D&D Cleric 5e Guide

D&D 5e Cleric Overview

Playstyle

When most people think about the ceric class, they think of the quiet party member who heals those in need and throws some ranged spells around when no one’s hurt. While 5e’s cleric can be like that, they can also be heavy armor wearing, mace wielding, summoning-lighting-bolts-with-one-hand-while-mass-party-healing-with-the-other…ers. Like druids and bards, clerics are spellcasters that have a ton of versatility and a long list of roles they can fill.

Strengths

The cleric’s spell list has a definitive focus on healing and buffing your party members. Keeping everyone in the fight by healing or making them harder to kill is extremely valuable to any party.

After spellcasting, Domains are the cleric’s biggest class feature. A cleric’s Domain is a defining aspect of your character as they represent what your cleric worships. Each Domain gives you bonus Domain Spells, unique abilities, and a bonus to damage with either spells or weapons. Like warlocks, clerics get their domains at 1st-level which can inject some potent class features in the early game.

Weaknesses

Having a solid healer/buffer in your party is indispensable, although some might call it the “boring” job. While 5e cleric builds can be varied and don’t have to necessarily focus on healing, your party may rely on you for support when situations get rough. Announcing you are playing a cleric is kind of like announcing you will be the designated driver, your friends are likely to get themselves into a bit more trouble knowing they have someone to bail them out.

Apart from that, the biggest issue clerics are likely to run into is that their spell list contains a lot of concentration spells. Concentration forces spellcasters to remain focused on a spell for the duration of its effect and will cause them to drop the spell if they take enough damage or cast another spell that requires concentration. If you’re not careful, you can end up wasting a spell slot or dropping a spell at an inopportune moment because of poor concentration management.

Best Races for Your D&D Cleric

Choosing a race that complements the cleric’s divine connection and versatile abilities is key to creating a character that truly shines. If you need help navigating the myriad options, our Guide to Cleric Races has you covered.

For a quick pick from the Basic Rules or Player’s Handbook, Hill Dwarves are a standout choice. With a +2 bonus to Constitution and +1 to Wisdom, they align perfectly with a cleric’s primary ability scores. Their Dwarven Toughness trait adds extra hit points, enhancing durability—something every frontline healer or spellcaster can appreciate.

Best Backgrounds for Clerics

Acolyte: This background makes sense for most clerics lorewise, and also offers Insight and some bonus languages. Shelter of the Faithful can have valuable contributions to your role-play.

Guild Artisan: Insight, Persuasion is good if you haven’t dumped CHA, and a language.

Hermit: Medicine skill and the herbalism kit can be handy to make potions, especially since everyone will probably be expecting you to be the healer anyway.

Ability Scores

Ability Score Increases (ASI) at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level.

Prioritize WIS over everything else. Make sure you have a solid amount of CON, then decide between STR and DEX depending on your armor and weapon choices.

STR: Bad for light armor clerics, good for heavy armor clerics. Heavy armor clerics will need to get this to 15 in order to make use of plate armor unless they are a dwarf.

DEX: Good for light armor clerics, bad for heavy armor clerics. This will be beneficial for AC, DEX saves, and stealth checks which light armor clerics have a better chance of making use of.

CON: You need to be alive to heal your party members, and CON helps you achieve that goal.

INT: Don’t bother with INT.

WIS: Clerics cast spells with their WIS, so pump this as high as you can.

CHA: Clerics shouldn’t try to focus on social skills outside of WIS-based ones. If you must, the overall effectiveness of the character will suffer.

Cleric Class Progression

1st Level

Hit Points: Clerics have a middle-of-the-road d8 hit dice. Better than the Sorcerer and Wizard, but the problem is that clerics tend to be in the middle of the fray instead of in a ranged position. A decent AC paired with their powerful healing spells should mitigate some of this risk.

Saves: WIS and CHA saves tend to be pretty useful, especially at higher levels.

Weapon/Armour Proficiencies: Light armor, medium armor, shields, and simple weapons is enough to survive early on. Specializing in a specific armor and weapon type will be necessary to get the full mileage out of this class.

Skills: Clerics aren’t known for their diverse skillset. They can only choose two of the following five skills.

• History (INT): Good for learning about your campaign setting, but your INT will be pretty low.
• Insight (WIS): Insight is the best of the bunch here. It gets used a lot and is WIS-based so you will have a solid bonus.
• Medicine (WIS): A bit redundant for stabilizing unconscious creatures since you are the best healing class in the game. That being said, it’s a pretty flavorful skill to have on a cleric and can be used for other purposes (identifying poisons, determining cause of death, etc.)
• Persuasion (CHA): Most clerics won’t have good CHA, but Persuasion is good to have if nobody else does.
• Religion (INT): Good for flavor, but your INT will be pretty low.

Spellcasting: Clerics cast their spells with WIS. Despite their ability to tank, they are considered a full caster class. 5e clerics know, and can therefore prepare, any cleric spell that they are of a high enough level to cast. If that wasn’t good enough, the spells in their Divine Domain of choice are always prepared for free. On top of their ability to prepare a great list of spells depending on what they are expecting that day, clerics get access to ritual casting which is an awesome way to conserve spell slots. Another awesome aspect of the cleric’s spellcasting is they are able to wear their spellcasting focus on their shield or clothes, allowing them to cast spells with material components without the need of a free hand.

With access to so many spells, and powerful ones at that, clerics can give the Wizard’s diverse spell list a run for their money.

Divine Domain: At 1st level, clerics get to choose their Divine Domain. A cleric’s Divine Domain completely defines how the build plays, some offer Heavy armor proficiency and an increase to melee weapon attacks, while others offer a boost to spellcasting or healing.

For a detailed breakdown of the strengths and features of each Domain, explore our Guide to Cleric 5e Subclasses.

2nd Level

Channel Divinity: Turn Undead provides a solid debuff against a popular creature type and can even destroy lower CR undead as they level up. Channel Divinity also comes with some great additional uses depending on which Divine Domain you choose. It also resets on a short rest, which allows you to use it plenty of times in an adventuring day, even at lower levels.

4th Level

5th Level

Destroy Undead: More undead hate, but a weaker one due to CR limiting. There are ~20 undead creatures that can be forced to save or die right at 5th level and it just gets better from there. By 17th level,  there are close to 80 monsters that can be affected by destroy undead. One round of insta-killing a couple of undead baddies your DM has thrown at your party will make them think twice about which undead creatures they throw at you in the future.

8th Level

10th Level

Divine Intervention: An interesting class feature. If your creativity knows no bounds, Divine Intervention can be extremely cool. The effect is deliberately vague in the Player’s Handbook, so its true potential will be at your DM’s discretion. Once you reach level 20 this becomes the cleric’s capstone ability. You won’t even need to make a roll, so expect your DM to reign in your craziest ideas. Still, it’s extremely flavorful and lets you flex your roleplaying.

Best Feats for Clerics

Check out our Guide to Cleric Feats.

Best Spells for Clerics

Check out our Guide to Cleric Spells.

Best Multiclass Options for Clerics

Multiclassing is always an opportunity cost; you have to determine if taking a level of another class is worth what you will lose from the original class. Many factors come into this decision, with the main factor being how long your campaign will run and, ultimately, what level you will be playing until.

Clerics aren’t the best class for multiclassing due to their reliance on multiple ability scores. Additionally, they can already cast spells and fight in melee range, so there isn’t too much to be gained from other classes. However, clerics are one of the more interesting classes to multiclass with. Clerics choose their domain at 1st-level, so builds can get a fair amount of value for just a one-level dip.

Druid: Druids also cast spells with WIS, so you won’t need to worry about INT or CHA. There are some good spells on the druid’s spell list that clerics usually can’t get, as well as Wild Shape. Although, clerics will have to forgo metal armor to multiclass into a druid.

Fighter: A few fighter levels can be great if you want to focus more on fighting than spellcasting. Access to all weapons and armor leaves you open to many build options. With Action Surge you could cast two spells in a single turn, laying down destruction or bringing your party up from the brink of defeat.

Monk: Monks also rely on WIS, ensuring that you won’t be wasting any stat points. This creates the possibility for a DEX-based cleric that dips into the Monk. Unarmored Defense could get you quite far with a high DEX score.

Wizard/Sorcerer: Combining the cleric and the wizard’s or sorcerer’s spell list will give you an absurd amount of spells to choose from, but will also delay getting access to the more powerful spells at higher levels. Low-level spells like absorb elements, shield, and feather fall will have a lot of utility on a cleric. The most common option is for wizards or sorcerers to take a one-level dip into cleric to pick up heavy armor proficiencies, the guidance cantrip, and healing spells.