6th level Cleric / Warlock Healer.

[Nosta]

I kinda want to try my hand at being a healer.
I've well known in my group for playing DPR characters in pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5 and I though it be fun to reverse that and play a HPR (Heal per Round) Character.

AND I Was wondering if a Cleric Specialty Life Cleric and a warlock celestial chain maybe would make a good healer?

How should I build this and how should I split the levels to start

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Healing comes in two versions: in-combat triage, and out of combat topping off.

In-combat triage is only used to pick someone up after they go down. If multiple people are taking 30 damage per hit, you're not going to keep up. If someone's at 15 and takes a hit for 30, they go down; healing them for 10 wouldn't have done any good. Once they're at 0, you hit them with a Healing Word or similar and they're back in the fight, regardless of how much you've healed them for. It doesn't matter if you healed them for 5, 10, 20, or 30 hp, one more hit from that giant is going to drop them again, but they get another round's worth of actions and the giant uses one of its attacks on them.

In-combat triage is basically only bonus actions, i.e. Healing Word or the Celestial Warlock's Healing Light or Aura of Vitality or similar. It doesn't matter how much it heals because you can't outpace the damage, you'll run out of spells before the opponents run out of attacks if you try to heal like you're playing WoW. If you're making a Celestial Warlock you want to stay single-classed to get as much out of Healing Light as possible. If you're playing a Cleric you don't want Celestial Warlock because it just delays your Cleric casting.

Out of combat healing comes in many forms. There's short resting and spending hit dice, which a Bard benefits via Song of Rest. Before the errata a conga line Healing Spirit was the way to go, as it could heal everyone in the party for 10d6 per cast, but it's since been severely nerfed. A Celestial Warlock can upcast Cure Wounds and then short rest to get the slots back. If most of the party is fairly hurt and low on short rest abilities the party short rests and spends hit dice, if not you spend spell slots to heal those that need it and you go to the next encounter. In most cases you don't want to be spending spell slots to heal people outside of combat.

Another part of healing is proactively preventing damage. Making your party take less damage, either by disrupting opponents' attacks (crowd controls, debuffs, protection or interception fighting style, etc.) or granting your allies temporary hp (Inspiring Leader feat, Heroism spell, Celestial Resilience feature, Eldritch Cannon feature, etc.) is far more efficient than healing.


Life Cleric isn't as good a healer as it looks, considering the above. Grave or Twilight Cleric is actually better, if you're sticking to Cleric. Life Cleric can be useful as a dip on a healer that uses spell slots and needs the armor/shield proficiency, I've been playing a Life Cleric 1/ Lore Bard with Aura of Vitality which heals 2d6+6 ten times when cast. However, a Celestial Warlock gets most of its triage healing out of Healing Light which Life Cleric doesn't benefit.

[Dork_Forge]

Healing comes in two versions: in-combat triage, and out of combat topping off.

In-combat triage is only used to pick someone up after they go down. If multiple people are taking 30 damage per hit, you're not going to keep up. If someone's at 15 and takes a hit for 30, they go down; healing them for 10 wouldn't have done any good. Once they're at 0, you hit them with a Healing Word or similar and they're back in the fight, regardless of how much you've healed them for. It doesn't matter if you healed them for 5, 10, 20, or 30 hp, one more hit from that giant is going to drop them again, but they get another round's worth of actions and the giant uses one of its attacks on them.

In-combat triage is basically only bonus actions, i.e. Healing Word or the Celestial Warlock's Healing Light or Aura of Vitality or similar. It doesn't matter how much it heals because you can't outpace the damage, you'll run out of spells before the opponents run out of attacks if you try to heal like you're playing WoW. If you're making a Celestial Warlock you want to stay single-classed to get as much out of Healing Light as possible. If you're playing a Cleric you don't want Celestial Warlock because it just delays your Cleric casting.

Out of combat healing comes in many forms. There's short resting and spending hit dice, which a Bard benefits via Song of Rest. Before the errata a conga line Healing Spirit was the way to go, as it could heal everyone in the party for 10d6 per cast, but it's since been severely nerfed. A Celestial Warlock can upcast Cure Wounds and then short rest to get the slots back. If most of the party is fairly hurt and low on short rest abilities the party short rests and spends hit dice, if not you spend spell slots to heal those that need it and you go to the next encounter. In most cases you don't want to be spending spell slots to heal people outside of combat.

Another part of healing is proactively preventing damage. Making your party take less damage, either by disrupting opponents' attacks (crowd controls, debuffs, protection or interception fighting style, etc.) or granting your allies temporary hp (Inspiring Leader feat, Heroism spell, Celestial Resilience feature, Eldritch Cannon feature, etc.) is far more efficient than healing.


Life Cleric isn't as good a healer as it looks, considering the above. Grave or Twilight Cleric is actually better, if you're sticking to Cleric. Life Cleric can be useful as a dip on a healer that uses spell slots and needs the armor/shield proficiency, I've been playing a Life Cleric 1/ Lore Bard with Aura of Vitality which heals 2d6+6 ten times when cast. However, a Celestial Warlock gets most of its triage healing out of Healing Light which Life Cleric doesn't benefit.

Hard disagree.

Besides the RP implications of purposely letting your allies begin to die before you adminster healing, this whole thing about non pop up healing being ineffective or a waste simply isn't true. You don't need to outpace the damage, not only are other PCs capable of mitigating damage/healing on their own, your only real objective is to slow the overall decrease in hp so that the monsters die first.

As for the OP: If you're going for a 6th level character then I'd personally recommend Life1/Celestial5 (for 3rd level Warlock slots) or Life2/Celestial4 (for the Channel Divinity). You'll be able to throw out a lot of healing over the course of the adventuring day, with invocations a lot of cantrips to support your utility and offense. With this split you'd want to prioritise Warlock, as that directly increases your pool of Healing Light dice (which can be used on the same turn you say, cast Cure Wounds).

I'd also recommend grabbing the Healer feat (probably with V.Human), it'd take a very difficult day (or a lot of bad luck) for you to run out of healing with this set up.

[Theodoxus]

I'd say it depends on your personal playstyle. I play Clerics more often than not, and only Life domain when I do. I've tried nearly every mutliclass combo (Cleric/Divine Soul, Cleric/Celestial, Cleric/Lore Bard, Cleric/DS/Celestial...)

You can definitely play the 'pop-up' style, in which case I recommend Life 1/Celestial x (doesn't really matter which you start with, as they provide the same HD and Saves...) This gives you 4 healing word, two on a short rest recharge, and 6 healing light charges on a long rest recharge. Definitely the most 'pop up' healing you'll get (although going 2/4 cleric/warlock nets you the same number of "abilities" (5 HW and 5 HL), you also get the Channel Divinity, letting you spread 10 points of healing around. If a good chunk of your party goes down to a well placed AOE, this is the best action you can do - but it's pretty circumstantial).

If instead, you're following Dork_Forge's recommendation, he's spot on with his assessment. My only caveat is if you know the party make up, it will help drive your answer. A Barbarian and/or Rogue will be doubling their effective HP (the Barbarian probably more reliably than the Rogue, depending on other factors the Rogue might be using their reaction for (like Commander's Strike ). So every point you heal back on them is effectively 2 HP. Likewise if you're using Warding Bond (which is quite powerful when used in conjunction with Blessed Healer (6th level Life ability). It increases the staying power of you and your bonded ally. In that case, I'd also recommend going straight Cleric.

Pre-Tasha's, I found for me, the most powerful healer was the Life/Lore combination. But now that Aura of Vitality is on the Cleric's spell list, there's really no reason to go Bard, unless you wanted to be a bit more blasty or have a few tricks (Song of Rest mentioned above) in your kit. And I heartily agree with grabbing the Healer feat. That's a massive boost to your healing that takes a lot of pressure off your spell slots.

So, the only other question I'd have for your consideration is why this specific multiclass? They don't really synergize particularly well, they're quite MAD (especially if you're not going dwarf for the lower strength score in heavy armor) and Patrons and Gods don't necessarily talk to each other nicely... (Completely DM dependent of course, so bully! if you've already worked that out )

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you want to do ongoing healing throughout a fight, the best way IMO is with temporary hp that refreshes every round, i.e. a Twilight Cleric using twilight sanctuary. The only thing that compares is an Artillerist Artificer using the protector mode of the eldritch cannon, which is better until higher level since it lasts an hour and can be used more often if you spend spell slots. Heroism can serve the same purpose, but it's considerably weaker and not on the default Cleric list.

If you have an Artillerist or someone casting Heroism in the party, they can handle the temp-hp-refreshing-every-round damage sponging and you can focus on actual healing. If you do want to proactively heal throughout a fight, you may as well ditch the warlock multiclass and stick to Aura of Vitality.

[Dork_Forge]

If you want to do ongoing healing throughout a fight, the best way IMO is with temporary hp that refreshes every round, i.e. a Twilight Cleric using twilight sanctuary. The only thing that compares is an Artillerist Artificer using the protector mode of the eldritch cannon, which is better until higher level since it lasts an hour and can be used more often if you spend spell slots. Heroism can serve the same purpose, but it's considerably weaker and not on the default Cleric list.

If you have an Artillerist or someone casting Heroism in the party, they can handle the temp-hp-refreshing-every-round damage sponging and you can focus on actual healing. If you do want to proactively heal throughout a fight, you may as well ditch the warlock multiclass and stick to Aura of Vitality.

Nitpick: Temp hp is not healing, it's damage mitigation. (I'd add in Glamour Bard to the list as well)

Are you saying that actual healing is only the pop up and top off methods you've previously listed?


Aura of Vitality is a nice spell, but is concentration, requires an action to set up, is 3rd level and only heals one character per turn. Proactive healing isn't necessarily like in video games where you're rushing to keep them close to full and healing every bit of damage, that is a much more difficult and largely redundant endeavour in 5e. Proactive healing is just topping off PCs as they hit certain thresholds or just took a big hit. 2d6+5 is nice, but it isn't a large amount of healing and requires already being set up (so you spend your first turn doing this and not damage, or risk losing concentration throughout the fight). It's a nice tool, but it's far from good enough to be the be all, end all of a proactive healing strategy.

What happens when you're out of 3rd level slots? At 6th level a straight Life Cleric can pull this for 3 encounters, not knowing going in if it'll be needed (larger risk of over healing/wasted resources). It even depends on the DM allowing the rule variant that grants the Cleric the spell (which actively takes away from the Paladin list).

[Chronic]

Healing in combat is very similar to damage mitigation when it's not to raise someone.

[stoutstien]

I kinda want to try my hand at being a healer.
I've well known in my group for playing DPR characters in pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5 and I though it be fun to reverse that and play a HPR (Heal per Round) Character.

AND I Was wondering if a Cleric Specialty Life Cleric and a warlock celestial chain maybe would make a good healer?

How should I build this and how should I split the levels to start

Building a good healer for a party is very dependent on that party's particular make up. Healing is basically broken down into two big categories of mitigation and recover. Those are both further broken down into:
mitigation- avoidance, reduction, diversion.
Recovery- healing and status removal.

The first level of life cleric is nice for the bonus proficiency it provides and the extra efficiency you have healing with spells. Not a lot of synergy with C warlock here due to healing light not being a spell. Same for grave cleric if you did want to go the yo-yo route.

If I was going to play a cleric/warlock I would just grab the 1st level in cleric and then go all warlock. Healing light is the bread and butter and the cleric dip provides more spells known and some personal protection.

[carrdrivesyou]

So, I played this exact build. I also took Magic Initiate to grab Goodberry (life cleric boosts them to 4 point heals). Here is my review:

1. In the low level, you can keep parties going for about 50% longer than normal without resting, until about 5th.

2. From 5th to 9th, you are going to have some sleight issues in keeping people topped off, but otherwise, not really losing out here.

3. After 9th level, you will see a SERIOUS drop in power, as single hits can mostly topple your tank. From here, it's all whack a mole healing.

Overall, if you take vampiric touch and tomb of levistus, you will be REALLY hard to put down for good, and your teammates will be neigh immortal, if easy to knock out. My group fought a full on lich in his own palace at 9th, and my character with this build just kept picking people back up. It was a long fight, but he had the stamina for it. Nobody was ever really worried about dying, and at the end of 10 rounds with a lich, I still had plenty of healing left, almost enough to go another round with the lich.

Your damage output will be dependent on you invocation list, and I highly recommend using the hex/agonizing blast route to stay up with the damage.