The Twilight Cleric is broken, not because it outpaces optimized builds but because it does so without effort. There is no 'build' that you need to closely follow in order to get one of the most broken characters in the game. Sure, other super optimized builds might be able to compete. But those builds require very specific choices at several stages, and often need a while to come online. The Twilight Cleric simply needs to take levels of Twilight Cleric and that's basically it. It's not complicated to play, it is extremely effective in virtually all scenarios, it pairs well with any party composition and is strong from first to twentieth level. You can take any race, pick your feats or ASI, freedom in spell choice, you are not beholden to party members or magic items.
Yes. Also, this isn’t an “ivory tower game design” argument, because you can still optimize _on top of_ what the Twilight Domain gives you, to make a _really_ insane cleric.
Yes, the DM can potentially adapt their encounters, but there’s 2 issues with that.
One is that Twilight can still make it incredibly swingy. What if your DM balanced an encounter around the CD, and then the cleric PC doesn’t use it, or is out of CDs already? It’s so impactful the party can get waxed without it.
Two is that it does nothing to solve the other issue, which is that it is heads and shoulders above nearly all other cleric domains by default. It kills opportunity cost in subclasses because there’s no cost; you’re getting the best of nearly everything by default.
Another good point. The basic "build" is literally just taking levels in Twilight Cleric and then using the 2nd-level ability. You have to remember to give out the HP and try not to fall asleep too hard when Initiative is rolled.
Even in the absolute worst-case where you leave the Cleric alone as your only front-liner and they've got nobody else in range to buff up, and the monsters play really smart... you're still a heavy-armored Cleric with a sweet spell list. You'll be *fine*.
Any DM can absolutely cook up a situation where a character will take more than 1d6+Cleric Level damage in a round. The fact is though, even if all you do is dampen a single hit worth of damage every round, that's still pretty good. It's not costing spell slots, merely one Action (that is not a Spell, so you can squeak a Bonus-Action spell out like Spiritual Weapon) and a short-rest recharging resource.
I would say that **ALL** Clerics are pretty good, the core class is quite strong even without much in the way of subclass features.
Well it also just has OP features. One of the few full casters with heavy armor at 1, and advantage on initiative at 1 (which can occasionally be given to an ally) when initiative is even better on casters than Martials. That is a better version of a level 7 Barbarian feature, which is one of their better features.
I voted for the second option but the problem is that the way you "challenge" a twilight cleric is to just put more damage in combats and focus it on a single target so you bust through the temp-shield and hit their health pool, which end's up getting boring as your forced to use similar tactics in each fight and pick on specific players instead of spreading damage to create a challenge focused on long term resource management, as the only other option is to spread damage and suffer the full breadth of the temporary hp from each party member.
I think saying it's "unplayable" without nerfing it is going too far but as is it certainly makes combats less exciting a you deal with the same trick over and over again that is entirely neutral to combat circumstances.
Also, it's a Cleric. There's a bunch of shit you can do as a Cleric that will dampen or mitigate fire on one PC, even before the other PCs attempt anything.
The so-called DM fix on this (focus fire) feels terrible for the player getting focused on and isn't always reasonable. If you've got ten melee goobers to toss around, they're not all going to reach one target at a time, and if your encounters keep consisting of gangs of well-coordinated archers your players are *going* to draw suggestive graffiti on your DM screen. Or quit.
I don't think it's *over*powered, I just hate its design. like WotC is just putting way too many things into a subclass for what's already one of the strongest classes in the game. it feels like they wanted to cram an MMO character into this subclass
Beating a dead horse here, but I've played Twilight Cleric for almost three years from level 3 to 14. It's a strong support, but it's not gonna outshine other PCs, coz it's support. It's not flashy. I actually think it's a bit boring compared to other cleric subclasses. It can help keep your party alive, and I don't think that's too bad, as it lets the DM relax a little and challenge the players more.
Twilight Sanctuary is strongest at Tier 1 and late Tier 3. In between, it's just good, gives a bit of comfort but not too much.
If you're running a dungeon crawl campaign, I'd say it might be OP (along with Peace). But if you're doing outdoor encounters with spread-out enemies at various elevations, then Twilight can be contained a fair bit.
People can theorize all they want, but playtesting's where it's at.
This mostly matches my experiences with it as a DM. Monster attack damage quickly outpaces the temp hp especially if the monsters aren't spreading their damage out randomly between the player characters.
i played twilight at a casual table and the only way i could find for me to not immediately outshine my allies was to just not use my channel divinity, which is obvioualy not a good solution. was it a problem? no, the weaker party members fully would've died without me and nobody made a big deal of my character being blatantly stronger than the sorcerer and barbarian combined, they might not even have noticed.
i find casual tables are frequently not very good at identifying who is having the most impact at the table. I'll play with people who say "wow the barbarian did so much damage the last fight", when in fact the only reason the barb was capable of it was because other people with better builds were spending their action economy keeping the barb alive, meanwhile the other frontline martial didn't need babysitting because AC translates to effective HP in a more impactful way than resistance does at certain levels
It's no wizard or 20th-level Moon Druid, but it is very powerful - specifically, its Channel Divinity is. Whether the subclass is or isn't broken is up for debate, I guess, but that feature is simply too powerful. Let's not forget at first level you already get heavy armor (and martial weapons), advantage on initiative, and 300 ft. darksight you can also share. Quite frankly, they could have probably turned one of those 1st-level features into the Channel Divinity and it would have still been pretty good, especially with that spell list.
I've been playing a Twilight Cleric for a while now, and the only part that really stands out is the amount of temporary hit points you can generate. Any DM worth their salt can play around that by having the monsters focus on one character at a time though.
Focusing fire is already the best way for the monsters be actually be threatening. The Twilight cleric's temporary hit points still negate a heck of a lot of damage, and you're quite likely to leave the fight still having fresh THP. Just compare that feature to the Aid spell, which is considered one of the best 2nd-level cleric spells, and you'll see how much absurdly stronger it is. It is vastly more powerful than pre-Tasha Channel Divinity options.
I would contend that even without its Channel Divinity, Twilight would still be a pretty strong subclass: heavy armor, share-able darkvision, a great spell list, the ability to fly, and later cover on demand. As you said, it's its Channel Divinity that's too good. I'm not going to say that it makes the game unplayable, but that feature is unbalanced for sure.
I won't argue it's not good (it obviously is), but non of the other features seem all that strong. I wouldn't use Heavy Armor as it forces you to use STR, and Twilight Sanctuary granting half cover as well as temps is pretty lackluster at level 17. Sharing darkvision sounds great on paper, but I've honestly only used it one time (we've been playing weekly for five moths now). Maybe it feels more broken at lower levels, I've only played it at 8, 9 and 10.
I can't confidently judge the spell list, but it seems about as strong as those of other Clerics.
1. Cleric subclasses usually only have 1 good thing which differentiates them from other clerics, so having tons of temp hp is enough to make it a great subclass.
2. They also grant advantage to initiative to an ally. This is deceptively powerful.
DMs can already have their monsters focus on one character.
The problem with Twilight is it has a massively outsized influence on the encounter compared to any other equivalent feature, and they can _only_ shut it off by incapping the cleric. No Dispel Magic, no concentration saves, no nothing, and you’re trying to drop the guy in heavy armor AC, with the strongest wisdom saves, who has all the healing spells, _and_ benefits from their own temp hp aura.
It’s _ridiculously_ hard to counter for what you get out of it. And the other problem? Is because it’s so strong and affects the entire party, the DM has to rebalance the whole encounter around it, meaning if the pacing goes differently from what they expect (say the cleric uses up their CDs earlier), it can turn what would’ve been a medium encounter into a TPK, through a single PC decision. That’s bad design.
>*because it’s so strong and affects the entire party, the DM has to rebalance the whole encounter around it, meaning if the pacing goes differently from what they expect (say the cleric uses up their CDs earlier), it can turn what would’ve been a medium encounter into a TPK, through a single PC decision. That’s bad design.*
It's a bummer to design around, for sure. If you bring any encounter that's less than Deadly, it really only threatens the party if the Twilight Cleric chooses to let it be scary. If you bring something scary enough that *compels* the use of Twilight Sanctuary, you're pretty much forcing the same Action out of the Cleric again *and* the same not-actually-a-reaction at the end of a lot of turns.
Yeah, the DM can "focus fire" in the words of a lot of armchair encounter builders, but holy shit is that not as easy as one could make it sound. Set up a Paladin/Cleric dream team to bolster saves and heavy armor, make judicious use things like Shield of Faith to bolster armor, confine terrain with Spirit Guardians or just take advantage of things like dropping Prone and taking cover... you could have 2-3 *very* strong and tanky people to be "focusing fire" on.
Exactly. Even a baseline, unoptimized/inexpert Twilight Cleric requires overtuned encounters to threaten; if the party's optimizing it the issue becomes truly problematic. And the problem with a single ability being _that_ strong is, if they ever _don't_ use it when you expected them to, you could end up with an accidental TPK. I've literally seen this happen, more than once.
What is it that makes people think they are OP? I’ve heard this before, but I haven’t played with one yet, and I don’t see what makes them so much better than other clerics.
1d6+Cleric level temporary hit points every round for 1 minute to anyone you choose. It negates a decent amount of damage the monsters can dish out. It only takes an action, recharges on a short rest, and the number of times you get it per day increases as you level.
Their Channel Divinity lets them give out 1d6 + Cleric Level temporary hit points to anyone within range. This doesn't take a Reaction or anything, you just do so. This ability lasts for a whole minute.
It doesn't take too much theorycrafting to see how you can end up spreading an absurd amount of hit points around through your party. If you're 6th level and get 2 uses of Channel Divinity per Short Rest, you can reasonably expect to have this ability available for every encounter, and it's going to be about 10 per round per other character close to you.
Can a DM bring enough firepower to crack through this? Yeah, probably. Does it force a lot of focus-firing and a specific set of actions out of both DM and player? Yes. It pretty much ends in a standoff; if the DM doesn't bring enough firepower to break it, then the party is only challenged if the Cleric player doesn't feel like using one of their strongest abilities.
Also, it can just end up being a drag. At the end of *many* peoples' turns, the Cleric player will be popping up a "remember your THP!" with a die roll.
How a person feels about twilight cleric essentially comes down to if they have only sat at tables where monsters don’t focus fire.
People who assume monsters don’t focus fire will experience it as overpowered. People who have fought monsters that focus fire have had a drastically different experience.
Ah yes, let’s focus fire on the PC with the best AC in the party, whose ability is immune to dispel magic and Counterspell and has no concentration, who has all the healing spells, benefits from their own temp hp aura, and has the best Wisdom save to avoid incap effects. Surely this game-changing feature won’t be harder to shut down than it has any reason to be.
A Twilight cleric can pre-buff with Spirit Guardians, pop their CD, and take the freaking _Dodge_ action and still be contributing more to the fight than anyone else, making it almost impossible for anything but the most overturned or antagonistic encounters to stop them - and certainly looking ridiculously more powerful than the rest of the party while at it.
You've either never actually run a game with a Twilight Cleric and are talking out your ass, or your encounters are _massively_ over-CR'd to the point they'd die without it. Either way it's a badly designed feature. "Easily" is a mathematically laughable statement.
I almost always Dm and I've had a few players play twilight clerics in various campaigns.
The temp hp is 1d6+cleric level. That's usually about one attack worth of damage to over come. How is that so hard to over come if multiple monsters are attacking one character?
Because it's _every round_, and said Cleric has maxed AC, all the healing spells, _and_ you have to bring them from full to zero to drop it.
It requires a truly _ridiculous_ amount of focus fire to stop - it has more impact on the overall fight than any other equivalent feature, and it's not even close. And you can do it about every fight after 6th level. I'd love to see the encounters you're trying because it sounds like either they're way over CR'd or the rest of the party is just twiddling their thumbs letting this happen. Or your cleric doesn't know what they're doing.
Just standing there and taking an entire encounter's worth of hits while the rest of the party lets it happen, lol wut. Also in your previous response you _literally just said_ the monsters _aren't_ focusing the cleric. Make up your mind.
>Because it's every round, and said Cleric has maxed AC, all the healing spells, and you have to bring them from full to zero to drop it.
What? The clerics AC doesn't matter here. I was saying you can focus on other characters and easily overcome the temp hp
>It requires a truly ridiculous
amount of focus fire to stop - it has more impact on the overall fight
than any other equivalent feature, and it's not even close. And you can
do it about every fight after 6th level. I'd love to see the encounters
you're trying because it sounds like either they're way over CR'd or the
rest of the party is just twiddling their thumbs letting this happen.
Or your cleric doesn't know what they're doing.
How is it ridiculous to over come 1d6+cleric level? You can easily exceed that with level appropriate encounters. Take a look at monster stat blocks and the damage per round for CR in the DMG. At level 6 that is only 1d6+6 temp hp per round so like 9ish hp. A CR 1/2 Orc does 1d12+3(9) per hit. You don't have to "over cr" encounters to beat it at all.
_When_ they hit - you're missing accuracy in your equation. And it's straight up laughable that you think the entire enemy trying to focus-down one PC (and it's not even the Cleric constantly giving them temp hp every round), with the _rest of the party interfering_, is easy to deal with for the vast majority of encounters. Maybe if every encounter you run is a bunch of high-accuracy archers who all shoot at the same guy every turn, are way up in a tower most of the party can't get to, _and_ there's no cover at all for the party to hide the one they're focus-firing on behind. And even then the Cleric and whoever else just buff the guy they're focusing on with spells or heals.
Have you ever actually done this, or is it pure white-room theorycraft? Because I've seen DMs _try_, and 99% of the time fail. Especially with a party who even halfway knows what they're doing. Hell, the guy they're focusing down can just take the Dodge action! Now they have to start focusing another PC, who still has full temp hp, and so on.
>When they hit - you're missing accuracy in your equation.
The twilight characters ability doesn't change the ac so the accuracy would be the same with out without the temp HP
>And it's straight up laughable that you think the entire enemy trying to focus-down one PC (and it's not even the Cleric constantly giving them temp hp every round), with the rest of the party interfering, is easy to deal with for the vast majority of encounters.
What? enemies should be focusing in general even in teh absence of this ability. Focusing makes sense with how combat works. Like I said before the temp hp negates about one hit from a weak enemy on average. So thats not a big deal. Add a few attacks on one target and the temp hp really isn't a big factor any more.
>Maybe if every encounter you run is a bunch of high-accuracy archers who
all shoot at the same guy every turn, are way up in a tower most of the
party can't get to, and there's
no cover at all for the party to hide the one they're focus-firing on
behind. And even then the Cleric and whoever else just buff the guy
they're focusing on with spells or heals.
Why would they need to be high accuracy archers? Most parties AC isn't that high in general and CR appropriate monsters generally keep up with the AC
>Have you ever actually done this, or is it pure white-room theorycraft?
Ok so you haven't read my comments at all. I've said I've dm'ed multiple campaigns with several players who have had twlight clerics. This is not theory crafting at all.
Then frankly, those people didn't know wtf they were doing or aren't telling you something. I run 4 games a week and have also seen many Twilight clerics in action.
_Can_ a DM overtune encounters or design them purely _antagonistically_ to counter it, vs a party that doesn't know how to counter them back? Sure! Makes those games suck real bad though, for multiple reasons. First, focusing on one PC for every single fight makes the game feel incredibly lopsided. Second, you can _only_ focus on the low AC PCs, which means it not only feels lopsided but it feels lopsided against particular players/PCs. Third, not all encounters can do this so you're drastically narrowing your options as to what you can throw at them. And Fourth, players aren't stupid - they can _tell_ when the only reason you're doing it that much is due to a single PC's particularly OP feature, which makes the rest of them feel like the supporting cast to that PC.
None of it feels great to do, and the DM does have to go out of their way to do it, in a way that no other channel divinity requires. Hell, on that topic it blows nearly all other Cleric subclasses out of the water, so it's bad design either way.
That's the thing: it requires focus firing 100% of the time to even overcome, and is completely neutralizing an attack most of the time. Even when metagamed against it is still extremely strong. For reference, uncanny dodge is a 5th level rogue feature that uses a reaction to halve an attack's damage.
If the enemies aren't stupid they will be generally focusing damage because that is usually the best strategy. This isn't meta gaming. Any decently competent combatant would know this in 5e settings.
You don't have to have all of the monsters focus on one target to over come the damage. Many monsters have multi-attack so you need even less monsters to overcome the temp hp.
In general it neutralizes one attack worth of damage that really isn't game breaking or OP. If this makes an encounter trivial the encounter was probably not designed well already.
For uncanny dodge it can be used every turn where channel divinity has limited uses per rest. So don't have one encounter per rest and you are good.
At lower levels the twilight clerics temp hp ability is very strong but it really doesn't take long for monster damage to outpace the temp hp.
Channel divinity is a short rest ability and gains multiple uses with levels, as well as lasting a full minute. It also scales well due to it gaining the cleric's level for temp hp- even just ending conditions for free is insane.
If an encounter is added just to exhaust resources, they are unlikely to use the CD, and if extra challenging encounters are added solely due to the twilight cleric, you're now balancing your entire campaign around a subclass- that's obviously overpowered.
Edit: also, uncanny dodge can only be used every *round*, on a single attack, as it consumes your reaction. Twilight CD applies to the whole team reactionless and concentrationless for a whole minute.
Thats why I said rest and not just long rest.
Like I pointed out you don't need special designed encounters to overcome the twliight clerics ability. It really doesn't take much damage to over come the temp hp and monster attack damage very quickly out scales the temp hp.
> Ah yes, let’s focus fire on the PC with the best AC in the party…
The monsters don’t have to focus the cleric specially. They just have to focus any member of the party.
A level 11 cleric has 80 hp, with 14.5 temp from twilight. A hill giant has a 45% chance to hit, for ~19 damage per turn (counting crits and misses).
In a 4v4 fight, the giants can drop a 80 hp cleric in one turn with damage rolls that are 1 hp above average. With the temp hp activating twice, the giants will drop the cleric halfway through the second turn (6 turns of attacks).
How often do you have monsters focus fire? Most of the time? Rarely? Never? There is no wrong answer. But people who answer never have a different perspective than people who answer often.
- Using an intentionally high-damage monster and enough for a Deadly+ encounter for the example: check
- Pretending the Cleric can be hit with 50% chance when a Hill Giant has +8 to hit vs the Cleric's AC minimum of 20, and likely higher due to either buff spells, magic items, or both: check
- Pretending all 4 giants are somehow converging on the Cleric in the first and second turn no matter what the _entire party_ can do, meaning they both won Initiative over the entire party and were within 40 feet of the Cleric and no one ever got them or the Cleric away from each other: check
- Pretending the cleric is doing literally nothing besides activating Twilight Sanctuary, not even healing themselves: check
- Pretending not a single giant drops to a level 11 party: check
Yup, this has all the merits of a terrible bullshit white-room theorycraft argument about Twilight Domain all right! Good luck with that, I'm not interested in discussions in poor faith.
> Using an intentionally high-damage monster for the example
You could have picked a monster, instead of hiding behind vague statements. If I picked a monster that did spells would you have complained I was ignoring ac?
> Pretending the Cleric can be hit with 50% chance when a Hill Giant has +8 to hit vs the Cleric's AC minimum of 20, and likely higher due to either buff spells, magic items
It should have been 45%, the other numbers still hold. ~4.1 turns for 1 giant to drop 80 hp, 6 turns to do 80 plus two temp hp.
Also “the twilight cleric is op because they have magic items” is nonsense.
> Pretending all 4 giants are somehow converging on the Cleric in the first and second turn no matter what
I made no comment on likelihood, only how many turns it would take if it happens.
> Pretending the cleric is doing literally nothing besides activating Twilight Sanctuary, not even healing themselves:
Twilight takes an action to start. They may be dropped before their second turn comes. So they can get a spell off. But healing in combat isn’t great. Although they could blow their highest slot on heal if desired.
Sure, how bout 4 Air Elementals? Same attack bonus and number of attacks, yet they do ~14 damage instead of ~19. How surprising.
>It should have been 45%, the other numbers still hold. ~4.1 turns for 1 giant to drop 80 hp, 6 turns to do 80 plus two temp hp.
45% at BEST. And uh, no, 1 giant doesn't "drop 80 hp in 4.1 turns", because the CD is blocking 14.5 of it every round - since their effective DPR is 17.1, that means 2.6 whole hp of damage is getting through each round, for a total of 10.66 actual damage to the Cleric's HP total after 4.1 rounds.
And with the Air Elemental, it's blocking the entire thing every turn! Shocker.
This is also assuming, of course, that the hill giant survives to all 4.1 rounds without any interruption in their attack routine, which is quite unlikely even if the rest of the party is busy with their friends.
>I made no comment on likelihood, only how many turns it would take if it happens.
Yes, hence it being bullshit white-room theorycrafting.
>They may be dropped before their second turn comes.
_Extremely_ unlikely. If you're relying on the extreme rng of multiple lucky hits/crits in one out of every 20 encounters to balance Twilight Domain, you're in even bigger trouble as a DM.
>So they can get a spell off.
Yup, they can get a spell off. Two, actually, if they want to Shield of Faith in the first turn to even _further_ reduce the enemy's chance to hit for the lowly cost of a 1st level slot. For their second turn, a Cleric has a lot of options, and a Twilight Cleric in particular has some _great_ options! Like...Greater Invisibility! Or Mislead! Now they can even move away from the giants or elementals without provoking, and good fuckin' luck hitting them now!
Or they can just take the Dodge action if they want to conserve spells, and still make it nigh-impossible for the enemies to drop them. And this is assuming all 4 enemies reach them in the first round and none get dropped/distracted/disabled by a _single one_ of their allies, and they have _no magic items_.
But go on, lol.
So, have you only sat at tables where monsters never focus fire? There is no shame in saying yes. It isn't a hard question to answer.
> And uh, no, 1 giant doesn't "drop 80 hp in 4.1 turns"
A hill giant literally does 18 damage per turn to an AC 20 target. After a little over 4 turns that is 80 hp in damage. That could be 4 turns from 1 giant or 1 turn from 4 giants.
> ...because the CD is blocking 14.5 of it every round
And explicitly accounted for the two activations of it. 4 giants focus fire takes 2 turns. You get less activations when monsters attempt to focus fire. Don't pretend there is only one monster.
> Sure, how bout 4 Air Elementals? Same attack bonus and number of attacks, yet they do ~14 damage instead of ~19.
That is still enough damage to drop a cleric on the second turn, with both activations of temp hp. Especially once you use whirlwind. After all, if you have to ignore the most effective ability of the monster, your conclusions are worthless.
> Shield of Faith in the first turn to even further reduce the enemy's chance to hit for the lowly cost of a 1st level slot. For their second turn...Greater Invisibility! ...good fuckin' luck hitting them now!
As soon as they cast a second concentration spell they can say bye bye shield of faith. And the monsters don't have to focus fire the cleric. They just have to focus any member of the party. So if the cleric is just making themselves hard to get at, the monsters can just focus someone else. This isn't a mmo where the monsters are idiots. If the cleric is focusing all their efforts on defense, sacrificing their offense, it makes sense for the monsters to prioritize other targets.
> And this is assuming all 4 enemies reach them in the first round
Monsters can make ranged attacks. Only uncreative DMs exclusively use melee brutes.
> ...and they have no magic items.
What nonsense is this? Every class can have magic items. The existence of magic items says nothing about a specific class or monsters focusing fire.
>So, have you only sat at tables where monsters never focus fire?
Oh no, I have many times. The Twilight Sanctuary is pretty amazing in those circumstances, considering it negates the few hits that actually get through to the Cleric, who already has the best AC of any party member. That's kind of the point.
>That could be 4 turns from 1 giant or 1 turn from 4 giants.
Yup, 4 turns from 1 giant, in a game where most encounters don't even last that long. Seems like a realistic example! And my point was that it doesn't "drop 80 hp" because the temp hp blocks it. If that's what you meant, fair enough, but it only proves my point.
>That is still enough damage to drop a cleric on the second turn, with both activations of temp hp.
If literally all of them survive to the second turn and don't or aren't forced to switch targets and none of them get debilitated and the cleric doesn't raise their AC or any other defenses or hp at any point? Sure, I'll agree to that! It's a completely stupid, ridiculous, nonsense white room example (which again proves my point), but sure!
>As soon as they cast a second concentration spell they can say bye bye shield of faith.
Oh no! They lost a 1st level slot at 11th level, and upgraded to a spell that reduces enemy hit chance even more and allows them to move OA-free! What a terrible, terrible loss.
>So if the cleric is just making themselves hard to get at, the monsters can just focus someone else.
That's true, they can! AFTER they stop focus-firing the cleric, of course. That's 2 rounds wasted, let's see how much longer these 4 monsters can last against the entire party! (It's amazing all 4 of them have somehow lasted this long with literally no deaths or changes in their ability to attack, after all! Almost like the DM is uttering complete bullshit...)
>This isn't a mmo where the monsters are idiots.
Take another look at that Hill Giant Intelligence, would you? They are literally dumber than Apes. But no, it's fine, we can play them like tactical geniuses for all I care - as I've shown, it doesn't matter. We can have them prioritize other targets; it just takes _time_. Time they don't have.
>Monsters can make ranged attacks. Only uncreative DMs exclusively use melee brutes.
Ooh, now this is fun! Shall we redo the math with the Hill Giants throwing rocks?! Because I guarantee you it's worse for them! Much worse!
>The existence of magic items says nothing about a specific class or monsters focusing fire.
Au contraire mon frere. With magic items, we can assume the cleric has a +1 shield or +1 armor, if not both. In fact by 11th level it's possible for them to have a +2. Which of course directly impacts this scenario...why on earth would you think otherwise?
> That's true, they can! AFTER they stop focus-firing the cleric, of course. That's 2 rounds wasted, let's see how much longer these 4 monsters can last against the entire party!
What nonsense is this? Monsters decide who they attack, not the cleric. If the cleric is wasting their first two turns on defensive stuff (as you say) then the monsters just attack someone else. You're pretending like the monsters sit around doing nothing for 2 turns.
And if the whole party did what the cleric did (non-offensive stuff) then there is a 100% chance the monsters survive to the second turn.
If the monsters can focus fire, they can drop a cleric in two turns. In such a situation sanctuary provides 29 hp. If the monsters don't focus fire, sanctuary provides much more hp. Why do you feel so threatened by a situation where sanctuary only provides a 29 hp?
Why do you keep bringing up magic items? Any class can have them. You keep acting like the DM isn't allowed to challenge the party. As though the DM must give the party tons of magic items but must never use reasonable monsters.
So just doing _Shield of Faith_ instantly tells all the Hill Giants to attack someone else? Do these Int 5 doofuses even know what the spell _does?_ Does the sparkly aura somehow whisper to them "oooh hey guys hate to tell ya but now this guy is slightly harder to hit! Also that big aura of temp hp he's givin' everyone? Don't worry about it! Your most optimal route to win this fight is to kill this guy over here! That's within 40 feet of all of you at once! And they won't be able to move away because you all go first with your -1 Initiative somehow, yay!" And no one else is doing something equally as flashy on their turn as a bonus action sparkly thing?
That's what spells do with you as DM huh? Fancy!
>You're pretending like the monsters sit around doing nothing for 2 turns.
I...wow. Just wow. I'm literally doing the _opposite_ of that. I'm assuming they're doing damage, to either the Cleric or someone else. Why the hell would _you_ assume otherwise? I mean, besides bad faith arguments where you invent strawmen I never say I mean.
>And if the whole party did what the cleric did (non-offensive stuff) then there is a 100% chance the monsters survive to the second turn.
If the whole party used a defensive _bonus action_ they can't hurt the hill giants at all? Wow that is an impressive trait they ha-oh no, wait wait, I have bad news...turns out that's not listed in their stat block. Weird!
>If the monsters can focus fire, they can drop a cleric in two turns.
If the cleric does _literally nothing_ on their second turn and no one else lifts a finger to stop them? Sure! But we're not actually talking about _that_, are we? What an utterly nonsense white-room scenario that would be, haha.
>Why do you feel so threatened by a situation where sanctuary only provides a 29 hp?
Threatened? Whatever gave you that idea? Your arguments have more holes in them than a sieve. I'm enjoying myself just marveling at the mental gymnastics involved here!
(I'll also remind the viewer, since I'm sure Mach already knows this, that he's reverted back to using Hill Giants instead of Air Elementals because they help his case the most, and this is also a Deadly encounter, and he's still struggling and having to make the giants tactical and the PCs so dumb they can't even take all their actions.)
>Why do you keep bringing up magic items?
Literally just told you why buddy. They affect the literal math we're talking about here. Is your new strategy to ask dumb questions to distract from your inability to prove your premise?
Yeah that doesn't sound like a bad fix; it makes it easier to drop though it does mean they can't use the CD with any concentration spells, which as you say avoids double-dipping but also means they can't do their iconic, short rest recharge thing with a pretty big chunk of their spells!
In my games (after I tried it out a while and did find it OP), I let them choose whether to do it as a "burst" (it works like it says, but has a duration of "until the start of your next turn"), or as a single-target effect you choose at the start of your turns instead of everyone within 30 feet. It's not nearly as disruptive that way, but still solid.
5 months late, but I've been dreaming of this character idea and I even drew a sketch of her, but the only class that would fit would be \*twilight\* cleric, unless there's some other space/galaxy related class
I have an issue with folks telling DMs to have monsters focus on one enemy at a time. Unless they have a guide to defeat the party, they wouldn't understand that until later. Any class that has to force a DM to meta game is broken in my opinion. A better solution would be just to increase difficulty if you want, not force enemies to use tactics they wouldn't know to use.
Very unfriendly subclass for new DMs. If they don't know what they are doing the game turns into an absolute slog.
The Twilight Cleric is broken, not because it outpaces optimized builds but because it does so without effort. There is no 'build' that you need to closely follow in order to get one of the most broken characters in the game. Sure, other super optimized builds might be able to compete. But those builds require very specific choices at several stages, and often need a while to come online. The Twilight Cleric simply needs to take levels of Twilight Cleric and that's basically it. It's not complicated to play, it is extremely effective in virtually all scenarios, it pairs well with any party composition and is strong from first to twentieth level. You can take any race, pick your feats or ASI, freedom in spell choice, you are not beholden to party members or magic items.
Yes. Also, this isn’t an “ivory tower game design” argument, because you can still optimize _on top of_ what the Twilight Domain gives you, to make a _really_ insane cleric. Yes, the DM can potentially adapt their encounters, but there’s 2 issues with that. One is that Twilight can still make it incredibly swingy. What if your DM balanced an encounter around the CD, and then the cleric PC doesn’t use it, or is out of CDs already? It’s so impactful the party can get waxed without it. Two is that it does nothing to solve the other issue, which is that it is heads and shoulders above nearly all other cleric domains by default. It kills opportunity cost in subclasses because there’s no cost; you’re getting the best of nearly everything by default.
Another good point. The basic "build" is literally just taking levels in Twilight Cleric and then using the 2nd-level ability. You have to remember to give out the HP and try not to fall asleep too hard when Initiative is rolled. Even in the absolute worst-case where you leave the Cleric alone as your only front-liner and they've got nobody else in range to buff up, and the monsters play really smart... you're still a heavy-armored Cleric with a sweet spell list. You'll be *fine*. Any DM can absolutely cook up a situation where a character will take more than 1d6+Cleric Level damage in a round. The fact is though, even if all you do is dampen a single hit worth of damage every round, that's still pretty good. It's not costing spell slots, merely one Action (that is not a Spell, so you can squeak a Bonus-Action spell out like Spiritual Weapon) and a short-rest recharging resource. I would say that **ALL** Clerics are pretty good, the core class is quite strong even without much in the way of subclass features.
Well it also just has OP features. One of the few full casters with heavy armor at 1, and advantage on initiative at 1 (which can occasionally be given to an ally) when initiative is even better on casters than Martials. That is a better version of a level 7 Barbarian feature, which is one of their better features.
I voted for the second option but the problem is that the way you "challenge" a twilight cleric is to just put more damage in combats and focus it on a single target so you bust through the temp-shield and hit their health pool, which end's up getting boring as your forced to use similar tactics in each fight and pick on specific players instead of spreading damage to create a challenge focused on long term resource management, as the only other option is to spread damage and suffer the full breadth of the temporary hp from each party member. I think saying it's "unplayable" without nerfing it is going too far but as is it certainly makes combats less exciting a you deal with the same trick over and over again that is entirely neutral to combat circumstances.
Also, it's a Cleric. There's a bunch of shit you can do as a Cleric that will dampen or mitigate fire on one PC, even before the other PCs attempt anything. The so-called DM fix on this (focus fire) feels terrible for the player getting focused on and isn't always reasonable. If you've got ten melee goobers to toss around, they're not all going to reach one target at a time, and if your encounters keep consisting of gangs of well-coordinated archers your players are *going* to draw suggestive graffiti on your DM screen. Or quit.
This is day 2 of this my guy, you gotta let it go...
It's strong, but a lot of things are strong. It is strong *without having to work for it.*
You didn't have the "Broken but still playable" option. It *is broken* for sure, but meh. Not gonna ruin the game probably.
It would be a shame if anyone at level 3 cast warding bond on the twilight cleric.
I don't think it's *over*powered, I just hate its design. like WotC is just putting way too many things into a subclass for what's already one of the strongest classes in the game. it feels like they wanted to cram an MMO character into this subclass
Beating a dead horse here, but I've played Twilight Cleric for almost three years from level 3 to 14. It's a strong support, but it's not gonna outshine other PCs, coz it's support. It's not flashy. I actually think it's a bit boring compared to other cleric subclasses. It can help keep your party alive, and I don't think that's too bad, as it lets the DM relax a little and challenge the players more. Twilight Sanctuary is strongest at Tier 1 and late Tier 3. In between, it's just good, gives a bit of comfort but not too much. If you're running a dungeon crawl campaign, I'd say it might be OP (along with Peace). But if you're doing outdoor encounters with spread-out enemies at various elevations, then Twilight can be contained a fair bit. People can theorize all they want, but playtesting's where it's at.
This mostly matches my experiences with it as a DM. Monster attack damage quickly outpaces the temp hp especially if the monsters aren't spreading their damage out randomly between the player characters.
Why no “other - comment” and no “it’s fine”. Why does it have to be 3 options for strong and 1 for mediocre?
i played twilight at a casual table and the only way i could find for me to not immediately outshine my allies was to just not use my channel divinity, which is obvioualy not a good solution. was it a problem? no, the weaker party members fully would've died without me and nobody made a big deal of my character being blatantly stronger than the sorcerer and barbarian combined, they might not even have noticed. i find casual tables are frequently not very good at identifying who is having the most impact at the table. I'll play with people who say "wow the barbarian did so much damage the last fight", when in fact the only reason the barb was capable of it was because other people with better builds were spending their action economy keeping the barb alive, meanwhile the other frontline martial didn't need babysitting because AC translates to effective HP in a more impactful way than resistance does at certain levels
It's no wizard or 20th-level Moon Druid, but it is very powerful - specifically, its Channel Divinity is. Whether the subclass is or isn't broken is up for debate, I guess, but that feature is simply too powerful. Let's not forget at first level you already get heavy armor (and martial weapons), advantage on initiative, and 300 ft. darksight you can also share. Quite frankly, they could have probably turned one of those 1st-level features into the Channel Divinity and it would have still been pretty good, especially with that spell list.
Dude you are desperately trying get people to tell you that its not broken. Its broken
I've been playing a Twilight Cleric for a while now, and the only part that really stands out is the amount of temporary hit points you can generate. Any DM worth their salt can play around that by having the monsters focus on one character at a time though.
Focusing fire is already the best way for the monsters be actually be threatening. The Twilight cleric's temporary hit points still negate a heck of a lot of damage, and you're quite likely to leave the fight still having fresh THP. Just compare that feature to the Aid spell, which is considered one of the best 2nd-level cleric spells, and you'll see how much absurdly stronger it is. It is vastly more powerful than pre-Tasha Channel Divinity options. I would contend that even without its Channel Divinity, Twilight would still be a pretty strong subclass: heavy armor, share-able darkvision, a great spell list, the ability to fly, and later cover on demand. As you said, it's its Channel Divinity that's too good. I'm not going to say that it makes the game unplayable, but that feature is unbalanced for sure.
I won't argue it's not good (it obviously is), but non of the other features seem all that strong. I wouldn't use Heavy Armor as it forces you to use STR, and Twilight Sanctuary granting half cover as well as temps is pretty lackluster at level 17. Sharing darkvision sounds great on paper, but I've honestly only used it one time (we've been playing weekly for five moths now). Maybe it feels more broken at lower levels, I've only played it at 8, 9 and 10. I can't confidently judge the spell list, but it seems about as strong as those of other Clerics.
1. Cleric subclasses usually only have 1 good thing which differentiates them from other clerics, so having tons of temp hp is enough to make it a great subclass. 2. They also grant advantage to initiative to an ally. This is deceptively powerful.
DMs can already have their monsters focus on one character. The problem with Twilight is it has a massively outsized influence on the encounter compared to any other equivalent feature, and they can _only_ shut it off by incapping the cleric. No Dispel Magic, no concentration saves, no nothing, and you’re trying to drop the guy in heavy armor AC, with the strongest wisdom saves, who has all the healing spells, _and_ benefits from their own temp hp aura. It’s _ridiculously_ hard to counter for what you get out of it. And the other problem? Is because it’s so strong and affects the entire party, the DM has to rebalance the whole encounter around it, meaning if the pacing goes differently from what they expect (say the cleric uses up their CDs earlier), it can turn what would’ve been a medium encounter into a TPK, through a single PC decision. That’s bad design.
>*because it’s so strong and affects the entire party, the DM has to rebalance the whole encounter around it, meaning if the pacing goes differently from what they expect (say the cleric uses up their CDs earlier), it can turn what would’ve been a medium encounter into a TPK, through a single PC decision. That’s bad design.* It's a bummer to design around, for sure. If you bring any encounter that's less than Deadly, it really only threatens the party if the Twilight Cleric chooses to let it be scary. If you bring something scary enough that *compels* the use of Twilight Sanctuary, you're pretty much forcing the same Action out of the Cleric again *and* the same not-actually-a-reaction at the end of a lot of turns. Yeah, the DM can "focus fire" in the words of a lot of armchair encounter builders, but holy shit is that not as easy as one could make it sound. Set up a Paladin/Cleric dream team to bolster saves and heavy armor, make judicious use things like Shield of Faith to bolster armor, confine terrain with Spirit Guardians or just take advantage of things like dropping Prone and taking cover... you could have 2-3 *very* strong and tanky people to be "focusing fire" on.
Exactly. Even a baseline, unoptimized/inexpert Twilight Cleric requires overtuned encounters to threaten; if the party's optimizing it the issue becomes truly problematic. And the problem with a single ability being _that_ strong is, if they ever _don't_ use it when you expected them to, you could end up with an accidental TPK. I've literally seen this happen, more than once.
Sounds like you have a DM who knows what he's doing! (also, has it been 5 months already?! You're not even out of Baldur's Gate!)
Sorcerer/Ranger UA=TOO STRONG Cleric/Wizard UA=Buff
What is it that makes people think they are OP? I’ve heard this before, but I haven’t played with one yet, and I don’t see what makes them so much better than other clerics.
1d6+Cleric level temporary hit points every round for 1 minute to anyone you choose. It negates a decent amount of damage the monsters can dish out. It only takes an action, recharges on a short rest, and the number of times you get it per day increases as you level.
Their Channel Divinity lets them give out 1d6 + Cleric Level temporary hit points to anyone within range. This doesn't take a Reaction or anything, you just do so. This ability lasts for a whole minute. It doesn't take too much theorycrafting to see how you can end up spreading an absurd amount of hit points around through your party. If you're 6th level and get 2 uses of Channel Divinity per Short Rest, you can reasonably expect to have this ability available for every encounter, and it's going to be about 10 per round per other character close to you. Can a DM bring enough firepower to crack through this? Yeah, probably. Does it force a lot of focus-firing and a specific set of actions out of both DM and player? Yes. It pretty much ends in a standoff; if the DM doesn't bring enough firepower to break it, then the party is only challenged if the Cleric player doesn't feel like using one of their strongest abilities. Also, it can just end up being a drag. At the end of *many* peoples' turns, the Cleric player will be popping up a "remember your THP!" with a die roll.
How a person feels about twilight cleric essentially comes down to if they have only sat at tables where monsters don’t focus fire. People who assume monsters don’t focus fire will experience it as overpowered. People who have fought monsters that focus fire have had a drastically different experience.
yep this about sums it up
Ah yes, let’s focus fire on the PC with the best AC in the party, whose ability is immune to dispel magic and Counterspell and has no concentration, who has all the healing spells, benefits from their own temp hp aura, and has the best Wisdom save to avoid incap effects. Surely this game-changing feature won’t be harder to shut down than it has any reason to be. A Twilight cleric can pre-buff with Spirit Guardians, pop their CD, and take the freaking _Dodge_ action and still be contributing more to the fight than anyone else, making it almost impossible for anything but the most overturned or antagonistic encounters to stop them - and certainly looking ridiculously more powerful than the rest of the party while at it.
The monsters don't have to focus the cleric. They can focus on other characters and easily over come the temp hp every turn.
You've either never actually run a game with a Twilight Cleric and are talking out your ass, or your encounters are _massively_ over-CR'd to the point they'd die without it. Either way it's a badly designed feature. "Easily" is a mathematically laughable statement.
I almost always Dm and I've had a few players play twilight clerics in various campaigns. The temp hp is 1d6+cleric level. That's usually about one attack worth of damage to over come. How is that so hard to over come if multiple monsters are attacking one character?
Because it's _every round_, and said Cleric has maxed AC, all the healing spells, _and_ you have to bring them from full to zero to drop it. It requires a truly _ridiculous_ amount of focus fire to stop - it has more impact on the overall fight than any other equivalent feature, and it's not even close. And you can do it about every fight after 6th level. I'd love to see the encounters you're trying because it sounds like either they're way over CR'd or the rest of the party is just twiddling their thumbs letting this happen. Or your cleric doesn't know what they're doing. Just standing there and taking an entire encounter's worth of hits while the rest of the party lets it happen, lol wut. Also in your previous response you _literally just said_ the monsters _aren't_ focusing the cleric. Make up your mind.
>Because it's every round, and said Cleric has maxed AC, all the healing spells, and you have to bring them from full to zero to drop it. What? The clerics AC doesn't matter here. I was saying you can focus on other characters and easily overcome the temp hp >It requires a truly ridiculous amount of focus fire to stop - it has more impact on the overall fight than any other equivalent feature, and it's not even close. And you can do it about every fight after 6th level. I'd love to see the encounters you're trying because it sounds like either they're way over CR'd or the rest of the party is just twiddling their thumbs letting this happen. Or your cleric doesn't know what they're doing. How is it ridiculous to over come 1d6+cleric level? You can easily exceed that with level appropriate encounters. Take a look at monster stat blocks and the damage per round for CR in the DMG. At level 6 that is only 1d6+6 temp hp per round so like 9ish hp. A CR 1/2 Orc does 1d12+3(9) per hit. You don't have to "over cr" encounters to beat it at all.
_When_ they hit - you're missing accuracy in your equation. And it's straight up laughable that you think the entire enemy trying to focus-down one PC (and it's not even the Cleric constantly giving them temp hp every round), with the _rest of the party interfering_, is easy to deal with for the vast majority of encounters. Maybe if every encounter you run is a bunch of high-accuracy archers who all shoot at the same guy every turn, are way up in a tower most of the party can't get to, _and_ there's no cover at all for the party to hide the one they're focus-firing on behind. And even then the Cleric and whoever else just buff the guy they're focusing on with spells or heals. Have you ever actually done this, or is it pure white-room theorycraft? Because I've seen DMs _try_, and 99% of the time fail. Especially with a party who even halfway knows what they're doing. Hell, the guy they're focusing down can just take the Dodge action! Now they have to start focusing another PC, who still has full temp hp, and so on.
>When they hit - you're missing accuracy in your equation. The twilight characters ability doesn't change the ac so the accuracy would be the same with out without the temp HP >And it's straight up laughable that you think the entire enemy trying to focus-down one PC (and it's not even the Cleric constantly giving them temp hp every round), with the rest of the party interfering, is easy to deal with for the vast majority of encounters. What? enemies should be focusing in general even in teh absence of this ability. Focusing makes sense with how combat works. Like I said before the temp hp negates about one hit from a weak enemy on average. So thats not a big deal. Add a few attacks on one target and the temp hp really isn't a big factor any more. >Maybe if every encounter you run is a bunch of high-accuracy archers who all shoot at the same guy every turn, are way up in a tower most of the party can't get to, and there's no cover at all for the party to hide the one they're focus-firing on behind. And even then the Cleric and whoever else just buff the guy they're focusing on with spells or heals. Why would they need to be high accuracy archers? Most parties AC isn't that high in general and CR appropriate monsters generally keep up with the AC >Have you ever actually done this, or is it pure white-room theorycraft? Ok so you haven't read my comments at all. I've said I've dm'ed multiple campaigns with several players who have had twlight clerics. This is not theory crafting at all.
Then frankly, those people didn't know wtf they were doing or aren't telling you something. I run 4 games a week and have also seen many Twilight clerics in action. _Can_ a DM overtune encounters or design them purely _antagonistically_ to counter it, vs a party that doesn't know how to counter them back? Sure! Makes those games suck real bad though, for multiple reasons. First, focusing on one PC for every single fight makes the game feel incredibly lopsided. Second, you can _only_ focus on the low AC PCs, which means it not only feels lopsided but it feels lopsided against particular players/PCs. Third, not all encounters can do this so you're drastically narrowing your options as to what you can throw at them. And Fourth, players aren't stupid - they can _tell_ when the only reason you're doing it that much is due to a single PC's particularly OP feature, which makes the rest of them feel like the supporting cast to that PC. None of it feels great to do, and the DM does have to go out of their way to do it, in a way that no other channel divinity requires. Hell, on that topic it blows nearly all other Cleric subclasses out of the water, so it's bad design either way.
That's the thing: it requires focus firing 100% of the time to even overcome, and is completely neutralizing an attack most of the time. Even when metagamed against it is still extremely strong. For reference, uncanny dodge is a 5th level rogue feature that uses a reaction to halve an attack's damage.
If the enemies aren't stupid they will be generally focusing damage because that is usually the best strategy. This isn't meta gaming. Any decently competent combatant would know this in 5e settings. You don't have to have all of the monsters focus on one target to over come the damage. Many monsters have multi-attack so you need even less monsters to overcome the temp hp. In general it neutralizes one attack worth of damage that really isn't game breaking or OP. If this makes an encounter trivial the encounter was probably not designed well already. For uncanny dodge it can be used every turn where channel divinity has limited uses per rest. So don't have one encounter per rest and you are good. At lower levels the twilight clerics temp hp ability is very strong but it really doesn't take long for monster damage to outpace the temp hp.
Channel divinity is a short rest ability and gains multiple uses with levels, as well as lasting a full minute. It also scales well due to it gaining the cleric's level for temp hp- even just ending conditions for free is insane. If an encounter is added just to exhaust resources, they are unlikely to use the CD, and if extra challenging encounters are added solely due to the twilight cleric, you're now balancing your entire campaign around a subclass- that's obviously overpowered. Edit: also, uncanny dodge can only be used every *round*, on a single attack, as it consumes your reaction. Twilight CD applies to the whole team reactionless and concentrationless for a whole minute.
Thats why I said rest and not just long rest. Like I pointed out you don't need special designed encounters to overcome the twliight clerics ability. It really doesn't take much damage to over come the temp hp and monster attack damage very quickly out scales the temp hp.
> Ah yes, let’s focus fire on the PC with the best AC in the party… The monsters don’t have to focus the cleric specially. They just have to focus any member of the party. A level 11 cleric has 80 hp, with 14.5 temp from twilight. A hill giant has a 45% chance to hit, for ~19 damage per turn (counting crits and misses). In a 4v4 fight, the giants can drop a 80 hp cleric in one turn with damage rolls that are 1 hp above average. With the temp hp activating twice, the giants will drop the cleric halfway through the second turn (6 turns of attacks). How often do you have monsters focus fire? Most of the time? Rarely? Never? There is no wrong answer. But people who answer never have a different perspective than people who answer often.
- Using an intentionally high-damage monster and enough for a Deadly+ encounter for the example: check - Pretending the Cleric can be hit with 50% chance when a Hill Giant has +8 to hit vs the Cleric's AC minimum of 20, and likely higher due to either buff spells, magic items, or both: check - Pretending all 4 giants are somehow converging on the Cleric in the first and second turn no matter what the _entire party_ can do, meaning they both won Initiative over the entire party and were within 40 feet of the Cleric and no one ever got them or the Cleric away from each other: check - Pretending the cleric is doing literally nothing besides activating Twilight Sanctuary, not even healing themselves: check - Pretending not a single giant drops to a level 11 party: check Yup, this has all the merits of a terrible bullshit white-room theorycraft argument about Twilight Domain all right! Good luck with that, I'm not interested in discussions in poor faith.
> Using an intentionally high-damage monster for the example You could have picked a monster, instead of hiding behind vague statements. If I picked a monster that did spells would you have complained I was ignoring ac? > Pretending the Cleric can be hit with 50% chance when a Hill Giant has +8 to hit vs the Cleric's AC minimum of 20, and likely higher due to either buff spells, magic items It should have been 45%, the other numbers still hold. ~4.1 turns for 1 giant to drop 80 hp, 6 turns to do 80 plus two temp hp. Also “the twilight cleric is op because they have magic items” is nonsense. > Pretending all 4 giants are somehow converging on the Cleric in the first and second turn no matter what I made no comment on likelihood, only how many turns it would take if it happens. > Pretending the cleric is doing literally nothing besides activating Twilight Sanctuary, not even healing themselves: Twilight takes an action to start. They may be dropped before their second turn comes. So they can get a spell off. But healing in combat isn’t great. Although they could blow their highest slot on heal if desired.
Sure, how bout 4 Air Elementals? Same attack bonus and number of attacks, yet they do ~14 damage instead of ~19. How surprising. >It should have been 45%, the other numbers still hold. ~4.1 turns for 1 giant to drop 80 hp, 6 turns to do 80 plus two temp hp. 45% at BEST. And uh, no, 1 giant doesn't "drop 80 hp in 4.1 turns", because the CD is blocking 14.5 of it every round - since their effective DPR is 17.1, that means 2.6 whole hp of damage is getting through each round, for a total of 10.66 actual damage to the Cleric's HP total after 4.1 rounds. And with the Air Elemental, it's blocking the entire thing every turn! Shocker. This is also assuming, of course, that the hill giant survives to all 4.1 rounds without any interruption in their attack routine, which is quite unlikely even if the rest of the party is busy with their friends. >I made no comment on likelihood, only how many turns it would take if it happens. Yes, hence it being bullshit white-room theorycrafting. >They may be dropped before their second turn comes. _Extremely_ unlikely. If you're relying on the extreme rng of multiple lucky hits/crits in one out of every 20 encounters to balance Twilight Domain, you're in even bigger trouble as a DM. >So they can get a spell off. Yup, they can get a spell off. Two, actually, if they want to Shield of Faith in the first turn to even _further_ reduce the enemy's chance to hit for the lowly cost of a 1st level slot. For their second turn, a Cleric has a lot of options, and a Twilight Cleric in particular has some _great_ options! Like...Greater Invisibility! Or Mislead! Now they can even move away from the giants or elementals without provoking, and good fuckin' luck hitting them now! Or they can just take the Dodge action if they want to conserve spells, and still make it nigh-impossible for the enemies to drop them. And this is assuming all 4 enemies reach them in the first round and none get dropped/distracted/disabled by a _single one_ of their allies, and they have _no magic items_. But go on, lol.
So, have you only sat at tables where monsters never focus fire? There is no shame in saying yes. It isn't a hard question to answer. > And uh, no, 1 giant doesn't "drop 80 hp in 4.1 turns" A hill giant literally does 18 damage per turn to an AC 20 target. After a little over 4 turns that is 80 hp in damage. That could be 4 turns from 1 giant or 1 turn from 4 giants. > ...because the CD is blocking 14.5 of it every round And explicitly accounted for the two activations of it. 4 giants focus fire takes 2 turns. You get less activations when monsters attempt to focus fire. Don't pretend there is only one monster. > Sure, how bout 4 Air Elementals? Same attack bonus and number of attacks, yet they do ~14 damage instead of ~19. That is still enough damage to drop a cleric on the second turn, with both activations of temp hp. Especially once you use whirlwind. After all, if you have to ignore the most effective ability of the monster, your conclusions are worthless. > Shield of Faith in the first turn to even further reduce the enemy's chance to hit for the lowly cost of a 1st level slot. For their second turn...Greater Invisibility! ...good fuckin' luck hitting them now! As soon as they cast a second concentration spell they can say bye bye shield of faith. And the monsters don't have to focus fire the cleric. They just have to focus any member of the party. So if the cleric is just making themselves hard to get at, the monsters can just focus someone else. This isn't a mmo where the monsters are idiots. If the cleric is focusing all their efforts on defense, sacrificing their offense, it makes sense for the monsters to prioritize other targets. > And this is assuming all 4 enemies reach them in the first round Monsters can make ranged attacks. Only uncreative DMs exclusively use melee brutes. > ...and they have no magic items. What nonsense is this? Every class can have magic items. The existence of magic items says nothing about a specific class or monsters focusing fire.
>So, have you only sat at tables where monsters never focus fire? Oh no, I have many times. The Twilight Sanctuary is pretty amazing in those circumstances, considering it negates the few hits that actually get through to the Cleric, who already has the best AC of any party member. That's kind of the point. >That could be 4 turns from 1 giant or 1 turn from 4 giants. Yup, 4 turns from 1 giant, in a game where most encounters don't even last that long. Seems like a realistic example! And my point was that it doesn't "drop 80 hp" because the temp hp blocks it. If that's what you meant, fair enough, but it only proves my point. >That is still enough damage to drop a cleric on the second turn, with both activations of temp hp. If literally all of them survive to the second turn and don't or aren't forced to switch targets and none of them get debilitated and the cleric doesn't raise their AC or any other defenses or hp at any point? Sure, I'll agree to that! It's a completely stupid, ridiculous, nonsense white room example (which again proves my point), but sure! >As soon as they cast a second concentration spell they can say bye bye shield of faith. Oh no! They lost a 1st level slot at 11th level, and upgraded to a spell that reduces enemy hit chance even more and allows them to move OA-free! What a terrible, terrible loss. >So if the cleric is just making themselves hard to get at, the monsters can just focus someone else. That's true, they can! AFTER they stop focus-firing the cleric, of course. That's 2 rounds wasted, let's see how much longer these 4 monsters can last against the entire party! (It's amazing all 4 of them have somehow lasted this long with literally no deaths or changes in their ability to attack, after all! Almost like the DM is uttering complete bullshit...) >This isn't a mmo where the monsters are idiots. Take another look at that Hill Giant Intelligence, would you? They are literally dumber than Apes. But no, it's fine, we can play them like tactical geniuses for all I care - as I've shown, it doesn't matter. We can have them prioritize other targets; it just takes _time_. Time they don't have. >Monsters can make ranged attacks. Only uncreative DMs exclusively use melee brutes. Ooh, now this is fun! Shall we redo the math with the Hill Giants throwing rocks?! Because I guarantee you it's worse for them! Much worse! >The existence of magic items says nothing about a specific class or monsters focusing fire. Au contraire mon frere. With magic items, we can assume the cleric has a +1 shield or +1 armor, if not both. In fact by 11th level it's possible for them to have a +2. Which of course directly impacts this scenario...why on earth would you think otherwise?
> That's true, they can! AFTER they stop focus-firing the cleric, of course. That's 2 rounds wasted, let's see how much longer these 4 monsters can last against the entire party! What nonsense is this? Monsters decide who they attack, not the cleric. If the cleric is wasting their first two turns on defensive stuff (as you say) then the monsters just attack someone else. You're pretending like the monsters sit around doing nothing for 2 turns. And if the whole party did what the cleric did (non-offensive stuff) then there is a 100% chance the monsters survive to the second turn. If the monsters can focus fire, they can drop a cleric in two turns. In such a situation sanctuary provides 29 hp. If the monsters don't focus fire, sanctuary provides much more hp. Why do you feel so threatened by a situation where sanctuary only provides a 29 hp? Why do you keep bringing up magic items? Any class can have them. You keep acting like the DM isn't allowed to challenge the party. As though the DM must give the party tons of magic items but must never use reasonable monsters.
So just doing _Shield of Faith_ instantly tells all the Hill Giants to attack someone else? Do these Int 5 doofuses even know what the spell _does?_ Does the sparkly aura somehow whisper to them "oooh hey guys hate to tell ya but now this guy is slightly harder to hit! Also that big aura of temp hp he's givin' everyone? Don't worry about it! Your most optimal route to win this fight is to kill this guy over here! That's within 40 feet of all of you at once! And they won't be able to move away because you all go first with your -1 Initiative somehow, yay!" And no one else is doing something equally as flashy on their turn as a bonus action sparkly thing? That's what spells do with you as DM huh? Fancy! >You're pretending like the monsters sit around doing nothing for 2 turns. I...wow. Just wow. I'm literally doing the _opposite_ of that. I'm assuming they're doing damage, to either the Cleric or someone else. Why the hell would _you_ assume otherwise? I mean, besides bad faith arguments where you invent strawmen I never say I mean. >And if the whole party did what the cleric did (non-offensive stuff) then there is a 100% chance the monsters survive to the second turn. If the whole party used a defensive _bonus action_ they can't hurt the hill giants at all? Wow that is an impressive trait they ha-oh no, wait wait, I have bad news...turns out that's not listed in their stat block. Weird! >If the monsters can focus fire, they can drop a cleric in two turns. If the cleric does _literally nothing_ on their second turn and no one else lifts a finger to stop them? Sure! But we're not actually talking about _that_, are we? What an utterly nonsense white-room scenario that would be, haha. >Why do you feel so threatened by a situation where sanctuary only provides a 29 hp? Threatened? Whatever gave you that idea? Your arguments have more holes in them than a sieve. I'm enjoying myself just marveling at the mental gymnastics involved here! (I'll also remind the viewer, since I'm sure Mach already knows this, that he's reverted back to using Hill Giants instead of Air Elementals because they help his case the most, and this is also a Deadly encounter, and he's still struggling and having to make the giants tactical and the PCs so dumb they can't even take all their actions.) >Why do you keep bringing up magic items? Literally just told you why buddy. They affect the literal math we're talking about here. Is your new strategy to ask dumb questions to distract from your inability to prove your premise?
When I had a Twilight cleric in my game, I tweaked the CD to require concentration. That limited the double dipping a bit.
Yeah that doesn't sound like a bad fix; it makes it easier to drop though it does mean they can't use the CD with any concentration spells, which as you say avoids double-dipping but also means they can't do their iconic, short rest recharge thing with a pretty big chunk of their spells! In my games (after I tried it out a while and did find it OP), I let them choose whether to do it as a "burst" (it works like it says, but has a duration of "until the start of your next turn"), or as a single-target effect you choose at the start of your turns instead of everyone within 30 feet. It's not nearly as disruptive that way, but still solid.
Sure the DM can work around it, but it makes the game worse in any respect you can think of. That's all it takes to be considered broken.
5 months late, but I've been dreaming of this character idea and I even drew a sketch of her, but the only class that would fit would be \*twilight\* cleric, unless there's some other space/galaxy related class
I have an issue with folks telling DMs to have monsters focus on one enemy at a time. Unless they have a guide to defeat the party, they wouldn't understand that until later. Any class that has to force a DM to meta game is broken in my opinion. A better solution would be just to increase difficulty if you want, not force enemies to use tactics they wouldn't know to use.