best/worst domains

[blelliot]

I was wondering what domains that everyone out there thinks are nescessary for a campaign, and which are not necessary at all. Thanks!

[Kelb_Panthera]

None of them are necessary. Many can be quite entertaining.

I don't do a lot of clerics, so I can't give much practical advice on which domains are the better and which are the worse beyond the traditional planning + undeath combo to get DMM: persist online and effective ASAP and travel and knowledge to trade away for the devotion feats.

[Psyren]

Good core domains include Air, Magic, Strength, Travel, Trickery and War. Summoner, Shadow, Spell, and Time are among my favorite non-core ones.

The Artifice + Creation combo is nice for the CL boost.

[eggynack]

I'm gonna add deathbound to the list of cool domains. It's basically the best thing for a cleric specializing in the creation of undead. By the by, worst domains isn't nearly as interesting of a question, which is probably why no one has answered it yet. It's mostly just, "This domain doesn't give you much," repeated a whole bunch. I suppose that healing can go on that list, because it mostly just gives you spells you'd be casting spontaneously anyways.

[ArcturusV]

Honestly I tend to like most domains. The ones I find myself not liking are generally: Any domain who's power is "+1 effective caster level". Usually they are tagged with spells that do almost nothing on Caster Level increases. Like Healing, where your level 1 domain suddenly does 1d8+2 HP instead of 1d8+1 HP.

But you asked which ones are most necessary for a campaign. I don't necessarily consider this the "Best" domains in terms of sheer power/usefulness. When I'm setting crafting I usually work along it this way:

What Gods/Forces do I want to have existing in the setting? What domains would they logically grant?

There's no domains I really consider universally "Needed" for a setting (Or a Cleric) to be effective. They're just a nice bonus, nothing more, nothing less. It's not like your setting will suffer horrendously if you cut out the Healing Domain. Or that Clerics will die horribly and be completely powerless without the Planning Domain.

[Jigokuro]

Well, its pretty subjective as phrased, but I'll toss out a few that are powerful in effect (which haven't been mentioned yet):
For domain power:
Pride - If you roll a 1 on a save, reroll.
Luck - one reroll a day
Time - Improved Initiative
For unique spells:
DESTINY! - almost all good spells, but that 9th! Choose Destiny: every time you roll a d20, you roll 2 and pick which one you want. It is completely ridiculous. Toss a DMM persist on it and say goodbye to bad luck forever.
Spellcasting - The 'anyspell's are nice.

Actually, destiny, luck, and time are good for either above list. I'd say they are high tier for general use.:smallsmile:
I'm also a fan of the Law domain for no optimal reason, just had a fun LN char with it once.

[Alleran]

I'd say Luck, Time (7th, 8th and 9th slots are Moment of Prescience, Foresight and Time Stop? Yes please!) and Destiny are probably the best.

[lsfreak]

Knowledge, Law and Travel are my favorites, because of Devotion feats. I don't think I've ever picked them for their spell lists, just for bonus feats they supply or Devotion feats I can get for them (I've also pretty much only built my clerics as paladins or archers, plus I think one anticaster that I also didn't care about the domains for).

[Kristinn]

The two I usually pick is Time and Travel.

Granted domain power of Time is Improved Initiative, a good, if a bit dull free feat.
Domain spells include gems such as Haste, Contingency and Time Stop. These spells that normally make Arcane spellcasting superior to the Cleric one, but now they are available to you once per day.

Granted domain power of Travel is an immediate action Freedom of Movement vs. magical effects, total duration per day equal to your Cleric level. Probably the second best domain power after Luck domain.
Domain spells have a lot of mobility spells usually lacking to Clerics, such as Fly, Dimension Door, Teleport. Higher levels spells underwhelming though, better to use them for Quickened Fly and Quickened Dimension Door.

[ArcaneGlyph]

I'll give the Shadow domain from ECS some lovins... Shadow Evocation and Conjuration on the spell list.. nomnomnom all day long.

[Vaz]

Good and Evil are fairly "bad" domains; most, if not all of their spells are all on the Cleric list as it stands.

Here (home.comcast.net/~ftm3/ASMoNM/domains.html) is a good list of the domains and spells (AFAIK, it's complete for 3.5 Wizards licensed content).

Clerics can be good at everything, particularly in regards to skill boosters; my favourite ones therefore allow you to gain new class skills/abilities, whether that be Kobold domain, or Trickery, etc.

[Venger]

planning domain! pretty good spells, plus the granted power of "extend spell" you're one step closer to DMM persist without even paying for it!

while some of them do kind of suck, I like the 7 deadly sins domains from the spc. (wrath, pride, greed, envy, lust, sloth, gluttony) the sloth domain's granted power is worthless, but really funny, and the spells on it are pretty punk rock too.

[CaladanMoonblad]

Animal domain allows your cleric to act like the Dog Whisperer... which is great if you are actively doing any adventuring where animals are present.

Want to know if the resturant is part of the thieves guild? Go ask an alley cat.

Want to know what places to avoid in the wilderness? Ask a raccoon, squirrel or songbird.

Need a tail put on the BBEG? Negotiate with the appropriate animal to follow the fellow and report back for some free snacks.

Animal domain rocks, and all without the penalties of hugging trees and hating metal.

Never trust anyone who can't stand metal. Druids probably listen to Yanni.

[tadkins]

Elf Domain is a great one if you're doing any archery.

[Person_Man]

My favorites are:

Domination: Spell Focus (Enchantment) bonus Feat. Suggestion, Dominate Person (as a 4th level spell!), Mass Suggestion on spell list.

Dream: Immune to Fear domain power. Sleep, Deep Slumber, Power Word Stun, Weird on spell list.

Illusion: +1 Caster Level on Illusion spells, Silent Image, Major Image, Displacement, Persistent Image, Mislead, and Weird on spell list. Gnome Domain also offers +1 Caster Level on Illusion spells (with some overlap on the spells granted) and the bonuses theoretically stack, so if you're going this route, a Gnome with the Illusion and Gnome domains be pretty potent.

Shadow: Blind-Fight bonus Feat. Shadow Conjuration, Shadow Evocation, plus Greater versions and Shades on spell list.

Slime: Grease, Acid Arrow, Poison (as 3rd level spell!), and Black Tentacles on spell list.

Time: Improved Imitative bonus feat. True Strike, Haste, Permanency, Contingency, Moment of Prescience, Foresight, and Time Stop on spell list.

Travel: Freedom of Movement domain power. Fly and Teleport on spell list.

Trickery: Bluff/Disguise/Hide as class skills. Invisibility, Mislead, Polymorph any Object, and Time Stop on spell list.

Transformation: +1 CL on Transmutation spells. Enlarge Person, Alter Self, and all the Polymorph spells on your spell list.

Truth: +1 on Div spells, bonus to Sense Motive equal to your Cleric level. Detect Thoughts (as 1st level spell) and See Invisibility on spell list.

[Venger]

I also dearly love the transformation domain.

the oracle domain boosts the CL for divination spells by 2, and the knowledge domain boosts it by an additional 1. taken in tandem with truth on something like a church inquisitor, you can get nuts pretty fast.

spite domain is absolutely excellent, and has a number of unique spells on it (including pact of return)

hunger domain gives a bite attack (excellent for qualifying for stuff) and a number of oddball unique spells (including the hilarious "bite of the king" that lets you swallow enemies whole and shunt them into a tummy pocket dimension)

inquisition domain is good for a focused dispeller

blackwater domain has some cool unique spells (and makes you immune to pressure damage, so you can grapple doods and just drag them down till their heads explode)

[navar100]

The only Domain I think truly sucks is Healing.

You get to spontaneously cast Cure Wounds spells anyway. Preparing one is dumb. Heal is a popular spell to prepare anyway in a regular spell slot. Ditto Mass Heal. +1 caster level to healing spells is meaningless. +1 hit point healed doesn't make a difference, and you're still bound by the caster level cap of the Cure Wounds spells in which case the +1 caster level is wasted.

[Venger]

The only Domain I think truly sucks is Healing.

You get to spontaneously cast Cure Wounds spells anyway. Preparing one is dumb. Heal is a popular spell to prepare anyway in a regular spell slot. Ditto Mass Heal. +1 caster level to healing spells is meaningless. +1 hit point healed doesn't make a difference, and you're still bound by the caster level cap of the Cure Wounds spells in which case the +1 caster level is wasted.

the death domain blows pretty soundly as well, as do the aforementioned good and evil domains

[Psyren]

Healing indeed sucks, however it doesn't actually matter that you have to prepare the cure spells if you find yourself casting at least one of each level every day. It just means that you're using your domain slot to do it instead of spontaneously converting a general one.

The CL boost I agree is generally wasted.

[Devils_Advocate]

I was wondering what domains that everyone out there thinks are nescessary for a campaign, and which are not necessary at all. Thanks!
Deities & Demigods recommends offering all of the core domains, I think. They are fairly basic and central, and other material is written based on the assumption that they are available.

But none in particular is truly necessary, and one could even run a d20 campaign with no domains at all, though this would limit options even more than a restricted list of domains. (The unmodified Cleric class would be excluded, for example, though it would be fairly easy to fix; simply giving Clerics an additional non-domain spell per level instead seems workable, though it makes them even more generic.)


You get to spontaneously cast Cure Wounds spells anyway. Preparing one is dumb.
No, because you can't convert domain spells to cures. So preparing one in a domain slot is generally better than preparing a regular Cleric spell in a domain slot, because using that for healing leaves you with the other Cleric spells of your choice of that level to be cast or converted to cures.

Of course, some domains let you prepare several spells that are not on the Cleric spell list. But Healing at least arguably has better domain spells than domains that mostly offer regular Cleric spells. (Death and the alignment domains have been mentioned.)


Heal is a popular spell to prepare anyway in a regular spell slot. Ditto Mass Heal.
Yeah, exactly. Being able to prepare one more good spell is a good thing.


+1 caster level to healing spells is meaningless. +1 hit point healed doesn't make a difference
It adds up if you do a lot of healing. Of course, if your party heals mostly with magic items... well, then you presumably don't pick the Healing domain.

I wouldn't recommend it for optimal play, but it's not the one completely pointless domain that you're making it out to be.

[Feilith]

Madness domain from CD is a big big winner. -1 to all wisdom checks/will saves but once per day you get 1/2 your char lv to a wis check/will save.

As a cleric you should have upwards of 19Wis by 20th lv and can take that -1 to your ever boring heal check, but when the BBEG come around and tries to dominate person/fear/mess you up you there's a solid +10 backing you up so you'll seldom fail.

[Venger]

Madness domain from CD is a big big winner. -1 to all wisdom checks/will saves but once per day you get 1/2 your char lv to a wis check/will save.

As a cleric you should have upwards of 19Wis by 20th lv and can take that -1 to your ever boring heal check, but when the BBEG come around and tries to dominate person/fear/mess you up you there's a solid +10 backing you up so you'll seldom fail.

madness domain is kind of a dud, especially that granted power.

as you said, it not only works just 1/day, but it actively hinders you the entire rest of the time.

if you're interested in bonuses to your saves as a character, check out elder evils. it's got a much better representation of using madness to protect yourself. deformity madness also gives you a permanent penalty (-4 to wis, just don't roll a character who cares about wis) but makes you immune to mind-affecting affects, and lets you get the same bonus (1/2 char lvl to a save as an immediate action) but you can use that ability 1/minute instead of 1/day.

[Oontarg]

One of the best domains is in my opinion is Bestial (BoVD) because it grants scent as its domain power. Scent is a plus one level adjust.

I like trickery and creation (form DD). Creation domain from DD gives you the 9th level spell Genesis which lets you create a demiplane.

[Alleran]

Domination: Spell Focus (Enchantment) bonus Feat. Suggestion, Dominate Person (as a 4th level spell!), Mass Suggestion on spell list.
You forgot that 9th level Monstrous Thrall. Dominate Monster, eat your heart out.

[Blackhawk748]

the Repose domain is nice (the not bad version of the Death Domain) the Fire Domain is fun from personal experience, as is the Earth Domain, then theres the classic Sun domain but thats a bit bland

[Devils_Advocate]

The Glory domain is kind of the less bland illegitimate lovechild of the Sun and Good domains.

[Venger]

One of the best domains is in my opinion is Bestial (BoVD) because it grants scent as its domain power. Scent is a plus one level adjust.

I like trickery and creation (form DD). Creation domain from DD gives you the 9th level spell Genesis which lets you create a demiplane.

scent isn't +1 LA. where are you getting that from? it's obtainable through a feat (called scent), a first lvl martial stance, and a variety of different class features (including crimson scourge's "smell of blood")

what is DD?

[karkus]

Part 1, Magic domain:

Well, Magic can be either the most useful, sort of useful, or not useful at all, depending on your party. If it's a solo campaign, with just one Cleric, or if you don't have a blaster, or even if the blaster is just a little unreliable, the granted power of being able to activate magic items is near-invaluable.

If you're afraid that the low-Con mage will soon croak out on your team, or even if you just think that you might get separated, then you can still activate arcane scrolls (remember that Cleric spells don't do nearly as much damage as Wizard/Sorcerer spells do).

Then again, if there are hardly any conceivable circumstances in which this ability could ever aid your party, it probably will turn out to be the worst choice for a domain (again, remember that the granted power can sometimes be much more useful than any granted spell).
Part 2, Alignment-based domains:

No offense to those who have already said the contrary, but I don't see much use for the Good, Law, Evil, and Chaos domains (especially Law and Chaos). Mind you, there are plenty of reasonable times to make use of these domains, I'm just saying that you could probably do better with other ones.

Law and Chaos seem like the least feasible options, mostly because I have personally never been able to flawlessly determine the Law/Chaos alignment component in most non-outsiders. Good/Evil? That obvious 90% of the time, but even then, what if a group of Paladins go insane? It's always good to keep in mind that not all your enemies will be of a particular alignment.
Part 3: Death domain:

Slay Living (5th), Destruction (7th), and Wail of the Banshee (9th) seem like the only useful spells in the Death domain to me. Even the granted power is pretty unreliable, having a pretty big margin of failure.

The spells that can create dead (Create Dead, for example) seem like the kind of spells that you would save for after an adventure, when preparing for the next, or would otherwise just keep on scrolls instead. The fact that the Linear Guild happened to stumble upon a large group of dead bodies available for reanimation (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0856.html) was a huge coincidence, not to mention the fact that Malack used his staff for them anyway. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0858.html)

In short, I just feel as though you're better off with a spell to defend yourself in combat, rather than a spell that you may or may not even get to use if you ever even get the opportunity to make the undead during the adventure.
Edit: To end on a more positive note, I just remembered that the elemental-based domains are among my favorite, both with spell selection and granted powers.

[Venger]

the death domain is not useful for a variety of reasons. slay living and destruction are ok spells, but they are also both on the cleric list at the same level you get them as domain slots.

slay living kind of blows, but it's notable for being the first real death effect (no one's gonna pretend phantasmal killer ever works) at the level you get it, you'll probably be running into the odd low-fort monster who's vulnerable to death effects.

destruction's a little iffier (CR 13 monsters that aren't immune to death effects? uhhh maybe if your DM throws a bunch of mooks to make a cr13 encounter)

but wail of the banshee?

running into cr 17+ enemy that's vulnerable to death effects, has a weak fort save, and is likely to be encountered in large groups?

not... that common in my experience. it's not on the cleric spell list, which is about all it has going for it. a 40 ft radius spread is awfully likely to catch some of your friends or summons in its wake.

[Oontarg]

scent isn't +1 LA. where are you getting that from? it's obtainable through a feat (called scent), a first lvl martial stance, and a variety of different class features (including crimson scourge's "smell of blood")


what is DD?

I don't know much about Tome of Battle martial stances or use Tome of Battle in my gaming group. Very few classes give Scent and i am unaware of any 0+ LA races that grant it. Thus i posted that it was a 1+ LA. I may be wrong. Thank you for pointing this out Venger.

DD is the abbreviation for Deities and Demigods the source book.

edit: The reason i think it is Plus one level adjust is the race Grey Orc from Races of Faerun. A Grey Orc should be a 0 LA race if not for Scent and 40ft move. That is my reasoning as why it is plus one LA.

[Venger]

I don't know much about Tome of Battle martial stances or use Tome of Battle in my gaming group. Very few classes give Scent and i am unaware of any 0+ LA races that grant it. Thus i posted that it was a 1+ LA. I may be wrong. Thank you for pointing this out Venger.

DD is the abbreviation for Deities and Demigods the source book.

I see. I just meant that it's fairly trivial to be able to obtain scent by taking levels in the certain classes (crimson scourge, warblade, swordsage from 1 by selecting the "hunter's sense" stance), casting certain spells (aspect of the wolf, a 1st lvl ranger spell), taking certain feats(scent), etc, and that many characters can do this sans LA. scent is not really powerful enough to warrant +1 LA.

lupins and tibbits are both LA 0 and have the scent ability (they are dog people and cat people respectively)

I do not understand what you mean when you say "scent is a +1 LA" could you explain it?

[ArcturusV]

Probably comes from insane early race/template guessing by WotC? Where things like Darkvision: 60' ended up being worth a level. Or Natural armor 1 was worth a level?

Adding to the sources of Scent, there's some templates like Serpentine which gives you Scent if you have 5 HD, LA 0. So there's quite a few sources out there. It's a handy ability to have, but by itself I wouldn't really count it as worthy of LA.

[Venger]

Probably comes from insane early race/template guessing by WotC? Where things like Darkvision: 60' ended up being worth a level. Or Natural armor 1 was worth a level?

Adding to the sources of Scent, there's some templates like Serpentine which gives you Scent if you have 5 HD, LA 0. So there's quite a few sources out there. It's a handy ability to have, but by itself I wouldn't really count it as worthy of LA.

darkvision's nothing compared to how highly wotco valued darn low-light vision.

[Oontarg]

edit: The reason i think it is Plus one level adjust is the race Grey Orc from Races of Faerun. A Grey Orc should be a 0 LA race if not for Scent and 40ft move. That is my reasoning as why it is plus one LA.

Where do the races lupins and tibbits come from? i would very much like to know, i have never heard of these races. Scent i think is a good ability and is worth an additional LA. Again i may be wrong.

edit: Scent is akin to natural armor. Most races/monsters with it are higher LA.
.

[Venger]

Oh! thanks for explaining your rationale, that makes sense now. there's no reason for gray orcs to have LA 1 (probably why you don't hear people talking about playing them as compared to say, water orcs or desert orcs) there isn't any sort of formula or points system that wotc uses in order to assign LA to monsters, they just do it randomly. (half-dragon: 3. feral: 1)


Where do the races lupins and tibbits come from? i would very much like to know, i have never heard of these races. Scent i think is a good ability and is worth an additional LA. Again i may be wrong.

edit: Scent is akin to natural armor. Most races/monsters with it are higher LA.

both of them are in the dragon compendium, page 18-25. the entries are right next to each other.

scent is moderately useful, but is largely used out of combat (tracking the bad guy by his handkerchief, etc). its range in combat is pretty small, and it's easily bypassed with darkstalker. it is not worth additional LA, as you can see with not one, but 2 playable LA 0 races (in addition to the non-exhaustive list of spells/feats/classes I mentioned earlier on)

that's fine, it's how we learn about the game. have you been playing long? I remember when I first started out, I wanted to play a shadowdancer (on purpose!) I mainly just thought the name was cool.

most monsters/races with natural armor are indeed high LA, but they shouldn't be. natural armor is essentially worthless because you accrue bonuses to hit very quickly and they can essentially keep going up indefinitely as long as you keep putting more resources into it. AC does not scale up on its own after a certain point and requires heavy investment to really matter. in addition, touch spells/rays ignore natural armor completely, making it just not function a lot of the time.

[Oontarg]

True natural armor is useless, I totally agree. definitely not worth a LA.

In RC scent allows you to identify things through smell. With scent you can smell though solid matter(it does not say you can"t) and know generally where a smell is coming from. Of corse smelling through matter is at the DM's prerogative.

With scent in a dungeon you can stand on one side of a "door" and get the general location of creatures on the other side of the "door" and then identify those creatures. All without them seeing you.

Tracking with scent is much better than normal tracking. If you have water breathing you are a tracking machine.

That is why i think it is worth LA

Back to the tread. Time is also one of my favorite domains.

[Curmudgeon]

Here (home.comcast.net/~ftm3/ASMoNM/domains.html) is a good list of the domains and spells (AFAIK, it's complete for 3.5 Wizards licensed content).
No, it's only complete for WotC books. I understand there are some domains in Dragon magazine, and I haven't gotten to those. If anyone wants to send me pointers (issue and page numbers) I can probably (eventually) borrow most of those issues and update the domain list.

[Venger]

True natural armor is useless, I totally agree. definitely not worth a LA.

In RC scent allows you to identify things through smell. With scent you can smell though solid matter(it does not say you can"t) and know generally where a smell is coming from. Of corse smelling through matter is at the DM's prerogative.

With scent in a dungeon you can stand on one side of a "door" and get the general location of creatures on the other side of the "door" and then identify those creatures. All without them seeing you.

Tracking with scent is much better than normal tracking. If you have water breathing you are a tracking machine.

That is why i think it is worth LA

Back to the tread. Time is also one of my favorite domains.

what is RC?

there are some pretty well-delineated rules for scent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#scent)

scent cannot RAW be used to identify monsters. I can understand why if it's apparently been used as a kind of mindsight-lite in your past experiences you'd think it was worth +1 LA.

time's a good domain.

can't believe no one's mentioned celerity domain yet, that one's killer.

thanks for the list, vaz!

[Kelb_Panthera]

what is RC?

there are some pretty well-delineated rules for scent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#scent)

scent cannot RAW be used to identify monsters. Actually it can.

On the very page you linked is a sentence that says that creatures with scent can identify familiar smells as easily as creatures with normal vision can identify familiar sights.

A successful knowledge check will get you info based on a creature's smell if you have scent, just like it will let you identify a monster upon sight.:smallbiggrin:


I can understand why if it's apparently been used as a kind of mindsight-lite in your past experiences you'd think it was worth +1 LA.I think Savage Species also marks scent (and blindsense and tremorsense) as being worth a +1 when ad-hocing LA before the acid-test.

The remainder of this post is quoted for my convenience. Deleting blocks of text on the Wii sucks.

I'm not sure why I thought there was so much more than that, but I did. :smallredface:

[Oontarg]

RC is the acronym for the Rules Compendium. Rules Compendium is like the bible to me in game(after the core books of course!)

Venger i have been playing D&D 3.0/3.5 since 2003. Before that i dabbled in AD&D. I am just new to posting on GITP. I also play a few other RPG pen and paper games primarily D20 or D100 systems.

In the way of domains, i love the racial domains(elf/dwarf/orc and the others)
While not the best domains they are definitely fluffy and can add to the game experience.