, a number of easy decisions that can be made. Let's cover each ability score in turn.

Strength: A cleric's Base Attack Bonus (BAB) follows a medium progression. At level 1 it's +0.  If you want to be effective in melee then your strength needs to be giving a +2 or higher bonus. 

Dexterity: Since the cleric can wear full plate armor, a high dexterity is not needed.  A 12 in dexterity would give you a small boost--the maximum full plate can bestow +1. 

Constitution: A negative constitution is a bad thing; for a battle cleric the argument could be the more hitpoints the better. However, bear in mind that you have the ability to heal yourself. A 10 in constitution at a cost of 2 skill points gives you 10 hitpoints less than spending 4 skill points to get a 12. That's the cost of a single cure light wounds spell.

Intelligence: Dump stat--you don't need it. Clerics have a low number of class skills to begin with, so extra skill points are not advantageous. The main skills you need to focus on are concentration and healing. During the European beta I never once used the heal skill after level 2. In my opinion, leaving intelligence at the base score of 8 is a valid option.

Wisdom: Here is where it gets interesting. Wisdom is the key ability score for spell casting for clerics, requiring a wisdom score of 10 + spell level. At launch, this means you really only need a 15 in wisdom at level 10.  However, wisdom dictates the number of spell points available to you. If you're considering long-term goals, remember that if/when the level cap is increased to 20 you will need a 19 minimum wisdom to cast spells. I personally would set wisdom to 16, but 14 or 15 would be acceptable if you are prepared to have less spell points and use both enhancements and ability score increases to boost your wisdom.

Charisma: Charisma affects turn undead abilities. However, since the reduction in turn undead power it's generally felt that Turn Undead is a waste for anything but Divine Vitality after level 5. Indeed, my experiences suggested that high level undead were not affected. Since were focusing on a battle cleric setting this to 10 or 12 will give you a little flexibility in turn undead.

How the Scores Might Look

The following table provides 3 possible options for ability score allocation; the values are based on selecting human as the race:

 

Even from these three options you can see a number of other ways to change the character. 

Feat Selection

The Cleric is proficient with all types of armor, but only simple weapons.  Since we are talking about a battle cleric, any feat choices should augment combat first, enhance spell casting second.

Damage Output: The best damage weapon available to a cleric as standard is the heavy mace or morningstar and the heavy crossbow. The heavy mace offers the same damage range as a longsword (1D8). Battle clerics are better served hiding behind their shields in battle than wielding a great sword or axe, however if you want a full on damage dealing battle cleric then a Martial weapon proficiency might be in order.

Where does that put us?

The following reflect a number of options you could consider at level 1:

Toughness: would increase the hitpoints the cleric has. However, this would be of limited value if you chose a constitution score of 10. 

Mental Toughness: A boost to spell points; nice even for a battle cleric. If you're playing a human I would seriously consider this feat as one of the two available to you.

Martial Weapon Proficiency: If you want to be different than the usual cleric, wielding a longword or battleaxe, or if you want to go for high damage through using two-handed weapons, then choose a relevant proficiency.

Combat Casting: If you're going to be facing monsters in battle and need to be able to get that critical heal spell off, then combat casting would be a good option for you for that boost to concentration.

Extend Spell: An odd choice; however, for duration-based combat buffs such as Bless or Divine Favor you get twice the duration for 11/2 times the cost, making Extend Spell a very useful feat for the self-buffing combat cleric.

Beyond level 1: Selecting feats such as Weapon Focus (weapon of choice) or Weapon Alacrity (weapon of choice) all help the cleric in becoming a more competent fighter. Other metamagic feats such as Empower Healing, Empower Spell or Heighten Spell can aid the cleric either when they choose to heal comrades, or deliver an offensive spell such as Searing Light, or try to debuff a boss with Blindness or Bestow Curse.

A Brief Word on Enhancements

The enhancement choices really come down to the individual player's style.  However, even a battle cleric will be expected to provide a good level of healing to the group, and so the Energy of the Zealot line of enhancements, which provide the boost to spell points, are desirable. Beyond that, devotion-based enhancements improve your healing powers; useful both for yourself and your comrades. Finally, depending on your race, any strength or wisdom improving enhancements would augment either your total spell points and your save DC or your offensive capabilities.   

Spell Selection

Spell choice is fairly straight forward--anything that increases your capability to attack and deliver damage is a must, followed by anything that lowers the abilities of your opponents. Bless, Divine Favor, Bane, Command, Bulls Strength, Divine Power, Shield of Faith, Bears Endurance, Blindness, Bestow Curse, Sound Burst...all help the cleric control the battle field. 

Summary

You can be forgiven for thinking that the battle cleric is simply a paladin. Paladins (see the paladin class description) have a much better offensive capability than a standard cleric, and because of that there may even be merit to the idea of a multi-class paladin/cleric in order to gain those extra weapon proficiencies; however, this will impact the number of high level spells available to you at a later point in your cleric's career. 

Instead the cleric offers an excellent middle ground between an out and out fighter and a character that can both heal themselves and their comrades during easy fights, where they can also provide a wall between the more vulnerable wizards and sorcerers as well as being able to lend an extra weapon in hand to hand combat with more difficult opponents.

A departing thought to leave you: why is the title of this article misleading?

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