1. Domain feats and Divinity feats.

Divine characters can take a Domain feat for any Domain their deities are associated with (Destiny, Sun, War, etc.) Domain feats give you a small skill bonus and an edge to one specific at-will power per class. For instance, the Death domain gives its associated powers a damage bonus against bloodied opponents. Love clerics gain the ability to forgo damage on the attack in exchange for granting up to two allies temporary HP.

Divinity feats give you another power for your Channel Divinity slot, also based on their deities’ Domains. The Death one is particularly fitting… it’s a melee touch attack with no hit roll and no damage. If the target of the touch has HPs equal to 5 plus one half your level or fewer, it drops dead. If you misjudged the health and your target sruvives, your Channel Divinity slot remains unused for the encounter. The Luck domain’s power is less dramatic but useful: if you have a “reroll” power that doesn’t pay off for you, you can use your Channel Divinity to save it to use again.

I think that these are deeply cool, for a few reasons.

The first is that it allows you to make your divine character’s identity as a servant of a specific D&D pantheon or world setting deity more distinctive. Before, the only two ways the game mechanics supported this was either by taking their magic holy symbol or through a deity-specific Channel Divinity feat. Now you can tweak your at-wills a little and acquire a portfolio of Channel Divinity powers, if desired.

And some of them have dramatic potential outside of combat. The Death divinity feat, Death Knell, is described above. The Life feat, Pulse of Life, grants someone a saving throw versus death at +10.

Imagine a scene where a Cleric is brought to the side of a man dying in agony and asked to do what they can for him. Imagine the difference between a Death Cleric and a Life Cleric.

The second reason is that it makes it easier for DMs and PCs to create new pantheons. Before, if you dispensed with the generic pantheon, you had a couple of choices: you could throw out the associated Channel Divinity feats, robbing divine characters of an option. You could change the name of each feat and its associated power to fit a new pantheon. You could let divine characters take a single such feat and change the name themselves (or just leave the name out of the game world). Or you could try to come up with new ones for every deity in your homebrew pantheon.

All of those options are still viable, of course, but if you just want to pick up and play a Cleric (or other divine class) devoted to a concept or a personal homebrew deity or whatever, you just name two or three domains and you’ve got access to the feats.

This also means that Clerics who are Clerics of a cause instead of a deity don’t get the shaft in feat selection.

2. Clerics can become healier.

If they want to. The original 4E PHB was very careful in not pigeonholing anybody into a single role, while still making sure each class was distinct. They were very mindful of the goal of making it so that everybody could be useful in the primary task of combat, making enemies dead. While Clerics have their Leader heal power, loads of healing utilities, and attacks that splash around HP and healing surge opportunities, they’re still primarily going to be attacking every turn.

But Divine Power gives Clerics the option to trade in their turn undead Channel Divinity for a new Divnity, that gives every ally in the burst the chance to spend a healing surge, and weakens the Cleric for one turn. And as mentioned above, there are domains feats that let you trade damage for your allies’ health or protection on one of your at-wills. Then there are paragon paths like Compassionate Healer and Miracle Worker that greatly extend the Cleric’s healing abilities, and Messenger of Peace that gives the Cleric defense bonuses for using “attacks” that inflict no damage.

It’s not that they’re trying to “force” the Cleric into the healer niche… there are other paragon paths like Battle Chaplain and Anointed Champion that fit the Warpriest mold. But blessed are the meek, for they can now go on adventures, too.

3. Paladins can become smitier.

First, there’s a new multiclass feat that lets you pick up a Channel Divinity from any other divine class. This is not Paladin specific, but it has a very obvious use: give Paladins back the Turn Undead power they gave up in the move to 4E. Though a Paladin who wants to lay the smitedown on undead might consider looking at Avengers, whose Abjure Undead does more damage to a single target and pulls them in.

Second, Paladins now have the option of swapping their healing ability, Lay On Hands (they tingle when you wake up), for Ardent Vow, which lets them do more damage if they hit the recipient, and also makes them continuously suffer the Paladin’s Divine Sanction on a hit.

Third, there’s the Divine Sanction… as mentioned in the previous post, Paladins can inflict the marking and damage portions of their Divine Challenge on more targets through a variety of attacks.

4. The Races Get… Um… Racier?

One thing I can’t stand is D&D-style fantasy where all the different peoples are clearly just Humans with a quick touch up in Photoshop. I think 4E has done a terrific job of stripping each race back down to its basics and presenting a version of each race that’s both mechanically and culturally distinctive in two pages of text. One way they’ve worked to keep each of the other races distinct from Humans while not making them unbalanced is to allow racial abilities to be developed through feats or paragon paths.

All Dragonborn can use a breath weapon, but some can let out bigger blasts or use it in more flexible ways. All Elves can reroll one attack per encounter, but Elves who choose to be a little bit more exemplary as Elves can take the Elven Precision feat to gain a +2 to the reroll.

(Sidenote: the designers have observed that most players who do Elves take that feat… I can see why. It doesn’t provide an overwhelming advantage to get a +2 to an attack roll once per encounter that can only be used when you’re using a power that’s already doubled your chance of success… but it is frustrating as heck when you use your reroll power and miss anyway. This is the same reason I predict that the Luck Divinity feat will be popular.)

They’ve also had interesting ways of combining races and classes… Eladrin Beastmaster Rangers can take a feat to make their animal companion a fey creature who can teleport along with them, Tieflings can take a feat to have their companions share their infernal taint, etc.

And the racial paragon paths and the handfull of class paragon paths with racial prerequisites allow this to be extended further.

Anyway, in Divine Power, this trend continues with loads of race or race-and-class specific feats. Elven Clerics can take a feat to trigger a healing surge when they hit with Elven Accuracy. Halflings can take the delightfully named Blessed Scoundrel feat to do something similar when they make an opponent miss. Goliaths can impart the strength of the stone when they heal. Dragonborn Clerics can make their breath bestow temporary HP on allies in its blast instead of rolling to hit them. Dragonborn Paladins can make their breath Sanction every enemy it hits. Goliaths can spread around their rocky resilience in various ways, and Devas can do the same with their radiant/necrotic resistance.

Basically, they’ve looked at a bunch of different ways the races’ abilities could interact with divine powers and provided feats to capitalize on them.

Then there are a few paragon paths that are race specific… Elven and Eladrin Clerics who are proficient with bows (note: Elves get bow proficiency for free) can take a paragon path that essentially turns the bow into a holy symbol, a divine archer. Dwarven Clerics can take the Stonekeeper paragon path.

Interesting sidenote: the Stonekeeper paragon path’s utility power is called Scrape the Sky. It increases your move by 1, your reach by 1, and your melee damage by 2d6 for the rest of the encounter. Who wants to take bets on the designers getting a kick out of Durkon in Order of the Stick using “Thor’s Might” to grow huge and smash the crap out of enemies? It doesn’t change the Cleric’s size mechanically, but Dwarves start out shorter than most Medium creatures… I suppose this just puts them on the tall end of Medium.

5. Turn Undead: Not Just For Undead Anymore

Two feats, Demonbane and Devilbane, allow you to extend the use of the ____ Undead powers (or any other powers that specifically target undead) to include enemies with the Elemental and Immortal origins, respectively. Now, those classes encompass more than just demons and devils… an evil Avenger could be abjuring Angels and Devas. With giants firmly connected to the Primordial powers of creation in this edition, you could very easily take Demonbane to make a fearless giantkiller.

They could have very easily made a bunch of different feats for more specific types, and I think some people will complain that they should have, but in doing it this way, they’re embracing the simplicity of their initial design and its benefits. What benefits? The fact that they only need two feats to encompass a whole wealth of possibilities. The fact that your power that you use for slaying demons, or giants, efreets, or true elementals can be turned against any of the others in that list if they get in your way can be seen as a side benefit.

I personally like to use undead because they make for good atmosphere, and because my players tend to know to expect a more nuanced view of “monstrous humanoid” races than “KILL KILL KILL KILL”… having an army of the damned rise up before them simplifies things. But not all campaigns will involve them heavily. These feats’ existence allow divine characters to get more use out of their base Channel Divinity attacks.

6. Paragons Among Paths

It must have been really fun brainstorming Paladin paragon paths for this book.

They have a generic Questing Knight… quest sold separately, see participating DMs for details. They have a Knight of the Chalice, attached to a grail myth involving a god of good slain by Asmodeus (though easily divorced from the D&D cosmology and attached to your local grail equivalent), they have a Demonslayer and a Dragonslayer build. These four aren’t the only ones… they just really jump out as nailing a specific archetype.

Clerics, as mentioned above, are full of choices based on what they want to emphasize, peace or war, love or strength, healing or hurting. The Anointed Champion has a cool mechanic where they can “anoint” one piece of their equipment, changeable after a rest or after certain conditions are met, to give themselves a bonus to AC, other defenses, or variable damage resistance. Battle Chaplain is similar to the Warpriest, but keeping more of the Leadership role.

I haven’t looked as much at Avengers and Invokers, but Avengers get a Relentless Slayer path that appears to my eyes to be much influenced in its notion of “slayage” by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as their level 12 Utility is a stance that lets them throw out extra basic melee attacks at targets other than their primary one… allowing them to dust minions with off-the-cuff blows while fighting the Big Bad. They have a favored enemy mechanic, but all it does rule-wise is let them rope more than one target at a time with their oath of enmity. While the list is clearly alphabetical, the examples of monster types who would make good enemies starts with “demon” and ends with “vampire”. Note that this is not a criticism… the fact that you can turn an Avenger into a Vampire Slayer (or Whatever Slayer) is pretty awesome.

The only problem with the Invoker paths is that glancing at the name tells you little. They’re all Something of Something, or Adjective Noun. When you look at them in detail, they’re kind of cool. Speaker of the Word, Keeper of the Nine… Keepers use apocalyptic imagery in their powers. Vessel of Ichor is using “Ichor” in the classic sense of the blood of the gods… drinking a single drop gives you great powers but can destroy you. (An idea explored in, of all things, The Spirit movie.) Theurge of the Compact is an infernally flavored Invoker, studying dark lore and harnessing the power of the Nine Hells in addition to the power of the gods.

7. Putting The Epic In Destiny

The Epic Destinies in this book amount to Avatar, Chosen, Exalted Angel, and Saint. All of them are pretty much what they sound like.

Saint: you are a Saint. This is one of the few strongly supernaturally flavored Epic Destinies that doesn’t come with a “get out of death free” card… Sainthood is a sweet gig but it has some harsh prerequisites, to steal a joke from Rich Burlew.

Exalted Angel is also exactly what it sounds like: you are elevated to being an angel. This might seem to be stepping on the toes of an Avenger path called Favored Soul, in which a divine spark within the character activates and they gain angel-like powers and wings… actually, maybe I’m just remembering the preview from this book but I think there might be an existing paragon path somewhere that’s also similar. There are definitely divine powers in the various classes that involve taking on/revealing an angelic aspect. In any event, I don’t see it as a contradiction to have lesser manifestation of an angelic nature and then the option at level 21 of going all the way.

Avatar is actually seven separate destinies, each tied to a specific domain, and each of which mean that you are an avatar of a deity of that domain… an aspect of them that’s been walking around in mortal flesh for [twenty experience levels], now awakening to full power. The Avatar of Death one was sneak previewed online… its level 30 feature is that all enemies who begin their turn within one square and with less than 25 HP simply die. Kind of makes the Death Channel Divinity feat (a prerequisite for this destiny) a little superfluous, but I don’t think anyone will complain… if anything, it can be thought of as the power maturing.

Other Avatar paths are Freedom, Hope, Justice, Life, Storm, and War… each one’s quite a bit different from the others. I think the idea was to provide enough Avatar paths to give people the basic idea for brewing up the other domains.

Chosen is similar to Avatar, in that it comes in multiple flavors, but it’s basically a retooled version of the original Demigod Epic Destiny. The idea is that a specific deity had elevated you to the level of a Demigod. All the features are the same, but you get a deity-specific power in place of the Demigod’s regeneration power. I’m sure some will claim that this is Wizards’ acknowledgment that the Demigod is overpowered or that while both destinies exist nobody will ever take Chosen (nobody except anybody who wants to play as the chosen one of their deity, I guess), but extra HP every turn isn’t an automatic victory and it isn’t always going to pay off when you need it to.

8. More robust multiclassing.

The “default” multiclassing in the 4E PHB involves you taking one feat that gives you an approximation of a watered-down version of one of the class’s features, and then having the option of using more feats to buy the ability to trade some of your class powers for the new class’s, and then having the option of using your paragon path to pursue more of the new class’s powers. A lot of what makes the classes distinct, though, is in their features, which you’ll never pick up if they’re not part of the initial multiclass feat.

But one thing the expansion books have included is supplementary multiclass feats that let you let you take on more of the “borrowed” class’s abilities. Divine Power includes feats that can be taken by paragon multiclassers to pick up all the Channel Divinity features of their second class, a heroic tier feat that lets you pick a single Channel Divinity ability of a divine class you’re multiclassing into (taking the feat alone counts as multiclassing into it), and a new heroic tier multiclass feat for each divine class that simply gives you a different feature than the previously existing ones did.

I’ll straight up say that the multiclass system in 4E started out as one of its weaker points, especially compared to the radical (for D&D) modularity of 3E’s version… “taking a level in _______” simply wouldn’t have worked in 4E, with so much of the class’s base abilities in their features and with escalating experience levels conferring such wildly differing benefits in terms of power levels.

But the system outlined in the core player book gave them a framework they’ve been building on, with the extra multiclass feats and with the “multiclass into a specialization” system they explored in Dragon with the article on different forms of professional killers. When these are combined with the Hybrid multiclass system, the possibilities for creating unique and interesting characters really grow.

9. Specific Powers

High level Invokers can get Hall of Thunderous Battle, which conjures a vision of a Valhalla-style celestial brawl. The mechanical effects are a sustainable zone in which your allies’ defenses are bolstered and enemies are continually pushed back round by round, after suffering damage in the initial burst, but it’s a cool description. They can also get Apocalypse Form The Sky, in which a giant celestial fist comes down and slams the ground. Those who take the “miss” damage are thrown clear of the area and fall prone. Those who are hit end up falling ten feet into the giant crater the fist smashes out… not a zone, not a temporary effect, Not A Clone, Not A Dream, Not An Imaginary Story™. Bigby’s Fist, meet The Hand of God.

Avengers can get the Cataclysmic Duel power, which is a basic fuckload-of-melee-damage power that has the after-effect of making it so that each blow exchanged between the target and the Avenger sends out shockwaves that knock people around. This can work against your allies, but its purpose is to isolate the Avenger and the target. On the opposite end of the spectrum is March of Doom, which lets you move the target 5 squares from where it starts, teleport to it, teleport all your allies within 5 squares to adjacent positions, then make an attack that does five times weapon damage and knocks the victim prone. Let the beating commence.

At a lower level, Avengers can get Dervish Strike, an encounter power that on top of damage lets you slide the target 5 squares… each of its allies you can slide it into has to resist your attack with Fortitude or be knocked prone. Bowling time!

Level 29 Clerics can get Breath of the Stars, a blast that does damage, pushes 5 squares, and dazes (save ends). Allies caught in the blast regain their surge value, unless they’re dying, in which case they heal back up to bloodied. If ever there was a power designed to turn the course of battle around, this is it. Enforced Surrender dominates the target, and when it manages to save, it ends in a state of prostration that grants all allies +5 to hit and damage against the target until its next turn.

On a boring but practical level, Clerics’ level 22 Utility choices include Heal, which simply restores all HP to one target, Mass Cure Serious Wounds, which gives all allies in a burst five twice their surge value, and Revive, which targets anyone who’s below bloodied, up to and including someone who died within the space of an encounter. It restores them back up to their bloodied value without penalty.

Paladins’ last utility choices include Return to the Living, which despite its name can only be triggered if you drop to 0 HP or below but don’t immediately die. It restores you to 1 HP and lets you spend up to four healing surges… four healing surges being 100% HP. Failure Is No Option teleports each ally in a burst to an enemy and restores 15 + Charisma modifier HP to them.

For attack powers, Discipline The Unruly is a three times weapon damage attack that has the automatic effect (i.e., you don’t have to hit) of making it so that any enemy within 5 squares that attacks an ally takes 4d6 radiant damage and is blinded for one turn. This effect can be sustained! Spurn The Unworthy lets you “slap down” a foe, doing similar damage, switching places with them, and knocking the target prone. It also has the effect of adding another die to you basic melee attack damage for the rest of the encounter. Used in conjunction with a Leader who can grant free basic attacks on a regular basis…

Paladin’s big powers include Devastating Surge, which lets you spend a healing surge to heal an ally and strike one creature to do damage equal to your surge value plus your Strength modifier… likely doing 50 damage in a stroke. Name of Awe is a close blast 5 that does 5d8 + Charisma modifier damage, immobilizes and weakens the targets until they save. It sanctions every enemy in the blast.

These are just a sampling.

10. World Mythology

One of the things I expected to care the least about. I’m not into the D&D default setting… I’ve ended up using their deities by default so that players would know their options… but woven throughout the books, starting with tiny threads in the original core books and picking up a bit in the PHB2, there’s a coherent world myth that is very appealing. The story really takes off in the sidebars of Divine Power and the fluff text of some of the paths, with promises that it will be continued in Primal Power. I won’t spoiler anything. I’ll just say that their mythos is suitably mythic.