Can the Peace Cleric stack ever type of ability bonus onto a check? Can Embolderning Bond (+1d4 ability check) stack with Guidance and Bardic Inspiration to provide a +2d4+1d6 on a skill check?
I did not release how overpowered and game-breaking the Peace Cleric is.
How do you nerf a Peace Cleric? I did not think it was as overpowered as it is.
How many encounters per day are you running? Remember the assumption is 6-8 ( which no one does, but there it is). If the player knows there will be more fights, they’ll be more judicious in using it. If they only have 1-2 fights in a day, there’s no reason not to use it.
And if that doesn’t work, enemies focusing fire on the healer is a time honored, and generally good, tactic. As long as the enemies are smart enough to know who it is.
So there is no point in having characters pas 5th level attempt skill checks? I mean, second-tier can just jump to the moon. I don't think Bless adds +1d4 to ability checks, just saving throws and attacks.
Wow - D&D is getting broken. I can see why they are making 6th.
The stacking is really not the overpowered bit. The "once per turn" is the overpowered bit, since that doesn't mean once per your turn (which it couldn't, since it should be useable out of turn). The ability also doesn't specify whether you have to declare you're using it before or after you make the check, and as far as I know this was never clarified.
I'd at the very least suggest requiring the players to declare before they roll the check. It won't do a whole lot, but it's slightly better than getting to see if you're likely to need it or not. As a houserule I'd change once per turn to once per round, but personally I just don't allow the domain at all (it's the only subclass I ban, though there are a couple of others that are borderline).
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Note: Bless and Guidance cannot stack because they are restricted to different rolls. Bless applies to attack rolls and saving throws where as Guidance only applies to ability checks.
As pangurjan noted I would require that players decide to use Guidance or Bardic Inspiration before making the role. There are features like the Lucky feat that have text that explicitly allow the decision to be made after the roll but before the result is known.
Also as Xalthu points out you can try running more encounters/challenges in a an adventuring day.
Make note of the limitations of various effects. For example Emboldening Bond requires the cleric to declare the targets when they first use the ability, that the target still be within 30ft of the cleric to be able to apply the bonus, the effect ends after 10 minutes, and can be used a number of times per long rest equal to the clerics proficiency bonus. This is very powerful but there are constraints on it you can exploit, like running more encounters, spreading the encounter over a large area, or using AoE to punish a bunched up party.
By that same vein I wouldn't allow players to cast Guidance as a reaction to something, but rather have them plan it out with their party members. Also it has Verbal and Somatic components so in a social setting it would be readily apparent that a spell is being cast.
I am afraid I don't have easier advise than that though. At least it isn't Pass Without Trace.
Note: Bless and Guidance cannot stack because they are restricted to different rolls. Bless applies to attack rolls and saving throws where as Guidance only applies to ability checks.
... By that same vein I wouldn't allow players to cast Guidance as a reaction to something, but rather have them plan it out with their party members. Also it has Verbal and Somatic components so in a social setting it would be readily apparent that a spell is being cast.
...
Good point. Guidance is an action, not a reaction. It needs to be cast and concentrated on before a roll is called.
You are worried about tier 2? Lets see a DC15 skill check with +4 ability and no proficiency has a 50% chance to pass normally, and an average of 57.5% chance with emboldening bond. Their normal odds with proficiency is 65% and just getting help with the roll raises it to 87.75%.
This is hardy an overpowered subclass feature when compared to the base rogue, bard, and cleric.
Make note of the limitations of various effects. For example Emboldening Bond requires the cleric to declare the targets when they first use the ability, that the target still be within 30ft of the cleric to be able to apply the bonus, the effect ends after 10 minutes, and can be used a number of times per long rest equal to the clerics proficiency bonus. This is very powerful but there are constraints on it you can exploit, like running more encounters, spreading the encounter over a large area, or using AoE to punish a bunched up party.
.
Not quite true an emboldened character needs to be within 30 feet of another emboldened creature (the Cleric may or may not have emboldened themselves. While that is still a restiction is isn't that much of one. With 4 characters you can have 2 melee characters flanking the bad guy, 10 get apart and the other two 100 ft away and 30 feet from each other firing at range. That makes it pretty difficult to do much damage with AoE attacks.
While a single class peace cleric is powerful it is nothing like as powerful as a twilight cleric. Where is becomes insane however is with high level single dips. I have a 19/1 Monk/Peace Cleric who with an Ioun stone of mastery can use emboldening bond 7 times a day and cover 7 characters (with summons and "pets" at high level I often get to use all of them). Even with 6-8 encounters per day it can essentially be up all the time (encounters can be within 10 minutes of each other though a DM could easily rule emboldening bond can not apply for check which take more than 10 minutes (for example a perception check on night watch or when travelling).
Oh, you are absolutely right Jegpeg! I read the " . . . within 30 feet of another." and overlooked that it is referring back to other targets rather than the cleric.
And yeah, a single level cleric dip is pretty absurd since they are such a front loaded class. One of the few that get their subclass at level one too.
Oh, you are absolutely right Jegpeg! I read the " . . . within 30 feet of another." and overlooked that it is referring back to other targets rather than the cleric.
And yeah, a single level cleric dip is pretty absurd since they are such a front loaded class. One of the few that get their subclass at level one too.
Not just that but BOTH the number of uses and the number of people increases with proficiency bonus so a one level dip on a high level character is far more powerful than what you get at first level. A first level life cleric is pretty good getting 3 extra healing at level 1 is significant but at hig hlevels casting a 1st level cure wounds or haeling word will get an unconcious character up but the extra 3HP from life cleric is pretty much useless. Whereas for emboldening bond a 1d4 to rolls is just as good at level 20 but a X 19 / Peace Cleric 1 enables far more rolls to have a 1d4 added than a level 1 peace cleric (Theoretically 9 times as many as it is 360 character minutes a day instead of 40)
Note: Bless and Guidance cannot stack because they are restricted to different rolls. Bless applies to attack rolls and saving throws where as Guidance only applies to ability checks.
I guess it's been a while since I've actually read bless... I thought it applied to attacks, checks, and saves. Oops.
But still, 47 to 77 is pretty broken. Irrelevant to the discussion here, but broken. Also, I just realized that you could also get a stone of good luck (luckstone) to boost it back to 48-78.
It's a level 20 best-case-scenario kind of thing. Pretty broken comes with the territory then, you're practically a half-god going up against actual gods.
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There are multiple ways to "break" skill checks. Eloquence bards, for example. Instead of banning things left and right, just adjust your game with the expectations that the characters will do well in the things they have trained to do well. If the bard can auto-win Persuasion, build your tension around Insight checks or jealous rivalries that build with the bard's every success. If the rogue can pick every lock and disarm every trap, make sure you're not depending on traps to make a dungeon challenging. Just don't go so overboard that you never give them a chance to excel at the thing they were built to excel at.
You create the win conditions of the game. If being good at skill checks breaks your game, change the win conditions to rely less on skill checks.
My take on Peace Clerics is that if they deal damage to a creature, they should be stunned until the end of their next turn. This means the party needs those good buffs that much more, and it encourages the cleric to actually walk the walk.
It's a level 20 best-case-scenario kind of thing. Pretty broken comes with the territory then, you're practically a half-god going up against actual gods.
Yeah, basically.
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
There are multiple ways to "break" skill checks. Eloquence bards, for example. Instead of banning things left and right, just adjust your game with the expectations that the characters will do well in the things they have trained to do well. If the bard can auto-win Persuasion, build your tension around Insight checks or jealous rivalries that build with the bard's every success. If the rogue can pick every lock and disarm every trap, make sure you're not depending on traps to make a dungeon challenging. Just don't go so overboard that you never give them a chance to excel at the thing they were built to excel at.
You create the win conditions of the game. If being good at skill checks breaks your game, change the win conditions to rely less on skill checks.
My take on Peace Clerics is that if they deal damage to a creature, they should be stunned until the end of their next turn. This means the party needs those good buffs that much more, and it encourages the cleric to actually walk the walk.
That advice is hard to do with a published adventure. To change everything from a skill check when there is a secret door to... inexperienced players.. . asking them to say they are searching to find something.
I would LOVE to see some of these changes in action, but there are no DMs that specifically give alternatives. "Just do this..." How do you determine if someone finds a secret door without a skill check? And if they are just going to pass every skill check, what's the point of having a secret door?
That's how the game is broken - how to give challenges anymore?
How do you determine if someone finds a secret door without a skill check?
You can require a specific action, for instance. The door may simply be undetectable by normal means, regardless of how good an investigator there may be among the PCs, but if they turn the right candles widdershins thrice or whatever it opens. Then the challenge becomes, instead of a skill check, a riddle - or it hinges on the players interpreting clues correctly so they know the door is there, just not necessarily how to open it. Even if they do just figure out where the door is with a high enough passive Investigation, figuring out how to open it is still the real challenge.
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See - but now you're no longer talking about a character, you're talking about a player.
That depends on how you provide info. "Turn the 2nd, 5th and 8th candle widdershins thrice to open the secret door" isn't something a character just figures out with their massively bloated intellect. It's essentially going to be either trial and error or finding instructions. The former is something the Int 8 Barbarian can do just as easily as the Int 25 Artificer, and the latter can happen via any number of ways - overhearing things, decoding a cypher or translating instructions found on a dead NPC, divine intervention, interrogating a captive, you name it. Some of those involve skill checks, some don't, but unless the players can stack huge bonuses on all types of skill checks all the time you should be able to call for checks with reasonable odds when you do want/need them.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
There are multiple ways to "break" skill checks. Eloquence bards, for example. Instead of banning things left and right, just adjust your game with the expectations that the characters will do well in the things they have trained to do well. If the bard can auto-win Persuasion, build your tension around Insight checks or jealous rivalries that build with the bard's every success. If the rogue can pick every lock and disarm every trap, make sure you're not depending on traps to make a dungeon challenging. Just don't go so overboard that you never give them a chance to excel at the thing they were built to excel at.
You create the win conditions of the game. If being good at skill checks breaks your game, change the win conditions to rely less on skill checks.
My take on Peace Clerics is that if they deal damage to a creature, they should be stunned until the end of their next turn. This means the party needs those good buffs that much more, and it encourages the cleric to actually walk the walk.
That advice is hard to do with a published adventure. To change everything from a skill check when there is a secret door to... inexperienced players.. . asking them to say they are searching to find something.
I would LOVE to see some of these changes in action, but there are no DMs that specifically give alternatives. "Just do this..." How do you determine if someone finds a secret door without a skill check? And if they are just going to pass every skill check, what's the point of having a secret door?
That's how the game is broken - how to give challenges anymore?
I don’t really understand your issue here. What problem arises when your party finds all the secret doors?
The thing that many DM’s forget or maybe don’t even realize because we are so conditioned to win games rather than simply play together, is that the adventure progresses forward when the characters are successful. When they are not, it’s either side-tracked until an alternate solution is discovered or grinds to a complete halt. The point of the game is for the characters to be successful not for the DM to have impenetrable secrets. What good is a secret door that can’t be discovered, particularly if it takes using up some of the party’s limited resources to do so? What fun does this situation add to your game for anyone?
There are multiple ways to "break" skill checks. Eloquence bards, for example. Instead of banning things left and right, just adjust your game with the expectations that the characters will do well in the things they have trained to do well. If the bard can auto-win Persuasion, build your tension around Insight checks or jealous rivalries that build with the bard's every success. If the rogue can pick every lock and disarm every trap, make sure you're not depending on traps to make a dungeon challenging. Just don't go so overboard that you never give them a chance to excel at the thing they were built to excel at.
You create the win conditions of the game. If being good at skill checks breaks your game, change the win conditions to rely less on skill checks.
My take on Peace Clerics is that if they deal damage to a creature, they should be stunned until the end of their next turn. This means the party needs those good buffs that much more, and it encourages the cleric to actually walk the walk.
That advice is hard to do with a published adventure. To change everything from a skill check when there is a secret door to... inexperienced players.. . asking them to say they are searching to find something.
I would LOVE to see some of these changes in action, but there are no DMs that specifically give alternatives. "Just do this..." How do you determine if someone finds a secret door without a skill check? And if they are just going to pass every skill check, what's the point of having a secret door?
That's how the game is broken - how to give challenges anymore?
I don’t really understand your issue here. What problem arises when your party finds all the secret doors?
The thing that many DM’s forget or maybe don’t even realize because we are so conditioned to win games rather than simply play together, is that the adventure progresses forward when the characters are successful. When they are not, it’s either side-tracked until an alternate solution is discovered or grinds to a complete halt. The point of the game is for the characters to be successful not for the DM to have impenetrable secrets. What good is a secret door that can’t be discovered, particularly if it takes using up some of the party’s limited resources to do so? What fun does this situation add to your game for anyone?
There's a bit of middle ground here. Finding secret doors, secret rooms, of Stuff That May Or May Not Be Found in general is essentially the same as convincing an NPC to help you, or intimidating the local sheriff so he doesn't throw you in the slammer, or disguising yourself to infiltrate a garden fête unnoticed, or forging a some incriminating evidence against the bad guy to hinder their nefarious plans while you find some genuine evidence, or any of a million other things: it helps you if you succeed, and if you fail you find another way forward. They shouldn't be automatically successful because the goal is to be successful in the end. There should be a fair chance of success, absolutely, and ideally these things work out more often than not (say 2/3 of the time, the rough target number for success bounded accuracy aims at), but the point isn't to have a win every step of the way - the point is to win by achieving the real goal, and stumbling and getting back up again along the way is part of the fun. The only real bad idea here is to have that final success hinge on whether the party finds something or not: if they fail one way, there should be other things they can do to progress further.
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Can the Peace Cleric stack ever type of ability bonus onto a check?
Can Embolderning Bond (+1d4 ability check) stack with Guidance and Bardic Inspiration to provide a +2d4+1d6 on a skill check?
I did not release how overpowered and game-breaking the Peace Cleric is.
How do you nerf a Peace Cleric? I did not think it was as overpowered as it is.
How many encounters per day are you running? Remember the assumption is 6-8 ( which no one does, but there it is). If the player knows there will be more fights, they’ll be more judicious in using it. If they only have 1-2 fights in a day, there’s no reason not to use it.
And if that doesn’t work, enemies focusing fire on the healer is a time honored, and generally good, tactic. As long as the enemies are smart enough to know who it is.
And bless, for a bonus of 3d4 + 1d6, and the d6 will scale up as your party levels, ending as a d12.
A level 20 rouge with Expertise in Stealth and 30 Dex (from 500 years of using a manual of quickness of action) and bless, guidance, pass without trace, an Ioun stone of mastery, Emboldening Bond, and Bardic Inspiration (in Tier 4) has a stealth bonus of +34 + 3d4 + 1d12. Minimum 48 (Reliable Talent), maximum 78.
Stacking gets waaay past bonkers at high levels.
(Edit: fixed tooltip)
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
So there is no point in having characters pas 5th level attempt skill checks? I mean, second-tier can just jump to the moon.
I don't think Bless adds +1d4 to ability checks, just saving throws and attacks.
Wow - D&D is getting broken. I can see why they are making 6th.
The stacking is really not the overpowered bit. The "once per turn" is the overpowered bit, since that doesn't mean once per your turn (which it couldn't, since it should be useable out of turn). The ability also doesn't specify whether you have to declare you're using it before or after you make the check, and as far as I know this was never clarified.
I'd at the very least suggest requiring the players to declare before they roll the check. It won't do a whole lot, but it's slightly better than getting to see if you're likely to need it or not. As a houserule I'd change once per turn to once per round, but personally I just don't allow the domain at all (it's the only subclass I ban, though there are a couple of others that are borderline).
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Note: Bless and Guidance cannot stack because they are restricted to different rolls. Bless applies to attack rolls and saving throws where as Guidance only applies to ability checks.
As pangurjan noted I would require that players decide to use Guidance or Bardic Inspiration before making the role. There are features like the Lucky feat that have text that explicitly allow the decision to be made after the roll but before the result is known.
Also as Xalthu points out you can try running more encounters/challenges in a an adventuring day.
Make note of the limitations of various effects. For example Emboldening Bond requires the cleric to declare the targets when they first use the ability, that the target still be within 30ft of the cleric to be able to apply the bonus, the effect ends after 10 minutes, and can be used a number of times per long rest equal to the clerics proficiency bonus. This is very powerful but there are constraints on it you can exploit, like running more encounters, spreading the encounter over a large area, or using AoE to punish a bunched up party.
By that same vein I wouldn't allow players to cast Guidance as a reaction to something, but rather have them plan it out with their party members. Also it has Verbal and Somatic components so in a social setting it would be readily apparent that a spell is being cast.
I am afraid I don't have easier advise than that though. At least it isn't Pass Without Trace.
Good point. Guidance is an action, not a reaction. It needs to be cast and concentrated on before a roll is called.
It is a decent feature but not overpowered.
You are worried about tier 2? Lets see a DC15 skill check with +4 ability and no proficiency has a 50% chance to pass normally, and an average of 57.5% chance with emboldening bond. Their normal odds with proficiency is 65% and just getting help with the roll raises it to 87.75%.
This is hardy an overpowered subclass feature when compared to the base rogue, bard, and cleric.
Not quite true an emboldened character needs to be within 30 feet of another emboldened creature (the Cleric may or may not have emboldened themselves. While that is still a restiction is isn't that much of one. With 4 characters you can have 2 melee characters flanking the bad guy, 10 get apart and the other two 100 ft away and 30 feet from each other firing at range. That makes it pretty difficult to do much damage with AoE attacks.
While a single class peace cleric is powerful it is nothing like as powerful as a twilight cleric. Where is becomes insane however is with high level single dips. I have a 19/1 Monk/Peace Cleric who with an Ioun stone of mastery can use emboldening bond 7 times a day and cover 7 characters (with summons and "pets" at high level I often get to use all of them). Even with 6-8 encounters per day it can essentially be up all the time (encounters can be within 10 minutes of each other though a DM could easily rule emboldening bond can not apply for check which take more than 10 minutes (for example a perception check on night watch or when travelling).
Oh, you are absolutely right Jegpeg! I read the " . . . within 30 feet of another." and overlooked that it is referring back to other targets rather than the cleric.
And yeah, a single level cleric dip is pretty absurd since they are such a front loaded class. One of the few that get their subclass at level one too.
Not just that but BOTH the number of uses and the number of people increases with proficiency bonus so a one level dip on a high level character is far more powerful than what you get at first level. A first level life cleric is pretty good getting 3 extra healing at level 1 is significant but at hig hlevels casting a 1st level cure wounds or haeling word will get an unconcious character up but the extra 3HP from life cleric is pretty much useless. Whereas for emboldening bond a 1d4 to rolls is just as good at level 20 but a X 19 / Peace Cleric 1 enables far more rolls to have a 1d4 added than a level 1 peace cleric (Theoretically 9 times as many as it is 360 character minutes a day instead of 40)
I guess it's been a while since I've actually read bless... I thought it applied to attacks, checks, and saves. Oops.
But still, 47 to 77 is pretty broken. Irrelevant to the discussion here, but broken. Also, I just realized that you could also get a stone of good luck (luckstone) to boost it back to 48-78.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
It's a level 20 best-case-scenario kind of thing. Pretty broken comes with the territory then, you're practically a half-god going up against actual gods.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
There are multiple ways to "break" skill checks. Eloquence bards, for example. Instead of banning things left and right, just adjust your game with the expectations that the characters will do well in the things they have trained to do well. If the bard can auto-win Persuasion, build your tension around Insight checks or jealous rivalries that build with the bard's every success. If the rogue can pick every lock and disarm every trap, make sure you're not depending on traps to make a dungeon challenging. Just don't go so overboard that you never give them a chance to excel at the thing they were built to excel at.
You create the win conditions of the game. If being good at skill checks breaks your game, change the win conditions to rely less on skill checks.
My take on Peace Clerics is that if they deal damage to a creature, they should be stunned until the end of their next turn. This means the party needs those good buffs that much more, and it encourages the cleric to actually walk the walk.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Yeah, basically.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
That advice is hard to do with a published adventure. To change everything from a skill check when there is a secret door to... inexperienced players.. . asking them to say they are searching to find something.
I would LOVE to see some of these changes in action, but there are no DMs that specifically give alternatives. "Just do this..." How do you determine if someone finds a secret door without a skill check? And if they are just going to pass every skill check, what's the point of having a secret door?
That's how the game is broken - how to give challenges anymore?
You can require a specific action, for instance. The door may simply be undetectable by normal means, regardless of how good an investigator there may be among the PCs, but if they turn the right candles widdershins thrice or whatever it opens. Then the challenge becomes, instead of a skill check, a riddle - or it hinges on the players interpreting clues correctly so they know the door is there, just not necessarily how to open it. Even if they do just figure out where the door is with a high enough passive Investigation, figuring out how to open it is still the real challenge.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
That depends on how you provide info. "Turn the 2nd, 5th and 8th candle widdershins thrice to open the secret door" isn't something a character just figures out with their massively bloated intellect. It's essentially going to be either trial and error or finding instructions. The former is something the Int 8 Barbarian can do just as easily as the Int 25 Artificer, and the latter can happen via any number of ways - overhearing things, decoding a cypher or translating instructions found on a dead NPC, divine intervention, interrogating a captive, you name it. Some of those involve skill checks, some don't, but unless the players can stack huge bonuses on all types of skill checks all the time you should be able to call for checks with reasonable odds when you do want/need them.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don’t really understand your issue here. What problem arises when your party finds all the secret doors?
The thing that many DM’s forget or maybe don’t even realize because we are so conditioned to win games rather than simply play together, is that the adventure progresses forward when the characters are successful. When they are not, it’s either side-tracked until an alternate solution is discovered or grinds to a complete halt. The point of the game is for the characters to be successful not for the DM to have impenetrable secrets. What good is a secret door that can’t be discovered, particularly if it takes using up some of the party’s limited resources to do so? What fun does this situation add to your game for anyone?
There's a bit of middle ground here. Finding secret doors, secret rooms, of Stuff That May Or May Not Be Found in general is essentially the same as convincing an NPC to help you, or intimidating the local sheriff so he doesn't throw you in the slammer, or disguising yourself to infiltrate a garden fête unnoticed, or forging a some incriminating evidence against the bad guy to hinder their nefarious plans while you find some genuine evidence, or any of a million other things: it helps you if you succeed, and if you fail you find another way forward. They shouldn't be automatically successful because the goal is to be successful in the end. There should be a fair chance of success, absolutely, and ideally these things work out more often than not (say 2/3 of the time, the rough target number for success bounded accuracy aims at), but the point isn't to have a win every step of the way - the point is to win by achieving the real goal, and stumbling and getting back up again along the way is part of the fun. The only real bad idea here is to have that final success hinge on whether the party finds something or not: if they fail one way, there should be other things they can do to progress further.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].