Base Class: Sorcerer
Your ancestors studied their innate magic and discovered ways of infusing their weapons with arcane energy. They refined this martial art over centuries and passed their knowledge on to the new generations.
Or maybe you found manuscripts that described the ways of the Arcane Blade and through studies and training you where able to awaken your own innate powers.
Arcane Armament
Starting at 1st level, you adopt how to cast spells while wearing armor and weapons. You gain proficiency with Light Armor and Medium Armor and the Rapier and Longsword.
Any weapon you are proficient with can be used as a spellcasting focus.
Starting at 2nd level, you can use a Bonus Action and spend 2 Sorcery Points. When you do so, arcane energy curls around your weapon for 1 minute. Whenever you hit with this weapon, you deal an extra 1d8 psychic damage.
Weapon Channeling
Starting at 6th level, you can channel your innate arcane energy through your weapons. If you choose to do so, you have to spend 10 minutes and touch a weapon that you are proficient with and that lacks the two-handed property. When you finish the channeling, arcane runes appear on the weapon.
You can attack with your channeled weapon twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Psychic Strikes
Starting at 14th level, you add your Charisma modifier (minimum of +1) to the damage of your melee weapon attacks.
Arcane Leap
Starting at 18th level, the arcane energy that you channel through your weapons reach into the ethereal plane.
As a Bonus Action, you can spend 3 Sorcery Points and teleport to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of a creature that you can see. Until the end of this turn, your weapon attacks deal an extra 1d8 psychic damage.
You can choose to spend 2 more Sorcery Points and activate the effect of Arcane Armament that you gain at 2nd level.
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Posted Nov 15, 2023oh man, this reply is way too late now I'm sure, but I just recently got access to this account back and haven't touched DnDBeyond for years. I never actually noticed that I published this subclass and that it got a decent amount of views & adds from other people. Apparently there's a bit of interest in a melee sorcerer subclass. or was.
anyways, I made this subclass mostly for flavour reasons, as one of my players really wanted to play a "Hexblade type gish but for the sorcerer class" and I then homebrewed this one here. the player in question was quite happy with it at the time and I think it performed reasonably well overall.
in terms of adding an expanded spell list like Clockwork Soul and Aberrant Mind got, I don't see any reason why this subclass shouldn't get this treatment. The Arcane Blade is already more "flavour" than "power", because going into melee with a sorcerer is always a big gamble. On top of that, activating the "melee features" of this subclass costs sorcery points, so you cannot easily drop metamagic spells and still get the damage boosts on your weapons as easily.
so to make it short: yes, I think adding an expanded spell list would absolutely be a good choice. I would advise to be "careful" with the choice of spells - don't just hand out the best spells for each level - and make it a thematic mix of combat and utility.
Spells like Longstrider, Ice Knife, Misty Step, Enhance Ability, Thunder Step, Spirit Shroud, Steel Wind Strike and similar are probably quite appropriate for the theme, but you can of course always expand the flavour to cover whatever the player wants to lean into more.
so again, sorry for the way too late reply, but maybe it still helps someone else. and thank you (& everyone else) for the interest in my homebrew!
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Posted Sep 13, 2022While I recognize that this is an older subclass and in line with the sorcerer subclasses at the time, I was curious if it would be an outlandish idea to update it with a expanded spell list like the ones featured in TCoE. Would this overpower the subclass at all, as many think that the TCoE subclasses are super obvious power creep, and if it wouldn't be too out of line, what Spells would be in line with the idea of the class? Mostly just out of curiosity as to what OP thinks, as the subclass is already pretty great and already homebrew so adding an expanded spell list at my table alone would be easy enough, but other opinions are nice.