Best Feats for Cleric 5e
by Prince Phantom
There might not be a class more misunderstood than the Cleric. Far too often they are expected to be the healbots that many other RPGs present them as, but 5e is simply not built around a need for a healer. Healing is exceptionally easy thanks to short and long rests, and the vast majority of healing spells simply do not provide a significant amount of hp.
This leaves the Cleric in an interesting spot. It is still very good at supporting the party in other ways like the Bless spell, but it also excels at damage dealing, which is quite contrary to what most would expect from a cursory glance at the class. Our feat selection then should focus much less on healing (not that there are any feats to support healing anyway) and much more on general support and filling the few holes that the class has. I’ll also denote when a feat is good for a specific subclass, as the Cleric has quite a few transformative ones.
Best Feats for Cleric 5e
War Caster (ASAP): This feat feels like it was made for Clerics. We appreciate all three bullet points here. A lot of Clerics want to be holding a shield in one hand, and either a weapon or magic item in the other. This makes spellcasting hard if your table actually follows those rules. Clerics also depend on a number of concentration spells like Bless and Spirit Guardians, and we are likely to find ourselves in the midst of a fray thanks to the generally low range of most of our spells. The opportunity attack is a great as a weapons using Cleric should probably have a way to cast Booming Blade and a cantrip focused Cleric can use Toll the Dead. This feat is such a quality of life upgrade that I find it hard to build a Cleric without it.
Telekinetic (Lv 4): We take this specifically at level 4 in preparation for gaining Spirit Guardians next level. Here’s the combo: cast Spirit Guardians, walk to where the enemy is 5ft out of the area, bonus action telekinetic shove them 5ft towards you, dealing damage. They then take the damage again once their turn starts, and on our turn we can repeat this process. Every single Cleric can perform this combo, and it pumps out crazy damage numbers. This isn’t even counting any additional enemies you can get in the area, and you can even encourage your friends to get in on the action with forced movement of their own to get the damage to trigger even more often on a turn! Teamwork is highly underrated in this game, use it more often.
Magic Initiate (Lv 8): We obviously want Find Familiar, especially if we are a weapon using Cleric. Advantage on our one attack per turn is very important for consistent damage numbers, and this even gives us a convenient way to get Booming Blade! For Clerics who don’t care about weapons, this is less impactful, but everyone benefits from a familiar and the Cleric cantrip list is starved for good choices so two more from the best list is much appreciated.
Resilient (Lv 8): We take this for Constitution saves and basically never have to worry about concentration checks for the rest of the campaign. Very important for a class that is dependent on concentration spells and also wants to be sort of in melee.
Fey Touched (Lv 8): Teleportation is a big hole in the Cleric spell list and only a few subclasses fill it. This also gives us an opportunity to grab Silvery Barbs, which is not normally available to us and is a great use of our otherwise not very useful first level slots.
Metamagic Adept (Lv 12, Tempest only): Long have men tried to break the Tempest Cleric’s channel divinity that allows them to maximize the damage of a thunder or lightning spell. Most take two levels of Tempest Cleric and then multiclass into a different full caster, but you could also just take this feat and transmute something like Fire Storm into lightning damage to deal a flat 70 damage to probably every enemy or 35 on a save.
Lucky (Lv 12): Another good defensive tool for preventing crits and helping with saving throws. Lucky isn’t as busted as everyone says it is but it is still useful for anyone who has the room to take it. Thankfully, Clerics are not a very feat dependent class. Just make sure you are picky with what you spend those luck points on.
Tough (Lv 16): D8 hit die is probably starting to feel a little on the short side by this level, and 32 extra max hp helps fix that a lot. At this point you probably have all the feats your build actually needs, so feel free to take whatever you want as a reward for your campaign getting this far.
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