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

[Ogre Mage]

The twilight cleric is my favorite cleric domain. I don't care what people think. Call me a munchkin if you like.

 

[Distracted DM]

The twilight cleric is my favorite cleric domain. I don't care what people think. Call me a munchkin if you like.

You're a munchkin

 

[Horwath]

Until you take a rest, ja?

and then you get to use your every ability again, so no effect there.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're a munchkin

Everybody's a munchkin!!

 

[Willie the Duck]

I'm not really trying to squash the discussion, but I think most player strategies that involve per-encounter abilities are easily circumvented just by having the monsters play intelligently. I'm not talking genius-level amounts of intellect, with ambushes and boobytraps and multiple contingencies, either...just basic skirmish tactics would shut down most of the issues people are describing in this thread.

Like: what if the monsters all decide to flee on Round Two, then regroup and attack ten minutes later? That's a tactic as old as warfare itself, and doesn't take superhuman intellect to figure out. Even football uses strategic "time outs" to break the opposition's rhythm, and quarterback kneels to run down the clock. So why wouldn't the kobolds (or whatever) use this same tactic against intruders with tons of short-duration abilities?

This not wrong. However, the same could be said about nearly all spells and abilities that players (and monsters who have them) bring to bear. Most of them last 10 rounds, and few more than 10 minutes (and very few of them have long enough range to affect those that flee). If the enemies can successfully accomplish this, they can mitigate a huge amount of PC ability (and suddenly ranged rogues and champion fighters become the best classes/subclasses). Since people don't talk about how awesome ranged rogues and champion fighters are, that tells me that this isn't what playstyles look like (be that because they aren't fun, DMs don't think monsters would have thought of this, in-game issues like the enemies are guarding something and can't flee, or any other explanation).

The answer to this what-if scenario I've described is usually something like "because that's not fun." And hey, fair enough. But if I'm being honest, the extreme cases being described in this thread don't sound like they're much fun either (and are a lot more far-fetched).

No argument that a lot of this is what-if scenarios.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You should check out the book series, "The Monsters Know What They're Doing," by Keith Ammann. It has far more tips, tricks, and examples than I could ever list here

You can up the difficulty of an encounter easily enough, but that doesn’t address the issue of a single PC dominating play, without having to do much more than stand around.

 

[SkidAce]

It’s still a strong ability even if it only grants the temporary hit points once. And at low level rerolling the D6 10 times matters.

I’ve never encountered a party who couldn’t easily stop and hammer fleeing enemies.

I agree as a general rule parties are efficient at that.

But jungle cover, scattering, retreating past traps, etc are viable. Depends on type of opponent mainly.

 

[mellored]

No argument from me. It's a very strong ability. Obviously my DM didn't think it was ban-worthy, but maybe he knows something the rest of us don't.

It's easy enough to just throw out a few more minion to chip away at the THP.

Or say "the whole room fills with Posion gas, you all take 5 damage at the start of your turn".
Which makes the Twilight feel special for countering that, when it's really there to counter Twilight.

Or every monster deals +3 damage.

Or my preferred method, what works for them works for me. So add Twilight clerics to the monster side.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's easy enough to just throw out a few more minion to chip away at the THP.

Or say "the whole room fills with Posion gas, you all take 5 damage at the start of your turn".
Which makes the Twilight feel special for countering that, when it's really there to counter Twilight.

Or every monster deals +3 damage.

Or my preferred method, what works for them works for me. So add Twilight clerics to the monster side.

When the presence of a single subclass requires the party to be treated as if they were two levels higher than their actual level, you know there is a problem with the subclass.

 

[ECMO3]

Twilight Cleric is a powerful subclass, You get a lot compared to other Clerics: Heavy Weapons AND Heavy Armor AND a good Channel Divinity AND better darkvision than Drow .... No other subclass gets this much in the first two levels.

That said, it has not caused problems in play in any of the games I have been in. I have only had a few PCs outright die in the last few years of gaming and one of them was in a party with a Twilight Cleric.

People complain a lot about Twilight Sanctuary, it is extremely powerful, probably OP in tier 1. In tier 2/3 it is no longer OP and in tier 4 it is downright weak compared to other actions you can take at that level.

In play what has been the most disruptive ability is the darkvision. If there was one thing I would change about the class it would be that, although that is also very easy for a DM to counter.

As far as being the "shiny" PC in the group (outshining others); that is almost always based on personality of the player and the player knowledge of the rules and their own PC. While people regularly complain on forums about classes and subclasses outshining others, that is never the cause at the table IME. We have played with lots of Clerics and the most shiny Clerics we have had in games are not the Twilight Clerics, but rather the Light and Life Clerics as well as Order and Death Cleric multiclasses.