Grave Domain Cleric 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Where Death Domain is devoutly evil and embraces killing and death, Grave is the neutral presentation of the gods of death. They’re closer to preservers watching the transition from life to death and back, with a goal of keeping the living alive, and the dead dead.

Mechanically, Grave is a bit all over the place with its features primarily focused on utility. If you’re in the market for a supportive cleric that functions on a bit of a different axis than Life or other supportive domains, Grave could be an option to consider.

1st Level: Domain Spells, Circle of Mortality, and Eyes of the Grave

Bane and False Life aren’t known for being all that powerful of 1st level spells. False Life in particular is terrible, rarely justifying the slot in the early game and sometimes being a mediocre place to put 1st-level spells past 5th level. Bane, similarly, is difficult to justify casting, especially given that Bless is a cleric spell that is far more consistent than Bane. Bless can’t miss, and your allies are far more likely to make a lot of rolls with it on than enemies will be making with Bane. Neither spell excites me, but there are two more features here.
Circle of Mortality kind of functions like a quality of life upgrade to Spare the Dying. Not needing to spend actions ensuring your buddies don’t die in fights takes a lot of pressure off of tense battles, as you don’t need to risk any death saves should you be within 30 feet of the downed ally. Max healing zero hit point creatures on top of that give you some decent reasons to consider picking up higher dice-sized healing effects like Mass Cure Wounds later to double in effectiveness, often giving allies extra rounds of health they wouldn’t have gotten from a regular cast. I like this feature on its own more than basically the entirety of Life Domain, as it removes your need to commit actions to be a productive healer, instead opting to make healing more efficient.
Eyes of the Grave literally just reads and performs like a worse Divine Sense. I will forever be bummed out by that fact. It identifies disguised vampires or liches, and not much else. It can even tell if a coffin has an undead creature lurking inside.

2nd Level: Path to the Grave

Path to the Grave has ludicrous potential. It functionally, with no save, doubles the next instance of damage from an attack the creature takes. Lined up next to a paladin or rogue, this can decimate a single target, making the action cost entirely fair. If you aren’t adventuring with “nova” style characters that want to dump a ton of damage into a single attack, this will be an action and a Channel Divinity use for basically an extra hit from a multi-attacking fighter or monk. That’s a lot less exciting. If you can ever set up a paladin with this, though, and they crit, there will be a smoking crater that you contributed half the damage to wherever your marked target was.
When theory crafting the highest possible damage on a single attack, this feature is basically mandatory.

3rd Level: 2nd Level Domain Spells

Gentle Repose and Ray of Enfeeblement are two more near-worthless spells that you’ll want to cast a handful of times or less per campaign.

Gentle Repose is nice in that it makes it very difficult for anyone near you to stay dead as long as you’re in the vicinity, especially post 9th level when Raise Dead becomes available, but seeing as Revivify comes two levels later, I can’t get excited about the possibilities Gentle Repose is supposed to offer.
Ray of Enfeeblement is over-costed for what it does with a high potential to do nothing. That’s not where I want my 2nd level spells to be.

5th Level: 3rd Level Domain Spells

As mentioned prior, Revivify is a freely prepared spell for you, making Gentle Repose only valuable should you burn through all your 3rd-level slots. It fundamentally changes the game from the point you get it onward, as death is far easier to prevent.
Vampiric Touch is the other domain spell offered. It’s comedically bad- it is action inefficient, has low damage for its cost, and rarely pays off in the hit points regenerated, all while taking up your concentration and risking being dismissed by a loose rock bonking you on the head.

6th Level: Sentinel at Death’s Door

Sentinel at Death’s Door gives you a bunch of reactions to mitigate critical hits. At 6th level, this is massive. Three to four free “no, that actually doesn’t crit!” moments will be as many moments as monsters will typically crit in an adventure. At higher levels, when you still only get five yet enemies are making a dozen or more attacks a round it does get a bit worse. A reaction for halving incoming damage from a crit can’t be undersold, though, and will absolutely help you feel like a meaningful defensive supportive cleric.

7th Level: 4th Level Domain Spells

Blight and Death Ward are shared with Death for 4th-level Domain Spells, and both are fine. 8d8 is a lot of single-target damage for a cleric to dish out when needed, and in the upper tiers having Death Ward can be reasonable to keep you or another healing character alive. Both are a lot harder to justify casting the moment you get them, as their impact for their slot is a bit low, but both options are nice to have as the game progresses.

8th Level: Potent Spellcasting

Potent Spellcasting adds your Wis mod to your Toll the Dead. As you get higher level, cantrips stop being frequently cast, as you’ve got more slots to play with and use. There aren’t a ton more fights per level at most tables, making the need for scaling cantrips kind of moot, and seeing as this domain gets no other compelling reason to cast cantrips, is left feeling like this feature doesn’t really benefit them in the majority of fights.

9th Level: 5th Level Domain Spells

Antilife Shell and Raise Dead close out Grave’s Domain Spells.

Antilife Shell is an awkward, near uncastable spell that heavily hampers your movement and is ineffective at actually mitigating most threatening enemies.
Raise Dead is the kind of effect you don’t really need to have prepared, as you can just prepare it as needed after a long rest to get a dead ally back. This makes its inclusion here entirely for flavor, and actively retracts from the power of cleric’s prepared caster status. You don’t want to waste an always-prepared spell on something you don’t need to cast in the moment. You have days to stop, long rest, prepare this, and move forward. It being a domain spell is a terrible inclusion, rounding out the Grave domain’s Domain Spells with two more stinkers.

17th Level: Keeper of Souls

Keeper of Souls is a rare feature that doesn’t even cost a reaction to use: it's entirely free. Free 10+ hit dice of healing to you or an ally mid-fight is crazy efficient. This is often going to look and feel like a free Heal every time something dies. In particularly lethal fights, your entire party can fight with Keeper of Souls in mind, as they know the most injured ally will get a huge boost of HP should at least one high hit dice creature goes down. What’s particularly sweet about this is it scales with Circle of Mortality; if your paladin goes down fighting the Balor, then your fighter successfully finishes off said Balor, your paladin friend is getting 21d12 MAX hit points back, or a free 252 hit points.
Keeper of Souls makes it so your DM can throw nearly endless monsters at you and you will be able to keep the group healthy so long as some of them have a good chunk of hit dice. If this were once per long rest I’d say it's still pretty solid; at will, though? This feature deserves its level, cause that’s NUTS.

All Together

Grave domain is a mixed bag. Its domain list is one of the worst out of all the domains in the game. Eyes of the Grave and Potent Spellcasting both are near meaningless features at the majority of tables. Circle of Mortality is a solid upgrade for playing a reactive healer, and Path to the Grave has insane potential that plays great in the upper tiers alongside Keeper of Souls to set up and knock out huge hit point monsters, then transfer their hit points to a friend. Sentinel at Death’s Door also excels at supporting the team by mitigating a ton of crits per adventure.

The more lethal the table, the better Grave domain is going to be. If you can’t consistently get value out of Eyes of the Grave early, and Sentinel at Death’s Door isn’t doing enough damage mitigation to have an impact on the success of an adventure, you’re probably better off playing a different domain. At tables with expectations of highly lethal enemies, Grave offers tools to assist other powerful characters and prevent death in a bunch of meaningful ways.

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