Author: Icebrick1
Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen recently released, and with it came a few new player options. While most options were restricted to the Dragonlance campaign setting, one is explicitly meant for use in any setting: the Lunar Sorcery subclass for Sorcerer. How does the subclass hold up, and should you play one? This guide goes through every Lunar Sorcery feature, and gives recommendations and how to best utilize the subclass.
Features Breakdown
Level 1: Lunar Embodiment
Lunar Sorcerer’s first feature is also its most potent one. Lunar Embodiment gives the Sorcerer a total of 15 new spells. Additionally, the Sorcerer chooses one lunar phase to embody, and gets to cast one 1st-level spell without spell slots depending on their lunar phase. Note that this extra 1st-level spell cast is the only effect of the lunar phase until later levels; the Sorcerer has access to all 15 spells at all times, no matter their lunar phase. Since shield is a much more potent spell than ray of sickness and color spray, the Full Moon lunar phase is the best.
Most of the spells themselves aren’t particularly powerful, and most were already on the Sorcerer list. The most useful spells on the list are shield, dispel magic, lesser restoration, phantom steed, and potentially death ward. However since all the spells on the list are Sorcerer spells for the Lunar Sorcerer, they can be exchanged for other Sorcerer spells.
This effectively gives Sorcerer an additional 15 spells known, though it will require a lot of swapping around on level ups. It should be noted that the spell the Sorcerer is swapping in to learn doesn’t necessarily have to be of the same level as the spell they’re forgetting. Additionally, while you can change what spells you’ve learned, this doesn’t alter the Lunar Spells table, which is static. This means you can’t get free casts of any spells other than shield, ray of sickness and color spray.
This might seem odd, since the text makes no mention of swapping spells, unlike Clockwork Soul and Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. The difference here is that Lunar Sorcerer has no special mechanics for swapping spells, it’s simply using the basic rules of the main class, while Clockwork Soul and Aberrant Mind alters this. For example of this type of mechanic working being confirmed by the developers of 5e, Jeremy Crawford has said you can swap the spells gained from Bard’s Magical Secrets with a Bard spell, because the Magical Secrets spell counts as Bard spell.
15 Additional spells is a lot—even more than Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul—but there aren’t any particularly strong options from outside the Sorcerer spell list that the Lunar Sorcerer gains, the best being phantom steed, lesser restoration, and death ward. Still, this is certainly a very strong feature, and it makes Lunar Sorcerer a very good class to grab a single level in for multiclassed builds, which will be discussed in the conclusion.
Level 1: Moon Fire
Lunar Sorcery’s second 1st-level feature is much weaker, but still potentially useful. It grants the Lunar Sorcerer sacred flame and allows them to target two creatures within 5 feet of each other with a single casting of sacred flame, essentially making it a slightly better version of acid splash. When you can hit two enemies with this, and they don’t have good Dexterity saving throws, it will likely be the best cantrip you can cast, but don’t focus your whole strategy on casting cantrips or forgo casting a leveled spell just because you see the opportunity to hit two people with sacred flame.
Level 6: Lunar Boons
Depending on your current lunar phase, you can reduce the sorcery point cost of metamagic on a school of spell by 1, a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. At best, this is as good as gaining additional sorcery points equal to your proficiency bonus, but the way these points can be spent is quite limited.
Full Moon has fairly limited options, with the best being Subtle counterspell, but Twinned death ward, subtle detect thoughts, Quickened or Twinned banishment and Twinned mage armor (though in the most optimal parties, no one is benefitting from mage armor) are all potentially useful strategies as well.
New Moon is overall quite weak as well. Decent options include: Twinned Tasha’s mind whip, Quickened synaptic static, Subtle suggestion (out of combat). Dissonant whispers isn’t a Sorcerer spell, but if learned from another source like the Fey Touched feat Twinned dissonant whispers is quite potent.
Crescent Moon is probably the strongest option with regards to this feature, but even it doesn’t have a ton of options. Most notable is Twinned phantasmal force, which is an excellent spell. Other possibilities include: Twinned darkvision, Twinned enlarge/reduce, Twinned polymorph. The Careful Spell metamagic usually isn’t worth taking, but if you have it, Careful hypnotic pattern is useful.
Overall, this feature is mediocre. If it was simply additional sorcery points equal to your proficiency bonus it would just be quite good, but as it is, the restrictions often mean you won’t get the most out of these sorcery points.
Level 6: Waxing and Waning
As a bonus action and at the cost of 1 sorcery point, you can change your current lunar phase. Additionally, you can cast the 1st-level spell from each lunar phase once, when you’re in the correct phase. Ray of sickness and color spray are barely worth their action cost, let alone the price of a sorcery point, so for now this feature is mostly for use with Lunar Boons. Note that unless you plan to use multiple spells of the appropriate schools with Lunar Boons, it’s not worth switching phases to use with Lunar Boons since it costs 1 sorcery point to switch.
The best strategy at this point is most likely to stay in the Full Moon phase until you have used up your free casting of shield, then switch to Crescent Moon to make use of twinned phantasmal force.
Level 14: Lunar Empowerment
The Lunar Sorcerer gains an additional permanent passive effect while in each lunar phase. These are fairly minor, but are worth switching to with Waxing and Waning when they are relevant.
Full Moon allows you to shed light a short distance, and gives you and your allies advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks and Intelligence (Investigation) checks. In a trap filled dungeon and against hidden enemies, this might be a good choice to protect you and your party. Once combat has begun however, this usually does nothing.
New Moon grants advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks and gives enemies disadvantage on attacks against you while you are in darkness. This is generally the best ability of the bunch. Advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) usually isn’t too important if the party has access to pass without trace, but it’s nice to have. The more potent part is giving enemies disadvantage, which is like a weaker form of Gloom Stalker’s excellent Umbral Sight feature. It will be difficult to use without Darkvision, though characters without it can use the spell darkvision if necessary.
Crescent Moon simply gives you resistance to radiant and necrotic damage. These damage types are generally uncommon, and this is probably the worst empowerment in general, but when you know you’ll be facing radiant and necrotic damage it can be worth switching to.
If you and your party can consistently give enemies disadvantage with the New Moon phase’s ability, that is the phase you should generally remain in. If you can’t make great use of the New Moon ability, either due to party composition or the environment, stick to the general strategy of getting the free casting of shield from Full Moon then switching to whatever phase is best for Lunar Boons.
Level 18: Lunar Phenomenon
Finally, the Lunar Sorcerer gains access to three bonus action abilities that can be used while in a Lunar Phase or while switching to another Lunar Phase.
Full Moon has a mild effect with a short duration, and relies on a saving throw that most monsters—especially at high levels—are very good at; Constitution. The additional effect of restoring 3d8 hit points is tiny.
New Moon is more useful, allowing you to freeze enemies in place while dealing a small bit of damage and run away without provoking attacks of opportunity by turning you invisible.
The Crescent Moon ability is situational, but it can be extremely useful when relevant. Dimension door is a very useful teleportation that allows you to bring an ally, and this is similar, though it trades range and the lack of a sight requirement for the ability to give you and your ally resistance to all damage.
In addition to getting to cast each of these abilities once per long rest, the Sorcerer can choose to spend 5 sorcery points to reactivate one again. Most of these aren’t worth spending 5 sorcery points on, except occasionally the Crescent Moon ability. None of these abilities are exceptional, but they are nice to have and it’s usually worthwhile to go through every moon phase in a day to use all of them once.
Conclusion
Overall, Lunar Sorcery is a subclass centered on the interesting mechanic of changing your lunar phase for different benefits, but unfortunately this mechanic will likely be underused until very late into the game. Regardless, the 1st level feature has enough power to make Lunar Sorcery a powerful subclass. For a straight classed Sorcerer, Lunar Sorcery will usually be a little weaker than Clockwork Soul Sorcerer, who gets access to more powerful spells like wall of force, but a little stronger than Aberrant Mind Sorcerer and Divine Soul Sorcerer.
Lunar Sorcerer is also an excellent one level dip for many builds. With a single level you can gain the absorb elements and silvery barbs spells from Sorcerer, and shield with an extra free casting from Lunar Sorcery. If your DM doesn’t allow you to swap Clockwork Soul spells the same level you gain the subclass, then this might be the only way to get the “big three” reaction spells in a single level, and even if they do, you might prefer the additional casting of shield to Clockwork Soul’s Restore Balance. Compared to a Divine Soul dip, Lunar Sorcerer misses out on bless, which is a great spell, but might not be necessary if other classes already give access to it, and Favored by the Gods, which is a very good feature that is probably better than a single extra casting of shield.
I don’t know who wrote this as the author(s) is not listed.
But there could be a couple of errors.
The second quote ‘Additionally, when you gain a level in this class,’ is on page 101, not 99, in my hard copy of the players handbook.
In every sorcerer build on tabletop builds. This spell replacement when you level up has never mentioned to replaced the sub-class featured spell list.
A sub-class feature spell swap has always been mentioned as part of the feature allows. Psionic Spells (divination or an enchantment spell) for Aberrant Mind, Clockwork Magic (abjuration or a transmutation) for Clockwork Soul and Divine Magic (cleric spell list) for Divine Soul each have a conditions for spell swaps.
It could be that the folks that wrote Lunar Sorcerer simply overlooked this limitation or this interaction may be allowed.
I am not a upset or anything. Just a little confused and would like some clarifications if possible.
“In every sorcerer build on tabletop builds. This spell replacement when you level up has never mentioned to replaced the sub-class featured spell list.”
That’s because it’s never been worth doing. The other subclasses that get subclass spells (AM and CS) get to choose better spells from the wizard list than they have on the sorcerer list so they have no desire to replace the subclass spells with generic sorcerer spells. You’ll find that the gloomstalker guides do choose to replace some gloomstalker subclass spells with generic ranger spells.
“A sub-class feature spell swap has always been mentioned as part of the feature allows. Psionic Spells (divination or an enchantment spell) for Aberrant Mind, Clockwork Magic (abjuration or a transmutation) for Clockwork Soul…”
It’s important for these to be mentioned because they are not the same swap provided by the PHB rules for spell swapping. They are an additional swap per level on the condition described in the subclass (swapping a subclass spell for another spell from outside the sorcerer list from given schools). This feature does not replace the feature that already exists that allows the swapping of sorcerer spells on level up. The two quotations in the article clearly state that sorcerer spells can be swapped on level up and that lunar spells are sorcerer spells. It may not have been the intention of the designers for this interaction to exist but it does and nearly every guide on this website features an interaction that one could argue was unintended.
Given that two other subclasses specifically allow swapping out the spells from the subclass list I think it’s very clear that RAI the lunar spell list can’t be swapped.
I think this is a really weird interpretation of the rules when the other sorc builds on this site assume the opposite.
This is the reason you guys (rightly) rate clockwork soul as the best sorc class.
Also Phantom Steed isn’t great if it’s not being cast as a ritual.
I don’t think this article is up to your usual standard.
Hello, there will be a revision to the article in the near future, but the reason the Lunar Sorcerer works differently from Clockwork Soul and Aberrant Mind is because those subclasses have additional rules that change how swapping works, while Lunar Sorc has nothing of the sort. As far as the game is concerned, they’re simply Sorcerer spells that we’ve learned, and Sorcerer spells can be swapped for other Sorcerer spells. This type of thing has been confirmed to work in the past by developers, for example you can swap a Magical Secrets spell (which is a bard spell) with a normal Bard Spell (though there isn’t a ton of reason to do this) https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/657832475729731584
The two other subclasses specifically allow the swapping of subclass spells to *spells that are not on the sorcerer spell list* which is not the same feature being referenced here. The feature that allows you to swap subclass spells to other spells on the class spell list is utilized by other builds on the site such as gloomstalker. It’s not relevant for other sorcerer builds on the site because no other sorcerer has a subclass list besides AM and CS and those two subclasses have the even more powerful feature of being able to swap to spells outside the sorcerer list. Given there are more powerful options to select from wizard than sorcerer, it doesn’t make sense to swap them to a generic sorcerer spell like it does here.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the lunar spells are not supposed to be swapped out for other spells on level up. It seems like a willfully ignorant misinterpretation of the rules to assume that is possible.
I think I agree with this subclass being better than Divine Soul, but I don’t think I agree with it being better than Aberrant Mind. Even if you’re allowed to swap your spells, I would much rather have Telekinesis, Arcane Eye, Black Tentacles, Hunger of Hadar, Locate Object, Dissonant Whispers, and strong subclass features than Death Ward, no-ritual Phantom Steed, Lesser Restoration, a few extra Sorcerer spells, and barely relevant subclass features.
I agree that you are right on a strict reading of RAW. It’s worth noting that the way this feature is implemented on DnD beyond I wasn’t able to swap out the lunar sorceror spells so I still think it’s pretty clear that the RAI is that these spells can’t be swapped.
DnD Beyond doesn’t let you swap Clockwork or Aberrant spells either. That’s more of a DnD Beyond problem than any indication of RAI