Before we launch into talking about domains, let’s talk about warpriests. “Warpriest” is the official name for the Essentials version of the Cleric class.

Classic PHB Clerics (also known as “Templars” post-Essentials) had a set of Strength-based melee weapon powers and another of Wisdom-based ranged implement powers. They were generally discouraged from mixing-and-matching, and over time the community decided that the Wisdom-based “laser cleric” build was the better of the two, particularly when you only had the core. There were certain levels that had no Strength powers in them, a situation that would only be remedied in supplements.

Warpriests are another attempt at a melee cleric - all of their attack abilities are are Wisdom-based weapon powers. Warpriest Domains are the solution found by Essential’s designers to reduce the number of decisions a player must make in order to play a cleric. Your pick one at character creation, and that determines not only all of your level 1 powers but also most of the encounter powers and features you get at higher levels all the way to the end of epic tier. They’re practically ready-made builds.

Technically, some of these belong to your paragon path, but Warpriests are in effect limited to a single choice there, which continues to provide powers from your chosen domain. Someone who is really into character optimization might pick a path from another source, but you can just stick to the default Devout Warpriest path and still be pretty effective.

Heroes of the Fallen Lands, the book that introduced Warpriests, also introduced the Sun and Storm domains. Heroes of Shadow added the Death domain for spooky clerics, and Dragon 392 included the Earth domain.

The Neverwinter campaign setting gives us four more domains, doubling the amount available in the game at the time of its publication. These are all dedicated to specific FR gods, but they can be used for similar deities from this or other settings. Though the Neverwinter campaign focuses on the heroic tier, the domains presented here include powers for the full 30 levels of a character’s career.

I’m going to talk about each domain in very general terms, as it would take an age to go through every power in detail. We’ll cover one domain per post, and they should each be fairly short.