Baldur's Gate 3 - Healer / Support / Frontline / Blaster Cleric - Class Guide

hello everyone today we're going to talk about the cleric in Baldur's Gate 3 so whether you've already dived into the game and you're looking at building out Shadow heart in a particular way or you're waiting for PlayStation 5 to come out and you are thinking about different characters you want to play or if even if you've already beaten the game and are just looking to start with something a little bit different this video is for you so with the cleric as many of the healing type characters in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition the cleric is kind of pushed meaning the cleric has tons of things it can do and it's a really really powerful character and arguably the cleric is in contention for one of the most powerful characters in 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and that translates equally over to Baldur's Gate 3 as well there are some incredibly powerful builds and really broken synergies that you can actually unlock in the first few levels of the game and we're gonna go over some of those today but generally it should be noted that in terms of a role clerics can fulfill pretty well every role and this is going to tie based on the subclass or the domain that you pick so the kind of God that you follow and generally speaking clerics are fairly tanky they get medium armor and shields right out of the gate they have some basic weapon proficiencies and they have a full array of spells and they are a prepared spell Caster so similar to a druid in the sense that they don't need to learn spells as they level up they don't need to find Scrolls or spell books they just have access to the entire array of spells and in Baldur's Gate 3 outside of combat you can share the uh change these prepared spells whenever you like to always be ready for whatever situation you are going to face which makes clerics incredibly versatile and Incredibly powerful so whether you need some more control or some support some Buffs some debuffs some blasting some front lining the cleric is going to be able to help your party out so without further Ado let's talk a little bit about some of the ability scores you might want to start with so because clerics have access to medium armor you might consider having a little bit lower dexterity than you might with other builds I am still totally happy doing at least 14 into decks and you could drop your strength a little bit and get your you could still do something like this as like sort of like a traditional build maybe even a few extra points into strength for that jumping and pushing and shoving and stuff like that um this is sort of like traditional Caster High initiative build I always like high initiative builds and you're still going to be able to use some you know crossbows at range if you want uh but if you're going to be in the back line you might want to do something like this if you are going to go for a more martial based cleric which there are plenty of builds you can do that with you might consider dropping your dexterity a little bit and instead putting some points into strength so that you can melee and this is going to be a solid build so I always like having at least my 16 in wisdom whether I'm going to be casting or in the melee at least 14 in Constitution this is arguably another one you could even consider doing something like this and just foregoing a little bit of strength or decks just to get your Constitution even higher for those concentration checks and should be a little bit more resilient because out of the first few levels of the game hopefully you're going to be spending most of your turns using your powerful spells and not doing too many attacks anyways and you always have some nice can trips you can fall back on that lets you just use your wisdom however there are plenty of domain specific builds that are gonna are gonna want a higher strength specifically something like the war domain so that is something to consider if you do want a more like battle cleric that is a really fun build you could do something like this and this is going to be something that I'm going to take my cleric through just because I think it's good and I think it's fun um but there's definitely some more other things you can do so let's talk about that in terms of the can trips let's let's go through these actually there are a few interesting options blade Ward is nice if you want to be frontlining if you want to have that ability to turn your action into resistance from regular attacks it is really nice on a cleric because you have a lot of powerful things you can do with a bonus action so you know you can still throw out your spiritual weapon or your healing word and then use your action on blade Ward which can actually save you a lot of damage in the long run guidance is one of if not the best cantrips in the entire game outside of combat it lets you open locks better it lets you disable traps it lets you you can use it in conversations to get intimidations or even just regular history or Arcana checks whatever you want so it's fantastic there and then sacred flame is a fantastic cantrip it's a saving throw base cantrip which means you can use it in melee it ignores line of sight um not line of sight but it ignores uh projectile targeting so like sometimes you'll have a an enemy that you can see but there's like a pillar in the way and you can't quite find the pixel to launch your Javelin or whatever sacred flame as long as you can see part of them you can hit them which is fantastic so it has great targeting there and it does decent damage and like all cantrips it scales with class or character level not just class level so as you level up this will do a little bit more damage not always the best thing to be using but there are a few cleric domains that get potent spell casting which means at level eight they'll get to add their casting modifier to their damage so while you're not quite fully keeping up with melee you'll still be able to do 2d8 plus 5 or so radiant damage which is going to be a pretty good use of your action for your supporting character and this is going to be you know totally fine for the late game if you want light you have options with either produce Flame or the light can drip I think those are fine thamaturgy also if you wanted to use your cleric as a bit of a party phase you could you know between guidance and thamaturgy you get a decent amount of bonus on intimidation and performance checks so worth picking up and also worth noting for multi-class options it's like a one level of cleric to get access to thamaturgy and guidance can be great for and like an 11th level bar that's looking for a fun dip and then yeah let's talk a little bit about the domains or clerics domains are largely how you really specialize and it reflects you the the type of God or type of cleric you are and it gives a lot of flavor as well to your cleric so you really need to think about right at level one what kind of cleric you get to make and this is what makes clerics actually a pretty nice multi-class dip is because they get so many great features right at level one tied to their domain this is going to be a pretty long section and I'm going to go through each domain and talk about some of the things you unlock I'm also going to explain whether a domain is going to get Divine strike versus potent spell casting which is going to determine whether your end game build post level 8 is going to be using their filler actions for weapon attacks versus filler actions for cantrips because that is going to determine what you want to be doing with your ability scores if you are having a potent spell casting cleric you're less worried about things like strength and decks being high and you care more about having your Constitution and your wisdom being as high as possible but if you are going to go for one of the Divine strike domains you will potentially want to be using your weapon from time to time so you might consider having decks or strength a little bit higher as well as your wisdom so that you can also take advantage of that feature that's going to give you those better weapon attacks so right out of the gate the life domain is one of the domains that gives you proficiency with heavy armor and it is also a Divine strike domain which means it is going to be using weapon attacks but you don't get access to any special weapons but you do get morning stars as a cleric which are pretty powerful so you're getting decent weapons out of the gate and there's some decent Spears and things as well and that'll be totally fine they are strength based you don't you're not going to be doing too much dexterity based life domain clerics aside from just if you want the initiative and the the specific ability score skills that go with dexterity life domain obviously gets a lot of healing spells in terms of its domain specific spells so every single domain is going to have access to certain spells some domains will actually give you access to spells that are not on the cleric spell list but because the life domain cleric is getting a lot of healing spells generally clerics already have access to these so you're not really getting a breadth of spells as a life domain cleric however you are getting very powerful spells specifically because of disciple of life so the disciple of life means every time you cast a level healing spell you're going to increase the hit points by the level of the spell plus two so right away your healing words even at level one are you gonna do 1d4 plus six healing when you're combining your wisdom modifier bonus with your disciple of Life bonus which gets to be pretty big you're pretty well topping somebody up with a bonus action which is great and this obviously scales as you level and as you're leveling up your spells it just it's going to make it so you're keeping people fully topped quite easily and as you level up as a live domain cleric you also get uh Your Divine um Channel Divinity I should say preserve life so this is going to be an action that is a big AOE heel that's scary scales with your character level it actually is a nice dip as well so if you wanted to just take two levels of cleric and for Life domain you get access to some potent healing disciple of life and you get access to that preserve life bonus action that scales are here as an action rather nice big AOE heel that will scale with your clap your character level not just your class level and it's I think three times your character level so level two it does six healing to everybody around you and then level three it'll do nine healing to everybody around you et cetera so it ends up being a pretty nice uh burst heal that you can use um and it is on a channeled Divinity charge so that is pretty nice it doesn't use a spell slot or anything like that and that'll be decent healing that you can do just to top people up it'll almost function sort of like a short rest amount of healing that you can use in an action so even in combat sometimes you can get a lot of value out of it in terms of your domain spells like I mentioned before you're getting things like lesser restoration Aid revivalified Beacon of Hope all those kind of spells that are going to be mostly healing you do get guardian of Faith at level seven and then you get the Divine strike as well so you're you have a few kind of offensive things that kind of that all clerics get in terms of that level eight bonus but really good at healing lots of support coming out of the life domain cleric now the light domain cleric don't let the light domain fool you this is all about fire so this is not like oh holy gentle light caress my face this is like Purge you with the Glorious Radiance of the Sun you know burn the heretic at the stake light this is not you know help the flowers grow this is Purge the evil kind of light so you obviously get the light can trip which is fun and there's actually some uses for this later in the game without doing too many spoilers and then your domain spells you get burning hands because it's a great way to uh Purge the Heretics you also get fairy fire which is a fantastic debuff so it's a nice sized AOE with a huge range it lasts 10 turns and it gives dis or gives advantage on all attack rolls um against enemies and you can turn invisible targets visible with it which has you know slightly less use cases but really it's a great way to open up a fight you just throw it on some enemies and your all your attacks are gonna have advantage against them they can save against it so it's not guaranteed to work but it is a really really powerful spell and it sometimes is worth using IF enemies are clubbed up together if you're gonna hit at least three times targets with this I would say this is this is a good one to cast as a subclass feature you also get warding flare which is amazing once again because this is a reaction I would highly recommend turning on reactions as a as a toggle so hit that button hit that L button bring up your reaction Pane and make it so you get to ask when you want to use this don't just let it fire off willy-nilly so you can actually avoid hitting attacks that are going to be meaningful you know you don't really care about that little Goblin swinging a dagger but when that bug bear is coming at you with that scary two-hander you want to use it use warning flare to stop that attack so this lets you use your reaction to impose disadvantage on attacks and it lets it so your attacker can miss so generally the way you would use this is they they're swinging an attack and it's going to hit you you know they roll the 19 and they they only need an 18 to hit you use your warding flare and then they have to re-roll and potentially have a chance to miss you so great way to use this also you can save it for whenever you're going to be crit and later on you can also use this to save enemies so at level six you can use or sorry not enemies save your allies not just yourself so early on in the game it's just gonna be against uh against enemies attacking your cleric but later on you can actually impose that disadvantage on enemies attacking any of your allies within range so it's a really cool feature that you get to use a few times per rest and it is super fun now the uh the main sort of thing you wanted to get though for being a light domain is both your channel Divinity as well as your domain spells you get really really strong domain spells so at level two you're gonna get access to Radiance of the Dawn which is your channel divinity this is going to be an action there's just a whole bunch of damage in an area around you to enemies it's sort of like the damaged version of the life domain Clark's AOE heal uh does a bunch of damage it doesn't scale super well but early game it's super devastating and even late game just you know use it when you have it it's going to be better than most of your leveled spells um until you're getting much lighter into the game and then even in late game it's a great sort of filler it's going to be better than just attacking or using a cantrip and it still can hit lots of targets and be fairly effective now in terms of your domain Spells at level three you're getting things like flaming Spear and scorching Rey so lots of fire blasty stuff and at level five you're getting Fireball and daylight um you eventually are getting things like wall of fire and Flame strike and destructive wave so this is the cleric that you want to be if you want to be blasting and you just want to be dealing fire damage and lighting the world Ablaze really really fun subclass I love the fantasy and I've always uh some in my tabletop games I've always loved rping as the cleric that sort of has that like Divine Vengeance um you know Purge the heretic kind of vibe and light domain cleric does that well you also are a potent spell casting cleric meaning you're gonna get to at level eight add your wisdom modifier to your sacred Flames uh or even you know your Firebolt or whatever um I think it's all cantrips I think the way bothers Gate 3 works is it even lets you convert this into whatever you're casting to that is I'm not 100 on that one because I think the half elf uh cantrip is it does say interior but I haven't tested this at high at level eight so um we'll we'll see but that some of the the ways some of these abilities Works in terms of potent spell casting it just it just kind of does um anyways either way adding it to sacred flame is still totally fine and it'll be a nice little way to do some extra damage and just because you are that potent spellcaster you don't necessarily need to worry about having a super high strength or dexterity because you are going to be mostly casting spells as a light domain cleric and you have lots of great ways to use your spells next up the trickery domain so this is shadowheart's default domain and arguably the worst domain oh so sad they had to make shadowheart a trickery domain cleric um partly it's because of the way the channel Divinity Works um and or sorry this class feature rather the blessing of the trickster it's not as versatile in Baldur's Gate 3 as it is in the tabletop um because you know obviously it's a little bit harder to code things like this illusory decoy that you can just like make do whatever you want and cast spells out of it's really powerful in the tabletop version of the game but in baldrish Gate 3 it's a little bit more limited but it still has its uses so the trickery domain cleric is a uh Divine strike cleric so they are going to be potentially meleeing at level eight and they are going to be doing additional poison damage on their melee attacks with the data poison at level 8 which is not a great damage type there's a lot of enemies that are resistant to poison damage but it's it is a thing so you would potentially be wanting to melee as a trickery domain cleric in terms of your abilities this blessing of the trickster is whatever grants additional advantage on stealth checks and then like I said the invoke duplicity which is where you're summoning that sort of illusory copy of yourself is as a way to Grant advantage on attack rolls and the way it works is you just put it next to an enemy and then as long as you're next to the duplicity and next to the enemy you'll get advantage on all Attack rules so it's a really simple way as an action just to kind of like guarantee Advantage so it is arguably powerful like especially compared to something like fairy fire if you put it right next to your front line it's sort of like a guaranteed fairy fire that's not going to hit your allies and it like it'll work against every enemy in range put it at a choke point and you'll get bonus Advantage the entire fight so there are some fine use cases for it it is totally worth using um your domain clasp spells you have some past without Trace Buffs that are going to let you stealth around amazingly well you also have things like mirror image which are going to make you a little bit tankier it makes it so that enemies have a chance to hit your mirror copy instead of hitting you you get things like polymorph and fear as you get on so I'll put a variety of spells some control and some utility so trickery is sort of a nice variety there um but because you you are this kind of awkward place where you want to be mailing to get use out of your Divine strike but you don't get any additional proficiencies with any finesse weapons or any uh Shields or heavy armor you don't get any bonus like some of the other clerics do for being melee oriented so it's a little bit more Awkward onto a knowledge domain so the knowledge domain cleric gets a lot of cool things you get some fantastic spells in command and sleep which has amazing control options you also get access to additional skills so in terms of Arcana and history we're getting some bonuses there in terms of getting some free skill expertise you also at level 2 get access to knowledge of the ages so this is going to give you the ability to pick an ability score and you get Proficiency in every skill of that ability score so this is the ultimate skill monkey bar or uh cleric build that's going to give you you know you'll be able to rival the bards rival the Rogues with your ability to do all sorts of things and because the knowledge domain is also a potent spellcaster so this is when you're not focusing on melee this lets you maybe spread your points out a little bit more to take advantage of the skill proficiencies and you can take some skill proficiencies in or assumability Square bonuses in intelligence or charisma and you could be a bit more of a specialist a little bit more of a party face if you wanted and then as long as you're kind of focusing on keeping your wisdom up and you're you know wearing your medium armor and your Shield you're not suffering too much you could easily pick up 14 decks and then still have lots of points left over to play around with so um definitely really fun there and then the the main thing you're getting from the knowledge domain is some of the spells that you get access to so obviously sleep and command are fantastic but you also get things like hold person for free at level three um and then later on you're getting some really cool spells you're getting uh you know dominate person in telekinesis at level nine so some really really interesting spells and uh yeah that's that's really what you're getting this the skills and and the Spells and the flexibility so let's talk about the nature domain so as the nature domain you get a few different things is this is another one that gives you access to Heavy Armor and then it gives you the shalila or sheleighly um rather uh kantrip which is going to let you use your wisdom modifier to turn a staff or club uh into your sheleighly which you can just smack people with it is a bonus action to turn it on and then you can use your action right away to start wailing away which is fantastic as a cleric because with that heavy armor that means you don't need decks and you don't need strength because you can just shillail your way to Victory this is also notably a Divine strike um it's a domain so that means you're going to be wanting to melee a little bit but unlike some of the other domains this one gives you full support because you have that Chalet you can just focus on maximizing wisdom and Constitution so you can maintain concentration on all your spells you have great armor class in your heavy armor and you have great melee potential because you're using your casting stat so this really reduces how multi-ability score dependent clerics can be and gives you some clear direction right away and then also you've got some fun bonuses right away you get speak with animals as an always prepared spell so you can just you know have those extra conversations was awesome you also get animal friendship which is potentially like less useful but later on you do get some more powerful spells things like Spike growth is really useful sleep storm insect plague these are awesome high high value spells that you get eventually and as a subclass feature you also become proficient in animal handling nature or survival so you get some bonus proficiencies kind of like knowledge but knowledge is expertise so it's a little bit better but definitely worth worth noting you do get those extra proficiencies later on you get the ability to charm animals and plants as a channel Divinity feature which is okay it's it's not honestly a very useful Channel Divinity um but some of the spells that you get are useful and then it's really just getting access to that shillelaghan trip right away and then some decent domain spells along with the heavy armor proficiency makes it you know fairly impactful but at the end of the day it's like why aren't you just playing a druid okay next step this is why you play a cleric The Tempest domain oh my gosh it does it all so the Tempest domain is kind of funny because it is both a domain that gives you all the proficiencies you go Tempest domain you get Marshall weapons and heavy armor you can wear all the best armor in the game and all the best you can use all the best weapons in the game and arguably this is like a nice stat array that I'm currently using that would work really well for the tempos domain it also is a Divine striking domain meaning it's going to incentivize you using melee attacks but when you combine two of its abilities so the subclass feature here Wrath of the storm along with the destructive wrath Divine Channel divinity you are both an amazing Frontline melee Striker and arguably the best Blaster Caster in the game because the channel Divinity for the Tempest domain clerics maximizes your damage when you're using your iconic lightning and thunder spells you just get to say no rolling dice for me I'm just going to turn these 3d8 into 24 damage to everyone please go and you just one shot entire rooms um and you can make this even more Ridiculous by combining this with some of the first level spells you get for a cleric something like oh I don't know creating some water and making all the enemies vulnerable to lightning and then you throw some sort of Lightning Spell like call lightning and you're like oh look at everybody just takes 80 damage done no rolls everyone dies please so um yeah really really fun amazing blasting potential ending encounters with like a single turn hilarious multi-classing if you're multi-classing with a sorcerer you take two levels to get your channel Divinity and then you just go off but we're not going to talk about multi-classing quite yet but it's so it's so powerful I just had to throw it in there um obviously you get some amazing spells for being tempus domain as well so right away you're getting things like fog cloud and thunder waves you get a little bit of blasting that other clerics don't get as well as some control which is really nice later on you're getting spells like shatter and gust of wind so you're you know blasting enemies off cliffs or you're exploding them at range and once again that shatter is going to be doing that like 3d8 damage um with a second level spell slot which you're gonna maximize into 24 which is also I I was talking about Thunder Wave when I said you know three times eight um because I would be upscaling that as soon as I could at level three um to be maximizing my damage and uh yeah eventually you're getting things like call lightning you're getting ice storm and then end game you're using destructive wave and you just maximize your destructive wave and you just watch the whole screen explode and it's beautiful um so yeah really fantastic and I didn't even talk about Wrath of the storm which is a nice little bonus so whenever somebody attacks you you can do 2d6 lightning damage or uh if they fail their safety deal half of that as uh Thunder damage um so it's just free damage as a reaction it's so good it doesn't scale amazingly well but it's just a way to use your reaction and getting to use your reaction consistently is awesome and this is just you know a nice way to do it and if you really wanted to um you could make your Tempest cleric B like a front line that's doing reactionary damage blowing up everyone with their Channel Divinity and then um still being a totally capable melee combatant as well so like great potential for the Tempest cleric it is one of my favorite you could probably tell I'm I'm excited about it it should be noted it does rely on your channel Divinity so it isn't something you could just do over and over and over again it's going to be tied to your rests which uh means like you're definitely a Nova based class but clerics are just a great class even outside of the Nova they have so many powerful spells that even outside of this you are totally fine and last but certainly not least we're going to talk about the war domain so the war domain is your more melee oriented cleric and this is also a great dip for classes that are looking at um picking up a few melee abilities while maintaining melee spell progression or sure full spell progression so in terms of spells you do get uh Divine favor so it's a bonus action you turn it on for a little bit it gives you an extra one to three radiant damage for a few turns it's okay it's honestly it's not super powerful um you know it's a paladin spell that uh you know most paladins won't use because they would rather just be divine smiting but because you have additional spell slots compared to a paladin you could potentially take advantage of this and there are going to be things you're going to be doing as a war domain cleric to get extra attacks but your extra attacks do take your use of your bonus action so it might be a little bit harder to take full advantage of this it's but it's fine you also get Shield of Faith as a always prepared spell this is a two AC bonus action you can just throw it up on yourself or anybody else for that matter and it's a nice little buff once again though these both take concentration so you're gonna be fighting because you have so many powerful spells you want to be concentrating on and it can be hard to pick one to use you also get the full Suite of Martial weapons as well as heavy armor for being a war domain cleric which means like the Tempest cleric you are a martial focused you're getting that Divine strike later on to do an extra d8 of just physical damage for the war domain and um it is totally totally fine now it should be noted that you get this really cool War produced feature so unlike the tabletop this one scales a little differently in Baldur's Gate 3 but you'll get a three uses right away and this lets you make a bonus action to make an additional melee attack with your main weapon whenever you make an attack in a turn so um ideally as a war priest you're going to be using like a big two-hander weapon um you know something impactful and then you can use you know at level one for three rounds you can make two attacks which makes you know the first three levels of the game the paladins and Fighters are gonna be so jealous of you as you're making all these extra attacks and then later on you do scale up a little bit in terms of the extra attacks but you're you're gonna be falling off um you know once other classes are hitting level five and they just get to do this for free making two attacks a turn however you're a full Caster so once you've hit level five you're casting Spirit Guardians and just waiting in and doing way more damage than all of them anyways so it's totally fine um so this is uh an interesting build but all of the the melee clerics there is sort of that caveat is like you're still a full caster so yes you can do some cool things and like hit people with your weapon and you get bonuses eventually that like make it kind of okay at the end of the day you're a full caster and you know a lot of your actions in the mid to late game are going to be probably better used just casting your powerful spells because your spells are going to be encounter ending in a lot of cases so in terms of those spells that you get for being a war domain cleric you do get some interesting things you get Spirit Guardians as one of your always prepared spells which is really powerful you get spiritual weapon which is also a powerful spell but kind of like the life domain both of these spells are already on the cleric spell list which is not great for you but you do get things like um you know flame strike or freedom of movement and hold monster these are all really powerful spells that you just get to always have on so even if some of the Spells you're getting aren't you know expanding your spell list you still have them ready to go and then you can take other things because the spell clerics spell list is fairly stacked especially towards the later levels um and there's lots of cool things you can do and in terms of your channel Divinity there's also a really really good Channel Divinity you get it's not quite the same as the Tempest domains just like maximize your damage but it's pretty good and it's also really nice for a dip as well um in terms of multi-classing because it's guided strike and you get to use your channel Divinity to get plus 10 on any attack row you make so this is great in combination with some of the Feats like Sharpshooter Etc that give you a minus five in terms of in exchange for plus 10 to damage so this lets you take that like great weapon Master build and really guarantee you're going to land that hit so that you can do a pile of damage with your uh War domain cleric and that is a brief overview of all the domains brief um anyways we're gonna go on and talk about some of the spells that you get um in the first level and the first second and second level all right so at level two clerics get a few goodies so they get access to that channel Divinity which does come back on a short or long rest so you can use it a few times uh which you know when I'm thinking about the Tempest cleric and things like that there's lots of cool things you can do there you also get turn Undead which is a okay Channel Divinity that's gonna have some situations where it's going to be powerful so some of those classes like the nature domain cleric are going to have something to do with their Channel Divinity which they won't otherwise use as much and then obviously you actually get your domain specific Channel Divinity so this one we have um our guided strike because we made a a war priest um which you know just for for the sake of this build in my actual game I I'm not actually going to respect shadow fight I'm gonna play the story as as it was intended but anyways let's talk about the first level spells which we haven't even gotten to yet so in terms of first level spells there are so many great options on the cleric spell list we're gonna take that one off and we're gonna take that one off and we're gonna take that one and that one for now and this is a great list of spells that's going to last us for the early game in my opinion so obviously guiding bolt gives us a nuke it does a good amount of damage for D6 radiant damage and the next attack rule against the target has Advantage so it's a little risky because it doesn't do anything if you miss but if you can put yourself in a situation where you're attacking at height and you pay potentially there's like some other Advantage creating scenario happening you can absolutely take advantage of guiding bolt having a really high chance to hit doing a good amount of damage and then setting up even further good success at hitting so it can be great there but you're probably not going to use this as much as some of your other things a bread and butter spell is going to be something like healing word just picking up Allies for free when they fall down or keeping them topped up with a bonus action it's a great little heel super fun bless is a very powerful um way to sort of Ensure your attacks are landing use at the start of combat or even pre-combat sometimes and it's going to give one D4 to attack rules and also to saving throws which can be useful in protecting your team as well so you obviously want to put this on your Strikers people making a lot of attack rolls if you are uh playing a cleric that is more of a spell caster and you're going to be using your sacred flames you should be noting that bless isn't actually going to help you so you know put it on the other characters don't worry about putting bless on yourself unless you're going to be making a lot of attack rolls and then um there's obviously some options here that you could take I like command especially as using higher level spell slots making targets like just drop prone or things like that can set up some nice advantage or making them Fleek and buy turns sometimes um Bane is sort of the opposite of bless and it just makes your team tankier and it also gives a penalty to saving throws which can open up future turns when you're making making sure your spells are actually going to land on enemies but it should be noted they can make a save against it but it is a Charisma saving throw so a lot of monsters have low Charisma so this has a pretty good chance of Landing a lot of situations um protection from Good and Evil is pretty decent when you're fighting enemies that matter so like the celestials and Undead Fae fiends Etc um so when you're fighting a whole bunch of Undead you throw this on and they all have disadvantage against you it does take concentration but it lasts until long rest so this is one you can cast outside of combat no worries um Sanctuary is a really useful spell I like having it just there's like an oh no button you can throw this on your Caster or even yourself someone who's really Squishy in a rough situation as a bonus action and it makes it so creatures I can't attack that Target um unless they're but they can still be attacked in with like area effect abilities um so that should be noted but they're not going to be able to be targeted and it does fall off if they take any offensive action so there are times that when you're planning ahead in the initiative you can have your turn make them take all their attacks especially on a shared initiative and then cast Sanctuary on someone after they've made all their attacks and it kind of protects them until the next time they're attacking so there's some cool uses there but I also uh like create or destroy water so obviously this can create a water surface which you can turn to ice or Electrify or whatever but it also makes creatures wet which gives them vulnerability to lightning which is insane it's like no saving throw required just make them vulnerable to lightning especially if you're a tempest cleric uh wow watch out um it's also useful just for putting out fires there's times in the game where you want to be able to just douse a fire surface or you know douse someone who's like a object in an encounter that's on fire or something that like you don't want to burn down you can use create water for that and there are just a lot of great uses for it so just having it available is fantastic personally inflict wounds does a ton of damage but I I would rather almost be using you know something like guiding full just gonna do a comparable amount of damage and it has the bonus as well as being ranged um but otherwise yeah every spell in the cleric spell list has its uses so let's go on to level three so level three we get access to second level spells and there are some great spells on the list here and noting once again that as a cleric you are a uh prepared spell Caster so you get access to all of these and you can just switch them out as needed um spiritual weapon it's it's showing red right here because I already have it prepared guaranteed um for my subclass this is a fantastic spell it's a little different than the table top but in some ways it's a little bit better in some ways it's a little bit worse so you use a bonus action to summon the weapon and then tabletop you get to attack right away it's not how it works in Baldur's Gate 3 you summon the weapon and then it enters the initiative in that round so you're still guaranteed to hit with it in the round but it might not be on your turn when you summon it like right away which should be after a couple characters move which can sometimes be unfortunate it can't take reactions or anything like that it it but it has that a strict like small movement speed but it can fly to kind of move to where you want to hit it but generally you just summon it next to where you want to hit and you can attack with it after a couple of Point like turns of initiative um it does good damage and it is a bonus action which is fantastic but one change they've made in welder's Gate 3 is it actually has hit points and it's fairly durable so it seems to have resistance to all sorts of damage and enemies will attack it sometimes if it's something that's kind of like if it's off and it's like the only thing that they can kind of get to or if it's blocking them in and it can really soak up a lot of damage if you position it in such a way that enemies are sort of like forced to attack it so spiritual weapon can be surprisingly used as a tool to keep your team alive and not so much as just a pure additional damage or way of spending your bonus action but it is still fantastic at that because once you use your bonus action to summon it summon it it just has its own turn and it'll just every turn you can just use its own attack and you don't need to keep using your bonus action to direct it you can use healing words and you know sacred flames and you're you're getting to do so many things as a cleric uh with this second level spell it's it's pretty fantastic so highly recommend that one Silence has a lot of really fun uses of just like stealthing and like shutting down casters and sneaking around it's great Aid is a fantastic buff that you can use outside of combat at scale as well just a nice plus five hit points on everyone so it's you know for a second level spell slot getting 20 hit points not a bad deal and it does scale nicely So eventually you can get like you know 40 hit points for everyone for one spell slot um it's pretty good and uh it is outside of combat doesn't take concentration so it's a great spell to have around blindness it takes a con save I don't love it uh it doesn't take concentration which is kind of nice so there are potentially some use cases I don't love it though calm emotions I don't love it either it's concentration you have better things to concentrate on enhanceability is good because you can make specific ability checks uh at certain times in the game and if you really want to make that certain ability check being able to buff your ally so whether it's like buffing Charisma and giving advantage on all your conversations there are some really great uses for enhanceability and having it is nice old person is an amazing ability it all it guarantees uh attacks made within three meters are critical hits so it's a wisdom save you use it on the big beefy ogre with a low wisdom and then all your melee just chops them up in a single turn later on as it scales you can put multiple targets into a hold which is great so that's fine um lesser restoration it can get rid of paralysis or blindness um you have to be close to them there's some use cases for it it's totally fine Prayer of Healing essentially turns a second level spell into like a pseudo short rest without all the benefits of actually short resting but it's gonna do a nice big AOE heel it kind of tops everybody up it's okay but generally speaking like you have it's easy enough to just rest and like you don't necessarily need it um protection from Poison I once again I usually don't think this is useful but it does last forever and or until long rest and you don't need to concentrate on it so there might be a use case where there's some poison around and you just you know want to have it up there might be certain fights where this becomes more useful but I haven't needed it so far and I've been playing through on tactician and I I haven't haven't felt the need for this one but I'm sure it's fine and finally warding Bond um it gives resistance to all damage and plus one to AC and saving throws until long rest it doesn't tell you the way this spell actually works though is that you take all the damage prevented so essentially instead of one target taking 10 damage you the caster and that Target will both take five damage so it has just reduced the damage it just transfers the damage which is sometimes totally fine especially if you're like a life domain cleric eventually you get an ability um called blessed healer that makes it so when you heal an ally you also get a kickback um so that in that way like potentially spreading out damage is totally fine and what you want to be doing but so there are some use cases for it but I don't think it's great but anyways yeah that's level three so first few levels where let's just talk about some of the Spells you get at level five because there are some great ones and then we'll finish off with a little bit of multi-classic stuff okay so at level five you get destroy Undead obviously but really the Spells at level five start to be something a little bit more special so obviously Spirit Guardians is one that a lot of people are going to talk about it is super great it does 3 to 24 so 3D radiant or necrotic damage and reduces the movement speed by enemies in it in half it has a nice range it's centered on the caster and the way it works in Baldur's Gate 3 is you can cast it on yourself and run into enemies and it counts as those enemies entering this the area and taking damage so you can oftentimes cast it on yourself and just like run through a battlefield and hit six or seven enemies and just light up the whole Battlefield so it's really really powerful it doesn't hit friendly targets so it's amazing for that it does half damage on a save so no matter what it's doing some guaranteed damage and it's perfect at finishing enemies off and as long as you can maintain your concentration you can do it every single round and the Fantastic part is after you turn it on for round one come round two you're doing the damage again and then you still have your action to do some more blastery things or whatever you need to be doing there's lots of fantastic options for clerics there so you can animate dead if you would like to be a necromancer and have an army of zombies clerics can do that for you if you would like to do a whole bunch of healing you can use Beacon of Hope not my favorite I'm not going to talk too much about it it makes it so you're you're you gain maximum hit points when you cast healing spells it's fine but there's way cooler things to be doing like you know summing an army of zombies it still occurs it's fine I don't want to talk about it too much daylight it's also fine it's not great um Fame death it's not great Cliff rewarding it's amazing oh my gosh this spell is so good I don't even think it's going to let us show all the options you get with this but ultimately what you can do is pick an element and you can do lightning damage or fire damage or coal damage do 5d8 damage in a fairly nice Circle The Cliff of warding is almost like the cleric Fireball but in addition to that there are some control glyphs as well so you can have Glyph of sleep and put a whole bunch of enemies to sleep or you can do a glyph of like knockback and knock enemies off cliffs there's so much versatility in this spell it is so so good Cliff of warding is easily the like an s-tier spell that I would recommend everyone take and in fact like pretty much Glyph of warding and spirit Guardians are why I want to add this to the video because these spells are so good and no matter what domain of cleric you take you get these which means no matter what domain of cleric you take even if you take something like nature or trickery which maybe aren't as good on the surface you get amazing spells anyways so they're like just use the amazing spells and like who cares if your class features aren't super fun this is fantastic um notably for tempest clerics you're just like I get to do 40 damage wait no they're wet oh 80 damage level five great um best healing word I mean it's fine you can heal up to six allies so if there's a few NPCs you want to keep alive you can do this as well um it's a bonus action you heal a whole bunch with it it has uses but it's really really hard to be like I'm using one of my level three slots on this when I could be killing everyone or killing everyone um so I mean if you're trying to be a Healer with your cleric obviously it's something like this lets you do that but you know what you know killing all the enemies stops them from doing damage which is pretty much healing laughs um production from energy getting resistance to any particular type of damage is fine especially if you know like you know a big scary enemies coming up that's going to do a specific type of damage this can be okay to use but you know there's other great things remove curse once again there's going to be uses and revive if I I found you get way more than enough Scrolls of this that you would never worry about slotting it and there's also a really easy way to get speak with that without having to slot it as well so yeah that is the Spells up to the first five levels and we can talk a little bit about multi-classic so when it comes to multi-classing clerics clerics are actually a really good multi-class so they're really good I should say for other classes looking to pick up a few abilities specifically for casters that want access to weapon proficiencies for very little because so many of the powerful domain abilities happen right at level one a lot of classes can just take one level of cleric pick up a bunch of great proficiencies and a few bonus spells they might not otherwise have access to like bless and and guidance and then just go the rest of the way so whenever you want to take that like one level dip it can unlock some great proficiencies so whether you are like a Bard or a sorcerer or a wizard who's just looking for heavy armor and Shields and potentially a few other things you could take a level of cleric and it works great a really really powerful combination for clerics is actually going uh sorcerer um obviously you're going to get some cool cool things happening in terms of later you can get some some spells but if you go two levels to become a tempest domain cleric and then put the rest of your levels into sorcerer you can get access to that amazing Channel Divinity on top of having sorcery points which is going to let you uh you know Quicken your spells and just you know get even more mileage out of some of those features so obviously you know once you're level seven you could maximize lightning bolts and things like that as well which is really fun um but one as a full cleric you already have access to that Glyph of warding so you do have to think about like what are you actually giving at um there are some potential as well as a cleric if you wanted to go sort of like a a fighter take two levels of fighter and then go back the rest in cleric that can give you some cool utility um mostly as a fist with two levels of fighter it's going to give you action surge as well as a fighting style so that's going to further augment your ability to be a little bit more of a Melee character um or even you know an Archer if that's something that you're looking at doing um and then you are going to be a little bit behind on your spell progression obviously with that but having action surge so you know two levels of fighter and then taking one level of War priest in terms of being an actual fighter that's making multiple attacks you won't feel like you're that far behind because by the time you're hitting fifth level if you're going you know Two fighter into three cleric you're getting access to spiritual weapon you're still having multiple melee attacks per round with your uh your class features um you're still having like really heavy hitting attacks with your channel Divinity giving your plus 10 so like you're super accurate so you wouldn't feel too far behind well you're potentially that you're already overloading on like you're not necessarily gaining too much I should say with taking the fighter because in terms of like the weapon proficiencies you're already getting that as a war cleric um but there are some potential combinations there just noting that like a lot of clerics really get their bonuses within the first two levels so picking up extra proficiencies or even you know one level of knowledge cleric for all those extra expertise things I'm getting expertise in all those skills like if you wanted to go 11 levels of Bard one level of knowledge cleric that gives you um some extra armor proficiencies gives you all that expertise uh and then it gives you access to a few extra spells as well that you wouldn't otherwise have as a Bard so and it doesn't affect your overall end game spell casting because you're gonna still get your level 11 of Bard which is going to give you the max level of spells in the game so there's options if you want to make like more of a skill monkey build with splashing a little bit of cleric there um generally speaking though if you're going like pure cleric you can't go wrong there's a ton of power there if you wanted to go maybe a little bit more melee you could go with like a war cleric that takes picks up a couple levels of Paladin early on um so before the first five levels because you still are making lots of attacks with that subclass feature just getting that two levels of Paladin to give you access to some of the paladins mites um and you have all the spell slots in the world as being a full caster that you would still be a very powerful Caster you'd still have a few attacks like a sort of like a pseudo martial class because you're getting that war war priest feature to make multiple attacks so you could Nova really really well with a few levels of Paladin um it does note though that a lot of the Paladin abilities scale off your charisma so you would want to go too deep into a cleric Paladin combination it wouldn't necessarily treat you super nicely but other than that it is it is fine there are potentially some interesting builds going into Rogue just for level three thief because um having two bonus actions is fantastic and clerics have some fantastic ways to spend bonus actions so this this is potentially an option that you you could go into but you'd really be falling behind on your spell list but clerics are very front loaded so you know even just a couple levels of a cleric you're getting to do a lot of things right away so you're maybe not missing out too too much by by doing a multi-class like that um but yeah lots lots of stuff this video is I'm sure way too long but if you are still here thank you so much for watching I've had so much fun talking about Walter's gate I love Dungeons and Dragons and I love this game it is going to be an Alzheimer for sure so if you enjoyed this please feel free to give a sub to the channel a thumbs up or leave a comment below tell me about your favorite cleric builds your favorite combinations and I will catch you in the next one oh [Music]

Channel: BulkoIV

Views: 6,043

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, d&d, 5e, bg3, baldur's gate 3, baldur's gate 3 cleric build, baldur's gate 3 cleric, dungeons & dragons

Id: 0BlpyR1ag2I

Length: 55min 19sec (3319 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2023