Life Domain Cleric: D&D 2024 Subclass Optimisation Guide

Learn to optimise for this healing-focused cleric subclass.

Focused on curing the pains of the world, the life domain hones in on the cleric’s capacity to heal and dials it up several notches. Almost any religion can have a cleric focused on the life domain, but more often, these clerics are devotees of the gods of agriculture, healing and endurance.

All of this makes the life domain cleric, the most cleric-y kind of cleric there is. Already known for their healing powers, this is enhanced further in the life domain.

If you’re looking for a support subclass that can keep your allies in the game longer and more easily, then this is the subclass for you.

The life domain has been revamped for D&D 2024 and this guide will take you through these changes as well as how you can play and build a powerful life domain cleric.

At a glance

Full caster with healing, buffing and damage dealing capabilities
Quite resilient for a full caster
Heals better than any other cleric
Is more resilient than other clerics with self-healing powers

3/5 – Your best option for a heavily healing-focused subclass, the features are decent at low-mid levels with an excellent level 17 feature that kicks in too late to elevate this subclass beyond a 3/5.

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

The life domain cleric is affected by a lot of small changes that have kicked in outside of the subclass. For instance, healing in general has been made more worthwhile with more powerful healing spells. The core cleric class also took options out of the subclass and made them options in the main cleric class to give more build flexibility.

Below are all the changes for the life domain:

Subclass starts at level 3 – All subclasses now kick in at level 3. For life clerics, this means moving the disciple of life and preserve life features to level 3.
Heavy armor proficiency – This no longer comes with the life domain, instead it’s an option for all clerics through the core cleric class.
Divine strike – The divine strike feature is now an option in the main cleric class and allows you to pick enhanced weapon attacks or spells so you’re not tied to one style or the other with your subclass.
Spell changes – The life domain spells are more healing focused. You now get aid, mass healing word, aura of life and greater restoration. This comes at the expense of spiritual weapon, beacon of hope, guardian of faith and raise dead.
Healing for undead and constructs – Preserve life will now work on undead and constructs, and by extension, so do other healing spells.
Improved healing spells – Healing spells in general got a glow up in the 2024 rules. They now heal more damage. For instance, cure wounds heals 2d8 + your spellcasting modifier. In the 2014 rules, this was just 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier. This not only means the spells the life domain cleric has are more profound, but the level 17 feature of supreme healing is subtly beefed up as it provides maximum potential healing, and with a higher maximum potential, this will be even more helpful.

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Life domain features

Cleric in combat — Cleric: Wizards of the Coast

Disciple of life – Lv3

How it works

Your healing spells grant an extra 2 + the spell’s level in healing.

Tactics

The extra healing isn’t massive, but it is welcome. It will be more useful at lower levels and fades at higher levels, despite growing with the spell slot used.
Healing spells that heal multiple creatures will be magnified by this effect. For example, mass healing word (which is a 3rd level spell) will grant an additional 5 hit points to each creature affected by it (so potentially an extra 30 HP healed altogether), unlike healing word which will grant an extra 3HP total.
This makes multi-target healing spells particularly worthwhile for the life domain

Life domain spells – Lv3

How it works

Gain the following as prepared spells at the relevant levels:

Cleric level	Prepared spells
3	Aid, bless, cure wounds, lesser restoration
5	Mass healing word, revivify
7	Aura of life, death ward
9	Greater restoration, mass cure wounds

Tactics

As you’d expect, the life cleric is pretty decked out with healing spells.
Expect to be the go to spellcaster for removing nasty conditions with the restoration spells.
You’ll likely want to focus your spellcasting more on healing than damage dealing, especially with your extra hit points healed.
Death ward is handy for preserving a character, and as it doesn’t require concentration and lasts 8hrs, can be cast ahead of combat. Aid also doesn’t take up your concentration or your action in combat giving you 2 easy buffs to apply ahead of combat.

Preserve life – Lv3

How it works

Use your channel divinity to heal nearby creatures by an amount that is 5 x your cleric level. But only if they’re bloodied and you can’t heal them beyond half their hit point maximum.

Tactics

This is an awkward one in some ways, but profound in others. You can only use this on bloodied allies and can’t heal beyond half their hit points which can be frustrating.
However, being able to spread healing across multiple allies is very handy especially at early levels before you get multiple target healing spells. I’d say this is particularly useful for when multiple allies are low on health or at 0HP and you can bring them back into play.
However, it’s not as powerful as mass cure wounds when it kicks in at level 9 (though you do have preserve life available earlier and it does grow in power as you gain levels). It also remains an option for when spell slots might have run out.
If you want to be able to heal allies to higher hit points, then you can use aid which raises their hit point maximum. If you upcast this, you have 8hrs of allies with a higher hit point maximum that you can keep healing into (or at least healing to half their hit point maximum).

Blessed healer – Lv6

How it works

Healing spells also heal you, granting 2 + the spell’s level in healing to yourself.

Tactics

It’s handy that you can keep your own hit points topped up and becomes just one more reason to keep pumping out healing spells.
This also means you should last a little longer in combat. Considering you likely want to be within 30ft of your martial allies, you may be slightly vulnerable to being targeted by enemies. Perhaps more so when enemies realise you’re stopping them killing their foes.

Supreme healing – Lv17

How it works

You always roll the maximum number on healing dice.

Tactics

This makes your healing spells considerably more potent.
For example, using mass cure wounds as a level 5 spell, you’d normally average 34.5 healing per target (assuming 20 wisdom and including the disciple of life feature). If we assume 4 targets, that’s 138 hit points healed. With this feature, this increases to 52 per target or 208 hit points healed (that’s a 51% increase in healing).
Obviously how profound this impact is will depend on the spell being used (a level 1 healing word will not be affected as profoundly). But this is a huge amount of extra healing for a feature that is always working!

How good is the life domain subclass?

The life domain is definitely the best healing subclass available. If this is what you’re looking for, then you’ll want to grab the life domain.

The spell options are all strong, if very healing focused, but this is appropriate for what you want to be. I’d probably argue that something like disciple of life quickly fades with increased levels (though bumps back up in power with mass healing spells). I’d also say that preserve life is probably also a weaker version of mass cure wounds. But more healing options and better healing are always going to be welcome and useful.

Up until level 17, I’d say the features are decent and fit well the enhanced healing approach. Supreme healing however, I think is excellent and makes the life domain into a very profound healing subclass!

Overall, I’d say this is a decent healer subclass at low and mid levels and very good at high levels. But because many players will never make it to level 17, I’m going to focus my evaluation on the subclass before this point, making it a decent option for healers, but nothing special.

3/5

Building an optimised life domain cleric

Undead attack a cleric — Cleric: Wizards of the Coast

Life domain clerics are big on healing. You’ll want to look at enhancing your spellcasting through wisdom to enhance your healing. Because of this, they’ll often do less when it comes to attacks, but may still need to be fairly close to the fighting which will mean building around defence too.

Below I’ve put together a load of advice on how to build a powerful life cleric.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Wisdom: You’ll want this as your highest ability score. Primarily this is for the better healing and spells, but it’ll also help you with skills and saving throws too.
Constitution: The higher this is, the longer you’ll last. Less important than wisdom for a life cleric but still important.
Strength: I’d lean towards a strength build for the life domain simply because you’ll last longer with heavy armor. That does meaning getting your strength up to 15 to use full plate, even if you won’t be making many weapon attacks.
Dexterity: You can still go down the medium armor route. If so, get your dexterity up to 14 for the +2 to AC. If you’re going for heavy armor, just dump dexterity.

Options to avoid

Intelligence: You don’t need intelligence.
Charisma: Clerics aren’t built for face skills and you’ve got more important ability scores to focus on.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	15	14
Dexterity	8	8
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	12
Wisdom	15	15
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

History: Solid knowledge skill
Insight: Important face skill.
Persuasion: You probably won’t be the party face, but many people in the party often join in with the talking.
Religion: Decent knowledge skill. You can enhance this further by taking the thaumaturge option.

Options to avoid

Medicine: Just use healing word.

Species/race

I’d look for species with the following qualities:

Toughen up: With just d8 hit dice, no matter your AC, you’re still a little light on hit points. This is especially the case if you plan on wading into the frontlines. Extra HP, resistances and other durability traits will help out here.
Damage dealing: Even a life cleric isn’t all about healing people. Sometimes the best way to protect is to blast the other guy with holy powers.
Innate spellcasting: With a relatively small range of possible spells options and a heavy leaning into healing spells, being able to grab additional options for spells through innate spellcasting can round out your capabilities nicely.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Two resistances for extra durability. You get some extra healing to reduce the drain on your spell slots. Celestial revelation will also give you options for flight or some close combat effects letting you mix up your approach as frontline clerics might need to.
Dragonborn (2024): A damage resistance for durability and the breath weapon gives you a close range AoE option. Temporary flight will let you mix up your approach for when you need to hang back after a bit of a battering or you can use it to reach high places.
Dwarves (2024): More HP and some damage resistance works great on a frontline cleric.
Elves (2024): Lots of extra spells to cast. High Elf will get you a cantrip like true strike which can combine with the extra damage from divine strike if you choose that option. You’ll also get misty step for when you need to make a quick escape. Wood Elves are too stealthy for the cumbersome cleric, but a Drow has darkness and faerie fire which are both good options.
Human (2024): An extra skill is nice. With your great wisdom, you might want to consider perception. More heroic inspiration is useful for any class and an extra origin feat could help fill gaps in your repertoire. For example, you could grab magic initiate if you really want to have true strike for weapon attacks. You could also consider something like tough to up your HP. There’s also lucky and musician for rerolling dice.
Tiefling (2024): Some innate spellcasting and a damage resistance is nice. You’ve got some of the most common damage types to choose from for your resistances here. Infernal legacy is probably your best option, especially if you want to be launching off hellish rebuke with spare spell slots.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 with ability score increases, origin feats and skills all now linked to your background.

For a life cleric, I’d prioritise wisdom and then constitution or strength (though you could replace strength with dexterity depending on your build).

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Guard	Strength, intelligence, wisdom	Alert	Athletics, perception	One kind of gaming set
Guide	Dexterity, constitution, wisdom	Magic initiate (druid)	Stealth, survival	Cartographer’s tools
Hermit	Constitution, wisdom, charisma	Healer	Medicine, religion	Herbalism kit
Sage	Constitution, intelligence, wisdom	Magic initiate (wizard)	Arcana, history	Calligrapher’s tools
Wayfarer	Dexterity, wisdom, charisma	Lucky	Insight, stealth	Thieves’ tools

Normally it’s wisdom and constitution or strength you’re going to want to increase. With that in mind, I think your best options are sage and farmer. Sage will get you some wizard spells (true strike is really good if you want to be using your weapons) while farmer will get you tough if you’d like to beef up your cleric a bit (you might also need the strength increase so you can manage full plate armor).

Feats

Origin feats

I’d say the below are your best origin feats for a life cleric:

Lucky – Grant advantage or disadvantage on important d20 tests.
Magic initiate – Grab some spells from another spell list. True strike is a good option for a weapon-wielding cleric.
Musician – Give everyone in the party a regular supply of heroic inspiration.
Tough – Great way to grab some extra hit points, especially if you want to dive into the frontlines.

General feats

At level 4, you can start picking up general feats. These are some of the better options for a life cleric:

Defensive duelist – Good for some reactionary defence. You will likely sacrifice some damage output, but if you’re going for sword and shield anyway (which makes the most sense for a subclass that often won’t be making attacks), you can just grab a rapier for damage equal to a longsword.
Fey-touched – 2 more spells prepared and 2 free castings expands your repertoire nicely. Misty step works well for moving where you need to be. For more ways to optimise for this feat, check out my fey-touched guide.
Heavy armor master – If you’re going to be wearing heavy armor, you can reduce the damage of every bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage that strikes you.
Inspiring leader – Go for the wisdom increase and bestow temporary hit points on the party each rest. A good idea to have someone in your party with this. This combines nicely with aid as well which increases hit points maximum.
Mage slayer – Get better at dealing with mages plus a form of legendary resistance.
Ritual caster – Can really expand your spell repertoire for some utility spells, plus they don’t require spell slots when cast as rituals. Good if no one else in the party can get things like detect magic. Read more about how to use this in my ritual spells guide.
Shadow-touched – 2 free castings of spells expands your spell uses nicely and invisible is a great option.
Speedy – if you plan on using spirit guardians a lot, having a bit of extra movement is a pretty good idea.

Weapons

Life domain clerics won’t always be casting healing spells. But when they’re not, they’ll likely be using other spells like bless or spirit guardians. This means the amount you’re using weapon attacks will be minimal.

With this in mind, I think it doesn’t make sense to build around high damage weapon attacks. You’ve got cantrips and spells as standard for when you do want to deal damage. Instead it makes sense to build around defence which means grabbing a shield and a one handed weapon.

Armor

If you’ve taken the protector option, you’ll likely want to be using heavy armor. The best option is full plate armor. Grab this once you can afford it (and make sure you get up to 15 strength).

If you haven’t taken protector, you’ll have to go with medium armor. Get your dexterity up to 14 for that maximum +2AC boost and grab half plate once you can afford it.

Light armor won’t be better for a life cleric as you’re not built for stealth and you’d have to invest heavily in dexterity to make it work.

No matter your armor, you should also grab a shield. You shouldn’t be making many weapon attacks so this shouldn’t inhibit your damage much, but will help your defence.