Tzeentch standing next to Magnus wearing a T-shirt that says "I'm not the step-dad, I'm the dad who STEPPED UP".
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AnasAbdin
Claire Keane
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Tzeentch standing next to Magnus wearing a T-shirt that says "I'm not the step-dad, I'm the dad who STEPPED UP".

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Ork gender
I saw another meme.
I have a little bit more time for this one but it's still wrong. Disregarding the fact that the concept of non-binary gender identity requires a notion of a binary gender model to reject so Tyranids at least are no more non-binary than my cat (or the insects that the hive structure is clearly based on). Um, Orks are more complicated.
Space Marines are not your friend Part II
I keep thinking about this, and apparently a lot of other people keep thinking about this, because the conversation keeps happening. I think I didn't get it quite right the first time round, which is normal and we should embrace being wrong and changing our minds with new information.
The Emperor wasn't 12 feet tall
I see this meme a lot in my Instagram feed and it really grinds my gears:
Not because it seems to be trying to shame a fictional antagonist for being "wrong" (although that really doesn't help), but because whoever made it seems to have missed that depictions of the Emperor as superhuman are meant to be Imperial Propaganda.
There's a scene in Fallout: New Vegas that I find really interesting in how it uses skill checks in dialogue. A merchant company, the Crimson Caravan, want to buy out one of their rivals, Cassidy Caravans, and they hire the player character to negotiate the deal. The player has likely already met the rival company's owner, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, by this point - in fact, it's entirely possible that she suggested they ask the Crimson Caravan for work in the first place.
Cass is propping up the bar at a truck stop on the border near the game's opening area. She's heard that her caravan has been destroyed in her absence - her employees killed and their wagons burned in an attack on the road - but she can't investigate because of a bureaucratic hold-up. The man in charge of the border post, Ranger Jackson, has halted all commercial traffic across the border because of dangers on the roads - wild animals, bandits, and enemy soldiers - that the authorities are struggling to get under control.
When the player brings the Crimson Caravan's offer to Cass, she refuses on principle. Her business may have effectively been destroyed, but she's too proud and too stubborn to sell her surname for any number of messes of pottage. Convincing her requires that the player employs one of either their Speech or Barter skills - there are two options for each, requiring either moderate or high investments of skill points. Skill and Barter are the game's two Charisma-based skills, and it's not uncommon for them to appear side-by-side like this, but here, they diverge in application.
The easier Speech option is simple - the player just reminds Cass that, if she sells the business, she won't be commercial traffic anymore, so she'll be able to get across the border. She's itching to get on the road again, so this convinces her. (She will ask the player to help Jackson clear the roads for the benefit of her fellow merchants, but this is a very simple quest that they likely already completed hours ago.)
The more challenging Speech check is to tell Cass that there's no way her business can survive, so it's her duty to do the merciful thing - shoot it in the head, bury it, and move on with her life. This, naturally, brings her close to socking the player in the jaw, but she sees the truth in it. She's been holding onto the forlorn hope that there might be something left to save, but she really has lost everything. This bypasses Jackson's quest - she just wants to walk out and not look back.
The Barter options approach things differently - from the Speech options, and from each other. The more challenging one involves making some sport of the offer, challenging Cass to a drinking contest. The player has to supply the booze, and they run the risk of getting embarrassingly drunk if their Endurance stat is too low, but, either way, this will impress Cass enough that she'll sign the contract.
The easier Barter option, though, is, I think, the most interesting. It requires the player to sweeten the deal with their own money - a not insubstantial amount of it, in fact. Cass is still hesitant, though, which allows the player to make a very interesting point. With the money from the Crimson Caravan plus the player's contribution, she'd have enough to restart her business - buy new animals and equipment, hire a new crew, start trading again.
Further, the player can point out that the Crimson Caravan are unlikely to continue using the 'Cassidy Caravans' name after buying it. They're only buying her out to try to monopolise local trade, after all. If they don't use the name, they'll forfeit their rights to it - meaning that Cass can, as she puts it, take their money, give them nothing, and go back to running her business as if the attack never happened.
Cass, naturally, accepts this offer, though she's staggered that the player is so willing to sell out their employers to help her like this. (The player needn't feel any moral misgivings about doing so. A little investigation reveals that the attack on Cass's business was actually engineered by the Crimson Caravan themselves, in collusion with a crime family, in a conspiracy to wipe out their competition.)
I think this entire interaction represents how well New Vegas uses skill checks. Barter, in RPGs, is often a very barebones skill. Its use is letting the player earn more and spend less - as part of an equation determining shop prices, or in dialogue options that boil down to asking for money. It's not uncommon for Speech to be the skill of the peaceful, benevolent diplomat, while Barter is for common mercenaries.
Here, though, the Barter options actually cost more than their Speech equivalents. The player ends up out of pocket for a sizable chunk of change or at least a lot of booze. Instead, the Barter skill represents the character's understanding of common business practices and relevant laws. It allows them to convince Cass to accept a deal by finding a loophole that benefits her more than if she refused.
The equivalent Speech options, meanwhile, are effectively free, but do involve making Cass feel that little bit worse. They emphasise what she's lost, how trapped she is by her circumstances, and convince her to give up and let the Crimson Caravan win. In the long run, this doesn't make a real difference - once she leaves the outpost, she and the player can discover the conspiracy and get their revenge either way - but I think the choice does let the player say something about their character.
Part of the brilliance of this game is how little details, like Cass being stuck at the outpost, tie into other details all across the story. Caravan traffic is halted, in part, because deathclaws have nested near the roads to the north. They've nested there because the local quarry has ceased operations - the noise caused by the digging and blasting had previously scared them off.
The quarry closed down because escaped convicts raided it and stole the workers' stash of mining explosives. The convicts escaped because the government was using them for forced labour on the railroads, and foolishly entrusted them with enough dynamite to stage an uprising, seize control of the prison, and turn it into a fortress and a base of operations for banditry.
Similarly, the threads of Cass's story spread outwards, ultimately affecting the entire future of New California. When she learns that the Crimson Caravan and their allies killed her friends, Cass is furious. She wants to march over there and beat the snot out of the people responsible. The player can convince her to instead settle things legally - get proof of their crimes, pass them on to Ranger Jackson, and hope the justice system gets revenge for her.
If Cass does things her way, the criminals pay with their lives, but their bosses end up better off for it. With their regional execs murdered, the trading companies can claim that the government isn't doing enough to protect them - so, they don't have to support the government's interests, either. They withdraw trade, demand special treatment, and end up making their shortfall everyone's problem.
If the legal option is pursued, though, the evidence becomes blackmail material. The government has the trading companies over a barrel, and that lets them pass stricter trade laws. Given the choice of accepting regulation or facing criminal investigation, the crooked execs choose to stay out of jail. Those responsible for the murders technically avoid justice, but their hopes of a monopoly are dashed - and their superiors are unlikely to be pleased with them having hurt long-term profits so badly.
Cass's story is political and economical all the way through. It's about the influence of wealth on government, and the fundamental injustices of the carceral system. It's about revenge, and reform, and how to hit people where it hurts - their bottom line. And it's about how, sometimes, skills in an RPG aren't about making numbers go up - they're about how a character understands the world around them, and how they can apply that understanding to help someone out of a jam, or help reshape the trade lines of a whole nation.

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Kill your Primarchs
When I first heard about this I thought it was a terrible idea. I still do, but Iâve decided to have more complicated feelings about it.
Letâs talk about the idea of heroes, and Rationalism, and maybe New Atheism a bit.
Does Warhammer 40,000 need some good guys?
Firstly, 40K does have good guys, theyâre called Exodite Eldar and they ride around their planets on dinosaurs they call dragons and they live an agrarian and nomadic existence, but also theyâre not a playable faction because they donât really fight anyone so on to the more relevant stuff.
Look, Iâm upset about the idea too. Thereâs a creative purity to the idea of a setting where everyone is severely morally flawed. Hereâs the thing though, 40Kâs fans arenât the community of weird nerdy punks they were in the eighties. For a long time, Games Workshop have recognised that kids are a huge market for their games, so the question is more, does Warhammer 40,00 need a faction for kids to identify with who arenât Fascist power fantasy?
Decadence, Degeneration & the Drukhari
I think the Eldar are really interesting. While other Xenos in 40K, like Orks and Tyranids, represent a sort of general external threat, Eldar bring some other ideas along with them. Iâm afraid weâre going to have to talk about Fascism again, but thereâs some other fun stuff too.
Space Marines are not your friend
... and the Imperium of Man are not the good guys.
These guys, with the iron crosses and the scary face-masks, surprisingly not very nice.
Gender and Warhammer 40,000
Look Iâm sorry. Itâs been a long time since Iâve played 40K but I still find the setting really interesting and also I have *opinions* (also Iâm thinking it could be fun to play some Dark Heresy).

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Hexblades!
Image credit: Elric of MelnibonĂŠ by Robert Gould
I used to hear about this build where youâd take a warlock with two levels in paladin so you could use warlock spell slots for divine smites. Apparently the game designers heard about it too because they created the hexblade, which is basically a warlock that gets smites and the proficiencies needed to be in melee. A few years ago I was reading Elric of MelnibonĂŠ stories by Michael Moorcock and I suspect the designers borrowed a looooooot of inspiration from Elric when they made the hexblade. Go read them, theyâve got that early to mid-20th century sword and sorcery pulp feel with all the weirdness and darkness that often entails.
I love warlocks in general, the patronâs presence in a campaign has so much potential to drive roleplaying and storytelling, but that can be even cooler when the presence is embodied in the actual weapon youâre using.
So how do you run them, and how might you tank with them? For starters, your important attributes are dexterity, constitution and charisma. Charisma is obviously important for all warlocks, constitution will give you more hit points, which youâll need because youâll be in melee a lot, and dexterity is important because it boosts the AC of the medium armour youâll be wearing. If youâre planning to tank, you might even consider making your dexterity 16 to start with and going for the medium armour master feat so you can really soak up hits (with scale mail and a shield thatâs an armour class of 19). If that means your dexterity starts higher than your charisma you could take a finesse weapon to start with. Charisma will become important for spells but it can probably wait. This might be a situation where you want to buy your starting equipment because the standard warlock starting equipment isnât really geared towards this sub-class, however the average gold warlocks have to spend is 100gp and a chain shirt or scale mail, along with a rapier, shield, and cheap arcane focus already costs 95gp so be careful.If you want to take advantage of that high dexterity, urchin is a useful background since the warlock class doesnât give you access to any dexterity skills.
This subclass was clearly designed to work with the pact of the blade boon (no pact of the chain means no quasit and that makes me sad). This boon doesnât give you a great deal to start with but it does give you access to eldritch invocations with a particularly martial focus. Improved pact weapon allows you to use your weapon as an arcane focus and gives it a +1 bonus if it doesnât already have it, this can be really useful at lower levels before you find a +1 weapon, and then you can swap it out for a different invocation. At fifth level you get access to thirsting blade, which allows you to attack twice, and eldritch smite, which works similarly to a paladinâs smite, these are must haves. Finally at twelfth level, lifedrinker allows you to do extra necrotic damage equal to your charisma modifier when you hit. Other invocations that might be helpful are fiendish vigour; the temporary hit points from false life will help keep you alive, cloak of flies, which will do poison damage to nearby enemies, and undying servitude; having a skeleton or zombie by your side that you donât need to concentrate on will help keep you in the fight longer.
Concentration is something to consider though. Youâll have access to some useful concentration spells like hex, several smites, eldritch weapon, spirit shroud and blade of disaster that have ongoing benefits (shadow blade might seem really good for hexblades but itâs not a pact weapon so it doesnât work with your invocations). Warlocks arenât great at concentration saves though, and youâre going to be getting hit a lot. If you want to use these spells then you might want to take the tough feat to give you proficiency in constitution saves (and +1 con) as well as the eldritch mind invocation to give you advantage on concentration saves.
Really theyâre a lot like paladins that feel slightly... wrong. Thereâs a sense in the Elric stories that heâs been physically weakened by the weapon he uses, and his martial prowess is maintained by his force of will and the weapon driving him. I think the way this subclass combines the use of charisma for attack and damage rolls with a slew of curses and necromantic spells really helps communicate that feeling. I havenât touched on the hexbladeâs curse or accursed spectre features because theyâre pretty straightforward but they certainly help create that tone.
The unconventional tank
Mostly when people think of tanking they think about armour, heavy armour, plate if possible, with a shield and something sharp or blunt to hit things with. It makes sense; the tanks with tracks and guns are covered in metal, and itâs a method that works; Heavy armour with a shield and one-handed weapon is a great way to avoid damage. Starting out with chainmail and a shield gives you an armour class of 18 on its own, which can increase to 19 with the defense fighting style. Full plate can increase this to number to 21 once you can find or afford it.
The problem with tanks, of course, is that they make a lot of noise. Every player I've known who's run a fighter or paladin has lamented their terrible stealth checks when the rest of the party starts sneaking around and all their bits of metal start clattering together. It doesn't have to be this way though. A character, in particular a fighter, paladin or ranger, can very easily approach or match the armour classes heavy armour allows by wearing medium armour and focusing on dexterity. If you want to run a character who feels more elegant while tanking, you could try this.
The method involves taking dexterity instead of strength as a character's highest attribute, it should be possible to get a 16 or 17 using the standard array. Finesse weapons are, of course, very important for this build. A rapier and shield is just as effective as any of the other one handed weapons used this way, such as longswords, morningstars or flails. Starting with a chain shirt, along with a shield and the dexterity bonus gives an armour class of 17 (or 18 with scale mail, but that can be noisy). The defense fighting style raises this number again. The key is the medium armour master feat, it extends the dexterity bonus for medium armour to a maximum of +3 and allows the wearer to ignore the stealth disadvantage imposed by scale mail and half plate. It can be taken at level four (or level one with a variant human). With a dexterity of 16, half plate, a shield, the defense fighting style and the medium armour master feat, one of the martial classes can reach an armour class of 21, the same as full plate and shield, for half the cost, and with the ability to sneak around with the others. The defensive duelist feat could also be quite fun here, it allows you to add your proficiency to your armour class as a reaction, itâs nice little buff and gives the sense of a skilled swashbuckler.
While fighters, paladins, rangers and of course barbarians make the most effective tanks, most classes include a sub-class that allows for something like tanking, for the record, I havenât tried most of these, so if you have Iâd love to hear how it went. Each of these options have a D8 for their hit die, making them less survivable than the martial classes, so a high constitution is very important if you want to tank with them. Those on this list who use medium armour can also benefit from the medium armour master feat. Arcanists have the armourer, giving them access to heavy armour and shields, and improving their armour overall. Bards have the college of valour, giving them medium armour and shield proficiency. Clerics have several very tough options, as I looked at in my series on them. Druids have access to the circle of the moon, giving them very tough wild shape options. Instead of putting on a lot of armour, just turn into a bear! Monks can be a bit more challenging, as they donât get armour proficiency and their armour class is based on a combination of Wisdom and Dexterity. With the standard array of attributes they might start with an armour class of 15 or 16, but this will advance very slowly as they level, and they can only reach a maximum of 20. Tanking with a rogue would be challenging too, but you could give one the moderately armoured and medium armour master feats, this would fit thematically quite well with the swashbuckler subclass. Probably donât try to tank with a sorcerer, they have D6 for their hit die and no armour proficiency, itâs going to end badly. Iâll do separate posts on the hexblade warlock and bladesinger wizard because theyâre both quite complicated and deserve the time. Also I need to figure out how that wizard works.
What do you mean when you say roleplaying?
So I see this discussion come up every few weeks.
And, like, I agree in general that D&D has problems with *some kinds* of roleplaying, but also I think that actually there are different ways to roleplay, and some of those are served better or worse by different rules systems.
So the problem is character interactions. D&D handles interpersonal stuff between player characters and non-player characters badly, and it handles stuff between two player characters worse. Thereâs an often unspoken assumption with these kinds of interactions that players will play out what what their characters say to persuade or intimidate another character, itâs enjoyable and contributes to the storytelling (some players prefer not to and thatâs fine). The DM will then follow this up by asking for some sort of check, almost always based on charisma. There are two big problems here, one being that success is entirely down to the roll and not what the player said, the other being that itâs almost always the bards, paladins, sorcerers and warlocks doing this because these checks so often rely on charisma. There are a few ways to improve the situation, some DMs might give advantage on a check for a particularly persuasive oration, or they might allow a character to roll persuasion with intelligence for a particularly rational argument, or with wisdom for an empathic one (the rules state that attributes associated with skills are only suggestions, so DMs should do this more), but thereâs still a big gap between what a player says and whether they succeed. The other problem is that when a player decides theyâre going to roll to intimidate or persuade another player, it can take away that playerâs agency. This is enough of a problem that most DMs donât allow social checks between players, but without a replacement, that leaves games with no system for handling interactions between players.
So, what are the other options? Iâm going to talk about Powered by the Apocalypse games because Monster Hearts is on the embarrassingly short list of non-D&D games Iâve played. These are games designed with character interactions at their hearts, unlike D&D, which has combat at its heart. Stats are generally 4 or 5 things along the lines of hot, cold, dark, weird, volatile, aggro, things like that, and different social checks rely on different stats, so that different characters will be better at different types of social interactions. On top of this the checks these games call for are less about succeeding in persuading someone of something, and more about instilling a feeling in another character, you can roll to turn someone on or shut someone down, that player can then decide how they react to that, which helps to retain everyoneâs agency. And then there are strings, these represent some piece of information or emotional connection that one character has on another. There are a lot of interactions that allow a character to get them, and a lot of ways to use them, but I think the most interesting way is when you want another player to do something. You can spend a string on them, and ask them to do the thing, if they do it, they get an experience point, pushing them closer to leveling up. I love it, it drives interaction between characters while maintaining everyoneâs agency and rewarding cooperation.
So yeah, if you want to support character interactions there are definitely better games out there than D&D. (Also a lot of Powered by the Apocalypse games are very queer, so, like, play them)
What about different kinds of storytelling though? Sometimes you want to tell a story about a character whoâs a badass, like Ripley, or Sarah Connor, or most of the people in The Lord of the Rings, or the Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok. Character interaction isnât so important to telling these charactersâ stories, whatâs important is letting them perform awesome physical (or magical) feats, and thatâs something D&D does really well. I made a post a little while ago on how you can use D&Dâs mechanics to tell a characterâs story. D&Dâs rules are pretty complicated and thereâs a library of abilities that are available to characters, this can be used for combat optimisation but it can also be used to express really specific elements of how a character is a badass in a way thatâs not really available in smaller RPGs like Monster Hearts. Dungeon World looks really fun, but I think Iâd struggle to make Yngvild Windrivver as intense in that system as she can be in D&D.
Anyway, itâs sort of an aside, but other people have talked about how thereâs a false dichotomy between optimising and roleplaying, they call it the Stormwind fallacy. The idea is that it is possible for a character to be interesting, worth role playing, and also good at what they do. Nobody ever said âah, Tolkein really nerfed Aragorn by making him a good characterâ. Roleplaying games arenât wargames, the role of the game master is not to beat you, they create the world in which to tell a story, and in D&D they provide interesting challenges. You shouldnât be in a situation where you need to optimise to survive unless everyone has agreed to play that kind of game, so the concept of nerfing is kind of meaningless here, very few people build their D&D characters to do the most possible combat damage, or healing, they build their characters based on what they like, or what tells their story, and they still successfully complete campaigns and have fun doing it.
Anyway, I think people should try roleplaying systems that arenât D&D. I love D&D but I think itâs a terrible introduction to roleplaying games because itâs so complex and it focuses on combat at the expense of pretty much all other interactions. Playing other games can help you see which games are best for telling the story you want to tell, but they can also help you see what D&D does well. Thereâs no game that does everything perfectly, so play lots and see which ones work for you.
Role playing religious characters
I guess while Iâm writing about clerics is as good a time as any to talk about this. Religion is a fundamental part of Dungeons & Dragons. The gods are active in the world and several classesâ powers are derived directly from divine entities. It may be different with other groups but Iâve often found that players struggle to express the religion of characters who are religious.
I have two thoughts about why this might be. The first reason is that D&D is power fantasy, characters feel really badass and I think this can drive a tendency in players to want to feel powerful. Recognising that your characterâs power is derived from another entity can make that difficult, particularly when for most characters, power is an expression of martial training or academic study (or just being born with it in the case of sorcerers). It can take a bit of a shift in perspective to play a character whose power derives from their faith in something bigger than them.
The second reason is atheism. Not only that many more people grow up outside of religion than in the 70s when D&D was first developed, so there are fewer people who are familiar with it, but also that thereâs a sort of general discomfort around the idea of religion which I think can make many people reluctant to engage with the idea of it. It might be that people see religion as too earnest for a game about bashing up monsters or that they see the major monotheistic religions of the real world as too corrupt and they donât want anything to do with religion because of that.
Either way I think itâs worth exploring charactersâ religion because it can lead to more compelling stories. Characters have lots of motivations but I think duty is a really interesting one. It can achieve several things to have a character with a sense of duty. The first is to easily give your character a set of motivations that arenât necessarily your own, which is really important for role playing. Another is that having a connection to a deity or an institution like a church or temple ties your character into the world, DMs generally love this sort of thing because it gives them hooks they can use to engage your character and the party. Also, these kinds of motivations can help to get away from the good/evil understanding of characters (I think alignment is the worst thing about D&D), I find thinking about what a character will sacrifice their own needs, or betray others, for is much more compelling. Of course this commitment could also be to an ideology or an institution, religion is just one way of thinking about it.
In the 21st century, in the West, our experience of religion tends to be of monotheistic ones, whereas all the D&D settings (that Iâve encountered) are polytheistic. The domains system kind of makes polytheism inherrent to D&D (I guess you could make a monotheistic setting where domains reflect different aspects of a single god, but I havenât seen that done). Polytheistic and monotheistic religions have very different characteristics and it often seems like people assume the qualities of monotheistic deities in polytheistic ones because of what theyâre used to seeing, things like omnipotence, a claim to absolute morality and absolute authority. By contrast, polytheistic religions tend to depict their gods as much more human, they bicker, theyâre jealous, their power is limited (a lot of the gods in D&D were once human).
If you want inspiration for how to play a religious character in D&D, donât look at Christianity, look at heroic myths from polytheistic societies. Myths about gods are useful, but myths about humans are better because they tend to depict how those humans engage with the gods. The Iliad is particularly useful, with Achilles offending Apollo by sacking his temple, or Agamemnonâs sacrifices to Zeus in memory of the fallen Achaeans. Itâs been a while since Iâve read about Cuchulain or Brynhilde or Gilgamesh so maybe itâs time to do some more reading. Having a character who worships a god or pantheon, but is also aware that there are other gods, and theirs is not all powerful, can be really interesting, it means your characterâs acts reflect more on their god and maybe their godâs relationship to other gods.
I also think itâs good to practice role playing calling on your characterâs god (or maybe the nature spirits in the case of druids and rangers) to lend you their power. Trust me, it still feels pretty badass to be role playing someone whoâs channeling the power of divine entities.
The twilight domain
Iâve saved the best for last.
So initially I dismissed any associations between the twilight domain and a certain book and movie series about the undead, but now Iâm not so sure. The main ability this domain has (apart from the 300 foot darkvision and the flying) is a 30 foot aura of dim light that allows you to give things in it temporary hit points, and later, cover. It also grants some aura spells which are normally only available to paladins. Anything involving an aura benefits summoners because the more creatures are in the aura, the more powerful the aura is. Clerics can (sort of) summon two types of things, celestials, which require high level spells where you only get one, and undead, which actually they donât summon, they create, so they donât require concentration to maintain, meaning you can create several and cast aura spells to buff your skeleton army while youâre at it. They also get faerie fire, which is a good alternative to bless if youâre attacking with a crowd, since, while the targets get a save against it, it gives everyone attacking the target advantage.
Now, you donât have to raise an army of skeletons, (you donât have to do anything I say, these are just suggestions for the kind of play I think these domains support) you could quite feasibly use this domain to support a conjuration wizard or a circle of the shepherd druid, but if you do want those skellies dancing to your tune then Shar seems like the deity to choose (or Shargaas from the orc pantheon). Shar is a goddess of darkness and, unlike her sister SelĂťne, seems like sheâd be okay with animating the dead. Thereâs only one cleric of Shar in the twilight domain of my heart and her name is Viconia Devir.
I guess thatâs why I went with a drow for that top picture. Anyone whoâs played Baldurâs Gate 1&2 will know Viconia spends a loooot of time raising skeletons. It just seems fitting.

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The peace domain
It might be a little naughty to say but I wonder if this domain might be intended to replace the life domain. Both domains are focused on keeping other party members alive and have that âparty mumâ vibe that gets thrown around about clerics, however the life domain is... kind of boring. Everything it does just makes a cleric better at healing, and it really shoehorns a cleric into just healing the party.
The peace domain is much more interesting. At first level they gain emboldening bond, a feature that for ten minutes allows their allies to add a D4 to an attack roll, ability check or saving throw once per turn. This is great because it allows your allies to decide how they want to benefit from the feature. Itâs also preemptive, rather than responsive like healing, which seems a little more fun. Also, domain spells like heroism and aid which add hit points, and warding bond which grants damage resistance, all contribute to making the party more resilient, but again, act preemptively.
Of course these clerics do have access to healing spells, as well as a channel divinity option that allows them to heal as many allies as they can reach in one turnâs movement.
At higher levels, emboldening bond becomes protective bond and allows party members to teleport next to their allies and take damage for them when theyâve just been hit, again, involving other party members in the process of keeping the party alive, which I think is just a really nice touch.
This domain would work really well for any deities that have the life domain suggested for them. Eldath, Lathander, Ilmater and Sune in the Forgotten Realms, and Boldrei in particular in Eberron. If youâre wanting to play a cleric focused on keeping the party alive, the peace domain will prove a little more complicated than the life domain, but will likely be more interesting and rewarding as well.
The order domain
This is one of my favourites. I mentioned before that I really like playing characters that focus on buffing allies because you can help them bring out their best and thatâs just a nice feeling, and the order domain does that really well.
From level one, when you target an ally with a spell, say cure wounds, healing word, heroism or bless, you can allow that ally to make an attack with their reaction. The damage dealers in your party are going to love you for this. Later you can cast enchantment spells as bonus actions, making bless and heroism even more useful, however this also allows you to cast hold person, compulsion and dominate person as bonus actions.
I like the idea of sitting back out of harmâs way supporting allies with buffs and doing damage at range with cantrips or a light crossbow. The channel divinity option could help with this, as it allows you to charm a group of enemies, meaning they canât target you.
You might be tempted to swap out divine strikes for blessed strikes given the lack of martial weapon proficiency, but this domainâs 17th level ability allows an ally to deal extra psychic damage to enemies you target with your divine strike, so boosting your cantrips might be ultimately more effective, but if youâre expecting to get to level 17, sticking with divine strikes supports the feel of this domain a bit better.
Order domain deities run the gamut of lawful alignments, and this playstyle works well for all of them, although the good ones like Bahamut, Torm and Tyr might lean more towards buffing allies, while the evil ones might lean towards holding and dominating enemies, and approach spells like bless and heroism with a very bossy tone. Clerics of neutral deities like Helm and Amaunator will likely draw a path between the two styles. All in all I love this domain.