Is there such a build as a ranged cleric?

[Finback]

Just wondering how that could work; I'm envisaging an archer carrying blessed arrows. Is it workable?

[Dankus Memakus]

Just wondering how that could work; I'm envisaging an archer carrying blessed arrows. Is it workable?

I played a trickster cleric with a crossbow Once, it was very fun. Although it was less blessed ammo and more like poisoned ones. Still, I highly recommend it. One of my favorite characters. You can do it with other divine strikes as well which may give you the more holy arrow feel but it probably will be sub optimal so be prepared for that.

[tatsuyashiba]

Light Domain Cleric for blasting. Arcana Cleric with arcane cantrips. If you want to stick with ranged martial weapons - War Cleric for the bonus action attack.

[CTurbo]

The Light domain is the best "ranged" Cleric. If you want to use a Bow, the War Cleric is probably your best bet. Tempest Cleric could also work if you want a mix of blasty and arrows.

Clerics are really meant to hide in the back and shoot things so it's certainly not optimal, but it could work.

[Vessyra]

Divine favour will make all of your weapon attacks, both sword and bow, carry radiant energy with them, making all of your attacks holy. War cleric will be a helpful domain for this path, as mentioned previously

[Appleheart]

You can also use a Nature Cleric, and pick Magic Stone as one of your Druid Cantrips, and use a Sling. Would be pretty solid.

But its a sling, not a bow. :)

[CircleOfTheRock]

I played a trickster cleric with a crossbow Once, it was very fun. Although it was less blessed ammo and more like poisoned ones. Still, I highly recommend it. One of my favorite characters. You can do it with other divine strikes as well which may give you the more holy arrow feel but it probably will be sub optimal so be prepared for that.
With that said, Trickster Cleric is generally consider slightly sub-optimal in general (for good reason), so if you do this, be prepared for that too.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Shouldn't be terrible. Take a domain that grants Divine Strike (War is probably best), wield a light/heavy crossbow (since you don't have Extra Attack), and make Dex your secondary stat instead of Str. If you went with something like War that grants martial weapons, consider Crossbow Expert and a hand crossbow--besides the obvious extra attack, a lot of the better Cleric spells are short-range auras, so you might wind up hanging out right behind the melee-ers. You are, I suppose, losing out on everyone's favorite Spirit Guardians, but worst-case you can burn your third level slots on Animate Dead and have a front-line of your very own.

[Spectrulus]

If your DM would allow it, I made a Homebrew Cleric domain a few weeks ago on a similar thought process. I'm sure others have looked into it as well

Cleric of the Hunt

*Hunter Domain

Many early cultures placed great significance on the hunt. Not only did hunts provide food for the tribes, but also raw materials for shelter, clothing, and tools.*
Every culture has their own god of the hunt, and in D&D, most Hunter clerics follow Artemis, Balinor, Chislev, Ehlonna, Habbakuk, Malar, Melora, Obad-Hai, Oberon, Semuanya, Silvanus, Solonor Thelandir, or Uller, although other diety's favors may be called upon for any people.*

Hunter Domain Spells

Cleric Level Spells
1st wild cunning, snare
3rd*ensnaring strike, pass without trace
5th conjure barrage, commune with nature
7th conjure animals,*swift quiver
9th conjure volley, steel wind strike

Bonus Cantrip

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain the true strike cantrip if you don't already know it.

Bonus Proficiencies

At 1st level, you gain proficiency with blowgun, hand crossbow, heavy crossbow, & longbow.

Huntmaster

From 1st level, your deity can delivers bursts of speed to you while you try to overtake your targets. As a bonus action, you can move up to your speed toward an enemy of your choice that you can see or hear. You must end this move closer to the enemy than you started.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a short rest or long rest.

Channel Divinity: Track Prey

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to locate your prey.*For one hour you gain +5 on Insight, Perception, and Survival checks to locate any creature you specify. If your prey is on another plane this ability fails but you know they are on another plane but not which one.

If you also have any item or part of that creature (a strand of hair, a finger, etc.) You instead gain +10 on these checks for the duration.

Channel Divinity: Mark the Quarry

At 6th level, you may spend your action to raise your holy symbol and mark an enemy you can see. While marked, whenever this enemy is dealt damage, it is dealt additional damage equal to your Wisdom bonus by up to five creatures your designate. The enemy can only suffer this damage once per turn. After one minute, the mark expires.

Hunter's Blessing

At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine energy. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 damage of the same type to the target. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8 damage.

Spiritual Strike

Starting at 17th level, when you use your action to cast a spell, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.

TL/DR
All ranged weapons, some Ranger spells, Aggressive x times a day, Channel for Tracking and/or party Hunter's Mark, cleric bonus damage, & cast while shooting as capstone.

[Tessman the 2nd]

Death domain cleric allows you to "twin" toll the dead from level 1, has divine strike and martial weapon prof.

[Randomthom]

Wood Elf Forge Domain with Longbow could work quite well, dex and wis, proficiency, magic weapon from lvl 1, mid-to-strong domain spells. Slightly wasting the heavy armour prof but no matter really. I like the idea of an Elven runesmith crafting elegant weapons with a woodland theme (think Sting, Glamdring, Orcrist etc.)

[Lord8Ball]

Take the war cleric domain and multiclass a bit into a fighter. Boom you got +2 mod to hit as well as having Extra attack's little brother channel divinity. From then you can cast bless on yourself. Or you can dip into paladin instead for the smites and ask your DM if you can use it at ranged since your basing your build around it.

[Talionis]

I would suggest 5 Ranger Hunter/Cleric of your choice with a Divine Strike/Favor (adds damage to first attack). Ranger 5 gets you first Extra Attack and up to second level spells. The Ranger spell list has a lot of upgrades for your ranged attacks, but by going Cleric you will have plenty of spell slots for those Ranger spells. Ranger does not move you into any other Stat attributes because you already wanted high Dex and high Wisdom for a ranged Cleric. Even though a lot of the ranged power will come from Ranger, the Cleric casting progression should beef up the spells and the Ranger spells often barely feel magical and much more mundane, should be easy to Fluff.

It should be a very fun build. You might also look at the other newer Ranger Archetypes if you have access to the newer books.

[Monster Manuel]

I'm playing a wood elf light cleric with a bow in Curse of Strahd. It's working out well. Drop buff spells, fall back, archery and Spiritual Weapon and/or blasty spells from the rear. Not really optimized for the bow, though, but still fun, so far.

[strangebloke]

Shouldn't be terrible. Take a domain that grants Divine Strike (War is probably best), wield a light/heavy crossbow (since you don't have Extra Attack), and make Dex your secondary stat instead of Str. If you went with something like War that grants martial weapons, consider Crossbow Expert and a hand crossbow--besides the obvious extra attack, a lot of the better Cleric spells are short-range auras, so you might wind up hanging out right behind the melee-ers. You are, I suppose, losing out on everyone's favorite Spirit Guardians, but worst-case you can burn your third level slots on Animate Dead and have a front-line of your very own.

crossbow expert's bonus action attack doesn't stack with War Domain's. So no bueno, in my opinion.

A wood elf with a longbow can be a pretty effective war domain cleric though.

[Zalabim]

War Domain Clerics also throw a mean Net. It sometimes has to be mentioned specifically.

[Dr. Cliché]

Isn't the Grave Cleric also supposed to be primarily ranged?

[Quoxis]

crossbow expert's bonus action attack doesn't stack with War Domain's. So no bueno, in my opinion.

A wood elf with a longbow can be a pretty effective war domain cleric though.

War cleric can only bonus action attack up to their wis mod, which a ranged weapon character would likely not pump up to 5 right away, so a steady supply of bonus action attacks isn’t exactly wasted here.

[Deathtongue]

I'm going to be blunt here: unless you know your DM is going to take it easy on you, your party is willing to carry you, the game is going to end at around level 7, OR you're playing a game in which a lot of magical items drop -- don't build a ranged weapon cleric.

The class is deliberately designed so you'll spend less and less of your time attacking with weapons as the game goes on. Every investment you make towards that end will, except for the above four caveats, pay fewer dividends. Melee cleric effectiveness drops like a rock around the level 9 or so breakpoint, even with the 'focused' domains.

If you want to be a full spellcaster and plug people full of arrows, play a Hexblade Warlock, a Valor/Swords Bard, or even a Bladesinger wizard (you'll have to use hand crossbows and your level 14 feature will be wasted, but eh) instead.

[strangebloke]

I'm going to be blunt here: unless you know your DM is going to take it easy on you, your party is willing to carry you, the game is going to end at around level 7, OR you're playing a game in which a lot of magical items drop -- don't build a ranged weapon cleric.

The class is deliberately designed so you'll spend less and less of your time attacking with weapons as the game goes on. Every investment you make towards that end will, except for the above four caveats, pay fewer dividends. Melee cleric effectiveness drops like a rock around the level 9 or so breakpoint, even with the 'focused' domains.

If you want to be a full spellcaster and plug people full of arrows, play a Hexblade Warlock, a Valor/Swords Bard, or even a Bladesinger wizard (you'll have to use hand crossbows and your level 14 feature will be wasted, but eh) instead.

I feel like your caveats cover the entirety of my gaming experience.

Won't go to level 7? Sure, happens most of the time. Unless we start at level five or something.

DM takes it easy on you? Never met a DM whose goal was simply to kill his whole party. If a TPK happens due to a tactical error, that's fine. If it happens due to "Jerry didn't build a 100% optimized character" then the DM is kind of a jerk.

Party is willing to carry you? A cleric optimized for ranged combat will still be a lot more competent than your average PC.

Lots of magic items drop... There are other problems in 5e if magic items aren't dropping.

In this case, a ranged cleric is a wood elf war cleric with at most 2 feats dedicated to his style. That's not... really anything terrifying. Honestly I'd advise sharpshooter over crossbow expert, though.

[strangebloke]

War cleric can only bonus action attack up to their wis mod, which a ranged weapon character would likely not pump up to 5 right away, so a steady supply of bonus action attacks isn’t exactly wasted here.

You're right. However, I'd still argue that it's a bit of a waste of a feat, especially since you can use spiritual weapon at range. I would prefer sharpshooter.

EDIT: to clarify. Cleric's main problem is that attacking at range is not worthwhile, most of the time. Sharpshooter keeps the cleric attack+BA viable for longer, whereas CE makes the attack better to do every round.

You are never going to be archer guy every round. Sharpshooter lets you be a good archer when you do shoot. Attack + bonus attack with divine strike and sharpshooter and channel divinity is pretty sweet. Optimized? Hardly. But better than a cantrip.

[Deathtongue]

I feel like your caveats cover the entirety of my gaming experience.Well, yes, but my caveats also DON'T cover a lot of other peoples' gaming experiences. For example: Adventurer's League.

There are some builds or concepts that will work at almost any table (for example, Lore Bard) but unfortunately ranged cleric is not one of them. Without knowing the OP's situation, I can't in good faith recommend going down this road.

[strangebloke]

Well, yes, but my caveats also DON'T cover a lot of other peoples' gaming experiences. For example: Adventurer's League.

There are some builds or concepts that will work at almost any table (for example, Lore Bard) but unfortunately ranged cleric is not one of them. Without knowing the OP's situation, I can't in good faith recommend going down this road.

You think AL DMs are hard on their players, don't give out magic items, and usually get past level 7? You think most AL players are so optimized that a guy who sinks a single feat into a fighting style is going to be way behind?

???

[Vogie]

Ignore the haters, and go for it. It may not be optimized, it'll certainly be fun.

I'd still suggest you have some sort of reliable damage augment, whether it be from 3 levels into Brute Fighter, Kensai Monk or Horizon Walker/ Colossal Hunter/ Primeval Guardian/Monster Slayer Ranger. That'll keep your damage Fairly competitive before your divine strike goes online.

Only pairing of the above that 100% won't work is Kensai Monk 3 / War Cleric X because the Kensei’s Shot feature requires your bonus action, which is a non-bo with War Priest.

If you really feel you're not doing enough damage, pump 2 more levels to get that extra attack from the martial class.