Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Giant Soul Sorcerer

I like the bonus spells and all the different things that vary by giant (dragon sorcerers and circle of the land druids should have this kind of variety), but it seems like it is trying to make the melee sorcerer without a lot of things that are good for melee. It is a strange day when the hill giant origin makes for a "better" fit than many other types. I might have given the fire giant flame blade, the storm giant thunderous smite, and ensnaring strike for the stone giant. Not sure what I would give the cloud giant.

 

[Tallifer]

I'm also really enjoying this UA. It has a lot of flavor and I think it fits even better in Eberron than it does in FR.

Forsooth. I immediately posted this class to the Facebook Group for my Eberron campaign. Moreover, my players happen to be exploring the lost city of the giants and the giantish temple to the currently asleep Living Mountain.

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[UngeheuerLich]

Sorcerers should habe light armor proficiency and spear proficiency like in 3e. That would help. At least that should be added to that subclass. The rest is conceptually nice

 

[Barantor]

The more I've looked into Sorc for 5E, the more I think they should've changed it's prime casting ability to Constitution instead of Charisma. I rarely have players that pick it over warlock or bard and wizards step on it's toes a lot more now too.

 

[Li Shenron]

Sorcerers should habe light armor proficiency and spear proficiency like in 3e.

Spear proficiency would probably change very little, so adding it would have definitely been ok. Even having full simple weapon proficiencies like Warlock wouldn't really change much.

The armor proficiency is a bit different. In my opinion the Sorcerer was designed (again) with the Wizard as a starting point, and in fact it has the same weapons & armor proficiencies. The Warlock has a slight bent on combat, hence the light armor and simple weapon prof, but also notice that both Wizard and Sorcerer have Mage Armor while Warlock does not. This is actually a problem for the Sorcerer, because Mage Armor is a long-duration spell that in most cases requires one spell slot to cover the whole day (and this cost is identical to both classes), but it actually also 'costs' one spell known, and that's a much bigger cost for the Sorcerer that the Wizard.

In fact, the PHB Dragon Sorcerer offers a natural armor bonus, that basically frees up one known spell that the Sorcerer can choose to be something else. But other Sorcerer subclasses AFAIK are stuck with a low AC of basically 10+Dex, while Dragon Sorcerer and Wizard (the latter for a cost of a daily slot) have 13+Dex, and the Warlock has up to 12+Dex.

The more I've looked into Sorc for 5E, the more I think they should've changed it's prime casting ability to Constitution instead of Charisma. I rarely have players that pick it over warlock or bard and wizards step on it's toes a lot more now too.

It would have been an interesting design choice... probably the majority of the gamer's base is too attached to the idea of a charismatic Sorcerer, but if we think about it, this prevents the possibility of having an antisocial or introverted Sorcerer, which frankly isn't an inappropriate concept for someone who was born with weird powers! I know that the original idea was "Sorcerer needs have high Cha because she controls her magic power with her force of personality", but it could have been as well "Sorcerer needs have high Con because she controls her magic power with her force of concentration".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sorcerers should habe light armor proficiency and spear proficiency like in 3e. That would help. At least that should be added to that subclass. The rest is conceptually nice

Dwarf
Lizardfolk
Tortal

 

[SkidAce]

2) Why exactly having a Giant ancestor would be a "sorcerous origin" i.e. the source/reason of your innate spellcasting? Only cloud and storm giants can cast some spells! All other giants are just big brutes with nothing magical. By that reasoning, we could have a "human soul sorcerer" too.

/

Works for me...all my "true" giants are a lot less populous and basically immortal until slain. So they may not cast spells, but they are magical, legendary creatures.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Tomelocks can also get it.

True -- thanks.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Well, this archetype certainly raises a lot of questions...

1) Bonus known spells... again? Didn't they go quite far into explaining why it was such a bad idea that they had to remove bonus known spells from the Storm Sorcerer? I am all in favor of increasing the known Sorcerer spells, but I'd like WotC to take a clear stand about it.

2) Why exactly having a Giant ancestor would be a "sorcerous origin" i.e. the source/reason of your innate spellcasting? Only cloud and storm giants can cast some spells! All other giants are just big brutes with nothing magical. By that reasoning, we could have a "human soul sorcerer" too.

3) Assuming it's now become officially ok to grant bonus known spells, and that it's acceptable that a non-magic ancestor causes magic descendants... at least the bonus spells could be the same spells that such ancestors can cast, not something else like invisibility.

4) Clearly, this archetype is all about investing in a high Constitution score. That's interesting, but a bit odd... are they trying to create subclasses that have a higher ability score cost in exchange for more power over the baseline? Like, we give you bonus known spells which are normally unavailable to sorcerer subclasses (and NONE of your subclass features will cost sorcery points, yay!) but we make you pay by making you more MAD?

5) The ability to increase size is cool. But it sounds like something you'd want to do when you're out of spells, and thus decide it's time to wade into battle! So it makes no sense at all that this ability is triggered by casting spells. It could be more simply an action or bonus action of its own.

And on a more general tone... again with more subclasses?? When are they going to work on something else? :/

For the bonus spells, MM said they wanted to give sorcerers levels 1-2 bonus spells, but not the levels 1-5 that classes like cleric and warlock got. To be fair, there would have been endless whining and moaning had the PHB sorcerer only had bonus spells for levels 1-2. Maybe they think sorcerer players will be grateful--poor deluded fools.

 

[Dausuul]

First thing: This subclass needs an ability that gives you advantage on Charisma skill checks to interact with giants. That sort of ability is a "ribbon" and won't significantly affect class balance, but it would have a big impact on the feel of the class. Any time the party interacts with giants, the giant-soul will be reminded, "Hey, these guys are your distant kin."

Now, to the actual abilities: The focus on Constitution fits very well with the giant theme. And it's very flavorful. However, the subclass suffers the same problem as a lot of warlock abilities (for non-bladelocks): It's loaded down with tanky defensive abilities, but until it reaches the mid-teens, it doesn't have any reason to get in melee where those abilities would see regular use.

I think the giant-soul would be a splendid opportunity to create a melee sorcerer subclass, like a sorcerer version of the hexblade. (In fact, using the giant-soul as it stands, a one-level dip in hexblade would do wonders.) However, this is not that subclass.

 

[rczarnec]

Ahm can any one give a hint where the idea of this is from?

Is this some Eberron Thing? What is this Ostrerria world and how does this fit into the multiverse?

Ostoria was the original kingdom of the giants in Faerun.