Baldur’s Gate 3: The 10 Best Feats for Clerics

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Penned by Sarah Arnold

Sarah loves RPGs, sandboxes, and sims. She's played every expansion of World of Warcraft and WoW Classic and spent hundreds of hours modding and playing Bethesda games.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Feats can be a powerful way to expand your cleric’s abilities in Baldur’s Gate 3. They can open up unique builds with spells, proficiencies, and other features that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. You gain access to a new feat every four levels (at level 4, 8, and 12), so you’ll be able to take three feats in total over the course of the game. That allows for a lot of creativity as you progress and get a feel for what kind of character you want to play – whether you’re playing a custom cleric or just looking for the best feats for Shadowheart. Let’s go through the best feats to take as a cleric.

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#10 Tough

Clerics are pretty tanky, and making them tankier is never a bad idea. After all, you can’t keep your other party members healed up if you aren’t staying alive yourself. Two hit points per level might not sound like a not, but every point can be the difference between a cleric who’s casting spells and maintaining concentration and one who’s face down on the floor. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

#9 Magic Initiate: Druid

Extra spells on a spell casting character are always a plus. As a cleric you will often feel like you don’t have enough spell slots for all of the various healing, support, and damage spells you have at your disposal. With the Magic Initiate feat, you can expand your spellbook to include two additional cantrips and a level one spell that can be cast once per Long Rest without using a spell slot. The druid version of this feat is a good choice because the spells will use your Wisdom score, which is your primary stat as a cleric. The Thorn Whip and Shillelagh cantrips are both nice to have, and for the level 1 spell you can select something that you wouldn’t normally have access to: Entangle, Goodberry, Jump, or Longstrider.

#8 Alert

Alert is a nice feat for any class. It helps you get an earlier turn in every combat and prevents you from missing an entire turn by being surprised. Going early in the round is strategically advantageous, especially if you are going to be casting buffs or debuffs, as the cleric will usually do on their first turn. The Alert feat will help you get out those valuable Banes, Blesses, and Hold Persons early in the fight when they’ll make the biggest difference.

#7 Elemental Adept: Fire or Lightning

Light Domain clerics will be using a lot of fire spells, and Tempest Domain clerics love their lightning. These are both commonly resisted damage types, so ignoring resistance for them is huge if you’re going to be using them a lot. This feat also makes it so you can’t roll a 1, which helps you feel like you’re not wasting spells on negligible damage. All around a solid feat if you’re using a lot of spells of a particular type, though otherwise it’s not useful.

#6 Resilient: Constitution

Like Tough, the Resilient: Constitution feat increases your hit point maximum, making you able to take more damage before needing to be healed. There’s an even bigger benefit to this feat, though, in that it gives you proficiency in Constitution saving throws. That includes concentration checks. So every time you take damage, this feat increases the likelihood that you’ll be able to maintain the spell you’re concentrating on. Given that you’ll usually be concentrating on one spell or another as a cleric, that’s tremendous.

#5 Ritual Caster

More spells that you can cast at no spell slot cost as long as you’re out of combat? That sounds like a win. If that’s not enough, Ritual Caster lets you learn spells you don’t otherwise have access to, like Find Familiar, Longstrider, Enhance Leap, or Disguise Self. You probably want to skip over Speak with Animals and Speak with Dead, both of which you can simply prepare, cast, and forget at any time.

#4 Shield Master

You’ll pretty much always want to be using a shield as a cleric, and this feat will make them even more useful for you. Dexterity saving throws are common, so a bonus to those is pretty good. That can help you avoid taking damage, which in turn can also help you avoid losing concentration on your spells. This feat also gives you a reaction that you can use to defend yourself, which is nice since the cleric doesn’t have any reaction abilities of its own.

#3 Lucky

The Lucky feat is good for just about any character. Three times between every Long Rest, you can give yourself advantage on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, or else make an enemy reroll their attack. Advantage on any roll is huge – it gives you two chances to roll well, throwing away the lower of the two rolls. Being able to force an enemy to reroll their attack can also save you or your party members in a pinch. In a game where every success or failure depends on a roll of the dice, being Lucky is a game changer.

#2 Ability Improvement: Wisdom

It’s not as interesting as some of the other options, but a straightforward two-point bonus to your main spellcasting stat is an excellent option for a cleric. Wisdom makes all of your spells better – you’ll do more damage and more healing. It will even improve some of your skills, including the frequently-used Perception skill. Sometimes a straightforward stat boost makes the most sense. Keep in mind, though, that even numbers are ideal for Ability scores. It may make more sense to put one point into Wisdom and one into Constitution or Dexterity rather than waste a point on giving yourself an odd Wisdom score.

#1 War Caster

This feat has two parts. First, like Resilient: Constitution, it helps you maintain concentration by buffing your saving throws. But where Resilient gives you a flat buff to your Constitution saves, War Caster gives you advantage on concentration checks in particular. Advantage is much better than a flat boost since it gives you two opportunities to roll well.

Second, this feat lets you cast Shocking Grasp as a reaction in place of making an opportunity attack. Shocking Grasp is a cantrip that you don’t normally have access to as a cleric. It prevents the target from using their reaction, which can help your party get away from them without taking opportunity attacks. The spell is even better on a Tempest Domain Cleric, with all of their bonuses to lightning damage. But it’s excellent on any spellcaster.

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Thanks for reading! We hope this guide has helped you choose the best feats for your cleric in Baldur’s Gate 3. If you have any questions, leave a comment below, and be sure to subscribe to High Ground for more useful guides!

Happy gaming!