Best Feats for Clerics 5e

Amazing Feats for Clerics

• Agent of Order: Being able to potentially lock down enemies that come within range of your spirit guardians is enough of a reason on it's own to make this feat a tempting pickup. The fact that you can increase Wisdom on top of that and output some extra damage is icing on the cake.
• Fey Touched: Great for the misty step spell alone, but also gives +1 WIS and another 1st-level spell of your choice. There are a ton of choices here for clerics. Melee clerics would love either hex or hunter's mark, caster clerics will have a lot of fun with silvery barbs or dissonant whispers.

Great Feats for Clerics

• Heavy Armor Master: A solid pickup for martial-minded heavy armor clerics. It'll allow you to tank more hits, so you can spend your resources outputting damage or healing allies.
• Metamagic Adept: Offers some exciting synergies with the sorcerer’s metamagic ability. You could get Twinned Spell to improve heroism or a healing spell, or Quickened Spell to cast a powerful heal and still attack.
• Righteous Heritor: This is a solid way to effectively heal your party as a reaction.
• Rune Shaper: Solid option to pick up more utility spells or even armor of Agathys if your wading into battle.
• Telekinetic: This feat can add a bit of extra value to clerics as they aren't normally able to learn mage hand. This, combined with the ASI makes this feat relatively worthwhile. Unfortunately, the biggest downside is that Telekinetic uses your bonus action, which you will likely be using for spiritual weapon. Still, it's worthwhile utility out of combat and can help your battlefield control.

Good Feats for Clerics

• Baleful Scion: This is a solid way to keep your cleric healed up so they can use their healing resources elsewhere. Plus, it works amazingly well with spirit guardians because you can damage creatures when it's not your turn and activate the healing ability more than once per round.
• Chef: CON or WIS are both good for Clerics, as are the shareable temporary hit points for your party.
• Gift of the Gem Dragon: Seeing as you can boost your Wisdom with the ASI, this is a solid ability for caster clerics and an awesome ability for frontline clerics.
• Gift of the Metallic Dragon: Clerics don't normally get shield so this is a solid defensive boost. The free cure wounds is meh, but you can't complain about free healing.
• Healer: The additional healing resources this feat offers in Battlefield Medic, as well as the boost to healing from Healing Rerolls, makes this a decent choice for Clerics who will be taking on a more support role for their party.
• Lucky: Lucky is a feat that is useful to any character, but is less good for spellcasters. Clerics will find it useful when combined with spiritual weapon which requires melee spell attacks.
• Magic Initiate: This feat is a good choice if you pick wizard as the class that you can draw spells from. The tried and tested find familiar as your 1st level spell lets you deliver touch spells and give Help actions to players. Minor illusion and mage hand for the cantrips nicely fill out your other needs.
• Medium Armor Master: Not a terrible option for non-heavy armor clerics who want to boost their AC.
• Observant: Extra WIS is useful and can go a long way for clerics that have an odd ability score. More combat-centric domains will skip this to keep their DPS up, but supporting roles will enjoy the utility.
• Outlands Envoy: While an ASI and a free casting of misty step and tongues isn't terrible for clerics, Fey Touched is going to provide more value.
• Resilient: Being better at CON saves is great for clerics since they need to keep up their concentration a lot of the time. Seeing a melee clerics don't need War Caster because they can wear their spellcasting focus on their shield, Resilient (CON) will likely provide more value.
• Scion of the Outer Planes: Clerics already get access to the best two cantrips on the list, but picking up a damage resistance and either sacred flame or guidance is a solid defensive buff and allows you to pick a different cleric cantrip to deepen your repertoire.
• Sentinel: This feat works well with almost all Cleric domains, as long as they prefer to be wading into battle. War Domain and Forge Domain will especially prefer this feat, as they’re guaranteed to be up close and personal.
• Shadow Touched: While most cleric classes could use this feat well, I think it best suits Trickery Domain, Grave Domain, or Death Domain clerics. It expands their spell list slightly, stays flavorful to their domains, and can upcast if needed.
• Skill Expert: There is one particular domain that Skill Expert synergizes particularly well with. Knowledge Domain clerics get access to select two skills, gain proficiency, and double their proficiency, which works as a pseudo-expertise. Skill Expert allows you to choose a third skill to double your proficiency with, while also giving you an ASI. For the rest of the cleric builds out there, +1 to WIS and expertise in Perception is absolutely worth the effort of taking this feat.
• Soul of the Storm Giant: This might be useful for martial-based clerics who want to help their survivability while also boosting Wisdom, and is especially fitting for Tempest clerics.
• Strike of the Giants: Most clerics won't be making melee weapon attacks nearly enough for this feat to pay off. If you're going into a martial cleric build and will be pumping your Strength modifier, you might be able to pull this off. Seeing as you'll be splitting ASIs between Strength, Wisdom, and Constitution, your best bet will likely be the Fire Strike option which just outputs damage without needing a save.
• War Caster: War Caster isn’t a required feat Clerics, even though some subclasses are prominent melee spellcasters. Typically, builds that use a sword and shield who want to cast spells will run into issues because they need a free hand for somatic and material components of those spells. Clerics have the ability to adorn their spellcasting focus on their shields. This means that they can cast spells that require somatic and non-costly materials without having to free up a hand. One of the biggest draws to picking up War Caster is the ability to perform somatic components of spells while you have a sword and shield in hand. That said, there is plenty of other value for War Caster, mainly that it grants advantage on CON checks made for retaining concentration. There are plenty of powerful cleric spells that require concentration, this feat helps you make sure you don’t lose concentration on spells while in combat. The ability to cast spells with a single target as an opportunity attack is also beneficial for sneaking in extra damage.

Situationally Useful Feats for Clerics

• Alert: Being up higher in the initiative order can be very valuable for any class. Clerics will be able to buff their allies right at the start of the fight, but this feat probably isn’t worth it just for that option.
• Crusher: Melee-focused clerics can get a lot of use out of this, especially the War Domain. You already get extra attacks and damage, making this feat even better.
• Defensive Duelist: No clerics are outright designed with DEX in mind, but something like the Trickery Domain could work.
• Divinely Favored: This feat has a lot of overlap with features clerics already get. If you need a spell from outside your spell list, grab Magic Initiate or Fey Touched.
• Durable: Nothing particularly exciting here for a cleric.
• Eldritch Adept: While the bonus of a new at-will spell isn’t bad, most clerics will probably be interested in the advantage on Eldritch Mind. However, between this feat, Resilient (CON), and War Caster, Resilient is the superior feat for clerics. Other invocations, like casting detect magic, are probably better.
• Ember of the Fire Giant: As it offers an ASI to Wisdom, this is an awesome choice for melee clerics and is especially thematic for Forge clerics.
• Fade Away: The ASIs don't match a cleric's priorities, especially heavy armor clerics . If your cleric plans on staying out of combat, just take the Shadow Touched feat and get access to the invisibility spell, rather than Fade Away's reaction.
• Fury of the Frost Giant: As it offers an ASI to Wisdom, this is an alright choice for melee clerics who want to keep enemies locked in their spirit guardians radius.
• Guile of the Cloud Giant: While this can help with survivability, Fey Touched can get you misty step and another useful spell while also pumping Wisdom.
• Keenness of the Stone Giant: While this can boost your Wisdom and gives you an awesome bonus action option, clerics will likely still want to use spiritual weapon instead of the stone throwing ability.
• Second Chance: The ASIs aren't great for clerics and they likely won't benefit much from this unless they're in heavy armor and charging into battle.
• Slasher: Clerics can use this feat if they want to be in the thick of it, especially War Domain clerics.
• Spell Sniper: This can allow you to cast guiding bolt 240 feet, which is alright at the very least. Unfortunately, the only cantrips worth to pick up are produce flame and thorn whip off of the druid's spell list.
• Squat Nimbleness: Not much of use here for clerics, unless you're going for a mountain dwarf (or other Small race) martial cleric who wants the Strength boost.
• Telepathic: Nothing here particularly worthwhile for a cleric, better off going with Fey Touched or Shadow Touched.
• Tough: Between the cleric's unrivalled healing abilities and the heavy armor that melee cleric subclasses offer, clerics won't usually need to invest in the Tough feat.

Bad Feats for Clerics

• Athlete: Nothing here for a cleric.
• Cohort of Chaos: Unfortunately, this is too unpredictable to be a efficient use of a feat.
• Crafter: Nothing here for a Cleric, unless you're a Forge Cleric who really wants to lean into the flavor.
• Crossbow Expert: Most clerics don't get extra attacks, which makes the ignoring the loading property feature of this feat irrelevant. As for being able to use ranged spell attacks normally against a target within 5 feet, clerics only get access to one spell which requires a ranged spell attack, guiding bolt. This spell is great for a 1st level spell, but doesn't rationalize picking up this feat.
• Dual Wielder: Clerics are typically spellcasters first and foremost, and they often rely on shields for added AC. Some domains might support a more martial approach where Dual Wielder could be considered, but typically there are more synergistic feat choices
• Elemental Adept: Most clerics can skip this, as their damage type isn’t included here. Tempest Domain clerics can pick this up if they want to get better damage on either thunder or lightning, but it’s not essential.
• Elven Accuracy: This feat focuses on damage dealing and attacks, something most Domains aren’t too concerned about. Unfortunately, for the Domains that want to be attacking, they’re usually melee Strength builds, which this feat doesn’t support.
• Fey Teleportation: Clerics can always use some extra CHA, but they aren’t usually known for needing to be highly mobile. For some melee-focused subclasses, you might get a little extra mileage. But, in most cases, Fey Touched does the same thing and more.
• Fighting Initiate: War and Forge Domain clerics can benefit from Great Weapon Fighting, Dueling, or Defense depending on your build.
• Gift of the Chromatic Dragon: Even martial clerics won't be attacking enough to make this worthwhile. Plus, they have spiritual weapon as a bonus action that they usually want to get active and start swinging with ASAP.
• Grappler: Nothing here for a Cleric.
• Gunner: A priest with a gun? This doesn’t mix well with the overall cleric kit, which is never DEX-based. The more supportive domains won’t be relying on non-magical damage anyway.
• Inspiring Leader: Not a great option for most clerics, as they typically don't invest in high Charisma scores.
• Keen Mind: Nothing here for a cleric.
• Lightly Armored: Already has access to light armor at the start.
• Linguist: Clerics will not get much use out of this feat, unless their domain is Knowledge.
• Mage Slayer: Clerics that are focused on melee damage, like War Domain and Forge Domain, definitely can use this feat. It isn’t essential on these subclasses, but it packs a powerful punch. Other domains are better off with supporting feats.
• Martial Adept: Nothing here for a cleric. Even martial clerics usually don't make enough weapon attacks for this to be worth it.
• Mobile: Most clerics are either in the fray permanently or far outside of it. This feat is an easy skip for clerics since they don’t support the skirmish playstyle. I would suggest Magic Initiate instead.
• Mounted Combatant: Caster clerics will want to skip Mounted Combatant. Melee tank clerics such as War and Forge Domain can find this feat useful for movement and advantage on attacks, though will really put their d8 hit dice to the test once they have to start tanking for their steed.
• Orcish Fury: Nothing here for a cleric.
• Piercer: Most clerics will skip this, as dealing damage isn’t their priority. However, War Domain, Strength Domain, and Forge Domain will work wonders with this feat, as they want to deal heavy damage.
• Planar Wanderer: Nothing here for a cleric.
• Poisoner: Clerics should be skipping this feat entirely. Melee clerics have better feats to pick up, and supporting clerics would rather use their damaging cantrips or buffs.
• Polearm Master: Clerics don’t have any features that allow them to attack with their spellcasting modifier like the Battle Smith or Hexblade. This makes melee-oriented clerics multi-ability dependant right off the bat. If you want to play a build that makes the most of Polearm Master, you might want to look somewhere other than a cleric.
• Revanent Blade: Nothing here for clerics. Even martial clerics would rather have a shield to boost their AC, rather than this two-handed scimitar.
• Ritual Caster: Clerics already have Ritual Casting and should just take Magic Initiate if they want access to find familiar.
• Savage Attacker: Skip this feat.
• Sharpshooter: Clerics that don't solely rely on spellcasting typically spec into a melee weapon build, rather than a ranged weapon build.
• Skulker: It’s rare for clerics to be too far away from the frontlines, making this feat challenging to recommend. Trickster Domain clerics might find some use out of it, but the rest of the subclasses won’t benefit.
• Tavern Brawler: Nothing here for a Cleric.
• Vigor of the Hill Giant: Unless you're in a dungeon crawl hell style campaign where every short rest and hit point is crucial, focus on something that will improve your spellcasting instead.
• Weapon Master: Any cleric subclass that might want martial weapons gets them as part of the subclass features.

Other Cleric Guides

• Cleric 5e Overview
• Cleric Subclasses Overview
• Cleric Spells
• Cleric Races
• Death Domain
• Twilight Domain
• Peace Domain
• Forge Domain

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Mike Bernier

Mike Bernier is the lead content writer and founder of Arcane Eye. He is a Adamantine best-selling author of Strixhaven: A Syllabus of Sorcery on DMs Guild and is a contributing author at D&D Beyond. Follow Mike on Twitter.