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#1 JohnLynch Feb 15, 2015 17:14:09

I wanted to try my hand at homebrewing up an iteration of the 4th edition Invoker for 5th edition. For those who didn't play 4th edition the Invoker is someone who, by discovering and using the words of creation, could call upon the power of the gods and punish their enemies. It was notable in 4th edition as being a controller who had more powerful "spells" but at the cost of imposing negative status effects on themselves.   I've decided to create this class as a Bard subclass largely for reasons due to flavour. Bards get their power from weaving the very fabric of reality into their songs and poetry. To me that sounds fairly similar to the flavour of an invoker, so I decided to go with it.   Devout College (Subclass) When the world was first born the spoken word of the gods themselves carried the ability to create and destroy. Over the ages these words have echoed through time and now you have learned a fragment of them. Using this power you act as an emissary of the gods themselves and sing their praises to those who would listen.   Divine Knowledge: At level 3 you choose a domain. When learning a new spell you may learn spells from your domain. Upon learning them these spells count as bard spells for you.   Channel Divinity: At level 3 you gain the level 2 ability associated with your domain. You can use this ability by spending an inspiration die.   Painful Invocation: At level 3 you can use the ability you gain from divine invocation without spending an inspiration die , however upon using it you become dazed until the end of your next turn. Once you use this ability you cannot use it again until you complete a short or long rest.   Divine Secrets: At level 6 you may learn 2 spells from a divine class such as the cleric or paladin. These don't count against your maximum number of spells known.   Divine Price: At level 14 you can increase a divine spell you cast by 1 level (up to the maximum level spell you can cast) without expending a higher slot. If you do so you become stunned until the start of your next turn. You cannot use this ability again until you complete a short or long rest.   ----- What do people think? Does this look balanced? I struggled with Divine Price in finding the right balance for it by making it powerful and memorable, but obviously not so overpowered that an Invoker would always use it.   What about flavour? I realise using a bard isn't the most intuitive way of creating a divine controller from 4th edition, but do you think it works? I wanted to avoid having to create a whole bunch of spells unique to it as down that path lies redundancy (a problem that forever plagued 4th edition). I could try to make it it's own class and draw upon the sorcerer's metamagic abilities, but I don't feel there's enough concept space to have multiple invoker subclasses.