A healing focused Cleric.....seems too weak? This feels really off.

[Tentacule Un Seigneur]

Healing spells just don't seem to heal enough to be viable at all....

At level 5 now.......and facing foes that can hit twice for 12 damage....and my healing spell often doesn't even cover one of those strikes......what?

I remember playing a healing cleric in D&D years back......and maybe my memory is playing tricks.....but something feels really off about this....

[WeenerTuck813]

Originally posted by Tentacule Un Seigneur:

Healing spells just don't seem to heal enough to be viable at all....

At level 5 now.......and facing foes that can hit twice for 12 damage....and my healing spell often doesn't even cover one of those strikes......what?

I remember playing a healing cleric in D&D years back......and maybe my memory is playing tricks.....but something feels really off about this....

I play my clerics as healing/support. Let me help.

When you get to the grove at level 2 or 3, the FIRST 2 things you do…

1.) Buy/Steal the gloves off of Zevlor
2.) Buy/Steal the ring off Volo.

Gloves = anyone you heal gets Blade Ward x2 turns (resistance to Bludg/Slash/Pierce)

Ring = anyone you heal gets Bless x2 turns (Attacks/Saving throws get +1d4)

Those are literally your 2 most important items for the whole game (gloves get replaced but by the same gloves only they give you a free revivify spell - so basically same gloves).

Heal ONLY with Healing word, and mass healing word (bonus actions) to both heal ppl and 2 turn super buff them.

Spend your ACTION on:
1.) Bless
-Try to get Staff of Arcane Blessing in underdark.

2.) Guiding bolt
-Single target damage

3.) Spirit Guardians
-AoE damage

4.) Free-to-use attack
-Crossbow, Sacred Flame, etc.

5.) Turn Undead
-If applicable. Huge undead killer

6.) Whatever spell is applicable. Maybe Hold person.


This is how I play my cleric and she is a stone cold stud in combat. The Buffs/Heals she puts out are absolute game changers

[FunkyMonkey]

Originally posted by WeenerTuck813:

Originally posted by Tentacule Un Seigneur:

Healing spells just don't seem to heal enough to be viable at all....

At level 5 now.......and facing foes that can hit twice for 12 damage....and my healing spell often doesn't even cover one of those strikes......what?

I remember playing a healing cleric in D&D years back......and maybe my memory is playing tricks.....but something feels really off about this....

I play my clerics as healing/support. Let me help.

When you get to the grove at level 2 or 3, the FIRST 2 things you do…

1.) Buy/Steal the gloves off of Zevlor
2.) Buy/Steal the ring off Volo.

Gloves = anyone you heal gets Blade Ward x2 turns (resistance to Bludg/Slash/Pierce)

Ring = anyone you heal gets Bless x2 turns (Attacks/Saving throws get +1d4)

Those are literally your 2 most important items for the whole game (gloves get replaced but by the same gloves only they give you a free revivify spell - so basically same gloves).

Heal ONLY with Healing word, and mass healing word (bonus actions) to both heal ppl and 2 turn super buff them.

Spend your ACTION on:
1.) Bless
-Try to get Staff of Arcane Blessing in underdark.

2.) Guiding bolt
-Single target damage

3.) Spirit Guardians
-AoE damage

4.) Free-to-use attack
-Crossbow, Sacred Flame, etc.

5.) Turn Undead
-If applicable. Huge undead killer

6.) Whatever spell is applicable. Maybe Hold person.


This is how I play my cleric and she is a stone cold stud in combat. The Buffs/Heals she puts out are absolute game changers

Solid advice. Clerics are amazing. Not that this is the only way to play Clerics, of course, but following this, it's hard to go wrong.

[Reaver79]

Right items and they work just fine, once you maximize your heals, add bonus value to heal, heal your self on healing others, buff on heal and give temp hp on heal it all kinda adds up..

[Zaris]

The basic combat concept in D&D pc games is:
- summons as pawns for soaking enemy dmg (in old games 5-10 possible, now really really weakened in D&D5)
- high armor values on everyone (armor, AC rings / helmets / shields, spells like magic armor or passives like barb / monk)
- kill enemies faster (haste on warriors and upcasted AOE spells like fireball on group of enemies, in BG3 more difficult because to big open combat fields while the old games were more narrow or could be cheesed like letting a warrior run in with 50% fire resi ring, enemies gather around him -> fireball)

Cleric in the old versions was only there mostly for strong summons (elementals) and a handful attack, AC buffs for the group or in Pathfinder games for resist buffs and of course resurrection.

For BG3 the best use case of cleric is to buff bless on the group (5-20% attack bonus for melee) or even better with the unique bless staff from underdark tower (10-40% attack and spell hit chance for everyone). After that a light / thunder cleric can spam some AOE dmg spells as support. Spirit guardian is also nice if you manage to fummel the enemies on one spot and just walk through them.

[Agony_Aunt]

On the other hand, Bard with their Song of Healing is awesome. A 50% heal to the whole party (mimics a short rest) that can be used in combat.

[Comrade Pickles]

Your enemies can't deal damage if they're dead.

[Mokona]

Clerics in this game are supposed to focus on preventing damage, not healing it. How you go about that is up to you.

[nullpo]

Because healing in bg3 is bad, even if you grab life cleric. Cleric is actually a really great dps just like any other class, especially against undead and horde. Shadowheart as light cleric is basically my top DPS in act 2

[Sardorim]

Yeah, Cleric is extremely weak outside like 1 spell and vs Undead.

You're better off chugging healing pots than using any healing. Even then, Lay on Hands from Paladins is better.

[talemore]

In the old games cleric had resurrect and mind blank and early game potion donkey.

It had power word but they never worked because if you have (power word kill) power word you could just ask your opponent to kill itself.

[HidesHisFace]

Because DnD clerics are not healbots like in MMOs, simple as that. Especially in 5e healing is not stellar in most cases.
Sure, cleric can heal better than other classes, but it still isn't their primary function.

Generally - healing is a contingency, a backup in case something goes horribly wrong or if you need to keep on going and have no way to rest.
Usually it is better to prevent or mitigate damage, not heal it - prolonged engagement in which you simply trade blows is a losing strategy in most cases.
You don't have proper sustain option - even if you can outheal the damage, you are still going to run out of spells eventually.
Think of damage prevention as healing before damage is ever dealt, in a way.

Cleric's best utiliy lies in bolstering the allies with buffs, weakening enemies with debuffs and providing hilarious amounts of AoE if applicable.

[I'm A Distraction!]

Considering you can toss a potion and heal anywhere from 2-4 people if they're stepped together (AND give them bladeward with that potion, as well as any other 'on heal' effects you've got), technically a Fighter with three tosses (six with haste) would out heal anything... At the expense of your bank account. :P

Heal wise... Yeah. Mass healing word's useful for spot healing to get people up (or healing word just to get someone on their feet). Prayer of Healing out of combat's okay. The only major in combat heal I used after a while was Warden of Vitality irrc, which might be from 5e spells. One spell slot for a bonus action heal for the next ten rounds seems effective from a spell slot perspective.

I'd say your spell slots are better spent on control, like 3.5 clerics (which, yeah, healing could do a lot after a few levels in, but you were usually better to CC in combat and heal out of combat - preferably with a persisted mass lesser vigor :P ). But your CC tends to only have a 50/50 (at best) chance of working, and usually only lasts a turn or two. But when Command: Grovel works on a buss, you certainly feel awesome.

[Estellese]

I ran my first campaign as a healing cleric. And it was co-op with someone who was bad at builds and strategy. So I just had my healer and Laezel for some fights. And fights where we were all together it was my two doing most of the work.

We did fine, the healer came in clutch a lot. And I hadn't fully itemized the healer either, since it was my first run and I didn't know where all the healing items were. I only had like, two if them. A necklace that gave one free healing word and mass healing word, and boots that added +3 to my heals.

Worked fine. And as others said, there are many more items that could make heals insane.


You are right to say that you will heal less damage than the enemy deals. That is true. Heals are NOT supposed to make you immortal. They never do (despite healers always getting the blame when the DPS dies in other games)

Healing word is a bonus action. You can use that and a spell/debuff at the same time. Which also means you can heal twice in one turn. That can out heal most attacks. But not all.

Healing can also push people's health up enough to survive multiple attacks. Say, they have 16 health and the enemy deals 10 damage a swing. They die in two hits. But if you heal them for 5, now they survive the second hit. Despite you not out-healing the damage.

Healing is a little weak, but absolutely viable still.

[talemore]

Clerics were limited in DnD

Only human or half human could be a cleric. They were rooted that only humans have souls since only humans have religions.

Spells designed in a game where lycanthropy is common and vampires and sort to defeat. Even the plot device in baldur's gate 3 would be cured by a cleric of exorcist the demon with divine magic.

It's why paladin are inquisitors but they exodus the physical demons and cleric exodus the spiritual. Paladin weren't much better than a fighter and end up being a healing monkey.

The game doesn't include any divine gods and only deal with demons. Divine magic having no resistance dealing damage to evil creatures would demand a buff to make the creature cursed evil and after being cursed evil by a cleric a paladin can use smite evil on the creature.

[Eternal President Uncle Slam]

Nah healing focused cleric is not weak. With the right equipment you can give your full party blade ward for two turns and heal everyone at the same time. Heals also cannot miss so you don't need to be able to out heal single target attacks, but if you do, then you have channel divinity for that.