Cleric Redesign

[dmnqwk]

I am sure many are satisfied with the Cleric in 5th edition, but I feel they are very lacklustre in their use when you compare them to Bards or Druids. Whether it's the terrible job the game did on giving Clerics a dexterity save cantrip spell, or that a lot of their damage is tied entirely to spells, making their melee capabilities so much worse than previous editions (to the point that I put them on par with Wizards, who at least have cantrip damage).

Because of this I wanted to focus on giving Clerics something that makes them feel a positive choice:

1) I wanted to ensure they could actually deal damage, in the same way other classes can heal and still provide a damage output from 6th level onwards.
2) I wanted to give Clerics a choice in how they played, so every cleric did not feel identical with a few domain sprinkles once or twice a day.

So, here I present my initial design for a new and improved Cleric. (please note abilities and archetype names are placeholders until I define them sufficiently to name them).

1st level: Spellcasting (same as current), Domains (altered)
2nd Level: Turn Undead (altered)
3rd Level: Cleric Archetype
6th Level: Archetype Ability
9th Level: Destroy Undead (altered)
10th Level: Heavenly Blessing
12th Level: Archetype Ability
14th Level: Divine Assistance
18th Level: Archetype Ability
20th Level: Divine Inspiration

Domains: Each Cleric choose their 1st Domain at level 1 and a 2nd Domain at level 5. They gain the bonuses listed and the spells listed are added to their spell lists, and do not count against the number of spells memorized per day (they are always memorized in addition to your selection).

Death Domain: At 1st level you know the Chill Touch cantrip. You also have advantage on death saving throws.
Domain Spells: 1st) False Life, 3rd) Ray of Enfeeblement, 5th) Vampiric Touch, 7th) Blight, 9th) Cloudkill

Knowledge Domain: You gain 2 knowledge skill proficiencies and Expertise in them (as current).
Domain Spells: 1st) Identify, 3rd) Augury, 5th) Nondetection, 7th) Arcane Eye, 9th) Legend Lore

Life Domain: When you cast a healing spell you may add your proficiency bonus to the result. (this seems very powerful because all life spells are already available to a cleric) Domain Spells: 1st) Cure Wounds, 3rd) Lesser Restorarion, 5th) Revivify, 7th) Death Ward, 9th) Mass Cure Wounds.

Light Domain: You know the Light and Produce Flame cantrips.
Domain Spells: 1st) Burning Hands, 3rd) Scorching Ray, 5th) Daylight, 7th) Wall of Fire, 9th) Flame Strike. (I think fireball is a bit too powerful at 5th, but feel free to comment if you disagree)

Nature Domain: You are proficient in the Nature skill and know the Thorn Whip cantrip.
Domain Spells: 1st) Animal Friendship, 3rd) Spike Growth, 5th) Plant Growth, 7th) Grasping Vine, 9th) Tree Stride

Tempest Domain: You have resistance to Thunder damage and know the Shocking Grasp cantrip.
Domain Spells: 1st) Fog Cloud, 3rd) Shatter, 5th) Sleet Storm, 7th) Ice Storm, 9th) Destructive Wave

Trickery Domain: You are proficient in stealth and you ignore the disadvantage to stealth with light or medium armour.
Domain Spells: 1st) Disguise Self, 3rd) Mirror Image, 5th) Blink, 7th) Dimension Door, 9th) Modify Memory

War Domain: You may choose a fighting style from the Paladin list
Domain Spells: 1st) Divine Favour, 3rd) Magic Weapon, 5th) Crusader's Mantle, 7th) Stoneskin, 9th) Hold Monster

Turn Undead: If they fail their saving throw at the end of their turn (so not the initial one) they suffer 1d6 radiant damage (increasing to 2d6 at 6th and 3d6 at 18th) in addition to the current effect (please note they only suffer the damage while they can see the subject of their fear, meaning if they hide around corners or run away they do not suffer the damage).
Destroy Undead: is moved to 9th level and affect monsters with a CR equal to 1/4 your level. (round down of course)

Heavenly Blessing: You have advantage on Wisdom and Charisma saving throws. (seems powerful but it only applies to the saving throws they are already proficient in).

Divine Assistance: Once per day you may re-roll a failed ability check or saving throw. You must accept the new result. At 18th level the re-roll is made with advantage.

Divine Inspiration: Automatically succeeds. If you try to use it again before a week is up there is a 20% chance it will work. Once failed you cannot try again until the 7 days are up.

Cleric Archetype - Templar
3rd Level: You gain proficiency with heavy armour and martial weapons.
3rd Level: A number of times per day equal to your wisdom modifier you may use a Bonus Action to make an extra melee attack. At 17th level you make two additional melee attacks when you use this ability.
6th Level: When you strike with a melee attack you deal an additional 1d8 radiant damage. At 11th level this increases to 2d8.
12th Level: Once per rest you sprout a pair of Angelic Wings that carry you forth. As a bonus action you can gain a fly speed of three times your normal distance. You must end your movement on the ground.
18th Level: Once per day you may use your Action to grant Advantage on all attack rolls made by allies within 60' for 1 round.

Cleric Archetype - Spiritualist
3rd Level: Spiritual Recovery (Arcane recovery with a cleric name)
3rd Level: A number of times per day equal to your wisdom modifier when you target a single ally with a spell, a foe within 30' takes radiant damage equal to 1d4/spell slot.
6th Level: Add your wisdom modifier to your cantrip damage.
12th Level: When you cast a spell which targets an ally they gain temporary hit points equal to 3 times your cleric level.
18th Level: Once per day you may use your Action to impose disadvantage on saving throws to all creatures within 60' for 1 round.

I feel as though Clerics have been weakened by being left as "healbots" without giving them sufficient damage output to let them function as they used to, which is to say second line fighters. Ensuring their AoE damage is not boosted too high prevents them from becoming Wizards with healing, but still makes them useful in many fights and hopefully these changes can go a long way to ensuring people who choose Clerics pick them for offensive reasons as well as their usual protective magic.

Changelog:
16/12 Light Domain bonus changed from Fire Bolt to Produce Flame cantrips.
16/12 Favoured Soul renamed Templar. 6th level: Extra Attack replaced with Additional Radiant damage per hit. 12th level Additional damage per hit replaced with temporary speed boost
16/12 Both Archetype level 18 powers changed from Bonus Actions to Actions and reduced to 1/day from 2/day. 18th level Spiritualist ability altered to affect all creatures within 60'.

 

[Lojak]

I tend to agree that the cleric class needs something and I like a lot of these ideas. In particular, I think you are on the right track with breaking your two archetypes into the traditional armored martial cleric and then more of a cloistered cleric type of caster.

However, I think you might have overpowered them a bit. In particular, I worry that a "Favored Soul" (Maybe Templar for this?) is a paladin with 9 levels of casting which might be too much. He gets all armor, all weapons, two attacks, and a pseudo smite ability (though admittedly not until level 12).

One of the things I have found is that healing spells are weak overall in 5e. Its almost always a better decision to spend your action doing damage than healing. The only exception is when the heal will bring someone up from unconscious. Further, spending an entire turn healing is boring for some players. I have considered some house rules of my own to change how this works (using bonus actions to "heal" by allowing the target to spend HD) but I suppose that is another thread and discussion. However, I think that the weakness of healing in 5e is part of why clerics seem less attractive to play.

Have you tried this in actual play? How is it working? Does it make the cleric player more engaged with the class? Does it feel like it does too much damage for the amount of support it brings? Honestly, I do not think I have had a player even play a cleric yet in our group which, to me, signals a problem.

 

[dmnqwk]

I agree that compared to the Paladin it's a worry in how to handle a "martial-based" cleric.

At 14th level, a Warcaster Bard has Extra Attack, plus gets to cast a spell and make an attack in a single round. With the way Cantrips scale it's very tough in 5th edition to grant melee attacks to a martial-based caster and keep the focus on the martial aspect (At 17th level, the Valor Bard could have a 4d10 firebolt going out, then get to strike with a 1d8+3 weapon, which is fairly trivial as a % of the overall output).

If we don't give a Cleric extra attack the hard part is to create a system which focuses on the melee aspect of the class, while allowing the spells to support it (similar to Warcaster, or Eldritch Knight). The Cleric, btw, already gets the "psuedo smite" under War Domain, but without the extra attack it scales up to 2d8 (so a 14th level War Cleric can attack twice in a round through their domain power, and add 2d8 radiant damage to each attack already).

I've yet to try it out, the one shot I was going to try it in got cancelled due to no-shows so I'm going to have to wait on that (and the only other campaign I am in currently I'm already playing a Bard). I think maybe I'll have to look at using the Warcaster process of allowing cantrips + attacks, since it's what is demanded for most martial-based casters. (I'll edit the main page to show the changes)

 

[Li Shenron]

1) I wanted to ensure they could actually deal damage, in the same way other classes can heal and still provide a damage output from 6th level onwards.

Did you notice that 6 domains out of 8 grant Divine Strike, which is a significant damage bonus? It's +1d8 at level 8th increased to +2d8 at level 14th, and it's supposed to compensate for the lack of Extra Attacks (it's less good, but still pretty good). This is once per turn, so I am not sure that your Templar ability is actually better, since it grants additional attacks but is limited per day.

2) I wanted to give Clerics a choice in how they played, so every cleric did not feel identical with a few domain sprinkles once or twice a day.

You are replacing ONE default domain (which grants 10 spells) with TWO domains that now grant 5 spells each. I am not sure this substantially increases differentiation in practice... in theory it does because instead of 8 domains you now have 56 combinations of 2 domains, but at the same time now every cleric chooses 2 of them so it is also likely that there'll be a popular domain or two chosen very often as second domain.

Also what happened to Channel Divinity, are you restricting this now to Turn Undead only? Because domains also differente clerics even further thanks to the special uses of channel divinity!

It's ok to split the domain spells lists in half and let clerics choose two, but if you really want to to differentiate substantially, I would:

1) extend the domain spells to 9th level (so basically 18 spells per PHB domain instead of 10, or 9 instead of 5 if you use your domains)
2) cut the common cleric spell lists in half*

Now that will seriously have an effect against "samey" clerics.

*I'd especially remove all spells that have specific effects that can remove/bypass one adventuring problem entirely. For example, how about removing all these from the Cleric list, and fold them strictly into domains:

Create or Destroy Water, Detect Magic, Continual Flame, Find Traps, Locate Object, Silence, Zone of Truth, Animate Dead, Clairvoyance, Create Food and Water, Daylight, Meld into Stone, Tongues, Water Walk, Control Water, Divination, Freedom of Movement, Locate Creature, Stone Shape, Contagion, Insect Plague, Legend Lore, Raise Dead, Scrying, Blade Barrier, Create Undead, Find the Path, Harm, True Seeing, Word of Recall, Etherealness, Firestorm, Plane Shift, Resurrection, Antimagic Field, Control Weather, Earthquake, Astral Projection, True Resurrection.

In 3e we did something like that specifically because we wanted to differentiate clerics of various religions more. We also used this with critically popular spells such as Harm and Heal (they are not that critical in 5e anymore). We had Harm available only to clerics with the Destruction domain, and Heal only to clerics of the Healing domain, so you had to give up other precious domain-only spells to get them!

 

[dmnqwk]

I was hesitant to parse the Cleric spell list too much into domains, not because I don't agree it might improve things, but because I was concerned it may overly complicate the basic cleric class. I agree with another thread about removing the "divine casters seem to know every spell" and changing them to spells known, similar to how Rangers no longer know everything, so it's definitely an extension of creating a more robust cleric system.

On the topic of Clerics don't feel offensive enough, I believe that the game designers see Clerics as a "healer" in an edition of the game which doesn't directly support pure healers. Since Bards and Paladins got access to better healing, as well as Druids being put on an even footing for basic healing, I think Clerics need to be taken away from the idea they are healbots, and put on a path of equality with other caster classes (who you must agree have far superior options for cantrip damage, with the exception of Bards who have the choice to take one as a Magical Secret in the College of Lore, or simply get Extra Attack as a Valor Bard.)

The reason for splitting Domains was to grant 2 separate 1st level domain powers, which I'm sure you remember existed in 3rd edition, but ultimately control cantrip access at 1st level (Cantrips are WAY more powerful than people realise at first glance, by the time you hit Extra Attack mode any class with an inferior cantrip for damage can feel useless when forced to use "default" options. Lore Bards, at 5th level, have a poor 2d4 cantrip access while Clerics 2d8 rely on DEXTERITY saving throws, instead of attack rolls versus the amazing Firebolt of 2d10, or a Druid's 2d12 poison spray (Admittedly on a con save, but they also have 2d6 thorn whip which works with spike growth so nicely, or produce flame).

But more than simply giving Clerics stuff, it's the fact that Clerics do need some kind of identity which allows them the freedom granted by other Classes' archetypes. As you say, most Cleric offensive powers fall into the category of either bonus radiant damage, or bonus cantrip damage. Each domain is not really granting you a basic method of damage dealing, when resources are spent, that offers a reason to have Domains. Wizards (and Sorcs) both offer their diversity with a multitude of elemental cantrips.. but yet again someone felt Clerics "are only allowed Radiant damage", they couldn't even be bothered to give Chill Touch (a necrotic damage spell) to Clerics... purporting a terrible myth that clerics are healbots.

Ultimately If they continue with this terrible ideology that Clerics are goody goody healers, it's about time Paladin was removed as a class and moved to being a subtype of Cleric, with the other Archetype literally called "Healbot".