The Reaper Cometh: A Death Cleric Build for 5e
Clerics, the holy folk who carry out their god’s will and bring hope and joy to the common man. Alternatively, servants of dark lords who care little for the struggles of the peasantry. That last one sounds fun, let’s run with that! The Death Cleric comes as a villainous subclass option from the DMG, so you technically need your DM’s permission to play it, though I’ve never heard of a single DM not allowing this or the Oathbreaker. Also, if you’re worried that this has to be an evil character, remember that flavor is free, and death is frequently portrayed as a neutral force in media. I’m sure you can think of a few examples, so draw inspiration from those more merciful portrayals of death and I think you’ve got a really neat character to roleplay. But let’s dive into the mechanics, because you can flavor any character however you want. What does our subclass provide, and how can we use it to enhance our character? Well, we get a smite-like channel divinity, a feature to split Toll the Dead to hit two adjacent foes, and the ability to ignore resistance to necrotic damage. At face value, on paper, not much to get excited about, but we can work with this and lean into a few of those to really bump up our power.
Race: Variant Human
We need quite a few feats and we need them quickly, and Variant Human’s stat array would prefer the two +1s rather than the +2 from Custom Origin.
Feat: Great Weapon Master
We will be building to have one big attack occasionally, and +10 to damage is hard to pass up. At these early levels, save your big attack (soon to be boosted by our channel divinity) for when you have advantage, as that will really help negate the -5 to hit. We don’t have an automatic way to get advantage ourselves at this point, but one of your friends might!
Starting Stats:
16/10/14/8/16/8 (+1 to Strength and Wisdom from race)
This is a fairly straightforward one. 16 Strength as it’s what we make attacks with, 10 Dexterity for saves and initiative, 15 Constitution for saves and concentration, dump Intelligence, 16 Wisdom for our spellcasting, and dump Charisma.
Level 1: Fighter 1
Okay put your pitchforks down, I promised a Cleric build and I plan to deliver, but level 1 Fighter just offers so much. We get Constitution saving throw proficiency, heavy armor, a fighting style, and Second Wind. For our Fighting Style, we’re actually pretty flexible. Great Weapon Fighting is a bad option, adding very little damage every round. Defense is generically good, granting +1 AC. Blind Fighting could be useful if your team plans to take advantage of heavy obscurement. Superior Technique could grab us one use of Precision Attack, helping us hit our one big attack. For me it comes down to protecting my concentration, as that will be used much more frequently than I make attacks. For that reason, I’m grabbing Defense here, but feel free to pick something else.
Level 2-5: Death Cleric 4, Fighter 1
Now let’s get to what you’re here for. We get a lot in these levels, so let’s break it down step by step.
Spells:
Keep in mind that Clerics are prepared casters, meaning you can swap spells after each long rest. If one of these spells isn’t working for you, swap it out with something else. The spells listed here are just what I would prepare on a generic adventuring day.
(Spells marked with * are automatically prepared by our subclass)
Cantrips: Toll the Dead, Guidance, Thaumaturgy, Mending
Toll the Dead is our main damage cantrip option as it pairs perfectly with our Reaper feature. The rest are utility options, Guidance in essential assuming no one else has it, but the rest can be swapped out as you please.
1st Level: Healing Word, Detect Magic, Bless, Command, False Life*, Ray of Sickness*
At first level we grab Bless as our main concentration option at low levels, Detect Magic as it’s a ritual, Healing Word for emergencies, and Command to invalidate single enemy encounters.
2nd Level: Aid, Hold Person, Silence, Blindness/Deafness*, Ray of Enfeeblement*
At second level we grab Aid to both buff our allies and bring three friends up from 0hp at once with a single action. If we land a Hold Person, we can leave a crater where our foe once stood by using both GWM and our Channel Divinity. Silence has great utility for shutting down spellcasters.
Our subclass spells are a mixed bag at best. Blindness/Deafness can be seen as a less powerful version of Hold Person that works on any creature, and doesn’t use concentration, so I appreciate having that. False Life could have use later when we have so many spell slots that we can spare one for some temp HP. The other two ray spells are awful and you should likely never cast them.
Our Strategy:
Cast Bless on turn one, then cast Toll the Dead whenever we can hit two enemies, or make one big attack with your choice of heavy weapon, expending our channel divinity to do a big chunk of damage. If you don’t have enough allies who make attack rolls to take advantage of Bless, Bane isn’t a terrible substitute, but in that instance I would also recommend something like Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person if applicable. Against single target encounters, we can completely invalidate them with Command, forcing them to kneel every turn, or one of the aforementioned spells. To note at level 5, if we hit with our channel divinity attack, we deal on average 33 damage, 40 if we crit with Hold Person. That’s right alongside what optimized martials deal on average with their extra attack, and while we can’t do that as often as they can, we also have full spellcasting and tons of defense and utility.
Feat: War Caster
With this, our concentration is secure, which will immediately become very important next level. We don’t need the ability to cast with our hands full, as we will normally be holding a two handed weapon, but we will be using the “spells as opportunity attacks” feature when we can. We’ll eventually get a way to empower our weapon based opportunity attack, but for now this can be used to hit someone with a Command like “grovel” and have a Sentinel-like control effect.
Level 6: Cleric 5, Fighter 1
There is so much to talk about with this one level, let’s break it down.
Spell Additions:
3rd Level: Spirit Guardians, Animate Dead*, Vampiric Touch*
These spells are what bring this character to life (unlife?) and turn us into a damage dealing machine (except Vampiric Touch, just pretend that spell doesn’t exist). First, let’s talk Animate Dead and how to best make use of it.
Animate Dead: This spell allows us to slowly accumulate an army of skeleton and zombie servants, the size of which scales with our spells as we upcast. Both undead types have their uses. Skeletons are better offensively, having better accuracy, damage, and the ability to attack at range. Zombies have higher HP and Undead Fortitude, allowing them to occasionally stay at 1hp when they should have dropped. That being said, Skeletons can be made more durable thanks to their ability to wield armor and shields. The Monster Manual explicitly states that they can wear armor, even though the base Skeleton stat block only has armor scraps. They are best suited for medium armor, and with half-plate and a shield a skeleton can have a massive 19 AC. They still have low HP, so Fireballs are still a threat, but for that reason I find myself reanimating skeletons much more often than zombies. If you’re having trouble finding bones to make skeletons, just animate a zombie and command it to eat the flesh off of a corpse, and a few hours later you’ll have a perfect pile of bones. Alternatively, just go grave digging. For ranged skeletons, arm them with heavy crossbows, and melee skeletons with rapiers. Commanding the undead takes our bonus action, but the wording of this is very exploitable. You could issue a command like “attack whatever I point my left pinky finger at until it is dead” at the start of the day, and then just point in combat, which doesn’t cost you any actions. You can also spread the love to your party, commanding a squad of undead to follow the commands of your party member until you give a different command. Now, the party member has their own squad of skeletons to assist them in battle. Also, undead will obey any command without question, meaning if you are about to lose control and don’t have a 3rd level slot to retain control, just command them to disassemble themselves and now you’ve got a pile of bones ready to be animated next time you have the chance. Lastly, we can command one of our undead to use the help action on an enemy, giving us advantage on our big GWM attack. Our main use for the undead horde will actually be to enhance the next spell I want to talk about.
Spirit Guardians: This house of a spell is the backbone of just about every Cleric build, and we are no different. 3d8 damage every round to anyone of our choice within 15ft of us is amazing, exploitable, and the 10 minute duration means it can potentially last multiple combats. The big obstacle with the spell is that it both requires concentration and asks us to be in close range, but that’s where our undead come in. We can select the undead to be unaffected by the spell, and use them to body-block our enemies from attacking us. Granted, ranged attackers and spellcasters can still get to us, but over 65% of printed creatures in this game only have melee attacks, meaning this is a pretty reliable strategy. I’d recommend keeping 4-5 undead as your personal armor guard, and using any remaining undead for other purposes like ranged attacking or giving them to other party members.
Level 7-9: Death Cleric 8, Fighter 1
We keep on with Cleric, as we want more spell slots.
New Spells:
3rd Level: Revivify, Dispel Magic
4th Level: Banishment, Blight*, Death Ward*
Some of our teammates might be upset that we’re only picking up Revivify now, but we’re a Death Cleric, they knew what they were signing up for. Dispel Magic is generically useful assuming you run into magic at least occasionally, and Banishment is really the only 4th level Cleric spell I’m excited about. We will likely be using our 4th level slots to upcast Animate Dead and Spirit Guardians. Blight is terrible damage for its level, and we have better things to do with our 4th level slot than Death Ward.
At 8th level Cleric (9th level overall) we’ll grab Blessed Strikes instead of Divine Strike, as it adds a d8 to both weapon and cantrip damage, whereas Divine Strike only effects weapon attacks. We are using both weapons and Toll the Dead, so Blessed Strikes works better for us. We’ve also got a second Channel Divinity now, allowing us to make our big attack more often.
Ability Score Improvement:
+2 Strength
Nothing too exciting here, but I want Strength more than Wisdom because we are about to take steps to improve our weapon attacks, and I appreciate the extra accuracy this provides. Wisdom is ironically less important, as the math shows that it doesn’t really matter a ton if our foes fail their Spirit Guardians saving throw, the half damage is still a ton. Additionally, increasing the save DC by 1 won’t have that massive of an impact, definitely not as much as increasing our Strength.
Level 10-11: Death Cleric 8, Eldritch Knight Fighter 3
We dip back into Fighter for a bit to grab Action Surge, allowing us to make two big strikes or cast two spells in one turn, and we go Eldritch Knight for more spells and spell slots. With this we actually have a 5th level slot, though no 5th level spells. That’s fine, as upcasting Animate Dead and Spirit Guardians is a great use of that.
Spells:
Cantrips: Booming Blade, Minor Illusion
Booming Blade is a fantasy upgrade to our weapon attack, automatically adding 2d8 damage on hit. It also works well with Spirit Guardians, forcing the enemy to choose between moving out of the spell and taking 3d8 damage, or staying in the spell and taking 3d8 damage. Minor Illusion is my pick for the best utility cantrip, but you can pick something else if you want.
1st level: Shield, Absorb Elements, Find Familiar
Shield and Absorb Elements are our defensive core, helping us tank a lot more hits over the course of a day. Find Familiar can give us a pet who can do a huge variety of things both in combat and out of combat.
Another damage check on our nova round. Now, we can use Action Surge to make two Booming Blade attacks, both boosted with our Channel Divinity if they both hit, and at advantage thanks to the help action from our undead or familiar. On average, we will deal about 103 damage if both attacks hit, 77 damage when accounting for accuracy. That’s not accounting for the damage from Spirit Guardians or our undead army, or the potential extra damage from Booming Blade, or a potential bonus action attack from GWM, or crits. We can only do this nova round once per short rest, but it’s nice to know that we can erase just about whatever we want on the battlefield.
Level 12+:
Past this point, I would personally go straight Cleric, but there are a few other potential options. If you go Cleric, we get all the way to 9th level spells, so here are some spells to pick up:
Blade Barrier, Heroes’ Feast, Conjure Celestial, Holy Aura, Mass Heal
We also get Improved Reaper, but we are lacking in spells to really make use of it. In fact, 5e as a whole is lacking in good Necromancy spell options for this feature.
Going for two levels of Shepherd Druid for Bear Spirit grants some temporary HP to us and our undead army, though this role would be better fulfilled by a dedicated Shepherd Druid, Artillerist Artificer, Twilight Cleric, or Glamour Bard. There’s also the question of if we can find some heavy armor that a Druid won’t mind wearing.
Our only other multiclass option is Barbarian, and rage doesn’t work with the vast majority of what we’re doing.
And that’s the build! Past this point, take it whatever direction you’d like, but just going straight Cleric is probably the strongest option. This build excels in damage, both single target and spread, while also providing the party with support and utility through our Cleric spells and the multitude of uses for our undead thralls. Play it as an evil necromancer or a pragmatic servant of death, either way you’ll have a ton of fun and leave a crater where that one guy who ticked you off used to be standing.
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