The Astral Domain Cleric from The Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One shows that the stars don’t always have to be a source of cosmic horror.
I mean, I get it. You’re in D&D, you start thinking about the stars in the night sky, and the mind just sort of drifts into what sorts of things might be lurking in the plutonian depths that lie between them. The void between the stars is rich and inviting for the imaginative. And the stars themselves? Well, since the 3rd Edition at least, there have always been sort of ill-omened stars.
It got even more explicit in 4th Edition with its 13 Baleful Stars being given names and shapes. Acamar the Hungerer. Zhudun, the corpse star. All of which to say it’s pretty easy to put horrors in the stars and/or to make them feel like a source of dread in your campaigns. But The Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One kind of steps up and says, ‘it doesn’t have to be that way’ with a new Cleric subclass dedicated to exploring the void in a nice way.
Usually, it’s stuff like this that’s out there.
The Astral Domain Cleric – Void Magic And The Flow Of Space
The secret is the new Astral Domain Cleric subclass. These are Clerics who find magic and divine connection with gods of the Astral Plane. Though they may be “as lost to time and space as the realm they reign over” they are still present in a way. Because as The Griffon’s Saddlebag puts it, “the Astral Plane fills the gaps between the planes of existence.”
In a way the Astral Plane is the ultimate destination of all things. The absence of anything is still something, even if it is just “absence.” Or, you know, a void. Which is how you get to the Astral Domain Cleric being all about void magic and cool space stuff without necessarily invoking eldritch horrors. And I really like this exploration of the Astral Plane. Let’s take a look.
It all kicks off with Create Void. This is one of the defining features of the subclass, and as you might imagine, this is your alternate use for Channel Divinity. Every Cleric gets one, and for the Astral Domain, it is all about opening up a planar tear, directly to the Astral Plane. You pick a point within 60 feet to open up a 15-foot radius sphere that deals 1d8 + Cleric level Force damage and pulls creatures up to 15 feet toward the center of the sphere, unless they make a Dex save.
It’s pretty good. You get a little bit of battlefield manipulation, some damage, all wrapped up in a nice little package. I wish it wasn’t limited by Channel Divinity, but it makes sense that it is. As “the space Cleric” you’ll be creating these little magical black holes constantly, though. Hard to think of a fight where it wouldn’t be useful, especially since it’s just a Bonus Action to use.
The other level 3 features aren’t bad either. Planar Reach lets you create a spatial warp through the fabric of reality to transform a Touch spell to have a range of 30 feet instead, but you can only do it up to your Wisdom modifier times per day. Which isn’t bad, especially for the Cleric spell list.
Then there’s the Astral Domain Bonus Spells, which give you a thematic list of bonus spells to always have prepared. It’s actually pretty nice, you get spells like Guiding Bolt and Starry Wisp as well as Invisibility and Blur, Blink and Slow reflect the Astral nature real nice, and then of course, Banishment and Dimension Door and Wall of Force round things out with a nice side of Teleportation Circle.
Higher Level Astral Powers
Now you might be looking at that list of bonus spells and the Astral Domain Cleric’s predilection for messing with spatial reality and be thinking, “wait shouldn’t this subclass have Misty Step?” And you’d be right for thinking that. But you have to wait until level 6 when you get Spatial Exchange. This feature means you always have Misty Step prepared, and you can use Channel Divinity instead of a spell slot to cast it.
You’ll want to because whenever you cast via Channel Divinity you can also pick a willing creature within 30 feet and swap places with them. So you can either get regular Misty Step or pull the ol’ switcheroo. I wish it didn’t take your Channel Divinity, though, because there’s already a lot competing for it with this class.
And finally the capstone for the Astral Domain Cleric comes in at level 17 with Supreme Switching. As the name suggests, this plays off of your Spatial Exchange, upgrading it with three powerful benefits whenever you cast Misty Step:
- When you cast Misty Step you can swap places with a willing creature even if you cast it with a spell slot, which is nice, but it feels a little weird to wait until 17th level for this one
- When you do cast Misty Step with a Channel Dvinity, thoough, you can also potentially swap places with an unwillig creature if it fails a Charisma save
- Whenever you swap places with another creature using your Channel Divinity, willing or unwilling, you can then cast a level 0-5 spell with a range of Touch as part of the same Bonus Action
All in all, it’s not a bad little subclass. If it were up to me, I’d probably sprinkle in some of the higher level features earlier – just because it seems like you’ll have to wait until level 17 to get to most of the fun stuff. But still, if you want to play with “planar magic” this isn’t a bad exploration for the Cleric.
Check out the Astral Domain and 12 other subclasses in The Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One!
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