Nature Domain Cleric Handbook: DnD 5e Subclass Guide

Introduction

The Nature Domain Cleric tries to add some of the Druid’s magical options to the Cleric, especially their abilities to interact with beasts and plants. Some of the subclass’s features are absolutely fantastic, but the whole subclass is dragged down by the weak spell list and the unusual emphasis on beasts and plants long after they’ve stopped being a threat.

Nature Domain’s role within a party is unclear. Heavy armor makes you more durable, but you won’t have the “stickiness” to be a Defender. Controller is probably the best answer since you add some area control spells from the Druid’s spell list.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Nature Domain Cleric Features
• Nature Domain Cleric Ability Scores
• Nature Domain Cleric Races
• Nature Domain Cleric Feats
• Nature Domain Cleric Weapons
• Nature Domain Cleric Armor
• Nature Domain Cleric Multiclassing
• Example Nature Domain Cleric Build – Snake Charmer
  • Ability Scores
  • Race
  • Background
  • Skills and Tools
  • Feats
  • Levels

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 2014 DnD 5e 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.

Nature Domain Cleric Features

1. Domain Spells: The nature spell list includes no truly fantastic options, and most of the options are either situational or outright bad.
   1. 1st Level: Both spells are very situational, and will become less important as you gain levels and beasts fall out of the CR scale. But if you do encounter beasts, Animal Friendship doesn’t allow a save for the vast majority of beasts, so those encounters are instantly trivialized.
   3. 3rd Level: Barkskin isn’t worth your Concentration, but Spike Growth is a good and inexpensive area control option.
   5. 5th Level: Plant Growth is an interesting area control spell, and a great way to make hedge mazes or befriend farmers. Wind wall is very situational.
   7. 7th Level: Both are very situational. Grasping Vine is just a terrible spell, and if you need to cause trouble for a single target, Spiritual Weapon remains reliable and effective.
   9. 9th Level: Insect Plague is a good crowd control option, and Tree Stride is an amusing novelty, but the maximum distance you can travel within the spell’s duration is less than a mile.
1. Acolyte of Nature: Druids have some fantastic cantrips, including some great utility options which are usually exclusive to Druids like Shillelagh, but Sacred Flame and Word of Radiance are still typically better choices. The bonus skill is nice, too.
1. Bonus Proficiency: With heavy armor and a shield, you can work on the front lines as well as any Fighter. The improved AC will also help to reduce the need to heal yourself instead of healing or supporting your allies.
2. Channel Divinity: Charm Animals and Plants: Very situational. Use the Harness Divine Power Optional Class Feature if you can.
6. Dampen Elements: This is insanely useful. It’s like Absorb Elements without a spell slot, and you can use it on yourself or any other creature within range. You’re still limited to one Reaction per round, unfortunately, so at times you may be forced to choose between two or more allies who are taking damage from the same source like a Fireball or a breath weapon.
8. Divine Strike: Note that you get to choose the damage type every time you hit, so you can easily switch energy types as the need arises, allowing you to avoid resistances and immunities and capitalize on vulnerabilities. See also: Divine Strike vs. Cantrips, above.
17. Master of Nature: The problem with Master of Nature is that it only affects creatures Charmed by your Channel Divinity: Charm Animals and Plants feature, which only lasts for one minute. You need to find creatures, charm them, move them where you need them, and do whatever you were planning to do inside the tiny time window of one minute.

    Even if you somehow manage something ridiculous with Animal Friendship and squish a bunch of animals into the 30-foot radius of Charm Animals and Plants, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to accomplish anything of note before Charm Animals and Plants expires. You could refresh Charm Animals and Plants, but you get just two uses of Channel Divinity per Short or Long Rest, so you’re getting at most 2 minutes at a time to use your subclass’s capstone feature.

Nature Domain Cleric Ability Scores

No different from a typical Cleric.

Nature Domain Cleric Races

Little different from a typical Cleric. The Yuan-Ti is a notable standout because of their ability to cast Animal Friendship at will (though only on snakes). The Rock Gnome also gets an honorable mention thanks to Speak With Small Beasts.

Nature Domain Cleric Feats

No different from a typical Cleric.

Nature Domain Cleric Weapons

No different from a typical Cleric. Unlike most Clerics with heavy armor, you don’t get proficiency in Martial Weapons. It’s odd, but it doesn’t really matter. The difference between a mace and a warhammer is negligible.

Nature Domain Cleric Armor

No different from a heavy armor typical Cleric.

Nature Domain Cleric Multiclassing

No different from a typical Cleric. Druid feels like an obvious multiclass choice for more Druid Cantrips, but there’s no real need to do so. A 1 level dip into Nature Cleric is a popular multiclass option because it gets you heavy armor, Cleric and Druid Cantrips, a skill, and powerful 1st-level Cleric spells like Bless and Healing Word.

Example Nature Domain Cleric Build – Snake Charmer

Nature Domain thrives when you’re constantly surrounded by beasts. The easiest way to make this happen is to bring them yourself. The easiest way to do that is with Animal Friendship. Therefore, we’re building a Yuan-ti Nature Cleric because we can charm as many snakes as we can find and bring them on adventures.

Because Nature Domain is rated orange, we’re going to take all of the Optional Class Features. Nature Domain has one of the better versions of Divine Strike, but it’s still an awful feature.

Ability Scores

We’re going for something a little unusual with this build, so we’re planning for medium armor. We need 13 Charisma to qualify for Inspiring Leader, which means that we need to shift some points around. If you don’t want to go this route, go for 15 in Str/Con/Wis, then put your +2 into Wis and +1 into Con.

	Base	Increased
Str	8	8
Dex	14	14
Con	13	14
Int	9	9
Wis	15	17
Cha	13	13

Race

Monsters of the Multiverse Yuan-ti. We’ll take +2/+1 ability scores, and we get Darkvision, Resistance to Poison, Advantage on saves against spells, and some innate spellcasting. We’re probably not worshipping Sseth, but I’m sure there’s a suitable deity of predators or snakes or something.

Weirdly, we’re here for the innate spellcasting. Normally the ability to cast Animal Friendship at will on snakes is one of those fun “ribbon” abilities where it feels thematic, but doesn’t really impact the game. The Nature Cleric, however, benefits from having a bunch of friendly animals on hand to help you.

Background

Far Traveler. Insight and Perception are great skills on a Cleric, and we can use the instrument proficiency to be proficient in flutes for snake charming purposes.

Skills and Tools

We’ll use our Cleric class skills to get History and Religion. We’ll get Insight and Perception, plus one gaming set and one instrument from our background.

We’ll also get our choice of Animal Handling, Nature, or Survival from our subclass. Nature is the go-to choice since it’s the most consistently useful, but you may need Animal Handling for some of the animal-related shenanigans proposed in this example build.

Feats

At level 4 we increase Wisdom to 19.

At level 8 we take Inspiring Leader.

At level 12 we increase Constitution to 15 and Wisdom to 20.

At level 16 we take Fighting Initiate to get Fighting Style (Interception).

At level 19 we have an open space. Pick something cool like Cartomancer.

Levels

Level	Feat(s) and Features	Notes and Tactics
1	Divine Domain: Nature Nature Domain Spells Acolyte of Nature – Nature – Thorn Whip Bonus Proficiency Spellcasting Cantrips: – Guidance – Toll the Dead – Word of Radiance	We’ll use Acolyte of Nature to get proficiency in Nature (unless your DM cares to have you make Animal Handling checks against Beasts that you have Charmed) plus Thorn Whip. We could get Shillelagh if we wanted to use melee weapons, but Cantrips will be better as soon as we hit level 5, so we don’t want to permanently commit to a spell that we’ll only use until level 4. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can retrain it with Cantrip Versatility. Our subclass spells get us Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals, giving us great ways to handle Beasts. Animal Friendship’s 24-hour duration is a great way to keep a Beast as a pet, but, at this level, we can’t really afford to commit a spell slot to it on a daily basis. Fortunately, we’re a Yuan-ti, so we can cast Animal Friendship on snakes at will. Snakes are present in a stunningly large geographical range in the real world, covering basically anywhere that isn’t too cold for reptiles. As long as you’re not trekking around in tundras or mountaintops, you can probably start a snake collection. Remember that a Charmed creature is not dominated. They can’t attack you or target you with hostile effects, but they’re not forced to listen to you. You’ll likely still need to make an Animal Handling check to convince them to do stuff. Fortunately, it’s a Wisdom check and you have Advantage, so it should be easy to convince a bunch of snakes to follow you around in exchange for free food. Beyond those considerations, we’re a pretty typical Cleric at this level.
2	Channel Divinity (1/rest) – Charm Animals and Plants – Turn Undead Harness Divine Power	Charm Animals and Plants is basically AOE Animal Friendship with a 1-minute duration. At very low levels, that might end some encounters against groups of beasts, like if you’re attacked by a pack of wolves. Against single beasts, Animal Friendship is better because it frequently doesn’t allow a save. Most of the time we’ll use Harness Divine Power to turn Channel Divinity into a spell slot simply because we can’t guarantee that we’ll run into hostile beasts.
3	–	Mostly standard Cleric stuff at this level. Spiritual Weapon, etc. We do get Spike Growth from our subclass spells, which is pretty great. Drop Spike Growth, then use Thorn Whip to drag enemies through the area for easy extra damage. This level also brings access to Aid. If you’re making a habit of bringing Charmed Beasts into combat, strongly consider casting Aid on them. Their hp won’t scale as you gain levels, and padding their hp makes it much easier to keep your pet snakes alive. At this level we can use our innate spellcasting to cast Suggestion once per day.
4	ASI: Wisdom 17 -> 19 Cantrip Versatility
5	Destroy Undead (CR 1/2)	More typical Cleric stuff at this level. Spirit Guardians, etc. Our subclass spells give us Plant Growth and Wind Wall, both of which are area control spells. If you can drop a conveniently placed potted plant, you can use Plant Growth to make a massive AOE almost impossible to get through.
6	Dampen Elements Channel Divinity (2/rest)	Dampen Elements is a fantastic defensive option for your party. It’s basically Absorb Elements with no usage limitation beyond the Reaction to activate it.
7	–	Our subclass spells at this level are bad. If you encounter a beast that you might want to dominate, start with Animal Friendship. You might use Dominate Beast if you can’t convince the beast to help you in a fight, but you probably won’t need to, and they’re more likely to stick around if you convince them rather than compelling them. That T-Rex could be your new best friend if you use Animal Friendship, but it’s an angry attack dog on a very brittle leash if you try to dominate it.
8	Feat: Inspiring Leader Blessed Strikes Destroy Undead (CR 1)	Inspiring Leader takes 10 minutes and must be used on Friendly creatures. By this level you have (hopefully) befriended a whole bunch of animals, especially snakes which you have perpetually Charmed via Animal Friendship. We want the ability to bring them into combat, but a CR 1/8 poisonous snake has just 2 hp. A stiff breeze will end it. To that end, we’ll use Inspiring Leader to give our scaly little friends some Temporary Hit Points. The THP last until creatures complete a Long Rest, and you can make the speech as often as you like. Start with the other players, of course, but then start buffing your danger noodles. They will still only have around 10 hp total, but that’s enough that they might survive taking damage once before they need to flee to safety, and that will scale (lol) with your level. Blessed Strikes is consistently better than Divine Strike until level 16 when Blessed Strike adds another d8 of damage, but by that point we probably haven’t swung a mace in an eternity. Blessed Strikes will be more consistently useful because we can use it with Cantrips.
9	–	Insect Plague is an excellent area control spell, dealing good damage in a big AOE with good scaling. It has the same 10-minute duration as Spirit Guardians, too. The choice between the two comes down to whether you need portability or distance. If you can keep enemies in the AOE from a safe distance, Insect Plague is great. If you need to chase your enemies around, Spirit Guardians remains the go-to option. This level also brings Summon Celestial. The Defender option can distribute Temporary Hit Points when it attacks. It’s only 1d10, but some extra THP on your friendly beasts might keep them alive if you’ve convinced them to help you in combat.
10	Divine Intervention	Ask your deity for a plague of snakes. Or if you already have enough snakes, as for bigger snakes. If you already have really big snakes, ask for food for your snakes.
11	Destroy Undead (CR 2)	Nothing novel at this level.
12	Ability Score Increase: – Constitution 14 -> 15 – Wisdom 18 -> 20	We postponed getting to 20 Wisdom to keep our snake friends alive, but we need to get back on that math.
13	–	You can cast Conjure Celestial to summon a Couatl, which feels on brand.
14	Destroy Undead (CR 3)	–
15	–	–
16	Feat: Fighting Initiate (Protection)	This is a weird choice, but the ability to mitigate an attack directed at one of your snakes could be enough to keep it alive, especially when you also have the THP from Inspiring Leader.
17	Master of Nature Destroy Undead (CR 4)	Master of Nature’s usefulness is entirely up to how many beasts you can drag along behind you using some combination of mundane methods and Animal Friendship. You can hope for a herd of dinosaurs which might be useful in combat, but your DM is unlikely to let you farm T-Rexes at a large enough scale to make this work. This is why we brought the snakes. Use Channel Divinity (Charm Animals and Plants), then command your small army of snakes to Help you and your allies in combat. Easily-accessible Advantage is a nice benefit, provided that your reserve of snakes is big enough to keep it going. Prior to this you’ve been relying on the snakes to act independently, but Master of Nature lets you precisely control their actions. If your DM gives you grief about this, the PHB lists the price of 1 chicken as 2 cp. You’re high enough level that you could buy out the chicken supply of an entire continent. 2 cp is nothing, and how often do you get to use chicken attack as a viable combat tactic?
18	Channel Divinity (3/rest)	Master of Nature 3 times per Short Rest.
19	Feat: Resilient (Constitution 15 -> 16)	A total of +7 to Constitution saves is pretty great.
20	Divine Intervention Improvement	Ask your deity to turn your chickens into snakes.