Playtest (A5E) Level Up Playtest Document #13: Cleric

Welcome to the 13th Level Up playtest document. This playtest contains a candidate for the first 10 levels of the game’s cleric class. We're nearing the end of this phase of class playtests, with only a couple left to go!

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Level Up Playtest Document #13: Cleric — Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)

Welcome to the 13th Level Up playtest document. This playtest contains a candidate for the first 10 levels of the game’s cleric class.

www.levelup5e.com

When you're ready, please fill out the playtest survey here:

Mailchimp Survey

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[Faolyn]

Hey @Morrus, I just noticed: This is the only class to give a choice of saving throws. Wisdom plus either Int or Cha. Is this a Cleric-only thing, or are you planning on doing something like this for the other classes as well?

 

[tetrasodium]

• Revelation. The wording on this fluff is dramatically more compatible with settings that don't have FR style hands on gods getting in bar brawls in the street while still making it easy for a gm to say the setting they are running does have hands on gods that directly give you your power. This is a nice mix.
• Creating a Cleric. I absolutely love that this tells the player to think about a bunch of questions that setup baselines for the PC. Over the years it feels like every cleric PC I've ever seen is basically a clonestamp of the last with few if any cosmetic changes. As a GM will be nice seeing this play out in player choices.
• Starting kits. I like the variety & feel like the range of options is already playing out to highlight the different paths a cleric might take between these & the divine blessing options right out of the gate between the two.
• Sacred Call. These are both pretty cool & set a nice split between "I beat things with a heavy object and cast spells" and "I interact with the hearts and minds and wield magic when I must". We've all had that one game where Bonecrusher Bloodripper declares that he wants to go preach to the people while decked in plate with a shield & warhammer to help attract attention or something & does great by random d20 chance alone & can compare them to games where father michael following the god of mercy goes out looking humble with a topical thing to preach about only to roll a 2 or something.
  • Magnetic Missionary: There are all kinds of ways to use this in play for neat effect given the sure thing ability to draw a reasonably sized crowd that might not be worth the risk otherwise while somewhat reinforcing the choices made earlier in character creation. I don't agree with @WarDriveWorley on the lack of drawbacks, this is done in public & very obvious in ways that engage a quantum sort of "we saw them" that could range from the bbeg's guards recognizing you later to having problems thrust upon you by someone in that crowd who may or may not even interact with you at this point. A bard putting on a show in a tavern has all kinds of excuses they could draw if those come up while cleric doing it in town square in broad daylight has less of them if things get sticky. It can also be used to generate urban camouflage for an ally or hinder pursuit from foes but those aren't always as easy to provide uniform mechanics for.
  • Ordination: This sort of "draw something on your shield" was a big part of what allowed 3.x CoDzilla to exist so needing to take it as a cost of something else knowing what we saw of different focus items in the bard this makes me really look forward to seeing the eventual equipment changes.
  • Zeal of the Convert is hard to judge, but I notice it's using (dis)advatange rather than expertise dice & whatever the negative expertise die winds up being.
• Spellcasting: I notice it has the more frontloaded spell slot slant we saw in bards rather than the power from magic that grows with more powerful spells we saw in sorcerer/wizard. I haven't done the math & I'm not sure if the 2ish levels we see it kick in are enough to model it further yet , but I like this way of balancing classes with a wide range of powerful class abilities towards the abilities rather than spamming high level spells like classes that rely primarily on their spells.
  • Didn't notice it when it was just wizard, but looking at spellcasting in more detail with the bard/cleric spellslot difference from wiz/sor spellslots I notice cleric & wizard both include the words "casting spells doesn't remove them from your list of prepared spells" while bar/sorcerer playtest & o5e phb does not.
• Ritual casting: Cleric ritual casting still has the o5e must be prepped style except or ceremony as opposed to the wizard "in spellbook" & cleric charisma mod number of ritual spells from any class. Still hoping that a5e ritual spells feel like more finished concept than o5e.
• Ceremony: The options in this are dramatically more flavorful, interesting, & useful than the xge ceremony ones.
• Devoted vow:
  • Chastity: Bonus against charm saves is useful with some monsters but they aren't super common in o5e, from the green dragon we saw this might be even better than it sounds
  • Mercy: From the wording it sounds an awful lot like monsters in a5e don't just die when they drop to zero like in o5e which could get interesting given all the way monsters could wackamole right back at the players ... nnnneeeeeaaaat.
  • Poverty: "Material luxury" can go a lot of ways & we know there are some mental fatigue type things I forget the name of, this could play out to being a whole lot more weighty than it sounds. @Faolyn if you've ever tried to use a friend's company connections to get a discount you can probably remember not being there when they relayed your order, that could leave a lot of room for a GM to have a vendor "upsell" different things or "attach" similar/extra stuff if it feels like it's being abused but at least IME it should probably work most of the time (especially if the forgo material luxury frequently impacts other players during a rest or something)
  • Secrecy: I've seen a few people try to secretly play a cleric to an evil god or something back in the 3.x days when there were sometimes real benefits so this would help with that kind of thing but it feels a bit lacking compared to other options. Perhaps it should also include an expertise die for religion checks to remember details & info needed to impersonate a cleric of some other faith?
  • Severity: eek this sounds like it will be super loner edgelordy. Maybe mention an exception for your henchmen like the felow players?
  • Silence: Neeeat. Wildshaped druids do this all the time & it's usually interesting all the things they explain trying to patomime. Plus it will give an extra reason for use of telepathy other than to talk to beth the druid
• Sacred presence: I like them all.
  • Cosmic Idealist: This sounds pretty cool & I can definitely see some interesting ways of using it both for an absolute morality setting like FR as well as one like eberron that spits in the face of alignment for mortal beings but not immortal ones who usually have better things to do than chat with j-random mortal
  • Eyes of the heart: The thing I like about this most is that by needing a contested insight check to trigger it gives a neat way of dragging the cleric off the wallpaper front & center early with a "yea sorry about bob, you know how those cleric types get around people" type interaction for someone else to paper over if bob's not going to stay front & center
  • Spiritual Salve: holy bleep this is incredible but I'm torn between too good & just right so probably just right even if almost guaranteed first knack slot.
• Providence: These are all pretty neat in different ways but with a second class getting a wizard-like ritual caster ability on top of being a class with the raise dead type ritual spells on their list it makes me really curious where we will see ritual tags in the a5e spells
• Knacks:
  • Ancestral Guidance: extending this to grave markers memorials etc makes this really powerful in cool & interesting ways but raises a question since it mentions if the creature is not dead. What if the creature is say an undead mummy inside the tomb you are targeting? GM's choice? I love creative stuff like this that encourage players to interact with things to proactively gather info
  • Compassionate nurse & faithful historian: new trappings are cool, especially when they move a skill to your prime ability score
  • gentle healer: Kinda cool little boon for short rests that differs from the bard thing in interesting ways
  • graceful fall: I never really understood why so many players seem to worry about fall damage since it's so unusual but definitely useful for some folks
  • monastic austerity: It seems like there are more ways to get exhaustion so this will be cool. The first question a player would ask me is probably does this cover the mental strife or just exhaustion?
  • numinous awareness: The implications of that magical wounds blurb make me really excited about the monster book
  • Premonition: I like the narrator will let you know footnote since I as a dm won't always have a clue about the first but sometimes will want to showboat it.
  • Preservation: more useful for some campaigns than others but defiantly useful for some games
  • Righteous path: kinda cool & sets up an interesting conundrum on if now is the right time to use it or not
  • Soothing words: we still don't really know much about strife & how to get it but this might be really useful or just one option of many
  • supernatural intuition: As a GM I always hate these know if X type creature is near type features since I don't always have the extra braincells to remember what everyone can detect or know when they are in range if I do, as one option of many rather than at level you can detect blah I can always suggest bob pick a different option or something & there are probably tables where these are more useful than mine would usually kee[ oy.

 

[Lefi2017]

I can tell you how alignment works in LU. Generally, it's supernatural. Demons, angels, undead etc. are all creature types with an alignment. Generally sentient creature types do not have an alignment specified in the rules. For PCs we focus more on our Destiny & Inspiration rules when discussing what drives the character.

ok this is good because most none planar things would make little sense so having it restricted to extreme cases like angels devils and so on is good. But for homebrew games that do not focus on having planes concept based on the for example just make good and evil meaningless like in a game world where heaven and hell just represent order vs chaos and all none mortal things are evil to from the mortal point of view.

As long as this doesn't turn the evil priest or Orc goblin hoards this is fine but I can see the players starting to argue why it should...
Just think of the Abbot in Curse of Strahd and how this effect would impact him / his dilution of his state...

 

[GKEnialb]

Good job with this class. Really like the additions to 05E clerics in general. A few comments:

Sacred Call:
Magnetic Missionary: If you do make your check, do you attract a larger crowd? Why would you want to attract a crowd?
Ordination: First paragraph is the same as the acolyte background.
Zeal of the Convert: Would expect this sort of thing without an ability (since the pious person is already in favor or against whatever deity anybody mentions)


Spellcasting:

• The text for cantrips says 2 + thaumaturgy and table says 3 at first level. The wizard text says 3 + prestidigitation and table says 3 at first level. Intentionally different?
• Like the ceremony spell

Devoted Vow:

• Really good, but what happens if you break your vow?
• If you choose Silence, can you still sign (hard to roleplay with no communication at all)
• Love Faolyn's suggested additional vows
• Don't think the vows are too easy to follow. It all comes down to roleplaying.

Sacred Office: Seems odd to be that well known at 4th level (mission known throughout land, common people recognize you on sight).

Empowered Turning: Does this mean you turn undead and idelogy/supernatural on the same use or on separate uses? Latter makes more sense.

Imminent Turning is much weaker than others.

Gentle Healer: Does this expend a use of the kit?

Knacks are some of the best for all the classes so far.

 

[AllOlive]

A few more (partial/incipient) vow ideas:

Ritual Calendar/ Diviner: roll a random vow each day. For the calendar one, also roll a duration, and you can roll in advance so you know what's coming.

Confessional: you cannot share information freely revealed to you unless explicitly told it's OK, and you can't explicitly ask for permission. Others tend to share their secrets with you.

Aid: you cannot refuse requests for help of a certain kind (medical? Financial?)

Geekery: you cannot resist a theological discussion. Expertise on religion.

Omens: you have a bunch of superstitions that you have to list. The narrator can.use them to make you do things: talk or not talk to an arbitrary NPC, enter or not enter a given building....

 

[AllOlive]

(double post, deleted)

 

[Dragonblade]

I like the mechanical weight behind the cleric's class abilities. It actually feels like what a cleric would be in pseudo-medieval fantasy world with a medieval church analog. I typically eschew the D&D pantheons of multiple gods. I don't think that cosmic framework suits the D&D cleric as written at all.

The vows are too undefined. It opens the door for two games to have a wildly different experience playing a cleric. A strict DM may rule that Vow of Poverty means a Cleric can never have money or items, while another DM doesn't enforce any restrictions at all, only occasionally doing some token role-playing around it.

Basically my informal rules of game design are as follows (and of course this is merely my opinion, yours may differ, etc.):

• As a general rule, class abilities shouldn't include drawbacks. Specifically this means deliberately restricting something that is not restricted for other classes. And I don't mean things like proficiencies, spells or class abilities. I mean taking away something like saying this class can only attune 1 magic item, not 3. Or this class can only move 20 feet a round, not 30, etc. Or it could also mean a penalty, like you always save vs fire damage spells with disadvantage.
• If they do include drawbacks, the drawback (and the corrsponding benefit) should be explicitly defined in game mechanics terms. Not left vague or subject to interpretation. This is to prevent both power-gaming on the player side, but also inconsistent or overly punitive DMing as well.
• Role-playing advantages and disadvantages should never be cross-balanced with mechanical advantages and disadvantages.
• If you are using drawbacks, then passive (ie always on) drawbacks should be balanced with passive advantages, and active drawbacks (expending some resource such as x/day, spell slot, etc. to activate) should be balanced with active advantages. Never mixed.
• If drawbacks are used in conjunction with class abilities, there should still be a net advantage to the player, it shouldn't just be a wash, otherwise what is in it for the player? Why play this class when other classes gain things without a commensurate drawback? This is more art than science though.

For example, my lets say I have an Ice Wizard subclass. If my permanent drawback is fire damage is always at disadvantage (a very common damage type), then a viable tradeoff might be complete immunity to all cold damage and cold environments. Note that mere advantage vs cold (a rarer damage type) would actually be a net loss to the player as cold is less common than fire. And resistance vs cold might be a wash. So upgrading it to total immunity might be a worthy trade pending play testing, etc.

I actually see virtually all of these rules implicit in 5e game design, which is one reason I feel its one of the best designed editions of D&D.

 

[merrymayhem]

I think you need to work on Devoted Vows a lot more, everything should revolve around your Divine Domain.

Lets use Devoted Vow with me having a War Divine Domain and my God being Clanggedin Silverbeard:

• Chastity - Why would a War God/Goddess care about Chastity? This should matter only if it's core to the God/Goddess beliefs, like the are a Virgin Huntress.
• Mercy - I am not a murder hobo but being of the War Divine Domain, if someone attacks me or something I am defending, they will die.
• Poverty - I am still saving up for my Full Plate Mail which costs 1,500 gold but it's not like I only think of myself. Recently we freed a bunch of people from slavers so all the treasure and bounties we got from the slavers we gave to those people so they can start over. Again, this only makes sense if the God/Goddess cares about Poverty.
• Secrecy - I still see this only mattering if God/Goddess are into this, most War God/Goddess are pretty open about who they are attacking.
• Severity - This could work if for an evil God/Goddess but being Lawful Good, I am all about defending the weak.
• Silence - I just can't see a War God/Goddess requiring their followers to be silent, makes running a battle a bit hard.

It looks like you just grabbed the values of the middle age Christian church for your vows. I thought D&D had moved beyond that.

I suggest you list all the Divine Domain and they start coming up with vows that would fit them.

 

[Zaukrie]

Channel divinity is so generic. I wish cleric abilities had A Lot more to do with the cleric's deity.....

 

[Faolyn]

I think you need to work on Devoted Vows a lot more, everything should revolve around your Divine Domain.

Lets use Devoted Vow with me having a War Divine Domain and my God being Clanggedin Silverbeard:

Agreed. I've been on a Ravenloft kick recently so decided to make a cleric of the Eternal Order--a NE faith all about appeasing the dead so they don't rise and take over the world. I don't know enough about the Severity vow to pick that one--the note saying that you get a bonus to find valuable objects seems enough at odds with the lack of mercy implied to make it untenable for my cleric, and none of the others make sense at all. I ended up making up one: the Ritualistic Vow I mentioned earlier, which is both because the EO says it conducts "countless rituals" to prevent the dead from rising and from a similar trait found in GURPS.

It looks like you just grabbed the values of the middle age Christian church for your vows. I thought D&D had moved beyond that.

For what it's worth, there are religions (e.g., Buddhism) where things like chastity or poverty aren't necessarily required (from what I've read, it depends on the type of monk and sect; I am not an expert) but often engaged in as part of detachment from the physical world (and from what I've read, Jainism requires both).