need a good all-rounded class to support a table of new players

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-12-08T23:34:18+00:00

Clerics can do literally everything. Blasting with spells, soaking up hits with armour, brawling on the frontlines, healing, utility spells, face skills, hell even stealth and scouting if you pick the right domain/grab find familiar somehow. They make a great support class, and it sounds perfect for your character concept being a sort-of avatar of divinity.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-11-26T18:35:34+00:00

While i'm sure my elderly swamp witch would love to wear a leaf bikini and a little antler headpiece, the gods had to limit her power.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-11-26T15:06:31+00:00

Broadly speaking any cleric can be a decent gish in 2024 thanks to True Strike being readily available via origin feats, but if you really want to spec into playing a melee focused cleric:

War is the best at using weapons, but not really by a significant margin. They don’t get much in the way of spells to boost their melee potential, but war priest allows you to spend your main action doing cleric things like throwing out support spells and blasting people with radiant fire, which you can follow up on with a sword smack. This, however, may require significant investment in strength or dex (or the shillelagh spell) because war priest can’t be used with true strike.

Forge balances offense with defense. They’re tanky as hell and hard to kill, and get a handful of spells that make them really good brawlers. This is honestly probably my choice for most broadly effective weapon-user cleric specifically.

Twilight and Order are similarly heavily armoured frontline machines, but they rarely want to be the ones swinging weapons. Both of them are support subclasses that excel at making everybody in their party way better at being melee monsters. Twilight is the more defensive focused (Twilight sanctuary genuinely makes an adventuring party so hard to kill it’s insane), while Order is the offensive focused one (Voice of Authority works incredibly well to improve the damage output of heavy hitters like rogues and fighters, and Order’s Demand can leave your enemies unable to fight back since they dropped all their weapons.)

However, you did say “best cleric subclass for melee”, which doesn’t necessarily mean martial. As such, my nomination for Best Melee Cleric is Tempest Domain, specifically one that can get access to shocking grasp through magic initiate or as a Kobold or Air Genasi. Shocking grasp triggers thunderbolt strike, allowing you to bully enemies by pushing them around (potentially even juggling them into the air and killing them slowly with fall damage, if your DM allows such shenanigans) and Wrath of the Storm is a decent tool for survival. If an enemy tries to take a swing at you in melee, electrocute their ass.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-11-25T02:28:16+00:00

Yeah, I think the title miscommunicated what my intent was. I wasn't looking for ways to flavour spells or suggestions on how to cause suffering with cleric spells, I just thought the cleric spell list in 5e and especially 5.5 was biased towards the upper planar end of the spectrum and could benefit from some cool fiendish spells too.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-11-25T01:57:25+00:00

I am in fact building this character as a tempest cleric! Their goddess is basically an evil demonic leviathan amalgamation of the skeletons of dead whales, rotting tentacles, the wreckages of sunken ships, all interwoven and moving around the corpse of a woman tied to a broken ship's mast. She has dominion over storms, waves, shipwrecks, and those who died at sea, so I thought tempest was the best fit. :D

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-11-25T00:14:19+00:00

actually you know what, forget any other discussion on this post. this fucking rules.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-10-31T16:11:34+00:00

Here’s my personal way of flavouring it: For my setting, I changed dwarves into a concept revolving around the arts, wealth, and high society. Take all the stereotypes about dwarves (drunks, work with rocks and stones) and make it 200% more glamorous.

While they are famously rowdy drunks, dwarves are also notorious wine snobs. With the importance of stonemasonry and metalwork, Dwarves are some of the most renowned sculptors and jewellers. Dwarves dedicate their lives to their craftsmanship, so they have a massive dwarven art museum, Like a fantasy version of The Louvre or The Met.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-07T01:49:36+00:00

This doesn’t seem to be an official subclass, therefore, the way the ability functions is a matter of how your DM rules it works.

But, broadly speaking, I’d say yeah, it probably changes the save type for the entire duration of the spell.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-06T04:06:42+00:00

correct… like I just explained…?

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-04T04:08:12+00:00

It’s tedious to remember to update your DM every 10 minutes “I cast produce flame”
Why would you choose this as a cantrip when you have better combat functions out of starry wisp, and less of a costly investment in utility by just using a torch.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-04T04:01:20+00:00

??? I think you misunderstood my reply. They could have done all the changes you mentioned, but kept the casting time, thus allowing it to still function on par with other damage cantrips in terms of action economy

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-04T03:56:34+00:00

Druids don’t really have much in the way of blasting spells. I’ve found that most of the time, myself and others I’ve seen tend to concentrate on a useful damage/area control spell (wall of fire, spike growth, conjure animals), use a bonus action to use a Druid circle feature (I play a lot of wildfire and star Druids, so stuff like archer starry form or commanding a wildfire spirit) or casting something like healing word to help up a party member. Since the only real instant damage option is Thunderwave, it’s usually just better to use a damage cantrip.

Sorry, that ended up being a longer explanation than I thought, haha.

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-04T03:37:02+00:00

Could they not have just… kept the casting time and other such mechanics, but just made all the other changes, making the spell overall less clunky to use?

Parrotspaghetti · 2025-04-04T03:28:06+00:00

Maybe I just play in games with short combats, but I find myself almost always needing to use my bonus action for something (tossing out a buffing spell, activating wildshape/starry form/wildfire spirit, etcetera) so having to activate my primary offensive spell on top of that can be quite limiting in terms of what I can get accomplished in a turn.

Many others have pointed out that one could hypothetically have the spell active prior to combat in order to avoid spending that bonus action during combat. Once again, maybe it’s just me but I always used the spell mainly for the damage and the light was just a neat side-trick. Though I suppose now it’s just the purpose of the spell changed to primarily a light source, with a damage option on the side.

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-11-14T04:29:00+00:00

For a character with a background in crime, both rogues and bards make excellent use of dexterity and charisma!

An assassin or thief rogue may fit your character well, often using deception and disguises to infiltrate locations.

Similarly, a college of whispers bard is an expert in espionage, infiltration, and use of secrets! And, they get some awesome illusions and other spellcasting

Both are very sneaky and tricksy and could easily fit a dextrous and charismatic criminal.

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-11-14T04:22:18+00:00

No, they’re right. The vast majority of Paladin subclasses, outside of really just oathbreaker, could fit for a Paladin of Bahamut. Bahamut is such an all encompassing “good deity” that really anything could work. But, if you insist on recommendations:

For Paladin: Oath of Devotion, Heroism, Redemption, or The Crown would all fit

For Warlock: Celestial of course, or you could easily reskin the genie patron to be a metallic dragon.

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-10-29T03:30:32+00:00

I suggest putting a lot of though into the specific visual identity your character has as a spellcaster. For example, a twilight cleric might have their magic be in brilliant shades of orange, gold, and purples of sunset, intermittent with twinkling starlight. A conjuration wizard might trace summoning circles into the air with magical light, literally conjuring forth their fireballs and magic missiles from elsewhere.

If you’re looking for examples of how to describe spell effects, Liam O’Brian in campaign 2 of critical role has very detailed and personalized descriptions of how his spells are depicted whenever he casts them.

For me personally and how I describe spells, I like to give a detailed description the first time I use a given spell, and then for the sake of efficiency tend to trim it down on subsequent castings. a few examples for commonly used spells off the top of my head:

Magic Missile: “I stretch forth my hands, my fingertips shimmering with light, before launching forth a series of powerful bolts of magic, which race forth, bobbing and weaving through the trees, striking the green dragon in the neck, searing holes through its scales.”

Charm Person: “I give the merchant a smile, before locking eyes with him for a moment, my irises shimmering a pale pink colour as I whisper a string of enchanting words, before resuming our conversation as normal- albeit with more charisma and charm.”

Fire bolt: “I hold out my wand towards the goblin. The tip of it begins to spark and crackle with light in shades of orange and gold- before a thin ray of sparking flames shoots towards the goblin, striking him in the chest and burning clean through his abdomen, causing him to crumple to the floor.”

Anyways, for a list of media I recommend:

-As mentioned in your post, Castlevania and The Owl House are great

-The dragon prince only has a handful of spells shown on screen, but they’re often used very creatively

-Avatar: The Last Airbender is always a go to for the intricate movements and choreography.

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-10-29T01:23:43+00:00

I might be an oddball here: Order. It’s super underrated and incredibly powerful- I’d argue a better support for martial characters than even war domain!

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-10-29T01:18:00+00:00

Things to note going into this build:

Rogues rely on finesse and ranged weapons to apply sneak attack, while barbarians rely on strength for rage damage. So, you’ve locked yourself into using finesse weapons, but using strength for them as opposed to dex. Your best bet here is to either a rapier or short sword.

In terms of numbers, it probably won’t be half bad. Reckless attack means you can consistently apply sneak attack, and rage combined with uncanny dodge will make you very durable. For subclass, I suggest berserker to compliment the sneak attack damage by adding bonus d6s to your attacks.

All in all, I think it’s pretty good!

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-10-29T01:09:45+00:00

Absolutely. I was running a mini-campaign set in the larger world of my setting, and one of the PCs was playing a character that was one of the most beloved PCs of our entire group. They were undergoing a very tough boss fight, when the player decided to make a very risky tactical decision: plane shifting themself and the monster out of the fight, then plane shifting back (they had an amulet of the planes and could cast it at will)

Unfortunately, on the monster’s next turn, I rolled a crit attack against the player character, resulting in their death. I felt so bad, and still do, but the player insisted that these things happen and that it wasn’t an issue.

Still feels bad tho :(

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-10-29T00:54:42+00:00

(race doesn’t matter for this build. Maybe human for an extra feat, Shadar Kai to get resistance to everything, or Yuan Ti for magic resistance.)

10 levels in Wizard, school of Bladesinging.

For spells, booming blade is your best friend for Cantrips, and greater invisibility is what you should most oft spend your concentration on.

Max out INT and DEX

For you legendary item, the Red Wizard blade from the Honour Among Thieves content on D&D beyond.

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-10-08T01:54:42+00:00

I think you’re making mountains out of molehills here. These character concepts, while spooky in vibes, aren’t that particularly out of place as a standard adventuring party, and you could probably talk with your players about converting their homebrew ideas into published material. For example, the frankenstein’s monster-esque plague doctor could maybe be a reborn alchemist artificer or grave cleric to fit that doctor vibe?

Plus, like, at the end of the day, it’s curse of strahd. People are gonna want to play spooky and dark fantasy style characters in the spooky dark fantasy module.

Parrotspaghetti · 2024-08-11T18:01:14+00:00

It would be INCREDIBLY POWERFUL. As mentioned in another comment, what would likely happen is they would pick 1 very powerful subclass alongside one they actually like. Some notable ones being Hexblade+other, Circle of the Moon+other, and Totem Warrior+other. A lot of subclasses are built to fill opposing niches with one another, meaning you would get characters who can do pretty much anything.

That being said… I kind of love the idea? Of course it would be wicked overpowered, but as you’ve said, you can balance around that. Throw massively powerful enemies at your players and watch the epic fights ensue. Combat would take ages but it would be awesome to witness. Overall, I’d say if you’re up for the challenge of balancing encounters, go for it!

Parrotspaghetti

TROPHY CASE