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Clerics inDungeons & Dragonsdo a good job of breaking away from the stereotype of the class as purely support team members. Boasting better armour than other casters and as many damaging spells as they have healing, clerics are more than able to hold their own in most encounters.
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For people who do want to lean into the idea of a cleric who specialises in aiding team members, the Cleric of Solidarity is a good candidate. With spells and abilities that make the most of large teams this subclass will shine at large tables with lots of allies to bounce off of.
Best Species For A Solidarity Domain Cleric
The Amonket setting the class originates from limits the number of playable species, but has some that are well-designed for this subclass. Your options broaden further in other settings.
Flight
Bonus accuracy at long range
An Aven cleric is unable to fly with heavy armour, but your domain requires you to be within 30ft of your allies to use most abilities. An Aven cleric can make careful use of their positioning in the air to stay in range of teammates while avoiding attacks.Your features that benefit weapon attacks can be used with both melee and ranged weapons,making use of your bonuses at long range when your other abilities aren’t needed.
Can survive a mortal attack on one hitpoint.
Natural melee weapons
A Minotaur cleric can make use of the solidarity domain’s access to heavy armour to wadeabout in melee combat. Staying in the thick of the fighting means that you’ll always be in range to use your spells, auras and channel divinity to maximum effect.
Your channel divinity is a powerful heal but cannot raise a person above half their health.Surviving on one hitpoint guarantees you’ll be able to make maximum use of this feature.
Four arms
Telepathy
The monstrosity creature type makes the thri-kreen immune to spells that can only target humanoids, such as charm person and hold person.
The thri-kreen’s secondary arms aren’t strong enough to hold normal weapons butgive versatility in juggling potions, wands and other consumable itemsthat are helpful to a support playstyle.
Telepathy is broadly a flavour ability, intended to give the Thri-kreen the ability to communicate with other species without having compatible vocal cords. Where it gains additional use is forcommunicating plans in battle against intelligent enemies that will respond to someone shouting out orders or strategies overtly.
Ignores the strength requirement of armours
Resistance to poisons
The mountain dwarf is good for playing the Solidarity Cleric as a pure caster.By ignoring the strength requirements on armour they can focus exclusively on raising their wisdomand rely on spellcasting instead of using a strength or dexterity weapon.
Best Ability Scores For A Solidarity Domain Cleric
The Solidarity domain offers multiple ways of building your ability scores, depending on whether you make use of heavy armour and melee weapons in combat. The exact priority of different ability scores may change as a result.
Strength
Second priority (if using heavy armour)
Heavy armour will penalise your movement speed if you do not meet the strength requirements for it. Fighting in melee also requires your strength score to be high, unless you’re using a finesse weapon such as a dagger or whip.
Dexterity
Second priority (if playing an Aven)
The Aven cannot use heavy armour so need to raise their dexterity much higher than other clerics to help evade attacks.Flying out of melee is simple but evading ranged attacks can require clever positioning such as flying with the sun to your back and shining in the eyes of people trying to shoot you.
Constitution
Third priority
Both dodging and armour will eventually let some hits through, and constitution is there to pick up the slack.
Intelligence
At your discretion
Clerics are expected to at least know the history and doctrine of their own faith, and both are attached to what is otherwise the least useful ability score. Raise your intelligence if you want to play a booksmart cleric but be aware that it won’t aid you in most scenarios.
Wisdom
First priority
Even clerics that favour using weapons will want to prioritise wisdom above anything.It strengthens your spells and gives you additional charges of your Domain features such as Solidarity’s Action.
Charisma
The Solidarity Domain is strongest with friends and charisma can help you to make friends. It unfortunately doesn’t directly benefit your characters abilities in combat or exploration.
Best Spells For A Solidarity Domain Cleric
The Solidarity Domain has a lot of spells that target a 30ft area around you, providing healing and passive bonuses as long as you stay in formation.
Your strongest domain spell is Circle of Power at Cleric level nine, originally a paladin spell that can only be learned at level 17, which negates the biggest weakness of teams that rely on tight formations.
Most classes that require everyone to stand within 30ft of each other are at risk when an enemy spellcaster uses a fireball or lightning bolt to hit the entire group.Circle of Power gives the team advantage on the saving throws and negates all damage on a successful save.
For a team centered playstyle there are a variety of spells available to Clerics that a Solidarity Domain can make use of:
Best Use
Bless
Grants three allies a bonus of 1d4 to all attack rolls and saving throws.
This spell takes an action to cast but can be used before combat starts.Casting it on the front three members of your group before kicking in an important looking doorwill leave you well-equipped for any combats on the other side.
Guiding Bolt
Damages an enemy andgrants advantage to the next ally attacking them.
Guiding Bolt is a useful tool for setting upallies that need advantage to use their abilities, such as rogues with sneak attackor champion fighters and paladins aiming to land critical hits as often as possible.
Sanctuary
Makes an ally less likely to be targetedfor attacks
If amember of your team is forced out of position, this spell can protect them until they return to safety.
Aid
Grants five current and maximum hitpoints to three allies.
If multiple allies are all on zero hitpoints, aid is a more effective way of bringing them all back into the fightthan single target spells such as healing word. It is available at an earlier level than other area healing spells such as mass healing word.
Prayer Of Healing
Heals up to six creatures out of combat.
A larger group is likely to take longer to reach consensus and resolve out of combat situations, giving you plenty of time to make use ofthis slow-to-cast spell that offers great healing for a second level spell slot.
Spirit Guardians
Damages and slows all enemies within 15ft of you.
Both the strength and dexterity variants of this class will be able to make use of this spell. Melee characters will benefit from both the slow and the damage aura, while an Aven can fly over the heads of large groups to deal damage and still evade attacks of opportunity.
