PDA

View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Sorcererous Origin: White Magic



Giegue
2017-05-30, 06:11 PM
As the title says. Some individual who's name I forget made a "Dark Knight" (As-in the final fantasy Job) archetype for fighters. I was thus inspired to turn another classic Final Fantasy Job into an archetype, paticularly the White Mage, and I have chosen to make it a Sorcerer Origin. Why Sorcerer? Well, for one, the sorcerer is a d6 class that wears robes and, more importantly, gets its archetype at level 1. The latter is important because unlike, say, the wizard, this allows the "white mage" to have healing abilities right at level 1 instead of feeling nothing like a "white mage" until level 2 when a wizard gets their archetype. Additionally, this lets the archetype also work as a re-work of the favored soul with minimal refluffing if you want to adapt it to a regular D&D setting. I am, however, concerned about the balance of some features, particularly the 1st level alterations to your healing spells, the 6th level feature and iconic capstone of Holy. So without further adue, I present...the White Magic Sorcererous Origin!



White Magic

http://i.imgur.com/5oyfhl6.png

Your spellcasting power comes from the ancient art of White Magic. Unlike other sorcerers who are simply born with innate magic, you draw your magic from a well-established magical tradition. However, unlike the studious path of the wizard, the art of white magic above all else requires empathy and the ability to exert your will upon the natural magic found within the world. While a wizard studies ancient means of drawing magic from some unknowable, cosmic source, as a White Mage you tap magic directly from the natural world. However, while a druid bonds with nature, you instead take from it, forcing your will upon the life-giving energies of the world's soul, sometimes called the lifestream, and using them to protect and restore your allies. As a result of the source of your magic, your spells often mirror those of clerics and other divine spellcasters, yet instead of serving a divinity you draw power from the inherent divine soul of the world and make it do your bidding.

As a result of how white magic works, it can be potentially destructive to the world. In the past, wanton use of white magic, even if it was well-intentioned, lead to catastrophes that nearly destroyed the world. Due to this, the art of White Magic has become a closely guarded secret, taught to only to those who have the empathy and understanding of life's interconnected nature to fully grasp what grave consequences the art can have when used wrongly.

White Magic

Due to your unique brand of magic, you gain access to curative and beneficial magics beyond the scope of other sorcerers. When your Spellcasting feature lets you learn a sorcerer cantrip or a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose the new spell from the cleric spell list, in addition to the sorcerer spell list. You must otherwise obey all the restrictions for selecting the spell, and it becomes a sorcerer spell for you. You also learn the Cure Wounds spell, which doesn’t count against your number of sorcerer spells known. Additionally, when you cast Cure Wounds, Lesser Restoration or Greater Restoration, you can cast it at a range of 30ft instead of a range of touch if you give up your move for the turn. (You cannot do this if you have already moved during a turn you cast Cure Wounds.)

Holy Seal

As a bonus action, you create a white magic sigil beneath the feet of one ally you can see within 30ft that lasts until the end of your turn. As long as that ally is standing in that sigil: when you cast a cleric spell that heals damage on them, instead of rolling dice to determine how much damage that spell heals them for, that spell heals them for the maximum amount of damage it could heal for. (So if you cast a Cure Wounds spell on that ally using a 1st level slot, it would heal 8 + your charisma modifier damage instead of 1d8 + your charisma modifier damage. If you cast a Mass Cure Wounds on your party using a 5th level slot, that ally would heal 24 + your charisma modifier while the rest of your party would heal 3d8 + your charisma modifier.)

Once you use this feature, you cannot do so again until you complete a short or long rest. At 5th level, this increases to twice per-short or long rest and at 11th level, to three times per-short or long rest.

Protect

At 6th level you learn how to place protective wards on your allies with your white magic. Once per-short or long rest, you can create a protective shield around yourself or a single ally within 30ft as an action. This shield lasts until you complete a long rest. At 11th level, you increase the number of times you can create a shield to twice per-short or long rest and at 17th level, you increase it to three times per short or long rest. For 1 minute, the shield increases the armor class of the creature benefiting from it by 2. Additionally, when you create a shield, it has hit points and a hit point maximum equal to twice your Sorcerer level + your Charisma modifier. Whenever the character benefiting from the shield takes damage, the shield takes the damage instead. If this damage reduces the shield to 0 hit points, the character benefiting from it takes any remaining damage.

While the shield has 0 hit points, it can't absorb damage, but it's magic remains. When you cast a spell that heals damage (such as Cure Wounds) on an creature benefiting from a shield, you can restore some of that shield's power, causing it to immediately regain a number of hit points equal to twice the level of the spell you cast on that creature. (up to that shield's hit point maximum; any excess hit points above that are lost.) A character can only benefit from a single shield at at time, and you can only have a number of shields equal to your Charisma modifier active at once.

Shield Against Magic

Eventually your ability to protect allies becomes such that you can also use your shields to ward them from spells. Starting at 14th level, when you give an ally a shield with your Protect feature (but not restore a shield's power with a healing spell), you can also give them a protective blessing. The first time that ally would fail a saving throw after receiving that shield, they can re-roll that saving throw with a bonus equal to your Charisma modifier on that roll.

Ancient Spell: Holy

At 18th level you learn the ultimate white magic art: the ancient spell Holy. As an action, you can expend a 9th level spell slot to call down a sphere of pure radiant energy to smite your foes. When you do this, you target a 30ft radius spread and force all creatures within that spread to make a Dexterity saving throw against your Sorcerer spell save DC. All creatures in the spread take 40d6 radiant damage and are stunned for 1 round. On a successful save those creatures are not stunned and only take half as much damage.

AngryJesusMan
2017-05-31, 09:57 AM
I like it. It's a good choice to use Sorcerer as the base because they get their Sorcerous Origin at 1st level.

White Magic - I'm not a fan of leaving the blasty-ness of normal Sorcerer spells available to this archetype. To each their own, but to me it was always a sacrifice having one of these characters because they had almost zero offensive capability aside from the basic attacks and ability to "heal" undead for damage until Holy entered the equation, at which point they became a real threat. Leaving it with access to the normal Sorcerer spells makes it feel more like a Red Mage to me, but that's just my opinion.

Holy Seal - I like it. It's a good feature.

Protect - I don't usually like to see another subclass's unique feature used (which is why I'm not fond of all of the UA material where Superiority Dice are used, but I digress). That said, this looks like a fine use of the Abjuration Wizard's Arcane Ward. It's fairly thematic based on the source material, and it's varied a bit to focus on healing rather than abjuration. The only thing that jumps out to me is that it starts out requiring a long rest, but at 11th level it can refresh on short rests. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. I was going to suggest leaving it to long rests since you can refresh them with spells and you don't get your spells back until you complete a long rest. That is, until I noticed that they only last for a minute. I think it will be a very stout ability, but short rests might be fine. Also, it looks like the "number of shields equal to Charisma modifier" is probably superfluous. You can't get them back until you complete a rest, and you only have up to three at a time, so I don't think it needs an extra limitation.

Getting past all of that, if I were intent on adding something like this (because the Protect spell was pretty intrinsic to what a White Mage brought to the table in Final Fantasy), I might go with something that grants resistance to piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning, like Barbarian rage. Maybe make Blade Ward much stronger in the hands of a White Mage, or give them an ability that behaves in the same general way? That way it mechanically achieves precisely the same thing as the spell did in the games (halving physical damage, IIRC). I feel like this feature as it currently stands lets you give tanks too much extra power. Of course, that's what I would do. You do as you see fit and maybe take my thoughts into consideration.

Shield Against Magic - this looks fine to me.

Holy - The first thing I see is that you don't give this a range. It specifies a 30 feet spread, but otherwise it doesn't outline where that 30 feet spread has to be. Also, I would presume that "30 feet spread" means "30 feet radius sphere", but I could see someone getting confused over whether it's a radius or a cube. Beyond that, I would imagine that you used Meteor Swarm as the template for this. While this one targets one 30 feet radius whereas Meteor Swarm targets four 40 feet radius spheres, Meteor Swarm does use two damage types that are fairly commonly resisted (fire and bludgeoning). This uses radiant which isn't nearly as commonly resisted and is actually fairly common as a vulnerability. Still, it's at 18th level, so I can't say that it's a bad thing. And finally, the fact that this is a subclass feature rather than a spell means it bypasses a lot of the protections that enemies might have against spells, like Counterspell and such. That's a pretty powerful argument that points to this feature being overpowered. It uses a spell slot, which is sufficiently pricey, but I'm not sure that makes up for the combo of 40d6 radiant and avoiding spell protections.

All-in-all I like the style you went with and I look forward to any revisions you might make along the way. I might even go back and update mine to include a protect-type ability. Thanks for the inspiration.