Unearthed Arcana The Unearthed Arcana Is Back With Cleric's Unity Domain!

This week's Unearthed Arcana has reappeared, with a renamed cleric domain and a replaced cleric ability! "Unearthed Arcana presents three new subclasses for you to playtest: the College of Creation for the bard, the Unity Domain for the cleric, and the Clockwork Soul for the sorcerer."

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

The Love Domain is now the Unity Domain:

"A sense of oneness shines at the heart of healthy communities, whether bound together by friendship, blood, faith, or some other uniting force. The gods of unity deepen such bonds and delight in their strength.

Clerics of these gods preside over marriages and other familial bonding customs, but they also nurture the emotional bonds of friendship and camaraderie. Their divine blessings bolster and protect allies in battle through these deep bonds and turn aside malign influences."

The Impulsive Infatuation power has been replaced with Shared Burden which allows you to distribute an ally's damage taken amongst other willing creatures.

 

[jasper]

My quick thoughts. I will let some run some damage numbers
Bard Animating performance. Change size to medium so no riding horse from the ferry go around.
Cleric . Shared Burden could cause some confusion. If I spread the damage around and the barbar is raging does he still take 1 pt of damage even if his resistance would drop to 1/2 of hp damage.
Clockwork Soul sounds like Eberron or robot theme. Not to my taste so no comment.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Need to really read this, but it sounds like the Unity domain could be analogous to the old City domain, which I appreciate. Kinda like how Order is essential a 5e version of the Law domain.

 

[Undrave]

Shared Burden could cause some confusion. If I spread the damage around and the barbar is raging does he still take 1 pt of damage even if his resistance would drop to 1/2 of hp damage

They specifically call out that Resistance are applied AFTER damage is spread. Now, wether you round up or down is probably in the rules for Resistance? Hopefully?

Potent Spellcasting
Now with the added inclusion of a Grey Box to remind people there are two kinds of Clerics in the world: Spellcasters and Bashers.

But are there REALLY two kinds of Clerics?

 

[cbwjm]

While I like the notes of the bard subclass, I'm not too fond of the rest. I'd have liked them to expand on the note theme, not necessarily as part of bardic inspiration. It might just be that it's a subclass that doesn't resonate with me though.

I don't really feel like the concept of unity is something that I can easily fit into a pantheon. The most logical place, from my perspective, seems to be for a god of civilisation but I think order fits that concept better than the unity domain. More than likely if this makes it into a book, I'm probably not going to include it.

The clockwork soul has a better capstone, you can actually bring people back up instead of just stabilising them but I still think that bulwark of law should provide a set amount of damage absorption, I will probably set it at 5 points/sorcery point spent instead of rolling when this comes out. I just feel like a concept based on the orderly plane of mechanis shouldn't have a random element. Is it also strange that they've gone back to granting spells as part of the subclass? I wonder if this will stick or if they will later go back and remove them because earlier subclasses didn't gain any.

 

[Leatherhead]

But are there REALLY two kinds of Clerics?

Some Clerics cast spells from the middle of the party, other Clerics like to pretend they are Paladins by hitting an enemy with their hammer, once, between casting a bunch of spells.

 

[RogueJK]

I see they are back to adding spells to sorcerer origins. That should have been done from the start in the PHB.

They did it with the Storm Origin and then removed them when published in XGtE.

They also did it with the UA Giant Soul Sorcerer, which never made it to primetime.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

It seems like they took the idea that there are other types of love and put that into the Unity domain.

That shared damage thing CD they have is neat, reminds me of a homebrew paladin I saw.

 

[Undrave]

Some Clerics cast spells from the middle of the party, other Clerics like to pretend they are Paladins by hitting an enemy with their hammer, once, between casting a bunch of spells.

My point is that Basher clerics are generally inferior (their melee damage doesn't scale at the same time as Cantrip damage) and not as supported.

 

[RSIxidor]

If I spread the damage around and the barbar is raging does he still take 1 pt of damage even if his resistance would drop to 1/2 of hp damage.

They specifically call out that Resistance are applied AFTER damage is spread. Now, wether you round up or down is probably in the rules for Resistance? Hopefully?

PHB page 7.

There’s one more general rule you need to know at the outset. Whenever you divide a number in the game, round down if you end up with a fraction, even if the fraction is one-half or greater.

Also a relevant SA post.

0 damage resistance

D&D Sage Advice ·

www.sageadvice.eu

 

[CleverNickName]

so we got an improved sorcerous origin and a better CD ability? not sure how this is a loss.

The Unity domain is definitely an improvement over the "Love" rough draft, both mechanically and conceptually. I approve.

Yep. I'm looking over the second draft right now and it's a lot more clear and focused than I remember the first one being. I'll never know for certain, but--well it does feel like the first version truly was just a draft that wasn't intentionally released, and that social media wasn't the instigator.