The Spice Domain

The Spice Domain is a domain for those non-combat focused clerics who love to cook or want to be able to use cooking skills in-game. The cleric gets a handful of unique powers that allows them to be useful in a variety of circumstances.

Spice Domain

Gods of food, comfort, and the home typically grant the Spice Domain. It usually appears in cultures that favor heavily spiced and aromatic foods. In real life, if such a domain existed, you’d find it in such places that served Indian, Mexican, Thai, and Caribbean cuisines.

This domain represents home cooking, comfort, and safety. The spells and powers the domain grants reflect these feelings. Want to add a real-world flair to this domain? Look at this list of spices.

Spice Domain Spells

1^st         Goodberry, Purify Food & Water
3^rd        Calm Emotions¹, Sleep²
5^th        Dragon Breath³, Create Food & Water⁴
7^th        Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum⁵, Tongues⁶
9^th        Regeneration, Word of Recall

Level 1:  Spicing/Seasoning Intern

Spice Domain Clerics get Cook’s Tools. According to Xanathar’s Guide to Everything says about cook’s tools (page 80):

Adventuring is a hard life. With a cook along on the journey, your meals will be much better than the typical mix of hardtack and dried fruit.

Components. Cook’s utensils include a metal pot, knives, forks, a stirring spoon, and a ladle.

History (Int.). Your knowledge of cooking techniques allows you to assess the social patterns involved in a culture’s eating habits.

Medicine (Wis.) When administering treatment, you can transform medicine that is bitter or sour into a pleasing concoction.

Survival (Wis.). When foraging for food, you can make do with ingredients you scavenge that others would be unable to transform into nourishing meals.

Prepare Meals (Choose: Perform: (Cha) or History (Int)). As part of a short rest, you can prepare a tasty meal that helps your companions regain their strength. You and up to five creatures of your choice recover one extra hit point per Hit Die spent during a short rest, provided you have access to your cook’s utensils and sufficient food.

This skill list could be expanded as follows:

Knowledge of the cuisine (Choose: Nature (Int) or Arcana (Int)) What parts are particularly tasty on the plant? What parts of this animal have unique requirements to be safe, or is eating it a death sentence?

In addition to the cook’s tools (and their uses), Spice Domain clerics may choose 2 of the skill uses above. These aforementioned skill uses are rolled at advantage. When rolling for these specific purposes, add your cleric levels in addition to any rolls. One user commented that they felt that adding levels was too strong. If you feel this way, for these specific uses only (and no others), have the skills roll at a double proficiency bonus.

Channel Divinity Power (also can be called “Spicing/Seasoning Novice”)

Beginning at 2^nd level, if the character can take a short or long rest when casting spells dealing with healing, comfort, etc. they are more effective. The Spice Domain cleric infuses food with spices and spells. Such spells are cast at a level higher, healing the character for the maximum amount allowed. The magic-infused food can’t be prepared too far in advance, as it rapidly deteriorates within a few turns. To be fair, the magic should start to dissipate in 2d4+2 turns.

Experienced Spicer/ Seasoner 

Starting at 6^th level the food that the Spice Domain cleric the food infuses with his spells and spices last a number of hours equal to his cleric level, after which time, the food returns to being normal, having no magical properties.

Furthermore, they get the Chef feat, which states

Chef Feat

Time and effort spent mastering the culinary arts has paid off. You gain the following benefits:

• Increase your Constitution or Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You gain proficiency with cook’s utensils if you don’t already have it.
• As part of a short rest, you can cook special food, provided you have ingredients and cook’s utensils on hand. You can prepare enough of this food for a number of creatures equal to 4 + your proficiency bonus. At the end of the short rest, any creature who eats the food and spends one or more Hit Dice to regain hit points regains an extra 1d8 hit points.
• With one hour of work or when you finish a long rest, you can cook a number of treats equal to your proficiency bonus. These special
  treats last 8 hours after being made. A creature can use a bonus action to eat one of those treats to gain temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.

Source: Unearthed Arcana Feats 2020

Sous Chef Spicer/ Seasoning Assistant

Starting at 8^th level, the caster can create a Heward’s Handy Spice Pouch (see link for description). Unlike a “standard” spice pouch of the same type, Spice Domain clerics may supplement the pouch with items foraged from the surrounding area. For every additional item added to the pouch, it gets an additional 1d4+1 uses. Furthermore, the food the cleric infuses with his spells and spices last a number of days equal to his cleric level. Note: the types of things you can add are teas, peppers, and naturally occurring herbs and spices. Throwing a dead squirrel, some acorns, or flour into the bag has a 50% chance of outright breaking it.

Master Chef Spicer/ Seasoning Master  

Beginning at 17^th level, your character has an unparalleled knowledge of spices and how they affect people. The character has honed his cooking and spicing skills. All the skills uses listed at the beginning of this article are rolled at advantage. The character may also create the following from their repertoire:

• Cloud of Spice. This ability may be used three-to-six times (1d4+2) per long rest, rolled at dawn. This ability acts as a container using the dust of sneezing and choking. Unlike the magic item, the cloud has a range of 30 feet. The cloud dissipates naturally after three rounds, but the gust of wind or similar spell disperses it sooner. All other details of the magic dust remain the same.
• Hero’s feast once per long rest.
• Greater Restoration once per long rest. Note: if the character is petrified, the Spice Domain cleric must rub a combination of spices onto the character to restore them (think of how Dr. Stone gets freed from in the beginning of the anime.) For all other uses, the character in question must eat the spell-infused food for the benefit(s).

Notes:

The following spells are known to the caster by different names

1. Calming tea or spice-infused warm milk
2. Cinnamon Dreams. Willing creatures who consume this spell infused food out of combat (i.e. not done by trickery or intimidation) reduce their current levels of exhaustion by 1. Furthermore, they wake feeling refreshed. Only one level of exhaustion may be reduced in this way.
3. “Pepper breath.”* Fire damage only. Instead of the standard casting components, the caster eats a spicy pepper. The hotter the pepper, the more the damage dealt. For real-world peppers, see the link here.
4. Grandma’s Home Cooking (in whatever native tongue they speak) In addition to the “normal” use of the spell, the spell heals 1 point per cleric level.
5. A piece of home. The spell has an illusory look of the character’s favorite room in their house, but this does not have any mechanical benefit.
6. A chat with friends

Fantasy Peppers

If you want to add some spice, consider adding these peppers to your games:

1d6 Pepper Name

1. Elven Calen. This golf-ball sized pepper starts off as a mild flavor, very grass-like in nature, but at the end there’s a subtle increase of heat a moment after it’s consumed. This pepper is so mild that even people who typically hate spiciness, enjoy its mild taste.
2. Elven Osp Baras. This acorn-sized pepper is is a dried chili. It the process of dehydrating it causes it to be crumbly. If found in spice shops, it typically is sold in powder form.
3. Gnomish Fucautha. A smoked-dried banana shaped chili with a leathery texture. It is typically soaked in oil, which is used as a condiment.
4. Gnomish Cachitha. A pea sized pepper, usually pickled, that gnomes consume with a tequila like drink
5. Dwarven Taalag. A bioluminescent  pepper is a  pepper that grows underground in mine passages. It grows in bunches like grapes.
6. Dwarven Grimmilag. Is less of a pepper than a spicy mushroom. This mushroom grows underground where the Taalag plants have been.

Design notes

The Spice Domain was a fun exercise in making a non-combat focused cleric that has lots of uses outside of battle, but a few entertaining ideas for use in battle. Please, let me know what you think!