Cleric Updates

The cleric received a number of tweaks in the latest playtest iteration. Overall, I'm still satisfied with this class and it's running a close second to the fighter, which became my favorite D&D Next class (the uber-awesome sorcerer and the warlock have not received updates yet) after the introduction of Expertise Dice in the previous release. Here are some salient points about the updated cleric:

• Clerics are customized by the player's selection of a deity archetype rather than a specific, named god. As a DM, I rarely use the published D&D settings, so I like this new method a lot better than having to choose a god from the standard D&D pantheon (Moradin, Pelor, etc.). This way, players in the Druid Cycle campaign world can select the template that best matches their god, such as the "lightbringer" template for Mithras.
• All clerics now have access to all forms of armor. This is consistent with pre-4e versions of the game, but I kind of liked how previous D&D Next versions tied the armor proficiencies to the domains/deities.
• Turn Undead had a brief career as a spell, but now it has returned to being a class feature. I'm pleased with this change, but I'd prefer a 4e-style Channel Divinity feature that would allow clerics to substitute a different power if desired. I should add that the new Turn Undead feature is complicated and kludgy, so I hope it gets streamlined a bit before the final release.
• Some cleric spells (of the healing and buffing varieties) are now identified by the term "Word of Power," which means that the spell can be cast in addition to taking another action, such as attacking. This is an important change because it eliminates the place of the weak Healing Word spell from earlier iterations, and it brings the cleric's healing mechanism closer to the 4e model, in which healing was a minor action (minor actions, of course, no longer exist in D&D Next).
• My beloved Spiritual Weapon remains a great spell, but it's been bumped up to a second-level spell. If I remember correctly, it was a second-level spell in pre-4e editions, so I'm not disappointed by this change.

In our next installment, we'll consider changes to the wizard.