Question about Clerics

[Poyzo]

Hello!

I'm thinking about picking this game up, but had a question about Cleric mains. I'm used to playing MMOs with Clerics, so I'm wondering if I would be doing the same thing: healing, buffing and staying out of harms way. Can somebody explain how Clerics operate in BG3? Also, are there other healing/buffing classes that I should be aware of?

Thank you!

[101Asa]

They roughly work the same. Shadowheart (a cleric) has some horrific mace aim for some reason (when she hits it decent) so I'd say if you wanna be the background buff person it works. I'd just pick up a nice crossbow.

[PaloG]

They're not hardlocked at a support role, depending on the domain and spells you pick Clerics are capable of pretty good damage. Also they are easy to pick up Heavy armor proficiency with which makes them great frontliners. You can certainly build an all support backline cleric but you're not required to.

Other class that can build for support is Druid. And there are mods that add a Sorcerer subclass more focused on support as well.

Paladins and Wizards also have support capabilities but they're mostly offensive classes.

[Ackranome]

Most Clerics are pretty weak.

You have two real choices as a Cleric -- Light and Life.

Life = You are in the back healing and buffing everyone.

Light you get a special cantrip of "light" which you cast on yourself and you can be a little more tanky.

They is a feat called "War Caster" which is necessary as a Cleric because so many spells are concentration based.

Clerics are mostly about the radiance damage -- which is specifically for undead but works on most things.

Unfortunately Clerics lack ritual spells in this game besides two which are situational at best.

Main stat is Wisdom.

Worst Domain by far is Trickery.

The biggest problem with Clerics is their cool spells are all concentration heavy and you can only really do 1 concentration spell.

The Guidance Cantrip is easily over-run by the Guidance Ring which you can pick up super early in the game so, that cantrip falls out. The other problem is your concentration spells over-ride each other. So, when you look at your spells - you have to think "What spell do I need most of the time?" If the Cleric is your main talker - Guidance is really important in the story-mode of the game as it adds +1 to 4 to all your checks. It is a big deal if you don't want to constantly save-scum.

You do not actually need a healer in the game at all because you have short rest and long rest available 99% of the time.

[Ranpo]

Probably the best support/anti-undead class, 2nd best is probably spore druid. Clerics makes Cazador a wimp. Heals are for emergencies, basically wipe prevention.

[yoot]

Respec Shadowheart to wardomain asap. If you're strictly staying cleric to provide buffs and heals make sure you use sanctuary. I don't recommend pure clerics at all but it's your choice play it whatever way is going to be fun for you.

[Gracey Face]

Clerics are support classes. You can fudge them so they "kind of" do decent damage but it's absolutely not worth it, and some cleric subclasses (like war) are absolutely pointless.

The only exception is that they do not have to stay out of harms way as much as in other games. They come with medium armor and shield proficiency by default, most (if not all) subclasses (you have to pick a subclass) give them heavy armor proficiency, they have medium hitpoints per level.

You can throw them into combat if you like, and they do reasonably well as "off tanks", but at the same time while they can tank somewhat the way this game works is that you can only ever have 1 "concentration spell" (almost all spells that are worth the time to cast are concentration spells) active at any time, and every single time you take damage you have to roll to see if you lose concentration on this spell (and so lose the spell). This means while clerics can tank you generally don't want them to as even with your concentration checks maxed out you'll fail them prettymuch every round because of the sheer number of checks you have to roll.

[WeirdWizardDave]

Clerics are great in D&D, it doesn't really follow the mmo healer/tank/dps concept instead D&D aims to make each class capable across the board to some extent.

Its important to remember though unless you're playing multiplayer you'll be controlling all of your party members anyway.

[Econ]

The cleric companion you get in the game (Shadowheart) is one of the most well developed in terms of story, so for that reason, I would not be inclined to main one as I like her in my party most of the time.

She (and any cleric) is very useful in Act 2, as there is a lot of undead but falls off in Act 3 when the rest of the party are getting 2-3 attacks per round or very powerful spells. The spells I found most useful are Divine Guardians (kind of like the WoW paladin's consecration) plus summoning a weapon and potentially warding glyph, which is amazing for AOE effects, including sleep (but the spell competes with Divine Guardian, so I leave it to the mage).

Healing is not as big a deal in DnD as an MMO like WoW. The healing output just can't keep up with the damage output in DnD, whereas in WoW, a healer can keep a party of 5 up.

The buffing role of clerics seems less important in 5ed DnD than in earlier versions and Pathfinder: they have deliberately reduced the number of buffing spells.

Druids are an interesting alternative to clerics - they have healing but some more offensive spells and the shape shifting ability.

[Henfor]

Cleric exists as a main class anchored to spellcasting, the subclasses decide what you do with that ability.

BG3 has a bit of a different casting system from other games. Most big spells often put you in a status of 'concentration' and that locks you to upholding one spell at a time, this concentration can also be broken while taking damage so it's often a net positive making your cleric very tanky. It is not the same type of put down 5 overlapping buffs, run around and heal gameplay, but ONE spell can often target 3-4 characters where you then become the hivemind that needs to uphold your concentration to keep the buffs at play.

i.e a Life Cleric is pretty much the standard RPG version of a cleric. Defensive and supportive spells, AoE heals and built correctly can also act like a tank. You don't really want to stray far from the frontline in my experience as majority of your spells either are most potent at short range or have some AoE elements where you want to get all your allies inside the radius.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Econ:

Healing is not as big a deal in DnD as an MMO like WoW. The healing output just can't keep up with the damage output in DnD, whereas in WoW, a healer can keep a party of 5 up

That was only older editions. 5e healing can actually keep up and it's one of the best ways to use clerics. High Con Life domain cleric (healing focused for OP) and stick warding link (you take 50% of the damage instead of the teammate for the OP) on everyone. It's especially good in this game as all of the items you find that give you damage resistance apply to the damage you take through the warding link, as do any damage resistances you might have (from say the elixir of ultimate resistance) so you can potentially be taking no damage while giving your entire party functionally double health and turning all of your heal spells into double power.

[Calculus]

Originally posted by Ackranome:

Most Clerics are pretty weak.

You have two real choices as a Cleric -- Light and Life.

Life = You are in the back healing and buffing everyone.

Light you get a special cantrip of "light" which you cast on yourself and you can be a little more tanky.

They is a feat called "War Caster" which is necessary as a Cleric because so many spells are concentration based.

Clerics are mostly about the radiance damage -- which is specifically for undead but works on most things.

Unfortunately Clerics lack ritual spells in this game besides two which are situational at best.

Main stat is Wisdom.

Worst Domain by far is Trickery.

The biggest problem with Clerics is their cool spells are all concentration heavy and you can only really do 1 concentration spell.

The Guidance Cantrip is easily over-run by the Guidance Ring which you can pick up super early in the game so, that cantrip falls out. The other problem is your concentration spells over-ride each other. So, when you look at your spells - you have to think "What spell do I need most of the time?" If the Cleric is your main talker - Guidance is really important in the story-mode of the game as it adds +1 to 4 to all your checks. It is a big deal if you don't want to constantly save-scum.

You do not actually need a healer in the game at all because you have short rest and long rest available 99% of the time.

You didnt just say most clerics are weak... try combining str/wis war cleric with paladin, it hits like a truck

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Calculus:

Originally posted by Ackranome:

Most Clerics are pretty weak.

You have two real choices as a Cleric -- Light and Life.

Life = You are in the back healing and buffing everyone.

Light you get a special cantrip of "light" which you cast on yourself and you can be a little more tanky.

They is a feat called "War Caster" which is necessary as a Cleric because so many spells are concentration based.

Clerics are mostly about the radiance damage -- which is specifically for undead but works on most things.

Unfortunately Clerics lack ritual spells in this game besides two which are situational at best.

Main stat is Wisdom.

Worst Domain by far is Trickery.

The biggest problem with Clerics is their cool spells are all concentration heavy and you can only really do 1 concentration spell.

The Guidance Cantrip is easily over-run by the Guidance Ring which you can pick up super early in the game so, that cantrip falls out. The other problem is your concentration spells over-ride each other. So, when you look at your spells - you have to think "What spell do I need most of the time?" If the Cleric is your main talker - Guidance is really important in the story-mode of the game as it adds +1 to 4 to all your checks. It is a big deal if you don't want to constantly save-scum.

You do not actually need a healer in the game at all because you have short rest and long rest available 99% of the time.

You didnt just say most clerics are weak... try combining str/wis war cleric with paladin, it hits like a truck

That's paladin hitting like a truck though, and paladin just always hits like a truck. You can take cleric out of that and do just as well, or replace cleric with, say, warlock and do even better.

[Ackranome]

Originally posted by Calculus:

Originally posted by Ackranome:

Most Clerics are pretty weak.

You have two real choices as a Cleric -- Light and Life.

Life = You are in the back healing and buffing everyone.

Light you get a special cantrip of "light" which you cast on yourself and you can be a little more tanky.

They is a feat called "War Caster" which is necessary as a Cleric because so many spells are concentration based.

Clerics are mostly about the radiance damage -- which is specifically for undead but works on most things.

Unfortunately Clerics lack ritual spells in this game besides two which are situational at best.

Main stat is Wisdom.

Worst Domain by far is Trickery.

The biggest problem with Clerics is their cool spells are all concentration heavy and you can only really do 1 concentration spell.

The Guidance Cantrip is easily over-run by the Guidance Ring which you can pick up super early in the game so, that cantrip falls out. The other problem is your concentration spells over-ride each other. So, when you look at your spells - you have to think "What spell do I need most of the time?" If the Cleric is your main talker - Guidance is really important in the story-mode of the game as it adds +1 to 4 to all your checks. It is a big deal if you don't want to constantly save-scum.

You do not actually need a healer in the game at all because you have short rest and long rest available 99% of the time.

You didnt just say most clerics are weak... try combining str/wis war cleric with paladin, it hits like a truck

They are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke comparatively to other classes.

This is the main reason games like "WoW" were successful in implementing the concept of tank/healer/dps/cc/buffer.

Healers aren't just healers in WoW and their heals are insane - so much so they are difficult to kill 1v1. A fighter high on elixirs stomps the crap out of a cleric in this game and having a party excluding a cleric is more beneficial than including one.

[AsianGirlLover]

You can absolutely build them any way you wish, thanks to items and multiclassing.

If you opt to go pure cleric, you’ll still do great with the right build.

[Scheneighnay]

They're generally a support class yeah, but they're actually one of the tankier classes seeing as they can use medium armor and shields right off the bat.