A Comprehensive Guide for Every Cleric Spell in DnD 5e

Channel Your Divine Power

Clerics in Dungeons & Dragons 5e are one of the strongest spellcasting classes. Their divine magic gives them access to some incredibly powerful spells, adn they get a wide variety of healing, damage, buff, and debuff options. Unlike paladins, who split their focus between martial prowess and spellcasting, clerics are full casters, meaning their spell slots go all the way up to 9th level.

What sets Clerics apart from some of the other casters is their versatility. Thanks to their ability to prepare spells daily from the entire Cleric spell list, they can adapt to the needs of any adventure, healing allies, banishing Undead, or raining divine fury upon their foes. Pair this with subclass-specific spells and features, and Clerics become one of the most adaptable classes in the game.

Cleric Spellcasting Tips

Here are some insights to help you make the most of your cleric’s divine arsenal:

What are the must-have spells on the cleric spell list?

Some spells are so universally useful that they’re hard to pass up. Bless is a quintessential low-level spell that boosts your party’s attack rolls and saving throws, staying relevant across all tiers of play. Healing Word allows you a ranged option to bring party members back from the brink of death as a Bonus Action, while Spiritual Weapon allows you to deal consistent damage without consuming Concentration or needing to wade into the fray.

Guiding Bolt is one of your most important 1st-level pickups, as it’s the best blaster spell you’ll have access to until Flame Strike, which is a 5th-level spell.

As you level up, consider powerful options like Spirit Guardians, which combines battlefield control with damage, or Mass Cure Wounds to sustain your party through dire encounters. Higher-level gems like Heal and Divine Word can turn the tide of climactic battles.

Lean into your Domain

Your cleric’s Divine Domain shapes the type of magic they excel at. For example, a Life Domain cleric enhances healing, making your Cure Wounds and Healing Words even more impactful. On the other hand, a Light Domain cleric thrives in dealing Radiant damage and controlling the battlefield with spells like Flame Strike and Fireball.

On the other side of things, Death Domain Clerics are entirely focused on sapping their foes’ life energy with Necrotic damage.

Explore your subclass spell list carefully. These domain spells are always prepared and don’t count against your preparation limit, giving you extra flexibility to tailor your choices.

Build for your role

Clerics can thrive as frontline tanks, support casters, or dedicating healers, depending on your build. If you’re diving into melee combat, make sure you have the War Caster feat for Concentration buffs like Shield of Faith to enhance your durability. For a more ranged, spell-focused playstyle, lean on control spells such as Command or Hold Person to lock down threats and give your allies the edge.

Balance concentration spells

Clerics have a wealth of Concentration spells, but you can only maintain one at a time. Be strategic about which spell you cast, especially in combat. For instance, casting Spirit Guardians means foregoing other Concentration options like Bless or Shield of Faith. Evaluate the situation, choose what benefits the party most, and make sure you have chosen enough non-Concentration spells to cast so you have something to do on turns where you’re Concentrating on an important spell.

What is this guide?

This guide is meant as a deep dive into the best spells for the 5e cleric. For the full overview of the cleric class, check out our cleric class guide.

To allow you to scan through the options quickly, we use the following color rating scheme:

• Red : Isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all
• Orange : Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise
• Green : A good option
• Blue : A great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
• Sky Blue: An amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized

Cleric Spells in D&D 5e

Cantrip

• Guidance: Outside of combat, you can use this literally every time a party member makes an ability check. Just make sure you're within arms reach of the creature you'll be providing guidance to and make sure to announce it before the ability check is called for.
• Light: Useful, but there are plenty of ways around having to pick up this spell. As long as your not underwater, simple torch could save you a slot for another cantrip.
• Mending: Being able to repair mundane object is situationally useful at the best of times, a waste of a cantrip at the worst.
• Resistance: It's difficult to predict when saving throws will need to be made. So, spending concentration for a save that might not come isn't worth it, even if you're not sacrificing a spell slot.
• Sacred Flame: Good ranged damage option early on. Also scales well as a source of radiant damage.
• Spare the Dying: When you're in the middle of combat and don't have any healing spells or potions left, you don't want to leave stabilizing a companion to chance. This is always a good spell to have as a backup.
• Thaumaturgy: Much worse than minor illusion or prestidigitation but can still be effective in roleplay scenarios.
• Toll the Dead: Good damage, rarely resisted damage type, and solid range. Obviously, it's best to use on an enemy that has already been damaged.

1st level

• Bane: A simple and effective low-level debuff. If you have access to it, bless is strictly better because it doesn't require a CHA saving throw.
• Bless: Bless is simply an amazing 1st-level buff. Adding 1d4 to all attacks and saving throws can really add up over a combat encounter. When given the choice, it's almost always worth it to cast bless on your party than bane on your opposition.
• Ceremony: Interesting spell that allows for a number of one-time buffs. These buffs have very specific circumstances like the target being a young adult or a someone looking to be dedicated to your god's service. That said, adding a d4 to ability checks and saving throws for 24 hours, no concentration, as a ritual seems like a worthwhile pick up if you are heading into a tough day. If you're party is a bunch of young adults, that are looking to dedicate themselves to your god, and all want to be married, this spell can provide a pretty huge one-time power boost.
• Command: Very effective charm spell that can be very versatile in combat, you can lock down opponents, cause them to drop important items, and so on. Make sure the target can understand your language before casting. Unfortunately, it only lasts one round so using it out of combat is pretty tricky.
• Create or Destroy Water: Being able to conjure 10 gallons of water isn’t particularly effective unless you are dying of thirst in a desert.
• Cure Wounds: Healing is important so pick it up if you think you’ll need it.
• Detect Evil and Good: Can be quite useful if you're suspicious that an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead is undercover around you. Solid spell to stock when traveling to other planes.
• Detect Magic: Every party should roll with at least one character who has access to detect magic.
• Detect Poison and Disease: Being able to detect poison or disease within 30ft of yourself is definitely a situational effect. Only stock when you think you'll need it.
• Guiding Bolt: Fantastic damage early on, and if the creature doesn’t die the next attack against it gets advantage which should do the trick.
• Healing Word: Great option even if you have a dedicated healer as it can be useful for resetting death saving throws from a distance and only requires a bonus action.
• Inflict Wounds: Does slightly more damage on average than guiding bolt but is a touch spell instead of range and doesn't provide the additional trait where it allows the next attack to be with advantage. Not worth it in most circumstances.
• Protection from Evil and Good: You love to see this spell in any party, the buffs this can provide are extremely useful in any combat scenario. The creature types this affects are very common so this spell will likely be useful in your campaign.
• Purify Food and Drink: If you're DM likes to poison you via food or drink a lot, this could be a good pickup? Otherwise, save it for when you go to a political banquet in enemy territory.
• Sanctuary: A good spell to have in your pocket if a team member is in dire straits or you need to protect an NPC.
• Shield of Faith: +2 AC is quite good, especially in the early game. Sadly, this spell requires concentration. Great buff for a tanking party member if you intend to stay out of the fray.

2nd level

• Aid: Proactive healing rather than reactive healing and at a higher, guaranteed rate than Cure Wounds. 5 hit points can make a huge difference in keeping the party alive, and the spell doesn’t require concentration. Can be cast at higher levels.
• Augury: This is a fun spell but, unfortunately, D&D is a game of chance and the results of your next 30 minutes will likely be left to chance. This means you'll be getting weal and woe most of the time.
• Blindness/Deafness: Very effective debuff that doesn’t require concentration. The only downside is that it targets CON.
• Borrowed Knowledge: If your party is lacking a critically important skill, getting time limited proficiency can come in handy.
• Calm Emotions: The fact that this spell has two different use cases makes it decent, even if those events may not come up too often. Enemies often have effects that charm or frighten in an area of effect, so being able to suppress those effects also in an area of your choosing could save your whole party. When used on enemies, you can make them non-hostile for a whole minute, giving you enough time to escape. The main issue with this spell is the concentration and the relatively small radius.
• Continual Flame: Most of the time you can just cast light or use a torch as a light source and save yourself the 50 gp.
• Enhance Ability: Decent buff before you go into combat. Also has a fair amount of utility for just about any out-of-combat situation.
• Find Traps: Reveals the presence of traps but not their exact location. Definitely not the best use of a spell slot.
• Gentle Repose: Extremely situational spell.
• Hold Person: This can be encounter-breaking against humanoids. Scales well with levels.
• Lesser Restoration: Diseases and conditions do come up from time to time, so you’ll be happy to have this when they do.
• Locate Object: 1,000 feet isn't a particularly wide radius but this spell will be extremely useful when it's needed. Great for city campaigns where everything is packed in tighter together.
• Prayer of Healing: Up to 12d8 + (your spellcasting modifier * 6) is insanely good healing for a 2nd-level spell slot. Unfortunately, the 10 minute casting time makes it impossible to use in combat and each creature only gets 2d8 + spellcasting modifier. If your party needs a boost of healing and doesn't have time for a short rest, this can be effective.
• Protection from Poison: Has some use if you have a poisoned party member but don't have access to lesser restoration. The resistance to poison and advantage on saving throws against poison is a nice buff in specific circumstances, especially because it doesn't require concentration.
• Silence: Silence is a niche spell with a high ceiling. It can be used in stealth scenarios but it’s most powerful usage is if you can target a caster who won’t be able to cast spells requiring a verbal component. Of course, it’s only a 20ft radius so you will either need to be fighting in close quarters or will need to find a way to prevent the caster from moving.
• Spiritual Weapon: Spiritual Weapon is an amazing spell that can provide tons of damage and action economy over an encounter. The fact that the weapon sticks around without needing concentration, is a bonus action to summon, has an effective damage type, and scales with your spellcasting modifier make this an absolutely stellar spell.
• Warding Bond: This buff is really good, but can be quite risky for yourself if used at the wrong time. Make sure you aren’t overwhelmed by enemies and have a sizeable amount of hit points and AC.
• Zone of Truth: Great for when you need to gain the trust of some NPCs, or when you don’t quite trust them yourself.

3rd level

• Animate Dead: More options for your bonus action and another body between you and the baddies. For necromancers that are looking to guide a horde of undead, this is the best option you're provided. Essentially, you can use a 3rd-level spell slot to animate one undead, or reassert your control over four undead. Depending on how many spell slots you have to work with, you can steadily grow your undead army. Just make sure you have the spell slots to reassert your control or your undead horde will revolt.
• Beacon of Hope: Beacon of hope seems to be best used in a moment of desperation when many of your party members are severely hurt. Unfortunately, this spell uses up your action so you can’t get to healing until the next round.
• Bestow Curse: If you can get within touch range, this can be an extremely powerful debuff for a single, tough enemy. The effect that causes the enemy to make a WIS save or waste their turn is extremely powerful and is made more powerful because they only get one chance to save, at the initial casting of the spell.
• Clairvoyance: Not many situations will call for this spell but it can be useful for scouting.
• Create Food and Water: Pretty much only useful for survival scenarios in which you aren't able to cast goodberry for whatever reason.
• Daylight: The light cantrip on steroids. The biggest downside of this spell is the misleading name which causes people to think that this spell actually produces daylight, which can be helpful when fighting creatures with Sunlight Sensitivity. Dispelling darkness could be situationally useful.
• Dispel Magic: Always make sure at least one of your party members has this.
• Feign Death: Extremely niche. Could be useful if you are attempting to recreate Romeo and Juliet.
• Glyph of Warding: Costly components and a long casting time are the major hurdles in the way of making glyph of warding a stellar spell. As it stands, its probably the best way to set a trap if you know where the enemy will be coming through and have at least an hour to prepare.
• Magic Circle: While celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead are quite common, this spell provides a very lackluster effect against them. As the creatures can still attack inside the cylinder and can still teleport out using a CHA save, it's not very effective at containing, nor protecting from, these creatures.
• Mass Healing Word: Like regular healing word this is used as a bonus action. This, combined with its low healing potential, means its primary use is also to revive downed teammates, but having multiple downed allies at once is quite rare.
• Meld into Stone: Good for long rests, though you may pop out of the stone to realize you've been surrounded by an ambush.
• Protection from Energy: This is typically outshined by absorb elements except in the specific circumstances when you are constantly being subjected to a type of damage.
• Remove Curse: Cursed items can be absolutely brutal. This is an excellent way to make sure your party member isn't possessed by a demon after the put on a locket they found in a haunted house.
• Revivify: Every party needs a party member with revivify. The nature of D&D is such that PC deaths happen fairly easily, so your friends will be looking to you to save them from that fate. Because each round of combat is 6 seconds, a party member that dies during combat can typically be revived within 1 minute. Make sure you've got diamonds worth 300 gp on you if you're planning on stocking this spell.
• Sending: Solid communication spell for at least one party member to have.
• Speak with Dead: Get some interesting lore, help solve a mystery, or get advice on how to proceed through a dungeon.
• Spirit Guardians: Acts as a deterrent against melee attackers or gives them a hard time moving away. This will be especially potent if you plan on diving into the fray.
• Spirit Shroud: Most spellcasters can skip this, but if you're a martial spellcaster that attacks multiple times a turn, this is definitely worth it.
• Tongues: Most of the time, it will be tough to justify a 3rd-level spell for the effect this produces. Of course, understanding a creature and allowing it to understand you could have the potential to stop a terrible situation unfolding. This is a spell that would be worthwhile to prepare for specific situations, but is too niche to consider stocking all the time.
• Water Walk: This is likely not to see use in an entire campaign.

4th level

• Banishment: Get rid of creatures from another plane, or take out a big threat for most of the combat. One of the better save or suck spells out there. Keep in mind that, unless the creature is natively from another plane, they will return after the spell ends.
• Control Water: A very effective spell, but only if you’re around water.
• Death Ward: Has an 8-hour duration and doesn't require concentration so it could be a good spell to cast pre-emptively if you have the ability to regain spell slots during a short rest.
• Divination: This is best used when you're asking about a relatively straightforward event that will happening in the near future. As with most "message from a deity" spells, it relies heavily on your DM and is intentionally vague which can impact its usefulness.
• Freedom of Movement: It’s nice to give extra movement options to allies, but there are better buff spells and this one is pretty situational.
• Guardian of Faith: A decent way to get some extra damage in if you know that a fight will take place in a specific location. Guardian of faith can also be used as a sort of alarm when taking a long rest in a dangerous place.
• Locate Creature: More thorough than locate animals or plants, and can be used to find people. It’s still pretty situational.
• Stone Shape: Can be used to deal damage if you get creative, or circumvent annoying parts of caves and dungeons since they are usually made of stone.

5th level

• Commune: Better than augury and divination to get the answers you need, since it’s a simple “yes or no” and you have to be given a correct answer.
• Contagion: The poisoned condition is a pretty strong one and this spell grants the condition on-hit for at least 3 turns. You get the potential for more turns under the poisoned condition and a lasting effect which are both quite strong. Make sure to avoid casting this on constructs, undead, fiends, or elementals.
• Dispel Evil and Good: Absolutely amazing spell to use when fighting celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead, which are all common enemy types. Not only do their attacks have disadvantage against you, each time you land a hit, they will be forced to make a CHA save or be banished back to their home plane. Simply an amazing spell in the correct circumstances.
• Flame Strike: Not particularly exciting when compared to fireball. It does the same amount of damage but has a better damage type (half radiant/half fire) and has a slightly larger radius. The "improved" damage type doesn't mean much because it still does half of it's damage as fire damage. So, if you're looking to work around fire resistance, this won't be a worthwhile choice.
• Geas: Not for use in combat but has extremely potent effects if you can cast it. The max damage this can do is 5d10 a day, so it's best used on a particularly influential commoner.
• Greater Restoration: Great spell to have that can get you or party members out of very tricky situations.
• Hallow: More of a DM spell than a player spell. It has an extremely long casting time and no particularly potent effects.
• Holy Weapon: Doing a 1st-level Divine Smite's worth of damage every time you hit is pretty great. Being able to do AoE damage and Blind as a bonus action at the end of the spell is a nice bonus if you end up getting surrounded. If you'll be using this as part of your build, picking up Resilient (CON) would be worth it.
• Insect Plague: A decent AoE damage and crowd control option.
• Legend Lore: Gain some knowledge on things of legendary importance. While cool, it doesn’t do much most of the time.
• Mass Cure Wounds: Range, multiple targets, and decent healing power. One of the best bang-for-your-buck spells if you have multiple party members down.
• Planar Binding: The 1 hour casting time makes this a fairly hard spell to pull off. If you manage to pull it off, this can be an extremely powerful spell when combined with summon greater demon or something of the like.
• Raise Dead: A more powerful resurrection spell than revivify because it has a 10 day time span and can cure Poisons and Diseases. Unfortunately, if you resurrectee is missing their head or other body parts, you'll have to wait until you get resurrection.
• Scrying: Useful but niche.
• Summon Celestial: One of the best summon spells from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The celestial you summon has flight, ranged and melee attacks, radiant damage, and healing abilities.

6th level

• Blade Barrier: Most wall spells are worthwhile ways to divide a battlefield and provided a consistent source of damage and blade barrier is no different.
• Create Undead: You can create stronger undead than with animate dead but main downside is the higher spell slot required. Create undead isn't usually worth it when creating a troop of undead servants to follow you around, because it will require too many spell slots to maintain.
• Find the Path: Lousy effect, especially for a spell at 6th-level.
• Forbiddance: This is an extremely effective way to protect a large space from extradimensional enemies. Only really worth it if you have a stronghold that you need to protect.
• Harm: 14d6 damage isn't anything to turn your nose up at, but is outpaced by most other spells that inflict AoE damage. The only real use for this spell would be if you're fighting a single, really tough enemy. This spell really shines if the single, really tough enemy has abilities to heal themselves because it can reduce their hit point maximum.
• Heal: Strong, dependable healing with no roll needed. Also can be used at range and has some of the lesser restoration benefits built in. At 6th-level, it's expensive but worth it if you can use its effects to the fullest.
• Heroes’ Feast: The expensive casting cost doesn’t take away from the undeniably powerful buff your whole party will receive. The benefits also last a full adventuring day and don't require concentration. Great spell to burn the night before a deadly battle.
• Planar Ally: This can be an extremely powerful spell if you're on good terms with the deity you're beseeching for aid, and the creature that they send. This usually works best for lawful good relationships when you're fighting an obviously evil force. This can be an extremely powerful spell because the creature that is sent isn't limited by CR like most other summon spells. Although, this can get extremely expensive for long-term endeavors. It's quite hard to rate this spell because so much is left up to the individual campaign, and the DM.
• True Seeing: Gain the abilities of truesight, spotting secret doors, and seeing into the ethereal plane, all without concentration. This will be effective at some point but a 6th level spell is steep.
• Word of Recall: Allows you to instantaneously pull the plug if things are going south, or simply skip the long trek back home to avoid potential encounters. Requires prep and you could have trouble getting everyone within 5 feet of you quickly enough in a losing battle but still a great contingency to have.

7th level

• Conjure Celestial: You don't have a lot of choice when choosing the celestial you're summoning. It will either be a Pegasus (CR 2), Couatl (CR 4), or Unicorn (CR 5—requires spell slot 9). That said, if summoning a Couatl is definitely worth the 6th-level spell slot, its a powerful ally that can fly, has a good AC, a decent amount of hit points, useful spells, and good attacks. If your DM lets you pick the celestial to conjure, this is a worthwhile and very effective spell. If not, and you either get a CR 2 ally or a CR 4 ally randomly, it's not quite as worth it.
• Divine Word: This is a situational spell that will make you feel like a literal god in the right circumstances. Obviously this is at its best for larger groups of enemies with few hit points, at which point you can impose massive debuffs to all of them (or just straight up kill them). Also, if you're fighting more than four celestials, elementals, fey, fiends that are not on their plane of origin, this automatically becomes better than banishment.
• Etherealness: This spell allows you to fly or move through solid objects, while not being affected or able to affect creatures not on the Ethereal Plane. You can only target yourself but there is no concentration. Pretty middle of the road all around.
• Fire Storm: Depending on the size and position of the crowd you are fighting, this can either be insanely big damage or an easy to aim fireball. Most of the time it will be the latter.
• Plane Shift: Good utility to run away from a fight that has turned south, or force a CHA save to avoid getting banished.
• Regenerate: Not much more healing than mass cure wounds, but it does have the advantage of growing limbs.
• Resurrection: Death is temporary when you’ve got resurrection. Because there is no time limit like revivify, this can be stocked when required.
• Symbol: Can be useful if you're setting a trap or protecting an area from enemies. Can be used in a pinch because of the 1 minute casting time. Unfortunately, it's quite expensive due to the 1,000 gp worth of powdered diamond or opal. This spell is certainly more DM-focused than player-focused.

8th level

• Antimagic Field: You want to be able to cast spells as a spellcaster, and this spell prevents that. Maybe there is some powerful magic around you that you want to stop, but you’re better off tackling that problem with a spell of your own and taking another 8th level spell instead.
• Control Weather: This is one of those spells that could have massive repercussions outside of combat. Its effect is extremely powerful though its uses may not be.
• Earthquake: There is way too much left up to the DM’s discretion for this spell to be effective in combat. The only use I can see for this spell would be destroying a city.
• Holy Aura: Wow, what a buff. Having all attacks against creatures in the aura at disadvantage and all saving throws at advantage can massively turn the tides of the encounter. Plus, at higher-levels your more likely to run into fiends or undead which provides a whole other level of value.

9th level

• Astral Projection: Niche and you will probably have some other reason for getting to the Astral Plane if you need to be there.
• Gate: Helps you move to another plane of existence, which you can hopefully already do by 18th-level. The feature which allows you to summon a creature from another plane can be extremely hit-or-miss because you don't gain any control over the creature. Be careful of what kind of cosmic horror you might accidentally unleash upon your world…
• Mass Heal: The best healing spell a healer can hope for. 700 hit points divided as you choose can essentially hit the "reset" button on an encounter you were about to lose. Also bundled with some lesser restoration benefits.
• True Resurrection: Crazy expensive material components and requires a 9th-levels spell makes this a tough choice when regular resurrection will often be good enough. Providing a new body to the resurrected creature is the other main benefit, since you might want to resurrect some legendary hero whose body has been lost.