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Hunter Domain
🕑 Added 2024-06-04 14:00:05 +0000 UTCGods of the hunt are found in a wide variety of pantheons. They represent a variety of approaches to the hunt, from the brave provider who ventures into the wild to feed her people to the cruel slayer who revels in casting fear in his quarry.
Alignment
Consider your alignment and how it affects your view of the hunt. Below are some ideas on how your philosophy shapes your attitudes and religious practices.
Chaotic
The hunt represents freedom from dependency on others. A hunter lives and dies by their skill and wits. To venture into the wild in search of prey is the ultimate expression of autonomy and skill.
Lawful
The wild must be tamed, and the hunter is the tip of civilization’s spear. The hunter enters the wild at the edge of civilization to bring back sustenance for the community. As the hunter weakens the wild, they strengthen civilization’s march to dominance.
Neutral
The hunter brings balance to world. Predators and prey exist in a careful balance, ensuring that each segment of nature can sustain itself. The hunter exists to cull only the prey they need to sustain themselves and those that depend on them. By doing so, they allow nature to thrive.
Evil
The joy in the hunt comes from the feeling of power it grants the hunter. To track down and slay a creature is more than a simple act of killing. It is an expression of dominance, a drawn out execution that forces the prey to confront its weakness as the hunter slowly but inevitably closes in for the kill. At that moment, the hunter revels in their power.
Good
The act of the hunt is an act of mercy. The hunter takes care to select only prey that slows down the herd. A weak, sickly, or injured creature can provide sustenance for others as its last act in life. To the hunter, this sacrifice must be respected and honored by striking without pain and keeping mercy in their heart.
What Drives the Hunter?
As a cleric of the Hunter, what do you consider your greatest quarry? Are their rituals or other aspects of the hunt that stand out as unique practices for you? Use the table below for inspiration.
D6 Roll or Choose: Quarry
1: You seek a mythic creature that plagues your dreams, taunting you with your inability to find it. The traditions of your faith hold that if you can catch this creature, it will bestow upon you a great favor. If you fail to catch it, a great calamity will befall the land.
2: Today you are the hunter, but one day you will be the hunted. A great enemy of your faith has sworn to slay you. You hunt to ensure that you remain one step of it. One day this enemy will track you down and attempt to slay you. As you hunt, you study your quarry so that you may learn how to escape this doom.
3: When you track your quarry, you sometimes find signs of a strange creature. Over the years, those signs have grown more frequent and fresher. You have consulted oracles and sages about these signs, but their omens are at best vague.
4: You are charged with memorializing every creature you have slain. You honor its sacrifice or castigate its weakness depending on your personal ethos. You etch ritual scars or tattoos on yourself to mark the quarry that you have claimed.
5: You refuse to eat any food that you have not hunted or gathered yourself. To accept food from another is to dishonor your craft and the mission charged to you by the gods.
6: You are the only cleric of your order. There can be only one hunter. The rest are prey. When you die, your station passes to the creature that slays you. Or so you thought. The omens point to the rise of another hunter, an unprecedented event in your faith’s history.
Domain Features
The Hunter domain grants the following features.
Hunter Domain Spells
Cleric Level Spells
1st goodberry, hunter’s mark
3rd locate animals or plants, pass without trace
5th conjure animals, slow
7th dimension door, faithful hound
9th commune with nature, hold monster
Able Archer
Starting at 1st level, you gain a bonus to damage rolls with ranged attacks equal to your proficiency bonus.
Bonus Proficiencies
At 1st level, you gain proficiency with all ranged martial weapons and two skills of your choice from among the following: Animal Handling, Nature, Perception, Stealth, Survival.
Channel Divinity: Swift Arrow
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to launch a ranged attack with divine speed and grace. As a bonus action, you can use your Channel Divinity to make a ranged weapon attack with a bonus to your attack and damage rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum +1).
Hunter’s Steps
Starting at 6th level, you can Dash as a bonus action.
Divine Wrath
Starting at 8th level, once per turn when you damage a creature with a weapon attack or cantrip, you can deal an extra 1d8 force damage. At 14th level, that extra damage increases to 2d8 force damage.
Swift Hunter
Starting at 17th level, when you use your Swift Arrow feature you make three ranged weapon attacks rather than one.
Comments
Lojaan
I agree with Swiss. I'm feeling the disconnect here. It doesn't fit cleric at all. No wild or primal domains really do. In D&D it feels like cleric is civilization and druid is wild/primal. Also if you are a cleric of the god of the hunt, it doesn't mean you are a hunter at all. Your job is interceding with the gods on the behalf of your people. If this subclass is about *embodying* the gods of the hunt then it should be a paladin or ranger subclass
Swiss Calavera
This is a weird clash of theme for me. I think cause of old D&D stuff, where Rangers worshipped a nature god, and that would be the fit for this. With that said I think there is a different place for an actual god of the hunt from like you mentioned, "The Civilization" side of things. I am picturing like a Spanish inquisition, or an English fox hunt. Those have a leader usually and I think that leader is a perfect fit for archetype of Cleric of the Hunter. So I think it actually makes sense to have abilities that allow your team mates to do more damage, instead of or in addition to you being able to do extra damage. Divine Wrath could cost a reaction to give damage buff to a team mate. Hunters step could allow you to use your bonus action to let another team mate move their speed on your turn. Channel Divinity could could be used to grant disengage (free or bonus action depending on balance) for a team mate, or the whole team for a minute or something.
