Baldur's Gate 3 Best Beginner Cleric Builds

Sep. 25, 2023

Baldur’s Gate 3 Best Beginner Cleric Builds

In thisBaldur’s Gate 3 Cleric Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you the 3 Best BeginnerClericBuilds that you can use to put together an effective Cleric early on in the game. I wanted to give some early-gameBuildsfor those of you who are near the beginning of the game. This is going to reach up to Level 6 and then for late-game Builds, it’s going to be from Levels 7 to 12.

Two of the Cleric Builds are SingleClassones while the other is aMulticlassBuild. I’ll talk about why that is but I won’t be going through every Subclass since there are 7 Cleric Domains. The ones that I’ll be focusing on absolutely devastate enemies inCombat.

So first up is 6 levels ofTempest Domain Clericand what I really like about thisBG3Build is it allows you to focus onWisdom. You’ll be casting Spells most of the time to crank Wisdom. This means that you won’t pay attention toStrengthorDexteritytoo much. You can also useHeavy Armorif you want as well as anyWeaponearly on in Baldur’s Gate 3. Because of this, you’re able to make use of Weapon Attacks until you get moreSpell Slots.

Once you gainCall Lightning, things will start to significantly open up for this Baldur’s Gate 3 Tempest Domain Cleric Build. It can be cast every turn as long as you maintainConcentrationwithout having to use more Spell Slots. This will be your primary attack. We’ve also taken theWar Caster Featat Level 4 in order to give us anAdvantageonConstitution Saving Throwsso that we can keep Call Lightning up for every possible turn.

There are a few other things I love about this Cleric Build. On top of the Heavy Armor, you can wield aShieldsince you haveShield Proficiencyas a Cleric. So you’re going to have a fairly highArmor Classeven early on. This will allow you to avoid damage that’s going to help keep your Concentration up because you’ll roll fewer Constitution Saving Throws. But it also makes enemies come up and attack you since you’ll position yourself on the front lines. They’ll end up missing quite often and when they do hit you, you’ll be able to retaliate with lightning or thunder damage for everyReactiononce per round, which is good.

It’s a decent amount of damage and you’ll get more out of that than you wouldAttacks of Opportunitybecause targets don’t normally run up to you to melee and then move out of range to attack something else. It does happen sometimes but it’s not very common.

This Build also has a good amount of AOE damage betweenThunderwave,Shatter, and Call Lightning so you’ll be able to deal a lot of damage each turn.

And because of theChannel Divinity Abilityof the Tempest Domain Cleric, where you gain an extra charge at Level 6, you can make sure that this does maximum damage twice everyShort Rest. So you’ll be able to wipe out groups of enemies regularly and rest in between combat to do it again.

At this level, you also gainThunderbolt Strike, allowing you to push targets backward when you hit them with thunder or lightning damage. This isn’t the most useful thing but sometimes, enemies are positioned right near a cliff’s edge and you can knock them off by dealing damage to them, which is great. A lot of times, you’ll kill them outright, and this is another reason to go to Level 6 in my opinion.

Moving forward with this BG3 Tempest Domain Cleric Build, you could take 5 levels ofCircle of the LandDruidin order to gainLightning Boltto give you another option for your Spellcasting. This does a long straight line of lightning damage that works very well when used with Channel Divinity. It would still give you access to a lot of Spell Slots that you could upcast so you’d still be very strong.

And then you could take 1 level of another Class like aFighter, for instance, in order to gain aFighting StylelikeDefenseto give you an extra Armor Class as well asSecond Wind. Or you could takeMonkto allow you to add your Wisdom to your Armor Class when you’re unarmored. Those are both really good options for this Build.

The next Build I want to show you is 6 levels ofLight Domain Cleric. I really like this one because similar to the Tempest Domain Cleric, it’s very offensive. It allows you to focus more on dealing fire damage whereas the first Build lets you deal effective lightning and thunder damage. As a result, you have a lot of fire-based Spells and you’ll probably want to pick upElemental Adeptas aFeatat some point to help you overcome fire resistance and immunities. This also makes it so that you can’t roll a 1 on yourDamage Rollsfor your Fire Spells so you’ll essentially deal more damage with them.

Because we go at least Level 5 here, you’re going to gain access toFireball, which is a fantastic AOE Spell. Moreover, at Level 6, you gain an extra Spell Slot so you’ll actually be able to throw 3 Fireballs before you have aLong Rest.

Another thing that I really love about this Light Domain Cleric Build is that at Level 1, you gainWarding Flare, which allows you to impose aDisadvantageon an enemy that’s going to hit you in combat once per turn. You can do this every turn so it means that you’ll be pretty tanky for a Spellcaster. It’ll be highly likely that they’re going to miss, particularly during the beginning of BG3.

Once you get to Level 6, you can also use this on nearby allies should they get attacked. It’s really good at mitigating the damage your party is going to take for every round.

The Channel Divinity of this Light Domain Cleric lets you inflict radiant damage AOE that hits enemies within the line of sight so they shouldn’t hide behind something for this to take effect. Although, in my opinion, it kind of falls off later on in the game but it’s still a decent one to have. Plus, this Channel Divinity doesn’t hit friendlies.

Moving forward, I would take this Baldur’s Gate 3 Light Domain Cleric Build up to at least Level 9 in order to gainFlame StrikeandWall of Fire. This is going to give you even more Fire Spells at your disposal, particularly a lot of damage if you have Elemental Adept. You could then multiclass with 3 levels of another Class such as a Fighter or Monk to pick up some Martial Features.

And the last Build I want to showcase is 5 levels of War Domain Cleric and 1 level of Fighter. I would highly recommend that if you’re going to do this setup to take Fighter first and then War Domain Cleric. This will give youProficiencywith Constitution, which will greatly benefit your Constitution Saving Throws because you have a lot of Spells that use Concentration.

The Baldur’s Gate 3 War Domain Cleric Fighter Build is really devastating and it’s a proper hybrid because you can deal decent damage in melee or at range while casting powerful Spells. And since you have War Domain, you can attack with yourBonus Action3x at Level 1 and then it’ll become 4x at Level 5.

A good reason to get to Level 5 here is to gain extra charges in between Long Rest. You can attack as a Bonus Action if you attack with your mainAction4x in combat. And then you also haveHeavy Armor,Medium Armor,Light Armor, and Shield Proficiency as well as all Weapon Proficiencies so you can use whatever you want. But I highly recommend using a Shield with either Heavy Armor orMedium Armorwith higher Dexterity and a Finesse Weapon so that when you go into melee combat, you’re very protected.

You can also use theSpirit Guardians Spell, which is absolutely devastating because it casts an AOE around you to hit enemies when you move into them. And then you deal additional damage at the start of your turn. So you can tank because of your high Armor Class, you can melee while enemies are sitting inside this, and it’s going to deal tons of damage for every round. Remember to attack with your Actions and Bonus Actions in between.

The only thing is that you have to maintain Concentration for the Spirit Guardians Spell so taking the Fighter first helps with it. If you took War Caster, it’ll let you get in the middle of enemies without having to worry as much about breaking your Concentration.

You’ll also be able to use other Spells such asSanctuaryto protect yourself. You haveHealing Wordto heal you or allies as a Bonus Action,Guiding Boltto range down enemies,Inflict Woundsif they get close to you. Because of your high Wisdom, there are a lot of things you can do. Second Wind is another option to heal yourself even for a little bit. And then you can keepBlesson your group.

This BG3 War Domain Cleric Fighter Build has a lot of versatility and it’s extremely deadly early on in the game.

Moving forward with this Build, I would probably take Fighter up to Level 5 in order to getExtra Attackand then finish taking War Domain up to Level 7 to give you more Spell Slots to deal even more damage.

So that wraps up our 3 Best Beginner Cleric Builds. We’ll have some properCompanion Buildscoming because we know a lot of people have been wondering about that. We already did one but I want to get those done, and then we’ll continue to mix them with other Guides and Builds.

As always, if you have more tips or questions, please leave them in the comments below. I will try and answer them.

Stay tuned for more Baldur’s Gate 3 content.

Auberon

Writer at Fextralife. I really like vanilla ice cream.