I've been tooling around with home brew content for quite a long while, and really enjoy the process of making something that meshes together with itself really well. However, I've found that a large amount of my stuff, when tested, either completely takes over a game or is so unbelievably under powered that its completely useless. I finally sat down and began to work on a powerful support option that I hoped wouldn't take over the game and would instead enable the rest of the party to push themselves beyond what they normally would be able to do.
I play a fair amount of clerics, partly because I really enjoy the aesthetic of being a support, propping up the team and covering their weaknesses, but mostly because someone always has to be the heal bot. Frankly, I don't enjoy having to spend all of my turns healing party members because one person wandered into a room and triggered an attack from twelve goblins. While i understand that its perfectly viable to allow that fool to die and learn their lesson, I also feel like its not fun for them to have to make a new character, and so here we are with the Cleric of the Sands subclass. My intention with this was to open up the options for a cleric to be preventative rather than responsive. Though those options tend to already exist in the form of several temporary HP buffing spells, shields, and bless and bane, I wanted to try to take a different route.
Cleric of the Sands
At level one when you take this archetype, you gain proficiency with martial melee weapons, and Light armors. You lose your medium armor proficiency.
Domain Spells: 1st: hail of stones (hail of thorns), expeditious retreat
3rd: Blindness/Deafness, Ray of Enfeeblement
5th: Bestow Curse, Stinking Cloud
7th: Fire Shield, Stone Shape
9th: Wall of Stone, Cloudkill
Veil of Sand: Wielding the sands of the desert as their very armor, Clerics of the Sands can confuse and distract their foes. At 1st level and as an action, you can expend one spell slot to form a veil of sand around you or a friendly target. The target of this spell has a +1 to their AC, with the AC increasing by +1 per level of spell slot expended. This effect lasts up to a minute with concentration. You cannot increase AC beyond 20 with this ability.
Channel Divinity; Sandstorm: At level three you can channel the fury of the desert through your person. In a 20 ft circle centered on yourself, you can create a furious sandstorm. This effect lasts up to ten minutes. Enemies that end their move inside the circle must pass a constitution save vs your spell save or be blinded whenever they are within the radius. Enemies that pass this save are immune to this effect for the duration.
Improved Veil: Starting at sixth level, your veil is stronger. Any enemy that misses an attack on your veiled target takes 1d8 bludgeoning damage.
Divine Strike: At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine power. Once on your turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can force them to make a con save vs your spell save, if they fail they’re blinded for the remainder of the round. When you reach 14th level, this increases to twice per turn, but does not stack multiple times on one creature.
Form of Sand: At 17th level, you gain the ability to take on the form of a turbulent cloud of sand using your action. You take no physical damage while in this form and have resistance to all forms of magical damage except for lightning and fire. You also gain the benefits of invisibility within any sandstorm.
The thought process behind this cleric was to introduce a different form of supportive role to the class. I know there are already spells and abilities that can tweak AC, and that they are typically sufficient as stand ins for most of these abilities, but the ability to tweak AC on the fly is pretty cool to me. A couple of other ideas i have is to change the AC ability to a pool that is spendable and refundable as an action, allowing the cleric to buff multiple members of a party. Alternate Veil: You have a pool of sand that has a number of uses equal to your cleric level+wisdom modifier. This pool can be used to increase the ac of a friendly target by +1 per point spent as an action. You can dispel the effect at any time, and can have the effect on multiple targets at once. A number of times per day, tied to your cleric level, you can refund the pool. This takes ten minutes to complete, as you have to collect and bless the sand in a similar fashion to holy water. <This is terribly worded, help here would be greatly appreciated...
I feel like it fills a nice utility niche in a party, buffing the defenses of the other players and enabling them to take advantage of blunders and failures more readily. It would allow a monk to be a little more lenient with their Ki, a swashbuckler to ease into their flow a little earlier, and a rogue to maybe be a little more cheeky with their movement and attacks. Sure, it can be used to create a powerful tank in the form of a 20 ac paladin at level 3, but having the little broken pieces are why I'm posting it here! My hope is that i can get some genuine critique of the class, and some suggestions on how to improve it!
Hail of stones, btw, just replaces every instance of "arrow" in hail of thorns with "small stone".
Losing armor proficiency is not really a mechanic that exists. Perhaps rather than that, you could make the core abilities of the class only usable when unarmored or wearing light armor (or specify they don't work when wearing heavy or medium). That way no skill is lost but the intention is clear that light is the better choice. I assume a sheild is still allowed though.
Consider the sand veil doing slashing damage rather than bludgeoning, as it lashes out and tears into the attacker's flesh.
Form of Sand needs a duration and number of times to cast.
Think about the name. A cleric domain is usually called "The Blank Domain", with the implication that clerics of this group are servants of "The God Of Blank". I can't think of a perfect word to use that sounds right for this theme.
I think I prefer the alternate sand pool idea, but easier just to let it recharge on a short rest. Keep the 1 minute duration, and allow more than one sand point to be used on someone in one action. I think concertation shouldn't be needed.
I appreciate the feedback, and your suggestions are immensely useful.
I very much appreciate the spell suggestions, the most difficult part of putting this together was picking themed spells that would serve purpose. Seriously, I remember sitting there for four days trying to come up with the second 5th level spell. I like the use of Absorb Elements and Zephyr Strike, and they probably fit the idea of the class in both appearance and effect, though if I take zephyr strike I will probably swap out expeditious retreat as that seems redundant to me.
I kind of figured that proficiency removal was going to be questionable, my intention with it was to reduce the tendency of clerics to stand right next to their tanks and for this cleric to take up a bit more of a midline role. I like the idea of limiting the use of certain abilities, and thinking about it all the abilities that are limited in this way are AC affecting. Shield proficiency does remain.
I'll be honest, I don't know why I forgot about duration and number of uses for form of sand.
The domain, unfortunately, is not the easiest thing to come up with as the original idea of this cleric was designed for a homebrewed setting. The gods this was written for were gods of the sun and desert, and there's not really an official domain that would fit under, besides Light and maybe Fire.
So, with some of the changes I would like to implement based on the feedback...
The Desert Domain
The domain I need to suggest gods for.
At level one when you take this archetype, you gain proficiency with martial melee weapons, and Light armors.
Domain Spells:
1st: Zephyr Strike, Sleep
3rd: Blindness/Deafness, Ray of Enfeeblement
5th: Bestow Curse, Stinking Cloud
7th: Fire Shield, Stone Shape
9th: Wall of Stone, Cloudkill Veil of Sand: You have a pool of sand that has a number of uses equal to your cleric level + your wisdom modifier. This pool can be used to increase the AC of a friendly target by +1 per use. As an action, you can spend any number of uses to increase the AC of an ally or yourself. You can dispel the effect at any time, and can have the effect on multiple targets at once. The AC of a target can never go above 20 using this feature. This pool is refunded during a short rest. Refunding takes ten minutes to complete, as you have to collect and bless the sand in a similar fashion to holy water.
Channel Divinity; Sandstorm: At level three you can channel the fury of the desert through your person. In a 20 ft circle centered on yourself, you can create a furious sandstorm. This effect lasts up to ten minutes. Enemies that end their move inside the circle must pass a constitution save vs your spell save or be blinded whenever they are within the radius. Enemies that pass this save are immune to this effect for the duration.
Improved Veil: Starting at sixth level, your veil is more volatile. Any enemy that misses an attack on your veiled target takes 1d8 slashing damage.
Divine Strike: At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine power. Once on your turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can force them to make a con save vs your spell save, if they fail they’re blinded for the remainder of the round. When you reach 14th level, this increases to twice per turn, but does not stack multiple times on one creature.
Form of Sand: At 17th level, you gain the ability to take on the form of a turbulent cloud of sand using your action. You take no physical damage while in this form and have resistance to all forms of magical damage except for lightning and fire. You also gain the benefits of invisibility within any sandstorm. This effect lasts for 1 minute, and can be used a total of four times before needing to recharge over a long rest.
I'm iffy on limiting the abilities use while not wearing light armor. Veil isn't meant as a personal defense ability like what a barbarian uses, and the cleric isn't meant to serve as a tank. I'll probably test it and see if I want to limit the ability beyond what it already has in the AC limit. The AC 20 limit is something to prevent a nearly unhittable AC 25 at early levels, but maybe a progression for that would be a better idea, as some of the higher CR monsters tend to have really good hit bonuses and 20 AC starts to drop off around midgame.
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I've been tooling around with home brew content for quite a long while, and really enjoy the process of making something that meshes together with itself really well. However, I've found that a large amount of my stuff, when tested, either completely takes over a game or is so unbelievably under powered that its completely useless. I finally sat down and began to work on a powerful support option that I hoped wouldn't take over the game and would instead enable the rest of the party to push themselves beyond what they normally would be able to do.
I play a fair amount of clerics, partly because I really enjoy the aesthetic of being a support, propping up the team and covering their weaknesses, but mostly because someone always has to be the heal bot. Frankly, I don't enjoy having to spend all of my turns healing party members because one person wandered into a room and triggered an attack from twelve goblins. While i understand that its perfectly viable to allow that fool to die and learn their lesson, I also feel like its not fun for them to have to make a new character, and so here we are with the Cleric of the Sands subclass. My intention with this was to open up the options for a cleric to be preventative rather than responsive. Though those options tend to already exist in the form of several temporary HP buffing spells, shields, and bless and bane, I wanted to try to take a different route.
Cleric of the Sands
At level one when you take this archetype, you gain proficiency with martial melee weapons, and Light armors. You lose your medium armor proficiency.
Domain Spells:
1st: hail of stones (hail of thorns), expeditious retreat
3rd: Blindness/Deafness, Ray of Enfeeblement
5th: Bestow Curse, Stinking Cloud
7th: Fire Shield, Stone Shape
9th: Wall of Stone, Cloudkill
Veil of Sand: Wielding the sands of the desert as their very armor, Clerics of the Sands can confuse and distract their foes. At 1st level and as an action, you can expend one spell slot to form a veil of sand around you or a friendly target. The target of this spell has a +1 to their AC, with the AC increasing by +1 per level of spell slot expended. This effect lasts up to a minute with concentration. You cannot increase AC beyond 20 with this ability.
Channel Divinity; Sandstorm: At level three you can channel the fury of the desert through your person. In a 20 ft circle centered on yourself, you can create a furious sandstorm. This effect lasts up to ten minutes. Enemies that end their move inside the circle must pass a constitution save vs your spell save or be blinded whenever they are within the radius. Enemies that pass this save are immune to this effect for the duration.
Improved Veil: Starting at sixth level, your veil is stronger. Any enemy that misses an attack on your veiled target takes 1d8 bludgeoning damage.
Divine Strike: At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine power. Once on your turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can force them to make a con save vs your spell save, if they fail they’re blinded for the remainder of the round. When you reach 14th level, this increases to twice per turn, but does not stack multiple times on one creature.
Form of Sand: At 17th level, you gain the ability to take on the form of a turbulent cloud of sand using your action. You take no physical damage while in this form and have resistance to all forms of magical damage except for lightning and fire. You also gain the benefits of invisibility within any sandstorm.
The thought process behind this cleric was to introduce a different form of supportive role to the class. I know there are already spells and abilities that can tweak AC, and that they are typically sufficient as stand ins for most of these abilities, but the ability to tweak AC on the fly is pretty cool to me. A couple of other ideas i have is to change the AC ability to a pool that is spendable and refundable as an action, allowing the cleric to buff multiple members of a party.
Alternate Veil: You have a pool of sand that has a number of uses equal to your cleric level+wisdom modifier. This pool can be used to increase the ac of a friendly target by +1 per point spent as an action. You can dispel the effect at any time, and can have the effect on multiple targets at once. A number of times per day, tied to your cleric level, you can refund the pool. This takes ten minutes to complete, as you have to collect and bless the sand in a similar fashion to holy water. <This is terribly worded, help here would be greatly appreciated...
I feel like it fills a nice utility niche in a party, buffing the defenses of the other players and enabling them to take advantage of blunders and failures more readily. It would allow a monk to be a little more lenient with their Ki, a swashbuckler to ease into their flow a little earlier, and a rogue to maybe be a little more cheeky with their movement and attacks. Sure, it can be used to create a powerful tank in the form of a 20 ac paladin at level 3, but having the little broken pieces are why I'm posting it here! My hope is that i can get some genuine critique of the class, and some suggestions on how to improve it!
Hail of stones, btw, just replaces every instance of "arrow" in hail of thorns with "small stone".
A few suggestions:
To use only existing spells in the spell list, perhaps Absorb Elements, Sleep, Color Spray or Zephyr Strike would be thematically appropriate.
Losing armor proficiency is not really a mechanic that exists. Perhaps rather than that, you could make the core abilities of the class only usable when unarmored or wearing light armor (or specify they don't work when wearing heavy or medium). That way no skill is lost but the intention is clear that light is the better choice. I assume a sheild is still allowed though.
Consider the sand veil doing slashing damage rather than bludgeoning, as it lashes out and tears into the attacker's flesh.
Form of Sand needs a duration and number of times to cast.
Think about the name. A cleric domain is usually called "The Blank Domain", with the implication that clerics of this group are servants of "The God Of Blank". I can't think of a perfect word to use that sounds right for this theme.
I think I prefer the alternate sand pool idea, but easier just to let it recharge on a short rest. Keep the 1 minute duration, and allow more than one sand point to be used on someone in one action. I think concertation shouldn't be needed.
I appreciate the feedback, and your suggestions are immensely useful.
I very much appreciate the spell suggestions, the most difficult part of putting this together was picking themed spells that would serve purpose. Seriously, I remember sitting there for four days trying to come up with the second 5th level spell. I like the use of Absorb Elements and Zephyr Strike, and they probably fit the idea of the class in both appearance and effect, though if I take zephyr strike I will probably swap out expeditious retreat as that seems redundant to me.
I kind of figured that proficiency removal was going to be questionable, my intention with it was to reduce the tendency of clerics to stand right next to their tanks and for this cleric to take up a bit more of a midline role. I like the idea of limiting the use of certain abilities, and thinking about it all the abilities that are limited in this way are AC affecting. Shield proficiency does remain.
I'll be honest, I don't know why I forgot about duration and number of uses for form of sand.
The domain, unfortunately, is not the easiest thing to come up with as the original idea of this cleric was designed for a homebrewed setting. The gods this was written for were gods of the sun and desert, and there's not really an official domain that would fit under, besides Light and maybe Fire.
So, with some of the changes I would like to implement based on the feedback...
The Desert Domain
The domain I need to suggest gods for.
At level one when you take this archetype, you gain proficiency with martial melee weapons, and Light armors.
Domain Spells:
1st: Zephyr Strike, Sleep
3rd: Blindness/Deafness, Ray of Enfeeblement
5th: Bestow Curse, Stinking Cloud
7th: Fire Shield, Stone Shape
9th: Wall of Stone, Cloudkill
Veil of Sand: You have a pool of sand that has a number of uses equal to your cleric level + your wisdom modifier. This pool can be used to increase the AC of a friendly target by +1 per use. As an action, you can spend any number of uses to increase the AC of an ally or yourself. You can dispel the effect at any time, and can have the effect on multiple targets at once. The AC of a target can never go above 20 using this feature. This pool is refunded during a short rest. Refunding takes ten minutes to complete, as you have to collect and bless the sand in a similar fashion to holy water.
Channel Divinity; Sandstorm: At level three you can channel the fury of the desert through your person. In a 20 ft circle centered on yourself, you can create a furious sandstorm. This effect lasts up to ten minutes. Enemies that end their move inside the circle must pass a constitution save vs your spell save or be blinded whenever they are within the radius. Enemies that pass this save are immune to this effect for the duration.
Improved Veil: Starting at sixth level, your veil is more volatile. Any enemy that misses an attack on your veiled target takes 1d8 slashing damage.
Divine Strike: At 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with divine power. Once on your turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can force them to make a con save vs your spell save, if they fail they’re blinded for the remainder of the round. When you reach 14th level, this increases to twice per turn, but does not stack multiple times on one creature.
Form of Sand: At 17th level, you gain the ability to take on the form of a turbulent cloud of sand using your action. You take no physical damage while in this form and have resistance to all forms of magical damage except for lightning and fire. You also gain the benefits of invisibility within any sandstorm. This effect lasts for 1 minute, and can be used a total of four times before needing to recharge over a long rest.
I'm iffy on limiting the abilities use while not wearing light armor. Veil isn't meant as a personal defense ability like what a barbarian uses, and the cleric isn't meant to serve as a tank. I'll probably test it and see if I want to limit the ability beyond what it already has in the AC limit. The AC 20 limit is something to prevent a nearly unhittable AC 25 at early levels, but maybe a progression for that would be a better idea, as some of the higher CR monsters tend to have really good hit bonuses and 20 AC starts to drop off around midgame.