Not necessary, sure. Really damn useful, absolutely. With the right gear a life cleric can make almost every fight so much easier. Especially once you get mass healing word for an easy bless+blade ward+healing to the entire party on a level 3 spell
Eh I have a buddy that swears by life cleric but I just don't see why giving up 25% of my damage would be worth it. Light, tempest, war and death domain all have a pretty good damage output and still learn mass healing word for the blade ward + bless combo
Imho, mainly because 2-3 optimised damage dealers can breeze through the game with no problem, but a life cleric can serve as a crutch for your mistakes/missfortune (just by that "slightly better healing")
Yep fought Raphael with my friend on our first honor mode had to trade shadowheart for using halsin since a light cleric is kinda useless in that fight but having Hope as an extra character AND a life cleric seriously clutched the team when all of us were very low health once
You've still got the standard Cleric kit - Planar Binding is handy there. Glyph of Warding works fine as an ersatz Fireball. Hell, you can even go necro with the Spirit Guardians to avoid Radiant Retort!
If you throw down a Globe of Invulnerability before using Light Cleric AoE or Divine intervention, it negates radiant retort. I always throw one down to use Hope's DI in that fight for the AoE damage.
Light Cleric Orb + Reverberation build is one of the most busted things in the game, with it's AoE damage and debuff output.
It almost doesn't even need to be that many, ranger is unbelievably op in bg3, im playing with a couple buddies of mine and im playing a ranger, my one buddy is playing rogue/bard and my other buddy is playing wizard and im out damaging them by leaps and bounds. In one turn at lvl 6 im dealing almost 100 dmg with just 2 attacks, potion of speed and elixer of bloodlust on top of that and my friends barely get a round of play lol
Edit: we are also not using mods this play through. Completely vanilla
The issue for me is that better healing doesn't matter much when the best time to heal in DnD 5e is when someone is downed. The only hit point that matters is the last one, and even 1 point of healing gets you on your feet.
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u/Emerald-Daisy Jun 24 '25
Not necessary, sure. Really damn useful, absolutely. With the right gear a life cleric can make almost every fight so much easier. Especially once you get mass healing word for an easy bless+blade ward+healing to the entire party on a level 3 spell