Cleric Love Domain (v2, updated 4/22/16)

tombowings

First Post
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.


Love Domain v2 (4/22/16)
Nearly every pantheon has a god or a goddess devoted to the concept of love. Examples include Aphrodite, Freya, Hathor, and Sune. Like their divine patron’s clerics of the love domain are often torn between the desire to find, cherish, and protect the a single beloved and the craving for lust, passion, intrigue, and the search for a new object of their attention.


Love Domain Spells

Cleric Level Spells
1st - Charm person, compelled duel
3rd - Calm emotion, suggestion
5th - Beacon of hope, tongues
7th - Compulsion, locate creature
9th - Circle of power, dream


Shape of the Heart
When you choose this domain at 1st level, you have the choice between one of the two options below:
Gift of Persuasion. You gain proficiency with the Persuasion skill and while you are not wearing armor or using a shield, your Armor Class equal 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Charisma modifier.
Soldier of Love. You gain proficiency with heavy armor and martial weapons.


Blessing of Love
Also at 1st level, your blinding beauty or determined presence can cause attackers to doubt their resolve to strike you. When you are attacked by a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack roll. An attacker that can’t be charmed is immune to this feature.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.


Channel Divinity: Cupid’s Arrow
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity as an action to cause Cupid’s arrow to prick a creature within 30 feet. That creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. If the save fails, that creature becomes charmed by another creature of your choice within 60 feet of you The chosen creature must be of a type that that the creature has the possibility of being romantically attracted to. The effect lasts so long as the target’s desired remain unfulfilled or until you use this class feature again.


Channel Divinity: Guardian of the Heart
Beginning at 6th level, you can channel divinity as a reaction when an enemy make a melee attack against one of your allies within 30 feet. You use your reaction before the enemy makes its attack. When That enemy must make a Strength saving throw or be pushed back 15 feet, landing prone and its attack misses. If your ally is charmed or romantically involved with you, your enemy receives disadvantage on its saving throw.


Improved Shape of the Heart
Starting at 8th level, you gain one of the features below associated with your Blessing of Love.
Gift of Persuasion: You may add your Charisma modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip.
Soldier of Love: You gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine energy. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 damage of the same type dealt by the weapon to the target. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8.


Protected by Love
At 17th level, when you are subject to an weapon or spell attack that affects only you, you can use your reaction to switch places with any adjacent creature charmed by you, becoming the target of the attack.

Alternatively, when one of your allies is attacked and within 5 feet of you, you may use your bonus action to switch spaces with that ally, becoming the target of the attack.
 
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77IM

Explorer!!!
Supporter
This is fantastic. I want this to be in the PHB. And you've written it in a very clean way.

Now I'm going to rip it to shreds. It's because I care. Consider this Tough Love. ;}

"When you cast this cantrip on a creature, it no longer becomes hostile when the spell effect ends." --> I'd change this to "no longer automatically becomes hostile when the spell effect ends, although it knows it was affected by magic and some creatures may not appreciate that." Or something to that effect. Because otherwise you are basically giving this character advantage on every Charisma check they ever make and that seems a little over powered. It's also backwards, as it's more valuable for people with low Charisma; this domain should be putting a premium on Charisma.

"You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once)." --> I'd do Charisma here too. It's OK for a cleric to have some Charisma. This is a great little domain feature, btw.

"If the save fails, that creature falls desperately in love and becomes charmed by another creature within 30 feet of you." --> Who choses the other creature? You? the DM? the victim? is it random?

As an aside, I think the 5e phrasing would be to impose the charmed condition first and make desperate love a rider on charm, e.g., "...the creature becomes charmed by another creature within 30 feet of you. While charmed, the creature is desperately in love with the creature it is charmed by." Boy that's a mouthful. I guess my phrasing isn't any better. I'm only mentioning this because the rest of your domain is written very well in the 5e style but this part stands out as a little informal.

"The effect lasts so long as the target’s desired remain unfulfilled or until you use this class feature again." --> That seems super powerful. Many charm effects allow a repeated saving throw or possibly a condition (e.g. damage) that triggers a new save. I'd either limit the time of this effect or allow a new save, maybe once per hour at least.

"That enemy must make a Strength saving throw or be pushed back 15 feet, landing prone and its attack misses." --> Auto-miss is also quite powerful. Nothing says that the attack needs to be a melee attack, for starters, so it's entirely possible the target is still in range of the attacker. I'm not really sure whether this is balanced or not; Channel Divinity is very limited so it should be powerful.

"Starting at 8th level, when you are subject to an weapon or spell attack that affects only you, you can use your reaction to have any creature charmed by you and within willingly switch places with you, becoming the target of the attack." --> I think there is a number of feet missing after the word "within"

"At 17th level, you gain immunity to charm and sleep effects." --> I think it would be better to grant immunity to the charmed condition and to magical sleep. An effect can impose multiple conditions and "charm effect" could be interpreted to mean any effect that includes the charmed condition. Making them immune only to the charmed condition means they still suffer the other effects of the ... effect. (This game needs more synonyms for "effect.")

"Additionally you gain advantage on saving throws against enchantment spells other enchantment magical effects." --> I don't think the game defines anything as an "enchantment magical effect," so I'd just leave that part out.

Other thoughts:

I think it may be appropriate for a love cleric to get proficiency in heavy armor and shields. They seem very defensive in nature, and I like the image of a very pretty "knight" with a shield emblazoned with a heart or a rose or something.

You might consider giving out free proficiency in the Persuasion skill. I like that better than the friends cantrip.

Finally, every cleric domain gets 1 of 2 things: either +Wisdom damage on cantrips, or +1d8 damage on weapon attacks (+2d8 later on). I think that's pretty important for keeping up with the Joneses, even in such a defense-oriented class. My suggestion is to get a little more creative and give this class +Charisma damage on cantrips. That's not as good as +Wisdom because it means you need 2 ability scores to maximize your potential, and raising Charisma means you're not raising other useful stuff like Constitution. But it feels appropriate for the love domain and gives more incentive to have at least a decent Charisma.
 

Fergurg

Explorer
Interesting. But I personally think it fits more as a Desire domain, rather than Love; it's manipulating someone else's emotional desires
 

tombowings

First Post
This is fantastic. I want this to be in the PHB. And you've written it in a very clean way.

Now I'm going to rip it to shreds. It's because I care. Consider this Tough Love. ;}

Thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked it. And, yes, tough love is exactly what I asked for. I've taken a lot of your advice for a future revision. I'll post it soon, once I get more of the details worked out.


Edit: Version 2 is up.
 
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77IM

Explorer!!!
Supporter
Very nice! I love (hah) the two distinct options for Shape of the Heart. It's like a sub-sub-class, but it works very well.

All I have left now are nitpicks:

"Starting at 8th level, you gain one of the features below associated with your Blessing of Love." --> I think you mean, "...associated with your Shape of the Heart."

"Gift of Persuasion." --> I really like the term "Soldier of Love" but somehow "Gift of Persuasion" sounds pretty bland. I don't have a better suggestion, though.

"Alternatively, when one of your allies is attacked and within 5 feet of you, you may use your bonus action to switch spaces with that ally, becoming the target of the attack." --> I think you mean, "use your reaction," because your bonus action is only available on your turn and your allies are typically targeted with attacks when it is not your turn.

"you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 damage of the same type dealt by the weapon to the target" --> I'd make this +1d8 psychic damage. Love hurts! (Also, Psyche, from Greek mythology, was the beloved of Cupid.) Relatively few creatures are resistant or vulnerable to psychic damage.

Channel Divinity --> I feel like both options should target "a creature within 30 feet that you can see" instead of just one within range. The "...that you can see..." text pops up all over the place as a hedge against targeting creatures that you're only vaguely aware of. "He's got to be around here somewhere... I'll target him with my Cupid's Arrow to draw him out!" Unless that's the dynamic that you want? It's usually more hassle than it's worth.

Love Domain Spells --> What, no dominate person? It's thematically appropriate, I think. Anyway, as long as there are lots of spells on this list that cause the charmed condition I think it's fine. This way Protected by Love will work frequently.
 

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