When you think of your classic blaster caster in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) or Dungeons and Dragons 5e, you might immediately picture a sorcerer or wizard burning their enemies alive with an upcast fireball. However, the Tempest Cleric has the potential for some frankly ludicrous damage numbers and Baldur’s Gate 3 has some features that make it even more appealing here. With a channel divinity that maximizes an instance of lightning or thunder damage, heavy armor proficiency, and some incredible always-prepared spells including Shatter and Call Lightning, Tempest Clerics are tons of fun even in the early part of BG3. With just a tiny multiclass dip into Wizard, this build really comes alive. With that in mind, here’s our guide on how to build the best Tempest Cleric you can in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3).
How to Build the Best Tempest Cleric in BG3
Creating Your Cleric
Since the Trickery domain isn’t all that great, I used this build for Shadowheart in my own playthrough. If you’re using this build for your custom player character, there isn’t a clear winner for best race here, really. Dragonborn is a strong choice to get your pick of a damage resistance depending on your scale coloring or you could go with a race with Darkvision like Elf or Tiefling. You can pick your favorite Background, but Folk Hero will provide you with Survival and Animal Handling abilities that play into your high Wisdom.
Our ability score allocation is slightly different from the recommended Cleric stats, putting more points into Intelligence and Constitution and taking them from Charisma and Strength. If you’re not interested in a Wizard Dip, you can stay close to the recommended stat spread, but I’d still insist you bump your Constitution just a little higher if you go that way. This cleric won’t be passing a ton of Persuasion checks, but we can call down the burning fury of our all-powerful deity from the sky, which can be persuasive in its own way, right?
- Strength – 8
- Dexterity – 12
- Constitution – 15 (+1)
- Intelligence – 14
- Wisdom – 17 (+2)
- Charisma – 8
Now it’s time to check out your cool cleric features. For starting cantrips, you should definitely pick up Guidance and Sacred Flame, then pick your favorite as the third. When you pick the Tempest Domain at first level, you’ll see that you get Thunderwave and Fog Cloud always prepared, and the Wrath of the Storm reaction ability that lets you do some rebuke damage when you’re harmed by an enemy. With these features and your heavy armor (once you can find some, that is), you’ll be pretty tanky and powerful even from level one! But it’s only going to get crazier from here.
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How to Level Your Tempest Cleric
Levels 2-3
Level 2 gives us our Channel Divinity charge, which includes Turn Undead for all clerics, and more importantly for us, it gives Tempest Clerics Destructive Wrath in Baldur’s Gate 3. This ability lets us do maximum damage on a spell with thunder or lightning damage instead of rolling. Enemies will still get to roll saving throws to take full or half damage, but this is still an incredible ability. At Level 3, you’ll unlock 2nd-level spell slots, and gain two more Domain spells in the form of Shatter, a strong area-of-effect Thunder damage spell, and Gust of Wind.
Levels 4-6
At Level 4, we get a choice of a Feat, and we’ll be adding +1 to our Wisdom and Constitution scores to bring them up to 18 and 16 respectively. At this stage of the game, we should be concentrating on spells like Bless, or a debuff like Bane if you want to sap your foes’ saving throws, and then letting loose those max-damage spells on the biggest groupings of enemies. At Level 5 of cleric, you unlock the extremely powerful and fun 3rd-level spells, plus the extra Domain spells Call Lightning and Sleet Storm.
Now that we have a good base of power, level 6 is where we’ll take our first Wizard level. You gain the Arcane Recovery feature and make sure you choose the Shield spell when you take the class. That will let you add +5 to your Armor Class as a reaction when you get hit and brings up your survivability a ton. This leads us to the part of the build that I’m not sure is a glitch or not. If you take even a one-level dip in Wizard, you can learn any level Wizard spell from scrolls if you have the spell slots to cast it. So as a Level 5 Cleric, Level 1 Wizard, you can learn the Wizard spell Lightning Bolt, which gives us so many more options to choose from. Our Wizard Spell Save DC will be slightly lower with a 14 intelligence, but by doing things like knocking enemies Prone to impose disadvantage on their Dexterity saves, we can still get those lightning bolts to hit very hard a lot of the time. Even if this ends up getting patched out, the Wizard dip is still worth it for other reasons.
Levels 7-9
At Level 7, we’re taking one more level of Wizard to get access to our Wizarding School. Here, we’ll select the Evocation School, which gives us the extremely fun Spell Sculpting ability. This lets us drop our AOE damage anywhere we want without having to worry about allies that have fought their way into the fray. It should be noted that this only works for Evocation spells, so something like Call Lightning will still damage allies because it’s technically in the Conjuration school. Make sure to double-check the spell description before firing it off! Spells like Shatter, Lightning Bolt, Thunderwave, and higher-level spells we’ll unlock like Flame Strike and Ice Storm are all perfectly safe candidates for Spell Sculpting.
Now we’re Level 7 (Cleric 5 / Wizard 2), and we’ll be going Cleric the rest of the way. Cleric Level 6 gives us a great crowd control feature with Thunderbolt Strike, which pushes any creature size Large or smaller 3m when you deal Lightning or Thunder damage to them. We also get a second Channel Divinity charge, meaning we can fry enemies with max damage twice per short rest… nice! Cleric Level 7 gives us our 4th-level spells, and the domain spells Ice Storm and Freedom of Movement are always prepared.
Levels 10-12
We’re in the final stretches going into Level 10 (Cleric 8 / Wizard 2)! At Cleric Level 8, you should add +2 to Wisdom to bring it up to its maximum of 20. Going with our wizard dip deprives us of one Ability Score improvement or Feat, so if you’re doing a single-class build, I would recommend increasing your Constitution, taking War Caster, or taking Elemental Affinity (Lightning) as your Level 12 feat. We also get Thunder damage added to melee attacks, but our Strength is pitiful on this build. Cleric Level 9 gives us 5th-level spells, and our final domain spells are Insect Plague and Destructive Wave. Cleric Level 10 isn’t huge for the build, but the Divine Intervention ability will let you call on your deity’s aid one time per playthrough.
Since we multi-classed into another full caster, we don’t have access to 6th-level Cleric spells, but still have a 6th-level spell slot. You can use that to upcast your favorite damage spells, but don’t forget that those two Wizard levels mean you can find scrolls to be able to prepare 6th-Level Wizard spells like Disintegrate, Globe of Invulnerability, and of course, Chain Lightning. For other strong Cleric spells to prepare aside from your bread-and-butter Tempest damage, I recommend a mix of damage and utility and don’t have too many spells competing for your concentration. You can never go wrong with spells like Guiding Bolt, Bless, Spiritual Weapon, Enhance Ability, Mass Healing Word, Guardian of Faith, Banishment, and Mass Cure Wounds. But clerics have one of the best spell lists in BG3, and can swap them at will before a fight, so look them over and pick your favorites.
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How to Play the Tempest Cleric in Baldur’s Gate 3
This Tempest Cleric build in Baldur’s Gate 3is pretty powerful from the second we get Channel Divinity. Not only does the Tempest Cleric do great damage on its own, but Larian added environmental effects that can enhance it further. An essential component of this build’s playstyle is taking advantage of the Wet condition, which happens, obviously, when enemies are doused in water or standing in a puddle. Wet enemies have this condition for several turns, during which they are vulnerable to both lightning and ice damage, which means that all damage is doubled against them. Combine this condition with some high-level lightning spells, and even powerful bosses will straight-up melt in front of you, but it does take a little bit of setup with your companions to pull off.
You can either bring a Druid in your party who can cast Create Water over a group of enemies and set your cleric up for huge damage, or just go old-fashioned and chuck some water bottles at that group of goblins. I even had Karlach lugging several water barrels around for a few encounters since they made an even bigger spread of wet area. Even though we have low strength, when equipped with a shield, our heavy armor, and the shield spell, we can be extremely hard to hit. Don’t be afraid of holding down the front lines, since you can use thunder and lightning damage to knock several enemies away from you in a pinch. And with our Spell Sculpting ability, you don’t have to worry about those blasts harming your party members.
If you want to bring the damage even ludicrously higher, use your companions to keep stacking elemental damage while the baddies are still wet. Equip a Ranger or ranged Rogue with elemental arrows to target more distant vulnerable enemies. If you’ve already got a Druid helping make wet surfaces, you might as well have them throw down some Ice Storm spells as well. Ice will also do double damage to wet targets, and it further benefits your Tempest Cleric by potentially tripping several enemies with the slippery surface it leaves behind, giving them that precious dexterity saving throw disadvantage.
That’s all you need to know for this Tempest Cleric build in Baldur’s Gate 3! Don’t spend all those spell slots in one place, and have fun absolutely dominating the battlefield with your thunderous fury.
If you’re looking for more, check out our guide to the best Berserker Barbarian build in BG3.
