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For Dungeons & Dragons’ Clerics, preparing the right spells is a matter of life and death. They should be careful not to pick the wrong options.
Clerics in Dungeons & Dragons can be some of the best healers a party can ask for, but much like any class that prepares their spells for a day, their usefulness is limited by what they anticipate. Not all spells are alike, and some are rarely worth preparing. In matters of life and death where healing and resurrecting are key to survival, Clerics need to make sure they know their best options. These are the spells no healing cleric should go without.
While other classes and characters builds can specialize in healing, none master it quite like the Cleric. Though they can serve a variety of functions and need not always be healers, the Cleric spell list includes invaluable options for keeping a party fighting through a stamina-draining battle and raising allies back up even when they are fallen. Still, not all of those options are created equal, and some are an utter waste of space.
Healing Word creates one of the best measuring sticks to compare other healing options against. Cast as a bonus action, consuming no material components and working from a range of 60 feet, the ability to reinforce any ally with a few more hit points is particularly valuable whenever anyone is making those incredibly tense death saving throws. The amount of damage the spell heals is unimportant because its range and action economy make it a better option to taking up a cantrip space with Spare the Dying, and it’s rare that so many allies are dying at once that Mass Healing Word is necessary.
Guidance and Sacred Flame are both far better cantrip options for a Cleric than Spare the Dying. The former is useful almost to the point of annoying Dungeon Masters with the constancy it comes up, and the latter is one of the best damage-dealing cantrips in the game. Sacred Flame can easily persist in being more dangerous than a Cleric’s own weapon, ensuring that they are still able to contribute to the fight even when everyone else is in good shape.
If healing or resurrecting is the build’s focus, few Clerics can do better than to have Heal and Revivify. Heal is a sixth-level spell that is perhaps the best mid-combat healing spell in the game due to how much HP it reliably restores. Revivify is the only spell that can bring an ally back from death in a single action, and though its requirement that the deceased be dead no longer than one minute may seem severe, a minute lasts forever in combat. Those options are among the best a Cleric can have to be prepared for the worst.
There is also Death Ward, which does not require concentration, lasts for eight hours and makes it impossible for a character to die from a single attack. At lower levels, this is a great way to stretch out single turns that can make all the difference, but at the higher levels, it proves to be one of the only spells that can keep devastating spells like Disintegrate or Power Word Kill from dolling out one-hit KOs.
With a trusty utility belt of options available, a Cleric can become the party’s safety net against the most powerful and dangerous enemies. They don’t need a wide selection of spells to be useful when a handful are enough to get the job done. Not everybody wants to play a Cleric, but there’s no one who is disappointed to have one at their side when their hit points drop to zero.
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