Excerpts: Divine Power Destruction Domain

In today's Divine Power preview, we present a new domain for followers of Gruumsh and Tharizdun: the destruction domain!

Domains Each deity holds sway over certain aspects of existence. For example, Erathis is the god of cities and nations. She often represents law, order, authority, and invention. Aspects of existence such as these are summed up in domains, spheres of divine influence. Each deity is associated with two or three divine domains. More than thirty divine domains are presented in this chapter, and the domains of the deities from the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide are noted. Erathis, for example, is associated with the civilization, creation, and justice domains.

Using Domains

Your divine character gains access to the domains of his or her deity, which means you gain access to those domains' feats. Each divine domain has a divinity feat and a domain feat associated with it. These feats follow the normal rules for feat selection. If your character worships multiple deities with a common theme (such as the three gods of destiny, Avandra, Ioun, and the Raven Queen), you gain access to all their domains.

Divinity Feats

Characters who have the Channel Divinity class feature can gain additional Channel Divinity powers by taking divinity feats. As long as you have a particular divinity feat, you can use its power.

Domain Feats

Domain feats provide benefits when you use divine at-will attack powers associated with them. Each domain feat notes its associated powers. If you have more than one domain feat associated with the same power, that power can benefit from only one domain feat at a time. You decide which domain feat applies each time you use the power. For example, if your cleric of Kord has the domain feats Power of Strength and Power of War and uses priest's shield, you choose which feat's benefit to apply.

Destruction

Gruumsh and Tharizdun share the destruction domain, but their outlooks have little in common.

Gruumsh exhorts followers to senseless carnage, burning, and the defilement of lands. His raging hordes scour the world, bringing cities down and dragging nations to their knees. Destruction is an end in itself, and the more violent the end, the better.

Tharizdun desires destruction on a grander scale. He is the god of cataclysms. No mere wildfire or volcanic eruption satiates his demands on his followers. The mad god seeks the world's end by whatever means possible. His crazed followers are often truly mad.

Other gods of destruction might be associated with natural disasters: storms, earthquakes, and the like. An unaligned god of destruction could be an uncaring agent of doom or a herald of the world's end, duty-bound to begin a cycle of cosmic rebirth by unleashing devastation upon the world. A good god of destruction might exist in a very dark world, where most of what exists is corrupt and must be wiped clean.

Power of Destruction (Domain)

Prerequisite: Any divine class, must worship a deity of the destruction domain
Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus to Intimidate checks.
When you use a power associated with this feat and hit an unbloodied enemy with it, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll. The bonus increases to +3 at 11th level and +4 at 21st level.
Powers: ardent strike (paladin DP), bond of censure (avenger DP), grasping shards (invokerPH2), righteous brand (cleric PH)

Path of Destruction (Divinity)

Prerequisite: Channel Divinity class feature, must worship a deity of the destruction domain.
Benefit: You gain the Channel Divinity power path of destruction.