Vengeance Domain Cleric

[hawkwind]

Hey all,


I'm a DM and one of my players has made a homebrew Cleric domain. Vengeance themed. He's thick skinned and good with the rules but also relatively new and it's his first attempt to do something like this so helpful if you can explain *why* you think something where possible please.


I've given some feedback but also asked that I can post it here so that we can both see some feedback from neutral people.


FYI for context, he's looking to multiclass into this from 5th level Gloomstalker but I'm hesitant to mention that as I'd like the class examined, not the multiclass choice.


Thanks for looking.


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Bonus spells

1. Bane, Hellish Rebuke

2. Bestow Curse, Blindness/Deafness,

3. Dispel Magic, Hold Person

4. Locate Creature, Guardian of Faith

5. Scrying, Insect Plague



1st

Prof Heavy Armour and Martial


1st

At 1st level, you can inspire vengeance in your allies. Whenever an ally that you can see and can hear you is hit with a successful attack, you can use your reaction to allow that ally to use their reaction to make a weapon attack against the creature that attacked it


2nd

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to gain insight into a target of your vengeance.


You conduct an hour-long ritual after which the target creature makes a Wisdom save vs your spell save DC. On a successful save, the creature cannot be targeted by this ability again for 24 hrs. On a failed save, the creature becomes your Target of Vengeance. You learn one of the following pieces of information (your choice) about the target creature: name, description, approximate location.


The target must be one that have wronged yourself or an ally in the past, and it's wisdom save is modified depending on the scale of wrongdoing:


Minor crime (eg insult): +2


Major Crime(eg murder): -2


Heinous Crime (eg genocide): -5


You can only have one Target of Vengeance active at a time. If a new Target is selected, the previous ceases to be a Target


6th

At 6th level, you become an instrument of vengeance.

If you make a spell or weapon attack against your target of vengeance that would normally take an action, you can reduce the required time to 1 bonus action.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.



8th level

At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with vengeful energy. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 psychic damage to the target. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8.



Implacable Vengeance

At 17th level, you gain +2AC and +2 on saves vs attacks from your Target of Vengeance

[Ilerien]

2. Bestow Curse, Blindness/Deafness,
3. Dispel Magic, Hold PersonBestow Curse and Hold Person should be swapped according to their levels. I assume it's a bug.

Prof Heavy Armour and Martial
The same as War clerics get. Powerful, but reasonable. Though doesn't seem very thematic to me.
At 1st level, you can inspire vengeance in your allies. Whenever an ally that you can see and can hear you is hit with a successful attack, you can use your reaction to allow that ally to use their reaction to make a weapon attack against the creature that attacked itIf there's no per rest limit, it shouldn't be given this early (or maybe just shouldn't be given at all) because it likely amounts to party rogue performing two sneak attacks per round.
I'd probably use it as a Channel Divinity option with some tweaking.
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to gain insight into a target of your vengeance.You conduct an hour-long ritual after which the target creature makes a Wisdom save vs your spell save DC. On a successful save, the creature cannot be targeted by this ability again for 24 hrs. On a failed save, the creature becomes your Target of Vengeance. You learn one of the following pieces of information (your choice) about the target creature: name, description, approximate location.


The target must be one that have wronged yourself or an ally in the past, and it's wisdom save is modified depending on the scale of wrongdoing:


Minor crime (eg insult): +2


Major Crime(eg murder): -2


Heinous Crime (eg genocide): -5


You can only have one Target of Vengeance active at a time. If a new Target is selected, the previous ceases to be a TargetChannel Divinity options tend to be available in combat (use action/bonus/reaction/no action). The only exception is Forge, but it still makes sense to use it more than one time between rests as opposed to this one.
Another issue is loose wording: what creatures are allies outside combat situations? What if someone insulted my friend ten years ago, and the friend in question is now my mortal enemy, is said someone eligible for targeting?.. What crimes besides given examples are minor, major or heinous? How does one identify the desired target exactly without knowing its name? I'd make it usable once per long rest and changed the effect so it augments spells (maybe specific domain spells?) and/or attacks against the target.
At 6th level, you become an instrument of vengeance.

If you make a spell or weapon attack against your target of vengeance that would normally take an action, you can reduce the required time to 1 bonus action.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.Straight-up improvement of the previous feature, which is common enough for official domains. An action may involve several spell or weapon attacks directed at different targets. Even if we specify "at least one" or "all of them" should be performed against the target of vengeance, it's still clumsy. Anyway, this one should be reworked in conjunction with the previous one.

At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with vengeful energy. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 psychic damage to the target. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8.TCE made 8th-level features (which were exclusively Divine Strike/Potent Spellcasting enhancing weapon attacks/cantrips respectively) into Blessed Strikes. I see no reason to deviate: should just give it Divine Strike (Blessed Strikes) and call it a day.

At 17th level, you gain +2AC and +2 on saves vs attacks from your Target of VengeanceAnother straight-up improvement of the same "a bonus against the sworn enemy" feature, which strikes me as limiting the options available for the subclass: could've given it something entirely new either here or at 6th level. Additionally, 5e tends to avoid giving numerical bonuses/penalties to saves whenever possible preferring to use (dis-)advantages.

[hawkwind]

Thanks for taking the time to look through that and I agree with everything you've said.

I specifically wanted to get feedback as you can sometimes feel bad, as DM, when you call them an idiot and rip their character sheet up in their face for daring to try something new. :smallsmile:

We're now onto version 2, and I'm keen to try to make it more fitting rather than a bag of cool extra attacks that he wants so please shout if you think of anything nicely thematic.

Just in case any one is interested my thoughts (copied from a thread somewhere else) are below - happy to take criticism on those thoughts as still learning myself.

Thanks again

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Thanks for that. You've largely echoed my thoughts which were.... well, lengthy but largely:

The ability to lock onto your target, if that's the way you want it to work should be decoupled from the scrying part. That whole methodology if too focussed on a BBEG and they'd find it useless and frustrating for a lot of other encounters. You keep spamming it every day until it works so any restrictions are a bit meaningless, or they always save and you're frustrated as you've lost most of your abilities. Lots of encounters it just won't come into play.

Lots of problems with the scrying part: too powerful for 2nd level, no restrictions or immunities mentioned (this does not get to work on Orcus at 2nd level!), the -5 saves penalty is better then having an piece of clothing in 5th level Scrying spell. It doesn't follow the limitations of other locate/ divine abilities (of much higher level). But fundamentally, as a DM, I don't really like a player's ability telling me they get to know a name, information like that is in my remit to give as part of the story.

1st level, exactly my comments, way too powerful, make it channel divinity and I'll wear it. No problem with weapons/ armour obviously

6th. Yep, thought this was homebrew powergaming here. It's almost like (up to) 5 slightly weaker action surges (fighters get 2 at 17th and it's a class defining ability).Compare with other, already good, domains like war or order and it's not even in the same ballpark. Ripe for breaking the system the way it's written. This level is often more the 'you get to fly a bit' power level, not unleashing 5 rounds of extra attacks - as you say with multiple attacks per rounds for martial classes.

8th, yeah, that's a fairly standard one now, as you say, like forge but with a better damage type. Meant to give the martial clerics a bump for not getting 2nd attacks I guess. Fair enough.

17th - yep, I wasn't worried about this one but I agree, needs some style added to it. Avenging angel stuff.

Spells. I don't mind these, mainly because they're nealy all cleric ones (resisting giving fireballs etc) but I did note they're all (very?) nice ones to have prepared for free, not a weak link here, but I can see the attempt to be thematic so kudos.

Overall I feel the common trap for people homebrewing is looking at a load of other (already very strong) other abilities, tweaking them all to be a bit better and then roling them into one class. It adds up to something crazy good. For me all classes have some 'meh' spells abilities, all of this would be blue in a guide.

Honestly I still sometimes find myself doing that sometimes making a new character - "if only I could have that feat and darkvision and maybe thieves tools etc etc". In that situation it's usually that I haven't fleshed out the personality of the character enough and started to enjoy their weaknesses or choices.

A good question is, would I ever consider taking another domain over this. Doubt it, I also think Clerics are already a pretty solid class overall.

[supercereal]

The idea it's cool, but the domain as it is is a mess (as already pointed out). It can be tweaked in a lot of ways but I would suggest against it. I don't know why your PG wants to multiclass into a Cleric that presumably serves a god/goddess related to vengence, but if is not for really strong roleplaying reason (and I tend to assume always not when homebrew is involved but maybe I'm biased :smallconfused:), I said let him pick only published material. Specifically:

- War domain cleric could work
- Death domain cleric could work with just a minor tweak to the domain spells
- Oath of Vengeance paladin seems perfect, you could even allow the paladin to be based on Wisdom instead of Charisma (maybe a little to busted in this case)

Or you can create the domain for your player, meaby adapting the Oath of Vengeance paladin into a Cleric domain.

[hawkwind]

but if is not for really strong roleplaying reason (and I tend to assume always not when homebrew is involved but maybe I'm biased :smallconfused:)

I'm with you there to be honest. He's old enough and thick skinned enough that if I say no at the end it'll be ok, so I think the experience of looking something like this is valuable for him and maybe we'll land on something thematic, for the moment I think it's an exercise in understanding power creep as much as anything.

[kosh49]

I agree with the general idea that as designed this subclass is somewhat overpowered, has some mechanics that are confusing and vague, and has sections that feel uninspired.

I do have one quibble with Ilerien's analysis. TCE did not make transform Divine Strikes and Potent Spellcasting into Blessed Strikes. It presented Blessed Strikes as an option a cleric could take instead of their standard Divine Strikes or Potent Spellcasting feature. If you look at the 3 subclasses in TCE, none of them have Blessed Strikes - two of them have Divine Strikes and the other has Potent Spellcasting. So I would say that all cleric subclasses should be defined with either Divine Strikes or Potent Spellcasting. Given the armor and weapon proficiencies this subclass gets at level 1, Divine Strikes makes sense to me.

As far as how Blessed Strikes are used in the game, I see 4 options:
1) The DM decides Blessed Strikes makes more sense to them than the Divine Strikes/Potent Spellcasting and all clerics get Blessed Strikes at level 8.
2) The DM feels that Blessed Strikes is a reasonable option and on attaining level 8 all clerics are allowed to choose either Blessed Strikes or the standard Divine Strikes/Potent Spellcasting (depending on the specific subclass).
3) The DM thinks that Blessed Strikes makes a good reward. At level 8 clerics get the appropriate Divine Strikes/Potent Spellcasting feature, but they can acquire the ability to pick Blessed Strikes instead as a reward for a quest (finding a forgotten secret, getting a boon from the god, achieving enlightenment, etc.)
4) The DM dislikes Blessed Strikes and decides it is not available in their world. All clerics get the appropriate Divine Strikes/Potent Spellcasting feature at level 8.
Ilerien clearly prefers option 1, and that is a perfectly valid way to play. But options 2-4 are also valid, and therefore subclass design must support them.

[hawkwind]

Thanks for the detail on that.

I must confessed I had lazily scanned over Potent Spellcasting and Divine/ Blessed Strike without appreciate those choices level choices but I see it now.

[Ilerien]

I do have one quibble with Ilerien's analysis. TCE did not make transform Divine Strikes and Potent Spellcasting into Blessed Strikes. It presented Blessed Strikes as an option a cleric could take instead of their standard Divine Strikes or Potent Spellcasting feature. If you look at the 3 subclasses in TCE, none of them have Blessed Strikes - two of them have Divine Strikes and the other has Potent Spellcasting. So I would say that all cleric subclasses should be defined with either Divine Strikes or Potent Spellcasting. Given the armor and weapon proficiencies this subclass gets at level 1, Divine Strikes makes sense to me.

...

Ilerien clearly prefers option 1, and that is a perfectly valid way to play. But options 2-4 are also valid, and therefore subclass design must support them.I am very far from stating there's only one way to implement optional features introduced in TCE. :) The details of implementation are up to the DM, hence me suggesting Divine Strike with Blessed Strikes as an optional feature that should be handled exactly the same way as other domains' 8th level features.
Though I indeed prefer to replace DS/PS with Blessed Strikes for any cleric from the start. :)