Hey there folks!

No news this week, just a big thank you for participating. We hope you enjoyed the contest! There will be more coming later (not next month though) so more of you get a chance to leave a mark in the world of Solasta II. 

We will be contacting the winner of Trades and Sails in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more news and contests, and drop by our Discord server to chat with other players!

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

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Hey there you wonderful folks!

Today we’ll be diving into the powerful Cleric class - very likely THE most versatile class when it comes to rounding off a team. Don’t make the assumption that they are just healers; depending on their domain and spell selection, Clerics can become stalwart frontliners, devastating spell slingers, high value supports or all of the above. But before we jump into that… We have some winners to announce!

And a warm welcome to Emji, the newest member of the Tactical Adventures team! May his barks be sonorous and his meals plentiful.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/

It took us quite some time to sort through all your submissions as we did not exactly expect the amount of participants to be this high. To give you an idea, the amount of words we had to read through added up to several novels in length…

But enough stalling, who won? Now as there were a LOT of very good entries (and because it was our first Community Contest), we decided to select a lot more winners than we initially intended to. Here is the list of all 20 winners of the “Of Quills & Ink” Community Contest!

Hope you enjoyed participating in the contest! Don’t forget that there’s another one going on right now, ending next Tuesday.

Children's Tale:

• John Kui'tunn - An Unseen Horror
  
• Augustus Pindrop - The Mess that Grew

Adventurer’s Journal:

• Thea Morningdew - Reverse River
  
• Crikk - Faded Diary

Herbalist’s Journal:

• Belmora Stormhammer - Fragmented Flora Log

Journal recounting events from Solasta I:

• Cyrania de Bergerac - Mage Tower's Library

Love Letter:

• Iela Valienne - Letter of Devotion
  
• Rune Sharstop - Tear-stained Letter
  
• Caedmon Delfias - Letter to a Daughter

Show or Circus Flyer:

• Rias Orde - The Circus is here!

Public Board Flyers:

• Milo Introcaso - Mushrooms Wanted
  
• Pym the Jug - Pogle’s Perfect Wigs
  
• Enialis Siannodel - Exterminators
  
• Valour - Sidekick Needed!
  
• Haris Murin - Looking for Maid
  
• Evan Boorthearth - Public Complaint

Complaint about a product:

• Rex Thunderquill - Delayed Doom
  
• Ragn Twinbeard - A poor ale delivery

Speculations about Shadwyn:

• Kaeroth Orinel - Dusty manuscript

Bogus research on Kobolds:

• Roth the Raucous - Horde Among Hoards

Just to be safe, we’ve elected to use the in-game pen name to announce the victors considering some people may have given us their real name to put in the credits. We’ll be sending the prizes later this week, so if you find your name up there make sure you check your emails! We’ll inform everyone on our Discord server[link.solasta2.com] once they are sent, in case you want to make sure you didn’t miss them

Important: Please note that not all of the above entries may be included in-game from the start of Early Access! Some books / scrolls are likely to be added to areas that will only be available in the 1.0 release.

One of the OG classes of D&D when it was first released in 1974, the Cleric is technically the oldest and arguably the only remaining class of the original game. For those who are curious, the other two were the Fighting Man which later became the Fighter in AD&D 1e, and the Magic-User which became the Mage in AD&D 2e and then the Wizard in D&D 3e. Only our good old Cleric got to keep their name for more than 50 years! Surprisingly, their well-known cousin the Paladin appeared as early as 1975 in a Greyhawk supplement as a subclass of the Fighting Man, later becoming a standard class starting in AD&D 2e.

But enough history lessons you may say! Clerics! What are they good for? Absolutely noth… Scratch that, we meant to say absolutely EVERYTHING. As stated in the intro, playing Cleric is like ticking the “Fill Role” box when queuing for a game. 80% of the time you’re going to end up as a support, but you can still play any other role decently well (and with that we just lost everyone who never played a MOBA). Long story short, a Cleric may not be a better frontliner than a Barbarian, and they may not be as destructive as a Wizard when it comes to causing indiscriminate devastation from afar… but they sure stand a much better fighting chance than both a Wizard in melee range and a Barbarian unable to reach their target. And on top of that, think of all the support they can provide! Heals! Buffs! Resurrection spells! Even if you don’t specialize into it, every Cleric has access to those tools - simply getting access to these options make you an invaluable asset.

Now this is the moment where we would go “and you too could become one for the mere price of 150 gold coins”, but this merchant is no charlatan - simply head to the nearest temple and you too could become a Cleric. For as you may already know, they get their powers from the deity they revere - they are their god’s chosen. No matter how devout, only a handful of followers are given this privilege.

While all clerics have access to the same list of spells, depending on the divine domain they choose their Domain Spells will vary - sometimes even giving them the ability to cast spells from other classes, such as the well known Fireball for the Light Domain, or even Hypnotic Pattern for the Trickery Domain (both official D&D subclasses). It used to be that Domain also heavily influenced whether or not you would be more of a frontline cleric or a caster cleric, as in the original 2014 5e ruleset only some would get Heavy Armor proficiency, and their level 8 subclass feature would either be Divine Strike (encouraging you to swing your weapon) or Potent Spellcasting (encouraging you to use Cantrips instead).

In the 2024 version this is no longer the case as those subclass features got merged into the base Cleric powers instead, allowing each and everyone to choose at level 1 if they would rather be a Protector (with Martial Weapons & Heavy Armor proficiency), or a Thaumaturge (with an extra Cantrip and a bonus to Arcana & Religion checks). Similarly, at level 7 (instead of 8, one level early yay) they get to choose between Divine Strike or Potent Spellcasting - it is no longer imposed by their Divine Domain.

All and all, we believe that’s a good improvement - let players decide themselves what role they want to fill, regardless of the theme of their Divine Domain.

Oh boy, this one is going to be massive. Unlike the other classes which each had 4 archetypes to talk about, the Cleric doubles that amount with 8 Divine Domains in total. But why?! Well, as gods were a fairly central theme for Crown of the Magister with all the focus on the Cataclysm, gods not being native to Solasta and their fight with Sorr-Tarr, we didn’t want each god to only have a single domain to lord over. So… we put some extra effort in creating more Divine Domains - some which worked better than others.

Note: Before we dive further - please keep in mind that we may not be able to make the same exception for Solasta 2. Crown of the Magister released with 6 classes, each with 3 subclasses (except for Cleric with 7), for a total of 22 archetypes in total. If we manage to include all classes with 2 subclasses at the 1.0 release of Solasta 2, that would already be 12 classes each with 2 subclasses, for a total 24 archetypes (on top of implementing 6 extra classes). Now we repeat it often - with a studio of only 35 people, there’s a limit to the amount of content we can include!

Anyway, let’s not bore you with production constraints. To the subclass breakdown we go!

As with most of the SRD subclasses, the Life Domain fulfills the base Cleric fantasy very well. Most people would look at the Cleric in any game and immediately think Healer or at least Support - well, Life Domain is exactly that. Be it Domain Spells or subclass features, everything from the Life Domain is about keeping your allies (and yourself) healthy and ready to party (and by party we mean punching foes in the face, if that wasn’t obvious enough).

Immediately out of the gate, Disciple of Life squeezes more value out of your healing spells by healing more… With its well known 2014 loophole giving Goodberry incredible value on Life Cleric, as instead of 10 berries healing for 1 HP they would heal you for 4 HP each (for a total of 40 HP in exchange for a level 1 spell slot). This interaction has been removed in the 2024 version as the extra-healing only occurs on the turn the Life Cleric casts the spell, so no more bonus if an ally is healed during their turn or over time.

Next comes Preserve Life, one of the least understood Channel Divinity out there - and for a good reason, it is quite convoluted. You can heal a number of HP equal to 5 times your Cleric level, distributed as you wish between multiple allies… but only up to half of their HP. Design-wise, this is likely because Clerics regain their uses of Channel Divinity on a Short Rest, meaning that if you could Preserve Life to heal allies to full health you easily keep your party at max HP without having to spend any Hit Dice or Spell Slots, completely bypassing those systems. Still, not a bad Channel Divinity at all considering you can heal multiple allies from range, which can save the day when things go south and you have multiple friends downed and you don’t have Mass Healing Word at the ready.

The rest of the features are as straightforward as the previous ones. Blessed Healer grants you minor healing when you heal others, reducing the chances of you needing to spend your turn healing yourself because you took too much damage. And finally Supreme Healer simply removes the need to roll your dice when healing, automatically making it as if you rolled the maximum score. Technically speaking this is quite insane as variance is a very big part of D&D - so bypassing it as a passive feature without a limited amount of uses is very, very powerful.

Final Verdict? What’s to say, really? It fulfills the healer fantasy and makes healing others feel good, instead of waiting for them to go down before dropping them a single Healing Word and pushing back into the action. With Life Domain on top of the buffs to healing spells in 2024, proactive healing may actually be pretty good!

Like many of our fans would say, “That’s Battle!”. The Battle Domain is very well liked by Solasta players as it fits the fantasy of the “Cleric fighting on the frontline next to everyone else”. Put them in Half-Plate Armor with a Morningstar in one hand and a Shield in the other, and let them run wild.

While they did not have access to Heavy Armor, they did get Martial Weapons proficiency and the ability to cast Somatic & Material spells even if they had both hands occupied. Now, not every table plays with spell components - in fact, when Solasta 1 Early Access came out many were confused as to why they couldn’t cast some spells (turns out quite a few have somatic components) - so this may not appeal to everyone, but for some the ability to cast spells without having to drop or sheathe your weapon every time was a god-send (haha). Divine Fortitude also granted them a large pool of temporary HP once per day, giving them more staying power when diving into danger.

Now, the rest of the subclass features were a little controversial - not from an external standpoint, as stated above people loved the Battle Cleric - but mostly from a design perspective looking back at our own creation. First came Decisive Strike, their Channel Divinity - which gave them the ability to attempt to stun an enemy on hit… which stepped on the Monk’s foot (Stunning Strike). In the Sourcebook, we would rework that into Incapacitation instead of Stun.

Next came Herald of Battle, at level 6. An aura which gave nearby allies +1 to attack rolls, damage rolls, AC and Saving Throws. Once again… biting into another class’ design, this time the Paladin. Now the difference was that Herald of Battle only worked when next to the Cleric (5’ radius only), but still. On top of that, flat +1 bonuses are usually not very common in 5e design as it both threatens bounded accuracy and creates complexity for tracking - anyone who played 3.5e knows that you would often have to calculate god knows how many +1s and +2s and -2s to add before you rolled your D20. Entangled? -2! Flanking? +2! On higher ground? +1, but only for melee attacks! Sun in your eyes? Believe it or not, that will be a -1 because we’re the DM and we make the rules! 5e generally did away with all of that by simply giving advantage or disadvantage depending on the situation, and with both cancelling each other out no matter how many there are.

And finally, the Extra Attack. Instead of the classic Potent Spellcasting or Divine Strike, the Battle Cleric was the only one getting an Extra Attack just like a Fighter or a Barbarian would (although at level 8 instead of 5). For many, that was the selling point of the Battle Cleric - you get to attack twice! In all situations, an extra attack is better than Divine Strike too - two attacks means less chance of missing and dealing 0 damage, and even a regular non-magical morningstar would still be 1d8 + STR modifier, so you get a little more than the flat 1d8 damage from Divine Strike. This is where the issue lies - while it is great and gives a strong identity to the Battle Domain, this feature is just better than what the other Cleric domains offer. Balance-wise, this isn’t a great thing to do.

It is difficult to know how the Battle Domain would change with the changes to Clerics in the 2024 ruleset - but one thing’s for sure, the Extra Attack feature would probably need to be reworked. Maybe they will still be able to attack twice per turn, but not without a cost!

Final Verdict? A great domain beloved by many, fulfilling the promise of a strong “frontline full caster” fantasy. Inside though, a domain that likely borrowed a little too much from other classes, and which would need a few tweaks going forward!

Woowee this one was a bit of a mess! The Elemental Domain was effectively three very similar Domains: Fire Domain, Ice Domain, Lightning Domain. Half of their features were excellent, and the other half were fairly terrible. Let’s dive into it.

First, the Domain Spells: almost none of them are from the Cleric spell list, granting them a lot of additional options. Area of effect spells such as Lightning Bolt and Thunderwave, mobility spells such as Fly and Misty Step, utility with Fog Cloud and Conjure Elemental… this was a huge boon for those looking to play a more “caster” type cleric.

On top of that, you got Primal Harmony immediately granting you Resistance to either Cold, Fire or Lightning (depending on your domain). This was only possible because Crown of the Magister did not have multiclassing - otherwise the level 1 Elemental Cleric dip would be insane. You also got an extra cantrip, which may not seem like much but those of you who had to spam Sacred Flame during the entirety of Solasta 1 know that it was very welcome.

Now at level 2, if you remember what we wrote about in our Sorcerer article about the Haunted Soul… a similar issue can be seen here. All three Channel Divinity Lightning Blade, Fire Burst and Ice Lance were just bad spells turned into a power instead. Lightning Blade dealt a laughable 1d8 damage, but could potentially stun for 1 round. Fire Burst dealt an okay 3d8 damage… but with no other effect. Ice Lance dealt a meager 2d8 damage and had the potential to… push 10 feet. That’s all it did. And all of those powers were single target on top. That’s pretty bad!

Level 6 gave you a neat power that allowed you to use your reaction to absorb damage from your domain type, healing you instead of harming you. We envisioned the Elemental Cleric stoically standing in a Dragon’s Fire Breath and coming out unscathed. What we got instead were Fire Clerics running into the fray and Fireballing themselves to both destroy enemy packs and healing themselves in the process. Looking back on it, it was pretty obvious that this would happen.

Level 8 also had the mistake of not following the standard 2014 cleric subclass progression, with Herald of the Elements taking the place of Potent Spellcasting… and once again giving very mediocre spell-like powers. Lightning gets a 2d8+WIS mod AoE that can restrain for one turn. Fire gets a 1d8+WIS mod single target spell that can shove 5’. Ice gets a 1d8+WIS mod single target that can restrain for a turn. Yea, Fire got completely shafted there (and Ice too).

As you can see, not our best work! Mostly because it was created at the very beginning when we were still running to get a few subclasses implemented and having very little time to change anything afterwards, but still - the three Elemental Domains were quite a mess. Which led to us reworking them into a single Elemental Domain in the Sourcebook afterwards. No longer would you choose Fire, Ice or Lightning - the Elemental Cleric is blessed to master all elements!

First, as Multiclassing needed to be considered, Primal Harmony and its level 1 Damage Resistance had to go - instead giving the Cleric the ability to change the damage type dealt by their spells to Fire, Cold or Lightning when they so desire. The bonus cantrip also went from being pre-selected to allowing them to choose any cantrip from any class as long as it dealt fire, cold or lightning damage.

The bigger changes came at level 2, with their Channel Divinity now offering them three choices (instead of being locked to one). Call upon Thunder is a teleport that deals AoE damage on arrival with a potential deafen. Call upon Wind deals damage in a line with a potential shove and prone. Call upon Ice deals single target damage with a potential restrain. And all of them deal the standard 2d8 + cleric damage which scales with levels, making this feature much less terrible (on top of giving them versatility since they can use all three).

At level 6 the feature also changed to needing a use of Channel Divinity as it was too strong to have unlimited uses. And instead of healing, using your reaction would grant you immunity to either Cold, Fire or Lightning damage until the start of your next turn, and then grant you Temporary Hit Points equal to the damage that you would have taken plus resistance to that damage type for 1 minute.

Finally, level 8 simply got replaced by Potent Spellcasting. Sometimes, simplicity is the best answer, and the level 2 Wrath of the Elements Channel Divinity already gave enough options to not need another three powers.

Final Verdict? An interesting base that was left a little undercooked - a bit of shame really, as a large part of the archetype already had a lot of good things going for it. Would love to revisit it in the future if we ever have the time to give it due diligence.

If the Elemental Domain was undercooked, the Insight Domain was simply raw. Sometimes you shoot and you miss the target by a little, sometimes the gun just blows up in your hand. And unfortunately, the Insight Cleric was more of the latter. Let’s be honest here, it was just bad. But why? Why, as its creator, are we so harsh on the Insight Cleric?

Well, you have to remember that Solasta 1 was mostly combat-centric. With a small team such as ours, we had to make decisions as to what we would focus on - and for us Tactical Adventures, the choice was a given: Tactical Combat. That doesn’t mean we don’t intend to polish the other aspects of the game (especially now that we learned from Solasta 1), but when we started on our first project we had to make sure we got the core of our game right.

So, going back to the Insight Domain… which as you would imagine from the name, was mostly suited for social exchanges. Dialogues. Investigations. None of which were very developed in Crown of the Magister. To the point that some players started saying that choosing the Insight Domain was like trying to play a Cleric without subclass. Ouch. Fair, but ouch. Let’s take a look.

At level 1, they got Divine Intuition giving them advantage on Arcana, History and Nature checks - none of which are very useful in Solasta 1. They also got Inspired Diplomat to know the odds in dialogue choices, which is somewhat useful but often not required. Those were reworked in the Sourcebook to grant two extra skill proficiency and expertise in Insight, plus the ability to add your Wisdom modifier to any Charisma check when attempting to influence someone after observing them for 1 minute.

At level 2, Foreknowledge makes the first attack directed at you be rolled with disadvantage, lasting 1 minute. Doesn’t sound so bad, but the kicker here is… First, you need to use your action to activate it. Second, it can only trigger once per round. Not per turn, per round. And since it’s not a reaction, you can’t decide on which attack it triggers - so if a tiny goblin attacks you before a Giant tries to punt you to Narnia, you are very much boned. In the Sourcebook, this was changed to make the Cleric actively target a creature, making that creature have disadvantage on all attack rolls against them for 1 minute, or until the Cleric uses a bonus action to switch target.

At level 6, Divine Eye gave advantage on rolls to detect traps, hidden doors and objects. Once again, a nice little bonus but nothing great really - and again, completely useless in combat, which is the largest part of Solasta 1. In the Sourcebook Divine Eye permanently gave the effect of See Invisibility and Detect Magic to the Insight Cleric, on top of doubling their proficiency bonus when making an ability check looking for traps, hidden doors and objects.

Finally at level 8, Divine Lore allowed them to read / speak all languages, with the addition of being able to identify one magical item for free per Long Rest. Again, could be great if the game had more uses of different languages being relevant, but that was not the case. Sourcebook just replaces it with the standard Potent Spellcasting.

Final Verdict? The Insight Domain was just doomed from the very start. It carries an inherently social-heavy theme in a game that’s simply not very developed in the dialogue / investigation themes. We’d like to imagine it would have probably found a better home in a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, or Disco Elysium if it were a D&D game.

Now that the Insight Domain is out of the way, let’s talk Law Domain! This one is little more in the middle of the pack, a decent domain power-wise with a straight-forward theme: Protecting the innocents and pushing the guilty. The Law Cleric has access to quite some powerful tools but there are a few bits that needed a tiny bit more varnish. Let’s get into it!

First came their Domain Spells, with access to two of the most powerful ones in Shield and Counterspell. This alone already pushes the archetype to the top of the pack… if not for two little tiny problems. Remember when I talked about the 2014 cleric subclass design pushing you towards either being a frontliner or a caster? Well, the Law Cleric is more of a frontliner… meaning they are likely close to danger with a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other.

But wait! Isn’t Shield a somatic spell? Uh oh… so basically you either keep one hand free to be able to cast Shield, but lose out on wearing a shield (-2 AC) or having a weapon out (your attack of opportunity deals almost no damage), or you keep both your weapon and shield and can’t cast Shield (losing on a potential +5 AC). Damn it! And what’s the other problem? Well, in Solasta 1 you need to succeed an Arcana Check to recognize the spell being cast by an enemy, meaning you need Intelligence. Not a big problem if you’re a Wizard, but if you’re a Cleric… you’re often going to end up casting Counterspell blindly without knowing if it's worth it or not.

This in no way makes the Law Cleric bad (those spells are still amongst the most powerful ones in D&D), but it makes the experience a little less smooth than we’d have liked. Arguably the Counterspell one is fine (after all you aren’t learnt like the Wizards, so it’s only fair that you might have to do a little bit of guesswork), but the Shield one is painful.

Jumping on the level 1 feature, Commanding Presence grants proficiency and advantage on Intimidation checks, and Unyielding Enforcer gives advantage on rolls made to resist being moved or shoved. In the Sourcebook we changed that to expertise on Intimidation (instead of advantage), kept the advantage against forced movement and also gave proficiency with Martial Weapons since it is a frontline archetype.

Level 2 Holy Retribution is a reaction Channel Divinity, where getting hit with a melee attack allows you to strike back and deal psychic damage. Fun fact, there was a strange bug out there that sometimes caused Holy Retribution to damage the Cleric instead, leading some players to wonder why their Cleric decided to wack themselves. While quite powerful (as it used a reaction and not an action), one thing that felt quite bad was that you could completely whiff and thus “waste” a use of Channel Divinity. This is why in the Sourcebook we buffed it to deal even more damage and potentially frightening the target for one round, but looking at the 2024 rules it probably would have been better to simply add “you only expend a use of Channel Divinity if the attack lands”.

Another use of Channel Divinity at level 2 is Force of Law (for some reason we gave them two choices), which simply makes the target of your spell roll their saving throw with disadvantage. This one was removed in the Sourcebook as it was just Heightened Spell Metamagic disguised under a different name.

Level 6 gave them access to Word of the Law, an action which forced the target to roll a CON saving throw against your spell casting DC or lose their concentration on their spell. The Sourcebook changed it to a bonus action (since anyone can make someone lose concentration with an action, that’s called bashing them in the face), and turning it into an INT saving throw as it was more a battle of will than a punch in the gut. Thinking back about it, would WIS be more suited than INT here?

At level 8 we continue on the non-standard streak with Anathema, a strange power that can be used once per short rest dealing minor damage each turn and restraining a target up to 1 minute. As with the other non-standard features this got changed to Divine Strike in the Sourcebook.

Final Verdict? A strong divine domain with a lot of good tools under their belt, and only some little flaws to polish out. A solid choice!

Onto the Sun domain! Considered by some to be the second strongest Cleric subclass in Solasta after the Battle Domain, it features strong AoE damage and debuff thanks to its Domain Spells, as well as good utility paired with great action economy. If that just sounded like a bunch of buzzwords mixed together, that’s because it kind of was - but long story short, it’s a very solid choice.

Starting with the Domain Spells, Sun Clerics get an early access AoE damage from level 1 with Burning Hands, and Faerie Fire is quite a good tool to have in Solasta against Soraks who always try to remain in the dark. Later on you unlock spells like Scorching Ray (good damage spell with flexibility to target one to three foes), Hypnotic Pattern (one of the best control spells as it doesn’t allow repeated saving throws), Daylight (great against Defilers and Broods) and Wall of Fire (great to control tight spaces like corridors) - quite a good arsenal as you can see!

At level 1 you also get Holy Radiance, which forces your foes to roll their saving throw against your Sacred Flame with disadvantage. While not a very flashy feature, Sacred Flame is often your bread and butter long range filler option as a Cleric in Solasta 1, so you’ll be casting it a lot - having a boost to help it landing adds up quite a bit over time.

At level 2, Herald of the Sun is a Channel Divinity that damages a single target and can blind them for up to 1 minute. We felt that this was a little too weak so in the Sourcebook we gave a lot more flavour. You instead clad yourself in fire for 1 minute, shedding bright light in a 10’ radius around you with a small Spirit Guardians-like effect - foes take half your cleric damage when starting their turn or moving near you, while allies gain that amount in temporary HP.

At level 6, Indomitable Light gave the Sun Clerics another use of Channel Divinity - however considering that it was extremely similar to the spell Daylight we simply removed it in the Sourcebook. The star of the show at level 6 though was Soothing Hands, a bonus action that not only healed an ally for an amount equal to your Cleric level, but also removed either Stunned, Deafened, Blinded or Frightened. As you can imagine, that was too powerful compared to most other cleric subclasses, and also a little bit too similar to the Paladin’s Lay on Hands. So in the Sourcebook it no longer heals, and the conditions removed also got changed to not overlap with Lesser Restoration (blinded, deafened, paralyzed, poisoned) - instead removing Charmed, Frightened and Incapacitated.

Lastly at level 8 we changed Divine Strike to Potent Spellcasting in the Sourcebook. Many players did accurately point out that considering their other features, the Sun Cleric was more a long range spellcaster than a frontliner type, so it made more sense to give them Potent Spellcasting.

Final Verdict? Both very straightforward in theme and execution, one of the better Divine Domains we made for Solasta 1.

The last of the 7 original Divine Domains available at the 1.0 launch, the Oblivion Domain is interesting. Outside being a very solid Cleric subclass, it has one feature that made many claim that they are required for Ironman (no loading allowed, game over = run over) Cataclysm runs, thus catapulting its popularity amongst those seeking the hardest of challenges. What is that feature? Let’s take a look!

At level 1 Oblivion Clerics get Gatekeeper, a passive feature that gives every ally (including yourself) within 30’ advantage on their death saving throw. Not a great proactive power, but it can save a few runs when things go sideways and you’re either out of heals or can’t spare an action to heal a downed ally.

At level 2 comes Herald of Pain, a Channel Divinity that can make all enemies within 30’ get disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks for up to 1 minute. When successful, it increases the survivability of your party by a significant amount as your enemies will be missing a lot more under its effect. But the feature that takes the crown at level 2 for those Ironman runs is Peaceful Rest - a very simple power that lowers the chances of being attacked at night on the world map and makes it impossible to be surprised during those encounters. And if you’ve played a good amount of Solasta 1, you know how deadly random encounters can be.

Fun fact, random encounters were reworked after the 1.0 launch as they were very inconsistent, and their difficulty was raised to make them challenging for freshly rested adventurers. After all, you enter a random encounter with all your HP and resources, and you long rest right after! Now that’s all good buuuut… The D&D 5e 2014 ruleset has an extremely powerful variable for any encounter… and that is getting surprised. In Turn-Based tactical games, there exists the concept of Alpha Strike - killing the enemy in a single round before they have the chance to react - and the 2014 ruleset made it possible to achieve in Solasta 1. Now in the 2024 ruleset surprise no longer makes you potentially lose your first turn, instead simply making you roll initiative with disadvantage which will significantly lower the variance created by surprising someone.

So how does that relate to the Ironman Cataclysm runs? Well, let’s just say that when you get ambushed by a deadly difficulty encounter at random while traveling on the world map, and with most of your party asleep… in the hardest game difficulty without the ability to load or run away, that’s often a death sentence. On top of that, we did go overboard buffing some of these random encounters, which made them very difficult to win even without being surprised. Most infamous at lower levels were the 8 bandits + 2 thugs (action economy hello), and at higher levels the twin Dragons or the Remorhaz trio (2 adults + 1 youngling). The biggest issue with random encounters in Solasta 1 was the variance added on top of the fact that unlike on Tabletop, we never implemented a feature to flee the encounter.

Alright that’s enough for story time, going back to the Oblivion Cleric with Strike of Oblivion, which for some reason was a 1d6 Divine Strike at level 6 instead of 8, and Mark of Fate which was a sort of group hex on a single target (everyone who attacked them who deal extra necrotic damage equal to the Cleric’s WIS modifier). In the Sourcebook those were changed to Mark of Fate being moved to level 6, only triggering once per turn (to avoid having the target blow up when attacked by extra attacks or spells with multiple projectiles) and giving its target a saving throw on their turn to remove the mark (so it’s not 1 min of free pummeling on the poor chap). Level 8 saw Potent Spellcasting replace Strike of Oblivion as once again this domain is more of a spellcaster cleric archetype than a frontliner one.

Final Verdict? Well, the Oblivion Cleric definitely does some things very well. While Gatekeeper isn’t great as it’s only useful when things go south (and even then usually Healing Word is a better solution), both their Herald of Pain and Mark of Fate are extremely potent at debuffing enemies or making sure that one target goes down fast. Peaceful Rest being what it is is less a testament of the Oblivion Cleric being good, and more a makeshift fix to a flaw that Solasta 1 had - namely, encounters being balanced for Normal Difficulty sometimes becoming a wall too tall to scale on Cataclysm, especially when layered with both the variance of surprise and the inability to run away. Not balancing for Cataclysm was intended (we simply don’t have the time for that), but we’ll be exploring options to lessen this feeling of inevitability in Solasta 2 (aka “the game decided that the run was over, without even allowing me a dice roll”).

Ah, the Mischief Domain! Last of the 8, introduced in Lost Valley with the addition of Misaye. It is… serviceable. Great domain spells, but the features don’t necessarily mesh well together. You’re encouraged to go in melee combat, but you don’t get Martial Weapons nor Heavy Armor proficiency. I guess Misaye does not only inflict mischief on others, but also on their own clerics!

Mischief Clerics have a plethora of options to control the battlefield with their Domain Spells - Grease, Slow, Confusion, Mind Twist and the like, on top of getting also great spells to buff themselves like Blur or Greater Invisibility. The higher the difficulty, the more control spells become an invaluable commodity: it doesn’t matter how accurate your enemy is or how hard they hit if they can’t play!

At level 1 Mischief Clerics get proficiency in Stealth and Deception, and get Borrowed Luck which allows them to use their reaction to reroll a failed saving throw that was rolled without disadvantage. Doing so will force disadvantage on their next saving throw, a fun design that pairs well with the name of the feature. In the Sourcebook this changed a little, you still get Deception but you get to choose between Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Performance and Persuasion instead of being forced into Stealth. You also get to learn Vicious Mockery as the little mischief maker that you are. Borrowed Luck also changed to be usable on any D20 rolls without disadvantage, usable without drawback a number of times per long rest. You can decide to use it even after running out of uses, but then your DM gets to inflict you with disadvantage on one D20 roll of their choice for each time you do later down the line…

At level 2 you get Strike of Chaos, a Channel Divinity that inflicts a random condition to the enemy hit for up to 1 minute. As the Mischief Cleric wasn’t a frontliner archetype, in the Sourcebook this changed to Playful Whispers, with a similar effect but AoE around you and the condition only lasting 1 round, and making you go invisible for the same duration.

At level 6 Elusive Target allows you to use your reaction to gain Dodge and Disengage until the end of your next turn after getting hit by a melee attack, making any subsequent attempts to target you less likely to be successful. At level 8 you get Divine Strike, later changed in the Sourcebook into Potent Spellcasting.

Final Verdict? A fun subclass, really. Borrowed Luck is plenty flavorful, the Domain Spells are fantastic and with the Sourcebook changes Playful Whispers just adds even more to the potential for mischief and control on the battlefield. Even before that change, Strike of Chaos itself could be devastating - at best it could paralyze an enemy for a full minute!

Can’t believe we’re finally done. That article took ages to write, we’re nearing 7,000 words there! Now for Solasta II, it is possible that Clerics won’t get a new Divine Domain considering the pantheon doesn’t change. We have a few designs ready in case we decide otherwise, but there are a few reasons as to why we might be reusing the updated version of Solasta 1 Divine Domains.

And with that, we’re done! See you next week for the end of the Trades & Sails Community Contest!

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/

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