# Is this “Fortune Domain” Cleric subclass balanced?

This subclass was initially conceived of as a complement to the Order domain. It evolved from being focused around chaos and disorder to emphasizing luck and randomness, instead. The end result is a subclass with several features revolving around advantage and disadvantage, meant to be a reflection of modifying the odds of a particular outcome.

Most of the features were created as modified versions of other cleric domain features. However, I'm not very experienced in creating homebrew content, and would like to know if the overall subclass is balanced.

# Fortune Domain

## Fortune domain spells

$$\begin{array}{cl} \textbf{Cleric level} & \textbf{Spells}\\ \hline 1 & \text{Chaos Bolt, Ray of Sickness}\\ 3 & \text{Enhance Ability, Mirror Image}\\ 5 & \text{Bestow Curse, Blink}\\ 7 & \text{Confusion, Freedom of Movement}\\ 9 & \text{Contagion, Skill Empowerment} \end{array}$$

Most spells were taken for flavor reasons, involving rolling extra dice or improving ability rolls. Ray of Sickness, Bestow Curse, and Contagion were selected as sources of disadvantage, which are important for other class features.

## Unfortunate Itch

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you learn the Infestation cantrip. For you, it counts as a cleric cantrip, and doesn't count against the number of cleric cantrips you know. Also, when you cast Infestation, the movement caused can provoke opportunity attacks.

I added a bonus cantrip in order to match with the Light and Grave domains. Infestation deals less damage than Toll the Dead on average, although on a separate save ability. The ability to trigger opportunity attacks should not happen very often.

## Luck In

At 1st level, you gain the ability to bend the odds in a favorable way. You can spend a bonus action to give a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see advantage on their next attack roll before the start of your next turn.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

This feature was created as a heavily modified version of Warding Flare, from the Light domain. I figured that giving advantage on one attack is slightly better than giving disadvantage on one attack, but the cost being a bonus action instead of an action is slightly higher.

## Channel Divinity: Fortune's Favor

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to change ill fortune into good.

When you roll damage for a spell, you can use your Channel Divinity to roll an extra damage die for each damage die that shows a 1 or a 2. For each extra damage die that rolls a 1 or a 2, roll another extra damage die. You can use this ability after the damage is already rolled, but only once per damage roll.

This feature was intended to act similarly to Destructive Wrath, from the Tempest domain. Fortune's Favor is less situational, applying to any damage roll, but does not increase the damage as much on average. The specification for spell damage is to avoid any strange interactions with Great Weapon Fighting.

## Luck Out

Starting at 6th level, you gain the ability protect yourself and others by altering the odds. When a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see has disadvantage on an attack roll, you can spend your reaction to use your Luck In feature and cause that attack to miss.

This is again based off of the Light domain feature of similar level. Luck Out is meant to be a more situational version of Improved Warding Flare that is slightly more powerful.

## Potent Spellcasting

Starting at 8th level, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any Cleric cantrip.

All cleric subclasses that I have seen have either potent spellcasting or divine strike as their 8th level feature. As I expect this subclass to rely more upon cantrips than melee, I selected potent spellcasting.

## Fortune's Fury

Starting at 17th level, you can use your action to activate an aura of misfortune that lasts for 1 minute or until you dismiss it using another action. The aura extends 30 feet out from you, and your enemies within this aura have disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

This is yet again based on the Light domain feature of similar level. The ability is significantly more powerful, but is only usable once per long rest.

There are several features that I am concerned about the balance of in this subclass. Luck Out and Fortune's Favor trade what I believe are approximately equivalent values between situationality and power, but I am unsure of my evaluation. Luck In and Fortune's Fury are very different from the original features they were based upon, which makes evaluating them difficult for me. Beyond that, I don't know how well these features interact with each other, or with other class features.

Is this subclass balanced, compared to other cleric subclasses?

• Welcome to RPG.SE! Great first question. Doesn't look like I have a lot more to say than Good Luck and Happy Gaming! – Someone_Evil Apr 18 '20 at 11:04

# Probably fine as is

Let's go through this feature by feature:

### Unfortunate Itch

Adding an additional cantrip isn't gonna make or break the game, so this is balanced, but it's really poor flavor. Calling an itch unfortunate is a huge stretch to add the infestation cantrip. If you desperately want to add a cantrip Guidance is probably better flavour wise even though it's even less useful, but honestly you could scrap this feature entirely and it wouldn't hurt the class that much. Keep in mind Clerics get choose cantrips anyway, and unless they have an RP reason to do otherwise they'll very likely pick a damaging cantrip that is better than Infestation anyway so for most players this isn't going to add much.

### Luck In

This is pretty good, but I wouldn't say broken. It's extremely similar to the Mastermind's Master of Tactics feature, which they get a bit later but not that much, and they have no limit on their use. I think this is fine as is, especially since Clerics often have useful things to do with their Bonus Action anyway (like Healing Word or Spirital Weapon). Overall I think good flavour, probably fine to leave as is.

### Channel Divinity: Fortune's Favor

I find the description a bit unclear, but the way I read it you just keep rerolling 1-2 and adding their values ad until there are none left? I don't think this is broken as such (it could theoretically go out of control but Channel Divinity isn't spammable and it's not very likely to add a ton of damage to any attack), but just to make accounting easier I'd recommend changing it to something like "You may treat any 1s on your damage dice as the maximum possible result for that die instead". Involves rolling less dice, should still give the intended effect of making a low roll suddenly pretty good. You can also keep it as is if you or your players really like rolling lots of dice and adding up numbers. Keep in mind that with the original wording this has the weird effect of being really powerful with spells that have a lot of d4 rolls, as this gives you a 50% chance to double each die - and then each doubled dice has another 50% to get doubled etc, which on average will give you double the dice normally intended for the spell, whereas this is fairly low impact on spells that deal d12's (as 1s and 2s are of course much more rare).

### Luck Out

This is really powerful. There are plenty of ways to give a creature temporarily disadvantage on something. That being said, trading a reaction for a single missed attack is probably fair by level 6 considering at that point most of the more dangerous foes you face have multiple weapon attacks anyway. I'd consider changing it so you have to use the feature before knowing whether or not the attack would hit or miss, but since this is sharing a pool with a less situational prior feature this is probably fine; My main concern is that with two features that normally won't get more than 5 uses total your Cleric will feel a bit starved for resources, depending on their situation it's quite possible they'll either ignore the 1st or 6th level feature in favour of the other entirely at this point depending on what kind of party they have (i.e. how often they can inflict disadvantage).

### Potent Spellcasting

Nothing to say on this, this is fine.

### Fortune's Fury

Really, really, powerful but that's kind of what you'd expect from a one-use-per-day capstone. If you're OK with this basically reading "once per day, automatically win an encounter if the combatants aren't very spread out" then this is fine I guess. Notably this better than pretty much any other Cleric capstone I can think of, but most other capstones also are always on abilities rather than one-offs.

## Overall a little overpowered in my opinion

I'll go through it bit by bit.

Spells: You have followed the convention pretty much perfectly. I'd say that's balanced.

Unfortunate itch: A cantrip is balanced but allowing it to provoke opportunity attacks might not be. If there are 2 front-line combatants within attacking range that's 2 extra attacks per failed save. That can add up quickly. Remember that in general forced movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks for exactly this reason. Potentially quite overpowered.

Luck in: This is significantly more powerful than warding flame. Warding flame only protects you, if this only gave you advantage it might be on a similar level but being able to pick which party member gets advantage, at a range of 30 feet, makes it hugely more powerful. A tweak I would recommend here is to make it touch but this would still be more powerful than the other domains. Not all domains have 2 level 1 features and those that do have one utility spell or proficiency related feature and one functional feature. Overpowered.

Channel divinity Fortune's Favor: I can see this being under-powered due to the limitation of needing to roll 1s and 2s. Remember that Channel Divinity can only be used once per rest up to level 6 then twice up to level 18 and then three times. The tempest domain could max the damage of any effect dealing thunder or lightning damage, potentially a max damage thunder-wave at first level or a max damage lightning bolt with a magic item or multi-classing. Under-powered.

Luck out: Causing an automatic miss is pretty powerful, even when they have disadvantage. I would say this is more powerful than giving disadvantage making it like warding flare and improved flare all in one. I recommend you just make it a reskin of warding flame maybe even improved flare. Overpowered.

Potent spellcasting: Yes, perfectly balanced.

Fortune's Fury: I like this feature, I think it has the potential to be very powerful but also to be underutilized which says to me that it's reasonably balanced.

Overall I like the idea, with a few tweaks it would be balanced and I can see it being a lot of fun to play.