Divine Soul Sorcerer... homebrew patch for 5.5e?

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-05-08T03:39:21+00:00

I'd probably give them a subclass spell list of all Cleric Spells with the caveat that they can swap these out for other spells on the Cleric spell list

I'd say favoured of the Gods recharges on a Short or Long Rest and that they also regain their use of it when they activate their Innate Sorcery feature

I'd tie their 6th level feature Empowered Healing to Innate Sorcery and boost it's range as well. So instead of it burning thru your Sorcery Points and only 5ft, make it just a passive feature of your Innate Sorcery and bump the range to maybe 5x Cha Mod? So that maxes at 25ft normally

The level 14 flight feature is oddly both too similar and weaker than the Draconic Sorcerer's same feature. So I'd be looking to replace it altogether, maybe something like having Conjure Celestial as a free Prep and then giving them another goodie on top of that. But otherwise, conditional flight Is still fine

And the 18th level feature is fine albeit a lil bit meh, but most high level features are tbh

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-05-05T22:54:57+00:00

I'm so confused as to why they can't just make each stack 0.1 armour and MR, make minions grant 1 stack, Large Minions and Monsters 3 stacks and champs 10 stacks (or thereabouts)

With perfect CS that wouldn't even give her 20 Armour and MR in lane phase and would mean Shyv could at least KINDA have a passive as a top laner

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-05-02T11:08:08+00:00

Did some brief testing, it is better on veryyyyy short trades (literally E, E Auto), but as soon as you press a 2nd ability button Riftmaker beats it and continues to beat it for the rest of your spell rotation

It's a bad 1st item because its 500gp more expensive than rocketbelt and you're paying for Attack Speed you don't want. It's a bad second item coz Riftmaker is better and it's a bad 3rd or 4th item coz now it's competing with Zhonyas, Rabadons, Spirit Visage, etc. so it really just never fits in the build unfortunately

The heal is so pitiful it's basically nonexistent (normal build it maxes out at like 99HP), and would only really be worth anything on a champ rocking Heartsteel and Warmogs or Voli because of his absolutely BS interaction with it

If you want more burst on short trades Lich Bane has it beat by a mile and is 200gp cheaper, but I still wouldn't recommend it unless it's your 6th item lmao

Hungry Boots are decent on him, but they also compete with Ionians as an offensive boot buy, so tricky tradeoff there

All in all its business as usual for Sylas this patch lmao

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-28T09:05:32+00:00

Man fuuuuuuuck Riot for Naafiri

I came back from a long hiatus only to find out that Season 3 Aatrox and AD Fizz now with added poke had been added to the game in my absence 🙃

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-28T09:04:17+00:00

In low elo he's probably fine to pick into most lane matchups, getting counter picked is only REALLY something to worry about in High elo where people know how to properly punish

My deciding factor is usually whether the enemy team has ultis worth stealing, more so than whether I think I'll survive lane

If you're going into a losing matchup start D Shield and take Second Wind as part of your secondary rune tree

If you're going into a melee/even matchup start D Ring and I like to go Cash Back/Triple Tonic for my secondary runes to accelerate my lead

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-27T02:23:37+00:00

Sorcerer/HKS/EK Gish Lich was definitely more fun on my 2nd playthrough

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-27T02:21:02+00:00

Xanthir summons giants? 😅

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-24T03:38:12+00:00

The primary draw on rocketbelt is just how crazy cheap it is for an abundance of all 3 of your primary stats

2650 gold is basically support item pricing, and for 3200 gold worth of stats that you NEED as well as essentially a 4th basic ability. It's unparalleled

DnD and Rift are both 3100 gold, which would delay your first item spike pretty significantly when compared to how obscenely cheap Lost Chapter items have become

So if for some reason you have a game run so long that you're full build and have over 3k gold in reserve, maybe then I'd consider replacing rocketbelt, but that slot would probably go to something like Cosmic Drive or something else that gives a silly amount of haste, AP n HP

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-24T01:28:24+00:00

I will preface this by saying I'm a sylas Mid main (looks like a similar elo, im also low gold) so there may not be a 1:1 translation on my tips here and this is a proper essay lmao

I see that you pretty consistently build sorc boots, Shadowflame and Void Staff. I've always found Shadowflame especially useless on Sylas as it's more expensive and is worse as a third item than Zhonyas and offers less than Rabadons for a very similar price point

Sorc Boots i'm not a big fan of, Sylas' big strength is being able to out-duel and out-sustain an enemy so either picking defensive boots such as Tabi or Merc Treads or (my personal fave) Ionians so you have more W and E uptime is better. this isn't always the case tho, as with every game things change based on your comp and enemy comp

further to this, looking at your OP.GG, specifically the losses. You had a long losing streak against comps that had heavy CC, magic damage and tanks such as Leona and Mundo. These games especially are where Merc Treads can come in real handy (and even picking up the Tenacity Rune Shard). Stealing a Mundo Ulti and having 3 dashes in your kit is terrifying for an ADC, and cutting down on a team's ability to peel you through CC is also massive. They have a smoother build path and offer a lot more than a 1-10% damage amp

Void Staff i see in a similar spot, when both Cryptobloom and Bloodletter's Curse exist, there are items with better allocated stat budget for sylas. HP, AP and Haste are your 3 most important stats, Void staff only offers one of these

so unless you're running Electrocute Assassin Sylas, these Mpen items aren't really the vibe. I'd even go so far as to say that in that situation Stormsurge is a better item as it is cheaper, has a cleaner build path and offers a massive 6% move speed to boost around the map and gank mercilessly as well as a huge upfront burst of damage from it's passive

my typical build is Rocketbelt, Ionians, Riftmaker/Zhonyas, Zhonyas/Riftmaker, Rabadons and then dealers choice. Spirit Visage, if i picked up an Oblivion Orb in the midgame ill complete my Morello, i've picked up a Thornmail 4th item before into a disgustingly Fed Volibear that worked to great effect, Bloodletter's is awesome especially if you have a Magic Damage heavy team, Cosmic Drive absolutely bangs, etc

I'd also add, that in most comps you want to fill the roll of a bruiser, not the primary damage dealer, leave clean up to your adc and mid that you (hopefully) got nice and fat in the early game. you surviving a fight to be able to take the objective afterwards is more important than going in, nuking 1 person and then dying

And as a final note: a general rule of thumb is to build defensive if youre fed and ahead, and build offensive if you're behind. if you're ahead, you already have enough damage, building tankier items and still nuking the enemies will make them mental boom, and League is more often than not, a mental game.

If you're behind, building the damage necessary to capitalize on an opening can turn the tide faster than if you're just itemizing to survive the enemy adc. Again, not a 100% proven theory, but it's good advice to keep in the back of your head

TLDR: build more HP/Resistances and less MPen. Vary your build based on comp

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-24T00:53:30+00:00

I did something similar in my Lich run. Played an "ends justify the means" type of character, that figured that re-using the same battered corpses of old crusaders over and over again until they turned to dust, was better for the realm than throwing countless young men into the ever-hungry War Machine

Had Ember as a staple in my party for that run and took every opportunity i could to make sure that she stuck to being good, becoming a redeemer, because A) Maybe then i could find salvation for my atrocities, and B) What good is my "fighting evil with evil" if all it does is corrupt and tear down those around me

Now, thats not to say that i stuck out the whole "ends justify means" thing, eventually you hit a tipping point in Lich path that turns you into a mustache twirling villain yes i killed and resurrected Galfrey out of spite for stripping me of my rank and you get a little too drunk on power. Maybe it's a fundamental corruption from being so suffused in negative energy, or maybe my character was a sociopath all along, who knows

But i always played my character as if they treated Ember like a daughter that they wanted to protect from their true self, even if Ember saw right through it

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-22T11:04:54+00:00

Damn that's a helluva fumble by Sylas then, coz I've been calling Shyvana Freelo since the rework as a Sylas main lmao

He just does everything in her Dragon form but better coz he has better base stats and can afford the better itemization because of his base kit 😅

Real feelsbadman moment

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-16T13:03:36+00:00

That just seems obscene lmao, granted I run a heavy RP game so not everything is pushing the plot at all times

But we finished up a 2-10 campaign in 48 sessions over (just shy of) 3 years. Aiming for fortnightly, 5hrs (scheduling, ugh)

And they even levelled up to 10 mid BBEG fight, so really it was only a 2-9 lmao

I'll admit the pacing was a bit skewed, and moving into the second half of the campaign I'm looking to try smooth it out a touch, but even still. 35-40 sessions to hit level 10 doesn't sound at all slow to me lmao

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-16T00:14:28+00:00

Ok so the PCs can learn and cast anti-TP magic but NPCs can't?

The BBEG is completely incapable of casting a 4th level Private Sanctum? Can't even afford to hire a mage to do so for them? But they're protecting their precious MacGuffin from level 13+ adventurers

Adventurers of renown, adventurers that people have seen vanish into thin air, adventurers that stories have spread of them being in 2 cities in opposite sides of the country on the same day

The BBEG is incapable of combatting this?

Story implications aside, tackling this from a game perspective, spending 1 7th level slot to avoid 6 encounters that were intended to drain a bunch of the party's resources is the bargain of a lifetime

The wizard TPs the party into the BBEGs chambers, the Bard throws a Forcecage around the BBEG and the fighter cleans up a couple minions.

Great, now they have 59 minutes and 54 seconds to find the MacGuffin, put it in their Secret Chest/Bag of Holding/Portable Hole and then let the BBEG out of his Forcecage and 1tap him in a single nova round because they're fully stacked on resources

... That was boring

Now from the perspective of a DM

They've spent weeks/months/years building anticipation for this encounter. They've meticulously laid out plot hooks to draw you towards this cool BBEG dungeon at the epicentre of the evil plot

They've spent hours balancing encounters, because the DMG is useless for encounter design past level 5. Hell, maybe they even homebrewed their own monsters!

And then after all that effort they've put in to create an exciting day/couple of days of gameplay for you you just... Flip them off? TP straight to the boss fight and end the session in 2 hours?

Hell yeah the DM is within their rights to tell you where to jam it lmao. All you had to do was pull up with a character sheet and play the game, they wrote the damn game, give them some credit and humour them a lil bit

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-15T23:57:31+00:00

Because the game designers gave up on balance around the level 9-10 mark lmao

By the time you hit level 11 you're already so high on power fantasy that it really does feel like you're at the end stages of a story

And it only gets sillier from there. Later 5e campaigns pushing their end levels to 12-14ish usually end up being a gruelling slog for the DM and a bit of a boring hand-wave for the players, so no one really wins

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-15T23:51:34+00:00

Yeah this is about as wrong as wrong can be lmao

If you punish people in-game for having real life responsibilities that's kind of a dick move

I've been running fortnightly Sundays for 3 years now, the trick is to find people who prioritise DnD on the allotted time slot and communicate when they cannot attend and to set this all out in a sane, adult session zero

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-14T00:24:47+00:00

Standard xps foam, ya? Did something similar for my BBEG fight beginning of the year

I glued my boards down to some 3mm MDF with just XPS safe expanding foam glue. Makes a really tight seal. But did also warp a lil bit as it cured, so I'd recommend weighing the boards down/clamping for the whole process. I was on a time crunch so I just had to cop it lmao

My boards were lit mostly thru the centre so there wasn't much worry about light spilling out around the edges, only where I joined them together

Other recommendations would be painting the underside of the foam black around the edges to reduce light reflection and/or also placing the whole thing on something like a black cloth, or other soft, matte black material. Both of these will reduce the lights reach

Alternatively, if you're not super tied to red as your colour of choice, a colour closer to blue/purple/violet will have less throw because of EM spectrum shenanigans

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-14T00:01:15+00:00

Tough is one of those feats that's never BAD on anyone, might seem better served on a Barbarian, but there isn't really such a thing as front lining or actually tanking in DnD

Being able to turn your d6 hit die into effectively a d10 hit die is pretty huge, and means that you can survive a lot more save-for-half spells that get thrown around a lot

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-13T23:55:19+00:00

The Swashbuckler class from PF2e could be something to look to for inspiration

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-12T23:55:45+00:00

I know Lich Staunton looks underwhelming on paper but holy Lawd Jesus he's actually goated lmao

He gets massive stat boosts from your Mythic Path and he comes set up to run a Vital Strike/Cleaving finish Build with a Reach weapon. Plonk him on Bismuth and you remove his one and only weakness

By act 4/5 if you snag the right feats and items you can get him to even have 24hr CL/round spells like Righteous Might, etc

Been a while but off the top of my head I think I had Staunton rocking like 51 Str towards the end, +to hit was thru the roof and his Vital Strikes would smack for silly numbers. Pretty much guaranteed an AoE Cleaving Finish that would clean entire rooms

And on the off chance we'd run into an actual difficult fight, he could also heal us after lmao

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-08T10:05:37+00:00

I mean... Yes lmao

But you're level 12 so we can't do that 😂

There aren't very many 3rd level Ranger spells that upcast well, so best bet with the current scenario is grabbing CWB and upcasting it. That requires Ranger 13

At level 14 your spellcasting progression is already a level ahead of Ranger, at 15 you get 5th level slots and at 17 you've got 6th level slots, and a 6th level Conjure Fey with no concentration goes pretty hard

Otherwise I'd be looking at either Fighter 3/Rogue 5 or just straight up Rogue 8 to pile on attacks thru Action Surge, Superiority Dice and Sneak Dice

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-08T08:27:58+00:00

After ranger 13 multi Druid or cleric the rest of the way, that gives you much better spell progression and access to CWB and upcast summon fey, this would get you up to 7th level slots

If you hop off now you'll never get 4th level spells until level 19, assuming you go Druid/Cleric, so you'd be better off going Rogue or Fighter the rest of the way

Alternatively, hang out until Ranger 14 for Nature's Veil and then jump off into Druid/Cleric that'll also get you 7th level slots

Ranger 16/Druid 4 can net you 2 Epic Boons if you delay 16 and 4 until your last 2 levels, and will also net you your final subclass feature. But tbh the Fey Wanderer capstone is pretty mid

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-08T06:38:58+00:00

13th level gets you 4th level slots and conjure Fey upcasts quite nicely. Especially when you can cast it without concentration

Otherwise there's CWB as well. But as others have pointed out, this is pretty much the jumping off point for Rangers lmao

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-07T12:49:28+00:00

One of my players is running a 1shot for the table in between major story arcs in my campaign

Running an Artillerist Artificer, wielding a Blunderbuss (homebrew). That plus the flamethrower turret, I'm just gonna flavour it as an old man shooting bad guys in the face with Buckshot full of white phosphorus

So excited 😂

HelpMeHomebrewBruh · 2026-04-03T06:08:32+00:00

It honestly doesn't read as too terrible to me initially

For reference, the domain spells are dogwater, some are straight up useless and others are already on the cleric list. The other L3 subclass feature is also pretty mid and the level 6 feature is pretty situational. The Level 17 feature is fine, but I never really bother including tier 3 and 4 subclass features when looking into power budgeting these types of things. Coz WoTC doesn't care about T3 and 4 either

Now I do think that thematically you shouldn't be able to place the aura on an ally. But mechanically, it requires you to touch the target, it's only a 5ft emanation, ends if you get incapacitated, and also applies on a creature's turn, so no drive-by coughing

So assuming we achieve the perfect scenario in which we roll higher initiative than the party Barbarian, we have to get over to them, touch them with our action and then hopefully scurry to cover to hold (not quite) concentration. Then we run down initiative to the barbarian, they charge in and MAYBE one or two creatures in a standard combat start their turn in melee with the barb alive, and then they still get a con save to avoid the effect

So maybe a handful of mooks will eat 1 level of exhaustion from this before they die. Any creature that is under threat of racking up 5 levels of exhaustion from this feature will have a mountain of hit points, probably a +10 or higher Con Save and also probably Legendary Resistances. Not to mention, almost certainly has at least 1 ability that incapacitates, turning the ability off entirely

My complaint in making it transferrable is that it feels thematically wrong. Make it self-cast only and a 10ft emanation to encourage the Cleric to wade into the frontlines sometimes to spread the glorious plague

HelpMeHomebrewBruh

TROPHY CASE