In the new Villainous Options Unearthed Arcana, the Pestilence Domain Cleric provides players with new ways of poisoning their enemies.
Wizards of the Coast just released a new Unearthed Arcana all about ‘Villainous Options’ – some are actually villainous, others just kind of gross or unsettling. Either way, it’s easy to lean into the darker, edgier side of things with this latest UA. Possibly it’s a hint that the Book of Vile Darkness is coming back as a supplement?
I could see the Season of Champions later this year featuring D&D’s in-game magical books of good and evil – and famously, the Book of Vile Darkness and its good counterpart, the Book of Exalted Deeds, have been splatbooks before. Perhaps they will be again. At any rate, we can’t say for sure right now. But what we do know is that the Pestilence Domain Cleric is all about adding poison and necrotic damage to enemies.
Pestilence Domain Clerics – A Pox Upon All Y’alls Houses
Interestingly enough, the Pestilence Domain brings a third ‘Horseman of the Apocalypse’ into the Cleric umbrella. There are also War Domain Clerics and Death Domain Clerics. All we need is a Famine Domain Cleric and you could have a party that could end the world. Actually, that’s not a bad idea for a campaign – but I digress.
The new domain encompasses plagues and decay and rot and everything that accompanies that. You might be a Cleric of a deity devoted to disease (like a certain Ruinous Power 40K players will know well), or one of poison or decay. Following this Domain will turn you into a debuffing machine as your withering magic ravages your enemies.
The heart of this subclass revolves around a magical pestilence which you get to spread thanks to Plague Blessing, the level 3 that makes up the core of the subclass. This is your special Channel Divinity option, which lets you do a Magic Action (and a use of Channel Divinity) to infect someone with a magical plague that either surrounds you or a willing creatuure that you touch.
Your target gains a pestilence aura that extends outward in a 5-foot emanation. Any creature of your choice that starts its turn in this aura has to make a Constitution save or else gain one level of Exhaustion. There’s a limit to how Exhausted a creature can get from this aura – it caps out at your Wisdom modifier, but Exhaustion is mean in 5.5E, manifesting as a -2 penalty per level to any attack roll, skill check, or saving throw a creature makes. With every level of Exhaustion creatures are likely to take more.
It’s virulent, it hits enemies where it hurts, and because it’s an aura that auto hits whoever is nearby, you can still cast spells, even ones that require Concentration, to debuff your enemies even further. It won’t outright kill enemies, as they have to hit six levels of Exhaustion before they die, but a spell like Sickening Radiance can push them over the top.
The other level 3 features are also quite nice. There’s a list of Pestilence Domain Spells that give you bonus spells all the way through level 9. It has all the things you’d expect: stinking cloud, insect plague, contagion, blight, ray of sickness, ray of enfeeblement, and more. If there’s a disease or disease-adjacent spell, it’s on here.
But the sleeper hit will be the Blight Weaver feature, which gives you resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage and makes you immune to magical disease, but more importantly, lets you ignore a creature’s resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage, and if you want to, you can swap Poison for Necrotic damage and vice versa.
Higher Level Poxes, Plagues, And Pestilences
At higher levels, you get even more ways to spread magical disease. But one thing that I really like about the progression here is that you don’t have to only rely on having one of your limited uses of Channel Divinity free to feel like a Pestilence Cleric. Features like Virulent Burst at 6th level, for instance, give you a whole new vector.
In this case, you gain a new Reaction; any time an Enemy is reduced to 0 hit points within 60 feet of you, you can cause their corpse to burst with plague. This explosion has a 10-foot radius (though if they had a level of Exhaustion it’s 20) that affects each creature of your choice within the area with either the Incapacitated condition (and a speed of 0) or 3d6 damage, unless they make a save.
The capstone for this subclass leans even harder into the swarming pestilence with Vermin Form. As the name suggests, this lets you become a swarm of tiny pests, such as cockroaches, maggots, or rats. Terrifying. While you’re manifesting as a pestilent swarm, you gain immunity to several conditions, resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and clashing damage, and you can enter a creature’s space.
You’ll want to do so because whenever you engulf an enemy creature, they take damage equal to your wisdom modifier. They also take that damage if they get shoved into yur space, etc. All told, I think thi feature probably needs the most work. It’s certainly not worth a level 5 spell slot.
I think the subclass could do with some fine-tuning in other areas, too – but all in all, I love the flavor, I think the mechanics are interesting. And I think it’d be fun to play. But what really matters to WotC is what you think. So keep an eye out for the playtest survey opening next week, and be sure and leave your feedback.
In the meantime, might be worth it to read up on Nurgle and his generous gifts…
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