Plague and contagion is such a universal human experience, and one that, until shockingly recently, we really didn't understand. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with the human body, but the existence of microbes like bacteria and viruses (are viruses technically microbes? I know they're not considered alive) is something that we've only known about for the better part of two centuries. Thus, the suffering, pain, and horror of plagues was historically connected to supernatural forces - the presence of evil spirits or perhaps the wrath of an angry god.
It's hard to imagine a lot of good deities who would be associated with Pestilence, though as someone of Jewish ancestry, I'm well aware of a recent holiday that was all about the divine invocation of plagues used to punish the Egyptians for holding our ancestors in slavery (a status that is debatable or even dubious historically, but it's a pretty powerful story).
I'm a big fan of good characters with evil powers, and all of these subclasses could probably fit into this. Perhaps you're on a mission of divine vengeance or punishment, and maybe you have to grapple with the morality of that.
Flavor aside, let's leap into the mechanics.
Domain Spells:
1st: Detect Poison and Disease, Ray of Sickness
2nd: Protection from Poison, Ray of Enfeeblement
3rd: Stinking Cloud, Vampiric Touch
4th: Blight, Giant Insect
5th: Contagion, Insect Plague
To be frank, I don't know that any of these spells are jumping out at me as incredible options. Ray of Enfeeblement can help protect the party from damage if it goes off. One note, though, is that we're going to get another option that makes a lot of poison-based spells much more appealing. (Though I don't think this would apply to the Giant Insect stat block).
Level 3:
Blight Weaver:
You get the following benefits:
Inoculated Soul: You gain resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage, and you cannot be infected by magical contagions.
Given that they sort of got rid of the idea of diseases in 5.5, this is curious. While the Contagion spell inflicts the poisoned condition, I feel as a DM I'd be forced to rule that this applies. Will we see diseases coming back to 5.5?
Rot and Fester: Damage from your Cleric spells and Cleric features ignores resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage. Additionally, when you cast a Cleric spell or use a Cleric feature that does either Necrotic or Poison damage, you can change that damage to the other type.
The first part is, I think, nearly useless, as there's almost nothing that's resistant but not immune to either damage types (some vampires might be resistant to Necrotic, but I believe only the Giant Badger has resistance to poison). The second part, though, is huge, because Necrotic is a far more reliable damage type than Poison, so you'll almost always swap out poison damage to Necrotic. Now, how many poison spells do you have? Ray of Sickness is one, but I think all the other spells on your domain list do Necrotic if anything already. And I don't think there are a ton of Cleric spells that do Poison either.
Plague Blessing:
As a magic action, you can present your holy symbol and expend a Channel Divinity to manifest a 5-foot emanation of plague around you or a willing creature you touch for 1 minute. It ends early if you dismiss it, manifest it again, or become incapacitated.
Each creature of your choice that starts its turn in the emanation must succeed on a Con save against you spell save DC or gain 1 Exhaustion level. This cannot raise their exhaustion to a level above your Wisdom modifier (minimum of 1).
This is, frankly, nutso. It's incredibly rare for a player to be able to inflict Exhaustion on monsters, and this is technically an AoE (albeit a pretty short-range emanation). Even if, without epic boons or other magical means to raise your Wisdom beyond 20, you can't fully exhaust a foe to death with this (that takes 6 levels) Exhaustion is a really nasty debuff, reducing their speed and all d20 tests (including the Con save to resist this) by 2 for each level.
The fact that you can even slap this on an ally (and it does avoid friendly fire, only infecting creatures you choose) makes it really powerful - start off a fight by putting it on one of your melee allies, and they're going to be potentially forcing that save every turn.
Is this going to win a fight? No. Con saves can be difficult, because basically every monster has a decent Con. But if it does go off, even just one level is going to reduce their speed by 5 feet and make them less likely to succeed on any d20 test.
Oh, and if it's a character who is likely to escape the combat, you've put a debuff on them that might take multiple days to recover from.
Level 6:
Virulent Burst:
When an enemy within 60 feet of you is reduced to 0 hit points, you can use a reaction to cause plague to burst from the creature in a 10-foot emanation, or 20 feet if they had any levels of Exhaustion. Each creature of your choice in the emanation must make a Con save against your spell save DC, suffering one of the following effects (presumably your choice):
Putrid Shock: The target is incapacitated until the end of its next turn and its speed is 0 while incapacitated.
Toxic Infection: The target takes 3d6 Necrotic or Poison damage (your choice).
You can use this feature Wis tiems per long rest.
So, this is pretty effective even if you haven't exhausted them. Once again, it's creatures of your choice, so you can happily do this even on foes that are crowded by your allies. This is useless in a single-monster encounter, or if they're spread out, but against a big horde of enemies, this could potentially hit a lot of targets (and more if the target is exhausted). I think the toxic infection option is going to be great in swarms of weak foes, but especially at higher levels, the Incapacitation effect is going to be a much bigger deal.
Level 17:
Oh right, Clerics only get subclass features at three levels now. Weird.
Vermin Form:
As a bonus action, you can shape-shift into a Medium swarm of tiny pests (like rats, cockroaches, maggots, etc.) While in this form, you retain your general shape, personality, memories, ability to speak, equipment, etc. You're the same except for the following:
Condition Immunities: You have immunity to being Grappled, Paralyzed, Prone, or Restrained
That's amazing, and I think a really key thing at high levels when you're fighting things that are big enough to swallow you.
Damage Resistances: You have resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage.
Also great. Not much to say about it.
Movement: You can enter and occupy another creature's space and vice versa. You also gain a climb speed equal to your speed and can climb on difficult surfaces including ceilings without making an ability check.
Definitely creepy. The Spider Climb ability is probably not as exciting at level 17, but fitting with the flavor.
Plague Bites: When you enter an enemy's space, that creature takes your choice of Necrotic, Piercing, or Poison damage equal to your Wisdom modifier. A creature takes this damage when it enters your space or ends its turn there (one instance of damage per turn).
At 17, this is pretty small damage, though some fun cheese-grater stuff with a Warlock or other movement-heavy character assisting could get some extra damage out of it.
The form lasts 10 minutes unless you end it early, become incapacitated, or die. You can use this once for free per long rest, or spend a 5th or higher level spell slot to restore your use of it.
The damage potential of this is not all that exciting, but the condition immunities and damage resistances probably make it a pretty good feature.
Overall Thoughts:
There are some really strong points here and some weaknesses:
Strong points include that Exhaustion is a horrifying condition to impose on your foes, and your ability to do so here is in AoE, so against a lot of enemies with not-particularly-good Con saves, this can be amazing. Likewise, the fact that every one of these nasty abilities avoids friendly fire makes this far easier to use. Indeed, the fact that you can choose an ally to be the vector for Plague Blessing is really good.
Weaknesses are that the domain spells aren't all that exciting, the subclass features lean heavily on Con saves, which monsters are often good at... that might be it.
I think I'd really need to see this in practice, but my gut tells me this could be a really nasty subclass, less about pumping out damage than totally debilitating your foes, which is a strong strategy.
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