New Sorcerous Origin - Arcane Soul

Right! So.

There was a lot of talk recently that I was involved in regarding Sorcerers and their function and origins and all that fun stuff. Recently I started recruiting for a PbP here and a player asked if I could create a Sorcerous Origin for them that would evoke the feel of not a Wild Mage, but just someone who literally has the Arcane fused into their very being. The concept focuses on the idea that magic is as second-nature to this Origin as breathing, and therefore focuses heavily on Sorcery Points and new ways that they can be used.

This will be playtested once I get that game up and running, so I'll see how it turns out, but I figured I would also present it to EnWorld at large for review and usage at your leisure.

Your innate magic comes not from some elemental or fantastical ancestor, but from the very pulse of magic itself. You may have been blessed by some cosmic, controlling force of magic, or have been born with the spark of something inexplicably extra. Whatever it is, it is in your very being: this has nothing to do with bloodlines or bargains for power. This is the raw force of mana within the world permeating your soul and allowing you to expand the usage of your magic beyond normal limits. With time and patience will come control, control of your ability to make The Weave bend, break, and reform to your will, allowing you to accomplish impossible feats of magic.


Level 1 - Made of Magic
While others may claim descendant from a fierce, magical creature or the byproduct of magical manipulation, you are magic, with the very heart of the arcane beating inside you. Manipulating the very nature of reality just by existingallows you to craft spellwork that pulls threads of The Weave that no other can. You gain the following benefits:

- You ignore Material Components in Spells unless there is a listed cost. You do not need an Arcane Focus in place of Material Components.
- Any time you would normally only gain 1 Sorcery Point when you gain a level, you instead gain 2.
- You gain 2 Sorcery Points. You can use Sorcery Points to cast any spell on the Sorcerer Spell List that you Do Not Know, expending a Spell Slot as normal. This caps at 5th Level Spells. The cost is as follows:




Level 6 - Mana Manipulation
It all starts to come so easy to you: at first it may have been a struggle, but each day brings new power, new ways to cast the brush of your esoteric art upon reality. Your own wellspring of energy allows you to take advantage of the loopholes you perceive in The Weave, alleviating the strain on your magical reservoirs. You gain the following benefits:

- Choose 2 Spells with the Ritual Tag from the Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard Spell List. These spells must be of a level that you can cast. They are added to your list of Spells Known, and can be cast normally through Spell Slots. You can also cast these spells as a Ritual if you spend Sorcery Points equal to the Spell's Level. These spells count as Sorcerer spells for you.
- If you use your Made of Magic Feature to choose a Sorcerer Spell that you don't know, you pay the cost for casting a spell you do not know as well as the Ritual cost from this feature.
- You can choose 1 more Ritual Spell at 11th Level, and 1 more at 15th level.


Level 14 - Arcana Overcharge
The spells of others are unwoven with but a word from your lips. The height of your own magic is constantly pushing new boundaries, burning more intensely with every casting. You're not just some other Mage: You touch the very source of the Arcane and bend it to your advantage and the detriment of your enemies. You gain the following benefits:

- You have Advantage on any Saves you make against Spells. If you succeed on a save versus a spell that would normally cause you Half-Damage, you can spend 2 Sorcery Points to instead take No Damage.
- You can add your Charisma Modifier to the damage of all your Spells. If a Spell allows you to target multiple targets, this extra damage only affects 1 target.


Level 18 - Metamagic Mastery
The secrets of spellcraft are laid bare to you. You twist, tear, and shred The Weave to best suit your own devices, forcing the threads back together in beautiful new patterns that boldly display your own sorcerous might, your dominion over the loom of magic. You gain the following benefit:

- When you use any Metamagic Option on a Spell, you can choose to add a 2nd Option to the Spell, paying the normal cost for Metamagic Options.

Okay, some impressions:

First off, double sorcery points. I've long thought of sorcery points as equivalent to Arcane/Natural Recovery, and for this reason I think of sorcerers, wizards, and land druids as "super casters." They have more than their share of slots compared to other full casters. I guess that makes arcane souls "super duper casters" and I'm worried that might carry things too far, especially combined with...

Effectively knowing all sorcerer spells. I've never created a spell slot with my sorcerer, first because my spell repertoire is so limited that I haven't really needed more castings of them, and second because metamagic is more efficient than spell slots. This ability addresses the former problem and makes the efficiency tax worth paying. Nice idea.

Stealing rituals. I'm not exactly opposed to the idea of sorcerers cribbing spells from other classes, but I do feel like ritual magic runs counter to the spontaneous, intuitive flavour of the class. From a balance perspective, this feels over the top when combined with already having access to all sorcerer spells. Paying sorcery points twice seems like a bunch of clumsy math, even if it does balance out having access to so many spells.

I feel like one of these features would make for a great level 14 ability. Giving both is going too far.

A good level 18 ability, at a point when you can make good use of it with 4 metamagic options and casters are breaking reality hard with 9th level spells anyway.

Generally features from a subclass only add one major benefit. Here you're level 1 and level 14 features are each adding two distinct benefits, which is a little much. Ignoring material components is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things so it's fine.

I'm also not a fan of a subclass feature straight up doubling a limited resource of the base class. It's much too powerful and invalidates the other subclasses in my opinion.

I do like the level the metamagic feature and expanding sorcerer spell known access. Very useful.

If this subclass is focused on spell points it might be cool if it was the only thing in the game that could actually restore a 6th level spell slot. I wouldn't allow restoring higher slots as spells above level 5 are dramatically more powerful and other features intentionally avoid this. Seems like something interesting to explore.

Thanks for the input, folks! Let's get to work.

famousringo said:

Okay, some impressions:

First off, double sorcery points. I've long thought of sorcery points as equivalent to Arcane/Natural Recovery, and for this reason I think of sorcerers, wizards, and land druids as "super casters." They have more than their share of slots compared to other full casters. I guess that makes arcane souls "super duper casters" and I'm worried that might carry things too far, especially combined with...

Effectively knowing all sorcerer spells. I've never created a spell slot with my sorcerer, first because my spell repertoire is so limited that I haven't really needed more castings of them, and second because metamagic is more efficient than spell slots. This ability addresses the former problem and makes the efficiency tax worth paying. Nice idea.

Click to expand...

This was kind of the idea: The increased SP is generally there to use the extra features, as I feel the idea of only finishing with 20 SP, a 1st Level Spell costs 2 of those, and most Metamagic is only going to eat 1, you're basically going with Metamagic every time. I wanted something that would help expand what, precisely, SP can do, but that also meant that the class would need a few extra things to spend it on. Even if all you're really doing is just constantly creating Spell Slots or constantly Casting things you don't Know, I don't inherently see that as soooo unbalancing because you're still paying a limited cost that only refreshes once per day.

famousringo said:

Stealing rituals. I'm not exactly opposed to the idea of sorcerers cribbing spells from other classes, but I do feel like ritual magic runs counter to the spontaneous, intuitive flavour of the class. From a balance perspective, this feels over the top when combined with already having access to all sorcerer spells. Paying sorcery points twice seems like a bunch of clumsy math, even if it does balance out having access to so many spells.

Click to expand...

The "paying points twice" is only going to occur if you choose to use 1 of the 3 Ritual Spells on the Sorcerer spell list. I just wanted to cover the bases that you can do this ... but I don't realistically see that as occurring too often. I imagine most people would choose the more useful Ritual Spells.

As Sorcerers generally do not gain a lot of utilitarian spells, this was my attempt to make them somewhat appealing in that you can nab some fun things like Comprehend Languages with your super Charisma Score, and you're saving the Spell Slot, which is the big factor. You're still paying the SP, which I guess a better balancer would be you increase the SP Cost? But the idea was to give a small repertoire of spells that aren't going to eat your Spell Slots that allow you some utilitarian functionality (but you'll never eclipse like a Wizard with that).

A general idea I would think to help balance this would be to make it where you can't use Spell Slots to cast these: SP only, and double the SP cost, so again: we have a lot of SP, but also a lot to spend it on.

famousringo said:

I feel like one of these features would make for a great level 14 ability. Giving both is going too far.

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I would lean towards keeping the defensive ability then and dropping the offensive. Thank you for your input on that.

famousringo said:

A good level 18 ability, at a point when you can make good use of it with 4 Metamagic options and casters are breaking reality hard with 9th level spells anyway.

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Thank you! I kinda figured that spellcaster balance basically dissolves at this level anyway, so might as well give something really neat to spend all that SP on.

MonkeezOnFire said:

Generally features from a subclass only add one major benefit. Here you're level 1 and level 14 features are each adding two distinct benefits, which is a little much. Ignoring material components is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things so it's fine.

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I do find the 14th level ability can be adjusted to just have the defensive ability, as it focuses far more on the concept of "Spend SP to do things" that the rest of the archetype follows.

MonkeezOnFire said:

I'm also not a fan of a subclass feature straight up doubling a limited resource of the base class. It's much too powerful and invalidates the other subclasses in my opinion.

I do like the level the metamagic feature and expanding sorcerer spell known access. Very useful.

Click to expand...

The expanded spell access and Metamagic features need that extra SP to use. While I admit that yes, you're gaining effectively double the SP of any other Sorcerer, the magic is essentially your only benefit and you are also (I hope) spending SP far more than any other Sorcerer. You're making Spell Slots, you're empowering Rituals, you're casting spells outside your list, you're fueling Metmagic: My impression was that because the options to spend SP on were larger, a smaller amount of SP would cripple to archetype by not really allowing you to do anything with it.

Should the other abilities, instead of being fueled by SP, be more of like a "Once Per Rest" or "Cha times per day" feature, then, in your opinion?

MonkeezOnFire said:

If this subclass is focused on spell points it might be cool if it was the only thing in the game that could actually restore a 6th level spell slot. I wouldn't allow restoring higher slots as spells above level 5 are dramatically more powerful and other features intentionally avoid this. Seems like something interesting to explore.

Click to expand...

Hm. This miiiight be a good addition as it gives yet more things to spend the SP on. Make it like 10 SP to do this and it's generally a "We really need this spell!" feature as even at level 20, that's eating 1/4 of your SP. Nice idea!

I do very much like the simplicity and easy book keeping on "Once per rest" and "modifier times per day" features. It just takes adding check-marks next to the ability on your character sheet to track. These timings also allow the features to not have to compete with each other for use of sorcery points which is kinda nice.

Jago said:

This was kind of the idea: The increased SP is generally there to use the extra features, as I feel the idea of only finishing with 20 SP, a 1st Level Spell costs 2 of those, and most Metamagic is only going to eat 1, you're basically going with Metamagic every time. I wanted something that would help expand what, precisely, SP can do, but that also meant that the class would need a few extra things to spend it on. Even if all you're really doing is just constantly creating Spell Slots or constantly Casting things you don't Know, I don't inherently see that as soooo unbalancing because you're still paying a limited cost that only refreshes once per day.

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This basically comes down to a difference of opinion. One of my problems with the sorcerer class is a dependance on long rest resources and an almost total dearth of at-will or short rest abilities. I want to solve the problem by giving the base class more at-will or short rest features. You want to solve it by giving them even more long rest resources and more abilities to spend them on.

I don't think your fix will work because it's addressing a class problem at the subclass level and because those who think sorcerers are fine because their table gets lots of long rests will view your sorcerer as OP, while the class is still subject to resource depletion in an adventure with many encounters per day.

As Sorcerers generally do not gain a lot of utilitarian spells, this was my attempt to make them somewhat appealing in that you can nab some fun things like Comprehend Languages with your super Charisma Score, and you're saving the Spell Slot, which is the big factor. You're still paying the SP, which I guess a better balancer would be you increase the SP Cost? But the idea was to give a small repertoire of spells that aren't going to eat your Spell Slots that allow you some utilitarian functionality (but you'll never eclipse like a Wizard with that).

A general idea I would think to help balance this would be to make it where you can't use Spell Slots to cast these: SP only, and double the SP cost, so again: we have a lot of SP, but also a lot to spend it on.

Click to expand...

Sorcerers have access to a decent number of utilitarian spells, including Comprehend Languages, the main problem is not having enough spell picks to grab any of them. Your 1st level feature addresses that problem already.

Like I said, resource depletion is a concern, so here's an alternative idea that I think is more elegant:


I considered using the language "must target only the caster" instead of "range of self" to include spells like Feather Fall and Spider Climb, but I'm worried it may already be too strong as it is.

This ability doesn't give your sorcerer access to any new spells, but it does allow her to conserve resources and cast dynamically. It's better than wizard rituals in that the sorcerer has access to the spells automatically and can cast them quickly, but it's worse in that it's limited to a single cast per short rest and caps out at 2nd level.

Potential problems are that it can be used for combat-centric spells like Shield and Mirror image instead of utility spells like Detect Magic and Alter Self, so it's hard to call it a utility ability.