Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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There seems to be a dearth of subclasses being developed for other classes. Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Druid, Barbarian. But for the cleric - nothing. Shouldn't there be subclasses for each of the major pantheon focuses? But instead...nothing.
What cleric subclasses would you like to see developed?
DARKNESS? NATURE? STORM? INVENTION? LUCK/CHANCE? OCEAN? PRIMORDIAL? LOVE?
or specific subsects of existing deities?
BANE - The Knights of the Black Gauntlet? CHAUNTEA - The Seeds of Cultivation? ILMATER - The Broken Ones? GOND - The Gatherer's of Gond? HELM - The Everwatch Knights? KELEMVOR - Knights of the Eternal Order? LATHANDER - Dawnbringers? LLOTH - Silken Stewards? MYSTRA - Knights of the Mystic Fire? SELUNE - Swords of the Lady? SHAR - Order of the Dark Moon? SUNE - Sodality of the Ruby Rose? TEMPUS - Storm Knives, TORM - Order of the Golden Knives
Well, a lot of these do already exist, but one I think is lacking in official material is a psychic-focused one to go along with the psionic subclasses we already have for Fighter, Rogue, Sorcerer, etc.
PSA: a "dearth" is a lack of something.
pronouns: he/she/they
WotC seem to be distancing the cleric class from the traditional concept of domains, even though the subclasses are still called domains. The Heroes of Faerun book has an otherwise comprehensive section on religion in the region, but there is nothing at all about what domains might be connected to which gods. With that in mind, new subclasses could basically be themed around anything.
They need to finish updating the 5e cleric subclasses to 5.5e, and that alone gives them 8 cleric subclasses for new books. There is less need for UA content for those updates.
There has been one new Cleric subclass presented so far (Pestilence Domain, in the first Villainous Options Unearthed Arcana). (The Wizard, meanwhile, has had no new subclasses post-2024 yet.)
The Cleric is the only class that is missing subclasses updated from the 2014 PHB (Nature and Tempest). The four Wizard subclasses that weren’t brought forward between the two PHBs look likely to be in the Arcana Unleashed supplement this year (inferring from the UAs). We might see the Arcana Domain in there, though that was only in the first of the Arcane Subclasses UAs.
I’m not sure quite what’s meant by the assertion that WotC has moved away from the traditional concept of Domains. They have perhaps moved from having a 1:1 relationship between deities and domains, but I think there was always an implication that some deities might have a “portfolio” that could encompass several domains, while some domains could be associated with multiple deities.
A portfolio of domains is how it was in 5.0. In 5.5, the word domain in the name of cleric subclasses is as abstract as say path for barbarians. There's nothing at all on any sort of connection between deities and domains (at least in the books I own).
Sorry for late reply: I wanted to check through my books too.
PHB24 is deliberately not setting-specific, so doesn’t deal with specific deities.
The Greyhawk Gazetteer in the DMG24 has a table of deities but not much detail other than alignments, home planes and typical worshippers.
Bigby’s Glory of the Giants describes the Giant pantheon, with an individual entries on each deity. Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen provides a similar description of the members of the Krynn pantheons. Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn is also similar, but with more extensive descriptions. None of these explicitly recommend Domains, but there’s enough detail, I think, for the player to infer which Domains would seem appropriate.
FR:HoF also includes the Knowledge Domain, which specifically mentions Oghma and Gond as deities particularly associated with the Knowledge domain in that setting.
So, they have moved to being less prescriptive about the domains associated with different deities. For most of the pantheons presented, there appears to be enough information that the player can choose domains that seem appropriate for that deity (or to choose a deity appropriate to their cleric’s domain). Thus, I would say that the domains remain just as relevant as they were in early 2014, but are less prescriptive.