In a weirdly thematic turn of events, you can blame today’s subclass for why today’s update is a day late! Plagues and diseases are part of the world no matter what we mortals think of the fact – sickness is as divine as anything else found in this existence. And some find beauty in illness, in the efficiency and cold-hearted savagery of disease…

 

Read on for more on the insidious, malignant Pestilence Domain Cleric!

Pestilence Domain Cleric

You can also find the PDF version here.

 

The Plague Cleric is a priest dedicated to illness and disease. Such clerics usually come in two shades – the seeker of divine punishment, and the malicious spreader of woe.

Some use their blighted magic only to enforce the will of the gods, striking down those who ignore that will with horrific disease. Others just want everyone to suffer as they’ve suffered for the past week to use their power to spread the word of their evil deity. In either case, the Plague Cleric is all about illness, and seeing to it that as many foes as possible suffer from it.

 

FEATURES:

• A plague is more than just sickness, you know. Sometimes its an infestation of insects! Ew!
• Better still when the insects (and all your other cantrips) sicken your foes to the pit of their stomachs!
• Rot away your enemies’ abilities! Like their ability to update stuff on time!
• As we all know, illness is contagious… and your powers turn your enemies into walking cauldrons of disease!
• Potent Spellcasting! I know, not very interesting! Kinda annoyed that I keep having to throw that in but it’s the precedent so oh well!
• Finally, when you poison your enemies, your poison hurts!

 

DESIGN NOTES:

• Truly I have never pulled from my real life more when designing a homebrew.
• The Plague Cleric began existence as a weird concept about biblical plagues and divine wrath – it was a Seven Plagues of Egypt kind of thing, not a disease and malady thing.
• Over time, it evolved into what it is now – a spreading contagion subclass, which aims to support the group via weakening enemies with the poisoned condition.
• I tried something new here with Blight Spreader, since it functions off both your Domain spells and your subclass features. I’m not sure how well I did with the wording, but I think the concept works well.
• I’m also not sure how annoying it might get to keep track of which enemies are poisoned and radiating poison and which ones aren’t. It doesn’t seem harder than any other class features, but I haven’t seen any existing class really do anything remotely similar.

 

Thanks for reading! Look forward to more on-time updates next week!

^{As long as I don’t contagion myself again.}