Clerics feel unnecessary/weak compared to some of the other classes. Fighters, Rogues and Rangers all benefit the most from the BG3 changes to attacks (high ground gives advantage, shadows give advantage, backstab gives advantage, 1d4 extra damage from dipping, 2d4 if you dip with dual wielding, etc.). Wizards get really good guaranteed damage with Fire Bolt, as well as great CC with ray of frost.
Meanwhile all the good things about clerics are diminished in BG3. Food heals, making healing spells less important. Getting max HP between every encounter is now trivial. There is no long resource grind through a dungeon. Buff spells like bless are often redundant because of all the advantage everywhere. The way the game works my cleric in most fights finds himself sitting on some high ground making bow attacks with a -1 attack mod and a -1 damage mod because advantage + dip is just so busted. Seems like there's no reason to pick cleric over ranger for most situations.
With the better action economy in BG3 vs 5e, fights are more about finishing enemies off rather than more sustained fights where healing, buffs/nerfs, and crowd control are more important (did i mention food and potions are bonus actions?). The level 2 cleric spells include some good CC, but the fact that they require concentration in a world where the floor is lava make them much harder to sustain. Giving 3 enemies -1d4 to attack rolls is fine, but when your attacks could do 1d8+1d4+3 with 90%+ chance to hit, generally just killing things is better (no concentration required!)
Shadowheart, our default cleric is locked into the trickery domain, which is just absolutely awful. At level 2 Trickery Domain Clerics unlock "invoke duplicity", which creates an illusion and gives advantage to attackers if both they and the illusion are within 10 feet of a target. Since you can just walk behind an enemy to get advantage, this spell is absolute garbage. The other trickery domain spells increase her tankiness, so you could build into that, but she has -1 DEX mod so it doesn't really make much sense.
Throwing a healing word on a downed teammate is still useful, but other than that just stacking damage dealers makes a lot more sense than slowing your party down with a cleric imho.
Last edited by genobeam; 21/10/20 07:35 PM. Reason: Grammar
