Twilight Cleric Concentration

[Master O'Laughs]

With the Twilight Cleric gaining access to circle of power, I was wondering how would one decide when to concentrate on Spirit Guardians, Circle of Power, or Sunbeam?

I know party make up would greatly influence choice, so lets say there is a Fighter, Rogue, & Wizard in the party as well.

Would it come down to knowing your opponent?
- If likely to throw out lots of saving throws - Circle of power
- Lots of small things with low health or radiant vulnerable - Sunbeam
- need to slow enemies down from reaching back line - Spirit Guardians

Curious what others thoughts are.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I opened this hoping to find a discussion about how adding Concentration to Twilight Sanctuary could be a possible fix to bring Twilight Cleric in line with the non-powercreep subclasses. :frown:

[Rukelnikov]

I opened this hoping to find a discussion about how adding Concentration to Twilight Sanctuary could be a possible fix to bring Twilight Cleric in line with the non-powercreep subclasses. :frown:

Me too lol

[P. G. Macer]

Me too lol

Me three!

But to try and answer OP’s question, I think it depends on what the cleric is facing, and the cleric’s build. If one is playing a melee Twilight Cleric (the consensus for which seems to be that it’s suboptimal versus ranged), Spirit Guardians as some more appeal, while ranged would seem to prefer Sunbeam to me. Circle of Power is dependent on whether you’re fighting spellcasters or not.

[PhantomSoul]

Me three!

But to try and answer OP’s question, I think it depends on what the cleric is facing, and the cleric’s build. If one is playing a melee Twilight Cleric (the consensus for which seems to be that it’s suboptimal versus ranged), Spirit Guardians as some more appeal, while ranged would seem to prefer Sunbeam to me. Circle of Power is dependent on whether you’re fighting spellcasters or not.

Me four!
(But I'll echo that the spell really depends on build/playstyle, but the opponent matters too, like in the OP.)

[MaxWilson]

With the Twilight Cleric gaining access to circle of power, I was wondering how would one decide when to concentrate on Spirit Guardians, Circle of Power, or Sunbeam?

I know party make up would greatly influence choice, so lets say there is a Fighter, Rogue, & Wizard in the party as well.

Would it come down to knowing your opponent?
- If likely to throw out lots of saving throws - Circle of power
- Lots of small things with low health or radiant vulnerable - Sunbeam
- need to slow enemies down from reaching back line - Spirit Guardians

Curious what others thoughts are.

Against lots of small things with low health I would expect Spirit Guardians to be more useful than Sunbeam. Sunbeam is only 5' wide...

To a certain extent it depends on how willing your DM is to let you e.g. affect a 10' wide column of enemy monsters by firing 2.5' of sunbeam into each 5' square. Some DMs will say, "Sure, you touch two squares so all the monsters are affected." Others will say, "Are all the monsters really within 5' of each other? I'm not sure I believe that merely touching a corner of a square is the same as hitting the actual monster."

Also, Sunbeam only lasts 1 minutes, vs. 10 minutes for Circle of Power or Spirit Guardians. Frankly I suspect that Insect Plague or Summon Celestial (since you're playing with Tasha's I assume it's legal) or Conjure Celestial would all be competitive with Sunbeam. Aura of Vitality and Aura of Life are also both worthy uses of concentration in combat.

Side note: IMO you could nerf Twilight Cleric's Channel Divinity all the way down to "you can grant your WIS mod in temp HP" instead of 1d6+LVL, and it would still be a fun and powerful class on the basis of its spell list, proficiencies, darkvision-granting, and flying.

[Master O'Laughs]

To all those about discussing the inherently strong nature of the Twilight cleric, haha, sorry. I figure there have been enough threads discussing it and myself being a player mostly would actually like to play it as is with no restrictions, completely affirming it is one of the strongest Cleric domains.


Against lots of small things with low health I would expect Spirit Guardians to be more useful than Sunbeam. Sunbeam is only 5' wide...

To a certain extent it depends on how willing your DM is to let you e.g. affect a 10' wide column of enemy monsters by firing 2.5' of sunbeam into each 5' square. Some DMs will say, "Sure, you touch two squares so all the monsters are affected." Others will say, "Are all the monsters really within 5' of each other? I'm not sure I believe that merely touching a corner of a square is the same as hitting the actual monster."

So my rough beginning thoughts were somewhat close. Cool.

[MaxWilson]

To all those about discussing the inherently strong nature of the Twilight cleric, haha, sorry. I figure there have been enough threads discussing it and myself being a player mostly would actually like to play it as is with no restrictions, completely affirming it is one of the strongest Cleric domains.

So my rough beginning thoughts were somewhat close. Cool.

Don't forget other options such as Insect Plague which might be even better against lots of small things!

[Zuras]

Against lots of small things with low health I would expect Spirit Guardians to be more useful than Sunbeam. Sunbeam is only 5' wide...

To a certain extent it depends on how willing your DM is to let you e.g. affect a 10' wide column of enemy monsters by firing 2.5' of sunbeam into each 5' square. Some DMs will say, "Sure, you touch two squares so all the monsters are affected." Others will say, "Are all the monsters really within 5' of each other? I'm not sure I believe that merely touching a corner of a square is the same as hitting the actual monster."

Also, Sunbeam only lasts 1 minutes, vs. 10 minutes for Circle of Power or Spirit Guardians. Frankly I suspect that Insect Plague or Summon Celestial (since you're playing with Tasha's I assume it's legal) or Conjure Celestial would all be competitive with Sunbeam. Aura of Vitality and Aura of Life are also both worthy uses of concentration in combat.

Side note: IMO you could nerf Twilight Cleric's Channel Divinity all the way down to "you can grant your WIS mod in temp HP" instead of 1d6+LVL, and it would still be a fun and powerful class on the basis of its spell list, proficiencies, darkvision-granting, and flying.

Practically speaking it’s entirely determined by what you’re fighting. Spirit Guardians is usually your best option, but there are entire categories of Tier 3 encounters that will be trivialized by a Sunbeam. Spirit Guardians requires you get close to the enemy, but you can also use Dodge to mitigate the risk, while Sunbeam will use your action each turn to blast enemies.

My default would be to lead with Spirit Guardians unless I had a specific reason for something else. Normally clerics are doing crowd control and status removal more than working as pure damage dealers.

Also strongly agree you shouldn’t underestimate the power of Aura of Life. It doesn’t sound that amazing, but it almost completely eliminates a large number of the effects I have actually seen kill PCs in play (HP reduction is no joke, and multiple necrotic damage sources have dead at zero HP riders).