Part of it depends on how you want to play. Personally, I love playing a CC/buffer/debuffer version of cleric. Outside of the spells mentioned by others, here are some of my favourites:
Sanctuary — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve saved an ally/myself from death because of this spell.
Shield of Faith— cast this on your melee meat shield and let them do what they do best.
Faerie Fire — IMO one of the most underrated spells in the game.
Guidance — One of the best cantrips for people who like to role-play in towns and villages. Cast it on yourself or your bard and make haggling with townsfolk a whole lot easier.
Those are all pretty low level spells. And FWIW If you’re a fan of buffing/debuffing/CC than Twilight Cleric is fucking incredible. It’s basically broken if you know what you’re doing.
Sanctuary is a super interesting spell. There’s a trick with it on the artillerist artificer where you can keep it up on yourself while attacking with your turret/gun
For sure. Just bear with me, this is gonna get a little long-winded. Like, too-long-to-fit-into-one-post-on-Kbin long ;p
A lot of it depends on party make-up and playstyle. I'm gonna assume your party is rocking with the usual set-up: two melees, a ranged character, and a healer/spellcaster (you).
First thing to remember is that, as cleric, you kinda sorta have more responsibility than anyone else in your party. For instance, all the barbarian has to do is rush the bandit and swing his axe. As cleric, you're gonna be expected to attack, heal, buff and debuff. To be a great cleric, you’re going to have to pay attention every round—see who needs healing or a spell to cure frightened/confused/what have you. Some people don’t like this responsibility but I absolutely love it.
Your position on the battlefield depends on playstyle and party. If your party is configured anything like the one I mentioned, then I think your best bet is to be between your melee and ranged allies. Basically, you want to be close enough so that your spirit guardians can really mess with your enemies but not so close they can fuck with your concentration.
SPELLS TO CONSIDER:
Other than the ones mentioned before, here's a few more…
Healing word: use it sparingly, mostly to bring your allies back to life. There's no point in wasting the slot if your ally just got nicked for 5hp. Save it for when they lose consciousness and are on the brink of making death saves.
Aid: Great for a majority of the game. Personally, I like using a third level slot to give my allies +10hp. Because the health from Aid ISN'T considered temporary, the extra temp. hp from Twilight Sanctuary stacks with the hp from Aid. So, with aid and TS, at low levels you can almost double your party's HP.
Spells gained through twilight domain: You gain access to some of the best spells IMO. Faerie Fire, Moonbeam, See Invisibility, Leomunds Tiny Hut, and Greater Invisibility are all great spells. Pair moonbeam with an ally who has booming blade and bosses (aka your DM) won't know where to go.
Put greater invisibility on your rogue (or druid) out of combat to steal anything you want.
Use LTH whenever your party needs a rest, and even as choke points to mess with your enemies (they can't go through the hut, neither can magic).
Eyes of Night: So much for having to worry about dark vision. Having this pretty much allows you, and everyone in your party, to pick a race that doesn't have access to dark vision. The game hasn't even started and you're already helping out your buddies.
Vigilant Blessing: Advantage on every initiative roll you–or anyone of your choosing–makes. This is huge. Just make sure you use it.
Twilight Sanctuary: This is what makes you god-like. In my opinion, it's the strongest skill in the game. Time it right and you'll mow through bosses. Pair it with spirit guardians and good luck getting the smell of dookie out of their pants.
Steps of Night: Useful at night and in dungeons. Aesthetically badass (imagine being a bandit and seeing a heavily armoured dude with wings slowly floating towards you with two kickass spheres ((TS and SG)) surrounding their party). Also great if you need to flee a battle.
– As cleric, you can swap out spells during a long rest. This comes in handy if you're about to fight elementals and need the right kinda magic to beat them.
– With Vigilant Blessing, you might find yourself at the top of the initiative order often. Use this to buff your allies if you can (Shield of Faith) activate TS immediately (So everyone gets temp. hp) or cast something like Faerie Fire on a mob before your allies get in range of the spell.
– Where other characters measure success by damage/round, you measure it in damage, healing, buffing. If it annoys you that you're not doing the most damage then cleric won't be for you. So just remember: your success isn't based on the damage you do but the damage everyone else can do.
– The hardest part about being a cleric is that you have access to a lot of bonus action spells, and figuring out when to use what can be tricky. Pay attention to your allies, enemies, surroundings to figure out which one to use. Same rules apply for spells requiring concentration.
That's all I can think of for now. If anything else hits me I'll reply with another comment. One final thing though…
I've played almost every class in DND, and multiclassed into anything and everything. By far, I never felt as god-like as I did when I played twilight cleric.
True story: I was playing with a DM who had a hard time scaling the difficulty for our four-person party. We had around 6 player death's in our first three sessions. When my bard died, that's when I decided to try twilight cleric. We went from 6 death's to none. I don't know if anyone even made a death save after that. Morale of the story: twilight clerics are an absolute game changer when played properly.
Enjoy the game and if you have any more questions ask. Twilight cleric is awesome. Seriously. The worst part about it is that every class will seem weak after you've played it lol.
Bless is one of, if not the best defensive and offensive spell. It gets way better if you have party members making attack rolls.
Then as you approach level 12-20 saving throws become way more common, so the floating d4 on every save and attack roll becomes dead useful. I would even upcast this to cover you + the whole party. It seems like not a huge deal, but if you turn one weapon attack into a hit, and can save one party member from taking full damage from a spell, etc you have caused an extra ~10-30 damage, and protected your party from 10-30 damage (or from control spells!)
I’m also a big fan of Word of Recall, Death Ward, Holy Weapon, and Aura of Vitality.
Word of Recall can be very clutch. Especially if your party does not have a Wizard/Sorc with any fast travel spells.
Death Ward can protect squishies.
Holy Weapon can supercharge a fighter ( or monk of your DM let’s you cast this on their unarmed strikes). Definitely fun, and dead useful if someone else is already casting Bless.
Aura of Vitality is essentially ~70 HP you can dole out to your party. That’s basically a short rest at lower levels. I’d use this out of combat.
As others have mentioned, those Spirit Guardians are phenomenal.
My personal honorable mentions are Silence to mess with enemy spellcasters, Beacon of Hope if you're in a tough fight and keep losing your front liners, and Spirit Shroud, if you are a melee Cleric
I have definitely blinded a fair share of people (and goblins) haha. Didn’t work so well when I tried to use it on a beholder and forgot the whole “anti-magic field” thing
It’s the cleric equivalent of fireball. An almost overly strong spell that is basically a must-take and must-use as soon as it becomes available. It’s almost always the best thing a cleric can concentrate on.
I always wanted to see a huge battle scene, like Lord of the Rings thousands of fighters… and before they start fighting, two gigantic d20s drop from the sky and make a roll.
I’m not saying I would have preferred that to what the Dungeons and Dragons movie was, but… okay, I’m saying that.
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