The temp HP from channel divinity can make players borderline unkillable, is mostly the issue. Without that feature, it’s still potentially one of the strongest subclasses for cleric. (Advantage on initiative, flight at level 6, sleep spell at level 1, etc.) But that feature pushes it over the edge, especially if you’re running a premade campaign like CoS, because the DM either has to put in extra work to adjust the encounters to your power level, or watch you steamroll through.

This makes so much sense! Thank you so much! So ultimately I would have to resolve it by doing one of the following: 1. Not allow the player to be that subclass of Cleric 2. Adjust each encounter that way its not a one-sided slaughterfest for the enemy. 3. Nerf some of the features within some of the skills so it doesn't take up so much effort on the DM side for enemies. Also, that's ridiculous that they get all of that at those levels lol.

I think option three is your best bet. Honestly, the only thing that \*needs\* nerfed IMO is the channel divinity. Here are some suggestions RPGBOT gives in his [guide for the Twilight Domain Cleric](https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/cleric/subclasses/twilight/): * **Fix A**: The cleric must maintain Concentration as though Concentrating on a spell. This prevents them from combining Twilight Sanctuary with the Cleric’s best spells, including things like Bless and Spirit Guardians. * **Fix B**: Applying either of the two effects takes the cleric’s Reaction, so they’re only able to affect one creature per round. * **Fix C**: The temporary hit point option applies once per creature, and the temporary hit points disappear if the creature exits the area of effect. * **Fix D**: Adjust the number of temporary hit points granted. 1d6+level is a lot. Try 1d6+Wisdom (may be slightly higher than intended at low levels, but will max out at 1d6+5 by level 8). You might also try just a flat 1d6 or just the cleric’s Wisdom modifier. * **Fix E**: Instead of automatically removing a Charm/Fear effect, creatures can re-attempt their save against one Charm/Fear effect currently affecting them at the original save DC. If this feels like too much of a “nerf”, you might grant Advantage on the save. * **Fix F**: The temporary hit points granted by Twilight Sanctuary end when the effect ends or if the creature leaves the area of effect.

Oh my goodness! This is legit god-tier advice! Thank you so much! I was trying to figure out a way to resolve it without taking away too much sparkle and joy for the player! Wow! This is amazing!

I would also make sure you explain your sources and decision very clearly to the player, and bring them in on the deciding which fix you use. There are tons of RPG horror stories where DMs nerf a character because they dont want to deal with it and it always comes off as haughty or close-minded. So maybe let him know exactly what research you did, the community consensus. and give a list of the proposed fixes and let him pick which will best help him get the experience he wants.

Any changes that affect a PCs ability to buff other PCs absolutely must be a whole table discussion, session zero or similar. Remember that this is a cooperative game where the main focus is the player party working as a team. Rather than, just, individual players working with the DM. Any homebrew mechanic can come with unexpected side effects, including things far worse than whatever you assume is being "fixed".

IMO that is a bit pedantic. I wouldn't expect my choice of class to be a whole table discussion so if my DM tweaks something about my class, it's between me and him. What are others going to bring to the discussion anyway? Tell me I can't play this class? Tell the DM he can't make that change?

No problem! Can't take credit for the advice myself, but glad I could help you find it!

[удалено]

As someone who tends to prefer to pick the "weirder" newer class options not in the PHB, I'm happy to be nerfed. I'd rather take a minor change to one of my abilities than make the game less fun for the rest of the group, including the GM. I really don't enjoy my out-of-game choices being "managed" in game; if something is a problem, I'd prefer to be told that upfront so that I can fix it.

>wear heavy armor and have disadvantage on dexterity saves Where are you getting the "Disadvantage on dexterity saves" from? Other than that, I think the biggest issue with subclasses like Peace and Twilight (and even gloomstalker for rangers) is: for an experienced DM, they can be handled. Waves of small encounters rather than 1 or 2 big encounters, understanding how to make enemies smart without making it feel like you're targeting an individual, teaching the players about managing resources effectively, how to tweak on the fly, etc etc. The real issue, imo, with these power creep subclasses are thet they're an awful time for DMs who maybe don't that level of experience, or just aren't as well equipped, or just not level headed enough to do all the things necessary to do all the above. I don't personally have any problems with any of my players choosing the "OP" subclasses, spells, etc etc. I'm experienced enough to know how to tweak encounters on the fly (and know when to just let them have the cake walk), how to balance out encounters over a day, know when to have dumb vs smart enemies, etc etc. I also play in high fantasy settings, where "because magic" is a very plausible answer to why the owlbear can shoot lightning from its mouth now. But imagine a game that's low magic, and the party is trying to traverse a dense forest filled with aggressive, but otherwise normal, beasts. How does a pack of wolves deal with a constant stream of 5.5 average (at level 2) TempHP to all the party members? If they all focus one player, then that means the rest of the party gets free reign to do whatever. Ultimately, the twilight cleric is a subclass that tells the DM: you better be good at combat or I'm breaking it.

D, E and/or F seem fine, but C and especially A and B make it borderline unusable. Make sure you work with your player to look for a solution, and keep in mind that the feature will appear more powerful than it is if you spread your monster's attacks on all players.

Take note that when you have to go through a bunch of hoops just so that the PC in question isn't dominating your campaign, it's the class that is the problem. Just ban it and save yourself the trouble of doing extra work ON TOP of the large amount of you work you will have to put into CoS yourself. This module, whilc awesome, does NOT run well out of the book.

As someone who already implemented similar changes myself and have been playing with them for a while: - A is not advisable as it is straight up un-fun. A large number of cleric spells are concentration and with this being a channel divinity and usable every other/every fight (at level 6+), it’s unnecessarily painful for this cleric compared to other domains that don’t have this issue. - B is one of the two options my players like and I find balanced! - C similar to my other solution, which is _removing_ the duration from Twilight Sanctuary and making it an “instant burst” - everyone gets the initial temp hp _and_ charm/fear removal, but that’s it. Has worked great in my experience; turns it into much more of an epic “oh shit” button than the original. - D isn’t recommended unless the campaign is starting at higher levels, because it’s still too much in Tier 1/2. - E actually isn’t _enough_ of a nerf, at least on its own, because the temp hp is far, FAR more disruptive and this does nothing to that. - F is also not enough of a nerf on its own, and is even arguably RAW already.

I probably would go with the Concentration one myself and leave the rest the same.

I hate nerfing abilities but I agree that the spamming of Temp HP is very powerful. I had an Artillerist Artificer in my last campaign and that was bad enough in a 10' radius. I guess I'd suggest discussing this with your player ahead of time so (a) it's nit a surprise and (b) see if they have other creative solutions

Just add statues or effigy's that nullify class/subclass abilities. Make them something the players can deal with quickly as well something that'll fit in the module narratively I think is the trick to making it not just feel tedious

Regarding F. Raw, the temp hp rules say they go away at the end of a the duration if a feature has a duration. But that is then contradicted in the SAC regarding shifter race temp hp. It doesn't help clarity that most spells are explicit while features are not.

A, D and B is simply nerfing it down to oblivion. C is potentially the most fair one. 

it needs to be nerfed down to oblivion. i have seen entire classes on the homebrew wiki more balanced than Twilight Cleric

He forgot to mention twilight domain is stacked with other things like heavy armor and martial weapons at level 1. 300ft darkvision  The ability to share that 300ft darkvision with the parts for an hour.  Even a race with 120 ft darkvision would take 3 rounds of straight dashing to just be able to see your party after they engaged at 300.  Tiny hut, fairy fire, aura of life, improved invisibility, mislead as domain spells.  Every level has bangers on the spell list. I played one and couldn’t deny the insanity and voluntarily swapped domains after playing it for several levels.

You missed the huge one. Circle of Power. Absolutely fucking insane to get what is basically a 17th level PLD skill at level 9. DM had us fight a bunch of wizards once, and everyone was making their Dex saves, so we basically took 0 damage every round.

I’m like this too. I played a game as a Yuan-Ti lore bard with really great initial rolls, a fully optimized spell book, and I just felt over powered at every stage of the game. The guilt led me to intentionally put the toon at risk until he finally got killed and I could play a less powerful build.

>He forgot to mention twilight domain is stacked with other things like heavy armor and martial weapons at level 1. Tbf this one is mostly a ribbon if anything. Martial weapon profficiency stops being useful fast for clerics (but might still be ok for the very, very early levels). Heavy armour is really overrated, at best you have to invest wayyy more, both money and ability scores, just to get a single point of AC more then medium armour. Not to mention str is the significantly worse stat then dex.

Heavy Armor allows you to ignore Dex and take Con instead. You get stupid good AC at low level. And, sure, AC is a fairly pointless stat at higher level, but it's definately not useless.

>Heavy Armor allows you to ignore Dex and take Con Instead you need to invest more in strength.... unless you want to eat the -10 speed penalty which, while it might be manegable, a general 33% speed decrease is rarely worth it. At higher levels, the effective +3 dex you get from choosing to focus on medium would still be worth it wayy more then that 1 ac difference.

Chain Mail only requires STR 13 and still gives you AC 16. Add a Shield and you're looking at AC 18 which is pretty good for low level and serviceable for higher levels. Most classes have a random 13 or 14 lying around that doesn't really do anything except give a random +1 on saving throws so the cost of it is pretty low. Nobody's denying Dex is by far the superior attribute but being able to put a 15 or 16 in Constitution for that sweep extra ~20 hitpoints at level 8 instead of Dexterity just to have an acceptable AC for a frontliner isn't nothing. Plus, you attack with strength as a cleric so that's a nice bonus too.

You only need a 14 in dex too, and if you have the 14 dex anyways (because it's just the better stat and, as you said, if you have one lying around) then again, just go medium. Eith pointbuy, you can afford your con to be higher too unless you multiclass. >Plus, you attack with strength as a cleric so that's a nice bonus too. Weapon attacks are terrible on a cleric past lvl 5. Lvl 4 debetable if you already have +4 wis and only +2 str. And as a caster little reason not to wear a shield, esp on a cleric who can have their holy symbol on the shield. The ac is too valluable compared to marginally better weapon attack. And if the class has martial profficiency too you can relatively quickly afford a rapier.

Or you just play Dwarf and no longer care about movement restrictions in armor.

If you have/want to dump both str and dex, then yeah that might be a thing. But that is a really, really rare scenario assuming you don't just give up with low rolled stats.

Where I have notice it coming into play is with monsters resistant to weapon damage. With martial I could use anything I picked up that had an enchantment on it to break through most resistances and immunities.  (Why yes my cleric also has high strength for the armor which you dismissed.) Now that I made a change it seems like we distinctly don’t have a simple magic weapon so against some enemies I can’t even contribute my one attack in the situations it’s called for. So may be trivial to you but it is one of the features I am noticing the loss of. To me martial means the ability to actually use any toys that you find.  If you never find any good simple magic weapons, no toys.

I would recommend asking the CoS subreddit about their experience with this subclass. The adventure is pretty deadly. The sub has years and years of experience to draw upon.

Easiest to just ban the subclass so you don’t need to worry about balancing either the subclass or your encounters

Sound advice! Thank you so much for your time!

Easiest, yes, but my philosophy is always to err on the side of fun. I think playing around with nerfing the channel divinity is the best option, because it still allows the player to play the subclass they're interested in.

I played one un-nerfed for several levels. It was absolutely like letting the whole party play on easy mode.  After several levels I told the DM to nerf me.  Even after a round of nerfs it was still too much so I offered to switch domains.  And now we don’t feel immortal anymore and that’s for the best.

I think that’s fair. My issue and the reason I do ask players not to play twilight cleric is I just don’t believe it’s features are unique or particularly cool…they’re just all really really strong and that’s the only real source of the appeal. Now, if you’re starting the campaign at like lvl 4 or higher, the justifications for banning/asking players not to play it are subject to diminishing weight, imo.

[удалено]

Yeah, I didn’t word that well. Here is what I mean. Superman has a lot of powers that he shares with other DC toons or superheroes in general but few others have all of those powers in one package and at sort of their most heightened level. Twilight clerics are like that to me. There are plenty of ways to get dark vision in the game, twilight cleric has it better than anyone and can more easily provide it to the entire group. There are plenty of temporary hit point granting abilities or feats, but twilight cleric get a better version of that ability and can keep refreshing those hit points throughout key encounters while also cleansing multiple status conditions if that seems more efficient. Add to it a spell list that cherry picks really strong spells from other classes/subclasses and the capacity to always front-load themselves in the initiative order. So any feature there, there are other ways to get them if it’s something a player really wants to feature…but to pick a twilight cleric is to effectively say, “yeah I want to do all of it out of the lvl 1 package and do it better than any of those other classes/abilities.” So by asking people not to use it, I’m not denying them the opportunity to provide any particular benefit to themselves or the group, I’m just saying let’s not have you get all of the abilities in their optimal form and have them right away. Edited to note also heavy armor and martial weapons. All at level 1 with no other character investment.

I really like your Superman analogy. For some features it really feels like those "Superman vs The Flash" discussions. A character that should have a super specific ability like The Flash's speed becomes overshadowed by the other character who just picked Superman and moves (relatively) as fast as the first one while also absolutely not having that as the defining part of their identity.

The problem with the temp HP is that even if you balance combat against it, the benefit is so great that if the Twilight cleric ever becomes incapacitated for whatever reason, then the party will have no chance without it. If I allowed a Twilight cleric in my game, at the very least, it's twilight ability should be nerfed to either require concentration to maintain or can only grant the Temp HP to one party member per round rather than everyone.

It's a bit easier because it's Curse of Strahd. By 5th level, they have Destroy Undead, so having roving hordes of skeletons, zombies, and shadows would be completely on-brand. Instead of nerfing Twilight Sanctuary, you give them a reason not to use it. This way, they have to decide in each encounter if it's worth using their Channel Divinity for the temp HP buff, or if they should save it in case a dozen shadows show up to kill them via strength drain. It's still a bit problematic because you have to balance the world around the cleric, but it is a tool in the DMs toolbox.

This is all true, but it's worth noting that Twilight Sanctuary is probably especially valuable in a game like Curse of Strahd as well. Removing fear and charm effects? Yes please!

Yeah, fair point. I personally haven't ever played a Twilight Cleric, so I am only theorycrafting how to make it work. I'm no stranger to high-powered campaigns, though, so I know the struggle of trying to work around one character being significantly more powerful than the rest of the party. I feel like no matter what the absolute power level, as long as the PCs are all within the same general range, the encounters can be adjusted to make it fun and interesting. One PC outshining all of the rest is neither fun nor interesting.

Yeah, it's a tricky balancing act. I've also not been at a table with a real life Twilight Cleric, but it sounds like the problem is the same as other highly powerful or minmaxed builds - if not everyone is aiming for the same level, it can make it seem like there's a main character.

I don't think a support cleric would have the same main character issue as some other crazy minmaxed builds, but it's still one extra headache for the DM to deal with. I played in a game with a homebrew speedster monk that was wildly overpowered relative to the rest of the PCs, and that was definitely an issue. I was no slouch myself as a roguelock with booming blade and sneak attack, but the monk could often do double my damage in a single hit and still have extra attack and flurry of blows. Made my damage feel almost useless by comparison. The cleric at least is empowering the entire party.

I am playing a twilight cleric in phandelver and the follow up Phandelver and Below and while I’m probably not playing “optimally” I don’t think I’ve made things easy for the DM .. at all. Maybe it’s because I save the channel divinity for when things are really looking bad or when the charm effects are coming in hot ? I don’t seem better than the DPS nuke of a shadow monk owlin or the super helpful and speedy centaur ancestral guardians barbarian ? The group has been close to going down a few times and it’s been super fun

Being able to use it twice per short rest is pretty often though... until the final battle moving through Castle Ravenloft, there aren't really a lot of opportunities to have more than 2 significant combat encounters in between short rests.

Yeah, that is why I was advocating for basically including random encounters with relatively large numbers of low CR undead. Shadows in particular are good, because their strength drain bypasses temp HP entirely. You are right though in that resource depletion will not hit Channel Divinity nearly as hard as other class resources.

>The problem with the temp HP is that even if you balance combat against it, the benefit is so great that if the Twilight cleric ever becomes incapacitated for whatever reason, then the party will have no chance without it. This is a noticeable problem before 6th level, at which point a cleric should be able to use their CD for every fight. Prior to that, it's impossible to guess which fights the cleric will pop CD for if you run multiples between rests.

I play a twilight cleric in a CoS campaign. Twilight domain is the definition of power creep in the last published subclasses : it has strong domain spells, heavy armor, martial weapons, broken channel divinity, adv on initiative, flight, insanely large darkvision which can be offered for free to the whole team, ... We decided with my DM to nerf it in 3 ways : - Darkivion is 120ft instead of 300ft - Channel divinity only gives my level temp HP instead of 1d6 + level - The "remove fear/charm effect" is replaced by : every ally in the range has advantage to resist fear/charm as long as it is not affected (it does not help to end the effect once the ally is feared/charmed) The last one is a big nerf, we agreed to do that and see how it actually affects the interactions in game. We may decide to up it later.

I got bummed out playing a twilight cleric. I was a circle of dreams Druid and got the idea to multiclass into Twilight Cleric because I thought it would make for some fun flavor for the character. As soon as I got Twilight Sancutary, that was it, that’s all I did, run around providing AOE hp to the party. Even when it got dull, it’s just so powerful it didn’t make any sense to do anything else. Super lame.

Go with #1. Just ban it. Simple answers are better. Part of why D&D is good is its straightforward, it allows a solid foundation for players and DMs to build their stories on. When you start tweaking stuff they won't want you to stop.

I would just leave it as-is. Remember that a lot of the opinions you read on Reddit are not expert opinions, but amateur or worse, but said with full confidence the way an AI would. Twilight subclass is powerful, yes, but I wouldn't consider it unbalanced. If you run encounters entirely as recommended, with the recommended party size, the recommended number of encounters per day (keeping in mind that encounter is not always combat, just a challenge that takes resources to overcome), and all the rest, the game is actually balanced extremely well. It's when DMs go tweak-happy, ban things that "feel OP", boost things that "feel weak", fudge dice rolls and edit stat blocks, run only 2 encounters per day, etc, that the balance starts to feel off. That said, Curse of Strahd specifically is a very unusual setting. Unlike most of D&D, it's meant as a horror setting and is *significantly* tougher than most with a *much* higher chance of TPK, if run exactly as intended. It's the kind of setting where you should warn the party at session zero that they WILL encounter enemies too powerful for them sometimes, and need to learn to figure out when that is the case and escape. Otherwise they'll happily waltz right in to the upper floor of the coffin maker's house and get TPK'd by vampire spawns, effortlessly. (RIP my last party!) Your players being OP is not a problem you will encounter in CoS, unless you deviate from the recommendations. Regardless of chosen subclasses.

Opinions on a certain (sub)classes may depend on specific situations which may or may not happen at a different table. They can even be derived from theory crafting. There's also the opinion that a PC (or player party) being powerful is a problem in the first place. Even if it is, different approaches are likely to different tables. There are at least three different ways to buff enemies in D&D for starters. A common side effect of the three (or less) encounters per "Adventuring Day" can be increasingly involve OP homebrewed NPCs. By which point the game is more Calvinball than D&D. Whilst CoS can be quite deadly, the setting also makes it very easy to bring in replacement PCs, thus could end up as a "Party of Theseus" campaign.

Or don’t forget 4. Engineer your encounters so that clumping up is a bad idea. I’m playing in a Strahd campaign alongside a Twilight Cleric. In the big, set-piece fights where they’d most want to use their channel divinity, we’re usually trying to rescue one person over HERE and facing an oncoming tide of werewolves over THERE and the party starts out split 120 feet apart because someone was investigating something they saw in the woods. Suddenly the twilight aura creates this tactical opportunity and constraint. Three players are in the aura fighting outnumbered against a horde while two go to the rescue and one tries to fight their way back to the group only to go down fighting creating yet another rescuee. TLDR: twilight cleric hasn’t been OP, and instead has made combat much more tactically interesting. Edit: oh and you can use waves to outlast the aura if you want to. Throw in a steady stream of chaff to start, like little twig creatures, then bring in the druids once the aura has dropped. That… is a very dramatic thing to have happen.

Option 4. Talk to player about the possible OPness of the subclass, and tell them you don't want to adjust encounters to their strengths. So discuss with them what your issues are and ask them either to "play nice" or help you. Most players will appreciate that level of discretion. I know I did, and I modified my play to better keep the DM from growing new white hairs without us using nerfs. Everybody won.

I love this option! My player was the one that approached me with this concern actually and it sparked the conversation and general concern over it. I plan on discussing the particulars with them layer this week so we can come up with a game plan (if one needs to be made).

Also don't be afraid to ask the player for suggestion.  They might have some really good ideas that fix the problem and that they are happy with.  Rather than having the gm bring down the ban hammer and ruining the players fun.

I'd lean towards #2 if you're more experienced as a DM or #1 if you're not; nerfing class features is something to avoid unless the entire table agrees on it. I've had inexperienced DM's at my tables attempt to 'rebalance' class features & spells they thought were OP before, and it always went one of two ways: Either the nerf made the feature or spell nearly useless and the player opted to take something else instead, or the change took away the aspect of the spell the player thought was fun and the nerfed version no longer interested the player and they became less invested in the character because of it. It's not too difficult to bump encounters to compensate for twilight cleric's temp hp aura. It improves their survivability immensely, but you can always throw harder hitting things at them to compensate.

Just fyi, you will have to adjust the encounters of any official module anyways if the party optimizes at all. Twilight gets singled out a lot because it doesn’t take a knowledgeable player to be strong, everybody knows to just pop twilight sanctuary in big fights. Overall I wouldn’t call it more game breaking than a PHB wizard after level 5, *if* the party knows what they’re doing.

I think the problem with #2 is that it sounds like it is just a lot of work. But in reality is is more complicated than that. You'd likely have to adjust each encounter on the fly as things go one way or another.

An easy option 2 fix is just to add an enemy that can cast fireball(any large AOE) to every encounter. I think this basically solves the temp HP problem because the players have to be bunched up around the cleric to receive the temp HP.

You have to do 2 regardless of what happens in the game. Party composition, player experience, loot, readiness and level of optimization all play in to how strong the party is. In my 8 years of dming i have just resorted to plan what my gut says are easy or medium encounters, and then throw in some extra goons if i feel like it. I never worry about "balanced characters". Balanced against what? The point is to have fun, not to beat an arbitrary combination of monsters at an arbitrary level.

Ah! You assume my twilight cleric remembers any of their abilities! But ya it's very strong and just needs an average player reading their character sheet. It's not like they have to set up some combo, they just use a core ability.

Fair point. I played a twilight cleric for about a year, until I asked to switch classes because it was so incredibly boring. But even after this one year, the other players forgot to roll for temp HP in \~30% of the cases... and it was much worse in the lower levels. xD

Also fair!  Thr fact that temp HP doesn't stack might also be a factor. The Shepherds druid exclusively uses Bear Spirit which gives some temp HP as well. Since the two powers conflict I think the Cleric just gave up on using it and has since forgotten that they can use it at all. 

Yep. I had a player do this and I easily had to plan almost 2 levels over their current level just because the Temp HP made them hard to threaten.

I have a Twilight Cleric at my 6 player table. That feature scales HARD with party size

Protector Aasimar gets flight at level 3, so at least that part of twilight cleric shouldn't be a problem. I've never had a player playing twilight cleric though. So no experience. But what you wrote seems strong!

No they don't also they empower the entire party equally so just throw more dangerous stuff at them. Twilight cleric is one of those subclasses while they're good they don't really mess with game balance since they make everyone stronger.

It's a little pointless to have a protection class feature that's so strong that the response to its presence can only be to make enemies hit harder to combat it, no? That's like a player getting thieves tools proficiency and the dc of every lock in every door increasing to match it.

Yeah? That's called niche protection and selling the class fantasy. It'd suck if there were no locked doors if someone invested in thieves tools proficiency or only doors which can be picked by anyone.

The big problem is that since it is a purely defensive buff, this will tend to drag on fights for longer, as level will scale up damage, HP, AC, saves, etc. So while this is true that it kinda just works out, it extends fights to a little bit of a sloggy level, as the enemies are constantly trying to punch through the temp HP and your party is missing more and trying to chew through more HP

If it get to sloggy the Twilight cleric cna always use destroy udnead isntead. They chose which version they use.

Exactly this. I’ve had to alter many things for a previous player, it wasn’t game breaking but it did make my prep hell for a bit.

God I wish. The one time I played strahd (the only time I ever played 5e) as a goliath cleric named Bug Sal, and it was barely doing anything. We kept dropping like flies. Probably because we did everything out of order but also the GM really overhyped the danger of things we were supposed to do earlier so we avoided them for the *seemingly* less dangerous later stuff.

My DM just lets the cleric know that they are target #1 in combat with those temp HP being used. So they get to be powerful and get the used but it will be used quickly

Don't forget 300 feet darkvision which they can share with their friends for an hour. Especially in night time this can disrupt any kind of creepy environmental stuff you have going on.

I ran cos with a twilight cleric in the party and found no issue at all.

It's the twilight sanctuary channel divinty. For a use of channel divinity (1/2/3 times per short/long rest @ level 2/6/18 respectively) the cleric can give any creature within 30 ft temp hp equal to cleric level plus 1d6 for 1 minute or 10 rounds of combat. It's an extremely useful ability that can be mitigated by having multiple combats between short rests to a degree but will generally make it harder to down any member of the party. I've never banned it because it lets me not care about strict balancing in fights but I fully understand why it's nerfed or banned.

Hmmmm got it. I've debated going this route as I don't want to seem too restrictive but they're playing an Aasimar and I can kind of see them being a lil' OP for some fights.

It's not that big of a deal imo

I agree, not a big deal. At like level 10 it's 11 to 16 hp. That's one potentially two hits from something that level that get absorbed. It's actually more powerful at level 1 and 2

Thank you so much for the response! This is really good to look at and review with the player!

You know, somehow I didn't realize that clerics got an extra channel Divinity at 6th level. I thought that came much later. That turns the "it's only 1 per short rest, so roughly only thrice a day" dismissal I had have much less impact...

This^ I don't balance shit, if an encounter is too much for my players they need to retreat. Not that they ever do, they're very good at killing the wildly over-leveled stuff I throw at them.

5e doesn't have any retreat rules, and with AoO working the way they do, you really can't get away.

Once you’re engaged in combat, retreat in rounds is usually suicide in 5e. Your players seem to know that.

This is the same conclusion I’ve come to after trying to use CR for a few months. Just gotta be careful with insta kill mechanics. 

Healing sucks in most editions of D&D, and it sucks even worse in 5e. Twilight Cleric fixes that problem, which makes it outshine *every other healing option in the game*. They also get early access to Fly. This isn’t always a problem but flight messes with encounter design a ton, to the point where pretty much all flight options are unbalanced (adventurer’s league banned Arrakoa over this). The biggest question, though, is this: does your party have any other support characters? If so, that player will get frustrated by the Twilight Cleric outshining them again and again. If you don’t, having your one support character be a bit on the strong side is probably totally fine. As always, party makeup is everything.

Yeah I was in a year long campaign. My life cleric of selune changed to Twilight when it released (to show the phases of the moon) and it was such a nice boost to his character. I got to actually *support* and feel useful. I didn’t feel OP at all. My DM was great at giving other objectives or making combat complicated beyond “hit point battle”. So the temp HP was nice of course but we rarely had time for short rests due to what was happening in the plot. As a DM now, I don’t think I’d change anything about it. I’d just adjust as if I’d given the party a magic item earlier.

Ultimately it's because Twilight Cleric exists to fix a problem that 5e has always had. Healing sucks. The potency per slot is incredibly low, so people only ever really bother Yo-Yo healing. There's just no way to provide healing that is able to keep pace with the rate at which damage comes in, or goes out. In response, classes have had some power creep slipped into the mix. Stuff like Grave cleric being entirely built around the Yo-Yo healing style, or Flame Druid getting features that buff their damage and healing simultaneously, or allows you to heal on a reaction when someone touches a dead creature's space. The original version of Healing Spirit was in this same design space, a heal that is applied by the movement of the person being healed, not by the healer themselves spending their own valuable actions to do so. It very quickly was nerfed into the ground because the original version could easily be exploited to conga line a ton of HP. These features were clearly designed to allow classes that have healing options to at least get more value out of them, rather than only ever using Healing Word as the method by which HP is restored. Twilight Cleric and Peace Cleric however took those features to a new level. Twilight Cleric in particular basically can give the Heroism spell in an AoE around them, which grants temporary HP every round for the cost of a Channel Divinity. This TempHP while not on par with damage received, would always negate at least part of one hit per turn, which is pretty significant mitigation. It's a very powerful ability, and coupled with other strong features that lets the Cleric move outside the squishy supporting mage role, I understand why people ban it, even though I think they do so to the detriment of support playstyles in general. It starts to feel like we can never get away from 5e's Healing Word meta when everything that would give us more options is immediately either banned, nerfed into the ground, or never makes it to full publication. (ALthough the reality is that 5e is just a severely flawed system in this regard.)

I had a Twilight Cleric. The temp HP doesn’t work if Strahd grabs a player and moves 90ft into the air on his Nightmare lol. That was my only perma death. Look CoS is a HIGHLY lethal campaign. No amount of temp HP is gunna make the Ol’ Bonegrinder a cake walk. It’s a stronger subclass than many other Cleric classes but the most powerful thing it has is actually the dark vision. But I used it create even more anticipation and fear because they knew the bad stuff was coming from a greater distance lol. Don’t ban it. Adjust the Channel Divinity if you like but as long as you run the encounters in the book they are gonna have a tough time. Which is good! It’s one of the best modules out there.

Totally agree with this. I’m playing in Strahd alongside a Twilight Cleric and all the fights have been more interesting because of them: - Pursuit fight where we had to run out of the protective aura to keep up with the thief - Rescue fight where we had to get in and get someone out while engaging a larger force - Split fight where we all began at different places in a town and narrowly escaped TPK - Split fight where we were attacked while regrouping after the TPK escape Etc, etc. Having an aura up created lots of tactical choices we’d otherwise not have had. Do you run for the aura or achieve the objective? Is it better to group up with the 3 in the aura or stand alongside the 1 who’s been pinned down outside of it and split the blows you know are coming their way? But we’ve had a lot of thrilling, narrow wins.

I kinda like it as a DM. It is very strong no doubt, but in a party buffing sort of way. Extra temp HP for the entire party on a per round basis makes the entire party tankier. That allows me to throw tougher encounters and use cooler monsters. The players perceive an increase in difficulty even though I'm just matching their power level. If I actually want to challenge them, I just have the monsters focus fire one or two of them, because in that case the temp hp gets depleted quickly. So I think of it as something that I can relatively easy balance around.

I've never feel the need to ban or nerf it. As the DM/GM you have the power to adjust the dials of everything happening around and to the PCs. Maybe now a monster has multiattack, maybe they have better movement, maybe they're actually smart and don't just behave like mindless computer-mobs in a videogame. Making the monsters actually intelligent is enough to make players shit bricks sometimes, and reminds them that this isn't just an MMO style "go kill 20 zombies" type game. CoS can, and should imo, be downright frightening at times. Also, knowing your players can help too with this. Are they choosing it for the vibe, or because they have min-max tendencies? I wouldn't stress too much about it, and tweaking the game isn't as big of a job as it seems if you just think of everything as having some easily adjustable dials to turn.

Its pretty crazy overpowered. In fact it is more overpowered than people think, they miss half the problems. Twilight sanctuary is the obvious one and is extremely powerful. 1d6+Cleric level every turn will soak a lot of damage. However, it is just the tip of the horribly balanced iceberg. I would argue the next 3 abilities are better if the player and party understand how to use them, it is pretty easy to choose operating at night. Eyes of the night is absurdly good. You can share it with all or most of the party. Most creatures have only 60 ft of darkvision, with a handful having 120 ft. This creates big areas where you can see the enemy, but they can't see you. Meaning your party's ranged attacks all have advantage and their attacks against you have disadvantage. Vigilant blessing makes sure one member of your party always had advantage on initiative. Going first is a big deal. Toss it on the wizard and they can open up with a big CC spell and put the party at a huge advantage. Give this to a gloomstalker with sharpshooter and they'll unload 3 +10 damage sharpshooter shots rights at the start of the battle. Steps of the night is free flight without concentration as long as it is dark, that's also very powerful. Flight is crazy good. It has amazing out of combat utility, just have someone extinguish the lights if you need it. In combat it is supreme maneuverability on a heavy armor character. You also get fantastic spells. Both faerie fire and sleep are fantastic level 1 additions. Leomunds tiny hut is a great spell that someone in the party wants. Greater invisibility is fantastic on clerics because their level 4 spell slots are a bit weaker and it is a very powerful spell. And on top of all that they get heavy armor and martial weapons. Put the package together and your frontline is constantly getting temp hp, your backline has advantage on all attacks, all attacks against your backline have disadvantage, you always get a clutch 1st action, and you have fantastic extra spells.

>Eyes of the night is absurdly good. You can share it with all or most of the party. Most creatures have only 60 ft of darkvision, with a handful having 120 ft. This creates big areas where you can see the enemy, but they can't see you. Meaning your party's ranged attacks all have advantage and their attacks against you have disadvantage. Serious question: how frequently are you engaging enemies at 300ft (and in the dark)? If you're trying to outrange the darkvision of something with 120ft of it, the only ranged weapon that has a first range increment higher than 120ft is the longbow (at 150ft), meaning the advantage ranged weapons would get by shooting at a blinded target would be negated by the disadvantage of shooting outside your first range increment (and that's if you're fighting in darkness; if you're fighting in dim light the players wouldn't get any advantage). Now, I'm intentionally excluding synergies with feats like Spell Sniper and Sharpshooter because, in my opinion, that's more of a commentary on the synergy than the cleric domain. A very few times, at very high level play, I have played in encounters with that much range because it was a large field of battle, which don't usually happen in darkness. For low- to mid-level play, most maps are dungeons, or alleys, or forests, where you're just not going to get 300ft of uninterrupted line of sight. It just seems like the range on Eyes of the Night would only be "absurdly good" in certain rare circumstances and when synergized with other characters' feats. In my book, it's a GOOD thing for players to get these occasional moments where everything aligns and their ability or build feels super powerful; 300ft of darkvision just doesn't seem like it would align that often. Also, purely anecdotally, I have not found advantage on Initiative (Vigilant Blessing or otherwise) to be all that powerful *in general.* If you have a high DEX Rogue with Improved Initiative, then yeah that will be a powerful synergy, but again I think that's a commentary about the synergy. There is certainly a tactical advantage to going first in the initiative order, but I don't find giving that roll initiative--in most cases--creates too much of an imbalance in who is going first.

It has multiple good features from early on, to the point where it would be a strong subclass without Twilight Domain. But the Twilight Domain has 3 effects: * It provides magical dim light * It grants temporary hit points equal to 1d6 plus cleric level to any cleric's ally from just ending a turn in the aura. * It ends effects causing charmed or frightened conditions upon ending a turn in the aura. Since it's a Channel Divinity ability, clerics regain it on a short rest. Meaning they have it available in at least half the fights. And that's no including the fact that they can add the temporary hit points before the adventuring parts, such as at the start of the day and then short rest to regain it. This makes parties a lot tankier than they should be for their level. I'll give an example since you're running CoS. There's a very hard fight at the coffin maker's against vampire spawns. I'm ending my run of the module for my main group right now and we have a Twilight Cleric. The party barely got to half hit points in that encounter; and they were rolling like shit, so it was an easy encounter even with the dice against them. If you're running CoS, an average Twilight Cleric will make the module an easy adventure with next to no danger, with the exception of the castle, since there's a lot of encounters there without enough time to rest between them.

Hmmmm got it. So nerfing it would probably be a decent option to take here -- especially if Players want to have their MC moment in battle. I'll have to have a chat with the player to find out what fits them best. Thank you so much!

A nice nerf I've seen makes it an instant ability with two effects at once: * Gives 6+cleric level temporary hit points to all allies in the aura. * Ends 1 effect causing a charmed or frightened condition. This would still make it a strong ability, but wouldn't be a "win nearly any fight" button. And the subclass gains many other good abilities that would ensure the subclass doesn't become weak. But look over some options what you want to do with it. Good luck \^\^

I ran COS with a Twilight Domain character and to challenge that player I had to make it much more difficult for the other players. At fifth level, the Twilight Sanctuary, spiritual weapon, spirit guardian combo was pretty good at shutting encounters down. I had to work really hard to balance this because the party also didn’t like “wasting time” on random encounters, so trying to add extra encounters to use up these resources was met with resistance. I have since made adjustments… In the first round, Twilight Sanctuary provide temp HP. For the rest of the duration all the cleric’s cast healing spells restore max dice. Seems to have helped the balance of it.

The adjustment makes them more powerful ... because it is actual healing, and you offer instead a level three spell. Want to shut down that combo? Have the monsters run away from the angelic creatures flickering about.

yeah, its also a spell that is considered pretty decent too! tho it inadvertently makes the player more icentivized to burn their slots

I haven't ever banned it myself, but then I never run modules and always balance encounters around my players anyways. As others have said the channel divinity can make premade campaigns challenging to run, because the writers don't really plan for that much temp HP. But it encourages players to clump together for maximum benefit, perfect for AOE spells and effects. Steps of night is a nice feature, but I don't really ever struggle with flight in my games because most of my enemies have both a ranged and melee option anyways. I think twilight is the best support cleric subclass, and it is probably out of balance with the others, but that is fine for me because I balance around my party anyways.

There are many mechanical reasons as people pointed out but for me a big part of it is that it’s flavor. It’s shotgunned out a bunch of ideas associated with night, twilight comfort ect. That all seem very unrelated and don’t fit like any god. It feels like they were told to make a twilight domain but couldn’t come up with one big idea so they threw together a bunch of smaller worse ones

I don’t think Twilight cleric should be banned, it’s powerful yes, it’s probably one of the top 5 single class builds and makes a pretty powerful dip but not enough to ban it. The divinity is probably the most powerful aspect of the class, but it made me think. The healing divinity is powerful because of how weak healing is normally. Made me think, how broken would reverse channel divinity be. Ie the cd does the equivalent damage to foes rather than heal friends. Similar to the clerical spell sprit guardians. PC would need to be in front line to get most effect, but it will have heavy armour. But 1d6 damage extra is not much when only a single target in range…

> any guidance would be awesome here I see what you did there

As both a player and a DM, I don't ban anything or nerf anything. I'd rather put in the work to challenge players while allowing them to still feel stronger than nerf their classes and subclasses. I'm not trying to kill them. Just make them work a bit and feel challenged. Besides, I've got two min/max players at my table that have the books memorized far more than I ever will. It's actually easier and more fun to try an challenge them then add artificial difficulty by nerfing their classes.

I played Twilight Cleric for over 3 years from 3rd level to 14th. It's a powerful support class, but otherwise not very different from other clerics. It provided a fair degree of comfort in combat but didn't let us stomp enemies to the ground. Battles were still tough. I should say that combat in our games was brutal and generally involved huge maps. As a DM, I would think twice about allowing Twilight Cleric in a dungeon crawl campaign. But otherwise I would say, go ahead. If you like to run brutal combat, Twilight will help the players with survival. That's not a bad thing. I'll add that it only helps a bit in early levels. My Twilight Cleric got downed in several encounters while we were under 6th level.

This is some really good info to run off of actually. Nice to know that it's not crazily OP all the way to 20 (it may be but I'm hoping not so much).

For what it’s worth you can always add some enemies in combats and figure out what feels right.

The only good reason to be altering/banning class features, even entire subclasses, is when doing so will result in the (specific) game being more fun for the (specific) people playing it. That's going to require discussions at the gaming "table" rather than over Reddit. Whilst the DM is required to roleplay NPCs who are adversarial, even openly hostile, to the PCs, it's intended to be a cooperative rather than adversarial. Claims that a specific PC or party are *overpowered* can easily come over as DM vs players. It really doesn't matter if the player party beats their opponents in one round or three. Though it is a problem if combat encounters frequently go longer than three rounds (and a serious problem if they ever exceed six). Combat is only *too easy* when the players think it is. Of course, if they think any combat is too hard, that's time to consider if your group are playing the right game or even using the right gaming system.

because it's overpowered. it would take over an hour for me to explain why, so i'll instead ask you to compare Twilight's CD to War's CD. then read Geas and notice that it ends when the Charmed condition does. an Archfay, Archdevil, Lich's, or Aboleth's magic is nothing in the face of a level 2 Twilight cleric. and this on top of having the strongest darkvision in the game, and proficiency in martial weapons and heavy armor, because why not? all at level 2, on what is already a very powerful class.

We're 5 years into our weekly game, I asked someone else to dm for several months recently and I played a twilight cleric. If you want a real shock, build out this class to a level 10 deep gnome m In all of core d&d and cr content there is only one thing that is banned at our table. I believe deeply, banning official content is a failure of the dm Its this subclass. So sayeth me, the dm.

In order to make combat more challenging and prevent players from being basically unkillable, the DM generally has to put in more damage to compensate. It then makes players extremely reliant on that temp HP in order to not die. It's a pain in the ass imo since it either makes encounters too easy, or extremely difficult if you don't want to play around your twilight cleric.

Playing a human Celestial Warlock with a level 1 dip in Twilight Cleric. First night I used the Vigilant Blessing on me then the next character who was on guard duty the DM did the whoa that has no limit. We instantly agreed that there should be a limit and his ruling was Prof bonus times per long rest. In gameplay it means one party member will have an initiative advantage most fights. However I am not a walking initiative advantage dispenser. I liked the idea of the breaking the trope of the Human is a useless guard at night. 300ft dark vision plus my imp familiar makes the human one heck of a guard. 300 feet is ridiculous tbh. It’s why I haven’t taken eldritch spear because a warlock chucking eldritch blast for 5-10 rounds as the poor band of baddies trying to sneak up on the party as they camp just seemed dumb to me. Devil sight is going to REALLY break the human can’t see nothing issue…

I pride myself in playing allowing all the vanilla stuff, even that which I dislike; Silvery barbs, Lucky, Simulacrum, Wish. I let players having ALL of it. The only, ONLY thing I've nerfed at my table is the Twilight domain cleric, and I intend to keep it that way. The Temp HP gets too crazy especially if you don't want to make a player feel unfairly targetted, so either you're not touching yout party and the encounter is boring, or you focus on one person and feel like an asshole. This can be fixed by including more enemies or stronger attacks but at that point there's two main issues; number one, you have to modify every single encounter in the module, and number two, it makes combats longer and more boring which always suck for the players. Another issue is that it's always a bother to have players going "remember you had temp HP" or "DM you forgot to account for the Temp HP" etc. It just sucks to constantly wonder if all players have a second bar of hp and it just turns everything into a bog. My solution to the subclass? Instead of giving 1d6+lvl temp HP my sanctuary HEALS wisdom+proficiency each turn, with the caveat that an unconscious creature does not benefit from this. So? allies with full HP don't get anything, Allies on the floor are not revived. But damaged allies get a constant influx of HP back, which serves a lot better in my opinion.

I use Foundry VTT as a way to run and track everything in my campaign. This is a very doable thing that I can set a macro up for so it's tracked and automated. I'm might test it this upcoming Friday.

Glad to know my fix is of help!

Well, once I had a Twilight Cleric who gave everyone massive amounts of HP every combat. I adjusted every combat so that opponents hit way harder than before. All was well. Then one random day she decided not to use that class feature, and I had to suspend the session and rework the entire encounter or the whole party would have been wiped in two rounds.

Don’t nerf anything. The effective hp of Twilights Cleric ability at level 6 is 9 * (number of players). They can use it twice per short rest. Remember that this hp bonus doesn’t stack. Instead, don’t allow them to spam short rests. If you add an odd opponent or two, it’ll balance out.  Also, it’s CoS - this ability is directly competing vs turn undead. You should warn your player that you have reservations and might step in, after you see if the class is broken.

Cowardice.

This is the answer

Darkness breeds fear. It's hard enough to leverage that in 5e-- now take a look at Twilight Domain and realize that simply for choosing it from *level 1* they will have *300 feet of darkvision*, far and beyond any darkvision anything else has access to from the start of any campaign. That's the level of "this class is imbalanced and busted" we're dealing with. At level 2, they can just use channel divinity to make a creature immune to charm... you know, one of the greatest assets in Strahd's personal arsenal. At 6th, they can just choose to fly for a minute a few times per day if they're in dim light or darkness, which is... pretty much everywhere in Barovia that they'll be adventuring in. Both Twilight Cleric and Gloom Stalker are unbalanced player options for the Curse of Strahd adventure, in my opinion. Twilight Cleric frontloads two *extremely* effective abilities into its first two levels, making it prime material for any power gamer to minmax into if you're allowing multiclassing. (Gentle reminder to all, more of a shout in the wind really, that RAW by the book both feats and multiclassing are optional rules!) It's just not a good idea to allow either of those classes in a Curse of Strahd campaign. Remember to be fair not only to your players, but to your own side of the DM screen! EDIT: Annnd in my fervor I have immediately realized this was not the sub I thought it was! But, I'm choosing to keep the rest of the post unedited as I stand by what I've said as my general feelings on Twilight Cleric.

People shitting themselves over a d6+level of temp HP are unhinged. That is far from game breaking and at higher levels a fraction of a single strike from almost any level appropriate source. There's nothing here that needs fixed. Let him play it and feel cool and appropriate to the setting. Who would be more prepared and willing to go face an evil vampire?

It’s a mechanic that unless you specifically target one player in a round, the DM effectively does not get to deal damage. And if the dm does specifically target one player just to get through the barrier then it feels unfun to be punished for using a class ability.

If the DM is never focusing any target regardless of how much effect on combat they have that DM has already nerfed combat to such a level that the party is going to win anyway.

Focusing a target make sense realistically and is effective as a game tactic but most importantly it is extremely boring and frustrating to be the receiving end of. Generally speaking you have very few means to avoid being targeted specifically if the DM has decided you’re the target, that’s why the “tank” roll doesn’t really work well in the context of DnD where there’s no aggro bar to force creatures to target specific people. But back to twilight sanctuary, there is no thought required and unless you have multiple unavoidable deadly encounters per long rest, you can bet the cleric is just going to wait for the big boss to use the ability. Removing any danger from the fight in a game where it’s already difficult to kill player characters. Yes there are ways with dealing with it but why constantly deal with it over and over again when it’s a clearly over powered ability for the cost, and instead ban it and move on.

Dealing with the characters abilities is literally what combat is. You have to "deal with" every character and uniquely what they do in combat. It is no different here. And my entire offer here is that it's *not* over powered.

I mean how is it not over powered? It only requires a 2 level dip into cleric to obtain. With a level 6 cleric being able to use it twice. Costs no spell slots to use. Grants 1d6 + cleric level in temporary hit points every round for 1 minute so effectively an entire combat. No action later required after it is activated. Does not require concentration. 30 foot radius, not diameter, radius around you, so there is nearly no reason that it shouldn’t hit all allies and it doesn’t state if it’s blocked by walls and moves with the cleric. Requires focus fire to even begin hitting Hit points. To make matters worse, the ones you are not focus firing are getting to reroll their temp hp basically until they get max. Because it’s temp HP and not healing, chill touch and similar spells do not block it. If this isn’t over tuned then I’m not sure what you would consider op.

It's so impactful because the temp HP re-ups every turn. Nothing else in the game does this. And it's anything that ends its turn within 30 feet of the cleric. That's 1d6+level to EVERY player EVERY round. Over a 3 round fight, with a party of 4, a level 5 twilight cleric can potentially give out 12d6+60 temporary hit points. That's an average of 102 extra HP. That's like having 2-3 more bodies on the field, at least in terms of attrition. That's a bitch to balance against.

Temp HP does not stack. It has no effect round two if the player were never targeted. Here is an idea, grab the cleric and grab him away from the party. Problem solved. Or, wait a minute to attack. Or, control the battle field and split the party. Or, focus fire on one PC. Or, target someone more than 30 ft away. Plus, as mentioned, a max of 11 temp HP at level five is most likely one free hit, if that. Plus, if round one is 11, next round may swap those temp HP for a lower amount. I don't fret twilight or peace domains. To the OP, I'd be more concerned about a cleric at all in CoS, and an aarocikra to boot.

If the ranged characters who are squishy and easy to kill want to be within striking distance of the melee combatants, where the cleric is, sure, this could happen. But then they'd catch hands. If combat is run by a DM who keeps things varied and sensibly intelligent it will certainly be a benefit, but not a game breaking one. Further -- this means that the cleric should become the focus target of non-animal intelligence combatants. That extra handful of HP isn't going to do a lot to 4 or 5 dudes on your ass at once. If enemies aren't all inverse-ninja attacking each character once and fighting in the worst way possible, that HP is only going to effectively benefit one or two characters a turn anyway. If a DM runs combat as it should be, it's not the huge benefit it seems on paper.

If you think people are overreacting, it just means you’ve never played with a Twilight Cleric.

I have in two campaigns and I still think people are overreacting.  It’s a non issue if everyone is moving across the battlefield or if the battlefield is large since you’ll only get 1 maybe 2 other players in your aura. And even in scenarios when players have been grouped together it still hasn’t been an issue in the games I’ve played.

This is certainly something I've thought of. I was speaking with a friend about it and they also came to this nearly same conclusion. But I may see what the player says as they brought it up to me.

Agreed. Even still, enemies aren’t stupid. If they see a big glowing aura and people doing okay in it, they’re going to focus on the cleric that is the source. Same way players focus the mage or whatever. My DM treated it as a big target whenever I used it and it made me really determine if it was worth it or not in some fights. Really not difficult to plan for a Twilight cleric for temp hp. Make the field more interesting or dangerous, have smarter enemies, make players have to make choices more frequently to lower their resources.

It’s not just one of the strongest subclasses for Cleric, it’s one of the strongest in the entire game. Hell, just take Eyes of Night. Darkvision, nice, but what if you already have it? Well. You now have it to 300 FEET. That’s 5 times the distance most creatures have Darkvision. Stay out of their visual range and blast them with spells and ranged attacks, and you have Advantage on all attacks and they can’t see you to target you soooo. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! You can magically share it with a number of creatures up to your Wisdom modifier. That’s likely to be 5 for most of your career but most parties top out at 6, so congrats, a first level cleric just made your entire squad the best sniper unit in existence just by virtue of ludicrous range Darkvision. Oh, and you can just. Give someone Advantage on Initiative. Only one person at a time, sure, but someone just has that and you can do it an infinite number of times. Hey, proficiency with Heavy Armor and Martial Weapons, too! Because why would we have something that’s already a support powerhouse have to worry about, like, getting hit? Next up? Arguable the BEST Channel Divinity in the game. A massive pool of free temp HP OR end the charmed or frightened condition, and that’s every round. It requires no concentration or action to maintain, it’s just there, and incredible, and at high levels also grants half cover which is bonkers. Oh and then at 6th level you can fly essentially all you would ever need to for combat. Your Domain spells are mostly very good as well. Other domains have squat on this. Except Peace, that shit is B R O K E N

One thing I don't like about Strahd is that the game quickly becomes meta when all the players choose anti-undead builds. Oh... The party just happens to be a Devotion Paladin, Twilight Cleric, Ghostslayer Bloodhunter, and Divine Soul Sorcerer... Okay... You guys bullied all the vampires including Strahd. You didn't even need any of the magic items. Want to play again with different characters?

The power creep ruins your enjoyment as a dm tbh

1) It's very strong and versatile. It's rare for the features to give Temporary Hit points, Dark vision further than 6 ft. or fly. All this versatility and you still have heavy armor. You can't even stop the temporary hit points in a meaningful way. 2) It lacks flavor. It seems like twighlight cleric just gives you the most busted and needed features for the character: temporary HP, AC, Flying. And not a lot that is connected to the night necceseraly. Why would twighlight cleric get Heavy armor and Martial weapons, but Order cleric not. 3) It breaks rules. No other features grants more than 120 ft dark is on, and even then they are usually given with sunlight sensitivity. Channel Divinity acts like a constant heal that can give you more temporary hit points than hero's feast. Even their capstone feature gives cover, which is extremely weird. 4) It's nightmare to world build around. The Tiwghlight cleric is the cleric that gets his powers from twighlight. That's it. It's so little flavor to do anything in your world.

I made a twilight cleric for my current game not knowing it was a big deal with some people and really, I haven't found it to be one, but then I don't min-max. The channel divinity can only happen once per long rest and we can't rest much our game because our campaign involves a time crunch so I usually save it. I also always forget to give out the initive advantage and no-one asks for it because none of us care that much. I also personally think sleep is a boring spell so I've used it a total of once. Additionally, as a player I don't always *want* to use my action to channel divinity because it wastes a whole action and I prefer Moonbeam thematically (or giving my party dark vision since none of them have it and it's always dark where we are) and that uses an action to summon and move - so if an enemy moves out of the beam, I *will* use my action to move the Moonbeam over using the channel divinity. I only throw up my channel divinity if I notice the whole party is taking a lot of damage. Some might say that 'I'm not playing it right' or effectively as I could be but that's kind of my point, not every player is trying to min-max the situation, some just wanna have fun. (And really if min-maxing is someone's fun, why take that from them anyway??? Just make sure to have several battles per long rest if a character being strong bothers you for whatever reason.) As for flight, well I'm playing a gem dragonborn and get it anyway. There are plenty of ways to combat flying anyway from nets to spells.

>I also always forget to give out the initive advantage and no-one asks for it because none of us care that much. Yup, that's me and my crew. > I also personally think sleep is a boring spell so I've used it a total of once. Oh man, you're missing out. At low levels, it can be a real life-saver. I've had the tide turn in some fights completely with a well-timed Sleep. At higher levels it starts to become useless but it's great in the low levels.

I used it once in a clutch situation when we were about to be exploded by a frost wyvern! It wasn't bad, just not my favorite. Accidentally putting the gryphon we were trying to save to sleep too was amusing though lol! I just like using other things.  I forgot to mention in my initial post that my group doesn't get hit much anyway (besides me we have a monk with a stupid high AC, a swashbuckler rogue who never stands still, a sorcerer that stays far away and a druid). I also have the Healer feat so I primarily use that to heal after battles rather than my class stuff because my character is a physician and I like RPing that.

Okay, bit of a hot take here (I guess)... Before I get into it, remember that every group is different and what works for one DM/group may not work for you/yours. Twilight Domain has a couple of features that people tend to view as OP. The main one is the "Twilight Sanctuary" Channel Divinity. This features allows them to use their Channel Divinity to have an aura of dim light for 1 minute (or until they're incapacitated or die). Whenever a creature (including the cleric) ends their turn within the aura, they can grant that creature temp hp (1d6+cleric level) OR end a charm/frightened effect. It's definitely a powerful ability, especially with a large party, but I've never had a problem with it. Does it mean that I have to change my tactics a bit? Yeah, sometimes. But reasonably intelligent enemies will realize that the person who is literally glowing with protective energy is an important target to take down first. The temp hp happens at the end of each creature's turn, so they only get it once per round and temp hp doesn't stack. And the effect ends the moment the cleric is incapacitated (which would include other conditions like stunned, paralyzed, petrified, and unconscious). Also, remember that a creature at 0 hp can receive temporary hp, but it doesn't restore them to consciousness or stabilize them. Some of the other features are powerful too. Vigilant Blessing gives one person advantage on initiative. Honestly, I always have at least one person take the Alert feat, so this doesn't bother me at all. Eyes of Night lets them share 300ft darkvision, which could be an issue if you give them scenarios where they'll see an enemy at that distance. Dense forests are your friend, and pay attention to the range of their spells/weapons. Also, the minute an unseen enemy starts firing, your bad guys should be moving closer and then taking the hide action each turn - not standing out in the open. Steps of Night gives them a fly speed at 6th level. This may not matter to you, depending what type of aasimar they are. At the same level, sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, and artificers all have access to the fly spell, which lasts 10 minutes and can be cast on anyone, so I'm not that bothered by this either. I'm not a fan of nerfing class features, so I always deal with balance issues on my side of the screen. I DM for two different groups of experienced players, so I generally just use max hp for all enemies. For big fights, I make sure the "boss" or their minions can counter some of the party's most effective tactics, but for most encounters I just let them have their fun. It works well for my groups; they still feel challenged regularly, but they also get chances to feel really powerful. I also end most of our campaigns between levels 17-20, so I'm really comfortable balancing encounters at this point. I've dealt with some really "broken" builds, but I've never nerfed anything.

Mostly because they don't have any actual experience with it and massively overreact. If your group is all taking low level aoe damage each round it'll make a huge difference. If your group is taking high aoe damage each round it'll make a small difference but force them to group up so the aoe might be more effective. If one of the PCs is taking the brunt of the focus it'll do very little. Having played one for a couple of years it's nice but rarely does it actually save someone who would otherwise have died. The best thing it does is eliminate small/incidental damage on people that means you can focus healing resources on those who really need it. In CoS it won't matter - it's a lethal campaign.

So the main thing that I think people go with is that as a domain Twilight Clerics are rather broken (although personally a lot of the subclasses that came with Tasha's and later do have a lot more power creep and throw off the balance of 5e). For example with a Twilight Cleric just at first level they can give pretty much the entire party Darkvision (presuming a few already have it), and give advantage to player's initiative pretty much at will. Then at second level they get an area of effect ability that gives temp HP or removes Charm or Fright (which would be incredible OP in a Curse of Strahd game).

Ahhhh this makes so much sense. I might need to make some adjustments then (or just tell the player no) for that cleric. Thank you so much!

It unbalances encounters with it's temp HP AND gets a ton of goodies besides.

Noted! Thank you so much for the quick response!

A twilight cleric joined my Rhyme campaign about halfway through and it completely changed the dynamic of the combats. It got too easy for the party, due to the temp HP channel divinity. I just upped the difficulty of encounters a good bit, which worked out fine. But I was an experienced DM, so it wasn’t hard to make changes on the fly.

I balance my recurring NPC enemies with the party. The campaign I’m beginning next Monday has a Peace Domain Cleric in it (another subclass that gets banned) so one of the groups working in opposition will have one who’s a level higher. This makes sense on a realistic level, too, if your party has been around for a little while. It makes sense for the Big Bads to start planning for them. You could look at doing that with your campaign as well.

Too sparkly. Makes it Impossible to stealth

It's a beefy subclass. Depending on party size and comp though it's not as OP as I think though yeah bit of fight balance tweaking Myself and friends are/were doing a 3 clerics vs Strahd game. Aasimar Peace. Got overkilled by the hags, DM liked my character though and offered me to come back, I liked the character too and took a warlock dip Human Twilight. Also took a sorcerer dip. Dwarf Forge. Still straight cleric. We added a dragon born monk at one point but dunno if he'll be back after hiatus. But we left death house with my Peace cleric kicking the other two unconscious bodies out the blade doors of death. And like I said my peace cleric died. But like look at what the party can do and tweak. The module isn't fixed rules. Our DM is doing stuff different cause one of the players has also DMed CoS before so But there's only 3 of us(or was)

I was a Twighlight Cleric in CoS, and yes it was a bit OP. I started this character after Yester hill, because my druid died. And some players left the game, so there were only 2 players left. Because of that those features helped us survive. But it still felt strong, not only because of Twighlight features, but the radiant damage(this applies to any Cleric) My saying, don't ban the features (it's discouraging for the player), pump up the encounters, since before level 6 there will be only 1 channel divinity per combat, and if the cleric is down, it's gone. And before level 6, damn the players will be dropping like flies anyways. Maybe also put Holy Symbol of Ravenkind later in the game. And the last point: the biggest problem for my DM with this Cleric was letting us get to lvl11 after Lysaga, because this unlocks Forbiddance (which I spammed in Ravenloft castle) so this is what I'd ban most

One thing to add. From experience as a DM, rolling temp HP each turn and players reminding each other they have x temp HP drags the pace of combat down. Just by a bit depending on the group but enough to be annoying to some. I finnaly just told the cleric to roll once at the beginning of combat and use that for the rest of the encounter. Pacing is a huge part of the game so I'm always conscious of mechanics that bog things down.

The class feature is, as explained by other people, a fairly strong ability. I'm running cos right now and I have a twilight cleric in my group. I think you're being a killjoy by banning certain classes (from the official sources), just because you as a DM don't want to put the work in, to balance encounters. My solution is simply upped DMG. All of the creatures do a bit more dmg and sometimes I put in creatures that aren't in the source material of cos plus I give them some extra hp, too. The first few fights were really easy for the group.. but by the 5th or 6th session I got the balance right and now everything's going smoothly (I didn't kill anybody yet, but we had some knock-downs for sure).

Lot of people have talked about it's power but what people have not talked about is the ease of doing it. for optimizers it's a one a done class 1-20 no breaks, every other build for optimizers is a 2-4 multi class build mixing sub classes to be top of the line. here it's Twilight Domain done.

A lot of people with good balancing ideas. One that nobody thought up is just to make sure that the party is regularly divided somehow during combat, so that the Twilight Sanctuary only affects like 1 or 2 others. That or just do what my DM does to me - Vortex Warp my ass around or otherwise find a way to push me away from my team.

Lol healers can’t keep up with damage, need twilight into oblivion… why have I done this

Absolutely do not allow Twilight Cleric in CoS. It's a tough campaign but that class just makes things a breeze. Not to mention it's insane darkvision, that it can share to others, making the bleak darkness of Barovia completely useless. Twilight and Peace domains are just so much stronger than any other cleric subclass that I just ban them or rework them.

There was a twilight cleric in my Spelljammer game and even the toughest monsters couldn't knock any character to zero hit points.

I know this doesn't fit your request perfectly but it might help. I currently have a Twilight cleric going thru " The Lost City" campaign and I have a hired NPC Gloom stalker ranger on the heels of the party. Hired because of a misunderstanding with their Murder-Hobo antics. Now the Twilight cleric is very sparse with his "Eyes of Night" feature and their bonus on initiative helps against "Vigilant Blessing", "Dread Ambusher" from the bounty hunter counters the temp hit points kinda.

Yeah it's mostly the abilities making the other players extremely hard to kill. In my campaign, I don't want to remove those abilities because they're very cool, but what I did do is make the twilight field that gives temp HP use concentration, so they can't just have everyone in it AND something like spiritual guardians. That makes it a very important for enemies with AOE but still useful when they can get away with it

I don’t dislike it - in fact, even as a DM, I love it. It’s just that its subclass abilities are extremely powerful - even to the point of being overpowered. Yeah, debate about the spell list or whatever but for me it’s just two abilities: twilight sanctuary and flight at 6th level. Twilight sanctuary makes the party extremely tough to kill. As a DM, I balance it by adding a bunch of guys with the ability to block temp HP or (emphasis on OR) by balancing it by making it so that it’s a one time boost for the party.

I have a Wight cleric in my current campaign. The temp HP. Is def an issue. Ive just taken to beefing the HP of opponents and giving them encounters with a much higher DC in opponents.

I see a lot of people saying the nerf option but I think it’s always feels bad nerfing a class especially since it seems like a lot of the problems it’s a buff for the team that doesn’t really take fun away from others, vs usually nerfing things I feel are more necessary when things get out of hand offensively where someone is ending fights before others really get to do much or one person is just lopsidedly powerful. IMO I would just see how it plays out and adjust from there. It might be a non issue in the party anyways or you can adjust fights or how enemies behave. Just my thoughts on it as someone who mostly plays but has dm’d her fair share as well.

Because some DMs don't like the idea of letting people be powerful. I mean who would think of a hero being powerful? Wild

I had a DM who thought that clerics themselves were OP and banned them outright lol

Honestly, flight isn’t really that overpowered. If you remember the rules about being knocked prone, that’s very dangerous to have happen when you’re flying. I don’t even want to think about what happens when your character has zero HP while flying in the air. That’s too death savings throw fails right there. And there are so many ways to hurt flying characters. Arrows, spells, other flying monsters. Being able to fly is really risky when you think about it.

I’ve been in a campaign with one of these, and it severely boosts the entire party’s defensive potential, especially if you have a barbarian with them. The channel divinity feature specifically scales very well with a large number of allies, so in a group of 3-4 players it’s not really a problem, but in a group of 5-6 or more it’s just too damn strong to get so many extra hit points each round.

I’m not sure really how overpowered twilight cleric really is. I mean, you’re literally comparing it to a life cleric who can basically heal just about anything. A cleric who can basically cast fireball and be an even better blaster than a sorcerer. A Tempest cleric who can maximize a ninth level lightning bolt dealing about 90 lightning damage in one turn. The arcana cleric, which can banished basically anything and give you access to wizard spells. The Forge cleric did really makes you a magic item for free. The deck cleric gets a superpowered version of inflict wounds. The war cleric can literally add a +10 to their accuracy for one attack. And we’re going to sit here and complain because the twilight cleric can give people in its aura 1d6 plus cleric level temporary HP per turn? It doesn’t even stack so if you’re a fifth level cleric, the maximum they could ever have is 10 temporary HP. The peace cleric has a similar ability, but it restores actual HP. Not to mention the fact that most of the twilight cleric abilities actually benefit the whole party not just the cleric. It’s the best way to be overpowered. It really doesn’t take much brain power to overcome these abilities.

It’s super frontloaded, and this is someone who absolutely loves this subclass. At level, one alone, you get heavy armor, Marshall, weapons, effectively advantage on initiative to one creature, which can include yourself with a borderline laughable cool down period and ridiculously long range dark vision, which can be shared with other creatures and can be easily recharged. This is just level one. Never mind, this is still a cleric, wisdom, and charisma saves proficiencies, light and medium armor, proficiency, simple weapon, proficiency, spellcasting, cantrips, amazing domain spells and much more again all at level one and several people pointing out the channel divinity is absolutely busted. A D6 might seem innocuous at the beginning but higher levels of play where this is actively minimum double digits of temporary HP it’s ridiculous and let’s not even mention the fact that at level 17 the twilight sanctuary counts is half cover. Oh, and they can fly in dim light or darkness as a bonus action I love this domain!

I ban it because If I didnt someone would play a twilight cleric like every single campaign Ive hosted. And I hated dming twilight clerics for the first 4 campaigns ive held and in Barovia they would just have unlimited flying always. They are a broken class and im tired of seeing them every game. If players wouldnt power game everytime it wouldnt be a problem. I see a lot of responses about adjusting power of encounters and true but that isnt a good solution for long term as it requires the party to be with and be carried by that player

I think I can give a better answer than what's been given so far: This ties back to how flat damage reduction behaves in a game. When you have flat damage reduction ( ie 6 damage rolled minus 5 flat damage reduction equals 1 damage dealt) a small variation in relative enemy damage rolls can lead to a massive variation in the damage dealt to players. To use an extreme example, if enemies normally deal a thousand damage and players have 999 damage reduction, a 1% increase in enemy damage rolls will lead to a 1000% increase in enemy damage dealt. Repeated temporary hit points act a lot like flat damage reduction, so they make the game hard to balance for DMs. If they're wrong or players get weird luck, the result is either an instant party wipe or a cake walk, with little in between. Well, mathematically that makes sense, but DMs tend to say that it makes players too powerful, so I guess we should just go with that.

Honestly I'd ban any cleric subclass from Tasha. They aren't well balanced, Treatmonk has a whole video if you want more details

Because they hate fun

I think people are overreacting here. Twilight Cleric's channel divinity just makes it a competent healer. It isn't without it's limitations: 1) The effect granting temp HP means it does not stack with other sources of temp HP like Warlock's Armor of Agathys or Tomb if Leviathan,Circle of Spore or Shepherd druids wildshape alternative or Armorer Artificer's bonus action Temp HP ability etc. 2) the temp HP from the channel divinity do not stack with themselves either. Meaning that each round you mitigate 1d6+your cleric level of damage not per ally but per attacked and hit. All DM has to do is to focus attacks on one or two PCs, preferably the cleric. Now comparing that with grave cleric canceling enemy crits the mitigation per difht isn't that impressive. 3) Temp HP does not count towards determining if a PC instantly dies to Power Word Kill and other effects dependent on amount of HP a PC has 4) If needed all DN needs to do to end the Twilight Sanctuary is to incapacitate the cleric. From various Stun and Paralysis effects to good old Banishment will do the trick. In 5e healing spells are virtually useless except for picking up unconscious allies because the amount of HP you can restore is heavily outclassed by monsters/NPC damage output. So it is simply more optimal for clerics to deal damage and help kill enemies quicker (dead monster deals no damage) than heal allies. Twilight Cleric granting temp HP every round can bridge the gap between their healing and enemy damage output or allow you to do some healing(or more precisely damage mitigation) while also dishing out damage/buffs/crowd control instead of being just a heal bot like Life/Light Cleric.

For perspective I don't ban anything published from my games. If a player is too optimized (beyond the point of just having fun, like crazy munchkin min/maxer) then monsters just tend to roll highet against them. Oh, you've got 70 temp HP, crazy the big bad multi attack crit you there goes that temp HP, now they still cost a turn of the big bad and no longer, "broke my encounter," It's not me vs them. It's about fun. Some players want to be untouchable, and some want to barely survive. Know what your players want and shift reality around that.

You know about "shoot your monks"? It also goes the other way around. Your characters have weaknesses so exploit that too.

This is really good advice! Thank you! The player actually brought this up and was worried about it so they asked me if it was okay. I typically move similarly to you, but there are some things I have to do my research on. I'll keep this option open as well!

Where are you getting 70 temp HP from? At level 20, a twilight cleric can only give a max of 26 temp HP per person in their aura each round. 

I just modify stuff on the fly to deal with stuff. Hit the high AC Paladin with a tidal wave. Incapacitate the twilight cleric. I hate telling people they can’t play something

The Tanky nature of the channel and giving them sleep makes them so good out the gate and later flight is just taking the piss. It’s why I ban flying races for premade modules cause I’m not redesigning encounters to just deal with one players choice. If one players choice of subclass or race has me redesigning big aspects of the game I’m just banning it session zero. It’s unfair for me to spend that much time accommodating for one player but not for the others and I can’t don’t have the free time to customize every encounter to fine tune to the party. It’s why I run a premade these days. Unless it’s a beer and pretzels dungeon crawl where I power them up like 3.5 then I don’t care cause I’ll just change stats or mobs to make it balanced.

Twilight Clerics are just broken, that’s why lol

I think my buddy Chris ([youtube link](https://www.youtube.com/@TreantmonksTemple)) mentions in some of his videos that Twilight Cleric is just straight up brokenly good. I think he calls it out in one of his recent videos on power creep that made D&D worse. Most DM's have issues because the temp HP is too restorative to the group, the darkvision makes no sense because it doesn't follow any other design limits. It just doesn't mesh well with the other stuff. You get Silver Barbs on that sucker, and your GM is just going to dislike your existence lol. That being said, I've never banned anything in any of my games. There's always ways to adapt, and sometimes I want my players to feel a little OP. I'm personally not bothered by it, mind you I don't play 5e anymore so that's probably why lol.

Having played a Twilight Cleric, and DMed one, add a die or two (depending on level) to the big monster's damage and everything becomes balanced again.

It's stronger than every other subclass of cleric and is the best sustain in the game out of the gate. You could cut its temp HP in half and it probably would STILL be broken. And for the record: the Twilight Cleric also makes things SUPER hard to balance. Because of the temp HP, anything that doesn't do a large amount of outright damage won't do much at all. But the problem with that is that if you do *too much* damage, the party implodes instantly. And all the creatures that can do the damage needed to threaten a Twilight Cleric party have FAR too strong defenses for the party's level, turning fights into a one-sided stomp (in either direction) or a slog. I'd do the following (if I wasn't banning it entirely): * Channel Divinity now requires concentration. * Channel Divinity temp HP reduced from 1d6+level to 1d4+1+level/4, rounded up. * Channel Divinity grants save reattempts, rather than immediately ending charm/fear. This absolutely *guts* the sustain of the class to roughly fit 5e's power curve. If needed, you can also look at nerfing the hit dice of the class when the subclass is taken from 1d8 to 1d6. That said, it's easier to just totally ban it. Save yourself the headache and do so.

The amount Temp Hp the cleric generates passively makes them the best healer period. No contest, everyone else go home. And considering it's basically a passive ability it allows for said cleric to also be a very efficient DPS dealing more damage than most other casters passively as well. At level 5 a twilight cleric deals 3d8 with guardians, another d8 with spiritual weapon, heals everyone around them and still have their action. The entire thing takes two turns to set up and deals more or similar damage on average than most other classes (excluding the bursts that say fighters rogues or paladins can manage). So what you have a is a passive 4d8 damage, temp Hp and still an action available to cast spells or attack. If every class had the same amount of shenanigans no problem, but they don't.

It's not only designed in a way it's just a very meta build by itself (meaning, all of the subclass spells and abilities are strong for all the things considered important in the Game), its channel Divinity is VERY broken, like a much stronger version of aura of vitality you get from 2nd level.

I don't ban official things if it fits the campaign theme. But my monsters attack with intelligence, and in CoS, a tpk is something the party should fear. So just beat up the cleric first, then go to the weakest PC and keep beating up.

There are only two reasons people ban first party content. 1: they're doing a specific kind of setting and want to limit to the elements appropriate (i.e. this is a low magic setting, so no sorcerers) This is maybe 5% of table bans. 2: they're bad DMs who think they know more about balance than the professional game designers who made the game. This is the other 95% of table bans (twilight cleric, silvery barbs, flying races, etc)

From what I have seen, its just the old "players not catching that they are wiping the floor while the others watch" kind of thing. Its a strong subclass so it feels sometimes like when someone rolls good stats and the rest of the group did not. Its not a problem if people have similar expectations (example: everyone loves roleplaying or everyone is optimizing). Compare what everyone has and run a one-shot before the actual campaign to see what the chemistry is like. As the DM you can change monster HP or alter their equipment to be more of a challenge if it needs it.

Totally worth trying. Actually the player is in my Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign I'm in the middle of running. I have session with them on Friday so I may do something a little different for them to see how they fair.

I have no idea why, because I don’t. I usually don’t ban anything.

it's op and then we all gotta understand the darkness rules, which nobody does

[удалено]