Baldur's Gate 3 best Cleric build

Looking for the best Baldur's Gate 3 Cleric build? In Baldur's Gate 3, Clerics represent the gods they worship, meaning they can wield potent magic on their deity's behalf. The token healers of the D&D universe, Clerics play an important role when added to any team composition.

Lest you think Clerics are all predictable goodness and humility, Baldur's Gate 3 lets you develop some extremely creative and off-the-wall Cleric builds. And while you can't necessarily expect Clerics to be hardcore weapon damage dealers, they have plenty of spells that can significantly hurt foes — just as you might expect from a character that represents, you know, an all-powerful god. If you're keen on finding the best Baldur's Gate 3 Cleric build to always keep your comrades alive and your opponents on their toes, here's everything you need to know including the best race, subclass, background, and feats for your character.

Note: Looking for lots more builds to choose from? Check out our dedicated list of the best builds in Baldur's Gate 3 for each class!

Baldur's Gate 3 best Cleric build

If you've picked Cleric for your class, you can expect to draw from the elements and your holy powers to keep allies safe when facing the creatures and beings of Faerun. While developing your Cleric build can be a relatively complex process, you'll want to choose abilities for your character with this in mind.

Cleric weapon, armour, and class proficiencies:

• Cleric weapon proficiencies: Simple weapons, morningstars
• Cleric armour proficiencies: Light armour, medium armour, shields
• Cleric skill proficiencies (choice of two): History, Intelligence, Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, Religion
• Cleric saving throws: Charisma, Wisdom

Cleric Domain options

At Level 1, Clerics can choose from the following subclasses, which are known as Domains:

• Life (includes heavy armour proficiency): Focus on spells that protect and restore mind, body, and soul.
• Light: Emphasises justice and majesty with spells designed to dispel darkness and harm the undead.
• Knowledge: A focus on adaptable spells, with many designed to debuff enemies.
• Trickery: Emphasises deception and illusion magic.
• Nature (includes heavy armour proficiency): An embodiment of the natural world, drawing your power from elements in the environment around you.
• Tempest (includes heavy armour proficiency): Leverages destruction via forces such as thunder and lightning.
• War (includes martial weapons proficiency and heavy armour proficiency): An emphasis on savagery against those who you consider unrighteous.

Cleric deity options

Clerics can choose to worship one of 20 different deities. Your choices may impact how NPCs interact with you, but ultimately, these choices don't have much bearing on how you spec your character. The only things to note are that Lolth-Sworn Drow Clerics must oviously worship Lolth, though other races can also worship her by choice. Seldarine Drow are free to worship any deity besides Lolth, and may want to look into Eilistraee, another Drow goddess who acts as Lolth's antithesis. Similar rules apply for Vlaakith - only Githyanki can worship her, but they can worship other deities as well.

Best Cleric race, background, and skills

Your race, background, and skills can greatly enhance and strengthen your Cleric character. These may vary based on your team composition, but these are our best picks for a solid Cleric build.

The best Cleric race is Gold Dwarf.

The Dwarf race has a reduced movement speed of 7.5m per turn, as opposed to most races' 9m. However, the race grants Dwarven Combat Training for weapon proficiency in battleaxes, handaxes, light hammers, and warhammers. Dwarves also gain Darkvision, allowing characters to see in the dark, and Dwarven Resilience, which confers advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance against poison damage.

The primary benefit to choosing the Gold Dwarf subrace is Dwarven Toughness, which increases a character's Hit Point maximum by one and increases it one more for every level.

The best Cleric background is Acolyte.

As an Acolyte, the character has chosen to live their life in service to a temple, which aligns nicely with the Cleric class as a whole. The Acolyte gains proficiencies in Insight and Relgion. Insight allows you to determine a creature's true intentions, while Religion allows you to recall lore about deities, rites, rituals, prayer, and other religious elements.

The best Cleric skill proficiencies are Medicine and Persuasion.

Medicine allows you to recognise symptoms of illness and disease, while Persuasion is generally useful when it comes to diplomacy without having to resort to trickery and deception.

Best Cleric Domain

The best Cleric Domain is the Light Domain. This Domain grants access to powerful spells as you progress, including Burning Hands at Level 1, Scorching Ray at Level 3, and Fireball at Level 5. Additionally, subclass features such as Warding Flame will allow you to use a reaction to impose disadvantage on an enemy when it attacks.

Best Cleric spells and cantrips

Clerics will start the game with three cantrips, a number of spells equivalent to your Wisdom modifier plus one, Domain spells, and two Level 1 spell slots. They will also get spells from their Domain, which are always considered prepared spells. They can choose additional spells as they progress, though it's worth nothing that spell levels do not correspond with character levels. Here are the best Cleric spells and cantrips for each applicable level.

Best Cleric cantrips

The best Cleric cantrips are:

Level 1 Cantrips: Blade Ward, Resistance, Sacred Flame

Level 4 Cantrip: Guidance

Best Cleric spells

These are the best Cleric spells by spell level:

Level 1: Healing Word, Sanctuary, Bane, Inflict Wounds

Level 2: Prayer of Healing, Enhance Ability

Level 3: Glyph of Warding, Protection from Energy, Mass Healing Word, Remove Curse

Level 4:Banishment, Wall of Fire (Light Domain only)

Level 5: Dispel Evil and Good, Contagion

Level 6: Heal or Heroes' Feast

Best Cleric feats

Cleric can choose feats at Levels 4, 8, and 12. The best Cleric feats are:

• Level 4: War Caster
• Level 8: Lucky
• Level 12: Tough

War Caster is a solid early-game feat to grant advantage on saving throws to maintain concentration on a spell. With this feat, you can also use your reaction to cast Shocking Grasp at a target moving out of melee range. Lucky grants advantage on any attack, ability check, or saving throw, or you can also use it to make an opponent reroll their attack. Tough grants two extra max HP per level, and even though this feat is retroactive at whatever level you choose, you can select it at Level 12 for an immediate 24 HP boost for endgame content.

That's everything you need to know for the best Cleric build in Baldur's Gate 3. If you want to experiment with your holier-than-thou build even more, check out our guide to multiclassing, or just get a little taste of heaven with another character by checking out our guide to romancing. If you don't like your Cleric build, you can check out our Baldur's Gate 3 respec guide and run an entirely new class by referencing our best builds guide.

Disclosure: Former RPS deputy editor Adam Smith (RPS in peace) now works at Larian and is the lead writer for Baldur's Gate 3. Former contributor Emily Gera also works on it.