The Luck Domain (Cleric) and Spells
PDF Links: Luck Domain, Luck Spells
D&D Beyond: Luck Domain, Blessing of Luck, Twist Fate
Art Credit: https://www.deviantart.com/ianllanas/art/Rolling-Dice-493721406
Are you feeling lucky? The gods and goddesses of luck, chance, and fortune have nearly always been relevant in mythological and fantasy pantheons. Everyone knows what it feels like to get unlucky, and everyone knows the feeling of waiting, hoping, even praying for good luck when you really need it — especially when you’re rolling d20s at a table (digital or otherwise) to see whether your intrepid heroes can survive their latest encounter or not!
Perhaps because of these reasons, a cleric domain of luck or chance is a common topic for homebrewers to tackle, and there are a lot of different interpretations out there. Advantage and disadvantage are usually common, and D&D Unleashed’s version has plenty of those as well. Often, however, these domains use features to add certainty to the player’s actions, which can feel like someone commanding the whims of chance, but can also feel quite similar to a very different domain and theme: that of knowledge, divination, and foretelling (such as the Divination Wizard or the Knowledge Cleric) especially if it relies on granting flat bonuses to skills or enabling rerolls on a whim. On the other hand, we really wanted to have the player of a character who worships a god of luck actually feel connected to the rhythm of the dice at the table and praying to Lady Luck — even more so than PCs normally are.
This led us to the main design for the Fortune’s Blessing feature, where the luck cleric is watching the game actions around them for particularly lucky or unlucky d20 rolls. Rather than attempting to command fate, the cleric can respond to lucky allies by amplifying and drawing on their luck, and to unlucky allies by attempting to reverse some of their bad luck. And they can respond to enemies as well, causing lucky enemies to stumble in their moment of triumph or taking divine power from reveling in their moment of misfortune. Because this feature works off of d20 rolls but not the results of those rolls, it has almost twice as many opportunities to activate when creatures are rolling with advantage or disadvantage, since more d20s are being rolled. That also means that a luck cleric can use the Fortune option to grant advantage in a way to try and chain the effect, using the feature’s own advantage to make it easier to activate on consecutive rounds — a real, mechanical lucky streak, powered by divine magic!
Though they aren’t granted any weapon proficiencies by their domain, these luck clerics are still more-or-less expected to wield a weapon for most of their combat time, which might be apparent from the Divine Strike and Channel Divinity: Blind Luck features. This channel divinity is not the strongest on its own, but is intended to be extremely flavorful, and works well as a counter to certain invisibility or obscuring effects. We’ve found that the ability to miss with the attack, while uncommon, grants a sense that the cleric is still reliant on the fortune or misfortune bestowed by their god (and it doesn’t use up the blessing immediately). It’s also an example of how this domain is designed to be able to multiclass well with other classes, much like the War domain is, as this particular Channel Divinity makes for a great combination with rogue levels and Sneak Attack dice for a truly deadly strike! Other martial classes can also provide Extra Attack, which gives the cleric twice as many chances per turn to hit with the blessing.
It was an intentional decision to push the luck cleric into weapon combat without giving them heavy armor or access to reach weapons. For one, it makes it more likely that both allies and enemies will be in range for Fortune’s Blessing. But a cleric who prays to these deities should feel the grace of their lucky blessings — or the burning sting of their jinxes — in the path of their enemies’ weapons. Placing themselves in the way of danger without the ideal defenses makes them reliant on luck, their own healing, and on their Sense Misfortune feature. Against strong enemies, this feature renders critical hits like normal hits, but against weaker enemies it can weaken the attack even below the level of an average non-critical hit, possibly even to 0!
Perhaps the strongest feature of the luck cleric is its capstone feature at level 17. In the Zone is balanced on the observation that clerics don’t have many high-level spells with particularly punishing saving throws — such an effect on a wizard or sorcerer would be extremely dangerous if it was commonly usable. But on a cleric, it’s simply very good. The cleric needs to choose their timing carefully, as blowing this feature too early can leave them without what they need later in combat. This feature is obviously extremely versatile — it can be used defensively to end a save-ends condition, offensively to attack or debilitate an enemy, or for other utilities, since it applies to ability checks as well. The biggest downside might be just that you can’t give it to your allies!
We should mention that there are a few new spells on the domain spell list, two of which can be seen below the subclass. In addition to the spells previewed today, we also previewed the other new spell on the Luck Domain’s spell list, jinx, a bit ago. As for today’s spells, they’re relatively simple affairs that underwent a lot of careful balancing. Blessing of Luck was created long ago specially for this subclass, and has found a place as a 5th-level spell that doesn’t provide too little power and feels worth maintaining concentration on for a single ally, but that still has some exploitable weaknesses when faced with many attacks or saving throws in a single turn. Twist Fate had its numbers chosen specifically to avoid easy automatic critical hits and misses, even for the 3rd-level Champion fighters (15th-level champions have worked hard enough for very little. They can have it), while still turning most hits into certain misses and most failures into certain successes. Forcing a creature to fail a saving throw is extremely powerful, and so it requires a saving throw of its own, preventing it from getting around things like Magic Resistance or Legendary Resistances, while still giving the caster more chances for a failed save than they would have had without twist fate. This spell has been dangerous every time its been able to affect saving throws, but we’re fairly confident in this iteration being just safe enough. However, it’s still under probation, so don’t be surprised if it sees chances before the Legends of Prestige and Prowess compendium releases!
PDF Links: Luck Domain, Luck Spells
D&D Beyond: Luck Domain, Blessing of Luck, Twist Fate
