Future of D&D 3, Part 1 - The Cleric

A new Unearthed Arcana came out last week, and that means I take a deep look and give my thoughts on what the changes bring. This one, though smaller than the previous document, is quite dense with information. It focuses on the Cleric Subclass, the changes to Species (with the term Race now gone), and the glossary changes to the spells. As I wrote out my notes, I realized that this would be a behemoth of an article. Since I do not want anyone to sit and read my 20-page dissertation, I broke this review up into a few smaller posts. The aim is two or three. This first one will focus on the Unearthed Arcana.

Statue of Augusta Bitner, in Lancaster Cemetery. By Sarah Michelle Walsh

If you have not read the previous posts in this series, you can start here .

The Cleric

The cleric is the first of the Priests Group. This group will also include the Druid and Paladin. As mentioned in the earlier UA , these groups will share particular traits. Priests will have access to Divine and Primal magic, and have a focus on healing, utility, and defense.

I have played Cleric a few times and always enjoyed the class. I have also had a handful of clerics in campaigns and one-shots. I know what I enjoy about the class and what I want to change.

Domain moved to Level 3

One of the first changes I noticed was when the Cleric gets their Divine Domain subclass. Originally, characters started out with the subclass at level one, when they began playing. The new play test moves the subclass back to 3rd level. The cleric’s progression would be in line with other official classes. Reviewing the Experts information, all the proposed classes also have 3rd level subclasses. 

To me, this is a wonderful change. For newer players, or players undecided on which domain to go, having a few levels to feel the character can make things a lot easier. Crawford confirmed as much in the play test interview, saying 

“what we have seen over the last eight years is that classes that have a subclass choice at first level and even sometimes at second level have two big issues with them the biggest one is they are a blocker for brand new players...when we ask you to choose a subclass at first level we are suddenly asking you who may never have played DND before to look at every subclass option for that class before you even played the class and make the most important decision for your class right away”

Jeremy Crawford also mentioned that this would help mitigate how powerful certain multi-class options become at the table. He mentioned that classes that have a subclass choice at first level most often end up in multi-classes that cause other people to “grit their teeth”. Now that those Domain-Specific features are at the 3rd level, it means that a multiclass will give less powerful abilities early on.

Channel Divinity Tweaks

While the Cleric Subclass moved to level three, Channel Divinity took its place at level 1. Originally, at 2nd Level, characters would start out with one use per rest. Now, characters get two uses per long rest.. This comes with a new CD ability, Divine Spark. The ability offers either healing or damage, using d8s equal to your proficiency modifier. The damage portion is also nice, providing half damage on a successful save. Turn Undead also had its wording changed up, now referencing the new Dazed condition. Still mechanically the same, this makes the text block smaller.

My first thought on this is that most classes that can cast magic (or at least the Priest Group) will have access to some sort of healing, not tied to spells. Paladin already has Lay on Hands, so I wonder if Druid will use a Wildshape to restore health to the party. But it feels like characters will have more ways to heal. This could make players feel less like they have to take healing spells, making them more resilient overall. While I think they are powerful enough, the tradeoff for getting this heal is a valuable resource. To me, that is an acceptable bargain.

The damage option I feel weird about. To me, this feels like a pseudo spell that has more steps to it. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything bought the optional Harness Divine Power feature, which would trade a CD charge for a spell slot. Looking at this, I guess the intention was to limit those uses to Healing or attacking, but I am not entirely sold on the idea.

The key wording on Turn Undead is a nice continuation of what Wizards have implemented in the rest of the play test. Defining terms, and then using those terms uniformly throughout the material, will help everyone. Dungeon Masters can merge down their screens and reference notes to a list of conditions instead of remembering what each ability does, and how they differ from one another. It will be easier for new people to join. This is a win for everyone.

Looking at what Crawford had to say shows why they moved Channel Divinity to the first level. 

“this introduces also is a nice progression where the cleric has Channel Divinity the vanilla version before they then get an additional option from their subclass whereas before you were you were sort of getting subclass first then Channel Divinity and then Channel Divinity came with it also a subclass add-on you now get to experience each of these features”

Being able to get a feel for those abilities early on before you get additional options means you are not drowning in choices early in the game, something that I think the current cleric class has a tendency t o cause.Overall, I like this.

Spellcasting Shake-up

Spell-casting has had some minor changes. First thing I noticed is that Wizards gives a recommended load out for a level 1 character, comprising Cure Wounds, Sacred Flame, Shield of Faith, Spare the Dying, and Thaumaturgy. They offer guidance on how to prepare spells if you choose differently. Preparing spells stays the same as in the previous document, where you can prepare specific numbers of certain level spells, corresponding to your Known Spell list. In the example, you get three 0-level (cantrips) and two 1st level spells, and they must be Divine. After a long rest, they can switch out prepared spells.

A load-out can be useful for new players. The list of spells provided feels like a standard cleric to me. A mixture of healing, defense, and damage spells to get a feel for what the class has available. Hopefully, this happens across the rest of the classes.

Prepared cantrips might be for all casters now from what we are seeing, not just for wizards. It feels nice to swap cantrips over a rest instead of waiting until a level up. It means you do not have to be married (Priest, marry; I am hilarious!) to your cantrip choice. Characters change while adventuring, and fresh adventures might call for different cantrips. In the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons, I see a lot of cantrips never getting chosen because they are just not optimal. Perhaps with this option available, we see that as less of an impact.

Specializing at Level 2

At the second level, Clerics get to choose their specialty through Holy Order. A cleric has three options. Protector provides Martial Weapons Proficiency and Heavy Armor Training( Proficiency. Scholar gives two extra proficiencies: Intelligence skills, and Skill Checks with those chosen abilities adds the cleric’s Wisdom Modifier to the results. Finally, we have Thaumaturge, who gets an additional cantrip and the ability to regain a use of Channel Divinity on a short rest once per day.

I like that we have untied the choice of party role from Subclasses. Prior to this, they provided your ability to use martial weapons and armor on the subclass. This feels like it can create more of a choice when character building. Crawford confirmed the goal of Holy Order, mentioning that Holy Order - base class so that players can mix and match more. Protector and Thaumaturge feel very familiar to me, while Scholar is an interesting addition to the list. It feels like you could match the Intelligence based classes for certain knowledge, which I like. Thaumaturge, as written, however, feels a little light when looking at it on paper. The ability feels powerful to start, but as you level, it could become underpowered. I think it could use more. Perhaps the Channel Divinity regain could scale with the character level.

Holy Smiting

Instead of Destroy undead, we now have Smite Undead. Where Destroy Undead would outright kill undead under a certain Challenge Rating that failed their Turn Undead, saving throw, Smite does d8 damage to the creatures, the number based on your Proficiency bonus. This effect is all or nothing, doing no damage on a save.

At a glance, it feels more balanced. You won’t have a cleric out there negating encounters with undead because you, as the DM, had some unlucky rolls. If you have undead heavy adventures and don’t want characters to ruin them, this can be useful. However, this will generate a lot more record keeping when combat happens. Destroy Undead would eliminate enemies entirely on a failed saving throw, removing them from the battle. Smite Undead now will injure, with the potential to not entirely kill. Looking at a level 5 Cleric, their Smite Undead would do an average of 14 damage from 3d8, rounded up. A zombie, which is CR ¼, has 22 HP on average. This would mean that most undamaged enemies would remain. In fact, at level 5, you would need to do almost max damage to clear the board. This makes for an interesting encounter with more math to it. 

Blessed Strike

Blessed Strike, like Holy Order, takes an ability locked to subclass and opens it up, both through freedom of choice and by moving it to the core class. Originally, you would have to choose to either do improved damage with melee weapons or with damaging cantrips. The proposed change to this feature would give both options to all characters at level 7.

More Holy Order?

At the 9th level, you get a second choice in Holy Order, allowing you to choose one of the other two options you did not pick in 2nd level. Out of all the options given, this is the only one I dislike. This design choice feels lackluster for a 9th level character. By 9th level, most PCs have a defined role in the party, and getting additional choices feels like it won’t do a ton for characters. Alternatively, I would like to see extra features given to your original Holy Order at this level. This “Greater Holy Order” could even allow for a character to swap their choice entirely, although I feel that if a change is needed, this can be done by talking to your DM and adjusting your character instead of offering an entire ability for it.

Divine Intervention

The final core class features we get are Divine Intervention and Greater Divine Intervention, at 11th and 18th level, respectively. Something has moved these earlier to make room for more subclass features and the new Epic Boon capstone. Divine Intervention itself is almost entirely the same, except the recharge after a successful use is now 2d6 instead of a flat 7, giving it a range. The only thing I have on these last features of the class is my hesitancy to buy into the Epic Boons. It is early, but nothing so far feels like it will make the character feel distinctly powerful.

Overall Thoughts

Mostly, I like the changes Wizards of the Coast presented. Reorganizing the abilities to match more of the other classes makes for a class that feels more uniform in its progression, and easier for newer players to learn, as well as avoiding the dangers of multiclass powers stealing the show. Holy Order becoming tied to the class, not the subclass, avoids forcing a certain role type because of a domain choice. I also like that it sets the character role early on, designating what the character excels at. 

I wonder if setting these proficiencies early will avoid something I have seen with the Cleric Class. Some cleric characters are at risk of stealing the stage from the rest of the party. I had a powerful Forge Cleric that in the first tier of play could handle just about anything, while also providing magical support. I have also seen many play-testers that will not allow a Twilight Domain cleric at the table because of some of their abilities. I would like to keep the versatility inherent in this class, but have a choice be made early on to determine what direction the class goes to avoid that overlap.

My final thought goes back to the spell-less healing option. First the Bard and now the Cleric both have class feature options that allow for healing. If this is the direction we are going, I expect the druid will have some way of doing the same. If healing does in fact become this common in One Dungeons & Dragons, I wonder what that will do with overall game balance.

Life Domain

Moving on from the core class, we get to see the Life Domain subclass. This subclass, as well as all other cleric subclasses, gives features at 3rd, 6th, 10th, 14th. Crawford confirmed this, stating “the life cleric gets features at 3rd, 6th, 10th, and 14th level. Again people are going to see that subclass progression has in almost every case been normalized if not every case”. He also mentioned that overall, the Life Cleric has remained a solid subclass. So most of these changes were small tweaks instead of sweeping overhauls.

Prepared Spells

The always prepared spells given to the Life Cleric got a bit of a change. Spiritual Weapon, Beacon of Hope, Guardian of Faith, Raise Dead, have all been removed from the Life Cleric list. They replaced these spells with Prayer of Healing, Mass Healing Word, Aura of Life, Greater Restoration.

This choice feels more focused on the specific domain. You have an emphasis on healing and helping instead of the previous mix, which gave a mixture of healing and damaging spells. Aura of Life especially feels like a flavorful choice, and can provide a lot more healing support than Guardian of Faith.

Better Healing

At the 3rd level, we get the feature Disciple of Life. This adds an additional 2 + Spell Level points to every healing spell roll. Healing Word cast at first level, for example, goes from 1d4+Wis to 1d4+3+Wis. I see this as all around good for the subclass. A decent boost to low-level spells, and a pleasant bonus to those high-level spells.

Channel Divinity

At the 6th level, Life Domain Clerics receive the Preserve Life Channel Divinity feature, originally a 2nd level feature. As mentioned before, they moved the feature to allow players to get a better handle on the core abilities. Comparing numbers, this Channel Divinity will initially be a close Divine Spark, but quickly exceed it in power, as well as being able to be spread across any creatures within 30 feet.

The Healer Supreme

Supreme Healing, originally 17th level, now sits as the last feature at the 14th level. It remains the same, providing maximum healing on any healing spell. I feel like this ability will be more useful at the end of Tier 3 play. Max healing plus the bonus equal to spell level makes for a solid healer, which the Life Domain is all about.

Overall Thoughts

The most flavorful part of the Cleric Class, but I feel like domains kind of got crazy in 5e. I know many folks who, at least when play-testing, will not allow Twilight Cleric due to how its power negates encounters. It comes from the domains having a broad use, providing a range of abilities and not really focusing on the specific abilities. I think the changes to Life Cleric show that the intent here is to make Domain features focus specifically, which should help avoid the potential for too much utility. 

Final Thoughts

Something I try to remember and, therefore, will put at the end here is that this is a play-test document. The purpose of this is to test out new directions for Wizards of the Coast to take the Future of D&D, and they have written nothing in stone. Some of these ideas, as was confirmed early on, were written out to see how much the community would dislike them, and go from there. So for now, it is important to look at the ideas and generate feedback on how you feel about these. I go over some tips for creating useful feedback, which is a useful read for the play-test and can be read here. Right before the play-test came out, D&D released a video (LINK) quickly talking about some of their responses so far. While they covered a lot, one of the biggest takeaways is that they are seeing many more responses than with the DnDNext/5e playtest. This is fantastic and should stay this way. We have the power to shape the future of Dungeons and Dragons, and feedback is vital to this process.

Conclusion

This play-test material gave us a look at the first of the Priest Group in the proposed design for the new Cleric. The class overall looks like a strong overhaul, making certain options available in the core class features instead of being tied to a subclass. This will allow for a lot more freedom in character design. There are some questionable changes, however, that feel like they do not belong in the class. My major disagreement goes to the 9th level second Holy Order option, that it does not really fit a 9th level feature. We also got to see the first subclass, the Life Domain Cleric. While they have adjusted the structure to match the new uniform design of 3rd, 6th, 10th, 14th level features, most of the big changes were just small tweaks. What we get now is a Domain that focuses more directly on healing and helping instead of having a mixture. I think this can solve a lot of the problems that arise with the current Cleric, but only time will tell.

Do you agree with my thoughts on the Cleric? Have thoughts on something I did not cover? Disagree with me entirely? I would love to hear in the comments below.

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