Nature Domain Cleric 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

So there is this class in D&D that’s pretty old. It's all about the environment, pulling magic from nature, and embracing the flourishing life around you. It’s called Druid. Nature Domain is weird in that it overlaps the most with this other archetype while providing nothing new, interesting, or meaningful to the concept. It sucks thematically and mechanically, adding nothing particularly meaningful to the game for its existence.

When reading through this, you can basically add “If you like this idea, you can just get it or something close enough to it by playing a druid” to the end of each section, because it’ll always be true outside of heavy armor proficiency and Dampen Elements.

1st Level: Domain Spells, Acolyte of Nature, Bonus Proficiency

Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals, I will say, I love as domain spells. Both are fairly niche, but you’ll find many moments to get a squirrel to tell you all about the bandit ambush that happened earlier, then become friends with said squirrel and follow it to where it saw them go.
Bonus Proficiency adds heavy armor proficiency for some reason. I truly do not understand this idea beyond giving the option some difference from druid. Sure, it's a boon, but doesn’t mix thematically with the whole “nature” thing.
Acolyte of Nature is a druid cantrip, that you know, you could get by playing a druid, and Animal Handling, Nature, or Survival proficiency, which again, are classic druid skills. And that’s it, that’s all there is at 1st level. I like Shillelagh and Thorn Whip a good bit, but they tend to shine brightly in the druid class.

2nd: Charm Animals and Plants

Charm Animals and Plants offers you a mass Animal Friendship that also works on plants! You still can’t speak to these plants, mind you, and can only communicate with the beasts by casting Speak with Animals. On top of that, the effect lasts one minute. This is closer to Turn Undead, but a bit more applicable at levels one to three when bears and wolves are a more pressing threat, and WAY worse past that point when beasts stop regularly showing up adventure to adventure in favor of more exotic, magical forces.

3rd Level: 2nd Level Domain Spells

Barkskin and Spike Growth are two more druid spells offered to clerics here.

Barkskin puzzles me. Nature Domain comes with heavy armor. You’re already built to have an AC higher than 16. This puts it as a spell you’d want to cast on a different ally with a lower than 16 AC, which begs the question: who is that, and is that worth concentrating on? If you’re the one in the thick of it taking the most hits, that AC bonus attached to your concentration isn’t going to stick around long, and it literally can’t improve your AC. It is wild to me that it’s included here over something like Conjure Animals.
Spike Growth at least can pair nicely with your druid cantrip if you picked Thorn Whip to do what druid does, but worse!

5th Level: 3rd Level Domain Spells

Plant Growth covers an area in super-difficult terrain, which will have big moments to shine. It's a classic druid spell. You can get it here should you want to do what druids do, but worse.
Wind Wall likely is too niche to find frequent use but does have some applications against massive groups of ranged assailants.

6th Level: Dampen Elements

Dampen Elements provides you a new at-will reaction to provide resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage, and finally is a reason to consider this option. It took 6 levels to get here, and this feature isn’t going to be amazing in every encounter, but a lot will benefit from a constant reduction in massive elemental damage.
If there were more around this feature, I’d be all about it. Setting Nature domain clerics as protectors from the elements, or conduits for all the elements, could be a way to set them apart from druids innate connection with animals. Unfortunately, this is the only feature that works in those concepts.

7th Level: 4th Level Domain Spells

Dominate Beast and Grasping Vine both are awkward.

Dominate Beast is entering into the game just as your final encounters against larger beasts is fading out, giving it next to no room to shine brightly at typical adventuring tables with a wide variety of threats.
Grasping Vine, while interesting at least, has major problems in being useful. The fixed point pull has potential to build towards it in a group with other damaging area effects, but concentration and the bonus action cost on a class that definitely wants to be using Spiritual Weapon makes it clunky even in the best circumstances.

8th Level: Divine Strike

Divine Strike kind of lets you feel fine about making weapon attacks at 8th level, but you’re regularly going to find less and less opportunity to make weapon attacks instead of just casting splashier 1st level or higher spells. That’s what full casters are best at.

9th Level: 5th Level Domain Spells

Insect Plague and Tree Stride finish the trend of taking mediocre druid spells and pasting them into cleric with next to no meaningfully different context. Insect Plague is fine damage in a decent area, and Tree Stride can be a blast to play with in wooded environments. Neither is particularly exciting to me, though.

17th Level: Master of Nature

Master of Nature exists to let you know there was some cool “beast master” inspired ideas here, but you don’t get to play with any of them. Charming a group of beasts at this tier will require set up. If you want to weaponize a huge group of animals, may I recommend Animal Shapes, a big splashy 8th-level druid spell?

All Together

Light Domain is similar to Evoker wizard in that it takes a bunch of explosive, common spells of that character archetype, but adds in meaningful supportive features wizards and sorcerers tend to lack, namely Warding Flare. That makes the subclass unique and interesting as its an entirely different feel and presentation from other similar builds. There are reasons to play a Light Domain cleric when you want to play a character with Fireball over its competitors.

In the case of Nature domain, there aren’t any compelling reasons outside of Dampen Elements to consider it, and Dampen Elements doesn’t happen until 6th level. Master of Nature is cool and all, but nearly worthless unless you can stage some kind of mass animal abduction. Druids and clerics both fit a semi-healing, supportive role. The most powerful stuff this option can do is doable on literally every cleric beyond Dampen Elements. If you really want to play with Dampen Elements, there is a package of stuff here that will make you feel like you’re getting through a weird multi-class druid route that doesn’t give the good stuff you’d multiclass druid for.

Thank you for visiting!

If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.

The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.