In Baldur’s Gate 3, the Cleric class represents divine spell casters who draw their power from a specific deity or a divine source. It is more of a support class that relies heavily on its unique spellcasting skills. They typically take on the role of healers and anti-undead characters in the party.
You must choose among domains at the start of character building as a Cleric. Each domain grants unique spells and skills to the Clerics according to their selected God or Deity.
Although Clerics use holy spells primarily, they can also wear armor and use weapons, unlike Wizards or Sorcerers. This allows them to support the party even when their spell slots run out.
Cleric Hit Points
Hit Points in BG3 measure how difficult it is to take out your character in combat. Your character’s Constitution directly influences these points. The value of your Constitution modifier is added to the Hit Dice you roll to make up Hit Points. In the case of the Cleric, you get 1d8 as your hit die.
You will gain 8 Hit Points at level 1 and the Constitution modifier. You will start gaining 5 Hit Points per level in addition to the Constitution modifier bonus.
Cleric Class Actions
Actions are your primary resource in combat, and these are assigned according to your class and the equipment you are wearing. These are replenishable and can get recharged once every turn in a fight. However, each class gets special actions that only they can use.
The Cleric class has the Channel Divinity feature, which allows them to channel Divine energy and obtain two actions. One is always Turn Undead, and the other depends on the subclass/ domain. When Turn Undead is activated, all the undead enemies in your surrounding will stop attacking you and run away instead.
The domain-specific actions are as follows:
- Life Domain: You will get Preserve Life in this domain, healing all allies in a range of 30 ft.
- Light Domain: You will get the Radiance of the Dawn action, allowing you to disperse magical darkness.
- Trickery Domain: You will get Invoke Duplicity, distracting your enemies with an illusion.
- Knowledge Domain: You will get Knowledge of the Ages, making you proficient in every skill of a selected ability.
- Nature Domain: You will get Charm Animals and Plants, allowing you to channel fey magic and Charm closer foes and plants.
- Tempest Domain: You will get Destructive Wrath, allowing you to roll maximum damage in place of Thunder of Lightning damage.
- War Domain: You will get Guided Strike, gaining you a +10 to an Attack roll.
Cleric Fighting Style
Clerics don’t get to choose a fighting style compared to fighters, rangers, or paladins since their main role is a spell caster. As such, the cleric in their life won’t have the time of the need to steady martial arts and develop their fighting style.
Cleric Proficiencies
While playing as a Cleric, you will have a range of equipment you can wield and skills you can be proficient in and get your saving throws.
Weapon: Clerics get proficiency in Simple Weapons, such as Daggers, Handaxes, Maces, and Cleavers. Although their spells are the main source of damage output, clerics can also wield these weapons when their spells run out.
Armor: As a Cleric, you can wear light armor, medium armor, and shields.
Skill Proficiencies: You can be proficient in any 2 of the cleric skills below.
- Religion
- Insight
- Medicine
- History
- Persuasion
Saving Throws: The Cleric’s Saving Throws proficiency is Wisdom and Charisma.
Cleric Subclasses
In Baldur’s Gate 3, the subclasses of the Cleric class are officially titled domains. These domains are a key factor in determining the direction your character development will go and the abilities and buffs you will be getting. The Cleric class has seven domains/ subclasses, unlike other classes with only three subclasses.
Life Domain
The Life domain is an aspect of many good deities offering spells to protect and restore the mind, body, and soul.
Proficiency: We get a heavy armor proficiency in the Life domain, allowing us to be more stalwart in holding the line.
Spells: The domain-specific spells are Bless and Cure Wounds.
Light Domain
As a Light domain Cleric, your job is to combat darkness and the undead enemies.
Feature: Warding Flare is this subclass’s exclusive feature, in which you shield yourself with divine light. You will use your reaction to impose debuff on the attacker, possibly causing their attack to miss.
Spells: The Light domain has a ton of spells aligned with Fire damage, including Burning Hands, Faerie Fire, and Light Cantrip.
Trickery Domain
A domain shared by wicked, chaotic, and mischievous deities alike. Those who channel Trickery specialize in deception and illusion magic, which will be obvious when you see their spell set.
Channel Divinity: Apart from Turn Undead, you get Invoke Duplicity. This creates a perfect illusion of the caster that is pretty cool as you can control its movement during your turn. Then, you can cast spells either from your original location or from where your illusionary self is standing.
Spells: The subclass-specific spells in this domain are Charm Person and Disguise Self.
War Domain
War Domain gives you access to magic, spiritual weapons, Crusader’s mantle, and Spirit Guardian. This subclass is geared towards combat strategies for going in and out of enemy mobs and cutting through their lines.
Proficiency: At level 1, you will get a bonus proficiency in martial weapons and heavy armor.
Feature: This domain’s special feature is War Priest. Whenever you use an attack action, you can make another attack action as a bonus action, depending on your Wisdom modifier.
Nature Domain
The nature domain gets you spike growth, plant growth, and insect plague spells at starting. This subclass of the Cleric is like a divine druid in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Features: This domain introduces the Acolyte of Nature, which grants you a Druid Cantrip and makes you proficient in Nature and Survival.
Spells: The subclass-specific spells in this domain are Shillelagh cantrip, Beacon of Hope, and Daylight.
Knowledge Domain
This subclass adds Command, Speak with the Dead, and Identify spells in your arsenal.
Channel Divinity: This subclass channels divine energy in Knowledge of the Ages. It pertains that if you choose a tool or skill, you will gain proficiency in that chosen tool or skill for the next 10 minutes.
Tempest Domain
You will be granted proficiency in Heavy Armour and Martial Weapons in this domain. It is better from the War domain in that it nets you a 2d8 damage output, instead of that 1d8 in the case of the War domain, resulting in more damage dealt to enemies.
