Hello everyone, and welcome to the next installment in a series of articles focusing on the Cleric Domains in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The goal for each of these is to provide you with a quick overview of your domain powers, spells, and introduce you to a god or goddess from real-Earth mythology who could be a deity using this particular domain.
All that said, welcome to this week’s article on the domain of Water.
The Water Domain is described as “You can manipulate water and mist and ice, conjure creatures of water, and resist cold. So you clearly have an affinity with water and moisture in all its forms. Likely someone who lives in a cold area or near open water of some sort.
So, what does a Cleric with this domain get?
First, “Icicle” – Which allows you to send a small icicle spear as a ranged TOUCH attack, that deals 1d6 points of cold damage (+1 per 2 levels). Having it as a ranged touch attack is very handy at lower levels, as any creature you meet that has a high normal AC, is likely to have a low touch AC due to size.
Second, you get cold resistance 10 at level 6, increasing to 20 at 12th, and finally to immunity at 20th level. It is extremely handy as cold damage is the second most common energy type for damage, after fire.
Spells:
The spells you get with the Water domain are as follows:
Obscuring Mist
Obscuring Mist is an overlooked spell for its sheer ability. It provides a 20% miss chance within 5 feet and 50% miss chance to anything further away. It is a huge advantage to have at any level, and the only real competitor for defensive purposes is invisibility. Some spells (and windy conditions) can disperse the mist, but these are all much higher level than Obscuring Mist itself. The downside, of course, is that you cannot target anyone either, when they’re more than 5 feet away, unless you have other senses than sight.
Fog Cloud
Fog Cloud basically works like Obscuring Mist, except that it cannot be dissipated by fire spells.
Water Breathing
This spell does what it says on the tin, but it’s important to note that unlike previous editions, the recipient does NOT lose the ability to breathe air while under the effects of water breathing. It’s also worth noting that you can affect multiple creatures, simply by dividing the duration. It does NOT state how far you can divide the duration, so in principle, by the time you get it, where you have 10 hours to split out, you could give 600 creatures 1 minute of water breathing each, to cross a river or something (as a GM it might be worth putting in a maximum amount of creatures than any caster can touch with a standard action. I suggest putting the limit at 8 Medium sized creatures at a time, as that’s how many can occupy the spaces around a Medium sized caster.
Control Water
Considering how much damage raising or lowering the water line has caused in recent months and years, I suspect that I do not have to go into too much details about this spell and how useful it can be to agriculture, or how damaging (at least in the long term from an RPG point of view) that this spell can be.
Ice Storm
This particular spell is not the greatest damage dealer out there, doing only a total of 5d6 which is very much on the low side for a 4th level spell. So, what makes the spell powerful? That would be the ability to place difficult terrain anywhere you please, and thereby gain a tactical advantage, enabling you to hamper enemy movement. This increases enemy movement cost to 2, halving the amount of distance they can cover. (Reducing a normal, unarmored human to 15 feet). Further, and more importantly, they cannot run nor charge through an area of difficult terrain, so you gain some measure of safety with this spell. Also, it reduces Perception checks of the enemy, though unfortunately, it does not hamper their vision enough to grant concealment of any sort.
Cone of Cold
Cone of cold does not have much of a description, mentioning only damage, after creating an area of extreme cold. As such, given the right circumstances, the spell could be almost undetectable, depending on the weather in the area. It’d be noticeable as a drop in temperature and possibly a faint shimmering in the air.
Elemental Body IV (water)
This allows you to take on the form of a Huge water elemental, making you immune to bleed damage, critical hits, and sneak attacks while in elemental form and giving DR 5/-.
Further, you also gain a +4 size bonus to your Strength, -2 size penalty to your Dexterity, a +8 size bonus to Constitution, and a +6 natural armor bonus. You also gain 120 feet swim speed, along with darkvision 60 feet and the ability to create a whirlwind. Bearing in mind that the Huge water elemental does 2d6+Str points of damage with each of its slams, it should be no surprise that this can be a drastic game changer.
Horrid Wilting
This spell dries up all the moisture in your body, doing large amounts of damage (minimum for 15d6), but the real strength of the spell is the range. 400 ft. + 40 ft./level meaning that at a minimum, it has a range of 1,000 ft. And it can affect as many creatures as you can get within 60 ft. of each other (as no 2 creatures can be further apart that 60 ft.). Because of the range (almost out of the range of most ranged weapons), it makes for an excellent combat opener, and the amount of potential targets should not be underestimated.
Elemental Swarm
This spell allows you to, given time, summon a small swarm of elementals; as in, within 20 minutes you have 2d4 Large water elementals, 1d4 Huge ones, and 1 greater water elemental, all with maximum hit points. Pair that with Augment Summoning and Superior Summoning feats and this becomes rather dangerous as backup.
New Deity
Charybdis and Scylla
The natural disasters, The Great Whirlpools, The Tempest Twins
Alignment CE
Worshipers sailors, traders, travelers, those wishing to avoid catastrophe on the seas
Cleric Alignments NE, CN, CE
Domains: Chaos, Destruction, Evil, Water, Weather
Sub-domains: Catastrophe, Hatred, Oceans, Rivers, Storms
Favored Weapon: a trident with 2 tines
Symbol: two monsters heads roaring at each other
Scylla and Charybdis are twin goddesses, neither of whom is venerated on their own, out of fear of angering one by worshipping the other.
The goddesses are INTENSELY jealous of each other, so when one manifests, the other inevitably follows. They were once beautiful naiads, but their constant bickering angered their father (a now-forgotten god) so intensely that he cursed them both and banished them from the godly realms. Whether he was forgotten, or the twins killed him, is unknown.
The goddesses do not have worshippers, though they do have priests. These priests proselytize and shout from the rooftops (often literally) about the strength and power of the goddesses, and their plans for destroying the world through rain and floods.
The temples are made to look like wrecked ships (preferably from REAL wrecks), showing off the strength of the Tempest Twins, and they’re most often placated in coastal towns, by sailors hoping to stave off the attention of the fickle and capricious goddesses.
Outside of their temples, the priests of Charybdis and Scylla are unrecognizable, wearing the clothes typical of the sailors and fishermen in their area. Inside the temples they wear robes that were once glorious to behold, but which are now broken, ripped and tattered, to remind everyone that disaster can befall even the mightiest.
Priests of Charybdis and Scylla are insane, but able to pull off appearing normal. As such they have no set routine, and the only thing they look to is praising their goddesses, ensuring that the temple (and they) remain rich by reminding everyone of the power of the Tempest Twins. (The priests often go so far as to sink ships by creating false beacons, and then robbing the wrecks and killing any survivors).
Kim Frandsen
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