Hello. So here is how it all started. I was working on getting the details fleshed out on the first game I was actually supposed to run as a DM. (It went smooth as butter and now I never actually want to play anymore but just be a forever DM) But anyway I was just in a creative mood and I had a thread of thought that went something like this. I wanted to create a man who hunted down those who were afflicted by the possession of evil or Demonic power and set them free with his magic power. And so my mental image of the coolest character I have ever come up with was born. The Exorcist. 

That was how it started, but I also knew that the class did not exist as any kind of official content in D&D. So I decided to work on making one up for myself. The only problem was that I would need to make it up as I went along to try and make sure that he isn't completely broken, as well as not being completely useless. And I wanted something special in how I kept him balanced. Impose levels of Exhaustion when he uses his powers due to the incredible strain of direct conflict with the power of Hell itself? How should his magic look? Bright golden lines that flower out from him as he performs the Rite of Exorcism upon a young girl who had been taken by a demon? 

So many questions, and no way to answer them since it was already just in my head. I decided to take a look at some homebrew classes online of the character I wanted to make since the Exorcist has been around for a while in people's homebrew. What I found was unsatisfying. Nothing fit my mental image of the man I wanted to create. Of course, that meant I was on my own, which I am fine with. I love creating characters, so creating a character class couldn't be too hard, could it?

Well, a week later here we are. I have made good progress on some of his class ideas. But only one mind can do only so much. I wanted to make a thread to ask people who found me two questions. What do you see in your mind when it comes to a D&D class called the Exorcist? and secondly what sort of Playstyle would he be? At the moment I have him based on a cleric in the sense that he is a buffer de-buffer and a holy man but that is about where the connections end. I don't want him to be a cleric sub-class but just his own class straight forward. 

I don't know if anyone will see this but if you do I would be overjoyed to hear what you have to say on the concept of The Exorcist as a class. If you have any thoughts on it then please let me know and I will do what I can to respond to everyone. Thanks for reading and may all your perception checks be natural 20's.

What I hear the word, I think of a priest driving a demon out of a creature.

Just like clerics have a core feature that applies to undead, your class could have a core feature that applies to fiends--something along the lines of channel divinity. A few things to consider in the most general terms are questions like:

• Do you want to make this class a full caster class?
• Do you want to build a custom class spell list to apply to the class?
• A class that specializes in hunting fiends is very thematic, but you may not want to put all the eggs in that one basket. You still want them to be useful when there are no fiends around.

I also see this as a cleric-esque class, like you said in your post. It doesn't have to be, but going just by the name, it's what I imagine.

I did want them to be a full caster class I think, perhaps a subclass would be physical combat as well but for the most part, spells. lots of spells.

as for being more than just fiends I also envisioned them fighting undead as well, like a cleric would, but specializing in the demonic. 

channel divinity was, right out of the gate, something I wanted to avoid. at least in its general structure. It is such a cleric thing that if I had it it would just be a cleric sub-class. at the moment I have something that could be considered him channeling divinity in the form of the Rites that he performs to do his stuff but I don't want to take it much further than that really. 

as for the spell list, I thought of just using the Cleric spell list and then making additions or subtractions to it as necessary to make it its own class spell list. Or just making a new list altogether was the other option that I saw while still using the cleric spell list as a template.  

I guess I wanted a Cleric, who wasn't a cleric but still did cleric-like things. A bit odd I know but still, it is just the way that it has formed inside of my mind as what he should be. if that makes any sense at all. 

Honestly, I feel like this is a Cleric subclass. It's just so niche, as in the class is defined by one single activity: exorcisms. It makes it hard to build up on its own, because there isn't that much else to work with! What would the subclasses for the Exorcist be? If you can't think of at least 2-3, it might not be a big enough idea to be its own standalone class

When I think of this character, I think of a slightly different term- the Inquisitor. Inspired especially by dark settings, like the Warhammer universe. Someone who keeps an eye open for corruption and evil activity, and ruthlessly roots it out wherever they find it. In DnD I feel like this can sometimes be represented by a Cleric, but is best shown by the Bloodhunter Class. That might be another option to draw inspiration from. For either the Cleric or Bloodhunter Class, you could create an advanced subclass instead of a regular one. Instead of just granting subclass features at the predetermined levels, you could have the subclass actually replace core class features at certain levels. That might be easier to work with than creating an entire class from scratch.

As for ideas on abilities, here are a few thoughts:

Favored Enemy: Similar to the Ranger, you can emphasize this classes specialty against certain enemy types, but could tweak it for spells! Say they can pick between Undead, Fiends, Fey, and Abberations. Whenever they cast a spell targeting such a creature it gets +2 to spell attack or the spell save DC, whichever is relevant to the spell. Or you could add on a different bonus, like a 1 round fear effect, or disadvantage, or whatever.

Inquisitor's Brand: You magically brand an enemy. While branded, you know the direction the enemy is in, and roughly how far they are. The creature becomes more susceptible to Radiant damage while branded, and can't travel between planes.

Charmbreaker: You may expend a spell slot of 3 or higher to break charmed/frightened conditions on another creature, including any instances of suggestion, memory loss, or anything else that is temporarily modifying that creature's mind/personality. You may also use this to attempt to remove curses and hexes from creatures and objects.

Resistance to Necrotic damage.

New Spells: you could create new spells for the class as well. You could actually really lean into the ritual nature of the spells, somehow powering up any spell they cast as a ritual, or maybe finding new and unique ways they can activate ritual spells. Ideas include preventing interplanar travel in a large area for a short period of time, binding fiendish enemies to various physical objects, identifying and breaking curses, etc.

I think you might be creating more work for yourself than you need to.

First thing's first; keep in mind that while the rules do have bits of flavour text scattered throughout them, you're actively encouraged to theme how your abilities actually work narratively, even if they function as written mechanically. So for example, you may not want your Exorcist's abilities to be fuelled by divine intervention, so ignore the word Divine/Divinity; mechanically it'll still function as Channel Divinity does, but for your character it may just be their own inner strength, some particular magical technique, words from a specific text or whatever, that's entirely up to you, don't worry about the divine part too much; Clerics in D&D don't even need to serve deities anymore as such, they can be avatars of forces of nature and other weirder things if the players want them to be.

Second, there's actually already a domain that has an anti-fiend Channel Divinity, and that's the Arcana Domain which you could either just re-theme as an exorcist with some light homebrew, or use as a starting point for a custom sub-class?

The main thing that springs to mind for me is that while Arcane Abjuration might be a good template for an urgent in-combat ability, you also want a way to perform proper exorcisms when things are less urgent. You'll want to talk to your DM about how you'd like to be an exorcist, and how they might agree an exorcism should work. Simplest option might be to say that you can use Arcane Abjuration for free by performing it like a ritual (takes 10 minutes, maybe requires some components like Holy Water, a sacred text or whatever), you could impose exhaustion as an additional cost, or to force the target to re-roll a successful save? That's a mechanic though, you and your group can then layer on the dramatic RP aspects if you want to get more from it (the back and forth of the ritual, the enemy fighting back etc.).

Obvious other feature you want is some kind of resistance to being charmed/possessed yourself, but you can get part of this as an Elf or Half-Elf; even if you actually want to be human, you could again just use one of these as a mechanical base and describe the character however you wish.

But yeah, I think my advice would be to start with what D&D already gives you, try to build an exorcist from that while ignoring all the preexisting theming, and see what parts you feel don't/won't work, and what you're missing. Then either come up with some light homebrew you can agree with your DM to go on top, or tweak a sub-class as required from there?

Elf491, I hear you and agree with a lot of what you said about it being difficult in and of itself to separate from being a cleric subclass. It is, in and of itself, just so cleric-like that it does seem almost impossible to make it into its own class. I like what you said about making it an advanced subclass that replaces features for its own stuff, I like that idea quite a bit so I may look into that as an option. I don't think it would change much of what I am doing to make the class since it would simply replace class features at the right levels, So for the moment I think I will use that when I continue working with it. After all the cleric doesn't get a subclass at 3rd level as a ranger does, it just gets more domain features as it goes along. So making whatever he would need to be an exorcist just a switch-up in how things are done doesn't sound too far-fetched to me.  I have thought of subclasses for the Exorcist, two in specific, that simply focus on empowering certain aspects of their powers. But until I flesh it out enough to potentially make it its own class I will take your advice and make it a cleric advanced subclass. 

I loved everything you said about the abilities that he could potentially have, favored enemy especially seemed like a really good idea to me. I will think about it and see if it would work since I have been a little short on ideas about what to give him in levels where he doesn't have anything at the moment to gain.

Thanks a lot for the advice. I will see what I can do to work him into the actual rules a little bit better when it comes to classes and see what I can come up with. thanks again for the great ideas.

Haravikk, I did not know about there being an anti-fiend channel divinity, I will take a look into that and see if it is a template I could use to get some good ideas for the character. As for the actual exorcism themselves, I had thought very little about that since it has been something that I knew would be a little tricky to work into game mechanics. I am still thinking about it but I will take your advice on asking the DM's in my group to see what they think it should be. It should give me a template to work with if nothing else. I had not thought about being resistant to being possessed but that is a good idea to take into consideration. I will see what I can do when it comes to mixing and matching stuff to find the right balance. 

Thx for the great advice and ideas. I will see what I can do about figuring out how an actual exorcism should be performed mechanically at least.