The idea behind this fun little build was to create a bow wielding acolyte of some faith. Inspired by Private Daniel Jackson in Saving Private Ryan and Arrow from Fire Force. The need of this build is to A. Be able to use a longbow. B. Use divine magic to boost attacks. C. Not multiclass or homebrew. (It'd be so easy if I could make a paladin with the archery fighting style and smites on ranged attacks). And D. Something that you can get into right away at lower levels and still feel useful as you level up.
With that being said, I came upon the War Domain Cleric. You get martial weapons, a decently balanced spell list with offensive and defensive spells, and domain abilities that make sniping a breeze.
War Priest allows you to use the Attack action as a bonus action after using your action to Attack. As a cleric you have plenty of spells at your disposal that are bonus actions. This gives you extra firing power between healing and buffing your team.
Guided Strike is your bread and butter. You get a +10 bonus to your roll to hit. Let's combine this with the Sharpshooter feat, which allows you to take a -5 penalty to your attack roll for a +10 bonus to the attack damage. You now have a +5 to your attack roll to add +10 to your damage. The neato thing is when you declare these. Sharpshooter gets declared before you make the attack roll and Guided Strike gets declared after you roll, but before a hit/miss is declared by the DM. Meaning you can save your Guided Strike if you roll well!!!
Divine Strike, or Blessed Strikes cuz I'd rather do extra radiant damage for flavor, just adds more bang for your buck.
Other ways to achieve something similar? Celestial Warlock could pull it off with Pact of the Blade, but the limited cleric spell list is a turn off. A paladin could do this as well, but you'd be missing out on smites. Divine Soul Sorcerer doesn't have much going for it to boost the physical ranged attack portion of our wants.
Ideally, we'd have Archery Fighting Style and Extra Attack, but that'd take a multiclass dip into fighter or ranger.
Grab some Bracers of Archery, pray to your deity for guidance, and lay waste the evil of the realm.
If you have recommendations of how to improve upon this idea, please let me know!
The problem with it is that it's going to fall behind at higher levels. You're going to have one shot every turn, and it's going to be very similar to that same shot you had at level 1. in tier 1, when people are only swinging their weapon once a round, it's going to feel good. When they start to multi attack, it's going to feel not so good.
Also, you give up a lot what makes clerics potent spell casters. Clerics love to live close to the front lines because of spirit guardians.
As a single class, I just don't see warpriest making a great archer for very long. I'd totally /dip/ warpriest to make a MC archer, but I'm just not convinced that it will really work well as a standalone.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
♫ ♫ HOLY ARCHER! YOU'VE BEEN DOWN TOO LONG IN THE SHINING SEA! OH WHAT'S BECOMING OF ME??!! ♫ ♫
R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio.
Okay... so... What about the spell Spiritual Weapon? I know, that spell says it's a melee spell attack, BUT the spell also has a 60 foot range for casting and you can move the weapon 20 feet per round. So you could just say that your Spiritual Weapon is a shimmering celestial longbow that appears by your side that fires arrows of force at targets within 60 feet. I mean, you're still making the same attack roll, all that's changed is the appearance of the weapon. And Spiritual Weapon is a beast of a spell because it's just a bonus action! So you can hit with it each round and still throw a Sacred Flame at that same 60 foot range. That's two attacks per round right there, and every cleric can do that by level 3.
But if you really want to stick to an actual physical weapon, remember that the Forge domain's Blessing of the Forge allows you to make your weapon a +1 weapon every day at 1st level. And their Divine Strike says you deal extra damage when you hit a target with a weapon attack - it doesn't specify "melee" weapon!
Okay... so... What about the spell Spiritual Weapon? I know, that spell says it's a melee spell attack, BUT the spell also has a 60 foot range for casting and you can move the weapon 20 feet per round. So you could just say that your Spiritual Weapon is a shimmering celestial longbow that appears by your side that fires arrows of force at targets within 60 feet. I mean, you're still making the same attack roll, all that's changed is the appearance of the weapon. And Spiritual Weapon is a beast of a spell because it's just a bonus action! So you can hit with it each round and still throw a Sacred Flame at that same 60 foot range. That's two attacks per round right there, and every cleric can do that by level 3.
That's not how spiritual weapon works. As you note, it has to be a melee weapon attack. The 60 foot range is just how far away from yourself you can place the weapon. Then if the target dies, you can move it 20 feet to target a different creature. You are proposing to allow it to target creatures in a 60 foot radius of the caster, without ever having to move it. That would be a huge buff, to say the least. It's already a very good spell, it doesn't need the help.
And to the OP, I'd agree crzyhawk, a cleric dip might be nice, but a a single class, not great. I'm not sure I'd call something you can do, at most, 3 times a rest (and at level 6, it will be competing with war god's blessing, which really, is it better for you to plink the enemy once, or let the rogue hit on a sneak attack, or the pally on a smite, or pretty much almost any other character, who will get more damage for the hit.) as a bread and butter. And either way, you're running into the problem of you can cast or attack, but not both, in a round.
Why not just be a ranger? They are good archers, and have powers and spells that can boost their archery. As for the divine end of it. You can easily rp them as being very religious, and take a magic initiate: cleric feat to beef up the divinity angle a bit more if you like.
Okay... so... What about the spell Spiritual Weapon? I know, that spell says it's a melee spell attack, BUT the spell also has a 60 foot range for casting and you can move the weapon 20 feet per round. So you could just say that your Spiritual Weapon is a shimmering celestial longbow that appears by your side that fires arrows of force at targets within 60 feet. I mean, you're still making the same attack roll, all that's changed is the appearance of the weapon. And Spiritual Weapon is a beast of a spell because it's just a bonus action! So you can hit with it each round and still throw a Sacred Flame at that same 60 foot range. That's two attacks per round right there, and every cleric can do that by level 3.
That's not how spiritual weapon works. As you note, it has to be a melee weapon attack. The 60 foot range is just how far away from yourself you can place the weapon. Then if the target dies, you can move it 20 feet to target a different creature. You are proposing to allow it to target creatures in a 60 foot radius of the caster, without ever having to move it. That would be a huge buff, to say the least. It's already a very good spell, it doesn't need the help.
And to the OP, I'd agree crzyhawk, a cleric dip might be nice, but a a single class, not great. I'm not sure I'd call something you can do, at most, 3 times a rest (and at level 6, it will be competing with war god's blessing, which really, is it better for you to plink the enemy once, or let the rogue hit on a sneak attack, or the pally on a smite, or pretty much almost any other character, who will get more damage for the hit.) as a bread and butter. And either way, you're running into the problem of you can cast or attack, but not both, in a round.
Why not just be a ranger? They are good archers, and have powers and spells that can boost their archery. As for the divine end of it. You can easily rp them as being very religious, and take a magic initiate: cleric feat to beef up the divinity angle a bit more if you like.
When I have tried to consider this in the past I usually arrive at ranger with a dip of warcleric. Bless, with archery fighting style and sharpshooter will likely put up crazy damage, because your accuracy will be quite good.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
But it doesn't change anything about the mechanics of the game, was my point. Yes, Spiritual Weapon, as written, produces a spectral weapon within 60 feet of you and within 5 feet of a target. But putting that spectral image next to you, instead, and still requiring the same attack roll to hit does not alter anything about the mechanics of the game. It's a purely cosmetic adjustment. It's just flavor. Sure, if you want to go full-on hardcore R.A.W. you can rule against it. But I would see nothing wrong with allowing a player to adjust the appearance of a spell to suit their character's theme if that adjustment has no effect whatsoever on the mechanics of the game or the outcome of the die rolls.
Also, your comment "You are proposing to allow it to target creatures in a 60 foot radius of the caster, without ever having to move it", is incorrect. I never suggested allowing the cleric to target any and all targets within 60 feet. Nothing about the mechanics of the spell change. When you cast the spell you choose the target. You may attack THAT target only until it dies, at which point you would be allowed to target a different target within 20 feet of the first. The only difference is where the spectral image of the weapon appears. That's all.
Either way, the point stands that casting Spiritual Weapon as a bonus action and Sacred Flame as an action allows any cleric two attacks, at range, each round. That's not too shabby.
This gets me thinking about a way to flavor spiritual weapon that way... go with the Celestial or Divine bow, but have a similar designed target be what dictates what gets shot. Move that 20 feet per round instead of the actual weapon.
This gets me thinking about a way to flavor spiritual weapon that way... go with the Celestial or Divine bow, but have a similar designed target be what dictates what gets shot. Move that 20 feet per round instead of the actual weapon.
Thanks for the constructive critique!
That was going to be my suggestion. A glowing archery target that could move 20 ft. per round as a bonus action.
I would say you could go with a reflavored Horizon Walker Ranger, serving the god/goddess of the hunt (Artemis/Pan/Hircine) tasked with hunting extra planar creatures down. This gets you your extra attack and fighting style, but doesn't give you many Cleric-y spells.
You could do the War Domain Cleric, but this is going to be more spell casting than actually shooting. I would steer away from Forge Domain unless you want to wear heavy armor. Two of the best features of the Forge Cleric (Soul of the Forge and Saint of Forge and Fire) require heavy armor. Now if you want heavy armor and to create your own arrows, go for it.
Alternatively, you could start War Cleric and dip ranger to 5 to get Extra Attack and your fighting style. If you're only going to dip to 5, I would go with the Hunter Colossus Slayer as it doesn't require your bonus action (keep using that Spiritual Weapon). Both Rangers and a range based Cleric will only need Dex and Wis, so you're fairly SAD and won't interrupt spell slot progression as you would if you went Fighter.
There isn't quite the classification of Divine vs. arcane in 5th edition that there used to be. There's so much overlap and very little wording that leans in that kind of direction.
That being Said. Rangers are traditionally already divine spell casters that tend to focus in archery (or Archers that tend to focus in divine casting, take your pick). it doesn't actually take any real re-flavoring to accomplish that task with Rangers. Even a number of their spells already have an inherently archer flavor because of this. Nature has always been a source of divine magic previously. Where as arcane magic has drawn more on specific elements and not nature as a whole. usually inspired or drawn more from the elemental planes and not really the same thing even though they might mechanically cast some of the same spells.
This is an older post, but something no-one has mentioned, and that is rarely brought up anywhere, is that the single class War Priest is in the unique situation of being able to make use of a Heavy Crossbow, reflavored as a proper english warbow, y'see? Because "Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an action, Bonus Action, or Reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make." It's not "once per turn" or some such, but once per action. Therefore War Priest goes well with this, right out of the gate. A small thing. A cool thing nevertheless.
Folks all say that after level 5 your damage tapers off, but from 8 onwards you should be almost back in the game with Blessed Strikes and maxed out WIS, no?
I think for a ranged cleric cantips, preferably with a subclass that gets are the better, less MAD option either with a subclass with potent spellcasting or by using blessed strikes.
With potent spellcasting at level 8 using toll the dead most the the time wou will be able to do 2d12+wis on a hit with divine strikes it does 2d12+1d8. If 75% of attacks are against damaged creatures this averages 17 to 17.5 damage this leaves your bonus action free to cast healing word or for a spritual weapon (etc). You don't need a weapon so can hold a shield in one hand and keep the other free (for spells with Somantic compoents and no material compoents)
A heavy crossbow does 1d10+1d8+dex dex is likely to be +2 or +3 assuming it is +3 it averages 13. You can do another 13 damage as a war cleric but only 5 times a day. The optimal approach from a pure damage point of view is to use the crossbow 5 times a day (when also using it as a bonus action) and toll the dead the rest of the time. This does 42.5 - 45 damage per day more than cantips alone. The cost of this is any combat you want the option of using a crossbow you cannot hold a shield (AC down 2, more if you have a magic shield) and you might have difficulty casting spells as you need your second hand both to fire the crossbow and for the material / somantic components of yuor spells. You can choose which you prefer but when you get to level 11 and toll the dead does 3d12 using cantrips once again is the better option.
Another option is to play as a Protector Aasimar Ranger. The race's feature doesn't fully encapsulate the "divine spells to empower attacks" portion of the OP's wishlist, and it costs an action, so can't be used with Dread Ambusher, but it's flavourful enough and it scales with the player. Dreadful Strikes from the Fey Wanderer is the closest thing to divine magic imbued strikes in the ranger features, but Colossus Slayer will also serve, and Radiant Soul will work well with Volley from the Hunter Subclass, when you get to it.
And the Ranger is a much better striker than a War Cleric, and even gets a couple good Healer type spells. It's not perfect, but without Homebrewing or Multiclassing, this is perhaps the closest you can get, and still be primarily a DPR class. The trouble is that spells like Divine Favour and Holy Weapon really ought to be cast on someone with Extra Attack, so hogging them as a support class really is suboptimal team play.
Seems to me Cleric and Paladin are the only ways to get Bow and Divine attacks and No multiclass or homebrew and online at low levels together. Neither is optimal - but War Cleric is slightly better in my opinion because you can put Divine Favour/Bless and Spiritual Weapon on at the same time.
Sacrificing bow or divine spells, you can be a Ranger or a cantrips cleric or a Celestial Bladelock.
I think this is the kind of build where multiclassing is highly justified. There's no easy way to build a divine archer RAW. The easiest way to homebrew it would be to make a divine EK - however by sticking to evocation and abjuration, would make a more healery defensive martial, an archetype covered by some of the other options - and while you could get Bless and Spiritual Weapons, you wouldn't get the on-hit DPR abilities that define the Paladin.
Maybe it is an option to make the bow your "holy symbol" (spellcasting focus) and reflavor your Spells (like Guiding Bolts, etc.) as arrows that are shot by it.
In one of my campaigns I'm playing a multiclassed Way of the Kensei Monk + War Cleric, which works really well as an archer; I'm currently on a 6/3 (Monk/Cleric) split using Tasha's Cauldron optional features, so I have both Ki-fuelled Attack and War Priest as options to fire three shots per turn, with Ki-fuelled Attack triggering easily using either Focused Aim (add +2-6 to a miss for 1-3 Ki) or Deft Strike (add d6 damage).
However there was a bit of a juggling act early on as I wanted to start with Cleric abilities, which meant my Extra Attack was delayed; it wasn't a huge problem but it did mean I lagged behind in damage for a bit. It is however a lot of fun to play, as the character can put out some serious damage at range (especially if I can get Bless up before the fight, or Divine Favor in the first round) and can more than hold their own up close (I'll often rush in to help anyone else that's in trouble).
While I only have the one Channel Divinity use per short rest, Harness Divine Power means I can use it to get a 2nd level slot back once per day (to get more out of my limited spell slots) or I can have Guided Strike in the back pocket for when Focused Aim won't be enough (or is too costly, as I prefer to just spend 1 Ki for the +2, since I only have the 6 Ki points), and a lot of the time it's saved for when I inevitably whiff a roll for Guiding Bolt (as missing with one of your limited spells is the worst). The character is also crazy fast, has solid AC and keeps trying to take the lead on social checks despite being horrible at them. A lot of fun. 😂
The idea behind this fun little build was to create a bow wielding acolyte of some faith. Inspired by Private Daniel Jackson in Saving Private Ryan and Arrow from Fire Force. The need of this build is to A. Be able to use a longbow. B. Use divine magic to boost attacks. C. Not multiclass or homebrew. (It'd be so easy if I could make a paladin with the archery fighting style and smites on ranged attacks). And D. Something that you can get into right away at lower levels and still feel useful as you level up.
With that being said, I came upon the War Domain Cleric. You get martial weapons, a decently balanced spell list with offensive and defensive spells, and domain abilities that make sniping a breeze.
War Priest allows you to use the Attack action as a bonus action after using your action to Attack. As a cleric you have plenty of spells at your disposal that are bonus actions. This gives you extra firing power between healing and buffing your team.
Guided Strike is your bread and butter. You get a +10 bonus to your roll to hit. Let's combine this with the Sharpshooter feat, which allows you to take a -5 penalty to your attack roll for a +10 bonus to the attack damage. You now have a +5 to your attack roll to add +10 to your damage. The neato thing is when you declare these. Sharpshooter gets declared before you make the attack roll and Guided Strike gets declared after you roll, but before a hit/miss is declared by the DM. Meaning you can save your Guided Strike if you roll well!!!
Divine Strike, or Blessed Strikes cuz I'd rather do extra radiant damage for flavor, just adds more bang for your buck.
Other ways to achieve something similar? Celestial Warlock could pull it off with Pact of the Blade, but the limited cleric spell list is a turn off. A paladin could do this as well, but you'd be missing out on smites. Divine Soul Sorcerer doesn't have much going for it to boost the physical ranged attack portion of our wants.
Ideally, we'd have Archery Fighting Style and Extra Attack, but that'd take a multiclass dip into fighter or ranger.
Grab some Bracers of Archery, pray to your deity for guidance, and lay waste the evil of the realm.
If you have recommendations of how to improve upon this idea, please let me know!
The problem with it is that it's going to fall behind at higher levels. You're going to have one shot every turn, and it's going to be very similar to that same shot you had at level 1. in tier 1, when people are only swinging their weapon once a round, it's going to feel good. When they start to multi attack, it's going to feel not so good.
Also, you give up a lot what makes clerics potent spell casters. Clerics love to live close to the front lines because of spirit guardians.
As a single class, I just don't see warpriest making a great archer for very long. I'd totally /dip/ warpriest to make a MC archer, but I'm just not convinced that it will really work well as a standalone.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
♫ ♫ HOLY ARCHER! YOU'VE BEEN DOWN TOO LONG IN THE SHINING SEA! OH WHAT'S BECOMING OF ME??!! ♫ ♫
R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio.
Okay... so... What about the spell Spiritual Weapon? I know, that spell says it's a melee spell attack, BUT the spell also has a 60 foot range for casting and you can move the weapon 20 feet per round. So you could just say that your Spiritual Weapon is a shimmering celestial longbow that appears by your side that fires arrows of force at targets within 60 feet. I mean, you're still making the same attack roll, all that's changed is the appearance of the weapon. And Spiritual Weapon is a beast of a spell because it's just a bonus action! So you can hit with it each round and still throw a Sacred Flame at that same 60 foot range. That's two attacks per round right there, and every cleric can do that by level 3.
But if you really want to stick to an actual physical weapon, remember that the Forge domain's Blessing of the Forge allows you to make your weapon a +1 weapon every day at 1st level. And their Divine Strike says you deal extra damage when you hit a target with a weapon attack - it doesn't specify "melee" weapon!
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Tayn of Darkwood. Human Life Cleric. Lvl 10.
That's not how spiritual weapon works. As you note, it has to be a melee weapon attack. The 60 foot range is just how far away from yourself you can place the weapon. Then if the target dies, you can move it 20 feet to target a different creature. You are proposing to allow it to target creatures in a 60 foot radius of the caster, without ever having to move it. That would be a huge buff, to say the least. It's already a very good spell, it doesn't need the help.
And to the OP, I'd agree crzyhawk, a cleric dip might be nice, but a a single class, not great. I'm not sure I'd call something you can do, at most, 3 times a rest (and at level 6, it will be competing with war god's blessing, which really, is it better for you to plink the enemy once, or let the rogue hit on a sneak attack, or the pally on a smite, or pretty much almost any other character, who will get more damage for the hit.) as a bread and butter. And either way, you're running into the problem of you can cast or attack, but not both, in a round.
Why not just be a ranger? They are good archers, and have powers and spells that can boost their archery. As for the divine end of it. You can easily rp them as being very religious, and take a magic initiate: cleric feat to beef up the divinity angle a bit more if you like.
When I have tried to consider this in the past I usually arrive at ranger with a dip of warcleric. Bless, with archery fighting style and sharpshooter will likely put up crazy damage, because your accuracy will be quite good.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
But it doesn't change anything about the mechanics of the game, was my point. Yes, Spiritual Weapon, as written, produces a spectral weapon within 60 feet of you and within 5 feet of a target. But putting that spectral image next to you, instead, and still requiring the same attack roll to hit does not alter anything about the mechanics of the game. It's a purely cosmetic adjustment. It's just flavor. Sure, if you want to go full-on hardcore R.A.W. you can rule against it. But I would see nothing wrong with allowing a player to adjust the appearance of a spell to suit their character's theme if that adjustment has no effect whatsoever on the mechanics of the game or the outcome of the die rolls.
Also, your comment "You are proposing to allow it to target creatures in a 60 foot radius of the caster, without ever having to move it", is incorrect. I never suggested allowing the cleric to target any and all targets within 60 feet. Nothing about the mechanics of the spell change. When you cast the spell you choose the target. You may attack THAT target only until it dies, at which point you would be allowed to target a different target within 20 feet of the first. The only difference is where the spectral image of the weapon appears. That's all.
Either way, the point stands that casting Spiritual Weapon as a bonus action and Sacred Flame as an action allows any cleric two attacks, at range, each round. That's not too shabby.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Tayn of Darkwood. Human Life Cleric. Lvl 10.
This gets me thinking about a way to flavor spiritual weapon that way... go with the Celestial or Divine bow, but have a similar designed target be what dictates what gets shot. Move that 20 feet per round instead of the actual weapon.
Thanks for the constructive critique!
That was going to be my suggestion. A glowing archery target that could move 20 ft. per round as a bonus action.
I would say you could go with a reflavored Horizon Walker Ranger, serving the god/goddess of the hunt (Artemis/Pan/Hircine) tasked with hunting extra planar creatures down. This gets you your extra attack and fighting style, but doesn't give you many Cleric-y spells.
You could do the War Domain Cleric, but this is going to be more spell casting than actually shooting. I would steer away from Forge Domain unless you want to wear heavy armor. Two of the best features of the Forge Cleric (Soul of the Forge and Saint of Forge and Fire) require heavy armor. Now if you want heavy armor and to create your own arrows, go for it.
Alternatively, you could start War Cleric and dip ranger to 5 to get Extra Attack and your fighting style. If you're only going to dip to 5, I would go with the Hunter Colossus Slayer as it doesn't require your bonus action (keep using that Spiritual Weapon). Both Rangers and a range based Cleric will only need Dex and Wis, so you're fairly SAD and won't interrupt spell slot progression as you would if you went Fighter.
There isn't quite the classification of Divine vs. arcane in 5th edition that there used to be. There's so much overlap and very little wording that leans in that kind of direction.
That being Said. Rangers are traditionally already divine spell casters that tend to focus in archery (or Archers that tend to focus in divine casting, take your pick). it doesn't actually take any real re-flavoring to accomplish that task with Rangers. Even a number of their spells already have an inherently archer flavor because of this. Nature has always been a source of divine magic previously. Where as arcane magic has drawn more on specific elements and not nature as a whole. usually inspired or drawn more from the elemental planes and not really the same thing even though they might mechanically cast some of the same spells.
This is an older post, but something no-one has mentioned, and that is rarely brought up anywhere, is that the single class War Priest is in the unique situation of being able to make use of a Heavy Crossbow, reflavored as a proper english warbow, y'see? Because "Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an action, Bonus Action, or Reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make." It's not "once per turn" or some such, but once per action. Therefore War Priest goes well with this, right out of the gate. A small thing. A cool thing nevertheless.
Folks all say that after level 5 your damage tapers off, but from 8 onwards you should be almost back in the game with Blessed Strikes and maxed out WIS, no?
I think for a ranged cleric cantips, preferably with a subclass that gets are the better, less MAD option either with a subclass with potent spellcasting or by using blessed strikes.
With potent spellcasting at level 8 using toll the dead most the the time wou will be able to do 2d12+wis on a hit with divine strikes it does 2d12+1d8. If 75% of attacks are against damaged creatures this averages 17 to 17.5 damage this leaves your bonus action free to cast healing word or for a spritual weapon (etc). You don't need a weapon so can hold a shield in one hand and keep the other free (for spells with Somantic compoents and no material compoents)
A heavy crossbow does 1d10+1d8+dex dex is likely to be +2 or +3 assuming it is +3 it averages 13. You can do another 13 damage as a war cleric but only 5 times a day. The optimal approach from a pure damage point of view is to use the crossbow 5 times a day (when also using it as a bonus action) and toll the dead the rest of the time. This does 42.5 - 45 damage per day more than cantips alone. The cost of this is any combat you want the option of using a crossbow you cannot hold a shield (AC down 2, more if you have a magic shield) and you might have difficulty casting spells as you need your second hand both to fire the crossbow and for the material / somantic components of yuor spells. You can choose which you prefer but when you get to level 11 and toll the dead does 3d12 using cantrips once again is the better option.
Another option is to play as a Protector Aasimar Ranger. The race's feature doesn't fully encapsulate the "divine spells to empower attacks" portion of the OP's wishlist, and it costs an action, so can't be used with Dread Ambusher, but it's flavourful enough and it scales with the player. Dreadful Strikes from the Fey Wanderer is the closest thing to divine magic imbued strikes in the ranger features, but Colossus Slayer will also serve, and Radiant Soul will work well with Volley from the Hunter Subclass, when you get to it.
And the Ranger is a much better striker than a War Cleric, and even gets a couple good Healer type spells. It's not perfect, but without Homebrewing or Multiclassing, this is perhaps the closest you can get, and still be primarily a DPR class. The trouble is that spells like Divine Favour and Holy Weapon really ought to be cast on someone with Extra Attack, so hogging them as a support class really is suboptimal team play.
Seems to me Cleric and Paladin are the only ways to get Bow and Divine attacks and No multiclass or homebrew and online at low levels together. Neither is optimal - but War Cleric is slightly better in my opinion because you can put Divine Favour/Bless and Spiritual Weapon on at the same time.
Sacrificing bow or divine spells, you can be a Ranger or a cantrips cleric or a Celestial Bladelock.
I think this is the kind of build where multiclassing is highly justified. There's no easy way to build a divine archer RAW. The easiest way to homebrew it would be to make a divine EK - however by sticking to evocation and abjuration, would make a more healery defensive martial, an archetype covered by some of the other options - and while you could get Bless and Spiritual Weapons, you wouldn't get the on-hit DPR abilities that define the Paladin.
[Edit] A few other thoughts...
Maybe it is an option to make the bow your "holy symbol" (spellcasting focus) and reflavor your Spells (like Guiding Bolts, etc.) as arrows that are shot by it.
Did something similar once in a LoL one shot. Divine Soul Sorcerer, Sentinel of Light with a Staff flavoured as a Relic Stone Rifle.
First attack of the game was a Guided Bolt Crit to Mordekaiser’s face during a Bilgewater Harrowing.
In one of my campaigns I'm playing a multiclassed Way of the Kensei Monk + War Cleric, which works really well as an archer; I'm currently on a 6/3 (Monk/Cleric) split using Tasha's Cauldron optional features, so I have both Ki-fuelled Attack and War Priest as options to fire three shots per turn, with Ki-fuelled Attack triggering easily using either Focused Aim (add +2-6 to a miss for 1-3 Ki) or Deft Strike (add d6 damage).
However there was a bit of a juggling act early on as I wanted to start with Cleric abilities, which meant my Extra Attack was delayed; it wasn't a huge problem but it did mean I lagged behind in damage for a bit. It is however a lot of fun to play, as the character can put out some serious damage at range (especially if I can get Bless up before the fight, or Divine Favor in the first round) and can more than hold their own up close (I'll often rush in to help anyone else that's in trouble).
While I only have the one Channel Divinity use per short rest, Harness Divine Power means I can use it to get a 2nd level slot back once per day (to get more out of my limited spell slots) or I can have Guided Strike in the back pocket for when Focused Aim won't be enough (or is too costly, as I prefer to just spend 1 Ki for the +2, since I only have the 6 Ki points), and a lot of the time it's saved for when I inevitably whiff a roll for Guiding Bolt (as missing with one of your limited spells is the worst). The character is also crazy fast, has solid AC and keeps trying to take the lead on social checks despite being horrible at them. A lot of fun. 😂
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
My Homebrew: Feats | Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Races
Guides: Creating Sub-Races Using Trait Options
WIP (feedback needed): Blood Mage, Chromatic Sorcerers, Summoner, Trickster Domain, Unlucky, Way of the Daoist (Drunken Master), Weapon Smith
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