Cleric

The cleric is a divine servant of one or more gods, serving them through combat prowess and divine spells, investing their allies with divine power. They are divine leaders who inspire through their own strength of faith. Clerics gain their powers through training and activate them through prayers and rites in the name of their divine patron.

Clerics may be good or evil, serving gods of good or gods of evil. Some clerics also serve primordials or fiends, though in the latter case the cleric must make foul sacrifices in order to retain their divine power. Clerics must be close to the alignment of their patron, usually within one step of the deity's alignment or less.

Perhaps the most well-known (and infamous) cleric in Toril was Fzoul Chembryl before his ascension to godhood.

Abilities
Clerics commonly use light or medium armor, simple weapons, and divine magic to improve the abilities of themselves or their allies in combat. Clerics augment these spells, also known as prayers, through holy symbols of their deity that carry with them or wear. Clerics are also experts in casting rituals, spell-like abilities that require an incredible amount of time and preparation to use but which often have dramatic effects. Others might instead choose to be trained in preparing alchemical recipes.

Clerics can also learn to directly access the power of their deity through their body in a prayer known as channel divinity. This power may manifest it in several ways such as increasing the abilities of the cleric as well as being able to repel or control undead creatures, with evil clerics generally choosing the latter. A cleric may also gain an individual variant of channel divinity based on the nature of their god, with clerics of Mielikki and Shar having access to a wildly different variant of channel divinity.

Clerics are powerful healers thanks to special training and the blessings of their gods, both of which increase the potency of the curative prayers available to them. Any cleric is capable of even a basic healing word, with more experienced clerics often capable of much more. Some clerics are also trained in transforming other prayers into powers of healing or, if the cleric worships a non-good god, into spells of necrotic power.

Domains


At the beginning of their career, clerics must choose two of the powers associated with the patron (called domains) as the focus of their particular training and faith. These allow them to prepare domain spells each day from those domains' set lists, in addition to their more general cleric spells.

Each domain also has another set power associated with it. For example, the Strength domain allows its clerics to increase their strength for one round per day by a number equal to their cleric level, and the Healing domain makes clerics more adept at casting healing spells.