I have two Clerics but my favorite is a Grave Domain Kenku Cleric named Trick or Treat. He wears a little plague doctor costume and will often accept payment in candy.
Grave domain is so much freaking fun. Rolled my first cleric not too long ago and I basically just try to negate damage all the time while laying out massive damage.
@masquerade Plague Doctors are always cute. Trick or Treat is often just helping with notes at his church but upon request by a deceased persons will or their family he'll aid in growing something from the deads grave. Like a rose bush. The graveyard they help out with doubles also as just a pretty garden so that the grieving process is less depressing.
I always love the bird race. I've always wanted to build one with a quick to always perch on things and then poop. All while screaming " I have no control" squawk !
@@pixelqube3274 No haha, Life domain is just _THE_ healer domain. But, it actually helps you in combat because you get all the super important spells automatically prepared and will have to use less healing spells because it’s so good at adding additional healings to your healing spells.
@@saintpoli6800 me when i play a life cleric:aight uh im just gonna do this. *proceeds to rip the souls out of every enemy and tortures there wailing souls then puts them back to there bodys* next time dont fuck with me
Ashley: "May the blessing of the everlight be with you" Me: *starts tearing up* It's been more than a year since we said goodbye to VM but I still miss them so much ;_;
3 years and counting, but then again i only really got into the vm campaign last year due to the pandemic. Still, i have a feeling that this won't ever fade away entirely
Preventing your allies from getting hurt saves you several rounds of being asked to heal them! Something to keep in mind if you don't like being boxed into *healing* , instead you can control the enemies and blast things.
The Sanctuary spell is truly godsent. I love it to pieces. Also hell yeah, crowd-controlling cleric! Hard to hit, hard to stop, and hard to keep control? Talk about a triple threat.
This, a thousand times this. I'm always trying to convince the players in my groups that the most efficient path is mitigation in battle, healing and recovery after.
A friend of mine didnt believe that clerics could be all about smashing face so I put together one. Not a single healing spell, but enough offense to make people feel the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the name of my warhammer.
So instead of using an action to do anything useful you want to stand in the thick of it wailing your hammer around pretending you can hit things? I see this work in only one instance: You said "Fuck all" and put all your Ability Score improvements into strength, wield a maul and GWM twice in a round. Thus doing absolutely nothing that your class was designed to do. You honestly do more damage per round with Spiritual Guardians, Dodge as your action and Spiritual Weapon as your bonus actions.
That’s where you’re wrong, Benjamin. Let them play the game however they want. “Your fun is wrong” is not a cool thing to say, man. Which might as well be what you’re saying
So if your idea of fun in a game is to stand by the side screaming "look at me, i'm a cleric using a warhammer to deal damage! How Cool is that!?" while doing little to nothing to actually help in a combat situation, because clerics are trash at hitting things hard, they ARE NOT MECHANICALLY BUILT FOR IT. You excuse that because "Well he's having fun." Do you know what is more FUN than trying to hit things and fail miserably? Actually hitting things. Why the fuck would you go out of your way to be create a character that is shit at what they're supposed to do because they rather be shit at something they are not supposed to do? Unless you go for a character that is, well... an idiot. That doesn't know better than be a terrible addition for a party.
If you want a more spell-focused cleric, CON is way more important than STR since a lot of spells require Concentration. Spirit Guardians can be the buzzsaw of a minion horde, but means nothing if a stray rock hitting your chest causes you to lose focus on the first round. For similar reasons, seriously consider picking up the War Caster feat, as you get advantage on concentration and can cast single target spells as opportunity attacks. Once an enemy tried to run away, figuring the cleric's mace couldn't do any serious damage. She instead used Hold Person. XD
You can also take the feat that allows you to add your proficiency modifier to the con save roll, Resilient, a feat that can be used more than once if you wish to become a damage and control blocking cleric, but then you are committing a lot. Saying that something like a gnome bear barbarian would get a lot of milage out of this sort of build (Mega tank)
My Death Cleric started with a level of Fighter for the Heavy Armor (also former Soldier, so it makes sense) I had Vampiric Touch going last fight, and thanks to the +5 on Con saves, I never dropped concentration, even as I was busy tanking it up and taking anywhere between 4 to 6 attacks per round. I plan on picking up War Caster at some point, for indeed the ability to cast something like Hold Person on an enemy that think they can flee from my wrath.
AAAAND that epic screech of fangirlish glee you just heard at 12:14 pm PST (10/17) was my niece who not only is a Vox Machina nerd but a Captain America/Avengers nerd....she hadn't realized "Pike" was the waitress that Cap saved in Avengers... I'm so proud. she now wants to be a cleric. Thanks guys
Awww, I looked this up after I saw this. I didn't realize Ashley had wayyy more parts that got deleted from the final movie :( I always thought the few waitress parts felt a bit disjointed. Oh well.. the deleted scenes are cool.
In all honesty I'd kinda wish she just made a new character when she eventually gets more time to actually play in the show,Yasha has just kinda been there as an NPC far more than as a PC so a lot of what kind of person yasha is comes from Matt and Ashley doesn't seem to know who the character is even when the campaign is about 40 episodes in. It might be easier to just reroll and establish a new character with an actual voice than try to keep the old one going.
*Ding! Cracks me up everytime. I've been wanting to play a Cleric for some time. Might develop him/her already.. ready to pound on some divine healing when needed.
Cleric has quickly become one of my favorites. 3rd level Inflict Wounds for 5d10 is no joke! And it can crit ( a deagonborn cleric in my game did 74 damage with his 3rd level crit). But really it's about the spell flexibility. Change your spell list every time you wake up?? Yes plz!!
"The best part about playing a Cleric is that you have the responsibility of keeping the other members of your party alive." *Side-eyes early C2 Jester. Especially after her "I'm the Cleric?" Moment.*
Clerics dont need to be heal bots, it's so sad how they are treated if they didn't prepare their entire kit with healing spells for the first session when someone goes down. Everyone should play a cleric at least once.
My first character was *clears throat and sings to TMNT tune* TEENAGE HIGH ELF KNOWLEDGE CLERIC! TEENAGE HIGH ELF KNOWLEDGE CLERIC! TEENAGE HIGH ELF KNOWLEDGE CLERIC! TEENAGE HIGH ELF KNOWLEDGE CLERIC! Teen in a chain mail - KNOWLEDGE POWER!
I'm in a group of all new players and none of them have figured out that Clerics are more than just heal bots yet. In our next campaign I'm rolling in with a Cleric to show them what's up.
Hahaha, I was one of them, but after running a Tempest Domain cleric and using those Channel Divinity's to just wipe out enemies who grouped up soon taught me otherwise.
Killing me I didn't think to take it with my Life Cleric. Mending just made so much more sense in an RP way, but the way my group rolls, oy vey, that sweet sweet Guidance would have been helpful. ;D But we've made it to 18 thus far, so at least it hasn't hurt us! ;D
You have to touch them though. Which is why my cleric takes magic initiate, just cast it through your cat familiar. Wait! Its dangerous to go alone! Take this.
This a great quick-guide, and I'd like to add a few other tips to it: 1)You do not need to worship a god to be a cleric. You can also be devoted to an ideal - yes this is not RAW. I liked the fact that Paladins no longer are tied to the gods, but ideals, and I see no reason why it couldn't also apply to clerics. If you like the mechanics of a cleric, but really don't want to be religious, you can work with your GM on it. 2)As several other peeps have pointed out, you do not need to prepare healing spells or be boxed in to it. There are some really interesting builds where you can do battlefield control, or area damage mitigation. I've played a Light Domain cleric, and I certainly wasn't healing people (at least, not during combat). Also, Jester and Clay :) Also, clerics get a lot of the juicy radiant and sunlight related spells.
Ive gone through 12 characters and memorized the manuals cover to cover but the little bits of humor and creativity put into these videos make them so worth watching
A campaign I DM has a tempest cleric, can confirm they kick ass. Between the lightning/thunder flavor and upper-level flight ability, she's basically Thor.
This reminds me of a Cleric story I have. It was a one on on session with my brother and it was a big 'ol Blue Dragon fight. There was an npc in the fight with a revival amulet that was real tough to break and they had no idea what would happen if it did. Essentially, the death was kinda anticlimactic so I exposed the secret of the broken amulet. The dragon falls... onto that npc. I rolled a percentile and before the dragon even caused any damage to the npc, she was on her feet again. She decided "Screw it, if I die, they're coming with me." She flew high up and the only other flying character, the player flew up with it. Eventually the dragon stopped, she needed a power boost for her (homebrew) attack. My brother forgot blue dragons are lighting based and casts call thunder. Me: She willingly fails her dex save. Player: Yea- Wait what? The lighting crawled around the dragon, she curled up and dove to the earth, like a meteor. The player had one more spell he could cast. He cast guardian of faith and kills the dragon. It caught the dragon, ripped off it's wings and chokeslammed it into a nearby field. Safe to say, that was one of the smoothest Cleric recoveries I have ever seen.
Currently playing a goblin rouge/ GRAVE cleric Okay; This May be long but I really love this class. I play a Goblin rouge named Gum-Gum who has died and been resurrected twice; and fell (jumped) into the swamp of lost things but escaped through some really good dice rolls after a few months in-game (about 3 sessions) so when there were new players wanting to join our gaming group and a few of the others were leaving ;my DM and I decided that because my character had died; she’d KNOW there was an afterlife. So she’d go on this sort of journey to become a grave cleric and sort of decompress from her time in the swamp of lost things (and run into the new characters and that’s be how the group would form) Also she’s a goblin but because she met the king of the storm giants (when she was just a rogue.) I thought it’d be great to have her be a cleric of the All-Father. So now I have a 4 foot tall Goblin arcane trickster rouge/ Grave cleric of the All father; whose “spiritual weapon” is a Giant Thor-Hammer. It’s really chaotic having this very small creature character worshiping a God usually worshiped by Giants; but it’s so, so much fun to play. Thanks for creating this video as I don’t own the book where this domain is explained. It makes me really excited for stuff coming up with that character in the next few levels. Although I will probably not be allowed to go past level 11 as a cleric. So Thanks for this video. The cantrips/spells from her arcane trickerster background balance out some of the “losses” that this cleric class doesn’t offer. Also, “Toll the dead” is my favorite cantrip from this class so far. Thanks for the video. Just discovered your channel tonight and just felt you’d appreciate the strangeness hearing of a Goblin Arcane Trickster Rouge/ Grave Cleric of the All-Father named Gum-Gum.
Hold person and Bane are also really good CC moves, while Bless is really good to help your allies actually hit stuff. All are Concentrations though, so choose wisely.
My first cleric was named Wilhelm, he was my first character and had a knack for losing his warhammer then punching his enemies to death. He punched a hobgoblin, ogre, mind flayer, and adult dragon to death all BEFORE he eventually multiclassed into monk
I just started my first ever Campaign, I love always playing a more supportive character so I went with a Cleric. Definitely having insane amounts of fun with this game!
I had a human Life Cleric for a season of AL called Kashfrey. She drank a half orc and two dwarves under a table and her spiritual weapon was party MVP. I would love to get back to her someday. Especially since I'd be roleplaying a pretty big personality shift after she failed to discern that one of the dwarves was dying (from poison, lol) while exploring a cave. And then death curse shenanigans. Kas was a ton of fun.
Sacred flame sucks compared to Toll The Dead. Its a Dex save which monsters are more likely to save versus Wis for Toll The Dead. Flame only does D8, but Toll does D8 when full HP and a massive D12 when hurt... So at level 5, your cantrip is doing 2D12 damage necro damage which few mobs are resistant too.
Same damage as a light crossbow, and bad save type. Does ignore cover and has a good damage type against undeads. So it's good if you are in a campaign of undeads that hides behind cover. No? I'd look elsewhere for ranged attacks, it just plain sucks. (Toll The Dead is buffed by the Death domain, so you hit two targets instead of one. It sucks against undeads though.)
Another way you can get some extra "boom" on your cleric is to take the Arcana domain, which lets you pick two cantrips from the Wizard/Sorcerer spell list and cast them with Wisdom. If you really want to keep the "Mighty-Smitey" feel, Greenflame Blade and Booming Blade are excellent choices from the Swords Coast Adventurer Guide. If you want more healing, a really powerful combo is to combine the Life Domain with a few levels of Druid or Ranger to add Goodberry to your spell list, normally 10 berries for 1HP each, and becomes 3 HP/berry thanks to Disciple of Life. 30 HP that can be distributed in multiples of 3 for a single 1st level slot will make you the most popular member of your party during a short rest.
I had the exact same idea (your math tho, good berries heal 1 and it's a 1st level spell so that's actually 40 hp) and GM banned it. If you read Life carefully it says, Starting at 1st level, your healing spells are more effective. Whenever you use a spell of 1st level or higher to restore hit points to a creature, the creature regains additional hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level. (3 additional for a first level spell, 4 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd ect.) You don't use the spell Goodberry to heal creatures, you use the spell Goodberry to instantly create up to 10 berries. Up to ten berries appear in your hand and are infused with magic for the duration. A creature can use its action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 hit point, and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day. A creature uses it's action to eat the berry, meaning you didn't use a spell, that creature used an action. Another creature can't use one of your spells as an action so Goodberry can't benefit from Disciple of Life. Now if you wanted to stretch out a Druid's healing you could dip into life cleric and use that benifit for some of the druid heal spells like Healing Spirit. (Healing Spirit restores 1d6 each time it heals and it can heal possibly 10 times, even to different creatures so that'd be 10d6+40 instead)
@@joemama114 Whoops, yeah I incorrectly recalled the effects, thanks for catching that math error. However, Jeremy Crawford has said on Sage Advice that Goodberry and Disciple of Life combine, at least as he'd rule it. But there's wiggle room both ways. :)
Helpful tip... Spirit Guardians (pg.278 PHB) is one of the MOST USEFUL spells you can get. It's a 3rd level concentration spell that lasts for up to 10min. It will allow you to dish out that damage while still using your turn to heal and take care of your group. My players have affectionately nicknamed it the Holy Blender!
My friends and me just started d&d and I- who of course wanted to be everything I like at once- made a tiefling life domain cleric and I'm not exactly sure how but my charisma was just busted from the start and now I'm called a bard-cleric mix. (also I so do NOT have a plan as to what I'm doing so.... im practically a better bard then a damn cleric) long story short everything: thank you, every damn tip I am finnaly able to understand helps a LOT
This is a very late post, but I just wanted to chime in, that Grave Domain Clerics are amazing. Giving an ally an automatic crit, and canceling an enemy crit, are HUGE. So happy Ashley (Pike) did the Cleric video. 🙂 💪
I miss seeing Ashley, I always forget how much I like her when she is out of the spot light for a while. She seems like a down to earth goodhearted person that is loving enough to take care of her friends but wise enough to know not take take shit and kick some ass.
I'm loving playing a tempest cleric actually! My party is pretty low level so I can still keep up with the dps. I realize I will be falling behind soon but for now I love that sweet sweet channel divinity + reaction = max 2d8 damage.
Or, if you want to just be a nightmare for enemies and the DM, choose the Death Domain. You can do 1d8 more necrotic damage on top of whatever else you are doing. There's also Touch of Death, which does 5+2x your cleric level, so a possibility of 45 extra damage. Finally, when you cast a necromancy cantrip or spell of 1st thru 5th level at an enemy, it can target two, doing damage to enemies that you weren't intending to damage in the first place.
Clerics are great for undercover campaigns. EVERYONE trusts the doctor. With their high wisdom and the trickery domain, they make great undercover agents if you want to try something different for the class.
“The best part about playing a cleric is that you have the responsibility to keep your fellow players’ characters alive.” Laura’s just off camera blinking and looking away awkwardly.
My current favorite character I've done (who I really hope to port into a game where I can actually make use of him rather than random oneshots) is a Very Smol Wood Elf Grave Cleric named Carothann. He's also a Dex-heavy build, which works...scarily well, actually.
I've been watching this as I'm working on my 1st cleric. I've been playing for over 20 years and i've been so scared to play cleric, but my love of Pike makes me wanna make one.
I invest only in wisdom and constitution. You can cast spells like toll the dead or sacred flame within melee distance since it doesn't require an attack roll. Also, try using a Warforgef! If you have heavy armor proficiency, then that gives you 16+Prof AC!
You could do a whole party of various clerics (or clerics & druids). You might be a little slow out of the gate, but it would be a total bitch for monsters to knock you down. It would give a whole new angle on storytelling & world connections, with the vast spectrum of harmonies of eternity to draw from. I'd love to see that campaign, or even run it. These are meaty characters with a lot of depths to explore.
I'm just now getting into DnD, but I've played a lot of faith based builds in different RPGs. I have a cleric that duel weilds greatshields in Dark Souls II
To be honest, even though this is a quick build it should have specified that there are two main types of clerics: spellcast-centered and then the ones that can whip out a sword or battleaxe - some clerics don't gain those melee combat proficiencies (take knowledge domain for example).
Clerics literally can do anything they want, they can fight on the frontline with War Domain with very offensive spells like Spirit Guardians etc. Or they can support with Life domain or they can simply take Light domain and become a fireball spitting pastor...
People seriously need to understand that clerics being tank and healer is just a stereotypes because in reality Clerics, thanks to their insane amount domains and their spell prepping style gets to customize themselves to whatever their party need them to be.
*I myself am playing a Cleric of the Fortune Domain.* Homebrewed by me :p Strauss von Orig, a gold-driven dwarf who tries to squeeze every penny out of every deal, while firmly believing that money is the life-blood of civilization that keeps it healthy and its citizens happy. He does not however condone illicit ways of attaining money, as it harms the hard work of those who most deserve it. He worships the dwarven deity of the forge and commerce in my friend's campaign. He is kinda of a joke character based around a character from the show Wakfu called "Ruel Stroud". :D
