It's not free but the action to proc it is..... Which is enough to scrutinize it heavily.
Compared to other free action healing/effects it's overly powerful.
Healing spirit is a 2nd level spell that gives 1d6 HP and requires no action to proc but it's a 5ft area and requires your BA to move and it's concentration.
Vs twilight cleric that's free action, 30ft, and requires no action to move as you are the center of it and produces much more THP and no concentration
Also your paladin aura.... That's only 10ft until level 18 then it's 30ft.
And none of them proceeds provide thp or healing effects.
Overall it's a broken ability that definitely needs an eratta
The numbers are great and the free nature of it and the action economy is what breaks it.
Action economy is a big deal in balancing features in the game and anything that gets activated as a free action should be heavily scrutinized.
In this case you are giving something away as a free action that outweighs a lot of features that requires a full action or Bonus action and that alone is cause for concern.
The fact you can do this for any number of creatures with free actions is just silly.
Except that it doesn't outweigh them.
It does outweigh them. That's just objective fact. It is the single best THP ability in the game by a long shot. It outweighs every single one of them.
People give THP way too much weight to begin with. And now Twilight Sanctuary comes along and uses it as a main mechanic and people are taking that overweighting and making it worse. THP has a lot of faults. It doesn't fix wounds. It can't bring somebody back up from unconcious or the like. And while it's not actually an issue in 5e because things like bleed aren't really a thing in 5e, it wouldn't stop such from doing their damage either because it's not healing.
No one claims it does these things. What it does? Prevents actual HP damage. That's it.
People keep talking about it like it's a cure spell but it's not.
No it is even better than a cure spell. Vastly better. A cure spell fixes 1d8+mod HP damage. Twilight sanctuary prevents up to (10d6+10*level)*#allies damage from even happening.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." ~ Benjamin Franklin
That's an actual saying for a reason.
Healing is notoriously inefficient in 5e. You're going to spend a a whole action to cure one guy for 1d8+mod HP? That really seems like a better use of your action than to erect a barrier that prevents 1d6+level damage per turn to all allies for a whole minute and whose remaining protection continues to last until used or a long rest?
The difference is staggering and entirely in favor of the twilight sanctuary.
Bonus? IF you really needed to heal someone because they're unconscious and dying you don't even have to give up saving them. Healing Word them as a Bonus Action on the same turn and now they're back up AND with a THP buffer to help keep them up.
There is also this continually pushed perception that Twilight Sanctuary is free. it's not free. It uses an ability with limited uses but also limited reasons to use it usually to make it work. But it does still cost something and it is not free. And it uses an Action to set up.
An action for (10d6+10*level)*#allies temp HP. <--- This is an absurdly high number for a single action.
In any fight where damage is even remotely spread out to your party this ability trivializes that entire encounter. And because it uses a resource you regain on a short rest, and lasts a full minute, it is reliable enough you can expect to have it available every time that happens. By 6th level you can afford to just drop it into basically any combat at all.
Now this is not to say that it's not strong. it is a Strong Ability, Particularly when you compare it to some of the other Channel Divinity Abilities which tend to be either somewhat niche, fairly weak, or just downright boring in what they do (such as War Domain it feels bad because it's boring and it's very limited use despite the fact that it almost guarantee's an attack hits when used).
You seem to be agreeing it is the most powerful channel divinity.
But Twilight Sanctuary is not anything game breakingly strong. There are things like Paladin Aura's that give some of the same kinds of protections. Or spells that might be single target but last longer, for a much more common resource. There are even a few spells that are High Level on Paladin's that are slowly making their way into other things that can cast them much sooner.
2 things. 1. This topic is about cleric subclasses so comparing a subclass to a paladin doesn't make much sense in this conversation. 2. The paladin spells you're referring to are making their way to is... the twilight cleric.
Twilight Cleric gets that 5th level otherwise Paladin only spell circle of power at *drum roll* ... 9th level. Yes, while anyone gets it at 17th level. Twilight cleric gets that doozy of a spell all the way at 9th level. People actually play characters at 9th level. You might not even be familiar with the spell since how often do you have a 17th level+ paladin in your party? Read circle of power again. It is nuts.
Twilight Sanctuary makes some trade offs, And does gain a little extra protection at 17th level to add to it. But it's basically just a scaling paladin aura with a limited duration and each turn the person it covers has to decide how it affects them. Assuming that they meet the conditions where the choice even matters. If they aren't frightened and ending their turn inside of the aura or having taken damage to need new protection points from THP. Then it's not doing a whole lot. And people talking about it being broken always talk in terms like every person in the aura is somehow taking just enough damage to use up the THP on every turn.
Generally when you talk about how powerful an ability is you're indeed, yes, talking about using it to its fullest. How powerful can it be in an ideal situation? That's the question you are asking. But that's not the only question people ask, you also wanna know how useful is it in less ideal situations. So, lets ask that for twilight sanctuary.
What is the least ideal situation to use it in, and how effective is it in that situation?
Well, it hits all allies in 30ft. So the least ideal situation is for there not to be any allies there and it only is protecting just you. Ok. Alone.
And it provides THP every round so the ideal situation is for you to be taking sustained damage over the duration of combat. So let's assume then you're not taking damage.
We have now described the only time the ability isn't super effective. When you're alone and not in combat. And even then, even in this situation... all you did was burn a channel divinity for 1d6+level THP that lasts for when you do get into combat.
That's... still good. Even in this worst case use: it is still good.
It's completely possible for them not to be frightened and not to have taken damage or for some reason taken so little damage, or the roll for THP is just that slight bit better that they only gain between 1 and 3 points. So the benefit is way below what people state it as for those people. It's also possible for people to end up outside of the area. Sure a 30' radius is decent sized. But it's hardly all encompassing. Otherwise many AoE spells would be even more dangerous than they already are just on a general level.
Trust me I get what you're saying. It isn't every combat that all members of your team take sustained damage every turn for a whole minute. Of course you're extremely unlikely to use every single last potential THP the ability spits out.
But the crazy thing is, even a small fraction of the THP being used is still a LOT of THP for a single action to have provided.
Here. Let's look at a super low level actual example you could see in games anywhere. 5 party. Level 2.
Compare: false life a level 1 spell these characters could potentially have access to. It adds an average of 6.5 THP to one player and is wasted if not used in an hour. Vs Twilight sanctuary. Even if used as a precombat buff you just gave all 5 players probably(1d6+2 best result of 10xrolls) 8 THP which lasts until their next long rest. So it is as good or better than 5 casts of false life.
And Trust me, Twilight Sanctuary is one thing I wish had shorter answers. But it's more of a nuance conversation.
It really isn't. It is just hands down better than anything else available that provides THP. Even in worse case usage it is still useful and valuable. And in best case uses it entirely trivializes entire encounters.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
It's not free but the action to proc it is..... Which is enough to scrutinize it heavily.
Compared to other free action healing/effects it's overly powerful.
Healing spirit is a 2nd level spell that gives 1d6 HP and requires no action to proc but it's a 5ft area and requires your BA to move and it's concentration.
Vs twilight cleric that's free action, 30ft, and requires no action to move as you are the center of it and produces much more THP and no concentration
Also your paladin aura.... That's only 10ft until level 18 then it's 30ft.
And none of them proceeds provide thp or healing effects.
Overall it's a broken ability that definitely needs an eratta
No. First of all. Stop calling it a healing ability. It's not a healing ability. It in no way heals. it doesn't do any of the little extra's that healing does.
This is what is making a lot of people call it OP. They keep talking about it like it's some kind of repeated cure wounds spell or something. it's not. you Can Technically die while having Temp HP on you because Temp HP cannot make you regain conciousness or even stabalize you to stop death saving throws.
And your Paladin Aura is only 10 ft argument is downplaying Paladin Aura's. most of them are powerful effects in their own right. That last longer and work better if in limited capacities than anything Twilight Sanctuary does. Twilight Sanctuary wishes it worked like a Paladin Aura. It's trying in some ways to be a Paladin Aura and missing the mark. All the Paladin aura cares about is positioning. Nothing else. Not timing in the turn. Not having to turn it on. Not uses of a Limited Use Ability to activate. nothing. It is always there. it may only be 10' in size until level 18. But Paladin Aura's are looking at Twilight Sanctuary and basically going. "Nice Try Pipsqueak."
They don't have to provide THP or healing effects when they can have other effects that are just as strong. Overall at level 20, Halving all spells is going to bock more Damage than the 21-26 THP of Twilight Cleric is going to, And yet it's still going to be ready to block the next one as well. And it's going to do that at 30'. At the same Level that people are pushing the numbers for Twilight Sanctuary being so strong. And on top of that. That Same Paladin is also going to provide as much as a +5 to all Saving Throws. Increasing the chance that instead of halving the Damage. That the damage is actually one quarter of it's value instead. And the Saving Throw is going to increase the likely-hood of damage that is from non-spell sources. When Spells can have average damages of 40-60 and max damages of 80-120 for a single spell. And things like Breath Weapons are regularly having average damage in the 50's as well. That is a lot of damage that one paladin is basically removing from the group. Way more than "24 per person" a turn. The only place that the THP of the Twilight Cleric in that scenario is doing better is in mostly physical attack roll based attacks.
When it comes to that Paladin or the Twilight Cleric as a choice for what is going to protect me overall at max level. My Answer is only going to be the Twilight Cleric if I'm going up against things largely physical based. Anything that is mixed or heavily magic Based. I'd rather have the Paladin. It's lifting more weight while doing absolutely nothing other than existing in a conscious state, not even Stunning them or paralyzing them stops it should you manage to do so. But Still people are saying It's the Twilight Cleric that is OP and Busted because of some points of protection that they mistake for healing ability that they first pick up at low level.
It's not broken. the OP nature of the ability is being heavily misrepresented.
It's not free but the action to proc it is..... Which is enough to scrutinize it heavily.
Compared to other free action healing/effects it's overly powerful.
Healing spirit is a 2nd level spell that gives 1d6 HP and requires no action to proc but it's a 5ft area and requires your BA to move and it's concentration.
Vs twilight cleric that's free action, 30ft, and requires no action to move as you are the center of it and produces much more THP and no concentration
Also your paladin aura.... That's only 10ft until level 18 then it's 30ft.
And none of them proceeds provide thp or healing effects.
Overall it's a broken ability that definitely needs an eratta
No. First of all. Stop calling it a healing ability.
He didn't yo.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
It's not free but the action to proc it is..... Which is enough to scrutinize it heavily.
Compared to other free action healing/effects it's overly powerful.
Healing spirit is a 2nd level spell that gives 1d6 HP and requires no action to proc but it's a 5ft area and requires your BA to move and it's concentration.
Vs twilight cleric that's free action, 30ft, and requires no action to move as you are the center of it and produces much more THP and no concentration
Also your paladin aura.... That's only 10ft until level 18 then it's 30ft.
And none of them proceeds provide thp or healing effects.
Overall it's a broken ability that definitely needs an eratta
No. First of all. Stop calling it a healing ability.
He didn't yo.
Hey now let's not let a small thing like the truth get in the way of a good rant!
But joking aside it's not healing but it's actually better IMO as it can put you above your HP total.
At higher levels spell damage is fairly inconsequential. The more dangerous thing is control effects which lock characters out of combat, or kill them outright. Fortunately Twilight Cleric does have Circle of Power to give advantage on saves against such things, and has had that since level 9.
Also gaining 20+D6 THP each turn that you "end your turn" in the twilight sphere means that that if a dragon is doing ~60 damage a round the dragon is doing only two thirds of that, taking four turns rather than three to inflict the same total damage. Sure, you can technically die with THP on, but it's going to take a lot longer to do so.
Let's say you have a level 20 Fighter with 16 Con, so hardly optimized, that's 184HP. The dragon does approximately 60 damage a turn that's three rounds to kill the Fighter.
With an addition 20 THP per round the Fighter has 200, the Dragon removes 60, dropping him to 140, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 160, the Dragon drops him to 100, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 120, the Dragon drops him to 60, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 80, the Dragon drops him to 20, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 40, the Dragon drops him to 0, taking him out. With just 180 HP the Fighter should have gotten taken out in three rounds. That additional two turns increases the damage the party can do to the Dragon by 67%, usually taking him out before he gets through the Fighter. That's without anyone actually healing the Fighter.
Continuously adding HP to a character, that provides a buffer against their actual HP total, makes characters much more durable.
Whether healing is better than THP is debatable, healing stacks and can be used on unconcious but THP prevent damage (avoiding or lowering DC of Con saves for concentration) and can be given before combat to boost effective total HP.
I think the closest thing to cmpare it with is inspiring leader:
Inspiring leader gives up to 6 creatures Twilight Santuary is unlimited, often this makes no difference but with a large parety or one with familiars, friendly NPCs and the likes the 6 limit could be significant.
Inpriing Leader gives level +cha mod HP so marginally worst than 1d6+cleric level for Pure cleric if the inspires has less than 18 Cha and slightly more if it is 18 or more. (Twilight sanctuary is less effective for a multi class than a pure cleric of the same character level but I am looking at pure clerics here). Whether twilight Sancuary can be used out of combat is up to the DM (there is no reason it can't I think RAW you could say is all characters within 30ft get the temp HP but it has ended before initiative is rolled but it would make most sense if combat is imminent would be to roll initiavive at the point it is declared even if the NPCs do not act aggressivly until attacked.
If you take damage within a minute you can get back with 30ft of the cleric for a top-up, you can also do this is you initially got a poor dice roll so see if you can get more temp HP with another attempt. Inspiring leader doesn't give this. While claiming every character can get the full effect up to 10 times is misleading I would say in practise you probably double the amount of Temp HP gained by this compared to the initial gain of each member of the party on average
Inspiring leader is once per short rest until level 5 this is the same as twilight sanctuary but from level 6-17 Twilight sanctuary is twice per short rest, if you get ot level 18 it is 3 times.
Twilight sanctuary has the option of reoving the frightends or charmed condition
Inspiring leader takes 10 minutes so must be done in advancetwilight sanctuary takes an action so you can use it immediately before or mid combat
In every way twilight sanctuary is at leas tthe equal and in nerly every aspect superior to a reasonably popular feat. The key areas being you can probably give out at least twice the number of temp HP per use (more for a large party) and once you hit level 6 you can do it twice as often. Those are enough to move it into the OP category.
Whether healing is better than THP is debatable, healing stacks and can be used on unconcious but THP prevent damage (avoiding or lowering DC of Con saves for concentration) and can be given before combat to boost effective total HP.
I think the closest thing to cmpare it with is inspiring leader:
Inspiring leader gives up to 6 creatures Twilight Santuary is unlimited, often this makes no difference but with a large parety or one with familiars, friendly NPCs and the likes the 6 limit could be significant.
Inpriing Leader gives level +cha mod HP so marginally worst than 1d6+cleric level for Pure cleric if the inspires has less than 18 Cha and slightly more if it is 18 or more. (Twilight sanctuary is less effective for a multi class than a pure cleric of the same character level but I am looking at pure clerics here). Whether twilight Sancuary can be used out of combat is up to the DM (there is no reason it can't I think RAW you could say is all characters within 30ft get the temp HP but it has ended before initiative is rolled but it would make most sense if combat is imminent would be to roll initiavive at the point it is declared even if the NPCs do not act aggressivly until attacked.
If you take damage within a minute you can get back with 30ft of the cleric for a top-up, you can also do this is you initially got a poor dice roll so see if you can get more temp HP with another attempt. Inspiring leader doesn't give this. While claiming every character can get the full effect up to 10 times is misleading I would say in practise you probably double the amount of Temp HP gained by this compared to the initial gain of each member of the party on average
Inspiring leader is once per short rest until level 5 this is the same as twilight sanctuary but from level 6-17 Twilight sanctuary is twice per short rest, if you get ot level 18 it is 3 times.
Twilight sanctuary has the option of reoving the frightends or charmed condition
Inspiring leader takes 10 minutes so must be done in advancetwilight sanctuary takes an action so you can use it immediately before or mid combat
In every way twilight sanctuary is at leas tthe equal and in nerly every aspect superior to a reasonably popular feat. The key areas being you can probably give out at least twice the number of temp HP per use (more for a large party) and once you hit level 6 you can do it twice as often. Those are enough to move it into the OP category.
THP doesn't lower the difficulty on con saves. it's still damage you take. it's just not damage to your life points.
Also Inspiring Leader isn't nearly strong enough to have something better automatically be OP. Inspiring leader is Decent. So something Good still beats it out quite easily without actually being OP.
Compared to other free action healing/effects it's overly powerful.
No. First of all. Stop calling it a healing ability.
He didn't yo.
He basically did. I bolded where so you can see it for yourself. you can play the technicality game to try and pretend it doesn't but it does. If he wasn't trying to call it a healing thing he wouldn't have needed the word healing in it. That changes the context of the entire sentence.
At higher levels spell damage is fairly inconsequential. The more dangerous thing is control effects which lock characters out of combat, or kill them outright. Fortunately Twilight Cleric does have Circle of Power to give advantage on saves against such things, and has had that since level 9.
Also gaining 20+D6 THP each turn that you "end your turn" in the twilight sphere means that that if a dragon is doing ~60 damage a round the dragon is doing only two thirds of that, taking four turns rather than three to inflict the same total damage. Sure, you can technically die with THP on, but it's going to take a lot longer to do so.
Let's say you have a level 20 Fighter with 16 Con, so hardly optimized, that's 184HP. The dragon does approximately 60 damage a turn that's three rounds to kill the Fighter.
With an addition 20 THP per round the Fighter has 200, the Dragon removes 60, dropping him to 140, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 160, the Dragon drops him to 100, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 120, the Dragon drops him to 60, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 80, the Dragon drops him to 20, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 40, the Dragon drops him to 0, taking him out. With just 180 HP the Fighter should have gotten taken out in three rounds. That additional two turns increases the damage the party can do to the Dragon by 67%, usually taking him out before he gets through the Fighter. That's without anyone actually healing the Fighter.
Continuously adding HP to a character, that provides a buffer against their actual HP total, makes characters much more durable.
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
Is there any any Chanel Divinity that has the effect of giving a character 67% greater durability against what appears to be a fairly decent hitter?
Imagine enemies that only do 20 or less damage. To the character under the effect of Twilight Sanctuary they might as well not exist.
Even at lower levels, say level 5, that's a minimum of 6 extra HP each turn, and it could be 11.
Basically Twilight Sanctuary has the effect of blunting enemy attacks against the characters under it, which will always be the Cleric himself, plus anyone within 30 feet of him. That means they will take longer, sometimes much longer (see a raging Barbarian for example) to die, requiring far less effort by the characters to heal or recover, allowing them to devote more turns to smacking the enemy. Small as the strategy in D&D might be, it reduces it even further to "stay within 30 feet of the Cleric, smack the other guys".
An Ancient Gold Dragon, for example, has 546 HP. With two extra turns of combat the aforementioned Fighter might almost kill it by himself.
I don't like hyperbolic statements like "breaks the game" because the DM can always create a greater challenge for a party with a Twilight Cleric, but the fact that he has to do so based purely on the existence of a Twilight Cleric in the party suggests that it has poor balance compared to the rest of the characters.
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
I think anyone saying it "breaks the game" is exaggerating a little bit, but they're also not entirely wrong either; while you can't really "break" a DM led game as they can always just bump up the difficulty of encounters to compensate, or have intelligent enemies specifically target the twilight cleric if absolutely necessary, you shouldn't need to. I know I used the word "broken" myself, on the first page, but I mean in terms of balance; it's still playable and manageable, but no (sub-)class should require the DM to do anything extra to make it work, especially not one published recently.
And the Twilight cleric domain is absolutely stronger than the others, and that devalues the other domains; while choosing one of the other domains shouldn't be the cause of someone not having fun (same is true of any class and sub-class, and even characters that are built to be sub-optimal, as the game can always be adapted to suit), it shows a lack of care and attention given to rules and makes it feel like WotC are more focused on pushing new stuff by making it stronger rather than balanced.
Twilight domain has more than enough that's cool about it without it needing to have such an absurdly strong channel divinity; as I've said before, you could remove that entirely and it'd still be one of the better domains. There's always going to be some imbalance in games like D&D when classes have such wildly different strengths and weaknesses (and casters can replicate various abilities from other classes if they want to) but that's all the more reason that it shouldn't be made worse by things being imbalanced when they don't need to be. I complained about the balance of the Twilight Domain when it was in UA, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in that (though WotC do not make it easy to know when you can give feedback, I've been unable to respond to so much of the UA they put out), yet when they published it all they'd really changed was the darkvision range from infinite to 300 feet (which in D&D is basically the same thing).
Consider the War Domain for example; I like it, and it's still fun to play, but it's widely regarded as being one of the weaker domains except for multiclassing. This was the case from the moment the Player's Handbook came out what… ten years ago now? However at the time the difference was marginal; it could do things that other domains couldn't, it's channel divinity was a little bit limited but still very useful and so-on. Then Forge Cleric came along, with a lot of similar, and even outright better, features, and suddenly it's easier to be a War Cleric by playing Forge Domain (though War Cleric is still good for certain multiclassing options). Now we've got Twilight Cleric, which has some of the same benefits (weapon and armour proficiencies), a good 1st level feature (bestowable super-darkvision), plus a channel divinity that puts most healer clerics to shame with the amount of "healing" (damage reduction) and condition removal it can do, while also being easily abusable to also let your party deal large amounts of extra damage on top of taking less in return.
So you've got a cleric domain that overlaps with both War/Forge Domain and maybe Life Domain, with a bunch of other unique benefits; it's basically a super cleric that renders most other domains redundant mechanically. I love it thematically, but I hate, hate, hate it mechanically, and hate that it was published in such an unbalanced state.
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Is there any any Chanel Divinity that has the effect of giving a character 67% greater durability against what appears to be a fairly decent hitter?
Imagine enemies that only do 20 or less damage. To the character under the effect of Twilight Sanctuary they might as well not exist.
Even at lower levels, say level 5, that's a minimum of 6 extra HP each turn, and it could be 11.
Basically Twilight Sanctuary has the effect of blunting enemy attacks against the characters under it, which will always be the Cleric himself, plus anyone within 30 feet of him. That means they will take longer, sometimes much longer (see a raging Barbarian for example) to die, requiring far less effort by the characters to heal or recover, allowing them to devote more turns to smacking the enemy. Small as the strategy in D&D might be, it reduces it even further to "stay within 30 feet of the Cleric, smack the other guys".
An Ancient Gold Dragon, for example, has 546 HP. With two extra turns of combat the aforementioned Fighter might almost kill it by himself.
I don't like hyperbolic statements like "breaks the game" because the DM can always create a greater challenge for a party with a Twilight Cleric, but the fact that he has to do so based purely on the existence of a Twilight Cleric in the party suggests that it has poor balance compared to the rest of the characters.
And that Fighter Died in those extra turns. But we can just gloss over that. I tried to kind of ignore the dragon as just a hyperbollic example.
But it's not a 67% increase. Your falsely equating 2 more turns to something that is just a rough example into something that it is not. It doesn't take anywhere near 67% durability increase to increase turns by 67%.
You really want to drag the Gold Dragon Into this. Let's drag the gold Dragon into this. Not only does the Gold dragon have a Breath Weapon that does 71 damage. But it's basic attacks at 3 a turn are 21+17+17= 55 average Damage with a better attack Modifier than characters can usually even get. The Legendary Actions that it's got going can end up being 3 Tail attacks. At 19 damage a piece. For another 57 average damage. So the Gold Dragon is fully capable of doing 112 Damage a Turn minimum on any turn it wants to. Considering that the level 20 Fighter even with a 20 Con only has about 225 HP. it's basically dead in 2 turns. Twilight Sanctuary is going to extend that to three but can't do any more than that. And that's only assuming that one of those two rounds wasn't a breath weapon attack. A DC 24 Dex Save that the Fighter is unlikely to be able to pass. Both from lack of Ability Modifier and lack of Proficiency in the save.
You can Get 4 turns if the Dragon Decides to spend a turn on doing it's Weakening Breath but the Fighter's Damage is going to drop quite a bit if the fighter fails the save since the fighters Damage is Most Commonly a strength based roll but that's not really it's best use of it's breath weapon or just plain it's time when it comes to killing the Fighter.
Oh and let's not forget the possibility of it stopping you from getting the THP for one of those turns because it DC 24 Wisdom Save for Frightful Presence.
Yeah. The Twilight Cleric is doing a whole lot to that. Even if it manages to take up 26 HP of Damage every single turn. The Damage is just so overwhelming that even if it saves you in the second turn. It cannot save you in the 3rd. Even if you got 3 full turns of Twilight Sanctuary for a total of 78 average damage blocked at best but it's more likely 52. Because 3 turns of damage from the dragon can be at least 336 damage. But is quite likely more due to the breath weapon. So your Talking about that single Fighter that can just about solo the Gold Dragon in 5 turns taking 258 damage in just 3 turns at the worst. Except when it does that much damage it's actually stacking failed death saves on the warrior. So it can more likely turn on a second party member for at least one of those tail attacks. A Party Member that's likely already a quarter to a 3rd damaged from the breath weapon.
So for round 4 on Average the Gold Dragon has it's breath weapon back. since it's basically a 1 in 3 chance to do so. which means it gets another shot at characters already 52 hp down past what the THP blocked. About to be hit for another 52 Damage beyond the THP yet again. This means there is a good chance that they are about half dead by the time the Dragon turns on them if all your relying on is twilight Sanctuary and expecting it to be 67% effective.
Oh and Let's not Forget. Every Other Round the Gold Dragon basically has Advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws due to Lair actions. And the turns in between it just chooses a character and banishes them for a round on a DC 15 Charisma Save. 6 of the Classes will have proficiency in the save so at least it will be at least a 50/50 for them (and for at least 3 of them having about a 75% chance of succeeding). The Cleric being one with proficiency. Along with the Bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock. But that still leaves 6 of the classes basically unprotected (7 if you count the blood hunter).
But yeah. Twilight Sanctuary is totally rocking that Damage mitigation against the Gold Dragon that decides to focus it's attacks at all. An Ancient Gold Dragon isn't anywhere near dumb enough not to realize quickly that it's not effective to spread it's damage around too much. It's an 18 Intelligence and 17 Wisdom. It's going to put all of it's Deadly Encounter level abilities to use. Your Gonna Need some other Tactics. Because the Gold Dragon is just another potential Max Level Adversary. It's not creating a greater challenge. But even the CR 20 Challenge Dragons are going to take a good chunk out of a party through Twilight Sanctuary.
Better get that Strategy, that you say that twilight sanctuary is simplifying, going before you take on that Gold Dragon. Or it's probably going to take down your group. Though if your lucky since it's good aligned it might be forgiving enough not to kill you and hope you learned your lesson for challenging it.
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
I think anyone saying it "breaks the game" is exaggerating a little bit, but they're also not entirely wrong either; while you can't really "break" a DM led game as they can always just bump up the difficulty of encounters to compensate, or have intelligent enemies specifically target the twilight cleric if absolutely necessary, you shouldn't need to. I know I used the word "broken" myself, on the first page, but I mean in terms of balance; it's still playable and manageable, but no (sub-)class should require the DM to do anything extra to make it work, especially not one published recently.
And the Twilight cleric domain is absolutely stronger than the others, and that devalues the other domains; while choosing one of the other domains shouldn't be the cause of someone not having fun (same is true of any class and sub-class, and even characters that are built to be sub-optimal, as the game can always be adapted to suit), it shows a lack of care and attention given to rules and makes it feel like WotC are more focused on pushing new stuff by making it stronger rather than balanced.
Twilight domain has more than enough that's cool about it without it needing to have such an absurdly strong channel divinity; as I've said before, you could remove that entirely and it'd still be one of the better domains. There's always going to be some imbalance in games like D&D when classes have such wildly different strengths and weaknesses (and casters can replicate various abilities from other classes if they want to) but that's all the more reason that it shouldn't be made worse by things being imbalanced when they don't need to be. I complained about the balance of the Twilight Domain when it was in UA, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in that (though WotC do not make it easy to know when you can give feedback, I've been unable to respond to so much of the UA they put out), yet when they published it all they'd really changed was the darkvision range from infinite to 300 feet (which in D&D is basically the same thing).
Consider the War Domain for example; I like it, and it's still fun to play, but it's widely regarded as being one of the weaker domains except for multiclassing. This was the case from the moment the Player's Handbook came out what… ten years ago now? However at the time the difference was marginal; it could do things that other domains couldn't, it's channel divinity was a little bit limited but still very useful and so-on. Then Forge Cleric came along, with a lot of similar, and even outright better, features, and suddenly it's easier to be a War Cleric by playing Forge Domain (though War Cleric is still good for certain multiclassing options). Now we've got Twilight Cleric, which has some of the same benefits (weapon and armour proficiencies), a good 1st level feature (bestowable super-darkvision), plus a channel divinity that puts most healer clerics to shame with the amount of "healing" (damage reduction) and condition removal it can do, while also being easily abusable to also let your party deal large amounts of extra damage on top of taking less in return.
So you've got a cleric domain that overlaps with both War/Forge Domain and maybe Life Domain, with a bunch of other unique benefits; it's basically a super cleric that renders most other domains redundant mechanically. I love it thematically, but I hate, hate, hate it mechanically, and hate that it was published in such an unbalanced state.
This is the best take... It's just that it does so much more with this one ability and on top of that it gets a lot of other amazing things as well.
The subclass is very much out of the "normal" power range for a class that is already very good.
This one ability just makes certain encounters that would otherwise be a challenge to a party pretty much inconsequential from a HP perspective.
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
I think anyone saying it "breaks the game" is exaggerating a little bit, but they're also not wrong; while you can't really "break" a DM led game as they can always just bump up the difficulty of encounters to compensate, or have intelligent enemies specifically target the twilight cleric if absolutely necessary, you shouldn't need to. I know I used the word "broken" myself, on the first page, but I mean in terms of balance; it's still playable and manageable, but no (sub-)class should require the DM to do anything extra to make it work, especially not one published recently.
And the Twilight cleric domain is absolutely stronger than the others, and that devalues the other domains; while choosing one of the other domains shouldn't be the cause of someone not having fun (same is true of any class and sub-class, and even characters that are built to be sub-optimal, as the game can always be adapted to suit), it shows a lack of care and attention given to rules and makes it feel like WotC are more focused on pushing new stuff by making it stronger rather than balanced.
Twilight domain has more than enough that's cool about it without it needing to have such an absurdly strong channel divinity; as I've said before, you could remove that entirely and it'd still be one of the better domains. There's always going to be some imbalance in games like D&D when classes have such wildly different strengths and weaknesses (and casters can replicate various abilities from other classes if they want to) but that's all the more reason that it shouldn't be made worse by things being imbalanced when they don't need to be. I complained about the balance of the Twilight Domain when it was in UA, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in that (though WotC do not make it easy to know when you can give feedback, I've been unable to respond to so much of the UA they put out), yet when they published it all they'd really changed was the darkvision range from infinite to 300 feet (which in D&D is basically the same thing).
Consider the War Domain for example; I like it, and it's still fun to play, but it's widely regarded as being one of the weaker domains except for multiclassing. This was the case from the moment the Player's Handbook came out what… ten years ago now? However at the time the difference was marginal; it could do things that other domains couldn't, it's channel divinity was a little bit limited but still very useful and so-on. Then Forge Cleric came along, with a lot of similar, and even outright better, features, and suddenly it's easier to be a War Cleric by playing Forge Domain (though War Cleric is still good for certain multiclassing options). Now we've got Twilight Cleric, which has some of the same benefits (weapon and armour proficiencies), a good 1st level feature (bestowable super-darkvision), plus a channel divinity that puts most healer clerics to shame with the amount of "healing" (damage reduction) and condition removal it can do, while also being easily abusable to also let your party deal large amounts of extra damage on top of taking less in return.
So you've got a cleric domain that overlaps with both War/Forge Domain and maybe Life Domain, with a bunch of other unique benefits; it's basically a super cleric that renders most other domains redundant mechanically. I love it thematically, but I hate, hate, hate it mechanically, and hate that it was published in such an unbalanced state.
let's look at other Domains if you want to look at Other Domains.
I'm going to point back to something about Arcana domain at high level. AT level 17 the Arcana Domain gets 4 extra Domain spells of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level off of the Wizard Spell list that become Cleric spells for the Cleric. So we're talking about Spells like Invulnerability and Meteor Storm. Invulnerability is powerful in the hands of a Cleric. The Ability to just say no to all damage for 10 minutes while maintaining your Party, and of course meteor Storm is going to rain down Massive Damage in a large area. Or Wish, or even Prismatic Wall. you could have any one of these just permanently known for you as an Arcana Wizard. Then on top of it you also get Incindiary cloud, Illusiory dragon, or clone. And yet still more on top of that. Sure These spells are nothing new and they do have some faults. But they are still strong spells that the Cleric just suddenly gets. And these are just examples of what you could take.
On a Class That is more Support and Utility, This one capstone ability opens up all new high level options, including new possbilities of offensive ability. It may only be 4 spells. But there is a lot of personal choice that can be powerful in those 4 spells. It's an ability that is quite potent. Despite being at a level that most people never apparantly see. Some of these spells can require their own extra work from the DM. Arguably more Extra work than the Twilight Cleric requires. All that Twilight Sanctuary requires of most DM's is to play their enemies slightly smarter. Which they should probably be doing anyway. Wish Alone can shift entire campaigns depending on what players do with it and how DM's interpret it.
And this is all on top of dispelling with healing spells at the range of the healing spells entirely for free... Extra Cantrips from what is arguably an improved Cantrip list. Extra Damage on Cantrips. It even has a pretty decent list of spells to always have on Hand despite most of them not being attack spells that many would subjectively lean towards first from the wizard, though it's far from perfect. But then that's basically true of all the Domain Spell Lists.
All of these abilities are at least decent. They may be kind of basic but they are still solid. Same goes with their Channel Divinity. It's a downside that it only affects one at a time. Yet at the same time it's got a large range of things that it can affect and potentially just remove from the fight. But it's still Solid, It's just kind of boring, not as Boring as the War Domain's channel Divinity but Still Boring. So people tend to think not as much of it. But this is objectively a really strong domain.
When you Take the Hype out of Twilight Domain and look at it for what it really is objectively, and take into account some of the weaknesses of things like Twilight Sanctuary. You find that while it's not a perfect match they are at least comparatively in the same ball park. Despite the fact that one is old hat from the PHB and the other is one of the New Shiny Domain's on the block from Tasha's.
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
I think anyone saying it "breaks the game" is exaggerating a little bit, but they're also not wrong; while you can't really "break" a DM led game as they can always just bump up the difficulty of encounters to compensate, or have intelligent enemies specifically target the twilight cleric if absolutely necessary, you shouldn't need to. I know I used the word "broken" myself, on the first page, but I mean in terms of balance; it's still playable and manageable, but no (sub-)class should require the DM to do anything extra to make it work, especially not one published recently.
And the Twilight cleric domain is absolutely stronger than the others, and that devalues the other domains; while choosing one of the other domains shouldn't be the cause of someone not having fun (same is true of any class and sub-class, and even characters that are built to be sub-optimal, as the game can always be adapted to suit), it shows a lack of care and attention given to rules and makes it feel like WotC are more focused on pushing new stuff by making it stronger rather than balanced.
Twilight domain has more than enough that's cool about it without it needing to have such an absurdly strong channel divinity; as I've said before, you could remove that entirely and it'd still be one of the better domains. There's always going to be some imbalance in games like D&D when classes have such wildly different strengths and weaknesses (and casters can replicate various abilities from other classes if they want to) but that's all the more reason that it shouldn't be made worse by things being imbalanced when they don't need to be. I complained about the balance of the Twilight Domain when it was in UA, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in that (though WotC do not make it easy to know when you can give feedback, I've been unable to respond to so much of the UA they put out), yet when they published it all they'd really changed was the darkvision range from infinite to 300 feet (which in D&D is basically the same thing).
Consider the War Domain for example; I like it, and it's still fun to play, but it's widely regarded as being one of the weaker domains except for multiclassing. This was the case from the moment the Player's Handbook came out what… ten years ago now? However at the time the difference was marginal; it could do things that other domains couldn't, it's channel divinity was a little bit limited but still very useful and so-on. Then Forge Cleric came along, with a lot of similar, and even outright better, features, and suddenly it's easier to be a War Cleric by playing Forge Domain (though War Cleric is still good for certain multiclassing options). Now we've got Twilight Cleric, which has some of the same benefits (weapon and armour proficiencies), a good 1st level feature (bestowable super-darkvision), plus a channel divinity that puts most healer clerics to shame with the amount of "healing" (damage reduction) and condition removal it can do, while also being easily abusable to also let your party deal large amounts of extra damage on top of taking less in return.
So you've got a cleric domain that overlaps with both War/Forge Domain and maybe Life Domain, with a bunch of other unique benefits; it's basically a super cleric that renders most other domains redundant mechanically. I love it thematically, but I hate, hate, hate it mechanically, and hate that it was published in such an unbalanced state.
let's look at other Domains if you want to look at Other Domains.
I'm going to point back to something about Arcana domain at high level. AT level 17 the Arcana Domain gets 4 extra Domain spells of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level off of the Wizard Spell list that become Cleric spells for the Cleric. So we're talking about Spells like Invulnerability and Meteor Storm. Invulnerability is powerful in the hands of a Cleric. The Ability to just say no to all damage for 10 minutes while maintaining your Party, and of course meteor Storm is going to rain down Massive Damage in a large area. Or Wish, or even Prismatic Wall. you could have any one of these just permanently known for you as an Arcana Wizard. Then on top of it you also get Incindiary cloud, Illusiory dragon, or clone. And yet still more on top of that. Sure These spells are nothing new and they do have some faults. But they are still strong spells that the Cleric just suddenly gets. And these are just examples of what you could take.
On a Class That is more Support and Utility, This one capstone ability opens up all new high level options, including new possbilities of offensive ability. It may only be 4 spells. But there is a lot of personal choice that can be powerful in those 4 spells. It's an ability that is quite potent. Despite being at a level that most people never apparantly see. Some of these spells can require their own extra work from the DM. Arguably more Extra work than the Twilight Cleric requires. All that Twilight Sanctuary requires of most DM's is to play their enemies slightly smarter. Which they should probably be doing anyway. Wish Alone can shift entire campaigns depending on what players do with it and how DM's interpret it.
And this is all on top of dispelling with healing spells at the range of the healing spells entirely for free... Extra Cantrips from what is arguably an improved Cantrip list. Extra Damage on Cantrips. It even has a pretty decent list of spells to always have on Hand despite most of them not being attack spells that many would subjectively lean towards first from the wizard, though it's far from perfect. But then that's basically true of all the Domain Spell Lists.
All of these abilities are at least decent. They may be kind of basic but they are still solid. Same goes with their Channel Divinity. It's a downside that it only affects one at a time. Yet at the same time it's got a large range of things that it can affect and potentially just remove from the fight. But it's still Solid, It's just kind of boring, not as Boring as the War Domain's channel Divinity but Still Boring. So people tend to think not as much of it. But this is objectively a really strong domain.
When you Take the Hype out of Twilight Domain and look at it for what it really is objectively, and take into account some of the weaknesses of things like Twilight Sanctuary. You find that while it's not a perfect match they are at least comparatively in the same ball park. Despite the fact that one is old hat from the PHB and the other is one of the New Shiny Domain's on the block from Tasha's.
That's the funny thing is Arcana is only comparable at high levels.... Where as this new domain is just straight up better from level 1 on..... Then the others might catch up if your lucky enough to get to high levels?
To me that's the issue. It's just straight up better for the meat of the game for 90% of campaigns
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
I think anyone saying it "breaks the game" is exaggerating a little bit, but they're also not wrong; while you can't really "break" a DM led game as they can always just bump up the difficulty of encounters to compensate, or have intelligent enemies specifically target the twilight cleric if absolutely necessary, you shouldn't need to. I know I used the word "broken" myself, on the first page, but I mean in terms of balance; it's still playable and manageable, but no (sub-)class should require the DM to do anything extra to make it work, especially not one published recently.
And the Twilight cleric domain is absolutely stronger than the others, and that devalues the other domains; while choosing one of the other domains shouldn't be the cause of someone not having fun (same is true of any class and sub-class, and even characters that are built to be sub-optimal, as the game can always be adapted to suit), it shows a lack of care and attention given to rules and makes it feel like WotC are more focused on pushing new stuff by making it stronger rather than balanced.
Twilight domain has more than enough that's cool about it without it needing to have such an absurdly strong channel divinity; as I've said before, you could remove that entirely and it'd still be one of the better domains. There's always going to be some imbalance in games like D&D when classes have such wildly different strengths and weaknesses (and casters can replicate various abilities from other classes if they want to) but that's all the more reason that it shouldn't be made worse by things being imbalanced when they don't need to be. I complained about the balance of the Twilight Domain when it was in UA, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in that (though WotC do not make it easy to know when you can give feedback, I've been unable to respond to so much of the UA they put out), yet when they published it all they'd really changed was the darkvision range from infinite to 300 feet (which in D&D is basically the same thing).
Consider the War Domain for example; I like it, and it's still fun to play, but it's widely regarded as being one of the weaker domains except for multiclassing. This was the case from the moment the Player's Handbook came out what… ten years ago now? However at the time the difference was marginal; it could do things that other domains couldn't, it's channel divinity was a little bit limited but still very useful and so-on. Then Forge Cleric came along, with a lot of similar, and even outright better, features, and suddenly it's easier to be a War Cleric by playing Forge Domain (though War Cleric is still good for certain multiclassing options). Now we've got Twilight Cleric, which has some of the same benefits (weapon and armour proficiencies), a good 1st level feature (bestowable super-darkvision), plus a channel divinity that puts most healer clerics to shame with the amount of "healing" (damage reduction) and condition removal it can do, while also being easily abusable to also let your party deal large amounts of extra damage on top of taking less in return.
So you've got a cleric domain that overlaps with both War/Forge Domain and maybe Life Domain, with a bunch of other unique benefits; it's basically a super cleric that renders most other domains redundant mechanically. I love it thematically, but I hate, hate, hate it mechanically, and hate that it was published in such an unbalanced state.
let's look at other Domains if you want to look at Other Domains.
I'm going to point back to something about Arcana domain at high level. AT level 17 the Arcana Domain gets 4 extra Domain spells of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level off of the Wizard Spell list that become Cleric spells for the Cleric. So we're talking about Spells like Invulnerability and Meteor Storm. Invulnerability is powerful in the hands of a Cleric. The Ability to just say no to all damage for 10 minutes while maintaining your Party, and of course meteor Storm is going to rain down Massive Damage in a large area. Or Wish, or even Prismatic Wall. you could have any one of these just permanently known for you as an Arcana Wizard. Then on top of it you also get Incindiary cloud, Illusiory dragon, or clone. And yet still more on top of that. Sure These spells are nothing new and they do have some faults. But they are still strong spells that the Cleric just suddenly gets. And these are just examples of what you could take.
On a Class That is more Support and Utility, This one capstone ability opens up all new high level options, including new possbilities of offensive ability. It may only be 4 spells. But there is a lot of personal choice that can be powerful in those 4 spells. It's an ability that is quite potent. Despite being at a level that most people never apparantly see. Some of these spells can require their own extra work from the DM. Arguably more Extra work than the Twilight Cleric requires. All that Twilight Sanctuary requires of most DM's is to play their enemies slightly smarter. Which they should probably be doing anyway. Wish Alone can shift entire campaigns depending on what players do with it and how DM's interpret it.
And this is all on top of dispelling with healing spells at the range of the healing spells entirely for free... Extra Cantrips from what is arguably an improved Cantrip list. Extra Damage on Cantrips. It even has a pretty decent list of spells to always have on Hand despite most of them not being attack spells that many would subjectively lean towards first from the wizard, though it's far from perfect. But then that's basically true of all the Domain Spell Lists.
All of these abilities are at least decent. They may be kind of basic but they are still solid. Same goes with their Channel Divinity. It's a downside that it only affects one at a time. Yet at the same time it's got a large range of things that it can affect and potentially just remove from the fight. But it's still Solid, It's just kind of boring, not as Boring as the War Domain's channel Divinity but Still Boring. So people tend to think not as much of it. But this is objectively a really strong domain.
When you Take the Hype out of Twilight Domain and look at it for what it really is objectively, and take into account some of the weaknesses of things like Twilight Sanctuary. You find that while it's not a perfect match they are at least comparatively in the same ball park. Despite the fact that one is old hat from the PHB and the other is one of the New Shiny Domain's on the block from Tasha's.
That's the funny thing is Arcana is only comparable at high levels.... Where as this new domain is just straight up better from level 1 on..... Then the others might catch up if your lucky enough to get to high levels?
To me that's the issue. It's just straight up better for the meat of the game for 90% of campaigns
Some very wise man, said something similar earlier in this thread. ;)
Arcana has the best level 17 cleric feature...but most of the game is played 1-16. And Arcana has undeniably one of the worst channel divinity features in the game.
Yep. If you are taking Arcana over Twilight as most powerful because of only the 17th level feature you are just doing theory crafting that rarely will ever be seen in a campaign. Twilight is stronger and gets nearly every broken handout you can give a subclass. Full martial/heavy armor prof Concentration less flight Absurd channel divinity that warps combat with temp HP and a charm breaker that has no drawback (no concentration, 10 turns, no action economy usage) I forgot and had to add via edit Advantage on initiative ( on yourself or others) Absurd Darkvision The ability to give the absurd darkvision to others
Just finished reading thru this topic and one common thread appears consistent in my opinion...most of the abilities that are being compared are for Damage output/reduction. Remembering that this is only one of the three pillars of the game totally rewrites the question. The most powerful cleric is the one that A) most closely fits to the style you want to play as a player. B) Is optimized for the type of campaign the group is running in. Twilight is a very powerful choice for some campaigns, but a low magic mystery campaign where CHA is key to the game? Maybe not quite as good as a Knowledge Domain Cleric. To me the most powerful cleric depends on the context you are looking for but generally whichever has the best synergy with your DM's play-style along with what you enjoy, with a little party composition thrown in, can make or break any class/subclass. The proverbial beserker in the potion shop, or the academic diviner wizard in a hack and slash adventure without a fighter.
Fateless, you were the one who brought dragons into this discussion. You were the one who attributed to them 60 damage a turn. I just went and looked for the biggest baddest dragon I could find, which is the Ancient Gold Dragon at CR24, and showed that even against a monster like that, one Twilight Cleric is providing a significant boost to durability for the party he's in. As for the Fighter dying, yes, that was the outcome my numbers showed, so then the Cleric revives him with Healing Word and the Dragon is left playing whack-a-mole.
And that's one character in a party. Just one.
Arcana Cleric is one of my favorite classes because of the way it mixes Wizard and Cleric (take Ritual Caster (Wizard) for some extra spells) but you can't compare a 17th level feature to a Channel Divinity that works from level 2. Most games will never see 17th level. Almost every game will see second level. (Also Arcana Cleric came from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide)
I honestly don't see why you seem so desperate to defend the Twilight Cleric against the charge that it's well above the baseline for power in Dungeons and Dragons. It's a class that changes what the DM has to do to set up a combat. It's like a Vengeance Paladin, except the Vengeance Paladin simply deletes single enemy targets so the DM can drown him in a horde of low CR monsters. With the Twilight Cleric, against a low CR horde the players can simply play "defend the Cleric" by surrounding him with their bodies and letting the constant boost of THP keep them standing, and even against a single big monster the Twilight Cleric will still provide a significant durability increase that justifies their presence in the party. However all its other features are good too, and it's a Cleric, which is one of the most well rounded and, I think it's fair to say, powerful classes in the game. A Twilight Cleric can set up its Twilight Sanctuary, then summon its Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians and bash away at the enemy just as well as any other Cleric can. It's a damage buffer system that requires minimal investment on the part of the Cleric.
The debate topic is that Twilight Cleric is too strong for most game. That's not defended against by saying "Well Ancient Gold Dragons have a breath attack, and legendary attacks, and so on and so forth." Sure, Ancient Gold Dragons are really powerful, but even against those the Twilight Cleric provides a notable durability increase. But also not everything is an Ancient Gold Dragon.
Any monster that cannot do more damage than the Twilight Sanctuary creates in temporary hit points becomes almost irrelevant. You don't have to heal damage you never take. Something like a raging Barbarian under the Sanctuary can tank twice whatever the Sanctuary puts out without injury. Imagine a level 10 game where the party Barbarians just ignore the first 22 damage they take each turn. That's what Twilight Sanctuary can do for them. That is why that particular feature of the class is game warping.
Nor is it a difficult situation to set up. It simply involves using a once/twice/thrice per short rest class feature, then having the party stay within 30 feet of the Cleric.
So no, the Twilight Sanctuary feature of the Twilight Domain Cleric is too strong for the game as it stands. Perhaps if it required concentration, thus requiring the Cleric to make an actual choice between setting up the Sanctuary or using one of the Cleric spells that require concentration, and giving a chance to drop it when taking damage, that would balance it somewhat.
It's not free but the action to proc it is..... Which is enough to scrutinize it heavily.
Compared to other free action healing/effects it's overly powerful.
Healing spirit is a 2nd level spell that gives 1d6 HP and requires no action to proc but it's a 5ft area and requires your BA to move and it's concentration.
Vs twilight cleric that's free action, 30ft, and requires no action to move as you are the center of it and produces much more THP and no concentration
Also your paladin aura.... That's only 10ft until level 18 then it's 30ft.
And none of them proceeds provide thp or healing effects.
Overall it's a broken ability that definitely needs an eratta
It does outweigh them. That's just objective fact. It is the single best THP ability in the game by a long shot. It outweighs every single one of them.
No one claims it does these things. What it does? Prevents actual HP damage. That's it.
No it is even better than a cure spell. Vastly better. A cure spell fixes 1d8+mod HP damage. Twilight sanctuary prevents up to (10d6+10*level)*#allies damage from even happening.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." ~ Benjamin Franklin
That's an actual saying for a reason.
Healing is notoriously inefficient in 5e. You're going to spend a a whole action to cure one guy for 1d8+mod HP? That really seems like a better use of your action than to erect a barrier that prevents 1d6+level damage per turn to all allies for a whole minute and whose remaining protection continues to last until used or a long rest?
The difference is staggering and entirely in favor of the twilight sanctuary.
Bonus? IF you really needed to heal someone because they're unconscious and dying you don't even have to give up saving them. Healing Word them as a Bonus Action on the same turn and now they're back up AND with a THP buffer to help keep them up.
An action for (10d6+10*level)*#allies temp HP. <--- This is an absurdly high number for a single action.
In any fight where damage is even remotely spread out to your party this ability trivializes that entire encounter. And because it uses a resource you regain on a short rest, and lasts a full minute, it is reliable enough you can expect to have it available every time that happens. By 6th level you can afford to just drop it into basically any combat at all.
You seem to be agreeing it is the most powerful channel divinity.
2 things. 1. This topic is about cleric subclasses so comparing a subclass to a paladin doesn't make much sense in this conversation. 2. The paladin spells you're referring to are making their way to is... the twilight cleric.
Twilight Cleric gets that 5th level otherwise Paladin only spell circle of power at *drum roll* ... 9th level. Yes, while anyone gets it at 17th level. Twilight cleric gets that doozy of a spell all the way at 9th level. People actually play characters at 9th level. You might not even be familiar with the spell since how often do you have a 17th level+ paladin in your party? Read circle of power again. It is nuts.
It really isn't. It is just hands down better than anything else available that provides THP. Even in worse case usage it is still useful and valuable. And in best case uses it entirely trivializes entire encounters.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
No. First of all. Stop calling it a healing ability. It's not a healing ability. It in no way heals. it doesn't do any of the little extra's that healing does.
This is what is making a lot of people call it OP. They keep talking about it like it's some kind of repeated cure wounds spell or something. it's not. you Can Technically die while having Temp HP on you because Temp HP cannot make you regain conciousness or even stabalize you to stop death saving throws.
And your Paladin Aura is only 10 ft argument is downplaying Paladin Aura's. most of them are powerful effects in their own right. That last longer and work better if in limited capacities than anything Twilight Sanctuary does. Twilight Sanctuary wishes it worked like a Paladin Aura. It's trying in some ways to be a Paladin Aura and missing the mark. All the Paladin aura cares about is positioning. Nothing else. Not timing in the turn. Not having to turn it on. Not uses of a Limited Use Ability to activate. nothing. It is always there. it may only be 10' in size until level 18. But Paladin Aura's are looking at Twilight Sanctuary and basically going. "Nice Try Pipsqueak."
They don't have to provide THP or healing effects when they can have other effects that are just as strong. Overall at level 20, Halving all spells is going to bock more Damage than the 21-26 THP of Twilight Cleric is going to, And yet it's still going to be ready to block the next one as well. And it's going to do that at 30'. At the same Level that people are pushing the numbers for Twilight Sanctuary being so strong. And on top of that. That Same Paladin is also going to provide as much as a +5 to all Saving Throws. Increasing the chance that instead of halving the Damage. That the damage is actually one quarter of it's value instead. And the Saving Throw is going to increase the likely-hood of damage that is from non-spell sources. When Spells can have average damages of 40-60 and max damages of 80-120 for a single spell. And things like Breath Weapons are regularly having average damage in the 50's as well. That is a lot of damage that one paladin is basically removing from the group. Way more than "24 per person" a turn. The only place that the THP of the Twilight Cleric in that scenario is doing better is in mostly physical attack roll based attacks.
When it comes to that Paladin or the Twilight Cleric as a choice for what is going to protect me overall at max level. My Answer is only going to be the Twilight Cleric if I'm going up against things largely physical based. Anything that is mixed or heavily magic Based. I'd rather have the Paladin. It's lifting more weight while doing absolutely nothing other than existing in a conscious state, not even Stunning them or paralyzing them stops it should you manage to do so. But Still people are saying It's the Twilight Cleric that is OP and Busted because of some points of protection that they mistake for healing ability that they first pick up at low level.
It's not broken. the OP nature of the ability is being heavily misrepresented.
He didn't yo.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Hey now let's not let a small thing like the truth get in the way of a good rant!
But joking aside it's not healing but it's actually better IMO as it can put you above your HP total.
At higher levels spell damage is fairly inconsequential. The more dangerous thing is control effects which lock characters out of combat, or kill them outright. Fortunately Twilight Cleric does have Circle of Power to give advantage on saves against such things, and has had that since level 9.
Also gaining 20+D6 THP each turn that you "end your turn" in the twilight sphere means that that if a dragon is doing ~60 damage a round the dragon is doing only two thirds of that, taking four turns rather than three to inflict the same total damage. Sure, you can technically die with THP on, but it's going to take a lot longer to do so.
Let's say you have a level 20 Fighter with 16 Con, so hardly optimized, that's 184HP. The dragon does approximately 60 damage a turn that's three rounds to kill the Fighter.
With an addition 20 THP per round the Fighter has 200, the Dragon removes 60, dropping him to 140, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 160, the Dragon drops him to 100, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 120, the Dragon drops him to 60, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 80, the Dragon drops him to 20, the Fighter gains 20, raising him to 40, the Dragon drops him to 0, taking him out. With just 180 HP the Fighter should have gotten taken out in three rounds. That additional two turns increases the damage the party can do to the Dragon by 67%, usually taking him out before he gets through the Fighter. That's without anyone actually healing the Fighter.
Continuously adding HP to a character, that provides a buffer against their actual HP total, makes characters much more durable.
Whether healing is better than THP is debatable, healing stacks and can be used on unconcious but THP prevent damage (avoiding or lowering DC of Con saves for concentration) and can be given before combat to boost effective total HP.
I think the closest thing to cmpare it with is inspiring leader:
In every way twilight sanctuary is at leas tthe equal and in nerly every aspect superior to a reasonably popular feat. The key areas being you can probably give out at least twice the number of temp HP per use (more for a large party) and once you hit level 6 you can do it twice as often. Those are enough to move it into the OP category.
THP doesn't lower the difficulty on con saves. it's still damage you take. it's just not damage to your life points.
Also Inspiring Leader isn't nearly strong enough to have something better automatically be OP. Inspiring leader is Decent. So something Good still beats it out quite easily without actually being OP.
He basically did. I bolded where so you can see it for yourself. you can play the technicality game to try and pretend it doesn't but it does. If he wasn't trying to call it a healing thing he wouldn't have needed the word healing in it. That changes the context of the entire sentence.
And i never Said that Twilight Sanctuary was doing nothing. It is doing something. But it is not breaking the game. Turning a 3 round combat into a 5 round combat is not game breaking even though it's not nothing.
Is there any any Chanel Divinity that has the effect of giving a character 67% greater durability against what appears to be a fairly decent hitter?
Imagine enemies that only do 20 or less damage. To the character under the effect of Twilight Sanctuary they might as well not exist.
Even at lower levels, say level 5, that's a minimum of 6 extra HP each turn, and it could be 11.
Basically Twilight Sanctuary has the effect of blunting enemy attacks against the characters under it, which will always be the Cleric himself, plus anyone within 30 feet of him. That means they will take longer, sometimes much longer (see a raging Barbarian for example) to die, requiring far less effort by the characters to heal or recover, allowing them to devote more turns to smacking the enemy. Small as the strategy in D&D might be, it reduces it even further to "stay within 30 feet of the Cleric, smack the other guys".
An Ancient Gold Dragon, for example, has 546 HP. With two extra turns of combat the aforementioned Fighter might almost kill it by himself.
I don't like hyperbolic statements like "breaks the game" because the DM can always create a greater challenge for a party with a Twilight Cleric, but the fact that he has to do so based purely on the existence of a Twilight Cleric in the party suggests that it has poor balance compared to the rest of the characters.
I think anyone saying it "breaks the game" is exaggerating a little bit, but they're also not entirely wrong either; while you can't really "break" a DM led game as they can always just bump up the difficulty of encounters to compensate, or have intelligent enemies specifically target the twilight cleric if absolutely necessary, you shouldn't need to. I know I used the word "broken" myself, on the first page, but I mean in terms of balance; it's still playable and manageable, but no (sub-)class should require the DM to do anything extra to make it work, especially not one published recently.
And the Twilight cleric domain is absolutely stronger than the others, and that devalues the other domains; while choosing one of the other domains shouldn't be the cause of someone not having fun (same is true of any class and sub-class, and even characters that are built to be sub-optimal, as the game can always be adapted to suit), it shows a lack of care and attention given to rules and makes it feel like WotC are more focused on pushing new stuff by making it stronger rather than balanced.
Twilight domain has more than enough that's cool about it without it needing to have such an absurdly strong channel divinity; as I've said before, you could remove that entirely and it'd still be one of the better domains. There's always going to be some imbalance in games like D&D when classes have such wildly different strengths and weaknesses (and casters can replicate various abilities from other classes if they want to) but that's all the more reason that it shouldn't be made worse by things being imbalanced when they don't need to be. I complained about the balance of the Twilight Domain when it was in UA, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in that (though WotC do not make it easy to know when you can give feedback, I've been unable to respond to so much of the UA they put out), yet when they published it all they'd really changed was the darkvision range from infinite to 300 feet (which in D&D is basically the same thing).
Consider the War Domain for example; I like it, and it's still fun to play, but it's widely regarded as being one of the weaker domains except for multiclassing. This was the case from the moment the Player's Handbook came out what… ten years ago now? However at the time the difference was marginal; it could do things that other domains couldn't, it's channel divinity was a little bit limited but still very useful and so-on. Then Forge Cleric came along, with a lot of similar, and even outright better, features, and suddenly it's easier to be a War Cleric by playing Forge Domain (though War Cleric is still good for certain multiclassing options). Now we've got Twilight Cleric, which has some of the same benefits (weapon and armour proficiencies), a good 1st level feature (bestowable super-darkvision), plus a channel divinity that puts most healer clerics to shame with the amount of "healing" (damage reduction) and condition removal it can do, while also being easily abusable to also let your party deal large amounts of extra damage on top of taking less in return.
So you've got a cleric domain that overlaps with both War/Forge Domain and maybe Life Domain, with a bunch of other unique benefits; it's basically a super cleric that renders most other domains redundant mechanically. I love it thematically, but I hate, hate, hate it mechanically, and hate that it was published in such an unbalanced state.
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And that Fighter Died in those extra turns. But we can just gloss over that. I tried to kind of ignore the dragon as just a hyperbollic example.
But it's not a 67% increase. Your falsely equating 2 more turns to something that is just a rough example into something that it is not. It doesn't take anywhere near 67% durability increase to increase turns by 67%.
You really want to drag the Gold Dragon Into this. Let's drag the gold Dragon into this. Not only does the Gold dragon have a Breath Weapon that does 71 damage. But it's basic attacks at 3 a turn are 21+17+17= 55 average Damage with a better attack Modifier than characters can usually even get. The Legendary Actions that it's got going can end up being 3 Tail attacks. At 19 damage a piece. For another 57 average damage. So the Gold Dragon is fully capable of doing 112 Damage a Turn minimum on any turn it wants to. Considering that the level 20 Fighter even with a 20 Con only has about 225 HP. it's basically dead in 2 turns. Twilight Sanctuary is going to extend that to three but can't do any more than that. And that's only assuming that one of those two rounds wasn't a breath weapon attack. A DC 24 Dex Save that the Fighter is unlikely to be able to pass. Both from lack of Ability Modifier and lack of Proficiency in the save.
You can Get 4 turns if the Dragon Decides to spend a turn on doing it's Weakening Breath but the Fighter's Damage is going to drop quite a bit if the fighter fails the save since the fighters Damage is Most Commonly a strength based roll but that's not really it's best use of it's breath weapon or just plain it's time when it comes to killing the Fighter.
Oh and let's not forget the possibility of it stopping you from getting the THP for one of those turns because it DC 24 Wisdom Save for Frightful Presence.
Yeah. The Twilight Cleric is doing a whole lot to that. Even if it manages to take up 26 HP of Damage every single turn. The Damage is just so overwhelming that even if it saves you in the second turn. It cannot save you in the 3rd. Even if you got 3 full turns of Twilight Sanctuary for a total of 78 average damage blocked at best but it's more likely 52. Because 3 turns of damage from the dragon can be at least 336 damage. But is quite likely more due to the breath weapon. So your Talking about that single Fighter that can just about solo the Gold Dragon in 5 turns taking 258 damage in just 3 turns at the worst. Except when it does that much damage it's actually stacking failed death saves on the warrior. So it can more likely turn on a second party member for at least one of those tail attacks. A Party Member that's likely already a quarter to a 3rd damaged from the breath weapon.
So for round 4 on Average the Gold Dragon has it's breath weapon back. since it's basically a 1 in 3 chance to do so. which means it gets another shot at characters already 52 hp down past what the THP blocked. About to be hit for another 52 Damage beyond the THP yet again. This means there is a good chance that they are about half dead by the time the Dragon turns on them if all your relying on is twilight Sanctuary and expecting it to be 67% effective.
Oh and Let's not Forget. Every Other Round the Gold Dragon basically has Advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws due to Lair actions. And the turns in between it just chooses a character and banishes them for a round on a DC 15 Charisma Save. 6 of the Classes will have proficiency in the save so at least it will be at least a 50/50 for them (and for at least 3 of them having about a 75% chance of succeeding). The Cleric being one with proficiency. Along with the Bard, monk, paladin, sorcerer, and warlock. But that still leaves 6 of the classes basically unprotected (7 if you count the blood hunter).
But yeah. Twilight Sanctuary is totally rocking that Damage mitigation against the Gold Dragon that decides to focus it's attacks at all. An Ancient Gold Dragon isn't anywhere near dumb enough not to realize quickly that it's not effective to spread it's damage around too much. It's an 18 Intelligence and 17 Wisdom. It's going to put all of it's Deadly Encounter level abilities to use. Your Gonna Need some other Tactics. Because the Gold Dragon is just another potential Max Level Adversary. It's not creating a greater challenge. But even the CR 20 Challenge Dragons are going to take a good chunk out of a party through Twilight Sanctuary.
Better get that Strategy, that you say that twilight sanctuary is simplifying, going before you take on that Gold Dragon. Or it's probably going to take down your group. Though if your lucky since it's good aligned it might be forgiving enough not to kill you and hope you learned your lesson for challenging it.
This is the best take... It's just that it does so much more with this one ability and on top of that it gets a lot of other amazing things as well.
The subclass is very much out of the "normal" power range for a class that is already very good.
This one ability just makes certain encounters that would otherwise be a challenge to a party pretty much inconsequential from a HP perspective.
let's look at other Domains if you want to look at Other Domains.
I'm going to point back to something about Arcana domain at high level. AT level 17 the Arcana Domain gets 4 extra Domain spells of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level off of the Wizard Spell list that become Cleric spells for the Cleric. So we're talking about Spells like Invulnerability and Meteor Storm. Invulnerability is powerful in the hands of a Cleric. The Ability to just say no to all damage for 10 minutes while maintaining your Party, and of course meteor Storm is going to rain down Massive Damage in a large area. Or Wish, or even Prismatic Wall. you could have any one of these just permanently known for you as an Arcana Wizard. Then on top of it you also get Incindiary cloud, Illusiory dragon, or clone. And yet still more on top of that. Sure These spells are nothing new and they do have some faults. But they are still strong spells that the Cleric just suddenly gets. And these are just examples of what you could take.
On a Class That is more Support and Utility, This one capstone ability opens up all new high level options, including new possbilities of offensive ability. It may only be 4 spells. But there is a lot of personal choice that can be powerful in those 4 spells. It's an ability that is quite potent. Despite being at a level that most people never apparantly see. Some of these spells can require their own extra work from the DM. Arguably more Extra work than the Twilight Cleric requires. All that Twilight Sanctuary requires of most DM's is to play their enemies slightly smarter. Which they should probably be doing anyway. Wish Alone can shift entire campaigns depending on what players do with it and how DM's interpret it.
And this is all on top of dispelling with healing spells at the range of the healing spells entirely for free... Extra Cantrips from what is arguably an improved Cantrip list. Extra Damage on Cantrips. It even has a pretty decent list of spells to always have on Hand despite most of them not being attack spells that many would subjectively lean towards first from the wizard, though it's far from perfect. But then that's basically true of all the Domain Spell Lists.
All of these abilities are at least decent. They may be kind of basic but they are still solid. Same goes with their Channel Divinity. It's a downside that it only affects one at a time. Yet at the same time it's got a large range of things that it can affect and potentially just remove from the fight. But it's still Solid, It's just kind of boring, not as Boring as the War Domain's channel Divinity but Still Boring. So people tend to think not as much of it. But this is objectively a really strong domain.
When you Take the Hype out of Twilight Domain and look at it for what it really is objectively, and take into account some of the weaknesses of things like Twilight Sanctuary. You find that while it's not a perfect match they are at least comparatively in the same ball park. Despite the fact that one is old hat from the PHB and the other is one of the New Shiny Domain's on the block from Tasha's.
That's the funny thing is Arcana is only comparable at high levels.... Where as this new domain is just straight up better from level 1 on..... Then the others might catch up if your lucky enough to get to high levels?
To me that's the issue. It's just straight up better for the meat of the game for 90% of campaigns
Some very wise man, said something similar earlier in this thread. ;)
Arcana has the best level 17 cleric feature...but most of the game is played 1-16. And Arcana has undeniably one of the worst channel divinity features in the game.
Yep. If you are taking Arcana over Twilight as most powerful because of only the 17th level feature you are just doing theory crafting that rarely will ever be seen in a campaign. Twilight is stronger and gets nearly every broken handout you can give a subclass.
Full martial/heavy armor prof
Concentration less flight
Absurd channel divinity that warps combat with temp HP and a charm breaker that has no drawback (no concentration, 10 turns, no action economy usage)
I forgot and had to add via edit
Advantage on initiative ( on yourself or others)
Absurd Darkvision
The ability to give the absurd darkvision to others
Just finished reading thru this topic and one common thread appears consistent in my opinion...most of the abilities that are being compared are for Damage output/reduction. Remembering that this is only one of the three pillars of the game totally rewrites the question. The most powerful cleric is the one that A) most closely fits to the style you want to play as a player. B) Is optimized for the type of campaign the group is running in. Twilight is a very powerful choice for some campaigns, but a low magic mystery campaign where CHA is key to the game? Maybe not quite as good as a Knowledge Domain Cleric. To me the most powerful cleric depends on the context you are looking for but generally whichever has the best synergy with your DM's play-style along with what you enjoy, with a little party composition thrown in, can make or break any class/subclass. The proverbial beserker in the potion shop, or the academic diviner wizard in a hack and slash adventure without a fighter.
Fateless, you were the one who brought dragons into this discussion. You were the one who attributed to them 60 damage a turn. I just went and looked for the biggest baddest dragon I could find, which is the Ancient Gold Dragon at CR24, and showed that even against a monster like that, one Twilight Cleric is providing a significant boost to durability for the party he's in. As for the Fighter dying, yes, that was the outcome my numbers showed, so then the Cleric revives him with Healing Word and the Dragon is left playing whack-a-mole.
And that's one character in a party. Just one.
Arcana Cleric is one of my favorite classes because of the way it mixes Wizard and Cleric (take Ritual Caster (Wizard) for some extra spells) but you can't compare a 17th level feature to a Channel Divinity that works from level 2. Most games will never see 17th level. Almost every game will see second level. (Also Arcana Cleric came from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide)
I honestly don't see why you seem so desperate to defend the Twilight Cleric against the charge that it's well above the baseline for power in Dungeons and Dragons. It's a class that changes what the DM has to do to set up a combat. It's like a Vengeance Paladin, except the Vengeance Paladin simply deletes single enemy targets so the DM can drown him in a horde of low CR monsters. With the Twilight Cleric, against a low CR horde the players can simply play "defend the Cleric" by surrounding him with their bodies and letting the constant boost of THP keep them standing, and even against a single big monster the Twilight Cleric will still provide a significant durability increase that justifies their presence in the party. However all its other features are good too, and it's a Cleric, which is one of the most well rounded and, I think it's fair to say, powerful classes in the game. A Twilight Cleric can set up its Twilight Sanctuary, then summon its Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians and bash away at the enemy just as well as any other Cleric can. It's a damage buffer system that requires minimal investment on the part of the Cleric.
The debate topic is that Twilight Cleric is too strong for most game. That's not defended against by saying "Well Ancient Gold Dragons have a breath attack, and legendary attacks, and so on and so forth." Sure, Ancient Gold Dragons are really powerful, but even against those the Twilight Cleric provides a notable durability increase. But also not everything is an Ancient Gold Dragon.
Any monster that cannot do more damage than the Twilight Sanctuary creates in temporary hit points becomes almost irrelevant. You don't have to heal damage you never take. Something like a raging Barbarian under the Sanctuary can tank twice whatever the Sanctuary puts out without injury. Imagine a level 10 game where the party Barbarians just ignore the first 22 damage they take each turn. That's what Twilight Sanctuary can do for them. That is why that particular feature of the class is game warping.
Nor is it a difficult situation to set up. It simply involves using a once/twice/thrice per short rest class feature, then having the party stay within 30 feet of the Cleric.
So no, the Twilight Sanctuary feature of the Twilight Domain Cleric is too strong for the game as it stands. Perhaps if it required concentration, thus requiring the Cleric to make an actual choice between setting up the Sanctuary or using one of the Cleric spells that require concentration, and giving a chance to drop it when taking damage, that would balance it somewhat.