Introduction
We’re taking a look at building single-class parties. Building a party around a single class presents unique challenges often due individual classes’ limited capabilities. DnD is fundamentally a game about a party of diverse characters pooling their abilities to become more than the sum of their parts. The single-class party flips that on its head, introducing fun new challenges.
Clerics are among the most powerful classes in the game. With the most subclasses of any class and a hue spell list, the Cleric has a ton of options to support nearly any role.
The Rules
- No multiclassing
- 4 party members
- Must attempt to cover all party roles
Strengths and Weaknesses of the All-Cleric Party
The Cleric’s strengths are numerous, and their weaknesses are relatively few. They do have very limited skill options, and Charisma-based skills are especially difficult, but even that can be overcome.
The Party
Member 1: Forge Domain Cleric
Of all four of our clerics, our Forge Domain Cleric is the only one with heavy armor, so they’re a natural choice for our Defender. Adding Booming Blade from either Magic Initiate or from our race (High Elf, half high elf, etc.) will be very helpful here.
Blessing of the Forge and Soul of the Forge can both get us a +1 bonus to AC, letting us hit 22 AC with a shield. Normally I would warn you about the Tank Fallacy here, but, if you cast Spirit Guardians and Booming Blade, that stops being a concern.
Member 2: Light Domain Cleric
While all clerics have offensive spellcasting, the Cleric’s spell list lacks the good instantaneous area damage that we expect from a Blaster. Light Domain addresses this by giving us Fireball, as well as giving us a good single-target damage option in Scorching Ray, allowing us to claim the role of Striker.
Our Light Cleric’s build is the simplest, so we’ll make this our Face. This is a back line caster, so we can afford to slack a bit on both Dexterity and Constitution, leaving plenty of room for a bit of Charisma. We can get Insight and Persuasion from our class skills, too, so it’s easy to fill out all of the Face skills. We can complement our skills with Guidance and with Enhance Ability.
Member 3: Knowledge Domain Cleric
Our party’s Scholar, the Blessings of Knowledge feature gets us Expertise in two knowledge skills, immediately setting us up for success. We can likely afford to invest in a little bit of Intelligence, too.
Member 4: Trickery Domain Cleric
The closest we can possibly get to a rogue, our Trickery Domain Cleric will be our party’s Scout. We’ll need to rely on spells to compensate for our lack of Expertise, and a race which provides additional skill proficiencies is essential.
The Report Card
| Role | Member(s) |
|---|---|
| Blaster | 2 |
| Controller | Everyone |
| Defender | 1 |
| Face | 2 |
| Healer | Everyone |
| Scholar | 3 |
| Scout | 4 |
| Striker | 2 |
| Support | Everyone |
| Utility Caster | Everyone |
Biggest Strength
The Cleric’s spellcasting remains a dominant part of the party’s capabilities. Abundant healing, defenses, buffs, and utility options allow us to address many challenges magically.
Biggest Weakness
The Cleric is limited only by their spell slots. While they can technically use weapons, they’re usually terrible at doing so, so any serious challenge will involve spending spell slots. If you run out of spell slots, you’re going to run into trouble.
Conclusion
How many flavors of “I cast Spirit Guardians” can you come up with? Because a lot of your encounters are going to start with the party discussing whose turn it is to do a beyblade impression.
