# The Cleric's Channel Divinity



## Ellington (Sep 7, 2012)

Does anybody else find this ability to be needlessly clunky?

It adds another resource pool for the cleric to manage apart from his spells, which would be fine, except the abilities this grants is so similar to his spells I can't help but feel the two could either be melded together somehow or distinguished further. A first level cleric gains the ability to once per day cast cure light wounds from a separate pool, but it isn't really cure/inflict light wounds but something slightly different. Different domains also grant different powers, which also feel very much like spells of their own. It all feels very confusing, especially for newer players.

Let's examine what they're trying to accomplish with Channel Divinity:

1) *They're giving the cleric its own gimmick.*

This is good, and in line with the design of the other D&D next classes. Apart from the unique spell list the cleric has its own unique ability that no other class has, much like the fighter's combat superiority. The cleric can further customize this unique ability by choosing different domains, allowing for a wide variety of different clerics.

2) *They're giving the cleric a separate pool of resources for healing.*

Understandable. People often complained that they had to sacrifice their cool powers to become party 'healbots', and if they weren't healing the party they weren't doing their jobs. By giving clerics the ability to separate their cool powers from the "boring healing stuff", the class seems a lot more exciting. But is this the right way to do it? It seems like overly clunky design to me, and I think there might be simpler ways to go about it.

Here are a couple of ideas I have on how to allow the cleric to perform his job as a healer without cutting the fun stuff out. 

*Intertwined healing*

4E had some fun spells that allowed the cleric to both hit stuff and heal their allies at the same time. What if (no seriously), all the healing a cleric did worked this way? Whenever a cleric cast a spell, he could heal a nearby ally for like, 1d6 HP at first level. With two spells per day, the cleric would _always_ heal at least 2d6 points per day. The amount of intertwined healing would increase, not with character level, but with the level of the spell slot used to cast the spell. So a first level spell slot would grant 1d6 HP as a free action while a third level spell slot would grant 3d6 HP. Evil clerics could use this power to deal the same amount of damage to nearby enemies.

You can envision this as some sort of "divinity leak" in the cleric. Whenever he casts spells as a conduit for his god, some of the god's divinity leaks out to either heal or harm nearby creatures.

But what about stuff like War domain clerics? They like to hit people and heal them at the same time. Where does that factor in? Simple, just give them spells that involve hitting people and the healing will follow. War domain clerics already have the spell Crusader's Strike which has them make a melee attack against a creature. Giving them some minor healing to go along with it sounds pretty cool to me.

This isn't to say that spells like Cure Light wounds should be removed from the spell list. They'd still be there, and even get some bonus healing on top from the intertwined healing! Everyone wins, even the players that like to play healbots.

*Ritual healing*

Simple and effective. The cleric could cast mass healing spells after combat to patch the party up without having to prepare spell slots in advance. The cost would simply be money, much like with other rituals. This gives the cleric (and the party as a whole) another resource to manage when healing the group, but it's a lot more intuitive than some arbitrary X amounts of healing per day that's totally not cure light wounds. The cleric would turn into a portable healing potion vending machine, but with better fluff.

Anyways, those are just a couple of ideas and I'd love to hear some more. I like the ideas they have for the cleric, but not so much the implementation.  If any of you agree and have some ideas of your own, please share them


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## The Shadow (Sep 7, 2012)

Channel Divinity at 1st level is pretty darn boring, no question there.  The Domains do seem to spice it up a bit as one levels.

I think it needs a little something more, in addition to Domain uses.  I'm also not at all sure why it has to heal/harm from a story perspective, though it is certainly D&D tradition.

From the metagame perspective, it's nice to reduce the pressure on healing spells, but you don't get it often enough to reduce it much.

My own thought is that each deity could have a unique Channel Divinity use, that would tie together their clerics of different Domains.


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## shadowmane (Sep 7, 2012)

I think I would favor linking the cleric even more closely to his deity.  All of the spells are already coming from the deity.  Handling the prayer for healing differently than the other magic would make for an interesting class.  The domain gives the spells, but the cleric can always pray for healing.  Kind of like a cantrip for a MU.  Healing is just something the cleric does (and the reverse for the evil cleric)  Its granted through prayer to ones deity, not through the spells.  Its an active prayer.  The cleric must be physically touching the one being healed.  A save is thrown to determine if the deity actually answers the prayer.  If so, then the D6 is thrown to see how many points of damage are healed.

All other spells are handled by the regular cleric magic system.


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## Li Shenron (Sep 7, 2012)

Ellington said:


> Does anybody else find this ability to be needlessly clunky?
> 
> It adds another resource pool for the cleric to manage apart from his spells, which would be fine, except the abilities this grants is so similar to his spells I can't help but feel the two could either be melded together somehow or distinguished further.




I totally agree, currently Channel Divinity is redundant, which is why I'm 100% confident that they already know they're going to change it a lot before the finished product.



Ellington said:


> 1) *They're giving the cleric its own gimmick.*




I don't this he need this. Clerical spells AND domains are already the Cleric's gimmick. There is no real need for another unique mechanic for this class, especially if the _effects_ are more or less the same you can do with spells and domain powers.

Someone may argue "but you get 2 different pools to fine-tune your resources, more tactical choices". Then why does the Fighter now gets only one "pool" (Combat Superiority) and even the Wizard (spells) while the Cleric should have 3? Save new unique mechanics for other classes instead (Druid, Shaman...)!

We also need to realize that "unique mechanics" are needed for classes which never had one (i.e. Fighter) or maybe had only an array of minor and inflexible mechanics (i.e. Paladin, Monk, Ranger...). 

Spellcaster already always had their own gimmick: spells. Now it's great that each spellcasting class has a different "tweak" on the preparation and casting mechanics. Don't give 2 to the same class, give 1 each. Why should the Cleric be more tactically flexible than the Wizard and other spellcasters?



Ellington said:


> 2) *They're giving the cleric a separate pool of resources for healing.*
> 
> Understandable. People often complained that they had to sacrifice their cool powers to become party 'healbots', and if they weren't healing the party they weren't doing their jobs. By giving clerics the ability to separate their cool powers from the "boring healing stuff", the class seems a lot more exciting. But is this the right way to do it?




But guess what... if Channel Divinity does only healing, people will complain "I want to use it for something more cool", and then they will add non-healing options to use it. So then people will complain "I don't want to sacrifice Channel Divinity pool for healing, move healing somewhere else", and then they will give another, healing-only gimmick. Rinse, repeat.



Ellington said:


> *Ritual healing*




Like the short rest and using your HD? 

How many more healing mechanics do we need in the game? If a group isn't yet convinced that we have TONS of healing, why can't they just reset all HP damage with a short rest? Or play the game with an "infinite life" cheat, that's what this "healing rush" makes the think about.


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## tlantl (Sep 7, 2012)

Okay I agree that channel divinity, besides having a dumb name, should be more deity specific. 

Maybe a war god giving one use of a maneuver such as CS dice or a god of mists giving the ability to assume a semisolid state granting a cover bonus or disadvantage on an attack, or a water goddess giving water breathing or walk on water for a minute a level, or ...

You know something that is granted by the entity being worshiped, something that has to do with that god's bailiwick. 

I understand the idea behind non spell related healing, since so many players decry the cleric as the heal bot and won't play one unless they don't have to memorize cure spells (something I find objectionable since the cleric class is designed from the outset to heal and protect the rest of the party.) 

There was a time when the cleric got literally nothing, (with the notable exception of spiritual hammer), but cures and minor buffs on their spell lists until they could cast 5th level spells. They also couldn't cast 2nd or 3rd level cure spells since they didn't actually exist unless the DM did something like I did and add cure spells to those levels. 

Clerics don't need to channel divine anything. Put turn undead back where it belongs and get on with the game. If a god doesn't deal with undead then their clerics can't turn or rebuke them.


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## DEFCON 1 (Sep 7, 2012)

Nope, I'm definitely on the other side of the equation.  If the game is presupposing "in-combat healing"... then having Healing Word (or Channel Divinity) outside the spell list is definitely something I think is better than the alternative.

That being said... I also don't think Channel Divinity (or whatever you want to call it) should have any uses _outside_ of healing.  The Cleric's domains get reflected by their spell lists.  Some Clerics will have additional healing and buffing in their lists, some Clerics will not.  So that's where the domain specialization comes in.

But EVERY god wants his/her champions to actually survive long enough to spread the word... which is easily enough justification to explain why every god/domain gives a pool of healing to his/her champion via Channel Divinity.  The individual PC can then decide whether or not to use that healing on other people, or indeed use the healing at all... but every Cleric should have that pool available at the very least to keep themselves alive to do his god's work.  Because a dead Cleric is a useless Cleric.


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## The Shadow (Sep 7, 2012)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Because a dead Cleric is a useless Cleric.




...You just made me imagine a cult focussed on worshipping Big Brother.  I don't know whether to thank you or slap you. 

Dead clerics are doubleplusungood!  They can no longer contribute to the glory of the Party!  We have always been at war with East Asia...


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## gyor (Sep 7, 2012)

Make a ritual verson of cure wounds, that should free up some space. I will note that the war priests alteration to channel divinity is its normal use, plus an attack. Then you don't have to worry.

 I will note they mentioned they wanted to add somethings to clerics, not sure what.


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## DEFCON 1 (Sep 7, 2012)

gyor said:


> Make a ritual verson of cure wounds, that should free up some space.




That doesn't solve the problem.  Because rituals occur outside of combat.

The issue here is that *if* the game is meant to have in-combat healing... what resources does the Cleric (or any other class with healing ability) have to use to power said healing?

In the past, they had to use their spell slots (thus giving rise to the heal-bot trope, where the Cleric's entire suite of spells was filled with nothing but cure spells.).  4E changed that by making their primary healing come from a pair of Healing Word abilities each encounter outside of the Cleric's normal spells.  And now D&DN has basically taken those two Healing Word encounter slots... renamed them Channel Divinity, and made them daily slots instead (varying the number of slots the Cleric gets based on level and so forth).

However, some people don't like that the Clerics now have two separate resources-- spell slots and Channel Divinity slots... because it means there's more to track, and more stuff that the Cleric "gets".  And the fear is that *if* WotC decided to create other abilities that could use the Channel Divinity resource (under the assumption that a non-healing focused god would not give healing powers to channel), then parties would STILL be light on in-combat healing, and the need for a THIRD resource for the Cleric would be created.

This is why I just believe Channel Divinity should be healing only.  Every god would give his/her Clerics a small font of healing ability _at the very least_ to use on himself to stay alive (and thus continue to do the god's work).  And it's then the Domain Spell List that would or would not have _additional_ Cure spells (for HP, diseases, poisons etc.) the Cleric could access... depending on what the god's domains were.


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## cmbarona (Sep 7, 2012)

Am I missing something? Some of the points people are bringing up are addressed within the second playtest packet. Is there a third? For example, Channel Divinity is already a heal-plus-attack for the War domain. And the Sun domain turns it into a burst damage effect. That's just the level 2 benefit for the only 2 domains debuting so far. As for it being a third resource, it really isn't. It's a third class feature, but only a second resource. The misunderstanding might be that domain is a class feature that interacts with a cleric's existing resources. Domains aren't a separate pool of resources, they just give additional options for the two existing pools. I'm also of the opinion that they are doing a great job of differentiating the domains this time around. Before, it just struck me as a slightly different spell list. Now a Sun Cleric seems vastly different from a War Cleric, and Channel Divinity is part of that equation.

Personally, I like Channel Divinity. It gives a bit of healing to Clerics who really don't care to specialize in it, and it can let the Cleric do things that spells (as currently written, at least) can't quite do, or so it seems to me. I would expect that Channel Divinity will be a class feature of any divine class, and there may be a series of "Channel Divinity" feats that are not specific to class, such as extra uses or increased CD die size.


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## ZombieRoboNinja (Sep 8, 2012)

I think Channel Divinity fails in its current design goal of having cleics draw from a separate pool of resources for healing.

The concern people expressed was that in Ye Olden Tymes clerics were expected to spend almost all their spell slots on healing, which made them boring to play.

The solution: create a separate pool of daily resources that clerics could use to heal!

But to make this really work, they'd have to make it so that clerics COULDN'T use their normal spells for basic healing. Otherwise, lots of parties would just expect clerics to use their normal spells AND their Channel Divinity to heal, leaving the clerics right where they started.

To make things even more confusing, sun-domain clerics can use their Channel Divinity for a weak AOE attack. So now they have two pools of daily resources with no clear division between them. More paperwork, less flexibility, no real benefit.

At this point, why not just nix Channel Divinity, add some more spell slots, and say that the Cure X Wounds spells are automatically prepared, like in 3e (and like Turn Undead in 5e)? Clerics may still feel pressured to use all their spells for healing, but at least there's less added complexity and a bit more flexibility.

The alternative that would actually fix the original complaint would be to leave in Channel Divinity and get rid of the Cure X Wounds and Heal spells altogether. But I can see a lot of traditionalists having a problem with a cleric who CAN'T cast healing spells.


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## Rhenny (Sep 9, 2012)

cmbarona said:


> Am I missing something? Some of the points people are bringing up are addressed within the second playtest packet. Is there a third? For example, Channel Divinity is already a heal-plus-attack for the War domain. And the Sun domain turns it into a burst damage effect. That's just the level 2 benefit for the only 2 domains debuting so far. As for it being a third resource, it really isn't. It's a third class feature, but only a second resource. The misunderstanding might be that domain is a class feature that interacts with a cleric's existing resources. Domains aren't a separate pool of resources, they just give additional options for the two existing pools. I'm also of the opinion that they are doing a great job of differentiating the domains this time around. Before, it just struck me as a slightly different spell list. Now a Sun Cleric seems vastly different from a War Cleric, and Channel Divinity is part of that equation.
> 
> Personally, I like Channel Divinity. It gives a bit of healing to Clerics who really don't care to specialize in it, and it can let the Cleric do things that spells (as currently written, at least) can't quite do, or so it seems to me. I would expect that Channel Divinity will be a class feature of any divine class, and there may be a series of "Channel Divinity" feats that are not specific to class, such as extra uses or increased CD die size.




I agree.  Channel Divinity should reflect the type of diety the Cleric worships and the powers should be linked to domains.   The name itself signals that the Cleric is channeling the power of his or her diety.   Spells are much more generic.


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## Sadrik (Sep 9, 2012)

I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function. All characters also have hit dice to heal their wounds. Simplify the game, extraneous resources do not need to be managed.


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## shadowmane (Sep 9, 2012)

Sadrik said:


> I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function. All characters also have hit dice to heal their wounds. Simplify the game, extraneous resources do not need to be managed.




That's exactly what I was after... simplification.  Cleric "spells" are eliminated in favor of the whole "divine favor" thing.  Cleric "spells" are works of miracles given to them by their deity, and only within the domain the deity works in.  It simplifies it greatly.  The only "spells" available to that cleric are the ones available to the domain(s) of that deity, plus any specials the deity gets to make that deity unique.  Healing is a simple prayer based on the favor the cleric has with his deity.  You would roll a simple save vs favor for the mechanic.  Apply advantage/disadvantage accordingly and viola, you have arrived.  It simplifies things for the player greatly, so he can concentrate on building to the domain of his character's deity.  You can also use the specialties to tweak the build into the Paladin, Priest, and Monk.


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## cmbarona (Sep 10, 2012)

Sadrik said:


> I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function. All characters also have hit dice to heal their wounds. Simplify the game, extraneous resources do not need to be managed.




A comment that's sort-of tangential to the topic:

I'm all for simplified healing, but I really hope they don't bring back  the Cure Light Wounds wand trick. I think over-reliance on magical  healing is a narrative trap. There's a great couple of paragraphs on page 13 of the 8/13/12 "How to Play" document about HP abstraction. It really frees up room for more dynamic storytelling when every swing of your axe doesn't have to mean an actual wound. Over the course of combat, combatants get bumps, scrapes, and cuts. They also suffer from exhaustion and fading morale. Sometimes quick reflexes and small divine favors are involved. It's hard to hold abstraction together with a magic-only based healing system that supposedly exists to cure extremely serious injuries.

They already have Healer's Kits to address the general bumps, scrapes, and cuts of combat, and presumably, more serious wounds as well. I think they wanted to include these as a replacement of 4e's mechanic that allowed you to simply use as many healing surges as you wanted during a short rest without outside aid. I think this may have swung too far into the abstract nature of HP for some folks. Healer's Kits are a nice middle ground, I believe. Being at 1HP doesn't mean your lung fell out; you're just really banged up and fatigued, and you'll be fine after treating your wounds and catching your breath. [/rant]

To bring this back to the topic at hand, I think Channel Divinity is actually meant to simplify healing, whether or not it accomplishes that task. Clerics get a baseline of healing as a class feature, and need not prepare specific healing spells if they don't want to. I suppose this could be handled by making Cure Wounds-type spells an automatic preparation, like Turn Undead currently is, and increasing the Cleric's available spells by one per current CD gain...

I know there is a lot of potential overlap between Channel Divinity and a Cleric's spells. I suppose the question to ask is, what is the benefit of separating the two mechanics? One I can see right now is that you can do it while gagged and bound. Another is that they could cover some domain-specific abilities to avoid spell-list bloat. If only one class, and one subclass within that class, has this ability, why add it to the spell list? further, perhaps there are issues we don't see yet because the rules don't yet exist, such as possible interactions with spell-casting items (wands, scrolls, etc.), multiclassing, and a "Channel Divinity" line of features that needs to work across divine classes regardless of spell list.


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## 1of3 (Sep 10, 2012)

Sadrik said:


> I am in the boat of remove channel divinity. Utilize the spell slots. In 3e, clerics were free when the party bought them a wand of cure light wounds. It was relatively cheap and could be bought early on. Later when they became very inefficient the cleric had many spell slots. If 5e follows the same path with the wands then there is no need to further separate the healing function.




If the devs actually go with "magic items are totally optional", buying wands is out the picture. They also said, they would restrict the spells that are applicable in wands.

Both ideas are good in my book.


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## DEFCON 1 (Sep 10, 2012)

ZombieRoboNinja said:


> But to make this really work, they'd have to make it so that clerics COULDN'T use their normal spells for basic healing. Otherwise, lots of parties would just expect clerics to use their normal spells AND their Channel Divinity to heal, leaving the clerics right where they started.




This assumes that Cure spells would be in EVERY domain's spell list though.  And I would not expect that to be the case.  Thus, if a particular domain doesn't have Cure spells in their list, and that player has CHOSEN to play a Cleric of that domain... the rest of the party knows that the extent of that player's healing is the pool of Channel Divinity uses and that's it.  There's no "forcing" the player to use his spells for healing in addition to the CD, because it's not possible.  It'd only be the Cleric who purposely chosen a domain that HAD a lot of Cure spells (like the Sun domain perhaps) that might be expected by the rest of the party to prepare some of those better Cure spells on top of the CD healing... but in that case, the player probably selected that domain simply IN ORDER to do that anyway.  They WANTED to be a bonafide "healer", and selected the Sun domain to do so.



ZombieRoboNinja said:


> To make things even more confusing, sun-domain clerics can use their Channel Divinity for a weak AOE attack. So now they have two pools of daily resources with no clear division between them. More paperwork, less flexibility, no real benefit.




Now this, I agree with you on.  I think if you are going to have a separate pool for healing, then just make it for healing.  Don't give other possible uses for it.  If that means we need to change the name from Channel Divinity to something else, I couldn't care less... but I think it is a smart game design to have every Cleric have a small pool of healing abilities if for no other reason than to keep themselves alive.  Even a God of Death would grant his Cleric a bit of healing to use on himself just to make sure he didn't croak while attempting to get the God's word out there.


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## Markn (Sep 10, 2012)

I would like to see the cleric manage healing/damage through spells but slightly differently than what anyone has mentioned before.  Any spell that is capable of doing damage is also capable of healing and any combination in between. Whenever a cleric casts a spell he can choose how much dice he distributes to damage and how much dice goes to healing an ally.  For example, a spell that does 4d6 damage could do all damage, all healing, or 2d6 of each or any other combination up to 4d6. I see healing in this manner being limited in range, perhaps touch or radius 15' for example making the clerics placement important when casting and it also really fullfills the clerics role as a support role since a cleric using this healing needs to be central to all PCs to make this healing effective. This also leaves design space for cure spells as they can be given large ranges and/or stronger effects. I think this would make the cleric fun to play as managing offense/defense becomes a round by round choice and sometimes the cleric will gamble what will be enough damage to kill the enemy while balancing healing thereby keeping allies in the game.  I think this could allow various play styles. Finally, the term Channel Divinity could be used to describe the clerics ability to both simultaneously deal damage and heal.


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