Night time is the right time, especially when you're a holy wonder-worker pledged to a deity of the moon.
My first ever character is coming up, and I'll be playing a Cleric in service to the goddess Sehanine [the prankster and shadowy CR version, not the elf-mom FR version]. I know that Twilight Cleric is the sub I want to play above all, but the amount of races and extra abilities in the game is almost over-whelming, especially since Tasha's made picking races by their ASI's less consequential.
I'm personally interested in the firbolg, kenku, tiefling and tortle. Firbolgs [who I'm sorta leaning towards] have a connection to the Feywild like the MW, maybe focusing on autumn, and the Speech of Beast and Leaf could let me talk to nocturnal animals, and the hidden step is just useful. Kenku give me a whole lot of tricky skills, and they're loss of flight could make the build-up to Steps of Night a fun character building moment. Tieflings [Glasya in particular] gives me a nice resistance and some flavorful illusion spells. And Tortles almost let me get the benefits of some of the bonus proficiencies while not making me invest in Str, and the thought of a man-turtle oozing Twilight Sanctuary and concentration-based spells from inside his shell just seems both funny and useful; plus, the moon and the tides tie into this.
Those are just my thoughts, but I'd love to hear your suggestions so I can come to a decision.
Although apparently there is controversy over the RAWness of it, I like Twilight Cleric for good-aligned Underdark races that want to find a home on the surface. Kobold, Drow, or Duergar all can mitigate their Sunlight Sensitivity using the Channel Divinity option. It doesn't just fit mechanically, I think it fits thematically as well, with the player caring about finding middle-ground peace between warring races, preaching safety and sanctuary for all, etc. etc. But, it's also a great class for any race without Darkvision, like Firbolg, or in parties with many of such races. I think that the lycanthrope-light Shifter race would be good thematically as well, and some of the subraces like Beasthide would synergize well with a melee tank cleric.
Viewed mechanically, the Twilight domain Cleric stands out from other Clerics by being good in melee (heavy armor and martial weapons, flying for mobility to get into melee, Divine Strike, half-cover at high levels for +2 AC), and good at tanking or being tied to the tank (THP for self and nearby, half-cover for self and nearby, lots of aura spells)
I guess they're also arguably good at slinging AOE fear effects (Fear, Wand of Fear, Dragon Fear, fallen Aasimar), since they can put up a bubble that (eventually) removes fear from allies that get caught in it. But, there really aren't many spells that hand out Frightened on the Cleric spell list... like, none actually, which honestly seems kind of strange, so building your Twilight cleric around fear probably isn't viable without an MC that relies on Intelligence or Charisma for those saves.
I've usually used Twilight Cleric as an MC for a shadow monk, not as its own pure class, but its tankiness and the various 30-foot aura spells it gets access to leads me to believe that you should play it like a tankier Paladin that can't do ridiculous damage if you're going pure cleric. Don't be a robe user who sits in the back row, be up in the mix next to your melee combatants where your auras will do some good.
Variant Human so I can have Resilient (con) and War Caster by level 4. I view these as feat tax on both clerics and druids due to their glut of important concentration spells and tendency to mix it up in melee at least part-time. I prefer to pick them up as soon as possible so that by the time those sweet 3rd level spells roll around the charatcer is set. Hence, variant human.
But I think you will have plenty of fun with any of the choices you're interested in. The most important thing is finding a character that gets you jazzed. What visual can you not stop obsessing over? What story is flowing from you without even trying? If you care about mechanical efficacy, then do something to help with concentration saves and roll with the species that screams to you. Cleric is a very forgiving class, not to mention how good the Twilight domain is.
One of resiliant con and warcaster early on is nice two is overkill. I would much rather get my wis up. I grant you that a lower DC only means the enemies in spirit guardians are more likely to take half damage but unless your sacred flame / toll the dead are going to be missing much more often (unless you are doging all the time to keep concentration up). Once you hit level 7 you don't need to keep your concentration on banisjh if the bad guy makes the save.
If you are going for effectiveness, however I agree with variant human, a feat at level 1 is a big deal usually balanced out by not having darkvision so while the rest of the party want to sneak around the castle in darkness you insist on having a light so all the bad guys know whre you are. As a twilight cleric however that is not a problem instead it is a case of "oh can't you see those drow wanting to attack us 250ft away, may this this will help"
I prefer ironclad concentration checks if I'm going to rest most of my strength on the back of a key conctration spell or two. Resilient (con) gives a plenty of benefit beyond boosting concentration saves. War Caster is more limited in scope but AoO spells are nice and not having to worry about full hands is great. I want both early. But to each their own. Certainly nothing wrong with boosting wisdom.
The domain itself gives quite a few features that are powerful, but some don’t quite have “maximized” synergy between features, racial options, and feats.
I like the idea of a hill dwarf. Extra hitpoints every level is quite useful. It requires no investment in strength because of the base dwarves feature which takes away heavy armor strength penalties. This allows full investment into dexterity, constitution, and wisdom.
point buy 3 15s for dexterity, constitution, and wisdom. Allocate the +1 to dexterity and the +2 to wisdom. This leaves constitution as an odd 15 allowing for resilience:constitution later. Max hitpoints aren’t lost since the hill dwarf gets an extra hitpoint every level.
Modest dexterity starting at lower levels allows for your initiative bonus to synergize more effectively with your advantage on initiative. Your average initiative roll will be about 17 or 18 starting at level 1.
A respectable dexterity score also allows for you to take advantage of a heavy crossbow using your attack action to replace your offensive cantrips. Taking into account save DC vs AC, your heavy crossbow shot deals more average damage with disadvantage than the toll the dead cantrip can do with a normal save roll. Toll the dead passes your heavy crossbow damage slightly at level 5, but isn’t worth taking as one of your first three cantrip choices. The heavy crossbow is still generally going to be better though as it will be easier to gain advantage on your attacks than it will be to impose disadvantage on your enemies saving throws. The extended dark sight and faerie fire spell should be a great boon to you and your party. The heavy crossbows may be switched with a longbow for longer ranges.
there’s also the amazing benefit that full casters enjoy from a reliably high initiative. Something small like casting bless on the party before everyone else attacks the first time during the round while being able to potentially move “safely” into place to help your rogue buddy out is awesome. Casting faerie fire on a bunched up group of enemies before they can scatter due to the chaos of battle is wonderful. Casting calm emotions on a similarly grouped up bunch of hostile humanoids can end a battle before a punch is thrown. Same thing with hold person, possibly upcasted. Casting spirit guardians while wading into enemies substantially increases its damage as the damage usually starts wracking up on the 2nd round instead of round 1. There are many other examples.
Dark sight racial feature is slightly wasted, but the distance increase is so large on the twilight domain that it’s still a substantial buff to all races.
you can also trade out the 4 weapon proficiencies you have with tools to customize your character even more, on top of the single choice you already have between brewers, masons, or smiths tools.
poison resistance and advantage on poison saves is pretty cool too.
Min max wise Half Elf is the choice now after Tasha's for pretty much every class. You can put the +2 to wis and +1 to 2 other attributes, fey ancestry for advantage on charm effects and can't be put to sleep, darkvision, and 2 more skills than any other race.
Going from the races you mentioned, the one that sings to me the most is the Kenku because I really do love that idea of your character working so hard to finally get flight. A while back I played as a Kenku Warlock for a similar reason (although my goal was to get the Eldritch Invocation to be able to levitate at will). I never played the character long enough to accomplish my goal, but Steps of Night comes online early enough in level progression that it can be a really interesting character-defining trait, especially for a Kenku.
That said, it would also be hilarious to play as a Tortle who can fly in the dark, spinning like Gamera or something.
When I imagine a Twilight Cleric, I imagine a gentle, comforting person who is present to heal and protect. For flavor & fun, I would choose High Elves or Drow for the following reasons:
Trance means that you don't sleep, meaning that you can represent the sleepless guardian of your party.
You are perceptive, watching over everything and everyone.
Weapon proficiencies can shift to navigation, documentation, etc. It gives your character more depth and background
Moon elf, sun elf, or drow are perfect representation of "sunset character" while being free to have any personality. A moon elf embracing their liniage, a sun elf who watches over the passage to night, a Drow who can only appreciate the sun as it rises, etc. Think about the warmth that the class has, and spread it around!
Learning of new cantrips/spells mean that your character can be more diverse. Green flame blade flavored for sunset or nighttime, dancing lights, the works! These clerics are more melee based, so green flame blade is amazing to have. They also have feats that increase the diversity even more.
This was a character concept of mine for a while, so I hope you like it.
I don't believe that Cleric or Twilight Domain grant access to Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade, despite them being good fits for a melee cleric without Extra Attack. Would take a feat or a multiclass to pick those up.
Night time is the right time, especially when you're a holy wonder-worker pledged to a deity of the moon.
My first ever character is coming up, and I'll be playing a Cleric in service to the goddess Sehanine [the prankster and shadowy CR version, not the elf-mom FR version]. I know that Twilight Cleric is the sub I want to play above all, but the amount of races and extra abilities in the game is almost over-whelming, especially since Tasha's made picking races by their ASI's less consequential.
I'm personally interested in the firbolg, kenku, tiefling and tortle. Firbolgs [who I'm sorta leaning towards] have a connection to the Feywild like the MW, maybe focusing on autumn, and the Speech of Beast and Leaf could let me talk to nocturnal animals, and the hidden step is just useful. Kenku give me a whole lot of tricky skills, and they're loss of flight could make the build-up to Steps of Night a fun character building moment. Tieflings [Glasya in particular] gives me a nice resistance and some flavorful illusion spells. And Tortles almost let me get the benefits of some of the bonus proficiencies while not making me invest in Str, and the thought of a man-turtle oozing Twilight Sanctuary and concentration-based spells from inside his shell just seems both funny and useful; plus, the moon and the tides tie into this.
Those are just my thoughts, but I'd love to hear your suggestions so I can come to a decision.
Insert interesting signature here.
Although apparently there is controversy over the RAWness of it, I like Twilight Cleric for good-aligned Underdark races that want to find a home on the surface. Kobold, Drow, or Duergar all can mitigate their Sunlight Sensitivity using the Channel Divinity option. It doesn't just fit mechanically, I think it fits thematically as well, with the player caring about finding middle-ground peace between warring races, preaching safety and sanctuary for all, etc. etc. But, it's also a great class for any race without Darkvision, like Firbolg, or in parties with many of such races. I think that the lycanthrope-light Shifter race would be good thematically as well, and some of the subraces like Beasthide would synergize well with a melee tank cleric.
Viewed mechanically, the Twilight domain Cleric stands out from other Clerics by being good in melee (heavy armor and martial weapons, flying for mobility to get into melee, Divine Strike, half-cover at high levels for +2 AC), and good at tanking or being tied to the tank (THP for self and nearby, half-cover for self and nearby, lots of aura spells)
I guess they're also arguably good at slinging AOE fear effects (Fear, Wand of Fear, Dragon Fear, fallen Aasimar), since they can put up a bubble that (eventually) removes fear from allies that get caught in it. But, there really aren't many spells that hand out Frightened on the Cleric spell list... like, none actually, which honestly seems kind of strange, so building your Twilight cleric around fear probably isn't viable without an MC that relies on Intelligence or Charisma for those saves.
I've usually used Twilight Cleric as an MC for a shadow monk, not as its own pure class, but its tankiness and the various 30-foot aura spells it gets access to leads me to believe that you should play it like a tankier Paladin that can't do ridiculous damage if you're going pure cleric. Don't be a robe user who sits in the back row, be up in the mix next to your melee combatants where your auras will do some good.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Variant Human so I can have Resilient (con) and War Caster by level 4. I view these as feat tax on both clerics and druids due to their glut of important concentration spells and tendency to mix it up in melee at least part-time. I prefer to pick them up as soon as possible so that by the time those sweet 3rd level spells roll around the charatcer is set. Hence, variant human.
But I think you will have plenty of fun with any of the choices you're interested in. The most important thing is finding a character that gets you jazzed. What visual can you not stop obsessing over? What story is flowing from you without even trying? If you care about mechanical efficacy, then do something to help with concentration saves and roll with the species that screams to you. Cleric is a very forgiving class, not to mention how good the Twilight domain is.
One of resiliant con and warcaster early on is nice two is overkill. I would much rather get my wis up. I grant you that a lower DC only means the enemies in spirit guardians are more likely to take half damage but unless your sacred flame / toll the dead are going to be missing much more often (unless you are doging all the time to keep concentration up). Once you hit level 7 you don't need to keep your concentration on banisjh if the bad guy makes the save.
If you are going for effectiveness, however I agree with variant human, a feat at level 1 is a big deal usually balanced out by not having darkvision so while the rest of the party want to sneak around the castle in darkness you insist on having a light so all the bad guys know whre you are. As a twilight cleric however that is not a problem instead it is a case of "oh can't you see those drow wanting to attack us 250ft away, may this this will help"
I prefer ironclad concentration checks if I'm going to rest most of my strength on the back of a key conctration spell or two. Resilient (con) gives a plenty of benefit beyond boosting concentration saves. War Caster is more limited in scope but AoO spells are nice and not having to worry about full hands is great. I want both early. But to each their own. Certainly nothing wrong with boosting wisdom.
The domain itself gives quite a few features that are powerful, but some don’t quite have “maximized” synergy between features, racial options, and feats.
I like the idea of a hill dwarf. Extra hitpoints every level is quite useful. It requires no investment in strength because of the base dwarves feature which takes away heavy armor strength penalties. This allows full investment into dexterity, constitution, and wisdom.
point buy 3 15s for dexterity, constitution, and wisdom. Allocate the +1 to dexterity and the +2 to wisdom. This leaves constitution as an odd 15 allowing for resilience:constitution later. Max hitpoints aren’t lost since the hill dwarf gets an extra hitpoint every level.
Modest dexterity starting at lower levels allows for your initiative bonus to synergize more effectively with your advantage on initiative. Your average initiative roll will be about 17 or 18 starting at level 1.
A respectable dexterity score also allows for you to take advantage of a heavy crossbow using your attack action to replace your offensive cantrips. Taking into account save DC vs AC, your heavy crossbow shot deals more average damage with disadvantage than the toll the dead cantrip can do with a normal save roll. Toll the dead passes your heavy crossbow damage slightly at level 5, but isn’t worth taking as one of your first three cantrip choices. The heavy crossbow is still generally going to be better though as it will be easier to gain advantage on your attacks than it will be to impose disadvantage on your enemies saving throws. The extended dark sight and faerie fire spell should be a great boon to you and your party. The heavy crossbows may be switched with a longbow for longer ranges.
there’s also the amazing benefit that full casters enjoy from a reliably high initiative. Something small like casting bless on the party before everyone else attacks the first time during the round while being able to potentially move “safely” into place to help your rogue buddy out is awesome. Casting faerie fire on a bunched up group of enemies before they can scatter due to the chaos of battle is wonderful. Casting calm emotions on a similarly grouped up bunch of hostile humanoids can end a battle before a punch is thrown. Same thing with hold person, possibly upcasted. Casting spirit guardians while wading into enemies substantially increases its damage as the damage usually starts wracking up on the 2nd round instead of round 1. There are many other examples.
Dark sight racial feature is slightly wasted, but the distance increase is so large on the twilight domain that it’s still a substantial buff to all races.
you can also trade out the 4 weapon proficiencies you have with tools to customize your character even more, on top of the single choice you already have between brewers, masons, or smiths tools.
poison resistance and advantage on poison saves is pretty cool too.
Min max wise Half Elf is the choice now after Tasha's for pretty much every class. You can put the +2 to wis and +1 to 2 other attributes, fey ancestry for advantage on charm effects and can't be put to sleep, darkvision, and 2 more skills than any other race.
Going from the races you mentioned, the one that sings to me the most is the Kenku because I really do love that idea of your character working so hard to finally get flight. A while back I played as a Kenku Warlock for a similar reason (although my goal was to get the Eldritch Invocation to be able to levitate at will). I never played the character long enough to accomplish my goal, but Steps of Night comes online early enough in level progression that it can be a really interesting character-defining trait, especially for a Kenku.
That said, it would also be hilarious to play as a Tortle who can fly in the dark, spinning like Gamera or something.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Human
When I imagine a Twilight Cleric, I imagine a gentle, comforting person who is present to heal and protect. For flavor & fun, I would choose High Elves or Drow for the following reasons:
Trance means that you don't sleep, meaning that you can represent the sleepless guardian of your party.
You are perceptive, watching over everything and everyone.
Weapon proficiencies can shift to navigation, documentation, etc. It gives your character more depth and background
Moon elf, sun elf, or drow are perfect representation of "sunset character" while being free to have any personality. A moon elf embracing their liniage, a sun elf who watches over the passage to night, a Drow who can only appreciate the sun as it rises, etc. Think about the warmth that the class has, and spread it around!
Learning of new cantrips/spells mean that your character can be more diverse. Green flame blade flavored for sunset or nighttime, dancing lights, the works! These clerics are more melee based, so green flame blade is amazing to have. They also have feats that increase the diversity even more.
This was a character concept of mine for a while, so I hope you like it.
My only good homebrews: Races, Subclasses.
An aspiring DM and Homebrewer. Ask me if you need anything.
I don't believe that Cleric or Twilight Domain grant access to Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade, despite them being good fits for a melee cleric without Extra Attack. Would take a feat or a multiclass to pick those up.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I believe the cantrip reference was supposed to be about the high elf feature.
Oh yes, that makes sense. I forget high elves get that!
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
We all know that the best Clerics are Hill Dwarf Clerics.