Clerics in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition
On the many sub-brands of Divine and Primal Power
It all started when one of the player’s in my weekly DnD posted in the group chat that he hated clerics.
I couldn’t let this slide. I spent the first year of playing 5th edition playing almost exclusively clerics. I played almost every domain available in a game or as an NPC in my own campaign. I responded:
I hate clerics because 5e nerfed the shit out of healing
they also nerfed the shit out of crits but that is another discussion
I find them too much good
with the armor, and the magic.
Its cool that there is another type of tank
but I miss healing
I am also not a fan of the Divine power source
My favorite power source Primal, doesn’t exist in 5e. Primal used to be where rangers, druids, and barbarians got their power
but now nature is wrapped up in Divine
and I feel like it makes both power sources less interesting
end of essay
So this is my response:
I never played a cleric in any edition before 5th so I can’t say I know what healing used to be like. I will say, who heals better than a life cleric? You maximize healing always!
I like that healing has been distributed to be honest because my fav thing about 5e is that clerics are about more than healing. And that other classes can excel in other aspects of healing (i’m looking at you Song of Rest and Healing Spirit)
I feel like there was a design choice in 5e to make healing in combat be weak period. Like you have to use a full action to drink a potion? It’s a choice you have to make. Everyone takes healing word because it’s easy to throw into a round if you don’t have a bonus action already, but that’s the reason it heals like dogshit.
Also the previous editions of the game didn’t scale spells like in 5e. I’ve seen the power of a 4th level cure wounds or healing word. Yes it’s not as sexy because there’s not a bunch of fun spell names, but it’s very effective.
I mean, they also nerfed the shit out of wizards. I feel like wizards had the biggest power drop between the editions, mostly because of the concentration mechanic. This is a tangent for sure.
So I was never interested in divine magic before until they created the different domains for 5e. I think they really nailed it with Warlock patrons and the divine domains are close to that but don’t commit as hard. It’s awesome to have these mechanical abilities tied to the KIND of divine entity you worship, granting channel divinity so you have a cool short rest option and then your domain spells and other various abilities. They make one cleric so different from another depending on the power you serve.
I understand why they would get rid of Primal as a single power source because it seems to contradict with the idea that all things in DnD are powered by spirits and elementals and gods. In a world where you cannot deny the existence of the gods it seems strange that there are forces out there in the world not connected to them. This is a modern, post-monotheism lens though, in my completely un-researched opinion.
There is no reason you couldn’t play a druid, ranger or barbarian tied to primal powers in 5e. Just because the world of the natural is tied to the divine doesn’t mean that you have to choose a god to worship when you become a druid, you merely choose a circle, and all those circles seem pretty primal to me. A totem barbarian gets their power from a primal form, not from Pelor or Selune.
There is always a balance in DnD between letting people do open ended cool things and giving them a structure to do that in. I think in the beginning the ability to have your cleric worship in a way that didn’t have mechanics tied to it leaned on the side of the creative player, and as DnD has evolved in 5th edition they tried to be more specific with rules and mechanics while not completely quashing creativity. So they let you pick a domain and there are abilities tied to that instead of you pick a god and there are abilities tied to that.
This additional specificity has been added to the primal pantheon as well, if not as overtly. Instead of a single umbrella of “primal power” to draw from you must choose to draw your power from a particular circle of land, or from the shapechanging power of the moon. You choose animals to create totems of for the barbarian and the ranger gains there magic from their connection to their favored terrains (maybe this isn’t cannon but that’s how I imagine it)
This reminds me of the whole Cure Wounds / Healing Word thing again, where it’s initially less exciting on paper to only have one flexible spell that scales to fit a number of circumstances than to have high powered versions of the same spell, but in practice it just gives you more options. You only have to have one spell prepared but you can cast it for a flexible amount of power. In a similar way the loss of a primal power takes away that big tent for nature lovers, but instead they’ve provided a ton of small (more decentralized?) natural sub-domains.
I’ve only just started playing a druid for the first time (as an NPC) but I see a lot of potential for this. Two primal spellcasters can draw their powers from very different things. A druid may draw their power from their connection to elementals in nature, whereas a moon druid may worship the moon above the earth. A storm herald barbarian may fight with other storm heralds about what kinds of natural disasters are the most powerful.
There’s also precedent for there to be divine-like powers in DnD besides those from the gods or from forces adjacent to a god. Pact magic is full of it, how is a pact with a great old one different from serving Oghma? Mechanically it’s very different, and it feels like it should be different. The old ones are only mentioned in the warlock section. Similarly, just because primal power (the umbrella group) isn’t mentioned specifically in 5th edition doesn’t mean you couldn’t get your magic through it, you just need to focus your source a little bit more than “my magic comes from outside”
So this was about clerics and why they are cool, and we all agree its great to cast spells in armor and have lots of other powers. Personally one of the best parts about DnD to me is that there are rifts in where people draw magic from, and I wish divine vs arcane vs pact magic had more of a rock paper scissors effect. Or maybe wild magic not being a throw away. Don’t get me started on psionics though, cause I am so happy they hardly appear in 5e except as regular magic without material components.
Of course all this is subjective.
Thanks for reading! End essay.
