Sling spells and deflect them with this quick-firing, 3rd party sorcerer subclass.
Nemesis sorcerers excel in magical duels. They’re highly adept at deflecting magical spells cast against them and can instead unleash their own spells quickly and precisely when they’re needed.
The subclass will grant your sorcerer enhanced abilities with readied spells and with magical deflection.
The nemesis sorcerer is a 3rd party subclass created by Keith Baker and Visionary Productions and Design for their 3rd party supplement; Frontiers of Eberron: Quickstone. The book was released for D&D 5.5e on D&D Beyond and is also available on DM’s Guild.
At a glance
- Full spellcaster
- Builds around using readied spells more often and more easily
- Great at deflecting magical attacks
- Eventually is able to cast multiple levelled spells each turn and concentrate on multiple spells simultaneously
3/5 – Nemesis sorcery tries to work some interesting ideas into readied spells, but struggles to pull them off in execution. These features tend to be either lacking in usefulness, or extremely potent. In the end, it lands a bit on the average side at low levels and massively overpowered at high levels. I’ve scored primarily based on the levels players will spend most time at (lower levels), but by level 18, this subclass becomes game-breakingly overpowered.
Nemesis sorcery features
Nemesis spells (Lv3) – 4/5
| Sorcerer Level | Prepared spells |
|---|---|
| 3 | Compelled duel, mirror image, see invisibility, shield |
| 5 | Counterspell, slow |
| 7 | Fireshield, Otiluke’s resilient sphere |
| 9 | Circle of power, mislead |
The nemesis sorcerer has mostly great spells. Shield, counterspell and slow are all great options. Mirror image and fire shield are great defensive spells if you’re OK with the setup time. Otiluke’s resilient sphere can have some useful combat utility. Circle of power and mislead are both good defensive spell too, though I think circle of power has more potential for greater impact on a combat.
I struggle with compelled duel on a sorcerer. It works thematically, but it’s a poor/brave option on a sorcerer. See invisibility is situational, but useful in those situations when invisibility is an issue.
Readied magic (Lv3) – 2/5
The idea here is allowing tactics that work for readied spells. This kind of removes some of the drawbacks of doing so by making it hard to lose concentration on the readied spell and dropping the reaction cost.
This definitely lowers the bar for bothering to ready a spell. At the same time, readying a spell is still a challenge as doing so will end a concentration spell you’re already concentrating on and it still remains that usually, casting a spell straight away is better than waiting to cast that spell.
Spell deflection (Lv6) – 4/5
Spells and magical effects are quite common. Keep in mind that this is a once per round thing as it requires your reaction. It may also conflict for your reaction with spells like counterspell.
It’s also worth being aware that magical effects can be a vague and under-defined term here as what is magical damage may depend on your DM. For instance, is a dragon’s breath magical or the effects of internal gastric combustion? I’ve no idea and your DM probably doesn’t either. Still, there are plenty of opportunities to use your reaction to halve magical damage making this a pretty good defensive feature.
Always ready (Lv14) – 5/5
Now readied spells become impressive. This means you can cast a levelled spell with your action, ready another levelled spell that normally requires an action, with your bonus action and unleash 2 levelled spells in the same round (or 3 as you still have your reaction free to cast that counterspell if necessary).
You’ll only get to use this once per combat at most, but that’s still one heck of a nova turn, especially if you set the reaction trigger to something immediate like, when I finish casting my next spell. It does perhaps mean concentration spells are a little harder to weave into combat than usual. Make sure you have plenty of non-concentration spell options to compensate.
Mindset of perfect prediction (Lv18) – 5/5
Concentrating on any number of spells is absolutely massive, as is 31 initiative as standard and 6th level counterspell without expending a spell slot (so one spell counterspelled each round)!
The feature does temper things a fair bit though. You need an action to activate this, but since it’s a silent thing, you can do so before combat starts without alerting anyone if you’re prepared. There is a 65% chance of passing the saving throw but if you can get advantage on that saving throw or a boost from something like bless or bardic inspiration, that number increases. So with good tactics and prep, this becomes phenomenal. With always ready, you can even cast 2 concentration spells in the same round and not worry about the concentration demands of readying a spell.
There is nothing that tempers your always available level 6 counterspell though. This really nullifies spellcasters against you.
This feature may only be once per long rest, but that’s one heck of an overpowered encounter if you ask me! Especially when this sorcerer will almost certainly be going first when they anticipate an encounter.
How good is the nemesis sorcery subclass?
Nemesis sorcery is a wildly imbalanced subclass in my opinion. It starts out quite mediocre at low levels and perhaps a little disappointing. Once you hit level 14 though, it suddenly becomes very powerful and at level 18, a strategic and prepared player can easily break the balance of the game.
For me, that makes it poorly designed and I suspect that the subclass wasn’t tested with power gamers (or even just strategic players) in mind. Extra levelled spells and concentration spells is very powerful and there are reasons that Wizards of the Coast very carefully manage these capabilities in spellcasters.
Up to level 13, nemesis sorcery is a 3/5 subclass. From levels 14-17 it’s a 5/5 subclass and from level 18, it breaks my scoring system and becomes a 6/5. However, I lean towards lower levels in my scoring as most characters don’t reach higher levels. For that reason, my official score will be a 3/5, but keep in mind that this subclass becomes game-breakingly good at high levels and is one that I’d outright ban at my table.
3/5
Building a nemesis sorcerer
The nemesis sorcerer can be built in a very similar way to other sorcerers. They focus on spellcasting at range and evasiveness. Gameplay may change a little (focusing more on readied spells for instance), this changes little about the options you take.
For a full breakdown on how to build a sorcerer, you can check out my sorcerer guide. For this article, I’ll just recommend options available from Frontiers of Eberron that work well for the nemesis sorcerer.
Species
Largely you’ll want a species that enhances your spellcasting and ability to deal damage. Extra resilience is decent too, but evasiveness for a sorcerer is better. I’d say the following are your best options from Frontiers of Eberron:
- Gargoyle: If you want more resilience, then a gargoyle is a decent route to go. Poison resistance is decent here but the base AC of 13 is much better and removes the need to worry about mage armor on the armorless sorcerer.
- Goblin: Some extra damage on some of your spells (fury of the small works with spells too). Most creatures will be larger than the small Goblin so this is easy to be applying. Disengage as a bonus action can be useful if you want to escape a creature’s reach.
- Harpy: Flight for evasiveness, performance to add to your face skills and a bunch of spells known that suit a sorcerer quite well is all very good.
- Medusa: A face skill is always good for a sorcerer. An enhanced gray gaze is also helpful for restraining while you damage. There’s also a bunch of useful spells too.
- Tiefling: Extra spells to play with is handy for a sorcerer. A damage resistance is also good and there’s more options here too. Sakah is interesting for its advantage on wisdom saving throws against magic and some deception leaning spells. There are some other interesting spells on these lists too like shatter and blindness/deafness.
- Warforged: The Warforged in this book is largely the same as the version in Forge of the Artificer. +1 AC and poison resilience will help you last even longer. Great if you want even more resilience.
Backgrounds
For a nemesis sorcerer, you’ll want a background that enhances your charisma, dexterity and/or constitution. Below are the backgrounds from Frontiers of Eberron that I think combine great ability scores with good origin feats and skills for nemesis sorcery.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragonmarked bravo | Strength, dexterity, charisma | Lesser dragonmark | Athletics and intimidation | None |
| Dragonmarked foundling | Dexterity, constitution, charisma | Lesser dragonmark | Insight and stealth | Thieves’ tools |
| Wandslinger | Dexterity, intelligence, charisma | Magic initiate (wizard) | Intimidation and sleight of hand | One kind of gambling set or woodcarver’s tools |
Feats
- Ashbound initiate: A face skill, advantage against creatures that have cast a spell and some decent extra spells known. All great on a sorcerer.
- Hewn for battle: If you’re a Gargoyle and you want to invest less in dexterity, then you could pick this up for some quite good AC which is handy if you maybe want more feats than ability score increases (or just better AC with a high dexterity).
- Lesser dragonmark: Not all of these are going to be great on a sorcerer, but some grant great spells and handy skill improvements. I’d probably suggest the lesser dragonmarks of passage (for misty step and longstrider) and shadow (for stealth proficiency, darkness and some illusions). The mark of healing could also be an option if you want some healing capabilities.
- Orb expert: Some improved attacks/spellcasting and improved evasiveness are great for a sorcerer.
- Shadow’s gift of stone: Quite a few extra spell castings as you progress in levels is going to be very useful for a sorcerer.
- Stone eyes: Improved restraining and paralysation by actually petrifying the target. They’ll need to fail by a substantial amount, but if you can weave in multiple effects like this into your spellcasting, then the effects could be substantial, especially at higher levels when you can sometimes concentrate on multiple spells simultaneously.
- Voice of the fury: Similar to shadow’s gift of stone, this gives you a bunch of free spell castings each long rest which is useful for a sorcerer.
- Wand expert: Target creatures that haven’t taken their turn yet with your spells and you’ll have advantage on the attack roll. Also decent if you get stuck in melee range of a creature.
- Wings of stone: Flight is always useful. If you want that and are a gargoyle, then this could be handy, especially for staying out of melee range.
More from Eberron
There are several 1st and 3rd party releases dedicated to Eberron, including Keith Baker’s Exploring Eberron and Frontiers of Eberron and the 1st party Forge of the Artificer. Check out all our coverage on these releases.
