Blast Cloak

 

LEVEL

4th

CASTING TIME

1 Reaction *

RANGE/AREA

Self (10 ft 🌐 )

COMPONENTS

S

DURATION

Instantaneous

SCHOOL

Abjuration

ATTACK/SAVE

None

DAMAGE/EFFECT

Warding

 

You cast out your arm protectively and wrap yourself and those nearby in a cloak of protective energy. You and each creature wholly within 10 feet of you reduces the damage taken by an amount equal to 5 + your spellcasting ability modifier + your spellcaster level.

* - which you take when you take damage from an area affect

Spell Tags: [WARDING]
Available For: [???]

There, that’s better.

Now, you see the part I designated with the pink underline up there? That’s the part that makes it feel more like a class feature instead of a spell. Many class features use the PC’s class level as a metric, and some racial traits work based off of a PC’s overall character level. Cantrips do automatically improve based on overall character level, but those are all, and they all always improve specifically at 5th, 11th, and 17th levels. The scope of this spell is far above cantrips‘
     Leveled Spells don’t use “spellcaster level” as a metric for anything like that in D&D. That’s in part due to the confuzzlement it would add to the already confuzzling multiclassing mechanics. The other main reason it isn’t used is because that means the spell will automatically improve as you level up without having spent anything additional for that boost.

 Also, note the pink question marks at the bottom? The list of classes to which you intend to make this spell available is also very relevant to the discussion.

In this edition, damage reduction is almost more useful than healing. Healing is mostly used either out of combat, or to play yo-yo with downed party members. But damage reduced/prevented is never taken at all. As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” And prevention at Reaction speed is even more valuable since it means not having to gamble an action to prevent something in the very near future that might not happen, or that will cover a longer period time but will need to be cast well in advance. A reaction that prevents damage, especially any type of damage is ve—ery awesome. It’s also not very common, so the spells closest in comparison for effect are I useable because of their levels, and the closest comparisons for level are less compatible healing spells.

At that 4th-level spell slot you’ve chosen, your closest comps are gonna be the 3rd-level spell mass healing word and the 5th-level mass cure wounds. The former restores 1d4+SAB to up to 6 creatures up to 60 ft away, and an additional +1d4/higher slot level. The later restores up to 3d8+SAB to up to 6 creatures within a 30-foot sphere up to 60 ft away, and an additional +1d8/higher slot level

You said you’re tryin’a only do the caster and a 10-foot aura around them, which limits things enough that I think it‘s a balancing factor. Also, you chose a very specific trigger of only working against an AoE, so that helps too. So I mocked up two ideas, one that’s a little more traditional, and another that’s inspired more by spells like invisibility and fly in regards to higher level scaling.