Dungeons & Delvers: Meet the (Kobold) Cleric

It just so happens that the cleric art features another kobold, but since I already talked about kobolds here we can just skip straight to the cleric-y bits.

The high concept for a cleric is basically what you'd expect: they're servants of various gods that can channel various divine powers.

The difference is that they don't operate exactly like wizards, just with a different spellcasting stat and sometimes different spells (which I'll get to in a bit).

Stats

The key stat for clerics is Grace, which is used for most cleric talents (and all of the social skills). There are three stat arrays to choose from, depending on whether you want to also be strong, fast, or smart.

Skills

You start with Religion at d6, and get to pick three other skills. Though Religion is tied to Intellect, there's a sidebar that explains that for clerics, most Difficulties will be lower for them (especially when it pertains to their own god).

Gear

You begin with an adventuring kit, a holy symbol, and either medium armor and a melee weapon, or light armor and a ranged weapon (presumably you'll choose whatever best works with your stats and skills).

The holy symbol is similar to the wizard's magic focus: if you don't have it, when you use cleric talents that require dice rolls you have to discard your highest dice result.

Talents

At 1st-level you get to choose any one Domain talent, which helps establish what your god is about. As you level up you can choose other Domains to further flesh out your god (like a god of healing and fire, or a god of thunder and war), focus on the Domains you already have, or choose other various talents that require specific Domains (like Warpriest, which requires the War Domain).

The big cleric thing is Favor. Favor is a kind of point currency: your maximum Favor is equal to your level (or cleric level if you multiclass), and you regain them all when you spend a short rest praying to your god. Many talents require you to have at least one Favor left, or spend Favor to activate.

For example, the Healing Domain lets you spend 1 Favor to negate a Wound that an ally suffers (you can't use it after the fact, which means clerics can't spend a half hour full-healing the entire party), while the Fire Domain lets you spend 1 Favor to make a ranged attack that uses both Grace and Religion.

There are also Blessing/Rite talents, which are somewhat to rituals from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. These let you do things like heal your allies, bless their weapons, protect them from fire, or bring them back from the dead. The catch is that they all require some time (usually 10 minutes or more) and a sacrifice of some sort.

Though they're basically useless once combat starts, the Divine Intervention talent lets you use a Blessing/Rite talent whenever you want, but you can't use it again until you pay the required sacrifice (and if you don't pay it off as soon as you can, then you can lose access to all of your cleric abilities until you do).

I should note that we're using all of these mechanics for clerics in FrankenFourth, which we think better evokes the idea/feel of a cleric (as opposed to giving them universal turn undead, and praying for specific spells with specific "slots" x times per day).

Announcements

A Sundered World is out (and also available in dead-tree format)! If you for some reason don't want the entire setting, you can just snag the races and classes.

The Ghost has manifested!

Sunken Treasures has been dredged up from the depths!

Lichfield is available for public consumption. If you want a concise adventure with a Silent Hill feel, be sure to check it out! Primordial Machine is also out, so if you want to catch a glimpse of A Sundered World, now's your chance! Finally, we've updated If These Stones Could Scream.