D&D 5E Order Vs Twilight Cleric. Neo Warlord Abuse?

[Zardnaar]

What do I see played? Well, cleric isn't a particularly popular class in my group. Aside from Twilight I've seen Grave domain, and a druid with a Life domain dip. I see more druids, along with healing-focused bards, and even a healing-focused warlock. And rangers and paladins who do a bit of cleric-type stuff occasionally.

Powerful class not that popular.

I've seen a lot because it's my wife's favorite class. That or Cleric 1/Divine soul xyz.


Her first BG3 character was a light cleric.

In our games I piloted a light cleric in 2015, I've seem death, twilight, nature, order, tempest ones played mostly single class. May be some others.

BG 3 messed around with trickery. Light, life, tempest.

Wife's dips into divine soul life, light, death, peace. She said she should have picked order over peace her current divine soul build as she's seen my order cleric in action.

 

[Zardnaar]

Dm banned silvery barbs

Fair enough I will to. It's very absurd with VoA. My players didn't know it existed. No one bought Strixhaven.

DM PoV not a fan of stiff that slows the game down a lot. Eg twilight cleric and summoning Druid.

 

[ECMO3]

While Embodiment of Law for those bonus action spells is nice, it is a bit underpowered if you don't have a main action that is strong and can be used with the bonus action spell. If you swap a strong bonus action and weak action for a strong action and weak bonus action you're not really gaining that much.

Dodge is almost always a great action, especially if you are in the front maintaining concentration or something.

 

[Zardnaar]

Dodge is almost always a great action, especially if you are in the front maintaining concentration or something.



Embodiment of law is a class ability, you would need to be 11th level to do this (Ranger 5/Cleric 6), and it only works on enchantment spells.

If you are talking about using quicken spell from the metamagic feat, that feat does not give you felxible casting and you can't turn spell slots into sorcery points with the feat.

I think they were referencing healing word via the cleric dip using Ranger slots.

The one level dip is kinda insane on sone classes eg divide soul.

It's also why I said the order cleric is better than the Twilight one in the right party and if you know what you're doing. In s vacumn the twilight domain is better imho. Ones offensive the others defensive and n D&D killing stuff faster also prevent damage.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I love how "Warlord" gets thrown around as though it were some ridiculously OP, "you can't believe how exploitative this was" class.

When literally all it did was help others do a bit more damage, and have heals.

 

[Zardnaar]

I love how "Warlord" gets thrown around as though it were some ridiculously OP, "you can't believe how exploitative this was" class.

When literally all it did was help others do a bit more damage, and have heals.

At will attack granting would ve OP in 5E.

4E it was 2d6 or 2d8 iirc.

Order cleric doesn't miss out if they grant an attack via spell its on top of what they're doing anyway.

In some cases your casting your spell. Standard action and granting the attack.

So it's something like 2d8+ strength or 3d8 plus strength plus spell effect plus 5d6+6 damage.

My clerics using a mace of dusruption+1d8 radiant or 3d8 sacred flame.

So yeah I've seen this in action and the Battlemaster. Damage is exceeding 4E at will.

 

[jgsugden]

....
If you are talking about using quicken spell from the metamagic feat, that feat does not give you felxible casting and you can't turn spell slots into sorcery points with the feat.

I was speaking of quickening ... but from multiclassing. I apparently edited out the rest of the build. It was Gloomstalker to 5, Cleric of Order 1 (for 6), Divine Soul to 5 (for 11), Battlemaster to 4 (for 15), Assassin to 3 (for 18), then finished off with a couple Sorcerer levels (for 20). Those selections were all story driven and made sense for the PC ... but turned out to be ridiculously strong.

Level 3 we get Gloomstalker for the second round 1 attack. 4 brought us Sharpshooter. 5 Gave us second level spells and Multiattack. 6 was Voice of Authority (with most of my spell slots going to healing word for high damage ally attacks). 7 gave me Silvery Barbs for granting bonus attacks by using my (and an ally's) reaction while saving damage. 9 gave me quicken which then allowed me to be far more versatile than the pure Cleric of Order. I'd use quickened Aid, Bless, Protection form Good/Evil, etc... All of this was while I was dealing high damage with the bow. At 11 I added Haste to the equation. After that, my spellcasting was fairly stable as I focused on enhancing the archery side of things with Battlemaster and Assassin until higher level. I have an alternate version of the build which is stronger and uses the Clockwork Sorcerer, but I will likely not get a chance to play it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I love how "Warlord" gets thrown around as though it were some ridiculously OP, "you can't believe how exploitative this was" class.

When literally all it did was help others do a bit more damage, and have heals.

A warlord in 4e almost always had the highest at will power damage because you let your highest damage ally swing while adding a damage bonus to that. It could be a really high bonus because you didn’t have to focus on main stat and could focus on secondary stat bonuses. You had good heals and other buffs on top of that (like initiative buffs). Etc. was it the strongest class ever? Maybe, maybe not, but it was dang strong and as the geico commercial says - it was so easy a caveman could do it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I am currently playing a Level 10 Twilight Cleric. It is indeed strong. But I've learned that there isn't a lot of variety in how the fights go. When in the fight, my spell list is effective, but limited in scope. The buffing is the priority, and that feels passive, so you don't feel like you are taking the fight to the enemy. Also, the Twilight Cleric really wants to go first in a fight, so others can get the temporary hit points before they get hit. If I go last as the Cleric, my allies are often getting hit before my Twilight Sanctuary goes up.

1. 1st round Action: Channel Divinity: Twilight Sanctuary. It's an action so you don't also get to attack on the first round, unless you want to concentrate on a Spiritual Weapon or something (which I don't usually do, as I prefer Bless). If you don't have the Channel Divinity ability, you'll be functioning like a normal cleric for the fight. But with 2+ uses per day, recharging 1 on each short rest, you'll always have it for 2 fights, usually 3. I will say I've never had to consider using Channel Divinity for any other effect. Twilight Sanctuary is too good to pass up.
2. 2nd round Action: This depends on the difficulty, type of enemy, and expected duration of the fight. If you are fighting a solo monster, Bless helps your allies really well with bonuses to attacks and saves. If you have 3rd level spells and you are fighting a horde, Spiritual Guardians is amazing. Both are concentration effects, which matters. At 9th level, I was able to use Circle of Power when fighting a scary Legendary monster, and it was an amazing feeling. I've never played a paladin at a high enough level to use the spell, and Twilight Clerics cheat it out at 9th level.
3. 3rd round Action: Was the enemy able to get in some early hits or debuffs on you or your allies? Heal them now, otherwise use your preferred attack, whether a weapon, cantrip, or a bigger spell like Guiding Bolt if needed. I keep my higher level spell slots open for bigger heals or Spiritual Guardian uses, and use mostly cantrips or weapon attacks, as I trust my allies to burn our enemies down.

The fight is often halfway over at this point, but at this point you are plinking away while trying to keep your concentration going.

Great Summary. I'd just add when you look at the round by round comparison things don't look quite as good for the twilight cleric.

For level 10...
Round 1. Grant Allies avg 13.5 temp hp.
Round 2. Refill that temp hp for any that lost it. Start up something like Spirit Guardians (likely hitting 2-3 enemies for 5d8 save for half each).

A Light Cleric.
Round 1. Spirit Guardians for 5d8 save half (hitting same number of enemies)
Round 2. Spirit Guardians strikes again, also can channel divinity hitting most enemies for 2d10+10 save for half.

Assuming 2 enemies for spirit guardians and 4 for the channel divinity that's +10d8 +8d10+40 (all save for half) ~ 45+84 ~ 129 save for half damage the light cleric has dealt over the twilight cleric in the first 2 rounds. (I already canceled out the 10d8 for each from spirit guardians on the 2nd round).

 

[Zardnaar]

Great Summary. I'd just add when you look at the round by round comparison things don't look quite as good for the twilight cleric.

For level 10...
Round 1. Grant Allies avg 13.5 temp hp.
Round 2. Refill that temp hp for any that lost it. Start up something like Spirit Guardians (likely hitting 2-3 enemies for 5d8 save for half each).

A Light Cleric.
Round 1. Spirit Guardians for 5d8 save half (hitting same number of enemies)
Round 2. Spirit Guardians strikes again, also can channel divinity hitting most enemies for 2d10+10 save for half.

Assuming 2 enemies for spirit guardians and 4 for the channel divinity that's +10d8 +8d10+40 (all save for half) ~ 45+84 ~ 129 save for half damage the light cleric has dealt over the twilight cleric in the first 2 rounds. (I already canceled out the 10d8 for each from spirit guardians on the 2nd round).

It's competing with radiance of the dawn and bless with voice of authority.

It's more complete package though ex flying, dark vision and slowing the game down.