My Ranking of Cleric Domains

[MrStabby]

So it has been a while since I wrone anything, and thought it might be fun to throw down my opinion of cleric subclasses (if nothing else it helps put my own thinking in order). The cleric is a class close to my heart and I think it is one of the beter designed classes in the game with a generally well balanced set of subclasses. Some of this is down to taste and a lot of the gaps in power between the options are pretty narrow. Furthermore the value of different features is likely to change between different campaigns - I guess I am saying that if you disagree I probably won't argue much.

I think my perception is also weighted somewhat towards levels 5 to 12 or so as that is my perception of where most table time happens - again, if you usually play lvels 16 to 20 then your ratings are likely to be different. The same is true if your games never get past level 4.

So from the bottom up...

14 War Cleric
A great option for a dip... for a main class, I would say there are better options. Honesly, it starts well and can be good at low levels. Heavy armour and martial weapons makes it as efective in combat as most martials before level 5, good domain spells free up spells known for other nice things and guided strike is frequently useful, if not that powerful. But then things stall. At 6th level a broader use of your CD is nice, but not really an exciting addition to something that was not that exciting to begin with. Divine strike at level 8 is leading you to weapons rather than spells, which is rarely the better option at higher levels. And at 17th level the resistances are nice, even if they need to be non magical, this can still come up in a lot of campaigns.

War Cleric misses a lot that other clerics have. What does it bring that's special? The domain spells are good spells, but they are generally all cleric spells anyway so they just free you up to take more of the less good cleric spells that you will probably never cast. It really supports you hitting things with weapons - and buffing a suboptimal choice needs a prety big buff for it to actually be optimal. It's not actively bad (and one of the good things about the cleric is that even if the subclass is a bit shaky, the core cleric is still solid enough).


13 Death Domain
Death domain is one of those domains its hard to judge. The channel divinity runs into the same problem the war cleric's does - it is encouraging you to make attacks which is often not a great use of the cleric's action. However, it does have the redeaming feature that a) it can be used on spell attacks so at least it supports other class features and b) its acually not bad - sure the damage is modest but it recovers on a short rest and as you might not be wanting to spend that many turns focussed on damage, when you do it can be a nice boost c) It shores up an area where he cleric is sometimes liable to struggle - taking down that single monster at lower levels before lots of summons come online.

Reaper looks good - twinned cantrips are nice, but it is so reliant on enemies clumping up together. It is a nice to have ability but not so good as it first looked (though if you have a grappler on the team it does get a bit of a boost).

The level 6 abiliy begins to higligh the problem though - the class doubles down on necrotic damage, and it takes class abilities to offset the weakness that this can bring when facing resistant enemies. It feels either weak because it does little, or a tax because its needed - either way you don't get a new, proactive ability at this level.

At high levels improved reaper... is still not good. Compare with the Enchanter wizard's twin spell that doesn't have the restriction of disance between enemies, supports better spells and isn' restricted by level... and comes on line 7 levels earlier.

And the spell list is weak. There just isn't anything here that really feels strong and the useful spells like animate dead are already on the class spell list.


12 Grave Domain

This domain is an odd mix of abilities, which does kind of work in its favour to cover a lot of different bases. Circle of mortality is a great support feature and makes the cleric a great dip for some classes that want some pop-up healing. At level 2 the channel divinity is... meh. OK, it isn't bad but you are using an action and a resource to double one ally's output for some part of their turn. If they make two attacks as an action and a bonus action attack you used your turn to make it (roughly) as if they had made 4 attacks. Sure, there may be other benefits like smite damage or whatever to be added, but fundamentally it is showing your action to do some fraction of what one of your ally's can do. Still, it lets the cleric contribute to damage in a new way - just as the help action can.

Level 6 gets better - sentinel at deaths door obviates critical hits, however if your table uses silvery barbs this becomes a pretty unremarkable class ability and someone else probably has this covered.

At high levels the class is similarly uninspiring - the cleric dishes out some HP each time an enemy dies - which is a cool and awesome ability at low levels. When you hit level 17 the failure mode of a typical party of adventurers is rarely "used too many resources for healing so in combat HP top up would have made a difference". This ability at level 6 would have been fun. At level 17 it's just a bit sad.

And the domain spell list is prety unexciting as well. Too much overlap with the base cleric list and no real stand-out spells either.


11 Tempest domain

Tempest domain shows some clear power. Tempest domain has a niche. There are good reasons people play and love the domain... but it also has some problems.

It is a heavily armoured blasting tanking cleric and any look at the class should start with the spells. And there are some good ones here. I don't tend to think blasting is the best use of spell slots 80% of the time, but that 80% leaves a lot of time where a well placed area of effect damage spell is just what was needed. The tempest cleric manages to straddle this line pretty well by having enough different options that it can use fog cloud or sleet storm as needed but can whip out a call lightning or a destructive wave when the time calls for it. This versatility shouldn't be discounted.

That said, the spells are not that great. No fireball levels of damage. No lightning bolts even. Destructive wave is pretty sweet, but its still not an overwhelming power spell for a level 5 investment. The destructive wrath channel divinity offsets this weakness nicely, and is a real boon, but like the death cleric taking an ability to get round necrotic damage resistance, this feels like you are using domain abilities just to break even with arcane casters.

The focus on blasting does miss out on some of the other class features - Thunderous strike gives you a bit of extra control from some of your spells and lets you shuffle the battlefield around a little, which shouldn't be neglected.

And at high levels you can fly. Outside. Above ground. If your campaign is in the open air a lot then I guess its a nice bonus.

This is a solid Domain. It has things to recomend it.

10 Trickery Cleric
I think a lot of people underestimate the trickery cleric, and honestly it does have a lot of bad features but it brings a lot of good ones as well. Unlike the War Cleric the domain features the Trickery ones let you fill more roles. The support for stealthy party members puts you into a bit of a support niche that many other characters won't fill. Your channel divinity is a bit niche - leting you send a clone about is very cool, especially out of combat or at the start of combat where you may not be wanting concentration for something else. Yes the poison on weapon attacks is a poor choice of damage type, but honestly - doing weapon atacks at level 8+ is probably not great anyway, so is this really a big cost.

The real strength of the Domain is in its spells though. These open up a lot of other playstyles. Dimension door, polymorph, pass without trace are all top tier spells. Even spells like dispel magic, already on the cleric list, are ones you would want to pick up.

On the other hand, whilst the strong points are strong - they are mostly the spell list and you could mimic this through other classes ike bard or divine soul and possibly do it better (though the medium armour and shields of the cleric should not be discounted). The high level invoke duplicity is a bit of a disapointment and it does miss out on some of the bigger sexy effects that other domains get.

9 Life Domain
This is a real classic cleric. In many ways it feels a lot like the War Cleric, but better. Same heavy armour, same domain spell focus on spells that are already cleric spells... but whilst the War cleric gets boosts to weapon combat, the Life cleric gets powerful boosts to healing. The Disciple of Life abiliy is almos enough to make healing a viable action in combat, not just when an ally goes down, but in topping them up as well. Add to that the Preserve Life channel divinity and you get a focussed support machine.

I do have some gripes about the class though - it is too one dimensional. Level 6 is a healing ability as is level 17, and whilst this does make for extraordinary resource efficiency, it doesn't really expand the cleric toolbox. And being great at healing is great when healing is good... when the bigger risks to the party are not directly HP loss but things like control effects the class has nothing special to offer and it is a little shoehorned into the reactive role. Of course there is still the core cleric activities of buffing and spirit guardians and so on that eveyone gets, but your subclass specialism only comes up at times of real threat.


8 Knowledge Domain
This one is maybe a bit controvesial, as it isn't such a combat focussed Domain but it really packs some power in the right place. The domain spells are Ok - though spells like command are already on the cleric spell list. Others like confusion are actually pretty good as domain spells - that time you want a mind control spell but your enemies are immune to fear and charm...

Add in some low key but powerful domain abilities and the Knowledge cleric is actually pretty strong. Always on expertise in a couple of knowledge skills is a good start. Channel divinity that lets you plug any skills gaps. Honestly this isn't going to be enough by itself, but the package does add more. Read thoughts coupled with some suggestion from your chanel divinity as you level up is the kind of ability that can lead you to being an MVP in any social campaign but it has broader applications as well.

Visions of the past is a nice rounding out abiliy - though at this level it maybe isn't that special.


7 Arcana Domain
One would have thought that the arcana domain would focus on spellcasting and would have awesome domain spells and magical abilities. Not so much. The domain spells are not terrible, but nor are they terribly exciting either. How badly do you really want magic missile or teleportation circle?

The arcana domain does have plenty going for it though though other abilities. Arcane initiate gives you a wizard cantrip; a lot of people saw this domain released in SCAG, saw the SCAG cantrips and put the two together (usually with shileighlah as well) to achieve... something. I have been pretty unimpressed by this - usually for the same reason other gimmics don't pay off: classes have a lot of support for playing to type and you need to stack a lot of bonuses to overcome what would otherwise be taking suboptimal actions. If you want to spend your turns rolling attacks, its worth thinking if you might be better served by a fighter, or at least something like a bladesinger. That said, this is still a top quality ability. Clerics at-will actions are not always so great. Toll the Dead is decent but a wizard cantrip opens up a whole new world - worst case you can reach out across a long disance to hit someone with a firebolt that is (later) buffed with extra damage. Add in ray of frost, chill touch or whatever cantrip has a nice additional effect appropriate to your campaign and you have a really good option. The range element is so useful as well - your target is the best target not just the tough guy sat next to you; you can hit the caster concentrating on the key spell or the enemy with vulnerability to your damage type or more commonly, you can atack the enemy you get advantage against.

Arcane abjuration is sufficinetly broad that it should probably see some use, though how much will obviously depend on your campaign.

Spell breaker is one of the more exciting abilities though, or at least in some campaigns - a dispell effect added to healing is potentially very powerful ineed, your spells not only get people fit but also overcome a lot of adverse effects. If you use things like Tasha's ACF rules then look out for spells like aura of vitality to keep bad effects off the party. If your DM uses a lot of control spells then this is really an exceptional ability. On the other hand, I have seen whole campaigns where this would only ever have been used once or twice.

Honestly, the real pull of the class is in high level campaigns where you can get the capstone - those juicy high level spells are unmistakably awesome. Wish AND divine intervention? Forcecage? Simulacrum?

6 Light Domain

Fireball.

Seriously, most of what is special with the class rests on this spell. So fireball is a great spell but more than that, it is about context. The cleric context is a lack of competing blasting spells and a more limited repertoire of effects to deliver coupled with a narrow selection of spells that can effectively hit a wide area at once. A preponderance of the good spells being concentration further adds a premium to good 'fire and forget' spells. Casters in 5th edition are complex oolboxes of effects and power is often about having the right tool for the job. A domain that seriously expands the set of tools available is in a good place.

Light cleric has a lot to offer but blasting is much of it. Though fireball rests in pride of place Wall of Fire is a nice addition to a class that doesn't have good spells of this type (maybe I am missing something about blade barrier?). Faerie Fire is often a good spell and is sometimes a GREAT spell. And then there is Scorching Ray - not an all time great spell, but when an effect gives you advantage or the target is vulnerable and you just want to take that single target down it has its place.

Sadly, most of the actual class features other than the spells don't shine. They are useful and thematic but they are not particularly efficient.




5 Nature Domain

We are getting to the good domains here. Nature is a surprising one: a bit of a druidic feel but then adding heavy armour proficiency seems odd. Nevertheless, it is a powerful combination.

Nature has a lot of good features going for it - a great spell list with the stand out Plant Growth and Spike Growth being mainstay combat staples. The addition of a wide variety of out of combat spells from speak with animals to tree stride makes a nature druid a fantastic contributor to the utility casting of the party.

The class features are also good - acolyte of nature is solid. The skills are not up to much, especially as you might not have well aligned stats for the tasks, but the druid cantrip is excelent. A popular choice is Shilleighlagh - though as with the arcana cleric I think this is a mistake. You can make the cleric a "warrior" but I find it more effective to play to the class's own strengths. Thorn whip just synergises so well with spike growth, plant growth, spirit guardians and the cleric's own heavy armour. You have extensive tools to be great at battlefield control - lean into them. Getting an extra enemy within the radius of spirit guardians and trapped with restricted movement is worth more than any paltry extra damage your attack migh have done.

Dampen elements is one of the best level 6 cleric abilities out there. This is a powerful support reaction to grant resistance to elemental damage. The cost of a reaction is rarely that significant, simply because so many sources of elemental damage are ranged so any missed reaction for an opportunity attack is somewhat more likely to have gone unused.

Even the Divine Strike option for the class is marginally beter than most of the others. With such a choice of elements you can dodge resistances and seek out vulnerabilities. Of course, I still prefer the boost to cantrip damage, but you can't always get everything.

The Domain does have a weakness in that its Channel Divinity is a bit niche, but it isn't as bad as it looks for a couple of reasons. 1) If the enemies you face are not plants or beasts then they are more likely to be undead than they otherwise would have been, so turn/destroy undead comes into play 2) Beasts are actually quite common - not just as enemeies for low level adventuring but as mounts for knights or wildlife that can can be brought in to do your bidding.

Now if Tasha's ACF rules are in play this becomes a lot less of a weakness.



4 Forge Domain
Up till now there has kind of been an implicit trade off between good Domain abilities, good channel divninity uses and good Domain Spells. Here is where it begins to break down and we see multiple strong areas.

This class stacks one of the most tanky options out there (not just heavy armour but also the ability to upgrade to +1 armour and to add a further +1 AC on to of that from level 6 and on top of that to add resistances and immunities as you level up) with effects that reward tankyness. Spirit guardians excells when you can be in the thinck of a fight and still keep concentration.

On top of this toughness it packs some truely excellent combat domain spells - heat metal, wall of fire and animate objects are stand out options that are not only good, but also allow the cleric to excell in situations where otherwise they may have been weak. The ability to swing from being a healer to a buffer to a damage powerhouse is impressive.

The class is no slouch out of combat either. Between a channel divinity that lets you create objects to the fabricate spell you should always have the perfect tool for a task at hand (and animate objects to cast on your creation makes for a very versatile problem solving tool). Some other tools like identify on the domain spell list also help here.


3 Order Domain
This domain brings a nice element of both additional buffing and additional control to the cleric. Voice of authority lets you hand out a lot of extra attacks through the day - and it doen't make you take actions that you are not already getting a good reward for to do it. It isn't like bless is a bad spell, or healing someone low on hit points is a bad move (though beware of expecting too much from using this on an ally reduced to 0hp - many DMs will rule (not unreasonably) that someone dropped to 0hp will fall prone and will be making their attack with disadvantage. The domain boosts control as well - command, hold person, slow, compulsion (don't forget you can target an ally with this and not make them move - just to use voice of authority with them) are all on the spell list and the level 6 ability to cast a bunch of enchanment spells as a bonus action only enhances these credentials.

The extra divination options are nice as rituals and generally boost your utility casting and give a well rounded set of options for ou of combat play.

The channel divinity option is going to be a bit campaign dependant, thoug I have found it very powerful. The abiliy to disarm a crowd of enemies is fantastic - either for combat advantage or to take prisoners more easily (and with familiars, summons or eam mates around to recover the dropped weapons you are able to preserve this advantage). It can even get enemies to drop grappled team mates. Do not overstate what charm does in this edition though.


2 Peace Domain
Yeah, now we are getting to the really really powerful cleric options. The domain spells are a little unremarkable but the class more than makes up for it with obscenely powerful class abilities. The bonus proficiencies are probably not whay you take this Domain, but at this same first level you do get emboldning bond - an abiliy that really stays relavent for the whole game. At 10 min duration it lasts a while and it can be used as well our of combat as in it... being a better bard than a bard is maybe a little insulting?

At level 2 balm of peace ratchets up the crazy. 2d6+wisdom modifier healing to each person in your party you can reach is a lot of healing. Its even more healing if anyone has summoned creatures. And it comes back on a short rest. And you get a free move thrown in as part of your action. If life clerics are jealous of your healing you know it must be pretty good.

The thing is... its protective bond at level 6 that is the stand out ability. In a non synergestic way it can just stop anyone in your party ever needing to take a concentration save and it can help keep everyone on their feet and fighting till the party HP runs out. Its powerful. The ability to teleport your party around is also a not insignificant bonus. Its worthc checking with your DM how the see resistances wrking with this ability, bu if they do then a party with a broad base of resistances might get even more value out of this.

1 Twilight Domain

OK, I don't think ayone is surprised that his is number 1. Great domain spells - faerie fire, moonbeam, aura of vitality, leomund's tiny hut, greater invisability, circle of power... this is not a weak selection and they all add good options to how the cleric can play.

The Domain features are no slouch either - full weapon and armour proficiency, eyes of night giving super darkvision, shared super dark vision, advantage to someone on intiatiative rolls... and this is all at first level. The domain features don't drop off either. Steps of night lets you fly - and whilst its temporary you do get quite a few uses and its about 9 levels earlier than the dragon sorcerer flight.

Then there is twilight sanctuary. The channel divinity that takes the class from being a tough caster with an excellend spell list and superb support abilities to something less serious and sporting all the love. Crazy good amounts of temp HP. Ending of some hostile effects. And at high levels half cover as well.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Interesting read. Well done in working on this and it gives me a bit to think about regarding subclasses we haven't seen at our table.

Regarding the Grave Cleric, you rate it as red, which I assume means generally poor/ underpowered. As someone who is currently playing one I'd say it's more situational based on a few things.

1) You say Circle of Mortality is a solid feature, and it is. I've managed to save several allies with the bonus action Spare the Dying and keep my action ticking over. Then the max dice for downed allies is also nice.

2) Channel Divinity: Path to the Grave. Here's where I have a point of disagreement. If you have a rogue you are actually doubling the damage of another character, better than that if you have an assassin. If you manage surprise, you've likely managed to already pre-cast whatever concentration spell you want up, so yes, you're using your action, but what would you really be doing at that stage anyway? Likely a cantrip. So I think a stealthy cleric with a rogue (and likely other players with alpha strikes like Whispers Bard) benefits from this feature a lot.

3) Sentinel at Death's Door. There's nothing in Silvery Barbs that indicates the DM should tell the party that there's a crit before asking if a player wishes to cast it. I'm aware some groups play that way, but it's not RAW (nor do I understand why a DM would buff SB in this way when it's widely considered OP). Regardless, RAW this feature occupies ground that is not covered by Silvery Barbs.

Anyway, I'll agree that some of this is party and table dependent, but to me this makes it situational, not poor. When the Grave Cleric works, it works well.


On a separate topic I like your reletively high ranking for Trickery Cleric; the one I DMed was a strong character. The spells are excellent and if you've got undead around to turn, the other (glitchy) Channel Divinity option isn't so much of an issue.

[arnin77]

Whenever I look at War Domain I want to go VHuman with GWM….

[Frogreaver]

Whenever I look at War Domain I want to go VHuman with GWM….

I always like him better with inflict wounds.

[LudicSavant]

14 War Cleric
13 Death Domain
12 Grave Domain
11 Tempest domain
10 Trickery Cleric
9 Life Domain
8 Knowledge Domain
7 Arcana Domain
6 Light Domain
5 Nature Domain
4 Forge Domain
3 Order Domain
2 Peace Domain
1 Twilight Domain

The ones that stick out to me most in this ranking is Life, Arcana, and Light being below Forge.


This is a real classic cleric. In many ways it feels a lot like the War Cleric, but better. Same heavy armour, same domain spell focus on spells that are already cleric spells... but whilst the War cleric gets boosts to weapon combat, the Life cleric gets powerful boosts to healing. The Disciple of Life abiliy is almos enough to make healing a viable action in combat, not just when an ally goes down, but in topping them up as well. Add to that the Preserve Life channel divinity and you get a focussed support machine.

I do have some gripes about the class though - it is too one dimensional. Level 6 is a healing ability as is level 17, and whilst this does make for extraordinary resource efficiency, it doesn't really expand the cleric toolbox. And being great at healing is great when healing is good... when the bigger risks to the party are not directly HP loss but things like control effects the class has nothing special to offer and it is a little shoehorned into the reactive role. Of course there is still the core cleric activities of buffing and spirit guardians and so on that eveyone gets, but your subclass specialism only comes up at times of real threat.

A well-built Life Cleric doesn't just heal a little more than other Clerics... it can heal 4 digits more than other Clerics, while still having plenty of resources left over to kill things. It can really push the level of lethality that a party can stand.

And yet, for all this healing oomph, it shouldn't be considered one-dimensional. You mention a Life Cleric's "extraordinary resource efficiency," but claim that this doesn't expand the toolbox. I disagree. Every time a Life Cleric solves a defensive/healing problem in fewer steps, it opens up more resources to use on other things. And they have plenty of space to prepare other things, because their domain list is good. Yeah, it's mostly spells that Clerics already know, but it's often spells that you wanted to prepare, like Bless, Spiritual Weapon, Revivify, and Lesser Restoration. That frees up space to take more of the good Cleric spells, and these days the Cleric list is plenty sufficient to fill up all your prepared spells with good choices.

Another way they can expand the toolbox is just by their features making certain spells waaaay better than they normally are. For example, if a Life Cleric casts Regenerate, it heals ten times as much as it used to, and takes on a fundamentally different tactical character.


Fireball.
Seriously, most of what is special with the class rests on this spell. So fireball is a great spell but more than that, it is about context. The cleric context is a lack of competing blasting spells and a more limited repertoire of effects to deliver coupled with a narrow selection of spells that can effectively hit a wide area at once. A preponderance of the good spells being concentration further adds a premium to good 'fire and forget' spells. Casters in 5th edition are complex oolboxes of effects and power is often about having the right tool for the job. A domain that seriously expands the set of tools available is in a good place.

Light cleric has a lot to offer but blasting is much of it. Though fireball rests in pride of place Wall of Fire is a nice addition to a class that doesn't have good spells of this type (maybe I am missing something about blade barrier?). Faerie Fire is often a good spell and is sometimes a GREAT spell. And then there is Scorching Ray - not an all time great spell, but when an effect gives you advantage or the target is vulnerable and you just want to take that single target down it has its place.

Sadly, most of the actual class features other than the spells don't shine. They are useful and thematic but they are not particularly efficient.


Light Cleric is more than just Fireball. In fact, I think they have some of the better class features.

It has one of the better Channel Divinities, because it's a non-spell blast comparable to a level 2.5 to level 5 spell (depending on your Light Cleric level) that you can use multiple times per short rest. That's resource efficiency, right there. And it's a big area of effect (Destructive Wave big), Sculpted, Radiant, and not a spell.

That "non-spell" part is important, because it means you can cast a bonus action spell on the same turn you use it.

And yeah, Fireball is good. A vanilla Fireball is already superior to a Tempest Cleric's Channel Divinity + level 3 spell in many situations, and of course the Tempest Cleric is using more resources.

And at high levels, Corona of Light can be kept on all day every day and gives people Disadvantage on all of your Fire/Radiant spells. And all of those used by allies. That's a force multiplier that can add up quick.

Warding Flare suffers from needing to be used before the roll, so it's only okay. At the very least, it's giving a Cleric something to do with their Reaction.


4 Forge Domain
Up till now there has kind of been an implicit trade off between good Domain abilities, good channel divninity uses and good Domain Spells. Here is where it begins to break down and we see multiple strong areas.

This class stacks one of the most tanky options out there (not just heavy armour but also the ability to upgrade to +1 armour and to add a further +1 AC on to of that from level 6 and on top of that to add resistances and immunities as you level up) with effects that reward tankyness. Spirit guardians excells when you can be in the thinck of a fight and still keep concentration.

On top of this toughness it packs some truely excellent combat domain spells - heat metal, wall of fire and animate objects are stand out options that are not only good, but also allow the cleric to excell in situations where otherwise they may have been weak. The ability to swing from being a healer to a buffer to a damage powerhouse is impressive.

The class is no slouch out of combat either. Between a channel divinity that lets you create objects to the fabricate spell you should always have the perfect tool for a task at hand (and animate objects to cast on your creation makes for a very versatile problem solving tool). Some other tools like identify on the domain spell list also help here.

For Forge, I would note a few things.
- Their Channel Divinity takes the same time as a Short Rest. You know, the Short Rest that usually generates up to 1, 2, or 3 Channel Divinities. So surely it must be a really exceptional Channel Divinity for this great cost, right? Nope... not really. It just lets you convert up to 100 gold into a mundane item of equivalent value. It's not even going to "ensure you always have the perfect tool for the task at hand," unless you knew about that task at least an hour in advance. This becomes less bad if you've got the Tasha's variant, but still one of the bottom rung CDs.
- Their level 2 ability doesn't stack with magic items, so can easily risk going obsolete. Even when it doesn't go entirely obsolete, it often has diminishing returns (because if you get a magic item, the best person for that item is gonna get it... so you're no longer buffing the best recipient for your buff).
- In terms of tanking, they can get +1 or 2 to AC, Fire Resistance, and not much else until level 17. While that's nice, the Life Cleric over there with the low rating is adding hundreds of HP of extra healing.
- Most of their domain spells are Concentration, and competing with stuff like Spirit Guardians or Summon Celestial.
- It has the worst Divine Strike short of Trickery -- though that won't matter if you can replace this with the Tasha's variant.

Edit:

Addressing some more stuff!

7 Arcana Domain
If you want to spend your turns rolling attacks, its worth thinking if you might be better served by a fighter

Eh. Arcana Clerics aren't necessarily "spending their turns rolling attacks" any more than a Nature Cleric using Thorn Whip in exactly the manner you advised. Or an Arcana Cleric using Fire Bolt in the manner you advised.

In fact, they don't necessarily even need to use actions on it at all to get their desired effect.

The main reason Arcana frontliners take BB is because choices like Warcaster are great for casters in general, and Warcaster+BB strongly discourages people from moving, and that lack of movement is exploitable by caster tactics. You win if they don't move.

The second reason is that it gives them a good AC-targeting, Advantage-scaling, magic-and-legendary-resistance-ignoring option that they can use on rounds they use a bonus action spell, or are spending their slots on great things like SG/SW/SC/AD... all of which are optimal Cleric spells, and none of which interfere with their Action. They're already using all of their spells, and have leftover action economy.

The notion that they're sitting there doing attacks instead of caster stuff, to me, is not only inaccurate but missing the entire point. BB is there to augment your caster controller suite, and add to the leverage of something you wanted anyways: Warcaster.


Spell breaker is one of the more exciting abilities though, or at least in some campaigns - a dispell effect added to healing is potentially very powerful ineed, your spells not only get people fit but also overcome a lot of adverse effects. If you use things like Tasha's ACF rules then look out for spells like aura of vitality to keep bad effects off the party. If your DM uses a lot of control spells then this is really an exceptional ability. On the other hand, I have seen whole campaigns where this would only ever have been used once or twice.

This, on the other hand, I agree with. Campaigns can vary a fair bit on how many dispellable things are being tossed around, and since Spellbreaker is one of the AC's big features, this should be considered before choosing them.


Honestly, the real pull of the class is in high level campaigns where you can get the capstone - those juicy high level spells are unmistakably awesome. Wish AND divine intervention? Forcecage? Simulacrum?

Yeah, their level 17 ability is basically the best one.

[Frogreaver]

9 Life Domain
This is a real classic cleric. In many ways it feels a lot like the War Cleric, but better. Same heavy armour, same domain spell focus on spells that are already cleric spells... but whilst the War cleric gets boosts to weapon combat, the Life cleric gets powerful boosts to healing. The Disciple of Life abiliy is almos enough to make healing a viable action in combat, not just when an ally goes down, but in topping them up as well. Add to that the Preserve Life channel divinity and you get a focussed support machine.

I do have some gripes about the class though - it is too one dimensional. Level 6 is a healing ability as is level 17, and whilst this does make for extraordinary resource efficiency, it doesn't really expand the cleric toolbox. And being great at healing is great when healing is good... when the bigger risks to the party are not directly HP loss but things like control effects the class has nothing special to offer and it is a little shoehorned into the reactive role. Of course there is still the core cleric activities of buffing and spirit guardians and so on that eveyone gets, but your subclass specialism only comes up at times of real threat.

I think life clerics never gets enough love. IMO that's because people focus too much on Disciple of Life instead of Preserve Life.
Preserve Life is the reason to play a life cleric. It's an absurd amount of healing. It's one of the few ways to sufficiently heal a 0 hp ally in battle so he doesn't risk immediately getting downed again. It also frees up the life clerics spell slots so you don't actually use slots for healing very often, meaning you can use them for other purposes. Additionally Preserve Life is not actually a spell so you can use bonus action spells with it, leaving open some impressive single turn combos.

IMO. Life Clerics are a bit boring but extremely efficient.


6 Light Domain

Fireball.

Seriously, most of what is special with the class rests on this spell. So fireball is a great spell but more than that, it is about context. The cleric context is a lack of competing blasting spells and a more limited repertoire of effects to deliver coupled with a narrow selection of spells that can effectively hit a wide area at once. A preponderance of the good spells being concentration further adds a premium to good 'fire and forget' spells. Casters in 5th edition are complex oolboxes of effects and power is often about having the right tool for the job. A domain that seriously expands the set of tools available is in a good place.

Light cleric has a lot to offer but blasting is much of it. Though fireball rests in pride of place Wall of Fire is a nice addition to a class that doesn't have good spells of this type (maybe I am missing something about blade barrier?). Faerie Fire is often a good spell and is sometimes a GREAT spell. And then there is Scorching Ray - not an all time great spell, but when an effect gives you advantage or the target is vulnerable and you just want to take that single target down it has its place.

Sadly, most of the actual class features other than the spells don't shine. They are useful and thematic but they are not particularly efficient.
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I don't see how Light can be rated worse than nature. Light is dang strong - albeit skewing more toward tier 1 and tier 2. The channel divinity early on is as strong as a level 1-2 spell. Later it only does cantrip level damage but does so in a large friendly fire AOE. However, you get 2-3 uses per short rest which can translate into 6-9 uses per day.


4 Forge Domain
Up till now there has kind of been an implicit trade off between good Domain abilities, good channel divninity uses and good Domain Spells. Here is where it begins to break down and we see multiple strong areas.

This class stacks one of the most tanky options out there (not just heavy armour but also the ability to upgrade to +1 armour and to add a further +1 AC on to of that from level 6 and on top of that to add resistances and immunities as you level up) with effects that reward tankyness. Spirit guardians excells when you can be in the thinck of a fight and still keep concentration.

On top of this toughness it packs some truely excellent combat domain spells - heat metal, wall of fire and animate objects are stand out options that are not only good, but also allow the cleric to excell in situations where otherwise they may have been weak. The ability to swing from being a healer to a buffer to a damage powerhouse is impressive.

The class is no slouch out of combat either. Between a channel divinity that lets you create objects to the fabricate spell you should always have the perfect tool for a task at hand (and animate objects to cast on your creation makes for a very versatile problem solving tool). Some other tools like identify on the domain spell list also help here.

Compared to Life Clerics and Light clerics I'm really not seeing where this one stands out. It's a solid all around choice but seems more or less comparable to them IMO.



3 Order Domain
This domain brings a nice element of both additional buffing and additional control to the cleric. Voice of authority lets you hand out a lot of extra attacks through the day - and it doen't make you take actions that you are not already getting a good reward for to do it. It isn't like bless is a bad spell, or healing someone low on hit points is a bad move (though beware of expecting too much from using this on an ally reduced to 0hp - many DMs will rule (not unreasonably) that someone dropped to 0hp will fall prone and will be making their attack with disadvantage. The domain boosts control as well - command, hold person, slow, compulsion (don't forget you can target an ally with this and not make them move - just to use voice of authority with them) are all on the spell list and the level 6 ability to cast a bunch of enchanment spells as a bonus action only enhances these credentials.

The extra divination options are nice as rituals and generally boost your utility casting and give a well rounded set of options for ou of combat play.

The channel divinity option is going to be a bit campaign dependant, thoug I have found it very powerful. The abiliy to disarm a crowd of enemies is fantastic - either for combat advantage or to take prisoners more easily (and with familiars, summons or eam mates around to recover the dropped weapons you are able to preserve this advantage). It can even get enemies to drop grappled team mates. Do not overstate what charm does in this edition though.
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I think Order domain is overrated unless your party has a really high damage single attack PC. Then it's really good. Otherwise your often weighing the benefit of a small heal (at non-optimal times) to grant an ally an additional attack with the benefit of whatever you could have done with the spell otherwise and often the tradeoff works out pretty close to even IMO.

EDIT: missed last line of channel divinity.

[LudicSavant]

14 War Cleric
A great option for a dip... for a main class, I would say there are better options. Honesly, it starts well and can be good at low levels. Heavy armour and martial weapons makes it as efective in combat as most martials before level 5, good domain spells free up spells known for other nice things and guided strike is frequently useful, if not that powerful. But then things stall. At 6th level a broader use of your CD is nice, but not really an exciting addition to something that was not that exciting to begin with. Divine strike at level 8 is leading you to weapons rather than spells, which is rarely the better option at higher levels. And at 17th level the resistances are nice, even if they need to be non magical, this can still come up in a lot of campaigns.

War Cleric misses a lot that other clerics have. What does it bring that's special? The domain spells are good spells, but they are generally all cleric spells anyway so they just free you up to take more of the less good cleric spells that you will probably never cast. It really supports you hitting things with weapons - and buffing a suboptimal choice needs a prety big buff for it to actually be optimal. It's not actively bad (and one of the good things about the cleric is that even if the subclass is a bit shaky, the core cleric is still solid enough).

War Cleric is an odd bird. It starts off with serious potential to personally cave faces in on the front lines in tier 1, but then apparently gets a promotion to a back line officer job later on. This can be especially awkward because people sometimes like to build them around that tier 1 playstyle (I think one poster already mentioned their desire to throw GWM on 'em), and then have the floor fall out from under them later when their playstyle shifts.

The level 6 reaction is a quite good one in the right party composition, because it's basically a good-sized chunk of guaranteed damage. That attack missed, you're contributing the damage it does if you switch it to a hit.

On the other hand, they suffer from having 2 of their class features eaten up by Channel Divinity.

One interesting tidbit is that they get Crusader's Mantle (and are the only Cleric that does so. The only other thing that gets it are Paladins... or Bards with Magical Secrets). It's niche, but in the right party it can be nasty (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/6cd9pb/crusaders_mantle_is_brutal/). There's no limit to how many creatures or attacks it can buff, so if you've got an army...

Anyways, definitely party-comp dependent beyond tier 1.

[Hael]

I rate the nature cleric as the worst of the bunch.

Its a very poorly designed subclass! On one hand, it kinda wants you to be a frontliner.. but there is so much clashy about this that it doesnt make sense.

The pros of this class are spike growth, plant growth and dampen elements. But those spells dont synergize with cleric abilities in general so tend to be situational. So in practice its a frontliner with dampen elements (which has anti synergy with warcaster).

[LudicSavant]

13 Death Domain
Death domain is one of those domains its hard to judge. The channel divinity runs into the same problem the war cleric's does - it is encouraging you to make attacks which is often not a great use of the cleric's action.

You can use their Channel Divinity on spells... including Spiritual Weapon.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841980415115919381/945901551854170132/unknown.png

That Channel Divinity is worth up to 45 auto-hitting, action-economy free, resistance-ignoring damage on top of stuff that Clerics just do normally.

That 45 damage is double the output of a 5th level slot Divine Smite (or the same as an L5 Crit Smite). Just tossed onto your Spiritual Weapon or Twinned Contagion or whatever you're doing.

You can think of this as like, Divine Smite for your Spiritual Weapon (and other things), and each Channel Divinity as a bonus spell slot.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I rate the nature cleric as the worst of the bunch.

Its a very poorly designed subclass! On one hand, it kinda wants you to be a frontliner.. but there is so much clashy about this that it doesnt make sense.

The pros of this class are spike growth, plant growth and dampen elements. But those spells dont synergize with cleric abilities in general so tend to be situational. So in practice its a frontliner with dampen elements (which has anti synergy with warcaster).

Giving Heavy Armor through a subclass feature (which means you can MC into heavy armor proficiency) is basically an auto bump up on a tier list, assuming your table allows multiclassing. It can also net a Wisdom focused class Shillelagh. Very strong multiclass option, not bad on its own either.

Why is Dampen Elements bad with Warcaster? You take Warcaster for the first 2 bullet points, you care less about the third because you're probably using Shillelagh for reaction attacks if you're making one.

Honestly, I'm not sure how you can say "it has all these good things but because they don't specifically work together all the time it's actually the worst subclass". Versatility is a huge strength, this subclass gets useful control options and can contribute well as a frontliner or support thanks to their subclass features. If anything about it is bad it's that the Channel Divinity and subsequently the 17th level feature are niche... but you're still a full caster at the end of the day and your other subclass features and domain spell list are pretty good. I'd say a middle to high rating is pretty accurate.

It's certainly not any worse than Trickery which, while thematically interesting, is held back significantly by its mechanics. It's intended to be a melee focused subclass with Divine Strike but gets the worst damage type and no additional armor proficiencies, making them fairly frail. Both channel divinity options are fairly niche, Invoke Duplicity taking concentration is a huge blow in its usefulness. If it weren't for its fairly potent supporting spells added in the domain list it would rate a lot worse.

[Yakmala]

14 War Cleric: Agreed. Good for a dip, or a low Tier 1 game, but does not hold up over time.
13 Death Domain: Our local gaming community doesn't allow this one for PC's so can't judge.
12 Grave Domain: I'd rank it higher. I've played with a few, and they have always proved to be great party support, with abilities that, no pun intended, spelled the difference between life and death.
11 Tempest domain: I'd rank it a bit higher just based on fun factor. But you need to beg your DM to let you find a Wand of Lighting early in your career.
10 Trickery Cleric: I've yet to play one but I've always suspected they're not as bad as some people believe.
9 Life Domain: Ranked too low. Their ability to heal is far better than other sub-classes, meaning they need to do less of it, freeing up slots for other things. Also insane when multi-classed with Shepard.
8 Knowledge Domain: Literally my favorite one level dip, especially when paired with Wizard. Never seen one played as a single class to high level.
7 Arcana Domain: I'd put this one higher, even if you don't plan to make use of BB shenanigans. They have a great spell list.
6 Light Domain: Right around where I'd put them. It's fun to be able to do everything any Cleric can do but also nuke swarms.
5 Nature Domain: Most folks I know don't like the Nature Domain. I think it's really good. Is it Top 5 good? Maybe not.
4 Forge Domain: Ranked a bit too high. It's a fantastic Tier 1 tank, but it's abilities are otherwise lacking.
3 Order Domain: Absolutely agreed this is top 3, especially if you know you have a Rogue or Paladin in your party.
2 Peace Domain: It's good, both as a dip and a single class. It certainly belongs in the top 5, maybe the top 3.
1 Twilight Domain: #1 without question. I'm happy I got to play my Twilight Cleric over the last year in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign before WotC wakes up and nerfs the hell out of it.

[Psyren]

FWIW, here's where Treantmonk ended up:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/945934606056685591/945935125970059314/unknown.png

(No surprise about the top two of course)

[Zetakya]

I think it's worth disambiguating between how you would rank them as a dip, and how you would rank them as a main class, TBH. Some of them (War, Forge) shine as dips but not main choices. Some are the other way around, and some do both effectively.

[Chaos Jackal]

Arcane initiate gives you a wizard cantrip; a lot of people saw this domain released in SCAG, saw the SCAG cantrips and put the two together (usually with shileighlah as well) to achieve... something. I have been pretty unimpressed by this - usually for the same reason other gimmics don't pay off: classes have a lot of support for playing to type and you need to stack a lot of bonuses to overcome what would otherwise be taking suboptimal actions. If you want to spend your turns rolling attacks, its worth thinking if you might be better served by a fighter, or at least something like a bladesinger.

Suffice to say I disagree with plenty of these rankings (Death and Grave are too low, Trickery, Nature and Forge are too high, at least), but this in particular stands out. You seem to be missing the point of these builds.

For one, it's not a gimmick. Clerics standing in the frontlines has been a common picture since forever. You've got armor, shields and various other tools depending on the edition (in 5e, spirit guardians is the standout). Far more clerics than Arcana will be frontlining; spirit guardians is one of the best spells in the game and enough on its own to make a class good there. Arcana being even better at the job isn't a gimmick, it's building on an already strong concept.

You don't even need to spend your action on these "suboptimal" choices to make the build do exactly what it's supposed to. The point is having options while reducing their own. Stand in spirit guardians and slowly melt away, try to Disengage away with half speed and by using your action, meaning the cleric can likely catch up to you or at least put you into spirit guardians range again, or Dash away, meaning you eat both parts of a booming blade which is double dipping Potent Cantrip.

Moreover, shillelagh is a cantrip with a duration and no concentration, you can practically have it up at all times. Spirit guardians lasts for 10 minutes, you can easily pre-cast it and it may even last through a couple fights to boot.

So you just walk into someone's face with spirit guardians on (standard cleric fare), cast whatever spells you might wanna be casting (also standard cleric fare) and severely punish those who aren't willing to be pinned on the ground forever by angry spirits (which isn't standard cleric fare). And if you don't deem the situation worthy of a spell, you have a much stronger at-will than the average cleric which still plays into your frontlining, since now even Disengage will trigger the second part of booming blade.

No gimmicks. No "spend your turns rolling attacks". Just standard stuff combined and amped. And I've yet to see a fighter, in theory or in practice, able to match the control and tanking ability of a frontliner Arcana cleric.

Oh, and while the spell list isn't amazing, it's not half bad either. You wanted detect magic anyway if there's no wizard or Tomelock in the party, dispel magic is also pretty useful to have around, arcane eye is quite the impressive scouting tool and a nice addition to anyone's list (its biggest disadvantage being that it has competition for slots from staples like death ward and freedom of movement) and let's not delve into planar binding.

Arcana clerics in the frontline are excellent at their job, the subclass is extremely potent overall and one of the best scaling ones to boot. And it doesn't need lv17 for it; like I said, planar binding is huge, and you've got stuff like regeneration's interactions with Spell Breaker. Incidentally, Spell Breaker is also a very strong feature.

Really, the subclass has only two weak points. The first is an above average, but only slightly so, domain spell list and the second is a kinda situational Channel Divinity. And neither of these things are really weak; the list still has some good spells, and the Channel Divinity being situational is somewhat offset by Harness Divine Power. If Arcane Abjuration isn't useful, you can always get back some spellcasting. Which is pretty nice on an Arcana cleric.

Much better overall than you give it credit for, especially compared to things like Forge or Nature.

[f5anor]

Much better overall than you give it credit for, especially compared to things like Forge or Nature.

I agree with the assessment regarding Arcana, but I do not get why people are not appreciating Nature more. Let me list some of the highlights, that I see here.

Obviously Heavy Armor is a great boon, allowing the Nature Cleric to tank effectively.

The spell list is in my view amazing, with great synergy between Plant Growth, possibly the best battlefield control spell in the game (concentration and saving throw free!), Spike Growth (scalable saving throw free damage), and also the potential to get Thorn Whip (saving throw free movement!), or Shillelagh if you want to implement the same tactics as were describe for Arcana.

The above amazing battlefield control and force movement mesh perfectly with Spirit Guardians!

Just imagine locking down the whole battlefield (movement divided by 4!, 150 feet range!, without a saving throw!) with Plant Growth and then casting Spirit Guardians to further immobilize enemies and melt them away. In case someone manages to stay outside your Spirit Guardians range, you can pull them inside with Thorn Whip!

Dampen Elements is (near) permanent resistance to all kinds of energy damage (acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder) for you and even for your allies as needed!

I give you that the higher level abilities are a bit lackluster, but the initial 6 levels are simply amazingly synergistic, and these are what most people will play.

I would argue that given the great benefits of these 6 levels, Nature Cleric is even a great choice for a multiclass, maybe with Ranger?

[Chaos Jackal]

I agree with the assessment regarding Arcana, but I do not get why people are not appreciating Nature more. Let me list some of the highlights, that I see here.

I don't consider the Nature cleric to be awful, but there are a few things going against it, particularly when comparing to Arcana frontline but also in general. Like, it's probably not the worst domain, but it's definitely not top 5 material either.

First, its Channel Divinity is also rather situational. Could be great in certain circumstances, but practically useless in a ton of others, and there's the added issue of beasts and plants generally not being particularly threatening opponents; they're usually low CR and very simple in what they can do.

Second, the spells. We're practically talking only two spells here, and the rest are... well, close to horrible, really, or at least quite unimpressive. And even those two good ones have their troubles.

Plant growth is a very good spell, yes, but it also cannot be used in a lot of places since it requires plants to be there. Unless the DM decides that the scrawny tree by the side of the road is enough to trigger the spell, you're gonna run into damn many situations where you can't use the spell at all. Even if you can, the radius is actually one of the rare cases where bigger area becomes a problem. 100ft radius is huge; unless your team is full of Sharpshooters (in which case great) you're liable to give a hard time to your friends too. Combined, you'll find that plant growth ends up not being the star as often as one might like.

As for spike growth, yes, this is quite a good spell, and you have access to thorn whip for the classic combo. Of course, it's not compatible with spirit guardians since they're both concentration, but different cures for different diseases; sometimes you'll find spike growth better.

But really, two good spells do not a domain spell list make, especially when one of them is a flat no the moment you step into a city or a dungeon or whatever.

And then you have the lv17 feature, which is just a boost to an already problematic Channel Divinity... and at lv17, I'd argue the number of beasts you'll be fighting is likely to be dramatically lower than at lv2. Really, Master of Nature is a borderline dead feature. Sure, many games don't go to lv17, but it's there to consider.

Compared to Arcana in particular, you can do frontline as Nature just fine, and shillelagh/thorn whip make you better at it than many other clerics, but I'd argue booming blade beats thorn whip for the job, if only slightly. Of course, you can get booming blade too via Magic Initiate, the same way Arcana gets shillelagh, but yours is gonna be slightly weaker because you get Divine Strike rather than Potent Spellcasting (and there's some conflict with Dampen Elements, as Nature clerics actually have a decent reaction already). Heavy armor is a plus, but ultimately the difference will amount to just 1 AC most of the time. Is it a wash? More or less I guess, but then Arcana wins out in other fields.

Your domain spells are ultimately worse, and your scaling is the worst offender in the comparison; where Arcana gets planar binding, synergies with Spell Breaker, a Channel Divinity that, while situational, will stay relevant as the levels increase and wizard spells, you get dominate beast, insect plague, a Channel Divinity that becomes increasingly irrelevant as the game progresses and ultimately a buff to that irrelevant Channel Divinity. Not stellar.

You're right in saying that in tier 1, perhaps low tier 2, Nature is actually a pretty good domain. Or perhaps in a game with a hefty beast/nature focus. But people usually look at the entire package when rating it, and the total isn't great. Even as a dip, you're not getting as much as from other domains; heavy armor is far from exclusive, and there are better 1st-level domain spells to pick from and less situational Channel Divinity features if you wanna go lv2.

[sambojin]

I wonder about your low ranking for War, considering how good it is at what it does.

What does the average party of murder-hobos do? They murder-hobo their way through 2-8 encounters a day. Sometimes they do other stuff, but usually something gets killed each day (or honour duels happen, or tests of strength, or something where someone needs to hit something, really reliably).

What turn in those combat encounters that frequently happen are the most important? Turn 1 and 2.

And War Cleric makes it so that any whiffed roll, any smite from a paladin, any manouevre from a battlemaster, any stab from a rogue, any restrain-on-hit from any type of druid, any GWM/SS attack, and even a tonne of spells/cantrips, will always hit, 95% of the time. Twice per short rest by lvl6.

This is very useful. You've got Guidance and Enhance Ability and plenty more spells for social/ exploration stuff, you can contribute heaps. But for the combat encounters, you make sure turn 1+2 happens properly, every single time. And this is valuable.


The fact that you get SG+SW auto-prepped (which is what clerics do, so you get +2 spells prepped for other stuff, so you're actually good out-of-combat), get Hold Monster as a spell (which gives you legs to keep that party DPR super-high in tier 3-4), and can even melee/ shoot a bit (yep, it opens Dex builds up for 2x ranged attacks for really long-ranged stuff), is pretty nice.

Prep a summon, blow a slot communing with gods in between stuff, even just bless and cantrip. You've done heaps, and always kept the party's-floor so high through your CD that it's ridiculous.

They're simple, they're basic, but +10 to-hit is so ultra-incredibly-awesomely reliable so that your party can crack heads properly 2-8 encounters a day that it's amazing. It is even thematic, because it draws parties into "screw it, lets just nova this problem away", because they know the War Cleric will make any low rolls stick. And once something gets defintely-smited or yep-restrained or auto-stabbed or dragged/ pushed/ proned or whatevered, the combat is in your favour regardless of the rolls. Your party may even move some social encounters to "lets do it in a hitty/talky way on skill and strength and panache", because they'll always bloody hit with you being there.

I'm not saying it's super-powerful, but it's about black-green. It's 100% going to be used each day, and is 95% reliable when it is. Yeah, sure, everyone is built to not need your help, but when you turn a 2-6 roll into a 12-16 roll and their stats and proficiency make up the rest, it'll feel good. 4 party members, with two that attack-roll? Odds are that your CD will always come into play, every day, a few times a day. On turn 1-2 of any combat. No-one will thank you for it, they'll just think they steamrolled the encounter. But they didn't. You just added +10 to +60?++ damage output a day, using bugger all resources for them. At worst, you made your own attack rolls stick. And you're a Cleric with a couple of extra spell preps on top of that as well 😎

[RogueJK]

I rate the nature cleric as the worst of the bunch.

Its a very poorly designed subclass! On one hand, it kinda wants you to be a frontliner.. but there is so much clashy about this that it doesnt make sense.


Is Nature a Top Tier Cleric subclass? Hardly. But it's better than several of the others, and far from the worst. I'd put it at around mid-pack.

Heavy Armor + Shield + Thorn Whip + Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon makes for a nicely tanky, WIS-SAD, and action-efficient frontliner, provided you've invested in a means to boost your Concentration like Warcaster and/or Resilient CON. (If you're a Dwarf, you can even dump STR here.)

Many folks tend to focus on Shillelagh for Nature Clerics, but Thorn Whip is the way to go for your free Druid cantrip. It's one of the only means for a Cleric to gain reliably repeatable forced movement.

Thorn Whip can be used in conjunction with Spirit Guardians to trigger two instances of Spirit Guardian damage in a round. Once on your turn when you pull an enemy into the radius using Thorn Whip, and again when the enemy starts their turn in your Spirit Guardians radius. Then with their movement slowed by Spirit Guardians, they're unlikely to be able to escape very far from your Spirit Guardians radius, and you can just pull them (or another enemy) back in with Thorn Whip again.

You can also use Thorn Whip in conjunction with your Spike Growth domain spell to rack up added damage from forced movement. Spike Growth's value increases if you get party tactics buy-in from other party members and they have further means to force movement for more Spike Growth damage on their turns.

Thorn Whip's forced movement can also be paired with other classes' hazard spells, like Cloud of Daggers, Wall of Fire, Moonbeam, Sickening Radiance, etc.. Keep in mind that D&D is a team game, so you can't just look at one PC's abilities in a vacuum. Repeatable forced movement sets up some of the best teamwork/tactics options in the game.



Divine strike at level 8 is leading you to weapons rather than spells, which is rarely the better option at higher levels.


but yours is gonna be slightly weaker because you get Divine Strike rather than Potent Spellcasting


It's intended to be a melee focused subclass with Divine Strike but...

"Divine Strike instead of Potent Spellcasting" is moot here, post-Tasha's. Any Cleric can swap their domain's Divine Strike out for Blessed Strike, which would allow that Cleric to add +1d8 radiant damage to their cantrips. That's an average of +4.5 damage, which is practically the same as the +5 from Potent Spellcasting with a 20 WIS.

So you can be a Nature/Trickery/whatever Cleric and still focus on cantrips without giving any damage up.

Also note that Blessed Strike applies to any cantrip cast by that character, while Potent Spellcasting only applies to Cleric cantrips. So you can pick up other cantrips from your race, a multiclass dip, or the Spell Sniper or Magic Initiate feats, and still be able to apply Blessed Strike's +1d8 to them.



I would argue that given the great benefits of these 6 levels, Nature Cleric is even a great choice for a multiclass, maybe with Ranger?

Can confirm. One of my very first 5E characters was a Hunter Ranger 5/Nature Cleric X (started out R1/C1, headed to R5 first, then eventually hit Cleric 9 or 10 IIRC). More melee-capable than a traditional Cleric and with more spell options than a traditional Ranger. While he wasn't uber-optimized, it was a fun and effective character with a bunch of utility and versatility, who was also able to keep up with the party Fighter's damage output.

But that was back when there wasn't much point in sticking with Ranger past Level 5ish, which has since changed. If I were to redo him today, I'd likely do something like Swarmkeeper Ranger 1 > Nature Cleric 1 > Swarmkeeper Ranger 5 > Nature Cleric 6 or 8 > Swarmkeeper Ranger X instead.

[solidork]

My experience is that even though War Cleric might be the worst of the bunch, Cleric is still strong enough that you're kinda a monster. I played a War Cleric from 5-13, and recently brought him back at 17 for a cameo.

[Psyren]

I wonder about your low ranking for War, considering how good it is at what it does.

What does the average party of murder-hobos do? They murder-hobo their way through 2-8 encounters a day. Sometimes they do other stuff, but usually something gets killed each day (or honour duels happen, or tests of strength, or something where someone needs to hit something, really reliably).

What turn in those combat encounters that frequently happen are the most important? Turn 1 and 2.

And War Cleric makes it so that any whiffed roll, any smite from a paladin, any manouevre from a battlemaster, any stab from a rogue, any restrain-on-hit from any type of druid, any GWM/SS attack, and even a tonne of spells/cantrips, will always hit, 95% of the time. Twice per short rest by lvl6.

This is very useful. You've got Guidance and Enhance Ability and plenty more spells for social/ exploration stuff, you can contribute heaps. But for the combat encounters, you make sure turn 1+2 happens properly, every single time. And this is valuable.


The fact that you get SG+SW auto-prepped (which is what clerics do, so you get +2 spells prepped for other stuff, so you're actually good out-of-combat), get Hold Monster as a spell (which gives you legs to keep that party DPR super-high in tier 3-4), and can even melee/ shoot a bit (yep, it opens Dex builds up for 2x ranged attacks for really long-ranged stuff), is pretty nice.

Prep a summon, blow a slot communing with gods in between stuff, even just bless and cantrip. You've done heaps, and always kept the party's-floor so high through your CD that it's ridiculous.

They're simple, they're basic, but +10 to-hit is so ultra-incredibly-awesomely reliable so that your party can crack heads properly 2-8 encounters a day that it's amazing. It is even thematic, because it draws parties into "screw it, lets just nova this problem away", because they know the War Cleric will make any low rolls stick. And once something gets defintely-smited or yep-restrained or auto-stabbed or dragged/ pushed/ proned or whatevered, the combat is in your favour regardless of the rolls. Your party may even move some social encounters to "lets do it in a hitty/talky way on skill and strength and panache", because they'll always bloody hit with you being there.

I'm not saying it's super-powerful, but it's about black-green. It's 100% going to be used each day, and is 95% reliable when it is. Yeah, sure, everyone is built to not need your help, but when you turn a 2-6 roll into a 12-16 roll and their stats and proficiency make up the rest, it'll feel good. 4 party members, with two that attack-roll? Odds are that your CD will always come into play, every day, a few times a day. On turn 1-2 of any combat. No-one will thank you for it, they'll just think they steamrolled the encounter. But they didn't. You just added +10 to +60?++ damage output a day, using bugger all resources for them. At worst, you made your own attack rolls stick. And you're a Cleric with a couple of extra spell preps on top of that as well 😎

+1. I'm not getting the hate for War Cleric at all. I definitely put it ahead of Death and Nature.

Are the domain spells giving you a bunch of exciting non-cleric stuff, no, but there's several on there I'd be preparing anyway which is the next best thing - now those preps are free for utility without hurting me in combat.

[diplomancer]

Sometimes I feel that lists like this, and class guides in general, should be split by Tier of play; so many subclasses, and even the classes themselves, are great at some tiers and just OK at others. And it's quite frequent that a player will make a character for one adventure set at 1 or at most 2 tiers.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

My experience is that even though War Cleric might be the worst of the bunch, Cleric is still strong enough that you're kinda a monster. I played a War Cleric from 5-13, and recently brought him back at 17 for a cameo.

Yeah, I think that's why it's hard to see any of these as red. We've had mostly subclasses rated in the bottom half of this list and they've all been good party members. Heck, last night my Grave Cleric multiclass sent and undead T-Rex and the best part of a score of zombies packing with Turn Undead. We're level 5, but he's only got 2 levels of Cleric and Wis 14, but... Encounter Over. Just like that, with a core Cleric ability.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think my perception is also weighted somewhat towards levels 5 to 12 or so as that is my perception of where most table time happens - again, if you usually play lvels 16 to 20 then your ratings are likely to be different. I'll cover Arcana up front. Arcana makes a nice boost at level 17. The campaign I have one in (1) is probably going to end at 16 or before and (2) just went dormant due to DM fatigue and (3) has a house rule that neuters the Banishment spell. :smallfurious: Arcana is a solid domain (I took ray of frost as an attack cantrip) with plenty of flexible choices and the option to turn some extra planar creatures that in some campaigns will be more handy than others. Mine's almost at level 10 and I can only say that I really enjoy it.
14 War Cleric
Never played one. Only one I have seen in game dropped out at 7 and re appeared as a SorcLock.
13 Death Domain
DMG only, not seen one played yet.
12 Grave Domain

This domain is an odd mix of abilities, which does kind of work in its favour to cover a lot of different bases.
Flexibility is a good class/sub class feature. But I have not played one.
11 Tempest domain
Played one, my second PC. By level 8 I was even more pleased with it than at level 2.

There are good reasons people play and love the domain... but it also has some problems.
I didn't experience any, and fog cloud is one of my favorite spells in this edition. :smallwink:

That said, the spells are not that great. No fireball levels of damage. No lightning bolts even.
Call Lightning is a good concentration spell, which in three rounds does 9d10 Lightning damage (when you have room to cast it) while you can either cantrip or SW at the same time. A lot of enemies don't clump up into SG circles; Call Lightning has more reach. (Particularly good in ship/seaborne encounters IME and versus flying creatures that try to strafe the party (Seen it cause manticores trouble).

It has things to recommend it.
Yes.
10 Trickery Cleric

I think a lot of people underestimate the trickery cleric, I don't think I ever got out of Tier 1 with this one, so I won't comment further.
9 Life Domain

This is a real classic cleric.
I think you undersold this one. I find Ludic's observations to be worth considering in your ranking.

I do have some gripes about the class though - it is too one dimensional.
That was not my experience.
8 Knowledge Domain
Great for a small party without a rogue or bard.
7 Arcana DomainAlready covered.
6 Light Domain

Fireball.
Seriously, most of what is special with the class rests on this spell.
Not enough play time to comment. I like the flare.
5 Nature Domain

We are getting to the good domains here. I dislike this domain. The Heavy Armor feature is thematically wrong. I'll never play one. The one I played with (I was a Ranger in that party) was underwhelming.
4 Forge Domain

This class stacks one of the most tanky options out there (not just heavy armour but also the ability to upgrade to +1 armour and to add a further +1 AC on to of that from level 6 and on top of that to add resistances and immunities as you level up) with effects that reward tankyness. Spirit guardians excells when you can be in the thinck of a fight and still keep concentration. The only Forge Cleric I've played with was a team player. He gave the Fighter the +1 Warhammer. Immune and Resistant enemies were no longer a problem for our lead Martial from that point on. Game died at level 7.
3 Order Domain
Have not played, no comment.
2 Peace Domain
Game where I created one died, stillborn, DM RL changes.
1 Twilight Domain
Will not allow this in my games unless the player agrees that the radius is shrunk from 300 to 90, medium armor, simple weapons.
This is the kind of bloat that the devs should know better than to inflict on the game.

The ones that stick out to me most in this ranking is Life, Arcana, and Light being below Forge. Concur.

I rate the nature cleric as the worst of the bunch. Thank you. :smallsmile:


FWIW, here's where Treantmonk ended up: Not a credible witness.

[Psyren]

Not a credible witness.

Eh, I agree with his rankings because of the reasoning he uses rather than who he is. Like Arcana getting the best cleric ability of them all at 17th level not really mattering in most campaigns for instance. But your objection is noted.

[KorvinStarmast]

Like Arcana getting the best cleric ability of them all at 17th level not really mattering in most campaigns for instance. But your objection is noted. At least he and I agree on something; a great feature that comes so late in the game that only certain campaigns will see them.

[Chaos Jackal]

"Divine Strike instead of Potent Spellcasting" is moot here, post-Tasha's. Any Cleric can swap their domain's Divine Strike out for Blessed Strike, which would allow that Cleric to add +1d8 radiant damage to their cantrips. That's an average of +4.5 damage, which is practically the same as the +5 from Potent Spellcasting with a 20 WIS.

Don't quote me out of context please. I was specifically referring to booming blade, which already benefits from Divine Strike anyway (and I didn't suggest otherwise either). My comparison was made in regards to booming blade double-dipping Potent Spellcasting through triggering two separate damage instances. Continuation of my earlier post on the matter.


Stand in spirit guardians and slowly melt away, try to Disengage away with half speed and by using your action, meaning the cleric can likely catch up to you or at least put you into spirit guardians range again, or Dash away, meaning you eat both parts of a booming blade which is double dipping Potent Cantrip.

Blessed Strikes is fine, but irrelevant to my point.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I
"Divine Strike instead of Potent Spellcasting" is moot here, post-Tasha's. Any Cleric can swap their domain's Divine Strike out for Blessed Strike, which would allow that Cleric to add +1d8 radiant damage to their cantrips. That's an average of +4.5 damage, which is practically the same as the +5 from Potent Spellcasting with a 20 WIS.

Keep the subclasses rating contained to the subclass, it's not a moot point to say "this is bad" if the option to replace it doesn't exist. Assume that you can't change it, because not everyone can, and rate it accordingly.

[Jerrykhor]

I'm gonna strongly disagree with Nature's rating here. I think its the worst of the lot.

It starts off with a piss poor CD. Plants are very rare as enemies. Beasts a little less so, but really depends on campaign and setting. Still, i dont like abilities that only work on certain creature types. Its like you don't have a CD most of the time. It only last 1 min, and its a Charm effect. So not really useful for out of combat. In the end, charm effects are weak, and you could probably replicate it with an Animal Handling check. A weak CD is usually enough to be low tier for me, but it gets worse.

Heavy armour and some skill proficiencies, yada yada, pretty decent, but most Domains get some of that.

The spell list, lets go through them one by one.
Animal Friendship. Redundant, you already have your CD.
Speak with Animals. You are now the beast whisperer. I thought i signed up to be a holy druid, not a retired pet trainer.
Barkskin. Useless for you, ****ty spell. Next.
Spike Growth. Decent spell, easily best of the lot, but might annoy teammates.
Plant Growth. Niche spell. I've had a DM rule that only the areas with plants are affected at all. Really brings down the rating of this spell.
Windwall. Another niche spell. I'm seeing a pattern here.
Dominate beast. Good if beast, but beasts are less common at higher levels.
Grasping Vine. Not worth a level 4 slot.
Insect Plague. Disgusting but effective. Not bad.
Tree Stride. A spell you can get creative with. Not really envied by wizards though.

Overall, a bad spell list.

Dampen Elements is of course very good, not much to say.

Divine Strike is flexible, a small win.

But Master of Nature is god awful. At this level are you still having encounters with beasts? It doesn't expand anything you can do, and the things you could not do before (ie non-plant or beast stuff), you still can't. Its not even better than Dominate Beast.

Thorn whip is not that great, and does NOT trigger 2 instance of SG. Forced movement is not considered as 'entering'. 'Entering' implies intent. Just like how its different if you are forcibly thrown into the car trunk, instead of entering it yourself.

[RogueJK]

Thorn whip is not that great, and does NOT trigger 2 instance of SG. Forced movement is not considered as 'entering'. 'Entering' implies intent. Just like how its different if you are forcibly thrown into the car trunk, instead of entering it yourself.

That is not correct.

Moving the Spirit Guardians radius onto a stationary enemy, or casting it initially when they're within the radius, doesn't trigger the damage.

But dragging/shoving an enemy into the SG radius using various forms of forced movement (such as Thorn Whip) does trigger the damage.

From Page 18 of the Sage Advice Compendium (bold emphasis mine):


Some spells and other game features create an area of effect that does something when a creature enters that area for the first time on a turn or when a creature starts its turn in that area. On the turn when you cast such a spell, you’re primarily setting up hurt for your foes on later turns. Moonbeam, for example, creates a beam of light that can damage a creature who enters the beam or who starts its turn in the beam.

Here are some spells with the same timing as moonbeam for their areas of effect:
blade barrier
cloudkill
cloud of daggers
Evard’s black tentacles
forbiddance
moonbeam
sleet storm
spirit guardians

Reading the description of any of those spells, you might wonder whether a creature is considered to be entering the spell’s area of effect if the area is created on the creature’s space. And if the area of effect can be moved—as the beam of moonbeam can—does moving it into a creature’s space count as the creature entering the area? Our design intent for such spells is this: a creature enters the area of effect when the creature passes into it. Creating the area of effect on the creature or moving it onto the creature doesn’t count. If the creature is still in the area at the start of its turn, it is subjected to the area’s effect.

Entering such an area of effect needn’t be voluntary, unless a spell says otherwise. You can, therefore, hurl a creature into the area with a spell like thunderwave. We consider that clever play, not an imbalance, so hurl away!

Keep in mind, however, that a creature is subjected to such an area of effect only the first time it enters the area on a turn. You can’t move a creature in and out of it to damage it over and over again on the same turn.

In summary, a spell like moonbeam affects a creature when the creature passes into the spell’s area of effect and when the creature starts its turn there. You’re essentially creating a hazard on the battlefield.


'Entering' needn't be voluntary. :smile:

[ProsecutorGodot]

Thorn whip is not that great, and does NOT trigger 2 instance of SG. Forced movement is not considered as 'entering'. 'Entering' implies intent. Just like how its different if you are forcibly thrown into the car trunk, instead of entering it yourself.

Spike Growth doesn't use the word "enter", it only asks that a creature moves into or within the area.

Though perhaps you meant Spirit Guardians, in which case you're correct. Forced movement is still useful with Spirit Guardian's though, being able to move enemies in a way that means they can't easily leave the spells area or to pull enemies into the area so that they take damage they otherwise wouldn't have at the start of their turn is a powerful tool.

Thorn Whip is also a good spell to use with War Caster, when combined with Spirit Guardians it means that a creature with only 30ft of movement can't leave the area so long as you successfully strike them with Thorn Whip as a reaction.

EDIT: I stand corrected, Sage Advice makes clear that "entering" needn't be voluntary unless it says so explicitly.

Entering such an area of effect needn’t be voluntary, unless a spell says otherwise. You can, therefore, hurl a creature into the area with a spell like thunderwave. We consider that clever play, not an imbalance, so hurl away! Keep in mind, however, that a creature is subjected to such an area of effect only the first time it enters the area on a turn. You can’t move a creature in and out of it to damage it over and over again on the same turn.

And I'm a bit slow on the draw, seems it's already been covered.

[Hael]

Heavy Armor + Shield + Thorn Whip + Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon makes for a nicely tanky, WIS-SAD, and action-efficient frontliner, provided you've invested in a means to boost your Concentration like Warcaster and/or Resilient CON. (If you're a Dwarf, you can even dump STR here.)
.

Thorn whip is definitely the right play here, but note that the post Tashas way of doing the same thing is with the telekinetic feat. And that allows you to bonus action instead (thus freeing your action to be used for melee or for a higher damaging cantrip).

Compare the action economy of an arcana cleric who first turn casts spirit guardians, then ba telekinetic. Next turn GFB/BB, ba telekinetic Etc. Vs the nature cleric who first turn spirit guardians (no useable ba b/c they dont take telekinetic), then second turn melee (no cantrip) + spiritual weapon, then only on the third turn do they have a useable thorn whip + spirit weapon combo. The latter has the usual ackward action economy, does less damage, spends more spell slots but is up a half feat.

The nature cleric could also take telekinetic, but that starts to hit circumstantial returns.

[f5anor]

The nature cleric could also take telekinetic, but that starts to hit circumstantial returns.

Not sure this logic is correct, Telekinetic is a feat that is available to everyone. As such it can be used by Nature Clerics as well, much like many of the other tactics discussed for Arcana.

Even in terms of cost of opportunity, I don’t see a real issue. After all we are talking AoE here, and many enemies involved. I see plenty of scope for a Nature Cleric to use both Thorn Whip and Telekinetic on multiple or even the same enemy, possibly in the same round.

[f5anor]

I'm gonna strongly disagree with Nature's rating here. I think its the worst of the lot.
…
Overall, a bad spell List.

I believe you are not being very objective here,
some of these spells are widely recognized as stellar. Of course the rest are a bit weak, but this does not make the stellar ones worse.

Regarding Plant Growth the spell says:

All normal plants in a 100-foot radius centered on that point become thick and overgrown

Clearly all available plants are included without criteria or qualifications. I generally rule that even if no visible plants are available, roots of plants are likely to be available in the ground, or even the walls of a cave or dungeon anyway. Of course this may not be the case in fully artificial surroundings. YMMV of course with your DM.

[RogueJK]

then second turn melee (no cantrip) + spiritual weapon, then only on the third turn do they have a useable thorn whip + spirit weapon combo

You're overlooking that you can cast Thorn Whip and cast Spiritual Weapon in the same turn... So you can have Thorn Whip + SW starting on Round 2. There's no reason to just melee on Round 2.

The rules state that if you cast a spell as a Bonus Action (like SW), the only spell you can cast with your Action that turn is a cantrip. But Thorn Whip is a cantrip, so it qualifies.


Thorn whip is definitely the right play here, but note that the post Tashas way of doing the same thing is with the telekinetic feat.

There are some important distinctions. It's not apples-to-apples here.

Telekinetic requires a failed save (bad against enemies with high saves, Legendary Resistances, or Magic Resistance), targets STR which is a very high save for a number of enemies, and only results in 5' of movement. Plus Telekinetic's BA competes with Spiritual Weapon and Healing Word, two vital Cleric staples. Plus it costs a feat. However, it works on enemies of any size.

Thorn Whip relies on an attack (bad against enemies with high AC), and gets you up to 10' of forced movement. But only works on Large or smaller creatures.


And that allows you to bonus action instead (thus freeing your action to be used for melee or for a higher damaging cantrip).


Telekinetic's competition with Spiritual Weapon is the important part here for damage output.

For example, let's compare three Level 5 Clerics with 18 WIS, one with Action Thorn Whip for forced movement plus BA Spiritual Weapon for added damage, one with Action Shillelagh melee for damage and BA Telekinetic for forced movement, and one with Action Toll the Dead for damage and BA Telekinetic for forced movement.

The Cleric with Thorn Whip could be doing 2d6 + 1d8+4 Spiritual Weapon. That's an average of 15.5 damage if both hit, and with two attack rolls you're still able to get partial damage even if one misses. Hit/Hit, Hit/Miss, Miss/Hit, Miss/Miss. Plus two chances to potentially crit.

The Cleric with Toll the Dead is doing 2d12 on a previously damaged enemy. Average of 13 damage. And that's all or nothing. Save/Fail. Plus zero chances to crit.

The Cleric with the Shillelagh melee attack is doing 1d8+4. Average of 8.5 damage. (Even if we say it's a Greatsword wielding 18 STR cleric, that's still only 11 average damage.) Again, all or nothing. Hit/Miss. And only one chance to crit.


So even though Telekinetic is "freeing your action for melee or a higher damaging cantrip", your melee or so-called higher damaging cantrip are both still lagging in damage output compared to the Thorn Whip + BA Spiritual Weapon combo, thanks to Telekinetic's Bonus Action clog negating the possibility of the added SW damage, plus the all or nothing nature of the other cantrip or melee (and the fact that you can't crit on a save cantrip like Toll The Dead).

Plus you have only half of the forced movement distance of Thorn Whip, so there will be fewer overall situations in which you can be properly positioned to drag enemies into your Spirit Guardians range. This is only partly mitigated by Telekinetic's lack of a size limit for its forced movement, since the majority of enemies are Large or smaller.

Also, when combo'd with the other Nature Cleric hazard spell of Spike Growth, Telekinetic is looking at only 5'/2d4 damage vs. Thorn Whip's up to 10'/4d4 damage.



https://c.tenor.com/iyiOA0P4NY4AAAAM/the-road-to-el-dorado-both.gif
However, while Telekinetic is not an outright replacement for Thorn Whip on a Nature Cleric, having both Thorn Whip and Telekinetic available together would be potentially useful, to be able to do stuff like Spirit Guardians + Telekinetic in Round 1, and then Thorn Whip + Spiritual Weapon in Rounds 2+. Or to have a backup resource-free use for your Bonus Action in smaller combats when you don't feel like burning spell slots on SWs. Or to combine Thorn Whip + BA Telekinetic for up to 15'/6d4 Spike Growth damage in a turn.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Telekinetic on most casters in general, for the half feat casting stat bump and the resource-free non-spell Bonus Action when you don't have something better to do with your BA. (Especially if they already have the Mage Hand cantrip... 60' Mage Hand opens up so many useful opportunities for shenanigans, especially when it comes to dungeon delving and traps. I've gotten tons of mileage out of that aspect specifically.)

[stoutstien]

Something to keep in mind is heavy armor and/or martial weapons aren't much of an upgrade. It's barely a side grade for clerics in most cases.

[RogueJK]

Something to keep in mind is heavy armor and/or martial weapons aren't much of an upgrade. It's barely a side grade for clerics in most cases.

Agreed.

Clerics will generally want a shield, and 1H martial weapons only do 1 point more in average damage over 1H simple weapons. Same with martial ranged weapons (Heavy Xbow/Longbow vs. Light Xbow/Shortbow). Besides, Clerics generally have better things to do than make weapon attacks anyway, outside of Tier 1.

And with Heavy Armor you need a 15 STR, while with Medium Armor you need a 14 DEX, so you're not really saving anything when it comes to stat allocation between the two types of armor.


The big exception here is with Dwarves, who with a Heavy Armor Cleric can dump both STR and DEX and just focus on WIS and CON. That's a potentially worthwhile strategy.

[stoutstien]

Agreed.

Clerics will generally want a shield, and 1H martial weapons only do 1 point more in average damage over 1H simple weapons. Besides, Clerics generally have better things to do than make weapon attacks anyway, outside of Tier 1.

And with Heavy Armor you need a 15 STR, while with Medium Armor you need a 14 DEX, so you're not really saving anything when it comes to stat allocation between the two types of armor.


The big exception here is with Dwarves, who with a Heavy Armor Cleric can dump both STR and DEX and just focus on WIS and CON. That's a potentially worthwhile strategy.

can do the same thing with races like the wood elf thanks to their increased base speed which nets the same reduction in the end. Still don't think I'd ever dump Dex hard though. Initiative alone is important

[Jerrykhor]

I believe you are not being very objective here,
some of these spells are widely recognized as stellar. Of course the rest are a bit weak, but this does not make the stellar ones worse.

Regarding Plant Growth the spell says:

All normal plants in a 100-foot radius centered on that point become thick and overgrown

Clearly all available plants are included without criteria or qualifications. I generally rule that even if no visible plants are available, roots of plants are likely to be available in the ground, or even the walls of a cave or dungeon anyway. Of course this may not be the case in fully artificial surroundings. YMMV of course with your DM.

I AM being objective. Half of Nature's features would be redundant if only it had Conjure Animals, and still remain thematic. But it got the pick of the weaker druid spells, the weakest CD, and probably the weakest lv17 feature of all Domains.

Which spells are widely recognized as stellar? I think only Spiked Growth.

[Pildion]

Not a bad list, but I think you underestimate Life Domain to much, it allows you to actually be a combat healer and not just throw out healing words. That fundamentally changes things for a party unlike any other class\subclass in the game can.

By your own admission, Arcana Domain gets both Wish and Divine Intervention... as well as Simulacrum, Mass Suggestion, now yes not until end game, but if we are looking at the domain as a whole its by far the best feature. out of ANY domain.

With Nature Domain I do agree its better then most people give it credit for, but I wouldn't have put it at 5th place, more like middle of the pack.

I think you put Forge Domain to high, its still a MAD build, by mid game your hurting with only 16 Str.

[Hael]

Even in terms of cost of opportunity, I don’t see a real issue. After all we are talking AoE here, and many enemies involved. I see plenty of scope for a Nature Cleric to use both Thorn Whip and Telekinetic on multiple or even the same enemy, possibly in the same round.

In terms of opportunity cost, it fails to justify itself on turns where there is only one enemy, and justifies itself on turns where there are multiiple in range. If say that happens half as often, then its half as effective relatively speaking. Other half feats would likely be a better pickup at that point.

[Hael]

You're overlooking that you can cast Thorn Whip and cast Spiritual Weapon in the same turn... So you can have Thorn Whip + SW starting on Round 2. There's no reason to just melee on Round 2.

Thats correct, and what I originally thought, but I stupidly misread a table about that rule. Apologies.


Plus Telekinetic's BA competes with Spiritual Weapon and Healing Word, two vital Cleric staples. Plus it costs a feat. However, it works on enemies of any size.

That telekinetic competes with sw is the main draw. It saves a spell slot, and indeed the competition with Spiritual Weapon is the important part here for damage output.

Regarding the damage analysis which accuratedly captures how bad the shillelagh cleric is. When you compare cleric (w telekinetic) vs nature cleric (w/o). Turn 1 gives an additional BA for the former, which procs spirit guardians. Turn 2 then is as you say which will be a slight damage win for the nature cleric (who has spent a spell slot on sw). Note that it will still takes a few turns to equalize total damage. So maybe a small win, but it honestly feels like a sidegrade relative to post Tasha vanilla cleric action economy..

Of course some other cleric subclasses will tend to have extra damage possibilities on their attack (like arcana cleric, war cleric or death cleric etc).

[RickAsWritten]

I know it's a common style to go from Red to Gold for rankings, but Cleric is one of the most balanced classes in the game. The bottom three subclasses should be Green and then improve from there. There is no Beastmaster or Banneret of the Cleric class.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I know it's a common style to go from Red to Gold for rankings, but Cleric is one of the most balanced classes in the game. The bottom three subclasses should be Green and then improve from there. There is no Beastmaster or Banneret of the Cleric class.

To build off of this, there is a tendency to rate subclasses lower due to niche abilities. I'm not sure that's as valid for Cleric, given the core class and abilities are solid. For Cleric subclass I'd rather have an ability that's a bit niche and strong rather than one that's commonly used and fair, as you can generally fall back on your core abilities.

[Frogreaver]

Thats correct, and what I originally thought, but I stupidly misread a table about that rule. Apologies.



That telekinetic competes with sw is the main draw. It saves a spell slot, and indeed the competition with Spiritual Weapon is the important part here for damage output.

Regarding the damage analysis which accuratedly captures how bad the shillelagh cleric is. When you compare cleric (w telekinetic) vs nature cleric (w/o). Turn 1 gives an additional BA for the former, which procs spirit guardians. Turn 2 then is as you say which will be a slight damage win for the nature cleric (who has spent a spell slot on sw). Note that it will still takes a few turns to equalize total damage. So maybe a small win, but it honestly feels like a sidegrade relative to post Tasha vanilla cleric action economy..

Of course some other cleric subclasses will tend to have extra damage possibilities on their attack (like arcana cleric, war cleric or death cleric etc).

I think it's a bad assumption that you will get to reliably use the telekentic feat bonus action to trigger Spirit Guardians, at least without significant concessions like using the disengage Action, or needing to take OA's.

[LudicSavant]

Can we talk about Death Cleric for a second?

Their Channel Divinity has no action economy requirements over stuff Clerics just do normally. It has all of the properties that make Divine Smite good (can't be wasted, no extra action economy, can activate on multiple hits, etc) and is a more abundant resource that does more damage.

Yes, you heard that last part right. In a standard 2 short rest day, the Death Cleric's Channel Divinity contributes significantly more damage than if a Paladin converts every single spell slot they have to Divine Smites (unless all of those smites are critting).

Since the features work in such a similar manner, they're easy to compare. Like so:

Level 2:
27 damage (Death Cleric over a 2-short-rest day) vs 18 damage (Paladin using all of their slots on non-crit smites)

Level 6:
102 damage (Channel Divinity over a 2-short-rest day) vs 63 damage (Paladin using all of their slots on non-crit smites)

Level 20:
405 damage (Channel Divinity over a 2-short-rest day) vs 243 damage (Paladin using all of their slots on non-crit smites)


That's just the Channel Divinity, no other resources. They aren't even spending any extra action economy for this. They just paste that damage right onto their daily output, with no chance of being wasted on a miss or anything. Poof. Hundreds of extra damage per day.

This is in a galaxy far, far away from the likes of Forge or Nature Channel Divinities,. And even stuff like Life and Light are at least spending Actions on theirs.

Just for fun, let's build one.

The Astral Psychopomp (Just a Githzerai Death Cleric)
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a6/db/f7/a6dbf75128c6322bae290c9352ffde2d.jpg
Starting Stats: 16 Wis / 17 Con / 14 Dex / other stats to taste
ASIs: 20 Wis, Resilient (18 Con), Gift of the Chromatic Dragon, Lucky
Cantrips x7: Mage Hand (buffed Githzerai version), Chill Touch (from Domain), Toll the Dead, Guidance, Light, Thaumaturgy, Word of Radiance
Blessed Strikes or Divine Strike? Blessed Strikes

Offense
We pretty much ignore our martial weapon proficiency, except at level 1-4.

Chill Touch gives us something Clerics don't usually have: A good AC-targeting cantrip that can bypass magic and legendary resistance. A particularly good one, because we can twin it (if enemies are clumped up), and because it'll bypass all elemental resistance, period, and it'll counter healing. And of course we'll also take Toll the Dead, which also gets the "twinned and bypasses resistances" treatment. This twinning does require enemies to be adjacent though, so don't count on getting it all the time (though: party members like a Repelling Blast Warlock, a grappler, or the like can help it come up extra frequently).

This can add up to a lot of damage. For example, at level 8 you could be doing 4d12+2d8+31 (66) damage on the opening round, just by tossing out Toll the Dead, a non-upcast Spiritual Weapon, and your Channel Divinity. And then do it again next round! And you always have the option of switching in Inflict Wounds or Chill Touch if you want to make everything bypass magic and legendary resistance.

Want more? We've got more. We can simultaneously be Concentrating on something, like Bless or Spirit Guardians (and later, Summon Celestial, which is almost like tacking a martial character onto your action economy for an hour). And have our Animated Dead firing bows or trying to grapple, shove, or even Help people. And we'll also eventually pick up Gift of the Chromatic Dragon (use it to buff the party Fighter or whoever makes a lot of weapon attacks... or even your Summon Celestial) and Lucky (useful for both offense and defense). And by Tier 4, we can start twinning Necromancy spells.

Also, we'll have a bit better initiative and stealth than Strength-based Clerics. (Stealth is relevant even if the rest of the party isn't stealthy, just because if you aren't seen, you'll get Advantage on your first attack of the combat, and your attacks can hit hard).

Defense
In addition to the usual Cleric defenses:

We've got Shield as a spell known and an extra bonus slot for it, meaning our AC is top class. We've got what is basically Absorb Elements Prof/day from Gift of the Chromatic Dragons. We've got Psychic Resistance too (another one of the most statistically common damage types, comparable to Fire). We've got Lucky rerolls and anti-crit insurance. We've got 18 Con and Resilient. And we're practically immune to Charm and Fear (because of stacking Githzerai Mental Discipline on top of a Cleric's already-good Wis saves). And unlike some Clerics, we didn't dump precious Dex.

In short, our Reactions are top notch, we've got plenty of resources to use them, we resist most elements, and shrug off many of the more troublesome status effects.

But also, our Concentration is very hard to break, not only because of Resilient and 18 Con, but also because we're cutting the DCs of things like high level dragon breath down to size with our elemental Resistances, or just getting missed in the first place because of Shield, or rerolling with Lucky... or just killing enemies faster so they have less chances to hit us.

Random Spell Notes:
- When using up slots to maintain control over Animated Dead, it's a good idea to use the slots right before sleeping. If you ever find yourself at the end of the day without enough juice to re-control some of your surviving undead, just order them to dutifully execute themselves before time's up. That's just good necromancer hygiene. You can always re-use the corpses later. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYBEbNbirkA)

- Inflict Wounds is pretty good for you, especially early on (though it also has decent upcasting, and can be twinned at Tier 4). Just at level 2, belting someone for 3d10+9 (25.5) is... well, it's like an Action Surge nova at that level. It's a good idea to get Advantage before using it though, such as from using Stealth, an enemy being knocked prone, a familiar or MPMM Hobgoblin Helping you, or the like. It's generally pretty easy to get Advantage on single melee Attacks.

- Blight isn't a wonderful spell... unless you're facing Plants, in which case it's awesome. So don't forget that you have it auto-prepared if you ever run into plant monsters.

- When you get the ability to twin Necromancy spells, you can twin False Life to hand out some pretty considerable THP to the party.

- The Channel Divinity does boost the healing from Vampiric Touch -- though if I wanted to focus on offense (instead of grabbing some healing too) I'd usually cast Spirit Guardians or Bless or something instead.

___

So why is Death Cleric rated Red? And should it be?

[Evaar]

Well now I have to add Death Cleric to the list of things I'm still interested in playing.

[sambojin]

Meh, I've got no problems with the Nature rating. Kinda. It's a bit lower than stated. You grab Thornwhip as your cantrip, you do stuff that normal clerics do, plus you can do a bit of dragging people into-or-through Spike Growth or Spirit Guardians. And at lvl8 it becomes a slightly more damaging cantrip to use as well, because you'll always target the right element.

Plus, you can grant resistance to every normal type of elemental damage for a reaction, an unlimited amount of times per day. An unlimited amount of Absorb Elements, once per turn. Which is actually kinda really strong.

Oh, and Charm Beasts, but whatever. They can't attack *you* for a minute, unless everyone else attacks them. Actually useful, depending on how the DM plays *charmed*, but not that big. Beasts have fairly decent Wis scores as well...

You just sort of cleric, have free Absorb Elements for everyone (one at a time) by lvl6, can Thornwhip people into Spike Growth by lvl3, can Plant Growth out ground areas by lvl5, and are still horribly slot constrained in the ability to do these things because you'd also like to use Spiritual Weapon or Spirit Guardians as well at those levels.

They're really nice by lvl7-9, but I mean, sh*t, so is every full caster. So is every druid. So is every wizard. I mean, free absorb elements is nice and all, but it's not +10 to-hit to open combat and two free spell preps like a War Cleric gets. Nicer Thornwhip than a druid can druid is good, but it's still just a cantrip. Give me a Summon or Conjure spell by lvl3-5 any build of the week, with wildshape and familiars attached for it.

It's not bad, but it's about black rated (green for nature gimmicks perhaps), at most. It's nice enough. It clerics, with some gimmicks. They're not even very nice gimmicks, but cantriping people into Spirit Guardians or Spike Growth is probably worth it, to save a feat. You'll do it all the time. Maybe green...
(Weirdly enough, just due to Wind Wall. Mini-chain-lightning is always funny to use, until you get in close enough for SG and thornwhip. Clerics can't blow slots quite like druids can, but neither of them get anything like Wind Wall for grid-play targeting, ever again. Its a pity you can't upcast it. Ask your DM if you can +1d8 upcast it. It still sucks, it's just fun to use. Tell him your God said you can upcast it 😋
It's a pity they didn't give Tidal Wave at lvl5. Now *there's* a targetable druid spell...
Tell your DM your God said you can upcast that too.)


((AC, even on deadly encounters, tends to be in the range of 18-21. I still can't understand the low rating for War. Turning a 2-9 roll into "yep, that hit with proficiency and stats, so add all the things a PC does on a roll-to-hit after that" is a hell of a lot better than red. About a 50-50% chance it'll come up in many combats, even in the hardest or deadliest of campaigns, or the lightest. And, even with unlimited Absorb Elements, Nature is probably only black rated. Funny old world, on how people perceive some things.
Even on standard stuff, a roll of 1-7 (with +3PB, +1 magic weapon, and +4stat, optimised build, so 15 total max) is often a miss in late tier 2/ early tier 3 play. So a 33'ish% chance, over two characters, for two turns, that any attack will miss. Maths-wise, you will save one attack that will be lost, per combat encounter, at least. Which is 10-20'ish+ damage output, for each attack saved by your CD.

How often does the first two turns of combat come up? Every single combat, and you'd like everything your party does to hit when they do, so it happens properly. How often does elemental damage come up? Pretty regularly, later on, when you've got plenty of spell slots and HP for it, but not every combat, so having unlimited single target resistance to it isn't as heavily weighted as you'd think it would be, in my regards for it.))

[Schwann145]

I always find Life and Grave to be rated lower than they should be, IMO.

With Life, too many people sleep on the spell list. Is it boring? Kinda. Is it entirely in-class? Yes. But unlike other domains with primarily in-class spell lists, Life is giving you spells you want prepared anyway. That frees up a ton of room for more interesting, or niche, spell selections for your daily preps.
One of the most important things a Cleric of any domain can be expected to do is things like Lesser Restoration and Revivify. No matter your Domain, you're probably using Spiritual Weapon and Bless. And you never, ever, have to worry about those spells taking up your slots. That's huge. Niche spells may be niche, but the Life Cleric is the most likely to have them when they're needed, because everyone else was too busy preparing the necessary/typical spells.


With Grave, it bucks traditional "Cleric wisdom" and I think that throws people off. You have to go into it with a different strategy.
Spells
Lots of off-list options, which is good. However, some underwhelming choices, which is unfortunate. Let's take a look:
Bane•False Life - Both really solid spells. Bane remains pretty effective through midgame while False Life is mostly valuable early on, but since it's a freebie you lose nothing for having it.
Gentle Repose•Ray of Enfeeblement - GR is probably going to end up a flavor spell, but against savvy DMs it's very valuable (but I doubt most modern D&D players can handle a DM that would make Gentle Repose valuable, so it's fair to consider it a weak option). Ray, however, is solid - effectively give everyone resistance to relevant enemy attacks. Con save every round is unfortunate, but teamwork can make that less of an issue.
Revivify•Vampiric Touch - Both very solid spells. Never have to worry about having Revivify prepared, and VT is great value.
Blight•Death Ward - Blight is solid damage but on a bad save, and the kicker is basically worthless (thanks devs; maybe print some more plant creatures, eh?). It's a free damage option though, so very good if you pick your target with some thought. Death Ward is the first spell I'm just flat-out disappointed with. In earlier editions, it was invaluable, but 5e is such a "safe" edition that it's value is basically entirely gone. Healing is super easy, dying has never been harder, and save-or-die spells are incredibly nerfed, so protections from them are weaker than ever. This should be a good spell, but edition design choices have hampered it big time.
Antilife Shell•Raise Dead - ALS is the bad side of niche. Yes, it has it's uses, but other options are basically always better. The protected area is really small (10ft radius) and requiring concentration basically kills it as a worthwhile option. Our 2nd bad spell. Raise Dead is, of course, always good to have and not eating up a preparation slot to bring people back to life is good in my book. Typically people say, "you can just wait a day to do it" but that's a very "armchair" mentality. You probably don't have a day to spare if people are dying.
Circle of Mortality
Spare The Dying is an awful spell. No one should ever choose it as a cantrip. Spend some chump change on healing kits and save yourself the valuable cantrip slot, am I right? Well it's actually an outstanding cantrip for Grave, because 1) it's free! You get it without eating up a cantrip choice. Yay! 2) What was once a touch spell now has 30ft range! 3) And as a Bonus Action instead of a Standard Action, you're not wasting your turn just to stabilize someone.
You'd be surprised how many people don't realize Grave gets this but it's poorly formatted in the source so it's pretty easy to miss.
But Circle of Mortality also turns player retention from a desperate strategy (Healing Word) into a rather solid strategy (Maximized Cure Wounds).
Healing Word is a great way to quickly save people from the potential of death and get them back into the action, but a rolled d4+mod is pitiful HP to stand back up with - a stiff breeze and you're back down again. However, it's the go-to strategy because you can do it quickly (bonus action) and from range (60ft).
Grave however, can Spare the Dying for free as a bonus action, then move and get off a freely max-healing Cure Wounds, and 8(x spell level)+mod is much better HP to stand back up with. You're less likely to immediately go back down and the spell slot is getting better value. The guaranteed stabilization from Spare the Dying also means if more than one party member needs tending to, you have more breathing room to pick and choose who is the more valuable party member to actually get your spell slot and get back into the fight since everyone will definitely be stabilized.
Eyes of the Grave
Consider this one a ribbon ability. Circle of Mortality is the 1st level ability doing the heavy lifting. If we could detect through walls, or if we weren't limited in uses per rest, then this would be better. But as is, it's meh, so luckily you already got a good ability.
Channel Divinity: Path to the Grave - A reliable offensive use for Channel Divinity is always very good. Doubling that Smite or Sneak Attack is crazy powerful and shouldn't be discounted. If you don't have a heavy hitter, this obviously loses some appeal.
Sentinel at Death's Door - Anything that lets you cheat the system is outstanding. Negating critical hits is just such an ability. Amazing ability.
Keeper of Souls - Irrelevant, because who plays at 17th level? But if you do, free healing every turn is never a bad thing. The more mooks the party kills, the more free healing you dole out. Or, if your DM is bad, something something bag of rats...

Grave does the healing game right - by negating bad things and keeping people reliably alive, while still contributing offensively. It's very good. It deserves better grades than people give it. High B/Green to Low A/Blue, IMO. :smallwink:

[stoutstien]

Yes death domain hits hard. Had a goblin bad touch death cleric I used for a few one shots that regularly took out targets faster than an action surging samurai. I might remake him as a bugbear sneaky reachy bad touch.

[RogueJK]

You grab Thornwhip as your cantrip, you do stuff that normal clerics do, plus you can do a bit of dragging people into-or-through Spike Growth or Spirit Guardians. And at lvl8 it becomes a slightly more damaging cantrip to use as well, because you'll always target the right element.

The Nature Cleric's swappable element Divine Strike applies to weapon attacks. Thorn Whip is a spell attack. Therefore Divine Strike doesn't apply to Thorn Whip.

You could exchange it at Level 8 for Blessed Strike from Tasha's, to be able to add +1d8 damage to the cantrip that way, but that's solely radiant damage. (Though radiant is typically better than Nature's elemental damage, except in certain edge cases like Trolls, Hydras, and some Celestials.)



Spare The Dying is an awful spell. No one should ever choose it as a cantrip. Spend some chump change on healing kits and save yourself the valuable cantrip slot, am I right? Well it's actually an outstanding cantrip for Grave, because 1) it's free! You get it without eating up a cantrip choice. Yay! 2) What was once a touch spell now has 30ft range! 3) And as a Bonus Action instead of a Standard Action, you're not wasting your turn just to stabilize someone.

Unless you're totally out of spell slots, it's nearly always going to be better to spend that same Bonus Action to Healing Word that downed ally (from up to 60' away), and yo-yo them back into the fight for their next turn, rather than simply stabilize them with Spare the Dying and have them remain unconscious. To put it another way: why just stabilize when you can stabilize + heal? Plus, the first half of Circle of Mortality now means they get max healing from that Healing Word since they'd be at 0 HP when you cast it.


Grave however, can Spare the Dying for free as a bonus action, then move and get off a freely max-healing Cure Wounds, and 8(x spell level)+mod is much better HP to stand back up with.

Unfortunately, no. When you use your Bonus Action to cast a spell (including a cantrip like StD), the only spell you can cast with your Action is a cantrip, not a leveled spell. So you can't BA Spare the Dying + Cure Wounds in the same turn.

Therefore, just BA Healing Word on the downed ally to serve both purposes of stabilizing and healing, and do something else useful with your Action.

You could, for example, use your Bonus Action to cast Healing Word, and then use your Action to cast Toll The Dead. That's allowable because you're using your Bonus Action to cast a spell and your action to cast a cantrip.

Or alternately, use your movement and Cure Wounds to stabilize + heal the downed ally, and then use your Bonus Action to do something useful, like swinging your Spiritual Weapon or Telekinetically shoving someone.



Spare the Dying is a waste of an Action on other characters, and still a waste of a Bonus Action on a Grave Cleric. Just heal them. :wink:

[Mercurias]

Can we talk about Death Cleric for a second?

(insert awesome-looking build here)

So why is Death Cleric rated Red? And should it be?

My main thought when I look at a Death Cleric is that it definitely seems to be a job designed to fight against players, and given its original description as a subclass designed for DMPC Villains, that design makes more sense.

I really like how you've converted it from a striker character to a role that works well from range. It's extremely cool.

I got a little inspired by it and tossed together a less powerful version that I'd probably enjoy playing more due to my personal tendencies, using Custom Lineage to make a more sticky melee character that uses Primal Savagery and Thorn Whip to drop Channel Divinity impacts and make use of Spirit Guardians. I liked the idea of a cleric with a haori over their armor, one sleeve left long enough to cover the casting hand so that people couldn't tell if a thorny whip or a claw would be whipping out from under the sleeve to carve into someone.

[CMCC]

Trickery at 10.

[Frogreaver]

My take on Death Domain

The necromancy cantrip boost is nice but the channel divinity is the real highlight. I find when it comes to overall subclass ratings that channel divinities tend to be one of the most underrated abilities. With that in mind let's dig in to Touch of Death.

Touch of Death requires a melee hit. It triggers off your Attack Action, Inflict Wounds, Spiritual Weapon, Vampiric Touch. Outside the Cleric list there's also cantrips like booming blade. Out of these options Spiritual Weapon is the real standout. You'd be using Spiritual Weapon regardless of the channel divinity.

However, level 2 slots for Spiritual Weapon aren't generally enough to rely on to proc all of your channel divinity uses. You only have 3 slots. That means you can cast 1 spiritual weapon per short rest (assuming 2 short rests). Using realistic assumptions, (ex: bonus action competition from healing word, not being able to cast it on round 1 due to casting a concentration spell, current target dies and others are out of range) you are probably only getting 3-4 attacks with a spiritual weapon cast. Assuming a 55% chance to hit that's 57.5% @ 3 attacks and 75.9% @ 4 attacks to use your 2 channel divinities per short rest @ level 6 on that single cast of spiritual weapon (single cast due to spreading out your 3 level 2 slots over 2 short rests).

To make it simple, the Death cleric channel divinity requires some serious tradeoffs to really make function at full capacity. You either have to trade some cantrip casts for inferior attack actions, find a way to increase accuracy (bless, find familiar for advantage), or dedicate more level 3+ spell slots to spiritual weapon (generally is a poor use of that level of slot).

That said, it's arguable that the best case is to just not worry about whether it functions at full capacity. Yes, you may be leaving a bit of damage on the whiteroom table by not doing so, but there are factors in play that will help mitigate that. Magic weapons, allies granting advantage or bless, etc.

I don't think Death Domain deserves the same red color as War. I'd say it's much closer to tempest in power than it is to war.

All this does have me wondering about a Paladin 6/Death Cleric multiclass though.

[RogueJK]

All this does have me wondering about a Paladin 6/Death Cleric multiclass though.

That'd be tough to pull off, needing STR/CON/WIS/CHA.

Perhaps a Conquest Paladin/Death Cleric with just a 13ish WIS, relying on Spiritual Weapon from Paladin so it's CHA-based, and simply loading up on non-WIS-dependent Cleric spells.

Or the old standby Hexblade 1/Paladin 6/Death Cleric X with just a 13ish STR.

Or maybe a VHuman/CLineage Paladin 6/Death Cleric X starting with the Magic Initiate Druid feat at Level 1 for Shillelagh, and just a 13ish STR.

[LudicSavant]

Two whacks with a Spiritual Weapon per short rest will use up your Death Cleric Channel Divinities from L6-L17, and stuff like Inflict Wounds can help out. By the time you're 18, well, you've got plenty of options.

But if you want more melee attacks to append Channel Divinities to, you can grab a melee attack cantrip as a side benefit of Aberrant Dragonmark (the main benefit is giving you a reaction spell like Shield on a short rest cooldown, and a +1 Con). You could even take Magic Initiate, if you want Primal Savagery or Thorn Whip (which, yes, counts as a melee attack) + Absorb Elements. The GGtR backgrounds are an option to give attack cantrips, too.

These options give the benefit of making it easy to land 2 CDs on turn 1 (same turn you cast SW) for significant burst damage. You can even do a wombo combo like precast spirit guardians and open up a fight with Advantage Thorn Whip + Channel Divinity -> pull into Spirit Guardians -> Spiritual Weapon + Channel Divinity -> Spirit Guardians activates when enemy gets their turn.

As for multiclassing, I have used it to augment martials in the past, like taking it after Eldritch Knight 11 or 12 to scale up their caster levels faster, while also getting them that smite-like benefit.

[RogueJK]

But if you want more melee attacks to append Channel Divinities to, you can grab a melee attack cantrip as a side benefit of Aberrant Dragonmark (the main benefit is giving you a reaction spell like Shield on a short rest cooldown, and a +1 Con). You could even take Magic Initiate, if you want Primal Savagery or Thorn Whip (which, yes, counts as a melee attack) + Absorb Elements. The GGtR backgrounds are an option to give attack cantrips, too.

In addition, a couple of the reworked races in MotM have access to a racial melee cantrip that can be WIS-based. Such as a Draconic Sorcery Kobold or Air Genasi Death Cleric with Shocking Grasp.

The Wood Elf Magic feat can also get a Wood Elf Death Cleric a WIS-based melee cantrip from the Druid list like Thorn Whip (and also grants you Longstrider and Pass Without Trace as spells known). That could be a fun character... A skulking Wood Elf cleric of the nature god of death and decay. Sort of a darker and less overtly fungal Spore Druid.

[Frogreaver]

That'd be tough to pull off, needing STR/CON/WIS/CHA.

Perhaps a Conquest Paladin/Death Cleric with just a 13ish WIS, relying on Spiritual Weapon from Paladin so it's CHA-based, and simply loading up on non-WIS-dependent Cleric spells.

Or the old standby Hexblade 1/Paladin 6/Death Cleric X with just a 13ish STR.

Or maybe a VHuman/CLineage Paladin 6/Death Cleric X starting with the Magic Initiate Druid feat at Level 1 for Shillelagh, and just a 13ish STR.

While I'm sure we could eventually come up with better, starting out variant human with resilient (con) and having final level 1 stats 16 str, 14 con, 14 wis, 14 cha seems solid to me. Focus on Strength since this would be a more damage focused build and I think it works out fine.

By level 12 you would have 5th level slots. 2x Channel Divinities per short rest that do 17 damage each (nearly the same smite damage as a 3rd level smite).

You can use the channel divinities and smites on the same attack. Using a level 4 slot and your channel divinity at the same time you can have a single hit do over 50 damage on average. IMO, that's impressive.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'm realizing of that on the 2 occasions I picked a Cleric to play in 5e I didn't weight all of the abilities equally in terms of mechanics. Some got full value, some part, and some were not weighted at all.

Here's my rationale:

17th level abilities: No weight. I think 2 of our campaigns have gotten to 16th level, and I've probably not even read the highest abilities on many of the subclasses.

8th level ability: No weight. We'd already houseruled you could pick cantrip or weapon attack to add a bonus to pre Tasha's.

Spellcasting: Only really weighting excellent or gamechanging spells like Fireball or Pass Without Trace. The difference between a poor list and a list with fairly good spells is almost moot. While you do prepare a daily list, so some niche spells can help, your core list contains enough solid choices to cover a regular adventuring day. Bless, Healing Word, Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, and a selection of healing spells get you off and running.

Channel Divinity: This is one that is campaign dependent. If you know that there will be lots of undead then the turn ability will almost always be better than any other option. You can turn a deadly encounter into a very manageable one; in CoS our Cleric saved his CD exclusively for turning up to level 5, and even after level 6 made sure he had at least one CD ready to turn. If there aren't a bunch of undead around then the quality of the other option is very important.

Heavy Armor: Depends on the group. When my group leans into stealth, Heavy Armor is often a pain in the butt; you're faced with the option of lagging back of the group or gearing down to Breastplate without the benefit of dex. If the group contains a few Heavy Armor users then it has value.

Other 1st level and 6th level abilities: These are the only abilities I'd weight at 100% every time when evaluating a Cleric subclass.

So that's it; despite a long list of differences between subclasses, a lot of what's there doesn't really rate with me or is somewhat dependent on the group or setting as to whether it matters much mechanically. The 1st (not armor) and 6th level abilities are the only ones that I'm fully rating every time.

When I read ratings for subclasses it's noticeable that some folks are prioritizing abilities differently, so how about you guys? What's at the top of the list?

[CMCC]

Trickery at 10.

Folks. Trickery at 10. It’s the best of the non-broken subclasses. By quite a bit.

[Evaar]

Folks. Trickery at 10. It’s the best of the non-broken subclasses. By quite a bit.

I think it's cool to provide reasoning to back up assertions.

[sambojin]

Trickery domain really isn't bad. The lvl1 feature is unlimited uses, so someone in the party always has stealth advantage. Plus, Tasha's "give me a free spell slot" CD helps a bit too, for when you're not playing with duplicates.

The channel divinity can give +free advantage for your melee attacks, or +vision, or +free "cast *any* spell from the duplicate's location". This is pretty big. There's lots of cleric spells that could use some range or positioning. Even just basic cleric'ing, having places to cast things from is huge. Or just for Healing Word'ing while you're busy SG/SW'ing. Or anything. If it's not a surprise encounter, there's often a round worth of notice that combat will happen, so invoke duplicity immediately. It's really handy to do so.

And you have SO MANY good non-cleric spells on your list of auto-prepped domain spells. Disguise Self, Mirror Image, Pass without Trace, Dimension Door, Dominate Person, Modify Memory. These are all very good spells. +Stealth, +defense, +movement, +mind control. You get a tonne of them.

And at lvl6 you can use your CD for doing mini-invis pops, just like a firbolg, but slightly better (it takes an action, but it lasts until the end of your next turn, not the beginning of it. So cast next turn happily to break your own invis if needed).


It's just a really tight, well rounded package, that gives you heaps of stuff to do, without being OP. I can sorta see why it's "middle of the bunch, but not bad or super-high ranking-wise", because clerics are averagely ok'ish-good anyway. Seems like a pretty fair rating really.

[LudicSavant]

The channel divinity can give +free advantage for your melee attacks, or +vision, or +free "cast *any* spell from the duplicate's location". This is pretty big. There's lots of cleric spells that could use some range or positioning. Even just basic cleric'ing, having places to cast things from is huge. Or just for Healing Word'ing while you're busy SG/SW'ing.

You can't use the Channel Divinity while SG/SWing, because it takes Concentration.

Also, it doesn't give +vision -- the illusion has no senses at all.