13th Age 2e Pregenerated Character Builds: Guardian Cleric

By Jay Godden

In this series, I’m presenting two different pregenerated builds for every 13^th 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 Armour or Vestments. Armour Clerics (like the one in this article) get proficiencies with heavy armour provided their strength score is 15 or greater, and get to use d10s as their recovery dice. Vestment clerics have to fight in light armour, 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 as part of the action that you use to 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.

Guardian Cleric
Download the Guardian Cleric character sheets here. These sheets make use of the class specific character sheets designed for second edition by Miguel Friginal.

This Cleric build protects their allies from the centre of the fray, making use of both heavy armour and a shield to grant more staying power in melee, with and focus on powers that protect and heal our allies. The mantra of this build is that you can’t help anyone if you’re unconscious, and so it has a healthy emphasis on personal survivability as well.

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. You will find a great use for magic weapons, and if your spell choices deviate from those recommended below you might find use for a divine implement too. A magic belt will supercharge your self-healing even more, and magic boots to boost your initiative will help you get buff spells active before your allies’ turns.

Talents

Healing Domain

This talent allows us to keep our allies alive and topped up at full hit points, and also helps to make up for Armour Cleric’s Heal feature having a short range by improving our other heals.

Life Domain

This domain offers even more healing, and helps with saving throws while the invocation is up which synergises with your at will spell, Combat Boon.

Trickery Domain

A powerful invocation that makes you even harder to hit, and the passive benefit can be used to ensure a key monster misses you or an ally, or that an important allied attack lands.

Kin Power

Dwarf’s Never Give In. This offers us a way to remove ongoing effects from ourselves, since Combat Boon can only help your allies until level 3. Since it’s triggered by healing using a recovery, as a Cleric you are uniquely well placed to do this on demand with your heal spell.

Attributes

Strength is paramount for hitting enemies in melee, then Wisdom and Constitution stay balanced for the best AC bonus: Str 19 (+4) Dex 13 (+1) Con 16 (+3) Wis 15 (+2) Int 10 (+0) Cha 12 (+1).

1^st level

Attributes: Str 19 (+4) Dex 13 (+1) Con 16 (+3) Wis 15 (+2) Int 10 (+0) Cha 12 (+1).

Kin Power: Never Give In

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

Talents: Healing Domain, Life Domain, Trickery Domain

Spells: Heal, Turn Undead, Combat Boon, Warrior’s Inspiration, Shield of Faith (Clerics can freely change their spells around each full heal up so selections here are intended as a guide for a default arc)

Feat: A: Combat Boon

2^nd level

New spell (Mighty Healing), new feat (A: Never Give In).

3^rd level

New feat (A: Strong Recovery).

4^th level

+1 to three attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom), new spell (Divine Endurance), new feat (A: Heal).

5^th level

New feat (C: Divine Endurance).

6^th level

New spell (Respite), new feat (C: Combat Boon).

7^th level

+1 to four attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom), new feat (C: Life Domain).

8^th level

New spell (Boon of Giant-Killing), new feat (E: Heal).

9^th level

New feat (E: Respite).

10^th level

+1 to five attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma), new spell (Mark of Enmity), new feat (E: Mark of Enmity).

Zenith feat

New feat (Z: Shield of Faith)