Primal Path of the Rage Mage (PEACH)

[Arkhios]

One thought led to another, and I came up with the idea to convert Bloodrager from Pathfinder to 5th edition, but early in the process I was suggested a better name - and a better concept - for the sub-class: Rage Mage. (the link leads to The Homebrewery at NaturalCrit.com)

Originally(?) a prestige class in 3.5, Rage Mage was a barbarian gish that could cast arcane spells while raging, but did so at a great cost to their defense, both of which are things I wanted to implement at the core of the rage mage sub-class.

I wanted to experiment with the idea I had of "spellcasting fueled by your rage", and initially I planned to make this system split your remaining uses of rage into 10 "Fury Points" per rage use (a rage lasts for 1 minute at a time and 1 minute is 10 rounds, and generally every spellcaster can cast one spell each turn (or round) because most of them take an Action, so the idea evolved from there). You would then use Fury Points to cast your spells, much like you do with Ki Points as a Monk of the Four Elements. The caveat was that you had to be raging in order to split your remain rage uses to cast spells. It was quickly noted that this was actually unnecessarily punitive. Many other sub-classes already give you additional resources (spellcasting, for example, is already an additional resource with the spell slots it gives you).

So, I came up with the idea of taking the spellcasting progression of an Eldritch Knight (1/3 progression), and calculated how many Spell Points (variant rule from DMG) they would have, and gave the Rage Mage an equal amount of Fury Points, which they use in similar manner as Spell Points. However, the point is that it's a separate spellcasting ability, and thus won't stack with Spellcasting, Pact Magic features, or even with Spell Points for that matter. I decided to keep the caveat that you must be raging in order to cast your spells with Fury Points (hence the name).
Because Cantrips don't use Spell Slots, they wouldn't use Spell Points either and thus you couldn't use Fury Points with them, I decided to omit Cantrips from the Rage Mage entirely, but I gave another abilities in return (more of them below).

Having borrowed a part of the idea from sandmote's Primal Path of the Seer, Rage Mage is unable to concentrate on any spells while raging. But eventually they learn a limited ability to concentrate on their own spells while raging, at the cost of losing previous concentration whenever they cast another spell.

As a substitute for losing Cantrips, I added a (hopefully) flavorful option for each Rage Mage to choose when they enter this sub-class: They become masters of one element, and gain abilities based on that element whenever they are raging. I based these abilities upon the Investiture spells, and split their abilities between sub-class levels, so that you would get all of them slowly as you gain more power.

Obviously, not all of these worked well, so I had to scrap most of them and instead make abilities more fitting for each element.

I'll put the key points here in this post later when I'm able.

In the mean time, please take a look at the Homebrewery document (the link above), and tell me what you think of this sub-class idea.

Cheers!

[Arkhios]

This is hillarious: I also homebrewed a subclass by the same name, but these are so extremely different from one another!

I haven't done a detailed reading of yours, but I think that it might get a bit too much stuff. It gets spellcasting alongside the totem-esque choose-a-feature. If you look at the Eldritch Knight, all of its non-spell features (aside from weapon bonding) are to streamline the spellcasting. Meanwhile, your rage mage gets extra damage, at will pseudo-spells, and bursts of damage when you rage. I get that the no-concentration thing is supposed to make up for this, but you probably aren't going to invest in non insta-evocation spells.

I am no expert on balance, but I think you might need to tone down some of the elemental rage effects. This is still cool to see and compare, though.

I had the feeling this might be a bit "overclocked", indeed. That's why I wanted to get feedback so I'd know where would I need to cut the clutter.

Technically, I see that Elemental Rage adds a big chunk of options. Although, I have to wonder if the feeling is only due to the amount of text, rather than the actual effects they provide. I tried to keep them fairly simple, though I suppose I could improve on that part...


Anyway, from this feedback I made these changes:

I removed the extra damage from each baseline Elemental Rage effects, because those were more of an experiment really. Initially, I wanted to give the Rage Mage something in return of losing Cantrips, so I decided they'd get an additional damage resistance while raging, appropriate for their element - so that has to stay. I also realized that starting a rage with an instantaneous burst of energy around you is quite enough for an at-will-esque feature, and they will get it at 10th level when the Elemental Rage improves (reason for the 10th level is basically this: Eldritch Knight gets two cantrips at 3rd level, and another at 10th level).

Additionally, after a full night's sleep I realized that the 14th level elemental action is perhaps a bit too much altogether, considering that you can cast spells, so I removed them entirely, and shifted their limited ability to concentrate to 14th level (similarly how sandmote did with their Seer, to be fair). Also, to cut the amount of features each sub-class level, I fused Spell Fury into the 14th level feature, giving its name to it and granting a relatively small boost to your spell damage.

[sandmote]

This really needs to be broken into two separate subclasses.

Otherwise, I'd specify the damage bonus from spell fury applies to one damage roll of a spell, not multiple rolls. Scorching Ray deals almost double damage if you don't.

[Arkhios]

This really needs to be broken into two separate subclasses.

Otherwise, I'd specify the damage bonus from spell fury applies to one damage roll of a spell, not multiple rolls. Scorching Ray deals almost double damage if you don't.

Yeah, that bit slipped past my notice. Already fixed. Good catch though :)

I suppose you're right that it should be two subclasses instead of one. I'll try to wrap the idea(s) around my head at work today (it's a rather quiet season right now).

[Arkhios]

I made another document for the elemental parts, but of course I forgot to save it, and now they're simply gone (because of work related reasons, I have to use a private window at work, so I don't even have any browsing history to search from <_<).
Luckily I remember the main gist of them and can probably build them again from ground up without problems. And, on hindsight, it would probably work better as a sub-class for another class anyway, like druid for example.

Anyway, what matters the most, is that I made further updates on the Rage Mage and tried to keep it more focused on one thing, and that is the "rage casting", plus some (out of combat) support abilities.