Melee Clerics–Actually that good?

[Braithwaite]

Honestly, I've had the same trouble with Druids.  Don't get me wrong, I love Druid spellcasting, they get a great mix of BC, summons, DPS, support, utility, and OMGHAX (such as Shapechange).  At low level their pet pwns, and at high level their spellcasting hits all the right notes.  But "CO common knowledge" cites them as brutal melee combatants via Wildshape, and honestly I've never seen it.  Maybe it's because dinosaurs don't exist in my DM's world (or at least are incredibly rare and isolated), and because my gaming group in general is rather skeptical of Dire Bears wearing all sorts of gear (by either Wilding Clasps, or taking it off and putting it back on).  Without those two, Druids gain some decent combat capability but are seriously fragile, and while their damage output can be decent in a form with Pounce, it really doesn't seem to keep pace with enemy HP, plus there's few options for overcoming DR.  What I've seen in practice is that, in campaigns with a few limitations (no gear in wildshape, no dinosaur forms), they suffer the same problem Clerics do - with some investment in feats, actions, and whatnot, they can hope to be moderately inferior Fighters.  Granted they can be moderately inferior Fighters who can also cast great spells, but I already covered this with Cleric.  Either you're wasting martial investment, or you're wasting spellcasting potential.  They can switch rolls more fluidly than Cleric, but with AC in the gutter, right up in the enemy's face, their life expectancy is unenviable.

I find druid melee to depend a lot on what kind of stuff you are fighting. I had one campaign where the DM liked to throw roughly even numbers of roughly equal level enemies at us, with lots of casters. That meant that I (and my pet) would almost always hit with at least one attack, and would almost always win the grapple. Most fights ran...

Round 1 I cast Bite of the x. Pet charges and grapples nearest foe (within 30 feet).
Rounds 2+ I charge grappled enemy and tear him a new one. Pet moves on to next victim.

Another campaign, playing a very similar druid, had lots of single, huge, high AC monsters (Dragons and such). We could barely hit, and only won grapples with extreme luck. The druid still ruled, he just couldn't melee. Of course, a fighter grappling build would have sucked equally.

[Brainpiercing]

IMHO what makes Clerics and Druids great is that usually you don't need to take a lot of melee feats to still be effective in melee. For example, my epic cleric cleric cohort has exactly one melee related feat: Power Attack.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

How about both?  I don't like metamagic-reducers in general, and my DM doesn't like Persist.  Without those two, it becomes very difficult for a Cleric to keep up in melee.  They get a lot of Personal buffs, but most aren't worth the action-economy cost.  Divine Power makes up for HD, stat investment, and BAB; Righteous Might helps compensate for lack of feats.  But by then the fight's half over, and you've only maybe just caught up to an average fighter.  Granted you're a fighter who can also cast Heal and Harm, but if you do those then your fighterness and those buffing turns were waisted, and if you don't then congrats, your Tier 1 character has now "caught up" with a Tier 5.  Maybe.  Unless the Tier 5 knew what he was doing.

tl;dr - I guess I'm just venting a bit of frustration.  Clerics and Druids have a certain mystique about them in melee, but I find that in a slightly more limited campaign that the common knowledge tends not to hold up in actual play.  Has anyone found the same thing, or am I just off my rocker?

I ban DMM, Persist and all the related cheese that makes clerics overwhelming. They're still good second tier combatants who have full casting. So what if they aren't able to quite outdo the fighter without several time consuming buffs? You're still looking at a very capable package from top to bottom. Unless your DM lets anything fly(Which is retarded outside of charop exercises), you're right about clerics.

[Alastar]

It's not retarded, it's simply in the player's hands to pace themselves.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

It's not retarded, it's simply in the player's hands to pace themselves.

No, it is retarded. What's the point of breaking the game, unless you want to ruin things for everyone? Granted, this isn't a concern if you a have a DM that understands how to say 'No'.

[PhaedrusXY]

It's not retarded, it's simply in the player's hands to pace themselves.

No, it is retarded. What's the point of breaking the game, unless you want to ruin things for everyone? Granted, this isn't a concern if you a have a DM that understands how to say 'No'.

Some people like to play in high-powered games? Some DMs like to optimize too? If everyone within the party is about the same power level, the DM can always crank up the challenges appropriately. The problems really only come in if the DM is inexperienced, or there are huge differences in the power levels of party members. Calling other people's gaming style retarded is asinine, and juvenile.

[BowenSilverclaw]

It's not retarded, it's simply in the player's hands to pace themselves.

No, it is retarded. What's the point of breaking the game, unless you want to ruin things for everyone? Granted, this isn't a concern if you a have a DM that understands how to say 'No'.

Some people like to play in high-powered games? Some DMs like to optimize too? If everyone within the party is about the same power level, the DM can always crank up the challenges appropriately. The problems really only come in if the DM is inexperienced, or there are huge differences in the power levels of party members. Calling other people's gaming style retarded is asinine, and juvenile.

Exactly. As long as the players and the DM all agree on a certain power level it works fine

[Negative Zero]

Druid: Both you and your companion are Fleshrakers. Insert Venomfire.

Yep, that's pretty much all it takes.

[BowenSilverclaw]

Add Energy Substitution/Admixture and Born of the Three Thunders for kicks if you can squeeze it in (maybe human with flaws)

Metamagic Rod of Empower/Maximize is nice as well

[Tshern]

Shapechange into a ten-headed Shrieking terror. Ten poison attacks a round. Toss in Energy admixtured (maximize with a rod) Venomfire for something like 48d6=288 (Beads of karma!) damage per hit.

[PhaedrusXY]

And make sure someone can cast Revivify, for when the DM turns that on your party. 

[Alastar]

Just an example.

In my PBP game the thorny trail, while the challenge is to make characters without spells per day, optimisation is cranked up to ''high'' and the player's are let loose on everything they can find.  They are all highly optimised character, and i think a level 10 Ling Ling in that game actually pulled a 350 damage in a round, at level 9.

As a DM, i am in no way threathened by their power level, and feel confident i can challenge them by optimisin, but a bit less then them, for instance, i could pit them agaisn't a smart wizard with good defenses from good spells, like displacement and greater mirror image, it's not some celerity busing bullshit, but it's not crappy, and i feel confident they will succeed.

The DM has the final say on what he is comfortable with.

[Brainpiercing]

Just an example.

In my PBP game the thorny trail, while the challenge is to make characters without spells per day, optimisation is cranked up to ''high'' and the player's are let loose on everything they can find.  They are all highly optimised character, and i think a level 10 Ling Ling in that game actually pulled a 350 damage in a round, at level 9.

As a DM, i am in no way threathened by their power level, and feel confident i can challenge them by optimisin, but a bit less then them, for instance, i could pit them agaisn't a smart wizard with good defenses from good spells, like displacement and greater mirror image, it's not some celerity busing bullshit, but it's not crappy, and i feel confident they will succeed.

The DM has the final say on what he is comfortable with.

I have to second that. Just on principle. I sure doesn't make it easy on the DM, but hell, if you're the DM, there are always WAYS to wiggle things. The key is to know what you're doing, and to know that even without breaking any rules you can still do basically what you like.

I have to agree to those sentiments though, too, that say that you need a roughly homogenous party. It gets hard if there's Joe Blow Fighter and CoDzilla in one party.

It's not retarded, it's simply in the player's hands to pace themselves.

No, it is retarded. What's the point of breaking the game, unless you want to ruin things for everyone? Granted, this isn't a concern if you a have a DM that understands how to say 'No'.

I'm pretty certain I don't agree with that. That's the "I suck, but I want everyone else to suck, too" attitude. there is no such thing as "breaking the game", as long as everybody plays responsibly.

[BowenSilverclaw]

They are all highly optimised character, and i think a level 10 Ling Ling in that game actually pulled a 350 damage in a round, at level 9.

Just for the record, that was my character


But yeah, I'm glad there are so many likeminded individuals about optimization and all it's different aspects on these boards

[Caelic]

And make sure someone can cast Revivify, for when the DM turns that on your party. 

This is a critical point.  There are a whole LOT of things I don't use in our usual Saturday campaign--not because they're banned, not because they're not effective, but because I don't want them used against us.

My DM isn't the sort of guy who will initiate the use of a tactic like Dire Weaselstorm, but once it's used, he'll cheerfully incorporate it into his arsenal.

He also has a simple method for making sure nobody goes overboard in creating their characters.  We each create three characters we'd be willing to play and hand them to him.  He picks one and gives it to us--and then keeps the other two as NPCs.

Overall, it works out very well.  We like making characters, so no biggie there.  The fact that two of the three will be coming back at us as adversaries tends to eliminate truly broken builds.  The DM gets to make sure the party is reasonably well-balanced, and a little of the burden of creating NPCs is taken off his shoulders.

[PhaedrusXY]

He also has a simple method for making sure nobody goes overboard in creating their characters.  We each create three characters we'd be willing to play and hand them to him.  He picks one and gives it to us--and then keeps the other two as NPCs.

That is GENIUS!

[BowenSilverclaw]

He also has a simple method for making sure nobody goes overboard in creating their characters.  We each create three characters we'd be willing to play and hand them to him.  He picks one and gives it to us--and then keeps the other two as NPCs.

That is GENIUS!

Bloody brilliant indeed

Also, please explain the 'Dire Weaselstorm' to me

[Caelic]

It's more of an in-joke than a truly TO-level example of brokenness.

At one point, way back when, I was playing an Alienist (it was a very Lovecraftian campaign.)

The DM's Big Bad emerged.  I proceeded to cast multiple empowered Summon Monster spells to summon Dire Weasels.

Lots of Dire Weasels.

PSEUDONATURAL Dire Weasels.

And since they were pseudonatural, and had a once-a-day True Strike, the majority of them hit the Big Bad and started draining Con.  Our party didn't normally USE stat drain attacks; the DM hadn't been expecting them.

His Big Bad...which had well over a thousand hit points...went down under a storm of tentacled fuzzy fury.

He hadn't expected it.  I certainly hadn't expected it to work so WELL.

We looked at each other, and in more-or-less the same breath said, "I won't use it if you won't."

[BowenSilverclaw]

That is epic, I've got to use that with my Wizard someday

[Bohemond]

This is perhaps the only example I have ever seen of an Alienist not completely sucking.  Bravo!  I mean it.