Nature Cleric, Channel Divinity uses?

[FoxWolFrostFire]

Okay. So I am excited to play my cleric. Went with Nature and I like it. I like the feature out look of the spells I get, my divine strike, and helping out team mates with all that nasty elemental damage. But for the life of me I can't think of a single USABLE part of Charm Animal and Plants Channel power.

Like on the surface it is just SUPER bad. 1 minute charm with save, that is broken by ANY damage. Can you all help a cleric out with how to combo this with spells, skills, other features, or Role play? Because right now I kind of just want to ask my DM if I can just use the channel slot to cast animal friendship spell for free on short rest lol.

[EternalPrime]

Advantages of Charm Animals and Plants domain feature over Animal Friendship:

1) it affects PLANTS, this includes twig-blights, shambling mounds, and treants.
2) it affects MULTIPLE targets within range.
3) it affects animals AND plants with a single use.
4) charmed targets are friendly to you AND OTHERS you designate
5) no INTELLIGENCE restriction, you can charm apes, giant owls, and cranium rats.

BTW: Animal Friendship also allows a save and is also broken if you or an ally damage the beast.

[NNescio]

Okay. So I am excited to play my cleric. Went with Nature and I like it. I like the feature out look of the spells I get, my divine strike, and helping out team mates with all that nasty elemental damage. But for the life of me I can't think of a single USABLE part of Charm Animal and Plants Channel power.

Like on the surface it is just SUPER bad. 1 minute charm with save, that is broken by ANY damage. Can you all help a cleric out with how to combo this with spells, skills, other features, or Role play? Because right now I kind of just want to ask my DM if I can just use the channel slot to cast animal friendship spell for free on short rest lol.

It's better than Animal Friendship, since it makes them all (well, all who failed their saves) Friendly to you and your party (or anyone else you want). So it's pretty much an AoE Save-or-Lose against plant and beast type enemies (this includes Wild Shaped druids), with no hard limit on their number and no annoying INT <4 limitation. At this point your party can just finish off any non-affected enemies (with the Friendly, Charmed ones predisposed to help) and then proceed to whack the Charmed ones one-by-one (or bypass the remaining ones, if they aren't the type to pursue and if your god would disapprove of killing them.)

(Provided, of course that the DM doesn't metagame to have them intentionally inflict damage on themselves or their allies.)

The problem is that it's, well, situational, as in most campaigns you don't really encounter those two creature types that often, except for random encounters while traveling, which should be easily steamrolled by your party anyway.

Animal Friendship as written is pretty crap, as all it does is to impose the Charmed condition. It doesn't even make them Friendly, despite the name (unlike a lot of Charm effects that have specific language saying they do). It can't attack, but it's not predisposed to help you either (heck it'll might even actively try to hinder you if you're hitting its friends). There's also nothing stopping it from mauling your friends (it is Charmed only with respect to you), and if you friends retaliate (they will), there goes the spell. You'll need to succeed on some sort of Animal Handling check (which you might not even get advantage on) to get it to help you (or to even stop running away or attacking the rest of your party), so it's pretty much a DM-may-I, especially if you want it to do something risky like fight alongside the party.

Of course, practically speaking,a lot DMs are very lenient with Animal Friendship (likely because it has Friendship in its name, and not being familiar with the exact effects of the Charmed condition), and basically treat it as Save-Or-Stop-Attacking-the-Party-and-Get-One-Free-Animal-Companion-for-24-Hours, in which case it does seem better than the Channel Divinity effect (because then it becomes a reliable way of letting you seek out and recruit beast allies before/during adventures).

[ShinyRocks]

I'm playing a Nature Cleric at the moment, and the Channel Divinity is proving useful now and then. We got attacked by a bunch of bullywugs, and while I was up front being the meat shield, a giant toad came from behind and attacked the squishies.

Channel Divinity got the toad off their back and actually made the it attack the bullywugs (DM did that for story reasons, though – I didn't request it).

It's situational, of course, but it's battlefield control. If your DM is putting you in a campaign of nothing but skeletons and golems, it's going to be useless, but a good DM will put their players in situations where they can feel like they've contributed and their skills and abilities are helpful, I feel.

I'm playing a Mark of Handling Human, which emphasises the control of beasts. They have an ability called The Bigger They Are, which is: 'When you cast a spell that affects only beasts, it also affects monstrosities with an Intelligence score of 3 or lower.' RAW this wouldn't count for Channel Divinity because it's not *only* beasts (and does it count as a spell?), but I'm gonna ask my DM if he'll allow it to count. He probably will, because he's pretty flexible and is more interested in fun/clever interaction than strict rules. If so, it increases the usefulness a bit more.

(Sidebar: my DM allowed me to use the 'ask a small favour' part of Animal Friendship to get a cart horse to stamp on a prone cultist from the group that had been attacking us. The cultist did not survive. Good times.)

[FoxWolFrostFire]

Advantages of Charm Animals and Plants domain feature over Animal Friendship:

1) it affects PLANTS, this includes twig-blights, shambling mounds, and treants.
2) it affects MULTIPLE targets within range.
3) it affects animals AND plants with a single use.
4) charmed targets are friendly to you AND OTHERS you designate
5) no INTELLIGENCE restriction, you can charm apes, giant owls, and cranium rats.

BTW: Animal Friendship also allows a save and is also broken if you or an ally damage the beast.

Sure, Sure. But the one minute limit pretty much makes it useless in a roleplay or exploring sense and you and an ally just don't damage it. If the person with the best before hand smacks what ever I make friendly it is over. At best it might burn an action or an attack from the opposing forces. It just feels like an overly specific thing with almost no REAL uses. As what you suggest are alright. But also have better spell options in kits already. What does THIS channel do that makes it worth it? I mean right now it just might as well be expanded turn undead for all the good it really does.

[Merellis]

Perfectly good channel divinity if a wall of vines are stopping you from getting into a building.

Just gotta charm the pants off those plants!

Just make sure your party is doing back-up vocals to set the mood.

[NNescio]

Sure, Sure. But the one minute limit pretty much makes it useless in a roleplay or exploring sense and you and an ally just don't damage it. If the person with the best before hand smacks what ever I make friendly it is over. At best it might burn an action or an attack from the opposing forces. It just feels like an overly specific thing with almost no REAL uses. As what you suggest are alright. But also have better spell options in kits already. What does THIS channel do that makes it worth it? I mean right now it just might as well be expanded turn undead for all the good it really does.

Every plant or beast that fails its save is effectively taken out of combat for ten rounds. You and your party are free to attack the rest of the enemies (who made their saves), after which you can focus on one Charmed enemy at a time (only the attacked creature gets to snap out of it). Or run away if you don't think they are likely to follow after the effect wears off (or if you god disapproves of killing them).

There is no limitation on HD, number of targets, attribute scores, etc., unlike similar mind-affecting effects. It's like a souped-up version of Sleep (except without the Incapitation part, permits a Save, and with lower range, etc. etc.) that works only on plant and beasts.

It's an encounter-ending effect. That scales up for free with when you level up. That doesn't require spell slots. Nor concentration. Nor does it allow a repeating saving throw to break its effect. It is better than even some decent Level 4/5 spells, provided you are up against Beasts and Plants.

Sure, it is less useful out-of-combat except for bypassing encounters, but this is the same for many other short duration (~1 minute) mind-affecting and CC effects.

Compare this to Animal Friendship, which is a borderline useless spell unless you have a DM who is suckered in by the"Friendship" part of the name and isn't familiar with the exact effects of the Charmed condition.

[PeteNutButter]

Every plant or beast that fails its save is effectively taken out of combat for ten rounds. You and your party are free to attack the rest of the enemies (who made their saves), after which you can focus on one Charmed enemy at a time (only the attacked creature gets to snap out of it). Or run away if you don't think they are likely to follow after the effect wears off (or if you god disapproves of killing them).

There is no limitation on HD, number of targets, attribute scores, etc., unlike similar mind-affecting effects. It's like a souped-up version of Sleep (except without the Incapitation part, permits a Save, and with lower range, etc. etc.) that works only on plant and beasts.

It's an encounter-ending effect. That scales up for free with when you level up. That doesn't require spell slots. Nor concentration. Nor does it allow a repeating saving throw to break its effect. It is better than even some decent Level 4/5 spells, provided you are up against Beasts and Plants.

Sure, it is less useful out-of-combat except for bypassing encounters, but this is the same for many other short duration (~1 minute) mind-affecting and CC effects.

Compare this to Animal Friendship, which is a borderline useless spell unless you have a DM who is suckered in by the"Friendship" part of the name and isn't familiar with the exact effects of the Charmed condition.

This.

It's basically a Hypnotic Pattern that can only target the plants and animals. Hypnotic Pattern is a fantastic crowd control spell, but basically useless against bosses.

[FoxWolFrostFire]

Alright folks. I think I can kind of see the light of this feature now. I still think it could have been much better, but in the right moments it might be one of the most powerful choices in the party.

Thanks for those who shed the light on that.

[Keravath]

I played part of Tomb of Annihilation with a Nature Cleric in the party. In that context, it was an awesome combination. The cleric channel divinity was able to deal with animals, plants and undead which account for a lot of the opponents in the jungles of Chult. Several encounters were made much less worrisome by the abilities of our nature cleric.

[LudicSavant]

Okay. So I am excited to play my cleric. Went with Nature and I like it. I like the feature out look of the spells I get, my divine strike, and helping out team mates with all that nasty elemental damage. But for the life of me I can't think of a single USABLE part of Charm Animal and Plants Channel power.

Like on the surface it is just SUPER bad. 1 minute charm with save, that is broken by ANY damage. Can you all help a cleric out with how to combo this with spells, skills, other features, or Role play? Because right now I kind of just want to ask my DM if I can just use the channel slot to cast animal friendship spell for free on short rest lol.

It targets multiple creatures, and unlike a typical charm makes the creatures friendly to you and any other creatures you designate. Which means that the victims can't take any harmful actions against you or your party. You can bypass a fight with animals entirely, or divide and conquer a group, damaging one while others are left CCed.

The only thing that stops it from being great is that it means your Channel Divinity is creature-type limited; the resource just sits around doing nothing if you're not fighting enough undead, plants, or animals during the day.

[MrStabby]

To be honest, it is not the most exciting channel divinity out there.

This isn't because it isn't useful, but more because it tends to be useful in circumstances that are not that exciting.

Of course this is DM dependant, but I don't imagine many campaigns have a BBEG that is a plant or a beast, or where they are major threats of plot significance. Furthermore beasts tend to have poor mental saves and the effectiveness of this CD should be compared to a typical illusion spell. There are a lot of other very effective ways to deal with beasts and plants.

Don't worry about this though. Nature is a solid subclass with some great perks. Compare your level 6 and 8 abilities to other classes for example. Your extra melee damage can chose an element to bypass resistance and to exploit vulnerability, your level 6 ability can prevent lots of damage all as a reaction.

Furthermore, if you are not fighting beasts or plants it increases the chance that what you are fighting is undead... where your other use for CD is really powerful.

[Tanarii]

It's better than Animal Friendship, since it makes them all (well, all who failed their saves) Friendly to you and your party (or anyone else you want).AFB but if the Nature Channel divinity makes them Friendly, and Animal Friendship (despite the name) just charms them, that's a significant difference. Spells that charm and make friendly (like Charm Person) are effectively a +10 bonus against indifferent and +20 vs hostile, on top of the advantage gained from Charmed.

[DarkKnightJin]

Perfectly good channel divinity if a wall of vines are stopping you from getting into a building.

Just gotta charm the pants off those plants!

Just make sure your party is doing back-up vocals to set the mood.

I see you're familiar with The Adventure Zone and their Nature Cleric, then.

On-topic: The 2nd level Channel Divinity for most Domains are rather limited in their usability.
Only a few are generally useful. Life, War, Grave, Death are useful in combat. Knowledge is useful outside of combat. Can't recall the other domains and their uses from the top of my head right now

[MrStabby]

I see you're familiar with The Adventure Zone and their Nature Cleric, then.

On-topic: The 2nd level Channel Divinity for most Domains are rather limited in their usability.
Only a few are generally useful. Life, War, Grave, Death are useful in combat. Knowledge is useful outside of combat. Can't recall the other domains and their uses from the top of my head right now

Even the niche ones like Arcana are probably less specific than this.

[bid]

Alright folks. I think I can kind of see the light of this feature now. I still think it could have been much better, but in the right moments it might be one of the most powerful choices in the party.

Thanks for those who shed the light on that.
Remember that at level 6 you get dampen elements, maybe the best of all domains. Graves is the only other at-will reaction.

[ImproperJustice]

Used it once in an Al-Quadim campaign where we were set upon by a pack of mounted horseman.

It was highly amusing to send the riders either flying off their mounts or racing into the distance.


It really just depends how frequently beasts and plants are encountered, but it does provide some excellent control options for a time.

[paladinn]

Wildshape needs to be a Nature domain channel divinity. Or at least a spell.