Light Domain Cleric 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Clerics following the holy light aren’t really so much kind, warm souls exuding radiance and life and more of… well, arsonists.

Light Domain offers clerics a blistering expanded Domain Spell list with some fun blind-like opportunities to function as a debuffer/blaster hybrid. If you want to be a holy firestarter, you got it with Light.

1st Level: Domain Spells, Bonus Cantrip, Warding Flare

Burning Hands and Faerie Fire start out your Domain Spells. Burning Hands on clerics is gas. Already, you’re working with medium armor and shield proficiency, making standing in the front lines a lot easier. This makes setting up the cone fare easier, and will easily give you opportunities to be the big, splashy spell-based damage dealer in the first few levels. Faerie Fire is a spell I’ve regularly been unimpressed by. It can do a fine job setting up Extra Attack allies post 5th level, but prior to that, I don’t really want to spend an action and my concentration on advantage on two or three attack rolls.
Bonus Cantrips aren’t typically major reasons to get excited. In this instance, you get Light. Huzzah, you now can make anything a torch! For a flavorful ribbon, this is great, and it helps that Warding Flare is excellent, making it easy to justify a lower-powered addition like this to enhance a character's flavor.
Warding Flare gives you a ranged defensive reaction that is regularly useful and scales with your Wisdom modifier. Burning Hands wants you to engage close to the front, and Warding Flare contributes to you staying alive. It is no Shield, but every reaction doesn’t have to be as good as +5 AC for a round to be a great reaction to have.

2nd Level: Radiance of Dawn

Radiance of Dawn buries the lede by putting a bunch of largely fludd at the forefront where you dispel magical darkness, and then says it forces all hostile creatures within 30 feet of you to make a Con save, taking 2d10 + your cleric level damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success.
Having extra ways to use your Channel Divinity beyond turning creatures of a specific type is great, especially in the early game. 2d10 + your level damage can result in a giant chunk of damage with an excellent damage floor that will execute weaker minions swarming you. This, once again, puts you somewhere near your fighter and barbarian friends, normally just behind them, as you do want to be close to danger to best take advantage of the giant area of radiant death.

3rd Level: 2nd Level Domain Spells

Flaming Sphere and Scorching Ray aren’t the world's greatest damage-dealing spells, especially given that

Flaming Sphere has to compete for your bonus action with Spiritual Weapon, but can perform a fine enough service for their cost I’d cast them if I wanted to go all in on the fire theme.
Scorching Ray does offer a decent long-ranged option to play around with and works great on builds that can pick up Hex somewhere to empower each attack.

5th Level: 3rd Level Domain Spells

Daylight goes hard on the “LIGHT” theme. It's basically just a super torch that beats magical darkness; not particularly useful at most tables most of the time.
Fireball, on the other hand, just puts you right in the same camp as sorcerers and wizards go for damage. Access to just this spell will carry you however high level you get with explosive, massive area damage.

6th Level: Improved Flare

This improvement to Warding Flare doesn't give light domain clerics as much new stuff to do as I’d like a 6th-level feature to do, but empowering the reaction to let it work on anyone with range is a great improvement. This will help keep the front-line characters working diligently to hold the line from going down, which in turn can help you stay alive. It's a win-win!

7th Level: 4th Level Domain Spells

Guardian of Faith normally is cleric’s 4th level area of effect damage spell that doesn’t really have to compete with Fireball because Fireball isn’t typically a cleric spell. It is now, though. Fireball is almost always going to be better against larger quantities of creatures, but in the scenarios where you get one big enemy in place for three rounds, 60 damage to a single target is a ton.
Wall of Fire suffers from needing to make the same comparison; is this spell more effective at dealing damage than Fireball is? The answer is it can be, but a lot has to go right for that to be the case. Fireball just smashes things, universally being powerful and effective. You could do both at the same time, though, so that’s fun.

8th Level: Potent Spellcasting

Potent Spellcasting is a non-feature on basically every domain, including this one. By 8th level, you’re not going to be running into a ton of encounters where you’re going to have enough time to spend all your 1st level and higher slots, making cantrips diminish in utility at most tables. At particularly grindy tables taxing your spell slots heavily, it can be a meaningful improvement that falls off as the game progresses, but most of the time you’re being carried by being a full-caster at this point.

9th Level: 5th Level Domain Spells

Flame Strike and Scrying are the final two Domain Spells. Neither is crazy exciting to me, with Flame Strike being a shapeable Fireball at the expense of some damage, and Scrying being a niche utility tool that you can occasionally use in a campaign to get info or scout ahead.

17th Level: Corona of Light

Corona of Light caps off Light Domain with a bang; for an action, you BECOME the light, imposing disadvantage for a minute on all saves against your spells. The action cost is steep, though, making this something you definitely want to use in a prep round prior to a fight. Should you get that round, though, all of your damaging spells are that much better.

All Together

Light Domain basically is two features: Domain Spells, and Warding Flare. Warding Flare is a great reaction option to play a somewhat supportive role with your reaction while laying waste to the creatures before with a burning vengeance. There is an elegance to this simplicity; the option wants to do fire damage, and it succeeds in doing so. If you want to be a cleric, but also want to light things on fire effectively, Light Domain succeeds, and will serve you well.

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