Cryomancer Bloodline (PEACH)

[Vogie]

Cryomancers harness the power of cold, and channel it to a devastating effect. With a strong connection to the frozen wastelands and icy deserts, a cryomancer's innate connection to the flow and ebb of winter has taught them the devastating nature of ice and snow. They become conduits for the elemental plane of ice and cold, shaping the frigid ice with a sculptor's grace.

Frozen Heart
Starting at 1st level, whenever you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that deals cold damage, freezing magic erupts from you. This eruption causes creatures of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of you. Choose one:

Those creatures take cold damage equal to half your sorcerer level (rounded up)
Those creatures have their movement speed reduced by 10 feet until the end of your next turn.
You can effect a number of creatures up to your proficiency bonus.

In addition, you learn the Shape Water cantrip, which doesn't count against the number of Sorcerer cantrips you know. You can cause the water to form and freeze in the same casting, and can choose to make the ice take the form of one of the simple melee weapons in which you are already proficient

Ice Block
At 6th level, you gain resistance to cold damage.
In addition, as a reaction when you are hit by an attack that causes you to take bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, you can entomb yourself in ice, which melts away at the end of your next turn. You reduce that damage by an amount equal to your sorcerer level plus your Charisma score, and you are shoved straight line a number of feet up to the amount of damage taken (rounded up to the nearest 5) without provoking opportunity attacks.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Cryomancer's Fury
Starting at 14th level, when you are hit by a melee attack, you can use your reaction to deal Cold damage to the attacker. The damage equals your sorcerer level, and ignores resistance to Cold damage.

Frozen Soul
At 18th level, you gain immunity to Cold damage and critical hits that deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage against you become normal hits.
In addition, any spell or effect you create ignores resistance to Cold damage and treats immunity to Cold damage as resistance to Cold damage.



Notes:

If it looks familiar, good on you - it's a combination of the underwhelming Pyromancer (PS) bloodline, and the Sea Sorcerer (UA), but locked into an ice theme.
Ice Block is a nod to WoW, but mixed with the Watery Defense feature. I envision it as: you make the ice form around you, the hit lands, and then the block of ice (with you inside it) slides away with the impact, before melting.



Thoughts?

[nickl_2000]

My first thought on the initial reading is that there is literally nothing wrong with it. I don't see anything here that is excessively overpowered or underpowered.

I do wonder about the Frozen heart ability combined with twinning. I'm a level 9 sorcerer, and I twin a level 1 ice knife. I'm now hitting with the spell twice, and then afterwards doing 10 total damage to 4 different creatures without a save. I just worry that this could be a little overpowered. It would be something you would need to watch carefully, especially with a Hexblade or Paladin/Cryomancer who can stand in the middle of combat pretty easily.


I see your intent on the Ice Block where it moves, the description still feels kind of wonky. If the ice is sliding away from someone after they attacked it, how am I controlling how it is moving? It really need some fluff to explain it better, or a bit of a re-work

[clash]

I would get rid of the movement from Ice Block it is too finicky and the ability does enough without it.

If you really want to keep it make it "you are shoved 15 ft away from the attacker."

[Vogie]

My first thought on the initial reading is that there is literally nothing wrong with it. I don't see anything here that is excessively overpowered or underpowered.

I do wonder about the Frozen heart ability combined with twinning. I'm a level 9 sorcerer, and I twin a level 1 ice knife. I'm now hitting with the spell twice, and then afterwards doing 10 total damage to 4 different creatures without a save. I just worry that this could be a little overpowered. It would be something you would need to watch carefully, especially with a Hexblade or Paladin/Cryomancer who can stand in the middle of combat pretty easily.

I see your intent on the Ice Block where it moves, the description still feels kind of wonky. If the ice is sliding away from someone after they attacked it, how am I controlling how it is moving? It really need some fluff to explain it better, or a bit of a re-work

Ironically, I'm not that worried about that half of Frozen Heart, as you'd have to be uncomfortably close to the targets for that to be done, and the amount of damage is quite small. I do worry about those who run in to range, drop a mass speed reduction, then run out.

I expect there to be some dips, but the low level cold-dealing spells are relatively few. There's Ice Knife, Chromatic Orb, Snowball Swarm... and not a lot else until higher levels. However, I will drop the movement speed reduction to 10 feet (from 15) to match the Lance of Lethargy invocation.

The Paladins can't trigger it with any of their spells that I'm aware of, outside of 13th level Ancients (Ice Storm), and since it scales with sorc level, I expect it'd be relatively unused as part of their nova, and it's a non-bo with their normal MO of smiting.

I don't believe AoA triggers it, but I could be wrong.


I would get rid of the movement from Ice Block it is too finicky and the ability does enough without it.

If you really want to keep it make it "you are shoved 15 ft away from the attacker."

"Shoved" is exactly the word I needed.

Being able to prevent a pittance of damage once is not the best of abilities, especially only once a rest. I really like the idea of them having to chase you down (taking AoOs from your squad) if they wanted to hit you again

[nickl_2000]

The Paladins can't trigger it with any of their spells that I'm aware of, outside of 13th level Ancients (Ice Storm), and since it scales with sorc level, I expect it'd be relatively unused as part of their nova, and it's a non-bo with their normal MO of smiting.


I was actually thinking about the Paladin 2/Sorcerer 18 build that is so commonly toted on this board.

[Vogie]

I was actually thinking about the Paladin 2/Sorcerer 18 build that is so commonly toted on this board.

Ah. Hm. Would a 7th level Sorcadin jump into melee range, toss an ice knife (at disadvantage if the targets are in melee range, unless they have crossbow expert) to make a 2 cold damage explosion? I mean, they could. Even at high levels, at 15 (pal 2/ sorc 13), say - it'd be +7 damage to Cone of Cold... but only for 5 targets within 10 feet of you raising the average from 32 Damage (if all fail throw) to an average of 39?

I don't really see it.

Should I cap the number of potential targets?

[Garfunion]

I do wonder about the Frozen heart ability combined with twinning. I'm a level 9 sorcerer, and I twin a level 1 ice knife. I'm now hitting with the spell twice, and then afterwards doing 10 total damage to 4 different creatures without a save.

You can not twin an ice knife spell, because the spell can affect more than one creature. But you can twin chromatic orb(cold) spell.

[DuctTapeKatar]

I like it. Ice knife is my favorite spell, and a subclass that rewards you for using it makes me incredibly happy.

I have to ask: do you have any advice for making things like this for 5e? I don't think I can really balance skills out that well yet.

[Garfunion]

You could reflavor the Storm Sorcery.

Speaker of the North Wind
You can speak, read, and write Primordial.

Frost Magic
At 1st level, you can use a bonus action on your turn to cause icy frost to briefly surround the area around you, immediately before or after you cast a spell of 1st level or higher. Doing so allows you to slide(move) up to 15 feet without provoking opportunity attacks.

Frozen Heart
At 6th level, you gain resistance to cold damage. In addition, whenever you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that deals cold damage, frost magic erupts from you. This eruption causes creatures of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of you to take cold or piercing damage (choose each time this ability activates) equal to half your sorcerer level.

Ice Block
At 6th level, as a reaction when you take damage, you can entomb yourself in ice, which melts away at the end of your next turn. You gain 10 temporary hit points per warlock level, which take as much of the triggering damage as possible. Immediately after you take the damage, your speed is reduced to 0, and you become incapacitated. These effects, including any remaining temporary hit points, all end when the ice melts.

Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Winter’s Furry
Starting at 14th level, when you are hit by a melee attack, you can use your reaction to deal cold damage to the attacker. The damage equals your sorcerer level. The attacker must also make a Strength saving throw against your sorcerer spell save DC. On a failed save, the attacker becomes frozen in place reducing their speed to 0 and can not take reactions, until the start of the creature’s next turn.

Frozen Soul
At 18th level, you gain immunity to cold damage and critical hits that deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage against you become normal hits.
In addition, any spell or effect you create ignores resistance to Cold damage and treats immunity to Cold damage as resistance to Cold damage.

[Vogie]

I have to ask: do you have any advice for making things like this for 5e? I don't think I can really balance skills out that well yet.

Certainly - the best way to make homebrew that isn't overpowered or underpowered is to make it as simple as possible. First, get really comfortable with the published material, including UA and PS content, and what makes them strong or weak. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Then, alter them very subtly, and in the niche ways to help your theme, with an emphasis on restrictions. You don't want a Mary Sue Superman-esque character who can destroy the planet level one. You want to have a strong resonating theme that can be divided into chunks. Restrictions breed creativity, and by limiting yourself to things that are already kind of playtested in some form allows you to skip a lot of the over or underpowered problems.

This is a great one to look at, as it's basically parts of two UA style published content blended together with what didn't fit the theme removed. And Garfunion provided an excellent counter-example, by rewording parts of the Storm Sorcerer to match similar mechanics of my cryomancer, while grabbing the Ice Block ability from the Warlock Tomb of Levestus invocation.

If you look through the stuff in my sig, you'll see I have a wide variety of homebrew based on those core ideas. My Warlock patron based on the movie version of Venom, as another example, is based on a couple core ideas that already existed:

Level 1: The Rage Mechanic
Level 6: Making the Primal Savagery cantrip act like Eldritch Blast
Level 10: The passive abilities of the Revised Ranger
Level 14: The mechanic from Vorpal Sword
Even some of the unique mechanics found in that homebrew are a little dull when they're removed from the thematic mold:

The Blade ability to create darts was basically an differently-powered version of Magic Stone, Alongside half the Weapon Bond ability from the EK
The Chain ability came from the question "what if I could give rage to my teammate?"
The Tome ability is just the Agonizing Blast effect for NOT-EB, plus using the existing Grasp of Hadar effects to simulate web swinging (What if instead of shooting rays to make them come closer to me, I shoot rays so I could make me move closer to them??)


Once you've gotten familiar with the actual material, chosen your theme and subsequent restrictions you're going to play in, go ahead and bring it all together and post it for feedback.
Walt Stanchfield once wrote "We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better," and I think that basically applies to any creative endeavors, including this. At first, your homebrew will be fairly terrible... and that's fine. This is a really good forum for very smart people who love this game to get together and help each other out. We'll help you get better, and you'll find that your 'brew will get progressively better as time goes on.