Travel Domain
Murray’s companion stumbled to the ground muttering, “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up, Mur.” The old cleric placed a hand on her shoulder, imbuing her with a wave of divine invigorating energy. As she stood, her shoulders slightly less bowed, he smiled and said, “I think you’ve got a few more miles in you yet, old friend.”
Murray, Cleric of the Travel Domain
Voyages across oceans, over mountain ranges, through steaming jungles, and from one world to the next all have an aspect of the sacred to them. The wisdom, knowledge, and prosperity gained through furthering one’s experience of the world also venerates the gods who made such places and those who watch over such journeys. An agent of one of these deities might be in some demand as a charm to help ensure safe travel, though the wise know that the gods often consider an easy journey to be less beneficial to the traveler’s spirit.
Building a Travel Domain Cleric
Clerics who follow the Domain of Travel are rarely happy staying in one place for too long, and many of their divine abilities make it easier for them and their companions to adhere to a more nomadic lifestyle:
Born to the Road reflects your more worldly upbringing, allowing you to learn two languages, and take proficiency in either Insight, Nature, or Survival, learn two languages, as well as cartographer’s tools
Channel Divinity: Reinvigorate empowers you to remove one level of exhaustion from yourself or someone you touch.
Trailblazer enables you to cut your travel time in half so long as you have a map of the region or personal experience travelling there.
Divine Strike offers some combat utility, empowering your weapons with lightning energy.
World Traveler is your capstone ability, and allows you to ignore difficult terrain, while gaining resistance to cold and fire damage.
With these abilities, Travel Domain clerics make an excellent contribution to any party that finds themselves on the road more often than not, with their abilities largely being focused on exploration over combat. The additional domain spells further complement these abilities, such as longstrider, find steed, haste, and freedom of movement. This also allows these cleric to act as a great stand-in for when the party lacks a ranger, who might otherwise act as the primary travel guide for the party. The ability to cut travel time in half could be invaluable for a campaign with a time-sensitive goal, such as one focused on a doomsday event, where the party is working against time itself. As a note, you may want to consider talking to your GM before taking this domain to get a sense of how much travel they expect to take place in the campaign. A campaign entirely set within the walls of a city may not be the best fit for this class, for example.
As with all classes, any race is suitable for playing a Travel Domain cleric, but there there are a few races whose innate abilities may synergize particularly well. The minotaur trait, Labyrinth Sense, allows you to retrace without error any path you have previously taken. When combined with the natural navigational skills of a Travel Domain cleric, you can ensure your party is almost never lost. Meanwhile, the Alert trait of green halflings grants you advantage on saving throws against being surprised, which could prove invaluable when acting as a forward scout for the party.
Roleplaying Tips
When playing a Travel Domain cleric, consider asking yourself why your character chose to follow this path. What drove them to pursue a life of constant travel? Are they fleeing a troublesome past? Or are they simply suffering from a lifelong case of wanderlust? Whatever the reason is, this can influence your roleplaying decisions. A troubled past might cause your character to always look over their shoulder, always advocating for the party to stay on the move. A more general sense of ennui may mean that your the first party member to leap at a new job or quest, enthusiastically talking about the possibilities on the horizon. Nomad makes a particularly appropriate background, and provides you proficiencies in land vehicles that works quite well with your class features. If you like the idea of running from your past, considering taking the fugitive or darkling background, and work with your gamemaster to establish a threat that might later emerge in the campaign. Each of these backgrounds are available in the Core Content Pack.
How to Access this Content
This subclass was created by our partners at Kobold Press, and it is one of the many available to subscribers, along with others like the Soulspy or the College of Entropy, as well as races such as the Shade or Spindrift Dwarf. Build your own Travel Domain cleric and tell us about it in the comments below or on any of our social channels. Join us on Discord, Reddit or Facebook to meet other members of the community and take your game to the next level, or follow us on Twitter @shardtabletop for regular updates.
