In summary, Clerics = Spirit Guardians + Spritual Weapon + reviving downed allies + situation spells.

Spirit Guardians is just one of the best spells in the game. Deals good damage, battlefield control and gives the cleric great action economy. That action economy is the defining aspect of their playstyle, they could easily focus on other task while everyone spend their actions attacking or offensively casting. The cleric could do the healing, search for hidden enemies, use magic items, do the help action, debuff, while still doing great damage at the same time.

Great video. For people who say that clerics who say "clerics do the same thing all the time", I would say that is generally true for almost all damage dealers. Treantmonk-style God wizards are an exception as battlefield control is always dependent on the battlefield at hand, but the melees swing their sword/axe/halberd, rogues go for that sweet critical strike, warlocks EB ad infinitum, and rangers/monks/and sorcerers ask their DM about re-rolling their character. If you want to make combat more engaging (it's my favorite part of D&D next to seeing my friends), be willing to describe what's going on, use the environment more and consider characters that can force movement via grappling or spells (it can play havoc for the DMs plans when an enemy gets tossed off a cliff into lava). Not every encounter from every DM will be a Matt Mercer style production, but feel free to borrow the "how do you want to do this" for coup de grace finishes. So yes, clerics can easily fall back on old reliable spells cast at an appropriate level for the encounter, but it needn't be boring. Besides, when it comes time for a rez, all eyes, some closed, will be on you.

YES to Spirit Guardians! It's just crazy. I feel like the somatic component is hitting tilde, opening the console and typing "GODMODE".

As a first time cleric (and spellcaster in general), this was extraordinarily helpful. Good job and thanks!

Before I started playing a cleric at mid-levels using Spirit Guardians I was not prepared for the amount of enemy attacks that were focused on me. In many battles you become the primary target and everyone may swing/shoot/cast at you. Before adopting this playing style you need to do everything you can to reinforce your character.

Can't wait for a Light Domain Cleric build.

I’m so glad that I watched this again, and really paid attention. Super valuable, and really has me looking more closely at my Ranger 5/Cleric 6 character and tactics. Keep it up, we need content like this, for sure.

I think a good note on your command spell on the ogre is that ordering it to go prone will make it unable to attack you for two turns. It drops prone on its turn and that's all it can do. Then it has to use its next turn to stand up and approach uou

One of my favorite things about playing a cleric is stacking their non-concentration options: aid, turn undead, spiritual weapon, warding bond, daylight, tongues, death ward, freedom of movement, even water walk. Don’t forget about the spell sanctuary. It’s a bonus action to cast and lasts one minute without concentration. If you really need to not be hit, you or an ally of yours can have its effect plus the dodge action. Making a wisdom save and then landing a hit at disadvantage is going to be pretty difficult. I often do this if I’m concentrating on a high level bless or the banishment spell.

Chris man.....you keep on teaching me.....that Dodge advice is golden!!!

I'm playing a Divine Soul Sorcerer right now and loving it, but it makes me excited to play a full-cleric in the future. Forge Cleric looks stupid fun.

Great video! Your guides are super helpful, and I’m loving all of your videos!

Fantastic video! I've been using it as reference material for my first character and it has proven so valuable. Thanks for the great, accessible content! Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the series. Great stuff.

Point of clarification: Greater restoration cannot remove stun. The only thing that does is power word heal which is a 9th level bard only spell. I learned this the hard way being on the receiving end of a particularly nasty psychic scream and got permastunned forever. Also, spirit guardians doesn't hit allies IF YOU CAN SEE THEM when you cast the spell. If the rogue is perfectly hidden, wizard is invisible, monk is around the corner then they will end up taking damage if they enter the spirit guardians. Honorable mentions should probably go to holy weapon (1hr conc. +2d8 per hit from your action surging fighter) and forbiddance (ritual, massive aoe - guarantees no undead if you just wait a minute)

cannot tell you how much i love you, Treantmonk.

I'm thinking of making a firlbolg grave domain cleric. It would be an extremely effective inflict wounds spell user. Hidden step is great to move in and cast it with advantage plus using eyes of the grave on the target to make it vulnerable against necrotic damage. This can be a very deadly combo for a level 2 character that will make most DMs rage.

This is helpful as I am playing a Grave Domain Cleric, approaching Level 4

I’m not sure how no one has mentioned that aid has an 8 hour duration and does not add temp HP, but adds to your HP max. You don’t cast this in combat, you upcast it as the first spell of the day on all frontliners as it effectively acts as bonus hp. Since it adds to your HP max to boost hp, healing spells heal the aid hp too

I'm so lucky to be looking specifically for this guide, on the very same day it came into existence.

i love clerics. thank you for the advice!

The fun of being a Trickery cleric is stacking Mirror Image in there with the Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon combo. Oh, you think you're going to hit me and probably going to make me lose concentration with a powerful hit? Nah, hit my mirror image instead!

Mom, One-Punch-Man is shooting videos again

It might pop up later in the video, but regarding the weapon vs cantrip dilemma if you can get Booming Blade/Green Flame Blade you kind of get the best of both worlds.

this is amazing!

Sounds like Life Domain is a solid choice since you get most of the recommended spells for free. I've been enjoying Life Domain, just wish the table understood that I can't heal everyone for big numbers. If we get Fireballed or get caught in dragon's breath there's not much I can do to fix it.

The Dice Gods be praised!!

Clerics can actually be played as a martial class if you spec them out right especially the war, forge, and storm clerics though I will admit storm cleric with booming blade is nothing to sneeze at

Awesome analysis. Cleric is my favourite class. Its funny because at lvl 3 with Spiritual Weapon you do feel really powerful, but we have a Stars Druid in our group, so I just look to him and think....ohh ya you're the powerful one at this level lol. 2x free guiding bolts and a bonus action equal to Spiritual Weapon (1d8 - wisdom mod) but at more distance and doesn't require a spell slot to use.....yep thats pretty dang strong. But lvl 5 and upwards Clerics can really turn it back on.

You mentioned keeping both Lesser Restoration and Protection from Poison prepared in the level 5-6 range, however, LR does remove the poisoned condition. Both spells are touch. PP gives you the hour of advantage rolls, but it that alone worth using two prepared spells at this level?

Couldn't you take the Metamagic Adept Feat and use Distant Spell on your Cure Wounds giving it a 30ft range?

Treantmonk’s T-Shirts!!

i love that spiritual weapon is basically like "you can have extra attack as a full caster, it just costs a spellslot and a bonus action

I just assumed you would always bless yourself in addition to your 2 melee damage dealers to give yourself the +1d4 on concentration saves to keep up the buff on your two damage dealing party members.

Do you think spirit guardians with a aasimar protector divine soul sorcerer work too?

One spell to consider in certain situations in my opinion is Spirit Shroud. While the extra damage is nice, the ability to just shut down an enemies' ability to heal is fantastic in the right situation and combos well with some other Cleric Spells. Let's say you're fighting a vampire. Radiant Damage does negate it's healing factor, but it doesn't negate its ability to recover using bite. So effectively, a hit empowered by Spirit Shroud and using Radiant damage, not only deals significant damage due to targetting their weakness to it, you're shutting down their ability to heal. Chill Touch can also do this, but it deals Necrotic, so it's far less reliable against the undead. Technically speaking, if Booming Blade is effected by Spell Sniper, it should also effect Spirit Shroud, so the effect increases to 20 feet. Making say Guiding Bolt a very good option, allowing you to both make an allies' next hit more likely to hit and negate regeneration at the same time. Furthermore, Spiritual Weapon also uses an attack roll, and thus if you're within 20 feet of the opponent, you effectively have two chances in one turn to land Spirit Shroud's effect: once with Spiritual Weapon and once with a primary attack. Even without that, both attacks get the damage buff, which is nice. Speaking of Spell Sniper: Booming Blade's secondary damage wouldn't be effected, but the attack you made with Booming Blade would and there's nothing saying the two wouldn't stack. So effectively, between Spirit Shroud and Booming Blade, you'd be dealing, at fifth level with both active, an additional 1d8 Thunder Damage and 1d8 Radiant, Necrotic, or Cold damage on top of the weapon's own damage. If you're a class that gets Divine Strike or Blessed Strike, that's an additional 1d8 damage with the type of damage being variable, later 2d8 past level 14. With these all stacked on top of each other, you'd effectively be dealing an additional 4d8 damage on an attack roll. And that's damage an enemy cannot regenerate or heal from until the start of your next turn. The best part is, with the exception of the spell slot used for Spirit Shroud intially, all this damage is essentually free, as none of it requires an additional action or bonus action to set up once Spirit Shroud is in play.

Thanks this is really helpful. Can I ask, on level 3, why would you decide to cast Bless on round 2 as opposed to Round 1?

honestly I advise players to use alternate means of picking up their ally like slapping a potion down their throat or making a medicine check while I do advise them to have some form of healing magic spending a spell slot early level on a healing spell may not be worth it when compared to the alternative not to mention any character can do these methods heck if your a thief rogue you an can administer a potion as a bonus action

Im a newbie cleric and i was just wondering why you wait until round 2 for the spiritual weapon dont you have an open bonus action at the end of turn 1? and if its something obvious please forgive me still learning

also one thing to mention at level 1 you can get 20 AC using the shield of faith spell which if you get bonuses from anywhere else like war forged integrated protection not to mention if your smart and know how to make a lot of money you can easily get plate armor by level 2 or 3 depending on the pace of the campaign especially if your a war forged forge cleric and you decide your going to make a crap ton of high quality weapons/armor/tools/etc to sell for some big bank not to mention you could also just make the plate armor yourself

That's a generous spirit guardians aura. It's a 35 ft cube vs 15 ft radius sphere. Gives ya a few more squares at the corners

I've been playing a fighter for the last three years in a campaign. Our cleric dutifully stopped casting Bless once he could cast Spirit Guardians. I took a level in cleric (forge) so I could cast and concentrate on Bless (also no one in our party could cast identify...).

Clerics are awesome, my biggest beef with them is they are often times less mobile than other characters. Echo fighters, thieves, wizards, monks(I know they suck), Rangers etc. All have abilities to move around the battlefield in short order. Clerics relying on spiritual weapon and 15 ft radius spirit weapon comparably plod along at 25 for spirit weapon and 30 foot pacing (assuming no dash action). This seems to impact the optimum usage of spirit guardians. Seems better mobility to clerics would help substantially on their signature key damage dealing spell.

How do you use meele atack weapons, shield for 18 AC and spells like spirit weapon or bless if they need somatic component?

Spirit Guardians has two gotchas that all clerics should know about. You cannot exempt an ally that you cannot see at the time of casting. Anyone who is invisible, hiding, behind cover, in darkness, etc. at the moment of casting will be affected. Spirit Guardians is a magical effect meaning it will not stack. The bad guys are not going to take 6d8 just because you have two clerics and both cast it. Plan ahead. Especially plan ahead before another character such as a lore bard or divine soul sorcerer builds around Spirit Guardians in conflict with his own cleric.

Clerics seem insane from my research. They can do anything from heal to insane damage burst.

If you blind an enemy believe everyone will thank you. Everyone benefits from being harder to hit, and being able to attack with advantage. The rogue will always get their sneak attack thanks to advantage, and paladins will love having more critical hits to slap some smites on. The barbarian will no longer have to use reckless attack, and will actually become harder to hit. You get the picture everyone loves you.

Question: if we're using most of our spell slots for Spirit Guardian and Spiritual Weapon, especially at low levels, how does this jive with your rating of Trickery as so high up when those extra spells it gets access to directly compete with the Big Gun spells?

So, Lev 5. Spirit Guardians + Spirit Weapon + Action. Sounds great!! Can I Still cast a normal spell with SG and SW currently in play?

Bravo

Hey Chris Can u explain the damage of spirit G. ex. I cast spirit G... does a create take damage (let say is standing next to me) on my turn ? or only on its own turn? or both?

I’ve been playing a light cleric and had mostly the same thoughts on this. I feel like I’m missing something though: is there any bonus action I can take on round 1 while casting spirit guardians?

14:24 I know this is a very late response, but I don't understand this mindset of being bored with clerics because you only ever cast spiritual weapon and heal. Rarely if ever have I even had time to consider a spiritual weapon in any significant fight. Bless, calm emotions, bane, lesser restoration, domain spells, dispel magic, spirit guardians... all of these take priority early, because you either want your allies to have the best chance to get off their most impactful abilities, hamper enemy movement as much as possible, or need to immediately counter very bad things the foe has done to you or party members, etc. etc. I can't waste a round of an often high stress 4-5 round combat getting off a spell that is going to give me 1 weapon swing's worth of damage per round. I'm running 2 clerics right now, and neither even prepares spiritual weapon, let alone frequently casts it. (level 6 and level 10 clerics). I guess if you are playing a life cleric and all you have access to is cleric spells, but other domains usually have better options in the moment than spiritual weapon. Heck, my arcana cleric often finds himself burning level 2 spells on magic missile to confirm kills, rather than taking a chance on a spiritual weapon's attack roll.

I actually think spirt guardians doing necrotic damage over radiant might actually be slightlyyy better (although it still really doesn’t matter much) this is just because clerics already have a bunch of tools that make them really effective against undead, and undead tend to be most of things you fight with necrotic resistance. So having spirit guardians do necrotic damage makes your cleric a little more versatile, as you have good options against a wider range of enemies. Although this does make undead less of an absolute cake walk as it nerfs your strongest option against them and undead are way more common than things that resist radiant so it’s still a toss up.

Cantrip? Weapon? Why not both? Booming Blade. Worth either a feat or a multi-class to get.

I'm playing an evil storm cleric. I blast Thunderwave and Call Lightning. If my party gets in the blast radius, I heal them after combat.

I play a very aoe blasty tenpest cleric. Destructive wave and thunderwave are super fun

Semi related question, I'm playing a Warlock that is dipping 3 levels into divine soul sorcerer. Do you think spiritual weapon is a good use of my bonus action or is it better to be using my limited sorcery points (3 total) to be quickening eldritch blast?

Id you play a tortle you can get an AC of 19 at lvl one

how much of this applies or doesnt apply to divine souls sorcerer? Is the difference big enough to warrant a separate video?

Playing a half-elf (moon elf ancestry) twilight cleric 5 - my strategy is to pop my twilight sanctuary and cast spiritual weapon in rd 1, add in spirit guardians in rd 2, and then from rd 3 on use booming blade with spiritual weapon attacks from rd 3 on, supporting our barbarian and conquest paladin with the temp hp from twilight sanctuary. I went Dex-forward, so I’m at 18 dex now wearing studded leather, a shield, and a rapier, and a wisdom of 16. Thoughts on the build? I know the slightly lower WIS is less than ideal, but I’m thinking I’ve got lots of damage sources per round, my 18 AC, and I can combine my booming blade with spirit guardians to just make enemies have few good options. And I’m thinking meanwhile that the +1 modifier difference between WIS and DEX isn’t that huge a deal (notwithstanding bounded accuracy)

Spirit Guardians has a 15ft radius, but your grid shows 35ft by 35ft aura. Is it common to represent it as 7*7 squares rather than 6*6, centered on a corner of the caster?

How do I play as a cleric of Tire?

So in defense of Dexterity/Wisdom Clerics you can easily get studded leather, shield and full dex modifier to AC, and gain stealth, initiative and bonus to ranged attacks. Combined with trickery domain and an amazing spell list and abilities you can do quite a bit.

Love this video I reference it regularly for my cleric. Just one question could you make a video or link to somewhere that shows me how to make a highlighted square in roll20 like you did for spirit guardians, that would help me alot in my games!

Weird how you didn't mention aid Spirit weapon is suboptimal Cure wounds is a waste Sanctuary is a must have if you have another caster in your party

Spirit guardians isn’t quite friendly fire safe. You specifically designate creatures you can see at the time of casting to be safe. Everyone else gets shredded. Bad guys can start grabbing hostages to keep try to keep you away. Commoners and children might try to rush to you for safety when they run across your party saving their town. If your party is split and your cleric sets up before everyone’s in sight, they get spirit shredded.

Are Circle of Dreams Druids the best healers in D&D? If so, can anyone give me the abridged version of why they’re superior to Life Clerics?

so ive been playing my cleric as a purely healbot. Ive been playing it horribly wrong

Forge Cleric says 19 AC at level 1

Why do we care that Spirit Guardians last until the next short rest? Treantmonks says that you should cast it again on your next encounter, but even if you took a short rest, you don't regain any spells from short rests

All right, time for an on-point comment. Feedback from 70 hours of low-level play (Life, Forge): a) weapon-bashing is common, though I often used Sacred Flame or Toll the Dead towards lvl 4. Regarding level 2 slots, I had a cool game where we raided a room SWAT-style and I had to spend the slots on Blindness and Enhance Ability while maintaining Silence cast as a Ritual. b) Forge play involved 50/50 SF/Mace and a support playstyle. Bless is a Godsend. Healing Word too. Our GM got a tiny bit frustrated-amused with the Paladin's AC 20 (Defense + my Blessing of the Forge). While I probably won't ever get heavy-duty spells ike Sunburst or Ressurection I'm looking forward to Divine Intervention since 10% is still not that bad.

Dude I'm done as you suggested a cleric not to carry a melee weapon

Revivify is pretty good but it is incredibly expensive, 300 gold worth of diamonds

“Clerics are so effective!” It’s literally two spells that are so effective that there is almost no other options any time there is a combat. It’s so cliché that if you had 3 clerics in the same party, all three would do the exact same thing, every single combat encounter.

Generic comment to increase engagement statistics.

> D&D is for *everyone* Not Hobgoblins tho. I hear they're quitters.

My biggest problem with Cleric is their abysmal Con save and how hard it can be to use SG effectively with it. Main points: - SG takes your spell action to cast. Therefore, can't take the Dodge action even though you signaled yourself as one of the biggest targets. Result: Cleric will be hit in the next turn. Additional effect, you are not getting any bonus action use this turn if it's the first round. - SG is used within melee range of enemies and typically only with there are a sufficient amount of them within range. Result: Cleric will be targeted by several attacks and, so long as the enemies don't share a turn, I've seen more often than not that only some of those enemies are ever actually affected by SG because the initial enemies end up breaking the cleric's Conc. - SG takes Conc and, as stated previously, can be easily broken in under one round. Result: Cleric gives up any other Conc for this spell and may even hit significantly fewer enemies than a Fireball would have (admittedly not a great spell to compare against but I'm doing it anyway). - SG when playing with the common optional Diagonals rules, I have not been convinced that SG should be a square. Result: Advertised dmg from optimizers may often be smaller than predicted. (Not a point on Con nor one I'm looking to defend but wanted to make others aware) Takeaway, if looking to use SG with a Cleric it's important to try and find a way to bump those Con saves, gain adv through something like War Caster, and/or get some high AC

Level 1 AC 19 from either forge cleric or for variant human medium armor master 16 dex. (No disadvantage on sneak). If you know you will not be going with 6 levels in cleric you can start level 1 with 20 AC by combining both of these ideas.

So funny story: I recently played in a one-shot (hopefully going to become a full campaign) and I had Guiding Bolt prepped as an emergency tool. Realizing my Hedgehog-folk Rogue (yes, really) was in position to sneak attack if he could only get advantage. Cue Pump-a-Rum (me) firing a Guiding Bolt, which then the Rogue shot with a hand crossbow and crit, doubling his SA and utterly demolished the boss

I love adding a level of Wizard to any Cleric build. Shield and Absorb Elements make you much harder to kill, while Find Familiar can help the party's Rogue deal very reliable damage. If you also take the Dodge action, you become nearly impossible to hit.

At level 5, multiclasses for 1 level of hexblade warlock and Booming/Green Flame Blade on his nature cleric. Ffft spirit guardians. Don't judge meeeeeeeee.

Solid breakdown of the Cleric but everything is reduced to how to handle combats. A lot of info on AC, HP, spells and tactics that are effective in combat. Playing D&D to me is much more than 3 encounters a day with a boss fight at the end.