13th Age 2e Pregenerated Character Builds: Blazing Cleric

By Jay Godden

In this series, I’m presenting two different pregenerated builds for every 13th Age Heroes’ Handbook character class, at all levels. My goal is to present complete mechanical builds using only standard elements and rules from the Heroes’ Handbook, ready for you to apply your own backgrounds, icon relationships, and One Unique Thing.

In this pair of articles, we look at two potential builds for the Cleric.

The Cleric is the heart of any party they find themselves in, offering powerful buffs and healing to make them and their allies fight harder and for longer.

The first choice to make when building a Cleric is whether you wish to fight in Armor or Vestments. Armor Clerics get proficiencies with heavy armor provided their strength score is 15 or greater, and better Armor Class as a result. Vestment Clerics (like the one in this article) have to fight in light armor, but they have better range on their Heal spell, an extra at-will spell, and can use Wisdom for some melee spells in place of strength. All clerics get the Heal and Turn Undead spells as class features, so you can help keep your allies conscious and lay the hurt on unholy creatures with minimal investment.

The Cleric’s talents are Domains, which each provide a passive benefit and a powerful once per arc invocation. Only one invocation can be used in each battle, by any creature in the combat. These invocations, along with your spells, are generally about protecting, improving, and healing you and your allies. Some cleric spells have two different effects depending on whether you cast them “for power” or “for broad effect”. Usually this means you can either target one ally who gets a double strength buff, or three (which can include you) to gain a single strength buff. You make this decision at the moment that you cast the spell, you don’t have to prepare them separately, so you can decide in the moment if you want a breadth of efficiency, or a spike in power. Remember that in second edition all spells are cast at the highest level available to you.

Clerics are reasonably complex characters, you have to keep track of your own spells and invocations, watch out for your domain’s passives coming up, and keep an eye on your whole party’s overall condition.

Blazing Cleric

Download the Blazing Cleric character sheets here

These sheets make use of the class-specific character sheets designed for second edition by Miguel Friginal.

This Cleric build focuses on using righteous magic to overwhelm and dazzle your foes before they get a chance to harm your allies. You will tend to try to stay unengaged, raining holy fire on your enemies and applying choice buffs to your allies to help them match your destructive barrage. In Adventurer tier you may wield a shield, eventually making way for a two-handed magic staff in Champion or Epic tier, the character sheets assume a swap to a staff at level 5.

As well as an implement, you might benefit from the initiative bonus of magical boots, which might let you act before your allies to use buff spells on them early. You could also benefit from a magical belt to improve your self-healing. Any items that deal thunder or lightning damage to additional enemies will synergise with Storm Domain. As usual magic item choices are left out of the character sheets, check with your GM to see if they will be granting you any.

Talents

Justice Domain

Give your allies attack re-rolls after any of you are crit, and increase miss damage with the invocation.

Storm Domain

Deal damage to nearby enemies that miss you, punishing them for attacking you and increasing your magical damage output. The invocation makes these enemies easier for you and your allies to crit too.

Sun Domain

This domain improves your Turn Undead spell, and when its invocation is active you will be able to target far-away creatures with most of your spells, both letting you step back out of danger and making it very hard for enemies to get away from you.

Kin Power

Dragonic’s Breath Weapon (Lightning). Not only does this power offer us an extra source of ranged damage, it synergises with the Storm Domain’s invocation by giving you more ways to apply lightning damage.

Attributes

Wisdom will be your highest score, determining the accuracy of your spells. Turn Undead gets bonus targets from Charisma, and Constitution keeps us going all arc: Str 10 (+0) Dex 14 (+2) Con 15 (+2) Wis 19 (+4) Int 12 (+1) Cha 15 (+2).

1st level

Attributes: Str 10 (+0) Dex 14 (+2) Con 15 (+2) Wis 19 (+4) Int 12 (+1) Cha 15 (+2).

Kin Power: Breath Weapon

Class Features: Vestments, Healing, Holy Light, Ritual Magic, Turn Undead

Talents: Justice Domain, Storm Domain, Sun Domain

Spells: Heal, Turn Undead, Javelin of Faith, Spirits of the Righteous, Bless, Judgement (Clerics can freely change their spells around each full heal-up so selections here are intended as a guide for a default arc, but remember that at least one of your spells has to be an at-will)

Feat: A: Justice Domain

2nd level

New spell (Warrior’s Inspiration), new feat (A: Storm Domain).

3rd level

New spell (Strength of the Gods replaces Warrior’s Inspiration), new feat (A: Sun Domain).

4th level

+1 to three attributes (Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma), new spell (Cause Fear), new feat (A: Heal).

5th level

New feat (C: Breath Weapon).

6th level

New spell (Crisis of Faith), new feats (C: Justice Domain replaces adv, A: Javelin of Faith).

7th level

+1 to four attributes (Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma), new feat (C: Crisis of Faith).

8th level

New spell (Sphere of Radiance), new feat (E: Bless).

9th level

New feat (E: Cause Fear).

10th level

+1 to five attributes (Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma), new spell (Prayer for Readiness), new feat (E: Prayer for Readiness).

Zenith feat

New feat (Z: Sphere of Radiance)