Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana and Necrotic Undead hunting.

[Jester David]

I found that odd as well.
The "undead hunting" part is really just some flavour being added to these death themed classes, to emphasis that they are not evil. But, yeah, they're not very good at it...

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I don't object to necrotic damage focused PC's even with a whiff of evil about them, but I do find this bait and switch tactic annoying. If they want to give us a blight druid, give us a blight druid, and if they want to give us an undead hunter druid, give us a druid that is actually good at fighting undead. A watered-down blight druid under an undead hunting druid name isn't really a win for either concept.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm with the majority on this as well. Even if Undead Hunting isn't the main schtick of your subclass (but just one of the small parts you do)... you're still better having your damage just be regular unnamed damage than it is for it to be Necrotic damage. At least your regular damage won't be resisted. If the damage you do is the exact opposite of the "best tool for the job"... or even "a standard tool for the job", then you would never actually take on or imply you have that job in the first place.

It would be like having a spear-fighter subclass whose fluff had one of their main foci being destroying skeletons. We'd all be asking ourselves "If this subclass is about destroying skeletons, why aren't they a bludgeoning weapon-user? Wouldn't that make more sense?" Now sure... you could come back with "There is nothing wrong with making a spear-fighter subclass!", and you'd be absolutely right! A spear-fighter subclass in of itself might be fine. But you wouldn't then add in a bit of additional fluff for it that does not actually make thematic sense for that subclass. There are plenty of themes that a spear-fighter exemplifies-- but destroying monsters using a less-appropriate tool is not one of them.

 

[Sacrosanct]

No, my fellow captain - your efforts at persuading us that giving foes of the undead necrotic powers can be good design falls completely flat.

Why? Sure things doesn't necessarily need to attract minmaxers. But you don't need to be a minmaxer to immediately see that using necrotic against the undead is plain stupid.

Death clerics and druids can do a lot of other things besides necrotic damage. I agree with Cpt Kobold. Clearly having them deal necrotic damage fits the fluff a lot more, and despite what some people will say, fluff is just as important as optimizing or stats. If the death cleric and druid had no other way of defeating undead, then I might agree with you. But they do. Lots of options. They do still have access to all of the spell lists, maybe my twilight druid likes to shapeshift into a bear and rip zombies to shreds? And the grave cleric has an ability to take away that damage resistance as well.

So yeah, making something less intuitive just for metagaming purposes is a bad thing, IMO. Especially when there are plenty of other class abilities that support that other fluff (undead hunters)

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

In the Druid threads it was pointed out that the subclass crunch really fit the Children of Winter to a tee: terrorist shadow Druids from Wberron.

Could be the fluff in the UA article is a smokescreen by @mearls & co. to obscure the Eberron connection, while testing the feel of the crunch...

Its possible, but there seems a bit too much influence of the spirits of the dead and the afterlife for either the Children of Winter (the poison, disease and vermin obsessed doom-cult) or the Ashbound (the eco-terrorists with the particular mad-on for arcane magic).

 

[Aldarc]

I'm pointing out that the necrotic damage is thematically appropriate for most of the deities, and the source of power of the clerics of that domain.

I don't believe that that is a red herring at all. I've already acknowledged that from a min/maxing mechanical standpoint rather than a thematic one, radiant damage would be more optimised. If there is an undead-hunting archetype of a Sun god, I would expect them to use a lot of that.

I've also stated why I believe these archetypes are the way they are: a class that is completely optimised against one specific foe will dominate excessively in some campaigns and have little use for its special abilities in others.
Both Clerics of the Grave and Druids of the Twilight are effective against undead while still retaining capability against other foes.

Necrotic damage is superficially thematically appropriate up until the point that you realize that despite what source these gods may have, these gods probably want their clerics that they have charged with wiping out undeath to have more appropriate tools to that end. This is not about min/maxing, but how well the mechanics match the flavor text, theme, and aesthetics of the subclasses. (Clue: they don't.) If their necrotic damage bypassed necrotic resistance or immunity that would be one thing, but it doesn't. That's a big problem when fighting undead. They don't even gain resistance against necrotic damage. Think about that for a second. There are other ways to make a Grave/Repose domain than what we have here, and it doesn't have to be entirely focused around fighting undeath. But if it's advertised as fighting undeath, as per the Grave cleric and Twilight druid flavor text, then it should probably have mechanical support to that end that provides new class tools or expands upon existing class tools.

The Grave Domain is for Player Character Clerics Deities of Death rather than the Undeath-focused NPC domain in the DMG that probably wouldn't be appropriate for a number of the Deities listed in the Grave Domain text.

Then pity those poor cleric players and death deities who oppose undeath, because the Death domain does their job better than the Grave domain.

(For the record, Wee Jas, Hades, and Anubis are listed under both the Grave and Death domains. I am disconcerted that WotC seems to have forgotten that Wee Jas is primarily a lawful magic deity as opposed to just a death deity. She isn't listed in SCAG for using the Arcana domain in Greyhawk. )

 

[Sacrosanct]

Necrotic damage is superficially thematically appropriate up until the point that you realize that despite what source these gods may have, these gods probably want their clerics that they have charged with wiping out undeath to have more appropriate tools to that end. This is not about min/maxing, but how well the mechanics match the flavor text, theme, and aesthetics of the subclasses. (Clue: they don't.) If their necrotic damage bypassed necrotic resistance or immunity that would be one thing, but it doesn't.

Yes it does. Their Path to the Grave ability does exactly that. And that's not even mentioning all the other spells they have at their disposal.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

No, my fellow captain - your efforts at persuading us that giving foes of the undead necrotic powers can be good design falls completely flat.

Why? Sure things doesn't necessarily need to attract minmaxers. But you don't need to be a minmaxer to immediately see that using necrotic against the undead is plain stupid.

. . . So use Radiant, or Fire, or Force.
Its not as if Clerics or Druids have a dearth of options when it comes to fighting undead types just from their non-Deity-thematic, generic capabilities.

Given the sort of things that the FR in particular gods get up to, I'm not surprised that some of them are lousy minmaxers. If Kelemvor really wanted to become a guardian of the grave and the afterlife, he should have been a sun god.

 

[Aldarc]

Yes it does. Their Path to the Grave ability does exactly that. And that's not even mentioning all the other spells they have at their disposal.

Not really. Path of the Grave requires that the Grave cleric use one of their scarce Channel Divinity for a touch attack. It's one action. And the vulnerability is then applied to the next spell or attack by you or an ally. But since the cleric used their action to Channel Divinity, it will probably be someone else who applies damage, which may or may not be necrotic. And once that attack has occurred, then the recipient is no longer vulnerable to that damage type. But if you are facing undead, why are you using your Channel Divinity for this and not for Turning Undead?