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

[overgeeked]

There's other fun clerics eg death, order and light. My clerics more or less refuse to heal as magical healing is so inefficient in 5E.

Either take the healing feat, short rest or buy some healing potions. I'll heal you to save your life or the occasional mass heal but magical healing is only coming if all hit dice are gone and there's no other choice.

My spell slots are more valuable than your hit points.

Basically don't throw your hp away expecting healing. I would rather buff you or nuke the enemy over healing.

And then you end up as a meme joke cleric. Like Jester from Critical Role. “Sure. She can heal. She has the ability to heal, but...”

 

[overgeeked]

Really? It's an awful long time since I've seen that.

Every time I run a game I get zero players offering to play clerics or healers. Once everyone realizes there’s going to be no healer, they start negotiating. I keep trying to reassure them it will be fine without a healer, but so far no takers on that.

 

[Maxperson]

Last Saturday we finished up a campaign with a twilight cleric. The party got to level 10. Yeah, it's pretty OP. I had to alter many encounters so they wouldn't be cake walks. Every time I managed to hit them, they just got more temp HP the next round. It was crazy.

We just finished a game at level 9, mainly because we lost. Normally we don't finish so low. Anyway, we had a Twilight Cleric in the party. He used that ability for the first time at level 9 and we never even knew he had it before then. He used it one time only and failed to mention to us that it refreshed every round. We thought it was a level 9 ability that only gave temp hit points once and we were like, "Wow! That's good!"

The player in question is still fairly new, but has been playing long enough to know better. I'm going to have to give him a hard time this week on game day. Especially now that I'm back in the DM chair and can't benefit from the ability.

 

[cbwjm]

It’s clearly broken. There’s no argument there. And it’s so bizarrely broken. D&D5E fights are already super easy mode. Most fights are a cakewalk unless the DM goes out of her way to unbalance things. It takes some wild dog-piling to get things to the point where the PCs are even challenged, to say nothing of in proper jeopardy.

But I honestly wonder: so what? Most groups have to bribe someone to play the cleric. Having such an obviously broken subclass (well, two with the Peace cleric) will hopefully draw some munchkins to the role and help ease the shortage of cleric players. If it’s such a pain in play, just talk to the players and ban the class. You don’t have to allow it at your table. Saying no to your players about busted stuff doesn’t make you a bad DM.

A more balanced approach, like in 4E, that allows the healer to both heal and do damage regularly might help. Players don’t want to be a heal-bot. It’s boring.

You don't need to bribe anyone to play a cleric any more. Those that want to play one are typically able to deal decent damage and healing isn't such a huge requirement that now you can get away with having a few healing potions for emergencies. Plenty of other classes can also bring in some healing as well.

 

[Zardnaar]

You don't need to bribe anyone to play a cleric any more. Those that want to play one are typically able to deal decent damage and healing isn't such a huge requirement that now you can get away with having a few healing potions for emergencies. Plenty of other classes can also bring in some healing as well.

I think it's more a stereotype. Light fighter that heals.


The optimized cleric uses certain spells,medium armor and a shield and avoids using weapons (unless you have higher stats).

 

[Undrave]

Optimized clerics essentially use 5 spells.

Bless, Spiritual Weapon/Guardians and healing word. And guidance.

There's other good ones but don't leave without them.

Yup and it's just... SO generic... and in the PHB they only had 1 Attack Cantrip! A Trickery Cleric sounds like a cool concept but I can basically get a better version of that concept by playing an Arcane Trickster (or the right Bard) with Magic Initiate Cleric (to get Thaumaturgy and Guidance) and the Charlatan background... There's just NOTHING for that Cleric to do beside those spells you listed once a fight break out.

Complete snoozeville. And I love playing support characters!

 

[Don Durito]

Trickster clerics have always suffered from the fact that the kinds of things we associate with tricksters and the types of things we associate with clerics are worlds apart.

Edit: Really this would make a good rogue subclass

 

[overgeeked]

You don't need to bribe anyone to play a cleric any more. Those that want to play one are typically able to deal decent damage and healing isn't such a huge requirement that now you can get away with having a few healing potions for emergencies. Plenty of other classes can also bring in some healing as well.

Maybe in your experience, but not mine. I’ve been running 5E since the playtest and counting up every group I’ve run there’s been exactly zero volunteers to play the cleric or primary healer. The players panic and start negotiating whose turn it is to play the cleric or bribe someone to do it. Every time. Every game.

 

[cbwjm]

Maybe in your experience, but not mine. I’ve been running 5E since the playtest and counting up every group I’ve run there’s been exactly zero volunteers to play the cleric or primary healer. The players panic and start negotiating whose turn it is to play the cleric or bribe someone to do it. Every time. Every game.

I've never had groups that worried about having a primary healer. First time I ran a game the only people who could heal were the paladin and the ranger. Current game I'm running has a druid and a bard, both of whom can heal but not like it's something they concentrate on. Mostly just healing potions.

I've only seen 3 clerics in games I've run that I can recall and two of them were run by me. In none of those runs was the cleric played as a healer. Even when I played a life cleric, healing was just something I was better at but it wasn't like the party was relying on me for healing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's obvious Twilight clerics are overpowered, don't need all that analysis.

Also, it doesn't matter.