Rather than serving the darkness, the Twilight Domain is dedicated to standing against it, protecting those asleep in their beds from the monsters of the night. And yet, the best way to do this is to harness some of that darkness to better overcome it—think more Batman than Superman.

Twilight Clerics are a powerful support subclass, standing alongside their allies to protect them with aura buffs while also being able to do some damage themselves. You’ll find yourself the backbone of the party in any fight.

A Twilight Cleric will have some deity of the night in their backstory: gods like Helm, Ilmater, Selune, or Yondalla. If you want to defend the innocent without having to play as a white knight, read on and learn how to play a Twilight Cleric!

Using This Guide

Everything in this guide has an emoji, ranking how useful a given ability or feature is to playing Cleric effectively.

✅ — An absolutely crucial feature. Often forms the backbone of a class’ look and feel. It will provide some bonus that can’t be found through other means.

🆗 — A solid feature that does its job well. Not game-breaking, and certainly replaceable, but a strong choice that shores up some weakness.

⚠️ — A debatable choice. It could work for a specific build, but otherwise, it is either a wasted opportunity or is just weaker than other alternatives.

⛔ — Outright bad and detrimental. This weighs down the class and just takes up space on the character sheet. A weakness you will have to accommodate for.

These rankings are meant to help you create an optimized class build, but remember—DnD isn’t a game where you need to win to have fun. Weaker but flavorful builds also have their place and can make for fulfilling characters.

How to Play a Twilight Cleric

Twilight Cleric is the king of aura effects, beating out all other Cleric subclasses. You need to stay aware of your positioning so that your party is close enough to benefit from your buffs. Fortunately, you are capable of surviving on the front lines, so sticking near your allies shouldn’t be a problem.

You’ll use your spells for two major purposes: casting aura buffs that keep your party safe (Support), and any number of useful effects that simplify problems you come across while adventuring (Utility Casting).

Being an Effective Support

Always have a buff spell running at any given time. Sometimes a single-target buff will be best to further power up your strongest ally, but often aura buffs are the way to go. With an aura, you can protect everyone, making it difficult for enemies to overwhelm the party and leave you isolated. Your Channel Divinity will be your main aura, but complement it with another protective buff to double-down on defense.

You’ll save more lives with your powerful buffs than with healing spells, but don’t neglect healing either. If an ally is close to death, heal them quickly, because healing is easier and faster than resurrection.

Being an Effective Utility Caster

Outside of combat, use your spells to help your party overcome whatever obstacles you encounter, from curses to cocktail parties. You have a good selection of domain spells that help you bounce back from surprise dangers, so pick up some more spells that are more proactive. Your party will rely on you for these essential but unexciting spells.

🛡️ Looking for another Cleric subclass? Check out our guide to Life Domain Cleric

Twilight Domain Subclass Features

You may find yourself pulled in two different directions: some features push you to be a spellcaster, and others push you to enter combat. No matter which path you choose, your features give you a utility toolbox to use outside of combat. And when a fight inevitably starts, they encourage you to join the front line, either to help heal or help attack.

🆗 Domain Spells

1st Level

✅ Faerie Fire

Making your party hit more reliably is a great buff, and since this is such a low-level spell, you can cast it all the time.

⚠️ Sleep

When cast at 1st level, you can knock out about 4 goblins. That’s fine at lower levels, but this spell quickly becomes irrelevant.

2nd Level

⚠️ Moonbeam

Okay damage makes this more of a control spell, setting up an obstacle. Yet the radius is quite small, so the obstacle isn’t even that big.

🆗 See Invisibility

Solid utility that you’ll be thankful to have at higher levels.

3rd Level

✅ Aura of Vitality

A nice bit of guaranteed healing each turn, freeing you up to cast some other spell or attack with your action.

✅ Leomund’s Tiny Hut

Remarkably versatile and powerful. Not much gets through a tiny hut. An excellent defense against swarms of enemies or just a safe shelter to long rest in.

4th Level

🆗 Aura of Life

The no-worry way to revive fallen allies without having to spend a turn healing them. Getting to revive multiple allies at once is also a big bonus.

✅ Greater Invisibility

Great utility for roleplay, retreats, or ambushes.

5th Level

✅ Circle of Power

One of the best buffs you’ll get access to. At higher levels, spells are way more dangerous than weapon attacks, so helping your entire party shrug off high-level spells is a huge advantage in most fights.

🆗 Mislead

A neat bait-and-switch to save yourself from a sticky situation, but your double doesn’t do much other than be distracting. It does come in useful for scouting, though.

🆗 Bonus Proficiencies

Heavy armor is always nice on defense and lets you stay close to your allies to make the most of your aura effects. The martial weapons are a toss-up.

🆗 Eyes of Night

Extended darkvision would be great. Getting to share it makes this feature so much better, as you solve a common problem that you’d otherwise need magic to solve. Still, it doesn’t work on magical darkness.

🆗 Vigilant Blessing

Stick this on a spellcaster (maybe yourself) or a Rogue to start combat with a bang.

✅ Channel Divinity: Twilight Sanctuary

The temporary HP is crazy good. So good it is often called overpowered. It gives your party a cushion of extra HP that tops itself up every turn and makes them very hard to kill aside from one giant attack. Keep your friends close so they remain within the radius, and you’ll be unstoppable.

✅ Steps of Night

This gets you off the ground and away from melee attacks, which gives you a significant advantage. Plenty of uses and negligible restrictions make this incredible.

🆗 Divine Strike

Extra damage never hurts, so long as you’re making enough weapon attacks for this to matter.

🆗 Twilight Shroud

This gives your party +2 AC when in your Channel Divinity aura. Just be prepared to have a rules talk with your DM since the cover rules are often glossed over, and this becomes useless if you can’t get the AC bonus.

🛡️ Not convinced yet? Try playing a Grave Domain Cleric instead

The Perfect Twilight Domain Build

Ability Scores

🆗 Strength

When you have nothing better to do than take a swing in melee, you’ll need high Strength.

⛔ Dexterity

Dump stat.

✅ Constitution

You’ll play the support role more through ongoing buffs than healing, so being able to maintain concentration is key.

⛔ Intelligence

Dump stat.

✅ Wisdom

Your spellcasting ability, and the most important of all the stats for you. Having this high helps your attacks land, improves your healing, and prevents enemies from resisting your spells.

⛔ Charisma

Dump stat.

Races

✅ In terms of the best race for Twilight Cleric, it’s hard to beat Tortle—the high base AC makes you very sturdy, and the ability to retreat into your shell as your aura buffs keep running is a powerful trick. Hill Dwarf, Firbolg, Lizardfolk, Loxodon, and Warforged are great picks too.

🆗 Protector Aasimar, Water Genasi, Githzerai, Harengon, Kalashtar, and Reborn improve your survivability, whereas Variant Human can provide some nice flexibility in your build by using the free feat to round out your skillset.

Feats

⚠️ Alert

Kind of a weird choice, but getting to cast your buff spells before enemies get the first hit can save your party a lot of trouble.

✅ Lucky

When the party relies on you to maintain your buffs, getting to reroll saving throws or effectively giving an enemy attack disadvantage can save your friends from a TPK.

✅ War Caster

Concentration spells are your bread and butter. A crucial part of your build for max optimization.