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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Divine Domain: Despair



AgentMaineSIGMA
2019-03-21, 10:01 AM
One of my more recent creations, the psionic Despair domain cleric! Make people afraid of you, get stronger when they are, become immune to fear... you get the idea. I'm very happy with how this domain's abilities work together, but I'm always open to suggestions. If you have any ideas/critiques, please respond below, and I'll be happy to talk over changes with you!

DESPAIR DOMAIN
Gods of despair- like Beshaba, Kelemvor, Loviatar, Talona, Ares, and Nephthys- all control some aspect of suffering so great, they are worshipped for the misery they cause. Most often depicted as dark, shadowy figures, they are feared and widely regarded as evil. While this is not always the case, the powers their clerics are imbued with do not help in this perception. Gifted the power to induce despair and terror, their clerics are often met with distrust and outright hostility. Still, they will never cease in their work, be it to end strife or to sew despair.

DESPAIR DOMAIN SPELLS
1st: cause fear, dissonant whispers
3rd: crown of madness, silence
5th: fear, slow
7th: phantasmal killer, sickening radiance
9th: geas, negative energy flood

BONUS CANTRIP
At 1st level, you learn the chill touch cantrip if you don’t already know it. This counts as a cleric cantrip for you, though it does not count against your number of cantrips known.

SADISTIC DEVOTEE
Starting at 1st level, you know how to draw on others’ fear and misery as a source of strength. Whenever you deal psychic damage to a creature or when you first make a creature frightened of you, you can gain temporary hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier as a free action.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses upon finishing a long rest.

CHANNEL DIVINITY: INVOKE DESPAIR
At 2nd level, you learn to invoke the name of your deity to inspire worry, doubt, and despair in the hearts of creatures. As an action, you present your holy symbol and each creature of your choice within 30 feet must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they take psychic damage equal to your cleric level and are frightened of you for 1 minute. Frightened creatures may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of their turns, with the effect ending on a success.

ENURED TO DESPAIR
Starting at 6th level, you have become numb to despair through your constant exposure to it. You are immune to the frightened condition, and have resistance to psychic damage.

POTENT SPELLCASTING
Starting at 8th level, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip.

HARBINGER OF DESPAIR
Upon reaching 17th level, your very presence is enough to bring fear and despair to your foes. Whenever a hostile creature ends its turn within 10 feet of you, it must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they are frightened of you until the end of their next turn. Furthermore, whenever you reduce a creature to 0 hit points, you can use your bonus action to force a creature within 30 feet of the dead creature to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they are frightened of you for 1 minute, or until they take damage.

If a creature successfully makes the save, they are immune to this feature for 1 hour.

nickl_2000
2019-03-21, 10:42 AM
Overall this seems like a really fun and well balanced subclass. There is one change I would consider though

HARBINGER OF DESPAIR - I would add a rider here where "if a creature passes the wisdom saving throw, they are immune to the effect for the next X hours". This protect allies who are in the impacted area and makes it a tiny bit less gamebreaking. Note, I didn't mention that they are immune if they take damage, just if they make the save.


You could also look at the 5th level spell: Destructive Wave for domain spells.

JNAProductions
2019-03-21, 11:05 AM
Overall this seems like a really fun and well balanced subclass. There is one change I would consider though

HARBINGER OF DESPAIR - I would add a rider here where "if a creature passes the wisdom saving throw, they are immune to the effect for the next X hours". This protect allies who are in the impacted area and makes it a tiny bit less gamebreaking. Note, I didn't mention that they are immune if they take damage, just if they make the save.

You could also look at the 5th level spell: Destructive Wave for domain spells.

For that, I generally use "Until they next complete a [long] rest," instead of just a blanket period of time. Long rest optional, of course.

AgentMaineSIGMA
2019-03-21, 05:00 PM
Overall this seems like a really fun and well balanced subclass. There is one change I would consider though

HARBINGER OF DESPAIR - I would add a rider here where "if a creature passes the wisdom saving throw, they are immune to the effect for the next X hours". This protect allies who are in the impacted area and makes it a tiny bit less gamebreaking. Note, I didn't mention that they are immune if they take damage, just if they make the save.


You could also look at the 5th level spell: Destructive Wave for domain spells.

Thanks for the suggestion! I thought I put in a stipulation for allies, and the immunity on a save makes sense. When it comes to destructive wave, I thought about it for awhile. I ultimately went with negative energy flood for the spell description. It feels more appropriate for someone who masters despair to be able to unleash negative energy and create zombies. Especially if you flavor it as unleashing a wave of despair that leaves your target a husk of who they were, now bound in service to you. It might be especially edgy, but what about this subclass isn't?

daemonaetea
2019-03-22, 08:37 AM
I really like everything but Sadistic Devotee. Most of the first level abilities a class gives remains useful for the entire life of the class. This one, though, will fade very rapidly. By mid levels, I just don't see it as useful at all. As I see it, the ability has three major limitations:

Little HP - 3 HP at 1st level is useful. 5 HP at 10th is much less so. This would be fine if it was more easily used, but...
Requires a bonus action - Again, at 1st level this isn't really a big deal. But eventually you've got a lot more things you'd really like to use that for. I'm doubtful of how often you'll choose 5 HP over getting another hit in on the enemy.
Limited uses per day - Both of the above would be more understandable if this was an infinite resource, but given how weak it is, a max of 5 times per day seems very limiting.


I think fixing any of the three things above would work. That is, increase the HP and keep it as a limited use bonus action. Or, remove the bonus action and keep the low HP and limited uses. Or, keep the bonus action and low HP but have it usable all day long. I think any of those would make this class feature much more viable at all levels, and not something which will be an afterthought past level 7 or so.

Of those, I personally like just removing the bonus action. I'd feel much happier about a minor benefit if I wasn't having to use an action to activate it.

AgentMaineSIGMA
2019-03-22, 10:14 AM
I really like everything but Sadistic Devotee. Most of the first level abilities a class gives remains useful for the entire life of the class. This one, though, will fade very rapidly. By mid levels, I just don't see it as useful at all. As I see it, the ability has three major limitations:

Little HP - 3 HP at 1st level is useful. 5 HP at 10th is much less so. This would be fine if it was more easily used, but...
Requires a bonus action - Again, at 1st level this isn't really a big deal. But eventually you've got a lot more things you'd really like to use that for. I'm doubtful of how often you'll choose 5 HP over getting another hit in on the enemy.
Limited uses per day - Both of the above would be more understandable if this was an infinite resource, but given how weak it is, a max of 5 times per day seems very limiting.


I think fixing any of the three things above would work. That is, increase the HP and keep it as a limited use bonus action. Or, remove the bonus action and keep the low HP and limited uses. Or, keep the bonus action and low HP but have it usable all day long. I think any of those would make this class feature much more viable at all levels, and not something which will be an afterthought past level 7 or so.

Of those, I personally like just removing the bonus action. I'd feel much happier about a minor benefit if I wasn't having to use an action to activate it.

My only reservation to these changes come down to how temporary hit points work.

Given that temporary hit points last until you complete a long rest, the idea of an infinitely spammable hit point buff concerns me because it makes you arguably too tanky. By limiting it to X uses per long rest, you give a finite number of temporary hit points the cleric can regenerate, like a Light cleric's warding flare.

As a cleric, few of your features or spells use your bonus action. Having this feature require a bonus action still costs you something, but doesn't interfere with most features. Making it automatic on fear means you sacrifice nothing and also requires that you have unlimited uses, as mentioned before. Having it take an action makes it borderline worthless, since you aren't using your action to do something to your target, meaning those hit points are probably going away by the start of your next turn.

I'm more open to buffing how many temporary hit points you get from this feature, but I'm still hesitant. As it stands, starting around 8th level, you basically get 25 THP. At that level, assuming you have a Constitution modifier of around 14-16, you multiply your number of hit points by nearly 1.5. My first thought would be to double the feature and say you get twice your Wisdom modifier, but at that point, you effectively double your number of hit points. Admittedly, this feature does become less relevant as you level, but even then, and additional 25 hit points is always useful, and an additional 50 hit points is great no matter what.

While I'm not opposed to buffing this feature, I don't see a clear path to doing it.

Rukelnikov
2019-03-22, 07:26 PM
Very solid subclass.

I agree with daemon about sadistic devotee, you need to spend resources to either deal psychic damage or case the frightened condition, and the gain while strong in the very beginning, falls off quite rapidly. I'd just remove the bonus action to activate, make it free action or reaction at most.

Endured to despair is a tad strong for my tastes, but given the rest of the class seems balanced it's ok.

Regarding the spells though, I'd give it Enemies Abound instead of Slow, and I don't see Sickening Radiance or Geas as being that fitting, but I dunno what to replace them with.

AgentMaineSIGMA
2019-03-23, 04:17 PM
Very solid subclass.

I agree with daemon about sadistic devotee, you need to spend resources to either deal psychic damage or case the frightened condition, and the gain while strong in the very beginning, falls off quite rapidly. I'd just remove the bonus action to activate, make it free action or reaction at most.

Endured to despair is a tad strong for my tastes, but given the rest of the class seems balanced it's ok.

Regarding the spells though, I'd give it Enemies Abound instead of Slow, and I don't see Sickening Radiance or Geas as being that fitting, but I dunno what to replace them with.

If you also think Sadistic Devotee could use the buff, I suppose I can't really argue. I'd be fine with it being a free action with the limited uses, as it doesn't seem to buff it too much.

If I were to replace one of the domain's 3rd level spells with Enemies Abound, I'd probably replace Fear instead of Slow. While Enemies Abound and Fear do have different effects, I feel like they could be somewhat redundant, and I want to make sure your options are still somewhat varied, especially given how reliant the domain is on the frightened condition. Slow gives you a nice spell that fits the theme of the class that doesn't require frightened.

I had the exact same problems with Sickening Radiance and Geas. They definitely aren't the best thematic fits, but 4th and 5th level spells are very picky with how they're themed. Corrupted holy energy and direct mind control at least are somewhat fitting.

daemonaetea
2019-03-23, 09:25 PM
I wanted to try to clarify my thoughts on Sadistic Devotee a bit more, as I didn't express what I meant very well the first time. I said it felt underpowered, and what I really wanted to convey was that it was a feel and not mechanical problem, at least for me. As written, what I'm comparing it to are the other Wisdom time per day abilities that you could pick up from another domain. Light gives you the ability to make an enemy have disadvantage times per day. Tempest gives you 2d8 damage, with possible interplay with their channel divinity option. War gives you an additional weapon attack. Of those, War and Light are solid and absolutely useful your entire play career. Tempest is a bit underwhelming later on, admittedly, which would put it very much in line with your version. However, I'd also say the Tempest ability is much more "free", as a Cleric is less likely to have a use for that reaction. Bonus actions, though, just always seem to become precarious at high levels in all the games I'm in. From core, with just Cleric levels and nothing else, you've already got Healing Word and Spiritual Weapon. Both of those have a solid chance of being desired in any given battle. And that's ignoring dips and feats, both of which could have given you something that you may want to use that bonus action for. So for those reasons, this ability just feels really stingy compared to the other domains.

And while the feature may theoretically be giving you 25 temp HP, it's very situationally dependent. It's not temp HP when you want temp HP. It's temp HP when you perform unrelated actions, 5 of them at a time. So it'll be a nice buffer to throw on when you can, but in the heat of battle it'd probably be hard to justify using something just to restore it. And you have to really commit to that HP, requiring both your action to cause psychic damage or fear, along with the Bonus action to grant yourself that HP. You can't be in danger and do so, because if you are it's really unlikely beyond those low levels that 5 HP is going to be the difference between life and death. If you're hurting that bad, you're probably better off with Healing Word at a higher level spell slot. And if you are in a safe enough position to use both actions just for that 5 temp HP, then... the ability isn't being that useful in that moment. That's what I mean when I say it doesn't feel good. It's not something you're likely to be excited or needing. It's something you'll throw on because "why not", not an ability you ever really are thankful for beyond low levels. I mean, as a comparison, the Warlock gets the ability to give themselves 9 temp HP whenever they want starting at 2nd level, and no one ever actually bothers to use that beyond the first few levels of the class. Partially it's because they just have so many more interesting options, but it's also because that 9 HP is rarely going to be making that big of a difference in a fight once you've reached mid levels.

But making it free means it's much easier to rely upon it, and that it's more acceptable as a minor benefit. It's a rider effect from doing what your class is supposed to be doing, not an action you have to base your round upon. That makes it much freer to throw in during a tense spot. Throwing off that fear and grabbing some temp HP, along with a quick heal to yourself, feels like your ability helped you in the moment, rather than you trying to make that ability useful or just prepping for later. I still think it's a much more minor ability than Light or War, on par with Tempest, but like Tempest (which is effectively free) it now feels much more justified as a minor ability. Not one you'll rely upon, but one that will be welcome as a nice bonus. Er, or not, as it were.

I don't think it's broken as you wrote it. I just think it's not an exciting option, and that it will be something used because why not. Where I think altering it slightly will make players a bit more willing to rely upon it as a feature, rather than treating it as a ribbon. Since I think the power level is still in line while altered, I'd just lean more in the direction that feels good as a player.

...Sorry for the wall of text.