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?

 

[Blue]

Man, that Favored Soul looks seriously broken. If you went Dwarf or Lizardfolk for AC, you can basically make a better cleric.

Are you saying that on the strength of the spell selection or of the class chassis?

A favored soul has a bigger list to pick from, but much fewer spells prepared (1/3 to 1/2) as the cleric and the cleric can change their spells among all of them every long rest.

Many cleric domains offer better armor then dwarf/lizard. Lizard could focus on DEX after they get their WIS up, but there is an opportunity cost in there. Even the ones that don't update offer the same as dwarf plus shields, and choice of race.

Sorcerer base class chassis probably beats out cleric base class because of metamagic and breaking down spells, but many/most cleric domains grant more than the other favored soul abilities.

I say you could make a great alternate divine caster, but I don't say that you can obsolete cleric with this at all - both are viable and have different strengths and weaknesses.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Loving these quite a bit, they all need tuning, but the concepts themselves are solid- favored soul is now the divine sorcerer full stop and isn't a paladin expy. Phoenix and Sea sorcery are cool options, with Phoenix being ideal for a blaster sorcerer, and Sea for a control sorcerer. That leaves stone sorcerer, which i love because it has shades of 4e sword mage, i expected it to be my least favorite of the paths named, but in reality, it's probably my favorite.

it works as an earth sorcerer, it's defensive and predicated on physical strength- but it also functions fine if you treat it as a more generic swordmage type, since you can still grab all the normal sorcerer stuff. I'll be excited to try it out at some point!

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

This version of the Favored Soul reminds me of the 4th edition Invoker. I think a character based on mixing the few debuffs from the sorcerer's list with the ones from the cleric's plus metamagic would make an interesting character.

 

[cbwjm]

Looking at this again, I think there is some really great stuff here that I will likely steal for some of my homebrew.

For the favoured soul, I think I might change that up a bit and have them choose a domain and add those spells as an expanded spell list. Supernatural resilience and favoured by the gods I might change up to include the the channel divinity option of the chosen domain (only the chosen domain, no turn undead) and maybe the level 1 domain ability (such as the life cleric's Disciple of Life ability).

The earth sorcerer has some great ideas to help me with porting over the sword mage via the Aegis abilities. I also really liked their armour ability, makes me think of Colossus from the X-Men as he armours up. It did seem a little weird at first, however, after thinking about it, it is clearly meant to be heavy armour.

The sea sorcerer's Curse of the Sea I thought was a cool feature. It either freezes, conducts electricity, or causes a spell to hit like a tidal wave.

The phoenix sorcerer's mantle of flame I might boost to once per short rest, I kind of feel that should be able to be used more often than once per day.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Also, interestingly enough, these reference two creatures, the phoenix and the nereid, that have yet to be updated for 5e. I'm wondering if this is a hint we'll see them updated soon. Granted, the nereid could very well make an appearance in TftYP, as it featured in one of the modules that will be updated...

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[Saeviomagy]

Favoured soul means you can get cleric spells with a charisma stat, which has some interesting implications for the various charisma casters.

Stone sorcery gives anyone the ability to escape the "dex or heavy armor" paradigm. You can now dump both dex AND strength, pump your constitution and have an AC competitive with plate mail, and you grab shield proficiency at the same time. Moon druids can get some serious mileage here, as can just about any caster who doesn't care to use mundane weapons.

 

[bedir than]

Favoured soul means you can get cleric spells with a charisma stat, which has some interesting implications for the various charisma casters.

Stone sorcery gives anyone the ability to escape the "dex or heavy armor" paradigm. You can now dump both dex AND strength, pump your constitution and have an AC competitive with plate mail, and you grab shield proficiency at the same time. Moon druids can get some serious mileage here, as can just about any caster who doesn't care to use mundane weapons.

how do you get to plate mail level AC with 13+Con (it doesn't say +CON&DEX)

 

[TwoSix]

Man, that Favored Soul looks seriously broken. If you went Dwarf or Lizardfolk for AC, you can basically make a better cleric.

I'd probably go Half-Elf or (oddly) Triton. Stone Sorcerer is begging for 16s in Str, Con, and Cha to start.

 

[TwoSix]

how do you get to plate mail level AC with 13+Con (it doesn't say +CON&DEX)

20 Con = 18 AC = Plate.

 

[Greg K]

I don't think this Favored Soul is meant to be another holy warrior. That's what clerics and paladins are for. This Favored Soul is meant to be Gandalf.

The new favored soul also works for those sorcerers from myth and stories where Sorcerers are not warriors, but receive their ability to cast arcane spells from being the child of a deity (e.g., Circe, Estra (from Archer: Fugitive From the Empire) along with possibly abilities like communing with their parent combined with both many examples from myths in which a deity watches over the demi-god child (or a favored person) and other myths/stories in which being the child of a divine being makes one naturally lucky.

Personally, I prefer the above take to a winged angelic warrior as the winged angelic warrior doesn't fit my campaigns.