In this Baldur’s Gate 3 Cleric Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you the 3 Best Beginner Cleric Builds that you can use to put together an effective Cleric early on in the game. I wanted to give some early-game Builds for 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.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Best Beginner Cleric Builds

Two of the Cleric Builds are Single Class ones while the other is a Multiclass Build. 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 in Combat. 

Baldur’s Gate 3 Tempest Domain Cleric Build

So first up is 6 levels of Tempest Domain Cleric and what I really like about this BG3 Build is it allows you to focus on Wisdom. You’ll be casting Spells most of the time to crank Wisdom. This means that you won’t pay attention to Strength or Dexterity too much. You can also use Heavy Armor if you want as well as any Weapon early on in Baldur’s Gate 3. Because of this, you’re able to make use of Weapon Attacks until you get more Spell Slots.

Level 5 Tempest Domain Cleric Build

Once you gain Call 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 maintain Concentration without having to use more Spell Slots. This will be your primary attack. We’ve also taken the War Caster Feat at Level 4 in order to give us an Advantage on Constitution Saving Throws so that we can keep Call Lightning up for every possible turn. 

Front-Line Cleric

There are a few other things I love about this Cleric Build. On top of the Heavy Armor, you can wield a Shield since you have Shield Proficiency as a Cleric. So you’re going to have a fairly high Armor Class even 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 every Reaction once per round, which is good.

It’s a decent amount of damage and you’ll get more out of that than you would Attacks of Opportunity because 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. 

Level 6 Tempest Domain Cleric Build

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

And because of the Channel Divinity Ability of the Tempest Domain Cleric, where you gain an extra charge at Level 6, you can make sure that this does maximum damage twice every Short 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 gain Thunderbolt 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.

Looking Ahead at the Tempest Domain Cleric Build

Moving forward with this BG3 Tempest Domain Cleric Build, you could take 5 levels of Circle of the Land Druid in order to gain Lightning Bolt to 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 a Fighter, for instance, in order to gain a Fighting Style like Defense to give you an extra Armor Class as well as Second Wind. Or you could take Monk to allow you to add your Wisdom to your Armor Class when you’re unarmored. Those are both really good options for this Build.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Light Domain Cleric Build

The next Build I want to show you is 6 levels of Light 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 up Elemental Adept as a Feat at some point to help you overcome fire resistance and immunities. This also makes it so that you can’t roll a 1 on your Damage Rolls for 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 to Fireball, 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 a Long Rest. 

Warding Flare

Another thing that I really love about this Light Domain Cleric Build is that at Level 1, you gain Warding Flare, which allows you to impose a Disadvantage on 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. 

Channel Divinity of the Light Domain Cleric

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. 

Looking Ahead at the Light Domain Cleric Build

Moving forward, I would take this Baldur’s Gate 3 Light Domain Cleric Build up to at least Level 9 in order to gain Flame Strike and Wall 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.

Baldur’s Gate 3 War Domain Cleric Fighter Build

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 you Proficiency with 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 your Bonus Action 3x at Level 1 and then it’ll become 4x at Level 5. 

Level 5 War Domain Cleric Fighter Build

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 main Action 4x in combat. And then you also have Heavy 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 or Medium Armor with higher Dexterity and a Finesse Weapon so that when you go into melee combat, you’re very protected. 

Spirit Guardians Spell

You can also use the Spirit 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.

Other Spells

You’ll also be able to use other Spells such as Sanctuary to protect yourself. You have Healing Word to heal you or allies as a Bonus Action, Guiding Bolt to range down enemies, Inflict Wounds if 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 keep Bless on your group.

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

Looking Ahead at the War Domain Cleric Fighter Build

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

Baldur’s Gate 3 Cleric Builds: Final Thoughts

So that wraps up our 3 Best Beginner Cleric Builds. We’ll have some proper Companion Builds coming 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.