March 11, 2024 • 21 mins
All Hail the Machine God Artificers are the inventors of the impossible and the crafters of the arcane, capable of assembling the most wondrous and deadly of magic items. Clerics are the devout ministers of divine will, imbued with celestial power to heal the sick and smite the unworthy. Put them together and we get priests of arcane science and the machine god’s clergy, bedecked in all the powers that can be assembled by god or man. Check out the full Cleric Artificer blog post: https://www.skullsplitterdice.com/blogs/dnd/artificer-cleric-multiclass Support our content, buy some RPG Dicehttps://www.skullsplitterdice.com
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Artificers are inventors of the impossible andthe crafters of the arcane, capable of
assembling the most wondrous and deadly ofmagic items. Clerics are the devout ministers
of divine will, imbued with celestialpower to heal the sick and smite the
unworthy. You put them together andwe get priests of arcane science and the
machine God's Clergy bedecked and all thepowers that can be assembled by God or
(00:21):
man. So if you want tobe a part of and I'll say it
again, the Machine God's Clergy,and why wouldn't you stick around for today's
video? This isn't one of themulti class options that most people think of,
and you'll likely have a truly uniquecharacter when you come to the table
(00:42):
with it. While the classes mayfeel very different at fake's value, both
can be built as support casters oras combat tanks, and most of those
features will stack together. Two preparedspell casting classes together means we'll have tons
of additional spell casting options. Clericgains quite a bit at first level,
meaning we can get away with someof the bills with just a single character
level. Dip Artificers are usually stuckin medium armour or even light armour,
(01:04):
and just a pinch of Cleric willlet us upgrade to heavy armour. Finally,
since infusions don't rely on any abilityscore, we have some wiggle room
when it comes to our ability spread. Build it right and we can become
the ultimate party buff with a halfa dozen different buffs online at a time,
or a power tank bolstered by bothour technological and holy buffs. There
(01:25):
are, of course, some downsideshere. The big problem is that both
Artificer and Cleric are both casting classes, and they use different spell casting abilities.
Then if we want to tank orget anywhere near combat, we'll also
have to care about constitution and oneof the physical damage abilities. Both classes
can go for marshall prowess combat build, but without a lot of work,
you'll lag behind the actual combat classesat doing the same thing. This basically
(01:49):
leaves us going full glass cannon withsevere combat limitations and maxing out our two
casting abilities, spreading ourselves thin overat least for abilities, or ditching one
of our spell casting has Altogether.With some careful building, we can overcome
a lot of this, but wedon't have a lot of wiggle room if
we want the build to actually workand at least be on par with a
single class build. Since Artificer inparticular is already a half cast class,
(02:13):
multi classing and Artificer means will beeven further behind full casters than normal,
and Artificer multi class can expect tofeel weak at the mid levels. We
also can't make much use out ofthe arguably best artificer class archetype, the
Artillerists and their Eldridge cannon, sincethe Arkane canon just doesn't synergize with the
Cleric. And of course, justlike with any other multi class, we're
going to be sacrificing high level Artificerabilities and high level Cleric abilities, and
(02:37):
we'll be getting our mid game andhigher level class features significantly later than a
single class character. We'll cover thebest combination of just these two classes,
but they actually lend themselves better towardsclass soup builds with dips in multiple different
classes, such as Ranger, Paladin, and Rogue if you're curious when this
multi class starts to kick in,Multi class characters tend to have a level
goal. They're working towards any synergythat provides a massive boost of power to
(03:00):
justify the level dips. Most ofour builds require at least gaining the third
level archetype features of the Artificer classand at least the first level archetype features
from the Cleric class. This meansmost of our builds will be kicked in
with four character levels, with threeArtificer levels and one Cleric level. Most
builds will also continue on with Artificeras the primary class, with only the
(03:22):
small level dip into Cleric. Nowlet's get into the class features that we
care about. As a dual classoption, We've got a ton of features
to consider, but only a fewof them will ever really be important.
We can shift the build in afew different ways, so not every class
feature will factor into every build,but the following features all play into at
least one of our strategies. Startingwith our significant Artificer features, we have
(03:45):
magical tinkering gain. At first level, you basically get to turn a number
of mundane items into tiny gadgets witha number of items per day equal to
your intelligence modifier. They can emitlight, record and replay sounds, emit
noises or odors, or relay messages. Next, we have spell casting Arficer
spell casting works a bit like anintelligence based cleric. You get access to
spells on the artificer's spell list thatyou prepare, but are limited by your
(04:09):
spell slots. The artificer list islimited, but for most of our builds,
it's where we'll be getting the majorityof our spells. Note that the
artificer is a half caster, whichmeans we only ever get to fifth level
spell slots. Arficers don't have aton of offensive spells at low levels,
but consider Tasha's Caustic Brew for someunexpectedly powerful acid damage. And then we
have infuse items. Starting at secondlevel, the artificer gets to essentially make
(04:32):
magic items that only last for awhile, choosing an item feature from a
long list that gains more options asyou gain artificer levels. This, however,
opens up all sorts of gadget possibilities, from simple stuff like magic rape
yeers to on demand magic ropes andgloves of Thievery early on, you'll be
limited mostly to static buffs, butat later levels you can make magic items
(04:53):
that essentially amount to extra features.You'll want to build towards the level milestones
when your infusion options improve. Withsix level, in five usions, tenth
level infusions and fourteenth level infusions.Note that what gadgets you can make depends
on your arficer level, not yourintelligence, so we can actually get quite
a bit of use out of theseeven if going core cleric. And then
we have Artificer specialties. Artificers gaintheir archetypes at third level, and several
(05:15):
of our builds rely on the thirdlevel archetype features. We'll go more into
artificer subclasses in a bit, ofcourse, but just know that for now
they'll be integral to our builds.Now, moving on to our significant cleric
features, we have spell casting.Clerics are a full prepared spell casting class.
This means you have access to spellson the cleric spell list. You
just have to pick which spells youprepare each day. Clerics have a couple
(05:39):
really good offensive spells, but you'lllikely get the most value out of their
utility buffing and healing spells even withjust a level dip. Cleric grants us
a ton of additional spell casting optionsand one to two spell slot levels.
And then we have channel divinity.Cleric get a special divine resource in their
uses of channel divinity. You gainthis feature with your second cleric level and
(05:59):
you get one of these uses ofchannel divinity every short or long rest,
and more uses at your six clericlevel. The base use of your channel
divinity is turn undead, which isunsurprisingly only useful if you're running into undead
monsters. All the cleric archetypes,however, provide us with much more interesting
uses of channel divinity power. Tasha'salso gave us another base use of our
(06:19):
channel divinity power, called harness divinepower. This lets us spend it in
order to regain a lost spell slot. You can only do this once per
long rest to stop us from farmingspell slots, but you can do it
more often at higher cleric levels.And then we have divine domains. Clerics
gain their archetypes at first level,and more than most classes, you'll be
getting most of your unique class featuresfrom your archetype. In particular, we
(06:42):
really care about the domains that letus ditch medium armour by giving us proficiency
in heavy armour including forge, Life, Nature, Order, Tempest, and
War. Other tempting options exist,but we don't want to be stuck in
light armour or medium armour. Andthen we have blessed strikes. A revised
claeric feature that replaces all these similarversions in the archetypes. This lets us
deal an extra one D eight damageonce a turn on an attack or cantrip.
(07:05):
This is a nice upgrade since itallows you to do focus on martial
options or spell casting regardless of whatarchetype you select. Now, let's talk
ability scores. For these dual classoption builds. We're taking advantage of some
artificer archetype features which will let ususe intelligence for our attacks. As such,
for these builds, we want tofocus on intelligence as our highest ability
score. Any ability score increases shouldbe spent on intelligence until you max it
(07:29):
out. Next, for both ofthese builds, we're going to be making
use of our cleric spell casting,and we'll want to make wisdom our second
highest ability score. Then, sincewe don't want to die and care at
least a little bit about our hitpoints, we'll need to make constitution our
third highest ability score. Finally,we're going to be relying on heavy armour
for these builds, and heavy armourhas a strength requirement. Ideally will want
(07:51):
fifteen strength so that we can wearplate armor, but we can also make
do with thirteen strengths so that wecan at least wear chain mail. If,
however, you're going to go withour machine God tank build, we'll
have a special artificer feature that letsus ignore the strength requirements and we can
just use strength as a dumpstat forall these builds. Dexterity and charisma can
both be dumpstats, and just asa reminder, the base attribute requirements for
(08:16):
multi classing Artificer and Clerk our thirteenintelligence and thirteen wisdom, and that's the
absolute minimum for the build. Nowlet's talk equipment. We're going to be
relying on heavy armor, but beyondthat our builds will be using wildly different
equipment. Put on the best heavyarmor you can wear, and take a
look at each build for further equipmentinstructions. And when it comes to which
class you should start with, keepin mind that you get similar skill proficiencies
(08:37):
and the starting weapon and armoured proficienciesare identical, and we pick up all
the missing tool proficiencies when we multiclass. Anyway, this means that there
isn't really a correct answer, andyou could start with either one. For
my personal preference, I start withthe Cleric, though for most of our
builds, starting with Cleric will getyou a heavy armor proficiency faster and you
can avoid the awkward swap from mediumto heavy later on. Now, let's
(09:01):
take a moment to talk multi classspell casting and how it works. The
easy part is the spells you know. Your known and prepared spells don't mix
whatsoever and work just like you werea single class character. If you're a
third level artificer and a fourth levelcleric, you'll have all the spells of
a third level artificer and a fourthlevel cleric. The spell slots are the
confusing bit. However, in theback of the basic rules, you can
(09:24):
find a table called multi class spellCaster, which shows you your spell slots
by your combined levels in spell castingclasses. Unfortunately, artificer is considered a
half caster while cleric is considered afull caster, so you'll have to do
a little bit of math. Thiswill help you figure out your spell slots,
and you'll add your cleric levels tohalf of your artificer levels rounded down.
So for example, if you hadfour cleric levels and two artificer levels,
(09:48):
you'd be a fifth level caster.For finding your spell slots on the
table. When it comes to actuallycasting your spells, you're going to have
to keep track of your spell attackmodifiers and the spell decease of each class.
Eric spells will all run off yourwisdom, and your artificer spells will
all run off of your intelligence.Finally, you need an arcane focus,
which is or staff, whatever othermagical thing you feel like, and you're
(10:11):
going to need it in your handto cast your artificer spells. The cleric
spells are a little bit easier.You need a holy symbol, which is
literally anything that represents your God,but you can thankfully just be wearing it
or displaying it so that you don'thave to be holding it specifically. You
do need to keep a hand completelyempty though, to perform the somatic components
of spells due to some wonky rulingsabout spell focus, but thankfully it can
(10:35):
be the same empty hand for bothyour cleric and arviser spells. I hope
that wasn't confusing. This particular sectiontook me a few takes because I had
to think about what I said andmake sure it made sense. So I
hope that wasn't confusing. Now let'stalk multi class builds. There are many
more combinations hiding in these class features. I know it, but The following
builds are among the best multi classcharacters of this particular brew. First,
(10:58):
we have the Divine Robot Commander.Our goal here is to build a robot
and buff our own private tank DPSmachine with divine power, getting free extra
attacks as we buff the bot.To start off, we need three levels
of Artificer taking the Battlesmith archetype,and just a single level of Cleric taking
the Order domain. We're only goingto be dipping into Cleric for that single
(11:18):
level, and all of our remaininglevels should go into Artificer as our primary
class. Battlesmith has a third levelfeature called battle Ready that gives us proficiency
with martial weapons, and more importantly, it lets us use intelligence instead of
strength or dexterity on our weapon attacks. It'll be an awkward first few levels,
but with this we can actually getsome hit points in without investing into
(11:39):
strength or dexterity. At third level, Battlesmith also gets a handy robot friend
in the form of a Steel Defender. Your robot pal acts on your initiative
and you can command him with yourbonus action. Its attacks and saves are
all linked to your own proficiency bonusand it sort of acts like an animal
companion. Ideally, battlesmiths want torely on their steel Defender to defend them
while loving spells at the target andkeeping distanced. The problem is that the
(12:03):
Steel Defender doesn't have that many hitpoints and its AC is a reasonable but
not amazing fifteen. Usually you'll bestuck spending your turn mending the steel Defender
and then ordering it to make asingle attack. Here's where the cleric level
and order domain kick in. Orderclerics gain a first level feature called Voice
of Authority, which grants one alliedtarget of our first level or higher spells
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a free attack using their reaction.Doesn't matter what the spell was or what
class it came from, it justhas to be a first level or higher
spell. This essentially means we getto three actions a turn, since our
action to cast a spell buffing ourbot also gives the robot in action,
and we get the attack from therobot using our bonus action as well.
When it comes to our infusions,we'd really prefer to buff our steel Defender
(12:48):
with magical armor and weapons, butsadly, due to some annoying technicalities,
it isn't proficient with anything, andearly on we should just buff our selves
up. We should be rocking heavyarmour with the enhanced defence in fu usion
for a plus one bonus to AC, with a spell casting focus in one
hand and a hand crossbow in theother, with the Enhanced Weapon infusion on
it not only for the plus onebonus to attack and damage, but also
(13:09):
to transform it into a magical weaponso we can use our intelligence for it
thanks to battle Ready. So whatspells are we buffing our robot with?
Firstly, from our handicleric level,we gain access to the spell Shield of
Faith, which grants plus two ACfor ten minutes so long as we can
maintain concentration. Plus two AC bringsour little robot up to a healthier seventeen
(13:30):
AC, and i'd recommend you tryand make that your initial spell at the
start of each combat. Bless alsouses concentration and conflicts with our shield,
but I still recommend it for situationswhere hitting is more important than blocking.
Next, we have the classics CureWounds and False Life, which heal HP
and provide temporary HP respectively, andcan conveniently be found on the Artificer list
(13:52):
At higher levels. Consider spells likein large reduce for giant robot fund and
haste when you reach third level spellsto stack up even more robot punches.
Finally, make sure to use oneof your Artificer cantrips on mending, since
that provides massive healing for your robotas well as a side note. Much
later in the build, you geta strange opportunity to turn your robot into
an archer century. One of themagic items you can replicate using your infusions
(14:16):
at tenth level is Bracers of Archery. The robot can attune the bracers,
and the bracers actually provide proficiency withbows, allowing the bot to use our
conveniently infused long bow. Also,once you reach six level Artificer, consider
swapping in some boots of the WindingPath and attuning them to your robot for
teleporting robots shenanigans. Next, wehave Machine God Tank. Our goal here
(14:37):
is to become a living Holy relicweapon, swooping in swinging holy fitts of
justice while shrugging off whatever comes ourway and giving the martial classes a run
for their money. We're going tostack up every defensive boost we can get
our hands on and become absolutely unkillable. To start off, we want to
take three artificer levels, selecting thearmorer archetype, and at least one cleric
level selecting the forged domain. Wethen want to push our original class artificer
(15:01):
up to tenth level to snag extraattack armor modifications and the tenth level infusions,
and all of our remaining levels gotowards getting us to tenth level Cleric
for a final even split of tenartificer levels ten cleric levels. So let's
break down how this one works.We have heavy armour proficiency as an armorer
artificer, so firstly we want toget our hands on some plate armour and
(15:22):
use the forged cleric's blessing of theforge to turn this non magical armor into
plus one plate. And it's importantto do this step first because it specifies
that it can only be done tonon magical armour, but all of our
artificer iron man stuff doesn't, soit'll only work as written if we do
it in the correct order. Thewhole ironman part of this build comes from
the armorer and the arcane armour featurewe gain at third level. Specifically,
(15:43):
we want to take the guardian optionfor our armour. Arcane armour is complicated
and grants several benefits, the mostimportant of which is to make our fists
into magical one D eight thunder weaponsthat use intelligence instead of strength or dexterity.
These melee attacks also impose the distractionability, and when we hit targets,
they'll have disadvantage on all attacks thatdon't target us on their next turn.
(16:04):
It also ignores the strength requirements ofthe armor. For our next defensive boost,
we infuse our forge blessed ar Canearmor with the enhanced defense for yet
another plus one AC bonus. Fromhere, we have a couple tempting options.
Go full tank by putting a shieldin one of our hands, or
go for an additional damage option andput a weapon in it. We don't
(16:25):
actually have access to martial weapons,but it's still a fair option to augment
our defensive abilities with some melee attacks. Finally, our go to cler expell
should be Shield of Faith, whichcleanly stacks another plus two A C bonus
defensive boost, so long as wecan maintain concentration, which hopefully shouldn't be
too difficult. When we get allthis together at fourth level, we've got
plate armours. Starting us off atAC eighteen plus one for the Blessing of
(16:48):
the Forge, plus one from enhanceddefense and plus two from a shield and
plus two from the Shield of Faith. For a whopping twenty four AC.
We can enter any fight swinging withour gauntlet, forcing targets to waste their
turn scrabbling inefficiently against our impenetrable holyscience. Later on you have nice options
to improve this. Further Armour modificationslets us essentially apply a whole ton of
(17:10):
infusions to our armor rather than justone. I highly recommend going for winged
boots for flying and higher movement speeds, repulsion shield on the shield for another
plus one AC for additional defense,and radiant weapon for the gauntlets to get
some holy justice into those punches.All told, this build is capable of
some of the highest ACS a playercharacter can reach with an insane twenty eight
(17:30):
AC in tier four. And thenlastly, we have the gun slinging Preacher.
Here we make use of the absolutemost ideal weapon for priests, a
gun. Our goal here is tolive out the trope of holy Man with
a gun and blast our way throughthe hairtics with massive amounts of damage.
This is simple but one of themost offensive options. The Cleric Artificer multi
class have to offer in more waysthan one. And obviously, while this
(17:52):
build revolves around firearms, it canwork fairly well using crossbows instead of those.
In case it doesn't fit your campaign, have firearms there, though with
a significant dip to the whole coolfactor. First, we want to take
three levels of Artificer, and onceagain we want to take the battlesmith archetype.
We then want to take a singleCleric level, taking the war domain,
followed by two more levels of Artificerto pick up extra attack. Finally,
(18:15):
all of our remaining levels should gotowards Claric, giving us a final
split of five Artificer levels and fifteenCleric levels. We get our hands on
a gun for heavy crossbow. Ifyour world is a bit more lame and
often forgotten, artificers start the gameoff with any firearm skill proficiencies for the
setting just in their base rules.If using renaissance guns, your best option
(18:36):
is a musket. For modern firearmsit's an automatic rifle, and finally,
for futuristic guns, we want alaser rifle. No matter what you choose,
you're definitely going to want to embossit with a holy symbol, especially
if it's a two handed weapon.Next, we need to infuse our lovely
gun with repeating shot, which notonly makes it a plus one magical item
weapon now, it also ignores theloading property by making magic bullets. And
(18:59):
because it is now a magic weapon, battle Ready allows us to use our
intelligence instead of dexterity for its attacks. And we can now make our attack
roles like we were martial characters.And since it's displaying our lovely holy symbol,
we can cast all of our clericspells through it. Before going further,
I do need to point out thesilliness that is the distinction between loading
and reload. Crossbows and renaissance gunsall use loading, which just says you
(19:23):
can make a maximum of one shotwith it a turn, but that we
can also ignore thanks to repeating shot. Repeating shot basically lets us skip the
crossbow expert feet that these sort ofbills normally need. Reload, on the
other hand, counts the number ofshots loaded into the gun and forces you
to use an action or bonus actionto reload it. All the modern and
(19:44):
future weapons use reload and there's noway for us to bypass it. All
this really means is every other turnor so. For most later guns,
we'll have to only shoot twice ina turn, and as we spend a
bonus action to reload rather than firea third time. How does this one
work? Let's take a look atthe build at six level just to make
sure, and it's time for initiativeroles. We fire our gun, followed
(20:07):
by another shot from extra attack,but we're not done. The war Clerics
war Priest feature gained at first levelallows us to make another attack as a
bonus action, uses equal to ourwisdom modifier for yet another shot. That
means that, thanks to war Matgicat only six level are heavy armored Preacher
filled to the brim with magical abilitiesand healing spells, can also pour out
ridiculous damage rolls each turn. Ifyou're using the Humble Heavy Crossbow, you'll
(20:32):
dish out thirty two damage that's threeD ten plus fifteen a turn. Brandishing
a musket brings you up to thirtyfive that's two D twelve plus fifteen to
turn. The Mighty Hunting Rifle pushesus up to forty seven sixty ten plus
fifteen to turn, and if yourDM is insane enough to give you futuristic
guns like a laser rifle, you'llbe unleashing fifty six. That's ninety eight
plus fifteen every turn. I havenever personally used laser or futuristic guns in
(20:57):
any of my D and D campaignbut maybe other RPGs, but not this
one. That sounds wild. There'sdefinitely one theme I could apply across all
of these builds in terms of roleplaying and stuff, and it's that if
any of you out there are interestedin playing a chaotic good or any type
of really crazy kind of character,all of these multi class builds kind of
(21:21):
seem like they would fit that.Yeah. I love specific use builds like
this. Thank you guys so muchfor watching. I really appreciate it.
Be sure to like and subscribe becausewe're putting out new content all the time.
Go see what we're up to youover on skullsplitterdice dot com. And
if you guys plan on building anyof the type of multi classes that we
put here today, or if youhave your own spin on it, I
would love to hear about them downin the comments. Thanks again for watching.
(21:44):
My name's Patrick Ferguson from skull SplitterDice and until next time, farewell,
Artificers are inventors of the impossible andthe crafters of the arcane, capable of
assembling the most wondrous and deadly ofmagic items. Clerics are the devout ministers
of divine will, imbued with celestialpower to heal the sick and smite the
unworthy. You put them together andwe get priests of arcane science and the
machine God's Clergy bedecked and all thepowers that can be assembled by God or
(00:21):
man. So if you want tobe a part of and I'll say it
again, the Machine God's Clergy,and why wouldn't you stick around for today's
video? This isn't one of themulti class options that most people think of,
and you'll likely have a truly uniquecharacter when you come to the table
(00:42):
with it. While the classes mayfeel very different at fake's value, both
can be built as support casters oras combat tanks, and most of those
features will stack together. Two preparedspell casting classes together means we'll have tons
of additional spell casting options. Clericgains quite a bit at first level,
meaning we can get away with someof the bills with just a single character
level. Dip Artificers are usually stuckin medium armour or even light armour,
(01:04):
and just a pinch of Cleric willlet us upgrade to heavy armour. Finally,
since infusions don't rely on any abilityscore, we have some wiggle room
when it comes to our ability spread. Build it right and we can become
the ultimate party buff with a halfa dozen different buffs online at a time,
or a power tank bolstered by bothour technological and holy buffs. There
(01:25):
are, of course, some downsideshere. The big problem is that both
Artificer and Cleric are both casting classes, and they use different spell casting abilities.
Then if we want to tank orget anywhere near combat, we'll also
have to care about constitution and oneof the physical damage abilities. Both classes
can go for marshall prowess combat build, but without a lot of work,
you'll lag behind the actual combat classesat doing the same thing. This basically
(01:49):
leaves us going full glass cannon withsevere combat limitations and maxing out our two
casting abilities, spreading ourselves thin overat least for abilities, or ditching one
of our spell casting has Altogether.With some careful building, we can overcome
a lot of this, but wedon't have a lot of wiggle room if
we want the build to actually workand at least be on par with a
single class build. Since Artificer inparticular is already a half cast class,
(02:13):
multi classing and Artificer means will beeven further behind full casters than normal,
and Artificer multi class can expect tofeel weak at the mid levels. We
also can't make much use out ofthe arguably best artificer class archetype, the
Artillerists and their Eldridge cannon, sincethe Arkane canon just doesn't synergize with the
Cleric. And of course, justlike with any other multi class, we're
going to be sacrificing high level Artificerabilities and high level Cleric abilities, and
(02:37):
we'll be getting our mid game andhigher level class features significantly later than a
single class character. We'll cover thebest combination of just these two classes,
but they actually lend themselves better towardsclass soup builds with dips in multiple different
classes, such as Ranger, Paladin, and Rogue if you're curious when this
multi class starts to kick in,Multi class characters tend to have a level
goal. They're working towards any synergythat provides a massive boost of power to
(03:00):
justify the level dips. Most ofour builds require at least gaining the third
level archetype features of the Artificer classand at least the first level archetype features
from the Cleric class. This meansmost of our builds will be kicked in
with four character levels, with threeArtificer levels and one Cleric level. Most
builds will also continue on with Artificeras the primary class, with only the
(03:22):
small level dip into Cleric. Nowlet's get into the class features that we
care about. As a dual classoption, We've got a ton of features
to consider, but only a fewof them will ever really be important.
We can shift the build in afew different ways, so not every class
feature will factor into every build,but the following features all play into at
least one of our strategies. Startingwith our significant Artificer features, we have
(03:45):
magical tinkering gain. At first level, you basically get to turn a number
of mundane items into tiny gadgets witha number of items per day equal to
your intelligence modifier. They can emitlight, record and replay sounds, emit
noises or odors, or relay messages. Next, we have spell casting Arficer
spell casting works a bit like anintelligence based cleric. You get access to
spells on the artificer's spell list thatyou prepare, but are limited by your
(04:09):
spell slots. The artificer list islimited, but for most of our builds,
it's where we'll be getting the majorityof our spells. Note that the
artificer is a half caster, whichmeans we only ever get to fifth level
spell slots. Arficers don't have aton of offensive spells at low levels,
but consider Tasha's Caustic Brew for someunexpectedly powerful acid damage. And then we
have infuse items. Starting at secondlevel, the artificer gets to essentially make
(04:32):
magic items that only last for awhile, choosing an item feature from a
long list that gains more options asyou gain artificer levels. This, however,
opens up all sorts of gadget possibilities, from simple stuff like magic rape
yeers to on demand magic ropes andgloves of Thievery early on, you'll be
limited mostly to static buffs, butat later levels you can make magic items
(04:53):
that essentially amount to extra features.You'll want to build towards the level milestones
when your infusion options improve. Withsix level, in five usions, tenth
level infusions and fourteenth level infusions.Note that what gadgets you can make depends
on your arficer level, not yourintelligence, so we can actually get quite
a bit of use out of theseeven if going core cleric. And then
we have Artificer specialties. Artificers gaintheir archetypes at third level, and several
(05:15):
of our builds rely on the thirdlevel archetype features. We'll go more into
artificer subclasses in a bit, ofcourse, but just know that for now
they'll be integral to our builds.Now, moving on to our significant cleric
features, we have spell casting.Clerics are a full prepared spell casting class.
This means you have access to spellson the cleric spell list. You
just have to pick which spells youprepare each day. Clerics have a couple
(05:39):
really good offensive spells, but you'lllikely get the most value out of their
utility buffing and healing spells even withjust a level dip. Cleric grants us
a ton of additional spell casting optionsand one to two spell slot levels.
And then we have channel divinity.Cleric get a special divine resource in their
uses of channel divinity. You gainthis feature with your second cleric level and
(05:59):
you get one of these uses ofchannel divinity every short or long rest,
and more uses at your six clericlevel. The base use of your channel
divinity is turn undead, which isunsurprisingly only useful if you're running into undead
monsters. All the cleric archetypes,however, provide us with much more interesting
uses of channel divinity power. Tasha'salso gave us another base use of our
(06:19):
channel divinity power, called harness divinepower. This lets us spend it in
order to regain a lost spell slot. You can only do this once per
long rest to stop us from farmingspell slots, but you can do it
more often at higher cleric levels.And then we have divine domains. Clerics
gain their archetypes at first level,and more than most classes, you'll be
getting most of your unique class featuresfrom your archetype. In particular, we
(06:42):
really care about the domains that letus ditch medium armour by giving us proficiency
in heavy armour including forge, Life, Nature, Order, Tempest, and
War. Other tempting options exist,but we don't want to be stuck in
light armour or medium armour. Andthen we have blessed strikes. A revised
claeric feature that replaces all these similarversions in the archetypes. This lets us
deal an extra one D eight damageonce a turn on an attack or cantrip.
(07:05):
This is a nice upgrade since itallows you to do focus on martial
options or spell casting regardless of whatarchetype you select. Now, let's talk
ability scores. For these dual classoption builds. We're taking advantage of some
artificer archetype features which will let ususe intelligence for our attacks. As such,
for these builds, we want tofocus on intelligence as our highest ability
score. Any ability score increases shouldbe spent on intelligence until you max it
(07:29):
out. Next, for both ofthese builds, we're going to be making
use of our cleric spell casting,and we'll want to make wisdom our second
highest ability score. Then, sincewe don't want to die and care at
least a little bit about our hitpoints, we'll need to make constitution our
third highest ability score. Finally,we're going to be relying on heavy armour
for these builds, and heavy armourhas a strength requirement. Ideally will want
(07:51):
fifteen strength so that we can wearplate armor, but we can also make
do with thirteen strengths so that wecan at least wear chain mail. If,
however, you're going to go withour machine God tank build, we'll
have a special artificer feature that letsus ignore the strength requirements and we can
just use strength as a dumpstat forall these builds. Dexterity and charisma can
both be dumpstats, and just asa reminder, the base attribute requirements for
(08:16):
multi classing Artificer and Clerk our thirteenintelligence and thirteen wisdom, and that's the
absolute minimum for the build. Nowlet's talk equipment. We're going to be
relying on heavy armor, but beyondthat our builds will be using wildly different
equipment. Put on the best heavyarmor you can wear, and take a
look at each build for further equipmentinstructions. And when it comes to which
class you should start with, keepin mind that you get similar skill proficiencies
(08:37):
and the starting weapon and armoured proficienciesare identical, and we pick up all
the missing tool proficiencies when we multiclass. Anyway, this means that there
isn't really a correct answer, andyou could start with either one. For
my personal preference, I start withthe Cleric, though for most of our
builds, starting with Cleric will getyou a heavy armor proficiency faster and you
can avoid the awkward swap from mediumto heavy later on. Now, let's
(09:01):
take a moment to talk multi classspell casting and how it works. The
easy part is the spells you know. Your known and prepared spells don't mix
whatsoever and work just like you werea single class character. If you're a
third level artificer and a fourth levelcleric, you'll have all the spells of
a third level artificer and a fourthlevel cleric. The spell slots are the
confusing bit. However, in theback of the basic rules, you can
(09:24):
find a table called multi class spellCaster, which shows you your spell slots
by your combined levels in spell castingclasses. Unfortunately, artificer is considered a
half caster while cleric is considered afull caster, so you'll have to do
a little bit of math. Thiswill help you figure out your spell slots,
and you'll add your cleric levels tohalf of your artificer levels rounded down.
So for example, if you hadfour cleric levels and two artificer levels,
(09:48):
you'd be a fifth level caster.For finding your spell slots on the
table. When it comes to actuallycasting your spells, you're going to have
to keep track of your spell attackmodifiers and the spell decease of each class.
Eric spells will all run off yourwisdom, and your artificer spells will
all run off of your intelligence.Finally, you need an arcane focus,
which is or staff, whatever othermagical thing you feel like, and you're
(10:11):
going to need it in your handto cast your artificer spells. The cleric
spells are a little bit easier.You need a holy symbol, which is
literally anything that represents your God,but you can thankfully just be wearing it
or displaying it so that you don'thave to be holding it specifically. You
do need to keep a hand completelyempty though, to perform the somatic components
of spells due to some wonky rulingsabout spell focus, but thankfully it can
(10:35):
be the same empty hand for bothyour cleric and arviser spells. I hope
that wasn't confusing. This particular sectiontook me a few takes because I had
to think about what I said andmake sure it made sense. So I
hope that wasn't confusing. Now let'stalk multi class builds. There are many
more combinations hiding in these class features. I know it, but The following
builds are among the best multi classcharacters of this particular brew. First,
(10:58):
we have the Divine Robot Commander.Our goal here is to build a robot
and buff our own private tank DPSmachine with divine power, getting free extra
attacks as we buff the bot.To start off, we need three levels
of Artificer taking the Battlesmith archetype,and just a single level of Cleric taking
the Order domain. We're only goingto be dipping into Cleric for that single
(11:18):
level, and all of our remaininglevels should go into Artificer as our primary
class. Battlesmith has a third levelfeature called battle Ready that gives us proficiency
with martial weapons, and more importantly, it lets us use intelligence instead of
strength or dexterity on our weapon attacks. It'll be an awkward first few levels,
but with this we can actually getsome hit points in without investing into
(11:39):
strength or dexterity. At third level, Battlesmith also gets a handy robot friend
in the form of a Steel Defender. Your robot pal acts on your initiative
and you can command him with yourbonus action. Its attacks and saves are
all linked to your own proficiency bonusand it sort of acts like an animal
companion. Ideally, battlesmiths want torely on their steel Defender to defend them
while loving spells at the target andkeeping distanced. The problem is that the
(12:03):
Steel Defender doesn't have that many hitpoints and its AC is a reasonable but
not amazing fifteen. Usually you'll bestuck spending your turn mending the steel Defender
and then ordering it to make asingle attack. Here's where the cleric level
and order domain kick in. Orderclerics gain a first level feature called Voice
of Authority, which grants one alliedtarget of our first level or higher spells
(12:26):
a free attack using their reaction.Doesn't matter what the spell was or what
class it came from, it justhas to be a first level or higher
spell. This essentially means we getto three actions a turn, since our
action to cast a spell buffing ourbot also gives the robot in action,
and we get the attack from therobot using our bonus action as well.
When it comes to our infusions,we'd really prefer to buff our steel Defender
(12:48):
with magical armor and weapons, butsadly, due to some annoying technicalities,
it isn't proficient with anything, andearly on we should just buff our selves
up. We should be rocking heavyarmour with the enhanced defence in fu usion
for a plus one bonus to AC, with a spell casting focus in one
hand and a hand crossbow in theother, with the Enhanced Weapon infusion on
it not only for the plus onebonus to attack and damage, but also
(13:09):
to transform it into a magical weaponso we can use our intelligence for it
thanks to battle Ready. So whatspells are we buffing our robot with?
Firstly, from our handicleric level,we gain access to the spell Shield of
Faith, which grants plus two ACfor ten minutes so long as we can
maintain concentration. Plus two AC bringsour little robot up to a healthier seventeen
(13:30):
AC, and i'd recommend you tryand make that your initial spell at the
start of each combat. Bless alsouses concentration and conflicts with our shield,
but I still recommend it for situationswhere hitting is more important than blocking.
Next, we have the classics CureWounds and False Life, which heal HP
and provide temporary HP respectively, andcan conveniently be found on the Artificer list
(13:52):
At higher levels. Consider spells likein large reduce for giant robot fund and
haste when you reach third level spellsto stack up even more robot punches.
Finally, make sure to use oneof your Artificer cantrips on mending, since
that provides massive healing for your robotas well as a side note. Much
later in the build, you geta strange opportunity to turn your robot into
an archer century. One of themagic items you can replicate using your infusions
(14:16):
at tenth level is Bracers of Archery. The robot can attune the bracers,
and the bracers actually provide proficiency withbows, allowing the bot to use our
conveniently infused long bow. Also,once you reach six level Artificer, consider
swapping in some boots of the WindingPath and attuning them to your robot for
teleporting robots shenanigans. Next, wehave Machine God Tank. Our goal here
(14:37):
is to become a living Holy relicweapon, swooping in swinging holy fitts of
justice while shrugging off whatever comes ourway and giving the martial classes a run
for their money. We're going tostack up every defensive boost we can get
our hands on and become absolutely unkillable. To start off, we want to
take three artificer levels, selecting thearmorer archetype, and at least one cleric
level selecting the forged domain. Wethen want to push our original class artificer
(15:01):
up to tenth level to snag extraattack armor modifications and the tenth level infusions,
and all of our remaining levels gotowards getting us to tenth level Cleric
for a final even split of tenartificer levels ten cleric levels. So let's
break down how this one works.We have heavy armour proficiency as an armorer
artificer, so firstly we want toget our hands on some plate armour and
(15:22):
use the forged cleric's blessing of theforge to turn this non magical armor into
plus one plate. And it's importantto do this step first because it specifies
that it can only be done tonon magical armour, but all of our
artificer iron man stuff doesn't, soit'll only work as written if we do
it in the correct order. Thewhole ironman part of this build comes from
the armorer and the arcane armour featurewe gain at third level. Specifically,
(15:43):
we want to take the guardian optionfor our armour. Arcane armour is complicated
and grants several benefits, the mostimportant of which is to make our fists
into magical one D eight thunder weaponsthat use intelligence instead of strength or dexterity.
These melee attacks also impose the distractionability, and when we hit targets,
they'll have disadvantage on all attacks thatdon't target us on their next turn.
(16:04):
It also ignores the strength requirements ofthe armor. For our next defensive boost,
we infuse our forge blessed ar Canearmor with the enhanced defense for yet
another plus one AC bonus. Fromhere, we have a couple tempting options.
Go full tank by putting a shieldin one of our hands, or
go for an additional damage option andput a weapon in it. We don't
(16:25):
actually have access to martial weapons,but it's still a fair option to augment
our defensive abilities with some melee attacks. Finally, our go to cler expell
should be Shield of Faith, whichcleanly stacks another plus two A C bonus
defensive boost, so long as wecan maintain concentration, which hopefully shouldn't be
too difficult. When we get allthis together at fourth level, we've got
plate armours. Starting us off atAC eighteen plus one for the Blessing of
(16:48):
the Forge, plus one from enhanceddefense and plus two from a shield and
plus two from the Shield of Faith. For a whopping twenty four AC.
We can enter any fight swinging withour gauntlet, forcing targets to waste their
turn scrabbling inefficiently against our impenetrable holyscience. Later on you have nice options
to improve this. Further Armour modificationslets us essentially apply a whole ton of
(17:10):
infusions to our armor rather than justone. I highly recommend going for winged
boots for flying and higher movement speeds, repulsion shield on the shield for another
plus one AC for additional defense,and radiant weapon for the gauntlets to get
some holy justice into those punches.All told, this build is capable of
some of the highest ACS a playercharacter can reach with an insane twenty eight
(17:30):
AC in tier four. And thenlastly, we have the gun slinging Preacher.
Here we make use of the absolutemost ideal weapon for priests, a
gun. Our goal here is tolive out the trope of holy Man with
a gun and blast our way throughthe hairtics with massive amounts of damage.
This is simple but one of themost offensive options. The Cleric Artificer multi
class have to offer in more waysthan one. And obviously, while this
(17:52):
build revolves around firearms, it canwork fairly well using crossbows instead of those.
In case it doesn't fit your campaign, have firearms there, though with
a significant dip to the whole coolfactor. First, we want to take
three levels of Artificer, and onceagain we want to take the battlesmith archetype.
We then want to take a singleCleric level, taking the war domain,
followed by two more levels of Artificerto pick up extra attack. Finally,
(18:15):
all of our remaining levels should gotowards Claric, giving us a final
split of five Artificer levels and fifteenCleric levels. We get our hands on
a gun for heavy crossbow. Ifyour world is a bit more lame and
often forgotten, artificers start the gameoff with any firearm skill proficiencies for the
setting just in their base rules.If using renaissance guns, your best option
(18:36):
is a musket. For modern firearmsit's an automatic rifle, and finally,
for futuristic guns, we want alaser rifle. No matter what you choose,
you're definitely going to want to embossit with a holy symbol, especially
if it's a two handed weapon.Next, we need to infuse our lovely
gun with repeating shot, which notonly makes it a plus one magical item
weapon now, it also ignores theloading property by making magic bullets. And
(18:59):
because it is now a magic weapon, battle Ready allows us to use our
intelligence instead of dexterity for its attacks. And we can now make our attack
roles like we were martial characters.And since it's displaying our lovely holy symbol,
we can cast all of our clericspells through it. Before going further,
I do need to point out thesilliness that is the distinction between loading
and reload. Crossbows and renaissance gunsall use loading, which just says you
(19:23):
can make a maximum of one shotwith it a turn, but that we
can also ignore thanks to repeating shot. Repeating shot basically lets us skip the
crossbow expert feet that these sort ofbills normally need. Reload, on the
other hand, counts the number ofshots loaded into the gun and forces you
to use an action or bonus actionto reload it. All the modern and
(19:44):
future weapons use reload and there's noway for us to bypass it. All
this really means is every other turnor so. For most later guns,
we'll have to only shoot twice ina turn, and as we spend a
bonus action to reload rather than firea third time. How does this one
work? Let's take a look atthe build at six level just to make
sure, and it's time for initiativeroles. We fire our gun, followed
(20:07):
by another shot from extra attack,but we're not done. The war Clerics
war Priest feature gained at first levelallows us to make another attack as a
bonus action, uses equal to ourwisdom modifier for yet another shot. That
means that, thanks to war Matgicat only six level are heavy armored Preacher
filled to the brim with magical abilitiesand healing spells, can also pour out
ridiculous damage rolls each turn. Ifyou're using the Humble Heavy Crossbow, you'll
(20:32):
dish out thirty two damage that's threeD ten plus fifteen a turn. Brandishing
a musket brings you up to thirtyfive that's two D twelve plus fifteen to
turn. The Mighty Hunting Rifle pushesus up to forty seven sixty ten plus
fifteen to turn, and if yourDM is insane enough to give you futuristic
guns like a laser rifle, you'llbe unleashing fifty six. That's ninety eight
plus fifteen every turn. I havenever personally used laser or futuristic guns in
(20:57):
any of my D and D campaignbut maybe other RPGs, but not this
one. That sounds wild. There'sdefinitely one theme I could apply across all
of these builds in terms of roleplaying and stuff, and it's that if
any of you out there are interestedin playing a chaotic good or any type
of really crazy kind of character,all of these multi class builds kind of
(21:21):
seem like they would fit that.Yeah. I love specific use builds like
this. Thank you guys so muchfor watching. I really appreciate it.
Be sure to like and subscribe becausewe're putting out new content all the time.
Go see what we're up to youover on skullsplitterdice dot com. And
if you guys plan on building anyof the type of multi classes that we
put here today, or if youhave your own spin on it, I
would love to hear about them downin the comments. Thanks again for watching.
(21:44):
My name's Patrick Ferguson from skull SplitterDice and until next time, farewell,
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