I started playing dnd again since ages and i wanted my character's background to fit his class. Now my character is a dwarven blacksmith an my DM suggested the cleric Forge domain. I read into it and thought this was a nice fit.
However a few sessions later and I discovered that my play style didn't really fit a cleric and was more that of a paladin. I talked with my DM and he allowed me to homebrew a subclass for the Paladin: Oath of the forge/ of Fire and Metal. Not set on the name yet
Choosing the spells for this oath I came across Burning hands, Heat Metal and Flame Blade, all of which are great but I wanted a more, literal, hands on approach. So here is my spell, if anyone could give some c&c.
It's really not a bad idea, but a bit messy. Let's dig in, shall we? Heat metal and elemental weapon seem to be most applicable. I think what you're looking for is a combination of these two spells that make your unarmed strikes deal extra damage, and to add some pain to grappled enemies. As elemental weapon is a 3rd-level spell, your spell seems overpowered as it stands. Here's what I would say: change elemental weapon to only affect your unarmed strikes and include some damage with no action while you have an enemy grappled. Strip out the bit about objects, because that's already covered by heat metal.
Your firsts erupt with fire. For the duration, you have a +1 bonus to attack rolls with your unarmed strikes and deal an extra 1d4 fire damage when they hit.
Additionally, at the start of each of your turns, each creature you have grappled takes 1d4 fire damage.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th or 6th level, the bonus to attack rolls increases to +2 and the extra fire damage increases to 2d4. When you use a spell slot of 7th level or higher, the bonus increases to +3 and the extra fire damage increases to 3d4.
Basically, reduce the duration of elemental weapon and add free damage to grappled enemies, recalling that you can grapple as many enemies as you have free hands.
Thank you for the feedback :) However there a some things I'd like to mention/ ask.
I want this spell to be useful outside of combat as well i.e. smiting, melting obstacles (melting iron bars/locks to escape a cell for example) and then 1 minute would seem too short. Ideally 1 hour would be better, in a smiting scenario, but in combat that would be too overpowered so I went with 10 minutes (still a little short on scenarios outside combat but alas). So maybe I need to look at that a bit more, focus the spell on combat scenarios or non-combat scenarios.
So Heat Metal and Flame Blade where the most applicable. I first looked if I could RP the attacks to fit the needs, but the damage was too low for the combat focused paladin I wanted to make.
Heat metal on the other hand doesn't deal with making metals becoming malleable or melting them (it also applies to only metals whereas my spell also applies to none metals) and I couldn't find anything about melting metals anywhere else. Also this is something I would have to ask my DM if he would allow melting things in combat. Melting an opponents weapon or armor could ruin an encounter pretty easily.
Flame Blade didn't have an effect on metal but was an "unarmed" strike, however it doesn't scale in damage on higher levels.
Elemental weapon does sound interesting, to see if I could use bits from that, but when imagining the spell I wasn't thinking of incorporating buff spells. So I'd have to think about that.
The other thing is the paladin only gets spell slots till 5th level, so I don't think the spell is "that" overpowered, casting this spell at 5th level would give me a max of 42 damage per turn, whereas if a bard/druid would cast heat metal at 9th level the would be able to deal max 72 damage per turn. At least that is how I looked at the spell and determined the damage, comparing 1st level spells of other classes being cast at their highest level.
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Hi everyone,
I started playing dnd again since ages and i wanted my character's background to fit his class.
Now my character is a dwarven blacksmith an my DM suggested the cleric Forge domain. I read into it and thought this was a nice fit.
However a few sessions later and I discovered that my play style didn't really fit a cleric and was more that of a paladin. I talked with my DM and he allowed me to homebrew a subclass for the Paladin: Oath of the forge/ of Fire and Metal. Not set on the name yet
Choosing the spells for this oath I came across Burning hands, Heat Metal and Flame Blade, all of which are great but I wanted a more, literal, hands on approach. So here is my spell, if anyone could give some c&c.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/426702-scorching-hand
It's really not a bad idea, but a bit messy. Let's dig in, shall we? Heat metal and elemental weapon seem to be most applicable. I think what you're looking for is a combination of these two spells that make your unarmed strikes deal extra damage, and to add some pain to grappled enemies. As elemental weapon is a 3rd-level spell, your spell seems overpowered as it stands. Here's what I would say: change elemental weapon to only affect your unarmed strikes and include some damage with no action while you have an enemy grappled. Strip out the bit about objects, because that's already covered by heat metal.
Here's my version:
3rd-level
Transmutation
Action
Self
V/S
1 minute (concentration)
Your firsts erupt with fire. For the duration, you have a +1 bonus to attack rolls with your unarmed strikes and deal an extra 1d4 fire damage when they hit.
Additionally, at the start of each of your turns, each creature you have grappled takes 1d4 fire damage.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th or 6th level, the bonus to attack rolls increases to +2 and the extra fire damage increases to 2d4. When you use a spell slot of 7th level or higher, the bonus increases to +3 and the extra fire damage increases to 3d4.
Basically, reduce the duration of elemental weapon and add free damage to grappled enemies, recalling that you can grapple as many enemies as you have free hands.
Thank you for the feedback :) However there a some things I'd like to mention/ ask.
I want this spell to be useful outside of combat as well i.e. smiting, melting obstacles (melting iron bars/locks to escape a cell for example) and then 1 minute would seem too short. Ideally 1 hour would be better, in a smiting scenario, but in combat that would be too overpowered so I went with 10 minutes (still a little short on scenarios outside combat but alas). So maybe I need to look at that a bit more, focus the spell on combat scenarios or non-combat scenarios.
So Heat Metal and Flame Blade where the most applicable. I first looked if I could RP the attacks to fit the needs, but the damage was too low for the combat focused paladin I wanted to make.
Heat metal on the other hand doesn't deal with making metals becoming malleable or melting them (it also applies to only metals whereas my spell also applies to none metals) and I couldn't find anything about melting metals anywhere else. Also this is something I would have to ask my DM if he would allow melting things in combat. Melting an opponents weapon or armor could ruin an encounter pretty easily.
Flame Blade didn't have an effect on metal but was an "unarmed" strike, however it doesn't scale in damage on higher levels.
Elemental weapon does sound interesting, to see if I could use bits from that, but when imagining the spell I wasn't thinking of incorporating buff spells. So I'd have to think about that.
The other thing is the paladin only gets spell slots till 5th level, so I don't think the spell is "that" overpowered, casting this spell at 5th level would give me a max of 42 damage per turn, whereas if a bard/druid would cast heat metal at 9th level the would be able to deal max 72 damage per turn. At least that is how I looked at the spell and determined the damage, comparing 1st level spells of other classes being cast at their highest level.