Cleric - Spirits Domain (Patreon)

The Spirits Domain is a cleric that tends to the dead, dying, and bereaved — whether by hastening enemies into the grave or keeping allies from it. This was actually our poll winner all the way back in February, but I couldn't find the right features at the time. So I tabled it and released the Unyielding Sun warlock instead. Then yesterday I got inspired! So here we are.

GMBinder | PDF

Obviously there's a fair amount of thematic overlap with the Grave Domain here, but I think the Spirits domain provides a fairly unique spin and actually carries off the theme a bit better. It's a pet class for one, for mechanical differentiation, and it's never made a ton of sense for the Grave Domain to be mostly about critical hits.

Design-wise: The spell list is fairly narrow and tightly focused on the theme — pulling in spells with spirit-ideas and that deal directly with the process of dying, vs. just the "dealing a lot of damage so things die" approach to death. Grave Teachings is a straightforward ribbon, with a narrow application but probably one that's pretty useful. Life and Death is a small but meaningful boost to your damage and healing spells - not amazingly powerful, but good enough that it's dippable the way cleric subs should be. Channel Divinity: Back From the Brink is straightforwardly situational-but-great I probably expect the strongest pushback on this feature, because there's a group of folks who feel death saving throws are sacrosanct. Spirit Companion is our big defining feature at 6th, bringing in a pet with standard pet-class mechanics; in this case, a fairly delicate one but with the ability to add a lot of flexibility to our spellcasting. Spirits' Protection is just a nice situational defensive boost. Spiritual Warfare is our Divine Strike/Potent Spellcasting equivalent; used here because the base versions just wouldn't really make sense. Crypt Keeper and Empowered Spirit are both a pseudocapstone, broken up into two features - one incredibly thematic and situationally awesome, the other just a straightforward boost to your pet. We then get a bonus piece of content in the Mortuary Cultist Background - I don't write backgrounds often, but this sub really demanded its existence.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback either in the comments or on Discord!