D&D 5E How on earth is this balanced?! Twilight cleric, more in-play evidence

[ECMO3]

It's not a single hit though. It's a single hit per character per round for the whole of the combat.

I have seen it used a lot and I have never seen it take up a "single hit per character" for even one round even, let alone a whole combat. As matter if fact I don't think I have even seen every character stay inside the 30-foot area of effect for a round. At most I have seen 3 characters (including my cleric) who were in the AOE AND also took damage, I only remember that happening once and the amount of temp hps it gave was less than a single hit did. Certainly it was nice to have those hps, but it is not close to what is claimed here. FWIW it was 3 abomitable Yeti's we were fighting at level 6 and they did about 20 damage per hit.

Note in this discussion I am not counting when I used it during a riot and used it to keep a host of peasant militiamen from dying. I was in the middle of a mob of peasants and it probably saved 20 or more civilians over the course of 10 rounds of combat but that was more of a role play use as we were not even rolling for the 200+ combatants engaged. FWIW I also used all my spell slots on sleep in that "combat" and those probably saved more lives.

It's far more effective than any concertation spell I've ever seen a cleric cast ........but I have seen one of these played to level 17, and it's not a little overpowered. It is very very very overpowered.

Come on now. Hold Person, Banishment, Sunbeam, Earthquake, Greater Invisibility .... What spells are your clerics casting?

If you want a direct comparison Aura of Life is a 4th level concentration spell. Aura of life will literally stop any ally within 30 feet from staying down for its 10-minute duration. Period. Your allies can not be kept down at all and can't be killed unless an enemy does enough damage on a hit to kill them outright or hits them so many times they get 3 failed death saves before their turn starts. Anything less and the ally gets 1 hp and is swinging a sword and slinging spells on his turn. Anything that can punch through all that to kill an ally before his turn comes around will EASILY punch through the temp hps he gets with TS as well. With Aura of Life active a level 3 Barbarian will beat a CR15 Purple Worm 1V1 and there is nothing the Worm can do to win (as long as the Worm stays within 30 feet and does not lose concentration).

At level 17 the ability to give out half cover about 23 temp hps per person per turn is nothing when you can cast mass heal or even heal ... or as noted above Aura of Life. This takes an action, are you really going to give up casting Gate and bringing the most powerful ally you know (perhaps your God even) to your side.

 

[Mort]

And if you have to DESIGN encounters to make it OP then it is not OP.



The Twilight Cleric's own Eyes of the night (a 1st level ability ) is better.

If we are talking strictly 2nd level cleric abilities
1. Harness divine power is worse levels 2-5, about equal at levels 6-12 and better at levels 13+
2. Arcane Abjuration is better (although the rest of the subclass is awful)
3. Artisan's blessing is better
4. Knowlege of the ages is about equal
5. Order's Demand is about equal
6. Balm of Peace is better (because it brings up downed allies)
7. Destructive Wrath is better if you multiclass to leverage it (worse otherwise)
8. With certain builds guided strike is better (although not generally as good)


I am playing a twilight cleric, currently level 8. Twilight cleric is the most powerful cleric I have played, but it can't touch the more powerful subclasses like Bladesinger or several of Tasha's Rangers.

In the game I am playing with a TC, the only time we had a party member die (actually die) was at level 5 when the party wizard got hit with a poisioned crossbow bolt while I had TS active. The battle ended the very next turn, if I had went more Nova to start out, he probably would have lived. At 8th level, more often than not I am burning CD to get back spell slots and not using it for TS.

At levels 1-4 is where Twilight Sanctuary really shines, but once you get to level 5 there is a pretty substantial opportunity cost to using your action on that instead of a spell. If someone is charmed or you are fighting an enemy that charms people then it is awesome to have. It is also good if you forsee some big long slug fest where you are going to be adding temp hit points for 8 straight rounds (although that is rare and even more rare that you can predict it ahead of time). If you have a long day where you use all your spells, .... then too it is nice to have this instead of just swinging your greatsword. But in most combats you are going to be better served by opening with a 3+ level spell if you have it because by your second turn, combat is usually half over if everyone is doing their job.

The only thing I have really found that is "OP" is the 300 foot darkvision which lets you outsee just about every other thing in the game. In any dark area with clear sightlines you (and the people you gift it to) will see enemies long before they can see you. You can ambush them from like 300 feet away and they have to dash for 3+ turns before they can even see you. Ironically this ability clashes quite a bit with twilight sanctuary because if you use TS you light yourself up.

None of the rest is OP but in combination it is unbalanced compared to other clerics. You get an initiative bonus AND martial weapons AND heavy armor AND TS....

Yes, if you go WAY back in this thread, I said the exact same thing.

The combination of abilities is over the top

 

[Flamestrike]

At high levels it's dishing out 20 odd temp hp per turn. That's enough to take the edge off even a powerful hit.

Thats at 17th level.

At 17th level an appropriate 'solo' encounter is a single CR 23 or so (and even then that's not even 1/3 of the days XP budget), and they're dishing out close to 200 damage per round.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

At 17th level an appropriate 'solo' encounter is a single CR 23 or so (and even then that's not even 1/3 of the days XP budget), and they're dishing out close to 200 damage per round.

That's on paper. In practice they rarely do anything like that. Largely because they miss a lot and are taken out before their second turn comes round.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Hold Person, Banishment, Sunbeam, Earthquake, Greater Invisibility

Very few monsters are "persons" in my experience, and the wizard dishes out the offensive spells, whilst the cleric keeps them alive.

 

[Flamestrike]

That's on paper. In practice they rarely do anything like that. Largely because they miss a lot and are taken out before their second turn comes round.

Sack your DM; he sucks.

The only 3 CR 23 Monsters in the SRD are the Kraken, and Ancient Silvers and Blues, which are at +16/17 to hit, with save DC's of 23/24, 3 legendary saves, AC's of around 18-22, and close to 500HP.

Monsters by CR - 5th Edition (5e) SRD

If they're missing a lot, or your PCs are dealing 500 damage against AC 20 in a single round, something else is going wrong.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sack your DM; he sucks.

The only 3 CR 23 Monsters in the SRD are the Kraken, and Ancient Silvers and Blues, which are at +16/17 to hit, with save DC's of 23/24, 3 legendary saves, AC's of around 18-22, and close to 500HP.

Monsters by CR - 5th Edition (5e) SRD

If they're missing a lot, or your PCs are dealing 500 damage against AC 20 in a single round, something else is going wrong.

I'm the DM. The players eat ancient dracoliches for breakfast. And one of the reasons they can do that is because the twilight cleric keeps them alive so they can focus on offence. And the PCs don't need to do 500 points of damage in a round (they typically do around 250) because they also have a monk who chews through legendary resistance in a round, opening the path for the divination wizard to make sure they fail their saves against a save-or-suck spell.

I could kill them if I wanted to - most of them have lousy saves, so I could ambush them with a dozen beholders. But killing the lot of them in one shot wouldn't be much fun.

 

[Flamestrike]

I'm the DM. The players eat ancient dracoliches for breakfast. And one of the reasons they can do that is because the twilight cleric keeps them alive so they can focus on offence. And the PCs don't need to do 500 points of damage in a round (they typically do around 250) because they also have a monk who chews through legendary resistance in a round, opening the path for the divination wizard to make sure they fail their saves against a save-or-suck spell.

Sounds like you let them Nova and dont police the adventuring day at all.

Whats the level and party composition?

 

[ECMO3]

Very few monsters are "persons" in my experience, and the wizard dishes out the offensive spells, whilst the cleric keeps them alive.

For clarification you said - "It's far more effective than any concentration spell I've ever seen a cleric cast" ...

Few monsters are persons, but certainly you have "seen" a cleric fight humanoids and cast Hold Person at least once right? I mean you have seen it?

All of the spells I listed are going to generally be more effective in combat than TS when you use them. In some cases they are situational, but you were suggesting this is more powerful than any concentration spell a cleric can cast in any situation. The ones I listed are just the ones that are objectively better, I would put others like Faerie Fire and Moonbeam right in there pretty close with TS in terms of effectiveness.

We were not really discussing the role of clerics vs the role of wizards and I would argue that in 5e that is not a discussion worth having because you can build any spell casting class to fill any role in the game. We are comparing how powerful concentration spells are to twilight sanctuary, in that respect something like sunbeam that will deal 27 points of damage (or 13 with a save) and blind every enemy in a 60x5 foot line every single turn, for turn after turn, is going to almost always be more effective than giving 14 or so temp hps to the people who got hit AND managed to stay within 30 feet of you.

Finally if you really want to restrict this discussion to "keeping people alive" - Aura of Vitality will still always be better than Twilight Sanctuary at "keeping people alive". ALWAYS.

 

[ECMO3]

I'm the DM. The players eat ancient dracoliches for breakfast. And one of the reasons they can do that is because the twilight cleric keeps them alive so they can focus on offence. And the PCs don't need to do 500 points of damage in a round (they typically do around 250) because they also have a monk who chews through legendary resistance in a round, opening the path for the divination wizard to make sure they fail their saves against a save-or-suck spell.

I could kill them if I wanted to - most of them have lousy saves, so I could ambush them with a dozen beholders. But killing the lot of them in one shot wouldn't be much fun.

Based on what I put in red I question whether or not you actually have play tested this. A monk of any level will average less than one burned legendary per round on a Dracolich.

I love stunning strike, but the chance of a 17th level Monk with a 20 dex and 20 wisdom using stunning strike to burn through legendaries on an adult Red Dracolich in one turn is 1.5%. That is using both FOB and Stunning strike. On average it will take 5 turns to burn through the dracolich's legendaries and almost half the time (45%) the 17th level Monk will run out of ki before the Dracolich runs out of legendaries.

If Monk does not use ki for FOB and only attacks 3 times a round then said Monk has a much better chance of the Dracolich running out of legendaries (81%) but he will average 6 turns to do it and the chance of doing it in 1 turn is closer to 0 than it is to 1%.

So the diviner is waiting on average 5-6 turns before he casts his "crowd pleaser" (assuming he even has an auto fail portent in his bag).

Note this is with the Monk having all his ki at the start of the fight and it is the chance of using up the three legendaries (3 fails turned to a success), but NOT stunning the dragon. Stunning the dragon takes a 4th failed save. That will average 8 turns without FOB and with FOB most of the time (70%) the Monk will run out of ki before he stuns the dragon. The chance to actually stun the Dracolich in one turn with FOB and stunning strike is approximately 1 in 1500.

Now to put this in perspective relevant to the discussion at hand - Going with the 5-turn number above, and assuming the dragon for some reason chooses not to breathe - the 17th level twilight cleric would have given the Monk 103 temp hps in the time it takes him to land his third failed save and considering his 20AC and partial cover from TS; the Dracolich would have dealt the Monk 267 points of damage on average before he is out of legendaries.

On the other hand if said twilight Cleric used a different Channel Divinity - turn undead - to help the monk drain legendaries, then he would drop the average time it takes to run the dragon out of legendaries from 5 turns to 4 turns, and boost the chance of doing it in 1 turn from 1.5% to 9%.

Certainly magic items could boost the Monk's numbers some, but not to the point that it will happen in 1 turn ... or even 3 turns.

I also need to emphasize I am talking about an adult Dracolich here, not an ancient one.