D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook reveal: "New Cleric"

[SkidAce]

Which was a cool scene, no doubt about it.

But... you are perhaps the third person in this entire thread to have posted ANY successful uses of Divine Intervention. The chance of success was so low... most tables and most clerics never saw it used. Personally, knowing that I had a 90% chance of failure, unless the fight was essentially already won and the only other thing I could do on my turn was take the dodge action, I wouldn't have even used Divine Intervention.

I do appreciate that the WOW factor of when it worked was high, but a feature designed to be useless 90% of the time is a bad feature for the game. I CONSTANTLY rewrote the cleric's level 10 abilities, because it just felt bad to use and fail until you happened to get extremely lucky.

I can appreciate that.

In fact, I can see not including Divine Intervention in the balance of cleric abilities, and giving them somthing else to compensate.

Then just have Divine Intervention be a player "Hail Mary" tool.



We liked it as it was, but there's no right or wrong here IMO.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Druids and Clerics (in theory) rely more on their cantrips for attacks and damage than the wizard or sorcerer.

Clerics haven't had that many interesting Cantrips as Sacred Flame all the time doesn't feel that great to me, but they've added Toll the Dead and Word of Radiance at least. Bonus Cantrips from species would be a really desirable thing to use with that damage bonus for Clerics.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Damage spells of wizards should be higher than cleric's because clerics have more martial abilities.

I'm not saying you're wrong. What I am saying, and what hasn't been responded to, is that you need to then make it clear that spells of equal level, gained at the same time by full caster classes, are not actually equal.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you wanted to improve the old DI ability without a complete change out, the simplest change would be to remove the action cost. Just make it a free action.

That way when it doesn't work (the vast majority of the time), then its no harm no foul. And a cleric in an intense situation never feels like he has to choose between an action that might not work but still does something to help, or an action with a 10% chance to save the day.

That would work

 

[Chaosmancer]

Fireball does as much as flame stike, 4 levels earlier.

I'm fine with clerics cantips being a bit stronger.

A notation: They did say they rebalanced Flame Strike in one of the earlier videos (likely the spell video)

Which it desperately needed.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not sure why you think the cleric spending 4 turns accomplishing nothing ended in victory.

If your going to have it, make it trigger on something like 'when 2 or more allies fails their third death save within 1 minute of eachother".

Well, to be fair and balanced^TM, after that used their action one turn to attempt it, they couldn't attempt it again for 24 hours, so those other three turns could be spent doing something useful.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can appreciate that.

In fact, I can see not including Divine Intervention in the balance of cleric abilities, and giving them somthing else to compensate.

Then just have Divine Intervention be a player "Hail Mary" tool.



We liked it as it was, but there's no right or wrong here IMO.

Yep, that was eventually the answer I landed on a few years ago.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Clerics haven't had that many interesting Cantrips as Sacred Flame all the time doesn't feel that great to me, but they've added Toll the Dead and Word of Radiance at least. Bonus Cantrips from species would be a really desirable thing to use with that damage bonus for Clerics.

Agreed, when I rewrote all the spells in the game, I added a few cleric cantrips, just to give them some other options (and I am a little sick of everyone using Toll of the Dead)

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not saying you're wrong. What I am saying, and what hasn't been responded to, is that you need to then make it clear that spells of equal level, gained at the same time by full caster classes, are not actually equal.

Um.. are you still talking about Fireball (3rd level spell) and Flame Strike (5th level spell)? Cause that idea of them being spells of equal level seems off to me.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'm not saying you're wrong. What I am saying, and what hasn't been responded to, is that you need to then make it clear that spells of equal level, gained at the same time by full caster classes, are not actually equal.

Ok. I understand that. Maybe wizards should just be 4 caster levels ahead.

Maybe they should gain an ability at level 5 that automatically increases damage by 2d6 or heightens spells by 2 or 4 caster levels.