Cleric Class & Subclass Detailed Overview for Baldur's Gate 3

the holy priest charged with the gifts of their Patron God the cleric is a smiter of evil and master of Priestly spells or someone would think in this video today we're going to be doing a deep dive on another one of our classes for bg3 this will be of course a 12 part Series where I hope to give you a better idea about each of the classes ahead of the launch of bg3 come August 3rd today we'll be focusing on the cleric I'll be pulling information from the 5th edition player's handbook and I'll show off the Early Access character select screen there won't be a ton of visuals because I just don't want to spoil anything from the game for myself or for you how will do this video is by talking about the base kit without any subclasses then go into the subclasses we know are coming at launch it's worth noting that most subclass abilities go up to level 20 in DND but the cap for Baldur's Gate 3 is level 12. so we'll talk about the high-end abilities because we still aren't sure if they're coming into the game in a modified form or what have you but that's just a bit of transparency up front keep in mind you can fully respect both your character and your companions for the exception of their race so I encourage you to try out every class you're curious about when the game launches and please as always play how you want not how the internet tells you lastly I am no d d expert not even slightly so I apologize if I missed the mark on any of these descriptions you can quickly navigate to any part of the video that interests you the most using the chapters in both the timeline and the description and don't forget to swing on by my twitch where I'll be streaming Baldur's Gate 3 on launch Linked In the description and pinned comment let's get started here on my cleric class and subclass detailed breakdown for Ballers day 3. loading into the game we have the cleric the cleric is obviously that pre-slide character that is always kind of seen as the typical healer one thing I want you to kind of really understand with healing in DND is it it's kind of not necessarily a trap and this is something that's been explained to me by friends that are very experienced D players they said that hey you know what it's almost always use more useful to just outright do damage and kill something versus healing people healing is typically something you do as a like hey you know what I'm not really in range I can't do anything from here let me get a heal out to give a little utility and and I'm reason I'm explaining that is because when you take a look at the amount of healing that a cleric can do you might be thinking well how the hell am I supposed to keep someone alive I can't use tons of heels or my heels aren't that strong because maybe I'm not the life domain whatever it is it's just me trying to kind of explain that healing isn't what it is and like say World of Warcraft where you're topping someone off all the time it's kind of a use in case of emergency or use it as additional utility but play also however you want now let's go through this class and how it works so the cleric is a wisdom class when you're using your wisdom for your spells for your ability checks all sorts of things primarily and The Wiz the cleric is a little bit different in Baldur's Gate in the Dungeons and Dragons actual handbook you choose a uh domain which is your subclass which then dictates which deities you can choose it's not like that in Baldur's Gate you just simply select whatever domain you want to be and then you can select whatever deity you want to be so take for example here is a tier typically yeah tier is typically like um I don't know Tempest Tempest is typically all about uh war and stuff like that and I think in the book it's something that you can only access uh war and Tempest or something like that I don't remember what it is but still my report remains here that I can be whatever deity I want and whatever subclass I want and by and large your deity is not going to matter it's it's pretty much going to be RP and flavorful kind of uh related more than anything you know hey do you want to go align with ball the god of murder or more than the other the all Hammer whatever it is it used to be okay Martin we only be able to do the forge domain so on so forth don't worry about that you're going to select your domain though which does have a thing when it has or it does have a determining Factor on the class so when you start off you get access to spell casting and your Divine domain which is again your subclass you have quite a few Divine domains to access and here in Early Access here we only have a couple I think it's Life Light trickery and I don't even have War yeah it's Life Light trickery but in the actual game we'll have knowledge we'll have War we'll have Tempest we'll have nature which we're going to go into in just a little bit but I want to explain how this works on kind of a high level before we jump into every single class because our subclass because you know about cantrips and if you have not I have a whole breakdown of what advantages are what disadvantages are what proficiencies are in a video linked in the upper right hand corner if you don't understand these terms I might gloss over them I might explain them depending on but you have your spells as well so what's unique about cleric is that you have prepared spells like every other well your your clerics your Druids and your um uh uh Wizards use your prepared spell so you basically prepare spells from a pool of spells that you have access to so I have access to all eight of these spells let me go ahead and prepare them meaning that we can cast them in the game if we want to swap them we can go ahead and swap them into the game um I don't think there's any penalty in Butler's gate to do it that's different in d d let's say you know okay we're gonna cast Shield of faith and Bane and guiding bull you know what I don't want Creator to destroy water I want heal wounds okay done so those are my prepared spells I can go ahead and cast them as soon as I press Venture fourth but every domain will give us access to always prepared spells so here's our spell pool and I'm going to switch this over to uh trickery because it's probably a bit easier to see so here are our prepared spells well the domain gives us always prepared spells meaning that no matter what spells we prepare up here we will always have these two spells or whatever spells are given to us as a result of our domain so take for example here we have these four prepared spells healing word guiding bolt Shield of faith and Bane but we also now have charm person and disguise self regardless of what we have in our prepared spells location same thing here if I were to switch to Life well you know what it's telling me right here you already have a stronger version of these and you're always prepared location so it's just kind of worth noting that's how those domains work and how the Spells work and I don't want you to get confused when you see prepared spells spells and spells here and go what's the difference these are always prepared they're always ready for you you can always use them and then your cantrips are going to be pretty much four abilities that you can pull from unless you go domain of Light which gives you the light can trip I think uh I think another domain or two will give you different ones but I'll talk about those when we get to them so those that's kind of how the domains and the the deity work as it pertains to the cleric and again of course you are a wisdom class and you will also get access to simple weapons Shields light and medium armor and then depending upon your domain you'll get other things other things so take for example we are the life domain this would give us heavy armor proficiency remember two you can use all armor but a proficiency allows you to not have a disadvantage when an attack roll and it allows you to cast while wearing that armor you're going to be using wisdom and Charisma for your saving or for special saving throw proficiencies you've got and as far as our skills go we get access to history Insight medicine persuasion and religion on the base level certain subclasses might Sub in different um proficiencies like if we went with knowledge we'd get access to like Arcana into this or other ones I think it's um it's Arcana history nature and religion are ones you can further specialize in but those are kind of the the down and dirty of what the cleric does yes you can be in the front line with the cleric and you can kind of uh go toe-to-toe with some things you are not the most durable right so you have eight hit points plus your your Constitution modifier here so you don't have uh heavy armor unless you go with a specific subclass but basically what this allows you to do is be a character that can buff and really help out the clap the the party with a ton of utility spells you can add a lot of damage in too right you have a lot of damage belts here call forth a beam of light that grants advantage on the next attack roll against the target so you do damage and anyone attacking this target they get a little bit of an advantage against it right so it helps you in doing damage or allows your party to do more damage or you get stuff like Shield of Faith here a surrounded creature with a shimmering field of magic that increases his armor class by two helping you to help give a little bit more armor class to yourself or to the Frontline fighter or maybe a backline wizard that's being compromised don't think of this class as someone that has to be the healer or has to Simply Be a buff bot your domain is really going to dictate how you play your cleric are you going to be a war domain cleric that gets up close and personal and uses a little bit of combat to really deliver the damage are you gonna be a trickery domain and use this to your advantage to kind of skulk and sneak around to do different types of uh uh skullduggery or maybe you go Tempest and you're just ripping things apart with lightning magic so that is your down and dirty for the base kit for the cleric let's talk a little bit more too about how this this progresses through the levels because on level one you know you get your spell casting in Divine domain but another big thing of the cleric is your channel divinity so what this allows you to do is turn Undead basically send send Undead running away if they don't pass a certain ability score or a ability check and then that eventually becomes destroy Undead on the fifth level so if they fail the turn on dead check then they take damage and are outright destroyed if they're under a certain difficulty or whatever it is there's a certain rating that they have to pass if they don't pass it boom they explode so like maybe a lich when your level five is not only gonna get destroyed but maybe a little skeleton Warrior will so it just kind of depends upon your level and the the uh the difficulty of that actual guy um and then level 10 you get divine intervention which allows you to actually tap into your Patron Patron deity to have them help you out what that means in this game I do not know unfortunately and as far as what the game is concerned with you do cap out at level 12 meaning you're only going to get to your sixth level of spell um so you won't be able to tap into level seven eight or nine uh hopefully we'll be able to see what that looks like in the future to some sort of like DLC or something of the sort but outside of your channel Divinity it gives you the ability to you know turn Undead but you also will get a Divine domain feature where you will choose if I go to press Channel Divinity I either turn Undead or whatever my uh domain will give me as far as a channel divinity option so take for example like life domain I doesn't show me on here um I can use this to either turn Undead with with my channel Divinity or the life domain allows me to constantly heal people around me so you choose what you want to do when you Channel Divinity depending upon your base kit and what your subclass is so with that all being said let's dive into some of the subclasses for cleric and to start us off we're going to talk about the life domain live domain is an aspect of many good deities offering spells to protect and restore the Mind Body and Soul so we only have three to take a look at here in Early Access but we have quite a few to go through so what this does here it shows it right here in the subclass features we get heavy armor proficiency for the life domain which is lovely we can pop into the heaviest of armor and actually be a little bit more stalwart in holding the line we also get disciple of life now this will progress as we go through the levels of the life domain because the life domain is all about healing that is the primary focus here we'll get access to blast care wounds lesser restoration spiritual weapon Beacon of Hope or vivify death Ward guardian of Faith all these things that are really towards buffing and healing more on the healing side but disciple of life here so when casting a healing spell the target regains additional hit points equal to two plus the Spells level let me put this into into context for you so this cure wounds is a level one evocation spell so I will actually get three more points healed on whatever this rolls between four to eleven this allows me or maybe I'll look at this one this will allow me to get um more healing out and that that scale so disciple of life is at level one but then blessed healer I get even more then I get uh Supreme healing at level 17. blessed Heroes what level uh healers at level six so this allows me to get even more hit points um out whenever I do heal now at level eight you also get Divine strike which allows you to add radiant damage to any time that you do a weapon attack and that eventually scales to do even more radiant damage the more you level and your domain spells here either right now bless and cure Williams like I said those are your first two but that is your life domain so if you want to be a Healer and you really want to kind of hang back and use those buffing and healing capabilities life domain is going to be for you next up is the light domain which adds an additional can trip so we have our three we're choosing from right here light adds this one or right there the light can trip if he's an object with an aura of light so it gives you light but the big subclass feature here is warding flare Shield yourself with Divine Light and use your reaction to impose disadvantage on an attacker possibly causing their attack to miss so reaction you'd use in close combat to make it so that they can um hopefully miss you um and then we get channel Divinity Radiance of the dawn so if our life Channel Divinity was preserved life which helps heal everything around us preserve da Radiance of the Dawn is what basically gives us the ability to do AOE radian damage and this is actually a pretty cool one and the way that this works here is that things around you they have to do a constitution saving throw meaning that they would use their constitution to do a Constitution's check and if they fail that they take radiant damage equal to 2d10 plus your cleric level which is a lot which is a lot of damage so 2D 10 let's just say you roll Max on both of those that's 20 plus your cleric level at level one that's 21 radiant damage which is typically associated with like fire um take for example here this guiding bolt does radiant damage it's not outright fire damage I'm just saying it's radiant the beams of light basically um but the light domain also has a ton of spells aligned with fire on that note there's your actual fire damage modifier um so you're gonna have burning hands and fairy fire are your two uh domain spells when you start off but this becomes flaming sphere uh scorching Ray daylight Fireball guardian of faith yet again wall of fire flame strikes crying so lots of fire damage lots of radiant damage and especially too because you get warding flare um also giving you that disadvantage now you also get this improved at level six to improved flare potent spell casting at level eight which basically allows you to add your wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric can trip which are these right here not cleric's spell because you already do that because of your charisma that's uh because of your wisdom that's how you cast your spells um lastly though you get Corona of light at level 17 which unfortunately I don't think that we would get access to here uh but it gives uh your enemies in the bright lights have disadvantage on saving throws against any spill that deals fire or radiant damage so this is definitely a character that is going to be delivering AOE radiant damage you do not have the tank ability of the heavy uh armor proficiency but you still are going to be able to deal out quite a bit of both fire and radiant damage if that's the kind of role you want to take with your cleric and our last domain that is in Early Access is a trickery domain a domain shared by Wicked chaotic and mischievous DDS alike those who Channel trickery specialize in deception and illusion magic which you'll see is just that with our spells we get charm person as well as disguise self but we have a special action called blessing of the trickster Grant another creature advantage on stealth check so this kind of helps with stealthing around if you want to take that route but do you have that channel Divinity remember Channel Divinity does your turn Undead but now what you do here is invoke duplicity with this and this isn't just simply creating an illusion of yourself and that thing just kind of goes off and distracts people nay the creation the perfect illusion of yourself is pretty cool because you can use your bonus action during your turn to move the illusion and then when you cast spells you can cast the spell as if you are where you are or you can cast a spell from the location of your duplicate from your illusion which allows you to just basically create something that is a a no risk to you right the thing goes out there if it gets if it gets dispelled it gets dispelled and destroyed it doesn't matter doesn't matter to you but it allows you to cast spells further up the line then you've needing to actually physically Place yourself there it's a really really nice ability also if you're within five feet of a creature that can see the illusion you have advantage on attack rolls against that creature because again that that illusion is distracting them so it's a nice way to kind of give you a little bit of an added uh capability which you also get channel Divinity cloak of Shadows so at level six this is when you can get access to this um you can use your channel Divinity ability to just outright vanish but this gives you just a lot of kind of tricks and tools at your disposal to move around the battlefield to just vanish and it basically it's in place until you attack or cast a spell or someone obviously sees you so you can use this ability to just kind of displace yourself if you so wish then your Divine strike and I don't think I Illustrated this properly in the base kit section but every single cleric will have a Divine strike in their domain because it is an ability given to them by their domain basically by their God more or less but Divine strike for trickery gives you poison damage which then evolves to 2d8 poison damage at level 14 which unfortunately we can't go to and then speaking of at level 17 you get improved duplicity which gives you four Illusions which is awesome but that is your domain of trickery next up is the war domain which is going to give you access to Divine favor Shield of Faith magic weapons spiritual weapon Crusaders mantle Spirit Guardians so stuff that's very geared towards combat or buffing up specifically combat and moving in and out of combat you get stone skin and freedom of movement stuff like that but at level one you'll get a bonus proficiency of Martial and heavy weapons so much like you did for life that gave you that heavy weapon we would also get a heavy armor uh yeah heavy and not heavy weapon heavy armor proficiency and then get martial weapons you get access to your flails to your um long swords bastard swords all that kind of fun stuff that is outside of the simple weapon purview but you also get a really cool one called War priest so basically whenever you use an attack action you can make another weapon attack action as a bonus action dependent upon your wisdom modifier meaning so this is a plus three so we can do that three times before you have to do a long rest to reset that which is really really really cool now for our Channel Divinity at level 2 we get guided strike which basically adds 10 to any attack roll that I personally do and at level six we get War God's blessing where we get to add Tana to any of our our party members attack rolls so this is really nice it kind of helps push things over and make sure you actually smash into the Target and hit them right uh versus like hey I'm gonna attack it I'm going to roll to hit I whiffed it well I'm going to use guided Striker War God's blessing whatever it is I think I have to do it before it says you make this Choice after you see the roll but before the DM says whether the attack hits or Miss well there you go so you do that after you roll for attack and then you buff it if you need to then our divine strike for this character is just simply a 1d8 damage increase and what that applies to is whatever damage your weapon is doing so maybe if you have a magic weapon it's going to take that damage and increase it if it's just the physical damage of your weapon then that's what it's going to do it's whatever it says the weapons it specifically it says you cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 damage of the same type dealt by the weapon to the Target so that is how that works off and then I thought at level 17 you get uh bonuses to resistances to bludgeoning piercing slashing damage from non-magical weapons but unfortunately will not go that high AI but that is your War domain now the nature domain is gonna you might make you think that you're gonna be kind of like a druid with heavier armor that's not really the case here the nature domain does get animal friendships speak with animals bark skin Spike growth plant growth wind wall dominate bees grasping Vine insect plague trees dried all those fun things but you also get access to some other stuff so your very first thing would be acolyte of nature which would Grant you a druid cantrip of animal handling nature or survival I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry you get a druid can trip but you also get access to one of the following proficiencies that you get to select animal handling nature or survival I got that totally miffed up in my head but then you also get the bonus proficiency of heavy armor which is nice you're gonna have a little bit heavier well you're going to have heavy armor as an actual defensive option your channel Divinity is charm animals and plants and this one's actually kind of cool so the way that this works is any plant or animal animal within a certain radius of you it's 30 feet in the in the book I don't know what that's going to be in the actual game it might be like 11 meters I don't know um they have to make a wisdom check and if they fail it you actually charm them for a minute which is really really cool and as you at level 17 you actually get the ability to use a bonus action to do stuff with them but unfortunately we'll be able to get there at level six you get the ability to dampen Elements which is very cool so basically how this works is um any yourself or any of um your your teammates within 30 feet anytime they take acid cold fire lightning or thunder damage you can use your reaction this only remember reactions only happen after something happens to them um you use a reaction to have them gain resistance to that creature so it's it's or that that instance of damage sorry so someone says hey you know what I'm doing lightning damage to that thing well the reaction is going to allow me to give that bonus or like an enemy does it to your to your teammate is what I mean then Divine strike for the um domain of nature is pretty cool too because you do 1d8 additional cold fire or lightning damage you get to choose so that'll be pretty fun because as you can see that this is not an outright just kind of Druid domain for the cleric that turns you into like oh I'm pretty much just a druid with heavier armor no you have all this kind of tapping into Elemental defense but also Elemental offense it makes you a very very cool domain for your cleric our second to last domain is going to be about the knowledge domain and this is going to add command identify augury suggestion non-detection speak with the dead Arcane eye confusion Legend lore scrying those spells to the mix for you now with blessing of knowledge that's going to be your level one specialization with this uh knowledge domain we're not going to get better armor but we are going to get better skills so you get to choose two more skills and again here are your current skills that you'll have right now when you go into knowledge domain you gain Arcana history nature or religion you choose two of those so this can be a chance for you to jump into Arcana again something that you typically don't have history religion are both on this list as it is but nature is not so you can kind of go into those but if you miss that that's okay because you have Channel Divinity so Channel Divinity for this character of course check everyone gets channeled Divinity but knowledge of the ages what happens at level two here is when you use Channel Divinity you have a chance here for knowledge of the ages not a chance you choose a skill or a tool and for 10 minutes you have proficiency with the chosen skill or tool this is kind of a cool way to kind of Kit into yourself the ability to maybe pick a lock whatever it is you can add in stealth in here or investigation into here and animal handing into here you just gain proficiency with it so again that means you get the two roll I'm sorry the two extra proficiency bonus so you know you can take a look at like animal handling perception or survival who are all wisdom skills which you will have lots of playing a cleric which is quite cool right the other child Divinity that you get at level six is read thoughts so now you have access to reading creatures thoughts you can use you can then use your access to um to the creature's mind to command it which is quite wild so you'll be able basically they say they fail a wisdom saving throw um you can command them and then uh you can end the spell here it says during this time you can use your action to end this effect and cast the suggestion spell on the creature without expanding the spell a spell slot which is kind of nifty right you can basically command them for a bit and then use suggestion on them to kind of uh one-two punch then at level eight you get potent spell casting wherein you'd add your wisdom modifier to the damage of every any cleric can trip which is lovely as well lastly is visions of the past which is level 17 ability which basically adds um object reading and area reading to your kit but unfortunately we cannot get there since we are capped at level 12. so if you really want to go is that necessarily going heavier into casting and that you become a better Caster I guess you know adding damage wisdom mod Empire damage is good but it's access to skills to unfettered amounts of skills which is really nice here and the Spells Of course for domain um are geared more towards divination than such but that is your domain of knowledge lastly we have the Tempest domain which is probably my favorite one which is going to give you access to fog clouds Thunder Wave gust of wind shatter call lightning sleet storm control water ice storm so it's not just simply lightning which is pretty much everything that's associated with The Tempest right and you get bonus proficiencies of both martial weapon and heavy armor yet again a lot more heavy armor proficiencies added in by domains than I remember so that's quite nice if you wanted to go the heavier route but Wrath of the storm is another ability that you get at level one and it's pretty cool so pretty much anytime anyone hits you they have to do a dexterity check remember that's off of their dexterity ability and if they fail it they take 2d8 lightning or thunder damage I get to choose so it's like a Max of of 16 right but if they fail it they take half as much so regardless they're going to take some sort of reactive lightning or thunder damage from you which is cool but do you also get your channel Divinity ability which kind of keys off all this the this domain is really about ramping things together really well it's pretty awesome so Channel Divinity destructive wrath what this does here is whenever you roll to do lightning or thunder damage you do the if you choose to channel the Divinity you do the max role so that 2d8 would just be an outright 16 lightning damage if you so wish which is really goddamn cool and this goes into Thunderbolt strike as well which you get at six at level six so whenever you deal lightning damage to a large or smaller creature you also push it 10 feet so it displaces things for you if you so wish and at level eight you get Divine strike which means that you're basically just like everything else right you're infusing your attack with the specific ability of that domain well you're going to infuse your attack with um thunder or lightning which is very nice oh I'm sorry actually it's just straight up thunder at level 14 that increases to 2d8 but we're not going to be able to get there and lastly we at level 17 again we don't get this but it's a cool ability nonetheless uh you have a flying speed equal to your current walking speed whenever you are not underground or indoors which is really cool so you can just pretty much fly across the map and just beat things to death so I think this is probably my favorite domain just because I like lightning abilities and I think it's pretty fun as far as being able to key off those abilities by buffing them with the channel Divinity destructive wrath or using Wrath of the storm just have a reactive ability to just do damage to people whenever they hit you I think it's a really really fun cool and really destructive domain so that concludes our breakdown here of the cleric and hopefully you have a better idea of how this all kind of plays together I know the the cleric is seemingly very convoluted the channel Divinity situation can be kind of a little difficult to understand and I think that once you understand that hey you either are going to do turn Undead or whatever the domain specific Channel Divinity you have access to you get to do one or the other and then you get access to your Divine strike capabilities which are very very good you get to be able to destroy Undead outright if you want to use turn Undead you get access to cleric spells you get access to domain specific spells it's a very fun class that again I want you to kind of gather the mindset of it solely being a healing class as you've seen especially with Tempest you can do a lot of fun things and really ramp up a lot of really crazy damage through value trains and stuff like that so hopefully this gives you a better idea of how the cleric plays let me know which one you want to see next in the comment section below I think people have wanted to see Rogue so I'll do probably Rogue next unless there's a clamor otherwise but also do make sure you check out my video that kind of breaks down how stuff like proficiencies and skills and stuff like that work so you have a better understanding of how they play into your character when you jump into Baldur's Gate 3. but as always guys thank you so much for watching here today have a good one and take care [Music] thank you

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Keywords: baldurs gate 3, baldur's gate 3, bg3, cleric Class & Subclass Detailed Overview for Baldur's Gate 3, bg3 cleric, bg3 cleric guide, bg3 cleric build, cleric overview, bg3 cleric overview, bg3 cleric domains, bg3 cleric subclasses, bg3 cleric tempest, bg3 cleric light, bg3 lore cleric, bg3 trickery, bg3 domain of war, cleric subclasses, bg3 class overview, bg3 domain of nature, bg3 domain of tempest, cleric build bg3, baldur's gate 3 cleric

Id: 6QPjTBzJf0c

Length: 30min 50sec (1850 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023