Hello everyone,

Welcome to the End-of-April feature discussion for Revenge of the Firstborn! This month we’re going to take a deep dive into another of the classes launching with the game, the cleric.

When people think of “the holy warrior”, especially in Dungeons & Dragons, they usually think of the paladin, but the cleric can also be a frontline fighter, particularly when they focus on domains that grant benefits in combat. There’s more about domains below!

Up through AD&D second edition, the cleric was restricted to only blunt weapons. The popular theory around why is that medieval clergy were forbidden from shedding blood, so bludgeoning weapons were the way to go. Like a few things in D&D, this is something of a “pop history” theory with only a little bit of history back it up.

In third edition, with the introduction of weapon categories, that strict prohibition was lifted. Clerics become proficient with all simple weapons. While most of these weapons are bludgeoning weapons, the theme was more about the skills involved in using them than the type of damage they inflicted. In fact, dwarven and elven clerics got their automatic racial proficiencies in the dwarven axe and the longsword, respectively. Combined with their granted proficiency with all types of armor, the cleric becomes a fully capable front-line fighter.

Further augmenting their abilities, both in combat and outside it, are the cleric’s abilities as a full spellcaster. The cleric’s spell list stands proudly alongside the wizard. Whether he is improving his battle prowess, protecting those around him, or curing diseases and wounds, a cleric focusing on spellcasting is force to be reckoned with.

One of the defining features of the cleric is his ability to Turn Undead. A cleric can cause undead to flee or destroy them outright. A cleric of evil alignment can halt them in their tracks or force them to fight on his behalf.

An encounter with the dead is often a tough battle of attrition against their varied debilitating abilities such as attribute damage, level drains and paralysis. A cleric can quickly turn these fights into a cakewalk.

Being Spontaneous

As in previous versions of D&D, the 3.5 SRD cleric is required to memorize the spells he wishes to use each day. However, introduced in the third edition of the game, clerics (and druids) possess the ability to spontaneously convert a memorized spell into a Cure Wounds spell (or Summon Nature’s Ally in the case of druids) of the same level. This means most clerics will choose to memorize non-Cure Wounds spells each day and convert the spells they’ve memorized into Cure Wounds spell as needed.

The last major feature of the cleric is their domains. When he takes his first level of cleric, a character decides which domains he wants to use. In Revenge of the Firstborn, while domains are not tied to specific deities, the cleric’s alignment does affect what domains and what spells a cleric can use.

Each domain grants a cleric access to two domain spells and one additional spell slot per level. These are in addition to his normal spells per day and, in some cases, are spells that do not normally appear on the cleric’s spell list, such as Wall of Flame, which belongs to the Fire domain.

Additionally, each domain grants a specific power themed to match the domain. For instance, the Death domain grants the ability to attempt to kill a creature merely by touching it, once per day. The Strength domain grants a once-per-day ability to add a cleric’s class level to his strength to perform prodigious feats of strength.

These domain abilities will be included in the next release of the demo and beta for Revenge of the Firstborn, so you can try them out when the next release goes live in early May!