I like the new focus on S tier, no longer being just "really good", instead being "potentially broken or problematic at tables". That feels much more helpful for players and the right focus in general for analysis of how the classes and subclasses are balanced.
@@valerius88 agreed. It's a really good reason I like the revision to Paladins. If you didn't use your spell slots to smite you were "playing wrong" and if you did it's possible you ended encounters without allowing the other players from being able to do anything, which decreases party fun. Edit:I played 1-16 Paladin in Against the Giants.
100% agree. I’ve had a few players at my table play subclasses that were S-Tier which definitely made the game less fun for me as the GM because of how overpowered they were. Looking at you Echo Knight!
Also if you have a DM that refuses to have his enemies attack you duplicate and they just somehow know witch one is witch and they only swarm you, just switch place with your duplicate as a bonus action.
reminds me of this really common but bad faith reading of the feature on the 2014 version where they just assumed that it could be insight checked like any illusion spell when that wasn't provided by the text. idk why "this unique ability that only this subclass gets that doesn't provide a clause that people can tell it's fake based on a check should be directly compared to a spell most classes can get earlier than this" obviously im not saying that enemies should be stupid and always think it's real but there are ways to counter play it without immediately shutting it down
As others have pointed out, you seem to have missed this part of Preserve Life for Life Domain: "This feature can restore a creature to no more than half its Hit Point maximum."
My favorite life domain memory is when the Monk was getting eaten by a T-Rex and kept going onconscious while the life domain Cleric constantly got them back up.
Hard to imagine a more horrific experience... Monk: Oh, God! He's chewing me! Cleric: Don't worry! I can keep you alive! Monk: No! Stop! It hurts! Oh, just please let me die!!!!
I really wish the Life domain cleric had a class feature that let them grant temporary HP (besides a Spell) or to Overheal, giving Temp HP (or increasing Max HP) by the amount of excess healing.
Yeah- I agree. Especially because Light Domain- Basically the Blaster Clerics- Get to grant temp HP when using one of their features. But Light Domain doesn’t, for whatever reason.
I think we're overlooking the changes to healing spells for high level life domain clerics that just max out dice. A 3rd level spell slot can easily mean 18 healing per person as a bonus action.
@@shaneconnolly4747 A 5th level Mass Cure Wounds does 5d8+Wisdom. By this level, that means you do 40 + 5 + 7 (52) healing to 6 people, and then an additional 7 healing to yourself. And you can do this with greater potency by upcasting. Even at high levels, this is *massive* healing that can undo several rounds of damage. This is different from 2014, when it was 3d8+Wisdom (24+5+7 = 36) which is fine, but is not nearly as good. And upcasting normal healing word is so insanely potent too now, when it was just completely negligible in 2014.
My understanding is 2024 Disciple of Life only applies the turn you cast the spell. Therefore, it will have little effect on Aura of vitality (round 1 only) and none on goodberry.
If a bunch of creatures hold their actions to eat a berry the moment you create them, I would argue that disciple of life would still apply (although this is only 4 hp restored rather than 1). If you could use a held action to feed another creature than you could heal more with more berries, but there isn't precedent in the spell description for that and you would need either a party of 10 or have some minions/hirelings to make use of all berries in one turn, which is pretty unlikely.
Im so angry they included TRICKERY instead of Tempest in the new PHB… I like Trickery, but I wish they had put the POWER OF ZEUS in the new phb instead…
6:32 Preserve life can't restore hit points past half a characters hitpoint max correct? Makes this ability much more niche, you would use it when a few party members are really low.
Invoke Duplicity mimics your movements. Therefore, if you Invoke Duplicity and give yourself invisibility, you would not be able to "snatch the McGuffin" without detection because your Duplicate would "act out" every step you make. Outside observers would not know exactly where you are, but they would be able to watch you climb a latter, walk across a ledge and jumping down to a lower area (with a good investigation roll).
Trickery Domain Cleric who has a day job as a Mime. So they put out the duplicate and steal something, and everyone outside just sees a mime preforming on the street
I mean, to be fair, this is assuming you're in a space where the motions required to move through it would be automatically obvious. If you NEED to climb a ladder to get to the McGuffin then yeah, sure, that would be a giveaway... but I'd argue that the large majority of combat environments most DMs run don't include very many features like that, so that's probably more of a niche exception than a general rule.
@@evanabney3659 My understanding of Invoke Duplicity is that the duplicate the cleric's movement, but doesn't actually move to a corresponding space. So if you climb a ladder, the duplicate would climb in place. If you pick someone's pocket, so would your duplicate - you would be revealing your technique.
I've played a 1-20 War cleric using the 2014 rules, and the 2024 updates are amazing and remove the bumpiness. Personally I'd rate it an A. If I had the 2024 rules, Id never run out of War Priest Bonus Action attacks as my Wis modifier was 3+ and that's how long fights last, and I generally prepped with Spiritual weapon and either shield of faith or spirit guardians before combat starts.
@@jeffdybdal656 Spiritual Weapon doesn't require concentration though for War Domain clerics, that's what's cool about the 2024 revisions. Add Shield of Faith without concentration as well and you're golden.
I'll say that my plan for playing a War Domain Cleric is to pair both Shillelagh and True Strike together. You can do this specifically with either Human or High Elf, I personally favor the Elf-style. Then you get through both Magic Initiate and Species access to 2 very important spells. Mixing these together means we can Action: True Strike, Bonus Action: Shillelagh Turn 1. After that we rely on War Priest for BA attacks with our new Shillelagh and cast True strike every turn. At level 6 it get's a little more interesting as now, not only do we have War Priest, but our main attack can instead be a non-concentration spiritual weapon. That means after turn 1 we always have damaging BA ability and with a combination of both we won't run out. The best part is that we can do all this and still Spiritual Guardians if we're need AOE. Probably not as strong as a Fireballing Light cleric but we've got attacks on par with our Fighters, and we could theoretically multiclass or take Weapon Mastery to add topple/slow to our Shillelagh attacks.
@@fortunatus1 True you can just Shillelagh and thats a fine build. However, if you never plan to get Extra Attack from multiclassing and you want to be attacking with a weapon you might as well stack True Strike on that. Or use your action to cast leveled spells, which at that point why be a war cleric?
For comparison, this is what Monty & Kelly gave 4 years ago for the Cleric Subclass Tier Ranking : - Life Domain : S - Light Domain : A -Trickery Domain : B -War Domain : C
Which is what I find wild. Overall, I think the cleric has improved and the life domain only got better. Other than not being able to use the good berry strategy I can’t see why it’s rating would drop so much
I tend to think the war domain's problem isn't really any different from the Paladin's, Valor Bard's, or Monk's problem, where you have two stats you need to buff. That's generally true for all gishes. I suspect that the solution is something similar.
I think what would really help the War Domain would be getting access to the new True Strike. Cause that would eliminate their need to keep up with strength (except for their 5 bonus action attacks per day, woopdidoo) and add even more extra damage on top. I still don't think it's quite enough to make up for their lack of extra attack, but it would be a big boost.
That's one approach. Either make it single stat with a spell or class feature, or boost both stats. You can boost two stats all the way to 20 while taking one feat (plus an epic boon feat), or boost one to 20 and the other to 18 while keeping more feats open. Neither is exactly unviable. (In fact, getting two stats to 20 is probably optimal for Monks, and maybe Barbarians, given their capstones.)
The one thing War domain would need to be great weapon using cleric is having Searing Smite as one of it's domain spells. That spell is such a massive damage boost to a weapon using cleric that you pretty much have to take 1 level in paladin just to get that spell.
I'm part of a 4-person party playing Curse of Strahd. Originally, we had a paladin, fighter, druid, and rogue. Healing was being provided primarily by the druid. After having the druid go down, and the paladin out of position, we realized we needed a cleric. By chance, my ability scores as a fighter were high because of good rolls, and I took a 13 in wisdom for a perception boost. When we leveled up from first to second level, I took a level in Life domain (2014 rules). With a wisdom of 13, my spell save DC and spell attack bonus were going to be minimal. I picked Life domain because the spells I picked were buffs, so DC and attack bonus don't matter. My pick of Protection from Evil and Good were clutch because we had two members who were in two different solo fights with ghouls. The fact that the ghouls were fighting with disadvantage meant our party members survived. Not the typical reasons for choosing Life domain, but it's working for us.
I play a Life cleric in a party with a druid and a bard and I'm afraid you're correct, I feel so useless and redundant a lot of the time 🥲 I love my character though so I don't want to change my build but. yeah. people say roles don't matter in 5e but the overlap in niches can leave people feeling excluded.
How is your Cleric’s Con/Strength score? You could try taking Spirit Guardians and going with a melee cleric build- That way, you can heal yourself up when you take damage on the frontlines, while your other party members can focus on healing your other frontliners… I mean, at least your healing would go somewhere. I dunno, just a thought, I’ve never played a Cleric for a full campaign, so idk what its like
@@Jekrane A melee build wouldn't work for my character unfortunately. I do have decent CON (15, planning to take Resilient and bump it to 16 at lvl 8) but STR is my dump stat since it doesn't make sense for the character to have high strength for many reasons, so I took the thaumaturge order when we recently updated to the 2024 rules. I already maxed out my WIS so I can do a little bit of blasting even if I'm not the most optimal blaster I can at least give people advantage with guiding bolt and prevent undead creatures from bouncing back with radiant damage. Genuinely I'm okay not being super OP or perfectly built. It just sucks to feel cornered in an suboptimal niche (healing) when other players can do the same and there's an expectation that's standby and do nothing but be a healbot. To be fair most of the other players are very nice and encourage me to do more blasting, it's just one player that complained about me not healing them once (we were separated and in different maps), called me a bad healer and it's been trying to one up me bc they're a druid and can cast the same healing spells so it's been weighing on me since then.
If I was that druid or bard, I'd heal less and damage more knowing I had a life cleric backing me up. I'd take 1 healing spell just in case you went down, and the rest of my spells would be freedom to have more fun with my class. They aren't purposely building healers, are they?
@@nobodynamedmatlock I don't think they are, bard definitely isn't but druid has the animal totem feature so they can heal quite a bit with it. Having a backup is good, I'm not saying I have ownership over healing spells obviously. But this player has called me a bad healer and one up-ed me whenever I heal someone so I have been feeling very redundant and like I have no place in the party. I deal with it because it's mostly just this one person but yeah.
For War Domains, start as a Human Fighter. Take a background that gets Wizard or Druid Initiate, take the other with your human feat. You now get a Fighting Style, you have Weapon Masteries, a way to use Shillelagh and/or True Strike, Con saves, and Second Wind. Multiclass into Cleric. Take your next 8-10 levels in Cleric. Level 7 gets you a buff to all attacks, level 8 will let you max out Wisdom. 9-10 get you 5th level spells and Divine Intervention. Take 2nd level of Fighter for Action Surge. If you actually play past Level 12, I'd take 3 more levels of Fighter, get a subclass, Feat (GWM), and extra Attack. If you go to Level 20. 6 Levels of Fighter and 14 Levels of Cleric gets you 2 more Feats and Improved Divine Strike. I personally don't like Clerics, but I would 100% play this
I also think Spiritual Weapon is a trap. +2 Defense and Bonus Action attacks Wisdom x per rest. Then keeping the +10 Attack in your back pocket is better.
Potential (easy-ish) Homebrew fix for the War Domain: Swap War God's Blessing and War Priest. Guided Strike now lets you use WIS for attack/damage rolls. War Priest now gives two attacks a la Bladesinger.
As a *Trickery Cleric,* you can cast spells with a *range of self* through your *illusion.* E.g. take the *Magic action* to let your *illusion* make an attack with *True Strike* or have *Spirit Guardians* emanate from it for the duration of the spell, since *Invoke Duplicity* states that _"You can cast spells _*_as though you were in the illusion's space,"_* which is far more liberal than the wording of e.g. *Find Familiar* _"when you cast a spell with a _*_range of touch,_*_ your familiar can deliver the touch."_
Nope. Just because you can cast as though you were in the space doesn’t mean the rules for self range spells changes. The emanation is not a thing which can be targeted with a self spell. It is not the caster. It is not even an object or creature to target. Self range spells target the caster only. The emanation is not the caster.
I think there's a really good, straightforward, War Domain built that isn't even super hard. Str 16, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 17, Cha 8 is perfectly straightforward. At that point, you use War God's Blessing for Shield of Faith, not Spiritual Weapon. This also allows Full Plate, which is pretty good. That gets you basically all of the abilities pretty easily most of the time. I think you guys got over-focused on Spiritual Weapon and didn't consider just...not relying on that particular option much at all. Honestly, as a Bonus Action attack you can make pretty regularly, War Priest combined with wanting to use Bonus Actions for other stuff like Healing Word makes Spiritual Weapon a little obsolete in melee if you either go Strength heavy or grab Shillelagh. Now, if you're engaging in ranged combat, that's when the Spiritual Weapon comes out and is quite good.
I think single class cleric just goes shillelagh and melee attacks with booming blade and BA attack while spirit guardians is up. Use all your CD for shield of faith.
My chief reasoning for playing a 2014 War Cleric was access to all martial weapons and heavy armor whereas most cleric subclasses would give you only one or the other. Now that proficiencies aren't tied to subclasses, there seems to be less reason to play a War Cleric when something like Light would give your warrior-priest Warding Flare and Fireball.
The 2014 War Cleric was really bad, and Tempest and Twilight also had martial weapons and heavy armor. I think they should have given the War Cleric extra attack, or a free/bonus action weapon attack when you cast a leveled spell.
The base Cleric on 2024 gets a choice of more spell focus and keeping your base medium armour and simple weapons proficiency or being a more martial focused cleric with martial weapons and heavy weapon proficiency.
Unless the 2024 "Invoke Duplicity" is written differently from the 2014, you cannot cast Spirit Guardians through your duplicate anyway because your duplicate requires concentration.
Guided Strike is still great for support with being able to add +10 to another character's attack, pretty much just turning anyone else's attacks into a hit.
My favorite subclass currently is the Death Cleric. The changes to Chill Touch were a significant buff to it. No longer does it have to rely on Inflict Wounds to use its features! And by the way; if you want Extra Attack on a War Cleric, best take 5 levels in Ranger as soon as possible. It lets you pick up a a few nice attack spells that run on Wisdom along the way. With Paladin, you would need bump up Charisma, and Fighter would add nothing to your spellcasting unless you pick Eldritch Knight, which is Intelligence-based. Only the Ranger has both martial and casting synergy with the Cleric.
While the War Domain does have some of those issues, I feel there are two different ways to look at subclass abilities. Some subclasses work towards enhancing a particular playstyle and each new feature builds on that single direction, while others add more and more diversity that you may not be able to use all at once but allow for many different directions and solutions to problems. There are merits to both styles, it's just a matter if you want depth or breadth. I think of it like comparing a hammer to a swiss-army knife. One has a single job it's good at doing, while the other can do many jobs but not simultaneously.
I'm playing a Life Domain Cleric in a Vecna: Eve of Ruin campaign with a VERY melee focused party and I'm glad to say that he's done his job of keeping the party on their feet- and saved their lives- on multiple occasions 😄
Regarding Disciple of Life: if you upcast a spell, it counts as a spell of that level for all purposes including this feature. Eg. If you cast a 3rd level “cure wounds” it won’t heal +3Hp, it will heal +5. Regarding War Priest: I think a balanced way of keeping the spirit of the 2014 feature intact would be to grant an additional attack as part of the attack action wis uses per rest. And to avoid broken combos, add a conditional: “This stacks with additional attacks from the extra attack feature, but does not stack with additional attacks from spells or other features such as by attacking with a nick weapon”
Personally, I am going to houserule some changes to war cleric to make it feel more like intended: Warpriest: You gain weapon mastery with a single simple or martial weapon of your choice. In addition, when you take the attack action, you can add your wisdom modifier to the attack roll of one attack per turn (no action), in addition to your Strength, or Dexterity modifier. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier, and regain all uses on a short or long rest. Eyeballing it, this doesn’t feel broken but I would want to test it. It certainly isn’t as powerful as the class feature that lets you covert a failed d20 test into a success once per turn without limits (I forget which class/subclass or level). As to 6th level, I want to resolve the decision paralysis around the channel divinity. So I will give them extra attack and the following secondary benefit (a greatly nerfed version of the printed feature to make it more of a ribbon). 6th: Spiritual weapon no longer requires concentration, and you can cast it once per day without expending a spell slot.
Preserve life is no bueno, thanks to this line: This feature can restore a creature to no more than half its Hit Point maximum So, wait until your group is bloodied, invoke this ability, and everyone is still bloodied
I feel like a "B" for life cleric, as a generalist, is appropriate. As you said, your party comp REALLY dictates the power of a life cleric. I find their best results are warding bond to a fighter/monk/paladin in the front line and your heals keeping up with resist, and the self heal you get keeps you in the fight for a lot longer as well.
For the level 6 War Domain subclass feature "War God's Blessing", I think they should have change : _You can expend a use of your Channel Divinity to cast Shield of Faith or Spiritual Weapon rather than expending a spell slot. Without requiring Concentration, for up to 1 minute._ ↓ _You can cast Shield of Faith or Spiritual Weapon without requiring Concentration._ That I would allow on my table if someone really wants to play a pure War Domain Cleric.
I wonder what you guys think of the interaction of grave cleric giving spare the dying a range of 30 feet, would that range double at level 5 or only would the base 15 feet double? For me my second class I played was light cleric and loved it.
I think as written the 5.5 Spare the Dying causes the 5e Grave Cleric version to essentially always be one doubling ahead (who knows how the feature will be written if the subclass ever gets updated to 5.5). Since it specifically says the range doubles at each cantrip scaling level with the new range of the base spell written parenthetically rather than just saying the new ranges with no reference to the fact that it happens to double I'd read the parenthetical as helpful descriptive listing rather than prescriptive. Also the change from 5e's "Bonus Action spellcasting rule" to 5.5's "Only one spell slot expended per turn on a spell" it opens them up to potentially casting an impactful spell with their Action while still stabilizing someone
My first character was a War domain cleric. I remember playing the class as thinking, “If this class got extra attack, I think it'd perfectly balance the bonus action problem” Still think that. Even with 2024 rules.
Looking at War Domain, I'm getting the feeling it's built to accomodate either melee or spell casting. Not expecting the player to use all of the spells and abilities, but just the ones that work for their build.
War Domain goes extremely hard if you go Human and pick up both MI: Wizard and MI: Druid. Getting Shillaleigh, Thorn Whip, Shield, and True Strike makes a War Cleric immediately viable from level 1, you can do your ability scores exactly the same as you would for a spellcasting cleric (14 dex). IMO it's an easy A+ with that setup. You could even start Fighter 1 for weapon masteries and Dueling on your club/quarterstaff.
So I have a theory. Several of the subclasses in the 2024 phb have a focus on the “bloodied” condition. I think that Wizards whats to make this an important part of that game. I have a feeling that when the MM comes out, we are going to see a lot of monsters that have abilities that will trigger when PCs are Bloodied. So it may actually be helpful to have a healer keeping everyone above half through the fight.
In a War, The Life Cleric is indispensable. Nice to have a doctor reliable in combat. Again, Life Domain Clerics can know and prepare more, having all healing spells on lock. Flame Strike is ready to be prepared instead of having to choose between the two. Free Healing Spells are Awesome!
Personally I can't wait to get to play the new trickery cleric, the amount of shenannigans you can get to with invove duplicity and all those domain spells is on the next level. Only thing I wish is that you would be able to use the duplicates senses and speak through it, but I guess those are both solvable issues. Minor Illusion lets you speak through it, and you can just stay nearby invisible to cover the senses.
I know this isn't phb 2024., however this is the perfect excuse to talk about my favorite one. Order cleric, it's first level feature to give allies reaction attacks and it's 6th level feature to give BA casting of enchantments is incredible. Only thing I don't like is the channel divinity involving the charmed condition, and the 17th level feature to basically just ......deal a extra 2d8 psychic damage. Now Multiclassing it goes hard, did it with Eldritch knight 13 and cleric 7 and the economy feels efficient. Order cleric is by far my favorite and I argue one of the best
Yes. The Level 1 Ability alone is great. It is also phenomenally worded, as it allows the attack AFTER the casting of the spell, so when the fighter goes down, you can pick him up with healing word and retaliate immediately. I haven't played it yet, but I'm hyped to play the Order-Cleric 1/ Clockwork-Sorcerer X I made. He's gonna chill in melee with heavy armor + shield + shield spell + Armor of Agathys + Bastion of Law at Level 7 and hit with booming blade to soft-lock his target into melee with the AoA-Retaliation, while having full spellcasting and 1st-level cleric spells like bless, command, healing word, shield of faith, etc. and the later ones even being twinnable. Level 1 Spellslot + 1 Sorcery-point to buff his, and a mates AC by 2 and also leting this mate attack as a reaction instantly. I think he's gonna be fire
I have an order cleric / clockwork sorc in a party I'm DMing and he's super strong. It's been fun for me too as I can bump up the encounter difficulty and complexity
Admittedly it could be because of my partner’s campaigns being a Homebrew one, and various scenarios just work but my Grave Domain cleric always feels invaluable as a healer or as a regular caster. Plus it’s just fun to play a gothic Nun, with mine being Raven Queen aligned and profoundly devout to her goddess, since this Raven Queen is the goddess of peaceful death, healing and destroying undead. The Shadowfell is entirely hers. As are the Shadar Kai.
war domain multiclassed with oath of vengeance would be fun. Would be fun to be able to cast shield of faith and haste on yourself and all in one turn. That is a +4 for AC then you could probably grab defensive dueler for an even further buff on AC. Would take a while in levels to get both online, but would be pretty crazy.
For War Domain, a good way to go is to grab Great Weapon Master. It will give you additional opportunities to get BA attacks. That should be enough to let you get BA attacks on most turns.
I like that Trickery offers many options for creative play, but all I can think about is whether I want to follow the Sacred Flame or the Fallen Fire with the Light Domain (throwing a fireball on a bunch of paladins would be a funny reference).
I think the buff to the cure wounds really improve life domain. If life domain was decent in 2014, he is really good in 2024 now when his iconic spell almost doubled its healing.
issue with wording flair is also in online play. you don't know when an attack comes most of the time. or if a DM holding back, or who his aiming at. that's why i never liked before the roll reaction stuff. most of those should stay at after it's declared imo.
One subtle buff for the light domain is that daylight now creates sunlight, so if you're a light cleric and you are attacked by a horde of vampires, you just instantly win
In the process of setting up a new campaign using 2024 PHB as base rules for character creation and spells. Really honestly not sure which way to go with my character. Thought initially crit fishing Half Orc Beastmaster with Piercer… but the removal of the ignoring of difficult Terrain and the orc not getting the extra crit die… Probably going with something different. Looking at Arcane Trickster Rogue, Trickery Cleric, Draconic Sorcerer or Illusionist Wizard
I think the buff to healing spells directly buffed Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Paladin. It still buffed life domain, the healing can be overkill now though.
27:55 I feel like you could arguably could cast Thaumaturgy to speak through your duplicate. Not sure if thats worth using your action to cast it, but I would probably let that fly at my table.
I'd also like to point out that all those healing spells (cure wounds and healing word) got an extra die. Healing overall got buffed. Personally, I find that a little strange much how this video explains that prevention often does alot more than pure healing can. I'm not complaining though.
for war domain cleric I'd be interested to see how balanced it'd be to give a slightly weakened version of level 6 feature at level 3 as a non-channel divinity feature (maybe total casting of them limited to wis mod per long rest? it could be workshopped) then the bladesinger style extra attack at level 6
awesome video! it enlightened me to a possible fix to the war domain. If i would DM a trable with a war domain cleric, i think i would swap the lv 3 and 6 features and then give it a second attak at lv 6 instead of the bomus action. Actually, i think i would strip his gided strike and give one weapon mastery to the poor dude.... i don`t know if this woud be balanced tho.
It seems like with the War Domain, you're better off choosing another sub-class if you want to play a Cleric, and choosing a Paladin or another martial class if you want to be a melee combatant. The War Domain just doesn't seem to live up to the promise of frontline Cleric that it proffers.
Going over the light domain spell list and forgetting to even mention Flame Strike. Sounds about right. Not buffing this spell for the 2024 PHB in a game where fireball exists is criminal.
27:33 I'd say a cleric has to make a performance check to deceive foes, and since the illusion copies you exactly you actually have to make use of a party member to do the sneaking in. As for the voice, i think thaumaturgy works if you want to throw your voice, so to speak, but it will sound weird. I can see DMs getting confused and it should have had more mechanics but imo in RP/combat leaving it up to the DM's prudence is fine? leaving stuff up to the DM to rule on at the moment is something DnD does anyways, and I'd it rather be this than a bunch of gear and checks (a lot of it is reduced in the 2024 phb, and I'm very excited for the dmg!) 34:17 tbh this extra attack isn't that crazy unless you multiclass to get flame blade or shadow blade, alternatively you could use shadow-touched+magic initiate wizard to get wrathful smite+true strike and wade into melee doing that+spirit guardians which is actually quite good damage wise, but then your bonus action attack's lost; alternatively alternatively you could use shillelagh from druid initiate, use a club+shield, and use true strike as well from magic initiate/high elf species, so there's quite a lot of ways you can actually build the war cleric and they're fine
In light of the trickster domain comments, it will be interesting to see how the dudes rank barbarian subclasses. The wild heart barb literally does give all allies advantage against targets within melee range of him/her starting level 3. This did not seem to impress treemonk who gave the subclass a middling rating.
I love the new war domain for the level 6 feature alone. I think it's potentially incredibly powerful and carries this subclass. It's just a shame that war priest wasnt improved
You’ve completely glossed over how versatile the Life Domain Cleric is. It doesn’t matter if I cast very few sub-class healing spells per long rest. They’re like an insurance policy. If I need them I have them. If not, the party had a combat good day. Which I, no doubt, contributed to with my prepared daily spells from the excellent, extensive, non-healing choices from the Cleric spell list. And I get to change it up every day with builds that preclude the necessity to cast healing spells. We need gonna need damage? I can do damage. We gonna need battlefield control? Got you covered. Tank? Happy to front-line with the Barbarian and Paladin and buff all of us. Anyone who thinks Life Cleric should be rated at anything less than high A tier has never played a Life Cleric, at least not competently. This was true for 2014 and the 2024 rule changes haven’t made this less true. Despite what you’ve been told, Life Clerics are flashy, dangerous battle beasts who are a ton of fun to play.
So the base cleric features are excellent and the life domain features are valuable when they are needed? So B tier. You just argued that when you are not using your subclass features you still have all the great cleric options available to you. So does every other cleric subclass. Healing doesn’t come up all the time and relies heavily on the party composition and campaign. As we’ve always said. B is an excellent rating and can be S tier in the right campaign. Healing is not always useful.
Life Domain Clerics should get Plant Growth and Aura of Life. Giving life to the land and improving the life of people through better crops, and AURA OF LIFE, feels obvious to me
I am really hoping that the Forge and Grave domains are in the next Xanathars equivalent book and get some nice QOL upgrades like Light and Trickery got. Twilight and Peace domains probably don't even need any upgrades tbh.
the main problem with war cleric is they're thinking you're supposed to change your weapon attack by your spiritual weapon attack, but then they're makin a whole feature useless, what make me think: why didn't just give extra attack to him in level 6 and make the level 6 CD being a feature limited wis/per day in level 3 to make both features useful?
Can you guys do warlock next? I’m curious about your thoughts on celestial, I think it needs work. I will also say I think grace domain is the “fixed” version of life domain, where your abilities let you do some absurd healing but you’re still useful in other ways
I feel an easy fix would have been going the BG3 route. Maybe have the spirit weapon have 1/2 of its normal hit die but have it act like a summon and get its own attack
Ahhh I wish my table had a life domain cleric. We are not optimizers, so our wizard, sorcerer (me) and bard are always down. We have an artificer, but he’s healing is not enough usually. We don’t have anyone with 14 or more Con ;)
I’ve always loved your content. So glad the impact you two have had on DnD and it’s something to be extremely proud of, as I hope you both are. However… Couldn’t disagree more with the war priest assessment. What the cleric subclasses to me are really how experienced are you at the game? Not at all? Life. Somewhat? Light. Creative, trickery. War cleric… is the expert level subclass. It’s not a B at all in the hands of a ‘good’ player. Get true strike, use shield of faith over spiritual weapon (that spell has always been overrated). I actually like the scaling of the channel divinities. The 3rd level doesn’t need to be used by say 10th. That’s ok. It’s not like you don’t have options of channel divinity uses. The spell list is just fine. And I guarantee you an experienced player could have a lot of fun with steel wind strike. Further, what is every cleric really going to do? Spirit guardians and running around. Which subclass is best for that? Could it be the one that can add +2 to its AC concentration free? Hmmmm let me think.
You didn't mention the fact that healing dice are double, play a live player is one of the only ways to play the rpg-style top you up healer, their channel Divinity at 20th level is literally a ninth level heal spell, the same spell that Monty offered from the druid in the last episode of drakkenheim, one back on a short rest and many during an adventuring day. I feel like this is a great option for a DM playing and someone else's campaign, straight up healers so you don't have to be an attention hog new king things with your above average understanding of the game.
It does kind of suck that healing in general isn’t really worth it. Although, I have seen a situation where it would’ve helped. Dragonlance party- As we raided the Bastion of Takhisis, our poor wild magic sorc got knocked unconscious by a bunch of skeletons and thrown in what we presumed to be an incineration pit. We rushed down, and with some good checks managed to convince the guards that we were allies and that our wild magic sorcerer was carrying an important message. Our bard casts Healing Word- Restoring Sorc to 8 HP. The Sorc notices something in the room. Dragon army guards rush down to the pit as a dragon awakens, approaching our Sorcerer. The guards position themselves to protect the Sorcerer- But even with advantage, even with a success, it wasn’t enough for our poor Sorcerer. He takes a low amount of damage… But it matters not. He drops to zero hit points. And this is the breath… Of a Death Dragon. The party watches, helpless, as our Aarocokra Wild Magic Sorcerer, Garmoid, rises as a zombie in front of our eyes. The player decides to make his new character a Reborn Life Cleric, to prevent another situation like this. This was about two to four weeks ago. Can’t wait to see what our new Life Cleric has to offer.
Edit button wont work… Smh. I meant to put “Where a little extra healing would have came in handy” Instead of just “where healing could have been useful”
War Priest isn't that bad, if you aren't using the spiritual weapon, you can still use your bonus action attack without using your action attack, so you could make a big strike with guiding bolt, insure it hits with guided strike, and then follow up with the war priest attack that is benefited from divine strike. Although, spiritual weapon was buffed in that it upcasts better, so it might be worth it to use the concentration on that. Can never go wrong with a free use of Shield of Faith though
Love light domain. Curious about multiclassing it with elements monk to get the pull into spirit guardians vs just taking telekinetic as the second feat (after magic initiate for shield and war caster at 4)… thoughts?
Light has a good spellist so I wouldnt damage that part of the character personally. Monk movement and Spirit Guardians is good obviously but it arrives late especially if you want stunning strike. If you just want to pull people into Sprit Guardians going for Thorn Wip would probably be a better bet most of the time.
@@benross9174 that’s a good point. I was thinking magic initiate (wizard) for shield + true strike, and maybe telekinetic at 8 because it’s a BA instead of thorn with which is a regular action. Think that might a better play?
@@vincentesposito4843 dont take true strike. And if you have already activated Spirit Guardians and dont have enough movement using an action isnt the worst thing in the world. It only takes a feat and if you play nature cleric you even get it for free
@@benross9174 true. Ngl I want light domain for the spell list and flexibility. Could also take double magic initiate as a human I guess to to get both. I guess my real conundrum is shield (and maybe fire bolt for flavor) vs thorn whip or just wait until level 8 to get telekinetic.
I've been in campaigns with no potions and all martials except me. Trust me, the Life Cleric is A tier in that campaign. However, I agree with the B Rank in general
I probably would put War domain in the C tier. There is too many conflicting abilities, and it doesn’t feel like it does what its meant to. In saying that i haven’t thought about it super deeply, i just get the sense it doesnt work too well
Did anyone else notice Kelly said "Let us know your favourite Cleric sub-class in the DESCRIPTION below"? I think the dudes need to re-record this entire video 😂🤣😂
Life domain: the bonus to healing spells is great on mass cure wounds or mass cure wounds on tpk fight tho. Light domain: Incredible. Trickery domain: I wish that they had a 1/3 of sneak attack for melee and idk inspiration for a caster! Maybe it would be to game breaking, but it's the only thing that is missing. Still incredible War domain: Why not the second attack of the valor bard or the bladesinging wizard? I mean... it just a waste. I like Kelly's idea tho! It would be great for casting a spell and making an attack, because you are the *** warpriest! And if im thinking about it, it should be both. A second attack and a bonus (now they can keep it wis) to differentiate with valor bard and bladesinging wizard for all the reasons mentioned. Finally, I hate on clerics that their last feature before the capstone of their subclass is at lvl 6? It's a too long commitment for a sublcass and that invite to multiclassing! Oh and great job guys, as always!
I like the new focus on S tier, no longer being just "really good", instead being "potentially broken or problematic at tables". That feels much more helpful for players and the right focus in general for analysis of how the classes and subclasses are balanced.
It's always been there, but it feels more direct now.
@@valerius88 agreed. It's a really good reason I like the revision to Paladins. If you didn't use your spell slots to smite you were "playing wrong" and if you did it's possible you ended encounters without allowing the other players from being able to do anything, which decreases party fun. Edit:I played 1-16 Paladin in Against the Giants.
Agreed, its great!
It explains why Light Domain isn't S Tier. It's extremely good, an all-around improvement to Cleric, but doesn't risk breaking the game.
100% agree. I’ve had a few players at my table play subclasses that were S-Tier which definitely made the game less fun for me as the GM because of how overpowered they were. Looking at you Echo Knight!
Also if you have a DM that refuses to have his enemies attack you duplicate and they just somehow know witch one is witch and they only swarm you, just switch place with your duplicate as a bonus action.
reminds me of this really common but bad faith reading of the feature on the 2014 version where they just assumed that it could be insight checked like any illusion spell when that wasn't provided by the text. idk why "this unique ability that only this subclass gets that doesn't provide a clause that people can tell it's fake based on a check should be directly compared to a spell most classes can get earlier than this"
obviously im not saying that enemies should be stupid and always think it's real but there are ways to counter play it without immediately shutting it down
As others have pointed out, you seem to have missed this part of Preserve Life for Life Domain: "This feature can restore a creature to no more than half its Hit Point maximum."
My favorite life domain memory is when the Monk was getting eaten by a T-Rex and kept going onconscious while the life domain Cleric constantly got them back up.
Hard to imagine a more horrific experience...
Monk: Oh, God! He's chewing me!
Cleric: Don't worry! I can keep you alive!
Monk: No! Stop! It hurts! Oh, just please let me die!!!!
Common cleric W.
I really wish the Life domain cleric had a class feature that let them grant temporary HP (besides a Spell) or to Overheal, giving Temp HP (or increasing Max HP) by the amount of excess healing.
Yeah- I agree. Especially because Light Domain- Basically the Blaster Clerics- Get to grant temp HP when using one of their features. But Light Domain doesn’t, for whatever reason.
That could be a really cool homebrew magic item idea?
I think we're overlooking the changes to healing spells for high level life domain clerics that just max out dice. A 3rd level spell slot can easily mean 18 healing per person as a bonus action.
That was already in the 2014 Life Cleric
@@shaneconnolly4747 healing spells now do twice as many dice worth of healing, which scales massively with maximizing dice.
@@shaneconnolly4747 A 5th level Mass Cure Wounds does 5d8+Wisdom. By this level, that means you do 40 + 5 + 7 (52) healing to 6 people, and then an additional 7 healing to yourself. And you can do this with greater potency by upcasting. Even at high levels, this is *massive* healing that can undo several rounds of damage.
This is different from 2014, when it was 3d8+Wisdom (24+5+7 = 36) which is fine, but is not nearly as good. And upcasting normal healing word is so insanely potent too now, when it was just completely negligible in 2014.
@@AnimatingClass101My partner homebrewed this into our games for a while so it’s great to see it implemented properly.
@@AnimatingClass101 I meant the maxxing dice was already in the 2014 class.
My understanding is 2024 Disciple of Life only applies the turn you cast the spell. Therefore, it will have little effect on Aura of vitality (round 1 only) and none on goodberry.
If a bunch of creatures hold their actions to eat a berry the moment you create them, I would argue that disciple of life would still apply (although this is only 4 hp restored rather than 1). If you could use a held action to feed another creature than you could heal more with more berries, but there isn't precedent in the spell description for that and you would need either a party of 10 or have some minions/hirelings to make use of all berries in one turn, which is pretty unlikely.
So my "make the Barbarian heal like Wolverine with Regenerate" trick probably won't work either 😥
Tempest for me aall the way! Thunder and lightning for the wicked there will be smiting!
galileo!
Very, very frightening
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
I see a little silhouetto of a man 😮
Im so angry they included TRICKERY instead of Tempest in the new PHB… I like Trickery, but I wish they had put the POWER OF ZEUS in the new phb instead…
6:32 Preserve life can't restore hit points past half a characters hitpoint max correct?
Makes this ability much more niche, you would use it when a few party members are really low.
I think that was changed for the 2024 rules
@@aidandunne5978 It was not. PHB 2024 still says Preserve Life cannot restore HP beyond half. The guys messed up
Invoke Duplicity mimics your movements. Therefore, if you Invoke Duplicity and give yourself invisibility, you would not be able to "snatch the McGuffin" without detection because your Duplicate would "act out" every step you make. Outside observers would not know exactly where you are, but they would be able to watch you climb a latter, walk across a ledge and jumping down to a lower area (with a good investigation roll).
Trickery Domain Cleric who has a day job as a Mime. So they put out the duplicate and steal something, and everyone outside just sees a mime preforming on the street
I mean, to be fair, this is assuming you're in a space where the motions required to move through it would be automatically obvious. If you NEED to climb a ladder to get to the McGuffin then yeah, sure, that would be a giveaway... but I'd argue that the large majority of combat environments most DMs run don't include very many features like that, so that's probably more of a niche exception than a general rule.
@@evanabney3659 My understanding of Invoke Duplicity is that the duplicate the cleric's movement, but doesn't actually move to a corresponding space. So if you climb a ladder, the duplicate would climb in place. If you pick someone's pocket, so would your duplicate - you would be revealing your technique.
@@jennyoutrageous Everyone would see your pick pocketing technique. The Duplicate copies whatever you do.
They added "regains additional Hit Points on the turn you cast the spell." so Aura of Vitality only gets one extra bonus to healing
I've played a 1-20 War cleric using the 2014 rules, and the 2024 updates are amazing and remove the bumpiness. Personally I'd rate it an A. If I had the 2024 rules, Id never run out of War Priest Bonus Action attacks as my Wis modifier was 3+ and that's how long fights last, and I generally prepped with Spiritual weapon and either shield of faith or spirit guardians before combat starts.
How are you swallowing the spiritual weapon is a concentration spell pill?
@@jeffdybdal656 Spiritual Weapon doesn't require concentration though for War Domain clerics, that's what's cool about the 2024 revisions. Add Shield of Faith without concentration as well and you're golden.
I'll say that my plan for playing a War Domain Cleric is to pair both Shillelagh and True Strike together. You can do this specifically with either Human or High Elf, I personally favor the Elf-style. Then you get through both Magic Initiate and Species access to 2 very important spells. Mixing these together means we can Action: True Strike, Bonus Action: Shillelagh Turn 1. After that we rely on War Priest for BA attacks with our new Shillelagh and cast True strike every turn.
At level 6 it get's a little more interesting as now, not only do we have War Priest, but our main attack can instead be a non-concentration spiritual weapon. That means after turn 1 we always have damaging BA ability and with a combination of both we won't run out. The best part is that we can do all this and still Spiritual Guardians if we're need AOE.
Probably not as strong as a Fireballing Light cleric but we've got attacks on par with our Fighters, and we could theoretically multiclass or take Weapon Mastery to add topple/slow to our Shillelagh attacks.
Do you really need both of those cantrips? Shillellagh already allows you to use Wisdom.
@@fortunatus1 True you can just Shillelagh and thats a fine build. However, if you never plan to get Extra Attack from multiclassing and you want to be attacking with a weapon you might as well stack True Strike on that. Or use your action to cast leveled spells, which at that point why be a war cleric?
@@Red13aron Don't forget Booming Blade
37:21 the feature says the spell ends if you cast it again, so no putting Shield of Faith on multiple party members with this.
For comparison, this is what Monty & Kelly gave 4 years ago for the Cleric Subclass Tier Ranking :
- Life Domain : S
- Light Domain : A
-Trickery Domain : B
-War Domain : C
Which is what I find wild. Overall, I think the cleric has improved and the life domain only got better. Other than not being able to use the good berry strategy I can’t see why it’s rating would drop so much
Honestly it was too high before. @@wudchop
Heavy Armor proficiency for Life was very strong. Also, healing has been muted some over the years.
Kelly: its just fun to cast fireball...
Me: at the barbarian and fighter!
I tend to think the war domain's problem isn't really any different from the Paladin's, Valor Bard's, or Monk's problem, where you have two stats you need to buff. That's generally true for all gishes. I suspect that the solution is something similar.
I think what would really help the War Domain would be getting access to the new True Strike. Cause that would eliminate their need to keep up with strength (except for their 5 bonus action attacks per day, woopdidoo) and add even more extra damage on top. I still don't think it's quite enough to make up for their lack of extra attack, but it would be a big boost.
You could grab either True Strike or Shillelagh to use Wisdom for your attacks.
That's one approach. Either make it single stat with a spell or class feature, or boost both stats. You can boost two stats all the way to 20 while taking one feat (plus an epic boon feat), or boost one to 20 and the other to 18 while keeping more feats open. Neither is exactly unviable. (In fact, getting two stats to 20 is probably optimal for Monks, and maybe Barbarians, given their capstones.)
@@jordanholt9170 or both!
Humans or Elves can grab the ability to cast both of those Cantrips from level 1.
The one thing War domain would need to be great weapon using cleric is having Searing Smite as one of it's domain spells. That spell is such a massive damage boost to a weapon using cleric that you pretty much have to take 1 level in paladin just to get that spell.
I'm part of a 4-person party playing Curse of Strahd. Originally, we had a paladin, fighter, druid, and rogue. Healing was being provided primarily by the druid. After having the druid go down, and the paladin out of position, we realized we needed a cleric. By chance, my ability scores as a fighter were high because of good rolls, and I took a 13 in wisdom for a perception boost. When we leveled up from first to second level, I took a level in Life domain (2014 rules). With a wisdom of 13, my spell save DC and spell attack bonus were going to be minimal. I picked Life domain because the spells I picked were buffs, so DC and attack bonus don't matter. My pick of Protection from Evil and Good were clutch because we had two members who were in two different solo fights with ghouls. The fact that the ghouls were fighting with disadvantage meant our party members survived. Not the typical reasons for choosing Life domain, but it's working for us.
I play a Life cleric in a party with a druid and a bard and I'm afraid you're correct, I feel so useless and redundant a lot of the time 🥲 I love my character though so I don't want to change my build but. yeah. people say roles don't matter in 5e but the overlap in niches can leave people feeling excluded.
How is your Cleric’s Con/Strength score? You could try taking Spirit Guardians and going with a melee cleric build- That way, you can heal yourself up when you take damage on the frontlines, while your other party members can focus on healing your other frontliners… I mean, at least your healing would go somewhere. I dunno, just a thought, I’ve never played a Cleric for a full campaign, so idk what its like
@@Jekrane A melee build wouldn't work for my character unfortunately. I do have decent CON (15, planning to take Resilient and bump it to 16 at lvl 8) but STR is my dump stat since it doesn't make sense for the character to have high strength for many reasons, so I took the thaumaturge order when we recently updated to the 2024 rules. I already maxed out my WIS so I can do a little bit of blasting even if I'm not the most optimal blaster I can at least give people advantage with guiding bolt and prevent undead creatures from bouncing back with radiant damage. Genuinely I'm okay not being super OP or perfectly built. It just sucks to feel cornered in an suboptimal niche (healing) when other players can do the same and there's an expectation that's standby and do nothing but be a healbot. To be fair most of the other players are very nice and encourage me to do more blasting, it's just one player that complained about me not healing them once (we were separated and in different maps), called me a bad healer and it's been trying to one up me bc they're a druid and can cast the same healing spells so it's been weighing on me since then.
@@Jekrane Thank you for the suggestion though! I recently gained access to spirit guardians and I'm planning to use it as much as I can.
If I was that druid or bard, I'd heal less and damage more knowing I had a life cleric backing me up. I'd take 1 healing spell just in case you went down, and the rest of my spells would be freedom to have more fun with my class. They aren't purposely building healers, are they?
@@nobodynamedmatlock I don't think they are, bard definitely isn't but druid has the animal totem feature so they can heal quite a bit with it. Having a backup is good, I'm not saying I have ownership over healing spells obviously. But this player has called me a bad healer and one up-ed me whenever I heal someone so I have been feeling very redundant and like I have no place in the party. I deal with it because it's mostly just this one person but yeah.
For War Domains, start as a Human Fighter. Take a background that gets Wizard or Druid Initiate, take the other with your human feat. You now get a Fighting Style, you have Weapon Masteries, a way to use Shillelagh and/or True Strike, Con saves, and Second Wind. Multiclass into Cleric. Take your next 8-10 levels in Cleric. Level 7 gets you a buff to all attacks, level 8 will let you max out Wisdom. 9-10 get you 5th level spells and Divine Intervention. Take 2nd level of Fighter for Action Surge. If you actually play past Level 12, I'd take 3 more levels of Fighter, get a subclass, Feat (GWM), and extra Attack. If you go to Level 20. 6 Levels of Fighter and 14 Levels of Cleric gets you 2 more Feats and Improved Divine Strike. I personally don't like Clerics, but I would 100% play this
I also think Spiritual Weapon is a trap. +2 Defense and Bonus Action attacks Wisdom x per rest. Then keeping the +10 Attack in your back pocket is better.
Me likee
"Cooking with gas" never gets old from Monty!
Potential (easy-ish) Homebrew fix for the War Domain: Swap War God's Blessing and War Priest. Guided Strike now lets you use WIS for attack/damage rolls. War Priest now gives two attacks a la Bladesinger.
As a *Trickery Cleric,* you can cast spells with a *range of self* through your *illusion.* E.g. take the *Magic action* to let your *illusion* make an attack with *True Strike* or have *Spirit Guardians* emanate from it for the duration of the spell, since *Invoke Duplicity* states that _"You can cast spells _*_as though you were in the illusion's space,"_* which is far more liberal than the wording of e.g. *Find Familiar* _"when you cast a spell with a _*_range of touch,_*_ your familiar can deliver the touch."_
Nope. Just because you can cast as though you were in the space doesn’t mean the rules for self range spells changes. The emanation is not a thing which can be targeted with a self spell. It is not the caster. It is not even an object or creature to target.
Self range spells target the caster only. The emanation is not the caster.
I think there's a really good, straightforward, War Domain built that isn't even super hard. Str 16, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 17, Cha 8 is perfectly straightforward. At that point, you use War God's Blessing for Shield of Faith, not Spiritual Weapon. This also allows Full Plate, which is pretty good.
That gets you basically all of the abilities pretty easily most of the time. I think you guys got over-focused on Spiritual Weapon and didn't consider just...not relying on that particular option much at all. Honestly, as a Bonus Action attack you can make pretty regularly, War Priest combined with wanting to use Bonus Actions for other stuff like Healing Word makes Spiritual Weapon a little obsolete in melee if you either go Strength heavy or grab Shillelagh. Now, if you're engaging in ranged combat, that's when the Spiritual Weapon comes out and is quite good.
Exactly!
And then grab Great Weapon Master later for supplemental BA attacks opportunities and extra damage.
I think single class cleric just goes shillelagh and melee attacks with booming blade and BA attack while spirit guardians is up. Use all your CD for shield of faith.
My chief reasoning for playing a 2014 War Cleric was access to all martial weapons and heavy armor whereas most cleric subclasses would give you only one or the other. Now that proficiencies aren't tied to subclasses, there seems to be less reason to play a War Cleric when something like Light would give your warrior-priest Warding Flare and Fireball.
The 2014 War Cleric was really bad, and Tempest and Twilight also had martial weapons and heavy armor. I think they should have given the War Cleric extra attack, or a free/bonus action weapon attack when you cast a leveled spell.
The base Cleric on 2024 gets a choice of more spell focus and keeping your base medium armour and simple weapons proficiency or being a more martial focused cleric with martial weapons and heavy weapon proficiency.
Unless the 2024 "Invoke Duplicity" is written differently from the 2014, you cannot cast Spirit Guardians through your duplicate anyway because your duplicate requires concentration.
I keep feeling like Joe should stick his head in the frame when you were talking about the trickery cleric to say, “You talking ‘bout me?”
Guided Strike is still great for support with being able to add +10 to another character's attack, pretty much just turning anyone else's attacks into a hit.
47:43 Thanks for the little poem Kelly!
"But if I had to rank them, one through 4,
It goes; Trickery, Light, Life, War."
Got the book today. I'm Jared, I'm a DM and I'm currently running the Curse of Strahd. The Social Interaction Example on pg 17 absolutely floored me
My favorite subclass currently is the Death Cleric. The changes to Chill Touch were a significant buff to it. No longer does it have to rely on Inflict Wounds to use its features!
And by the way; if you want Extra Attack on a War Cleric, best take 5 levels in Ranger as soon as possible. It lets you pick up a a few nice attack spells that run on Wisdom along the way. With Paladin, you would need bump up Charisma, and Fighter would add nothing to your spellcasting unless you pick Eldritch Knight, which is Intelligence-based. Only the Ranger has both martial and casting synergy with the Cleric.
While the War Domain does have some of those issues, I feel there are two different ways to look at subclass abilities. Some subclasses work towards enhancing a particular playstyle and each new feature builds on that single direction, while others add more and more diversity that you may not be able to use all at once but allow for many different directions and solutions to problems. There are merits to both styles, it's just a matter if you want depth or breadth. I think of it like comparing a hammer to a swiss-army knife. One has a single job it's good at doing, while the other can do many jobs but not simultaneously.
I'm playing a Life Domain Cleric in a Vecna: Eve of Ruin campaign with a VERY melee focused party and I'm glad to say that he's done his job of keeping the party on their feet- and saved their lives- on multiple occasions 😄
Regarding Disciple of Life: if you upcast a spell, it counts as a spell of that level for all purposes including this feature. Eg. If you cast a 3rd level “cure wounds” it won’t heal +3Hp, it will heal +5.
Regarding War Priest: I think a balanced way of keeping the spirit of the 2014 feature intact would be to grant an additional attack as part of the attack action wis uses per rest. And to avoid broken combos, add a conditional:
“This stacks with additional attacks from the extra attack feature, but does not stack with additional attacks from spells or other features such as by attacking with a nick weapon”
Personally, I am going to houserule some changes to war cleric to make it feel more like intended:
Warpriest: You gain weapon mastery with a single simple or martial weapon of your choice. In addition, when you take the attack action, you can add your wisdom modifier to the attack roll of one attack per turn (no action), in addition to your Strength, or Dexterity modifier. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier, and regain all uses on a short or long rest.
Eyeballing it, this doesn’t feel broken but I would want to test it. It certainly isn’t as powerful as the class feature that lets you covert a failed d20 test into a success once per turn without limits (I forget which class/subclass or level).
As to 6th level, I want to resolve the decision paralysis around the channel divinity. So I will give them extra attack and the following secondary benefit (a greatly nerfed version of the printed feature to make it more of a ribbon).
6th: Spiritual weapon no longer requires concentration, and you can cast it once per day without expending a spell slot.
Preserve life is no bueno, thanks to this line: This feature can restore a creature to no more than half its Hit Point maximum
So, wait until your group is bloodied, invoke this ability, and everyone is still bloodied
I feel like a "B" for life cleric, as a generalist, is appropriate. As you said, your party comp REALLY dictates the power of a life cleric. I find their best results are warding bond to a fighter/monk/paladin in the front line and your heals keeping up with resist, and the self heal you get keeps you in the fight for a lot longer as well.
For the level 6 War Domain subclass feature "War God's Blessing", I think they should have change :
_You can expend a use of your Channel Divinity to cast Shield of Faith or Spiritual Weapon rather than expending a spell slot. Without requiring Concentration, for up to 1 minute._
↓
_You can cast Shield of Faith or Spiritual Weapon without requiring Concentration._
That I would allow on my table if someone really wants to play a pure War Domain Cleric.
I wonder what you guys think of the interaction of grave cleric giving spare the dying a range of 30 feet, would that range double at level 5 or only would the base 15 feet double? For me my second class I played was light cleric and loved it.
I think as written the 5.5 Spare the Dying causes the 5e Grave Cleric version to essentially always be one doubling ahead (who knows how the feature will be written if the subclass ever gets updated to 5.5). Since it specifically says the range doubles at each cantrip scaling level with the new range of the base spell written parenthetically rather than just saying the new ranges with no reference to the fact that it happens to double I'd read the parenthetical as helpful descriptive listing rather than prescriptive. Also the change from 5e's "Bonus Action spellcasting rule" to 5.5's "Only one spell slot expended per turn on a spell" it opens them up to potentially casting an impactful spell with their Action while still stabilizing someone
My first character was a War domain cleric.
I remember playing the class as thinking,
“If this class got extra attack, I think it'd perfectly balance the bonus action problem”
Still think that. Even with 2024 rules.
Looking at War Domain, I'm getting the feeling it's built to accomodate either melee or spell casting. Not expecting the player to use all of the spells and abilities, but just the ones that work for their build.
War Domain goes extremely hard if you go Human and pick up both MI: Wizard and MI: Druid. Getting Shillaleigh, Thorn Whip, Shield, and True Strike makes a War Cleric immediately viable from level 1, you can do your ability scores exactly the same as you would for a spellcasting cleric (14 dex). IMO it's an easy A+ with that setup. You could even start Fighter 1 for weapon masteries and Dueling on your club/quarterstaff.
Cure Wounds (etc.) can be cast at higher levels for greater effect; thereby increasing the amount of the bonus heal.
So I have a theory. Several of the subclasses in the 2024 phb have a focus on the “bloodied” condition. I think that Wizards whats to make this an important part of that game. I have a feeling that when the MM comes out, we are going to see a lot of monsters that have abilities that will trigger when PCs are Bloodied. So it may actually be helpful to have a healer keeping everyone above half through the fight.
In a War, The Life Cleric is indispensable.
Nice to have a doctor reliable in combat.
Again, Life Domain Clerics can know and prepare more, having all healing spells on lock.
Flame Strike is ready to be prepared instead of having to choose between the two.
Free Healing Spells are Awesome!
Personally I can't wait to get to play the new trickery cleric, the amount of shenannigans you can get to with invove duplicity and all those domain spells is on the next level. Only thing I wish is that you would be able to use the duplicates senses and speak through it, but I guess those are both solvable issues. Minor Illusion lets you speak through it, and you can just stay nearby invisible to cover the senses.
I know this isn't phb 2024., however this is the perfect excuse to talk about my favorite one. Order cleric, it's first level feature to give allies reaction attacks and it's 6th level feature to give BA casting of enchantments is incredible. Only thing I don't like is the channel divinity involving the charmed condition, and the 17th level feature to basically just ......deal a extra 2d8 psychic damage.
Now Multiclassing it goes hard, did it with Eldritch knight 13 and cleric 7 and the economy feels efficient. Order cleric is by far my favorite and I argue one of the best
Yes. The Level 1 Ability alone is great. It is also phenomenally worded, as it allows the attack AFTER the casting of the spell, so when the fighter goes down, you can pick him up with healing word and retaliate immediately. I haven't played it yet, but I'm hyped to play the Order-Cleric 1/ Clockwork-Sorcerer X I made. He's gonna chill in melee with heavy armor + shield + shield spell + Armor of Agathys + Bastion of Law at Level 7 and hit with booming blade to soft-lock his target into melee with the AoA-Retaliation, while having full spellcasting and 1st-level cleric spells like bless, command, healing word, shield of faith, etc. and the later ones even being twinnable. Level 1 Spellslot + 1 Sorcery-point to buff his, and a mates AC by 2 and also leting this mate attack as a reaction instantly. I think he's gonna be fire
I have an order cleric / clockwork sorc in a party I'm DMing and he's super strong. It's been fun for me too as I can bump up the encounter difficulty and complexity
Admittedly it could be because of my partner’s campaigns being a Homebrew one, and various scenarios just work but my Grave Domain cleric always feels invaluable as a healer or as a regular caster.
Plus it’s just fun to play a gothic Nun, with mine being Raven Queen aligned and profoundly devout to her goddess, since this Raven Queen is the goddess of peaceful death, healing and destroying undead. The Shadowfell is entirely hers. As are the Shadar Kai.
war domain multiclassed with oath of vengeance would be fun. Would be fun to be able to cast shield of faith and haste on yourself and all in one turn. That is a +4 for AC then you could probably grab defensive dueler for an even further buff on AC. Would take a while in levels to get both online, but would be pretty crazy.
For War Domain, a good way to go is to grab Great Weapon Master.
It will give you additional opportunities to get BA attacks. That should be enough to let you get BA attacks on most turns.
To talk through your duplicate you could pick up Minor Illusion and cast it through it, then use the sound option.
Light and Tempest have always been my favorites, but I think the one I'm most excited to see updated for 2024 is the Knowledge Domain!
I like that Trickery offers many options for creative play, but all I can think about is whether I want to follow the Sacred Flame or the Fallen Fire with the Light Domain (throwing a fireball on a bunch of paladins would be a funny reference).
I think the buff to the cure wounds really improve life domain. If life domain was decent in 2014, he is really good in 2024 now when his iconic spell almost doubled its healing.
As a life cleric’s DM I have to wholeheartedly agree that their presence makes my encounter “balance” very fun
issue with wording flair is also in online play.
you don't know when an attack comes most of the time.
or if a DM holding back, or who his aiming at.
that's why i never liked before the roll reaction stuff.
most of those should stay at after it's declared imo.
One subtle buff for the light domain is that daylight now creates sunlight, so if you're a light cleric and you are attacked by a horde of vampires, you just instantly win
In the process of setting up a new campaign using 2024 PHB as base rules for character creation and spells. Really honestly not sure which way to go with my character. Thought initially crit fishing Half Orc Beastmaster with Piercer… but the removal of the ignoring of difficult Terrain and the orc not getting the extra crit die… Probably going with something different.
Looking at Arcane Trickster Rogue, Trickery Cleric, Draconic Sorcerer or Illusionist Wizard
I think the buff to healing spells directly buffed Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Paladin. It still buffed life domain, the healing can be overkill now though.
I haven’t played a cleric in a minute but thanks to the 2024 rules I remember why I love them
Don’t worry Kelly, use Thaumaturgy while Invoke Duplicity to fill the whole space with your Trickery taunts!
On the Trickery cleric and casting spells using the illusion as your point of origin, contagion got a buff. I really want to use this...
27:55 I feel like you could arguably could cast Thaumaturgy to speak through your duplicate. Not sure if thats worth using your action to cast it, but I would probably let that fly at my table.
I'd also like to point out that all those healing spells (cure wounds and healing word) got an extra die. Healing overall got buffed.
Personally, I find that a little strange much how this video explains that prevention often does alot more than pure healing can. I'm not complaining though.
for war domain cleric I'd be interested to see how balanced it'd be to give a slightly weakened version of level 6 feature at level 3 as a non-channel divinity feature (maybe total casting of them limited to wis mod per long rest? it could be workshopped) then the bladesinger style extra attack at level 6
awesome video! it enlightened me to a possible fix to the war domain. If i would DM a trable with a war domain cleric, i think i would swap the lv 3 and 6 features and then give it a second attak at lv 6 instead of the bomus action. Actually, i think i would strip his gided strike and give one weapon mastery to the poor dude....
i don`t know if this woud be balanced tho.
It seems like with the War Domain, you're better off choosing another sub-class if you want to play a Cleric, and choosing a Paladin or another martial class if you want to be a melee combatant. The War Domain just doesn't seem to live up to the promise of frontline Cleric that it proffers.
Going over the light domain spell list and forgetting to even mention Flame Strike. Sounds about right. Not buffing this spell for the 2024 PHB in a game where fireball exists is criminal.
27:33 I'd say a cleric has to make a performance check to deceive foes, and since the illusion copies you exactly you actually have to make use of a party member to do the sneaking in. As for the voice, i think thaumaturgy works if you want to throw your voice, so to speak, but it will sound weird. I can see DMs getting confused and it should have had more mechanics but imo in RP/combat leaving it up to the DM's prudence is fine? leaving stuff up to the DM to rule on at the moment is something DnD does anyways, and I'd it rather be this than a bunch of gear and checks (a lot of it is reduced in the 2024 phb, and I'm very excited for the dmg!)
34:17 tbh this extra attack isn't that crazy unless you multiclass to get flame blade or shadow blade, alternatively you could use shadow-touched+magic initiate wizard to get wrathful smite+true strike and wade into melee doing that+spirit guardians which is actually quite good damage wise, but then your bonus action attack's lost; alternatively alternatively you could use shillelagh from druid initiate, use a club+shield, and use true strike as well from magic initiate/high elf species, so there's quite a lot of ways you can actually build the war cleric and they're fine
In light of the trickster domain comments, it will be interesting to see how the dudes rank barbarian subclasses. The wild heart barb literally does give all allies advantage against targets within melee range of him/her starting level 3. This did not seem to impress treemonk who gave the subclass a middling rating.
Life cleric is critical in my current campaign. Every fight we’ve had since level 4 has been near TPK
I love the new war domain for the level 6 feature alone. I think it's potentially incredibly powerful and carries this subclass. It's just a shame that war priest wasnt improved
You’ve completely glossed over how versatile the Life Domain Cleric is.
It doesn’t matter if I cast very few sub-class healing spells per long rest. They’re like an insurance policy. If I need them I have them. If not, the party had a combat good day.
Which I, no doubt, contributed to with my prepared daily spells from the excellent, extensive, non-healing choices from the Cleric spell list. And I get to change it up every day with builds that preclude the necessity to cast healing spells. We need gonna need damage? I can do damage. We gonna need battlefield control? Got you covered. Tank? Happy to front-line with the Barbarian and Paladin and buff all of us.
Anyone who thinks Life Cleric should be rated at anything less than high A tier has never played a Life Cleric, at least not competently. This was true for 2014 and the 2024 rule changes haven’t made this less true.
Despite what you’ve been told, Life Clerics are flashy, dangerous battle beasts who are a ton of fun to play.
So the base cleric features are excellent and the life domain features are valuable when they are needed? So B tier. You just argued that when you are not using your subclass features you still have all the great cleric options available to you. So does every other cleric subclass. Healing doesn’t come up all the time and relies heavily on the party composition and campaign. As we’ve always said. B is an excellent rating and can be S tier in the right campaign. Healing is not always useful.
I think if you have a lot of summon spells prepared with your Life cleric, the player can hold itself pretty good if he keep healing the creature.
6 levels of trickery domain cleric and 14 levels of arcane trickester was one of the best things i played on 5E
Life Domain Clerics should get Plant Growth and Aura of Life. Giving life to the land and improving the life of people through better crops, and AURA OF LIFE, feels obvious to me
I am really hoping that the Forge and Grave domains are in the next Xanathars equivalent book and get some nice QOL upgrades like Light and Trickery got. Twilight and Peace domains probably don't even need any upgrades tbh.
Ranger with war domain lines up a little better since both classes like higher wisdom.
the main problem with war cleric is they're thinking you're supposed to change your weapon attack by your spiritual weapon attack, but then they're makin a whole feature useless, what make me think: why didn't just give extra attack to him in level 6 and make the level 6 CD being a feature limited wis/per day in level 3 to make both features useful?
War being in the core PHB seems kinda redundant with Paladin being a thing but it being basic is probably a good thing for new players as well
I would like to see a video showing some B tier subclass with the party compositions becoming S tier.
Can you guys do warlock next? I’m curious about your thoughts on celestial, I think it needs work. I will also say I think grace domain is the “fixed” version of life domain, where your abilities let you do some absurd healing but you’re still useful in other ways
Kelly rocking the Yaniir shirt! ❤️ Great vid!
I feel an easy fix would have been going the BG3 route. Maybe have the spirit weapon have 1/2 of its normal hit die but have it act like a summon and get its own attack
Ahhh I wish my table had a life domain cleric. We are not optimizers, so our wizard, sorcerer (me) and bard are always down. We have an artificer, but he’s healing is not enough usually. We don’t have anyone with 14 or more Con ;)
Light domain cleric might be my favourite class to play and love to see is just as good
I’ve always loved your content. So glad the impact you two have had on DnD and it’s something to be extremely proud of, as I hope you both are.
However… Couldn’t disagree more with the war priest assessment. What the cleric subclasses to me are really how experienced are you at the game? Not at all? Life. Somewhat? Light. Creative, trickery. War cleric… is the expert level subclass. It’s not a B at all in the hands of a ‘good’ player.
Get true strike, use shield of faith over spiritual weapon (that spell has always been overrated). I actually like the scaling of the channel divinities. The 3rd level doesn’t need to be used by say 10th. That’s ok. It’s not like you don’t have options of channel divinity uses.
The spell list is just fine. And I guarantee you an experienced player could have a lot of fun with steel wind strike.
Further, what is every cleric really going to do? Spirit guardians and running around. Which subclass is best for that? Could it be the one that can add +2 to its AC concentration free? Hmmmm let me think.
You didn't mention the fact that healing dice are double, play a live player is one of the only ways to play the rpg-style top you up healer, their channel Divinity at 20th level is literally a ninth level heal spell, the same spell that Monty offered from the druid in the last episode of drakkenheim, one back on a short rest and many during an adventuring day. I feel like this is a great option for a DM playing and someone else's campaign, straight up healers so you don't have to be an attention hog new king things with your above average understanding of the game.
Also the drive-by warcaster cure wounds really makes this action economy viable.
Life domain cleric goes up in ranking with 1 house rule. When you come back from 0 HP you get 1 point of exhaustion
It does kind of suck that healing in general isn’t really worth it. Although, I have seen a situation where it would’ve helped. Dragonlance party- As we raided the Bastion of Takhisis, our poor wild magic sorc got knocked unconscious by a bunch of skeletons and thrown in what we presumed to be an incineration pit.
We rushed down, and with some good checks managed to convince the guards that we were allies and that our wild magic sorcerer was carrying an important message. Our bard casts Healing Word- Restoring Sorc to 8 HP. The Sorc notices something in the room. Dragon army guards rush down to the pit as a dragon awakens, approaching our Sorcerer. The guards position themselves to protect the Sorcerer-
But even with advantage, even with a success, it wasn’t enough for our poor Sorcerer. He takes a low amount of damage… But it matters not. He drops to zero hit points. And this is the breath… Of a Death Dragon.
The party watches, helpless, as our Aarocokra Wild Magic Sorcerer, Garmoid, rises as a zombie in front of our eyes.
The player decides to make his new character a Reborn Life Cleric, to prevent another situation like this. This was about two to four weeks ago. Can’t wait to see what our new Life Cleric has to offer.
Edit button wont work… Smh. I meant to put “Where a little extra healing would have came in handy” Instead of just “where healing could have been useful”
War Priest isn't that bad, if you aren't using the spiritual weapon, you can still use your bonus action attack without using your action attack, so you could make a big strike with guiding bolt, insure it hits with guided strike, and then follow up with the war priest attack that is benefited from divine strike. Although, spiritual weapon was buffed in that it upcasts better, so it might be worth it to use the concentration on that. Can never go wrong with a free use of Shield of Faith though
War domain with Echo Knight fighter. Lots of extra attacks
Modify Memory is niche, sure. However (not really spoilers, but SPOILERS sort of)
CR has two examples I can think of, with BANGER uses of that spell!
War Domains bonus attack feature should be replaced with "let an ally reroll a missed attack" as a reaction at the same number of uses.
Love light domain. Curious about multiclassing it with elements monk to get the pull into spirit guardians vs just taking telekinetic as the second feat (after magic initiate for shield and war caster at 4)… thoughts?
Light has a good spellist so I wouldnt damage that part of the character personally. Monk movement and Spirit Guardians is good obviously but it arrives late especially if you want stunning strike. If you just want to pull people into Sprit Guardians going for Thorn Wip would probably be a better bet most of the time.
@@benross9174 that’s a good point. I was thinking magic initiate (wizard) for shield + true strike, and maybe telekinetic at 8 because it’s a BA instead of thorn with which is a regular action. Think that might a better play?
@@vincentesposito4843 dont take true strike. And if you have already activated Spirit Guardians and dont have enough movement using an action isnt the worst thing in the world. It only takes a feat and if you play nature cleric you even get it for free
@@benross9174 true. Ngl I want light domain for the spell list and flexibility. Could also take double magic initiate as a human I guess to to get both. I guess my real conundrum is shield (and maybe fire bolt for flavor) vs thorn whip or just wait until level 8 to get telekinetic.
Trickster's Domain has turned into a magical Echo Knight
I've been in campaigns with no potions and all martials except me. Trust me, the Life Cleric is A tier in that campaign. However, I agree with the B Rank in general
I probably would put War domain in the C tier. There is too many conflicting abilities, and it doesn’t feel like it does what its meant to.
In saying that i haven’t thought about it super deeply, i just get the sense it doesnt work too well
War domain has always felt like it didn't quite fill the space it should. It felt very close, but not quite there.
Never understood why it doesn't get extra attack at level 6 like Valor Bards do.
Agreed
Did anyone else notice Kelly said "Let us know your favourite Cleric sub-class in the DESCRIPTION below"? I think the dudes need to re-record this entire video 😂🤣😂
Life domain: the bonus to healing spells is great on mass cure wounds or mass cure wounds on tpk fight tho.
Light domain: Incredible.
Trickery domain: I wish that they had a 1/3 of sneak attack for melee and idk inspiration for a caster! Maybe it would be to game breaking, but it's the only thing that is missing. Still incredible
War domain: Why not the second attack of the valor bard or the bladesinging wizard? I mean... it just a waste. I like Kelly's idea tho! It would be great for casting a spell and making an attack, because you are the *** warpriest! And if im thinking about it, it should be both. A second attack and a bonus (now they can keep it wis) to differentiate with valor bard and bladesinging wizard for all the reasons mentioned.
Finally, I hate on clerics that their last feature before the capstone of their subclass is at lvl 6? It's a too long commitment for a sublcass and that invite to multiclassing!
Oh and great job guys, as always!