D&D 5E What is the Deal with the Twilight Cleric?

[Willie the Duck]

This, I disagree with because I have lived it.

Okay, but I hazard it was a rather special case. You were running HP attrition too fast to keep up with through other means, yes? It was make or break for the fight because you were attritioned right to the edge of your reserve/replenishment rate? Obviously any kind of benefit will mean that you win an encounter that is just at the edge of your ability to endure when you do have it.

In most cases, though, what it means is you come out of a fight without having had to have spent the time or actions keeping someone standing and/or spend resources on after-fight healing. It doesn't 'win the fight' in the same way a complex crowd control and summoned allies combo works (or amongst enemies something like running into a whole slew of Intellect Devourers).

This is why I'm comparing it to 2e bladesinger as compared to find city nukes -- it is straight up a durability/power-boost. It doesn't win the combats for you, it generally just lets you take on more overall adventuring.

As another thread currently explores, combat in D&D is typically attritional, and when you are running a Twilight character competently, your channel divinity obviates much of the attrition for the entire party, for an entire fight.

I don't understand how that's not what I stated.

As I mentioned, I played one through the first part of Rime (the campaign eventually petered out). I initially took the class because I figured the group darkvision would be incredibly useful in that environment (it was). But I hadn't fully anticipated how overwhelmingly powerful Twilight Sanctuary would be. Our part was me, a barbarian, a rogue, and an artificer. We punched way above our level because weaker mobs simply couldn't do much, if any damage through my free healing, and even tougher mobs struggled to do much against our barbarian, between the free healing and their damage reduction.

Right, and that's normally what it ends up doing -- your group just has an across the board boost in how much they can take on.

 

[Tessarael]

Regarding temporary hit points, I played an Artillerist archetype Artificer in one campaign. As a bonus action with the protector cannon, he was granting d8 + Intelligence modifier temporary hit points to targets of my choice within 10'. It was nice, but not overpowered in our experience.

In comparison to this, there are a couple of things that make the Twilight Cleric's temporary HP power better: 30' radius; no bonus action required to use it; it can end effects causing charmed or frightened; and it scales with Cleric level which is really nice for a low level power. The disadvantages are the channel divinity requirement (less uses than the Artillerist's canon) and the dim light source can interfere with Stealth.

I think if you dropped Twilight Sanctuary temporary HP scaling with Cleric level, maybe instead allowing Wisdom modifier, and possibly reduced the radius, then that would be more reasonable at higher levels; yet bad at low levels.

 

[CleverNickName]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I knew y'all would have the details.

• I think the ability to grant darkvision to everyone in the party is a non-issue, though, since most of us already have it. The massive range of darkvision is pretty impressive, though; I can see that would be very frustrating to our DM. (He was pretty tired of my warlock's Devil's Sight invocation a couple of years ago, this might bring up some bad memories.)
• I didn't notice the heavy armor and weapons proficiency when I first read through the class. I agree with @Burnside--that just seems like a weird thing to include for a "twilight" character. I'm not sure why it was necessary.
• The worst thing is going to be the temporary hit points. That's a lot of healing...like, A LOT, and unlike most clerical healing it can't be countered or dispelled since it's not a spell. I worry that our DM is going to just up the damage output of the monsters to compensate for it. Skeletons will start carrying around greataxes and halberds instead of scimitars, enemy casters will start preparing more AoE spells, that sort of thing.
• And the temp hp aura also sounds like a tracking nightmare. It sounds like every player in the group is going to have to manage two different pools of hit points every round, and we already struggle with just one. Fortunately we're going to be running this on Roll20, so we will probably end up creating a macro for it. Have it apply Xd6 points to the $temp_hp string on token drop if $aura1 is true, or somesuch.
• Come to think of it: Roll20 can manage the 300' darkvision too, since the maps are all going to be Dynamically Lit. Just toggle it on, and our Night Vision increases from 60 to 300. It'll be hands-off for everyone once it's set up.

Anyway. Thanks again for your input...keep it coming!

If you're the sort to worry a lot about balance, power, or maintaining a status quo, you could consider banning it. If you don't really care about such things, use it freely. It's not as bad as Silvery Barbs, but it could fuel the flames of discord if you have players that complain about casters vs martials.

Well, I'm not the DM in this gaming group, so it's not up to me to ban anything. I was just being paranoid, and worried that one of my fellow players was going to make trouble for the group. We've had a couple of different characters with Silvery Barbs over the years and we didn't notice any issues--so if the TC is comparable to that, we're probably going to be okay.

But, yeah...our DM is going to be frustrated with this class, for sure.

(as an aside, I've never heard anyone complain about "casters vs martials" outside of EN World.)

 

[Zardnaar]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I knew y'all would have the details.

• I think the ability to grant darkvision to everyone in the party is a non-issue, though, since most of us already have it. The massive range of darkvision is pretty impressive, though; I can see that would be very frustrating to our DM. (He was pretty tired of my warlock's Devil's Sight invocation a couple of years ago, this might bring up some bad memories.)
• I didn't notice the heavy armor and weapons proficiency when I first read through the class. I agree with @Burnside--that just seems like a weird thing to include for a "twilight" character. I'm not sure why it was necessary.
• The worst thing is going to be the temporary hit points. That's a lot of healing...like, A LOT, and unlike most clerical healing it can't be countered or dispelled since it's not a spell. I worry that our DM is going to just up the damage output of the monsters to compensate for it. Skeletons will start carrying around greataxes and halberds instead of scimitars, enemy casters will start preparing more AoE spells, that sort of thing.
• And the temp hp aura also sounds like a tracking nightmare. It sounds like every player in the group is going to have to manage two different pools of hit points every round, and we already struggle with just one. Fortunately we're going to be running this on Roll20, so we will probably end up creating a macro for it. Have it apply Xd6 points to the $temp_hp string on token drop if $aura1 is true, or somesuch.
• Come to think of it: Roll20 can manage the 300' darkvision too, since the maps are all going to be Dynamically Lit. Just toggle it on, and our Night Vision increases from 60 to 300. It'll be hands-off for everyone once it's set up.

Anyway. Thanks again for your input...keep it coming!

Well, I'm not the DM in this gaming group, so it's not up to me to ban anything. I was just being paranoid, and worried that one of my fellow players was going to make trouble for the group. We've had a couple of different characters with Silvery Barbs over the years and we didn't notice any issues--so if the TC is comparable to that, we're probably going to be okay.

But, yeah...our DM is going to be frustrated with this class, for sure.

(as an aside, I've never heard anyone complain about "casters vs martials" outside of EN World.)

Silvery Barbs is somewhere between overpowered and broken but always annoying fun suck. Espicially for the DM. It's banned in my games.

Sone things are just anti social even if they're mechanically fine. Twilight cleric, silvery barbs and the old frenzied berzerker fit into that category.

Summoners can also fit into that category. That's more of a RL time issue. For example I had a player who wanted to consult the MM every round and read the entries.

Eventually I told him to buy his own MM and use that and copy out his summoned stats. He stopped doing it after that as it involved money (he was really cheap). And effort (photocopying the pages money and time required).

What's anti social varies of course but in the DM generally. I played with Silvery Barbs as a player and asked DM can I swap it out (I got it via feat) and it was banned after that. Order cleric.

 

[mellored]

Just reduce the numbers.

IMO:

1: 30' darkvision, or increase it by 30" if you already have it. Can still share it.
Same advantage on initiative
CD: Temporary hit points equal to half your cleric level.
6: Fly until the end of your next turn.
17: is fine as is.

All the same features, just toned down.

 

[AnotherGuy]

How this got approved as is, I will never understand.
Surely they have a measurement/valuation system when building subclass features?

I mean dropping a TwC in a dungeon, likely with high wisdom - they could see everything and notice everything from miles away.
Same darkvision distance as a dragon.

 

[Distracted DM]

Just reduce the numbers.

IMO:

1: 30' darkvision, or increase it by 30" if you already have it. Can still share it.
Same advantage on initiative
CD: Temporary hit points equal to half your cleric level.
6: Fly until the end of your next turn.
17: is fine as is.

All the same features, just toned down.

Automatically ending any fear or charm is another biggie- at best, it should only be able to help one PC per turn.. or maybe it allows a reroll instead of auto ending. And you need to reduce the aura range.
The spell list and armor proficiencies... I don't know.

 

[FrogReaver]

At low levels the biggest concern is the temp hp. Unless the dm drastically changes encounters then almost nothing will even threaten the party. It’s still a solid amount of damage soak in the mid levels as well.

It essentially sets the DM up to be the bad guy to challenge the party. Whether that’s by focus fire on PCs to overcome the temp hp, bringing big aoes to bear or simply ramping up encounter difficulty to compensate.

 

[TheSword]

I played a Twilight Cleric for about a year (5e 2014). IMNSHO, the best description is "power creep".

The TC is not broken. It will not spoil a game. It is, however, noticeably better that any cleric from the PHB (and probably most other 5e 2014 cleric subclasses). Not by enough to be blatantly overpowered, but by enough that you can tell.

If you're the sort to worry a lot about balance, power, or maintaining a status quo, you could consider banning it. If you don't really care about such things, use it freely. It's not as bad as Silvery Barbs, but it could fuel the flames of discord if you have players that complain about casters vs martials.

I DM’d Age of Worms for levels 1-20 over about 2 years. We had a Twilight Cleric, a Paladin, A Transmuter and a Rogue.

Some things we experienced.

• It was good but not game breaking
• The action to activate meant it wasn’t always used and if it did it took up a round
• Temp hp sources were relatively common and this meant they didn’t benefit folks.
• The renewing benefit only helps if you get attacked so back line characters saw less benefit than the frontline tank.
• I found that at lower levels it didn’t have a huge impact and at higher levels the radius 30’ meant allies weren’t always in the reach.
• Intelligent foes would target the cleric with spells or reducing to 0 hp to incapacitate and end the effect.

The other powers weren’t an issue at all. Darkvision is a circumstantial benefit. The other benefits were rarely used. Our group has always found clerics in 2014 to be a bit meh. So this ability for us just redressed the balance. That said the player is a pretty reasonable guy who does spam the most power spells. He spent a lot of time protecting the rest of the party and letting them excel and shine.

In short it depends on your group style, party mix, and DMs adventure structure. I’m pretty ban-happy (rope trick, tiny hut, lucky feat, silvery barbs etc) but I don’t feel the need to ban or modify this. Might feel differently in different circumstances.

 

[James Gasik]

But you have to really TRY to make Pun-Pun, or all the other crazy stuff that usually wouldn't fly at a table. A twilight cleric is a normal character, which any GM unfamiliar with the subclass probably won't see a problem with until the game starts. Then, over a few sessions, eyebrows are going up. A few more sessions and you're struggling with how this is legit, and how to challenge the party without outright stomping them into the ground. It also help kill GM fun of challenging the party... fear or charm? Ha, naw. And then you want to focus on the TC? They have heavy armor and, for some reason, flight... BUT their awesome aura is huuuge so they can fly AND still give it to the party.

Yeah, it's been discussed to death at this point. Folk already linked old threads, and y'all have provided good reasons here.

The same argument goes for Druid + Wild Spell though. It's a logical choice a player could stumble into (man, I don't know what feat to take for my Druid, oh, here's a Druid-only feat!) that turns out to be crazy powerful.