Cleric Domain: Winter

[P. G. Macer]

You can see my Homebrewery entry for this Domain here (https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/E69_C5fsV36a).

The gods of winter range in personality and temperment to a vast degree. Some shelter their followers from winter’s harshness, while others preach a creed that only the strong shall survive winter’s wrath.

Domain Spells:
1st Level: Armor of Agathys, Ice Knife
3rd Level: Rime’s Binding Ice, Spike Growth
5th Level: Sleet Storm, Slow
7th Level: Conjure Minor Elementals*, Ice Storm
9th Level: Cone of Cold, Hold Monster
11th Level: Otiluke’s Freezing Sphere, Wall of Ice
*Unless you also gain this spell from another source, you can only conjure ice mephitis with it.

Bonus Proficiencies and Cantrip
At 1st level when you choose this domain, you gain proficiency with heavy armor, martial weapons, and the Survival skill.
Additionally, you learn your choice of the ray of frost or frostbite cantrip. Whichever cantrip you choose is a cleric cantrip for you, but doesn’t count against the number of cleric cantrips you know.

Hoarfrost Steps
Also at 1st level, you are naturally adapted to cold climates, and difficult terrain because of ice or snow does not impede your movement.

Channel Divinity: Flash Freeze
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to impede the movements of your foes. As an action, you can present your holy symbol, and every hostile creature within 30 feet of you must make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC or be restrained until the end of your next turn. A creature immune to cold damage automatically succeeds on its save, and a creature with resistance to cold damage makes the save with advantage. On a successful save, a creature that is neither resistant nor immune to cold damage has its movement speed reduced by 5 feet.

Arctic Acolyte
Starting at 6th level, you gain resistance to cold damage. If you have resistance to cold damage from your race, you instead gain resistance to fire damage.
Additionally, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage rolls of cleric spells you cast of 1st level or higher that deal cold damage.

Divine Strike
At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with freezing 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 cold damage to the target. When you reach 14th level, the extra damage increases to 2d8.

Hailstorm Hierarch
Starting at 17th level, you are immune to cold damage.

Additionally, when a spell or Domain feature of yours makes you roll cold damage, you can reroll any 1s you roll, but must use the new rolls, even if they are still 1s.

Finally, your spells and Domain features which deal cold damage deal half damage to creatures immune to cold damage.

The first thing that’ll jump out to many of you is my inclusion of 6th-level Domain Spells, a major departure from standard 5e design principles. My reasoning for such a deviation is simple, in that it would be rather awkward for my Winter Domain Cleric to not have any way of accessing those spells without mutliclassing, yet as there are no spells of 7th-level or higher that deal only cold damage**, it would be ill-fitting to shoehorn them into the 17th-level feature in a manner reminiscent of the Arcana Domain. I therefore felt expanding the range of the Domain spells by 1 spell level was the least awkward solution.

I wonder if the second parts of the 6th-level and 17th-level features should be swapped, as re-rolling the 1s of damage dice is usually a lower-level feature, and adding the spell casting stat mod to spell damage, even only in certain circumstances, is something in WotC design I have seen at both low and high levels.

I’m also quite concerned about the power level of the Channel Divinity. I hadn’t entirely taken into account when writing it that clerics get multiple uses of their CD per short rest starting at 6th level, and thus a Winter Cleric can repeat the CD in consecutive rounds. If you have any suggestions for resolving this, whether through introducing a cooldown (pun intended) mechanism or just nerfing the feature, let me know.

[sandmote]

There's some wonky language, but I don't see anything unclear. The phrase "every hostile creature," in the text for flash freeze should probably be replaced with "each creature of your choice,"

Flash freeze is probably a bit weak rather than too strong, as you only have it last a single turn. I would swap the levels you get "reroll 1s" and "add WIS bonus," though. It feels weird to give that before casting based clerics get Potent Spellcasting, and a damage bonus to a bunch of your higher level spells will likely come up more often than a damage bonus to cantrips.

I think the biggest problem is the sheer volume of features this subclass gives at 1st level. Heavy armor and martial weapons and a skill and a cantrip and two mostly ribbon effects is too much. It would be more reasonable if the bonus proficiencies were most useful for PCs that benefit little from Hoarfrost steps (and cantrip) and Hoarfrost steps (with cantrip) were most useful for PCs that already have the bonus proficiencies. Since there's multiple items useful for most characters to pick up, I'd personally drop the skill (which probably fits better with backgrounds anyway) and either the armor or weapon proficiencies.

[P. G. Macer]

There's some wonky language, but I don't see anything unclear. The phrase "every hostile creature," in the text for flash freeze should probably be replaced with "each creature of your choice,"

Flash freeze is probably a bit weak rather than too strong, as you only have it last a single turn. I would swap the levels you get "reroll 1s" and "add WIS bonus," though. It feels weird to give that before casting based clerics get Potent Spellcasting, and a damage bonus to a bunch of your higher level spells will likely come up more often than a damage bonus to cantrips.

I think the biggest problem is the sheer volume of features this subclass gives at 1st level. Heavy armor and martial weapons and a skill and a cantrip and two mostly ribbon effects is too much. It would be more reasonable if the bonus proficiencies were most useful for PCs that benefit little from Hoarfrost steps (and cantrip) and Hoarfrost steps (with cantrip) were most useful for PCs that already have the bonus proficiencies. Since there's multiple items useful for most characters to pick up, I'd personally drop the skill (which probably fits better with backgrounds anyway) and either the armor or weapon proficiencies.

This is very useful feedback, thank you!
I think I’ll do as you suggest and drop the skill and the armor or weapons.
For Flash Freeze, would adding a small-to-medium amount of cold damage buff it enough? I’ll also adjust the wording for targeting.

You’re absolutely right about the WIS mod thing; I had been trying not to step on Potent Spellcasting’s toes, but slipped up somewhere in the design process.

[Yakk]

At 17th level, simply state that you can cast any spell that deals cold damage as if you had it prepared, and it counts as a cleric spell when you cast it. If such a spell could deal cold damage as well as other damage, all of the damage is converted to cold damage.

Maybe a bit too broadly worded.

...

Arctic Acolyte, I get why you worded it that way. We could tweak it to be on-theme, yet not have problems stacking with resistance.

"As a reaction, you can reduce cold damage dealt to a creature you can see by half. After the damage is dealt, you gain temporary HP equal to the amount you reduced the damage."

This is an active ability you can use to protect others or yourself.

...

Also, one thing I like to do is to avoid "m0ar damage". For cold, we have "reduced movement speed" of ice grabbing at a creature, and temporary HP of "an icy protective shell". I'd try leaning on those two.

Like, replace:

Additionally, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage rolls of cleric spells you cast of 1st level or higher that deal cold damage.
with:

When you deal cold damage with a cleric spell, they are encased in ice that reduces the creature's movement speed by half of the cold damage done until the end of your next turn. This ice can broken by attacks or other damage; every point of bludgeoning or fire damage reduces the movement speed reduction by 1. (AC 12, and its magic resistance uses the Cleric's saves against spells or effects)
or something tidier.