What kind of cleric would my party need so we don't make it a nightmare for the dm?

[Pikashell]

Hello, everybody! In a month or so I'll be playing in a new campaign that will be dm-ed by one of my current players. So far we have a chronurgy wizard and a champion fighter. I have decided to play a cleric but I can't pick between the life domain and the arcana domain. Originally, I was going to play a frontliner but the fighter decided that making his AC a million was a better idea. I tried to tell him that min maxing for ac isn't cool for the dm to balance, especially for a new one and that 2 dudes in heavy armor in the party might be a bit too much. However he refuses to listen to me and the future dm and I think it might be better if I play a cleric that doesn't have that high AC like the arcana cleric for example. What is your opinion?

[Gtdead]

I'm not sure why you believe that starting with 19 AC is a difficult thing to balance. Save for half, magic missiles, swarms of weak enemies (increased chance for a crit) can all counter a character with high AC and low damage. And he can also add a couple of ranged characters to attack the wizard.

I don't think that your choice of cleric will affect the early game much. Cleric has a very strong chassis, so getting a few more tools won't change the fact that he has access to spells like guiding bolt, bless, protect from good and evil, sanctuary, healing word etc.

I'm also not sure what would be more difficult for a new DM to counter, extra healing and 1 extra AC or spellbreaker. I consider arcana the strongest (and more fun) option, so since you identify increased AC as a problem, you have two good reasons to go for it and it will give a buffer period to your DM to get comfortable with creating encounters, since you get spellbreaker at lvl 6.

[Eldariel]

Most Clerics have similar AC with Forge Cleric as the exception (3 points higher than e.g. Arcana or Life Cleric on level 6). It happens to outstrip Fighter without magic armor too. So if you play any Cleric not named Forge Cleric you'll be just fine. Though I think your thinking is upside down: having high durability frontline is the opposite of an issue. It means the DM doesn't have to worry that much about the party randomly dying for no reason. It makes their job easier. It generally helps to have some redundancy in the frontline; with only one frontliner they're liable to get focused down real hard. The Arcana Cleric would indeed be a great secondary frontliner (if you use SCAGtrips you can be quite strong in melee and you'll scale hard on level 8), which would be nice-to-have for the party. It would also give you a lot of good support magic, which you'll be missing.

The party has a superstrong controller in the Chronurgist and your run-of-the-mill meatshield in the Champion so you do want some recovery powers. To that end, Cleric is a great call though of course there's something to be said for Druid and Bard as well. But Cleric can cover all statuses and is a fairly solid character for picking allies up. Add to that good buffs and some solid offensive casting and it's probably a fine call. There's nothing wrong with Life Cleric either but I do prefer Arcana generally since Life mostly excels with off-list spells like Goodberry, Aura of Vitality and Healing Spirit.'


To reiterate: party durability makes the DM's job easier. Highly volatile parties are a nightmare to DM since it's such a delicate balancing act and the party will probably die eventually to a misstep. Meanwhile a party with all-around solid defensive tools in addition to good offense will let the DM worry less about accidentally killing the party. So high AC is the opposite of a problem. Simple Kobolds will still land hits on that 21 AC Fighter fairly often thanks to Pack Tactics and +4 for instance. And that's before we talk about the enemies simply using spells or abilities (a band of Orcs might have a hard time hitting a 23 AC fellow but together they will probably succeed in pushing him prone and grappling him and then beating him senseless).

[Unoriginal]

As said by the others, high AC PCs don't make things harder to DM, usually. I can't think of a situation where a DM would have an hard time because the party has high AC, given that bounded accuracy also applies for NPCs-against-PCs rolls. Unless if the DM was just trying to insta-kill the PCs with attacks.

I mean if anything the Chronurgy Wizard is more likely to cause issue with a new DM. And by more likely I mean "there is a chance", as opposed to the AC thing where it's more "there is no chance in usually circumstances".


Would you mind explaining what you meant a bit more, OP?

[Pikashell]

As said by the others, high AC PCs don't make things harder to DM, usually. I can't think of a situation where a DM would have an hard time because the party has high AC, given that bounded accuracy also applies for NPCs-against-PCs rolls. Unless if the DM was just trying to insta-kill the PCs with attacks.

I mean if anything the Chronurgy Wizard is more likely to cause issue with a new DM. And by more likely I mean "there is a chance", as opposed to the AC thing where it's more "there is no chance in usually circumstances".


Would you mind explaining what you meant a bit more, OP?

I thought that the high ac might be difficult for the new dm, because when I was starting I didn't really know how to make fun and balanced encounters (the party all had ac over 16). Since I'm still not that good at doing that, I don't think I have any useful advice for the new dm. And I thought making my character have lower ac would be a good idea but I wasn't sure. So I turned to the giantitp forum. Does that explain it better?

[Miele]

I thought that the high ac might be difficult for the new dm, because when I was starting I didn't really know how to make fun and balanced encounters (the party all had ac over 16). Since I'm still not that good at doing that, I don't think I have any useful advice for the new dm. And I thought making my character have lower ac would be a good idea but I wasn't sure. So I turned to the giantitp forum. Does that explain it better?

Generally speaking, using Xgte tables for encounters creations helps DMs a lot, old and new, from there using a healthy mix of vs.AC and ST offense, helps crippling the party a bit, without being a one-trick pony encounter and provides a varied challenge. Players at the table may not all have massive experience, but those that do can offer advice to the new DM.

[Dork_Forge]

The biggest thing is to just let the DM know that if high ACs are becoming a problem, they can mitigate it by targeting save or using enemies that can leverage advantage like Kobolds and Wolves. If he finds that standard attacks are missing too often for things to feel fun, then he can always drop a +1 or +2 into the monsters to hit from time to time to keep things fresh. One thing they should really avoid doing is compensating for less hits with more damage, since that can seriously backfire on a monster crit (this wouldn't be a problem if you were a Life Cleric though). Hope that helps!

[Eldariel]

I thought that the high ac might be difficult for the new dm, because when I was starting I didn't really know how to make fun and balanced encounters (the party all had ac over 16). Since I'm still not that good at doing that, I don't think I have any useful advice for the new dm. And I thought making my character have lower ac would be a good idea but I wasn't sure. So I turned to the giantitp forum. Does that explain it better?

The AC you get is pretty starkly limited in this edition. On level 1 you can get:
- 16 AC from Chain Mail (13 Str, stealth penalty)
- 16 AC from Scale Mail (14 Dex, stealth penalty)
- 15 AC from Chain Shirt (14 Dex)
- 15 AC from Studded Leather (16 Dex)
- 16 AC from Mage Armor (16 Dex)

- 17-18 with a Shield (at the cost of one hand; means you can't use some of the more powerful weapons in the game and you can't wield a weapon and cast with somatics at the same time)

- 18-19 Fighting Style/Forge +1 armor/similars.


This caps you at 19 AC, which given that basically no enemy has under +4 to hit means you'll be hit on a 14 or higher. Which means even a lowly Goblin hits you on 30% of its attacks or about every third attack. Now, it's possible to get AC higher than this momentarily: Shield of Faith grants +2 to AC for instance pushing you up to 21. But that uses up Concentration and a spell slot (both sparse resources) and means you aren't using offensive spells that could've made the enemies fall down. At that point every hit runs the risk of breaking your Concentration on the spell (enemy still has 20% chance of hitting and 5% chance of that is a crit) where you lose the spell. Shield-spell can block an individual attack or attacks for one turn but especially for enemies with ranged weapons, they can just hit someone else while waiting for the spell to expire.

And that's before we get to enemies attacking you with Advantage (by knocking you prone or having Pack Tactics or similars; Kobolds and Wolves are two typical low level examples) where they have a 51% chance of hitting AC 19 or 36% chance of hitting AC 21. So AC is just an effective HP increase and on a bad day it'll feel like it does nothing. Now, once the characters get lots of cash they can upgrade Splint Mail (20 AC cap) and later to Half-Plate (also 20 AC cap) and Fullplate (21 AC cap). But even there those same CR 1/4 enemies still have that 20%-36% chance of hitting you unless you burn resources on a short duration spell.


And remember that enemy can ignore the guy who spends all their spells and resources on AC if other enemies are easier targets. Targets with very high AC typically get one Opportunity Attack if a melee walks past them or not even that if a ranged guy shoots at their allies in the backline. So overfocus on AC without minding your offense will lead to a "turtle" who is hard to kill, yes, but one the enemy can save for last while taking out the high priority lower defense targets.

This is why single-minded focus on AC is rarely a bad idea; it's not that the enemy couldn't hit you, it's that the enemy isn't incentivised to hit you over the other targets. To properly make use of very high AC you need enough threat to make enemies focus you (some powerful offensive magic, particularly one with Concentration, is often a good beacon to make enemies focus you for instance).

The system is built so that it's very hard to get off the d20 on attacks even from the weakest of enemies. This is the whole point of bounded accuracy. As such, the system is built so that a focus on AC is viable (and surprisingly powerful) but it doesn't break anything.


Like I said, it's almost on the contrary; the DM doesn't have to worry about PC survivability as much when they have high durability characters with good AC and redundant defensive options in addition to a decent offense. It's a bigger problem when the party is superdefensive with little offense (they'll never kill anything and thus even simple encounters will wear down their resources something severe) or superoffensive (they'll annihilate most encounters but when things go wrong they have little in terms of fallback options and thus a simple inopportune Fireball or dragon breath weapon may kill them).

A nicely balanced party means the DM can expect that the party doesn't die to being slightly unlucky and doesn't completely destroy average encounters either. This means it's easy to present them with a challenge without making death all that likely which is kinda the sweet spot where you want to spend most of the game (of course, occasionally it's nice to just completely stomp weaker opposition and sometimes it's nice to have that life-or-death battle against an immensely powerful opponent but both get old if they're too frequent and a balanced party is generally one best suited for keeping both extremes special). So...easiest to DM if the party has solid defense and solid offense.

[KorvinStarmast]

Go life cleric or arcana cleric; either is fine. Life has very nice domain spells; arcana gives you a little more flexibility with cantrips and Magic Weapon helps you help your Fighter hit things that are resistant/immune to stuff.

My recommendation? Arcana. The arcane banishment is situationally quite nice.

Why Life Cleric? In a small party your PCs will all tend to get hit more often. The Channel Divinity feature is handy for getting you all up to 1/2 after a tough fight. (There are fewer targets for your enemies to choose from, so more chances to get hit).

[Frogreaver]

Hello, everybody! In a month or so I'll be playing in a new campaign that will be dm-ed by one of my current players. So far we have a chronurgy wizard and a champion fighter. I have decided to play a cleric but I can't pick between the life domain and the arcana domain. Originally, I was going to play a frontliner but the fighter decided that making his AC a million was a better idea. I tried to tell him that min maxing for ac isn't cool for the dm to balance, especially for a new one and that 2 dudes in heavy armor in the party might be a bit too much. However he refuses to listen to me and the future dm and I think it might be better if I play a cleric that doesn't have that high AC like the arcana cleric for example. What is your opinion?

A single classed Champion cannot get enough AC to burden a DM unless he's handed AC boosting items out like candy.

To that end, a cleric in general and especially a life cleric will be more challenging for the DM to handle than the champion - not because of the AC, but because the super healing.

[Eldariel]

A single classed Champion cannot get enough AC to burden a DM unless he's handed AC boosting items out like candy.

To that end, a cleric in general and especially a life cleric will be more challenging for the DM to handle than the champion - not because of the AC, but because the super healing.

I dunno if boosted healing is that special: I'd say there are Clerics harder to handle than Life Cleric (though the Channel Divine is nice). It still doesn't keep pace with damage enemies can inflict and they're still sharply restricted in slots; it's not like pre-errata Healing Spirit or even Life Goodberry. It just makes healing actions something you might actually be well-advised to use in combat to do things other than pick allies up (though it's still not a very effective use of your action; Guiding Bolt does 4d6 (14) at about 66% chance of hitting (an average of 8,4) granting Advantage on the next attack while at it (an ally hitting for 1d8+3 without Advantage vs. with Advantage vs. AC 15 goes from 55% to 84% with Advantage so it amounts to 4,125 vs. 6,3 or 2,175 extra damage at 66% rate or 1,4355 effective damage) to while Life Cure Wounds still only heals 1d8+3+3 = 10,4 so at total their offensive/defensive contributions are about equal but the Guiding Bolt contributes to the enemy dying and thus minimises future damage to you while Life Cure Wounds means you'll need to use even more resources to accomplish the same goal even if you don't get downed. Healing Word is of course more slot efficient but it's not a godlike option either.

As such, Life doesn't really give DM problems; it just gives PCs another way to take actions in combat and makes out of combat recovery more efficient. This changes if you combine Druid and Life Cleric instead and play by Sage Advice, since Druid has spells that combine insanely well with the Life bonus making attrition pretty much a joke. But just plain Life Cleric is just reasonably able to use healing spells in combat without it being a horrible waste of actions and spell slots (though there are often still better options).


As such, I don't see Life Cleric really being hard to handle on DM. On the contrary, it's one of the most-vulnerable-to-attrition Clerics due to the amount of slots it generally burns if combat healing which instead makes the life of the DM easier.

EDIT: I'm also a bit confused by the statement that the Domain spells for Life Cleric are good. It has spells you never wanna cast like Cure Wounds, Beacon of Hope and Mass Cure Wounds and all of the spells are on the Cleric list so it doesn't open up anything new. If anything, I think it's the worst domain list in the game. The power of domains is opening up stuff Clerics don't normally get (Arcana for example gets Arcane Eye as an immensely powerful spell that's normally Wizard-exclusive) and Life just doesn't do that. It just means you get to prepare few more Cleric spells, towards the bottom of the barrel which are rarely worth casting if you have Spirit Guardians already.

[Frogreaver]

I dunno if boosted healing is that special: I'd say there are Clerics harder to handle than Life Cleric (though the Channel Divine is nice). It still doesn't keep pace with damage enemies can inflict and they're still sharply restricted in slots; it's not like pre-errata Healing Spirit or even Life Goodberry. It just makes healing actions something you might actually be well-advised to use in combat to do things other than pick allies up (though it's still not a very effective use of your action;

Curious if you've ever been a party with a life cleric and had the life cleric player change PC's mid campaign? The difference in encounter difficulty is noticeable.

Guiding Bolt does 4d6 (14) at about 66% chance of hitting (an average of 8,4) granting Advantage on the next attack while at it (an ally hitting for 1d8+3 without Advantage vs. with Advantage vs. AC 15 goes from 55% to 84% with Advantage so it amounts to 4,125 vs. 6,3 or 2,175 extra damage at 66% rate or 1,4355 effective damage) to while Life Cure Wounds still only heals 1d8+3+3 = 10,4 so at total their offensive/defensive contributions are about equal but the Guiding Bolt contributes to the enemy dying and thus minimises future damage to you while Life Cure Wounds means you'll need to use even more resources to accomplish the same goal even if you don't get downed. Healing Word is of course more slot efficient but it's not a godlike option either.

I just love these faulty comparisons...
1. You give 55% chance to hit with weapon but a 66% chance to hit with guiding bolt. They both should have the same chance to hit. The actual computed DPR should be more like 13.7. Not far off but still.
2. You can't compare hp healed and DPR and reach any kind of accurate assessment. Healing 10.5 hp will prevent 21 DPR worth of damage when an enemy has a 50% chance to hit you. 21 > 13.7

When facing multiple enemies you can sometimes prevent more damage by killing the first early and thus speeding up the sequence of enemies dying. Of course the reverse there can also occur when the enemies down one of your PC's, and that's even worse in a 3 person party as it can impact action economy to a greater degree than in a larger party.

As such, Life doesn't really give DM problems; it just gives PCs another way to take actions in combat and makes out of combat recovery more efficient. This changes if you combine Druid and Life Cleric instead and play by Sage Advice, since Druid has spells that combine insanely well with the Life bonus making attrition pretty much a joke. But just plain Life Cleric is just reasonably able to use healing spells in combat without it being a horrible waste of actions and spell slots (though there are often still better options).

Fights don't tend to feel challenging when you are constantly near max or know you can be topped off almost immediately when on low hp. One of my favorite combo's with life cleric is to wait for ally to get low on hp and then use the channel divinity to heal them to half and follow it up with a healing word. For a good chunk of the game that would bring an ally up to 3/4's hp.

As such, I don't see Life Cleric really being hard to handle on DM. On the contrary, it's one of the most-vulnerable-to-attrition Clerics due to the amount of slots it generally burns if combat healing which instead makes the life of the DM easier.

Attrition is the easiest thing to handle. Rests are free. Wizards have tricks to help secure rests.

EDIT: I'm also a bit confused by the statement that the Domain spells for Life Cleric are good.

I didn't make it. Though I think it's easy to agree in one sense, they have many spells almost every cleric will always take on their domain list, except the problem is that the cleric list outside those spells is a little lacking, such that they will end up taking some inferior spells compared to clerics that get domain spells from other spell lists and then can use their prepared spells to just prepare these.

It has spells you never wanna cast like Cure Wounds, Beacon of Hope and Mass Cure Wounds and all of the spells are on the Cleric list so it doesn't open up anything new.

You never wanna cast cure wounds or mass cure wounds? WOW.

If anything, I think it's the worst domain list in the game. The power of domains is opening up stuff Clerics don't normally get (Arcana for example gets Arcane Eye as an immensely powerful spell that's normally Wizard-exclusive) and Life just doesn't do that. It just means you get to prepare few more Cleric spells, towards the bottom of the barrel which are rarely worth casting if you have Spirit Guardians already.

Believe it or not, you can build a very strong cleric that rarely ever uses spirit guardians.

[Eldariel]

Curious if you've ever been a party with a life cleric and had the life cleric player change PC's mid campaign? The difference in encounter difficulty is noticeable.

Once. I found myself wishing their actions would more often prevent enemy damage to actually topping off characters in combat. Of course, that's not to say they were playing optimally; they did use Cure Wounds for instance which is objectively just a terrible spell (Healing Word cures just 2 HP less and still leaves you with your Action; if you can't make 2 HP's worth of difference with your action, you aren't trying).

I just love these faulty comparisons...
1. You give 55% chance to hit with weapon but a 66% chance to hit with guiding bolt. They both should have the same chance to hit. The actual computed DPR should be more like 13.7. Not far off but still.
2. You can't compare hp healed and DPR and reach any kind of accurate assessment. Healing 10.5 hp will prevent 21 DPR worth of damage when an enemy has a 50% chance to hit you. 21 > 13.7

When facing multiple enemies you can sometimes prevent more damage by killing the first early and thus speeding up the sequence of enemies dying. Of course the reverse there can also occur when the enemies down one of your PC's, and that's even worse in a 3 person party as it can impact action economy to a greater degree than in a larger party.

Of course you pick up downed PCs, that's almost always the correct play. But yeah, dropping an enemy generally prevents more damage than you deal. And yeah, you're right, HP gained is of course affected by the attackers' chance of success.

Fights don't tend to feel challenging when you are constantly near max or know you can be topped off almost immediately when on low hp. One of my favorite combo's with life cleric is to wait for ally to get low on hp and then use the channel divinity to heal them to half and follow it up with a healing word. For a good chunk of the game that would bring an ally up to 3/4's hp.

Depends on how the DM runs their encounters. If you're constantly fighting medium and the occasional hard encounter, this may be true but if you face fewer deadlier encounters, being near full is rather a prerequisite for surviving than it is any kind of get-out-of-jail-for-free. If enemies have a chance to down a PC in one hit and you're facing numerous enemies, Action-based healing becomes highly resource intensive and rather always weaker than just trying to prevent enemies from taking you down.

Attrition is the easiest thing to handle. Rests are free. Wizards have tricks to help secure rests.

True but if you're on a clock they cost you things worse than losing encounters. Time always has to have a cost or the game doesn't really work.

I didn't make it. Though I think it's easy to agree in one sense, they have many spells almost every cleric will always take on their domain list, except the problem is that the cleric list outside those spells is a little lacking, such that they will end up taking some inferior spells compared to clerics that get domain spells from other spell lists and then can use their prepared spells to just prepare these.

You never wanna cast cure wounds or mass cure wounds? WOW.

Neither is worth the action generally. Healing Word and Mass Healing Word are usually better due to bonus action being far less costly than an action.

Believe it or not, you can build a very strong cleric that rarely ever uses spirit guardians.

While true, I've generally found that the same Cleric would be more useful to the party if they were casting Spirit Guardians instead though. There's a reason it's so often talked about; it's so good that the opportunity cost of not casting it is often prohibitive over using your Concentration and slot on something else (there are exceptions of course; Silence vs. casters for example can be worth more and vs. kiting flyers you need other tools first).

[Frogreaver]

Once. I found myself wishing their actions would more often prevent enemy damage to actually topping off characters in combat. Of course, that's not to say they were playing optimally; they did use Cure Wounds for instance which is objectively just a terrible spell (Healing Word cures just 2 HP less and still leaves you with your Action; if you can't make 2 HP's worth of difference with your action, you aren't trying).

A cantrip in tier 1 will do around 3-4 DPR. 2 extra hp of healing is pretty much equivalent to that from a numerical perspective. I'm not saying you should always use cure wounds, but sometimes its more important to heal the little extra, sometimes it's not. Having that versatility to decide is very useful. That and cure wounds scales better than healing word.

Of course you pick up downed PCs, that's almost always the correct play. But yeah, dropping an enemy generally prevents more damage than you deal. And yeah, you're right, HP gained is of course affected by the attackers' chance of success.

But if your not healing more damage than the enemy is doing then there's a good chance you'll get stuck in a constant cycle of healing the ally to pick him up from being down and having the enemies knock him down again before he can act. Getting out of that cycle with a level 2 cure wounds is perhaps more useful than anything else you could do in that circumstance.

Depends on how the DM runs their encounters. If you're constantly fighting medium and the occasional hard encounter, this may be true but if you face fewer deadlier encounters, being near full is rather a prerequisite for surviving than it is any kind of get-out-of-jail-for-free.

If you are really needing to be at full for each fight then I can think of no better ally than a life cleric to make that happen.

If enemies have a chance to down a PC in one hit and you're facing numerous enemies, Action-based healing becomes highly resource intensive and rather always weaker than just trying to prevent enemies from taking you down.

It's a rather large assumption that you will fight many enemies that can down an uninjured ally in 1 hit.

True but if you're on a clock they cost you things worse than losing encounters. Time always has to have a cost or the game doesn't really work.

If you are on a clock there's no one more efficient in using fewer slots to top their allies off than a life cleric.

Neither is worth the action generally. Healing Word and Mass Healing Word are usually better due to bonus action being far less costly than an action.

Discussed this above for tier 1. That wasn't the case. For tier 2 it will be, at least for level 1 slots. Looking at level 2 or 3 slots and it probably isn't.

While true, I've generally found that the same Cleric would be more useful to the party if they were casting Spirit Guardians instead though.

Spirit Guardians is the only way for a cleric to do decent damage, but that doesn't make it more useful than a level 1 bless followed by a timely mass healing word as needed.

There's a reason it's so often talked about; it's so good that the opportunity cost of not casting it is often prohibitive over using your Concentration and slot on something else (there are exceptions of course; Silence vs. casters for example can be worth more and vs. kiting flyers you need other tools first).

In most scenarios I've found a start of fight bless followed by a mass healing word IF needed was the better play for the life cleric. Spirit Guardians was great when we were being overrun by small low hp enemies that bum rushed us.

Of course a Spirit Guardians primary build also requires feats for concentration boosting. That's a big opportunity cost as the bless and heal playstyle frees you up from needing to focus on concentration boosts.

[JNAProductions]

Cure Wounds scales at 2 HP per slot level better than Healing Word, but your high level slots and action are generally going to be far more valuable than an extra couple of hit points.

Healing Word is almost always better-even with the cycle you mention. If you use Cure Wounds, you HAVE to heal more damage than the enemy can do to allow your ally an action (if the enemy comes after the Cleric but before the ally acts) or you are, at best, trading one for one (if that's not the case). Whereas with a Healing Word, you get one action (the former case) or two (the latter case) per enemy's turn. Also, Healing Word has range, which is helpful!

I will agree that Life Clerics are pretty damn good. But their domain spells are kinda lacking, notably because they include some usually subpar picks (Cure Wounds), some niche ones (Lesser Restoration-though when that's needed, that's really helpful! and Raise Dead, which isn't so much since you can just prepare it the day after) and notably lacks any non-Cleric spells.

I also find it a bit funny that you're poking at someone for making odd assumptions, given some of the assumptions you've made in previous threads.

[Eldariel]

A cantrip in tier 1 will do around 3-4 DPR. 2 extra hp of healing is pretty much equivalent to that from a numerical perspective. I'm not saying you should always use cure wounds, but sometimes its more important to heal the little extra, sometimes it's not. Having that versatility to decide is very useful. That and cure wounds scales better than healing word.

I think the opportunity cost of HAVING PREPARED and then casting Cure Wounds is often too high to bother. Often e.g. Dodge or Help action is going to do more for instance.

But if your not healing more damage than the enemy is doing then there's a good chance you'll get stuck in a constant cycle of healing the ally to pick him up from being down and having the enemies knock him down again before he can act. Getting out of that cycle with a level 2 cure wounds is perhaps more useful than anything else you could do in that circumstance.

That's only if the enemy turn is after you before your ally in initiative order. You can get around that with a readied action to heal the ally after the enemy's turn but of course, at that point Cure Wounds IS better than Healing Word since readying an action takes your action anyways. Anyways, I don't think the difference of a couple of HP is usually that impactful for surviving; come Tier 2, many enemies quickly begin hitting for 15+ damage a hit easily meaning a single hit will down the healed ally again, whether you use CW or HW making the difference in healing is actually completely irrelevant.

If you are really needing to be at full for each fight then I can think of no better ally than a life cleric to make that happen.

Druid is better. Life Cleric 1/Druid X is even better better. Goodberry is the name of the game for capping out allies; leftover slots for Goodberry at the end of the day leads to an absurd amount of healing off-turn on the next day. Healing Spirit is also pretty good even with the errata. Aura of Vitality is really the only competitor but level 3-4 Healing Spirit compares fairly reasonably with Aura of Vitality too. Cleric's best downtime healing is Prayer of Healing which is just not all that. No, the all-day survivability spells are on the Druid (or Bard/Paladin) lists. Life Cleric is second best at it though they're comparatively better at combat healing.

It's a rather large assumption that you will fight many enemies that can down an uninjured ally in 1 hit.

Enemies that throw a fistful of dice often do that on crits. Things like mummies, shadow demons, etc. All of those are tier 2 enemies that will rather effortlessly drop you in one round. Same goes for many Dragons and many NPC casters. In many campaigns I've played it's almost a rule that a player will get knocked 100-0 in one round at least once a session.

If you are on a clock there's no one more efficient in using fewer slots to top their allies off than a life cleric.

Again, Druid and Life 1/Druid over that.

Spirit Guardians is the only way for a cleric to do decent damage, but that doesn't make it more useful than a level 1 bless followed by a timely mass healing word as needed.

In most scenarios I've found a start of fight bless followed by a mass healing word IF needed was the better play for the life cleric. Spirit Guardians was great when we were being overrun by small low hp enemies that bum rushed us.

Of course a Spirit Guardians primary build also requires feats for concentration boosting. That's a big opportunity cost as the bless and heal playstyle frees you up from needing to focus on concentration boosts.

Bless is actually often not all that impactful unless you're making a lot of saves. Furthermore, you cast Bless and sit back healing you will paint a target on your face so you need Concentration buffing at least as much as a Spirit Guardians user if not more. Only below humanoid intellect encounters would not focus down the Cleric given a chance especially after they see you cast a spell. And ranged attacks are a thing. Generally I find Spirit Guardians will probably do more damage than Bless for most encounters against tough and easy enemies alike; though Bless is nice in case enemy is very save-happy again.

In short, I think it's a foolish Cleric indeed who doesn't boost their Concentration as no matter how they go about it they'll be taking heat (and Life Cleric in particular should be happy to, to make use of their level 6 feature: all the more reason to buff Concentration so that you can afford it). The biggest contributions a Cleric can make are all Concentration.

[Tanarii]

High AC is very powerful in Tier 1, but starts becoming less so in Tier 2. It will definitely make your life easier as a party. The DM just needs to know he shouldn't have to pull any punches, like he would have to at first if there was only one high AC char in party, or even none.

Edit: at first level, AC 16 is typical for high, 18 with shield. And AC 12-13 is typical for the lows (included Dex 15/leather wearers). It's usually a pretty big difference to start. But the gap closes for non-squishy Dex chars because they have strong incentive to put all ASIs into Dex first.

[Hellpyre]

I like cure wounds being available to me as an option anytime I play a Cleric. Not because it heals slightly more than healing word, but because it allows you to heal multiple allies by using different action types. If I have two allies downed in the same round, I'd often much rather use two 1st-level slots over one 3rd-level slot, especially in the earlier levels. Not to mention, sometimes you just wamt to pile on enough healing to prevent an ally from going unconsious at all (if they have an important concentration spell going, or when waking up prone is a death sentence). But mostly, the flexibility of having multiple action types of healing available in combat is why I like about it.

at that point Cure Wounds IS better than Healing Word since readying an action takes your action anyways

Also, you can't ready a bonus action spell at all, by RAW.



And regarding dumping all of your excess slots into goodberry: that seems like a course of action to take only if you can guarantee that nothing attacks you mid-rest. It is not something I would recommend if enemies capable of casting dispel magic pop up.

[Eldariel]

I like cure wounds being available to me as an option anytime I play a Cleric. Not because it heals slightly more than healing word, but because it allows you to heal multiple allies by using different action types. If I have two allies downed in the same round, I'd often much rather use two 1st-level slots over one 3rd-level slot, especially in the earlier levels. Not to mention, sometimes you just wamt to pile on enough healing to prevent an ally from going unconsious at all (if they have an important concentration spell going, or when waking up prone is a death sentence). But mostly, the flexibility of having multiple action types of healing available in combat is why I like about it.

I don't know if that's what you mean, but you certainly can't cast Cure Wounds and Healing Word in one round. The bonus action leveled spell rule.

[Hellpyre]

I don't know if that's what you mean, but you certainly can't cast Cure Wounds and Healing Word in one round. The bonus action leveled spell rule.

You are correct, I did totally blank on that when I brought up using two 1st-level slots. Although for the rest of it, I more meant combining any set of action or bonus action with a heal on the other action type. Drinking a potion and then healing an ally, for example, requires a regular action heal, whilst administering a potion and healing an ally requires a bonus action heal. Mostly I'm just advocating for flexibility in action types being valuable if you are planning on healing being a character focus. It's somewhat rare that your bonus action will dictate your turn more than your action, but it certainly comes up on occasion.

Yo-yo healing itself is also kind of an immersion issue for me anyways, but that's a personal gripe.

[Warpiglet-7]

Hello, everybody! In a month or so I'll be playing in a new campaign that will be dm-ed by one of my current players. So far we have a chronurgy wizard and a champion fighter. I have decided to play a cleric but I can't pick between the life domain and the arcana domain. Originally, I was going to play a frontliner but the fighter decided that making his AC a million was a better idea. I tried to tell him that min maxing for ac isn't cool for the dm to balance, especially for a new one and that 2 dudes in heavy armor in the party might be a bit too much. However he refuses to listen to me and the future dm and I think it might be better if I play a cleric that doesn't have that high AC like the arcana cleric for example. What is your opinion?

New DM tip: don’t tell a player they have to be less smart, strong or tough to hit if they are only using basic rules! A champion? Give the dude a bone! He is playing out a fantasy of a tough armored warrior—-let him!

Also introduce him to the perils of shoves grapples and save spells. It can be balanced between success and peril.

[Frogreaver]

I think the opportunity cost of HAVING PREPARED and then casting Cure Wounds is often too high to bother. Often e.g. Dodge or Help action is going to do more for instance.

Life Clerics always have it prepared...

That's only if the enemy turn is after you before your ally in initiative order.

This is true but does it actually minimize or negate my point?

You can get around that with a readied action to heal the ally after the enemy's turn but of course, at that point Cure Wounds IS better than Healing Word since readying an action takes your action anyways.

Readying actions is hard when you are concentrating on bless or spirit guardians.

Anyways, I don't think the difference of a couple of HP is usually that impactful for surviving; come Tier 2, many enemies quickly begin hitting for 15+ damage a hit easily meaning a single hit will down the healed ally again, whether you use CW or HW making the difference in healing is actually completely irrelevant.

Which is another reason to use the higher level slots for healing instead of the level 1 slots.

Druid is better. Life Cleric 1/Druid X is even better better. Goodberry is the name of the game for capping out allies; leftover slots for Goodberry at the end of the day leads to an absurd amount of healing off-turn on the next day.

1. You Presume you have slots left at the end of the day.
2. Even if you have slots left over You are most likely only going to have 3-4 which is 30-40 hp of goodberrys to carry over. The Preseve Life Channel Divinity quickly scales to offering more hp than that in a given day. By level 3 it can heal 15 hp per short rest. By level 6 it can heal 30 twice per short rest. The healing of a life cleric is primarily focused around their channel divinity. I think that's what most people miss.
3. Goodberrys are only good between combats.

Healing Spirit is also pretty good even with the errata.

It's okay. Prayer of healing on a life cleric is pretty comparable.

Aura of Vitality is really the only competitor

Aura of vitality is really only good for out of combat healing, and even then it's competing with Preserve Life + Prayer of Healing.

Cleric's best downtime healing is Prayer of Healing which is just not all that. No, the all-day survivability spells are on the Druid (or Bard/Paladin) lists. Life Cleric is second best at it though they're comparatively better at combat healing.

It's not the spells that make the Life Cleric soo good at healing. It's the channel divinity. The extra healing per spell is just icing on the cake.

Enemies that throw a fistful of dice often do that on crits. Things like mummies, shadow demons, etc. All of those are tier 2 enemies that will rather effortlessly drop you in one round.

LOL, a shadow demon is going to drop a PC in one round? Really? I mean a max damage roll on a crit is always a possiblity... But nah, shadow demon isn't taking down a typical tier 2 character in 1 hit.

Same goes for many Dragons and many NPC casters. In many campaigns I've played it's almost a rule that a player will get knocked 100-0 in one round at least once a session.

And you know whose best at bringing back up those players that happens to? A life Cleric.

Bless is actually often not all that impactful unless you're making a lot of saves.

Never seen Bless with a GWM or SS I take it?

Furthermore, you cast Bless and sit back healing you will paint a target on your face so you need Concentration buffing at least as much as a Spirit Guardians user if not more.

A cleric that is standing back, in heavy armor and in the worst case loses a level 1 spell if he loses concentration... he's less likely to be targeted and less likely for it to be a big deal if he does lose it. Whereas the cleric using spirit guardians using their higher level slots on the spell and being in melee range of nearly every enemy is going to be targeted more and care a heck of alot more about losing concentration.

Only below humanoid intellect encounters would not focus down the Cleric given a chance especially after they see you cast a spell. And ranged attacks are a thing. Generally I find Spirit Guardians will probably do more damage than Bless for most encounters against tough and easy enemies alike; though Bless is nice in case enemy is very save-happy again.

Spirit Guardians is doing more damage than bless. Hands down.
What you are failing to see in your bless vs Spirit Guardians heads up comparison is the level 3 slot that was left open something like mass healing word. That matters a great deal and is being flat out ignored.

The other part is the saves from bless are a really big deal defensively. They can keep the party from all kinds of bad status effects. Bad status effects great eat into the parties damage.

You are also making a HUGE assumption about how DM's will run enemies. Not all DM's run enemies like you do. Enemies aren't preprogrammed to aggro anyone that casts a heal spell.

In short, I think it's a foolish Cleric indeed who doesn't boost their Concentration as no matter how they go about it they'll be taking heat (and Life Cleric in particular should be happy to, to make use of their level 6 feature: all the more reason to buff Concentration so that you can afford it). The biggest contributions a Cleric can make are all Concentration.

Matters much less if a level 1 bless is your concentration focus. You can just recast it if it does go down.

[Hellpyre]

Matters much less if a level 1 bless is your concentration focus. You can just recast it if it does go down.

While I agree generally with the sentiment (if you would have lost concentration anyways, much better to lose fewer invested resources) it's still very much important from an action economy point of view to not have to keep recasting your concentration buff in combat. So I'd say it matters less, but not all that much less.

[Frogreaver]

While I agree generally with the sentiment (if you would have lost concentration anyways, much better to lose fewer invested resources) it's still very much important from an action economy point of view to not have to keep recasting your concentration buff in combat. So I'd say it matters less, but not all that much less.

ASI's are invested resources too.

How often is a back line heavy armored cleric going to lose concentration on a spell in the first place? How many times will he be targeted? How many of those targets will become hits? How many of those hits will lead to losing concentration. If this becomes too much of a problem how easy is it to let himself be a target of his bless?

To me the answer is clear, boosting concentration is a minor concern for a character focusing on bless as his concentration spell. It's not very likely you will lose concentration in the first place and it's not causing you a large resource drain when it does.

[opaopajr]

Life Cleric, one for the flexibility between both other PCs, and two for failsafe "undo" button so GM can throw stuff without stress of fine tuning encounters.

Just because you can wear heavier armor doesn't mean you must. Sometimes swapping to med for stealth is worth it for a job. And wearing heavy is solid to keep a strong front.

With some Cover (+2/+5 AC) and Dodge (atks Disadv, DEX saves with Adv) you can get into equivalent 20+ AC probability. But those can change round by round, and is good practice for GMing! Don't feel the need to softball the GM, your PC numbers of 3 is enough recalculating as is.

[Hellpyre]

ASI's are invested resources too.

How often is a back line heavy armored cleric going to lose concentration on a spell in the first place? How many times will he be targeted? How many of those targets will become hits? How many of those hits will lead to losing concentration. If this becomes too much of a problem how easy is it to let himself be a target of his bless?

To me the answer is clear, boosting concentration is a minor concern for a character focusing on bless as his concentration spell. It's not very likely you will lose concentration in the first place and it's not causing you a large resource drain when it does.

The answer to those questions is very heavily dependant of both DM and the caliber of enemies faced. If you are in the back, armored up and blessing allies while dealing small amounts of damage, I would expect most enemies to leave you alone as long as other PCs are hitting harder. It's the point where you start healing people and it becomes clear that you need to fall for the party to that intelligent and canny enemies will begin gunning for you. Once you get there, losing concentration is a significant possibility (how significant depending heavily on what defences against failing concentration you have). And when you do, it is a hit to your action economy. I have already agreed that the loss of resources is much lower if you use bless over (possibly, hell probably, upcasted) spirit guardians. But if you are still taking heat, which healing in combat should cause a reasonable enemy to apply, losing concentration is still significant because you need to either use an action re-establishing your concentration effect or contine to fight without the continous benefit of your concentration-effect-of-choice.

There's also other, less general, scenarios such as those where all members of the party are targetted equally, such as swarming the party will low-CR creatures, which can still subject the cleric to occasional damage through good rolls. But I don't want to go to far into specific cases because hopefully our theoretical cleric adapts to the situation they are in rather than casting a given spell every fight like a robot.

[LudicSavant]

Hello, everybody! In a month or so I'll be playing in a new campaign that will be dm-ed by one of my current players. So far we have a chronurgy wizard and a champion fighter. I have decided to play a cleric but I can't pick between the life domain and the arcana domain. Originally, I was going to play a frontliner but the fighter decided that making his AC a million was a better idea. I tried to tell him that min maxing for ac isn't cool for the dm to balance, especially for a new one and that 2 dudes in heavy armor in the party might be a bit too much. However he refuses to listen to me and the future dm and I think it might be better if I play a cleric that doesn't have that high AC like the arcana cleric for example. What is your opinion?

If the DM is struggling to challenge players with a half-decent AC, I think you would be far better off teaching the DM some of the basics of anti-high-AC tactics rather than telling players to dump their AC. Both in the short and long term, for everyone involved.