Just to be the first kid on the block dipping a toe into homebrewed One D&D design, I’m offering some new Holy Orders for the Cleric Class, as released in the new UA document. I really like the idea of the Holy Order feature, as it provides both a playstyle and an implied social role for Clerics without getting into their deity or Domain choice. (It does need to move to 1st level, though.)
If you’ve been reading this blog since its earliest days, you’ll recall that I did the same thing during D&D Next. Those designs haven’t stood the test of time and maybe these won’t either, but you’ve gotta get it wrong, a lot, before you can get it right, so let’s start early, you know?
Antiquarian. When you first touched a holy symbol of an ancient faith, prayers in a forgotten language tumbled from your lips. You can use Intelligence rather than Wisdom as your Spellcasting Ability for Cleric Spells. (Designer’s Note: This Holy Order is a pretty bad idea if the Holy Order feature doesn’t move to 1st level.)
Archivist. Preserving the history of a faith, an organization, or a people is a holy obligation for you. You gain Proficiency in the History Skill, and when you make a History Check, you gain a bonus to the check equal to your Wisdom Modifier. When you use the Study Action and your Ability Check is a success, you can also choose one creature who can hear you. That creature gains advantage on the next d20 Test that it rolls before the start of your next turn.
Avenger. Trained for battle, you gain Martial Weapon Proficiency, and when you are not wearing Armor, your AC equals 10 + your Dexterity Modifier + your Wisdom Modifier. You can wield a Shield and still gain this benefit.
When you finish a Long Rest, you can choose one weapon; while you wield that weapon, you can use Wisdom instead of Strength or Dexterity for attack and damage rolls you make with it.
Exorcist. Charged with defending all people from malevolent spiritual forces, choose one of the following creature types: Aberration, Celestial, Fey, or Fiend. Creatures of the type you choose are also affected when you Channel Divinity to Turn Undead. When a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see rolls a Saving Throw to avoid or end possession or the Charmed Condition, you can use your Reaction to give them Advantage.
Inquisitor. Charged with rooting out the truth (or heretics), you gain Proficiency in two of the following Skills of your choice: Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion, or Religion. Whenever you make an Ability Check using either Skill, you gain a bonus to the check equal to your Wisdom Modifier.
Invoker. You have been invested with a fragment of divine power. When you roll damage for an Evocation Spell that you cast with a Spell Slot, you can expend one use of your Channel Divinity and take Radiant Damage equal to twice the Spell’s level; this damage ignores Resistance and Immunity to Radiant Damage. If you do, you can treat any results of 1 or 2 on the damage dice as if they were the maximum result for that die.
In addition, you regain one expended use of your Channel Divinity whenever you finish a Short Rest.
Runepriest. You have been granted command over runes of divine power. When you cast a Divine Abjuration Spell that requires Concentration, you can expend one use of your Channel Divinity to cast it without Concentration instead. This creates a glowing rune on the target that sheds dim light within 5 ft. You must be able to see and touch your target, and your Spell ends immediately if you use this feature again.
Design Notes
My foremost goal is to reclaim some of the most compelling concepts of divine magic that haven’t yet come from 4e to 5e – Avenger, Invoker, and Runepriest spring to mind. Also, an idea from 3.5e that really spoke to me: the Archivist. Making the Antiquarian a Cleric and thus a Divine caster is one of several ideas I’ve been playing with for awhile – another is an Artificer subclass dedicated to using old weird stuff that definitely doesn’t come from Celeano or Carcosa, why would you even think that, pish tosh.
For the Invoker, I’m intentionally copying the important half of the Thaumaturge feature, so that they can afford to use the Invoker feature more often. (But even charging a CD use may be unnecessary, because of the HP cost. I dunno.)
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I rather like the Avenger
Thanks!
Interesting ideas. One thing I think has potential is Holy Order options with level and choice requirements, to reflect either going further within your Holy Order (taking the pre-req limited choice) or branching into other orders. Not sure what that looks like mechanically but I feel like that would make for a more interesting narrative choice than what is currently presented.
I don’t expect WotC to pursue that, but for my part I like it. I don’t know if you’ve looked at my DM’s Guild product “Level Up Your Background,” but in that PDF I’m experimenting with a similar idea strictly within 5e Backgrounds. It’s linked in the footer of this post, and you can also check out the posts where I was playing with the idea in its earliest version. I think it’s cool if PCs can gain social status along with power, and have something to show for it.
These are all really nice concepts. I agree that Holy Order and Channel Divinity should switch places in the advancement. It makes sense both narratively and mechanically. Holy Orders have the potential to affect starting equipment, skill choices, and other basic early PC choices. CD is mechanically more powerful and doesn’t involve any choices that change how your character plays.
Invoker, Runepriest, Avenger, and Antiquarian are my favorites from this group, but all of them are solid ideas. I think there is probably room here for another one that changes the spellcasting stat to Charisma in a similar way as Antiquarian does for Intelligence.
I’d also love to see the 9th-level Holy Order feature get some options to double down on the choice made at level 1 or 2, rather than picking an entirely new Order. There are definitely several HO choices that are just bad choices at that level.
I’m really hoping we see something similar to this HO concept added to Druid, Wizard, and Sorcerer. Warlock already sort of has this with its Pact choice. I think it might be interesting to see the specialist wizard concept moved into a level 1 choice and have subclasses focus on other things. Let a wizard be a Generalist, Abjurerer, Evoker, etc.
I thought about adding a Cha-as-spellcasting-stat Holy Order (I probably would have called it Channeler or Ecstatic) and decided against it for this post, just to avoid one Holy Order that multiclassed perfectly with Bard, Paladin, Sorcerer, and Warlock. That Cha-caster multiclass family seems dominant enough to me as is, you know?
I would love to see a Druid version in particular that supported weapon-wielding Druids and sagacious Druids… and once you’ve gone that far it seems strange NOT to add a Thaumaturge parallel, and so on. I like the deeper specializations of existing Wizard subclasses, so I’m not with you on wanting to see them cut down to a single feature. That said, SOME kind of discretionary, playstyle-defining feature paralleling Holy Order could work for me. I want to see Sorcerer, as a whole concept, retasked into being a little bit more of a fighter-mage or rogue-mage anyway, so maybe this is a way to get there.
I did consider the potential multiclass overlap, but honestly, I don’t personally see possible abuse through multiclass as a compelling reason not to provide a rule for an obvious and flavorful character option. If we extended this to druids, sorcerers, and wizards I would want to try to figure out potential ways for them to change their casting ability as well.
The other idea I was considering for wizards was a focus on spellcasting implement choice. There is some rich ground to mine there and if I remember correctly 4e had some minor features tied to different kinds of implements. Figuring out a simple mechanic that made wand-using wizards different from staff or rod or orb-using ones would be an interesting challenge.
I was also thinking that the school specialization choice could be a way to double down on a subclass choice, but that would probably be hard to balance. If you chose Necromancer as your HO equivalent, most likely there wouldn’t be a good reason to choose School of Divination as your subclass.
Pivoting sorcerers to being the arcane version of the ranger or paladin would be very welcome. I’m really interested to see what justification they come up with for moving sorcerer and warlock subclass choice back to 3rd level.
I think that holy order is only one right thing from this playtest
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