Baldur’s Gate 3 – Cleric Class Guide

Elevate your party’s performance by mastering divine support as the Baldur’s Gate 3 Cleric. This versatile class channels celestial power to transform ordinary adventurers into unstoppable forces on the battlefield.

The Baldur’s Gate 3 Cleric class draws upon divine energies to empower allies and control engagements. Functioning as your group’s strategic backbone, this character enhances every companion’s capabilities both during combat encounters and exploration phases. Our comprehensive Cleric guide examines the tactical advantages and strategic depth this class brings to your campaign.

Many players underestimate the Cleric’s potential, viewing them as simple healers when they actually offer comprehensive tactical solutions. Their ability to prepare different spells each day provides remarkable adaptability to handle diverse challenges throughout your journey.

Class Features

• Regular Spells – Clerics automatically gain access to all spells available at their current level, though they must strategically select which ones to prepare for daily use through the spellbook interface.
• Domain Spells – These specialized Cleric spells remain permanently prepared, ensuring you always have reliable options regardless of your daily selections.
• Spell Slots – You possess limited magical energy reserves organized by power tiers, which fully replenish only after completing a long rest period.
• Cantrips – These basic spells can be cast repeatedly without consuming valuable spell slot resources.

Proficiencies

Your racial heritage significantly influences your initial weapon and armor capabilities. We recommend selecting Human or Wood Half-Elf options for their enhanced weapon training in simple weapons, shortswords, spears, pikes, halberds, glaives, light armor, and shields. Defensively, Clerics demonstrate proficiency with light armor, medium armor, heavy armor, and protective shields.

Strategic race selection can dramatically enhance your Cleric’s combat effectiveness and survivability.

The Baldur’s Gate 3 Cleric offers seven distinct divine domains, with players selecting one specialization during initial character creation at level 1. Each subclass provides unique Domain Spells that remain constantly available, alongside distinctive feature perks that define your playstyle. Should you wish to experiment with alternative approaches, you can respec and change classes whenever desired.

For this comprehensive class guide, we’re focusing on foundational mechanics rather than specific spell selections during creation. We explore optimal spell combinations in greater depth within our dedicated build guide.

Life Domain

• Subclass Feature: Disciple of Life – Whenever you cast a healing spell, the recipient gains bonus hit points equivalent to 2 plus the spell’s level, significantly enhancing your healing efficiency.
• Spell: Cure Wounds – Restores 4-11 hit points; requires close melee proximity to target.
• Spell: Bless – Grants three designated targets a valuable 1d4 bonus to both attack rolls and saving throws.

Light Domain

• Subclass Feature: Warding Flare – Utilize your reaction to impose disadvantage on an attacker’s roll, potentially causing their assault to fail.
• Spell: Burning Hands – Inflicts 3-18 fire damage to all creatures within a five-meter frontal cone area.
• Spell: Faerie Fire – Illuminates targets within the affected zone, making them clearly visible while granting attackers advantage against them.
• Cantrip: Light – Imbues any object with radiant illumination, creating a persistent light source.

Trickery Domain

• Action: Blessing of the Trickster – Bestows advantage on stealth checks to a single ally.
• Spell: Charm Person – Prevents humanoid adversaries from attacking you while providing conversational advantages during social interactions.
• Spell: Disguise Self – Completely alters every aspect of your physical appearance for deception and infiltration purposes.

Knowledge Domain

• Spell: Command – Forces a creature to either flee, approach, freeze in place, fall prone, or discard its melee weapon.
• Spell: Sleep – Renders targets unconscious, effectively removing them from combat temporarily.

Nature Domain

• Subclass Feature: Acolyte of Nature – Learn an additional Druid cantrip while gaining proficiency in Animal Handling, Nature, or Survival skills.
• Spell: Speak with Animals – Enables communication with beast creatures, unlocking additional dialogue options and quest opportunities.
• Spell: Animal Friendship – Persuades creatures with Intelligence scores of 3 or lower not to attack; the effect terminates if the target sustains damage.
• Cantrip: Shilelagh – Transforms your staff or club into a magical weapon dealing 4-11 bludgeoning damage while utilizing Wisdom for attack calculations.

Tempest Domain

• Subclass Feature: Strike an attacking creature to inflict 2-16 thunder damage; targets failing their saving throw receive only half this damage.
• Spell: Thunderwave – Deals 2-16 damage while forcefully repelling enemies within a cone-shaped area.
• Spell: Fog Cloud – Generates an obscuring mist in a confined area, causing blindness and heavily obscuring vision for creatures within its boundaries.

War Domain

• Subclass Feature: When executing an unarmed strike or weapon attack, expend a War Priest charge to perform an extra attack using your bonus action.
• Spell: Divine Favor – Your weapon attacks deal supplementary 1-4 radiant damage with each successful hit.
• Spell: Shield of Faith – Boosts the armor class rating of a designated target by 2 points.

Your domain selection fundamentally shapes your Cleric’s role within the party structure.

Best Race and Sub-race

Recent modifications to character creation mechanics have expanded viable racial options for Baldur’s Gate 3 Clerics. However, for our baseline recommendations, we selected standard Human due to weapon proficiencies aligning perfectly with Cleric armaments, alongside supplementary skill proficiency:

• Base Racial Speed – Nine meters movement capability.
• Civil Militia – Weapon training with spears, pikes, halberds, and glaives; armor proficiency including light armor and shields.
• Human Versatility – Choose one additional skill proficiency while increasing your overall carrying capacity.

The Wood Half-Elf represents another excellent selection due to its comprehensive benefits:

• Base Racial Speed – Nine meters base movement.
• Civil Militia – Identical weapon and armor proficiencies as Human selection.
• Darkvision – Visual capability in darkness extending to 12 meters.
• Fey Ancestry – Advantage on saving throws against charm effects; magical sleep attempts automatically fail.
• Sub-race Perk: Fleet of Foot – Movement speed increases by an additional 1.5 meters.

Best Background and Skills

Your background selection for your Baldur’s Gate 3 Cleric primarily reflects personal preference and roleplaying objectives. Strategically, prioritize backgrounds utilizing Wisdom, your class’s primary attribute. Recommended options include:

• Acolyte – Insight (WIS) and Religion (INT) proficiencies.
• Folk Hero – Animal Handling (WIS) and Survival (WIS) capabilities.
• Guild Artisan – Insight (WIS) and Persuasion (CHA) skills.
• Outlander – Athletics (STR) and Survival (WIS) proficiencies.

Best Abilities

The Cleric’s fundamental spellcasting attribute is Wisdom. Nevertheless, Dexterity and Constitution hold significant importance for different reasons. Dexterity enhances your armor class and initiative order, whereas Constitution directly increases your hit point total. Additionally, elevated constitution scores influence concentration maintenance for spells with sustained battlefield effects. Optimal ability distribution should resemble:

• Strength: 8
• Dexterity: 14 or 15
• Constitution: 16 – Maintain this elevated value to optimize concentration-based spell effects.
• Intelligence: 8
• Wisdom: 17 – You can acquire +2 points through the Ability Improvement feat, plus an additional point by defeating Auntie Ethel.
• Charisma: 8 or 10

Mastering Cleric gameplay extends beyond basic spellcasting into sophisticated tactical decision-making. Many inexperienced players make critical errors in spell preparation and battlefield positioning that undermine their effectiveness.

Common Mistakes to Avoid:

• Over-preparing healing spells while neglecting essential buffs and control options
• Positioning too close to frontline combat, risking concentration breaks on crucial spells
• Failing to coordinate spell selections with your party composition needs
• Wasting high-level spell slots on situations where lower-level alternatives would suffice

Optimization Strategies:

• Prepare versatile spells that address multiple potential scenarios
• Coordinate with tanks to maintain optimal positioning for area-effect spells
• Utilize cantrips strategically to conserve spell slots for critical moments

Resource Management:

• Track your party’s health to determine when to use healing versus preventive measures
• Plan spell usage around expected encounters between long rests

Baldur’s Gate 3 offers immense adventure potential with countless hours of exploration and discovery. For additional strategic guidance, explore our comprehensive BG3 guides collection.

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