D&D: Track Your Order Domain
This month’s Unearthed Arcana explores a new domain for clerics, focusing on law, civilization, and whole heck of a lot of party support powers. All I can say after reading this one is, when can I see it released for official use?
Originally developed on Mike Mearl’s Happy Fun Time Hour (which if you’re not watching it you should be), the Order domain is for Clerics who serve justice, who are disciplined, and believe in service to a civilization. It’s a domain that’s narratively centered around holding up civilization, and mechanically centered around holding up the party. Order domain clerics make excellent party leaders/anchors. They can hold their own in a fight, they can step to the front line as well as any Fighter, and make their allies better when they’re all fighting nearby.
It’s very cool to see in action–there are a couple of different features that work in tandem and it’s all real fun to play with. But also, it’s so interesting to see this version of the subclass, especially compared to the original draft, which you’ll find linked below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4hzZSrbzOI
They give it a lot more focus, and even buff it a little bit to be in line with the rest of the Cleric subclasses. But you can watch the video if you want to see what the first draft was like (and also want some insights into the design process). For now, let’s take a look at what the Order domain cleric looks like now.
Call the Authorities
One of the biggest themes of the class is enforcing order. There’s two primary ways that Order clerics go about doing that: buffing their allies and mentally controlling their enemies. A first look at the extra spells reveals a suite perfectly suited to this, with spells like Enhance Ability and Heroism accompanying Dominate and Hold Person. So no matter what, you’ll always have some kind of buff effect available to you.
And why does this matter? Well, starting at 1st level, you get one of the things that makes you shine as a “lead from the front” kind of warrior-priest. There’s an extra rider attached to every buff you cast, gratis. Voice of Authority lets you grant an ally an extra attack as their reaction, so not only can you help them out, you can give them an extra attack as well. It’s a pretty solid ability–and the idea of casting a spell you’d cast anyway giving some extra effect carries through to their 6th level ability, Order’s Dominion, which lets you regain a spell slot of lower level every time you cast an enchantment spell.
So not only do they have a lot of magical might, they can increase their endurance for a day of adventuring, and can help ensure they always have some trick available to them. Couple that with things like Order’s Wrath which lets you share your Divine Strike ability with an ally, and you’ve got a solid class for anchoring a fight.
It’s very exciting to see the Happy Fun Hour classes get this treatment. Hopefully it’s only a matter of time before we see more of the current UA classes make the jump.
In the meantime: Happy Adventuring!
