D&D 5E An elven cleric archer

[MerricB]

My Friday night group have started Lost Mine of Phandelver, all creating new Basic characters. We allowed rolling of ability scores, and got quite a number of scores very close to the set scores of point buy, with one or two outliers. Nothing too extreme.

Greg got the cleric's role, a character class he really enjoyed during the 4E days. He ended up making an wood elven cleric with Wisdom of 16 and Dexterity of 18. And then he bought a bow...

Although a dedicated fighter/archer will be better at archery - and at higher levels, Greg will find spells more effective - it was great to see him in action. All the characters were effective, but coming from playing a lot of 4E and AD&D, it was really nice to see this elf using his bow, making sure goblins didn't get near his friends.

It's not really a big deal - an elf with a bow - but for some reason, it really made my day that the Basic Rules would allow this character straight away, even without all of the extra stuff in the PHB.

Cneers!

 

[doctorhook]

It is pretty cool that it's possible to make this character in 5Basic! Weirdly enough, the combination was so obvious and intuitive that it was hidden in plain sight. This must be one of the hidden (or not!) strengths of rules-light gaming. Seems likely that we're going to see even more elves using bows this edition. Nothing wrong with that!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You might even see an elf wizard with a bow, at least for a couple of levels. I really like how this edition doesn't feel the need to overly penalize niche concepts.

 

[JC99]

5E also makes it simple to make a pretty mean Link clone. High Elf Folk Hero fighter with high dex and light armor, using long bow and shield/rapier (not quite the master sword, but close enough) and for your cantrip either Firebolt or Ray of Frost (Fire/Ice arrows).

 

[Joe Liker]

It's actually a great solution to a problem my friend is having -- if only I could convince him!

He plays a cleric, but he doesn't want to be in melee range of anything if he can help it. But he gets bored with sacred flame because he doesn't get to roll the attack; it's a saving throw spell.

I tried to get him to be a wood elf, but so far he's resisting. I think he's one of the few people who really appreciate the human's +1 to every attribute.

 

[inmused]

My Friday night group have started Lost Mine of Phandelver, all creating new Basic characters. ...

5E also makes it simple to make a pretty mean Link clone. High Elf Folk Hero fighter with high dex and light armor, using long bow and shield/rapier (not quite the master sword, but close enough) and for your cantrip either Firebolt or Ray of Frost (Fire/Ice arrows).

I was sitting next to the Cleric at this table. Great 5E start. Greg's Wood Elf cleric archer was great to roll with and well role-played. Love Merric's DMing as well. Very colourful and vivid.

I rolled up something similar to your suggestion. Wood Elf hero fighter with high dex and wisdom, studded leather and two weaponed fighting with finesse/light swords. Worked well at 1st level.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's actually a great solution to a problem my friend is having -- if only I could convince him!

He plays a cleric, but he doesn't want to be in melee range of anything if he can help it. But he gets bored with sacred flame because he doesn't get to roll the attack; it's a saving throw spell.

I tried to get him to be a wood elf, but so far he's resisting. I think he's one of the few people who really appreciate the human's +1 to every attribute.

If I was in that situation, I'd ask to just make Sacred Flame a ranged spell attack for 1d8 radiant damage (a la the mechanics of Fire Bolt) instead of a saving throw spell. Won't make a whole heap of difference.

It is interesting though that the Basic Cleric doesn't have a ranged spell attack roll cantrip, their only spell attack is saving throw based. I wonder if the PH will include a cantrip that makes an attack roll?

 

[Bryk]

My Friday night group have started Lost Mine of Phandelver, all creating new Basic characters. We allowed rolling of ability scores, and got quite a number of scores very close to the set scores of point buy, with one or two outliers. Nothing too extreme.

Greg got the cleric's role, a character class he really enjoyed during the 4E days. He ended up making an wood elven cleric with Wisdom of 16 and Dexterity of 18. And then he bought a bow...

Although a dedicated fighter/archer will be better at archery - and at higher levels, Greg will find spells more effective - it was great to see him in action. All the characters were effective, but coming from playing a lot of 4E and AD&D, it was really nice to see this elf using his bow, making sure goblins didn't get near his friends.

It's not really a big deal - an elf with a bow - but for some reason, it really made my day that the Basic Rules would allow this character straight away, even without all of the extra stuff in the PHB.

Cneers!

Good thing about it being only low levels, a cleric with 18 dexterity is going to regret it later. Rolling that 16 which allowed him to get that 18 to DEX, is really what made it a much better option. Rolling well will always open up a lot more options early and it kind of give you that false sense that you can do what you want.

The differences between the classes below level 5 are relatively minimal. HP sadly is the one thing that stands out the most.

I personally am loving the changes from the last playtest. Healing being hit hard with the nerf bat really feels like it has made the DMs life a lot easier in terms of being able to actually reasonably threaten the party without having to go way overboard. The Life Cleric in the last playtest made it so hard as a DM to challenge a party because everything had to be scaled up so much.

This has greatly changed a few things. I feel as a player you do have to consider short rests more. Originally the 1 hour short rest was more often than not brushed off because of the "we can't afford to wait/waste an hour". However now, the healer(s), just can't seem to keep up if you want to go go go. My group with our 1 healer was pushing and pushing and we ended up having 2 members fall unconscious, (cleric didn't have spare the dying) and it was a truly scary experience. All because our cleric ran out of heals. In the last playtest it would just simply be: Spare the dying, Spare the dying, massive heal, rinse repeat.

It does seem to fall down the the adventure / DM with when to use short rest dice. I feel like even if you only have 1 encounter a day, you have to have that threat for players so that they want to short rest (using Hit dice) as part of their long rest.

I do love the versatility early with the simple enough rules. I feel they gave the right amount of information in both the starter and basic. However you can't really run basic alone unless you create custom monsters due a complete lack of any beastiary what so ever which is kind of disappointing and disheartening. It is hard to tell a new DM to DL the basic and play when in reality it gets you no where it's fine for the players, and the starter is required for DMs.

 

[MerricB]

However you can't really run basic alone unless you create custom monsters due a complete lack of any beastiary what so ever which is kind of disappointing and disheartening.

Monsters, Magic Items and DM Advice will be added to the Basic Rules on August 8th.

The purpose of the version 0.1 Basic Rules is to allow character creation with the Starter Set, not to run full campaigns.

 

[thunktanker]

Good thing about it being only low levels, a cleric with 18 dexterity is going to regret it later.

Fortunately, this is less true in 5e. Caps on ability scores allow characters with suboptimal primary stats to catch up. I could see a cleric or a wizard making their dex higher both to help them be an archer in the first levels while they develop as magic users and for the armor class bonus.