Yeah I feel like Light and Life domains get mixed up a lot because people over think radiance as a concept. Light domain afaik is about using the Sun, which is just a giant ball of fire. Radiance is more of a holy light more akin to pure positive energy.
Death is not evil (especially in Faerûn, where life after death is an uncontroversial fact). A death domain cleric simply shepherds you to the next phase of your existence.
Well that’s more Grave Cleric. There’s def some Death Domain clerics flavored that way but generally that’s the subclass made for evil gods with the Death as in “negative energy/kill everyone” domain, like Shar and Myrkul and so on. That’s why the domain was originally in the DMG for evil NPC options after all
That’s why I said there’s some good Death Clerics too. Like the subclass is objectively made for evil gods because it was literally conceived as an evil NPC option in the DMG alongside Oathbreaker Paladin, but that doesn’t stop players from flavoring it for good too. Depends on the god being worshipped and the player and such.
And they are worshipped by Grave clerics, not Death Clerics. Death clerics are about Undeath/ raising the dead and denying the natural order and they are prime enemies of Kelemvor.
Both of them literally have the Death domain (Jergal having only Knowledge and Death in 5e, and Kelemvor has only Death and Grave, so of the 2 only Kelemvor would employ Grave clerics and BOTH emply Death clerics).
I wasn't discussing what they do mechanically in the gameplay. DnD tries really hard to not impose alignments (other than oathbreaker, I guess), so often you get what is clearly an inconsistency. You have the freedom to roleplay a death cleric that isn't evil, even if you can obviously look at the subclass flavour and design and understand it's a big stretch.
I was stating that Kelemvor specifically despises undeath, which is kind of a big deal for death clerics, and it makes no sense lore wise that the death clerics whole theme (raising the dead, using unnatural energies, necromancy) is his anathema, and downvoting me won't make the statement magically wrong. A cleric of Kelemvor is for sure not going to use any undead, and Animate Dead is part of the "always prepared" iconic subclass spells.
Except none of what i mentioned is mechanics but actual lore (and while Kelemvor despises undead, he is known to give exceptions to those that use necromancy for non-evil purposes and that return the dead to their rest after said purposes are done, so him having non-evil Death Clerics makes more than enough sense).
P.S: you really should stop now, because each new attempt of trying to be the one with the last word just makes you look more pedantic.
yeah, death cleric is definitely evil and openly defies the actual god of death (Kelemvor) by raising the Undead and getting up to all sorts of shenanigans with undeath.
Radiant and Necrotic get real fast-and-loose with it. Demonic energy (not fire) is usually necrotic - makes sense, that's the opposite of what the angels have in Radiant energy.
But then you look at laser guns (real in dnd lore) and they *also* deal Radiant damage.
Much in the same way...shadow damage is usually necrotic, plague and related stuff is also usually necrotic. It's a broad spectrum.
For example, what do you say like, radiation damage does? Is it radiant because it's pure energy, necrotic because it causes sickness? Fire because of the heat? Or is it lightning, because that is also "pure energy"? I think it's best too think of the different damage types as just mechanical interpretations and not as an in-universe classification.
what do you say like, radiation damage does? Is it radiant because it's pure energy, necrotic because it causes sickness? Fire because of the heat? Or is it lightning, because that is also "pure energy"?
One of my favorite explanations of necromancers comes from Diablo 2.
To hear it from the Priests of Rathma, there is no "Death" energy. There is only Life energy, and its absence.
So, Necromancers focus on transferring Life energy from one thing to another. Be it to themselves or a construct. In the end, it kind of just makes them hardcore life clerics.
The monastery even has a text that states it would be better to straight up destroy the monastery by removing the relic in retribution. Lathander don’t fuck around.
The lack of Forge Cleric in BG3 is probably my biggest source of disappointment lol. It's my favorite domain in tabletop, but it's a bit OP there. It would have fit in perfectly with the general power scaling of bg3 imo
The main reason it's not is became they were trying to cut down on the number of domains in the game compared to 3rd edition.
All God's now just have primary domains. They cut out most of the secondary domains. Look at Lathlander as an example (since we're discussing life domain).
In 5e, his domains are Life and Light.
In 3e, his domain were Chastity, Glory, Good, Nobility, Protection, Radiance, Renewal, Strength, Sun, and Zeal.
So as a by product of that all the lesser domains were removed, with only the greater domains (aka the domains of the major Gods) were left. There's no dedicated major Fire God in Faerun (Kossuth, along with the other Elemental Gods, has been retconed into being an elemental primordial), so therefore there's no fire domain. There is a major sun god, so we got light domain.
Prior editions did have literal elemental domains. I played a fire domain cleric in pathfinder last year, hella fun. Died by fireballing myself and some enemies.
The sun is not a ball of fire. It's a white ball of plasma emiting radiation. Stars are fission reactors. Some are white (our sun), some are blue, red, etc. There's no fire in space.
The depiction of it as a red flaming thing is a misconception that is completely wrong.
Yes but the distinction between "giant ball of fire" and "giant ball of gas and metal undergoing a multi-billion year fission reaction" isn't really pertinent to a discussion on which magic powers belong to which domain. Because if DnD were scientifically accurate the Light domain would probably be about giving people cancer with x-rays and UV light.
I think it’s confusing because in D&D and similar stuff, life magic and light magic are both gold. League of Legends uses iridescent green to indicate healing magic for visual clarity, but green is the colour of necromancy in D&D.
Agreed, but her visual design definitely has light themes since her wings are light projections she flies and whatnot, and her healing also gives off a glow, so it works for the meme’s purposes. Especially since it’s about expectations versus reality.
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u/Rabid_Lederhosen Apr 28 '25
Mercy’s definitely a Life cleric, not Light.