Clerics Revisited | Web DM | TTRPG | D&D

there we go hey everybody how's it going welcome to wednesday afternoon here on the web dm channel and uh today we are going to be talking about that classic of dungeons and dragons classes the cleric taking a a look at all 12 13 gosh i guess 13 uh core classes in 5e uh over the next few weeks and just sort of assessing where they're at something big is coming up in the next couple of years in 2024 that's always a good time to reflect on where d is at especially if you're a long time fan of the game uh these addition changes these tweaks to the game who knows what's coming uh down the pipe uh are always the time sort of take stock what does d d mean to us what we want out of the game where are the classes at which one's the best all that kind of stuff so that is what we're going to be talking about today uh on our hangout here on web dm and um yeah yeah i uh i decided to start with the cleric because i want to go with the core four uh first off and clerica comes alphabetically um but it's also like of all of the classes in 5e i i think it's one of the strongest it's the one that i've had a lot of experience with as a dungeon master with players of clerics alike and i've had a chance to play a few myself and play alongside them so i have a lot of experience with it i love clerics my first d d character i ever played was a specialty priest so a strong attachment to the class and you know we were even talking about like the cleric spell list uh recently on our patreon podcast about like how some of the most iconic spells in the game are on the cleric spell list right like the healing spells the divination spells like this is a class that as weird as it is like when you dig into the history of of what's a cleric what a weird name you know where does this class come from because it's not in any of the pulp or fantasy literature that's supposed to have inspired dungeons and dragons uh you know it's like oh it's a wait wait this comes from van helsing you know player wanting to play a vampire hunter and mixed with the imagery of knights templar all right i'll i'll buy it it's you know the first gish you know that stands between the uh the the fighter or the fighting man and the magic user so it's like cleric has a pedigree that's as old as dungeons dragons and so it has this place in the fantasy genre that when you look at us like it seems weird and out of place uh she's like well we just have a bunch of competing monotheisms and a fantasy campaign but it can be so much more and i think the 5e cleric really nails it in terms of portraying a class that is in touch with the divine powers of your world that has a connection with them and depending on how you flavor that and interpret it you can go a lot of different ways in both establishing like what's important to your world like what matters uh at the biggest scale at the scale of the gods and the cosmos all the multiverse and like how they still manage to make a connection with the personal and the the you know just the the mundane of the setting uh and really highlight the fantasy of it is really embedded uh in the class itself i think it's so no major changes needed is my assessment if you're just tuning in for for the thumbnail sketch like it's uh no major changes needed only tweaks to the 5e cleric that's my uh that's my tldr but let's really get into it because what i love about the cleric is how diverse it is the fact that it can cater to so many different play styles and concepts through the use of the subclass options my the divine domain and how the the spell list especially at the low levels not so much past level three but especially those low levels gives you like a core toolkit of abilities and spells and the like of what it means to be a cleric and then you get to go off and play in in other concepts all right maybe i'm four you know maybe i'm melisandre from song of ice and fire like whatever it is that you want to be maybe you want to pretend to be a necromancer or really lean into the necromancy aspect that's embedded in the cleric spell list already we go grave or death or something so there's a lot of different ways to take the class and yet it still does its core function of party support and utility magic and of being a second line may layer if need be for being a support caster and being able to fill in and switch switch amongst a lot of different roles in the party depending on what you need cleric great always want one in the party wonderful party of two hope one of them's a cleric you know always useful always great to have um and so that you layer all of that on top of it has really good offensive potential uh spiritual weapons spirit guardians those bread and butter damage boosting spells it encourages you to get up encourages you to get up close and mix it up and it to me like there's so many different ways to flavor that magic what does the spiritual weapon look like is it just a floating weapon or is it wielded by some ethereal being uh you know that your god has sent down and this is just the effect that's uh that's landing this weapon attack right you know where the guardians look like how do you know what what manifestation of your deity does it embody right what is it about the the the domain of your god that your magic says about you because divine magic is supposed to be miraculous and it uses the mechanics of spells it always has that's for our convenience you know and it's um it doesn't have to be that uh get that same evo right like how you flavor it how you describe it what your spell components look like that kind of thing really goes a long way towards what your specific cleric looks like and yet at the same time you still got to be a cleric that doesn't mean he'll bot that does not mean you're just a healer my first experiences of playing touches and dragons like one of the first times i remember playing it in second edition i had taken over someone else's character that person had been kicked out of their group but the 13th level specialty priest of lathander was part of the party and uh i've only played baldur's gate up until then and so i played like i played in baldur's gate which is clerics have a lot of awesome spells like they can they can like raise their strength and protect us from energy like there's all kinds of things healing's a chumps game right it's like if we need to heal i'll just we'll take a day and i'll load open all healing spells and will heal up and then the next day we'll go adventuring again instead of spending a week resting up or something you know but my magic is best to use smiting the enemies of my god then healing us up and just like the friction it caused in the party like why you gotta heal that i was like all right well i'll prepare heal that will restore all your hit points but like cure wounds there's other things i can do here with this magic and i like that about each iteration since then right since that time where there was third edition or fourth or fifth is try to get the cleric out of that box of you only are here to restore hit points and that's not the case anymore i don't think it was ever the case though there were plenty of things that the cleric was also there for other than uh topping up the hp tanks um but especially with fifth edition i really do think that there are there's so much more you can do with the cleric than just heal and one of the tweaks that uh that dnd could do is to help shape the player meta right help help shape the way that players think about the cleric and perceive them so that it's not seen as like oh yeah well you're the last to play with we need a cleric everybody else pick the good classes like no you get to play the cleric look at them you know they miss their chance or you play all clerics and still have a great time yeah um so yeah we're talking about the cleric today i'm going to get to some of my in-depth go we'll go through the some of the core features and i'll run down a bit of the divine domains there's 14 of them so not going to get through every single feature of them and then i'll talk about a bit of my uh improvements and what i what if what like if d d is mine and i can do whatever i want i'll kind of style wishlist there at the end take somebody else's questions out chris is asking should the cleric be an inherent ritual caster when i think of the historical preacher religious figure them holding a holy tone comes to mind for me i think so i think there's a lot of i think there's a lot of concepts that the cleric could support but but doesn't um i think like the archivist from third edition leaned into this was an intelligent intelligence-based divine caster that kept a prayer book or a ritual book to me the fix for this is in the spell list and honestly the biggest changes i would make to the cleric is are in its spell list and not the base class itself and so i think if you just had more ritual spells there especially world building type spells like ceremony for instance uh which is an interesting spell i like that it exists i have some questions about the gold piece cost and like who this magic is meant for from a world building perspective but those are ancillary to dnd as a game they're just sort of fun dm uh exercises um see i think a lot of this can be handled by how the spell is presented is there a way for clerics to turn regular spells into a ritual spell you know by paying extra time or extra materials or something so that like they really need to heal someone then they can have this ritual of healing and it might take 30 minutes it might take a while just to get those extra few hit points but it'll save someone's life you know uh so i think you could maybe do something with that that'd be um that'd certainly be interesting just more ritual spells across the board and make them like a ritual caster and full you know like is it a ritual spell then you can ritually cast it you don't have to have it prepared for that day or on your domain list so that that's what i would uh that's those are some of the changes i might uh make that because the idea of a a divine caster that casts from a prayer book excuse me a divine counselor that has like a ritual prayer book to me is a natural outgrowth of the concept uh something i can easily imagine in a variety of fantasy worlds so uh so yeah all right hey it's friggin paco all right i'll sit cohen uh tons the name cleric and drew it to an extent overshadow other potential new classes that field uh a similar vibe example shaman or something or i'm not gonna say which doctor thinks well oops my bad that's what happens when i uh think before i talk before i think shaman i could see uh i wouldn't go with the other uh does it crowd others out or is that a different problem to me i think that they are encompassed within the cleric the cleric is the class that deals with the divine the cleric is the class this is the intercessor the intermediary between the divine and the mortal world and what one of the things that i would do is like do you have a domain brian you're a death cleric you're a a grave cleric a tempest a light whatever it is but you know about all the gods right like the religion skill or proficiency is there for specialized knowledge about like rituals and servants of the gods and like but when you're familiar with the whole pantheon because you are there to act as an intercessor when orcis comes sniffing around or whatever you know you're there to be like well this work is either someone broke an oath and the demon was let loose and you know we need to fix something around here or there's an infestation of undead like you're there to help solve that you're the first line of defense really most of the normal people who live in a d world like how are we going to deal with this supernatural threat where's the nearest cleric right they have a broad range of tools to deal with all kinds of threats that can help you recover and uh you know renew your community or the people who are involved in fending off a threat afterwards there if you had to pick one class yeah a wizard would be nice but at low levels i'll take it clear because they've got they've got magic they can fight a little bit of everything and they're more like everyday useful if that makes sense like they can create water you know they can can heal the sick they can they can help you recover and so i think all of those concepts are encompassed with the cleric and and really it's the fact that the cleric comes with this templar imagery of a heavily armored weapon-wielding holy warrior which shares a lot with the paladin right and i think like war cleric and some of the forged cleric are are expressions of that idea lots of overlap between the dnp classes right and so like that's one way of looking at it and if really just broaden our concept a cleric is a priest they are that relate to the gods who are a class of extra planar entities that are above and beyond warlock patrons and the kinds of celestials and fiends that that you can call with spells and the like they're something different they they embody or represent the the forces in the world and so in that sense they are you know greater than and they the only way they can relate to us is through the cleric and and people like them so i i think that's thinking it like that it's natural see like yeah that's that's exactly that encompasses any kind of uh any kind of caster that deals with either the gods or anything that the gods have a purview over right and this is where it blurs the line with druid because this is a druid just a very specialized nature priest like for a while in d d the answer was yeah that's exactly the case it's specialized enough that it deserves its own spell list and its own set of abilities and the like uh the second edition took that too like a all right every god has its own class of priest tempus you're a barbarian that can cast spells you know like uh you know with andrew here you know you're you've got all the good wizard spells and all the good fire ones because you know your god is the the morning lord the rising dawn um so you you have that kind of magic that's just who you are in you know even just in the uh the base rules it's like there's no single cleric spell list their cleric spellis is divided between spheres and you have a number of spheres based on your god so every cleric that you play has a different set of spells that they have access to you and you hope that healing was one of those that your god offered you but simone didn't and so like that's one way i like this way because it's way less page count way less reading you just they're the guy that casts god magic that could be magic with the afterlife too so i think that's how it encompasses uh those sort of concepts especially exorcist is another oracle that kind of thing all of them are clerics just a weird name cleric uh that's uh let's see all right uh all right so that we have a question from oyer i'm that is my best attempt at your name i have i uh i'm that's i'm not going to try a second time because i feel like i'll just butcher it how do you manage local and global deities could my cleric pray to a river spirit could you pray to a saint how would you do it my game absolutely uh all of the options at least in the campaigns i've run i use all of them from that chapter a chapter one in the uh the dmg where it's just like yep there's type pantheon loose pantheon mystery called saints powers philosophies i like the exalted model if you're familiar with exalted's creation it is a animist setting so there's like every tree rock river bridge an old building that kind of thing has a spirit of some kind and the one of one of the functions of the exalted was managing the interactions between the spirits the minor gods and the mortal world because it can get out of whack because you know you over fish or pollute a river or something like that and spirit gets upset and now there's no water anymore and that's like an adventure like managing that uh relationship would be part of the campaign and to me i see that as the cleric's core function in a world building sense is that in a d d world there are gods and there's lesser gods there's demigods which includes quasi-gods which includes demigods and vestiges and all kinds of things and there's archfey demon lords like there's a whole gradation of extra planar entities before you even get to like really high cr monsters that might just live nearby that a just a regular peasant or you know tradesperson or somebody living in a fancy world might happen across or have to deal with and how many of them are like okay well they don't mess with us if you know you know we make these sacrifices or you know make these offerings of food or you know tribute or whatever like the cleric is part of that they're they're there to make sure that goes smoothly because that monster might be the offspring of a god right and to me it's about thinking about your world is like a a place that is more than just like yeah there's a collection of monsters in here and it's like a theme park or a zoo and now it's like where'd those monsters come from like who who made them who who decided that uh you know who decided that that this thing should exist and humanity has given us the answers like this before if you look back to folklore and ancient religions of like oh yeah the gods they created chimera and hydra and all kinds of giant boars and lions and bulls and two-headed snakes and snakes if you look at them you'll die and and you know bulls whose heads are so heavy they can't lift them up off the ground they can only look at the ground but if they've looked at you you just disintegrated or turned to stone or die a fright or something like you know the gods did it it's a their office their offspring of the the titans war or something so you know you god i love that question to me that is how you make a setting fantastic and i just uh proceed with the idea that yep this is the case i have no idea what the names of all of them are if it comes up in play we'll figure it out and i trust that i will come up with something that's good enough in that moment and be will be better the second time and that is how i would do it because i'm trying to prepare all that ahead of time that sounds like a lot of work uh i'm gonna answer one more question then i'll get to a bit of a class feature breakdown like but jacob overstreet asks how would you get clerics uh how would you get clerics lean into weapon attacks since it seems cantrips will always be better considering strength and decks are difficult to invest after wisdom and con yep yeah that is a that's a mood i mean clerics are primary spell casters right like they get all nine levels of spells weapon attacks are always going to be secondary in in that case that that would be the case i think with blade singers with different kinds of bards i think if you get access to something that boosts your cantrips in some way because they already scale and you're doubling up on your casting stats you don't have to split your asis get feats earlier that kind of thing like what it's hard not to do that even if you're like a like i've seen some hardcore role players like should i really like this you know this idea of it's it's not working um so i think the way to do it it would be to uh through homebrew would be one way if i really had a cleric player who was like i i want my weapon attacks to be better than my my cantrips because it's not like they're terribly far behind it they are worse which you know that's to be expected they don't get extra attack all that kind of thing even war cleric gets like five extra attacks a day at the best i like work lyrics um but uh yeah and i so i either homebrew something give them a blade style cantrip green flame blade or booming blade or something uh i'd stick away from the smites i think that's paladin territory but something that's like yeah extra damage when you hit or you can split that damage or to me something that's like i you summon the gods weapon is cool like most of my options are our home brew you know things like you get like shadow blade but it will bump it up a level and call it something different and it's it's like really good and you can have that alongside your spirit weapon that sounds and all that other good stuff or maybe a spell that lets them transform themselves and get a whole bunch of really really you know really nice buffs like another different style of tensor's transformation or tasha's otherworldly transformation or even just like a shilly style spell for uh forum would be good so those are ways that i would do it but to me they're all they're all home brewed because the situation is is that weapon attacks are always going to be second uh for clerics especially after like level four four so everybody else gets extra attack and they don't and then the ones that do still have to wait till eighth level to get anything good eighth level weapon clerics have to wait come on that's a shame anyway let's look at the features we're gonna get into it i have some nitpicks about the cleric as much as i love them so looking at the class features especially for the base class it's immediately apparent that the divine domains are carrying the load here in terms of like changes to the core class that make for interesting choices or change the way the base class plays and like right like most of the heavy lifting of what makes a cleric interesting is in the divine domains and then also the spell list and so spell casting is first here we'll just dive right into it love the low level clear expel list there's so many great iconic spells on it um there's they're so good that you might be tempted to just continue using them even though you've got fourth fifth sixth seventh day rifle spells i know that's not true fifth level is a really good level for cleric spells i think but to me like once you hit level four it's like okay i got death ward freedom of movements nice spell control water because moses did it uh i you know it's like i i think of other classes spell lists it i still i can pick out and identify classic spells even after you know up to the ninth level and like there's still some good ones i i think tasha's uh the optional ones that uh that tasha's ads are pretty non-optional really ought to just be part of the cleric spell list i really think there are to be more i think that you can justify things like meteor swarm tsunami if they've got earthquake why not those when these are summoning natural disasters that surely that's within the purview of the gods to grant one of their clerics that can cast seventh eighth and ninth level spells right on the wizard who cares if everybody's getting their stuff stolen 5e nobody has any class protection anymore you know it's night level let them go loose yeah at least give them wish you know but i also sort of think it's like sort of things like everybody if you get to ninth level you get wish sorry wizards give we'll give you other things you know anyway that's just my personal opinion i like that the divine domain spells add some variety and there are some choices about what's a divine domain spell that maybe scratch my head when it gets to the divine domains but for the most part i think they had a lot of great variety their spells you would expect to see given the theme of the domain et cetera i mostly uh well i'll get into it into the improvement so i want to want to jump ahead of myself so that's the spell casting this really carries most of the weight of the the core features of the cleric class and clerics are a full spellcaster that's just sort of how it should be and i think that if anything it's when i think of other classes that are full spellcasters i want them to be up to the clerics level in terms of how their subclass changes how the base class plays in that you know you could be you stick with that caster or maybe now you're trying to mix it up in melee doing your weapon damage occasionally but probably just still sticking with those cant trips or just word of radiancing it up in your heavy armor over there you know buffing your allies that kind of thing you know like there's all kinds of different ways you can play depending on the divine domain that you choose and so to get into this feature like there's first off there's 14 of them and i didn't count ahead of time because i only just now thought of it but i don't know if that's the most of any subclass i'll keep an eye on chat maybe somebody has that answer for me but 14. there's a lot of options there and if you like the base class you're like yeah my next campaign through i didn't get enough of the cleric but i'm tired of you know light tired of being a you know low-rent wizard you know so i'll be something i'll go forge or something i like the fire but i want to mix up in melee or something so i think that is a really strong part of the class obviously there's some stinkers uh in nature cleric comes to mind uh war not as good as it could be i might just i i want to love it so much but i just i can't i do like arcana i think that that's a fun uh classic arcane uh even though it's it's situationally useful and i think some of its stronger features come in later but mostly what i like about the divine domains is the range of concepts they cover and how many different kinds of priestly champion in the service of a higher power you can play using this variety and and it was really cool and i think it strikes a nice balance between some of my favorite attempts at the cleric from prior editions and that's what ultimately what i really like uh clerics much to do divine dominity goodness jim divine divinity channel divinity thank you brain uh is the second of the uh really big core class features next to spell casting that claire gets and i think every class ought to have one of these things especially the spell casters because it's easy to see the spells as like oh yeah these are your class features you know feast and like it's one of the reasons why i don't like playing wizards in 5v i've been trying to hold off talking about wizards but i just can't do it anymore the spells aren't enough i need a little more when i'm a player and i like that like the cleric has more and i like that it's tied to the channel divinity you get the core feature of turn undead situationally useful but still useful when it's useful and then it's that it's a vector vehicle for the divine domains theme to come out in other ways i think is really interesting and a really cool feature i'm curious to see how they iterate on it and uh and and develop it further uh the next iteration of dnd unfortunately destroy undead which would be really cool comes in too late to be appreciated and i think it ought to be moved to level three it's just i'm just gonna get it out of the way uh when it's you know you're like level three you're like oh man skeleton zombies that could still be a real threat let's i would love to just watch them explode in a shower of bone shards before i can just have my wizard fireball them or turn out spirit guardians and disintegrate them you know just like for an adventure or two um divine intervention and that's it we're at the end of the core class features of the clear by the way i have seen this successfully used three times in a campaign before level 20. and each one of them like twice i was at level 10 uh those deep percentile came up hot and some kind of guidance or appreciation because you look at the the chance that it's gonna uh that's gonna proc you're like oh yeah no no way i'm not gonna devote any brain power to this sure yeah go ahead and roll that nine all right what do you ask for and like seeing it as like a bootleg version of wish is easy and just really looking at the cleric spell list like it does this but i know in my heart of hearts i i just know deep down that if i was the player and i get this chain i get i roll on you know roll on the d percentile and it gets that it gets in that narrow window and it's just like yeah it's like a ninth little spell or an eighth level spell be like really really this is divine intervention come on you can't send a solar you can't split the heavens like a sheet and do something cool and as a dm i'm over here going i'd love to do that uh you're gonna get what you get on the spur the moment thing like this and so i i this is where i would love to have more guidance from the rules i think things like mythic odysseys theros is should be in the dmg like there's a lot of great stuff in there i've mentioned before that's uh i think it's really good advice for gm's on how to run a divine intervention what it's like for these gods in a fantasy setting to go like okay i heard you this time not just the regular stuff but the good the good the good aid the good assistance yep i got you and um you know that's a moment that uh is easy to drop a ball on and easy to feel like oh that could have been cooler you know anyway i love it i think you should get it earlier first level base chance and then a percentage upwards and then as often as you get it to work and then once it works you get a cooldown um that kind of thing it's the panic button uh in in my uh in one of my wishlist versions of d d it's the only feature that the cleric gets and you have to negotiate each time with the dm and it would work better than the last time i actually tried that which was a disaster so i'm going to answer some other questions and then we're gonna talk more about every dungeons dragons players favorite topic uh their personalized unique and special edition of d d that wizards of the coast is going to make for them starting tomorrow all right here we go it's got some other questions here um we have a question from owissie and does it look what does it look like when a tempest cleric or other cleric not to a dis not to a distinct god uses divine intervention or another distinctly divine power does that distinction matter that's a good question i i think like it's worth thought as a player if you're going with like you know my cleric worship's a force or a philosophy or you know it's an embodiment of some sort of mystery cult or something so the whole point is that you don't know what the god is or the divinity is otherwise wouldn't be a mystery cult i think that it's okay to sort of use like i'm not just i'm trying to come at the kind of way to describe it because in my head it's like just i can't have an idea but it's not verbal uh it's like omens and signs like where your magic is serendipitous or it's it's like wait wait a minute was was that magic or did something weird just happen uninexplicably like i'm thinking of the game mage you may or may not be familiar with it but one of the world of darkness games you play mages and the idea is that magic is about bending reality which is a consensus to your specific point of view and and how far you've been that out of alignment with what consensus reality is determines whether or not you generate paradox and backlash and the like so a good example is you want to summon a lightning bolt well you could have it just pop out of your hand whatever but reality is not going to like that if it jumps from that power transformer up there and hits the bad guys that's another matter that could plausibly happen you didn't have you know it might have happened you know uh maybe the bad guys just forgot to put bullets in their guns today you know that that could happen so that's the kind of magic i'm thinking about in that case where it's like they're invoking something about creation that they are invoking something about it which is you know the dna world creation is suffused with magic it's it's a it's not a separation between natural and supernatural it's one thing all mixed up that they're invoking that and then saying like yeah you know the gods that's great i don't need those intercessors intermediaries i'm connecting directly with this uh with this divinity of creation and so creation responds serendipitously wow that was really lucky that's how i would do it and i think that's an interesting way as opposed to like big flashy effects and you know like a spectral manifestation of you know the deity you know appearing and swinging a big flaming sword or something that's cool too but it's also like did the ground just swallow that person did that just happen you know and that kind of thing is where did that rock come from did a bird just drop that i don't know that could be silly could be cool it really depends on the player but that's uh that is my starting point for it i hope that gets you going all right there we go this one all right for max walker how much it was just a second i actually read it uh how much you get at the concept of a big tent revival preacher as a cleric and not as a divine soul sorcerer which seems so much easier mechanically all right so um i as someone who has spent a lot of time at revivals uh in not as many in big tents but not zero right um i'll say this there's a wide variety of preaching styles and the sort of fire and brimstone gets you pumped up charismatic preachers one of those and there's plenty of revivals that are like you know what you need you need a good sunday school lesson you know you know what you know what you need to get back on track is you when you're gonna break down this you know these verses from this this book of the bible and this other book we're going to cross reference them and we're going to go back to the greek and ancient hebrew and all kinds of things and help you understand what you know and once you understand you'll be able to see how this can be applied to your own life and walk the walk talk to talk cetera et cetera and uh amen um and then there's others that are about you know feelings how do you feel how are you you know are you feeling something is there something weighing you down something on your mind something you're worried about thinking considering maybe that's god maybe that's her when i think of wisdom that's the cleric's core stat and in the description of the cleric that specifically calls out they do not cast their spells through training or study right they intuitively understand what what it's like what they intuit the god's will they they manifest this magic through spell slots through spell casting which is one of the ways the gods are able to enact their will in the world is through clerical magic and so when you think of it that way of just this is someone that can just read a room or feel their way through it whereas like when i think of a charisma-based divine soul they're someone's like no i've got a feeling i want you to feel and i'm gonna bring you there whereas the wisdom based is like what what's everybody feeling i want to meet them where they're at and so i to me that's the hook for it is is the charisma is like all right i'm gonna get i'm gonna get you pumped up you're gonna you know you're coming with me whatever it is we're doing i'm gonna lead us there and it's gonna be great awesome you know like i just i was born this way it's great like the gods blessed me and the clerics are going like wow but do you really understand what it is that powers your divine soul and to me that's that's kind of um that's the hook that i would go with and in that way you can still have the pump them up fire and brimstone you know hellfire style if that's where the crowd's at then they can meet him there charisma is often a very good secondary stat for um for clerics they can substitute as a party face they got spells to support it depending on the domain you pick there's a lot of a lot of you know ways that they can fill in for a face or even service one wholesale depending on the player in the build so yeah i think divine soul sorcerer seems mechanically uh easier but think of it from like insight is the other key social skill and it's wisdom and so i think that's the uh that's the angle i would uh i'd go with yeah so yeah yeah let me go check it out as someone who often is like oh yeah what is my instinct telling me then i get in trouble when i listen to it so you know that i don't know that i'd make a great cleric in that sense probably a better office so i think i could be a sorcerer i think i think that's my class uh everybody wants to be something really cool but i think it was a sorcerer i guess that's pretty cool um barbarian naming i don't know i don't think i'm athletic enough for that anyway uh nikola asks uh do you think turn undead should be switched with more specialized channel divinities for evil neutral or unique deities honestly i think it should become a spell and then just derive it and i don't i do think that having channel divinity and non-spell-like but magical ability uh for a magical class is just what what you get and so i want to take channel divinity away i want to give more options for it i like the options and tasha's i think that there ought to be evil and neutral options i think that you know part of what the divine domains are doing is providing that um but i also think there could just be more options for base use of channel divinity besides turn undead and i think it's a good um place to home brew options uh for your cleric players and the like um i appreciate that super chat thank you uh there would and um yeah so i i definitely think there's space for it and like i've never been satisfied with the command or rebuke undead for for evil options or like all right yeah well it makes sense that the good aligned clerics are sinding undead fleeing from the uh holy light of their symbols and the like but like i don't know not every evil deities into necromancy sorry you know i hate to break it to you so yeah it could be that there's other types of creatures that that could be turned or rebuked to me that that's the first place is to open it up to fiends and elementals and fae and aberrations and then either you know when it's used or maybe pick at character creation depending on you know your preference that's how you differentiate it so you can say i'm trained to fight you know threats from the far realm i think monster hunter is a great concept for a cleric right i think it's a great i think if cleric fits just like what do you do i'm a monster hunter i hunt monsters i can protect myself from them i can heal up after i can trap them send them back to their home planes you know that kind of thing it's just cool just a cool concept uh i think more options for channel divinity would be neat be interesting make for the make the class more satisfying to play all right michael asks so war clerics are one of my favorite domains but even i know they need some work could a potential fix uh could a potential fix be a channel divinity that gives you extra attack for a minute but instead of list of modifiers per day yeah i mean i think if they were going to rewrite it now it would be like proficiency long rest and i mean even that is i'm not that's even that's not satisfying because i really would like something that's it doesn't need to be full on extra attack right but something that either increases their damage or or lets them add their wisdom to their weapon attacks or something like letting them feel like like satisfied with using a melee weapon and not being like all right i just have to get over the fact that i could be doing more damage sacred flame and other things um and what that is without just saying like all right that you just have extra attack like it was but and then like they have to use your bonus action for it uh is it's the other uh it's the other real kicker which is eats up the other bonus actually i just there's more domain i don't want to be discarded i think it fulfills one of the core concepts of the cleric and what i what i want is it for you to just have a fresh coat of pain i think if you were doing it now there it would either be like a stance you can go in like you're saying like you activate this thing and then for this period of time you're in like beast mode whatever your war mode uh and i think that'd be really cool let the war god possess you or something you could even like let's dip a little bit into barbarian you know i think there's there's uh there's space to play around with some of the concepts berserker is playing with for this and you see like without the uh the crippling exhaustion although three levels of exhaustion you can get through a fight if you've got rage going with three levels of exhaustion and barbarian it's not gonna be pretty uh you better hope there's not a lot of spell casters there but you can do it you'll get through anyway i think there's there's fun stuff you could do with average like yeah you're people you've let tempus or or any other war gods like you know possess you with a portion of their spirit then yeah you ought to fight like a demon or angel yes maybe and i don't know if i was doing that it would be like yeah for a minute you get this you become a martial character or something so like you have your own uh rage maybe you're limited in what spell casting you can do during that maybe it's like touch spells only or spells that buff yourself uh you know something like that or or maybe you can cast spells which is nothing with a concentration although that'd be really pampering i think given all the great concentration spells you'd have as a cleric but you can even go the opposite and it's something that that gives you protection like yeah if you're concentrating on a spell when you enter into this because you're going to be in melee because you're going to be hit more often and you're putting like from a meta level you are pooling your hit points at the top of the queue for whittling away if you think of all of the party's hit points as one big resource and then that is the ultimate game's over if this thing runs out the ranged casters and ranged attackers their hp are further down that priority ladder and if you're going to say no you i've got the ac and i've got enough hp and this boosts me i'm like i will i'll be on the front line i'll risk my hit points getting whittled down first in order to contribute to our success and and with the war god's blessing i will do that and then you just like let them hulk out for a bit and like my head's like they're ripping people in half and throwing them around and then i'm quickly into barbarian territory so yeah it needs love i feel you on that i played a war clear a couple of times and like the thing that i found was there's so many fiddly bits with the war cleric of like i can do this and it's a war war priest and or god's blessing and this then but with his bonus action that like i was five feet from one of our uh ranger players and like completely forgot i could be giving them bonuses to their uh to their attacks just because that there's so many little options when you throw in spells for me i am a i like a simple class we'll get to fighter i'm just going to be like why they all need to be champions um i'm a simple class simple man i have simple needs and and so i found that was a real hindrance for the war cleric because i got done playing them and i was like oh wait like none of the resources i have from the class were used maybe that's because i you know don't play that much more fifth edition than i used to still rusty on it um so maybe more passive bonuses would be good for cleric all right one last question i'm going to talk about i get to control everything what i would do and then what i actually think or hope might happen uh all right hey freaking paco there's some obscure rule that allows pious characters for 10 days to get inspiration for 2d6 days it's in the dmg as well as blessings 2 is in the dmg is the dmg too far from players for these rules yeah i mean i like these rules i really do and like the blessings i feel are underused the there's others like charms and the boot like epic boom so i was like don't wait till 20th level you can give them give those earlier but blessings are one of those things that i use and tie with features of like a dungeon or wilderness landscape or something so if i'm running like a sandbox whatever then you know if you know that you visit this shrine and make this offering then you'll get this blessing and the just like cast this spell three times is i think fine i you know it's a good way to express like the benefits of a blessing in a way that's immediately intelligible to players as long as they understand spellcasting and i i try to use it as much as i can now getting players to act on it getting players to both recognize that this is a shrine it's a fantasy world if i make an offering what'll happen for a lot of players either that kind of curiosity never kicks in or they only encounter evil alters and shrines they're like no way am i making an offering there but i'd let them i'm not going to stop a player if they want to do something terrible so it's it's like i usually put them in there but they're not always seen of the like so to me it really is about getting players to think like this is a fantasy world there are blessings to be found they're supernatural gifts to to find and like they said being a pious characters or spending these 10 days of prayer and contemplation to get inspiration like mostly i think it's inspiration needs to do more for that like there is a long time just to get inspiration um but that's the idea behind it that you would spend a little time to get this little benefit it's the same thing with like there's a some some rule somewhere where it's like okay clerics can spend time in religious service to the nearest temple and get half off of spell casting uh that they would receive from that temple and there's some games where that is perfect that's like just what you need because you are scraping behind cash and you don't have enough to get the kind of healing magic that you're required and that discount is going to be that's going to get you over that hump and into the home stretch to third level you know and other games is like what why do we care about that like if we need spells cast we cast them ourselves or you know the npc's do it because it's this game requires that the story requires it whatever so um i mostly what i wish is that all of those things were better organized and that there was some sort of index or compendium to all of the little tidbits and nuggets that are in fifth edition by now that's like you know on this book on this page there's this table that's perfect for xyz reasons i don't know that's that sounds like something that a youtube content creator would have to to make i don't know anybody who would be able to do that uh so uh improvements where's the clarinet improve tweaks only here we're not looking at major improvements big thing that jumps out to me with the cleric is that its distribution of features is really uneven i i i've uh i can see myself playing a cleric i've never played one at a high level but i can see myself getting to about seventh eighth level or so definitely by tenth just being like that is it i'm done like i've got another ten levels of my good new spells but so does every night you know full caster that's you know like getting a lot of stuff early on it's you know there's a ton of great stuff for tier one cleric is great tier two but to me like by tier three and four it feels so much less and that might just be because d d keeps putting 20 levels in and really just needs to deal with 10. that's entirely could be the case whether that happens or not is another another matter entirely but i think you could like smooth that out but some features get a little bit earlier i said i think divine intervention you could go as early as level one and it still be uh all right as long as you had good guidelines for the gm that they could quickly read understand and make a ruling ons that doesn't stall the game too long or derail it and you know that kind of thing it could be a really interesting feature that defines the class but things like destroy undead i think it earlier the level eight feature whether that's potent spell casting or divine strikes or blessed strikes i think that ought to come at six level um those sorts of things and then smooth out both better spells like with better spell list a lot of those dead levels get easier to take and then just maybe there's more we could do maybe there's more ideas we could play with lean into something about the class that the spells usually carry the load on but maybe a non-spell magical ability could do you know right like monks and paladins have a healing pool and clerics you know get some use some of those spell slots for something else so there's something there that i'd like to see something that's a bit more evened out um but i suspect the answer is is d d is the level is a 10 level game and 20 levels out of the sense of continuity and nostalgia and yeah okay all right i love 20th overall d d but it doesn't need to be core or standard in the player's handbook it can be optional so um okay i see it's not uh it's 10 day downtown activity 2-d day 2-6 days starting with a point of inspiration i got you okay so every day for those 2d6 days man i'd be really upset if i got two days all right okay so um the other big thing uh improvement for uh clerics are their spell lists i i think for me they're after level three it really falls off fourth level spells for clerics are one of those like i just what's going on here fifth you got a lot of good ones but then by sixth seventh like at each level there's something right there's something you prepare and use like but it's just four spells for eighth and ninth level come on really really and you know there's some really cool spells on there it's not like that it's just listen it's not the druid spell list okay let's be honest it's not the druid's bonus but i want something more and so i either want like the divine domain spell list to extend all the way up to ninth level you know we can do one spell uh for six seventh eighth and ninth you know we don't we don't need two you know not greedy over here but something we are the divine champions right we're conduits for the magic of the gods surely they can throw us some night level spells beyond the four we get don't let those wizards show you up gods don't let them do it all right uh i think that uh divine intervention ought to have a base percent chance and then a level uh on top of it i think it you know proc more often it ought to come up it ought to be something that you like uh you know look at and look to to use in in situations and that you can hope for will you know you'll get a chance to use it and see it before you get to 20th level and i don't know maybe i've just been i guess i have been lucky and i've seen it so many times but i don't know i really like it i like the idea behind it i think that it is interesting it's very group and dm dependent so more guidelines for how to rule in those moments would be appreciated even if they're in a different section in the dmg i mean the like throw it in with all the rules for ruling on wishes and how you handle those things which used to be guidelines for in the dmg he's be able to tell you how you handle this when this comes up um so it'd be nice to have that added in but we're not talking about a full-on revision of d d just how we'd improve the clear class um i think that uh the options and tasha's ought to just be standard like they're they're all add to the class they'll add something interesting and neat to it and i really hope that they go in that direction giving you more uses for your channel divinity besides turn undead and what's in the divine domain giving you some versatility what kind of attacks you have and letting the melee clerics get a little bit of love in with blessed strikes and still you know letting them get uh some benefit from when they do cast their spells you know i think that's okay um really though what i'm looking for is like something that helps with filling in the concepts as well like so i want to see more domains represented i'd like to see more of the elemental domains represented there's a lot of dnd settings where clerics who worship elemental powers or various gods that reside on the elemental planes present dark sun a bunch of stuff in planescape you know and i think it's it's it's there there's you know an adventure where you fight you know cults of elemental evil but you couldn't make one you'd have to make a druid or a wizard or something it's like wait a minute that's not isn't the cleric the one that's supposed to do this uh so i think if you just you know you already cobbled together something with tempest and forge and light it'd be interesting to see something that that was a bit more earth-themed a bit more water themed a bit more you know like really air themed like but they don't need to be actually like fire air earth and they could be like they are now where it's like this is light it works for a lot of different concepts this is tempest it works for a lot of different concepts we'll switch out control water and some other stuff if you're an air air cleric something like that i think there's some still some concepts missing from what the cleric can do that i'd like to see improved uh now if i've got control of everything uh we'll end on this one and then maybe we've got one one last question but uh if i got control of everything deity is mine and you're all forced to play my bespoke personalized version of this game uh for forever and ever then claire's keeping track of their piety i think piety ought to be standard in the way that like encumbrance is standard it's ignored by a great many groups and not to the detriment of their games they have plenty of fun without it but it's still the default it's still like it's assumed that you pick a cleric then you as a player have chosen to bring in this extra mechanic with you and i think as long as you keep it simple three strictures three like do this don't do this do this you know that kind of thing keep it simple don't make it so that the class becomes ungamable too many times d gets in its own way and it's like oh yeah they've got this restriction that's for role-playing it's like yeah but it means i can't adventure you know so they've had they have to be things that accommodate the adventurous lifestyle uh that uh you're here for d d for you know and uh i think it would give something and if you want to ignore it you can right it doesn't require it and and i think it's if you present it to something that's like this will fluctuate and change constantly part of the interesting element of playing the cleric is managing this fluctuating number and what it means when you've done something that offends the gods are you trying to cast augury after you were just in that battle why are you doing that you know you can't profane the god's sacred presence when you've got blood on your hands it doesn't matter who or what was going on you just don't do that wash your hands then you can talk to me that's just how gods are and i think that having that baked into the class uh would be really fun um i i'd really love love to see some uh it's more spelt like abilities right some more just inherent powers that clerics get because of their connection you know i think there is a much finer line thematically and in the like between cleric and warlock but mechanically i'd like to see more overlap i really like what's going on mechanically with warlocks and think it could work for uh for um so yeah that's a uh those are some some places where i'd start a bit more radical would be like cut the cleric spell list in half to its core functions only healing party support strong divinations that's what cleric spell casting has done well and always has and then massively expand the domain spellis and you get all the domain spells of your god still only get the powers of one of the domains but like god has you know every god i have at least two domains i think in this setup but yeah you get all of them they uh that's the god's magic that they give you and it's that fills it in and brings it back up and so then each cleric really does have a very unique spell list but still has like pure wounds healing word lesser restoration uh personally i'd get rid of revivify uh but that's just me and and bump down some of the other uh cleric spells i think things like uh stone shape could be a little bit lower level um but uh those are the things the really big ones um the other thing that occurs to me is like just reading through the player's handbook description of the cleric there's a lot of really great background prompts what's the relationship between your cleric and the nearest temple and how do you fit into the priestly hierarchy that kind of thing and it's like right before the you know here's how you do a quick build here's how you actually make a cleric and i would love to see those questions move to the here's how you make a client cleric section and and present it similar to how like the bonds ideals and flaws are for uh backgrounds with like prompts for the player in gm of like all right who is this god which worship where is this temple where is it on the map and like hey dm you're guess what one of your players decided to make a cleric you need to think about xyz you know that this would be really good to think about as a way to incorporate uh these elements of the class more fully into the campaign for that player that wants a really engaged satisfying uh clear experience yeah i mean you could ignore it if you don't want you know that's a one of the wonderful things about the game but i think to me the heart of it really is like all right okay i've been chosen by the gods to manifest their divine power i'll i'll swallow thee it works just like spell casting pill that's fine i'll accept you know i'll my suspension of disbelief won't snap because of that but to then in the course of play never have to worry about that relationship i find unsatisfying as a player and i and that's that's what i'm looking for i also when i play barbarians i want to meet the tote the bear totem i want to have to go talk to him before i use that power you know that's the kind of play that i want i want to dig deep into those details as part of the adventure uh you know not as a distracting side track but as as an element of of you know whatever fantastic adventure we're going on and i think that'd be really cool and i'd love to see the clerk go there and you know maybe in my dreams i'll enjoy it and that's we'll all just share that and have that with us all right last question that i'm going to head out uh so we've got uh i've got a last question here greetings sir any advice for a humble cleric of augma that took a lightning bolt from blue college to the test all those blessings be with you uh from malphizar um any advice goodness uh so i would stay away from ferrous metals and uh that's really the the big thing that i would do i'd hope that ogma would have some way to help you out that situation at the very least send a paladin uh perhaps a revenant paladin even uh to deal with the dracolich but you know who knows good luck with the prayers and the offerings and uh last one here from wood division uh what's the one domain you would delete from the game because it's so bad or badly designed nature nature nature beasts for relevant for tier one maybe a little bit of tier two and if i want to play a druid i'll just play druid uh for the united i i get why it's there i in the i understand from from a lore perspective from a concept perspective i understand and there's a place where nature domain is the elemental druid they're trying to do that a bit i think but they've got all these spells and abilities they're like these deal with beasts and you oh oh you can charm a beast that's been of something or you command one that's been charmed it's like oh it's 17th level thanks how many beasts am i i just i don't i don't care for it i think it's like a like a pine forest burn it down and let it regrow as something something new uh and that's that's uh that's how i feel about it so yeah i even like more domain is redeemable as is just heavy tweaks but you don't need to start from scratch nature domain needs to start from scratch i'm afraid um it sucks that's too bad so yeah that's uh that's my final opinion had a really good time i'm i'm looking forward to some of these we will go through all of them i i'm looking at them from uh sort of like where do i think they're uh they're headed but i like to start off with one that i really enjoyed because i'm i'm anticipating getting into some of the classes and just being nothing but a gripe fest so i look forward to those weeks and i hope you do too and i hope that those gripes help get you through your week until then come and check us out on patreon uh if you get a chance if you like supporting the show and enjoy our numerous back catalog videos uh and uh yeah appreciate it thanks for supporting the show the channel and we'll talk to you next week

Channel: Web DM

Views: 19,604

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, d&d, dungeons & dragons, dnd, 5e, web dm, webdm, jim davis, 5th edition, ttrpg, rpg, roleplaying game, tabletop, game master, dungeon master, prep, campaign, faction, session prep, how to play dungeons and dragons, dm, gm, dungeon, monsters, live, wotc, 6e dnd, d&d 6e announced, 5.5e, clerics, cleric, divine, spellcaster, class, player class, player options, tasha's cauldron, domain, divinity, gods, forgotten realms

Id: 4OASWdj8LYY

Length: 67min 1sec (4021 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2022