Invoke Duplicity is a feature in the Trickery Domain that requires concentration and allows you to cast spells as though you were in the illusion’s space. This feature allows you to attack farther than any cleric, including ranged spells. Cure Wounds and other touch spells are particularly effective with the illusion, but you can also cast ranged spells through Invoke Duplicity.
The senses clause prevents you from trying to use your duplicate to get line of sight you otherwise wouldn’t. If you cast disguise self before invoking duplicity, your duplicate can be used to cast touch spells. The channel divinity power of clerics of the Trickery domain can be learned in 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.
You can create illusory doubles of yourself and use them for spells. For the duration, you can cast spells as though you were in the illusion’s space, but you must use your own senses. Invoke Duplicity allows the Trickery Domain Cleric to cast spells through the illusory copy when you first aquire the ability.
In D and D 5E, you can cast spells as though you were in the illusion’s space but cannot attack with physical items. The UA Playtest 6 version replaces Trickery Cleric’s Invoke Duplicity with the UA Playtest 6 version, which allows the Cleric to move, swap places with, and cast spells from an illusion.
At 17th level, you can create up to four duplicates of yourself when using Invoke Duplicity. As a bonus action on your turn, you can move any duplicates of yourself.
📹 Treantmonk’s Guide to Trickery Clerics Part 1
So this is PART 1 of 2 for my Trickery Cleric guide. I was originally going to put it all together, but it ended up over 2 hours long.
Can you poke someone with Mage Hand?
The text delineates the capabilities of a magic hand, which is capable of manipulating objects but is not designed for use in attacks, the activation of magic items, or the transportation of more than 10 lbs. It is considered an attack to poke someone in the eye or trip them, as well as to drop a 10-pound weight from a height of 30 feet.
Can you cast spells while looking through a familiar?
It is incumbent upon the wizard to utilize their action each turn to perceive through the familiar’s eyes until the commencement of their subsequent turn. Consequently, they are precluded from casting any spells that necessitate an action or the Attack action.
What are the rules for mage hands?
The ability to control one’s hand is a fundamental aspect of the action in question. This control can be exercised in a variety of ways, including manipulating objects, opening doors or containers that have been previously unlocked, retrieving items, and pouring contents from vials. It should be noted, however, that the hand is capable of movement only up to a distance of 30 feet and is unable to engage in combat, activate magical items, or bear more than 10 pounds.
Can familiars use vampiric touch?
The RAW system restricts attacks to the caster only, precluding the possibility of such actions being carried out through pets. Although the description of the “self” target for vampiric touch indicates alternative methods, this is not applicable to vampiric familiars.
Can invoke duplicity cast touch spells?
In order to cast spells in an illusion, it is necessary to utilise one’s own senses in a manner that reflects the experience of being situated within the confines of the illusion itself. This implies that one can cast spells as if situated at the location of the illusionary duplicate, provided that the spell can be targeted using one’s own senses. To illustrate, in the case of the Cure or Inflict Wounds spells, if the creature can be targeted using one’s own senses, the spell may be cast.
How many times can you invoke duplicity?
The Invoke Duplicity feature enables users to generate up to four replicas of humanoid creatures within a 60-foot radius, rather than a single instance. It should be noted, however, that this feature may not function as intended if JavaScript is disabled or blocked by an extension or if the browser does not support cookies.
Can you cast touch spells through mage hand?
It should be noted that the game does not permit the casting of touch or melee action spells through the mage hand, which is a utility spell utilized for the purpose of grabbing and manipulating objects. The game may contain content that is not appropriate for all age groups. This may include general mature content, as well as potentially nudity or sexual content. To update content preferences on Steam, users are directed to the provided link.
Can invoke duplicity fly?
The spell necessitates that the creature traverse the shortest distance possible to maintain its flight. At higher levels, the spell can affect one additional creature for each slot level above 1st. The targeting of creatures must be conducted from a distance of no more than 30 feet. It should be noted that the spell may be disabled or blocked by extensions or browsers that do not support cookies.
How does duplicity work?
Duplicity is a backup system that uses a complete (full) backup as the first archive, followed by incremental backups that add differences from the latest full or incremental backup. It can recover chains of full and incremental backups to the point of time that any incremental steps were taken. If any incremental backups are missing, subsequent backups cannot be reconstructed. Duplicity uses tools like GnuPG, librsync, tar, and rdiff to perform this process.
Data can be transmitted to the backup repository using various methods like SSH, SCP, SFTP, local file access, rsync, FTP, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Rackspace Cloud Files. It works best on Unix-like operating systems like Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X, but can be used with Windows under Cygwin or the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Can you cast touch spells through familiar 5e?
You can only have one familiar at a time and if you cast a spell while already having one, it adopts a new form. When casting a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast it. The familiar must be within 100 feet of you and use its reaction to deliver the spell. If the spell requires an attack roll, use your attack modifier. Consume 10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs by fire in a brass brazier.
Can you invoke duplicity and cast a concentration spell?
Invoke Duplicity is a trickery domain feature that creates a perfect illusion of oneself that lasts for 1 minute or until concentration is lost. It is used to create a perfect illusory clone of oneself, which is currently 100ft away. To cast “Dominate Person” on a target 120ft away without moving, one must use their own senses. This feature requires concentration and allows spells to be cast as though they were in the illusion’s space, but requires using their own senses.
📹 Jester is a Role Model for clerics in Dnd 5e! – Critical Role character analysis
Link to patreon, merch shop, discord and twitter: https://www.patreon.com/Packtactics?f… https://discord.gg/Sh28ZN8PEx …
Ngl, Jester and Caduceus pretty much hard carried the ‘Mighty’ Nein at so many points late in the 2nd Campaign it wasn’t even funny. I’m sure Taliesin realized that the party needed a dedicated healer more than anything else after a certain campaign event. But the utility casting of Jester is perhaps the biggest advantage said party had, due to how much her spells defined (or even negated the need to) fight encounters.
An interesting thing to note about Invoke Duplicity is that it lacks the standard language about interactions and investigation checks. Given that the invoked duplicate is a “perfect illusion,” this can result in multiple rounds of confusion where the enemy attacks it and is convinced you’ve just got an uncanny ability to dodge their strikes.
There is one spell people forget that Trickery gets: Mirror Image. Mirror Image is already a substancial buff to someone’s defenses, eating attacks and making you take 0 damage, but combine that with Spirit Guardians and you’ll have a monster on the battlefield. Add Spiritual Weapon and bang, three spells stacking upon you that aid on everything, survivability, offensive and control. It will be taxing on the spell slots, but for a big last fight at the end of a dungeon, if you have the resources, this is a pretty good way to spend them. Trickery’s utility doesn’t stop there. Sure, they are incredible in combat due to the spells they get and maybe Cloak of Shadows to run away, but out of combat they are also really damn good, with great skills to recall knowledge like Religion and History and Medicine for aiding your allies without spending spell slots. But the biggest boost is with the combination of Disguise Self and Charm Person from the Trickery cleric and both Insight and Persuasion from the Cleric’s skills. With these tools, you can turn into a really potent social character, being able to sense the motivation of a certain person and either persuade them to do something for you or, if you are feeling a little trolling, charm them to do it for you as long as it isn’t anything harmful. Even Dominate Person, if a group reaches a high level social interaction, can be pretty useful in a clutch, and you’ll always have all those spells prepared.
My last cleric was a life cleric. I only did in combat healing to get PCs back up via healing word or via the website divinity if almost all of them where down. Again. (Don’t fight covern hags with level 2 or 3 chars…) But my main spell was Spiritual Weapon, remember Jesters Lolipop? I had so much fun, adapting my weapon to the enemies. Air elemental? Paper fan! Dryad? Axe!
I have been saying how optimized Jester’s action economy and slew of options was for a long time, thanks for covering this. She has great AC, can heal and revive WHEN NEEDED, has bonus action options in spells like Spiritual Weapon, Hellish Rebuke for good damage on a reaction, can use her duplicity to stay almost completely safe while using touch spells on enemies/allies, and can deal good damage or buff/debuff. All while still leaving room for utility spells like sending. People have said she’s a bad cleric just because she doesn’t heal very often, when this cleric build isn’t built to do that. In fact, if you did this you’d literally be wasting your turn in comparison to your offensive/utility options. Maybe Jester alone isn’t the most optimized build possible for a cleric, but the way Laura played her made it optimized.
When people think cleric, they think it’s a “healer” class which isn’t true! Clerics, like other classes, have healer subclasses but that isn’t what their class is as a whole! Clerics can be damage dealers with subclasses such as war domain, or they can fill other roles such as jester being a trickster.
If someone really wants to play a healer, for most campaigns the answer is “literally anyone that can take Healing Word.” If you’re going to be in a campaign that actually does a whole bunch of combats in one day instead of infrequent setpiece battles, the answer is Paladin. Lay On Hands lets you pick how much you heal and the correct number is 1hp; just enough to get you back to consciousness. Knowing that, the Paladin can bring people back to consciousness 5x their level per day without spending their smi- I mean, spell slots. Paladin (I believe) is the only class that has an unavoidable healing feature. There’s plenty of spells and subclasses that heal, but you can’t pick Paladin and not get Lay On Hands. Therefore, Paladin is the real “healer” class, not cleric.
For the curious, the rest of the Trickery Domain features are: 6th level: website Divinity: Cloak of Shadows. Basically, invisibility. Thankfully, this is the level at which you get two uses of website Divinity before needing a rest to regain it, but invisibility in exchange for a use of either Turn Undead or Duplicity isn’t that great a trade. Worse, it only lasts one round, even if you don’t do anything to break the effect, like attacking or casting a spell. 8th level: Divine Strike. Free poison damage to the tune of 1d8 added to any weapon strike, once per round. Note that this doesn’t say “melee”, so ranged weapons still get the extra damage. It doesn’t even have charges, and scales slightly at higher levels (2d8 at level 14). That said, it isn’t great damage, and not everything is susceptible to poison damage. 17th level: Improved Duplicity. This ramps up the effects of Duplicity, but only slightly, giving you four illusory copies instead of one. Again, not bad, but not much.
The website divinity is overlooked on the attack roll aspect because most people think of clerics as a spell caster and it requiring concentration negates mantaining other spells. But Clerics have access to things like inflict wounds and contagion which require an attack roll, and duplicity does give you advantage on those attack rolls if you make good use of it.
The rest of CR joked that Laura Bailey was playing Battle Mercy, but her point was solid; in 5e healing doesn’t keep up with damage. A few spells come close (Prayer of Healing, Aura of Vitality, Heal), and others can be clutch in the right situation (Healing Word), but overall she went in for damage and control and utility and was clutch. As Caleb quipped to Jester; “I may be the transmutation wizard, but you change people.”
Hot take – clerics are often seen as healers because our real-life priests get no power from their gods, and therefore have to study medicine to advertise their religions. In a world like the DnD world, with very active deities, clerics should be more like Jester – wizards with a different source of magic.
Also dust of deliciousness, the dust that makes food taste very good, and gives whoever eats it disadvantage on wisdom checks and wisdom saving throws. Not only did she did deception so well she just didn’t have to roll (hag just accepted the cookie, she tricked Matt Mercer in-character and forced him into a corner where if the she succeeds a single persuasion heck, the BBEG is done for. Notice it was a persuasion check, not a deception vs insight contest. If she failed, that hag likely would not have gotten mad. She roleplayed being timid and pitiful so well literally no one suspected she had any other plans. Good roleplaying is optimal.
When we were I believe around level 17 or 18, my DM gave my dreams druid healer an altered version of the Moon Sickle that was a 5d12 instead of just a d4. Even let it work with the dreams druid feature too. Might’ve been OP if it weren’t for how much stuff in his world stopped healing as well as doing nearly 100 damage per round with 20 of that not being able to be healed back without a long rest or greater restoration. Still, with the healing I was able to do, it did make us slightly less dead. Healing needs to be buffed in regular dnd, especially at later levels, but with the right homebrew it can certainly be a useful tool.
Just putting this here, each cleric should be using the domain and style that they want. Not what they think is always optimal, but what is fun, That being said, different domains fit different styles. Life domain is great for healing, either go the full way for insane lategame heals or go like 6th level and then multiclass into something else if you want to have other utility or dps. Domain of light is great for combat and exploring, light cantrip, fireball at 5th level, website divinity to impose disadvantage on attacks against yourself and later on your allies. Great combat cleric. Domain of knowledge and trickery are both great utility casters with lots of spells for knowledge and tons of sneak/stealth for trickery. Domain of nature is great if you want most of the druid perks without beast form and you want the healing capabilities of a cleric. Domain of tempest is a great spell caster dps and at 17th level gives flight if not underground or indoors. Domain of war is a martial cleric and great combat capabilities especially the website divinity to give +10, comboing great with the great weapons feat to -5 to attacks and +10 to damage. Forge domain is great for a longer campaign with all the smithing capabilities but also giving the party magic weapon/armour properties at level 1, also you become a tank at level 6 and 17. Domain of grave is great for clutch moments and has a lot of value for combat, such as level 8 adding wisdom modifier to cleric cantrip damage (like toll the dead, a must have cantrip) Domain of twilight is broken in many player’s eyes, I prefer to create a character and then decide the domain first, rather than just go for what everyone thinks is best.
I’ve always read the “as if concentrating on a spell” features to mean simply that maintaining them follows the same mechanics as Concentration but it is not a spell. I’ve never interpreted that to mean that using Invoke Duplicity or similarly worded features prevents the use of Spells that require Concentration. To back up my interpretation: – The verbiage used is “AS IF concentrating” not “USING your Concentration”. – Secondly, the RAW for breaking Concentration specifies 3 factors: Taking Damage, Being Incapacitated/Killed, Casting ANOTHER Spell that requires Concentration – On that final point, it specifies that you cannot Concentrate on two SPELLS at once. I contend that Invoke Duplicity and every other similar ability I have read are not SPELLS but features/abilities. Therefore, while breaking the effect of the feature may follow the same rules as Concentration it does not meet the requirements to prevent the use of a Concentration Spell. In fact, as written, there is no limit to the number of things you can Concentrate on with the exception that only one of them may be a Spell
In the 25 years of being a DM, I think playing the strengths of your mechanics is just half what makes a role model. The other half is ooc social-based– the player and their interactions that lead to the group having fun. I’ve known players who don’t play optimized characters and they’re often still looked up to as great inspirations. That said, Jester’s player does add a lot to the group’s dynamic and the overall enjoyment of the game.
At 4th level spell casting a cleric should remember why you should pick a real good subclass. You’ll probably use banishment or divination or upcast something. Pass without trace and polymorph are insane indeed. They solve a lot of problems. Blessing of the trickster is good. For the M9 it wasn’t nearly as good, but only because of the party comp. She should have used it more if she understood on who she should use it. Laura liked it at the start but underestimated how good it still was still in late game. Invoke duplicity isn’t that easy to use tbh. It’s an ok feature, tho. Trickery isn’t a front liner, so the last clause doesn’t happen often enough. Using a website divinity is a big cost. The range limitations and action economy use are difficult to manage, specially considering what spiritual weapon does. And requires conc, which all good cleric spells already require too. Spirit Guardians and bless are super good. There were cases in which she and Cad cast bless and bane (bane isn’t as good, yes, but it does boost effective AC if there are few enough enemies, tho it uses concentration as a big downside) and trivialized the encounter. Healing is generally bad in 5e unless you build a good healbot. Twilight cleric comes to mind – there are others. Aura of vitality is a good off fight heal and an ok in fight heal if a circumstance for it ever happens. There are many other things one can do too, but usually, not in fight.
There’s so much good stuff in Cleric as a class but my innate desire to not play classes that make me genuinely leashed to a specific mode of behavior the entire game tends to keep me away from it. Same with Paladin(past level 2) and Warlock. Same distance from being the party’s support too, though for a different reason: I don’t like sitting back and perusal other people do things in this game while I do all of nothing. I realize that its pretty DM dependent, but from personal history I’m found that if you don’t push your involvement in dnd you wont play the game. The one time I played cleric and had fun with it was in a campaign where everyone’s goal was to become a god, and that was to find out the funny question of “What happens when a cleric becomes the god of their own domain?” The results may shock you, especially since I was a Tempest cleric. 🙂
I’ve never really looked into Invoke Duplicity… I’m kinda intrigued by the wording here: “as if you were concentrating on a spell”. I’m not convinced it’s intended to actually take your concentration per se (otherwise I would expect it to specifically say it takes your concentration). Based on the wording it might be intended to just replicate the mechanics of concentration (CON check of half damage DC) without taking your concentration limit so you can still cast concentration spells. I might be wrong, but that wording jumps out at me.
I FUCKING LOVE CALEB WIDOGAST From his backstory, his build perspective and my god, the roleplay. Liam had me in tears talking to his imaginary cat…. It would be an Honor to sit at Mercer’s table, but for me it would be a lifetime achievement to play with O’Brien… So yeah if you want to analyze Caleb’s playthrough in campaign two, you at least have 1 pair of eyes ready to watch.
Gods yes, not going to lie I can understand EXACTLY why she used Pass Without Trace and Polymorph so much, as someone who also prefers Trickery Domain. My own Trickery Cleric (actually now clerisorc) is very much the utility caster, and pretty much the swiss-utility cleric/sorcerer, so to speak. He CAN heal when needed, but he’d rather be slinging a Guiding Bolt or Inflict Wounds. He’d rather get that Heightened Spell Sacred Flame off. And most of all, the man loves to sneak and help his party sneak. And pick locks, the man loves picking locks and can guidance a rogue, if not offer the help action since he too has Thieves’ Tools proficiency. I’m gonna say, if you’re truly going to be optimally sneaky as a Trickery Cleric, the moment you’re able to get it as a magical item, GET MITHRAL ARMOR. Get the benefits of a good medium armor, while also being sneaky-breeki. In short: Trickery Domain is a lot more fun and busted than folks give it credit for. Take a background with access to Thieves’ Tools or else go with Custom to have it as a proficiency. When you’re able to, get Mithral Armor. Metamagic Adept or multiclassing sorcerer (Divine Soul or Wild Magic) could be very helpful. And Robe of Useful Items is ONLY AS USEFUL AS YOU MAKE IT. It could be a Trickery Cleric’s best friend. Signed, The Wild Magic Trickery Cleric who will bend your luck during a Heightened Spell Sacred Flame.
Jester caught so much unwarranted flak. There was maybe one instance or two where Jester didn’t healing word when I would have, but no one died on her watch throughout the campaign. The one PC death occured while Jester/Laura was missing. Jester, Caduceus, and Caleb carried the mighty nine. Beau, Nott, and Fjord did what they could but the three were no where near equal on power level. Yasha did more harm than good and wasted soooo much session time being useless and undecisive. I’m not sure how many times I frustratedly shouted “get some javelins” or “buy some armor” or “use reckless attack” at Ashley. I’m really happy that someone taught Ashley how to play D&D for season three. Fearne is a delight the third time around and unlike Pike, is actually playing within the 5E rules set.
Sorry, when someone says they want to play a healer, cleric isn’t high up on the list though, admittedly, it was in previous editions so I think that’s why people get stuck. Celestial Warlock doesn’t have to rely on spells to heal. For sheer number of available heals (not quality) that aren’t competing with other uses of resources, I don’t think anyone else can compare.
iirc Invoke Duplicity was used frequently really early on (like first 5-10 episodes), but that was due to Laura misunderstooding how it worked and thinking it was stronger than it actually was (she thought it was like a pet). iirc once Matt clarified what it actually does, she stopped using it really.
I love the IDEA of trickery domain. But it really doesn’t do much on its own. It get some neat spells sure, but if you’re doing it just for the spells you miss out on about half of your subclass. The advantage on stealth is helpful in some circumstances, but (while not infinite) there are other ways to give that. And as much as I LOVE invoke duplicity as a concept it sucks so hard. And don’t even get me started on cloak of shadows. You might as well just cast mislead and get the effect of both. And then they get poison divine strike. Which yeah. Tasha’s added Blessed strikes as an option to replace it but that’s another WoTC classic bandaid solution. I just felt the need to rant. I know not everything needs to be super powerful, but it’s not fun to feel weaker than your teammates for a lot of people.
Great article. I always thought that Trickery Clerics should be able to use Invoke Duplicity while casting a concentration spell since the description only says it lasts for 1 minunte or until you lose concentration as if you were casting a concentration spell instead of identical to . So, you’d have to roll two concentration checks when taking damage. Otherwise, the feature is kind of useless.
Laudna in campaign 3 could be interesting. She’s multiclassing as a Sorlock, which isn’t that special but because she’s pact of undead it’s occurred to me that she could quicken for double eldritch blast and spread her beams out to deal damage and cause fear to a large number of targets at the same time. Generally quicked EB is just ok, but if it’s dealing a little damage to everyone in a group and causing mass fear? That seems like it could be good.
Pass without trace opens up some concerning narrative threads by it’s wording. The spell specifies that you target any number of creatures within 30ft at time of casting. This doesn’t mean they have to be willing and it can be used on someone by force, this opens up some unsettling abduction/forced relocation/slavery narratives. The people this spell is used on cannot leave behind footprints and cannot leave behind markings or messages to inform others of where they’re being taken.