June 11, 2015

Entropy Domain

Divine Domain
Comments from the Finger: Sometimes it's not enough to conquer the world, or even the universe. You need to destroy it. You need to destroy everything.
     This is really for the Cleric in your life that wants to kill things and maybe even wants to be evil, but doesn't really rock the undead commander thing. Also, it gave me an opportune time to put in some exploding d6 mechanics!

Entropy Domain

Entropy, the end of all things, the return to chaos. Those who follow deities of this domain - such as Tharizdun, Chaos, and The Shadow -  are rarely anything other than evil and want all things to return to the chaos in which all things originated.

Entropy Domain Spells
Cleric Level Spells
1st bane, witch bolt
3rd heat metal, shatter
5th bestow curse, haste
7th blight, dimension door
9th cloudkill, wall of force

Bonus Proficiencies
When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain proficiency in heavy armor and martial weapons.

Entropic Touch 
At 2nd level, your touch can increase entropy and wither the life from living things. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, that creature takes 1d6 force damage. If one of these dice rolls a 6, roll an additional d6, rolling again if this die rolls a 6, and so on, to a maximum of 4d6 damage for the entire attack. This attack's damage increases by 1d6 and its maximum damage increases 2d6 when you reach 5th level (2d6 / 6d6), 11th level (3d6 / 8d6), and 17th level (4d6 / 10d6).

Channel Divinity: Distortion Field
At 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to increase or accelerate or decelerate entropy in a region of space. As an action, choose a 10-foot radius sphere that you can see within 30 feet. For 1d6 rounds, while you concentrate on this effect, when a creature enters the affected area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, the creature takes 2d6 necrotic damage. Alternatively, you can instead heal each creature in this region 2d6 hit points once at the time of casting.

Channel Divinity: Return to Entropy
At 6th level, you learn to use your Channel Divinity to repair or destroy objects. As an action, you can repair or damage one unattended non-magical object which has an area in cubic feet less than five times your Cleric level. Objects heal or take 8d8 force damage from this effect.

Divine Strike
By 8th level, you gain the ability to infuse your strikes with divine energy. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an additional 1d8 force damage. At 14th level this increases to 2d8.

Sphere of Annihilation
By 17th level, you can create a pocket of pure entropy so energetic that it forms a hole in the multiverse, a sphere of annihilation. This sphere is less stable than a normal sphere of annihilation and as such behaves differently. Your sphere is a 2-foot diameter black sphere that appears in your square and vanishes after one minute. Non-magical items that are wholly engulfed by the sphere are obliterated. Anything over than a magic item that touches the sphere but isn't wholly engulfed by it takes 4d10 force damage.
     You can move the sphere 15 feet in any direction as a bonus action. If the sphere enters a space a creature occupies, the creature must make a Dexterity saving throw or be touched by it, taking 4d10 force damage. If a creature is killed by this damage, its body is disintegrated, its soul is consumed, and can only be restored to life with a wish spell. After you create a sphere of annihilation, you cannot create another one until you complete a long rest.

Changelog: 7/7/15: Distortion field reworded and now only applies healing once.
7/13/15: Distortion Field reworded and Bonus Proficencies are given at 1st level.
8/18/16: Bonus Proficencies: Includes heavy armor
9/18/16: Entropy Domain Spells: changed


  1. Would love to try and play this as a good character. Someone who's generally decent and believes good should triumph etc. but that in the end everything needs to be destroyed for the sake of neatness. Probably regarding their religion with complete apathy, seeing it as something that's going to happen so it doesn't really matter whether or not they help it along.

    1. I tried to write this so that with most features one could, if they so desired, play a cleric that wishes to reverse entropy or slow it as much a possible to extend the length of the universe. That's probably not the cleric most people will see here, which is totally fine, but I had a great time writing in some duality.

    2. I did. I played as a cleric of Chronepsis/Io-Chronepsis. I took entropy to be a natural cycle of decay and that is kind of chronepsis

  2. I'm not sure I understand Entropic Touch right.
    First off, there's no limit on the amount of time you can use it per short / long rest ?
    Second, it only does the 1d6 force damage ? Meaning you don't get your weapon damage dice, or your ability modifier ?
    If I read it right, it seems pretty bad, at least until you reach level 5, and later on it becomes really good considering there's no limit on the amount of times you can use it.

    Otherwise, it looks cool overall. My only concern is the level 2 channel divinity that might be a bit strong, 2d6 healing every round for 1d6 rounds, even if it heals enemies and allies alike, is VERY strong. It's the best healing ability in the game until the PCs have access to level 4 or 5 spells. That's (on average) 6d6 healing on up to 4 medium creatures. But since it doesn't scale in any way, while very good early on, it's only mediocre later on.

    1. Entropic Touch: You mean the most OP attack ability I've read about for a 5e class ever?
      Since there is no mention of a limit, one must assume that there is none. And sure, it's merely a d6 touch attack without any sort of modifier add on to damage, but you must remember something: You roll an additional d6 for every time you roll a 6, up to a max of 4d6 at lvl1. So EVEN AT LVL1 you're looking at 1-24 damage per hit! Sure, this requires you to roll only 6es, so it is RNGy as fuck, which is the point of Entropy(chaos!), but that's still an INSANE amount of damage. At level 17 is argueably weaker than on lvl1, since your max damage is only 60 at that point. But you must remember that it is still a completely FREE ability, and honestly speaking, with that attack, you have no reason to carry arms anymore.

      Which is why I've personally added a "can only use once per short rest" clause to the ability before I told my players that they may play an Entropy Domain Cleric in my campaign.

    2. Understand that to roll 24 damage at level 1 with an entropic touch, you need to roll 4 6s in a row on a d6. The chances of that happening are 1/(6^4)=1/1296. The chances of doing this are about three times worse than rolling a critical hit with disadvantage (two 20s at one time.)

      The damage of thus thisability is the same as a cantrip with two important things to note: instead of having a side effect, like taking away the target's opportunity attack or reducing their speed, it has a random chance to deal extra damage, and secondly, it's a touch range ability, which places the player in more danger than they would be with a ranged attack option.

      Finally, I should note that as you get more dice to roll at higher levels, your chances of rolling a 6 increases and getting extra damage increases. Finding the expected damage from this isn't hard, because exploding d6s are well understood. At 17th level, you roll 4d6, each of which have a chance of rolling a 6. Therefore your expected damage is 3.5 (average of 1d6) * 4 + 4/6 * 3.5 (this is the chance a die will roll again and add times the expected contribution of that die, an average d6 roll) + 4/36 * 3.5 + 4/216 * 3.5...
      This sequence continues with increasingly negligible expected damages, as the likelihood of rolling a 6 that many times decreases. The average damage here is expected to be around 17,which places it under a firebolt (rolling d10s) at every level.

      It's a fun exploding d6 cantrip, and it's not broken.

    3. If you thought the math was interesting, I can write up some blog posts looking at some of our experimental mechanics. I'm actually a math minor in real life, and this stuff isn't too crazy.

    4. I see. Well, I already knew the Math of the 24 damage at lvl1 before I posted, but I know better through experience to not trust anything to statistics and math, as dice rolls rarely seem to actually follow those principles. Still, you made your point and it has convinced me to lift the limit on Entropic Touch for now.
      I'll let my players get free reign of the ability and see how it holds up. I'll keep you guys posted about how it works in our group should we ever use the class(we decided to use all the classes in class pack 1 & 2, and so far we've got a circle of concrete druid, a battledancer bard and an oath of inquisition Paladin)

    5. Ohh, and yeah the math was interesting. As I've said I already ran the numbers on the lvl1 ability, but I didn't run them on the higher levels. And your explanation did give me insight in why you think this ability is okay, so I wouldn't mind some blogposts about the more experimental abilities you've had.

      Also, I asked a question about the College of Mask bard, so if you could look over at that page and answer that, it would be much apprieciated.

  3. This would make an interesting Warlock as well... (often lets Warlocks play Cleric domains and vice-versa with minor adjustments.)

  4. I was wondering, if you used Entropic Touch on a plant, would it harm the plant? cus one of my players did that, and I ruled that it killed the plant.

    1. just give the plant health statistics for a weak object

  5. A player interested in this domain just pointed out to me that it is missing a level one ability besides the bonus proficiencies. Is this due to balance issues?

  6. Looks like there's an "and missing in the bonus proficiencies.

    "When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain proficiency in heavy armor martial weapons."

    Unless heavy armor martial weapons are a thing, which sound badass.

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