Expected read time: about 6 minutes

We struggled for a while before settling on our first cleric subclass. Most ideas we came up with had already been done, and we wanted to release something unique to us. Being a fan of Magic: The Gathering, particularly the Ravnica setting and the Orzhov Syndicate, I finally had the idea of a cleric domain that encourages healing your allies—for a price!

(Note: That sunburst on the cover of the book in the art above is the symbol of the Orzhov Syndicate. Bonus points if you noticed!)

Book of Grudges

I’m actually not going to start at the beginning for this one, but at 6th level when you gain the “Book of Grudges” feature. See, when it comes to the mechanics this is actually the first one I came up with, inspired by games of Talisman with my wife’s family.

See, in Talisman you can be pretty mean to each other. You and the other players race to reach the Crown of Command at the middle of the board “over the bones of your allies”, as it were. And whenever my father-in-law got screwed over by one of the other players (all in good fun), he’d joke about marking the grievance down in his “book of grudges”, to remember the offense and pay it back later.

I couldn’t not think of these moments when designing the Debt Domain! And so, this feature was born.

The way it works is that you keep track of when creatures wrong you. If they hit you with an attack, for example, or dare to pass a saving throw against one of your precious spells, you can mark down their name in your book and put a strike next to it (to a maximum of three strikes). Then, when you damage that creature, you can erase one of the strikes by its name to deal an extra 1d6 damage to it. Payback!

Alternatively, if a creature has three strikes by its name, you can erase all three at once to give it disadvantage on a saving throw against one of your spells. Sweet revenge!

It gets better though. See, an enemy automatically gets three strikes on its name if it scores a critical hit against you or if it knocks you to 0 hit points. Oh, they better watch out now!

Anyway, the feature is tons of fun. On to some other great features!

Domain Spells

I had a special goal for the Debt Domain spells, which was to have the list almost look like it belongs to a cleric that any party would want to accompany them. With spells like cure wounds, lesser restoration, revivify, and greater restoration available, the party can confidently walk into any dungeon, counting on their friendly cleric to keep their hit points topped off, right?

Well, kind of. Because the cleric is noting down every healing spell that she expends on the party’s behalf—and she’ll be sure to collect on all the debts owed to her!

The other half of the domain spells seem odd for a cleric, but are all about letting her do her job:

Hellish rebuke lets her retaliate against any who dare harm her in combat.
Knock lets her get through doors locked by people trying to hide from her as she collects debts or taxes or whatever else they owe.
Phantom steed provides a way for her to get around quickly, such as when being chased out of town by a mob that’s fed up with paying her.
Fire shield tells any dissatisfied customers to keep their distance.
Leomund’s secret chest makes for a good place to keep her things private—like money!
Hold monster has a variety of uses, such as deterring an attacker or preventing a debtor from fleeing.

The two halves of the domain spells come together to form a kit that makes the cleric desirable to an adventuring party, while also empowering her to do what she needs to do.

Book of Debts

This one went through a bunch of iterations, but I’m happy with where it’s ended up. It involves some literal bookkeeping and some math skills, but as a design team we figured that the player who picks up this subclass is probably the kind who enjoys such minutiae. Still, we worked to make it as simple as possible.

The idea is that whenever you heal a creature by using a spell, you write its name down in your Book of Debts and also jot down a number of “debt points” that the creature accrues. The number of debt points accrued equals the level of the spell slot you expended when you cast the healing spell. As you can imagine, the other player characters in the party accrue quite a number of points next to their names! Then you can cash in those points later on for some nifty benefits. We’ll get into those in a bit!

After some consideration, we decided that you should also be able to claim points by using other types of healing, even if they don’t directly restore hit points. For example, by removing harmful conditions using the lesser restoration spell, or by bringing a character back to life with revivify. It’s only fair, after all!

Okay, so what do you use these points for? Selfish stuff, obviously. These are your options:

Spend 1 point to gain some temporary hit points
Spend 2 points to gain advantage on an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw you make within a short time
Spend 3 points to regain a 1st-level spell slot
Spend 4 points to regain a 2nd-level spell slot

Once you choose one of these effects, the creature whose name you erase points from gets this momentary wave of fatigue over them, giving them disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls until the end of its next turn. So…use it carefully. And cleverly!

One last thing about this feature: you yourself have a limit on how many debt points you can cash in on a given day, which is 2 + your cleric level. You know, so that you can’t get a nigh-infinite number of spell slots returned to you in one day. It’s fair.

Book of the Damned

Okay, we’re skipping over Potent Spellcasting because like half the cleric subclasses get it, it’s nothing new.

Book of the Damned, however, is something new!

Basically if someone dies and their name is still in your Book of Debts (or Book of Grudges), you can call in their specter and force it to serve you for a short while. What you do with it is up to you; talk to it, have it fight for you, some other clever thing you can think of, etc.

It’s not necessarily a strong combat ability, as at this point of gameplay specters aren’t particularly powerful monsters. But being able to call up a spirit and talk to it, ask it questions, demand answers, that could be neat. It can fly and move through walls, so it’s a pretty great scout—so long as it’s not a bright daylight situation!

How Does It Play?

Summer played a Debt Domain cleric in our Curse of Strahd campaign, and she really liked it.It turned out to be one of her most favorite characters she’s ever played, and that’s saying something, because her favorite class is the fighter! She doesn’t usually enjoy playing spellcasters. But her character, Ilya, was a pragmatic servant of Waukeen whose steadfast practicality kept our party alive on more than one every occasion.

The subclass has definitely been through a few iterations of playtesting and feedback, and this is the version we’re most happy with. It’s also one of the more successful subclasses we have on the DMs Guild, which actually caught me by surprise. I guess the whole “payback” theme really does appeal to a portion of the D&D community!

Wrapping it Up

So that’s the Debt Domain!

Thank you, as always, for joining me on this journey of design musings. If there’s anything that caught your attention, please feel free to leave a comment, or reach out to us on social media!

Happy gaming to all, and see you in the Archives!

Options Unraveled: Debt Domain