Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Tempest Cleric build?

For my second play through, I'm going with an Eilistraeen Tempest cleric. Any suggestions for a build, single or multiclass? I'll be keeping Shadowheart in my party.

Tempest Sorcerer is OP

A fun character I used on my first playthrough was a multiclassed tempest cleric / storm sorcerer. Level order was sorcerer 1 -> cleric 2 -> sorcerer 10. Starting stats were 8/14/15/8/12/17, increased to 8/14/16/8/12/20 during leveling.
The gear I used was balanced between survivability and spell power. (Medium armour, adamantium shield, some items to increase my spell save dc and spell attack bonus)
My "signature move" was combining destrucitve wrath with sorcerer spells. Good picks for that are twinned chromatic orb and at higher levels lightning bolt.
A quickened create water (before you cast your main spell) applies the wet condition to targets, making them vulnerable to lightning (and cold) damage, doubling the damage they take.
The short flight from tempestous magic allowed me to easiely reposition in melee range when needed or to use the terrain to have the high ground.

So while the above suggestions are valid, they are primarily surrounding using a different class entirely, and splashing Tempest Cleric. Imho if you're *playing as* a class primarily, that means at a minimum 6 levels of that class, and a build centered around what that class does well. So for me, it would start by looking at whether you should multiclass at all, and what you give up by doing so:

If you miss X levels of Tempest Cleric, what do you miss?
1 level - a feat
2 levels - 6th level spells
3 levels - Divine Intervention (once per game only)
4 levels - 5th level spells, and Insect Plague / Destructive Wave as domain spells (but you gain the feat back)
5 levels - a feat, and Divine Strike: Thunder
6 levels - Domain spells Ice Storm and freedom of movement, 4th level spells

So, what does tempest cleric do well?
- They bully in terns of positioning; with Thunderbolt Strike you can push enemies around basically at will as long as you're dealing thunder or lightning damage
- They have an incredibly powerful maximize effect for thunder or lightning damage specifically, with Destructive Wrath they can auto-deal max damage, which is huge for the highly variable damage Thunder and Lightning tend to do
- They are tanky, with heavy armor, shields, martial weapons, and all the healing normally associated with the Cleric kit
- They make good use of their reaction, having a built in reaction attack which deals lightning and thunder damage.

Given that, what are some good build options?
1) You could double down on the melee bullying, getting in enemies faces and using your reaction to push them back, maybe in conjunction with sentinel. The trouble with going heavy melee is baseline they don't get an extra attack. 5 levels is a *lot* to give up to get an extra attack, but it's certainly an option. Any option which will grant an extra attack won't also give full spell slot progression (other than college of valor bard), so 5 levels would indeed be my target here. Lots of options (Bard, Paladin, Ranger, Fighter, Warlock, Monk, Barbarian), these are just some that stand out to me:
- Warlock (Pact of Blade); with repelling blast you can double down on pushing folks around. It also gives you always on Shilleleigh. You don't need proficiencies, and you can gain some other minor benefits, it's not terrible.
- Way of 4 elements Monk; you actually gain quite a bit of mobility and can actually get up to 4 attacks per round. Though it seems to fly in the face of your normal tankiness and is *very* MAD (Multi Attribute Dependent), but using the lightning gear with this, and maybe in conjunction with tavern brawler, this could actually be crazy powerful. The more I think about it the more I like it.
- Wildheart Barbarian; it super doubles down on the "tankiness" aspect, but you lose out on a lot of spellcasting power during fights. Still, if max survivability is what you're seeking, this will do it.
- College of Swords Bard; You have to do 6 levels but you get max spell slots, so lots of slots to use your 3rd level spells of each class. It's not terrible, but wouldn't be my pick.

2) You could go for max thematic synergy and go storm sorcerer. It actually would work really well to get you into melee, though it won't fix your low attacks, and you get metamagic, though none of the effects are as good for you as your existing maximize damage effect. I feel like Storm Sorc benefits more from a dip in Tempest Cleric than vice versa. It does let you quicken the Call Water though, and that allows fun novas.

3) Wizard. Since MC Wizard works the way it does, you have unlimited spell selection, and most importantly, 6th level Wizard spells, including but not limited to Chain Lightning. You don't need much for it, just one level will work, or two if you want to pick up subclass features, either Evocation (safer to use your chain lightning etc) or Divination (for super powerful Portents). Since Planar Ally is great it's a tough call, but I don't think either of the Wizard subschools would matter nearly as much as the 6th level Wizard spells, so I'd probably go just one level.

For me then the top 3 would be:
Tempest Cleric 6 / Way of 4 Elements Monk 5 / Wizard 1. Take Fist of Four Thunders for one of your 3rd level Monk powers. Has up to 4 attacks per round, synergizes well with existing items in the game, still gets 2 feats (Likely Tavern Brawler and one other, maybe Elemental Adept or War Caster?), and is an absolute *bully* constantly pushing people around. Has wide spell diversity and options, with 3rd level Cleric spells and 4th level Wizard spells, and can create water surfaces via Create Water to exploit for additional damage and status effects, just not as fast as Storm Sorc or with the same max power as 6th level Wizard spells; definitely a melee combatant first and foremost.

Tempest Cleric 11 / Wizard1
Basically just a pure Tempest Cleric with one less feat in exchange for access to all Wizard spells; including Chain Lightning. Simple but very powerful and fun imho. If you want safer lightning spells vs the party just bump to 10 / 2 and go Evocation, or if you want Portent rolls same thing but go in that direction of course.

Tempest Cleric 9 / Storm Sorc 3
Gets you good mobility and great nova potential; caps at 5th level spells so no Chain Lightning and less overall spell selection, still absolutely great. If you want a feat more than 5th level spells you can go 8 / 4 instead of course.

Edit: Scratch that, if not going for the Melee Monk Build, I'd *definitely* just combine the 2! Tempest Cleric 7 / Storm Sorc 3 / Evocation Wizard 2, get 6th level Wizard spells, the nova potential of Storm Sorc, the team safety of evocation Wizard, and keep Tempest Cleric as the primary of course. Super MAD but hey I think it's just crazy enough to work

I don't think that one level of Wizard will let you scribe 6th level spells. When I've tried to scribe 3rd level spells with a 4th level Gale I get "Your Wizard level is too low"

If you want to embace the tankiness of the Tempest Cleric I'd suggest a Ranger 5/Cleric 7. This gets you up to 2nd level Ranger spells which have some great ritual spells like Longstrider, Enhanced Leap, Disguise, Talk with Animals. Plus you can get some good skills, can start with heavy armor via Ranger Knight so no re-spec needed ever, and can get some resistances.

Tempest Cleric 7 gets you 4th level spells.

Since Ranger is a half spell caster the 5 levels are like 3 levels of real caster, so your spell slots are based on 7+3 = 10th level 4/3/3/3/2 so you get 5th level slots that you can upcast. You could cast 3 Call Lightnings, 3 upcasted to level four Call Lightnings and then 2 upcast to level 5 Call Lightnings for 8 casts every long rest. You are the Thunder god.

For stats you can go with a 17 str or 17 wis with the other being 16, dex can be 10 since you are in heavy armor, put all you can in con and then do wahtever with the rest.

I like Dual Wielding for this since Rangers don't get two handed, plus there are some nice one handed non-finesse weapons. Dual wield the mace of Lathander and the Gnoll flail that heals you while activating the Ilithid psionic damage and go to town.

Melee in heavy armor is super survivable early and after you get your 2nd attack you add in the spell power.

I've got a Duergar doing this and he's a blast. Innate poison resistance plus fire resistance from Ranger help out a lot. High Wisdom helps out a bunch for saves and ability checks. Tiefling also starts with fire resistance and half orc would be great as well. Really any race would be good.

Its a very fun thematic character

You definitely can do so. The reason your 4th level Gale can't learn a 3rd level spell is because you can learn spells based on the spell slots you have available, and your Gale at 4th level lacks 3rd level spell slots. It's multiclassing with other casters, specifically, that lets Wizards cast more powerful spells than their level would otherwise allow.



Here's a Shadowheart with 1 level of Wizard but with a 2nd level spell learned just as a quick demo. You can test this very easily, just take someone other than Gale (since you retain spells known even when respeccing, so it'll be easier to find a scroll you don't already know this way), respec them to add a level of Wizard and the rest caster classes, teach them a 2nd level spell. Hope that helps.

The ideal build for this is 8 sorc lightning dragon or storm sorcery / 2 wizard evocation for sculpt spells / 2 cleric for tempest and max damage on a lightning spell (this can be combined with twinned spell and divinity recharge items).

You want to take 1 Sorcerer level first to get Con saving throw bonus, and make the build int based, using the wizard slots for chromatic orb / shatter / lightning bolt / glyph of warding / chain lightning. Use the Sorcerer spells to take buffs, and with 10 Wisdom you can prep two level 1 cleric spells so can have bless and something else prepped.

For cantrips to scale with Int, take damage cantrips on the wizard level (fire bolt, ray of frost, shocking grasp are all you need). You get guidance / resistance / light from the cleric levels, then burn the sorcerer cantrips on stuff like mage hand / blade ward / friends / whatever else.

Feats wise for MC you only need 1 ASI for 20 INT with Ethels hair, plus Elemental Adept: Lightning. Companions will only get 18 INT.

And then basically you just spam lightning bolt & chain lightning, use chromatic orb & shatter at lower levels.

Thanks, people. I was thinking mainly cleric, and GiantOctopodes's build sounds great. But sorcerer path sounds intriguing. I haven't started a new game yet, so choices, choices, choices.

Very cool idea!!! It would take me a lot of time to potentially figure this out. Many thanks for sharing!

Glad I could help! Out of curiosity, the melee build or the spell build?

Just so folks are aware, the difference between Tempest Cleric 6+ / Storm Sorc 3+ and Storm Sorc 6+ / Tempest Cleric 2+ is Thunderbolt Strike vs Heart of the Storm.

Storm Sorc 6+ you get a 6m AOE doing 1/2 Sorc level damage when casting a leveled spell dealing thunder or lightning damage (so in DumbleDorfs build 4 damage), which can be helpful for triggering Cull the Weak on small enemies, but otherwise isn't a ton of damage but never hurts. You also get Thunder / Lightning resist.

Meanwhile Tempest Cleric 6+ gets Thunderbolt Strike, which gives the option of pushing back any large or smaller creature you damage with thunder or lightning by 3m, no saves, no limit on usage. Use a lightning spell or shoot just fire off a lightning arrow, doesn't matter if they save for half damage, taking just one point will be enough to knock them back, letting you push them off cliffs, roofs, rafters, or whatever other perch they might be sitting on. Or shoving them together for more nuking, or pushing them through Spike Growth or other hazardous terrain for massive damage, the options are endless.

I get that Sorc 8 / Wiz 2 / Cleric 2 gives 2 feats instead of 1, but imho you get the worse of the two abilities, and Wizard is your damage dealer anyway, so if getting that 2nd feat were that important to me I'd go Tempest Cleric 6/ Storm Sorc 4 / Evo 2 before I would go primarily Storm Sorc. Keeps Quicken, keeps all the important features, gets 2 feats, you just lose 4th level Cleric spells. Could also go Cleric 8 / Storm Sorc 3 / Wiz 1 if you wanted to keep the 4th level spells, the Evocation shape spells is nice but not required if you're careful enough / don't care that much about your teammates XD 4th level Cleric spells are ok but not likely to be your first or even 2nd choice for what to cast so I'd do the former personally.

You could try 6 sorc / 6 cleric Cha based and get the best of both, but then you don't get any level 4+ arcane spells and just get upcasted lightning bolt and call lightning.

Right now, I'm thinking my cleric as somebody who will kind of replace Gale in terms of crowd control. He and Shadowheart have been in every party I've had in my first playthrough (with a bard/rogue Tav) and this time around, I want to have the flexibility to leave him out but don't want to be a direct replacement (e.g., not a wizard or sorcerer). Plus I just want to pair two clerics, since it feels like with a slight respec and a rogue level, Shadowheart + a more AoE/damage-focused cleric could then slot in any companion and be a strong party. I might even take this concept as far as respecing Lae'zel into a war cleric/paladin.

Q: for a C7/S3/W2 or 8/3/1 build, would bit be better to focus on Wisdom 16/Charisma 14, 14/16, or 16/16 with weak con? I plan on 10 dex and int and using the ogre int headband and maybe the dex gloves. Or does that take away the sparky stuff combos?

With 7/3/2 or 8/3/1 with the assumption Int is covered by the headband I'd definitely go 16/14 over 14/16 or 16/16 with weak Con. If you were going with the Monk build then you'd have a conflict with the Dex gloves for the Sparkle Hands but with a caster build you should be fine; shield / boots / staff / amulet / armor are the slots for the stuff which will be relevant and important to you, not that you have to use all of them all the time but those are the slots the important stuff uses. You do miss out on the 3 temp hitpoints on lightning charge gain helmet with the intellect helm, but it's likely very worth it.

I think that's settled. Any thoughts on a Lae'zel war domain cleric build?

All this thread has taught me is that Larian put 0 of the dnd 5e restrictions for multiclassing in and gave us all the advantages

Dident really dive into multiclassing yet. Might wanna take a look at what combos are possible