Elemental Essence
Maximoff summoned his aura as he saw the man’s attack coming, a fiery corona erupting around him. The swing went wide as the attacker stumbled back in surprise. As the flames reflected in the man’s frightened eyes, Maximoff muttered, “You really should have picked someone else to rob.”
Maximoff, Elemental Essence Sorcerer
Your innate magic arises from elemental power suffused into your being. You might have an elemental creature, such as genie, in your ancestry. Perhaps you lived most of your life near a portal to one of the Elemental Planes, and the ambient magic of the plane saturated everything you ate and drank. Perhaps a magical conjuring went awry, and the essence of an elemental merged with your own. Whatever the ultimate source, you are a walking conduit to an elemental plane.
Building an Elemental Essence Sorcerer
Sorcerers who gain their power from the elemental essence can trace their powers back through one of four different heritages: Air, Earth, Fire, or Water. As they grow in power, their new abilities will be a reflection of this elemental heritage
Elemental Heritage lets you speak, read, and write in the language associate with your element, and also determines the damage type of your aura and other abilities.
Manifest Aura allows you to summon an elemental aura around you that can impose disadvantage on attackers and cause elemental damage to nearby enemies.
Infuse Elements grants you resistance to your chosen element and allows you to spend a sorcery point to empower your spells with an additional effect based on your chosen element.
Elemental Jaunt allows you to teleport a short distance, triggering an elemental effect upon your arrival.
Elemental Soul provides you immunity to your chosen element and an additional benefit that enhances your mobility.
With these abilities, Elemental Essence sorcerers can excel at dealing great amounts of damage and controlling the battlefield. The element you choose is important for not only the damage it will provide, but also the way it affects your higher-tier abilities. Their aura can provide them some increased survivability, as well as discourage melee-focused enemies from getting too close. Infuse Elements allows you to affect enemies with an additional conditions, such as an inability to use reactions, or causing them to run in fear, depending on your element. Elemental Jaunt offers both offensive and defensive capabilities, providing a hasty retreat or a way to get behind enemy lines. Lastly, Elemental Soul can be incredibly powerful, depending on which element you’ve chosen and where your campaign takes place. For example, a sorcerer immune to fire would be considered quite the dangerous foe when battling fire giants, red dragons, or other fire-based creatures.
As with all classes, any race is suitable for playing an Elemental Essence sorcerer, but there there are a few races whose innate abilities may synergize particularly well. A Fireforge Dwarves’ Fire Resistance trait could allow you to gain two elemental resistances if you were to pick another element as your elemental heritage, making you even more sturdy when facing other spellcasters or elementals. Shoal Gnomes’ natural affinity for water, with traits such as Amphibious and Aquatic Beast Affinity would also pair quite well with the water-based elemental abilities of the Elemental Essence sorcerer.
Roleplaying Tips
When playing an Elemental Essence sorcerer, you might consider allowing your chosen element to influence your roleplaying. If you choose earth, you might be firm and stalwart in your decisions, or if you choose fire, you may be quick to anger or simply passionate in your beliefs. Be sure you don’t let this influence completely override your character, or you’ll risk becoming a one-dimensional cliche. When crafting your backstory, ask yourself how you gained your elemental powers. Did your family descend from the djinn? Did you grow up near a rift in the elemental planes? Or is it a mystery that you’ll have to unravel through your campaign? Any of these are great options. When choosing a background, Archivist and Collegian work great for a character that chose to further explore the arcane through study or scholarship. Corsair could be a fun background if you chose water as your elemental heritage, as your abilities would make you a natural on the seas. Transformed Familiar is also an interesting possibility for any magic-based classes, and could help explain where your sorcerous powers came from. Lastly, consider what has drawn you to the life of an adventurer? Is it to seek out an artifact of great elemental power? To discover the source of your abilities? To seek wealth, love, or fame? Or something else entirely…the choice is yours.
How to Access this Content
This subclass was created by our partners at Kobold Press, and it is one of the many available to subscribers, along with others like the Soulspy or the College of Entropy, as well as races such as the Shade or Spindrift Dwarf. Build your own Elemental Essence sorcerer and tell us about it in the comments below or on any of our social channels. Join us on Discord, Reddit or Facebook to meet other members of the community and take your game to the next level, or follow us on Twitter @shardtabletop for regular updates.
