Bah. I see plenty of players in Living Campaigns salivate at the possibility of picking up Great Fervor (1 re-rolled save, once per day) or sudden maximize. Once per day? You bet. But they still kick ass.
The strength domain is a great domain. It has good spells and the granted power is also very good... for a melee cleric or for a cleric who has spent the feats to keep his melee options open. Here's why:
You're exploring the ice caves of doom and an advanced wendigo appears behind you. It bites and crits you for monstrous damage; your allies are all ahead because you were playing the rear guard. You can:
A. Cast Heal or Cure Critical Wounds on yourself.
B. Cast Divine Power and quickened divine favor
C. Cast Righteous Might and quickened divine favor
D. Click off the bracers of the Quick Strike, cast quickened divine favor, use your strength domain, crank up the Power Attack, and strike the thing down then and there.
If you choose any of options A-C, you're just extending the fight and ensuring that you take another bite or two before you are ready to take the Wendigo down. With option D, you can lay the smack down on the Wendigo right then and there. A magic missile or force orb from the rest of the party and it's going down.
The utility of the strength domain power is that you have the ability to toss out some top of the line damage without any warmup time. Any cleric who isn't designed to avoid melee should be able to be quite impressive if he has the time to cast righteous might, divine power, and divine favor. However, very few enemies are going to let you cast three rounds worth of spells without doing something similarly impressive themselves. The ability to, even for one round, lay that kind of smack down without preparation is worth a lot. At high levels, it can also enable a character who is already buffed to do really over the top damage for one round when he's in a good position to do so. Not stacking with the +6 from your belt or divine power isn't as big of a deal when the bonus is +14 as it is when it's a mere +8. (Not to mention the fact that having the strength domain power may tip the balance towards casting righteous might instead of divine power so you do get all of the stacking goodness).
That is of real value to PCs as well, but is of less value to NPCs. IME, NPCs get the drop on PCs more often than PCs get the drop on NPCs. Also, the ability has a lot of synergy with the kind of stats and magic items that PCs are more likely to have than NPCs. It's good if you can use your strength domain power. But, if you have a +4 holy ghost touch greatsword, Power Attack, Cleave, divine favor, boots of speed, hero's feast, and a bardsong going, getting four attacks at +21 damage per swing (assuming level 12 for +12 strength using a two handed weapon=+9 damage and Power Attacking for an extra six points for another +12 damage), it's more impressive. Drop any of the elements (for instance, because you are an NPC and the DM doesn't feel like giving all that loot to the PCs or because, as a CR>party level NPC, you are effectively getting one action to the party's four to six actions and consequently have different challenges and priorities), and it's less effective.
Musrum said:
And a good demonstration as to why this sucks for a PC. A 1/day ability is fine for an NPC.
How different it would be if the DM had a number of tokens that he could use on "per day" abilities for ALL the NPCs & Monsters...
