The Cleric's Channel Divinity

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I think Channel Divinity fails in its current design goal of having cleics draw from a separate pool of resources for healing.

The concern people expressed was that in Ye Olden Tymes clerics were expected to spend almost all their spell slots on healing, which made them boring to play.

The solution: create a separate pool of daily resources that clerics could use to heal!

But to make this really work, they'd have to make it so that clerics COULDN'T use their normal spells for basic healing. Otherwise, lots of parties would just expect clerics to use their normal spells AND their Channel Divinity to heal, leaving the clerics right where they started.

To make things even more confusing, sun-domain clerics can use their Channel Divinity for a weak AOE attack. So now they have two pools of daily resources with no clear division between them. More paperwork, less flexibility, no real benefit.

At this point, why not just nix Channel Divinity, add some more spell slots, and say that the Cure X Wounds spells are automatically prepared, like in 3e (and like Turn Undead in 5e)? Clerics may still feel pressured to use all their spells for healing, but at least there's less added complexity and a bit more flexibility.

The alternative that would actually fix the original complaint would be to leave in Channel Divinity and get rid of the Cure X Wounds and Heal spells altogether. But I can see a lot of traditionalists having a problem with a cleric who CAN'T cast healing spells.

 

[Rhenny]

Am I missing something? Some of the points people are bringing up are addressed within the second playtest packet. Is there a third? For example, Channel Divinity is already a heal-plus-attack for the War domain. And the Sun domain turns it into a burst damage effect. That's just the level 2 benefit for the only 2 domains debuting so far. As for it being a third resource, it really isn't. It's a third class feature, but only a second resource. The misunderstanding might be that domain is a class feature that interacts with a cleric's existing resources. Domains aren't a separate pool of resources, they just give additional options for the two existing pools. I'm also of the opinion that they are doing a great job of differentiating the domains this time around. Before, it just struck me as a slightly different spell list. Now a Sun Cleric seems vastly different from a War Cleric, and Channel Divinity is part of that equation.

Personally, I like Channel Divinity. It gives a bit of healing to Clerics who really don't care to specialize in it, and it can let the Cleric do things that spells (as currently written, at least) can't quite do, or so it seems to me. I would expect that Channel Divinity will be a class feature of any divine class, and there may be a series of "Channel Divinity" feats that are not specific to class, such as extra uses or increased CD die size.

I agree. Channel Divinity should reflect the type of diety the Cleric worships and the powers should be linked to domains. The name itself signals that the Cleric is channeling the power of his or her diety. Spells are much more generic.

 

[Sadrik]

I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function. All characters also have hit dice to heal their wounds. Simplify the game, extraneous resources do not need to be managed.

 

[shadowmane]

I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function. All characters also have hit dice to heal their wounds. Simplify the game, extraneous resources do not need to be managed.

That's exactly what I was after... simplification. Cleric "spells" are eliminated in favor of the whole "divine favor" thing. Cleric "spells" are works of miracles given to them by their deity, and only within the domain the deity works in. It simplifies it greatly. The only "spells" available to that cleric are the ones available to the domain(s) of that deity, plus any specials the deity gets to make that deity unique. Healing is a simple prayer based on the favor the cleric has with his deity. You would roll a simple save vs favor for the mechanic. Apply advantage/disadvantage accordingly and viola, you have arrived. It simplifies things for the player greatly, so he can concentrate on building to the domain of his character's deity. You can also use the specialties to tweak the build into the Paladin, Priest, and Monk.

 

[cmbarona]

I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function. All characters also have hit dice to heal their wounds. Simplify the game, extraneous resources do not need to be managed.

A comment that's sort-of tangential to the topic:

I'm all for simplified healing, but I really hope they don't bring back the Cure Light Wounds wand trick. I think over-reliance on magical healing is a narrative trap. There's a great couple of paragraphs on page 13 of the 8/13/12 "How to Play" document about HP abstraction. It really frees up room for more dynamic storytelling when every swing of your axe doesn't have to mean an actual wound. Over the course of combat, combatants get bumps, scrapes, and cuts. They also suffer from exhaustion and fading morale. Sometimes quick reflexes and small divine favors are involved. It's hard to hold abstraction together with a magic-only based healing system that supposedly exists to cure extremely serious injuries.

They already have Healer's Kits to address the general bumps, scrapes, and cuts of combat, and presumably, more serious wounds as well. I think they wanted to include these as a replacement of 4e's mechanic that allowed you to simply use as many healing surges as you wanted during a short rest without outside aid. I think this may have swung too far into the abstract nature of HP for some folks. Healer's Kits are a nice middle ground, I believe. Being at 1HP doesn't mean your lung fell out; you're just really banged up and fatigued, and you'll be fine after treating your wounds and catching your breath. [/rant]

To bring this back to the topic at hand, I think Channel Divinity is actually meant to simplify healing, whether or not it accomplishes that task. Clerics get a baseline of healing as a class feature, and need not prepare specific healing spells if they don't want to. I suppose this could be handled by making Cure Wounds-type spells an automatic preparation, like Turn Undead currently is, and increasing the Cleric's available spells by one per current CD gain...

I know there is a lot of potential overlap between Channel Divinity and a Cleric's spells. I suppose the question to ask is, what is the benefit of separating the two mechanics? One I can see right now is that you can do it while gagged and bound. Another is that they could cover some domain-specific abilities to avoid spell-list bloat. If only one class, and one subclass within that class, has this ability, why add it to the spell list? further, perhaps there are issues we don't see yet because the rules don't yet exist, such as possible interactions with spell-casting items (wands, scrolls, etc.), multiclassing, and a "Channel Divinity" line of features that needs to work across divine classes regardless of spell list.

 

[1of3]

I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function.

If the devs actually go with "magic items are totally optional", buying wands is out the picture. They also said, they would restrict the spells that are applicable in wands.

Both ideas are good in my book.

 

[DEFCON 1]

But to make this really work, they'd have to make it so that clerics COULDN'T use their normal spells for basic healing. Otherwise, lots of parties would just expect clerics to use their normal spells AND their Channel Divinity to heal, leaving the clerics right where they started.

This assumes that Cure spells would be in EVERY domain's spell list though. And I would not expect that to be the case. Thus, if a particular domain doesn't have Cure spells in their list, and that player has CHOSEN to play a Cleric of that domain... the rest of the party knows that the extent of that player's healing is the pool of Channel Divinity uses and that's it. There's no "forcing" the player to use his spells for healing in addition to the CD, because it's not possible. It'd only be the Cleric who purposely chosen a domain that HAD a lot of Cure spells (like the Sun domain perhaps) that might be expected by the rest of the party to prepare some of those better Cure spells on top of the CD healing... but in that case, the player probably selected that domain simply IN ORDER to do that anyway. They WANTED to be a bonafide "healer", and selected the Sun domain to do so.

To make things even more confusing, sun-domain clerics can use their Channel Divinity for a weak AOE attack. So now they have two pools of daily resources with no clear division between them. More paperwork, less flexibility, no real benefit.

Now this, I agree with you on. I think if you are going to have a separate pool for healing, then just make it for healing. Don't give other possible uses for it. If that means we need to change the name from Channel Divinity to something else, I couldn't care less... but I think it is a smart game design to have every Cleric have a small pool of healing abilities if for no other reason than to keep themselves alive. Even a God of Death would grant his Cleric a bit of healing to use on himself just to make sure he didn't croak while attempting to get the God's word out there.

 

[Markn]

I would like to see the cleric manage healing/damage through spells but slightly differently than what anyone has mentioned before. Any spell that is capable of doing damage is also capable of healing and any combination in between. Whenever a cleric casts a spell he can choose how much dice he distributes to damage and how much dice goes to healing an ally. For example, a spell that does 4d6 damage could do all damage, all healing, or 2d6 of each or any other combination up to 4d6. I see healing in this manner being limited in range, perhaps touch or radius 15' for example making the clerics placement important when casting and it also really fullfills the clerics role as a support role since a cleric using this healing needs to be central to all PCs to make this healing effective. This also leaves design space for cure spells as they can be given large ranges and/or stronger effects. I think this would make the cleric fun to play as managing offense/defense becomes a round by round choice and sometimes the cleric will gamble what will be enough damage to kill the enemy while balancing healing thereby keeping allies in the game. I think this could allow various play styles. Finally, the term Channel Divinity could be used to describe the clerics ability to both simultaneously deal damage and heal.