Cleric 5e Guide to Dungeons and Dragons

 An Answer to Prayers

Devout servants of powerful deities, clerics used to be the game dull party heal bot but in 5th edition they ascend to greatness as one of the most powerful and versatile spellcasters in the game. Clerics can heal, stab, blast, and pray their way through D&D and what was once a boring playstyle is now a combination of cool abilities and powerful spells. Grab your holy texts and vestments and make a quick prayer as we go through everything you need to know in this complete cleric guide for dnd 5e.

 

What Are Clerics?

A cleric is a devout follower of a deity and is so favored by that divine being that they gain magical powers. They could be a devotee to that deity, or a common person chosen for greater things. How exactly these magical powers work depends a lot on the deity, which means a cleric can be anything from the cheerful healer of a benevolent god of prosperity to the battle-crazed berserker of a blood god. Unlike warlocks that make pacts with powerful beings, clerics are gifted their powers by their devotion, their actions, and their willingness to fulfill their destiny in the name of their holy benefactor. This all shakes out into a very powerful class that mechanically can fit any role you'd care to play. Healing, tanking, DPS of both the melee and ranged flavors, even scouting and playing the party face, if you want to play it there's a way to mold your cleric into it. Each cleric's god usually has a major impact on that character’s personality, and even more than other classes no two clerics are alike.

 

Cleric Class Features

Before we get into the builds and options, we should go through the classes mechanics and class abilities that define the cleric.

 

Cleric Spellcasting

Clerics are primarily spellcasters, and you'll need to get a hang of your spells even if your main tactic is going to be swinging a sword around.

Starting off simply, as a cleric your spellcasting ability is Wisdom, which means your spell attack modifiers and spell save DC is based on your Wisdom modifier. The higher your Wisdom is, the better your spell attacks will be and the more difficult it will be to resist your effects.

You're also what's called a prepared spellcaster, which can take some getting used to. Your cleric has a list of spells and knows every spell on the cleric spell list, yes you read that right. The trick is that you have to pick and choose which spells you'll be using at the start of the day. Every time you finish a long rest, you'll get to pick out a number of cleric spells to have "prepared" equal to your Wisdom modifier + your Cleric level.

That's how you pick out which spells you have available, so how does casting them work?

You also have a thing called "spell slots", which you can think of as bullets or fuel that you load into your different spells to "fire" them. Your total amount of "ammo" is determined by your cleric levels, and you get all your ammo back when you finish a long rest.

So, let's say I'm a 3rd level cleric and I prepare the 1st level cleric spell guiding bolt. Since guiding bolt is one of my prepared spells, I just load in one of my 1st level spell slots and pull the trigger. Or, If I'm facing something really nasty, I could load in my spicier 2nd level spell slot and fire it off to do some more damage.

You can prepare different spells every time you finish a long rest, and just like other spellcasting classes you also have a few cleric cantrips or "level 0 spells" that don't take any spell slots to cast. You also can't prepare spells with a level higher than the slots you have, which makes sense.

You'll also be getting (most likely) a set of "domain spells". The cleric archetypes are called divine domains, and most of them have lists of spells that are added to your list of prepared spells for free. You still have to load in your spell slots to use them, but you get to have them prepared in addition to all your other spells (which is especially nice as some of them come from other spell lists).

Clerics also get a special feature called ritual casting. Which allows you to cast certain "ritual spells" without spending a spell slot if you take a long time to cast them. Most ritual spells aren't things you'd usually want to use in combat but casting them as a ritual makes sure you can't cast them in combat as it takes 10 more minutes to cast them that way. What this does is it allows you to cast some roleplaying and investigation type spells without it affecting your combat effectiveness, which can be a major bonus!

Finally, you'll be doing all of this with something called a "holy symbol". Usually, a holy symbol is the icon of your deity, but it can be anything really so long as it's associated with your god. Holy symbols function near identically to an arcane focus, and your holy symbol is essentially just the cool thing you hold up as your spells go off.

 

Channel Divinity

Starting at 2nd level, you gain access to divine energy that you can use to "channel divinity", this outpouring of positive energy (or possibly negative energy) can be used in two different ways.

The first way to use this special ability is the generic one that every cleric gets to use called turn undead. You basically fire off a ton of divine power and undead creatures within 30 feet of you has to make a Wisdom saving throw. If they fail, they gain a special condition called "turned" which is like frightened only worse, and they have to spend their entire next turn getting as far away from you as they can.

The 2nd way to use channel divinity is determined by your cleric archetype or "divine domain", and we'll get into that later but your access to magic is themed around your god. Your uses of channel divinity get restored on short rests, and if they need a saving throw, they use your spellcasting DC. For the most part, you'll be using the mode from your divine domain unless your DM is throwing a ton of undead your way.

You start with only 1 use of your channel divinity, but you get more times per day as you go on and some class feature redundancy. You'll pick up an additional time per day of your channel divinity at 6th level, and then strangely another use all the way up at 18th level for a total of 3 times per day.

 

Destroy Undead

At 5th level you continue the theme of "clerics beat undead" and your turn undead channel divinity power gets enhanced to just completely destroy undead if they fail the saving throw, assuming they're below a challenge rating threshold. You gain this feature at 5th level, at which your turn will destroy undead of CR ½ or lower, which improves to CR 1 at 8th level, CR 2 at 11th level, CR 3 at 14th level, and finally CR 4 at 18th level.

This whole feature is honestly kind of a legacy thing, and you'll very rarely see it come up in campaigns. However, if your DM is creating a horror story or throwing a lot of very low level undead at you, remember you have this feature and blast away some chaff zombies, especially at later levels.

 

Divine Intervention

Once you hit 10th level, you can literally ask your god for a favor. You ask your deity really nicely to do something, roll percentile dice (that's both d10s to get a result between 1 and 100) and if you roll equal or lower than your cleric level, your god does you a favor.

Of all the class features in 5e, this one is the most open ended and dependent on DM discretion, but if your DM is kind, it can be incredibly powerful. I find that most DMs will be particularly lenient if you ask for things that are in your god's flavor and themes. So, asking your god of charity and goodness to murder the guards probably won't go over well... Though asking the same thing of a death god might. And the actual level of this interaction can range from events serendipitously happening in your favor, to a Monty Python style god caricature appearing in the sky.

If you attempt this and it fails (rolled over your level), you can try again after a long rest. If you attempt it and it works then you've got to wait a full week before getting another favor from on high.

Finally, your big capstone feature at 20th level lets you automatically succeed on getting your god's favor with the divine intervention class feature, no roll required.

 

Optional Cleric Features

In Tasha's Cauldron of Everything every class got a set of optional features that act like a sort of upgrade patch to fix issues and improve things that needed improving. So, while everybody else is stuck in the past you can harness the futuristic powers of a new book installment. These features are technically optional, but assuming your DM allows them, make sure to include these class features with your new cleric:

Additional Cleric Spells

In Tasha's and some other later books, we've gotten some new cleric spells to the list and a few that they decided should have been cleric spells all along. Especially as prepared casters this all just serves to put even more tools in your pockets. The following spells are now on the cleric spell list:

3rd Level

Aura of Vitality

Spirit Shroud

4th Level

Aura of Life

Aura of Purity

5th Level

Summon celestial

6th Level

Sunbeam

8th Level

Sunburst

9th Level

Power Word Heal

 

Harness Divine Power

This one is actually huge. At 2nd level right along with your channel divinity feature you get a new divinity power. As a bonus action you can use your channel divinity to recover a spell slot, at a spell level no higher than half your proficiency bonus rounded up. A free 1st or 2nd level spell may not seem like much but having an essential spell reserve is a major boost to your utility, especially if you picked a domain with a meh divinity power.

Cantrip Versatility

Just like basically every other class with cantrips, Tasha's gave you the ability to swap out a cantrip for another cantrip whenever you gain an ability score increase. It's not a huge power boost or anything but it's nice to have the ability to retrain something that was previously hard locked in.

Blessed Strikes

Every cleric domain gets one of two feature forms of damage giving at 8th level, either divine strike or potent spellcasting. Now with Tasha's you have the option to replace either of those with a 3rd option called "blessed strikes". Blessed strikes lets you deal 1d8 additional radiant damage whenever you hit a target with a weapon attack or cantrip, and you can only do this once each turn. This ends up being a happy middle ground in a lot of situations, as it lets you deal extra damage if you had potent spellcasting but were focusing on weapon attacks, and it lets you deal extra damage with your spells if your domain had divine strike. However, if your domain WAS in line with your play style, the original features are a lot better than this. Consider taking blessed strikes only when you're playing a domain against its intended play style.

 

Building a Better Cleric

It feels like everybody hated playing the "heal-bot" cleric in the past and they've just been slowly growing what a cleric is capable of. Now clerics can be built up into practically anything, making excellent tanks, damage dealers, utility casters, party buffers, and yes, even healers. With just a little work, clerics can do the work of any of the spellcasting or fighter classes. To start with though, you'll need to address your ability scores.

 

Cleric Ability Scores

As a player character you're not just some average peasant laborer, you're a hero with ability scores that reflect your different adventuring qualities. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability score for clerics, and you're going to want your Wisdom to be high and quite likely your highest ability score.

Past that it gets more complicated because of all the routes you can take when building your cleric. Most if it revolves around what armor you plan on taking, and if you plan on being a "combat cleric" or more of a "spellcasting cleric". Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are all in the running here for your 2nd highest ability score. Choose Constitution for survivability, or for decent amounts of damage choose Strength for larger weapons and Dexterity for smaller ones (or ranged weapons).

If you end up with heavy armor (more on that later), you'll most likely want to make Constitution your next highest ability score. If you're relying on light or medium armor, Dexterity should be your next highest. And finally, while not all builds will want it, some of the more combat oriented cleric builds will want Strength as their next highest score.

In any case, none of these "physical scores" should be your dump stats and should at least be neutral "10's". You don't need large amounts of CHA or INT as both Charisma and Intelligence are largely useless for you other than ability checks, and you should put as few points as possible into them unless you're doing some very specific and odd builds of cleric.

Finally, while there are a few feats to consider for your ability score increases, I recommend simply loading up on Wisdom unless you've absolutely got your heart set on a specific build.

 

Cleric Races

You can choose any race but as a cleric you'll want particularly high Wisdom and a buff to one of the 3 physical ability scores, depending on the type of cleric you're trying to build. The following races gain either a +2 bonus to Wisdom, or have a +1 bonus to Wisdom and a +2 bonus to a physical score, making them optimal choices for a cleric character:

 

Aarakocra

+2 Dex and +1 Wis is appealing, but let's be honest, the big reason to take this race has always been the flight. This is by far the most often banned race in 5e so make absolutely sure your DM is cool with the bird folk before building your character. If you do manage it, they're fantastic options and I recommend taking full advantage of your flight by focusing on ranged spell attacks and other abilities you can use from a distance.

 

Centaur

Centaurs gain +2 Str and +1 Wis. Extremely mobile (unless you're in a climbing situation) and can potentially hit very hard and fast with the Charge ability. Centaurs are a powerful option for Strength focused melee cleric builds. Click for our detailed Centaur race guide

 

Dwarf (Hill)

Hill dwarves get +2 Con and +1 Wis. This is one of the strongest options for "tanky" clerics, as the boost to your Con combined with the free hit points from Dwarven Toughness will make you particularly chunky and survivable. That and a dwarven cleric is downright iconic. Resistance to poison damage and advantage on saves against poisons can be a nice boost as well.

 

Elf (Pallid)

Elves get +2 Dex and selecting the Drow subrace snags a +1 Wis bonus. Technically only available in Critical Role's unique setting, but if your DM allows it this is an incredible option. Pallid elves gain permanent advantage on Investigation and Insight checks, which combined with their racial spell sets makes this one of the best options for utility clerics.

 

Elf (Wood)

Base elves get +2 Dex and wood elves gain a +1 bonus to Wis. Wood elves are probably what you'll need to default to if your DM disallows pallid elves, though they're not a bad option in their own right. Their extended 35-foot movement speed makes them a more maneuverable option if you want to play a pure spellcasting cleric that keeps their distance.

 

Firbolg

Firbolgs are one of the few races with a +2 bonus to Wis, and also snag a +1 bonus to Str. I really love these guys for combat clerics strangely enough, their Hidden Step ability can get them out of trouble if the fight gets the better of them.

 

Genasi (Water)

Genasi get +2 Con and water genasi pick up +1 Wis. Besides the typical "aquatic stuff" you also strangely get resistance to acid damage. This isn't a bad option if you expect to be in and around water often in your campaign and would like an easier time with the whole breathing underwater thing.

 

Halfling (Ghostwise)

Base halflings get +2 Dex and Ghostwise pick up +1 Wis. The halfling Lucky ability is strong enough to justify the race selection on its own, but the silent telepathy option makes them a tempting option for utility clerics. Bonus points for pairing the creepy ghostwise halfling with the grave or death domain (insert evil monologue here).

 

Human

With the full +1 spread in every ability score, humans are genuinely hot shit and are flexible enough to fit any class, and the variant human's feat fits especially well if you want to pick up the war caster feat early. It may seem bland, but humans are always a good option if you're stuck.

 

Kalashtar

These spirit-bound folk gain +2 Wis and +1 Cha. The Charisma bonus is a bit wasted but kalashtar are one of the only races with a +2 Wisdom bonus. You also pick up some very strong resistances, but be wary, this race is technically locked to the Eberron setting so you'll need to double check with your DM before using them elsewhere.

 

Kenku

Kenku gains +2 Dex and +1 Wis. And while they're abilities overall are a bit lacking; they do pick up some strong utility options and can make for a versatile utility/sneaky cleric. Their mimicry feature will vary in power depending on how your DM rules it. With good rulings the kenku is a strong contender especially for trickery clerics, but with bad rulings they're just ok.

 

Lizardfolk

Lizardfolk gain +2 Con and +1 Wis. Lizardfolk have a ton of good minor abilities, but it's their natural armor that makes them appealing for otherwise lightly armored builds. You also gain a hold breath and natural swim speed which is nothing to sneeze at.

 

Loxodon

Loxodon gain +2 Con and +1 Wis. The loxodon natural armor is unique in that it uses Constitution, which means you can focus entirely on Constitution and Wisdom and dump everything else. I find loxodon to be the best tanky cleric option, combined with the Unity Domain you can become a giant walking bag of hit points that keeps your allies alive.

 

Simic Hybrid

Simic Hybrids gain +2 Con and +1 to any other ability which can be Wis. Simic are innately flexible, but consider taking the +1 bonus to AC. It may not be the most exciting option, but flat AC bonuses are hard to come by and it can make a big difference for a tank build.

 

Tortle

Tortles gain +2 Str and +1 Wis. Due to their extremely tough and stat independent natural armor, you can fully ignore Dexterity as an ability score and focus on Wis, Str, and Con. One of the better "combat cleric" options if you're trying for a Str focus.

 

Warforged

Warforged gain +2 Con and +1 to any other ability score which you can make Wis. Their inbuilt bonus to AC makes warforged particularly appealing for tanky clerics. Strongly consider choosing warforged if your DM allows them, and you're running a highly armored domain like the forge domain.

 

Divine Domains: Choose your Gods.

Clerics choose which domain they will specialize in at level 1, which can have a lot of roleplaying depth beyond the subclass features, making clerics an interesting class for RP purposes. Where an awkward warlock gets a cool patreon that grants their powers, clerics get a generous sponsor that's divine rather than just edgy. These domains typically fall to a god in each Pantheon and each domain description is fairly wide with countless deities that can fall into those categories. For instance, the gods of knowledge in a Faerun campaign could be Thoth, Oghma, or Aureon. These domain descriptions are largely thematic rather than specific to particular gods, so you should be able to play any cleric subclass in any campaign setting from basic fantasy settings to strange settings of any culture shift. Each domain is given access to a list of cleric domain spells from many spell lists (including some wizard spells), which are always considered "prepared". You gain two of these spells at 1st level, 3rd level, 5th level, 7th level, and 9th level.

Almost every domain also gets one of two features at 8th level, divine strike which adds 1d8 damage (which later increases to 2d8 damage) to your weapon attacks, or potent spellcasting which adds a damage bonus to your cantrips equal to your Wisdom modifier. These 8th level features go a long way towards specializing you towards melee or blaster spellcasting, and you should choose accordingly. Putting it all together these domains act as your subclass, but a subclass that dominates more than half of the class features your character will gain. Pick your subclass wisely, as it will have even more impact on your character's playstyle than most subclasses, granting features at 1st, 2nd, 6th, 8th, and one final capstone feature as a 17th level cleric.

 

Arcana Domain

This is the domain to take if you want your cleric to dip their toe into wizardry. Mechanically it gets additional wizard cantrips and a lot of the iconic wizard spells like magic missile get added to your list of cleric spells. Gaining wizard cantrips gives you access to the melee attack cantrips like Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade, making it sneakily one of the stronger melee cleric options. It's also one of the absolute best "anti-magic" class archetypes. You get to dispel any nasty effects your enemies have cast on you or your allies with the healing spells you were already using. If you were looking for an arcane shotgun of DPS you'll be disappointed, but it's a great way to get your cleric involved in those counterspell fights.

 

Death Domain

A death domain cleric aligns with the forces of death to become a spooky damage dealer with a focus on melee strikes and upping the power of necromancy damage cantrips like chill touch and toll the dead. One of the better options for a DPS melee cleric with strong damage spells all throughout its domain spell list. It's also a fair healing or utility caster since your regular damage can come from cantrips and you can save your spell slots for healing or other utility options.

 

Forge Domain

This is best of the defensive options for tanky clerics with some proper arcane armor and magic weapons. Between the Blessing of the Forge and Soul of the Forge abilities, a forge domain cleric can gain +2 AC on top of heavy armor. Start with one of the races that has a built in +1 AC like warforged or Simic hybrid, put on some full plate and add on a shield and your full casting cleric can have 23 AC as early as level 6! Then just cast shield of faith to walk around the dungeon with a cool 25 AC. And why not, have some free fire damage resistance as a cherry on top! Other than the tanky aspect you basically get to turn your weapon into basic magic weapons with a damage and attack bonus. And you get some utility out of the channel divinity option, which lets you craft a nonmagical object. Combined with your arcane armor and magical weapon, the forge grants a touch of artificer feel in there as well.

 

Grave Domain

The domain description of the grave domain sounds a lot like the spooky necromancer cleric option, but it's really the opposite. You gain a bunch of abilities that are great for keeping your allies alive and a couple bits of anti-undead tech and even a sneaky DPS boost to your cantrips. Putting it all together, the grave cleric is an ideal pick if your priority as a cleric is to keep your friends alive.

 

Knowledge Domain

The knowledge domain dips your cleric's toes into the bard class and grants you some skill expertise, bonus proficiencies, and a bunch of utility spells. The knowledge of the ages feature gives you skill or tool proficiencies at a moment's notice, wrapping up a lot of situational options into one. Consider the knowledge domain if you want to build a cleric focused on utility, divination magic, skill proficiency, and the roleplaying pillar of adventuring.

 

Life Domain

Healing, healing, and more healing. Almost every feature you gain from the life domain gives you more opportunities to heal or makes your healing effects better. Channel divinity: preserve life alone is like the equivalent of multiple decent healing spells from other casters and can regularly pop a whole party back up from near death to half their hit point maximum. Run life clerics if you're looking for a traditional heal bot style cleric.

 

Light Domain

A decent option for a DPS cleric that can be far more survivable even without the heavy armor due to its Warding Flare ability that can impose disadvantage on attack rolls. The domain spells also oddly include some of the best fire damage spells from the arcane spell lists, making this strangely one of the best offensive options for the more pyromaniac minded cleric. The damage potential falls off quite a bit in later levels though, as the Radiance of Dawn ability doesn't scale up terribly well.

 

Nature Domain

This domain lets you make friends with animals like a druid but doesn't actually gain much. Channel divinity: charm animals and plants is cute, but very situational. I don't recommend this domain unless you've got a very specific wonky exploit that requires charming beasts or plants. It's also strangely punchy for the druid style theme with heavy armor proficiency and divine strike, but if you're going for straight melee there's better options.

 

Order Domain

Order lets you "grant" reaction attacks to your allies when you buff or heal them and combined with the charming effect from the Order's Demand feature you can easily take control over the battlefield. Your counter argument to any situation is "no", and you'll be able to shut down the worst of the chaos around you. Best built with a lot of ally buff spells, this domain is one of the best options for a control cleric.

 

Peace Domain

Annoyances between friends happen and if settling character argument is your bag the peace domain may be for you. It sort of builds in a lot of the buffing and healing spells as features rather than making you use up spells. The channel divinity: balm of peace option is a respectable heal, and when you hit 6th level you gain an ability to swap places with one of your allies and essentially take their hits for them. Valuable for the healing channel divinity power alone, and a very strong option if you want to try and play your cleric primarily as a healer / tank or as a diplomat trying to solve conflict without hostile action.

 

Tempest Domain

You call upon the natural energy of a storm deity to rain down thunder damage and lightning damage. The core of the tempest cleric is its Wrath of the Storm feature that lets you deal a good chunk of damage to anything that attacks you, and both thunder damage and lightning damage are fairly reliable damage types. The channel divinity: destructive wrath feature lets you spend your channels to maximize lightning or thunder damage, which happens after hits so you can even use it to maximize critical hits. The domain spells also grant access to sleet storm and call lightning (though frustratingly not lightning bolt), making this domain one of the very few ways to gain this powerhouse spell outside of druid levels. And at the top of the tempest domain spell list, you pick up destructive wave, a powerful 5th level spell normally only found on the paladin spell list. Combined with the heavy armor proficiency, this domain works wonders for tank/dps builds looking to shrug the hits and dish out some lightning damage.

 

Trickery Domain

This domain lets you dip your cleric into a bit of rogue with an illusory duplicate. You gain clone illusions that can be used for all sorts of devious tricks, alongside a ton of illusion and escape abilities like the ability to turn invisible. It gets incredibly insane with your 17th level capstone where you get 4 illusory clones. This is one of the best options for utility/sneaky clerics.

 

Twilight Domain

You wouldn't think it at first, but this "unearthed arcana" domain is one of the better healing cleric options. Your Twilight Sanctuary ability sets up a mobile area of healing for you and your allies while your other features make it easier for you to sneak around in the dark. Consider this domain if you want your cleric to both sneak and heal.

 

Unity Domain

This domain provides an insane amount of buffing power to your cleric, and the sharing damage potential of the Protective Bond ability can all but ensure you and your party stay up and fighting doing your best impression of the Monty Python black knight. Consider taking this with a high Constitution race, prioritizing hit points and turning yourself into a walking bag of health to spread among your allies when they need it.

 

War Domain

The war cleric is very simple and solid choice, it wants to hit the enemy and hit it hard for maximum damage by blasting spells alongside weapon attacks. The War Priest ability is especially powerful at early levels, and you can dish out a ton of damage with the extra attacks and eventually even more with divine strike. Channel divinity: guided strike lets you spend your channels to add a whopping +10 bonus to attack rolls. Consider multiclassing with a few paladin levels or fighter classes to push your damage further with some smites.

 

Cleric Builds and Tactics

The cleric class has access to a little bit of everything, and between all the options at their disposal every cleric is going to be unique. There's no "right" way to build your cleric, but there are a few key tactics, favorite spells, and powerful options you may want to try, and in turn a few build options that really help support those tactics and make the best use of your divine energy.

 

Cleric Healing

While clerics don't have to spend the entire game healing anymore, they're still one of the classes best built for dedicated healing available in 5e dnd. To understand how to use that healing energy and keep your allies alive, you'll need to understand the fundamental healing spells available to you more than just the 1st-level spell cure wounds.

Cure Wounds. This is your bread and butter healing spell that you'll be using from level 1 all the way up into level 20. As an action, you touch somebody and heal them for 1d8 + your Wisdom modifier and add in another 1d8 for each slot level above 1st. For the most part, if you're in the middle of a fight, and somebody needs healing, this is the spell you'll be firing off.

Healing Word. This is your emergency button, the healing spell you use only when things are BAD. It heals half as much as cure wounds with 1d4 + your Wisdom modifier, adding another 1d4 for each slot level above 1st. The big difference is rather than an action at touch range, it's a bonus action at a target within 60-foot range. This is a huge deal as it means you can do an important action like make an attack or dash away and heal your ally on the other side of the battlefield. Most often you'll be using this is panic situations, where a few hit points right this second will save a character's life.

Prayer of Healing. This is your out of combat heal, the spell you'll want to use when you're safe, but still gearing up for the next threat around the corner. It heals up to 6 creatures (usually the whole party) for 2d8 + your Wisdom modifier, which even for a 2nd level spell is a massive upgrade from the other options. The kicker is the 10-minute casting time. With such a long casting time, this infinitely stronger healing spell is impossible to use effectively in the middle of combat but is ideal when things have calmed down.

Aid. The aid spell is an often overlooked gem. It's a 2nd level spell that can increase the hit point maximum for multiple creatures. It lasts 8 hours, and doesn't require concentration, making it an excellent party heal/buff option for clerics, especially at later levels when your 2nd level spell slots aren't as scarce.

Finally, if you're really committed to being the party heal bot, consider the life domain. It is built completely around healing and while it's a bit dull it definitely gets the job done.

 

Cleric Tanking

Paladins take the traditional role of divine tank, but when you're getting munched by bloodthirsty cannibals the clerics can do the job just fine. Step one is acquiring heavy armor proficiency which is happily provided by quite a few of the divine domains including the forge, nature, order, tempest, twilight, and war domains. Any of these will push your cleric onto the tanky side, but the forge domain especially is the most tanky you can get.

By level 6 a forge cleric with plate armor and a shield can get to 22 AC!

Tanking can be about more than just AC though. It's about taking the hits and making sure your party is protected, and clerics have a whole swathe of spells that do just that.

Protection from Evil and Good. I find this spell gets overlooked a lot but if you're trying to tank the big bad guy there's a good chance this will be amazing. You'd think it works off alignment somehow, but what it actually does is impose disadvantage on attacks coming at you from specific creature types. If your DM has thrown an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead at you, this spell can impose disadvantage on all their attacks and deal with charm, fear, and possession effects for basically the whole fight.

Shield of Faith. Remember how I said you could get to 22 AC? How about 24 AC instead? It costs you a 1st level spell slot and your concentration, but this spell just flatly gives you a +2 AC bonus for the duration of 10 minutes. +2 AC when you're already pushing the edge can make you downright unhittable in some combats. I find myself using it less at later levels, but in the early game it can be a tanky godsend.

Protection from Energy. About to fight a fire-breathing dragon? It doesn't take a lot of research to learn there may be some fire damage breath attacks coming your way. Elemental damage includes some of the most common damage types and many enemies are completely themed around a single energy damage type. This 3rd level spell takes advantage of themed enemies by granting you resistance to a chosen damage type for a whole hour (so most of a dungeon and the boss fight).

 

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Cleric DPS

The arcane casters may get the spotlight when it comes to magical damage, but you've got a ton of options for dishing it out using divine magic in your spells and some good old fashion face bashing. Every cleric starts out with simple weapon proficiency and medium armor proficiency, but you've got plenty of options to improve that and you can swing a berserker axe just as well as you can lob spells.

If your plan is to do some melee DPS as a cleric taking the war domain is an excellent start. The war priest ability lets you make an additional weapon attack as a bonus action whenever you use the attack action even if it's with some huge weapon like a maul or battleaxe. Load up on high Strength and go to town with a flurry of weapon strikes empowered by divine magic. War is probably the strongest and most straightforward pick for melee clerics, but any of the domains that pick up martial weapons and divine strike (death, forge, life, nature, order, tempest, trickery, twilight, and war) are fine choices for those extra damage increases with your melee attacks.

If your plan is blaster casting the cleric spell list still has you covered. You have a fine retinue of touch spells if you're willing to get your hands dirty from time to time, and great ranged options if you want to snipe from afar.

Guiding Bolt. More or less unique to the cleric spell list, this is an excellent 1st level direct damage spell with a long 120-foot range and a whopping 4d6 radiant damage. It also grants advantage on the next attack made against your target, so you'll help focus down a tough foe even faster.

Spiritual Weapon. You conjure a floating beat stick and for the next minute you'll be able to bop enemies with it as a bonus action. In a lot of situations this adds a huge boost to your damage potential and uses bonus actions which would in many cases go unused. It's a bonus action spell that doesn't even require concentration, so you can be blasting away with spells, concentrating on another powerful damage spell, and have this dishing out extra hits all at the same time!

Spirit Guardians. This 3rd level spell is one of the most obnoxious damage dealers in the game and can completely ruin a combat for your enemies. You basically surround yourself with a 15-foot aura of pain that ignores you and your allies while punishing anybody who gets near you. It lasts for 10 minutes, 15 feet is a WIDE AoE damage aura, and any enemies will have to save or take 3d8 radiant damage or necrotic damage every single round. This is an amazing crowd control option and if you have a lot of enemies this damage really stacks up as one of the best and most efficient damage spells in the game.

Magic Initiate. The magic initiate feat grants you two cantrips from another spellcasting class, and it's admittedly a weird choice considering clerics are already a full spellcasting class. But it can grant you easy access to some key wizard cantrips, green-flame blade, and booming blade. Both of these cantrips let you essentially cast them as part of a melee attack, and cantrip damage increases as you advance in level. This stacks that damage up ontop of whatever else you've got going on. Consider this if you're trying to maximize damage as a melee cleric.

War Caster. Finally, as a tip for any cleric who's planning on getting into the thick of combat, consider using one of your ability score improvements to take the feat War Caster. It gives you advantage on concentration checks to maintain your spells, lets you cast all your stuff with weapons in hand, and even lets you tag creatures with your spells as attacks of opportunity! Some of your most powerful spells require concentration and keeping them going in combat can be essential. And casting spells as opportunity attacks can make you a beast in combat and can allow you to nail down enemies away from the rest of your party.

 

Cleric Party Buff

When you're not healing or blasting, clerics have access to some of the best force multiplying spells that can make your party doubly effective. Or you can horde those buff spells for yourself and channel your magic into being a doubly buffed frontline fighter.

Resistance. This cantrip gets overlooked a lot, but when exploring a quick cast of resistance can greatly improve your ally's chance of surviving the next trap or hazard. You touch a friend and if they have to make a saving throw in the next minute, you grant them an extra d4 on their save. Costs you nothing other than the cantrip slot, but basically every time your rogue tries to disarm the trap, or the fighter boldly opens the suspicious door, they'll have a boost against whatever comes their way.

Bless. Think of this as the upgraded version of resistance. Instead of a cantrip it's a 1st level spell, and instead of 1 ally it's up to 3. Oh, and that d4 doesn't get used up after the first roll AND it can be used on attack rolls. In a lot of cases this will end up doing so much more damage than a 1st level spell, even if you only partially get to share in the glory of bringing the bad guys down.

Beacon of Hope. Another spell that's often overlooked, this 3rd level spell creates a shining beacon that gives you and all your allies advantage on Wisdom saving throws and death throws within 30 feet and maximizes (instead of rolling it's the maximum) any healing you or your allies get. The key here is that it's any healing, not just healing you do. So, you can plop this down and go about your combat, while everybody else's healing abilities within 30 feet get overcharged. It's a balanced spell and not a broken mess like flag for power creep that is healing spirit, but it has broader applicability and I think it's only a matter of time until it's a spell of cleric notoriety.

Cleric Class Features

Before we get into the builds and options, we should go through the fundamental features that define the cleric.

Cleric Spellcasting

Clerics are primarily spellcasters, and you'll need to get a hang of your spells even if your main tactic is going to be swinging a sword around.

Starting off simply, clerics are Wisdom based, which means your spell attack modifiers and spell save DC is based on your Wisdom modifier. The higher your Wisdom is, the better your spell attacks will be and the more difficult it will be to resist your effects.

You're also what's called a prepared spellcaster, which can take some getting used to. Your cleric has a list of spells and knows every spell on the cleric spell list, yes you read that right. The trick is that you have to pick and choose which spells you'll be using at the start of the day. Every time you finish a long rest, you'll get to pick out a number of cleric spells to have "prepared" equal to your Wisdom modifier + your Cleric level.

That's how you pick out which spells you have available, so how does casting them work?

You also have a thing called "spell slots", which you can think of as bullets or fuel that you load into your different spells to "fire" them. Your total amount of "ammo" is determined by your cleric levels, and you get all your ammo back when you finish a long rest.

So, let's say I'm a 3rd level cleric and I prepare the 1st level cleric spell guiding bolt. Since guiding bolt is one of my prepared spells, I just load in one of my 1st level spell slots and pull the trigger. Or, If I'm facing something really nasty, I could load in my spicier 2nd level spell slot and fire it off to do some more damage.

You can prepare different spells every time you finish a long rest, and just like other spellcasting classes you also have a few cleric cantrips or "level 0 spells" that don't take any spell slots to cast. You also can't prepare spells with a level higher than the slots you have, which makes sense.

You'll also be getting (most likely) a set of "domain spells". The cleric archetypes are called divine domains, and most of them have lists of spells that you get to essentially "prepare for free". You still have to load in your spell slots to use them, but you get to have them prepared in addition to all your other spells (which is especially nice as some of them come from other spell lists).

Clerics also get a special feature called ritual casting. Which allows you to cast certain "ritual spells" without spending a spell slot if you take a long time to cast them. Most ritual spells aren't things you'd usually want to use in combat but casting them as a ritual makes sure you can't cast them in combat as it takes 10 more minutes to cast them that way. What this does is it allows you to cast some roleplaying and investigation type spells without it affecting your combat effectiveness, which can be a major bonus!

Channel Divinity

Starting at 2nd level, you get 1 use of your "channel divinity", this outpouring of positive energy (or possibly negative energy) can be used in two different ways.

The first way is the generic one that every cleric gets to use is called turn undead. You basically fire off a ton of divine power and undead creatures within 30 feet of you has to make a Wisdom saving throw. If they fail, they gain a special condition called "turned" which is like frightened only worse, and they have to spend their entire next turn getting as far away from you as they can.

The 2nd way to use channel divinity is determined by your cleric archetype or "divine domain", and we'll get into that later. Your uses of channel divinity get restored on short rests, and if they need a saving throw, they use your spellcasting DC. For the most part, you'll be using the mode from your divine domain unless your DM is throwing a ton of undead your way.

You start with only 1 use of your channel divinity, but you get more times per day as you go on. You'll pick up an additional time per day of your channel divinity at 6th level, and then strangely another use all the way up at 18th level for a total of 3 times per day.

Destroy Undead

At 5th level you continue the theme of "clerics beat undead" and your turn undead channel divinity power gets enhanced to just completely destroy undead if they fail the saving throw, assuming they're below a challenge rating threshold. You gain this feature at 5th level, at which your turn will destroy undead of CR ½ or lower, which improves to CR 1 at 8th level, CR 2 at 11th level, CR 3 at 14th level, and finally CR 4 at 18th level.

This whole feature is honestly kind of a legacy thing, and you'll very rarely see it come up in campaigns. However, if your DM is throwing a lot of very low level undead at you, remember you have this feature and blast away some chaff zombies, especially at later levels.

Divine Intervention

Once you hit 10th level, you can literally ask your god for a favor. You ask your deity really nicely to do something, roll percentile dice (that's both d10s to get a result between 1 and 100) and if you roll equal or lower than your cleric level, your god does you a favor.

Of all the class features in 5e, this one is the most open ended and dependent on DM discretion, but if your DM is kind it can be incredibly powerful. I find that most DMs will be particularly lenient if you ask for things that are in your god's flavor and themes. So, asking your god of charity and goodness to murder the guards probably won't go over well... Though asking the same thing of a death god might.

If you attempt this and it fails (rolled over your level), you can try again after a long rest. If you attempt it and it works then you've got to wait a full week before getting another favor from on high.

Finally, your big capstone feature at 20th level lets you automatically succeed on getting your god's favor, no roll required.

Building a Better Cleric

It feels like everybody hated playing the "heal-bot" cleric in the past and they've just been slowly growing what a cleric is capable of. Now clerics can be built up into practically anything, making excellent tanks, damage dealers, utility casters, party buffers, and yes, even healers. To start with though, you'll need to address your ability scores.

Cleric Ability Scores

Wisdom is your spellcasting ability score for clerics, and you're going to want your Wisdom to be high and quite likely your highest ability score.

Past that it gets more complicated because of all the routes you can take when building your cleric. Most if it revolves around what armor you plan on taking, and if you plan on being a "combat cleric" or more of a "spellcasting cleric". Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are all in the running here for your 2nd highest ability score.

If you end up with heavy armor (more on that later), you'll most likely want to make Constitution your next highest ability score. If you're relying on light or medium armor, Dexterity should be your next highest. And finally, while not all builds will want it, some of the more combat oriented cleric builds will want Strength as their next highest score.

In any case, none of these "physical scores" should be your dump stats and should at least be neutral "10's". Charisma and Intelligence however are largely useless for you, and you should put as few points as possible into them unless you're doing some very specific and odd builds of cleric.

Finally, while there are a few feats to consider for your ability score increases, I recommend simply loading up on Wisdom unless you've absolutely got your heart set on a specific build.

  

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Last updated: January 27, 2019

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