It’s all good. I was trying to be funny. =)

Ah, I had not noticed the others commenting on Watery Defense, so for that you have my apologies.

Another commenter below already revealed the magnitude of my error on Watery Defense. There are only so many Mea Culpas I can say! 😉

You’re right about Stone’s Edge, though given how quickly that would chew through sorcery points and then spell slots, I’m not sure how much use it will see. Maybe it’s totally reasonable – I’ve never played or seen a high-level sorcerer in action, so I honestly don’t know. I do kinda feel like it’s more tone-deaf when applied to cantrips – I’m sold on it (thematically and mechanically) for Metal Magic spells, but when applied to the rest of the sorcerer’s repertoire, I don’t think it fits into what Stone has going on.

Stone’s Edge is able to used with Cantrips. And it’s once per spell, not once per turn. So Quickened spell + Cantrip allows you to use it twice per turn, by burning through Sorcery Points, sure, but still. (and if nothing else, at least all your cantrips now have “+(sorc lvl/2)” on their damage)

Both Cam Banks and I have thought as much.

The one hesitation I have is if you want to keep the feel of the Spheres of Mysticism from the Fifth Age, or the mystic’s single domain from 3.5. Careful spell choice would have to come into play here.

Of course, a DM could house-rule that the favored soul could also pick spells from a single domain.

Oh good lord, you’re right. What a mess. (I think it’s obvious why I missed THAT while reading.) Good catch, though!

FWIW, I thought it was pretty boss BEFORE you pointed that out. Ignoring what we can more or less call 20 + level points of B/P/S damage, which then functionally doubles once you pick up Water Soul (since you’d apply resistance before declaring the reaction)… Yeesh. This adds up to a pretty convincing “ignore one source of B/P/S damage per short rest,” because there aren’t that many sources of B/P/S damage, even at 18th+ level, that kick out more than 76 damage. An assassin on a surprise round, with Death Strike… oh, but Assassinate doesn’t work on you once you get Water Soul.

I’m not sure how often any of this would come up for a top-end sorcerer, but it does make the Sea sorcerer a lot harder to take down than that d6 Hit Die would suggest.

I did a story a while back when that hated movie came out where I built all 4 of the Fantastic Four out as NPCs. It would be interesting to throw sorcerers at players instead of the elementals I created.

http://www.tribality.com/2015/08/14/fantastic-four/

Right, Blessed Countenance, the vast options of the cleric spell list, Soul of the Sea, and the latter half of Shifting Form all have social or exploration applications. That’s a short list, for covering four subclasses. To be fair, social mechanics are mighty thin on the ground in 5e, outside of the Bard UA that was pretty widely panned (unjustly, in my view), so it’s hard to know where to even GO with giving subclasses social mechanics other than advantage or expertise with particular rolls. Let’s be real, that’s lazy and boring.

I get that the one-and-done thing is part of the fiction of some fire mages. The Human Torch isn’t really an example of that, though, is he? I assume you mean Johnny Storm and not the robot, who I know even less about. But superheroes ONLY run out of juice when it’s dramatically meaningful, which isn’t a mode that D&D really offers. I just think the game is pushing the player awfully hard to guess that THIS is the encounter that matters for the day – in my campaign, and many of the campaigns I’ve played, players don’t have a good way to make that kind of guess.

I think it’s fine to have a feature like Mantle of Flame. I don’t think it’s fine to make that the central expression of the whole archetype, such that one later feature only works when it’s up and another is only WORTH anything when it’s up. At minimum, the Phoenix sorcerer also needs a per-short-rest feature at 1st level, so that they’re effectively expressing their concept more often than once per day.