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.
I think this really sums it up....
Damage is usually the main weapon for creatures and if you take that away then you really reduce the threat they pose.
As others have said it's definitely not insurmountable but it for sure impacts the game on a level no other Cleric feature does.
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
It Doesn't just catch up at high levels. It shines as high levels. But some of it's abilities are actually quite low level. 6 and 8 for example. Well within normal play range. The Level 6 Ability basically adds in a free third level spell every time you heal and you scale it based upon the level you cast the healing spell at. That's nothing to sneeze at. Even if it does use spell slots.
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)
No. What I brought up is CR 20 creatures and brought up dragons as an Example. And I specifically mention it's only their very basic damage. When you then misrepresented to make things seem better than they are. Which is a very big difference. I just as easily could have brought up something like the Pit Lord and other Devil's that are that high level that function under similar ways just for their Basic attacks.
And thta's something you ignored. Basic attacks. meaning Not even it's full arsenal. Just the most basic thing it can do to you.
And so you decided to bring out what you felt was a big bad dragon to prove your point. So I obliged you and showed how that big bad dragon destroys your point because Twilight Sanctuary isn't protecting a damned thing.
Whack a mole. Is a pretty dumb tactic. No Dragon of 18 intelligence is going to play whackamole. Your going to bring that Character up 1 time with your healing word shenanigans and it's going to hit that character 3 times and make sure they are Dead unless the DM is determined to play soft on the party. And the worst thing about a dragon. It can hit them three times before it's turn ever comes up depending on the Initiative order thanks to Legendary Actions. So that character could be brought back up and Dead by the time the Dragon does it's thing. Congratulations. You slowed down some of it's damage for half a turn. Excellent for you. Real win there for Twilight Sanctuary.
I'm not Defending the Twilight Cleric. You are the ones Defending the Twilight Cleric and holding it up as untouchable. I'm opposing the reasoning of that. The Ancient Gold Dragon, One of the Biggest and Baddest things in the game was used as proof of how excellent the Twilight Cleric is and How OP it is and how it's going to minimize even the most challenging Encounters.
But let me illustrate some further Flaws in your example of that Dragon. With that Basic Damage the Fighter will Die in 5 turns, we're both in agreement here. But it's not only the Fighter that will die in 5 turns if the Dragon decides not to just focus blitz the fighter with attacks but instead focus on two members of the party instead. Whatever gets hit by the legendary tail attacks from the Dragon that is likely going to be squishier than the Fighter. this second target is also going to be dead in 5 turns.
But let's do more than just make claims. Let's look at some numbers to support them. That particular dragon has 546 HP. To beat it in 5 turns you need to do basically 110 damage a turn (using easy rounding). At a 22AC Your looking at the Typical 65% chance of hitting at +14. So what ever damage you do basically in basic math, Cut that down to 65% of that number. that's what your actually gonna do in average numbers closer to real play.
So that Fighter. Let's give it a d12 weapon that is magical at +3, and GWM and of course it's strength is going to be maxed. So your looking at 24 Damage a hit. Attacking 4 times a turn this means 96 damage average. Let's not Forget a subclass and ay it's gone Battle Master. So we should add an average of 6 damage to a total of 6 hits to represent the 6 d12 superiority dice it would have. So for your first turn let's 24 damage giving us 120. The turn after that it's going to be 108 for the last 2 dice added in. Then it's going to be 96 For the Last 3 turns. Except these numbers need changed to reflect only hitting 65% of the Time. the Fighter is actually only averaging 78 Damage that first turn, 70.2 on that second turn, and 62.4 on the 3 turns following that.
Except that there is an issue and I need to make a correction to myself here. Thanks to GWM your actually still -2 on your to hit for a total of +12. So it's actually at 55% So let me correct the math. The Fighter is actually going to be doing 66 average damage on the first turn, 59.4 average damage on the second turn, and 52.8 average damage on the 3 after that. We haven't used either Action Surge Yet. Let's also use those on the first two turns to maximize their value. So that would be 132 average damage on the first turn, and 118.8 average damage on the second turn, With the next 3 still being 52.8 average damage. So in total for the 5 turns. The Fighter managed 409.2 average damage on the dragon. Not nearly so solo'd as it appeared in the end.
But wait. It's worse than that. The Fighter is still not getting one of those THP's thanks to Frightful Presence on the Fighter. And likely at least one other party member. If the Dragon chooses these two to beat on. They are downed in 4 rounds. Not 5. Because they go down faster in that particular turn. Likely the first or second turn of the fight. This means that if the Twilight Cleric is going to just mass healing word the both of them to their feet again. the 5th round is going to put so many failed death saves on both of them to put them back in the ground to make sure that they are dead unless the Dragon is deliberately made not to do the smart thing by the DM. But it also means that the Damage done by the fighter is about 53 damage less for a total of roughly 356 from the Fighter. This leaves the Fightrs Efforts about 190 damage short on it's attacks, though the Dragon is at least looking pretty rough.
But there is still an issue that if it plays out like this in a real game for some reason, not just one character dead but two characters completely dead, and the dragon didn't take as much damage with a single character but at the same time Few things can Burst like a Max Level Fighter with it's sheer number of attacks in a short period. you Still need something, or a combination of somethings that can output the necessary average damage to do at basically 50 damage a turn to finish it off. Against an Enemy that Whack a Mole shouldn't work to make up the difference unless the DM is letting the party win... And they probably shouldn't be doing that if your game has really gone to this tier of play. And this is Just from brute force Physical attacks from this Powerful Dragon.
This doesn't make a very good defense about how OP Twilight Sanctuary is.
And that's the reality of it. Unless the DM is playing all your enemies in the dumbest ways possible and spreading out the damage absolutely as far as they can. Twilight Domain and Twilight Sanctuary does not give what is advertised by the claims of OP and that's entirely my problem with this fad of adamantly calling it such. Further, In Groups that are over powered for the power curve at low level then It's not Twilight Sanctuary that is making Twilight Sanctuary seem so strong. It's the over powered Characters that people are min-maxing and using that are making Twilight Sanctuary appear to be so strong. But these characters often aren't going to be significantly threatened even without it.
The White Room Math that everybody uses to Justify Twilight Sanctuary show's the cracks at most levels with even the tiniest change of tactics by the DM. Not Extra Work. Not Stronger Enemies. Not Adjustments to power levels just because of Twilight Sanctuary. Just simply giving the enemies some reasonable level of intelligence. Too many DM's have been playing monsters way too dumb for a variety of innocent and not so innocent reasons for far too long, That it has caused people to think it's the norm and base entire Theories about characters around it.
And when we get into low CR hordes... Unless they are so far below your level that they are more of a nuisance than a resource drain or any kind of actual threat. They have action economy. Even if they only hit half the time there is usually enough of them that they are still going to overwhelm the amount of protection Twilight Sanctuary is giving. Hordes are an easy way to break it and still threaten lots of party members. Focus fire let's you break it and only threaten a couple.
STanding in the center and body blocking the cleric doesn't work. You'd need 8 people to do that. Since most parties are 3/4 that at the outside maximum and are recommended to be half that. it's not a practical tactic. Even if you slow the horde down. Spiritual Guardians is a tactic any Cleric can use. And the Twilight Cleric doesn't do anything to make it more effective. it always has some use against weaker horde's. specially at lower level. But the threat of the horde has never been in them being hardy, or even having the best chance of hitting you. It's always been the overwhelming action economy. Twilight Sanctuary doesn't fix the overwhelming action economy. That horde is always goign to hit often enough for just enough damage to be a threat despite twilight sanctuary (because any one single hit is never the point to begin with and Twilight sanctuary is often a single hit) Or they are so weak that they were never a real threat no matter how many times they swing at you because they will rarely actually hit you. and that doesn't change with Twilight Sanctuary either. Because again. any one hit from a horde doesn't really matter and all they were ever doing when that weak is effectively any one hit.
Many DM's are afraid of hordes because they are always either one or the other. And because they don't use them often Most DM's worry that they've gone to far with their horde when it's meant to be a threat because a bunch of attacks will get through. Twilight Sanctuary actually makes hordes less stressful and easier to use for most DM's. Even while it doesn't change which way the horde is going to be much because it makes the difference between beating the party nearly to death with a horde and all the way to death with a horde just a little bit bigger. This can make it easier to Handle for DM's that haven't mastered that craft yet (usually by accidentally nearly or actually TPK'ing a few parties in trial and error).
And that really leads me to a point that I've been making repeatedly against claims about twilight Sanctuary at all levels. The Average Damage is not below that which Twilight Sanctuary Creates. There are individual creatures that might have trouble making it. But for the most part the damage that the monsters do at any given CR is a bit higher than what Twilight Sanctuary is going to give. Even at CR 2. One of the Best gains from Twilight Sanctuary your going to get thanks to the variable dice roll. Your still going to average 3 on the dice. Add to to that your 2nd level and you get 5 total THP. With a lot of the CR 2 monsters sporting a +5 to hit against the 15 to 16 AC being standard on several classes. But a lot of their damage averages close to about 10 damage each time they actually do hit you if I'm remembering the numbers correctly right now, it's been a while. Their average damage overall is lower because they are looking at about a 50% hit rate. But multi-attack creatures are increasingly showing up at level 2. Luckily most of them are still doing lesser damage per hit and aren't sporting the greatest attack bonuses yet. it makes them a little less dangerous on the armored party members and tanks. Taking 5 damage instead of 10 damage on a single hit is not bad. But at the same time. Let's look at the health of characters. Several classes are d8 hit die so we're talking 13hp before con bonuses. While Taking 3 hits instead of 2 before you drop dead is no small feat. There are a bunch of ways to achieve a similar result because of the average damage you take. For those classes that can wear a shield that can do it. For those that can somehow inflict disadvantage that will do it as well. Healing will also obviously do it and even basic healing spells are massively effective at these kinds of starting levels. Some of these kinds of things cost resources. Some of them don't. So it's going to depend on each characters situation as to the cost benefit. Even for the cleric themselves. But as you go up in CR. Twilight Sanctuary starts slowly losing ground on how much it's protecting. The Higher characters get, the less Twilight Sanctuary protects despite it's level scaling.
yes. Twilight Sanctuary is doing something. But it is not doing everything. It's not even doing close to everything.
Even with the Barbarian it's not everything. The Barbarian's abilities are actually doing the heavy lifting. 11 THP turning into 22 for the Barbarian sounds nice. But the Barbarian is looking at a Max non-raging HP Somewhere in the range of 120HP at level 10 if that's the example we want to go with, but for any damage they can soak up with resistances by raging they are Rocking what is effectively 240HP in simple parlance, though it's technically wrong mechanically. They are Beefy monsters regardless. It's a large part of what they do. Multi attack is everywhere. usually in an average total damage range of 30 damage or so and attack modifiers of +9. But even more than that. It's still the Barbarian making most of the damage ineffective. It's nice to say it's effectively 22 damage blocked for the barbarian because of the way they talk about them. It's an easy way to picture things. But the truth is. It's not 22 damage blocked for the Barbarian. The Barbarian is going to block the bulk of the damage. And then the THP is going to take from what is left. The Barbarian is what is blocking the Majority of the Damage and making Twlight Sanctuary look like it's blocking more. But it's still just 11 damage ultimately. The other 15 that the Barbarian doesn't take when Raging is because of their own abilities. As the Damage increases. The damage that isn't taken by the Barbarian increases. But the 11 is always just 11. Even when the Barbarian is not raging it's also just 11.
Twilight Sanctuary on the Barbarian really kind of highlights something about THP now that I'm focused on it. And that's the core of what it does. Preventing damage. THP is extremely set. It's single use universal protection however. Being Set and being one time use are it's trade off for working on any kind of damage in a universal fashion. Resistance is more limited in the type of damage that it can affect. But it's highly dynamic. The Barbarian taking 10 Bludgeoning damage while Raging may only lose 5 health. But on the Very Next Attack it could just as easily block 100. Or it could block multiple attacks in a row. Whether it's 20 damage from a single attack or it's that 110 that the Ancient Gold Dragon can do in focused physical attacks. It still works. It's always going to cut it in half as long as it applies.
Let me Demonstrate what I mean. Let's take that same Adult Gold Dragon going all out with PHysical attacks. It could kill that fighter in 2 turns without protections. Without raging it would take not quite 3 rounds to down the Barbarian without rage because it would have about 280 health. Then just by Raging the Barbarian suddenly halves all that physical damage. All of a sudden. Those 3 rounds to kill the Barbarian are now a full 5 rounds to just barely do enough damage. That's if it's going all out on physical damage. If we ignore it's legendary action damage and such by assuming they target a second party member. Since it's damage is now about 60 a turn. It's going to take the Dragon 5 turns to down the barbarian without it's rage. However, It's going to take it 10 rounds to down the barbarian once it is raging and it's resistances apply.
Resistance is a self adjusting potential monster of an ability. And it makes any other kind of damage mitigation look a whole lot better when paired with it. In the Example of the Barbarian taking 30 damage at level 10 with 11THP. that 11 THP looks huge when you only look at the damage that the Resistance didn't block, but it's still only protecting against about 35% of the damage. The other 50% of the 85% total blocked by that Barbarian that has both is because of it's Resistance. if something did mass Resistances That is what would be OP. That would be worthy of all the Hype that Twilight Domain and Twilight Sanctuary gets now.
First of all, Twilight Sanctuary scales absurdly well, as not only is the temporary HP based on your full class level, it also has a wide area and more uses at higher level. It's equivalent to multiple free castings of bestowable ranged False Life upon every party member every single turn of a big fight, or multiple fights over an adventuring day. It can add up to a massive amount of damage reduction, meaning less healing required by the party and very likely more rounds out of party members that might otherwise go down (so resources saved and/or more damage dealt). It works against every damage type regardless of being an attack roll or a save.
Even when you're talking 60-70 damage dragon attacks it's a potentially 10-25% damage reduction regardless of attack and damage type and for the entire party; Barbarian Rage might be "better", but it only applies to certain damage types, for a single character and also stacks with Twilight Sanctuary (effectively doubling the amount of damage ignored each turn due to the sanctuary). At 10th level against dragon's breath covering the whole party you could be talking 70-ish damage ignored, or 700 over a full ten rounds; while unlikely, that'd be equivalent to a free 9th level Mass Heal!
Compare it to just about any other temporary HP effect and it's enormously OP; most temporary HP abilities add only a handful of points (Heroism adds only 2-5 and takes a 5th level slot to affect five creatures, Twilight Sanctuary will outperform that from 2nd level (5.5 temp. HP average) at a fraction of the cost, and can also end charmed or frightened just not at the same time). People always dunk on Heavy Armor Master as not scaling well, but in practice it scales fine (less damage is less damage, no matter the level) but with Twilight Sanctuary a feat that was arguably fine now seems pathetically bad by comparison as the amount of damage reduction Twilight Sanctuary gives is multiple orders of magnitude better affecting all sources of damage.
Firstly by reducing the turns spent casting healing instead, or turns where party members are down. But also secondly because it can so reliably trigger or counter a lot of darkness (or rather, dimness) based abilities, of which the game has quite a few, such as Sunlight Sensitivity, advantage on Shadow Blade and so-on. For a "power gamer" party, a Twilight cleric could easily enough you to build a party that can take a lot of punishment, throw in an Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight and a Bladesinger each with Shadow Blade and it could get silly how much more difficult the DM will need to make things.
The power creep on Twilight Domain isn't just undervaluing other cleric domains, it's undervaluing an entire category of damage reducing abilities, and why? Because it's not quite dark and not quite light? It doesn't even fit the theme in any way! It's an OP ability just thrown in seemingly at random and left as-is despite people complaining about the UA version.
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First of all, Twilight Sanctuary scales absurdly well, as not only is the temporary HP based on your full class level, it also has a wide area and more uses at higher level. It's equivalent to multiple free castings of bestowable ranged False Life upon every party member every single turn of a big fight, or multiple fights over an adventuring day. It can add up to a massive amount of damage reduction, meaning less healing required by the party and very likely more rounds out of party members that might otherwise go down (so resources saved and/or more damage dealt). It works against every damage type regardless of being an attack roll or a save.
Even when you're talking 60-70 damage dragon attacks it's a potentially 10-25% damage reduction regardless of attack and damage type and for the entire party; Barbarian Rage might be "better", but it only applies to certain damage types, for a single character and also stacks with Twilight Sanctuary (effectively doubling the amount of damage ignored each turn due to the sanctuary). At 10th level against dragon's breath covering the whole party you could be talking 70-ish damage ignored, or 700 over a full ten rounds; while unlikely, that'd be equivalent to a free 9th level Mass Heal!
Compare it to just about any other temporary HP effect and it's enormously OP; most temporary HP abilities add only a handful of points (Heroism adds only 2-5 and takes a 5th level slot to affect five creatures, Twilight Sanctuary will outperform that from 2nd level (5.5 temp. HP average) at a fraction of the cost, and can also end charmed or frightened just not at the same time). People always dunk on Heavy Armor Master as not scaling well, but in practice it scales fine (less damage is less damage, no matter the level) but with Twilight Sanctuary a feat that was arguably fine now seems pathetically bad by comparison as the amount of damage reduction Twilight Sanctuary gives is multiple orders of magnitude better affecting all sources of damage.
Firstly by reducing the turns spent casting healing instead, or turns where party members are down. But also secondly because it can so reliably trigger or counter a lot of darkness (or rather, dimness) based abilities, of which the game has quite a few, such as Sunlight Sensitivity, advantage on Shadow Blade and so-on. For a "power gamer" party, a Twilight cleric could easily enough you to build a party that can take a lot of punishment, throw in an Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight and a Bladesinger each with Shadow Blade and it could get silly how much more difficult the DM will need to make things.
The power creep on Twilight Domain isn't just undervaluing other cleric domains, it's undervaluing an entire category of damage reducing abilities, and why? Because it's not quite dark and not quite light? It doesn't even fit the theme in any way! It's an OP ability just thrown in seemingly at random and left as-is despite people complaining about the UA version.
Yes. it looks good compared to any other THP effect.
But that's not hard. Most THP effects suck. They are either not worth the resource cost to do them. Or they require set up to make them work. And then they are gone within a turn or two most of the time once battle starts unless your not taking damage and then they are doing nothing.
A Better THP doesn't Make it OP. It makes it a worthwhile THP. The Rest of the THP's usually aren't worthwhile under most circumstances. They may exist and some people do a lot to try and make use of them. But they aren't. The biggest use of False life is when it's cost is spell slot free. Or with somebody trying to pull something with pre-combat setup.
I've shown multiple comparsions and you tell me I'm all over in my argument. I'm not actually all over. it all comes down to the same thing. All these different ways that you get effectively something similar but under different circumstances in various parts of the game.
Sure it stops a bit of Damage. But at the Same time. A Heal Spell can Reset that Same damage. Higher AC can avoid that same Damage even though it's not readily noticeable, but people innately understand this enough that There have been attempts to get the highest static and Spike AC since the Game Started.
People Dunk on Heavy Armor Master because they often ignore the fact that it works on every single hit. And Most People don't Realize how many things don't Have Magical Physical Attacks even at higher Level. Everybody runs on this base Assumption that after level 6 everything is hitting you with a Magical weapon of some kind. But it could easily end up saving Tons of HP for those that have it every turn. Take that Ancient Gold Dragon, just to stick with a Creature we've already talked about it's abilities. Heavy Armor Master works against that Ancient Gold Dragon. It's Melee Attacks are not marked as Magical in any way. So under that concentrated attack. Heavy Armor Master can save our fighter that would die in a couple rounds 18 damage a round. Heavy Armor Master saves that Fighter 36 HP in those Two Rounds. More than enough to make up for the Round lost due to failing the Frightful Presence Roll.
On the Other Hand. Heavy Armor Master doesn't work on the CR 20 Pit Lord. And for a very special reason. It has a special ability. "Magic Weapons. The pit fiend's weapon attacks are magical." This one magical Ability is not the most common. But it's the Difference for Heavy Armor Master. And without it Heavy Armor Master is useful at high level and not just low Level.
With the Number of Creatures that Make 3 and 4 attacks a turn at high Levels or even 2 or 3 attacks at Lower Levels. Just flip through the Monster Manual some time and look at all the creatures that do slashing, bludgeoning, or Piercing but either do not have some kind of magical weapon attached or do not have a special ability that makes their natural attacks magical weapons some time. People Scoff at the nonmagical part of Heavy Armor Master not realizing that it's good for most of the game. You'll find plenty of situations where conceivably this will block 6, 9, or even 12 Damage from just a single creature, It doesn't need some kind of theoretical could effect covering the party or enemies spreading out, It just needs an enemy to do what it's trying to do anyway, hit the person who has it. Sure. Again it's protecting a single person but it's infinitely re-usable. Twilight Sanctuary is used once a turn at best, but for multiple people. And Heavy Armor Master is completely action economy free though it does cost you an ASI to get it, so it's not cost free. And it Still Stacks with everything else you might get. If your Not going to replan every encounter because a member of the party has Heavy Armor Master. Why do so for Twilight Sanctuary?
So Yes. Heavy Armor gets dunked on. But it gets dunked on because of bad assumptions based upon perceptions of the game.
Twilight Sanctuary is lifted up because of Perceptions about the game. And Again. I am not arguing that it's somehow not useful. But it is not even close to game breakingly useful. It's finally a THP ability that is at least doing something noticeable. We've needed this since the start of the game. The only thing that we've had that even came close is a Feat that takes 10 minutes to set up.
With the level 10 dragon. You claim that you could block 70 Hp. But a max roll on twilight sanctuary at level 10 is only going to do 16 per person. If it's a 4 person party your looking at 64 damage total blocked. If we go for the average per person of 13 for that level. your looking at 52 damage blocked. In a 5 person party if that's what you mean you could block 70 damage but the average is 65. But let's look at it a little closer because we can just as easily stack the numbers the other way. The Two CR 10 Dragons are the Red and the Gold and they both do 55 or 56 Average with their Breath Weapon, Ignoring Saves for the Moment, Each Party member has Taken at minimum 39-40 damage, and at average 42-43 Damage per person. In a 4 person party your looking at 156-160 damage minimum to your party with an average of 168-172 Damage to your party After Twilight Sanctuary has done it's thing. In a 5 person party the numbers move up to 195-200 minimum, and 210-215 Average Damage to your whole Party (this is a ton of damage that still needs healed anyway, this is still effectively at least one and likely 2 or more 5th level healing spells to remove). Your Blocking 1/4 of the Total Damage from the breath weapon. You can block that much just by one person not being in range of the breath weapon. Or the Rogue succeeding on the dex save to take no damage from having Evasion. But then If the Rogue's Evasion does it's job and avoids the Damage. The Rogue is blocking a Quarter of the Damage and the THP from Twilight Sanctuary on them is doing nothing. So your actually blocking less damage thanks to twilight Sanctuary. It's not bad in a tight area where you can't spread out. Or if you got breathed on by surprise and you had it up. I'm not saying that it's not even though everybody is acting like I am. Blocking the Damage is not bad. But in your average fight against a dragon. Why are you set up so the Dragon can hit all of you in the first place instead of spread out where it can only hit two or maybe 3 of you at most? Sure the Twilight Sanctuary helps the 2 or 3 that get hit. But so Does many other things.
Even when these things are stackable, Like say Twilight Sanctuary and Resistance. That doesn't make both Twilight Sanctuary and Resistance Standalone OP. it just makes for a strong combination.
As for Shadow Blade. You don't really have to adjust for Shadow Blade. Sure it's damage is a little nicer thanks to the 2d8. But the Advantage is not that special. There are so many ways to get Advantage that it's not even funny. Advantage is Excellent, don't get me wrong on that point, But it's mundane and built into the game. And Darkness isn't the only way to inflict disadvantage. Why do you need to retool just for advantage? if you've been playing with anything like kobolds in the party or allowing Flanking Rules or just even have a Barbarian (Wolf Totem level 3 makes allies get Advantage against any hostile target within 5 feet of the raging barbarian). This has already existed in your game all along. It's not anything we haven't seen or is particularly revolutionary because most of these things already work in a vast array of situations. There is nothing here that Twilight Sanctuary particularly adds to the table in regards to advantage so why replan for this possibility if your not going to replan for all of the others?
The Power Creep that you all argue for. Isn't really there. While there are some things that are unique. And good for Being Unique. It's still within the same power level of stuff that has existed since the PHB. We're just seeing it done in a different way for once, that's all. Not even the Dark Vision thing is that unique. is it an unusually large range and group effective? yes it is, But at the same time it has a rediculously short duration so it's basically only battle useful. And there are other abilities already in the game from earlier books that thwart it. This ability is another one that is just severely over rated but it's not talked about nearly as much as Twilight Sanctuary. And that might be because that despite seemingly amazing people are innately aware of it's flaws.
People may have complained about Twilight Sanctaury In UA. But you have to remember that Wizards was also running tests on it and comparing it to different things and ways it could be used. Not everything that the players complain for or complain about or demand they want from UA materials is actually what they claim them to be when they complain. Many of the Things that Players Talk about wanting to Keep from UA's actually are Overpowered, and then we see all kinds of complaints for quite a while about how it was nerfed. Even though they know most UA abilities are going to be nerfed anyway and many of them actually require it before they can see official publication. So why is it so hard to believe that an Ability that they complained about being too much not actually being to the level that they say and actually being more balanced than claimed? It's also an interesting phenomenon that most things that they don't want nerfed from UA's is almost always offensive in power. But the things that they complain should be nerfed is something defensive.
It's not "a bit of damage" it's literally most of the damage for a CR leveled creature for early levels.
And the THP can be above your total HP and stacks with all this stuff you keep mentioning for basically free.
it's not most of the Damage. It's best is at level 2. And For the most part your looking at it doing half... in the levels where it doesn't take a lot of hits to kill you anyway... and it goes down from there... Even at Max Level the best that it can really hope to do is to block a third.
And it doesn't matter that THP can be above your max Total HP. it's not actual Hp. It's name is a Trick. And Stacking isn't special. That's my point. And your Claims of Free aren't so free are they. It comes with all kinds of rules, That you conveniently want to ignore or downplay all of the time. While making other aspects more than they are. Despite the fact thta other abilities do as much as more on their own. Or also stacked together.
Let's take that dragon at Level 10 once again. And let's look at a rogue. The Rogue would have to fail it's best save and it would still take half damage... This is still stackable with fire resistance to basically make it a quarter damage. So we're now down to 12 damage done to the rogue for that breath weapon. Sure that Is Damage that Twilight Sanctuary can cover, but only after all of those other things, and it's still only as good at best as the Rogue avoiding it in the first place or simply not being in the path of the fire breath to begin with, Which are both also Free by the way you want to define free when it comes to the Rogue. So your Ability at it's best for this character is doing what it's own abilities are likely to do anyway but only stacked with other abilities. Or I could Ignore Twilight Sanctuary... Get basically the same protections in most scenario's and flank the dragon giving myself advantage to ensure my sneak attack and a more likely chance to hit and grant the Flanking bonus to the Tank standing in front of the Dragon trying to keep it's attention as well. Since I'm basically getting the same protection either way. It's just one is already built into my sheet or built in to the positioning. And the other puts a little number on my sheet to keep track of to get the same thing. Because if I'm behind the dragon not caring about Twilight Sanctuary and the Dragon does turn around to use it's breath weapon on me. Guess what? By Shere positioning alone. I just blocked all damage for my other party members, And I still have a chance of taking no damage from it and at worst take half damage. 25 damage is a great price if it means the rest of the party isn't taking even 35 damage.
For That matter. Even 50 damage on just one party member is better than over 100 collectively on the whole party, let alone the potential for 150 or 200.
A friend of mine who is a self-described "power gamer" had to put his Twilight Cleric away after a few sessions. He admitted that it was too OP even for him.
A Better THP doesn't Make it OP. It makes it a worthwhile THP. The Rest of the THP's usually aren't worthwhile under most circumstances. They may exist and some people do a lot to try and make use of them. But they aren't. The biggest use of False life is when it's cost is spell slot free. Or with somebody trying to pull something with pre-combat setup.
When False Life's spell slot is free it's only casting at 1st level which is pointless, because it so quickly becomes irrelevant. I use it on a sorcerer but I tend to cast it around 4th level because 20+ temporary HP is a decent buffer to put up ahead of a possible fight (and it lasts an hour so it's usually a safe bet it'll get used).
Twilight Sanctuary adds around the same temporary HP every roundfor the entire party for "free". While it occasionally lags by a few points depending upon exact levels, it's massively, massively stronger.
Sure it stops a bit of Damage. But at the Same time. A Heal Spell can Reset that Same damage. Higher AC can avoid that same Damage even though it's not readily noticeable, but people innately understand this enough that There have been attempts to get the highest static and Spike AC since the Game Started.
You're missing the entire point; with Twilight Sanctuary you don't need to spend slots to heal to get the same damage reduction, you just need to activate what it easily the most OP channel divinity ability in the game. And higher AC isn't comparable because it isn't mutually exclusive with this ability; if you have the means to bolster your AC then you can have both.
Your Blocking 1/4 of the Total Damage from the breath weapon.
This is the only part of your wall of text that matters here; 25% of the dragon's breath weapon is basically granting half resistance to the entire party against all damage types. And you don't think that's powerful? Not one of the channel divinity powers comes even close to that kind of utility except in very niche cases (e.g- facing undead Turn Undead is better, but guess what, Twilight Domain gets that the same as every other cleric). Even accounting for varying scenarios (more, weaker enemies vs. one larger one etc.) there is very little that this doesn't provide solid protection against, and it stacks with a lot of other defensive abilities; so it's rarely just 25%, it's 25% (per round) on top of the Barbarian's Rage, the Rogue's Uncanny Dodge etc.
Yes you could reduce the damage more by not being hit, but that's not always up to you, is it? It's a massive amount of damage reduction potential; even if we accepted your premise that THP abilities are too weak (which I don't btw, I think they're about right as it's a buffer against any damage and the game is purposefully weighted in favour of damage dealing) Twilight Sanctuary isn't just a bit better, it's hands down the strongest THP ability in 5th edition without contest, and it's granted at 2nd level as a short rest class feature with fantastic scaling. Even with less extreme damage taken it outshines most healing spells, can alternately remove two of the most common (and most debilitating to party damage) conditions and can increase party damage both by doing these things and by easily triggering other abilities. Plus the one big monster example is misleading, as against multiple enemies you're even more likely to see the whole party taking damage (as they go for different members) thus getting more value out of the party wide damage reduction.
I don't know why you're bending over backwards to defend something that is so objectively OP; it makes a mockery of the unique channel divinity of every other domain because not one of them even comes close to comparing. It allows the Twilight Domain to offset similar damage to Life Domain at effectively zero cost (whereas Life Domain has to burn slots and action economy just to compete, which means also reducing their own damage dealt), can function as a big force multiplier, and doesn't even remotely fit the theme of twilight. On the topic of the Life Cleric let's compare to their channel divinity (divide up 5x Cleric level HP); they can restore a maximum of 100 at level 20, but Twilight Sanctuary can be preventing that much damage every single turn if the whole party are taking damage, or that much over a single turn if the enemy pick on one party member.
A strong channel divinity wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the domain were weaker to compensate but it's not; it's a solid domain without the channel divinity. You could split the THP, anti-fear/charm and dim light features into three separate channel divinities and they'd still be among the better options among all the domains. Give them just the area of dim light divinity and it might be more balanced, as it would make sense for the class and requires some buy-in from the party to become the force multiplier that it can be. Instead we've got three solid (some arguably too solid) effects in a large area all rolled into one, it's objectively OP no matter how you spin it.
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On something that got 300 ft darkvision (and handed it to others), concentrationless fly speed, full weapon and armor proficiency, advantage on initiative (or gave it to someone else), and can end one charmed/frightened condition with no concentration or action.
In my view twilight sanctuary could last for a single turn (which would be normal for most channel divinities) and the domain would still be overpowered.
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
Your numbers make no sense and you do not even explain how you get them? You just arbitrary add 50 points of damage from nowhere.
Also of ******* course the chokers aren't the big bad in this encounter they are minions. That's how higher level encounters work.... You have one big CR opponent and fill in with minions.
And guess what... You can add THP to the paralyzed PCs for free... So basically reducing the threat from the auto crits. Even if they happen.
I was giving a purposefully high damage encounter with multiple hits that fits your own discussion points.
The fact remains you offset 54 points of damage a turn which even with your fudged numbers is roughly half of the damage still lol
A Better THP doesn't Make it OP. It makes it a worthwhile THP. The Rest of the THP's usually aren't worthwhile under most circumstances. They may exist and some people do a lot to try and make use of them. But they aren't. The biggest use of False life is when it's cost is spell slot free. Or with somebody trying to pull something with pre-combat setup.
When False Life's spell slot is free it's only casting at 1st level which is pointless, because it so quickly becomes irrelevant. I use it on a sorcerer but I tend to cast it around 4th level because 20+ temporary HP is a decent buffer to put up ahead of a possible fight (and it lasts an hour so it's usually a safe bet it'll get used).
Twilight Sanctuary adds around the same temporary HP every roundfor the entire party for "free". While it occasionally lags by a few points depending upon exact levels, it's massively, massively stronger.
Sure it stops a bit of Damage. But at the Same time. A Heal Spell can Reset that Same damage. Higher AC can avoid that same Damage even though it's not readily noticeable, but people innately understand this enough that There have been attempts to get the highest static and Spike AC since the Game Started.
You're missing the entire point; with Twilight Sanctuary you don't need to spend slots to heal to get the same damage reduction, you just need to activate what it easily the most OP channel divinity ability in the game. And higher AC isn't comparable because it isn't mutually exclusive with this ability; if you have the means to bolster your AC then you can have both.
Your Blocking 1/4 of the Total Damage from the breath weapon.
This is the only part of your wall of text that matters here; 25% of the dragon's breath weapon is basically granting half resistance to the entire party against all damage types. And you don't think that's powerful? Not one of the channel divinity powers comes even close to that kind of utility except in very niche cases (e.g- facing undead Turn Undead is better, but guess what, Twilight Domain gets that the same as every other cleric). Even accounting for varying scenarios (more, weaker enemies vs. one larger one etc.) there is very little that this doesn't provide solid protection against, and it stacks with a lot of other defensive abilities; so it's rarely just 25%, it's 25% (per round) on top of the Barbarian's Rage, the Rogue's Uncanny Dodge etc.
Yes you could reduce the damage more by not being hit, but that's not always up to you, is it? It's a massive amount of damage reduction potential; even if we accepted your premise that THP abilities are too weak (which I don't btw, I think they're about right as it's a buffer against any damage and the game is purposefully weighted in favour of damage dealing) Twilight Sanctuary isn't just a bit better, it's hands down the strongest THP ability in 5th edition without contest, and it's granted at 2nd level as a short rest class feature with fantastic scaling. Even with less extreme damage taken it outshines most healing spells, can alternately remove two of the most common (and most debilitating to party damage) conditions and can increase party damage both by doing these things and by easily triggering other abilities. Plus the one big monster example is misleading, as against multiple enemies you're even more likely to see the whole party taking damage (as they go for different members) thus getting more value out of the party wide damage reduction.
I don't know why you're bending over backwards to defend something that is so objectively OP; it makes a mockery of the unique channel divinity of every other domain because not one of them even comes close to comparing. It allows the Twilight Domain to offset similar damage to Life Domain at effectively zero cost (whereas Life Domain has to burn slots and action economy just to compete, which means also reducing their own damage dealt), can function as a big force multiplier, and doesn't even remotely fit the theme of twilight. On the topic of the Life Cleric let's compare to their channel divinity (divide up 5x Cleric level HP); they can restore a maximum of 100 at level 20, but Twilight Sanctuary can be preventing that much damage every single turn if the whole party are taking damage, or that much over a single turn if the enemy pick on one party member.
A strong channel divinity wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the domain were weaker to compensate but it's not; it's a solid domain without the channel divinity. You could split the THP, anti-fear/charm and dim light features into three separate channel divinities and they'd still be among the better options among all the domains. Give them just the area of dim light divinity and it might be more balanced, as it would make sense for the class and requires some buy-in from the party to become the force multiplier that it can be. Instead we've got three solid (some arguably too solid) effects in a large area all rolled into one, it's objectively OP no matter how you spin it.
It doesn't just Lag behind by a few points to your False Life Casting at 4th level. It lags behind by more than a level of casting. it only does 20+ hp with Twilight Sanctuary at an average Level 17+. But when you get that 4th level magic if you choose to use False Life at that casting which is level 9. Twilight Sanctuary is managing 12 HP on each person. And only looks spectacular if you have something like a fireball happen.
Also No. 25% of the damage is not like half damage on all targets. It's 25% of the damage. It's 1/4 damage on all targets. it's not even close to 1/2 resistance to all damage types. if it did that then i'd consider it OP. your Basically claiming that I'm right and then turning that into a false statement of double that effectiveness. Which still doesn't deal with the issue that you got the same effectiveness with the positioning of 1 character doing what it's going to do anyway.
I'm also not missing the Point of Twilight Sanctuary... Your over stating it's point. Let me ask you this in factual Reality. Your making claims of it saves Healing. What are you saving healing for? So that you can heal in other fights? Or So that you can Cast Other Spells? If your Doing it in easy fights and then you use up those resources before you get to the big fight. All you've saved yourself is the ability to hit more. Not to fight back. If your Using it in the Big Fight to save healing against a major threat instead of the small fights? Then you've already either trivialized or had to heal in the small fights. And Saving healing in the Big fight might let you hit that BBEG more. But it's not really saving you resources because the point of those REsources are to fight the Big Fight. And AFter the big Fight you can rest. Which allows you to use a resource that's absolutely only purpose is healing in the form of Hit Dice. And the big Bad Guys are doing so much damage at the upper levels your still going to have to heal Or your going to die anyway in the fight with the BBEG. your just going to do it a bit slower. Which can be accomplished in all kinds of ways. Not just by Twilight Sanctuary on the party.
And Again. THP is fairly weak. It may work against all damage. But that also means that it's used up really fast usually with no way to replenish it. Even if you give yourself 20THP at level 9. When the Creatures can do 30 damage to you. That's wiped away in a round and you've still taken damage. It's nice to say that it saved you for a round. But it saved you for a round for what? Some more Offensive Capability, Because that's not guaranteed because many classes have first round setups that they go through. Nice to have protection for your setup. But it's a round where some might be actually taking damage while not putting much out. The Game actually has a fairly decent defensive multi-structure too it. It just get's ignored way too much (kind of like enemies in too many games doing anything particularly intelligent gets ignored). People Overpower their characters for Offense, Way above the Ability curve, Ignore any of the Defense that isn't dead obvious like certain abilities or high AC. And then claim everything is weighted to Offense. Start Having Enemies they fight be more tactical and even use a bit of Defense, Or have strategically placed healers of their own. And Defense becomes a whole different ball game for PC's. They start learning all the avoidance tactics and battlefield control and Defensive Stacking that is really in the game that Twilight Sanctuary is just another decent piece of.
Take That Rogue and it's uncanny Dodge. An Attack Comes in and the Rogue Halves the damage with Uncanny dodge. Then you stack in the Twilight Sanctuary. The Rogue takes almost no damage. But what's the Rogue going to do for the next attack that turn? It might have managed to avoid one hit But it has nothing against hit 2, or hit 3, or hit 4. It has slightly more hp but has found itself in the same tight spot it would have been in even if Twilight Sanctuary wasn't a thing. it's best Option if it could make it still would have been to Disengage and not be there to hit in the first place. And then Uncanny dodge if something does manage to chase after it, and then maybe Twilight Sanctuary could kick in. But the Rogue has still blocked more damage for itself than Twilight Sanctuary has. All for just a couple of infinitely reusable action economy actions. That they still have available next turn. Regardless of positioning. For Twilight Sanctuary to be of benefit next turn it has to end it's turn inside Twilight Santuary. This means no going and hunting down ideal positioning or Running away from the party to make itself less of a target unless that spot just happens to be in Twilight Sanctuary. This could mean reduced Effectiveness in protecting itself, or it could mean reduced effectiveness in damage. And that's only if it' in melee. What does it do if it's ranged? If it's staying as close to that 80' mark where it's finding good hiding spots to hide every turn so it can sneak attack ranged. Either the Front line or the Rogue are going to be out of position of Twilight Sanctuary. This is a bog standard tactic for most ranged characters, With some going even farther back if they have any capability to do so.
Everybody talks like Every ideal Play and Every Party Member is going to be in the bubble range of twilight Sanctuary and take just thta sweet spot of damage where your using every point without getting a lot of bleedover onto their actual hp, but a lot of tactics talked about in these boards don't really fit that. But that's the excuse for how OP and how much damage it protects and how powerful and repeatedly useful it is.
And this is what your not getting. You accuse me of not understanding the ability and all it does but To Work to spec, it basically needs an entire group to play into it and to ignore other possible more advantageous strategies to get things done AND be playing against bog standard unthinking enemies attacking all party members just about evenly at all times that also play into twilight Sanctuary. Even Dungeon and other Map layouts have to play out in the favor of Twilight Sanctuary. When the Entire Game has to play into Twilight Sanctuary to give it the full functionality that people claim it has. How OP is it really? Because if Everything is going to this length to make it work, Then it certainly better work well if it's any good at all.
It's like the Group with the Balhannoth that I just talked about in this same Thread. It's made to sound like it's breaking a deadly encounter, But for level 10's it's really only an Encounter against 1 or maybe 2 monsters, and only one of them is very damaging. The other's threat is more in disabling the entire party than it is actually hurting anything. But it's portrayed as a group of 4 that the group should be worried about taking on to make Twilight Sanctuary look good. What are you going to do? Have your entire party rush the one real threat in the fight just to occupy all of it's tentacles so that it can't make attacks with them because it's too busy grappling and rely on the DM to play ball and bite each of your party members once a turn with reduced damage from the lack of tentacle attacks just so Twilight Sanctuary looks good? Or Are your Ranged still going to stay Ranged and make Twilight Sanctuary redundant while the front line gets in the danger zone for increased Party Effectiveness but reduced Twilight Sanctuary Effectiveness? The Choice is yours. But if you choose the second one just keep in mind that 41% number I quoted earlier... Becomes more like 20%. In a Game where things like the Bear Totem Barbarian Exists and gets 50% on 90-95% of the damage in the game on it's own anyway. Give that Barbarian immunity to poison from Gear, some ability to dash and attack, and the ability to see invisible. And that Entire Encounter is basically made a joke just by said Barbarian existing. it suddenly becomes the Balhannoth that has to extend the fight and hope to change the tides as much as possible by going invisible or teleporting around hoping to stay out of the Barbarians reach. even with it's Lair actions in play which is more teleporting and a different version of turning invisible until it attacks, but this one entirely single target based.
again. it's general purpose. it's not bad. it does something that THP has needed for a long time. Even your example of casting it at 4th level shows weaknesses in sources of THP, and you mention it lasting for an Hour so you set it up before hand. Great if you can be sure to have combat in that hour. Decent if you want to spend a turn casting it in combat to have protection for only a turn. But then when that turn runs out?
Twilight Sanctuary would be much more threatening and more power creep in nature if it did more, Or if THP stacked on top of itself so that even when a person didn't get hit you were still outputting the THP that most people try to claim it does when talking about how OP it is so that you need to hit every person on every turn just to keep the THP under control. That would require battle redesigns and a lot of extra work from any DM's. Even DM's that already play their enemies smart and have parties that stack defenses quite a bit.
Edit: I'd also like to point out. Frightened is hardly the most debilitating of conditions. being Charmed is somewhat of a problem but Frightened for most versions of it in 5e just makes you stand there and not approach. If it moves away from something like a paladin or Barbarian this could be annoying but it doesn't even stop your actions so there are often still things you can do, specially if the enemy hasn't moved away from you after you've closed on it. But there are lots of ways to remove it, Twilight Sanctuary is just another one. Stunned and Paralyzed are just two abilities that are way more debilitating than Frightened is, and both have the potential to last for quite a while. Sometimes without additional saves, Or with alternate inflicting conditions such as being a status inflicted by a poison or the like. On top of that ways to remove them are also much more rare and usually higher level to boot. Frightened is annoying but not usually deadly, the other two are potentially deadly if they last for long or hit you at a bad time.
Also At this point I have to ask. people have claimed objectivity that isn't there a couple times. Why do you all have to bend over backwards to such a Degree to make Twlight Sanctuary Subjectively OP? Why is there this need to over state and over theory craft what it does to the points that people do? Various people did the same thing with healing Spirit even though it wasn't nearly what people claimed either when it came to objective practical use.
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
Your numbers make no sense and you do not even explain how you get them? You just arbitrary add 50 points of damage from nowhere.
Also of ****ing course the chokers aren't the big bad in this encounter they are minions. That's how higher level encounters work.... You have one big CR opponent and fill in with minions.
And guess what... You can add THP to the paralyzed PCs for free... So basically reducing the threat from the auto crits. Even if they happen.
I was giving a purposefully high damage encounter with multiple hits that fits your own discussion points.
The fact remains you offset 54 points of damage a turn which even with your fudged numbers is roughly half of the damage still lol
I don't add 50 points from nowhere. Your damage for one of your monsters alone was completely wrong...
And then I showed how that same monster could do 75 more. And I completely ignored the damage from the 2CR one's that aren't likely to hit more than the broad side of the barn to begin with.
So not only do I explain where it comes from, the Bites on Grappled Foes as Legendary Actions, i actually took out math that you added when you shouldn't have.
But go ahead and keep smoke screening. And it's not half damage. it's 41% Exactly as I said. Assuming that everybody at the table plays things in the absolute stupidest way possible. Which means all our party members get in striking range of this one creature so that it can basically grapple and bite all of them every round. So the 41% is playing in your Favor and it's still not even close to the 67% percent that you claimed with your ACtual fudged numbers and bad math to make your own example.
But then you weren't going to tell anybody about the two useless monsters or the legendary actions if I hadn't mentioned them were you? you were just going to pretend it was the 45 from the three attacks, the 22 from the paralyzing monster and then the all of about 10 damage each from the two might as well not exists to get your 86. Did you even more than glance at the monsters just to grab quick numbers when you picked them? Or did whatever module you stole the encounter from list their average damages for you and you didn't read any farther than that to know what they were actually like?
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
Your numbers make no sense and you do not even explain how you get them? You just arbitrary add 50 points of damage from nowhere.
Also of ****ing course the chokers aren't the big bad in this encounter they are minions. That's how higher level encounters work.... You have one big CR opponent and fill in with minions.
And guess what... You can add THP to the paralyzed PCs for free... So basically reducing the threat from the auto crits. Even if they happen.
I was giving a purposefully high damage encounter with multiple hits that fits your own discussion points.
The fact remains you offset 54 points of damage a turn which even with your fudged numbers is roughly half of the damage still lol
I don't add 50 points from nowhere. Your damage for one of your monsters alone was completely wrong...
And then I showed how that same monster could do 75 more. And I completely ignored the damage from the 2CR one's that aren't likely to hit more than the broad side of the barn to begin with.
So not only do I explain where it comes from, the Bites on Grappled Foes as Legendary Actions, i actually took out math that you added when you shouldn't have.
But go ahead and keep smoke screening. And it's not half damage. it's 41% Exactly as I said. Assuming that everybody at the table plays things in the absolute stupidest way possible. Which means all our party members get in striking range of this one creature so that it can basically grapple and bite all of them every round. So the 41% is playing in your Favor and it's still not even close to the 67% percent that you claimed with your ACtual fudged numbers and bad math to make your own example.
But then you weren't going to tell anybody about the two useless monsters or the legendary actions if I hadn't mentioned them were you? you were just going to pretend it was the 45 from the three attacks, the 22 from the paralyzing monster and then the all of about 10 damage each from the two might as well not exists to get your 86. Did you even more than glance at the monsters just to grab quick numbers when you picked them? Or did whatever module you stole the encounter from list their average damages for you and you didn't read any farther than that to know what they were actually like?
And 41% damage reduction for free each turn is not crazy how?
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
Your numbers make no sense and you do not even explain how you get them? You just arbitrary add 50 points of damage from nowhere.
Also of ****ing course the chokers aren't the big bad in this encounter they are minions. That's how higher level encounters work.... You have one big CR opponent and fill in with minions.
And guess what... You can add THP to the paralyzed PCs for free... So basically reducing the threat from the auto crits. Even if they happen.
I was giving a purposefully high damage encounter with multiple hits that fits your own discussion points.
The fact remains you offset 54 points of damage a turn which even with your fudged numbers is roughly half of the damage still lol
I don't add 50 points from nowhere. Your damage for one of your monsters alone was completely wrong...
And then I showed how that same monster could do 75 more. And I completely ignored the damage from the 2CR one's that aren't likely to hit more than the broad side of the barn to begin with.
So not only do I explain where it comes from, the Bites on Grappled Foes as Legendary Actions, i actually took out math that you added when you shouldn't have.
But go ahead and keep smoke screening. And it's not half damage. it's 41% Exactly as I said. Assuming that everybody at the table plays things in the absolute stupidest way possible. Which means all our party members get in striking range of this one creature so that it can basically grapple and bite all of them every round. So the 41% is playing in your Favor and it's still not even close to the 67% percent that you claimed with your ACtual fudged numbers and bad math to make your own example.
But then you weren't going to tell anybody about the two useless monsters or the legendary actions if I hadn't mentioned them were you? you were just going to pretend it was the 45 from the three attacks, the 22 from the paralyzing monster and then the all of about 10 damage each from the two might as well not exists to get your 86. Did you even more than glance at the monsters just to grab quick numbers when you picked them? Or did whatever module you stole the encounter from list their average damages for you and you didn't read any farther than that to know what they were actually like?
And 41% damage reduction for free each turn is not crazy how?
Your points continue to diminish.....
That isn't crazy. it's possible to do in many ways all over the place all the time.
But that 41% goes down if only 2 of your party members and not of a mind to play into the stupid to be taking damage to begin with and stay at range. Cutting your 41% damage reduction in half automatically. But saving them from all of the damage that they would have taken in the effort without bothering about twilight sanctuary. So now your looking at 20% damage reduction just because 2 of your party decided they'd rather not take damage at all? What do you do? Where do you go from here? Twilight Sanctuary is falling down because even two theoretical PC's suddenly don't get with the program and white room into making Twilight Sanctuary look good? let alone the fact that many ranged wouldn't want to get thta close in practical play anyway.
Just like with the one Character deciding not to play ball with the Dragon's breath and face tank a bunch of fire damage just so the Twilight Domain Cleric can look heroic. Saving as much Damage as Twilight Sanctuary could if he did get hit all on it's own just by not being there. And the rest being able to save even more than than that if others aren't just standing there to take it as well. What do you do? Twilight Sanctuary has fallen down because somebody chose to be somewhere else.
What do you do when the Extremely Intelligent Dragon realizes that Focus Fire is it's best move, and taking out members of your party under a barrage of attacks is better than spreading out the damage as much as possible? Causing Twilight Sanctuary to fall down again because it's doing vastly under it's group rate protections once again?
Every Time your Answer has been "Well it protects from at least some damage!" A point that I never argued against. I've said many times it does block some damage. It's just not necessarily all the damage that everybody is trying to adamantly claim it protects from. Which nobody has been able to refute. I can hold up the it protects from at least some damage without my other argument being wrong. They are not mutually exclusive concepts. They never were.
The issue was never black and White and I've only argued in the grey area in between. it is not Blocks Damage or Does not Block Damage, it's how much, and How much is not what people state and then cry " Objectively OP!" at the top of their lungs.
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
Your numbers make no sense and you do not even explain how you get them? You just arbitrary add 50 points of damage from nowhere.
Also of ****ing course the chokers aren't the big bad in this encounter they are minions. That's how higher level encounters work.... You have one big CR opponent and fill in with minions.
And guess what... You can add THP to the paralyzed PCs for free... So basically reducing the threat from the auto crits. Even if they happen.
I was giving a purposefully high damage encounter with multiple hits that fits your own discussion points.
The fact remains you offset 54 points of damage a turn which even with your fudged numbers is roughly half of the damage still lol
I don't add 50 points from nowhere. Your damage for one of your monsters alone was completely wrong...
And then I showed how that same monster could do 75 more. And I completely ignored the damage from the 2CR one's that aren't likely to hit more than the broad side of the barn to begin with.
So not only do I explain where it comes from, the Bites on Grappled Foes as Legendary Actions, i actually took out math that you added when you shouldn't have.
But go ahead and keep smoke screening. And it's not half damage. it's 41% Exactly as I said. Assuming that everybody at the table plays things in the absolute stupidest way possible. Which means all our party members get in striking range of this one creature so that it can basically grapple and bite all of them every round. So the 41% is playing in your Favor and it's still not even close to the 67% percent that you claimed with your ACtual fudged numbers and bad math to make your own example.
But then you weren't going to tell anybody about the two useless monsters or the legendary actions if I hadn't mentioned them were you? you were just going to pretend it was the 45 from the three attacks, the 22 from the paralyzing monster and then the all of about 10 damage each from the two might as well not exists to get your 86. Did you even more than glance at the monsters just to grab quick numbers when you picked them? Or did whatever module you stole the encounter from list their average damages for you and you didn't read any farther than that to know what they were actually like?
And 41% damage reduction for free each turn is not crazy how?
Your points continue to diminish.....
That isn't crazy. it's possible to do in many ways all over the place all the time.
But that 41% goes down if only 2 of your party members and not of a mind to play into the stupid to be taking damage to begin with and stay at range. Cutting your 41% damage reduction in half automatically. But saving them from all of the damage that they would have taken in the effort without bothering about twilight sanctuary. So now your looking at 20% damage reduction just because 2 of your party decided they'd rather not take damage at all? What do you do? Where do you go from here? Twilight Sanctuary is falling down because even two theoretical PC's suddenly don't get with the program and white room into making Twilight Sanctuary look good? let alone the fact that many ranged wouldn't want to get thta close in practical play anyway.
Just like with the one Character deciding not to play ball with the Dragon's breath and face tank a bunch of fire damage just so the Twilight Domain Cleric can look heroic. Saving as much Damage as Twilight Sanctuary could if he did get hit all on it's own just by not being there. And the rest being able to save even more than than that if others aren't just standing there to take it as well. What do you do? Twilight Sanctuary has fallen down because somebody chose to be somewhere else.
What do you do when the Extremely Intelligent Dragon realizes that Focus Fire is it's best move, and taking out members of your party under a barrage of attacks is better than spreading out the damage as much as possible? Causing Twilight Sanctuary to fall down again because it's doing vastly under it's group rate protections once again?
Every Time your Answer has been "Well it protects from at least some damage!" A point that I never argued against. I've said many times it does block some damage. It's just not necessarily all the damage that everybody is trying to adamantly claim it protects from. Which nobody has been able to refute. I can hold up the it protects from at least some damage without my other argument being wrong. They are not mutually exclusive concepts. They never were.
The issue was never black and White and I've only argued in the grey area in between. it is not Blocks Damage or Does not Block Damage, it's how much, and How much is not what people state and then cry " Objectively OP!" at the top of their lungs.
It's free and can reduce damage by 41% by your own statements. I think it's more most of the time not less... As I picked a very deadly encounter with lots of multiple attacks on purpose.
30ft is pretty big range is hardly up close. Also it moves with you so you can also just move closer as needed making the effective range a lot more.
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.
Anything that makes the DM rebalance all of his encounters is defacto "broken". Your character broke this game, and he had to fix it. Is this easier to "fix" than other types of broken abilities? Sure. Sometimes. Yeah. But if your DM is specifically and intentionally rebalancing encounters to accommodate a specific ability of yours, you broke the game and he's fixing it.
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.
Going for just the twilight cleric is only even going to work if you can entirely drop him, too. The ability doesn't rely on concentration you have to entirely incapacitate the cleric to end the effect early. And guess what twilight clerics have? Really good AC. They get heavy armor and shields. They have the full cleric spell list of defensive buffs. So good luck with that strategy. And if all enemies are always targeting specifically and only the cleric? Congrats, we just admitted they're the best support/tank in the game.
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.
You know, I'd personally still call it broken even if it were mechanically better balanced. Why? Because it interjects your character onto every other players turn. That alone is some serious main Character syndrome BS. Any fix to the ability need to keep its primary function confined to the cleric's turn alone and stop having them be a co-partner during everyone else's turns.
This doesn't make a very good defense about how OP Twilight Sanctuary is.
And that's the reality of it. Unless the DM is playing all your enemies in the dumbest ways possible and spreading out the damage absolutely as far as they can. Twilight Domain and Twilight Sanctuary does not give what is advertised by the claims of OP and that's entirely my problem with this fad of adamantly calling it such.
You're right that the full distributed sum of all possible THP don't ever get used. So if a 5 party at 20, you're not using all 1,175 of the temporary HP you single action potentially spit out.
Sure, those THP gave a cushion to any pets, familiars, or summoned creatures you had and could have kept them up and increased that total even further.
Sure, it basically reduces the enemy's AOE potential by keeping everyone buffered at the same time.
Sure it forces the enemy to try to all single in onto one focus fire'd target and yes that makes disrupting their targeting exceptionally effective.
And yeah, nothing in the game offers anything like the over 1k+ THP, nothing even comes close by an order of magnitude.
But c'mon! I mean, it doesn't literally transform your entire party into greater deities so how can anyone say it is OP?
The White Room Math that everybody uses to Justify Twilight Sanctuary show's the cracks at most levels with even the tiniest change of tactics by the DM. Not Extra Work. Not Stronger Enemies. Not Adjustments to power levels just because of Twilight Sanctuary. Just simply giving the enemies some reasonable level of intelligence. Too many DM's have been playing monsters way too dumb for a variety of innocent and not so innocent reasons for far too long, That it has caused people to think it's the norm and base entire Theories about characters around it.
What tactic, exactly, defeats Twilight Sanctuary? You've said this a few times but don't seem to have suggested an actual tactic that defeats it.
Focus fire?
Okay. Let's compare, then, what TS does if you try to have all enemy's focus fire one party member at a time.
Still provides a buffer that keeps them up longer vs if they were focus fired without it.
That # of THP = 1d6+level per round. This will significantly increase the targeted party member's lifespan.
Makes choosing who to spend spell slots on to actually heal a really easy decision. Because oh yeah, you're still a full spellcaster and have the cleric spell list. And TS doesn't take any of your actions to maintain. Nor your concentration. So you still do all the spellcasting you'd otherwise do as any other subclass cleric would.
Even in this scenario you will have greatly extended the lifespan of the targeted party member, will have spit out enough THP that the people not getting targeted can safely provoke opportunity attacks at will without concern for superior tactical repositioning, and created a situation where the targeted party member can focus more of defensive options since they have all the incoming damage headed their way, even further mitigating damage done to your party as a whole.
That is what "smart" enemies are forced to do to try to win, and even that isn't a great option. Was there some other "smart tactic" you think they'd employ to overcome TS??
And when we get into low CR hordes... Unless they are so far below your level that they are more of a nuisance than a resource drain or any kind of actual threat. They have action economy. Even if they only hit half the time there is usually enough of them that they are still going to overwhelm the amount of protection Twilight Sanctuary is giving. Hordes are an easy way to break it and still threaten lots of party members.
So the "smart tactic" enemies would take against the party is make sure to have instead had more people on their side? Like... what? BBEG asks the party politely not to adventure in his castle because he's not quite yet fully staffed with enough overwhelming numbers of minions to defeat the party cleric's 2nd level ability?? This is your argument?
STanding in the center and body blocking the cleric doesn't work. You'd need 8 people to do that. Since most parties are 3/4 that at the outside maximum and are recommended to be half that. it's not a practical tactic. Even if you slow the horde down. Spiritual Guardians is a tactic any Cleric can use. And the Twilight Cleric doesn't do anything to make it more effective. it always has some use against weaker horde's. specially at lower level. But the threat of the horde has never been in them being hardy, or even having the best chance of hitting you. It's always been the overwhelming action economy. Twilight Sanctuary doesn't fix the overwhelming action economy.
It absolutely does. TS puts out an empower or upcast version of false life every turn. Not every round, every turn. 5 man party you're spitting out the equivalent of 5 spells per round. Without using any actions on subsequent turns whatsoever.
It happens every round without any action being used whatsoever. None. Having a huge THP effect, on all allies, every round... for NO action... absolutely "fixes the overwhelming action economy".
That horde is always goign to hit often enough for just enough damage to be a threat despite twilight sanctuary (because any one single hit is never the point to begin with and Twilight sanctuary is often a single hit) Or they are so weak that they were never a real threat no matter how many times they swing at you because they will rarely actually hit you. and that doesn't change with Twilight Sanctuary either. Because again. any one hit from a horde doesn't really matter and all they were ever doing when that weak is effectively any one hit.
This makes no sense. Say a horde of weaker enemies hit a different member of the party once a round. Maybe it is only 5 damage each time. Ok. Now everyone takes 5 damage per round. Maybe it take the party 5 turns to eventually win. Ok. A normal party will have all party members now down 25 hp each but the Twilight Cleric party will have all party members down... probably nothing. None damage. Yes, that's right, they're all at full and even have probably 8+ THP on top for the next fight still. So they actually went up in effective hp instead of down 25.
That's, btw, thinking at 2nd level. How many 2nd level characters even survive all taking 25hp?
The twilight cleric trivializes these types of encounters where there are a large number of weak enemies who have spread out targets. It makes them a nuisance instead of a threat. There is no sense of danger because you can easily soak the damage they can dish out. Everyone can.
Many DM's are afraid of hordes because they are always either one or the other. And because they don't use them often Most DM's worry that they've gone to far with their horde when it's meant to be a threat because a bunch of attacks will get through. Twilight Sanctuary actually makes hordes less stressful and easier to use for most DM's. Even while it doesn't change which way the horde is going to be much because it makes the difference between beating the party nearly to death with a horde and all the way to death with a horde just a little bit bigger. This can make it easier to Handle for DM's that haven't mastered that craft yet (usually by accidentally nearly or actually TPK'ing a few parties in trial and error).
Hordes are best case arguments for twilight sanctuary I'm not sure why you're doubling down on this reasoning. Having every party member targeting by masses of weak enemies means each party member is making full use of the THP you're giving them. That's an absurd number of THP getting put to use preventing actual hp damage from taking place.
If your argument is that this one ability allows the DM to entirely change the way he develops encounters so that they're now all horde encounters because it is now safe to do so.. yeah. that's true. But that also means you know fully well that this is the most OP 2nd level ability in the game because it allows the DM to entirely change the way he develops encounters.
And that really leads me to a point that I've been making repeatedly against claims about twilight Sanctuary at all levels. The Average Damage is not below that which Twilight Sanctuary Creates. There are individual creatures that might have trouble making it. But for the most part the damage that the monsters do at any given CR is a bit higher than what Twilight Sanctuary is going to give. Even at CR 2. One of the Best gains from Twilight Sanctuary your going to get thanks to the variable dice roll. Your still going to average 3 on the dice. Add to to that your 2nd level and you get 5 total THP. With a lot of the CR 2 monsters sporting a +5 to hit against the 15 to 16 AC being standard on several classes. But a lot of their damage averages close to about 10 damage each time they actually do hit you if I'm remembering the numbers correctly right now, it's been a while. Their average damage overall is lower because they are looking at about a 50% hit rate. But multi-attack creatures are increasingly showing up at level 2. Luckily most of them are still doing lesser damage per hit and aren't sporting the greatest attack bonuses yet. it makes them a little less dangerous on the armored party members and tanks. Taking 5 damage instead of 10 damage on a single hit is not bad. But at the same time. Let's look at the health of characters. Several classes are d8 hit die so we're talking 13hp before con bonuses. While Taking 3 hits instead of 2 before you drop dead is no small feat. There are a bunch of ways to achieve a similar result because of the average damage you take. For those classes that can wear a shield that can do it. For those that can somehow inflict disadvantage that will do it as well. Healing will also obviously do it and even basic healing spells are massively effective at these kinds of starting levels. Some of these kinds of things cost resources. Some of them don't. So it's going to depend on each characters situation as to the cost benefit. Even for the cleric themselves. But as you go up in CR. Twilight Sanctuary starts slowly losing ground on how much it's protecting. The Higher characters get, the less Twilight Sanctuary protects despite it's level scaling.
So your arguement is even if the L2 party only fights a single CR2 allosaurus, the fighter will survive 4 rounds instead of drop in only 2. So therefore TS isn't helpful.
Right, because having the fighter drop on round 2 would have lead to a much better outcome?
yes. Twilight Sanctuary is doing something. But it is not doing everything. It's not even doing close to everything.
Why are you trying to sell this line so hard? We can do math.
Even with the Barbarian it's not everything. The Barbarian's abilities are actually doing the heavy lifting. 11 THP turning into 22 for the Barbarian sounds nice. But the Barbarian is looking at a Max non-raging HP Somewhere in the range of 120HP at level 10 if that's the example we want to go with, but for any damage they can soak up with resistances by raging they are Rocking what is effectively 240HP in simple parlance, though it's technically wrong mechanically. They are Beefy monsters regardless. It's a large part of what they do. Multi attack is everywhere. usually in an average total damage range of 30 damage or so and attack modifiers of +9. But even more than that. It's still the Barbarian making most of the damage ineffective. It's nice to say it's effectively 22 damage blocked for the barbarian because of the way they talk about them. It's an easy way to picture things. But the truth is. It's not 22 damage blocked for the Barbarian. The Barbarian is going to block the bulk of the damage. And then the THP is going to take from what is left. The Barbarian is what is blocking the Majority of the Damage and making Twlight Sanctuary look like it's blocking more. But it's still just 11 damage ultimately. The other 15 that the Barbarian doesn't take when Raging is because of their own abilities. As the Damage increases. The damage that isn't taken by the Barbarian increases. But the 11 is always just 11. Even when the Barbarian is not raging it's also just 11.
That was a lot of word to say: Twilight Sanctuary complements and multiplies the effectiveness of resistances. Each is great but they multiply with one another.
Take 20 damage. Have resistance? take 10. Instead have 10 THP? take 10. Have both? No damage you're immoral now! Woo.
Twilight Sanctuary on the Barbarian really kind of highlights something about THP now that I'm focused on it. And that's the core of what it does. Preventing damage. THP is extremely set. It's single use universal protection however. Being Set and being one time use are it's trade off for working on any kind of damage in a universal fashion. Resistance is more limited in the type of damage that it can affect. But it's highly dynamic. The Barbarian taking 10 Bludgeoning damage while Raging may only lose 5 health. But on the Very Next Attack it could just as easily block 100. Or it could block multiple attacks in a row. Whether it's 20 damage from a single attack or it's that 110 that the Ancient Gold Dragon can do in focused physical attacks. It still works. It's always going to cut it in half as long as it applies.
Yeah and in a game where resistances don't stack, an ability that does work hand in hand with resistance is even more valuable. Once you have the resistance covered how are you now going to prevent more damage? THP. They complement each other.
Let me Demonstrate what I mean. Let's take that same Adult Gold Dragon going all out with PHysical attacks. It could kill that fighter in 2 turns without protections. Without raging it would take not quite 3 rounds to down the Barbarian without rage because it would have about 280 health. Then just by Raging the Barbarian suddenly halves all that physical damage. All of a sudden. Those 3 rounds to kill the Barbarian are now a full 5 rounds to just barely do enough damage. That's if it's going all out on physical damage. If we ignore it's legendary action damage and such by assuming they target a second party member. Since it's damage is now about 60 a turn. It's going to take the Dragon 5 turns to down the barbarian without it's rage. However, It's going to take it 10 rounds to down the barbarian once it is raging and it's resistances apply.
You're so close. Now add in 23.5 THP per round to the barbarian and you'll realize that he basically doesn't die. That dragon can't kill him. Well, not for a while anyway. A long, unrealistically long while for a combat. You'll have won that combat long, long ago. Instead of 10 rounds, it'd be 30+. I say 30+ because that's all 3 minutes of twilight sanctuary. Only after it fades can the barbarian die at roughly 7 damage a round on average lol.
Resistance is a self adjusting potential monster of an ability. And it makes any other kind of damage mitigation look a whole lot better when paired with it. In the Example of the Barbarian taking 30 damage at level 10 with 11THP. that 11 THP looks huge when you only look at the damage that the Resistance didn't block, but it's still only protecting against about 35% of the damage. The other 50% of the 85% total blocked by that Barbarian that has both is because of it's Resistance. if something did mass Resistances That is what would be OP. That would be worthy of all the Hype that Twilight Domain and Twilight Sanctuary gets now.
Resistance alone doesn't stop the barbarian from dying to the dragon. THP alone doesn't stop the dragon from bursting him down either. Together? They trivialize the encounter.
Curiously, the only way to consistently shoot out this much THP to all party members without an action for free every turn multiple times a day is found: on the twilight cleric.
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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.
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I think this really sums it up....
Damage is usually the main weapon for creatures and if you take that away then you really reduce the threat they pose.
As others have said it's definitely not insurmountable but it for sure impacts the game on a level no other Cleric feature does.
It Doesn't just catch up at high levels. It shines as high levels. But some of it's abilities are actually quite low level. 6 and 8 for example. Well within normal play range. The Level 6 Ability basically adds in a free third level spell every time you heal and you scale it based upon the level you cast the healing spell at. That's nothing to sneeze at. Even if it does use spell slots.
No. What I brought up is CR 20 creatures and brought up dragons as an Example. And I specifically mention it's only their very basic damage. When you then misrepresented to make things seem better than they are. Which is a very big difference. I just as easily could have brought up something like the Pit Lord and other Devil's that are that high level that function under similar ways just for their Basic attacks.
And thta's something you ignored. Basic attacks. meaning Not even it's full arsenal. Just the most basic thing it can do to you.
And so you decided to bring out what you felt was a big bad dragon to prove your point. So I obliged you and showed how that big bad dragon destroys your point because Twilight Sanctuary isn't protecting a damned thing.
Whack a mole. Is a pretty dumb tactic. No Dragon of 18 intelligence is going to play whackamole. Your going to bring that Character up 1 time with your healing word shenanigans and it's going to hit that character 3 times and make sure they are Dead unless the DM is determined to play soft on the party. And the worst thing about a dragon. It can hit them three times before it's turn ever comes up depending on the Initiative order thanks to Legendary Actions. So that character could be brought back up and Dead by the time the Dragon does it's thing. Congratulations. You slowed down some of it's damage for half a turn. Excellent for you. Real win there for Twilight Sanctuary.
I'm not Defending the Twilight Cleric. You are the ones Defending the Twilight Cleric and holding it up as untouchable. I'm opposing the reasoning of that. The Ancient Gold Dragon, One of the Biggest and Baddest things in the game was used as proof of how excellent the Twilight Cleric is and How OP it is and how it's going to minimize even the most challenging Encounters.
But let me illustrate some further Flaws in your example of that Dragon. With that Basic Damage the Fighter will Die in 5 turns, we're both in agreement here. But it's not only the Fighter that will die in 5 turns if the Dragon decides not to just focus blitz the fighter with attacks but instead focus on two members of the party instead. Whatever gets hit by the legendary tail attacks from the Dragon that is likely going to be squishier than the Fighter. this second target is also going to be dead in 5 turns.
But let's do more than just make claims. Let's look at some numbers to support them. That particular dragon has 546 HP. To beat it in 5 turns you need to do basically 110 damage a turn (using easy rounding). At a 22AC Your looking at the Typical 65% chance of hitting at +14. So what ever damage you do basically in basic math, Cut that down to 65% of that number. that's what your actually gonna do in average numbers closer to real play.
So that Fighter. Let's give it a d12 weapon that is magical at +3, and GWM and of course it's strength is going to be maxed. So your looking at 24 Damage a hit. Attacking 4 times a turn this means 96 damage average. Let's not Forget a subclass and ay it's gone Battle Master. So we should add an average of 6 damage to a total of 6 hits to represent the 6 d12 superiority dice it would have. So for your first turn let's 24 damage giving us 120. The turn after that it's going to be 108 for the last 2 dice added in. Then it's going to be 96 For the Last 3 turns. Except these numbers need changed to reflect only hitting 65% of the Time. the Fighter is actually only averaging 78 Damage that first turn, 70.2 on that second turn, and 62.4 on the 3 turns following that.
Except that there is an issue and I need to make a correction to myself here. Thanks to GWM your actually still -2 on your to hit for a total of +12. So it's actually at 55% So let me correct the math. The Fighter is actually going to be doing 66 average damage on the first turn, 59.4 average damage on the second turn, and 52.8 average damage on the 3 after that. We haven't used either Action Surge Yet. Let's also use those on the first two turns to maximize their value. So that would be 132 average damage on the first turn, and 118.8 average damage on the second turn, With the next 3 still being 52.8 average damage. So in total for the 5 turns. The Fighter managed 409.2 average damage on the dragon. Not nearly so solo'd as it appeared in the end.
But wait. It's worse than that. The Fighter is still not getting one of those THP's thanks to Frightful Presence on the Fighter. And likely at least one other party member. If the Dragon chooses these two to beat on. They are downed in 4 rounds. Not 5. Because they go down faster in that particular turn. Likely the first or second turn of the fight. This means that if the Twilight Cleric is going to just mass healing word the both of them to their feet again. the 5th round is going to put so many failed death saves on both of them to put them back in the ground to make sure that they are dead unless the Dragon is deliberately made not to do the smart thing by the DM. But it also means that the Damage done by the fighter is about 53 damage less for a total of roughly 356 from the Fighter. This leaves the Fightrs Efforts about 190 damage short on it's attacks, though the Dragon is at least looking pretty rough.
But there is still an issue that if it plays out like this in a real game for some reason, not just one character dead but two characters completely dead, and the dragon didn't take as much damage with a single character but at the same time Few things can Burst like a Max Level Fighter with it's sheer number of attacks in a short period. you Still need something, or a combination of somethings that can output the necessary average damage to do at basically 50 damage a turn to finish it off. Against an Enemy that Whack a Mole shouldn't work to make up the difference unless the DM is letting the party win... And they probably shouldn't be doing that if your game has really gone to this tier of play. And this is Just from brute force Physical attacks from this Powerful Dragon.
This doesn't make a very good defense about how OP Twilight Sanctuary is.
And that's the reality of it. Unless the DM is playing all your enemies in the dumbest ways possible and spreading out the damage absolutely as far as they can. Twilight Domain and Twilight Sanctuary does not give what is advertised by the claims of OP and that's entirely my problem with this fad of adamantly calling it such. Further, In Groups that are over powered for the power curve at low level then It's not Twilight Sanctuary that is making Twilight Sanctuary seem so strong. It's the over powered Characters that people are min-maxing and using that are making Twilight Sanctuary appear to be so strong. But these characters often aren't going to be significantly threatened even without it.
The White Room Math that everybody uses to Justify Twilight Sanctuary show's the cracks at most levels with even the tiniest change of tactics by the DM. Not Extra Work. Not Stronger Enemies. Not Adjustments to power levels just because of Twilight Sanctuary. Just simply giving the enemies some reasonable level of intelligence. Too many DM's have been playing monsters way too dumb for a variety of innocent and not so innocent reasons for far too long, That it has caused people to think it's the norm and base entire Theories about characters around it.
And when we get into low CR hordes... Unless they are so far below your level that they are more of a nuisance than a resource drain or any kind of actual threat. They have action economy. Even if they only hit half the time there is usually enough of them that they are still going to overwhelm the amount of protection Twilight Sanctuary is giving. Hordes are an easy way to break it and still threaten lots of party members. Focus fire let's you break it and only threaten a couple.
STanding in the center and body blocking the cleric doesn't work. You'd need 8 people to do that. Since most parties are 3/4 that at the outside maximum and are recommended to be half that. it's not a practical tactic. Even if you slow the horde down. Spiritual Guardians is a tactic any Cleric can use. And the Twilight Cleric doesn't do anything to make it more effective. it always has some use against weaker horde's. specially at lower level. But the threat of the horde has never been in them being hardy, or even having the best chance of hitting you. It's always been the overwhelming action economy. Twilight Sanctuary doesn't fix the overwhelming action economy. That horde is always goign to hit often enough for just enough damage to be a threat despite twilight sanctuary (because any one single hit is never the point to begin with and Twilight sanctuary is often a single hit) Or they are so weak that they were never a real threat no matter how many times they swing at you because they will rarely actually hit you. and that doesn't change with Twilight Sanctuary either. Because again. any one hit from a horde doesn't really matter and all they were ever doing when that weak is effectively any one hit.
Many DM's are afraid of hordes because they are always either one or the other. And because they don't use them often Most DM's worry that they've gone to far with their horde when it's meant to be a threat because a bunch of attacks will get through. Twilight Sanctuary actually makes hordes less stressful and easier to use for most DM's. Even while it doesn't change which way the horde is going to be much because it makes the difference between beating the party nearly to death with a horde and all the way to death with a horde just a little bit bigger. This can make it easier to Handle for DM's that haven't mastered that craft yet (usually by accidentally nearly or actually TPK'ing a few parties in trial and error).
And that really leads me to a point that I've been making repeatedly against claims about twilight Sanctuary at all levels. The Average Damage is not below that which Twilight Sanctuary Creates. There are individual creatures that might have trouble making it. But for the most part the damage that the monsters do at any given CR is a bit higher than what Twilight Sanctuary is going to give. Even at CR 2. One of the Best gains from Twilight Sanctuary your going to get thanks to the variable dice roll. Your still going to average 3 on the dice. Add to to that your 2nd level and you get 5 total THP. With a lot of the CR 2 monsters sporting a +5 to hit against the 15 to 16 AC being standard on several classes. But a lot of their damage averages close to about 10 damage each time they actually do hit you if I'm remembering the numbers correctly right now, it's been a while. Their average damage overall is lower because they are looking at about a 50% hit rate. But multi-attack creatures are increasingly showing up at level 2. Luckily most of them are still doing lesser damage per hit and aren't sporting the greatest attack bonuses yet. it makes them a little less dangerous on the armored party members and tanks. Taking 5 damage instead of 10 damage on a single hit is not bad. But at the same time. Let's look at the health of characters. Several classes are d8 hit die so we're talking 13hp before con bonuses. While Taking 3 hits instead of 2 before you drop dead is no small feat. There are a bunch of ways to achieve a similar result because of the average damage you take. For those classes that can wear a shield that can do it. For those that can somehow inflict disadvantage that will do it as well. Healing will also obviously do it and even basic healing spells are massively effective at these kinds of starting levels. Some of these kinds of things cost resources. Some of them don't. So it's going to depend on each characters situation as to the cost benefit. Even for the cleric themselves. But as you go up in CR. Twilight Sanctuary starts slowly losing ground on how much it's protecting. The Higher characters get, the less Twilight Sanctuary protects despite it's level scaling.
yes. Twilight Sanctuary is doing something. But it is not doing everything. It's not even doing close to everything.
Even with the Barbarian it's not everything. The Barbarian's abilities are actually doing the heavy lifting. 11 THP turning into 22 for the Barbarian sounds nice. But the Barbarian is looking at a Max non-raging HP Somewhere in the range of 120HP at level 10 if that's the example we want to go with, but for any damage they can soak up with resistances by raging they are Rocking what is effectively 240HP in simple parlance, though it's technically wrong mechanically. They are Beefy monsters regardless. It's a large part of what they do. Multi attack is everywhere. usually in an average total damage range of 30 damage or so and attack modifiers of +9. But even more than that. It's still the Barbarian making most of the damage ineffective. It's nice to say it's effectively 22 damage blocked for the barbarian because of the way they talk about them. It's an easy way to picture things. But the truth is. It's not 22 damage blocked for the Barbarian. The Barbarian is going to block the bulk of the damage. And then the THP is going to take from what is left. The Barbarian is what is blocking the Majority of the Damage and making Twlight Sanctuary look like it's blocking more. But it's still just 11 damage ultimately. The other 15 that the Barbarian doesn't take when Raging is because of their own abilities. As the Damage increases. The damage that isn't taken by the Barbarian increases. But the 11 is always just 11. Even when the Barbarian is not raging it's also just 11.
Twilight Sanctuary on the Barbarian really kind of highlights something about THP now that I'm focused on it. And that's the core of what it does. Preventing damage. THP is extremely set. It's single use universal protection however. Being Set and being one time use are it's trade off for working on any kind of damage in a universal fashion. Resistance is more limited in the type of damage that it can affect. But it's highly dynamic. The Barbarian taking 10 Bludgeoning damage while Raging may only lose 5 health. But on the Very Next Attack it could just as easily block 100. Or it could block multiple attacks in a row. Whether it's 20 damage from a single attack or it's that 110 that the Ancient Gold Dragon can do in focused physical attacks. It still works. It's always going to cut it in half as long as it applies.
Let me Demonstrate what I mean. Let's take that same Adult Gold Dragon going all out with PHysical attacks. It could kill that fighter in 2 turns without protections. Without raging it would take not quite 3 rounds to down the Barbarian without rage because it would have about 280 health. Then just by Raging the Barbarian suddenly halves all that physical damage. All of a sudden. Those 3 rounds to kill the Barbarian are now a full 5 rounds to just barely do enough damage. That's if it's going all out on physical damage. If we ignore it's legendary action damage and such by assuming they target a second party member. Since it's damage is now about 60 a turn. It's going to take the Dragon 5 turns to down the barbarian without it's rage. However, It's going to take it 10 rounds to down the barbarian once it is raging and it's resistances apply.
Resistance is a self adjusting potential monster of an ability. And it makes any other kind of damage mitigation look a whole lot better when paired with it. In the Example of the Barbarian taking 30 damage at level 10 with 11THP. that 11 THP looks huge when you only look at the damage that the Resistance didn't block, but it's still only protecting against about 35% of the damage. The other 50% of the 85% total blocked by that Barbarian that has both is because of it's Resistance. if something did mass Resistances That is what would be OP. That would be worthy of all the Hype that Twilight Domain and Twilight Sanctuary gets now.
Fateless, your arguments are all over the place.
First of all, Twilight Sanctuary scales absurdly well, as not only is the temporary HP based on your full class level, it also has a wide area and more uses at higher level. It's equivalent to multiple free castings of bestowable ranged False Life upon every party member every single turn of a big fight, or multiple fights over an adventuring day. It can add up to a massive amount of damage reduction, meaning less healing required by the party and very likely more rounds out of party members that might otherwise go down (so resources saved and/or more damage dealt). It works against every damage type regardless of being an attack roll or a save.
Even when you're talking 60-70 damage dragon attacks it's a potentially 10-25% damage reduction regardless of attack and damage type and for the entire party; Barbarian Rage might be "better", but it only applies to certain damage types, for a single character and also stacks with Twilight Sanctuary (effectively doubling the amount of damage ignored each turn due to the sanctuary). At 10th level against dragon's breath covering the whole party you could be talking 70-ish damage ignored, or 700 over a full ten rounds; while unlikely, that'd be equivalent to a free 9th level Mass Heal!
Compare it to just about any other temporary HP effect and it's enormously OP; most temporary HP abilities add only a handful of points (Heroism adds only 2-5 and takes a 5th level slot to affect five creatures, Twilight Sanctuary will outperform that from 2nd level (5.5 temp. HP average) at a fraction of the cost, and can also end charmed or frightened just not at the same time). People always dunk on Heavy Armor Master as not scaling well, but in practice it scales fine (less damage is less damage, no matter the level) but with Twilight Sanctuary a feat that was arguably fine now seems pathetically bad by comparison as the amount of damage reduction Twilight Sanctuary gives is multiple orders of magnitude better affecting all sources of damage.
Firstly by reducing the turns spent casting healing instead, or turns where party members are down. But also secondly because it can so reliably trigger or counter a lot of darkness (or rather, dimness) based abilities, of which the game has quite a few, such as Sunlight Sensitivity, advantage on Shadow Blade and so-on. For a "power gamer" party, a Twilight cleric could easily enough you to build a party that can take a lot of punishment, throw in an Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight and a Bladesinger each with Shadow Blade and it could get silly how much more difficult the DM will need to make things.
The power creep on Twilight Domain isn't just undervaluing other cleric domains, it's undervaluing an entire category of damage reducing abilities, and why? Because it's not quite dark and not quite light? It doesn't even fit the theme in any way! It's an OP ability just thrown in seemingly at random and left as-is despite people complaining about the UA version.
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Yes. it looks good compared to any other THP effect.
But that's not hard. Most THP effects suck. They are either not worth the resource cost to do them. Or they require set up to make them work. And then they are gone within a turn or two most of the time once battle starts unless your not taking damage and then they are doing nothing.
A Better THP doesn't Make it OP. It makes it a worthwhile THP. The Rest of the THP's usually aren't worthwhile under most circumstances. They may exist and some people do a lot to try and make use of them. But they aren't. The biggest use of False life is when it's cost is spell slot free. Or with somebody trying to pull something with pre-combat setup.
I've shown multiple comparsions and you tell me I'm all over in my argument. I'm not actually all over. it all comes down to the same thing. All these different ways that you get effectively something similar but under different circumstances in various parts of the game.
Sure it stops a bit of Damage. But at the Same time. A Heal Spell can Reset that Same damage. Higher AC can avoid that same Damage even though it's not readily noticeable, but people innately understand this enough that There have been attempts to get the highest static and Spike AC since the Game Started.
People Dunk on Heavy Armor Master because they often ignore the fact that it works on every single hit. And Most People don't Realize how many things don't Have Magical Physical Attacks even at higher Level. Everybody runs on this base Assumption that after level 6 everything is hitting you with a Magical weapon of some kind. But it could easily end up saving Tons of HP for those that have it every turn. Take that Ancient Gold Dragon, just to stick with a Creature we've already talked about it's abilities. Heavy Armor Master works against that Ancient Gold Dragon. It's Melee Attacks are not marked as Magical in any way. So under that concentrated attack. Heavy Armor Master can save our fighter that would die in a couple rounds 18 damage a round. Heavy Armor Master saves that Fighter 36 HP in those Two Rounds. More than enough to make up for the Round lost due to failing the Frightful Presence Roll.
On the Other Hand. Heavy Armor Master doesn't work on the CR 20 Pit Lord. And for a very special reason. It has a special ability. "Magic Weapons. The pit fiend's weapon attacks are magical." This one magical Ability is not the most common. But it's the Difference for Heavy Armor Master. And without it Heavy Armor Master is useful at high level and not just low Level.
With the Number of Creatures that Make 3 and 4 attacks a turn at high Levels or even 2 or 3 attacks at Lower Levels. Just flip through the Monster Manual some time and look at all the creatures that do slashing, bludgeoning, or Piercing but either do not have some kind of magical weapon attached or do not have a special ability that makes their natural attacks magical weapons some time. People Scoff at the nonmagical part of Heavy Armor Master not realizing that it's good for most of the game. You'll find plenty of situations where conceivably this will block 6, 9, or even 12 Damage from just a single creature, It doesn't need some kind of theoretical could effect covering the party or enemies spreading out, It just needs an enemy to do what it's trying to do anyway, hit the person who has it. Sure. Again it's protecting a single person but it's infinitely re-usable. Twilight Sanctuary is used once a turn at best, but for multiple people. And Heavy Armor Master is completely action economy free though it does cost you an ASI to get it, so it's not cost free. And it Still Stacks with everything else you might get. If your Not going to replan every encounter because a member of the party has Heavy Armor Master. Why do so for Twilight Sanctuary?
So Yes. Heavy Armor gets dunked on. But it gets dunked on because of bad assumptions based upon perceptions of the game.
Twilight Sanctuary is lifted up because of Perceptions about the game. And Again. I am not arguing that it's somehow not useful. But it is not even close to game breakingly useful. It's finally a THP ability that is at least doing something noticeable. We've needed this since the start of the game. The only thing that we've had that even came close is a Feat that takes 10 minutes to set up.
With the level 10 dragon. You claim that you could block 70 Hp. But a max roll on twilight sanctuary at level 10 is only going to do 16 per person. If it's a 4 person party your looking at 64 damage total blocked. If we go for the average per person of 13 for that level. your looking at 52 damage blocked. In a 5 person party if that's what you mean you could block 70 damage but the average is 65. But let's look at it a little closer because we can just as easily stack the numbers the other way. The Two CR 10 Dragons are the Red and the Gold and they both do 55 or 56 Average with their Breath Weapon, Ignoring Saves for the Moment, Each Party member has Taken at minimum 39-40 damage, and at average 42-43 Damage per person. In a 4 person party your looking at 156-160 damage minimum to your party with an average of 168-172 Damage to your party After Twilight Sanctuary has done it's thing. In a 5 person party the numbers move up to 195-200 minimum, and 210-215 Average Damage to your whole Party (this is a ton of damage that still needs healed anyway, this is still effectively at least one and likely 2 or more 5th level healing spells to remove). Your Blocking 1/4 of the Total Damage from the breath weapon. You can block that much just by one person not being in range of the breath weapon. Or the Rogue succeeding on the dex save to take no damage from having Evasion. But then If the Rogue's Evasion does it's job and avoids the Damage. The Rogue is blocking a Quarter of the Damage and the THP from Twilight Sanctuary on them is doing nothing. So your actually blocking less damage thanks to twilight Sanctuary. It's not bad in a tight area where you can't spread out. Or if you got breathed on by surprise and you had it up. I'm not saying that it's not even though everybody is acting like I am. Blocking the Damage is not bad. But in your average fight against a dragon. Why are you set up so the Dragon can hit all of you in the first place instead of spread out where it can only hit two or maybe 3 of you at most? Sure the Twilight Sanctuary helps the 2 or 3 that get hit. But so Does many other things.
Even when these things are stackable, Like say Twilight Sanctuary and Resistance. That doesn't make both Twilight Sanctuary and Resistance Standalone OP. it just makes for a strong combination.
As for Shadow Blade. You don't really have to adjust for Shadow Blade. Sure it's damage is a little nicer thanks to the 2d8. But the Advantage is not that special. There are so many ways to get Advantage that it's not even funny. Advantage is Excellent, don't get me wrong on that point, But it's mundane and built into the game. And Darkness isn't the only way to inflict disadvantage. Why do you need to retool just for advantage? if you've been playing with anything like kobolds in the party or allowing Flanking Rules or just even have a Barbarian (Wolf Totem level 3 makes allies get Advantage against any hostile target within 5 feet of the raging barbarian). This has already existed in your game all along. It's not anything we haven't seen or is particularly revolutionary because most of these things already work in a vast array of situations. There is nothing here that Twilight Sanctuary particularly adds to the table in regards to advantage so why replan for this possibility if your not going to replan for all of the others?
The Power Creep that you all argue for. Isn't really there. While there are some things that are unique. And good for Being Unique. It's still within the same power level of stuff that has existed since the PHB. We're just seeing it done in a different way for once, that's all. Not even the Dark Vision thing is that unique. is it an unusually large range and group effective? yes it is, But at the same time it has a rediculously short duration so it's basically only battle useful. And there are other abilities already in the game from earlier books that thwart it. This ability is another one that is just severely over rated but it's not talked about nearly as much as Twilight Sanctuary. And that might be because that despite seemingly amazing people are innately aware of it's flaws.
People may have complained about Twilight Sanctaury In UA. But you have to remember that Wizards was also running tests on it and comparing it to different things and ways it could be used. Not everything that the players complain for or complain about or demand they want from UA materials is actually what they claim them to be when they complain. Many of the Things that Players Talk about wanting to Keep from UA's actually are Overpowered, and then we see all kinds of complaints for quite a while about how it was nerfed. Even though they know most UA abilities are going to be nerfed anyway and many of them actually require it before they can see official publication. So why is it so hard to believe that an Ability that they complained about being too much not actually being to the level that they say and actually being more balanced than claimed? It's also an interesting phenomenon that most things that they don't want nerfed from UA's is almost always offensive in power. But the things that they complain should be nerfed is something defensive.
It's not "a bit of damage" it's literally most of the damage for a CR leveled creature for early levels.
And the THP can be above your total HP and stacks with all this stuff you keep mentioning for basically free.
it's not most of the Damage. It's best is at level 2. And For the most part your looking at it doing half... in the levels where it doesn't take a lot of hits to kill you anyway... and it goes down from there... Even at Max Level the best that it can really hope to do is to block a third.
And it doesn't matter that THP can be above your max Total HP. it's not actual Hp. It's name is a Trick. And Stacking isn't special. That's my point. And your Claims of Free aren't so free are they. It comes with all kinds of rules, That you conveniently want to ignore or downplay all of the time. While making other aspects more than they are. Despite the fact thta other abilities do as much as more on their own. Or also stacked together.
Let's take that dragon at Level 10 once again. And let's look at a rogue. The Rogue would have to fail it's best save and it would still take half damage... This is still stackable with fire resistance to basically make it a quarter damage. So we're now down to 12 damage done to the rogue for that breath weapon. Sure that Is Damage that Twilight Sanctuary can cover, but only after all of those other things, and it's still only as good at best as the Rogue avoiding it in the first place or simply not being in the path of the fire breath to begin with, Which are both also Free by the way you want to define free when it comes to the Rogue. So your Ability at it's best for this character is doing what it's own abilities are likely to do anyway but only stacked with other abilities. Or I could Ignore Twilight Sanctuary... Get basically the same protections in most scenario's and flank the dragon giving myself advantage to ensure my sneak attack and a more likely chance to hit and grant the Flanking bonus to the Tank standing in front of the Dragon trying to keep it's attention as well. Since I'm basically getting the same protection either way. It's just one is already built into my sheet or built in to the positioning. And the other puts a little number on my sheet to keep track of to get the same thing. Because if I'm behind the dragon not caring about Twilight Sanctuary and the Dragon does turn around to use it's breath weapon on me. Guess what? By Shere positioning alone. I just blocked all damage for my other party members, And I still have a chance of taking no damage from it and at worst take half damage. 25 damage is a great price if it means the rest of the party isn't taking even 35 damage.
For That matter. Even 50 damage on just one party member is better than over 100 collectively on the whole party, let alone the potential for 150 or 200.
A friend of mine who is a self-described "power gamer" had to put his Twilight Cleric away after a few sessions. He admitted that it was too OP even for him.
When False Life's spell slot is free it's only casting at 1st level which is pointless, because it so quickly becomes irrelevant. I use it on a sorcerer but I tend to cast it around 4th level because 20+ temporary HP is a decent buffer to put up ahead of a possible fight (and it lasts an hour so it's usually a safe bet it'll get used).
Twilight Sanctuary adds around the same temporary HP every round for the entire party for "free". While it occasionally lags by a few points depending upon exact levels, it's massively, massively stronger.
You're missing the entire point; with Twilight Sanctuary you don't need to spend slots to heal to get the same damage reduction, you just need to activate what it easily the most OP channel divinity ability in the game. And higher AC isn't comparable because it isn't mutually exclusive with this ability; if you have the means to bolster your AC then you can have both.
This is the only part of your wall of text that matters here; 25% of the dragon's breath weapon is basically granting half resistance to the entire party against all damage types. And you don't think that's powerful? Not one of the channel divinity powers comes even close to that kind of utility except in very niche cases (e.g- facing undead Turn Undead is better, but guess what, Twilight Domain gets that the same as every other cleric). Even accounting for varying scenarios (more, weaker enemies vs. one larger one etc.) there is very little that this doesn't provide solid protection against, and it stacks with a lot of other defensive abilities; so it's rarely just 25%, it's 25% (per round) on top of the Barbarian's Rage, the Rogue's Uncanny Dodge etc.
Yes you could reduce the damage more by not being hit, but that's not always up to you, is it? It's a massive amount of damage reduction potential; even if we accepted your premise that THP abilities are too weak (which I don't btw, I think they're about right as it's a buffer against any damage and the game is purposefully weighted in favour of damage dealing) Twilight Sanctuary isn't just a bit better, it's hands down the strongest THP ability in 5th edition without contest, and it's granted at 2nd level as a short rest class feature with fantastic scaling. Even with less extreme damage taken it outshines most healing spells, can alternately remove two of the most common (and most debilitating to party damage) conditions and can increase party damage both by doing these things and by easily triggering other abilities. Plus the one big monster example is misleading, as against multiple enemies you're even more likely to see the whole party taking damage (as they go for different members) thus getting more value out of the party wide damage reduction.
I don't know why you're bending over backwards to defend something that is so objectively OP; it makes a mockery of the unique channel divinity of every other domain because not one of them even comes close to comparing. It allows the Twilight Domain to offset similar damage to Life Domain at effectively zero cost (whereas Life Domain has to burn slots and action economy just to compete, which means also reducing their own damage dealt), can function as a big force multiplier, and doesn't even remotely fit the theme of twilight. On the topic of the Life Cleric let's compare to their channel divinity (divide up 5x Cleric level HP); they can restore a maximum of 100 at level 20, but Twilight Sanctuary can be preventing that much damage every single turn if the whole party are taking damage, or that much over a single turn if the enemy pick on one party member.
A strong channel divinity wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the domain were weaker to compensate but it's not; it's a solid domain without the channel divinity. You could split the THP, anti-fear/charm and dim light features into three separate channel divinities and they'd still be among the better options among all the domains. Give them just the area of dim light divinity and it might be more balanced, as it would make sense for the class and requires some buy-in from the party to become the force multiplier that it can be. Instead we've got three solid (some arguably too solid) effects in a large area all rolled into one, it's objectively OP no matter how you spin it.
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Level 10? Sure let's look at that....
Encounter:
1 Balhannoth
2 Chokers
1 Chuul
For 4 level 10 PCs this is a Deadly encounter with 14k+ experience points.
Together these creatures are putting out roughly 87 damage per turn or slightly more on future turns with the ADV from restrained.
The level 10 Twilight Cleric is offsetting 13.5 damage per character per turn or 54 damage in total.
So 62% of this encounters damage is mitigatied per turn with a single action that requires no concentration or action to apply each turn
Please explain how any other CD even comes close to this
On something that got 300 ft darkvision (and handed it to others), concentrationless fly speed, full weapon and armor proficiency, advantage on initiative (or gave it to someone else), and can end one charmed/frightened condition with no concentration or action.
In my view twilight sanctuary could last for a single turn (which would be normal for most channel divinities) and the domain would still be overpowered.
The Chuul does 22 damage over 2 hits with automatic grapples. But more importantly it inflicts a paralyzed condition for a minute with only one save attached to it. Luckily that's only a 13 Con Save so it's not terribly high for a CR 10 creature. But that Attack that Paralyze (that is poison based) as part of it's multiattack any time it has a person grappled. But then this is also a CR 4 creature. It's only purpose for being stuck into the group is to attempt to inflict status effects. Of Important note for this creature specifically is that if the Twilight Cleric Gets Paralyzed. Twilight Sanctuary immediately ends. So hope it doesn't happen in the first turn. But considering it's only at a +6 to attack thanks to it's lower CR. It's only going to maybe land 1 attack on average on the party a turn and then attempt the Paralyzing attack.
The Two Choker's are an overly weak example and are CR 1's. Your going to kill these two in a single turn and they are unlikely to hurt you unless your already paralyzed So you can practically ignore that these things existed as anything other than minor damage sponges because there is little chance for them to even hit you otherwise (and even if they did it's for a laughable 5 damage), they are non-threats. These are basically smoke screen monsters added in so that you can make claims of all 4 members of the party be hit. They don't even alter the Danger Level of the Encounter if you remove them.
The Only Particular threat to the level 10 party is the Balhonnoth at CR 11. This is most of the Danger level in the fight to begin with considering that it's 1 CR higher than the party level and so to a normal power leveled Party that is not min-maxed this is a (technically) Medium on the borderline of Hard encounter on it's own. This is the Only Heavy Hitter in the party and it's doing the Bulk of the Damage. Doing either 3 attacks or 4 attacks. It either Does a bite (25 damage) and 2 tentacle attacks (10 damage each) For a total of 45 Damage, Or it does 4 tentacle attacks equaling about 40 damage. Something to note is that each tentacle has an automatic grapple with a DC 15 escape, But also as long as something is grappled it cannot make any tentacle attacks. This creature also has 3 Legendary Actions. 1 bite on a Grappled target, A Teleport at a distance of 60 feet. Or an Invisibility that breaks only after it makes an attack roll. If it were to make 3 Bite Attacks on Grappled opponents with it's legendary actions. That's an additional 75 Damage.
So this encounter doesn't really do 87 damage. it's Star Creature actually breaks this number being in the vicinity of 115 to 120 Damage a Turn on it's own under decent conditions. Then you can add on whatever the others manage to do. If the Chuul lands 1 attack a turn your looking at 130.
So the only thing likely to hit all 4 members in a turn is the Balhonnoth, and even assuming that the Chuul attacks, I'll even give you the supposed technical math of the .5's for 54. Your still not doing 67% of the damage of this turn under realistic conditions. your Looking at 41% of the Damage, and two joke mobs that aren't contributing to make it any less than that.
But Nice Cherry Picking of Monsters you got going on there to make it seem like a lot more than it actually is. Did you pull it out of a Module?
(For a note for those that are wondering. 2 chokers are a trivial And the 2 chokers and the Chuul are Easy. They only Do a bunch of boosting to the Difficulty rating of the Balhonnoth because they are adding numbers to the party over their actual threat capability themselves. The Encounter System for 5e does give weight to numbers and not just the power strenght of monsters themselves. Even with weighting for numbers. it still takes 6 chokers to even make an Easy encounter for a level 10 party. And it takes 3 Chuul's to make a Medium encounter. Also 2 Chuul's and the Balhonnoth would make a deadly encounter as well and a more effective one despite having less creatures in it. But then your basically guaranteeing higher damage and a higher likelihood that somebody gets paralyzed even at a DC 13 Con Save).
Your numbers make no sense and you do not even explain how you get them? You just arbitrary add 50 points of damage from nowhere.
Also of ******* course the chokers aren't the big bad in this encounter they are minions. That's how higher level encounters work.... You have one big CR opponent and fill in with minions.
And guess what... You can add THP to the paralyzed PCs for free... So basically reducing the threat from the auto crits. Even if they happen.
I was giving a purposefully high damage encounter with multiple hits that fits your own discussion points.
The fact remains you offset 54 points of damage a turn which even with your fudged numbers is roughly half of the damage still lol
It doesn't just Lag behind by a few points to your False Life Casting at 4th level. It lags behind by more than a level of casting. it only does 20+ hp with Twilight Sanctuary at an average Level 17+. But when you get that 4th level magic if you choose to use False Life at that casting which is level 9. Twilight Sanctuary is managing 12 HP on each person. And only looks spectacular if you have something like a fireball happen.
Also No. 25% of the damage is not like half damage on all targets. It's 25% of the damage. It's 1/4 damage on all targets. it's not even close to 1/2 resistance to all damage types. if it did that then i'd consider it OP. your Basically claiming that I'm right and then turning that into a false statement of double that effectiveness. Which still doesn't deal with the issue that you got the same effectiveness with the positioning of 1 character doing what it's going to do anyway.
I'm also not missing the Point of Twilight Sanctuary... Your over stating it's point. Let me ask you this in factual Reality. Your making claims of it saves Healing. What are you saving healing for? So that you can heal in other fights? Or So that you can Cast Other Spells? If your Doing it in easy fights and then you use up those resources before you get to the big fight. All you've saved yourself is the ability to hit more. Not to fight back. If your Using it in the Big Fight to save healing against a major threat instead of the small fights? Then you've already either trivialized or had to heal in the small fights. And Saving healing in the Big fight might let you hit that BBEG more. But it's not really saving you resources because the point of those REsources are to fight the Big Fight. And AFter the big Fight you can rest. Which allows you to use a resource that's absolutely only purpose is healing in the form of Hit Dice. And the big Bad Guys are doing so much damage at the upper levels your still going to have to heal Or your going to die anyway in the fight with the BBEG. your just going to do it a bit slower. Which can be accomplished in all kinds of ways. Not just by Twilight Sanctuary on the party.
And Again. THP is fairly weak. It may work against all damage. But that also means that it's used up really fast usually with no way to replenish it. Even if you give yourself 20THP at level 9. When the Creatures can do 30 damage to you. That's wiped away in a round and you've still taken damage. It's nice to say that it saved you for a round. But it saved you for a round for what? Some more Offensive Capability, Because that's not guaranteed because many classes have first round setups that they go through. Nice to have protection for your setup. But it's a round where some might be actually taking damage while not putting much out. The Game actually has a fairly decent defensive multi-structure too it. It just get's ignored way too much (kind of like enemies in too many games doing anything particularly intelligent gets ignored). People Overpower their characters for Offense, Way above the Ability curve, Ignore any of the Defense that isn't dead obvious like certain abilities or high AC. And then claim everything is weighted to Offense. Start Having Enemies they fight be more tactical and even use a bit of Defense, Or have strategically placed healers of their own. And Defense becomes a whole different ball game for PC's. They start learning all the avoidance tactics and battlefield control and Defensive Stacking that is really in the game that Twilight Sanctuary is just another decent piece of.
Take That Rogue and it's uncanny Dodge. An Attack Comes in and the Rogue Halves the damage with Uncanny dodge. Then you stack in the Twilight Sanctuary. The Rogue takes almost no damage. But what's the Rogue going to do for the next attack that turn? It might have managed to avoid one hit But it has nothing against hit 2, or hit 3, or hit 4. It has slightly more hp but has found itself in the same tight spot it would have been in even if Twilight Sanctuary wasn't a thing. it's best Option if it could make it still would have been to Disengage and not be there to hit in the first place. And then Uncanny dodge if something does manage to chase after it, and then maybe Twilight Sanctuary could kick in. But the Rogue has still blocked more damage for itself than Twilight Sanctuary has. All for just a couple of infinitely reusable action economy actions. That they still have available next turn. Regardless of positioning. For Twilight Sanctuary to be of benefit next turn it has to end it's turn inside Twilight Santuary. This means no going and hunting down ideal positioning or Running away from the party to make itself less of a target unless that spot just happens to be in Twilight Sanctuary. This could mean reduced Effectiveness in protecting itself, or it could mean reduced effectiveness in damage. And that's only if it' in melee. What does it do if it's ranged? If it's staying as close to that 80' mark where it's finding good hiding spots to hide every turn so it can sneak attack ranged. Either the Front line or the Rogue are going to be out of position of Twilight Sanctuary. This is a bog standard tactic for most ranged characters, With some going even farther back if they have any capability to do so.
Everybody talks like Every ideal Play and Every Party Member is going to be in the bubble range of twilight Sanctuary and take just thta sweet spot of damage where your using every point without getting a lot of bleedover onto their actual hp, but a lot of tactics talked about in these boards don't really fit that. But that's the excuse for how OP and how much damage it protects and how powerful and repeatedly useful it is.
And this is what your not getting. You accuse me of not understanding the ability and all it does but To Work to spec, it basically needs an entire group to play into it and to ignore other possible more advantageous strategies to get things done AND be playing against bog standard unthinking enemies attacking all party members just about evenly at all times that also play into twilight Sanctuary. Even Dungeon and other Map layouts have to play out in the favor of Twilight Sanctuary. When the Entire Game has to play into Twilight Sanctuary to give it the full functionality that people claim it has. How OP is it really? Because if Everything is going to this length to make it work, Then it certainly better work well if it's any good at all.
It's like the Group with the Balhannoth that I just talked about in this same Thread. It's made to sound like it's breaking a deadly encounter, But for level 10's it's really only an Encounter against 1 or maybe 2 monsters, and only one of them is very damaging. The other's threat is more in disabling the entire party than it is actually hurting anything. But it's portrayed as a group of 4 that the group should be worried about taking on to make Twilight Sanctuary look good. What are you going to do? Have your entire party rush the one real threat in the fight just to occupy all of it's tentacles so that it can't make attacks with them because it's too busy grappling and rely on the DM to play ball and bite each of your party members once a turn with reduced damage from the lack of tentacle attacks just so Twilight Sanctuary looks good? Or Are your Ranged still going to stay Ranged and make Twilight Sanctuary redundant while the front line gets in the danger zone for increased Party Effectiveness but reduced Twilight Sanctuary Effectiveness? The Choice is yours. But if you choose the second one just keep in mind that 41% number I quoted earlier... Becomes more like 20%. In a Game where things like the Bear Totem Barbarian Exists and gets 50% on 90-95% of the damage in the game on it's own anyway. Give that Barbarian immunity to poison from Gear, some ability to dash and attack, and the ability to see invisible. And that Entire Encounter is basically made a joke just by said Barbarian existing. it suddenly becomes the Balhannoth that has to extend the fight and hope to change the tides as much as possible by going invisible or teleporting around hoping to stay out of the Barbarians reach. even with it's Lair actions in play which is more teleporting and a different version of turning invisible until it attacks, but this one entirely single target based.
again. it's general purpose. it's not bad. it does something that THP has needed for a long time. Even your example of casting it at 4th level shows weaknesses in sources of THP, and you mention it lasting for an Hour so you set it up before hand. Great if you can be sure to have combat in that hour. Decent if you want to spend a turn casting it in combat to have protection for only a turn. But then when that turn runs out?
Twilight Sanctuary would be much more threatening and more power creep in nature if it did more, Or if THP stacked on top of itself so that even when a person didn't get hit you were still outputting the THP that most people try to claim it does when talking about how OP it is so that you need to hit every person on every turn just to keep the THP under control. That would require battle redesigns and a lot of extra work from any DM's. Even DM's that already play their enemies smart and have parties that stack defenses quite a bit.
Edit: I'd also like to point out. Frightened is hardly the most debilitating of conditions. being Charmed is somewhat of a problem but Frightened for most versions of it in 5e just makes you stand there and not approach. If it moves away from something like a paladin or Barbarian this could be annoying but it doesn't even stop your actions so there are often still things you can do, specially if the enemy hasn't moved away from you after you've closed on it. But there are lots of ways to remove it, Twilight Sanctuary is just another one. Stunned and Paralyzed are just two abilities that are way more debilitating than Frightened is, and both have the potential to last for quite a while. Sometimes without additional saves, Or with alternate inflicting conditions such as being a status inflicted by a poison or the like. On top of that ways to remove them are also much more rare and usually higher level to boot. Frightened is annoying but not usually deadly, the other two are potentially deadly if they last for long or hit you at a bad time.
Also At this point I have to ask. people have claimed objectivity that isn't there a couple times. Why do you all have to bend over backwards to such a Degree to make Twlight Sanctuary Subjectively OP? Why is there this need to over state and over theory craft what it does to the points that people do? Various people did the same thing with healing Spirit even though it wasn't nearly what people claimed either when it came to objective practical use.
Nobody needs to bend over backwards to prove it... It's very easy to see that 54 thp per round pretty much every fight is stupid high....
No other channel comes even remotely close
I don't add 50 points from nowhere. Your damage for one of your monsters alone was completely wrong...
And then I showed how that same monster could do 75 more. And I completely ignored the damage from the 2CR one's that aren't likely to hit more than the broad side of the barn to begin with.
So not only do I explain where it comes from, the Bites on Grappled Foes as Legendary Actions, i actually took out math that you added when you shouldn't have.
But go ahead and keep smoke screening. And it's not half damage. it's 41% Exactly as I said. Assuming that everybody at the table plays things in the absolute stupidest way possible. Which means all our party members get in striking range of this one creature so that it can basically grapple and bite all of them every round. So the 41% is playing in your Favor and it's still not even close to the 67% percent that you claimed with your ACtual fudged numbers and bad math to make your own example.
But then you weren't going to tell anybody about the two useless monsters or the legendary actions if I hadn't mentioned them were you? you were just going to pretend it was the 45 from the three attacks, the 22 from the paralyzing monster and then the all of about 10 damage each from the two might as well not exists to get your 86. Did you even more than glance at the monsters just to grab quick numbers when you picked them? Or did whatever module you stole the encounter from list their average damages for you and you didn't read any farther than that to know what they were actually like?
And 41% damage reduction for free each turn is not crazy how?
Your points continue to diminish.....
That isn't crazy. it's possible to do in many ways all over the place all the time.
But that 41% goes down if only 2 of your party members and not of a mind to play into the stupid to be taking damage to begin with and stay at range. Cutting your 41% damage reduction in half automatically. But saving them from all of the damage that they would have taken in the effort without bothering about twilight sanctuary. So now your looking at 20% damage reduction just because 2 of your party decided they'd rather not take damage at all? What do you do? Where do you go from here? Twilight Sanctuary is falling down because even two theoretical PC's suddenly don't get with the program and white room into making Twilight Sanctuary look good? let alone the fact that many ranged wouldn't want to get thta close in practical play anyway.
Just like with the one Character deciding not to play ball with the Dragon's breath and face tank a bunch of fire damage just so the Twilight Domain Cleric can look heroic. Saving as much Damage as Twilight Sanctuary could if he did get hit all on it's own just by not being there. And the rest being able to save even more than than that if others aren't just standing there to take it as well. What do you do? Twilight Sanctuary has fallen down because somebody chose to be somewhere else.
What do you do when the Extremely Intelligent Dragon realizes that Focus Fire is it's best move, and taking out members of your party under a barrage of attacks is better than spreading out the damage as much as possible? Causing Twilight Sanctuary to fall down again because it's doing vastly under it's group rate protections once again?
Every Time your Answer has been "Well it protects from at least some damage!" A point that I never argued against. I've said many times it does block some damage. It's just not necessarily all the damage that everybody is trying to adamantly claim it protects from. Which nobody has been able to refute. I can hold up the it protects from at least some damage without my other argument being wrong. They are not mutually exclusive concepts. They never were.
The issue was never black and White and I've only argued in the grey area in between. it is not Blocks Damage or Does not Block Damage, it's how much, and How much is not what people state and then cry " Objectively OP!" at the top of their lungs.
It's free and can reduce damage by 41% by your own statements. I think it's more most of the time not less... As I picked a very deadly encounter with lots of multiple attacks on purpose.
30ft is pretty big range is hardly up close. Also it moves with you so you can also just move closer as needed making the effective range a lot more.
Once again your points are diminished
Anything that makes the DM rebalance all of his encounters is defacto "broken". Your character broke this game, and he had to fix it. Is this easier to "fix" than other types of broken abilities? Sure. Sometimes. Yeah. But if your DM is specifically and intentionally rebalancing encounters to accommodate a specific ability of yours, you broke the game and he's fixing it.
Going for just the twilight cleric is only even going to work if you can entirely drop him, too. The ability doesn't rely on concentration you have to entirely incapacitate the cleric to end the effect early. And guess what twilight clerics have? Really good AC. They get heavy armor and shields. They have the full cleric spell list of defensive buffs. So good luck with that strategy. And if all enemies are always targeting specifically and only the cleric? Congrats, we just admitted they're the best support/tank in the game.
You know, I'd personally still call it broken even if it were mechanically better balanced. Why? Because it interjects your character onto every other players turn. That alone is some serious main Character syndrome BS. Any fix to the ability need to keep its primary function confined to the cleric's turn alone and stop having them be a co-partner during everyone else's turns.
You're right that the full distributed sum of all possible THP don't ever get used. So if a 5 party at 20, you're not using all 1,175 of the temporary HP you single action potentially spit out.
But c'mon! I mean, it doesn't literally transform your entire party into greater deities so how can anyone say it is OP?
What tactic, exactly, defeats Twilight Sanctuary? You've said this a few times but don't seem to have suggested an actual tactic that defeats it.
Focus fire?
Okay. Let's compare, then, what TS does if you try to have all enemy's focus fire one party member at a time.
Even in this scenario you will have greatly extended the lifespan of the targeted party member, will have spit out enough THP that the people not getting targeted can safely provoke opportunity attacks at will without concern for superior tactical repositioning, and created a situation where the targeted party member can focus more of defensive options since they have all the incoming damage headed their way, even further mitigating damage done to your party as a whole.
That is what "smart" enemies are forced to do to try to win, and even that isn't a great option. Was there some other "smart tactic" you think they'd employ to overcome TS??
So the "smart tactic" enemies would take against the party is make sure to have instead had more people on their side? Like... what? BBEG asks the party politely not to adventure in his castle because he's not quite yet fully staffed with enough overwhelming numbers of minions to defeat the party cleric's 2nd level ability?? This is your argument?
It absolutely does. TS puts out an empower or upcast version of false life every turn. Not every round, every turn. 5 man party you're spitting out the equivalent of 5 spells per round. Without using any actions on subsequent turns whatsoever.
It happens every round without any action being used whatsoever. None. Having a huge THP effect, on all allies, every round... for NO action... absolutely "fixes the overwhelming action economy".
This makes no sense. Say a horde of weaker enemies hit a different member of the party once a round. Maybe it is only 5 damage each time. Ok. Now everyone takes 5 damage per round. Maybe it take the party 5 turns to eventually win. Ok. A normal party will have all party members now down 25 hp each but the Twilight Cleric party will have all party members down... probably nothing. None damage. Yes, that's right, they're all at full and even have probably 8+ THP on top for the next fight still. So they actually went up in effective hp instead of down 25.
That's, btw, thinking at 2nd level. How many 2nd level characters even survive all taking 25hp?
The twilight cleric trivializes these types of encounters where there are a large number of weak enemies who have spread out targets. It makes them a nuisance instead of a threat. There is no sense of danger because you can easily soak the damage they can dish out. Everyone can.
Hordes are best case arguments for twilight sanctuary I'm not sure why you're doubling down on this reasoning. Having every party member targeting by masses of weak enemies means each party member is making full use of the THP you're giving them. That's an absurd number of THP getting put to use preventing actual hp damage from taking place.
If your argument is that this one ability allows the DM to entirely change the way he develops encounters so that they're now all horde encounters because it is now safe to do so.. yeah. that's true. But that also means you know fully well that this is the most OP 2nd level ability in the game because it allows the DM to entirely change the way he develops encounters.
So your arguement is even if the L2 party only fights a single CR2 allosaurus, the fighter will survive 4 rounds instead of drop in only 2. So therefore TS isn't helpful.
Right, because having the fighter drop on round 2 would have lead to a much better outcome?
Why are you trying to sell this line so hard? We can do math.
That was a lot of word to say: Twilight Sanctuary complements and multiplies the effectiveness of resistances. Each is great but they multiply with one another.
Take 20 damage. Have resistance? take 10. Instead have 10 THP? take 10. Have both? No damage you're immoral now! Woo.
Yeah and in a game where resistances don't stack, an ability that does work hand in hand with resistance is even more valuable. Once you have the resistance covered how are you now going to prevent more damage? THP. They complement each other.
You're so close. Now add in 23.5 THP per round to the barbarian and you'll realize that he basically doesn't die. That dragon can't kill him. Well, not for a while anyway. A long, unrealistically long while for a combat. You'll have won that combat long, long ago. Instead of 10 rounds, it'd be 30+. I say 30+ because that's all 3 minutes of twilight sanctuary. Only after it fades can the barbarian die at roughly 7 damage a round on average lol.
Resistance alone doesn't stop the barbarian from dying to the dragon. THP alone doesn't stop the dragon from bursting him down either. Together? They trivialize the encounter.
Curiously, the only way to consistently shoot out this much THP to all party members without an action for free every turn multiple times a day is found: on the twilight cleric.
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.