Cleric Subclass Design

Cleric Subclass Design

Players expect a strong thematic tie between their cleric and their deity. A cleric of the god of war should have a very different kit compared to a cleric of the god of magic. This desire clashes with the cleric’s access to full spellcasting, leaving us a relatively small mechanical footprint for a subclass.

Giving the cleric a distinct flavor within its subclass requires a good understanding of the benefits offered by the core character class. The class was designed with this challenge in mind, leaving future designers (like us!) space to deliver the right flavor within the class’s bounds.

Core Class Elements

The cleric gains its subclass at 1st level because a few of its core class features are specifically built to fall short of their expected benefits. Without the benefit of the subclass, the cleric is left behind the power curve compared to other classes. Let’s look at these features and talk about how you can use them in subclass design.

You have three core class features to build on when creating a cleric subclass.

Weapons and Armor. The base cleric grants access to simple weapons, light armor, medium armor, and shields. Granting better armor and weapons is a useful way to make a domain stand out from the others. Typically, subclasses that focus on casting leave this list untouched while those that expect to engage in close combat gain additional weapons and heavy armor.

Spellcasting. The core cleric spell list is supposed to run short on pure offense. That was true in earlier editions of the game – just try making a blaster cleric in AD&D – but 5e’s design approach undermines this. All spells at a given level, regardless of the classes they are assigned to, are balanced against each other. That means that core cleric offensive spells are as potent as a wizard spell. To emphasize a cleric’s spell ability, you need to hunt through the non-cleric lists for outlier spells such as fireball or shield. You can grant them to the cleric via the domain spell lists.

Channel Divinity. Gained at 2nd level, Channel Divinity offers a narrow, default option. During the design of 5e we had many long arguments about Turn Undead. Rob Schwalb – rightfully, in retrospect – argued that it should be a spell. In the end, we made it a core feature due to player expectations. If a cleric is in the party and a vampire shows up, D&D players expect the cleric to pop Turn Undead. Making that optional felt like it removed an iconic element from the class.

Since Turn Undead is so narrow, you can expect a cleric subclass to give a thematic, more generally useful outlet for Channel Divinity.

Features and Structure

Here is how the cleric subclass structure breaks down by level and typical features.

Domain Spells

Domain spells mostly come down to finding the right flavor for a subclass, usually by poaching spells from other classes. As mentioned above, this is also your chance to give a spell-focused cleric access to the wizard spells that fall above the power curve. Shield, fireball, and spells that dish out conditions are great ways to make a cleric feel more like a caster.

1st Level: Filling Out the Kit

At 1st level, a domain should fill out the gap between the base cleric and a character’s full functionality. Of course, it must fill it out in a way that feels resonant for the domain’s core concept.

Typically, a domain grants better weapons and armor if its clerics are meant to fight up close. Otherwise, look to give the cleric some extra skills to round out their utility and a useful tool that can augment their spellcasting.

The Life domain provides a good model, with its extra boost to all healing spells. You can also consider some limited use abilities, such as the War domain’s War Priest feature. Those two features provide a good target for power. An ongoing benefit should provide about +2 damage per round, while a limited use one should be equivalent to a weapon attack or cantrip used as a bonus action. For a limited use ability that uses an action, use 1st-level spells as your power guideline.

2nd Level: Channel Divinity

At 2nd level, you have the chance to complement Turn Undead’s narrow scope with something more broadly applicable. Disciple of Life from the Life domain is a good model for the power level of these abilities. It provides five times the cleric’s level in healing, showing us a few key design guidelines.

Channel divinity benefits should scale. Turn Undead puts a condition on creatures. Its effectiveness remains equal across all levels and can provide a powerful swing when it lands on a boss monster or other high CR threat.

Five points of effective power per level, or about 1d8, is a solid baseline for its effective power. If you require the use of an action, the Channel Divinity ability can provide about 1d8 worth of power per cleric level. Roughly speaking, it should start off equal to a 1st level spell and scale up by one spell level for every two cleric levels.

6th Level: Situational Boost

My experience is that the 6th level benefit is the most difficult one to get right. Its power level needs to be very narrow, as we’ve already given the cleric meaty benefits at lower levels. However, we need to deliver something thematic and fun to make sure that the cleric hits the right flavor notes.

Blessed Healer from the Life domain provides a nice model. It grants 2 + spell level healing to the cleric when they cast a spell that heals others. I love this effect because healer characters spend a lot of time keeping the rest of the party going. A heal that “splashes back” to the caster keeps the healer on their feet and provides a notable boost each time the cleric pursues their core action.

Note that since this benefit is restricted to healing only the caster, its power level is low. Plenty of times, a cleric might have full hit points when they heal someone else.

Some subclasses grant an additional use for Channel Divinity at this level. This approach allows you to handle situations where this level’s narrow power band makes it difficult to find the right effect.

8th Level: The Math Patch

When balancing the cleric, a weird little hiccup emerged in its power curve. At 8th level, a cleric’s at-will damage risked falling behind the other classes. We placed the fix within the subclass to capture the divide between weapon and spell-focused clerics.

Does the subclass expect to use weapons? Give it Divine Strike here. Otherwise, give it Potent Spellcasting. I expect in the revised rules that we’ll see a new core class feature that combines those two benefits and gives them to all clerics.

17th Level: The Capstone Feature

Cleric subclasses deliver a capstone feature meant to give the cleric a powerful expression of its subclass. These abilities are meant to look powerful, but if you study them closely you might notice that their powerups aren’t particularly compelling within the context of the game’s highest tiers.

As a rule of thumb, aim for something that sounds completely bonkers at low level but has a much smaller effect at the top of the level chart.

Knowledge Domain. Visions of the Past looks cool, but there are plenty of divination spells that could do the same thing. High level characters can afford to burn through mid-level slots to gain that information.

Life Domain. Maximized healing rolls sound broken, until you fight high CR monsters and see damage results in the hundreds.

Light Domain. Disadvantage on saves against spells seems neat. Disadvantage against spells that inflict fire or radiant damage is… unimpressive. You can make this work if you find control spells that deal that damage, but that’s a bug to me. I don’t think anyone designing spells for D&D remembers that those damage types give this particular subclass a significant edge if the spell stuns or shuts down bosses.

Master of Nature. Freeing up your actions is nice, but it turns an option you never use into one that you almost never use, unless you specifically build your character to take advantage of this feature.

Storm Domain. Flying is very useful, but as with many things at 17th level it is fairly common to gain via spells or magic items.

Trickery Domain. The benefit here – extra images from Invoke Duplicity – could be useful, but it requires concentration. Very narrow, probably rarely used.

War Domain. Barbarian resistance to damage sounds great until you realize that high CR creatures wreak havoc with energy attacks and conditions.

Bonus Topic: I Love the Cleric

The cleric consistently ranks as one of the most liked and powerful classes in the game. Personally, I love how the design for this class came together. While in an ideal world the subclass choice would come in a little later, I love how the domain overlaps with the core class to produce something unique.

When designing classes in the future, I’m going to think long and hard about how the class’s core functionality intersects with the design space given to a subclass. In 5e playtests, I loved how clerics felt so distinct while still delivering their expected core functionality. Simply by making weapon and armor proficiencies into a dial, it is easy to deliver a wide range of archetypes within a single class.

Channel Divinity provides another example of this benefit. We start with a narrow effect that all clerics get to establish the class’s identity. We then layer in a more generally useful but resonant effect that gives a character a distinct identity.

I’ve been thinking of designing an alternative fighter class that uses this approach, but that will have to wait until after Gen Con when we move on to character class design.