So I'll start off by admitting that I'm not the type of person to play cleric too often. Last time I played cleric was about 6 years ago? So I'm basically a new player when it comes to cleric, and I joined a PBP here on D&DBeyond as a life domain cleric, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Luckily we haven't started yet so I'd like a little help if at all possible.
as for what important depends on if you wanna run around with 2 handed heavy weapon/heavy armor. Or sword and board/medium armor.
2) Healing/buff/damage spells dont be afraid to experiment cleric can switch it spells (except cantrip) after long rest. Cantrips *guidance. pretty nice one time buff if not concentrating on something else *toll of the death. damage will save spell. pretty good damage + since it a save spell you can it up close withouth disadvantage. *thaumturgy. Depends on your DM and your creativity but it pretty nice kit to use for example as distraction. 3)resilient nice feat to get proficiency on con save and +1 to even an uneven stat. lucky always nice general feat to have if you dont know what to pick. 4) monster will outdamage your heals so it best to heal the party back up after combat unless people health getting to low (if short rest not option spend those hit dice first :P), You wanna act as a second tank/support.
2 handed heavy armor.
1) WIS>STR/CON>DEX rest dump stat (str atleast 15 to get plate armor) 3) Polearm and sentinel strong combo with glaive weapon. melee enemies with only 5 feet reach gonna hate you.
sword/board. (rapier)
1)WIS>CON>DEX (max 14 dex if you going after medium armor) 2)war caster. This allow you to cast spell with somatic compononent while holding rapier/shield. if you put your holy symbol on the shield that take off material component allowing to cast any spell. the other 2 feature pretty great to for spellcaster. shield master. handy defensive feat.
whoops forgot life cleric doesnt get martial weapon XD.
Life Clerics are often considered "support": due to their boost to healing they often are incentivized to keep spell slots for healing instead of combat.
I do agree with Palfatreos, Wisdom is one of your most important stats.
The next is deciding what is your non spell attack going to be? Dex or Str. Note: Life Clerics only have Simple Weapons. Dex will give you ranged combat, but limited melee options (daggers is the only Finesse Simple Weapon). Strength won't help you at ranged but gives you strong melee options. Quarterstaff is one of the cheapest and best options as it can be 1d6 one handed or 1d8 two handed, and at higher levels staves are often good magical gear. A light crossbow on the other hand deals 1d8+Dex. Keep in mind at 8th lvl Divine Strike is at weapon strike, so it still works ranged!
Personally my favorite feat for a Life Cleric is Magic Initiate: Druid. This gets you 2 more cantrips, while Druid Cantrips aren't amazing neither are Cleric. I recommend taking Shillelagh, as it can turn your quarterstaff, staff, club into a WIS based melee attack weapon. This can make Strength and Dex less as important as Wisdom now does spells and melee damage. As for the lvl 1 spell pick Goodberry. Combined with Life Cleric it means every berry heals 4hp. So every day you get a free casting worth 40hp. This is amazing at 1st lvl (vhuman) and still good at 4th (anyone). Cast it 1st thing every morning and pass them out to the party. If you have 5 people everyone gets 2. It's effectively a discount daily potion.
If you don't want a high strength to wear Full Plate, if you play a Dwarf they are never slowed down by heavy armor. They also get training in the battleaxe and warhammer which grant coveted Martial Weapons, but then you need high Strength to utilize them so the Dwarven Movement is moot.
That said if you ignore heavy armor and have +2 Dex, medium armor is almost as good or equal to heavy armor, except full plate. Also since you're trained in it Mithrial heavy armor ignores the strength requirement.
Ah okay, I'll keep the Shilleagh spell in mind, although I didn't see the character doing too much damage. The more I work with my character, the more I realize that she might become the party mom. As for race, I had gone with a homebrew that I made which can be seen here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/races/21001-neko
So yea, there's that. With standard array, her level 1 final stats are as follows: 13str, 10dex, 14con, 10int, 15wis, 13cha.
For the spells that I currently have on her I will list the spell and my reason. I have:
Cantrips: Guidance (giving advice about life?), Light(making sure that party members that don't have darkvision can see), and Thaumturgy (Assisting with intimidation and lulling party members to sleep without the sleep spell.)
Level 1 spells: Create/Destroy Water (Making sure that no one goes thirsty), Inflict Wounds(Just a little bit of damage if I deem it necessary), Sanctuary(Protect the squishy-er members of the party)
Although I suppose that I'll be changing my cantrips around before the campaign starts so that I do have a more constant method of damage. I am also planning on taking one ability score increase (probably after my wisdom increases) so that I can wear plate so that the healer has a harder time dying.
Stat wise, a mostly wisdom and charisma. I personally am a dragonborn, but some useful spells for the Curse of Strahd module are a hard to tell thing.
Cantrip wise: Light for sight and showing off that I have a divine gift, spare the dying for when I have nothing left at the end of an encounter, or if you want an npc to live instead of the downed and insta dead thing. Thaumaturgy and mending are my usual swap around spell. Useful if you don't want to touch doors in a place, or maybe give yourself golden eyes or be commanding.
Depending again on campaign, I at least find it useful to have cure wounds, bless (always prepared by domain) protection from good and evil. purify food and drink, sanctuary (you can go more supportive or save someone who is say paralyzed with that.) Would swap out purify food and drink if you have more survival based characters or not in a cursed land for guiding bolt. Little more 'good' than inflict wounds. Plus giving an ally advantage is great.
You don't have fixed spells. You just pray a minute per spell level prepared in the morning you want and then good to go. Remember that the domain spells you get every couple levels are not counted against what you can prepare.
From personal experience, the channel divinity, preserve life, if not yet used, use it before people roll hit die in short rests. Get a cheeky bonus heal in. Or use it to save lives when death saves start happening. Course you gotta meta a little bit since only up to half. Heal check beforehand if you need to. first few levels with it is nice in a replace healing word sort of way, but when a few levels in and the high constitution people can take a hit or two when at/below half, then it gets to shine.
Also for first feat. If you are proficient and the +5 to it would give you a 20 or higher passive perception, observant is a great option. Otherwise war caster to help you keep your powerful concentration spells up by advantage to maintain, as well as spells on opportunity attacks. Say someone is close and you have allies nearby, command them to grovel so they drop prone their turn. hold person can mean they screwed. Cheeky sacred flame never hurts.
But why Charisma? unless you are the only option for the 'face' of the party I would leave that to one of the charisma based classes. Turn Undead no longer works based on your charisma score.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Charisma helps to be persuasive and being the face. I see it as to be more self confident with a deity helping to guide my actions. Shame that there isn't a whole lot of spells that would need a charisma save to it. If you can talk your way out of a battle, or gain some aid from helping the church out of a different deity it is nice, can be left to a handful of other classes.
I go with charisma since I am a more evangelistic kind of cleric, and like the role play aspect of it. Since I tend to roll stats that are fairly meh, I like to try and avoid fights since having to burn through spells in a attempt to keep people alive isn't a good thing.
That is fair, although it is more fun (to me) to be the proselitizing priest that has a poor charisma score. So they smile and nod when you talk but roll their eyes when you look away.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
The Healer feat is great because it can preserve spellcasting resources, and it can be paired with healing word spells. Inspiring Leader could also be good for the party mom.
I disagree with the choice of Toll the Dead. To me, this is entirely inappropriate for a cleric with the Life domain. It is a necromantic spell, it is granted by the death domain. It is the antithesis of what a life cleric would car, IMO. The campaign I DMd, I disallowed it for the party’s LG Light cleric
I disagree with the choice of Toll the Dead. To me, this is entirely inappropriate for a cleric with the Life domain. It is a necromantic spell, it is granted by the death domain. It is the antithesis of what a life cleric would car, IMO. The campaign I DMd, I disallowed it for the party’s LG Light cleric
Well unfortunately it was the only cleric cantrip that I know of that deals damage. If there is another cantrip that deal damage, then I most certainly didn't see it in my cantrip selection. Also, disallowing people to use a spell is kind of a jerk move imo because you are basically saying that ALL light domain clerics are pure, and I call bull on that. I've played light clerics before that had just a slight twist in their mind. You could also explain it as one of those intrusive thoughts that caused someone to learn the ONE necromantic spell that they have. Also, with not allowing a life cleric to use necromantic spells, you prevent them from being able to use spells such as: Spare the Dying, Revivify, Resurrection, and True Resurrection. All of those are necromantic spells, and you are saying that I can't use them because I'm a life domain cleric.
Also ignores cover which is pretty darn handy. Sacred Flame.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Word of radiance is basically a strictly better thunderclap IMO. The close range and being con save (very few monsters have negative con) don't make it a very good offensive option, but it can hit multiple targets.
You can play a dexterity life domain cleric if you choose a race that supports a finesse weapon. I'm currently playing a life domain Drow Cleric of Eilistraee so i'm chaotic good using a rapier which is a martial weapon that Drow have proficiency with so yeah it is possible with the right race combination.
Sacred flame would be your alternate damaging cantrip if you wanted something other than toll the dead.
Sacred Flame is pretty much a must-get, to be honest. Not only does it ignore cover, radiant damage is resisted WAY less often than the necrotic damage from Toll The Dead.
8th level life cleric here! In my group I'm the only healer so I've really been putting the healing capabilities of the class to the test. At lower levels my bread and butter spells were Healing Word, Sanctuary, and Bless. When I got 3rd level spells I added Spirit Guardians and Mass Healing word. I like to keep in mind that because I'm doing extra healing every time I heal I don't necessarily need to cast Cure Wounds or Healing Word at a higher level. It's helped me save spell slots.
As a Life Cleric one of the most effective moves I can do is Channel Divinity on my action to raise the party to half hit points then follow it with a bonus action Mass Healing Word. In our most recent battle I even managed to combine it with Beacon of Hope. In this case I cast Mass Healing Word at 4th level to maximized healing.
If you're looking for a parental feel Insight and Perception skills would be great. Investigation might be good too.
I focused stats in Wis, Con, and Cha. Our party didn't have a face so it's worked for me. Because my focus is healing I don't worry about Str, if you want to be more focused on hitting things Life cleric might not be the best subclass choice, but it's definitely doable.
As for feats, Resilient is great. I chose Dex because I also planned to get Shield Master. The two synergize great for our campaign where I'm dodging rocks from giants and dragon breath weapons. War Caster is usually a good option too for the advantage on concentration checks, but keep in mind most of your healing spells aren't concentration. I've chosen to forgo this feat because I usually stay out of heavy hitting range, I've focused on high AC and a good Dex save to keep my Concentration checks low. I took feats instead of ASI because of the Life Clerics bonus healing per spell level. As long as you've got +3/4, the bonus should help mitigate a lower wisdom score.
As for keeping your party alive, just keep in mind you've committing to being The Healer, sometimes you may have to forgo doing something cool to just heal the party. You should always be planning on handing out healing on your turn, if no one needs it plan B should be buffing the party, and finally plan C can be anything else. I love casting Spirit Guardians early in a combat because it lets me contribute to damage, but it's not always possible. Getting Spiritual Weapon on the field early is also great, especially because we don't get many bonus action options, but sometimes Healing Word takes the spotlight. With 4th level spells Guardian of Faith is great because it doesn't require concentration. All of these spells are always my plan C for a turn I don't need to heal.
Thank you capricEntropy for the insight on life clerics, you've provided a lot for me to think about in the future. One thing I gave my cleric was guidance rather than bless though as I thought it was more motherly. Like a mother giving gentle advice while the person does their thing.
Guidance is great, I kind of regret not taking it. I took Word of Radiance, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, and Mending. Mending might be a good option for a parental feeling too. It's great for roleplay moments, whenever our little ranger is looking too ragged I try Mending her clothes lol.
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So I'll start off by admitting that I'm not the type of person to play cleric too often. Last time I played cleric was about 6 years ago? So I'm basically a new player when it comes to cleric, and I joined a PBP here on D&DBeyond as a life domain cleric, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Luckily we haven't started yet so I'd like a little help if at all possible.
I probably should ask some actual questions huh? Well here goes:
1.) What are the most important things I should probably go for in terms of stats and feats?
2.) What spells should I look at getting, or think about.
3.) What are some skills that I should think about getting if I'm going for a sort of parental life cleric?
and 4.) General tips and tricks to keep party alive?
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?374604-The-Devout-and-the-Dead-a-guide-to-Clerics pretty good guide for clerics
as for what important depends on if you wanna run around with 2 handed heavy weapon/heavy armor. Or sword and board/medium armor.
2) Healing/buff/damage spells dont be afraid to experiment cleric can switch it spells (except cantrip) after long rest.
Cantrips
*guidance. pretty nice one time buff if not concentrating on something else
*toll of the death. damage will save spell. pretty good damage + since it a save spell you can it up close withouth disadvantage.
*thaumturgy. Depends on your DM and your creativity but it pretty nice kit to use for example as distraction.
3)resilient nice feat to get proficiency on con save and +1 to even an uneven stat.
lucky always nice general feat to have if you dont know what to pick.
4) monster will outdamage your heals so it best to heal the party back up after combat unless people health getting to low (if short rest not option spend those hit dice first :P), You wanna act as a second tank/support.
2 handed heavy armor.1) WIS>STR/CON>DEX rest dump stat (str atleast 15 to get plate armor)3) Polearm and sentinel strong combo with glaive weapon. melee enemies with only 5 feet reach gonna hate you.sword/board. (rapier)1)WIS>CON>DEX (max 14 dex if you going after medium armor)2)war caster. This allow you to cast spell with somatic compononent while holding rapier/shield. if you put your holy symbol on the shield that take off material component allowing to cast any spell. the other 2 feature pretty great to for spellcaster.shield master. handy defensive feat.whoops forgot life cleric doesnt get martial weapon XD.
Nox - Adult Oblex - The Trials
Jartrin Ephok - Dragonborn - Zanoliv
Bunol - Grim Angel - The Floating Lands of Goriate
A lot depends on what you want to accomplish.
Life Clerics are often considered "support": due to their boost to healing they often are incentivized to keep spell slots for healing instead of combat.
I do agree with Palfatreos, Wisdom is one of your most important stats.
The next is deciding what is your non spell attack going to be? Dex or Str. Note: Life Clerics only have Simple Weapons. Dex will give you ranged combat, but limited melee options (daggers is the only Finesse Simple Weapon).
Strength won't help you at ranged but gives you strong melee options. Quarterstaff is one of the cheapest and best options as it can be 1d6 one handed or 1d8 two handed, and at higher levels staves are often good magical gear.
A light crossbow on the other hand deals 1d8+Dex. Keep in mind at 8th lvl Divine Strike is at weapon strike, so it still works ranged!
Personally my favorite feat for a Life Cleric is Magic Initiate: Druid.
This gets you 2 more cantrips, while Druid Cantrips aren't amazing neither are Cleric. I recommend taking Shillelagh, as it can turn your quarterstaff, staff, club into a WIS based melee attack weapon. This can make Strength and Dex less as important as Wisdom now does spells and melee damage.
As for the lvl 1 spell pick Goodberry. Combined with Life Cleric it means every berry heals 4hp. So every day you get a free casting worth 40hp. This is amazing at 1st lvl (vhuman) and still good at 4th (anyone). Cast it 1st thing every morning and pass them out to the party. If you have 5 people everyone gets 2. It's effectively a discount daily potion.
If you don't want a high strength to wear Full Plate, if you play a Dwarf they are never slowed down by heavy armor.
They also get training in the battleaxe and warhammer which grant coveted Martial Weapons, but then you need high Strength to utilize them so the Dwarven Movement is moot.
That said if you ignore heavy armor and have +2 Dex, medium armor is almost as good or equal to heavy armor, except full plate. Also since you're trained in it Mithrial heavy armor ignores the strength requirement.
Ah okay, I'll keep the Shilleagh spell in mind, although I didn't see the character doing too much damage. The more I work with my character, the more I realize that she might become the party mom. As for race, I had gone with a homebrew that I made which can be seen here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/races/21001-neko
So yea, there's that. With standard array, her level 1 final stats are as follows: 13str, 10dex, 14con, 10int, 15wis, 13cha.
For the spells that I currently have on her I will list the spell and my reason. I have:
Cantrips: Guidance (giving advice about life?), Light(making sure that party members that don't have darkvision can see), and Thaumturgy (Assisting with intimidation and lulling party members to sleep without the sleep spell.)
Level 1 spells: Create/Destroy Water (Making sure that no one goes thirsty), Inflict Wounds(Just a little bit of damage if I deem it necessary), Sanctuary(Protect the squishy-er members of the party)
Although I suppose that I'll be changing my cantrips around before the campaign starts so that I do have a more constant method of damage. I am also planning on taking one ability score increase (probably after my wisdom increases) so that I can wear plate so that the healer has a harder time dying.
Stat wise, a mostly wisdom and charisma. I personally am a dragonborn, but some useful spells for the Curse of Strahd module are a hard to tell thing.
Cantrip wise: Light for sight and showing off that I have a divine gift, spare the dying for when I have nothing left at the end of an encounter, or if you want an npc to live instead of the downed and insta dead thing. Thaumaturgy and mending are my usual swap around spell. Useful if you don't want to touch doors in a place, or maybe give yourself golden eyes or be commanding.
Depending again on campaign, I at least find it useful to have cure wounds, bless (always prepared by domain) protection from good and evil. purify food and drink, sanctuary (you can go more supportive or save someone who is say paralyzed with that.) Would swap out purify food and drink if you have more survival based characters or not in a cursed land for guiding bolt. Little more 'good' than inflict wounds. Plus giving an ally advantage is great.
You don't have fixed spells. You just pray a minute per spell level prepared in the morning you want and then good to go. Remember that the domain spells you get every couple levels are not counted against what you can prepare.
From personal experience, the channel divinity, preserve life, if not yet used, use it before people roll hit die in short rests. Get a cheeky bonus heal in. Or use it to save lives when death saves start happening. Course you gotta meta a little bit since only up to half. Heal check beforehand if you need to. first few levels with it is nice in a replace healing word sort of way, but when a few levels in and the high constitution people can take a hit or two when at/below half, then it gets to shine.
Also for first feat. If you are proficient and the +5 to it would give you a 20 or higher passive perception, observant is a great option. Otherwise war caster to help you keep your powerful concentration spells up by advantage to maintain, as well as spells on opportunity attacks. Say someone is close and you have allies nearby, command them to grovel so they drop prone their turn. hold person can mean they screwed. Cheeky sacred flame never hurts.
But why Charisma? unless you are the only option for the 'face' of the party I would leave that to one of the charisma based classes. Turn Undead no longer works based on your charisma score.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Charisma helps to be persuasive and being the face. I see it as to be more self confident with a deity helping to guide my actions. Shame that there isn't a whole lot of spells that would need a charisma save to it. If you can talk your way out of a battle, or gain some aid from helping the church out of a different deity it is nice, can be left to a handful of other classes.
I go with charisma since I am a more evangelistic kind of cleric, and like the role play aspect of it. Since I tend to roll stats that are fairly meh, I like to try and avoid fights since having to burn through spells in a attempt to keep people alive isn't a good thing.
That is fair, although it is more fun (to me) to be the proselitizing priest that has a poor charisma score. So they smile and nod when you talk but roll their eyes when you look away.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
The Healer feat is great because it can preserve spellcasting resources, and it can be paired with healing word spells. Inspiring Leader could also be good for the party mom.
I disagree with the choice of Toll the Dead. To me, this is entirely inappropriate for a cleric with the Life domain. It is a necromantic spell, it is granted by the death domain. It is the antithesis of what a life cleric would car, IMO. The campaign I DMd, I disallowed it for the party’s LG Light cleric
Well unfortunately it was the only cleric cantrip that I know of that deals damage. If there is another cantrip that deal damage, then I most certainly didn't see it in my cantrip selection. Also, disallowing people to use a spell is kind of a jerk move imo because you are basically saying that ALL light domain clerics are pure, and I call bull on that. I've played light clerics before that had just a slight twist in their mind. You could also explain it as one of those intrusive thoughts that caused someone to learn the ONE necromantic spell that they have. Also, with not allowing a life cleric to use necromantic spells, you prevent them from being able to use spells such as: Spare the Dying, Revivify, Resurrection, and True Resurrection. All of those are necromantic spells, and you are saying that I can't use them because I'm a life domain cleric.
Sacred flame would be your alternate damaging cantrip if you wanted something other than toll the dead.
Also ignores cover which is pretty darn handy. Sacred Flame.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Word of radiance is basically a strictly better thunderclap IMO. The close range and being con save (very few monsters have negative con) don't make it a very good offensive option, but it can hit multiple targets.
You can play a dexterity life domain cleric if you choose a race that supports a finesse weapon. I'm currently playing a life domain Drow Cleric of Eilistraee so i'm chaotic good using a rapier which is a martial weapon that Drow have proficiency with so yeah it is possible with the right race combination.
Sacred Flame is pretty much a must-get, to be honest. Not only does it ignore cover, radiant damage is resisted WAY less often than the necrotic damage from Toll The Dead.
8th level life cleric here! In my group I'm the only healer so I've really been putting the healing capabilities of the class to the test. At lower levels my bread and butter spells were Healing Word, Sanctuary, and Bless. When I got 3rd level spells I added Spirit Guardians and Mass Healing word. I like to keep in mind that because I'm doing extra healing every time I heal I don't necessarily need to cast Cure Wounds or Healing Word at a higher level. It's helped me save spell slots.
As a Life Cleric one of the most effective moves I can do is Channel Divinity on my action to raise the party to half hit points then follow it with a bonus action Mass Healing Word. In our most recent battle I even managed to combine it with Beacon of Hope. In this case I cast Mass Healing Word at 4th level to maximized healing.
If you're looking for a parental feel Insight and Perception skills would be great. Investigation might be good too.
I focused stats in Wis, Con, and Cha. Our party didn't have a face so it's worked for me. Because my focus is healing I don't worry about Str, if you want to be more focused on hitting things Life cleric might not be the best subclass choice, but it's definitely doable.
As for feats, Resilient is great. I chose Dex because I also planned to get Shield Master. The two synergize great for our campaign where I'm dodging rocks from giants and dragon breath weapons. War Caster is usually a good option too for the advantage on concentration checks, but keep in mind most of your healing spells aren't concentration. I've chosen to forgo this feat because I usually stay out of heavy hitting range, I've focused on high AC and a good Dex save to keep my Concentration checks low. I took feats instead of ASI because of the Life Clerics bonus healing per spell level. As long as you've got +3/4, the bonus should help mitigate a lower wisdom score.
As for keeping your party alive, just keep in mind you've committing to being The Healer, sometimes you may have to forgo doing something cool to just heal the party. You should always be planning on handing out healing on your turn, if no one needs it plan B should be buffing the party, and finally plan C can be anything else. I love casting Spirit Guardians early in a combat because it lets me contribute to damage, but it's not always possible. Getting Spiritual Weapon on the field early is also great, especially because we don't get many bonus action options, but sometimes Healing Word takes the spotlight. With 4th level spells Guardian of Faith is great because it doesn't require concentration. All of these spells are always my plan C for a turn I don't need to heal.
*And diamonds! Hoard them for emergency revivify
Thank you capricEntropy for the insight on life clerics, you've provided a lot for me to think about in the future. One thing I gave my cleric was guidance rather than bless though as I thought it was more motherly. Like a mother giving gentle advice while the person does their thing.
One last thing, I love your picture ^.^
Thank you! Yours is cute too!
Guidance is great, I kind of regret not taking it. I took Word of Radiance, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, and Mending. Mending might be a good option for a parental feeling too. It's great for roleplay moments, whenever our little ranger is looking too ragged I try Mending her clothes lol.