D&D 5E Xanatar's Guide to Everything: Divine Soul Sorcerer

[AmerginLiath]

It's a tedious job. I find it really hard to transcribe Mearls, but Crawford is very clear-spoken.

Morris, I’ve done oral history transcriptions for work in the past, so I feel the pain. Especially since those videos are technically part of conversations, there’s a lot of body language and shorthand involved that likely makes it even harder (I’d be torn over sometimes including descriptors of motions).

 

[Li Shenron]

I am ok with the favoured / divine soul sorcerer.

But really, how many more arcane-divine hybrid do we need? We're getting the Arcane domain and the Theurgy wizard, the Celestial warlock...

 

[Leatherhead]

But really, how many more arcane-divine hybrid do we need? We're getting... the Theurgy wizard

I doubt we are getting the Theurge. Not only was that subclass a mechanical nightmare, but we also got the War Wizard. Which is far more likely to claim the only Wizard subclass slot, despite how lackluster War Wizards were.

 

[Li Shenron]

I doubt we are getting the Theurge. Not only was that subclass a mechanical nightmare, but we also got the War Wizard. Which is far more likely to claim the only Wizard subclass slot, despite how lackluster War Wizards were.

You are right. The War Wizard was even a worse case IMHO, since we probably have more "gish" options already than "arcane-divine hybrids", and thus it's more likely to end up in the book

 

[MoonSong]

I like the idea of having a range of different divine abilities, rather than always healing. Even with just a limited list, this makes it easier to expand the list for other gods/domains/spheres of influence. Since I’m most interested in this subclass as a way of playing the Dragonlance Mystic, that’s exactly the sort of change to the UA Favored Soul that I was looking for.

It already is the most flexible subclass. The divine flavor is easier to ignore or to work with.

I am ok with the favoured / divine soul sorcerer.

But really, how many more arcane-divine hybrid do we need? We're getting the Arcane domain and the Theurgy wizard, the Celestial warlock...

Unless they changed that, the divine soul has the option to be even more arcane that divine. The sorcerer list overlaps a lot with the cleric's. It even shares spells wizards and clerics don't. In that way the sorcerer is already an hybrid of sorts even before the divine soul. Of course the distinction is fuzzy at best, exactly what makes arcane magic arcane? just being non-divine? or is the scholarly flavor important? I'd dare to say plain sorcerer isn't even arcane to begin with.

 

[gyor]

You are right. The War Wizard was even a worse case IMHO, since we probably have more "gish" options already than "arcane-divine hybrids", and thus it's more likely to end up in the book

The War Wizard isn't a Gish at all, not even a little, the War Wizard was just a wizard who learned to serve in the military, but not as melee soldier, but rather as magical artillery, so defence spells to protect himself because on the battlefield he's a top tier target, offensive magic to kill a lot of enemies the basic function of, artillery, and some tactical abilities so he can the most of his abilties on the battle field.

People really misunderstood the function of the War Wizard, it's not another version of the Spellsinger, the Spellsinger brings together skill in weapons with spells in an Elvish artistic, way, the War Wizard doesn't try to be a fighter, he's interested into armies and is designed pragmatically on that function.

Yes Evoker is good at blasting things, but the Evoker isn't designed tactically, isn't designed to serve in military armies, they can do so, but the focus of the Evoker is to study of the Evocation school of magic, the War Wizard studies war (not simply fighting, but war) and the applications of magic to war.

If it gets picked for XGTE I hope it focuses on tactics more.

 

[gyor]

Theurge is not a divine arcane hybrid, it's a religious arcane spellcaster, the power source for it's spells is still completely arcane. Even it's channel divinity is 100% arcane. They could explain how that works better.

The Celestial Warlock again is pure arcane as it's power source, it doesn't even get it's spells from a God, it's gets them from Celestials, it's not so different from a fiend pact aside from the morality of it's patrons.

The Arcane Domain is purely divine magic, you worship a God of Arcane magic so your divine magic gets to emulate some arcane spells a bit, but your not an arcane magic user unless you multiclass.

Only the Bard is argueable a hybrid class, stealing the knowledge of how to cast another classes spells as magical secrets.

The Divine Soul is odd, it's argueable changes the power source of the parent class from Arcane to Divine. It's up to interruotation as to if only the cleric spells are divine magic or if all the Divine Souls spells are Divine. You have a shard of divinity in your soul powering spells so I learn towards all the, DS spells being divine, they come from a piece of God in you.

 

[gyor]

I hope the Divine Soul gets the Holy Symbol profiency.

 

[gyor]

"But, that felt like it was going a little bit further the field and then I think the using it of the mystic made a little bit more sense."

At first I thought he was saying that the Avatar could be a subclass of the 5e Mystic, then I realized he's referring to the Mystic Class from previous edition, the charisma using divine caster class, which could be proof that the previous editions of the Mystic could have more influence on the class.

PS. I really wish they'd change the name of the 5e Mystic Class to Psion as it has NOTHING in common with the original Mystic class or the Mystic Wanderer prestige class or the Dragonlance Mystic (all of which are related I believe).

 

[gyor]

Doesn't even need to be seduced by an evil force. The concept of supremely good beings driven to evil means is hardly new, and is fairly common in literature and film. The character of Gabriel in the Prophecy movies or the Kingpriest of Istar from Dragonlance come readily to mind. Eberron touched on this idea back in the day as well.

All that being said, I don't really like the "healing=good alignment" association. As if evil creatures never have a need to be healed, or a desire to keep themselves, their allies, and/or their servants healthy. Though I suppose that if we double down on the "evil cannot be a source of healing" idea, it adds both an element of tragedy for those more concerned with results than methods and some interesting permutations to the Divine Soul class debate.

The Evil Divine Soul will still have access to healing spells from the cleric class.