Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana and Necrotic Undead hunting.

[Cap'n Kobold]

Twilight Druid is the one that seems messed up to me. I can see that they are connected to the world of Death and pulling up necrotic energy fits that, but saying they seek out and destroy undead, then give them a bonus when they use their damage ability to kill undead, while making that damage nearly as useless as possible against undead is mind boggling.

Really? I see it as part thematic (the bonus damage is necrotic because of their ties to death and decay) and part balance (they get additional health back to compensate for a less optimised damage type). As has been pointed out before, Druids don't exactly have a shortage of spells dealing radiant, fire and suchlike that are quite capable of destroying undead.
I think that there is a difference in view as to the purpose of the ability. I don't think it is meant to be an "ultimate undead killer". Its meant to be an interesting, thematic ability with a compensating factor making up for where the flavour impinges on the effectiveness. That chunk of healing is not insignificant.

It'd be like if they were enemies of constructs, got bonuses for using an ability to destroy constructs, but that ability required the creature to be breathing to work. OR hunting fire elementals, getting bonuses when using an ability to kill fire elementals, and the ability does fire damage.

A little disingenuous I feel. Only 5 undead types appear to be outright immune to your extra damage, and it bears reiteration that it is a rider on one of your actual spells: - You're never going to be relying on that ability alone to do the killing.

It simply makes no sense, if you want a druid who is connected to death, great and wonderful, Twilight could totally fill that niche of the druid who worships the ending of the life cycle, but don't give me an ability that is terrible against undead and then tell me to kill undead with it. It doesn't fit.

I very much doubt that you're going to get a subclass deliberately and powerfully optimised towards killing the undead, or any other single foe. There are too many balance issues introduced that are dependent upon campaign. Druids aren't exactly slouches at destroying the undead with their base capabilities.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I am the GM. In general, I dislike abilities like this and the UA Ranger's Primeval Awareness. I dislike this as a player and a GM. If this ability must exist, then make it like the paladin's Divine Sense.

Fair enough. Divine Sense has a much smaller sense range, so it should cause less issues with revealing plot ahead of time etc.

Indeed, hence my suggestion to possibly make their channel divinity akin to Know Your Enemy, since that would have a wider applicability than the Eyes of the Grave.

Know your enemy just gives you an idea of how a creature compares to you. It doesn't really fit well into the idea of the Cleric of the Dead.

I'm curious though, Cap'n Kobold. Is there any fault or problem that you see with the Grave cleric? Do you believe that it is perfect or good as written? What would you change, if anything?

Oh, its certainly not perfect. The ability to negate crits is a little too random and specific for my tastes, and if the ability to detect undead within a mile range is wreaking havoc with DM's campaigns, then it should probably be changed. It gets some nice useful and thematic spells, and some that are less so.

However the main objection that seems to be raised with it: - The fact that its not uber optimised for destroying undead despite destroying undead being one of the aspects of the cleric's mission statement. - I do not have a problem with. I can understand why the gods of death are associated with necrotic damage rather than radiant damage. I accept that 5e has a very limited design space and that official material is unlikely to be highly min/maxed. And, quite frankly, I don't see the extra d8 damage once per round as big enough to be a dealbreaker for the entire archetype.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Really? I see it as part thematic (the bonus damage is necrotic because of their ties to death and decay) and part balance (they get additional health back to compensate for a less optimised damage type). As has been pointed out before, Druids don't exactly have a shortage of spells dealing radiant, fire and suchlike that are quite capable of destroying undead.
I think that there is a difference in view as to the purpose of the ability. I don't think it is meant to be an "ultimate undead killer". Its meant to be an interesting, thematic ability with a compensating factor making up for where the flavour impinges on the effectiveness. That chunk of healing is not insignificant.

A little disingenuous I feel. Only 5 undead types appear to be outright immune to your extra damage, and it bears reiteration that it is a rider on one of your actual spells: - You're never going to be relying on that ability alone to do the killing.

I very much doubt that you're going to get a subclass deliberately and powerfully optimised towards killing the undead, or any other single foe. There are too many balance issues introduced that are dependent upon campaign. Druids aren't exactly slouches at destroying the undead with their base capabilities.

If we raised the base healing to 3hp, and removed the undead healing, and didn't say anything at all about the twilight druid hunting undead, then I think it would work better. I don't actually want a class hyper-specialized at killing a specific type of enemy, and besides, the spell Sunbeam alone makes Druids one of the best undead killers behind the cleric.

But, let's say you are level 14 and fighting a Mummy Lord. You're casting a big Fire spell, how many dice of necrotic are you going to throw into the spell. They will do 0 damage, just heal you or one of your friends 5 hp each if you kill the thing.

Similiar situation, only now it is a White Dragon, big fire spell, you'll only get 2 hp each if you kill it, but you are adding 1d10 necrotic damage with each die.

I'd throw more dice at the dragon, because the damage is the draw. It is a massive buff to be able to add 7d10 damage to a spell, and possibly heal a little at the same time. And I can feel confident saying the damage is the major point, because they chose to use d10's, the healing Dream Druid uses d6's. It almost makes them too powerful, as long as they never fight undead.


Honestly, I'm fine with the Twilight druid being thematically tied to death and decay, my issue is that they couldn't just accept that. They had to tell us they want to destroy undead, and then take the chunk of damage they'd given the class and decide they needed to balance it against destroying undead.

We wouldn't need to balance it if we had just not mentioned undead and instead made them a druid that focuses on death and decay.

That's what I have an issue with, we didn't need to balance them against undead if we hadn't said they are supposed to fight undead and then made the abilities they get worse than their base ability to fight undead. A Dream Druid or Land Druid is just as good or better at fighting undead than the Druid class that is called out as the hunter of undead. Just let them be creepy like the necromancer wizard and leave it at that, or if you really want them to be the undead fighting druid, just make the damage of the dice match the spell, or be force damage, or acid damage, anything except the damage type which in older editions healed undead instead of hurting them.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

If we raised the base healing to 3hp, and removed the undead healing, and didn't say anything at all about the twilight druid hunting undead, then I think it would work better. I don't actually want a class hyper-specialized at killing a specific type of enemy, and besides, the spell Sunbeam alone makes Druids one of the best undead killers behind the cleric.

And most Druids hunt the undead anyway. Without that being specifically mentioned in the Twilight Druid's flavour text though, people could get the impression that these druids didn't.

But, let's say you are level 14 and fighting a Mummy Lord. You're casting a big Fire spell, how many dice of necrotic are you going to throw into the spell. They will do 0 damage, just heal you or one of your friends 5 hp each if you kill the thing.

Similiar situation, only now it is a White Dragon, big fire spell, you'll only get 2 hp each if you kill it, but you are adding 1d10 necrotic damage with each die.

I'd have to actually make a choice. Based on the needs of my group; (do we need the healing) and what I think my chances of killing the mummy lord with the spell are. If we don't need the healing, or I don't think the spell is likely to kill it, I'll hold them back for a better opportunity. Mummy Lords tend to hang around with other undead after all and 5 x your druid level in healing is not an inconsiderable amount. Even if you just pump them into cantrips to nuke down hapless skeletons for the healing alone.

Likewise I would consider the same situation when it comes to the Dragon: Do we need the extra damage? Is there a party member who needs the healing? What are the chances of killing the Dragon with the spell?

I'd throw more dice at the dragon, because the damage is the draw. It is a massive buff to be able to add 7d10 damage to a spell, and possibly heal a little at the same time. And I can feel confident saying the damage is the major point, because they chose to use d10's, the healing Dream Druid uses d6's. It almost makes them too powerful, as long as they never fight undead.

If you regard the damage as the major point of that ability, then I can understand you preferring not to use them on undead targets.

That may be the source of our disagreement on this: just different playstyle attitudes. I value the healing from the ability, and you value the damage more. It may simply be that I'm often a healer/support type and those 5 x level HP represent spell slots that I wouldn't have to use on a cure spell.

Its an incentive for destroying the undead. Use them to help you kill an undead and you gain more than double the healing to compensate you for those dice likely doing half of the usual damage.

We wouldn't need to balance it if we had just not mentioned undead and instead made them a druid that focuses on death and decay.

That's what I have an issue with, we didn't need to balance them against undead if we hadn't said they are supposed to fight undead and then made the abilities they get worse than their base ability to fight undead. A Dream Druid or Land Druid is just as good or better at fighting undead than the Druid class that is called out as the hunter of undead. Just let them be creepy like the necromancer wizard and leave it at that, or if you really want them to be the undead fighting druid, just make the damage of the dice match the spell, or be force damage, or acid damage, anything except the damage type which in older editions healed undead instead of hurting them.

OK. Necrotic and Radiant damage have similarities in origin to Positive and negative energy, but they are not the same. In 5e, radiant damage hurts most living creatures and necrotic damage hurts most undead.

You might feel better about the Twilight Druid if you take the attitude that the text about them hunting undead may have been put there to ensure that people don't think that they like the undead. Without that, its possible to believe that given their ties to death and decay, they would have no problem with the undead, or even create them themselves.
Even the base assumptions of the Druid class as a whole are pretty vehemently against undead. A subclass with a different focus wouldn't need flavour text to tell them that they should destroy undead.

 

[Aldarc]

Fair enough. Divine Sense has a much smaller sense range, so it should cause less issues with revealing plot ahead of time etc.

It could be limited by Wis, similarly to how Cha limits use by a Paladin.

Know your enemy just gives you an idea of how a creature compares to you. It doesn't really fit well into the idea of the Cleric of the Dead.

Okay, think of it akin to judging the fate of your enemy. With your "Eyes of the Grave" you can see how a creature/foe fares. You know their health. Their weaknesses. Their strengths. You know the means of their demise. That would provide better synergy with the Channel Divinity, assuming that it was retooled for the cleric's next hit, such you see the weakness and you opt to use your channel divinity to prey upon that.

Oh, its certainly not perfect. The ability to negate crits is a little too random and specific for my tastes, and if the ability to detect undead within a mile range is wreaking havoc with DM's campaigns, then it should probably be changed. It gets some nice useful and thematic spells, and some that are less so.

However the main objection that seems to be raised with it: - The fact that its not uber optimised for destroying undead despite destroying undead being one of the aspects of the cleric's mission statement. - I do not have a problem with. I can understand why the gods of death are associated with necrotic damage rather than radiant damage. I accept that 5e has a very limited design space and that official material is unlikely to be highly min/maxed. And, quite frankly, I don't see the extra d8 damage once per round as big enough to be a dealbreaker for the entire archetype.

I don't think the Grave cleric needs to be über optimized for fighting undead, but it should probably have a few tools (e.g. advantage on turn/destroy attempts, a reworked eyes of the grave or channel divinity) that nudge it in that direction while retooling those that run counterintuitive to that end (i.e. divine strike). Again, many of these death deities had their clerics channel positive energy (aka 5e radiant damage). So while it also makes sense on your estimation that they have access to necrotic damage, one should not neglect that their divine strike should also reflect the radiant damage of older editions.

 

[Leatherhead]

However the main objection that seems to be raised with it: - The fact that its not uber optimised for destroying undead despite destroying undead being one of the aspects of the cleric's mission statement. - I do not have a problem with. I can understand why the gods of death are associated with necrotic damage rather than radiant damage. I accept that 5e has a very limited design space and that official material is unlikely to be highly min/maxed. And, quite frankly, I don't see the extra d8 damage once per round as big enough to be a dealbreaker for the entire archetype.

"Not uber optimized" is an understatement when you are talking about the second worst type out of the 13 available. As for what gods are associated with what damage, lets take a look.

Life gets radiant.
Nature gets their pick of cold, fire, lighting, or thunder, per strike.
Tempest gets thunder
Trickery gets poison
War gets damage of the weapon type

Death domain gets necrotic.
Forge domain gets fire.
Grave gets necrotic.
Protection gets radiant (seriously?)

Given the precedent, a radiant/necrotic pick your own damage type per strike would be the way to go. Grave is supposed to be a combination of Life and Death (or at least the line between the two), and the Nature Cleric also gets a variable damage type. Though I think force would be a better pick, 5e is hinting that it represents Ki (aka life force/soul magic) and it's different enough to make it interesting. However, if I were given carte blanche to redesign the Grave domain, I wouldn't even give it a divine strike. I would have given it potent spellcasting and made it a caster-type to avoid redundancy with both the Life and Death Clerics.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Okay, think of it akin to judging the fate of your enemy. With your "Eyes of the Grave" you can see how a creature/foe fares. You know their health. Their weaknesses. Their strengths. You know the means of their demise. That would provide better synergy with the Channel Divinity, assuming that it was retooled for the cleric's next hit, such you see the weakness and you opt to use your channel divinity to prey upon that.

I wondered about the ability to know creature hitpoints, but that struck me as potentially stepping on the toes of groups that already have players knowing the HP of monsters as a table rule. The ability to know the immunities, resistances, vulnerabilities and special conditions required to prevent regeneration or permanently kill a creature would make an interesting ability, but simple knowledge checks might be able to do the same.

One option that I considered was something along the lines of: As a reaction when you reduce a creature to 0HP, you may use your Channel Divinity ability. The creature must make a Charisma(?) saving throw. If it fails, it dies permanently and may only return to life through resurrection magic.
So this would allow the Grave Cleric to kill some of the peskier undead such as liches and vampires that are tricky to get rid of, but it would also be useful against creatures such as Trolls which would also not normally stay down. It might be too powerful and plot-destroying however.

I don't think the Grave cleric needs to be über optimized for fighting undead, but it should probably have a few tools (e.g. advantage on turn/destroy attempts, a reworked eyes of the grave or channel divinity) that nudge it in that direction while retooling those that run counterintuitive to that end (i.e. divine strike). Again, many of these death deities had their clerics channel positive energy (aka 5e radiant damage). So while it also makes sense on your estimation that they have access to necrotic damage, one should not neglect that their divine strike should also reflect the radiant damage of older editions.

5e's radiant damage is not equivalent to positive energy. Its the Good damage of a Holy weapon and the untyped damage of the light-blasting spells or flame strike. The holy connection is probably why Life and Protection Clerics get radiant damage on their divine strikes, as do some celestials I believe.
Likewise necrotic damage doesn't heal undead, and indeed hurts most of them. As far as I can tell, positive and negative energy seem to have been written out of D&D.

The Grave cleric already has tools for hunting and killing undead: not only their subclass ability to seek them out, but all of their base clerical abilities and spells as well. While the subclass ability may need adjustment in that its currently too good at finding undead, the fact that its a tool for doing so isn't in question as far as I can see.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

You might feel better about the Twilight Druid if you take the attitude that the text about them hunting undead may have been put there to ensure that people don't think that they like the undead. Without that, its possible to believe that given their ties to death and decay, they would have no problem with the undead, or even create them themselves.
Even the base assumptions of the Druid class as a whole are pretty vehemently against undead. A subclass with a different focus wouldn't need flavour text to tell them that they should destroy undead.

I have seen "druids should be pro-undead" and even "undead is natural" arguments often enough on Paizo.com to believe it is necessary to have to say that. I think they could have avoided it by focusing more on "guarding the natural flow of life and death from those who would corrupt it", which would make them more anti-necromancer (the concept, not necessarily the subclass) then anti-undead in focus.

Of course, if they wanted to make a creepy druid subclass or an Eberron druid eco-terrorist subclass (Circle of Reclamation?), then they should have just do it, and if necessary, throw in something like "This is an addendum to the evil PC options. Dungeon Masters should give serious consideration about whether to allow players access to these options.....not suitable for bright sunny, heroic games/better for murky or evil games" etc.

 

[renevq]

The Eberron druid eco-terrorists would be the Ashbound... The Children of Winter are the death obsessed nihilists... to quote:

Death, being a part of the natural order, draws some to its dark source of power. The Children of Winter seek to cleanse the land through blight, disease and cold, believing that the strong will survive to populate the great spring that lies beyond their dark winter. The end of the current age is coming, as evidenced by the creation of the Mournland, and the Children of Winter see themselves as agents of nature - cleansing Khorvaire so it can bloom anew

I think it fits pretty well.

 

[DeanP]

The deliverer of un-named damage: