Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Sorcerers: Favored Souls, Phoenix Sorcery, Sea Sorcery, & Stone Sorcery

Favored Soul (again), Phoenix Sorcery, Sea Sorcery, Earth Sorcery.

Could this be the start of Elementalists?

 

[Chaosmancer]

The Sorceror having limited amount of spells known helps balance out the sorceror's raw power and the ability to twist their magic compared to other spellcasting classes. So to limit their power they only know so many spells.

Which theoretically sounds great, but in practice drives me insane. They get so little from metamagic and yet are penalized so heavily for it. I'd really hoped this UA would have addressed some of the concerns about the sorcerer that have come up and been debated so heavily.

Just to remind people, there is no way to change a Metamagic once you have chosen it, and since most games don't go past 11th level you will only ever get 2 metamagic options, chosen at 3rd level.

Then you decide between using those metamagics or using sorcerery points at a loss to gain more spells, which is still highly limited.

I know some people like staitjackets but I'm not a fan.

 

[Leatherhead]

Which theoretically sounds great, but in practice drives me insane. They get so little from metamagic and yet are penalized so heavily for it. I'd really hoped this UA would have addressed some of the concerns about the sorcerer that have come up and been debated so heavily.

Just to remind people, there is no way to change a Metamagic once you have chosen it, and since most games don't go past 11th level you will only ever get 2 metamagic options, chosen at 3rd level.

Then you decide between using those metamagics or using sorcerery points at a loss to gain more spells, which is still highly limited.

I know some people like staitjackets but I'm not a fan.

Metamagic isn't that great, but Font of Magic is rather potent.

Aside from that though, letting them know 21 spells (getting one at every level) wouldn't break them, they still don't have anywhere near the flexibility of other casters (except for Warlocks perhaps)

 

[gyor]

Metamagic isn't that great, but Font of Magic is rather potent.

Aside from that though, letting them know 21 spells (getting one at every level) wouldn't break them, they still don't have anywhere near the flexibility of other casters (except for Warlocks perhaps)

It not just against other casters, it's compared to every other sorceror subclass. WotC already decided it broke the balance to have some subclasses with extra spells and other without, because the sorceror was specifically designed that way.

Honestly for me it only becomes a hard issue for the Favoured Soul at the 3rd level of spells, because you have so many iconic spells like Lightening, Fireball, Haste, act..., plus some really good new spells like revivify which in practice is better then raise dead, because it takes a lower spell slot and it doesn't hit you with brutal penalties like Resurrection.

In fact that's why I don't even bother picking 4th level spells, instead I use that for another 3rd level choice.

Also remember the sorceror can retrain spells when they get a new level, so you can trade 1st level spells for higher levels, and then burn the 1st level slots for spell points.

If your really clever you can use the combination of font of magic, flexible magic, metamagic, cantrips, sorcery points, to do absolutely increbable things that no other magic user can come close to, and your choice of feats and sorceror origins added to that can boost things further.

Also remember that many spells get more powerful in higher slots and in some cases do more things. So in 3e you had cure minor wounds, cure lights wounds, cure serious wounds, cure critical wounds, all separate spells, in 5e the favoured soul gets all of them by just taking cure wounds, 1 spell known, but it's effectly 9 separate spells that grow more powerful, with each higher slot you it put into. Fireball is similar, but a third level spell. Holy Word is like a ranged version of cure wounds, but with an innate quicken metamagic.

With the Warcaster feat and twinned firebolt cantrip, you have a nasty reaction, there are so many combos, or you can focus on raw power.

Look at my Mass Cure Wounds example for how powerful in raw magic a sorceror, favoured soul in this case, can really be.

Or you can focus on save or die spells with heighten magic and be really scary, even planeshift with heighten magic out a powerful enemy with high saves.

Take Magic Inniate for more magic spells and cantrips.

I think Quicken Spell and Twinned Spell are nearly universally good, but maximize spell, Hieghten Spell, Subtle Spell, Careful Spa, Enlarge Spell, etc..., can be amazing for the right build.

A favoured soul can be an amazing healer for a minimum investment. Or an amazing blazer, necromancer, and so on. The new favoured soul is more balanced, but extremely powerful with tons of possible builds, especially between Divine Magic and Blessed Countenance, with Favored of the Gods possible supporting various builds. With it 1 level dips into other classes that opinions explode further.

A with a few clever choices in cantrips, feats, background, and spells, metamagic, origin, the favoured soul can melt someones face off, heal as well as a life cleric, be as good a party face as Charisma Rogue or Bard, create illusions, buff themselves and others, animate objects, all with the same build.

Example with a 6th level Favoured Soul, with sorceror magic inniate feat with Twinned and Quickened metamagic and the spells Mage Armour, Bless, Holy Word, Haste, Fireball, Spiritual Weapon, Phantasmal Force, Firebolt, Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp, Thaumagury, Guidance can do a crap load of things.

You can cast Holy Word at 1 to 3rd level, twin or quicken Phantasmal Force/Haste/Firebolt/Shocking Grasp/Ray of Frost/Sacred Flame/Revivfy/Guidance/Spare the Dying, burn all 1st and 2nd level spells for SP and use all you SP to create for fire balls, for potentially more fireballs, twin Holy Word for effectively 6 1st level holy words while using your action to cast a twinned attack cantrip like Firebolt, Shocking Grasp, Ray of Frost, Sacred Flame, or out of combat a twinned Guidance Spell two buff the skills of two different characters.

You can cast a Quicken Bless, then twinned Haste on yourself and one other character, then use the free cantrip attack you just gained from Haste to cast a twinned firebolt to someone's face.

Each extra spell known is a potential force multiples in the hands of a sorceror in a way its not for a normal magic user, because Sorcerors can bend magic in ways other characters can't. Also remember a cantrip enhanced by metamagic is effectly a first level spell more or less, and you can build some wicked combos.

Plus you get Favoured of the Gods to make sure an attack spell hits or avoid a spell that could take you out of a fight, or avoid a trap and Blessed Countenance, with guidance cantrip can make you crazy good at Charisma skills.

So your good in combat and have alot of utility out of it, giving the favoured souls more spells known beyond mutliclassing would radically out balance it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It not just against other casters, it's compared to every other sorceror subclass. WotC already decided it broke the balance to have some subclasses with extra spells and other without, because the sorceror was specifically designed that way.

Which is why I think all of the subclasses need rewritten, to bring them all into line, instead of simply making the new ones more powerful. They hated doing it with the Ranger, but they did it.

Also remember the sorceror can retrain spells when they get a new level, so you can trade 1st level spells for higher levels, and then burn the 1st level slots for spell points.

Which is only good if you never want to cast 1st level spells. Like Cure Wounds and Healing Word for your Favored Soul, or MAge Armor, or Shield. Up casting spells like you talk about below is only possible if you know those low-level spells. So instead you wouldn't take any high level spells, but that is clearly not optimal. Yes, you can shuffle 1 spell every level when it becomes useless, but if you took a spell that would eventually become useless as compared to one that is always useful... Doesn't that seem odd.

Also, those 1st level slots will only ever net you 4 sorcerery points, in increments of 1 per bonus action, not exceeding your sorcerer level, and represent about 2 uses of metamagic in place of 4 spells (on average, twinning Haste for example costs 3 points, while quicken is always 2).

If your really clever you can use the combination of font of magic, flexible magic, metamagic, cantrips, sorcery points, to do absolutely increbable things that no other magic user can come close to, and your choice of feats and sorceror origins added to that can boost things further.

Looking at your list of awesome things a sorcerer can do, I noticed something. All but 1 of your specific examples involved Quicken or Twin, and that 1 example was using Plane Shift which you won't have by 11th level.

Also, Enlarge doesn't exist. You might be thinking of Distant which does not increase the area of effect unfortunately.


And again, this is part of the problem. Barring some very specific builds, or a political intrigue game where Subtle can actually shine, the vast majority of Sorcerers talk about using Quicken and Twin. Followed at level 10 with either Heighten or Empower, and then grabbing the one you didn't grab at like level 17. That's it, that is the power of metamagic. Doubling spells and casting them faster. It's good, but Twinning is expensive for high level spells, and generally people combine them.


They can dish out comparable damage, but at the end of the day, it just doesn't feel good to have your major ability decided from before you even start (metamagic being so highly limited) and 15-16 spells (by using a feat) limits you so hard, especially for the Favored Soul who wants those Cleric spells, and you either don't have what you want at lower levels or you have no higher level spells.

They need just a little more metamagic, a few more spells known, just to let them breathe so a sorcerer player can feel okay choosing something for fun on occasion instead of needing to optimize every decision from level 1 on.

Also, I don;t like multi-classing, so I don't like that as a solution.

 

[gyor]

Blasters who don't want to kill allies and want to do higher damage could go with Careful Spell and Maximize.

Distant is good for healers, who want to be able to raise dead while staying out of combat.

Sublte is good for enchantment and illusion focused sorcerors.

Extend Spell is good for buffers, necromancers and summoners.

 

[gyor]

Between the you can totally take something that is just for fun as a Sorceror, you don't have to have a zillion blaster spells. I have given an example already of a level 6 Favoured Soul that has a wonderful mix of spells that can bring people back from the dead (revivfy), heal them (holy word), create illusions (phasmal Force), buff them (Bless, haste, Mage Armour), blow them up (Fireball, Shocking Grasp, Ray of Frost, Sacred Flame), buff they're skill checks (guidance), do weird trippy minor miracle things (Theumagy yeah I keep forgetting how to spell it), summon a minion sort of (Spiritual Weapon) and Twin Spell/Quicken/Font of Magic allow massive level of flexiblity, so your good at these things.

 

[rczarnec]

Subtle is good for casters that don't want to be counterspelled.

 

[rczarnec]

You can cast a Quicken Bless, then twinned Haste on yourself and one other character, then use the free cantrip attack you just gained from Haste to cast a twinned firebolt to someone's face.

You wouldn't be able to do this unless you were spacing this out over several turns.

If you cast a bonus action spell (quickened bless), you cannot cast Haste. From the PHB "A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn. You can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action."

The Haste action cannot be used to cast a spell - from the text of the spell "it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action."

 

[Hathorym]

Personally, I find Distant Spell to be extremely useful. My favorite distant spell is Gaseous Form. Now with Favored Soul, you can add Cure Wounds, Greater Restoration, Inflict Wounds, Lesser Restoration, Power Word Heal, etc. Bestow Curse and the Ressurection series.

My new favorite is Silence and Subtle Whatever

Not to mention, the "robed priest" concept is completely possible. You may not have a domain, but you have personality and metamagic. Good trade I'd say.

 

[gyor]

You wouldn't be able to do this unless you were spacing this out over several turns.

If you cast a bonus action spell (quickened bless), you cannot cast Haste. From the PHB "A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn. You can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action."

The Haste action cannot be used to cast a spell - from the text of the spell "it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action."

Yes I forgot, your right.