Clerics are the class that every party wants to have, even if players don't want to play them. That's largely because Clerics have always been the quintessential healer class in D&D. People at Wizards of the Coast have actually said that they explicitly tune Clerics to be the most powerful class overall in order to encourage people to play them.
Cleric subclasses also have a pretty strong impact on the lore of the game itself - different gods have different domains, and so adding a subclass might mean adding new deities to your world's pantheon, or at least expanding the nuances and facets of the existing ones.
There are a whopping 14 subclasses for Clerics, compared with, for example, 7 for Druids. Most of this is from the PHB, so expect this to be a bit longer of a series.
My suspicion is that the subclasses for Clerics tend to grant marginal benefits rather than very powerful ones, given the underlying power of the class, but we'll see. Also, I'm going to short-hand the level 8 Divine Strike and Potent Spellcasting (or Blessed Strikes if you want to use the alternative rules, though I wouldn't) given that these are shared across all the subclasses, and work essentially the same way, making them more like class features than subclass features. I'll also just touch on whether the subclass gets Medium or Heavy armor, which is roughly 50/50 between the subclasses.
To state it here: Potent Spellcasitng lets you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage of your Cleric cantrips. Divine Strike lets you deal extra damage with a melee weapon attack once per turn, starting off with 1d8 of a thematically appropriate damage type, and then going up to 2d8 at level 14.
Divine Strike is more often found on the heavy-armor wearing subclasses given that they'll need decent strength anyway to wear that armor, though Death and Trickery domains I know also get it, and might want to use finesse weapons given that they'll need at least a bit of Dexterity to maximize their AC with Medium armor (though nothing is stopping someone with amazing stats from having great Strength on top of great Wisdom along with at least 14 Dexterity.)
While the PHB is technically chronologically first, I'm going to take care of Death Domain from the Dungeon Master Guide to begin with.
Death Domain:
The Death Domain is designed primarily for villainous NPCs, and represents the darkest and cruelest of deities. This is not the healthy cycle-of-life, funerary-rites kind of god of death (that's the Grave domain,) but instead represents the domain of murder and darkness. So, if you want to play one of these as a PC, you'll either need a campaign that allows for evil characters or really bring some subversion to it (I like the notion that a Cleric, as opposed to a normal priest, is chosen by the deity rather than choosing to worship them, so you might be an unwilling prophet of an evil deity.)
Your domain spells are False Life, Ray of Sickness, Blindness/Deafness, Ray of Enfeeblement, Animate Dead, Vampiric Touch, Blight, Death Ward, Antilife Shell, and Cloudkill. This is almost all about the destruction of foes and defilement of the dead, so it fits. Also, the necrotic damage will work well with other features.
You also get proficiency with martial weapons, and you use medium armor.
At 1st level you get Reaper. You learn one necromancy cantrip from any spell list. If you cast a necromancy cantrip that targets only one creature, you can instead choose a second creature within range that is within 5 feet of the target. While you'll probably be using this mostly for Chill Touch or Toll the Dead, this notably also works on Spare the Dying. This can be a huge buff to the damage you deal, though it does require targets be close to one another.
At level 2, you get Touch of Death as a Channel Divinity option. When you hit with a melee attack, you can use channel divinity to deal extra necrotic damage equal to 5 + your Cleric level. Note that it's not only weapon attacks, so you could do extra damage with an Inflict Wounds if you need to. And it's a pretty hefty chunk of damage to tack on, which is nice.
At level 6, you get Inescapable Destruction. Necrotic damage from your spells and Channel Divinity ignores resistance. Given how much of your damage will be necrotic, that's pretty great (though it won't get past incorporeal undead's usual immunity.)
At level 8, you get Divine Strike, dealing necrotic damage.
At level 17, you get Improved Reaper. This works basically the same as Reaper, but now for 1st-5th level spells. If they consume a material component, you have to provide material for both castings, but it's still just a single spell slot. So yes, you can revivify two people at once.
So, honestly, the Death Domain is pretty good anyway, and I'm always happy to see people playing around with making villainous powers for heroic characters.
Knowledge Domain:
Gods of knowledge and wisdom are a common feature in most pantheons, and this lets you play a cleric dedicated to a deity who holds ancient truths and secrets.
Your domain spells are Command, Identify, Augury, Suggestion, Nondetection, Speak with Dead, Arcane Eye, Confusion, Legend Lore, and Scrying. There's a very strong theme here of being able to secure information - only a few are really combat abilities, but many are still very useful.
At 1st level you get Blessings of Knowledge. You learn two languages of your choice, and can choose to become proficient in two of the following: Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion. You then get to double your proficiency bonus when using those skills. So yeah, if you want to be a bigger know-it-all than the Wizard, this will let you.
At 2, you get the Channel Divinity option Knowledge of the Ages. You can channel divinity as an action to gain proficiency in one skill or tool for 10 minutes. Surely situational, but it can be very useful if you just pray to your god and are suddenly much better at sneaking around.
At level 6, you get an additional Channel Divinity option: Read Thoughts. As an action, you choose a creature within 60 feet that you can see. They make a Wisdom save, and if it succeeds, you can't use this on them again until you finish a long rest. If it fails, you can read its surface thoughts when it is within 60 feet of you for 1 minute. During that time, you can use an action to end the effect and cast Suggestion on them without spending a spell slot, and the target automatically fails. So this is pretty cool - you can wait to see if they've succeeded or failed to try something as overt as a suggestion spell, though to be fair it doesn't say if the target doesn't notice when you're just passively reading their thoughts.
At 8, you get Potent Spellcasting.
At 17, you get Visions of the Past. If you spend 1 minute in meditation and prayer, you can get dreamlike, shadowy visions of recent events. You can meditate like this for a number of minutes equal to your Wisdom modifier, and you can do this once per short or long rest.
If you meditate on an object you're holding, you can learn how the owner acquired and lost it, and the most recent significant event involving the object and that owner. If the object was owned by another creature within the past number of days equal to your Wisdom score (not just modifier), you can spend an additional minute for each owner in that time period to learn the same info.
If you meditate on an area, you can see what has happened in a 50-foot room or space going back a number of days equal to your Wisdom score (again, not just modifier). For each minute you spend, you can learn about a specific significant event, starting at the most recent. Significance is determined by how important it is to your current situation.
So, that's a crazy and cool capstone ability. It can make solving mysteries far, far easier, which seems appropriate for a cleric of knowledge. While I don't know that this is a combat powerhouse (at least more than other clerics,) it's a great one for uncovering the truth, which is thematically great.
Life Domain:
Life clerics are probably the most quintessential subclass, generally focused on the preservation of life and working as healers. This can be anything from natural life to urban life - just things living and being healthy, and thus this is probably going to be a good-aligned domain most often (as a kind of opposite to Death domain.)
Your domain spells are Bless, Cure Wounds, Lesser Restoration, Spiritual Weapon, Beacon of Hope, Revivify, Death Ward, Guardian of Faith, Mass Cure Wounds, and Raise Dead. AKA some of the Cleric spell list's greatest hits. So you'll basically have all the "standard" spells prepared (except maybe Spirit Guardians) and can thus be a lot more flexible in what else you use.
You get heavy armor, as well.
At 1st level, you get Disciple of Life. Any spell of 1st level or higher will restore additional hit points to anyone it heals equal to 2 + the spell's level. An extra 3 healing on each Cure Wounds is really great, and this will start to really shine with multi-person heals. More bang for your healing buck. It's great.
At 2, you get an additional Channel Divinity option: Preserve Life. As an action, you present your holy symbol and can choose any creatures within 30 feet of you, dividing a number of hit points equal to 5 times your Cleric level and distributing them to those creatures. This can't restore any creature to more than half their hit point maximum, and can't heal undead or constructs. This can be a great emergency heal to the whole group, and will probably only be used when things are bad.
At level 6, you get Blessed Healer. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that restore hit points to a creature other than you, you regain hit points equal to 2 + the spell's level. While this won't be a giant amount of healing, having some passive healing on yourself while keeping the party alive will be very useful - we can't have the healer going down, can we?
At level 8, you get Divine Strike, dealing radiant damage.
At level 17, you get Supreme Healing. When you would normally roll dice to restore HP with a spell, you now just use the highest possible number for each die. Holy crap is this good. This will make every spell of this sort do nearly twice the average, and you can always know how much HP the spell will restore - which will be a lot. Granted, a lot of the higher-level healing spells already just do a flat amount, but this will mean that every base-level Mass Cure Wounds will heal people for 24 + Wisdom (or rather 31 + wisdom because of Disciple of Life.) This is a great thing for people with bad dice luck, and is overall just pretty awesome.
Life Clerics are, well, really really good at healing.
Light Domain:
To close out this post while we're only like halfway through the PHB subclasses (actually not even) we're going to talk Light domain. Maybe it's because of my time playing WoW, but I would usually think of this as the primary healing subclass, but here the cleric worships a deity of light, with literal brightness as a major aspect of their magic.
Your domain spells are Burning Hands, Faerie Fire, Flaming Sphere, Scorching Ray, Daylight, Fireball, Guardian of Faith, Wall of Fire, Flame Strike, and Scrying. There's a really big fire theme here, and the fact that you get Fireball, one of the most powerful damage spells in the game, can't be ignored.
You also get a bonus cantrip: Light, if you don't already have it.
At 1st level, you get Warding Flare. When you are attacked by a creature you can see within 30 feet of you, you can blast them with light to give them disadvantage on the attack with your reaction, unless the creatures is immune to being blinded. You can use this a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier per long rest. So you can make it a bit harder to hit you, which is certainly nice.
At 2, you get Channel Divinity: Radiance of the Dawn. You can use an action to dispel any magical darkness within 30 feet of you. Additionally, each hostile creature within 30 feet of you has to make a Wisdom saving throw or take 2d10 + your cleric level worth of radiant damage on a failure, or half as much on a success. Creatures behind total cover are not affected. A nice burst of AoE damage that can also get rid of a very annoying environmental issue.
At 6, you get Improved Flare. You can now use Warding Flare when a creature you can see within 30 feet attacks any other creature. This makes it a bit more useful, though I think this could have been baked in at 1, frankly.
At 8 you get Potent Spellcasting.
At 17, you get Corona of Light. You can use your action to activate an aura of sunlight that lasts for 1 minute or until you dismiss it as an action. You emit bright light for 60 feet and dim light for 30 feet beyond that. Your enemies in the bright light have disadvantage on saving throws against any spell that deals fire or radiant damage. Note that that's not just your spells, so your Sorcerer tossing fireballs or your Druid blasting Sunbeams will also benefit from this.
While the features themselves are a little underwhelming, the damage spells you get as a Light Cleric actually make this a very potent damage-focused subclass. So I'd say it's definitely worth checking out.
Next post we'll finish up the PHB with Nature, Tempest, Trickery, and War domains. And then we'll only have... six left!? Man, there are a lot of flavors of Cleric.
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