2024 DnD Cleric Spells Guide

Introduction

Cleric spells offer powerful options to heal and protect your allies, for debuffing enemies, and for dealing both radiant and necrotic damage. Clerics have access to all of the beast healing spells in the game, making them a go-to choice as your party’s primary healer.

But don’t let those strengths fool you. Clerics are not “heal bots” in DnD 5e. While the Cleric is a spectacular healer, they also have many of the best divination options, as well as plenty of unique and powerful offensive options, including most of the best options for dealing both Necrotic and radiant damage.

Introduction
Disclaimer
Cleric Spells by Level

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
Green: Good options. Useful often.
Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the 2024 DnD Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows. Also be sure to check for errata periodically.

Cleric Spells by Level

Cleric Cantrips

Guidance ^(PHB): As long as you’re not concentrating on something with a long duration between fights, you should be constantly throwing this on your allies. Your Rogue should have Guidance for every skill check they make while searching, sneaking, handling traps, etc.
Light ^(PHB): Disposable magic light is fantastic, but if you don’t have room for the cantrip you’ll do fine with torches.
Mending ^(PHB): Too situational. Short of Rust Monsters and a few oozes, nearly nothing in 5e deals damage to your equipment. If you’re playing Spelljammer this is essential, but otherwise you can skip it.
Resistance ^(PHB): The amount of damage prevented is small and doesn’t scale, so committing Concentration to this is hard to justify beyond very low levels. This could be useful against low-CR elementals which you’ll face at levels 1 and 2, but 1d4 damage per turn just isn’t enough beyond that.
Sacred Flame ^(PHB): Probably the best source of radiant damage in the game. It’s a reliable way to kill zombies, and since it requires a saving throw rather than an attack, you can use it against adjacent enemies without issue. The ability to ignore cover is nice on a spell which calls for a Dexterity save, but you could also switch to a different spell like Toll the Dead if cover becomes an issue.
Spare the Dying ⁽⁾: The only benefit to Spare the Dying is that it has 15-foot range, and that’s so little range that it’s hardly worth considering. Buy a Healer’s Kit and walk the 15 feet if you need to stabilize an ally as an Action.
Thaumaturgy ^(PHB): Thematically fun, but not especially useful. See our Practical Guide to Prestidigitation and Similar Cantrips for more.
Toll the Dead ^(PHB): 60 ft. range, the damage is measured in d12’s, and since it’s necrotic damage almost nothing will resist it.
Word of Radiance ^(XGtE): A great way to handle crowds of multiple enemies. See our article on Melee Cantrips vs. Extra Attack for a breakdown of the math comparing melee Cantrips to normal martial attacks.

Level 1 Cleric spells

Bane ^(PHB): While the debuff is good, Bane is often difficult to justify. Against crowds, enemies will die too quickly to justify debuffing them. Against bigger enemies, it makes more sense to hit them with something more debilitating.
However, Bane isn’t without merit. Since it targets Charisma saves, many enemies that are resistant to more common Constitution or Wisdom saves still have poor Charisma saves. It’s also especially useful against enemies with Legendary Resistance because it puts the DM into a no-win situation: do they burn a Legendary Resistance one a level 1 spell, or do they accept the debuff which will make them more vulnerable for the rest of the fight?
Bless ^(PHB): At low levels Bless can decide if you win or lose a fight, but even at very high levels adding 1d4 to attack rolls can dramatically improve your party’s damage output. This gets better as your party gains the ability to make more numerous attacks, so if you have fighters, warlocks, or characters who use two-weapon fighting, Crossbow Expert, or Polearm Master, this will get a ton of mileage. If you’re not concentrating on anything else, Bless is a great go-to option in nearly any case.
Ceremony ^(XGtE): This is a weird spell. The fact that it exists implies that Clerics perform burial rites, wedding ceremonies, and rites of passage magically at a cost of 25gp each.
It certainly feels cool for a Cleric to have a dedicated mechanic for performing these functions, but I don’t know why this isn’t just a Religion check or something. It also creates a bizarre economic divide because of the 25gp price tag between people who can and can’t afford to blow that gold on making a religious ceremony literally magic.

Regardless of all of that, the spell provides weird incentives to do things like getting married before a dungeon crawl or a boss fight. As a DM I would discourage players from abusing these options.
Command^PHB: Enough effects to be useful in many situations, but it’s a single-target spell and the effects only last one turn, so at low levels it’s hard to justify. Consider picking this up a few levels into your career once you have the ability to upcast it to affect multiple targets.
The best uses of Command typically require support from your allies. Approach and Flee are great if you have melee allies who can make Opportunity Attacks when the target moves. Drop is great if someone in your party can quickly pick up the dropped item, preventing weapon-using enemies from arming themselves again. Grovel can cause flying enemies to fall. Halt simply trades actions, but robbing your target of a turn is certainly impactful. At high levels, spending an Action and a level 1 spell slot to prevent a powerful foe from acting can easily win a fight.
Create or Destroy Water ^{(EEPC / XGtE)}: The ability to magically create water has many uses. Few of them are combat-related, but this neatly solves a major component of any survival scenario.
Cure Wounds ^(PHB): Significantly more healing than Healing Word, but the action economy is worse in exchange. Save this for when you need a lot of hit points in a hurry. Ideally, you’ll heal an ally from 0 hp (or at least close to it) to full or nearly full hp.
As a rule, healing in combat is a bad choice unless someone is unconscious or you can heal them enough to keep them conscious for multiple turns. If you heal an ally and they immediately take damage roughly equal to what you healed, you have spent an Action and a spell slot to negate an Action from an enemy that likely won’t need to track spell slots for more than a few rounds. If all that you’re doing is offsetting damage, you’re in an attrition fight. Players always lose attrition fights, even when they win the fight.
Detect Evil and Good ^(PHB): Situationally useful, and you can use it to find invisible enemies or detect enemies through thin walls.
Detect Magic ^(PHB): Essential. If you’re not concentrating on anything else, it’s often a good idea to cast this as a ritual and walk around with it.
Detect Poison and Disease ^(PHB): Very situational, and unless you can also cast Protection From Poison there’s little you can do about it anyway. Fortunately, you can cast this as a ritual.
Guiding Bolt ^(PHB): Great single-target damage for a 1st-level spell, and even though the Advantage only applies for one attack it’s easy to have an ally follow your Guiding Bolt with another spell or with a high-powered attack like a Sneak Attack.
Healing Word ^(PHB): More important than Cure Wounds, especially at low levels. As a bonus action you can heal an unconscious ally enough to get them back into the fight, and you still have your action for Vicious Mockery.
Inflict Wounds ^(PHB): Bad damage on a Constitution save at melee range.
Protection from Evil and Good ^(PHB): A great defensive option at any level, but Sanctuary will be more effective in melee and Sanctuary doesn’t care about creature type.
Purify Food and Drink ^(PHB): Cast this as a ritual and you’ll never need to worry about spoiled food again. One of many reasons that Dungeons and Dragons makes a terrible wilderness survival game.
Sanctuary ^(PHB): Potentially forcing enemies to give up an attack is great, and this doesn’t prevent the target from contributing via support spells, the Help action, summoned creatures, pets, etc. Sanctuary also has a Bonus Action casting time, so you can attack or cast a Cantrip in the same turn (likely before casting Sanctuary). It doesn’t even require Concentration, so for the puny cost of a few level 1 spell slots, you could throw this on everyone in your party over the course of several turns (don’t actually do this; no one will be able to attack).
Since Sanctuary allows the attack to retarget their attack, Sanctuary isn’t as effective against ranged attacks as it is against melee attacks, but that shouldn’t deter you.
Shield of Faith ^(PHB): +2 AC is a significant boost, and the Bonus Action casting time means that you can easily wait to cast this until you get into combat. The spell lasts 10 minutes and it’s only level 1, so Shield of Faith remains an excellent buff on any character at any level. However, it requires Concentration, so in many cases Sanctuary will be more effective unless you’re running directly from one encounter to another and can benefit from Shield of Faith’s relatively long duration.
Wardaway ^(FRHoF): A weaker version of Tasha’s Mind Whip, Wardaway makes some huge trades to fit into a level 1 spell. The damage is obviously much worse, but that’s not why you’re here. The target still gets to move and act in the same turn, but halving their speed is still impactful. The biggest limitation is that Wardaway uses a Constitution save instead of a much more reliable Intelligence save.
At low levels where enemies have very few saving throw proficiencies, Wardaway may be decently reliable. But enemies at low levels also rarely have Bonus Actions, so they’re likely to fail the save and barely notice the spell’s effect.

Level 2 Cleric spells

Aid^PHB: With an 8-hour duration and three targets, this is a staple buff that’s worth casting literally every day. Keep in mind that this actually increases the targets’ hit point maximum, so temporary hit points can be added, too.
Aid’s casting time allows it to be used in combat, which is unusual but offers an interesting option. With three targets and a 30-foot range, you can cast it to both buff and heal your allies during combat. Targets’ current hit points and hit point maximum both increase, so allies at 0 hit points are healed in addition to having their hit point maximum raised, thereby allowing Aid to serve a similar function to Mass Healing Word.

However, since spells don’t stack with themselves, it’s hard to repeat this trick. You’ll need to cast Aid again using higher-level spell slots, which can get expensive quickly, so Mass Healing Word is probably better if Aid is already running and if Mass Healing Word is an option for your party.
Augury ^(PHB): This is my absolute favorite divination spell because it allows players to politely ask their DM for hints. Castable as a ritual with a reusable material component, if you have time you can cast this repeatedly to question all sorts of decisions.
Blindness/Deafness ^(PHB): Blindness is crippling, especially for enemies who fight at range like archers and spellcasters. It’s also helpful against melee enemies, but Constitution saves tend to be high, so it’s often best to use this on enemies which are more physically frail. Deafness is a mild annoyance.
Borrowed Knowledge ^(SCoC): A great way to cover skill proficiencies that your party doesn’t have, Borrowed Knowledge lasts an hour and doesn’t require Concentration, so you can combine it with Enhance Ability to become instantly excellent at any skill. Enhance Ability is more broadly useful because you can cast it on other allies to support them when their best skills come into play, but when there’s a gap in your party’s skillset, you can use this to come to the rescue.
Calm Emotions ^(PHB): Two situational but frequently useful effects. First, you can use this to temporarily suppress effects which charm or frighten your allies. Both effects are common, and many enemies can apply them to your whole party. Charm effects often include mind control effects, and suppressing them for a minute on a willing ally can easily buy you enough time to deal with whatever is trying to mind control your friends. Fear effects are often area effects, such as a dragon’s Frightful Presence, so suppressing them for a minute can bring whichever portions of your party failed their saves back into the fray.
Second, you can use this to make enemies not be hostile toward you and your allies for one minute. That will at least pause most encounters for the spell’s duration, which is enough time to either heal and buff the party or escape. I wouldn’t try to negotiate a truce in one minute, especially since the targets can go right back to hostile the moment that the spell ends. Note that this effect intentionally uses the “Hostile/Indifferent/Friendly” disposition scale described in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Continual Flame ^(PHB): Having reliable, constant light is really nice. Cast this on a shield, a necklace, a weapon, or maybe a whole bunch of different things to guarantee that you always have adequate light without casting light or lighting a torch.
Deryan’s Helpful Homunculi ^(FRHoF): Since you can cast this as a Ritual, you’re effectively turning gold into short-lived assistance while crafting an item. This is only useful if you’re leaning into the 2024 rules’ extremely lackluster crafting system, and even then it’s only useful if you’re in a hurry but also have a ton of extra money lying around.
Enhance Ability ^(PHB): Fantastic and versatile. Using this to buff Charisma for your party’s Face will make any social situation go a lot better.
Find Traps: Too expensive and too imprecise. Invest in Investigation.
Gentle Repose ^(PHB): Very situational, but it solves some interesting problems. Normally you can cremate a body to prevent it from becoming undead, but cremating a body takes an alarmingly large amount of fuel which you probably don’t have laying about. You can mutilate the body, but that’s gross and in many campaign settings the gods view that sort of thing as evil. So if you need to maintain a body until you can give it a real burial, this is your best bet. Fortunately, you can cast it as a ritual and you can typically wait until the next day so that you can prepare this as needed.
Gentle Repose also pauses the timer on effects which raise the dead. While this is specifically called out as working with Raise Dead, it works with anything that raises creatures from the dead. That includes Revivify. So if you keep this prepared, you can haul your allies around until you can cast 3rd-level spells and until you can scrape together enough diamond dust to raise them.

Remember that while spells don’t stack, their durations can overlap so if you cast Gentle Repose early to avoid gaps in spell duration you can keep bodies preserved indefinitely.
Hold Person ^(PHB): On/off button for Humanoids. Humanoids are a tiny portion of DnD’s roster of enemies, so this spell is situational by design. Even some creatures which have historically been common Humanoid antagonists like Hoblins and Sahuagin have changed creature type in the 2024 rules, though there are more NPC stat blocks than in the 2014 rules, which might keep Humanoids a relevant threat in some campaigns.
In encounters with multiple foes, you can up-cast Hold Person to paralyze multiple targets, so this can still handle groups of enemies when AOE damage spells aren’t a good idea for whatever reason. Paralysis is a serious status condition, granting Advantage on attacks against the targets and guaranteeing Critical Hits for attacks made within 5 feet of the target. Send anyone with a weapon into melee to finish off the targets before they manage to succeed on a follow-up save to remove the condition.

However, remember that targets get an additional save at the end of each round, so you can’t predict how long this will stay in effect. If you up-cast this to affect multiple targets, you may reach a point where so few of them are still paralyzed that maintaining Concentration may not be worthwhile.
Lesser Restoration ^(PHB): Situational, but a situation that comes up often. If you don’t have a Cleric or Druid in the party, you may be the only one with access to this spell, so you’ll want to take it at some point.
Locate Object ^(PHB): Too situational, and too easy to counter. Anyone with any knowledge of magic that’s trying to hide something will wrap it in lead.
Prayer of Healing ^(PHB): A Short Rest plus some extra healing for 5 targets. Useful if you’re pressed for time or if your party goes through hit points quickly and needs more healing than Hit Point Dice can provide.
Protection From Poison ^(PHB): Situational, but poison is common across the full CR range, so this is a fantastic defensive option at any level. The 1-hour duration means that you can get a lot of mileage out of a single spell slot even if you cast it ahead of time.
Silence ^(PHB): Verbal components are extremely common in spells, including many that spellcasters frequently use to escape dangerous situations. If you can trap an enemy spellcaster in place (such as by having an ally grapple them) and drop Silence around them, you’ll significantly limit their options. In the 2024 rules, spellcasting enemies will have combat actions that aren’t actually spells and which will ignore Silence, but you’ll still limit some of their best options.
Spiritual Weapon ^(PHB): Basically a summon spell without the advantage of a body to draw attacks, and the 1-minute duration and constant need to use your Bonus Action mean that it quickly becomes obsolete once real summon spells come online for other spellcasters when they get level 3 spells.
Warding Bond ^(PHB): A dangerous, but interesting way to protect an ally. Generally you’ll find preventing them from taking damage with spells like Sanctuary will be more effective.
Zone of Truth ^(PHB): Situational and much less reliable than you would hope. Creatures are aware that they’re under the effect, and they can choose to “be evasive”, which means that they could give you true but useless answers or simply not answer. Creatures other than the caster also don’t know who passed or failed the save, so unless they already trust you other creatures might not believe you when you tell them that a creature is telling the truth.
If a creature is willing to talk, they can prove that they are saying what they believe to be true, and you can know whether or not they believe it to be true. But if the creature is incorrect, if you’re lying to other creatures (which they might believe that you are), or if any other number of other things go wrong, this spell simply fails to meet its intended purpose.

In short, this helps honest creatures prove to you that they are being honest. Nothing else. If you want to get answers from an unwilling or unhelpful subject, cast Detect Thoughts.

Level 3 Cleric spells

Animate Dead ^(PHB): Undead are excellent replacements for living creatures in many ways. An undead guard never gets tired while keeping watch. An undead horse never tires of marching. An undead porter won’t complain about their back hurting from hauling your treasure. Sure, desecrating the bodies of the dead is “icky” or “evil” depending on who you ask, but you likely can’t pay NPCs to work 24/7 in highly dangerous conditions far from home, so sometimes you need to compromise ethics in favor of effectiveness.
Aura of Vitality ^(PHB): Never use this in combat, but 20d6 healing for a 3rd-level spell is very efficient. Even Healing Spirit can’t match this amount of healing at the same spell level (with the 2020 errata and a +5 spellcasting mod, 6 uses, 2d6 healing when cast at 3rd level, total 12d6 healing).
Beacon of Hope ^(PHB): Thematically, this is a really cool spell. Mechanically, it’s very hard to use. The best way to use this would be when a fight is going poorly so you throw up Beacon of Hope and start casting Mass Cure Wounds or Mass Healing Word to get your party back into the fight. But In those cases you typically just want your party above 0 hit points, and the difference of a few hit points on average won’t matter much. Also, you can’t cast two leveled spells in the same turn anyway, so that ideal scenario is explicitly against the rules. Instead, use the time you would spend casting this to cast literally anything else so you can end the fight faster instead of burning precious resources trying to feed hit points into an insatiable blender.
Bestow Curse ^(PHB): The effects are versatile enough that you can easily bring this into play in a variety of situations, and the scaling mechanism works well enough that this remains a viable option for higher-level spell slots. Use the third option against big tanky enemies with poor Wisdom, or use the first option against enemies that like to grapple. If you’re ever uncertain, use the third option. Robbing a creature of their turn on a failed saving throw is debilitating, and can take creatures almost completely out of a fight.
Clairvoyance ^(PHB): With a 1-mile range and the ability to place the sensor in a place you can’t see, this is a fantastic way to safely scout dangerous places. If you have enough time to sit around and cast the spell repeatedly you can scout whole structures from the outside by gradually learning about more interior locations through previous castings.
Create Food and Water ^(PHB): Rations are cheap, but it’s good that you can prepare this if you somehow find yourself somewhere without food for extended periods. This also lets you create 30 gallons of water, which is enough for a nice bath but not enough to fill a 5-foot cube.
Daylight ^(PHB): A Continual Flame, Light, or even a torch is typically sufficient, but sometimes you need to light up larger areas like dark battlefields or massive caverns. This also dispels magical darkness of 3rd level or lower, which is great if you’re fighting enemies like drow which can produce magical darkness. Tragically, you can’t cast Daylight at a higher level to dispel magical darkness of higher levels.
Dispel Magic ^(PHB): Every party needs someone who can cast Dispel Magic. It’s simply too important to forgo.
Fast Friends ^(AI): A fantastic non-lethal option for handling single targets, but it has some limitations. The target needs to be able to understand you, so you likely need to share a language. The spell requires Concentration, so you don’t want to maintain this during combat if you can avoid it. And of course, you don’t want to try casting this during combat.
If you can isolate a single enemy outside of combat, you may be able to ply them for information or send them on errands which will save you trouble later. Tragically, the spell only lasts an hour so the effects end just as you’re getting really attached to your new best friend, and the targets know that you charmed them. You may be able to cast this repeatedly or you may be able to negotiate the situation peacefully even after the spell ends, but many people don’t take kindly to being charmed.

You can also compare this to Suggestion. In the 2024 rules, Suggestion is unrestricted to the point that I use the 2014 version in my own game, but Suggestion doesn’t let you change the commands part-way through the spell. 2024 Suggestion is a better spell than Fast Friends, but Fast Friends is still decent.
Feign Death ^(PHB): Very situational.
Glyph of Warding ^(PHB): Depending on how your DM handles it, this is either a situationally useful defensive measure or a reality-bending way to break the game from the comfort of your own home. See our Practical Guide to Glyph of Warding.
Incite Greed ^(AI): This is a gamble. If targets fail their saves you can draw them into melee range with you and keep them there for up to a minute. You then need to find a way to capitalize on their position. You could walk your full speed away (affected targets can do nothing but move toward you, so they can’t take Reactions to perform an Opportunity Attack), drop Concentration, then hit them with a Fireball.
Laerel’s Silver Lance ^(FRHoF): The damage type is fantastic, the Prone effect is great, very few area damage spells target Strength saves, and you can omit targets to avoid hitting friends. There’s definitely a niche here, but 3d10 (avg. 16.5) is very low compared to other level 3 spells. Lightning Bolt is 8d6 (avg. 28), and upcasting Laerel’s Silver Lance actually widens that gap.
Preparing this and buying the 250 gp spell component feels like too much investment for the extremely narrow case where you can justify using this over other damage spells. But the Cleric spell list has very few direct damage spells, so this may be more useful than it is for other classes which can cast it.
Life Transference ^(XGtE): With the buffs to Cure Wounds, this is totally obsolete.
Magic Circle ^(PHB): With a 1-minute casting time, you can’t use this in combat unless you have time to prepare and your enemies are coming to you. Even then, using this in combat isn’t reliable protection because it doesn’t mitigate the effects of spells and abilities which don’t require attack rolls like breath weapons or fireballs. The best use case is generally to invert the effects and use a spell to summon a creature so that you can bargain with it without risk of the creature escaping. Even then, the 1-hour duration may not be enough to guarantee your safety. If you want similar effects in combat, Protection From Evil and Good will do the trick.
Mass Healing Word^PHB: You never want to need this. It heals exactly as much as standard Healing Word at a much higher cost, but the ability to heal multiple targets means that you can bring multiple allies back into the fight and you still have your Action that turn. Also, the upcasting is terrible.
Meld into Stone ^(PHB): Very situational.
Motivational Speech ^(AI): This makes the Inspiring Leader somewhat obsolete. Inspiring Leader will provide considerably more temporary hit points, but this doesn’t require a feat and takes one tenth the time.
Protection From Energy ^(PHB): An important, staple defensive option, but it’s single-target and requires Concentration so you can’t afford to keep it running constantly.
Remove Curse ^(PHB): Situational, but irreplaceable. Fortunately, you can usually wait a day to prepare this.
Spirit Guardians ^(PHB): Among the Cleric’s most defining options, Spirit Guardians can win encounters and is rife with abuse cases. The tactics to multiply damage output from Spirit Guardians were defining in the 2014 DnD rules, and in the 2024 rules, they’re now a defining tactic for the character optimization meta as a whole.
In an enclosed space, Spirit Guardians makes you the center of an extremely dangerous sphere. With a 15-foot radius, a Medium character can cover a sphere 35 ft. in diameter, easily filling many rooms, and even in larger area, this is still a big area to control. Reducing enemies’ speeds by half further complicates things for them, and if you can create difficult terrain in the area, they’re basically out of luck. Even if you do nothing but cast this spell, walk around, and Dodge on your turn, you can often dominate encounters. The 10-minute duration is long enough that you could easily carry this through multiple fights, and you still get to use your full turn to do more stuff.

Spirit Guardians’ damage can trigger once per turn, not once per round, so you can reapply the damage by moving yourself and/or your enemies. The damage triggers when the Emanation enters a target’s space (such as when you cast the spell or walk the AOE onto your enemies), when a target enters the AOE (such as when they move toward you or when your allies knock them into the AOE with a Push weapon), and when a target end their turn in the area. To trigger the damage as often as possible, encourage your allies to collect speed debuffs and forced movement effects. You may also let an ally grapple you and drag you around the battlefield, bringing the damage to your enemies without introducing additional points of failure from your ally attacking or forcing saving throws.
Spirit Shroud ^(TCoE): Clerics never get Extra Attack, and you don’t have options like Scorching Rays to trigger this multiple times per turn unless you’re a Light Domain Cleric. Spirit Guardians is a much more effective use of a spell slot.
Tongues ^(PHB): The second this spell becomes available to your party, all of their language proficiencies feel silly. The 1-hour duration is long enough to get through all but the lengthiest social situations, and if you’re in a situation where you need to re-cast Tongues you’re not likely to need your spell slots for much else (except Enhanced Ability (Eagle’s Splendor)).
Water Walk ^(PHB): Usually flight is a better option than walking across a liquid, but at least you can cast this as a Ritual.

Level 4 Cleric spells

Aura of Life ^(PHB): Generally only useful if you know that you’re facing the types of undead which reduce your hit point maximum (there are several). The healing is numerically very efficient for the spell slot: 100 hit points to as many living creatures as you can fit into the 30-foot radius for the spell’s 10-minute duration.
However, it only affects creatures at 0 hit points so you’re never going to actually get that amount of healing unless you’re sprinting across an endless field of dying creatures. The more likely case is that you’ll use this while your allies repeatedly get knocked back to 0 hit points so that they can repeatedly stand back up at 1 hp and keep fighting.
Aura of Purity ^(PHB): Technically situational, but the defenses are broad enough that you can cover a wide variety of situations. In most encounters it’s unlikely that you’ll be hit with more than one or two negative status conditions, but Aura of Purity provides broad enough protection that you’ll be able to common many of the most common conditions with the same spell.
Banishment ^(PHB): Among the most powerful save-or-suck spells in the game for several reasons. First, it’s a Charisma saving throw and very few creatures are good at those. Second, many powerful enemies like fiends are extraplanar, so you can easily remove them with a single spell (though many of them can cast Plane Shift to come right back, so watch out for that). Finally, casting the spell at a higher level allows you to target additional creatures so you can remove big parts of an encounter for up to a minute, deal with anything that passes the initial round of banishment, then prep yourself for everything else to drop back in while your party stands around with readied actions.
Control Water ^(PHB): All of the effects are situational, and there are some weird edge cases like using the Flood option on a puddle or a full bucket where it’s unclear what happens when the water overflows its container.
Death Ward ^(PHB): With an 8-hour duration, this is a great insurance policy. It’s great to throw this on death-prone characters like your party’s Defender, but if you expect to face a high-level spellcast you should also consider putting this on your less-durable allies like wizards to protect them from things like Power Word Kill.
Divination ^(PHB): Much more precise than Augury, and it works much further into the future. The 25gp component cost won’t hurt much at this level, but it’s enough to deter you from using this every time you have a question.
Doomtide ⁽⁾: The damage isn’t high, but it’s a good damage type and the save debuff is excellent. Magical darkness will force most enemies to exit the AOE on their turn so that you can force them back into it to trigger the effect again. But, unlike most ongoing area damage spells, the sphere moves away from you gradually, which can make it difficult to keep the spell in the area where you’re fighting. There’s also no word on what happens when the sphere hits cover, so it might run right through walls.
Casting as a Circle Spell: This is something to be done by an NPC, not by a player. A permanent ball of nonsense rolling slowly away from you forever is not something that a player needs. The spell doesn’t end when it moves out of range, but you can drop it up to a mile away and watch it terrorize innocent civilians. Also, how weird is that material component? A string of black pearls from another plane, but somehow it doesn’t have a gp cost.

The sphere notably keeps going forever. As explained in the rules for spell ranges, “If a spell has movable effects, they aren’t restricted by its range unless the spell’s description says otherwise.” You could, in theory, shoot this into space and it would float along like an angry little cloud forever.
Freedom of Movement ^(PHB): Situational, but a great way to handle being grappled if you have poor Strength and if you’re not proficient in either Athletics or Acrobatics.
Guardian of Faith ^(PHB): Only useful because of the 8-hour duration. The cap of 60 damage means that it’s going to make 3 to 6 attacks (more if enemies have Evasion or Damage Resistance), which isn’t enough to justify this in combat. Instead, throw it up to protect yourself while your party is resting or as a trap that you’re going to drive your enemies into.
Guardian of Faith is arguably a decent area control spell, and it doesn’t require Concentration like similar spells. But Guardian of Faith’s limited damage and absolute lack of scaling makes it hard to justify the spell slot. Your best bet is to line up several Guardian of Faith spells in a row and drag enemies through them in succession. But that’s a very expensive way to replicate Spike Growth just so that you can avoid Concentration.
Locate Creature ^(PHB): More effective than mundane tracking, but the 1,000-foot range can be a problem if the target is actively fleeing from you. If you’re going to use this, be sure that you’re moving faster than your target.
Stone Shape ^(PHB): Stone is an incredibly common material in dungeons, castles, and other structures, so the ability to reshape it is immensely powerful. Using this to pass through walls or seal doors are obvious options, but a clever player can do a lot of damage by sabotaging structures or altering natural stone terrain. Typically you can’t use this in combat, but you could shape a 5 ft. cube directly above an enemy so that it falls on them. Tragically, the 5e rules don’t specify how much damage is dealt by falling objects or a DC to avoid them, so the effect comes down to what your DM does with the improvised damage table in the DMG.

Level 5 Cleric spells

Circle of Power ^(PHB): Great protection against enemy spellcasters, but it’s entirely passive and only matters if your enemies rely primarily on spells, so it’s situational by design.
Commune ^(PHB): A yes-or-no answer is enough to get a great deal of information if you ask your questions well. But you need to ask all three questions before the spell’s 1-minute duration expires, so your DM could (and probably should) set a real-world timer. If the DM needs time to think of the answers, pause the timer. Unlike Divination, this doesn’t consume the material component so if you can spare the prepared spell, you should consider casting this once every evening before you rest to see what you can learn.
Contagion ^(PHB): Sage Advice made significant changes to how this spell works, so if you have a physical copy of the Player’s Handbook make sure you go download the latest version of the Sage Advice and Errata documents.
If you hit the target with a melee spell attack, they’re poisoned for a minimum of 3 turns. Poisoned is an extremely effective debuff, though many creatures are resistant or immune to it. Even so, the Poisoned effect may be more significant than the disease. The target must fail a total of three saving throws to apply your chosen disease, and considering a typical combat lasts 3-5 rounds many enemies won’t live long enough for that to happen. Consider the Poisoned effect to be the primary effect of the spell, and think of the disease as a neat novelty which might come up if you don’t manage to kill the target fast enough.
Dawn ^(PHB): This is a mediocre area denial option. You can spend a Bonus Action to move it, which is really nice, but Constitution saves tend to be high, and the damage isn’t spectacular. Compare this to casting Spirit Guardians as a level 5 spell: 5d8 damage (avg. 22.5) compared to 4d10 (avg. 22), but Spirit Guardians won’t hurt you or your allies, and if you need to move the effects, you can walk and spend your Bonus Action doing something like casting a Cantrip. Dawn’s single saving grace is that it specifically says “this light is sunlight”, which means that it hurts vampires and some other monsters very badly. If you can grapple a vampire to hold it in the radius of Dawn, you can kill them pretty easily.
Dispel Evil and Good ^(PHB): In most cases, Protection from Evil and Good will do the trick, but Dispel Evil and Good has two additional effects. You can prematurely end the spell to end a charm/frighten/possession effect, or to attempt to banish creatures from other planes. They do still get a saving throw, and if the creatures are native to the plane they’re on, nothing happens.
It’s very important to note that the banishment effect isn’t limited by the spell’s duration: creatures banished this way are sent to another plane and must return by normal means. However, since the banishment effect doesn’t affect creatures on their home plane, the banishment may not be as appealing as spells like Banishment which can affect creatures native to your current plane.
Flame Strike ^(PHB): Only as much damage as Fireball cast a spell level lower than whatever spell slot you use for Flame Strike. The big appeal is that there are two damage types, so creatures which are immune or resistant to one generally won’t be resistant or immune to both. But if you’re casting a 5th-level spell intending to only get partial damage, you’re wasting a 5th-level spell slot.
If you want radiant damage, 5th-level Spirit guardians will deal 5d8 radiant damage (avg. 22.5) compared to 10d6 (avg. 25) from Flame Strike, and Spirit Guardians last 10 minutes and you can walk around with it. If you want fire damage, most Clerics are out of luck, but if you just need a ranged AOE, Dawn or Insect Plague will be more effective in almost every case.
Geas ^(PHB): This spell is situational by design. It has a 1-minute casting time and Verbal components, so you’re not going to break this out in combat or while sneaking around in a dungeon. You’re going to restrain the subject, and stand around chanting for a full minute and hope that they fail the save. Once that’s done, you need to give them a suitable command (read the spell description). Generally you’ll want it to be something that benefits you, but will also take the target most of the duration to keep them from becoming a problem for you. Also remember that the base effect of the Charmed condition makes it easier for you to talk the creature into doing things with Charisma checks, so a Geased creature may be a useful ally for the duration of the effect even if the original order isn’t directly related to what you want them to do.
Increasing the spell level extends the duration, but weirdly the damage doesn’t increase. 5d10 is a nice pile of damage, but it doesn’t scale with spell level and at some point the target will get smart enough to wake up, trigger the 5d10 damage, take a short rest, then go about their business. If the damage scaled this would be less of a problem, but damage is so easily repaired in 5e outside of combat that without further penalties Geas is more a tax on hit dice than the magical shackles it’s intended to be. If you want a homebrew fix, add a level of fatigue each day that the target is out of compliance, or make the damage impossible to heal until they go a day without taking it. Neither of those is a perfect solution, but they’re miles better than an average of 27.5 damage.
Greater Restoration ^(PHB): If you don’t have a Cleric in the party, you need this.
Hallow ^(PHB): Situational by design. This isn’t a spell that you just carry around. With a 24-hour casting time, this is a spell that you plan out well in advance, get comfortable for, and probably eat a hefty meal beforehand because you don’t want to stop for food or water until it’s done. The effects are powerful and versatile, and since they’re permanent until dispelled this spell can easily outlive you. Unfortunately, the spell is still susceptible to Dispel Magic, and watching some jerk repeatedly cast Dispel Magic as a 3rd-level spell until they pass the DC 19 ability check for your 9th-level Hallow feels really bad after you spent so much time and money to cast it.
Holy Weapon ^(XGtE): 1-hour duration and cast as a bonus action. The intent is that you’ll cast this and attack in the same turn, but Clerics never get Extra Attack (War Clerics get an extra attack as a bonus action a few times per day, but that isn’t enough to keep you busy for an hour) so that’s a horrible use of this spell. Put this on someone making a whole bunch of attacks with one weapon. A fighter is ideal, but someone using Polearm Master or Crossbow Expert will suffice. You want as many attacks as you can get as quickly as you can get them to maximize the total damage dealt. When the duration runs short, or when you need to concentrate on something else, end the spell early and blind every enemy in the radius.
Insect Plague ^(PHB): An improvement over Dawn in some ways, but some of the same challenges. Creatures can still move out of the area to avoid the ongoing damage, but with a 20-foot radius of difficult terrain that’s slightly harder to accomplish than in the area of Dawn, but not by enough that Insect Plague is actually better.
Legend Lore ^(PHB): Situational, but potentially very useful. “Famous” is a bit subjective, but there’s easy room to argue that someone gaining notoriety in some fashion is famous enough to qualify.
The spell calls out that you could learn “secret lore that has never been widely known,” which presents some interesting opportunities. You might be able to learn things like the identities of secretive, unknown enemies. The more you know already, the more detailed the information becomes, so repeated castings might lead to you learning a ton of useful information.

But the rules text also gives the DM a way to disguise information with “figurative language or poetry.” So your DM might give you some absolute nonsense in order to disguise relevant plot details. My advice: If the DM enjoys that, lean into it. If they’re doing it to keep you from spoiling the plot, let them keep their secrets for now.
Mass Cure Wounds ^(PHB): You shouldn’t need this. It doesn’t do enough healing to justify the spell slot, so the best use case is to cast it when you have more than one ally at 0 hit points. If you reach that point, things have gone very seriously wrong. Healing Word is a much more efficient way to get people conscious, and considering how little healing you’re getting out of Mass Cure Wounds your allies will probably go down again anyway if anything looks at them funny.
Planar Binding ^(PHB): At the level you get this, 1,000gp is a steep price to pay for a spell that lasts 24 hours. Save this for higher levels when you can cast something like Gate to summon a powerful creature and bind it to your service for a long time. If you can somehow get two 9th-level spells, you could summon a Balor or something equally powerful for a year and a day, then command it to conquer a continent for you or something. Most creatures won’t be happy about this form of servitude, of course, so be sure to plan for their sudden yet inevitable betrayal.
For more help, see my Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.
Raise Dead ^(PHB): Don’t bother preparing this unless someone is already dead. If your ally dies, they’ll still be dead the next day when you prepare Raise Dead.
Scrying ^(PHB): Spy on the campaign’s antagonists at every opportunity. The material component is expensive, but it’s reusable so you can buy a fancy mirror once then spend the rest of your character’s career spying on people from afar. The target gets a saving throw to resist, but doesn’t know that they’re being targeted by the spell. The sensor works the same way that Clairvoyance does (uses your normal senses, invisible luminous orb, etc.), so generally creatures will never know that they’re being spied on unless they can see through invisibility.
While the text of the spell isn’t clear, I believe that the Connections use whichever has the biggest effect rather than stacking, so you can’t use your macaroni art of the target and a lock of their hair from your closet shrine to them to give them a -12. In case it wasn’t clear already: using this spell is super creepy, and you shouldn’t go around using it for recreational purposes.
Summon Celestial ^(PHB): Summon a pet fighter. Defender is a melee fighter that can grant temporary hit points. Avenger is a ranged fighter that shoots lasers from a bow. Both deal radiant damage and can fly. It’s pretty great.
For more help, see my Practical Guide to Summoning Spells.

Level 6 Cleric spells

Blade Barrier ^(PHB): The AOE is good and the damage is good. The wall also provides 3/4 cover, which is great since Clerics almost never use spells that require ranged attacks. Casting a spell that targets creatures on the other side of the wall doesn’t care about cover unless the center of the AOE is on the wrong side for some reason.
Unfortunately, there’s no spell level scaling, and aside from being difficult terrain, there’s very little preventing enemies from running through the wall, suffering the damage, and going right back to fighting as though you had just hit them with a 6d10 Fireball or something.

Blade Barrier also doesn’t have the advantage of portability provided by Spirit Guardians, and Spirit Guardians does comparable damage (1d8 per spell level vs 1d10 per spell level). Unless you need to put up the barrier and retreat, Spirit Guardians is likely a better choice.
Create Undead ^(PHB): If you just need something to ride around on or a minion to carry your treasure, use Animate Dead. If you want to have an intelligent thrall to handle complex tasks or to act as a bodyguard, use Create Undead. But remember: undead are evil and will murder you at the first opportunity, and generally DMs don’t like players dragging an undead army around behind them.
Dirge ^(FRHoF): This is another one of those Spirit Guardians-style spells: Turn it on, walk into a room, blend your enemies. However, most of those spells have Emanations of 10 to 20 feet. Dirge has a staggering like radius of 60 feet, which will cover all by the largest combat encounters. It pays for that massive radius with a 1-minute duration (compared to 10 for similar spells) and only 3d10 damage (compared to 3d8 for level 3 Spirit Guardians). The secondary effect knocks foes prone of halves their speed, effectively eating half of their speed either way. Creatures (and remember that you can omit specific creatures from the spell’s effect) also can’t heal while in the area, which doesn’t come up often, but is a nice bonus.
Unlike other Spirit Guardians-style spells, you can’t easily abuse it by using forced movement to drag enemies in and out of the AOE. Because the radius is so large, you’ll likely fill the area of any combat encounter. Where similar spells are at their best when you can apply the damage several times per round, Dirge likely can’t do that. Instead, you’re here for the speed debuff. Stack it with other speed debuffs like Ray of Frost, the Slasher feat, and the Slow Weapon Mastery, and you can effectively freeze enemies in place. Combine that with some forced movement to get enemies into a small area, and you and your allies and bring down your enemies with a few low-cost area damage effects.

Casting as a Circle Spell: Casting this as a Circle spell is brutal. Exhaustion imposes a penalty on saves which quickly turns this into a death spiral, and the inability to remove the Exhaustion by resting means that most creatures are permanently exhausted. If you can use this to hit important antagonists (the BBEG or their named lackies), it could shift the direction of an entire campaign unless those creatures have access to a spellcaster who can cast Greater Restoration and several hundred gp of diamond dust.
Find the Path ^(PHB): This is barely useful as it is, but the next spell level brings Plane Shift, which will immediately solve long-distance travel challenges.
Forbiddance ^(PHB): This is a strange spell, and it’s very easy to abuse in ways that the designers likely didn’t intend. Since you can cast it as a ritual, it’s basically a 1,000gp cost to buy into the spell, then it’s free to cast any time after that unless you want to make it permanent.
Forbiddance is intended to create areas where you can keep creatures of a specific type out of the area, so important holy sites could keep out undead and fiends, but potentially allow celestials. But as the spell is written the area can be occupied while you cast the spell, including by creatures that you’re going to forbid.

If you come upon a dungeon which you know is full of forbiddable creatures (technically you don’t need to know, but knowing ahead of time is the abuse case), you can sit down, spend 20 minutes to cast this as a ritual, and turn 40,000 square feet of dungeon into a 30-foot high area of ongoing damage for 24 hours with no save. That’s a 200x200x30 area, and 30 feet is tall enough for many two-story buildings, so you could enclose up to 80,000 square feet of floor space in sufficiently rectangular buildings. The damage is easily enough to eliminate anything that can’t get out of the AOE in a hurry, which is astoundingly hard since the damage seems to come from absolutely nowhere. If you’re a lich just hanging around in your lair minding your own business, your only recourse is to run in a random direction and hope for the best or teleport away to safety.
Harm ^(PHB): 14d6 averages to 49 damage, which is pretty good. But it’s a single-target spell with a Constitution saving throw, and Constitution saves tend to be high. By comparison, a 7th-level Spirit Guardians will deal 7d8 damage (average 31.5) to every enemy within 15 ft. of you on a save that’s usually lower than Constitution saves. If you deal damage even twice, that’s a better option than Harm, and Spirit Guardians lasts for 10 minutes. Harm’s biggest appeal is potentially reducing the target’s hit point maximum, which is good against enemies with regeneration or which can heal themselves magically.
Heal ^(PHB): Among the best in-combat healing in the game, Heal restores a reliable, consistent 70 points of hp. That won’t bring a player from 0 to full hit points (except maybe wizards), but it’s enough to keep them in the fight for a while in most cases. It also removes some annoying status conditions, but not enough that it can replace Restoration.
Heroes’ Feast^PHB: An absolutely amazing spell, the 1,000gp cost means that you need to save it for special occasions.
Planar Ally ^(PHB): Casting this spell is expensive, difficult, and confusing, and the creature that you summon counts as a member of the party and gets a share of the experience points that your party earns. Use this as an absolute last resort, or if you know a specific extraplanar creature which might be willing to help you for free.
Sunbeam ^(PHB): Spirit Guardians will typically be a better offensive use of a spell slot.
True Seeing ^(PHB): You don’t always want this running, but you always want this available. For 1 hour you can see through illusions and invisibility, effectively negating them, and you can see into the Ethereal plane so that you can see creatures using options like Blink or walking around on the ethereal plane on their own like Phased Spiders. However, you can only see 120 feet away, so you’re not totally protected. Invisible creatures can maintain a safe distance while observing and even attacking you if there is sufficient space to do so.
Word of Recall ^(PHB): A great way to escape to somewhere safe if adventuring is going badly for you and your party. The cap on 5 other creatures may be hard if you have a large party or if members of your party have pets.

Level 7 Cleric spells

Conjure Celestial ^(PHB): All the damage of Spirit Guardians, but you steer the effect at range instead of standing in the middle of it, and it heals you and your allies. You can use all of the same tactics as everything else in the spirit guardians meta to repeatedly trigger the damage to your enemies and the healing to your allies. You can move this into an ally on your turn, then your ally can walk out and back in on their own turn to heal twice in a round.
Like Spirit Guardians, the 10-minute duration is enough to carry this between multiple encounters, and the ability to heal your party with it means that you don’t even need to worry about stopping to rest and heal. Even without repeatedly triggering the effect, 4d12 is enough to get nearly any character from 0 to full hit points within a minute.
Divine Word ^(PHB): Primarily this is written as a way to handle crowds of weak enemies, and while the spell does that well it’s actually more effective as a way to banish high-CR extraplanar enemies. Affected creatures are banished similar to Banishment, but there’s no numerical limit on the number of affected creatures and they can’t return for 24 hours without serious magic like Wish, so enemies can’t Plane Shift right back into the fight to express how little they enjoyed that time that you banished them.
Etherealness ^(PHB): A profoundly effective scouting/escape option. Unless you’re fighting ethereal enemies, you’re untouchable. You can see and hear into the material plane (albeit at limited distance), allowing you to spy on other creatures in person without their knowledge. The spell lasts 8 hours, which is sufficient to do a lot of things potentially including a Long Rest.
Fire Storm ^(PHB): Imagine a fireball that you got to cut up and shape in 10-foot cubes. That’s essentially what Fire Storm is. It’s a decent blast spell, but it doesn’t do nearly enough damage for a spell of this level.
Plane Shift ^(PHB): Simultaneously a fantastic long-distance travel spell and a single-target save-or-suck. If you want to travel within the same plane you may need to cast this twice, so make sure that your lay-over is somewhere pleasant like Celestia or Elysium. If you use this to get rid of someone, send them somewhere really unpleasant like sending a demon to Celestia or a humanoid to the plane of fire. Unfortunately, you do need a specific tuning fork for each plane that you want to visit, so start a collection as soon as possible.
Power Word Fortify ^(PHB): A huge amount of Temporary Hit Points. There’s no specified duration, so these THP last until your next Long Rest, making it easy to cast this before walking into a dangerous situation.
Regenerate ^(PHB): Limb removal is exceptionally rare in DnD 5e, typically the subject of specific traps or house rules written by players who enjoy the thought of their characters losing limbs every time a sword comes out. Still, any amount of regeneration means that a character never stays Dying, and with a 1-hour duration this heals an impressive 600 hit points on top of the initial hit point restoration.
Resurrection ^(PHB): Situational by design, and intentionally very expensive. You don’t want to need this spell, but sometimes things don’t work out as planned.
Symbol ^(PHB): While many of the effects are wonderful, the inability to move the symbol and the high casting cost are prohibitive.
Temple of the Gods ^(PHB): Very situational. The 1-hour casting time makes this rarely useful except for specific story points (celebrate a holy day, conduct a ceremony like a wedding, provide sanctuary against an attack that you know is coming), so you should be able to prepare and cast this well ahead of time. You can’t make this permanent, but you could technically recast the spell every day to keep it in existence if you were planning to retire in a permanent base and didn’t need a level 7 spell slot every day.

Level 8 Cleric spells

Antimagic Field ^(PHB): Situational by design, but incredibly powerful. Even with such a small radius, removing magic from the game totally shifts the balance of the game. The biggest problem is that you are primarily a spellcaster, so you are turning off your biggest set of tools to use this. The best-case scenario is to use this when you are outmatched magically, but your allies can still fight without magic and defeat whatever you’re facing.
Control Weather ^(PHB): Very situational, and kind of a pain for the DM. Go to your setting’s arctic equivalent, and raise the temperature to “Unbearable Heat” for 8 hours. That certainly won’t cause horrifying and potentially irreparable ecological damage that the DM will need to either totally disregard or track in some unpleasant fashion for the duration of the campaign.
Earthquake ^(PHB): A powerful area control spell, but you don’t want to be within the 100 ft. radius, and because you don’t get the control the appearance of fissures you also can’t risk placing it with enemies near the edges. You also don’t want to risk using it inside or in an area where a nearby structure will fall on you. So you need to center the effect on your targets as much as possible, you need to be at a safe distance from the center point, and you may need some extra space to avoid falling structures. If you can manage those parameters and still manage to put the spell where you want (consider flying), this can level a city with an Action. Concentrating on the spell doesn’t do anything except maintain the difficult terrain, which means that you get almost all of the spell’s effects in one turn, so feel free to drop Concentration and switch to something else.
Holy Aura ^(PHB): A great defensive buff. For one minute your party is incredibly difficult to harm. Fiends and Undead can be blinded, so Holy Aura is most useful against those enemies, but that’s such a minor part of the effect that it doesn’t matter much. Advantage on all saves and Disadvantage on all incoming attacks is a massive defense in any situation.
Holy Star of Mystra ^(FRHoF): Powerful, but the use case is very complicated, and even in situations where this could be useful, it might have reduced impact depending on how your DM runs enemies.
Holy Star of Mystra is at its absolute best when you’re dueling with an enemy spellcaster. The ability to reflect single-target saving throw spells of level 7 and below means that enemies will be forced to use area damage spells or non-spell offensive options. Of course, in the 2024 DnD rules, most spellcaster enemies have powerful non-spell offensive options and then a handful of specific spells, so even those enemies may not be impacted by this capability.

You’re most likely to benefit from the cover benefit and the Bonus Action attack. +5 to AC and Dexterity saves is significant, and covers attacks and most area damage spells which won’t be covered by the Reaction option. Even if you’re not facing enemies that will interact with the Reaction option, it’s a good defense.

But all of this costs a level 8 spell slot (you’ll never get more than one), and it lasts one minute and requires Concentration. The benefits are only worth the spell slot if you’re going to benefit from all of them.
Sunburst ^(PHB): Imagine fireball with three times the radius and it blinds the targets. The targets get a Constitution save every turn to remove the blindness so you can’t expect it to stay in effect for long, but the save is at the end of their turns so they’ll spend at least one turn blinded if they fail the initial save, and that may be enough to determine the outcome of the encounter.

Level 9 Cleric spells

Astral Projection ^(PHB): A relatively safe way to explore the Astral Plane, but it has some complications. Avoid Githyanki at all cost; their silver swords can cut your astral cord and kill you outright. If things ever look bad for you, spend the Action to return everyone to their bodies. If any of your allies drop to 0 they’ll go back to their body unharmed, but if you don’t see it happen you may not know about it so you need to have a way for your party to contact your astral projection from wherever you hid your bodies. If you ever get forcibly returned to your body and don’t have a chance to end the spell intentionally and bring your allies back too, they can always get home by punching themselves down to 0 hit points.
While you have this spell running, make sure that your party’s bodies are hidden and protected somewhere that your enemies (or curious but hungry monsters) can’t get to you, but that won’t be immediately dangerous if you return to your body with no spell slots. A comfortable, but totally sealed underground hideout is a great option that you could feasibly create using Stone Shape and some patience.

Your bodies don’t need food or air while you’re under the spell’s effects, but the spell doesn’t mention water. I assume that this is an oversight, but check with your DM; you may need to solve the issue of keeping your bodies hydrated. Since you don’t need to breathe, maybe submerge everyone in a shallow pool of water fed by a Decanter of Endless Water? Or maybe get a dedicated sect of monks to tend your bodies. Since your bodies don’t age, this makes you effectively immortal while you’re exploring the Astral Plane, so this can be a good way to keep your character alive between world-threatening problems so that you can return to the world to smite the latest lich without worrying about gray hair or whatever.
Gate ^(PHB): There are several ways to use this spell, two of which were intended when the spell was designed.
- Travel to another plane: The simplest option, you open a door and you walk through to another plane, leaving the gate open for up to a minute for whoever else to walk through in either direction.
- Summon a creature: If you know the name of a creature on another plane, you can drag them (potentially against their will and without a save) to your location. This is easy to abuse by going to a plane where you know they aren’t (pocket dimensions work great for this, but there are so many planes that it’s hard to accidentally be on the same one), then forcibly summon them. You could summon your biggest antagonist after spending a bunch of time setting up traps, buffs, and readied actions, then have your party stomp them into the dirt. Or you could Gate an enemy into somewhere immediately lethal to them, such as a pit of lava or the negative energy plane. I think the intent of this function was to summon an ally to help you in a fight, but I think my idea is more useful.
- One-way cover: You can only enter the portal from the front, but it’s unclear what the back looks like or how it functions. It’s not described as solid, so it’s entirely possible that you can fire projectiles through it from the rear, while projectiles from the front pass into the portal. I can’t imagine that you can see through the portal, so this may be hard to do, but it may be possible. Check with your DM.
- Magical drain: About to drown? about to be hit by a flow of magma or falling rocks? Open a gate to literally anywhere else and let the offending substance enjoy eternity floating in limbo or anywhere else that isn’t a problem for you. The multiverse is your dumping ground.
Mass Heal ^(PHB): 700 hit points is enough to fully heal most parties of 20th-level characters. Dropping this mid-combat is a great way to turn a fight around.
Power Word Heal ^(PHB): Full healing and removing a bunch of status conditions in one spell is really nice. Mass Heal will provide more hp and can be split among the party, but Power Word Heal does handles more status conditions.
True Resurrection ^(PHB): Try to use cheaper methods if possible. The 25,000gp material component is expensive, even at this level.