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Admiral Xytan 1
2015-12-13, 01:04 PM
As you can see, I just joined the site, so I'm not exactly sure how everything works, so I hope I put this in the right spot. I've prowled the forum for a while and read every strip of OOTS; I just haven't made an account until now.
I really like to create stuff for my games, be they magic items, cool NPC's, or new subclasses. This is a subclass I took a shot at after I got the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. It's a new Sorcerer Origin, based around Elemental Fire instead of Storm. As some of you may be able to tell by the names of the features, this subclass was also inspired by the Sunsinger Warlock from Destiny (which I am fairly obsessed with right now, and am working on converting a lot of items from Destiny to D&D 5e).
Anyway, I wanted to post this here so you guys can look at it and comment and help me refine because I am sure that it's going to need some tweaking to make it balanced, but I just can't bear to rip apart my creation unless other people tell me it needs to be done. So, here it is:

Fire Origin Sorcerer

Your innate magic comes from the power of elemental fire. Perhaps you were born near a node of elemental fire, or are the descendant of a being with great power over the element of fire or a connection the Elemental Plane of Fire. Whatever the case, the magic of the inferno permeates your being.
Fire Sorcerers are masters of aggressive combat-oriented magic, incinerating their foes with the power of the raging blaze that burns inside them.

Fire Speaker
The arcane magic you command is infused with elemental fire. You can speak, read, and write Prinordial. (Knowing this language allows you to understand and be understood by those who speak its dialects: Aquan, Auran, Ignan, and Terran.)

Blazing Magic
You add your Charisma modifier to the damage inflicted by your single-target fire spells.
At 6th level, your fire spells ignore fire resistance.
At 10th level, you add your Charisma modifier to the damage of all of your fire spells.

Fire Origin Spells
You learn the following spells at the corresponding levels, and they do not count against your number of spells known.
Sorcerer Level Spells
1st create bonfire, control flames, fire bolt, scorch
3rd agnazzar’s scorcher, scorching ray
5th fireball, flame arrows
7th wall of fire
9th immolation
11th investiture of flame
13th delayed blast fireball, fire storm

Fire Heart
At 6th level, you gain resistance to fire damage. If you would gain resistance to fire damage from another feature or spell, it becomes immunity to fire damage.
When you cast a fire spell of 3rd level or higher, you regain a Sorcery Point.

Radiant Skin
Starting at 6th level, you can, as a bonus action, cause bright light to emanate from you for up to a 20-foot radius, with dim light emanating from an additional amount equivalent to the bright light’s radius.

Blazing Fury
At 14th level, when you are hit by an attack, you can use your reaction to cast a fire spell that you can cast at-will at the attacker.

Radiance
At 18th level, you gain the following benefits:
You gain a magical flying speed of 60 feet.
Whenever you spend Sorcery Points on Metamagic for a fire spell, the cost is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 1). You can use one additional Metamagic option when you cast a fire spell. (What do you all think of this? I'm not particularly attached to it, so if you think I should cut it, I will. It just occurred to me and I wanted to see what everyone thought.)
Your Radiant Skin now also deals 1d10 fire damage to creatures who come within 5 feet of you or start their turns there. While it is active, nonmagical damage that you take is reduced by a number equal to your Charisma modifier.

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As a final note, the spell "Scorch" in the spell list is not a spell in the rulebooks. It's a spell I'm going to finalize at a later date, and is meant to be a touch fire cantrip.
With that said, I look forward to everyone's feedback.

ZenBear
2015-12-13, 09:28 PM
I like it, and look forward to more elemental sorcerer origins.

2 issues:

1. Gaining that many bonus spells is quite powerful. I can't say for certain how much it might unbalance things but it's worth looking into.

2. Getting back SorcPoints every time you cast a spell (because how often will you not be casting a Fire spell as a Fire Sorc?) seems really powerful, especially when you can trade SorcPoints for spell slots that give you more SorcPoints.

I don't know a ton about full-caster balance, but that's just my two cents.

Admiral Xytan 1
2015-12-15, 06:08 PM
I like it, and look forward to more elemental sorcerer origins.

2 issues:

1. Gaining that many bonus spells is quite powerful. I can't say for certain how much it might unbalance things but it's worth looking into.

2. Getting back SorcPoints every time you cast a spell (because how often will you not be casting a Fire spell as a Fire Sorc?) seems really powerful, especially when you can trade SorcPoints for spell slots that give you more SorcPoints.

I don't know a ton about full-caster balance, but that's just my two cents.

To be honest, those are exactly the things that I was most concerned about. I just wanted to see if other people came to the same conclusions on their own.
I know that one of the big limiters of the sorcerer is his smaller number of spells, so expanding that would be a big boost in flexibility. My question then becomes: how much do you think I should reduce the number of additional spells granted by this subclass? Cut the number in half? A fourth? Or should I drop all but a couple of extra spells, like fireball and wall of fire?
The Sorcery Point problem came about because I wanted the class to be able to use more metamagic than the standard sorcerer. One idea that I had for limiting the number of sorcery points is only letting him regain a point when he casts a spell of a certain level or higher (i.e. 4th or 5th). Instead of, or more realistically, on top of that, maybe I should restrict these Sorcery Points from being used on creating spell slots, and only allow them to be used for metamagic. An entirely different direction to take concerning flexibility with spells would be to give him several option akin to the Warlock's invocations, that grant certain abilities, act as small buffs, or allow certain spells to be cast more frequently.

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on these ideas.

ZenBear
2015-12-16, 07:36 PM
Quick thought on the SorcPoint bit:

This being a fire specialist, and with the precedent of the Wild Magic Surge table, take some inspiration from the Warhammer: Fantasy Bright Wizards. Instead of SorcPoints have fire spells accrue some kind of resource that can be used to empower your damage at the risk of "overheating" and backfiring on the Sorcerer.

CantigThimble
2015-12-16, 08:03 PM
The sorcery point thing is really interesting. How about metamagics on fire spells cost one fewer sorcery point to a minimum of one?

I don't think the bonus spells known are necessary, this subclass already gives some really good benefits and players are going to be taking fire spells without getting them for free. Really giving them bonus spells known is making them more control/utility focused as with their offense list taken care of they'll be free to take other spells. Having a more diverse spell list than the wild magic sorcerer doesn't really fit with the whole hyper-fire-specialist design.

Admiral Xytan 1
2015-12-17, 05:02 PM
The sorcery point thing is really interesting. How about metamagics on fire spells cost one fewer sorcery point to a minimum of one?

I don't think the bonus spells known are necessary, this subclass already gives some really good benefits and players are going to be taking fire spells without getting them for free. Really giving them bonus spells known is making them more control/utility focused as with their offense list taken care of they'll be free to take other spells. Having a more diverse spell list than the wild magic sorcerer doesn't really fit with the whole hyper-fire-specialist design.

I like the metamagic cost-reduction idea. I'm going to go ahead and put that in instead of the regenerating Sorcery Points.
I hear what you're saying about cutting out the bonus spells. Part of the reason behind it is that I didn't want this sorcerer to only be casting fire spells and nothing else; a large number of his known spells should be fire-related, definitely, I just wanted him to be able to cast some other stuff too. The other reason behind it is the fact that I like powerful things, and free stuff always makes you stronger (possibly too strong). Anyway, everyone, let me know if you think I should cut out the extra spells known. If you guys think so, I'll go ahead and do it.

ZenBear
2015-12-17, 06:00 PM
Well I'm AFB but if you count up all the Fire spells in the game/that are available to Sorcerers, subtract that from the Sorcerer spells one can know. If there are too many, or some are not available to Sorcerers, give them those, just enough to allow a bit of flexibility. They will be casting Fire spells almost exclusively in combat, but a few out of combat utility options are in order. Also, there should definitely be a means of piercing resistance/immunity to fire damage if there isn't already. Don't want the player to be completed useless against a red dragon, that's no fun.

Admiral Xytan 1
2015-12-20, 09:41 AM
Well I'm AFB but if you count up all the Fire spells in the game/that are available to Sorcerers, subtract that from the Sorcerer spells one can know. If there are too many, or some are not available to Sorcerers, give them those, just enough to allow a bit of flexibility. They will be casting Fire spells almost exclusively in combat, but a few out of combat utility options are in order. Also, there should definitely be a means of piercing resistance/immunity to fire damage if there isn't already. Don't want the player to be completed useless against a red dragon, that's no fun.

I count 13 fire spells and 4 fire cantrips on the Sorcerer spell list. A 20th level Sorcerer knows 15 spells and 6 cantrips. So, if the Sorcerer took all of the fire spells and cantrips, he'd have two choices left over for each. While that might be fine for the number of cantrips, that is a very limited choice of spells. So, essentially, the Sorcerer would have to simply give up knowing several of the fire spells in order to be able to do pretty much anything else.

And now I'm just reading my post again, completely baffled that there is no way to overcome fire resistance. What was I thinking? Fire is the most-commonly resisted damage type in the game. I seem to recall making a specific note to deal with that, but it appears that it just slipped my mind. Thank you for pointing it out. I will put something in right away and bold it so everyone can see.

Corghall
2017-02-07, 10:04 PM
As a final note, the spell "Scorch" in the spell list is not a spell in the rulebooks. It's a spell I'm going to finalize at a later date, and is meant to be a touch fire cantrip.
Did you ever finish this? I'm going to use this in a game coming up soon and I can't find the spell.