*Apparently missed Grave Domain, so here's the funny quip I would have made:* It lets you one-shot any creature in the game, and breaks the rule of healing unconscious people even more. I don't tend to ban official subclasses from my table, but this one would get an exception.
@@damianlynch1964 well grave domain gets a feature that let's you like double necrotic damage against a creature you target with it, I'm not sure entirely how it works but it can do a ton of damage if used right. Also I believe Blaine uses it in his one punch man dnd video but I'm not sure.
@@damianlynch1964 I’m pretty sure it’s channel divinity is where you force the creature you hit to take your damage as a vulnerability, essentially doubling damage dealt. This may be death domain, but I’m pretty sure this feature is called path to the grave
"With how versatile and independently strong you can build a Cleric you can make an entire party full of purely priests, call it the 'A-Men' and bust down Tiamat's door demanding her lunch money, and she would just build her own toilet to give herself swirlies so she wouldn't have to endure the kind of bullying you're about to give her." -Jocat, A Crap Guide to Cleric
Cleric: The only class in the game so versatile that you can have an entire party of them and have them each fit specialized roles with little to no overlap.
Except everyone is a healer(in addition to their other role) and the bad guys have to kill the entire party at once because they can chain resurrect everyone in a single round. Clerics are the real undead army.
Yeah. I used to want to play an all-cleric campaign. The sheer variety of subclasses you get (and basically none of them bad) means you can do everything you can do with almost every other class. And have crazy healing. However, after 3+ years of playing alongside a cleric who had the best DPS in our party, I think I'd actually be rather be the DM for a party entirely of clerics.
@@kdawg3484 If everybody is OP, then nobody is. The DM just needs to treat the players as a couple levels higher than they are. If there is anything D&D 6e needs to address, it is the relative fighting strength and scaling between the classes. They should make sure all classes are useful in *and* out of combat.
except no cleric gets extra attack or weapon cantrips (booming blade/gfb and no divine strike doesnt count, it is still less than a 2nd attack unless you combine the 2). so i raise you Warlock, the most versatile class.
Cleric in a nut shell Party Members: "You're the healer right" Forge Cleric: "I'm literally wielding heavy armor, and a warhammer. WHY DO YOU THINK IM A HEALER?"
Death Domain lets you cast certain spells twice in the same action for the price of one. Light Domain lets you cast Fireball War Domain gives you proficiency in martial and heavy armor, Hold Monster, and gives you resistance to nonmagical physical damage.
@@daggeranddoctor I think there is a high level Cleric spell/ability that lets you call your god for help, even in battle, it's up to the DM to determine how they help you (usually casting a spell at max level is what is suggested, but could be anything). This is in 5e, it might be the last class feature Clerics get, now that I think about it.
Clerics are like the Monkey's Paw class of tabletop: they can do almost everything, but the party will probably start whining if you do anything other than healing or buffs.
A front line cleric is a tool usefull to a party lacking front liners, a life cleric is a powerful support that buffs the rest of the party. I have played with 2 light clerics both of them were some douches who wants to wear armor and cast fireball, hiding and never healing or buffing, they act like a wizard without the weaknesses and real chance of dying. It annoys me mostly because when the DM says we have a in cleric the party assume its a cleric not a dragon blood sorcerer wanna be which you'd be better off playing.
@@poitter82 I picked cleric because we didn't have one and I was pretty sure they were useful and important. I picked light cleric because I wanted to be a sunbro. I have plenty of healing and buffing spells prepared but my party never really needs them because you don't need to heal if you don't get hit and you can't get hit if there aren't enemies and there aren't enemies if there's fireball.
Did that before as a one shot series of 3 parts for my Brother and e of our friends. By the middle of the 2nd part they had just wiped away an army of Fiends and Undead(once I make a campaign, even if i see they had happened to create a team that totally counters, I will not change it.). The army was led by a group of Mummy Lords in their lair. They were suppose to capture them and they nuked everything. THEY WERE LEVEL 12!
@@Barkstopper A level 12 cleric, properly armed, is a force capable of taking out entire continents. My level 12 cleric had an AC of 29 in combat. Case in point comes from my cleric who wore a bandolier of magic missiles and carried a portable hole mounted to a collapsible frame. She spent a year blessing an entire lake and we scooped up the devil BBEG into the portable hole and then drowned him in holy water. Due to consistently good intimidate rolls at the table (her getting angry after negotiations fail) her mere presence causes enemies to flee. She also brought balance to the 4 nations on said continent. Or as my DM put it "they don't fear your deity, they fear you"
"At level 1 you have healing so potent that some party members can be restored to full health with a single spell" And totally not because they have a max HP of 5.
Unless you are a life cleric, healing is only good for getting people up or between fights until Heal comes online at 11th level, and blaming cleric for yoyoing downed adventurers is ridiculous given that 3 classes have healing word, and more have cure wounds. Seriously cure wounds does 1d8+3 at first level, it "HeAlS tO FuLl", but chromatic orb does 3d8 damage and a fighter hitting with their sword does 2d6+3
@@override367 and that's why I run Pathfinder 2. Well, that and it actually gives the DM tools to make an adventure. Well, that and the classes and ancestries are balanced and deeper. Well, that and...
@@Mark73 very hard to do. First, get rid of tiers of play. Then, rebalance all classes. Then, rewrite all monsters to be interesting. Then, make CR make sense. Then, rewrite action economy, races, feats, spells, weapons, armor and magic items. At some point, It's no longer 5e.
“Clerics are too powerful for their own good” What, am I NOT supposed to clutch perma-death situations with the snap of my fingers and a lucky d100 roll~?
Honestly, we coulda used a cleric instead of starting with three paladins in our campaign. For those that wanna laugh at that, we're down to one paladin because one paladin switched to a warlock, another's only purpose is just good for throwing at large monsters and kept away from any decision making, and the third is dead. The Arcane Trickster rogue f***ed off to investigate something and has never returned, our bard/warlock is a bad roll away from his weapon possessing someone's soul, my battle master JUST got de-petrified, and the wizard is actually very competent but she's still kinda new to it. A cleric in D&D Silent Hill/Bloodborne would be helpful.
Why does one of your party members have a cursed weapon that can posses someone shouldn't you find a way to avoid having to fight your own party members
I play fighter/assassin, count on me to claim heads while backstabbing enemies too focused on party members...so long as u dont mind my collection of shrunken heads...
Trickery Domain Cleric is actually a very good support class. Give them the Urchin background and give them a dexterity build (High or Wood Elf for shortsword proficiency) and they're a sneaky Cleric that can fill in for your Rogue.
I'm playing a cleric in my friends campaign that they might potentially run sometime ever and I included a trait for them that they specifically don't fight much or with their full power in part because this is said friends first time dming and I wanted to play a bit more support
My first time playing I thought that clerics weren't really that strong and were mostly for support so I made a battle cleric because I didn't want to accidentally min max too much, it didn't work and I killed everything I saw
@@jordanpritchard5226 i'm a Lizardfolk Twilight Cleric. bubbles. bubbles for days. bubbles that are good for the party. bubbles that are bad for everything else.
Honestly as a cleric in all of my friend’s campaigns while yes it’s already stated to be over exaggerated this actually is pretty accurate since the only people to ever die in any of the campaigns I play are funnily enough the ones that aren’t in a 100 mile radius of me
@@tendericed2749 I mean tbh my team did have to protect me at all times so there were major consequences for me, a literal stick could kill me and even 1v1ing a low level goblin was scary to me since my defense and attack stats were as low as they could possibly be since I put all my points into stuff like wisdom (we used point buy for our characters) so while yes they basically couldn’t die if they were with me I myself was extreme vulnerable and the DM knew that since I was always the target of nearly every enemy in the game. I’d literally have at least 2 people at all times protecting me since throughout the campaign the dm has tried to literally assassinate me but we all had a lot of fun so I think it really depends less on how op the cleric is for others and more of how op the cleric is by themself
@@hoodie1355 I've DM'd with clerics in the group, I once had a group of 3 cleric a Paladin, and a Warlock. All to the same frackin' God, mind you... Was a lot of fun though, A Life Cleric, a Death Cleric, a Nature Cleric, a Paladin and a Warlock all in one group, was a whole lotta magic to go round. To make sure that death was still a threat, even to characters that can be revived continually, I introduced enemies that can snatch the very souls of their victims, meaning you cannot revive someone unless their souls have been freed, so having demons and devils opposed to their god was a semi frequent occurrence. The campaign I had originally planned never got played, instead they ended up crusading in the name of their god and freeing people from demonic and hellish control, while all my work into the original story had been derailed from day one, the game we all ended up playing was even more fun than it otherwise would have been, had I shoehorned them into my original plan. TL;DR : Clerics aren't broken if you know how to handle them, The Warlock and Death Cleric faced perma-death and so did the Warlocks second character.
@@Cha-Khia that is a really really good idea I won’t lie, it terrifies me since my group’s usual DM is subscribed to this guy but hey I don’t mind showing my team why I’m the only healer of the group so thank you for telling me about this. I say bring it on and I’m happy to hear that y’all had a ton of fun and honestly I guess it really is just like that with the story sometimes, I can not tell you how many times my DMs would say word for word after the session “y’all literally did the one thing I didn’t plan for”
Druids and Paladins both get more healing. Druids can spend all their spell slots on Goodberry before going to bed, and can still have other healing spells when they need them. Paladin gets Lay on Hands and healing spells
One reason I really like playing cleric is that they’re so mechanically powerful that I can play up flaws more without being worried about just dying horribly
See as a DM I actually I LIKE when my players are strong. The party has like 3 clerics and that means that I can push them crazy ludicrously hard and have the enemies be vicious, and know that somebody probably had a healing word. I’ve had the monsters attack PCs 5 times while they are down and get 2 auto failed death saves and they managed to save the player each time. It was crazy intense every time and their victory and survival felt like a rollercoaster ride. Perfect dnd if you ask me.
The more power you give a player, the more power you can throw at a player. When imagination is the limit, there is quite literally an infinity of potential on both sides of the spectrum.
@@stefanomorales2228 the only thing keeping my puzzles and combat encounters safe From a Fairy Mystic is that she's being controlled by my 10 year old sister and she has no concept of tactical knowledge or teamwork. My brother has been the MVP of almost every encounter where there's a non square room. He's a level 2 ranger. He isn't cheesing, he just knows how cover and tactics work. I had to explain battle tactics because she wasn't listening when I explained it the first time. She's good at to though, and my brother isn't, so it works out.
I should DM, because then I'd give Clerics the following limitation: they all have to be multiclassed, and they all have split personality. That means they randomly have to switch the class they're playing for either the Cleric, or the class they're multiclassing into. If I have a randomizer app, then I turn it on and tell the Clerics with multiple personalities that they have to switch class and personality.
I started playing as a cleric in a new campaign at the beginning of the year and I now understand why so many people become exasperated with being a cleric. In the roughly 10-ish months we've been playing, our session 2 weeks ago yielded the only time that the party has stayed close enough for me to heal them when we were getting our shit wrecked in combat, but it's not all bad, as said in the video, there are a lot of upsides to being a cleric, and in my case, being a war domain cleric has been really nice for being a secondary tank in our group.
As a great man once said, the enemy can't damage you if they're dead. Combat healing is pretty suboptimal anyway, I'd maybe hit them with a Bless to concentrate on or a Bane to get the enemy slipping down hill, then we'd kill everything that moves. You can then heal them outside of combat, or just buy enough potions so that you can be using those slots to further kill anything that looks at you funny.
@@LupineShadowOmega Great advice, I'll have to keep the bane idea in mind (I already use bless at the start of every combat and it comes in clutch damn near every time lol). And spiritual weapon, that has saved our asses so many times. Our group is a bit disorganized and not everyone has learned the concept of working together (or remembering that flanking enemies is a thing that they can and should do more often). The group just really needs to learn to play on each other's strengths and try to assist one another when things get tough, teamwork makes the dream work 👌. Yes, we've had talks about these concepts, but it's a work in progress that is very slowly getting better.
@@Fektthis Healing at a distance is definitely a huge help, I try to do it when I can. My character is going through a bit of an alignment change as well as a domain change as a result of the alignment change, but it'll be a while yet until that happens 🤷🏻♀️ fun thing of playing around with a traumatized character that the DM is fully intending to further traumatize (with my permission, of course, because I'm a glutton for punishment and specifically created this character so the DM could have fun being a cruel god).
In our group, everyone gets bandages at the shop before we leave town. The cleric only heals if you are downed and nobody is close enough and available to bandage you stable. Even then, he usually only hits you with a Spare the Dying or a 1st level Cure Wounds. The basic premise is a combination of "you should work harder to not fall down" and "the most important hit point is the last one".
Seeing how popular the "seducing bard" trope is (to the point involving horror stories involving players being offended when the bard wants to do anything other than seducing the problem), I'm surprised it wasn't as popular as the cleric.
it's because that's the stereotype of the class to such an extent that people straight up don't play the class unless they're doing exactly that (there are obviously exceptions). Whereas everything else seems more approachable
@@edwardking9359 I actually played bards before I knew about that stereotype and after discovering the stereotype i was shocked that it was all people did with bards. There's so much room for other things with bards, the overdramatic performer, the charismatic idiot, the cold, calculating college of whispers bard, the mighty college of blades bard, the loremaster, the traveling minstrel, and yes, the fashions bard who seduces everyone Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and yet somehow nobody even considers them, so one of the most fun classes to roleplay gets turned into *seduces the dragon*
@@apersonwhomayormaynotexist9868 A lot of that honestly sounds even more toxic and fun destroying than "horny bard". A McJagger Swagger who sleeps with the king's sister to get the party an army is useful to the party and their mechanics in combat are fine, but I will break the fingers of anyone who tries to play a stringed instrument at my table when I'm trying to think and being an attention whore is worse than being a regular whore. And it all overlooks the actual interesting uses of a bard in terms of lore and RP. Hell, in-universe a high-level bard should decry any and all of the aforementioned stereotypes as "amateurish minstrels for whom the craft is but a means to an end".
@@LemonMoon Religion is handled differently by many DMs, but generally: 1. A Cleric should have a background that gives Religion as a proficiency. If not, a lack of such knowledge is at least part of the character. 2. The Cleric can usually get an easy roll for religious elements they should know: basic elements of orthodox gods should be a given, and rituals/history of the same should generally be fairly low, with a tipping point for when things become obscure, like distant history, specific artifacts, or knowledge of dead cults, where dedicated research would be needed instead.
@@eric_moore-6126 well, because they are on of the most important people of their religion They have to know. (Also because religions in dnd are connected af)
Kinda forgot grave domain, were your party member will never die as long as you are up and they aren't instantly killed. And them you can snap you fingies and they will take double damage if someone from your party looks at them the wrong way.
"I'm not that kind of Cleric." All you have to say to turn the Paladin into the party healer...and then make the entire campaign about who can be the toughest tin can. But that is another story (Hint: it's the 28AC Cleric 17/Wizard 3 with SoF and Shield)
@@edwardking9359 We are on the same side on this. My comment is a joke as much as serious. I have an AL legal character that is the source of the post.
Me and my wife play Clerics in the same campaign and we realized early on that we were OP (being War and Life clerics) and we silently agreed amongst ourselves that we would take the silent backseat for the sake of the rest of the party.
Really? Who else you play with? I'm a Death Cleric and from lvl's 1-5 i'm mediocre at best, Martial classes (and our Star Druid) out dmging me easily, i'm mainly just a Bless machine. Lvls 5-10 ya i'm doing well, spirit guardians, spiritual weapon combo is nice though can't be used all the time if I want spells for other things as well, but now the Wizard is starting to get powerful spells, Barbarian is dmging crazy with his reckless attack and GWM combo, Polearm (spear and shield) Paladin putting up dmg comparable to me, etc. I love Clerics and they can be OP in situations, but I also find playing with others that many classes can be built to do really good dmg output or great support.
I played a dwarf cleric once in my nephew's campaign. There was a lot of undead and my Spirit Guardians spell basically allowed me to just walk thru hoards of enemies while they got cut down.
Buddy every player in the campaign is new except me and it's the DM's first campaign. It's also homebrew, everyone has the attention span if a ferret and our wizard has tried to murder me twice now. Me being a support cleric isn't the problem.
The only character that I have played that HAS died was my forge cleric tabaxi, Dust of Coal. Killed by a evil party member for trying to curtail their greed. It was a drow bard...
I had thought to dip knowledge cleric 1 and arcane tricster (rogue 3) with my lore bard lvl 7, but lvl 1 spells and some extra cantrips might not help. Though unlike spells, cantrips do seem to level with total character level... And mage hand with pickpocket and lockpicking abilities looks so tasty...
That's a lot of soft stats. The WIS for Cleric, the CHA for bard and the possible intelligence for trickster. Depending on what you wanted to do, I'd probably cut one of these classes and then use the two. Cleric would probably be my cut and depending on things it would be either do you want to be more of a fullcaster, or are you being the skill monkey rogue. Because that would decide which I focused on more.
Watching this, I'm trying to understand how our cleric is such a master of getting in trouble. She needs healing more often than anybody else in the group. It's either good roleplay or the player just does something wrong (possibly both). Hope the player will sort all of her troubles and return to the game, I miss this villager milf (villager milf is character, not player - your Captain Obvious) very march.
Other than the Heal spell, Clerics and Druids shine more for out of combat healing. Prayer of Healing, Aura of Vitality are amazing for such low lvl spells. Pair Aura of Vitality with a Life Cleric, and you went from an average overall heal of 70hp (which is still great for a 3rd lvl spell) to 120hp thanks to Life Cleric's lvl 1 ability. Thats a 71% increase in HP provided. Pretty insane.
"Plz heal me" "You think I prepared healing spells today?" - convo between me and the rest of the party during a boss fight (purging heretics > healing dummies)
Me as a Cleric: Lol no I’m not preparing any healing spells that aren’t low level and I’m using them at the lowest level I can. Don’t expect me to be a brainless healbot up your asses
I'm going to be running a solo campaign for a half orc war cleric, he can do 72 bludgeoning damage in 1 round if he crits on both attacks. Icespire peak is going to become slush rubble.
ah yes, the jack of all, master of none. where the emphasis is depends on who is playing them, but they are definitely flawed (countercharm ring any bells?)
Cleric in my campaign to a shadow monster "My dad will beat your dad." Enemies dad literally the God of darkness The clerics deity God of water... The clerics dad died...
What I would do is try to make the cleric more like a warlock. Everyday, the cleric has to complete some task set by their deity, like “don’t use any healing magic for the day.” And if they break any of the rules set by the deity, they can get punished with things ranging from poison and direct damage to exhaustion and even death if the clerics keep disobeying the gods
Grave domain is a good support that can boost an ally's damage or your own, and you get Vampiric touch so you can Vampiric touch and healing word in the same turn since its a spell attack so after you cast it you can heal and do damage all at the same time or spirit guardian if there is multiple enemies
I remember the first and only time I played a cleric, it was a dragonborn war (or maybe life or something) cleric. While I remember some really busted spells I could do, I think the two things that helped balance my class was that she was always in armor, so a slow boi, and she was often drunk, so she didn't always make the best choices. Honestly, I'm pretty sure one of my worst blunders is what helped the dm progress the story forward.
i have a special way i made to bypass the no wish spell thing (and there's a reason i made for that, i'll tell you if you wanna know) where you have to go through a dungeon in which a different god/goddess has made a room to test people and stop any fiendish beings. which means if you're a cleric (or paladin i guess) then if i let the next room be that of the deity you follow then the deity will just let you through without having to deal with the challenge, granted it's only 1 room since by rule they can't make you skip the entire thing but still it's kinda unfair when the rest of the party gets separated and has to fight through challenges but you get a free skip.
I will say its basically most games relationship with healers. If its too powerful you just need to adjust the difficulty to accommodate them. I had a similar complaint with revival. However you are correct for saying 'saving everyone's lives' can make them inherently more important.
I'm using a Tempest Cleric in the Storm King's Thunder Mod I'm in right now. In the game Sunday, we had to rescue a garrison of Dwarf soldiers who were behind a huge camp of Orcs, winter wolves, and Giants were coming to reinforce them. I dropped a Sleet Storm on the bridge leading up to the cave they were hiding in. Long story short, we got all of them out after our monk alerted them to our presence, and still got away.
So my DM has a weird rule where you can actually play 2 characters at the same time, so 1 of the 2 I played was a cleric. I balanced them by giving it 13 health total. At level 5. My other one is a damn combat god. He has 45 health, 27 AC, and too much movement speed. So my cleric just sits in the back and heals.
But if I don't play Cleric, then how can I play as Angelo De La Cruz, the Variant Human of the Light Domain with the Athlete background who doesn't know how to use healing spells and instead invokes the wrath of Quetzalcoatl (flavored as Pelor) with his fire and radiant spells as well as his macuahuitl (flavored as a longsword) by taking the Weapon Master feat?
I first started playing D&D around 1979, when the original AD&D books had come out. Clerics were greatly limited at the time. All classes were. Almost every group had house rules to expand the classes a bit. Uniformly increasing the choices available to the various classes and subclasses was needed. By third edition things were getting unbalanced. You could min/max a character then pick the right skills and you had something that could tank through opponents twice their level. By 5E things have only gotten worse. Instead of correcting previous errors they decided to double down. If DMs find certain classes or granted skills and abilities making characters effectively unplayable, ban them, make them available to NPCs only. Check out some of the earlier editions to see how they were handled.
it's pretty fantastic being a forge cleric, my dm plays with fromsoftware like difficulty and it's great fun struggling to keep everyone (myself included) out of the ground.
Eh, clerics are fun, myself and my players love them. We play to have fun, no intention on breaking the game. Flavor is what matters most, if the party steamrolls everything then the fights just become harder and more interesting.
lvl1: Toll the Dead for big d12 damages (double of if you're death domain since the lvl1 "Reaper" feature lets enemies share that pain), and Inflict Wounds for 3d10. Already set for life :) Just get some healing spell to shut up the party later and maybe one of those floaty-swordy-thingies too.... So far in my campaign I've only every considered casting a healing spell once, and that time the bard beat me to it so i didn't have to (Initiative rolls, the clerics weakness).
Lol, I love clerics. I play an Elf Life Cleric (werewolf) that I plan to reskin into an Elf Light Cleric later (playing Curse of Strahd). The Deity is Tekmór, the Child Goddess of Creation, Laughter, and Bliss (life/light domain)(NG). Her older brother (whose full name has been lost over history, so he is known as the “Brother of Tekmór” or “Older Brother”) is her protector and the Knowledge Domain deity, God of Law, Truth, and Justice. (LN)
My campaign currently has a bard, ranger, paladin, druid, and a wizard who took magic initiate cleric. I firmly believe that there is no way that any of them will ever die without throwing several dragons at them.
Had a game a few days ago where my team was clearly supposed to travel for two weeks to get somewhere. I prayed, got a 1 on the d100 roll for my deity to intervene, and received an item from the place we were going so we could teleport. It felt so GD good.
Clerichas always been my favorite class even when I was very young nd didnt understand classes or even knew what DnD was. I asked my uncle what characters I could play. he said you could swing swords or cast magic. I said ill take both. He said your options are Elf or cleric, and so from that forward I have forever mained an elf cleric. Funny stories aside, I grew into loving Cleric in 5E, my first true dnD experrnce . I evaluated every class over hundreds of hours of research, testing, DMing, and character building. I concluded that Cleric was the most powerful class in the game, granted I have very little experience, only about 2 years, but in a group of tens of thousands of DnD DMs, I am considered one of the more helpful members, and Dms with decades of experience often come to me for advice. So, I think I have confidence in my decisions and conclusions. So, why do I find Cleric to be the most powerful class? Well first I want to say Warlock is probably the true most powerful class, but since Short Rests are completely DM Dependent, I say no, thats too big of a risk. Dms love to screw over Warlocks, but you can't screw a Cleric over aside from the level 10 feature, but I always assume it will fail anyway. Rule #1 when determining what class is best, always assume everything you do will fail, this way, you are working with bare minimum. Cleric and Bard are the best at ensuring things can't fail, while Warlock and Ranger are the #1 most dependent on GM handouts. But surely I have more reason than this to believe cleric to be the superior class? Well, first and foremost, Magic is only as useful as your long rests, which again, is DM Dependent. For this reason, Martial Classes are more reliable than any caster. The usefulness of any caster is based entirely off of your DM and what they allow and wont allow, how many rests they let you take, so on and so forth. But you know a DM can't fuck over? You swinging your greatsword at the goblin. This is why Warlock and Cleric are the most powerful classes, because they can swing swords and wear armor just as effectively as a fighter. Now you might think well, if thats what makes someone strong, then Eldritch Knight or Paladin should be #1. And you're not wrong, they are very powerful too, but unfortunately their magic is very very worthless, though, having those level 1 spell slots DOES make them more useful than a regular fighter or barbarian. But theres a lot I could say about that so I digress. So, without further adeu, Why is Cleric the most powerful class? 1) You start with medium armor, some subclasses grant heavy armor, or take heavy armor as a feat. 2) Start with martial weapons on some classes, or rely on your race to get your weapons, failing that, a feat will grant you 4 weapon proficiencies. 3) Since you have the armor and weapon skills of any martial class, now you need magic. Clerics are 9th level casters, surpassing any martial class and beating most spell casters in durability, reliability, and tying them in raw power. 4) Priests don't have very much offense, but they have some extremely powerful divination, including Wish and Divine Interention that can solve most problems for you. Weaknesses of Cleric: 1) Low damage ability, this is offeset by making sure you have martial weapons or a magic weapon that uses your wisdom, many ways this can be achieved including just using cantrips. 2) Heavy Armor DOES require an investment point, which limits further your race and subclass options as you need both heavy armor and martial weapons to make cleric the best it can be. 3) Building cleric this way means you need to max strength, but this isnt a weakness, in fact, its literally STRENGTH and allows you to yeet enemies you cant smite. 4) DM like to fuck with religious characters and try to get them to lose their powers.
Your awesomeness is only surpassed by your love of d & dragons, and also pasta. Pasta surpasses your awesomeness. You will need to make peace with that. Can't fight carbs.
A story about a Grave Cleric In a one-shot I was in, a friend played a grave cleric and had the metamagic adept feat, taking quickened spell. In the first round of combat, he flanked the bbeg with an ally, used path to the grave on the bbeg as their action, quickened spell cast inflict wounds at 8th level as their bonus action and crit on the attack. 10d10*2*2= enough damage to kill the bbeg in the first round of combat
This just reminds me of the first DnD campaign I was ever in, were the Cleric got separated from the party, then got beaten up by two cultists and held captive.
So I started a new campaign last Sunday, we're all level 1 and we run into some orcs, 4 cannon fodder, a leader and a Cleric of Gruumsh. Said Orcs wanted our stuff, naturally we say no. Same number of Orcs as there is party members so it might be a tough fight but we'll likely come out on top. Except my fellow players were absolute idiots. Now, our Barbarian is brand new to the game, so I really can't blame her for not knowing what she's doing, but what about Barbarian makes you think "all minimum physical stats, high stats in intellect, wisdom and charisma?" Then we've got a Warlock who decides to charge in to melee range to Eldritch Blast and is immediately downed for his trouble. Then there's the Monk who charges in behind the enemies and stays there, immediately gets surrounded and killed. Our Wizard did their job and stayed back, but was immediately downed by a good roll on Guiding Bolt from the Orc Cleric. Can't really blame them, that's just the way the dice go and they were doing what they should have. Still, that leaves me standing by myself. Everyone is rolling new character sheets and telling me to just run. If I was playing anything but a Cleric in heavy armor I would have. I was a Warforged Forge Cleric so my AC was 20, the Orcs had just run out of magic and my companions were at least nice enough to damage all but one of the enemies before going down. Long story short, Toll the Dead and two Healing words and a Spare the Dying gets everyone but the Wizard back on their feet. The Monk and Warlock disengage to get some distance and start with some long range attacks while the Barbarian fixes their character sheet. Unfortunately the Wizard died in the middle of the battle, I felt terrible because of all the people I really wanted to save them, but still, it would have been a TPK on the FIRST ENCOUNTER if I hadn't been playing Cleric. That's how OP Clerics are. And yes, the DM did point out that they might want to consider that we're not playing a video game and that we'll need some actual tactics because you can't always rely on a Cleric to save you every fight.
i came up with an artificer character who's origin story is that they just be inventing and testing potential weapons and a war is going on between a bunch of islands that want to take over more land or resources, and when the war was over my character now be traveling and adventuring for money in order to open up a shop with gear that comes in handy for traveling
“Tempest cleric turns you into a bathtub toaster,” As someone playing a tempest cleric right now, yeah, you’re really not wrong in that one. Just forgot it’s a very LOUD bathtub toaster.
*Apparently missed Grave Domain, so here's the funny quip I would have made:* It lets you one-shot any creature in the game, and breaks the rule of healing unconscious people even more. I don't tend to ban official subclasses from my table, but this one would get an exception.
How can a grave domain cleric oneshot any creature in the game?
@@damianlynch1964 well grave domain gets a feature that let's you like double necrotic damage against a creature you target with it, I'm not sure entirely how it works but it can do a ton of damage if used right. Also I believe Blaine uses it in his one punch man dnd video but I'm not sure.
@@damianlynch1964 I’m pretty sure it’s channel divinity is where you force the creature you hit to take your damage as a vulnerability, essentially doubling damage dealt. This may be death domain, but I’m pretty sure this feature is called path to the grave
True. But that is a far cry from “one-shot any creature in the game”.
@@damianlynch1964 it significantly helps with 1shotting any creature in the game but blaines wording is still not exactly correct.
"With how versatile and independently strong you can build a Cleric you can make an entire party full of purely priests, call it the 'A-Men' and bust down Tiamat's door demanding her lunch money, and she would just build her own toilet to give herself swirlies so she wouldn't have to endure the kind of bullying you're about to give her."
-Jocat, A Crap Guide to Cleric
Go go, god rangers *cue the power ranger theme song*
I remember that lmao
I’m so glad to see someone taking another crack at DnD class analysis, they fill me with such joy and education
And whats worse, this aint even a joke, you can do that.
@@shinobidaniel_12 GO GO holy rangers!
The best nerf for cleric was calling them the healer class.
So, what 4e and Pathfinder 1e dod to clerics.
TRUE
Careful the white mages from FFXIV might show up and overpower yer barb
Mad Death domain noises*
Then we join the game with zero healing spells
Cleric: The only class in the game so versatile that you can have an entire party of them and have them each fit specialized roles with little to no overlap.
Except everyone is a healer(in addition to their other role) and the bad guys have to kill the entire party at once because they can chain resurrect everyone in a single round. Clerics are the real undead army.
@@amirabudubai2279
"I get knocked down, but I get up again..."
Yeah. I used to want to play an all-cleric campaign. The sheer variety of subclasses you get (and basically none of them bad) means you can do everything you can do with almost every other class. And have crazy healing. However, after 3+ years of playing alongside a cleric who had the best DPS in our party, I think I'd actually be rather be the DM for a party entirely of clerics.
@@kdawg3484 If everybody is OP, then nobody is. The DM just needs to treat the players as a couple levels higher than they are.
If there is anything D&D 6e needs to address, it is the relative fighting strength and scaling between the classes. They should make sure all classes are useful in *and* out of combat.
except no cleric gets extra attack or weapon cantrips (booming blade/gfb and no divine strike doesnt count, it is still less than a 2nd attack unless you combine the 2). so i raise you Warlock, the most versatile class.
Cleric in a nut shell
Party Members: "You're the healer right"
Forge Cleric: "I'm literally wielding heavy armor, and a warhammer. WHY DO YOU THINK IM A HEALER?"
Forge Cleric: Sort of...
Barbarian comes back with massive burns, severe pain, and a peg leg.
Forge Cleric: I did heal him...
Party: WTF?
Me: Can you heal my armor?
Death Domain lets you cast certain spells twice in the same action for the price of one.
Light Domain lets you cast Fireball
War Domain gives you proficiency in martial and heavy armor, Hold Monster, and gives you resistance to nonmagical physical damage.
I will play every cleric
Chad move
All Cleric party, make your gm cry
We wanted to this some time ago, all clerics, one from each domain
Holding you to that
@@remixtheidiot5771 the A-men.
Monk: Has neat little gimmicks and can attack twice along with ever growing AC.
Cleric: G O D *yeets Monk out the window like its a baby*
Basically, if the Monk misses those Stunning strikes and is "winded" due to the lack of Ki they better start praying
@@ExeErdna To who exactly? GOD IS LITTERALLY TRYING TO KILL YOU!
@@Cha-Khia Monk better start multiclassing
Sounds more like 3.5 than 5e.
@@daggeranddoctor I think there is a high level Cleric spell/ability that lets you call your god for help, even in battle, it's up to the DM to determine how they help you (usually casting a spell at max level is what is suggested, but could be anything). This is in 5e, it might be the last class feature Clerics get, now that I think about it.
"Cleric too powerful! Don't use it!"
Hmm yes... don't play it because of the reason I like to play it. Makes sense.
Clerics are like the Monkey's Paw class of tabletop: they can do almost everything, but the party will probably start whining if you do anything other than healing or buffs.
@@bubbasbigblast8563 funnily enough, I'm currently playing a light cleric and my party gets mad at me if I don't use fireball enough.
A front line cleric is a tool usefull to a party lacking front liners, a life cleric is a powerful support that buffs the rest of the party. I have played with 2 light clerics both of them were some douches who wants to wear armor and cast fireball, hiding and never healing or buffing, they act like a wizard without the weaknesses and real chance of dying. It annoys me mostly because when the DM says we have a in cleric the party assume its a cleric not a dragon blood sorcerer wanna be which you'd be better off playing.
@@poitter82 I picked cleric because we didn't have one and I was pretty sure they were useful and important. I picked light cleric because I wanted to be a sunbro. I have plenty of healing and buffing spells prepared but my party never really needs them because you don't need to heal if you don't get hit and you can't get hit if there aren't enemies and there aren't enemies if there's fireball.
@@lyebatenkaitosofgluttony2452
"I cast Fireball." XP to Level 3
Played the party of five clerics, DM had to double the CR, still it was a steamroll. Most awesome game i've ever played!
It would criminal if that group was NOT called the "Holy (steam)Rollers".
Did that before as a one shot series of 3 parts for my Brother and e of our friends. By the middle of the 2nd part they had just wiped away an army of Fiends and Undead(once I make a campaign, even if i see they had happened to create a team that totally counters, I will not change it.). The army was led by a group of Mummy Lords in their lair. They were suppose to capture them and they nuked everything. THEY WERE LEVEL 12!
@@Barkstopper A level 12 cleric, properly armed, is a force capable of taking out entire continents. My level 12 cleric had an AC of 29 in combat.
Case in point comes from my cleric who wore a bandolier of magic missiles and carried a portable hole mounted to a collapsible frame. She spent a year blessing an entire lake and we scooped up the devil BBEG into the portable hole and then drowned him in holy water. Due to consistently good intimidate rolls at the table (her getting angry after negotiations fail) her mere presence causes enemies to flee. She also brought balance to the 4 nations on said continent. Or as my DM put it "they don't fear your deity, they fear you"
Ah, yes... the A-Men
The A men.
"At level 1 you have healing so potent that some party members can be restored to full health with a single spell"
And totally not because they have a max HP of 5.
That would mean a wizard or sorcerer with 8 constitution. so you won't have to worry about those for a long time, they probably permadie before lvl 2.
Unless you are a life cleric, healing is only good for getting people up or between fights until Heal comes online at 11th level, and blaming cleric for yoyoing downed adventurers is ridiculous given that 3 classes have healing word, and more have cure wounds.
Seriously cure wounds does 1d8+3 at first level, it "HeAlS tO FuLl", but chromatic orb does 3d8 damage and a fighter hitting with their sword does 2d6+3
@@override367 and that's why I run Pathfinder 2. Well, that and it actually gives the DM tools to make an adventure. Well, that and the classes and ancestries are balanced and deeper. Well, that and...
@@mycatistypingthis5450 Can those tools be used for 5e as well?
@@Mark73 very hard to do. First, get rid of tiers of play. Then, rebalance all classes. Then, rewrite all monsters to be interesting. Then, make CR make sense. Then, rewrite action economy, races, feats, spells, weapons, armor and magic items.
At some point, It's no longer 5e.
“Clerics are too powerful for their own good”
What, am I NOT supposed to clutch perma-death situations with the snap of my fingers and a lucky d100 roll~?
Jokes on you I rolled a d100 when praying to my god and rolled a 100 needless to say the rest of the sessions after that point have been difficult
Honestly, we coulda used a cleric instead of starting with three paladins in our campaign.
For those that wanna laugh at that, we're down to one paladin because one paladin switched to a warlock, another's only purpose is just good for throwing at large monsters and kept away from any decision making, and the third is dead. The Arcane Trickster rogue f***ed off to investigate something and has never returned, our bard/warlock is a bad roll away from his weapon possessing someone's soul, my battle master JUST got de-petrified, and the wizard is actually very competent but she's still kinda new to it. A cleric in D&D Silent Hill/Bloodborne would be helpful.
I hope that a Bard is good enough at healing, with healing word and cure wounds. And their vicious mockery.
I am a forever cleric who needs a group :)
Why does one of your party members have a cursed weapon that can posses someone shouldn't you find a way to avoid having to fight your own party members
I play fighter/assassin, count on me to claim heads while backstabbing enemies too focused on party members...so long as u dont mind my collection of shrunken heads...
Trickery Domain Cleric is actually a very good support class.
Give them the Urchin background and give them a dexterity build (High or Wood Elf for shortsword proficiency) and they're a sneaky Cleric that can fill in for your Rogue.
I'm playing a cleric in my friends campaign that they might potentially run sometime ever and I included a trait for them that they specifically don't fight much or with their full power in part because this is said friends first time dming and I wanted to play a bit more support
You are a good friend. XD
I did a pacific cleric once, people got piss. fun time.
My first time playing I thought that clerics weren't really that strong and were mostly for support so I made a battle cleric because I didn't want to accidentally min max too much, it didn't work and I killed everything I saw
Title:don't play a cleric
Me immediately:I should make a cleric
Fire Genasi Cleric of the Light Domain. All the Cantrips. All the win.
Ah i see easy win gg shake my hand dont even need to play
@@jordanpritchard5226 i'm a Lizardfolk Twilight Cleric. bubbles. bubbles for days. bubbles that are good for the party. bubbles that are bad for everything else.
Honestly as a cleric in all of my friend’s campaigns while yes it’s already stated to be over exaggerated this actually is pretty accurate since the only people to ever die in any of the campaigns I play are funnily enough the ones that aren’t in a 100 mile radius of me
Doesnt it take the fun out of games if there arent any consequences to your actions though?
At least i feel that way
@@tendericed2749 I mean tbh my team did have to protect me at all times so there were major consequences for me, a literal stick could kill me and even 1v1ing a low level goblin was scary to me since my defense and attack stats were as low as they could possibly be since I put all my points into stuff like wisdom (we used point buy for our characters) so while yes they basically couldn’t die if they were with me I myself was extreme vulnerable and the DM knew that since I was always the target of nearly every enemy in the game. I’d literally have at least 2 people at all times protecting me since throughout the campaign the dm has tried to literally assassinate me but we all had a lot of fun so I think it really depends less on how op the cleric is for others and more of how op the cleric is by themself
@@hoodie1355 I've DM'd with clerics in the group, I once had a group of 3 cleric a Paladin, and a Warlock. All to the same frackin' God, mind you... Was a lot of fun though, A Life Cleric, a Death Cleric, a Nature Cleric, a Paladin and a Warlock all in one group, was a whole lotta magic to go round.
To make sure that death was still a threat, even to characters that can be revived continually, I introduced enemies that can snatch the very souls of their victims, meaning you cannot revive someone unless their souls have been freed, so having demons and devils opposed to their god was a semi frequent occurrence.
The campaign I had originally planned never got played, instead they ended up crusading in the name of their god and freeing people from demonic and hellish control, while all my work into the original story had been derailed from day one, the game we all ended up playing was even more fun than it otherwise would have been, had I shoehorned them into my original plan.
TL;DR : Clerics aren't broken if you know how to handle them, The Warlock and Death Cleric faced perma-death and so did the Warlocks second character.
@@Cha-Khia that is a really really good idea I won’t lie, it terrifies me since my group’s usual DM is subscribed to this guy but hey I don’t mind showing my team why I’m the only healer of the group so thank you for telling me about this. I say bring it on and I’m happy to hear that y’all had a ton of fun and honestly I guess it really is just like that with the story sometimes, I can not tell you how many times my DMs would say word for word after the session “y’all literally did the one thing I didn’t plan for”
I’m talking about showing that I’m more than just a revive item btw
I think cleric was going to be my next class i use. Because going off my first campaign...we NEED A HEALER!!!
Nah druid is a better healer in most situations
@@ShugoAWay You are wrong
Play a druid or bard then! Clerics shouldn't just be healing, and are good in other ways as well!
@@harperthegoblin Goodberry
Druids and Paladins both get more healing.
Druids can spend all their spell slots on Goodberry before going to bed, and can still have other healing spells when they need them.
Paladin gets Lay on Hands and healing spells
One reason I really like playing cleric is that they’re so mechanically powerful that I can play up flaws more without being worried about just dying horribly
See as a DM I actually I LIKE when my players are strong. The party has like 3 clerics and that means that I can push them crazy ludicrously hard and have the enemies be vicious, and know that somebody probably had a healing word.
I’ve had the monsters attack PCs 5 times while they are down and get 2 auto failed death saves and they managed to save the player each time. It was crazy intense every time and their victory and survival felt like a rollercoaster ride. Perfect dnd if you ask me.
The more power you give a player, the more power you can throw at a player. When imagination is the limit, there is quite literally an infinity of potential on both sides of the spectrum.
Rest of the party "hehe... Im in danger"
Not if you want to give your players an alive world and not a mmorpg
Just make sure they can't spam inflict wounds and kill the bbeg at level 3
@@stefanomorales2228 the only thing keeping my puzzles and combat encounters safe From a Fairy Mystic is that she's being controlled by my 10 year old sister and she has no concept of tactical knowledge or teamwork. My brother has been the MVP of almost every encounter where there's a non square room. He's a level 2 ranger. He isn't cheesing, he just knows how cover and tactics work.
I had to explain battle tactics because she wasn't listening when I explained it the first time. She's good at to though, and my brother isn't, so it works out.
I should DM, because then I'd give Clerics the following limitation: they all have to be multiclassed, and they all have split personality. That means they randomly have to switch the class they're playing for either the Cleric, or the class they're multiclassing into.
If I have a randomizer app, then I turn it on and tell the Clerics with multiple personalities that they have to switch class and personality.
I started playing as a cleric in a new campaign at the beginning of the year and I now understand why so many people become exasperated with being a cleric. In the roughly 10-ish months we've been playing, our session 2 weeks ago yielded the only time that the party has stayed close enough for me to heal them when we were getting our shit wrecked in combat, but it's not all bad, as said in the video, there are a lot of upsides to being a cleric, and in my case, being a war domain cleric has been really nice for being a secondary tank in our group.
As a great man once said, the enemy can't damage you if they're dead. Combat healing is pretty suboptimal anyway, I'd maybe hit them with a Bless to concentrate on or a Bane to get the enemy slipping down hill, then we'd kill everything that moves. You can then heal them outside of combat, or just buy enough potions so that you can be using those slots to further kill anything that looks at you funny.
another reason Divine Soul rules. Distant Spell heals
@@LupineShadowOmega Great advice, I'll have to keep the bane idea in mind (I already use bless at the start of every combat and it comes in clutch damn near every time lol). And spiritual weapon, that has saved our asses so many times. Our group is a bit disorganized and not everyone has learned the concept of working together (or remembering that flanking enemies is a thing that they can and should do more often). The group just really needs to learn to play on each other's strengths and try to assist one another when things get tough, teamwork makes the dream work 👌. Yes, we've had talks about these concepts, but it's a work in progress that is very slowly getting better.
@@Fektthis Healing at a distance is definitely a huge help, I try to do it when I can. My character is going through a bit of an alignment change as well as a domain change as a result of the alignment change, but it'll be a while yet until that happens 🤷🏻♀️ fun thing of playing around with a traumatized character that the DM is fully intending to further traumatize (with my permission, of course, because I'm a glutton for punishment and specifically created this character so the DM could have fun being a cruel god).
In our group, everyone gets bandages at the shop before we leave town.
The cleric only heals if you are downed and nobody is close enough and available to bandage you stable. Even then, he usually only hits you with a Spare the Dying or a 1st level Cure Wounds.
The basic premise is a combination of "you should work harder to not fall down" and "the most important hit point is the last one".
Seeing how popular the "seducing bard" trope is (to the point involving horror stories involving players being offended when the bard wants to do anything other than seducing the problem), I'm surprised it wasn't as popular as the cleric.
it's because that's the stereotype of the class to such an extent that people straight up don't play the class unless they're doing exactly that (there are obviously exceptions). Whereas everything else seems more approachable
@@edwardking9359 I actually played bards before I knew about that stereotype and after discovering the stereotype i was shocked that it was all people did with bards. There's so much room for other things with bards, the overdramatic performer, the charismatic idiot, the cold, calculating college of whispers bard, the mighty college of blades bard, the loremaster, the traveling minstrel, and yes, the fashions bard who seduces everyone
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and yet somehow nobody even considers them, so one of the most fun classes to roleplay gets turned into *seduces the dragon*
@@apersonwhomayormaynotexist9868 Plenty of people do plenty more with it, it's just that's the stereotype.
@@apersonwhomayormaynotexist9868 A lot of that honestly sounds even more toxic and fun destroying than "horny bard". A McJagger Swagger who sleeps with the king's sister to get the party an army is useful to the party and their mechanics in combat are fine, but I will break the fingers of anyone who tries to play a stringed instrument at my table when I'm trying to think and being an attention whore is worse than being a regular whore. And it all overlooks the actual interesting uses of a bard in terms of lore and RP. Hell, in-universe a high-level bard should decry any and all of the aforementioned stereotypes as "amateurish minstrels for whom the craft is but a means to an end".
"Don't play Cleric"
Me, who was about to choose Aasimar Paladin: "Well yes, but actually no."
Pretty sure that race class combo is what caused the paladin purge of '16
@@bogjoore uhhhh, really? *sweats in Aasimar Paladin*
The Cleric only has two weaknesses:
1. Skill checks not involving religion.
2. When the party is too cheap to bring back-up healing.
What stat are you sacrificing to have a high intelligence cleric who has good religion
Why would *religion* be a Cleric's best skill? Knowing about other religions doesn't make sense for RP *OR* power.
@@LemonMoon Religion is handled differently by many DMs, but generally:
1. A Cleric should have a background that gives Religion as a proficiency. If not, a lack of such knowledge is at least part of the character.
2. The Cleric can usually get an easy roll for religious elements they should know: basic elements of orthodox gods should be a given, and rituals/history of the same should generally be fairly low, with a tipping point for when things become obscure, like distant history, specific artifacts, or knowledge of dead cults, where dedicated research would be needed instead.
@@eric_moore-6126 well, because they are on of the most important people of their religion
They have to know. (Also because religions in dnd are connected af)
To be fair, real Christians suck at religion checks too.
all cleric party with different domain clerics has all you need, now say that in Japanese and it can pass as a light novel title
Its already been serialized and Hot Topic is selling shirts with their logo
Kinda forgot grave domain, were your party member will never die as long as you are up and they aren't instantly killed. And them you can snap you fingies and they will take double damage if someone from your party looks at them the wrong way.
Do that for the assassin making a sneak attack and scoring a crit...
Ain't no party like a D&D party.
Cause a D&D party don't stop.
Till the Cleric dies.
Or the DM sings in defeat
Why not to play Cleric: The party won't stop asking you for heals, even if you didn't take any healing.
This is why I don't let players tell each other what class they are!
The only time the party will see even a smidgen of healing from me is when they go down.
Or if we're out of combat. If I'm feeling generous.
"I'm not that kind of Cleric." All you have to say to turn the Paladin into the party healer...and then make the entire campaign about who can be the toughest tin can. But that is another story (Hint: it's the 28AC Cleric 17/Wizard 3 with SoF and Shield)
@@nickm9102 Just play an actual character not a class
@@edwardking9359 We are on the same side on this. My comment is a joke as much as serious.
I have an AL legal character that is the source of the post.
As cleric of the party I am often used as a weapon quite literally, and my spine is currently shattered in the campaign
Me and my wife play Clerics in the same campaign and we realized early on that we were OP (being War and Life clerics) and we silently agreed amongst ourselves that we would take the silent backseat for the sake of the rest of the party.
Really? Who else you play with? I'm a Death Cleric and from lvl's 1-5 i'm mediocre at best, Martial classes (and our Star Druid) out dmging me easily, i'm mainly just a Bless machine. Lvls 5-10 ya i'm doing well, spirit guardians, spiritual weapon combo is nice though can't be used all the time if I want spells for other things as well, but now the Wizard is starting to get powerful spells, Barbarian is dmging crazy with his reckless attack and GWM combo, Polearm (spear and shield) Paladin putting up dmg comparable to me, etc.
I love Clerics and they can be OP in situations, but I also find playing with others that many classes can be built to do really good dmg output or great support.
Me: Wow new video cool!
Blain: Most of you gremlins...
Me: :(
I played a dwarf cleric once in my nephew's campaign. There was a lot of undead and my Spirit Guardians spell basically allowed me to just walk thru hoards of enemies while they got cut down.
Buddy every player in the campaign is new except me and it's the DM's first campaign. It's also homebrew, everyone has the attention span if a ferret and our wizard has tried to murder me twice now. Me being a support cleric isn't the problem.
Then don't support, kill everything that moves and let the wizard know that they're next if they look at you wrong. XD
god damn it you got me to check my disc after those pings
The only character that I have played that HAS died was my forge cleric tabaxi, Dust of Coal. Killed by a evil party member for trying to curtail their greed. It was a drow bard...
I had thought to dip knowledge cleric 1 and arcane tricster (rogue 3) with my lore bard lvl 7, but lvl 1 spells and some extra cantrips might not help.
Though unlike spells, cantrips do seem to level with total character level... And mage hand with pickpocket and lockpicking abilities looks so tasty...
That's a lot of soft stats. The WIS for Cleric, the CHA for bard and the possible intelligence for trickster. Depending on what you wanted to do, I'd probably cut one of these classes and then use the two. Cleric would probably be my cut and depending on things it would be either do you want to be more of a fullcaster, or are you being the skill monkey rogue. Because that would decide which I focused on more.
If you play a Cleric Asimar you're literally doubling down on the whole holy/unholy god deal. A Warlock Asimar for all the EDGE!
alternatively, use cleric to roleplay while keeping up with the minmaxxers at the table
Watching this, I'm trying to understand how our cleric is such a master of getting in trouble. She needs healing more often than anybody else in the group. It's either good roleplay or the player just does something wrong (possibly both). Hope the player will sort all of her troubles and return to the game, I miss this villager milf (villager milf is character, not player - your Captain Obvious) very march.
I mean
Clerics are one of the hardest to roleplay classes
So yap, both or good roleplay are a big choices
"Clerics are too powerful!"
Me: plays Bard and uses healing word, and cure wounds to heal, and mock everyone around me viciously.
That one liner was WEAK! Now take 1d4
Now try that, except with d12s instead of d4s, a more versatile spell list you can change every day and heavy armour, and you have a cleric.
Bards playing D&D well :)
IMAGINE using Vicious Mockery when you could be a Hexblade Bard, with the patron Gibson
Other than the Heal spell, Clerics and Druids shine more for out of combat healing. Prayer of Healing, Aura of Vitality are amazing for such low lvl spells. Pair Aura of Vitality with a Life Cleric, and you went from an average overall heal of 70hp (which is still great for a 3rd lvl spell) to 120hp thanks to Life Cleric's lvl 1 ability. Thats a 71% increase in HP provided. Pretty insane.
"Plz heal me"
"You think I prepared healing spells today?"
- convo between me and the rest of the party during a boss fight (purging heretics > healing dummies)
Me as a Cleric: Lol no I’m not preparing any healing spells that aren’t low level and I’m using them at the lowest level I can. Don’t expect me to be a brainless healbot up your asses
I'm going to be running a solo campaign for a half orc war cleric, he can do 72 bludgeoning damage in 1 round if he crits on both attacks. Icespire peak is going to become slush rubble.
lol i've got a half-orc war cleric, too
solidarity 🤝
you get multiple attacks ?
He probably skipped bard because he can't think of anything bad to say about the class.
Nah probably waiting for colab with either Jo or Cammy cat
Well despite the fact Bard players usually fuck everything in a 10 mile radius.
Isn't he a bard?
ah yes, the jack of all, master of none. where the emphasis is depends on who is playing them, but they are definitely flawed (countercharm ring any bells?)
I think it's because a majority of toxicity towards a game and other players comes from bards. At least in my games this is true.
Cleric in my campaign to a shadow monster
"My dad will beat your dad."
Enemies dad literally the God of darkness
The clerics deity God of water...
The clerics dad died...
how do you determine that and why did they actually fight ?
What the plumber said. Darkness and water are complementary or neutral to each other. There isn't much light at the bottom of the ocean.
What? Why would you ever kill off a clerics main source of power?
What I would do is try to make the cleric more like a warlock. Everyday, the cleric has to complete some task set by their deity, like “don’t use any healing magic for the day.” And if they break any of the rules set by the deity, they can get punished with things ranging from poison and direct damage to exhaustion and even death if the clerics keep disobeying the gods
As someone who primarily plays this class I was just laughing maniacally the whole time
Currently on the process of playing every domain
Grave domain is a good support that can boost an ally's damage or your own, and you get Vampiric touch so you can Vampiric touch and healing word in the same turn since its a spell attack so after you cast it you can heal and do damage all at the same time or spirit guardian if there is multiple enemies
"You're a Cleric, you're 'spose to heal!" it is your job to stay out of horrible death scenarios, I'll be over here sipping tea
My last character got screwed to death by a dragon (level 4 rogue) you KNOW I’m picking cleric for revenge.
This video: *exists*
Cleric mains: *IM LOOKING AT SOME GRADE A HERESY*
I remember the first and only time I played a cleric, it was a dragonborn war (or maybe life or something) cleric. While I remember some really busted spells I could do, I think the two things that helped balance my class was that she was always in armor, so a slow boi, and she was often drunk, so she didn't always make the best choices. Honestly, I'm pretty sure one of my worst blunders is what helped the dm progress the story forward.
I main clerics. to quote our bard: “Why does the rest of the party even show up to those battles anymore?”
Artificer is one of my favorite classes to play!! And we have had one at each of the games I have played since they have been released
As a twilight cleric, I highly approve of my domain ability 😂😂😂
i have a special way i made to bypass the no wish spell thing (and there's a reason i made for that, i'll tell you if you wanna know) where you have to go through a dungeon in which a different god/goddess has made a room to test people and stop any fiendish beings. which means if you're a cleric (or paladin i guess) then if i let the next room be that of the deity you follow then the deity will just let you through without having to deal with the challenge, granted it's only 1 room since by rule they can't make you skip the entire thing but still it's kinda unfair when the rest of the party gets separated and has to fight through challenges but you get a free skip.
New video idea: Monsters in isekai. I'm curious how much of early D&D survived into the mind of current day Japanese.
Tentacle time.
I will say its basically most games relationship with healers. If its too powerful you just need to adjust the difficulty to accommodate them. I had a similar complaint with revival. However you are correct for saying 'saving everyone's lives' can make them inherently more important.
Now imagine a full cleric party
Yes.... yes.... yes! As a dm I would get a kick out of this, what's at stake for such a gathering of clerics?
I'm using a Tempest Cleric in the Storm King's Thunder Mod I'm in right now. In the game Sunday, we had to rescue a garrison of Dwarf soldiers who were behind a huge camp of Orcs, winter wolves, and Giants were coming to reinforce them. I dropped a Sleet Storm on the bridge leading up to the cave they were hiding in. Long story short, we got all of them out after our monk alerted them to our presence, and still got away.
So my DM has a weird rule where you can actually play 2 characters at the same time, so 1 of the 2 I played was a cleric. I balanced them by giving it 13 health total. At level 5.
My other one is a damn combat god. He has 45 health, 27 AC, and too much movement speed. So my cleric just sits in the back and heals.
Loving this series. Keep it up. Don't Play BARD!
NONE CAN CHALLENGE THE MIGHT OF CLERICS!
Information I needed a couple months ago. My DM regularly goes "this encounter was supposed to be a LOT harder" :D
XP to level 3 does not approve
Boy do I love playing clerics for every reason listed in this video.
But if I don't play Cleric, then how can I play as Angelo De La Cruz, the Variant Human of the Light Domain with the Athlete background who doesn't know how to use healing spells and instead invokes the wrath of Quetzalcoatl (flavored as Pelor) with his fire and radiant spells as well as his macuahuitl (flavored as a longsword) by taking the Weapon Master feat?
I liked the "UNLIMITED POWEERRRRR".
You should probably do more like that, it was funny.
I first started playing D&D around 1979, when the original AD&D books had come out. Clerics were greatly limited at the time. All classes were. Almost every group had house rules to expand the classes a bit. Uniformly increasing the choices available to the various classes and subclasses was needed. By third edition things were getting unbalanced. You could min/max a character then pick the right skills and you had something that could tank through opponents twice their level. By 5E things have only gotten worse. Instead of correcting previous errors they decided to double down.
If DMs find certain classes or granted skills and abilities making characters effectively unplayable, ban them, make them available to NPCs only. Check out some of the earlier editions to see how they were handled.
bro you need to cover the ARIZONA RANGER with a BIG IRON on his hip
Hi
it's pretty fantastic being a forge cleric, my dm plays with fromsoftware like difficulty and it's great fun struggling to keep everyone (myself included) out of the ground.
Eh, clerics are fun, myself and my players love them.
We play to have fun, no intention on breaking the game.
Flavor is what matters most, if the party steamrolls everything then the fights just become harder and more interesting.
Flavor on clerics can be really cool if you are into it
Ah the schizophrenic, ptsd, cleric of the insanity domain that I tried my last group.... So many fond memories...
So you’re telling me that I should play cleric multiclassed into a gunslinger?
lvl1: Toll the Dead for big d12 damages (double of if you're death domain since the lvl1 "Reaper" feature lets enemies share that pain), and Inflict Wounds for 3d10. Already set for life :)
Just get some healing spell to shut up the party later and maybe one of those floaty-swordy-thingies too....
So far in my campaign I've only every considered casting a healing spell once, and that time the bard beat me to it so i didn't have to (Initiative rolls, the clerics weakness).
I love seeing these videos in my feed!
Lol, I love clerics.
I play an Elf Life Cleric (werewolf) that I plan to reskin into an Elf Light Cleric later (playing Curse of Strahd).
The Deity is Tekmór, the Child Goddess of Creation, Laughter, and Bliss (life/light domain)(NG). Her older brother (whose full name has been lost over history, so he is known as the “Brother of Tekmór” or “Older Brother”) is her protector and the Knowledge Domain deity, God of Law, Truth, and Justice. (LN)
My campaign currently has a bard, ranger, paladin, druid, and a wizard who took magic initiate cleric. I firmly believe that there is no way that any of them will ever die without throwing several dragons at them.
I recommend traps. Like a cave that floods if they choose the wrong door. Or gravity-based traps (pits, slides into blades, falling rocks).
@@MonkeyJedi99 Interesting idea, might try something like that.
War Clerics imo, along with Order Clerics, are the best ones. So much fun with these to be had
Time for a large game with one of every cleric subclass and no other players
Me with my Teifling cleric of the Trickery domain who doesn’t any healing spells but spare the dying: 🧍
Me and my twilight cleric feel personally called out by this video
I can't wait to see what you have to say on my favorite class.
Warlock.
Had a game a few days ago where my team was clearly supposed to travel for two weeks to get somewhere. I prayed, got a 1 on the d100 roll for my deity to intervene, and received an item from the place we were going so we could teleport. It felt so GD good.
We gonna summon the A-men team and make tiamat give herself swirlys
Clerichas always been my favorite class even when I was very young nd didnt understand classes or even knew what DnD was.
I asked my uncle what characters I could play. he said you could swing swords or cast magic. I said ill take both. He said your options are Elf or cleric, and so from that forward I have forever mained an elf cleric.
Funny stories aside, I grew into loving Cleric in 5E, my first true dnD experrnce . I evaluated every class over hundreds of hours of research, testing, DMing, and character building. I concluded that Cleric was the most powerful class in the game, granted I have very little experience, only about 2 years, but in a group of tens of thousands of DnD DMs, I am considered one of the more helpful members, and Dms with decades of experience often come to me for advice. So, I think I have confidence in my decisions and conclusions.
So, why do I find Cleric to be the most powerful class? Well first I want to say Warlock is probably the true most powerful class, but since Short Rests are completely DM Dependent, I say no, thats too big of a risk. Dms love to screw over Warlocks, but you can't screw a Cleric over aside from the level 10 feature, but I always assume it will fail anyway. Rule #1 when determining what class is best, always assume everything you do will fail, this way, you are working with bare minimum. Cleric and Bard are the best at ensuring things can't fail, while Warlock and Ranger are the #1 most dependent on GM handouts.
But surely I have more reason than this to believe cleric to be the superior class? Well, first and foremost, Magic is only as useful as your long rests, which again, is DM Dependent. For this reason, Martial Classes are more reliable than any caster. The usefulness of any caster is based entirely off of your DM and what they allow and wont allow, how many rests they let you take, so on and so forth. But you know a DM can't fuck over? You swinging your greatsword at the goblin. This is why Warlock and Cleric are the most powerful classes, because they can swing swords and wear armor just as effectively as a fighter.
Now you might think well, if thats what makes someone strong, then Eldritch Knight or Paladin should be #1. And you're not wrong, they are very powerful too, but unfortunately their magic is very very worthless, though, having those level 1 spell slots DOES make them more useful than a regular fighter or barbarian. But theres a lot I could say about that so I digress.
So, without further adeu, Why is Cleric the most powerful class?
1) You start with medium armor, some subclasses grant heavy armor, or take heavy armor as a feat.
2) Start with martial weapons on some classes, or rely on your race to get your weapons, failing that, a feat will grant you 4 weapon proficiencies.
3) Since you have the armor and weapon skills of any martial class, now you need magic. Clerics are 9th level casters, surpassing any martial class and beating most spell casters in durability, reliability, and tying them in raw power.
4) Priests don't have very much offense, but they have some extremely powerful divination, including Wish and Divine Interention that can solve most problems for you.
Weaknesses of Cleric:
1) Low damage ability, this is offeset by making sure you have martial weapons or a magic weapon that uses your wisdom, many ways this can be achieved including just using cantrips.
2) Heavy Armor DOES require an investment point, which limits further your race and subclass options as you need both heavy armor and martial weapons to make cleric the best it can be.
3) Building cleric this way means you need to max strength, but this isnt a weakness, in fact, its literally STRENGTH and allows you to yeet enemies you cant smite.
4) DM like to fuck with religious characters and try to get them to lose their powers.
I love that I saw this the day after a multilclassed in cleric because I knew they were op and I sick of almost dying all the time.
"You have a Ghost Sword that can Beyblade Spin everything you look at,"
Yup; sounds accurate to me
Blaine: The most spammable cantrip
Warlock: Brave words for someone within 300ft of me
Your awesomeness is only surpassed by your love of d & dragons, and also pasta. Pasta surpasses your awesomeness. You will need to make peace with that. Can't fight carbs.
Cleric is my favorite class hands down
As someone still fairly new to D&D and is playing a artificer, that intro hurt.
A story about a Grave Cleric
In a one-shot I was in, a friend played a grave cleric and had the metamagic adept feat, taking quickened spell. In the first round of combat, he flanked the bbeg with an ally, used path to the grave on the bbeg as their action, quickened spell cast inflict wounds at 8th level as their bonus action and crit on the attack. 10d10*2*2= enough damage to kill the bbeg in the first round of combat
This just reminds me of the first DnD campaign I was ever in, were the Cleric got separated from the party, then got beaten up by two cultists and held captive.
You know, it might be fun at some point to have an all-cleric party. It's a versatile enough class for that to be viable.
I bet it would be super strong too
So I started a new campaign last Sunday, we're all level 1 and we run into some orcs, 4 cannon fodder, a leader and a Cleric of Gruumsh. Said Orcs wanted our stuff, naturally we say no. Same number of Orcs as there is party members so it might be a tough fight but we'll likely come out on top.
Except my fellow players were absolute idiots.
Now, our Barbarian is brand new to the game, so I really can't blame her for not knowing what she's doing, but what about Barbarian makes you think "all minimum physical stats, high stats in intellect, wisdom and charisma?" Then we've got a Warlock who decides to charge in to melee range to Eldritch Blast and is immediately downed for his trouble. Then there's the Monk who charges in behind the enemies and stays there, immediately gets surrounded and killed. Our Wizard did their job and stayed back, but was immediately downed by a good roll on Guiding Bolt from the Orc Cleric. Can't really blame them, that's just the way the dice go and they were doing what they should have.
Still, that leaves me standing by myself. Everyone is rolling new character sheets and telling me to just run. If I was playing anything but a Cleric in heavy armor I would have. I was a Warforged Forge Cleric so my AC was 20, the Orcs had just run out of magic and my companions were at least nice enough to damage all but one of the enemies before going down. Long story short, Toll the Dead and two Healing words and a Spare the Dying gets everyone but the Wizard back on their feet. The Monk and Warlock disengage to get some distance and start with some long range attacks while the Barbarian fixes their character sheet.
Unfortunately the Wizard died in the middle of the battle, I felt terrible because of all the people I really wanted to save them, but still, it would have been a TPK on the FIRST ENCOUNTER if I hadn't been playing Cleric. That's how OP Clerics are.
And yes, the DM did point out that they might want to consider that we're not playing a video game and that we'll need some actual tactics because you can't always rely on a Cleric to save you every fight.
i came up with an artificer character who's origin story is that they just be inventing and testing potential weapons and a war is going on between a bunch of islands that want to take over more land or resources, and when the war was over my character now be traveling and adventuring for money in order to open up a shop with gear that comes in handy for traveling
“Tempest cleric turns you into a bathtub toaster,”
As someone playing a tempest cleric right now, yeah, you’re really not wrong in that one. Just forgot it’s a very LOUD bathtub toaster.
a cleric healing the party? Haha good one! Never saw that happen... -_-
"He's out of line... but he's right.."-Resident Cleric
Everyone in the party dips into two levels of Twilight Cleric giving each other temp hit points ....fishing max temp hit points