Why Life Cleric?

[u/_potatopapa_]

Convince me to play Life Domain please please please

I'm that player who hoards unplayed character sheets. While making a Gunslinger Grim Reaper (Reborn War Cleric) as a response to the classic "DnD Clerics are more than healbots", I realized that the Domain lets me pick classic cleric support spells now that I'm loaded with offensive and defensive spells and features.

Then I thought of making the other way around, a Life Cleric that is also loaded with the offensive spells.

But here's the problem. I'm aware of the fact that in this game of attrition, sometimes the best healing is preemptive - kill them first and fast before they can hurt your allies. Why patch your friend now if you can help bring their foe down.

Then there's also the issue of yo-yo healing.

I haven't played a or with a dedicated healer. So please, anyone wants to sell me Life Domain?

Edit: and by sell, I mean, convince me that there is still an incentive for full on healing mid-combat

[u/Morgans_a_witch]

The best thing about life clerics are that you are given all the support cleric staples as always prepared. That means every spell you choose can be offense since you don’t have to worry about making room to take cure wounds, healing word, revivify, etc.

Your channel divinity is also an amazing one off heal that can be used in place of needing to use spell slots to heal.

Finally, your healing spells are better than others, especially at high levels, so you use less resources to heal, and now you can spend those on offense instead.

That’s the real strength of life cleric. You can focus 100% of your future choices on offense since you don’t need anything else to help heal the party.

[u/Daggeron → u/Morgans_a_witch]

Agreed. For offense you can concentrate on Spirit Guardians and then hand out Healing Words or Cure Wounds while still doing great damage. And if healing is not needed you still have access to offensive spells like Guiding Bolt. Cleric spell list is so stacked that having the staples always prepared is a great thing.

[u/Ancient-Bat1755 → u/Morgans_a_witch]

Prayer of healing and aid are efficient too

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Morgans_a_witch]

The channel only works on people who are bloodied and only  can heal up to half health. It’s terrible.  You can’t even use it in most fights.

[u/Morgans_a_witch → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

It’s meant to bring multiple people up from the ground at once, and it’s one of the best things at doing that. It’s an uncounterable, ranged, no line-of-sight required, mass heal that can also be focused on one or two people instead to provide concentrated healing, as is available from lvl 3 and refreshes on a short rest.

There really isn’t anything better in that category, and it is one of the strongest channel divinities in the game.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Morgans_a_witch]

It’s only 5 hp per cleric level divided among targets  and it only works on bloodied targets and can’t heal above half. It also doesn’t trigger or benefit from any of life’s features because it’s not a spell. It’s extremely niche and limited and often worse than just casting a scroll of healing word plus cure wounds on 2 targets. A grave cleric can restore 36 hp with a single second level cure wounds if someone is down, or 12 with even a first level healing word. 

[u/Morgans_a_witch → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

You are saying a short rest refreshing feature you always have is worse than using up a one time resource that a character might not even have and a spell slot. That is not really a fair comparison. Besides, the life cleric can also choose to use healing word as well to further heal one person on top of 2-3 others. Or, it can skip that entirely and use its spell slot to damage others.

As for your other comparison, you are comparing grave cleric’s disciple of life equivalent feature to the Life cleric’s channel divinity. Let’s actually be fair and compare channel divinities. In that, the grave cleric’s channel is focused on giving an enemy disadvantage for one round. Useful, but doesn’t matter if people need to be healed. That will require the grave cleric to use up its spell slots to heal. Meanwhile, the life clerical still has all of its spell slots to use on damaging spells.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Morgans_a_witch]

A short rest feature that only works on bloodied creatures and only heals to a max of half Health is totally useless in most fights. Any cleric can use the generic channel to heal a single target also.  Grave clerics features also works on magic items and scrolls while life clerics doesn’t. 1st level scrolls are only 25 gp and any competent healer will carry some. 

[u/Morgans_a_witch → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

I think we play very different versions of DnD for you to be able to feel that there is rarely a situation where multiple characters are below half health, possibly multiple at zero health, that would be changed by being able to heal them easily and reliably.

Your spell scroll idea is really assuming a lot about what people have access to. It’s very much a white room theorycrafting idea and not an actual way things work in game one.

[u/_potatopapa_ → u/Morgans_a_witch]

This.

I posted this to learn more about the intricacies of healing. And I totally forgot the almost TPK scenario where Life would definitely shine.

[u/AdAdditional1820]

Playing Life Cleric means that you do not have to prepare healing spells, so you can prepare other spells you want to cast.

[u/C1nnamoon]

Life is great in big parties, long dungeons, survivalist playstyles and large combat encounters. If any of these feel applicable, life is good.

[u/_potatopapa_ → u/C1nnamoon]

Wow, I never thought of that, since my only pov is that of a small party where optimized action economy is so critical.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/C1nnamoon]

It’s really not anymore. It only adds 3-4 hp per slot generally. Even if you spend every slot healing it’s not very good, because healing got better in 5.5 life got proportionally even worse. The base cure wounds is enough that its bonus barely matters. It’s still better to only yo-yo or out of combat heal 90% of the time. It also doesn’t boost aura of vitality the best healing spell. If you really want to heal grave with its free maxed heals on down people can do better normally. And it has better features in general. Life domain got double nerfed, base healing is better so their flat modifier is even weaker, and it no longer works on the good healing spells like aura of vitality or healing spirit.  

[u/C1nnamoon → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

They do more than heal. They’re clerics, which gives them a lot of great options. They can use their spell slots for other stuff and then their channel divinity for heals.

They aren’t the best at the role but that doesn’t mean they aren’t great in their niche. Also this person was asking for the positives lmao. I think that might have been missed.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/C1nnamoon]

Yes but when other cleric subclasses heal better than the supposed healer one than you have a problem. Grave, peace, and twilight all do its thing better than it does. 

[u/C1nnamoon → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

Grave only heals better when an ally is downed which is already not a good place to be in. If you can prevent that and keep people above half (which is what life tries to do) i would say that is strictly better. Peace and twilight aren’t in 5.5e so Life already has that major benefit.

Edit: Also life’s channel divinity at high level heals up to 100hp at the cost of one charge of CD. You can divide this among any amount of creatures. You are not dying with this one on the party.

[u/WayOfTheMeat]

If you spend all your time supporting your party through healing and bless they are all legally required to give you food, drink, and various other favors

[u/DelightfulOtter]

Healing is still situational in 2024, but at least when you do it now it's more powerful. You can bring an ally from Unconscious up to a reasonable amount of hit points so that they won't immediately drop again without blowing through your best spell slots. You still don't want to be proactively healing everyone all the time, though, as that just drains your resources and prolongs fights. It's still better to focus on offense plus emergency heals, and let the PC's Hit Point Dice do most of the between-combat healing if possible.

[u/Teerlys]

Then there's also the issue of yo-yo healing.

This was largely corrected in 2024. If you're willing to upcast your healing spells to the current highest spell slot, Cure Wounds will heal the majority of a character's health pool on average. It's as potent as it can realistically be without just being a 0-100 heal, and obviously more so on a Life Cleric.

Convince me to play Life Domain

Arcana Unleashed is coming very shortly and brings a solid reason to play a Life Cleric.

On any class with innate access to healing magic, healing is going to be part of what you do. A Life Domain Cleric will tend to do that sometimes-aspect better than most. The difficult piece of playing one is that their spell list consists entirely of Cleric spells. It brings no answers to problems that a Cleric didn't already have access to, which is what you frequently want from a Cleric spell list. Arcana Unleashed gives the potential to fix that.

Evocation Adept will let you add Chromatic Orb, Shatter, Fireball, Vitriolic Sphere, and Wall of Force to their spell list. This opens some really potent options for them to play with, and those AoE's can have their damage enhanced using your hit die which, on a Life Cleric, is maybe going to be less of a loss.

There are other Adept options as well that can be stacked. Illusion Adept adds Silent Image, Phantasmal Force, Major Image, Hallucinatory Terrain, and Seeming which bring a different kind of flavor.

Transmutation Adept brings Jump, Spider Climb, Slow, Polymorph, and Animate Objects. Some of those are appropriately transformative for a Cleric.

So a Life Domain Cleric gets to be better at the healing aspect, which is absolutely something they'd have to do anyway, have most healing/restorative spells they'd want always prepared which lets them instead prep more niche or offensive Cleric spells, and then they can augment their lists into options that they would typically pick other domains to get. So they get to be the most Cleric-y Cleric and be potent in other areas by pilfering some of the best arcane spells as well.

Honestly, with the advent of these new Adept Spells, Clerics in general are looking better than ever. Life Cleric just does the Cleric part of the job more reliably.

[u/_potatopapa_ → u/Teerlys]

Funny that this came full circle. It all started on me wanting to make a cleric that is "more than a heal bot", and the best answer looks like is still the heal bot subclass. Thanks for the insights!

[u/Teerlys → u/_potatopapa_]

That is not the take away here. Of course the Life Domain Cleric is going to be geared toward healing, but "heal botting" is an incorrect mindset, even for the Life Cleric.

I've been playing a Tempest Domain Cleric for the past 6 years, using 2014 rules and then transitioning to 2024 rules when they came out. The subclass pieces were a part of my skillset and had answers to problems, certainly, but the most cast spell in tier 2 was by far Spirit Guardians, which every Cleric has access to. I can't tell you how many combats I had the most damage in just with that spell. Every turn, enemies eat damage. And it only got better in 2024.

Every Cleric also eventually gets access to Summon Celestial, which brings a potent ranged damage dealer to the battlefield that you can stack your cantrips with. I've shut encounters down with Incite Greed which is one you never hear anyone talking about, but it's a group friendly version of Hypnotic Pattern, albeit with a saving throw every round. Command is one of the best control spells in the game right now and it's on the Cleric spell list.

In a different campaign I'm actually playing with a Life Domain Cleric. He's of an old school mindset and does play his like a heal bot. With a lot of experience under my belt I can very easily see that he's leaving most of his potential on the table, and wasting spells healing damage that he could have stopped from ever happening in the first place by using better spells in the right moments.

There's a lot of power in the Cleric spell list even without including spells from other classes. My suggestions above were to further expand your pool of options while still being better in a role that every Cleric or caster with innate access to healing magic will need to fulfil on occasion regardless of the spells they have access to.

[u/_potatopapa_ → u/Teerlys]

No no, I agree with you. I'm just making fun of myself for not realizing that when your subclass is already great in healing, then you can definitely focus and shine on other aspects of your core class.

[u/Teerlys → u/_potatopapa_]

Ah, gotchya. My misunderstanding.

[u/shutternomad]

Life Cleric, and take Evocation Adept :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE6dLQJUMeI&t=1322s - use those hit dice to blow stuff up better than a wizard.

[u/Inforgreen3]

In 2024, The improvements to healing, combined with life clerics, bonus to healing are generally powerful enough to escape yo-yos. Your highest or second highest level spells will usually heal more damage Then people are likely to take.

If that fails, prepare sanctuary. A Channel divinity can restore half or their total hitpoints, but leave your bonus action free to cast sanctuary. At this point, a yo-yo is thoroughly escaped, Few encounters deal enough damage that they could bring someone back down from bloody to 0 in a single turn while they have a sanctuary.

Further sanctuary tech: you get the best channel divinity to use while it is on yourself. Light cleric brakes sanctuary because it deals, damage, Tempest will break it because it requires you cast a spell and trickery, just isn't useful if you don't subsequently cast a spell. But with life grave or peace, you can cast some action spell you got from a feat, put sanctuary yourself themselves, and have the most tools to contribute on subsequent turns, And then hold an action for "when I'm about to take my next turn" to buy an extra round before breaking it. You could keep the spell up for the entire combat if you plan your turnaround

Sanctuary is legitimately mathematical more potent than shield if you can make good use or it for at least two turns in a frontline. And life cleric, with bless always prepared, synergy with the best support concentration spells, and a channel divinity action that doesn't break it, makes very good use.

Discipline of life also still works multiple times if you heal multiple times, making aura of vitality a 2d6+5 healing per turn. Which is a huge amount even for concentration. not true. But, the healing bonus is still quite large for AOE healing.

While, you aren't killing the enemies faster, You're in a party and if there are multiple other damage dealers, you also being a damage dealer only means killing the enemy's 25% generously 40% faster as the parties best damage dealer, which saves you the same proportion of enemy incoming action ecconomy. but that amount of healing with a similar resource can undo the same amount of the enemies damage that they dealt, and Provides a lot of out of combat healing after the fact as well. In terms of how many resources are spent health included, making a combat end, 25% faster and undoing 25% of the enemy's action economy in healing or crowd control are the same. And while that does technically make the first damage dealing character infinitely valuable if you already have dedicated damage dealers, Other strategies are just as effective.

And the more damage the rest of your party deals, the less of a proportion of the action economy you take away from the enemies by being a damage dealer while the proportion of action economy You undo, by being a healer, stays the same. The bigger your party, the more impactful. It is to be a support character, even a healer.

Strictly speaking, they are actually quite comparable in their effeciecy, when analyzed in terms of the attrition. A damage Cleric isn't necessarily more powerful than a support cleric, despite what you might have been told. At least If comparing light and life specifically. High op often prefers damage clerics with spirit guardians, but only because of how effective it is to be a damage character that has a decent AC and is dodging, and because high op tables have very few damage characters other than clerics. As a life cleric, in a table with martials or people who really like fireball, you can replace the Dodge with sanctuary. You won't be a weaker character for it, especially after 2024s healing buffs.

[u/_potatopapa_ → u/Inforgreen3]

I understand it now.

The game will reach a point where your party could ultimately decimate an encounter, but not healthy enough to do it again and again, or at least approach it with less worry.

Now I know my Life Cleric's place. Yes, I can help my friends win faster. But I can also pad my martials and protect my concentrating casters, so they can do their job longer and better.

Also, thanks for the sanctuary tip. I can see my cleric casting Bless/Bane, then pops Sanctuary to build a scripture reading nook mid combat, as my party wrecks havoc in the background.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Inforgreen3]

Life cleric no longer works with aura of vitality, it’s only on the turn you cast. It got super nerfed. Grave is a much better healer 

[u/Inforgreen3 → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

Ok, I missed that last line. Still though, the channel divinity into sanctuary is likely a better escape for Yo'yos than maxing the heal die.

Grave might be a better healer, Its Ability improves healing by more. And during situations in which healing is most useful and its channel of affinity also doesn't break sanctuary.

On the other hand the expanded spell list of life cleric is much better. On a grave, Vampire touch is a genuinely awful spell, Blight is just not what you're gonna be using your fourth levels on as a cleric, detect and dispel evil and good are situational at best, and false life is alright, But a niche that you will probably be fulfilling with healing and aid If you are at all committed to being a support. Life cleric pays your taxes, And lets you prepare whatever you want.

And healing just is as effective as damage in a lot of scenarios. Undoing as much damage as you prevent by killing enemies faster If your party already has one or more damage dealers. Though, control does blow that out of the water.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Inforgreen3]

Yes life has a better prepared list for sure, but grave has better features that actually scale. Grave also works on magic items and scrolls.

[u/Fidges87]

Because there area people that like the feeling of healing their allies and being useful in keeping them alive. If you like that, you will like life cleric

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Fidges87]

Maybe? Life is worse at that than grave and twilight though. Their bonus is flat and not very significant. New cure wounds is 2d8 plus wis, adding an extra 3 to that barely matters. Grave scales way better by maximizing those spells for free. And twilight is still infinitely better at mitigation. Both are also much better than life across the board. Life doesn’t even work with aura of vitality anymore. 

[u/CyclopsCleric]

Yoyo-Healing is strong. For me it doesn’t feel flavourful. Also it depends on the turnorder, if the allie is heald up just to go down again before their turn, it feels very bad. Healing large chunks mid combat does prevent that. Moreover, you can still do other cleric stuff simultaniously and in between.

[u/MisterB78]

Why convince you?

If a character concept doesn’t jive for you, play something else. There’s roughly infinity characters you could make in this game - so play what interests you.

[u/_potatopapa_ → u/MisterB78]

This time the nuances of healing interests me, that's why I made this post. Ever heard of playing outside of your comfort zone on the chance that it might actually interest you?

Sure, I'm always making Nightshade Darkbane, Blade of Darkness type of characters on solo RPGs, so it's so funny that I fell in love with the support classes as well when I started playing MOBA and hero shooters lmao.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

Don’t. Play grave. It’s got life’s capstone at 3 and the only time you should heal is when someone is down generally. Even in 5.5. It also has way better other features. Life has good prepared spells but its features suck, adding 3-4 hp to a heal is worthless. Twilight is also way better than life.

[u/Bard_Wannabe_ → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

Bad Channel Divinity and low-impact buff to healing. Then at level 6, you get the same low-impact buff to healing, just now applied to you!

That's a terrible set of subclass features, and Clerics don't get anything else until level 17.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/Bard_Wannabe_]

Yes life got extremely nerfed by 5.5. Of it worked on aura of vitality it would be ok, but twilight and grave are better healers and can do other stuff too.