Quote Originally Posted by Kurald Galain View Post
I was looking into building a melee-based cleric or druid.

However, neither class has access to the Extra Attack ability (as far as I've seen); so around level 6'ish, every other melee character seems to attack twice as often (or 50% more, if TWF or similar) and that's a pretty big gap. How does a melee-focused cleric or druid cope with that? Or should I stick to bladesinger or sword-bard instead?
Depends on what you want.

I played human death cleric with magic initiate and took green flame blade and booming blade as cantrips.

When I reached level 8 I was doing 1d8+5 with my weapon, adding divine strike for 1d8 necrotic plus 1d8 thunder/fire from booming blade/green flame blade. To supplement that I could add 21 necrotic damage with my channel divinity twice per short rest. So the standard was 3d8+5 damage with damage spikes of 3d8+26. On top of that I was usually running spiritual weapon for extra 1d8+4 dmg as a bonus action. Decent AC with medium armor and shield and just for fun you could have active spells like spirit guardians for extra damage.

At level 11 I was doing 4d8+modifer and level 14 5d8+modifier and touch of death scales really well with 2xCleric level+5 So you'll be better at smiting than the paladin. Level 5 paladin smite 3d8 for 13.5 average damage 2x per day, level 5 death priest smite 15 damage 1x per short rest, level 9 paladin gets his 3rd level slot and can smite for 18 damage 2x per day and 13.5 3x per day. Death priest at same level 23 damage 2x per short rest.


So yes you can make a decent melee priest if you want to, then you are a full caster as well.


I've had Moon Druids in my game being decent frontline fighters, great at tanking at least doing great damage at low level and petering off after level 5 but still doing great. The moon druid in my game is Moon Druid 8/Monk 1 and has gotten her Wisdom up to +5 so most of her forms have 15+ in AC.

There are other melee builds for druids that rely on Shillelagh but to make them decent I think you have to multiclass.