Last Updated on November 20, 2023
1st Level: Bonus Proficiencies
You gain proficiency with shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons.
1st Level: Metal Magic
You gain access to the spells listed.
| Stone Sorcerer Spells | |
| Spell Level | Spell Name |
| 1st | Compelled Duel |
| 1st | Searing Smite |
| 1st | Thunderous Smite |
| 1st | Wrathful Smite |
| 2nd | Branding Smite |
| 2nd | Magic Weapon |
| 3rd | Binding Smite |
| 3rd | Elemental Weapon |
| 4th | Staggering Smite |
When your spellcasting feature lets you learn a Sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, you can select one of these spells in place of a spell from the standard Sorcerer spell list.
You must otherwise obey all other restrictions in choosing a spell, and the spell becomes a Sorcerer spell for you.
1st Level: Stone’s Durability
Your hit point maximum increases by 1 and increases by 1 again whenever you gain a level in this class.
As an action, you can gain a base AC of 13 + your Con modifier if you aren’t wearing armor. This lasts until you end it as a bonus action, you are incapacitated, or you don armor other than a shield.
6th Level: Stone Aegis
As a bonus action, you can grant a bonus to an allied creature you can see within 60 feet of you. Any bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage the target takes is reduced by 2 + your Sorcerer level divided by 4. This lasts for 1 minute, until you use it again, or until you are incapacitated.
Additionally, when a creature you can see within 60 feet of you hits the selected ally with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to teleport to an unoccupied space you can see within 5 feet of the attacker.
You can then make a melee weapon attack against the attacker. If it hits, you deal an extra 1d10 force damage, which is increased by 1d10 at 11th level and 17th level. You can only use the teleportation ability if you are on the same surface as the attacker.
14th Level: Stone’s Edge
When you cast a damage-dealing spell, choose one creature damaged by it. That creature takes extra force damage equal to half of your Sorcerer level. This feature can only be used once per casting of a spell.
18th Level: Earth Master’s Aegis
You can choose three allies to protect with Stone Aegis.
Table of Contents
Stone Sorcery (UA) Sorcerer Subclass Guide
What Is Stone Sorcery?
Stone sorcery is a sorcerous origin that provides Sorcerers with a deep connection to earth magic. This isn’t a school of magic but rather a collection of spells and concepts that relate to the plane of elemental earth. This loose definition allows a number of features to be considered for the Sorcerer that normally wouldn’t be part of its design.
Earth magic could really mean anything, but the designers of this playtest material decided on two key components to focus on: a hardy resolve and combat.
UA provides this incredibly flavorful piece of text that really sells me on what it’s trying to do: “Your link to earth magic grants you extraordinary resilience, and stone sorcerers have a natural affinity for combat. A steel blade feels like a natural extension of your body, and sorcerers with this origin have a knack for wielding both shields and weapons.”
This subclass fills a niche that isn’t really explored, at least not for the Sorcerer specifically. Sure, there are other martial spellcasters but none that have the full array of benefits offered to the Sorcerer class.
What Is Earth Magic?
The big selling point of this subclass is probably its expanded spell list. The Stone Sorcerer receives an array of spells focusing on martial combat, none of which are typically available to the Sorcerer.
Unlike some other subclasses throughout 5e, the list of spells is optional. You can choose to take one of these spells whenever you learn a new spell instead of simply knowing the spells in addition to your normal progression.
This is a bit of a double-edged sword for our “Sword-cerers” to wield. On one hand, you’re getting a great selection of spells to utilize for this build’s very specific function. On the other hand, choosing all nine of these spells means you only end up with six unique spells to make the build your own.
Before we discuss just how good the spells really are and how many you will want to keep in your build, let’s actually talk about what they are.
For simplicity’s sake and so you’re not reading the same boring set of words every time, I’ve decided to say “smite spell” instead of “a concentration spell cast on a bonus action.” So yeah, there are a lot of smites here.
1st Level – Compelled Duel
A Wisdom saving throw spell that goads a target into attacking you and gives it disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you.
This concentration spell lasts for 1 minute and ends if you cast a spell that targets another creature, if a creature friendly to you targets or casts a harmful spell on your target, if you attack any other creature, or if you end your turn 30 feet away from your target.
1st Level – Searing Smite
A smite spell that allows you to deal an extra 1d6 fire damage on the target of your next melee attack after casting the spell. Additionally, the target takes 2d6 fire damage at the start of each of its turns until the spell ends or it fails a Constitution saving throw.
If the spell is upcast, the initial damage is increased by 1d6 for each level of spell slot beyond 1st.
1st Level – Thunderous Smite
A smite spell that allows you to deal 2d6 thunder damage to the target of your next successful melee weapon attack. Additionally, if the target is a creature, it must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed 10 feet away from you and be knocked prone.
1st Level – Wrathful Smite
A smite spell that allows you to deal 1d6 psychic damage on your next successful melee weapon attack. Additionally, if the target is a creature, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened of you until the spell ends or until it uses an action to repeat and succeed on the saving throw.
2nd Level – Branding Smite
A smite spell that allows you to deal 2d6 radiant damage on your next successful melee weapon attack. The spell also causes an invisible target to become visible and causes any target to shed dim light in a 5-foot radius and be unable to become invisible until the spell ends.
If the spell is upcast, the initial damage is increased by 1d6 for each level of spell slot beyond 2nd.
2nd Level – Magic Weapon
Turn a nonmagical weapon into a magic weapon with a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls.
When upcast to 4th level or higher, the bonus increases to +2, and when upcast to 6th level or higher, the bonus increases to +3.
3rd Level – Blinding Smite
A smite spell that deals 3d8 radiant damage on your next successful melee weapon attack. A creature targeted by this spell must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be blinded until the spell ends.
3rd Level – Elemental Weapon
Turns a nonmagical weapon into a magic weapon with a +1 bonus to attack rolls and deals an extra 1d4 damage of acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder.
When upcast to 5th or 6th level, the attack roll bonus increases to a +2, and the extra damage increases to 2d4. When upcast to 7th level or higher, the bonus damage increases to +3, and the extra damage increases to 3d4.
4th Level – Staggering Smite
A smite spell that deals 4d6 psychic damage on your next successful melee weapon attack. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks and be unable to take reactions until the end of its next turn.
Which Spells Should a Stone Sorcerer Use?
The decisions here are made extremely simple; you don’t need all nine spells to be a good Stone Sorcerer. Since six of the spells are smites, two create magical weapons, and one is a unique spell, you’ll probably only end up choosing three or four to end up with a rock-solid build.
Starting with smites, I would suggest only using one, but there is an argument that using two lends itself to diversity in your casting. Fortunately, Sorcerers can already change damage types with metamagic, so that isn’t the diversity we’re worried about. We simply want to choose the added ability of the smite that works for us.
Of all of these, searing is probably the best since it can deal continuous damage and be upcast for significant first-hit damage.
A close runner-up is blinding since the blinded condition gives attack rolls against an affected creature advantage and gives the affected creature disadvantage on attack rolls. It can’t be upcast, but that’s the price we pay for a decent secondary effect.
Don’t choose Wrathful Smite if you take Compelled Duel! You’re either focusing on keeping a creature near you or you’re trying to keep them off of you. With this build, you’re almost definitely trying to keep them up close and personal.
Another thing you’ll notice here is that all but the magical-weapon spells use your concentration. So, while Compelled Duel is an excellent spell for this subclass that can be used to great ends, it’s not typically what you’re going to want to burn a 1st-level spell slot on if it’s just going to be wasted in two turns for a smite to be cast.
This really leaves us with Magic Weapon and Elemental Weapon, and these two are perfect additions to the team. You can easily take Magic Weapon first and then swap it out for Elemental Weapon when you reach the appropriate Sorcerer level.
However! Magical weapons aren’t hard to come by, and you can probably quickly find something good enough to avoid using these spells entirely.
What have we learned? The spell list here is, on the surface, pretty great. Smites are awesome, and there’s a reason Paladins get almost exclusive access to them. They’re the perfect flavor of spell to boost a martial combatant’s goals.
Unfortunately, the spells all exist in direct conflict with each other. Rather than a spell list that lends itself to a plan of action in combat, this spell list is very simply a list of options.
Grab one to three of them, sure, but don’t waste your limited known spells on what are essentially slight variations of the same spell.
Stone Sorcerer Build
While I don’t think this is a great subclass, it doesn’t mean it can’t be useful for a good build.
Six levels in this subclass get us access to Stone Aegis, but we don’t need a level 20 build for just this class. Multiclassing is the way to go here, allowing us access to more martial abilities.
For this build, we’ve used the standard array ability scores present in the PHB (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8).
- Class: Stone Sorcerer 14, Oath of Conquest Paladin 6
- Race: Half-Elf (Wood Elf Heritage)
- Background: Far Traveler
- Ability Scores: STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA
- Skill Proficiencies: Insight, Proficiency
- Language Proficiencies: Terran, Elven, Common
- Tool Proficiencies: Musical Instrument
- Equipment: A light crossbow, 20 bolts, arcane focus, explorer’s pack, two daggers, one set of traveler’s clothes, any one musical instrument or gaming set you are proficient with, poorly wrought maps from your homeland that depict where you are in Faerûn, a small piece of jewelry worth 10gp in the style of your homeland’s craftsmanship, and a pouch containing 5gp
- Feats: Tough, War Caster, Great Weapon Master
- Metamagic Options: Empowered Spell, Quickened Spell
- Important Spells: Searing Smite, Elemental Weapon, Armor of Agathys, Booming Blade/Green-Flame Blade, Sword Burst, Lightning Lure
The combination of Sorcerer and Paladin is by no means a new idea. It gives Paladins access to more casting abilities and spell slots while giving Sorcerers some much-needed durability.
We’ve chosen the Oath of Conquest here because it’s one of the best Paladin subclasses but also because of its strong mix of offensive and defensive abilities.
Most importantly, we’re getting access to divine smite and extra attack from the main class and guided strike (+10 bonus on attack rolls) from the subclass.
Add in Empowered spell to deal more damage more frequently and Quickened spell for a bit of haste when we need it, and we’ve got a pretty amazing build.
It’s not often that we won’t have a reaction to make, and with extra attacks, that’s three attacks each round. Since most of them will be dealing extra damage, our DPS is pretty comparable to some of the best fighters.
You’ll also notice that most of our important spells are cantrips. That’s because we’ll be able to constantly smite and then utilize a melee weapon cantrip for our attacks, providing a huge boost to our damage output.
We’ve thrown Lightning Lure in as the perfect War Caster reaction cantrip, pulling enemies in close so we can mess them up on our turn.
Sure, the Stone Sorcerer isn’t a great class on its own, but it’s incredible for supplementing a Paladin build. Truly, any Paladin could work with this, and Hexblade Warlocks or martial Bards are also excellent options to entertain.
Rather than a fully realized class, this feels like a template for building other, more impressive, gish characters off of.
Until then, check out some of our other Sorcerer guides. And as always, happy adventuring.
As a kid, I was often told to get my head out of the clouds and to stop living in a fantasy world. That never really jived with me, so I decided to make a living out of games, stories, and all sorts of fantastical works. Now, as an adult, I aspire to remind people that sometimes a little bit of fantasy is all you need when life gets to be too much.
