What should divine intervention be replaced by?

[Logical DM]

In some games, divine intervention is not an appropriate ability for clerics - there are settings (like Eberron) where such explicit intervention makes no sense, and I'm running one of the settings in which it isn't an ability they should have with a new group. As an aside, I think it's much more appropriate an ability for warlocks - they get a patron who they owe unspecified favours to, but they don't get any actual class power out of it - mechanically a sorcerer and warlock are equally powerful, but only the warlock comes with a fluff drawback attached, so I figure an intervention style ability is a good trade.

The problem becomes this - I can't think of a level 10 ability and capstone for clerics to replace it in games where it doesn't make sense, or when the character doesn't want it (since it's useless in combat before 20, using your action and having a 90% chance of nothing happening is trash). What should I give them?

[Magic Myrmidon]

Good point. But the ability itself doesn't need to be replaced. Just refluff it. It's a cleric drawing on the depths of their faith, pulling on magical threads that typically lead nowhere, drawing on ambient life force, you know, whatever. Just because an ability is called "divine intervention" doesn't mean it has to be that. Even rename it to "Hail Mary" or whatever you'd like.

[Chronos]

Even rename it to "Hail Mary" or whatever you'd like.
So, rename a prayer after a prayer? :smallamused:

[Callin]

He was probably going with the Football Play (American) and pun was intended... but I agree. Just rename the ability no need to change it.

[Bubzors]

Agreed with the others, just change the fluff. Maybe he sees visions, or has a vivid dream, or goes into a trance and the character believes it was intervention from his god. No one else saw the vision, and may just call him a crackpot.

Might even be interesting to role play with the other characters. This religious fanatic of a party member goes into a trance, mumbles some crazy religious mumbo jumbo, then gets up and says, "I have the answer now."

"What did you see?"

"The will of my god manifest."

"Rrrrrriiiiiggghhhtt... what does everyone else think?"

I'd be questioning following that guy if I were with him

[xyianth]

To go a different direction than the others... I personally hate the 5e Cleric class design in its entirety and have rewritten it completely for my table. Divine intervention was just one of several reasons I disliked it. It is a terrible ability, 90% chance of wasting an action means it won't work when you need it so it's actually better to use as an alpha strike. Then, on the 10% chance it does work, it lets the DM adjudicate its effects. So in essence, it uses the cleric's action to... give the DM an ability they already have all the time. If your DM doesn't want to mess up a great scene/planned encounter, the impact of your ability will likely be minimal. If the scene is unimportant, the resolution becomes anti-climactic and boring for everyone else.

My recommendation is to scrap the ability completely and instead give clerics an ability they can actually use. Off the top of my head, I'd give clerics the ability to maintain concentration on two effects at once, with a decreasing penalty on any concentration checks needed to maintain concentration while doing so. By 20th, no penalty would be applied. This actually would help fix one of the other problems facing clerics in 5e: the potency of the bless spell. (it is so good that it will likely occupy your concentration 'slot' most of your career as a cleric, which is boring as a player) While you are at it, bump up the efficacy of the cure wounds line to 2d10+wis +1d10/lvl to bring it in line with 1st level damage dealing spells and help reduce the strain healing places on a cleric's spell slots. These two changes alone would fix a significant amount of the problems a 5e cleric player faces.

Best of all, it removes the dependence on actively involved deities for those settings where that makes no sense.

[pwykersotz]

To go a different direction than the others... I personally hate the 5e Cleric class design in its entirety and have rewritten it completely for my table. Divine intervention was just one of several reasons I disliked it. It is a terrible ability, 90% chance of wasting an action means it won't work when you need it so it's actually better to use as an alpha strike. Then, on the 10% chance it does work, it lets the DM adjudicate its effects. So in essence, it uses the cleric's action to... give the DM an ability they already have all the time. If your DM doesn't want to mess up a great scene/planned encounter, the impact of your ability will likely be minimal. If the scene is unimportant, the resolution becomes anti-climactic and boring for everyone else.

My recommendation is to scrap the ability completely and instead give clerics an ability they can actually use. Off the top of my head, I'd give clerics the ability to maintain concentration on two effects at once, with a decreasing penalty on any concentration checks needed to maintain concentration while doing so. By 20th, no penalty would be applied. This actually would help fix one of the other problems facing clerics in 5e: the potency of the bless spell. (it is so good that it will likely occupy your concentration 'slot' most of your career as a cleric, which is boring as a player) While you are at it, bump up the efficacy of the cure wounds line to 2d10+wis +1d10/lvl to bring it in line with 1st level damage dealing spells and help reduce the strain healing places on a cleric's spell slots. These two changes alone would fix a significant amount of the problems a 5e cleric player faces.

Best of all, it removes the dependence on actively involved deities for those settings where that makes no sense.

Dual concentration was unambiguously stated by the designers to be something which breaks the game. It should not be handed out lightly. Also, having played a cleric and DM'd for three clerics, they don't need help. What you're chafing against is a new limit of the system, not a flaw in the class.

The ability works much better with DM's who WILL let the player meaningfully interact with important scenes, you're right. I allow that, but most DM's I've played with don't, so I get what you're saying. In terms of the 10% effectiveness, you're also right. I support DM intervention for auto-success if the request is thematic, well RP'd, and not used for abuse.

[xyianth]

Dual concentration was unambiguously stated by the designers to be something which breaks the game. It should not be handed out lightly.

To be fair, that was an off-the-cuff suggestion. I personally disagree with the designers on that point when applied to clerics, but I do understand that it is risky to add that ability anywhere.

For some other suggestions for replacement abilities, you could consider giving them a spell slot recovery mechanic similar to arcane recovery(wizards) or natural recovery(druids). You could also put in significantly more work and come up with something like a 1/day powerful channel divinity option with unique effects per domain.


What you're chafing against is a new limit of the system, not a flaw in the class.

I actually think the concentration slot mechanic is one of the best parts of 5e, I just don't think some parts of the cleric class handle it appropriately. The biggest offender is the bless spell, and when I rewrote the class, I changed that spell to provide a single floating 1d4 bonus per character each round that they could apply to any 1 roll of their choice, then removed concentration from the spell. This brings it, imho, in line with other 1st level spells and frees its stranglehold on the cleric's concentration slot.


Also, having played a cleric and DM'd for three clerics, they don't need help.
I am honestly a bit surprised by this. I too have played a cleric and DM'd several different players who played clerics. We all came to the same basic conclusion, that the cleric as written is essentially an NPC class. Allow me to explain.

It appears that the cleric class was designed around covering 3 primary roles in the party: healing, party support, and condition removal.

First, lets look at the healing role. There are two main tools for the cleric to use to cover healing, at least until 6th level spells show up. Healing word is a great spell, but it is hardly unique to clerics. Both the almighty bard and druid classes can also make effective use of this spell, and even lowly rangers can pick it up. Setting aside Life clerics for a moment, clerics are fundamentally no better or worse at in combat healing than any other caster with access to this spell. In fact, I would argue that those other classes can make better use of this spell since they get class features that don't rely on spell slots to keep them competitive, freeing up more slots for healing word if healing is needed. The other tool a cleric has is the cure wounds spell. I don't know what the designers intended, but this spell doesn't heal enough given its drawbacks. As a result of this low healing amount, clerics have to spend more spell slots to heal out of combat than they should. This, in my experience, results in approximately 40% of a cleric's daily spell slots being used in covering the party's healing. This number is significantly reduced if you can share the burden among other party members. (bards, druids, rangers, paladins, etc...) This is one of the problems I have with clerics, the large drain on their daily resources that is entirely dependent on the types of characters other players are playing. This can be remedied slightly by bumping cure wounds to 2d10+wis at 1st level, and scaling from there. But unless you are swimming in alternative methods of healing, or allowing significantly less than the recommended 9-10 encounters per day, healing is a major draw on a cleric's daily spell slots. It is also a little weird to me that the healer feat is far more useful for a thief than any form of cleric, but that is a somewhat specialty situation.

Second, lets look at the party support role. Clerics get lots of party buff spells, most of which are limited by concentration. This is not a problem by itself since most of the buff spells are well designed to provide great benefits in some situations and be mediocre or worse in other situations. However, some spells aren't designed this way, and the worst of them is the bless spell. Bless is a nearly universally applicable buff spell that provides a benefit that every type of character loves to have at all times. This puts a virtual cost on every other buff spell in the cleric's spell list: "Is this effect worth losing the effects of bless?" This seemed to have three very negative impacts on my cleric players:

This turns a large number of interesting buff spells into sidelined spells you barely notice.
This reduces most encounters and skill challenges to a single tactical decision for the cleric player: "Can I get away with using guidance for this, or do I just cast bless again as usual?"
On those rare occasions that the cleric decides to cast something other than bless, the rest of the party notices and (with varying levels of sincerity) complains that the cleric "isn't doing their job."
Third, lets look at the condition removal role. Clerics are fantastic at this role, but that is not necessarily a good thing. Clerics are so good at this role, that they are the first, best, and only solution parties usually have to dealing with every condition they encounter. Almost without fail, there isn't any variation or planning associated with this role. The party's answer to every condition is simply "we have a cleric" or "go hire a cleric." I have yet to come up with a better system for handling this role for my table, all I can tell is that I don't like the 'throw the cleric at the problem until it goes away' system at all.

Now, I am not saying you can't build a cleric to perform front-line melee or stand back and cast blast spells in 5e. You absolutely can, what I am saying is that few if any of your class features will support that role outside of your daily spell slots. And as discussed above, those already have 3 other roles draining them to be effective. This puts a lot of strain on the daily resources of the cleric. All too often this causes the cleric to be the first PC running low on resources, and as a player, it sucks to be the one that is constantly running low and having to convince the other players it's time to rest.

Bottom line, both my players and I have not been able to determine a difference in the capabilities of an adventuring party whether there is a cleric PC in the party or not. Most PC classes have some unique things that allow parties to tackle situations in different ways. But the abilities of a cleric are often either necessary or superfluous. Either way isn't very much fun for the player controlling the cleric in the opinions of my players and I. This was best demonstrated to me by the following thought experiment, which was presented by one of my cleric players:

Imagine a magic item with 3 buttons.
The first button heals a target.
The second button activates an aura that grants the bless spell's effects.
The third button removes a condition from a target.
Now imagine that this magic item scales as you level, healing more hp, creating a larger aura, and gaining more uses/day.
How many situations would such a magic item completely replace a cleric for the party?
Shouldn't a PC be more than a scaling 3 button magic item?
I would be interested to hear anecdotes/examples where clerics have shined in your campaigns. If there is something I am overlooking or interpreting wrong, I would love to know so I can inform my cleric players. Obviously, good roleplaying can make anything fun/entertaining to play, but sometimes rollplaying is important too. As it is, both my players and I are enjoying the changes I made by rewriting the cleric entirely.

[pwykersotz]

To be fair, that was an off-the-cuff suggestion. I personally disagree with the designers on that point when applied to clerics, but I do understand that it is risky to add that ability anywhere.

For some other suggestions for replacement abilities, you could consider giving them a spell slot recovery mechanic similar to arcane recovery(wizards) or natural recovery(druids). You could also put in significantly more work and come up with something like a 1/day powerful channel divinity option with unique effects per domain.



I actually think the concentration slot mechanic is one of the best parts of 5e, I just don't think some parts of the cleric class handle it appropriately. The biggest offender is the bless spell, and when I rewrote the class, I changed that spell to provide a single floating 1d4 bonus per character each round that they could apply to any 1 roll of their choice, then removed concentration from the spell. This brings it, imho, in line with other 1st level spells and frees its stranglehold on the cleric's concentration slot.


I am honestly a bit surprised by this. I too have played a cleric and DM'd several different players who played clerics. We all came to the same basic conclusion, that the cleric as written is essentially an NPC class. Allow me to explain.

It appears that the cleric class was designed around covering 3 primary roles in the party: healing, party support, and condition removal.

First, lets look at the healing role. There are two main tools for the cleric to use to cover healing, at least until 6th level spells show up. Healing word is a great spell, but it is hardly unique to clerics. Both the almighty bard and druid classes can also make effective use of this spell, and even lowly rangers can pick it up. Setting aside Life clerics for a moment, clerics are fundamentally no better or worse at in combat healing than any other caster with access to this spell. In fact, I would argue that those other classes can make better use of this spell since they get class features that don't rely on spell slots to keep them competitive, freeing up more slots for healing word if healing is needed. The other tool a cleric has is the cure wounds spell. I don't know what the designers intended, but this spell doesn't heal enough given its drawbacks. As a result of this low healing amount, clerics have to spend more spell slots to heal out of combat than they should. This, in my experience, results in approximately 40% of a cleric's daily spell slots being used in covering the party's healing. This number is significantly reduced if you can share the burden among other party members. (bards, druids, rangers, paladins, etc...) This is one of the problems I have with clerics, the large drain on their daily resources that is entirely dependent on the types of characters other players are playing. This can be remedied slightly by bumping cure wounds to 2d10+wis at 1st level, and scaling from there. But unless you are swimming in alternative methods of healing, or allowing significantly less than the recommended 9-10 encounters per day, healing is a major draw on a cleric's daily spell slots. It is also a little weird to me that the healer feat is far more useful for a thief than any form of cleric, but that is a somewhat specialty situation.

Second, lets look at the party support role. Clerics get lots of party buff spells, most of which are limited by concentration. This is not a problem by itself since most of the buff spells are well designed to provide great benefits in some situations and be mediocre or worse in other situations. However, some spells aren't designed this way, and the worst of them is the bless spell. Bless is a nearly universally applicable buff spell that provides a benefit that every type of character loves to have at all times. This puts a virtual cost on every other buff spell in the cleric's spell list: "Is this effect worth losing the effects of bless?" This seemed to have three very negative impacts on my cleric players:

This turns a large number of interesting buff spells into sidelined spells you barely notice.
This reduces most encounters and skill challenges to a single tactical decision for the cleric player: "Can I get away with using guidance for this, or do I just cast bless again as usual?"
On those rare occasions that the cleric decides to cast something other than bless, the rest of the party notices and (with varying levels of sincerity) complains that the cleric "isn't doing their job."
Third, lets look at the condition removal role. Clerics are fantastic at this role, but that is not necessarily a good thing. Clerics are so good at this role, that they are the first, best, and only solution parties usually have to dealing with every condition they encounter. Almost without fail, there isn't any variation or planning associated with this role. The party's answer to every condition is simply "we have a cleric" or "go hire a cleric." I have yet to come up with a better system for handling this role for my table, all I can tell is that I don't like the 'throw the cleric at the problem until it goes away' system at all.

Now, I am not saying you can't build a cleric to perform front-line melee or stand back and cast blast spells in 5e. You absolutely can, what I am saying is that few if any of your class features will support that role outside of your daily spell slots. And as discussed above, those already have 3 other roles draining them to be effective. This puts a lot of strain on the daily resources of the cleric. All too often this causes the cleric to be the first PC running low on resources, and as a player, it sucks to be the one that is constantly running low and having to convince the other players it's time to rest.

Bottom line, both my players and I have not been able to determine a difference in the capabilities of an adventuring party whether there is a cleric PC in the party or not. Most PC classes have some unique things that allow parties to tackle situations in different ways. But the abilities of a cleric are often either necessary or superfluous. Either way isn't very much fun for the player controlling the cleric in the opinions of my players and I. This was best demonstrated to me by the following thought experiment, which was presented by one of my cleric players:

Imagine a magic item with 3 buttons.
The first button heals a target.
The second button activates an aura that grants the bless spell's effects.
The third button removes a condition from a target.
Now imagine that this magic item scales as you level, healing more hp, creating a larger aura, and gaining more uses/day.
How many situations would such a magic item completely replace a cleric for the party?
Shouldn't a PC be more than a scaling 3 button magic item?
I would be interested to hear anecdotes/examples where clerics have shined in your campaigns. If there is something I am overlooking or interpreting wrong, I would love to know so I can inform my cleric players. Obviously, good roleplaying can make anything fun/entertaining to play, but sometimes rollplaying is important too. As it is, both my players and I are enjoying the changes I made by rewriting the cleric entirely.


To your first point: Cool, it's hard to tell sometimes who's heard that and who hasn't.

To your spoilered point: I believe you can cite more experience than me with the class by virtue of having designed your own to your own specifications and table circumstances from the ground up. I merely have regular play experience. However, for my table the class has performed admirably in all its functions. Sadly, I think any reply I make at this point would be inadequate after your detailed post. I'm afraid I'm simply not up to dissecting my experiences in equal measure.

That said, I'll try a bit here. I don't really see Clerics other than Life Clerics as primary healers. I'm not certain they really should be able to heal better than other classes with access to the spells. Their focus is based on their domain. Playing the default Cleric in Lost Mines of Phandelver, my friend had the same slots that the Wizard had, and he used them in ways that enabled us to succeed. Guiding Bolt helped our Rogue more than a few times, he always had a heal ready to bring one of us up if we dropped (happened three times), and because we play cautiously, he was able to choose between Aid and Bless situationally. And after he was out of slots, or even before he started to fall short, he was very handy in melee combat. An off-tank if you will. He pulled the Wizard out of the line of fire over and over, and had the AC to handle it. This was my first experience with Clerics, and these things all proved out with repeated use. Now again, take what I say with a grain of salt because I only have experience under level 10 so far.

Other classes (I haven't seen a Valor Bard in action yet) have not been able to boast the same array of support options. They all have their own methods of contribution to be sure, but the Cleric seems to fill a nice niche. That said, I think it's awesome that you've built your own. :smallcool:

[SharkForce]

simplest solution to the problem imo would be to have a powerful representative of the god handle the divine intervention, just as already will be happening with various other spells that allow you to contact your deity.

so you pray to one of the sovereign host, you don't get them... you get a powerful celestial. you pray to the silver flame, you'll probably be answered by a couatl (or a rakshasa in disguise, depending). for an elf praying to the undying court, you might get an ancient elven mummy priest or even a baelnorn (elven lich).

and so on. you don't even have to use a standard out-of-the-book monster... they can be a "divinely empowered messenger" version with all sorts of special deific abilities.

[jkat718]

Recently, one of my players had his cleric receive a holy weapon from his deity. In order to deliver it, a Deva (described in the Monster Manual as "angels that act as divine messengers or agents") was sent to the church that he works at, during one of his sermons. Unfortunately, the party didn't recognize that it was an angel (devas can change form), so they thought it was something evil and attacked it before it could open its mouth. I ended up having it turn into a bee and fly away, leaving the weapon on the character's bed with a note, which just said "Your friends are mean," signed by his deity.

[xyianth]

Recently, one of my players had his cleric receive a holy weapon from his deity. In order to deliver it, a Deva (described in the Monster Manual as "angels that act as divine messengers or agents") was sent to the church that he works at, during one of his sermons. Unfortunately, the party didn't recognize that it was an angel (devas can change form), so they thought it was something evil and attacked it before it could open its mouth. I ended up having it turn into a bee and fly away, leaving the weapon on the character's bed with a note, which just said "Your friends are mean," signed by his deity.

I lol'd, thank you!

[Envyus]

Recently, one of my players had his cleric receive a holy weapon from his deity. In order to deliver it, a Deva (described in the Monster Manual as "angels that act as divine messengers or agents") was sent to the church that he works at, during one of his sermons. Unfortunately, the party didn't recognize that it was an angel (devas can change form), so they thought it was something evil and attacked it before it could open its mouth. I ended up having it turn into a bee and fly away, leaving the weapon on the character's bed with a note, which just said "Your friends are mean," signed by his deity.

I would have made this into a plotline.

[jkat718]

I would have made this into a plotline.

Oh, it will be. Just not the plotline for that session. The angel comes back...