The
Elementalist
A class by Henry Smith.
Decipher the secrets of a new breed of magic user
A spell-slinging caster with limitless
low-level spell slots
The Elementalist
Running her henna-tattooed hands across a glittering scimitar, a tiefling sets her blade alight, leveling a threatening gaze at the young hotheaded soldier who thought fit to challenge her.
Swaddled in a thick winter coat, a plump dwarf exhales a mist of cooled air and sends two rays of ice towards a creeping wight, slowing the undead menace to a crawl as the dwarf raises their icy shield and advances apprehensively.
Kicking up dust with his heels, a wild-eyed elf rushes full pelt towards a closing city gate, calling forth a disruptive gust of wind to block an oncoming volley of arrows from the guards manning the battlements.
Whether they wield those combative powers for themselves or their cause, elementalists embody the chaotic, pugnacious, and limitless energy of the elemental chaos. Even the act of becoming an elementalist is a gamble, and it's one that wagers immense personal loss.
Forgotten Tales
Elementalists were first born when a long-forgotten tribe of scholarly nomads came upon land threatened by a warmongering nation, and found themselves cornered. A wizard elder, hoping that a fate of death might be better than a fate at the hands of this damned empire, called upon her study of the elements to grant the tribe a swift end in the very heart of an underground caldera.
Their deaths would not go unavenged. The wild, furious, instant pain of their sacrifice drove them straight to the heart of the elemental chaos - a fluctuating four-way intersection between the elemental planes. It consumed the nomads in an instant, tore them to shreds, and slowly reassembled them anew: as a single avatar of their former selves. The gentle wizard elder was eventually spat back from the magma, her tribe and persona obliterated, as isolated, silent, and furious as a blizzard. Like a blizzard she descended upon the aggressors.
That tale is lost to the ages: There is almost no understanding of the mechanisms that govern how one becomes an elementalist. All that is known is that the most zealous, desperate people sometimes find themselves alive in the most unthinkable places, unaware of exactly how they got there, and with a glow of tempestuous havoc emanating from within them.
Creating an Elementalist
Elementalists' personalities are connected by a yearning drive for raw strength, and their obfuscated origins pose unique questions. What desperate needs might have kept your elementalist character alive in the elemental chaos? Did they fulfil that need, or is their vengeance yet to come? Did they go looking for power, or stumble on it by accident? Do they remember much of their life before they gained their power? Who, if anyone, stuck by them throughout?
The Elementalist
| Level | Proficiency Bonus |
Cantrips Known |
Spells Known |
Spell Slots | Spell Level | Elemental Force Die |
Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | +2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1st | d4 | Spellcasting, Elemental Force |
| 2nd | +2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1st | d4 | Spellcasting Style |
| 3rd | +2 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1st | d4 | Attuned Element |
| 4th | +2 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1st | d4 | Ability Score Improvement |
| 5th | +3 | 5 | 5 | Unlimited | 1st | d6 | Unstable Spellcasting |
| 6th | +3 | 5 | 5 | Unlimited | 1st | d6 | Spellcasting Style Improvement |
| 7th | +3 | 5 | 6 | Unlimited | 1st | d6 | Attuned Element Feature |
| 8th | +3 | 6 | 6 | Unlimited | 1st | d6 | Ability Score Improvement |
| 9th | +4 | 6 | 7 | Unlimited | 1st | d8 | Primordial Drain |
| 10th | +4 | 6 | 7 | Unlimited | 1st | d8 | Attuned Element Feature |
| 11th | +4 | 6 | 8 | Unlimited | 2nd | d8 | Unstoppable Force |
| 12th | +4 | 6 | 8 | Unlimited | 2nd | d8 | Ability Score Improvement |
| 13th | +5 | 6 | 9 | Unlimited | 2nd | d10 | Primordial Drain (two uses) |
| 14th | +5 | 6 | 9 | Unlimited | 2nd | d10 | Discorporate |
| 15th | +5 | 6 | 10 | Unlimited | 2nd | d10 | Attuned Element Feature |
| 16th | +5 | 6 | 10 | Unlimited | 2nd | d10 | Ability Score Improvement |
| 17th | +6 | 6 | 11 | Unlimited | 3rd | d12 | |
| 18th | +6 | 6 | 11 | Unlimited | 3rd | d12 | Primordial Drain (three uses) |
| 19th | +6 | 6 | 12 | Unlimited | 3rd | d12 | Ability Score Improvement |
| 20th | +6 | 6 | 12 | Unlimited | 3rd | d12 | One with the Elements |
Quick Build
You can make an elementalist quickly by following these suggestions. First, make Wisdom your highest ability score. Your next highest score should be Dexterity, or Constitution. If you receive heavy armor proficiency, you may wish to make Strength your second highest score. Second, choose the outlander background.
Class Features
As an elementalist, you gain the following class features.
Hit Points
- Hit Dice: 1d8 per elementalist level
- Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier
- Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + your Constitution modifier per elementalist level above the 1st
Proficiencies
- Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields
- Weapons: Simple weapons, hand crossbows, longswords, rapiers, shortswords
- Tools: none
- Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
- Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Athletics, Arcana, Intimidation, Nature, Perception, and Survival.
Equipment
You start off with the following equipment in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
- (a) a simple ranged weapon with 20 pieces of ammunition or (b) a shield and a simple melee weapon
- (a) leather armor or (b) hide armor
- A component pouch and an explorer's pack
If you forego this starting equipment, as well as the items offered by your background, you start with 3d4 × 10 gp to buy your equipment.
Multiclassing
If your group uses the optional rule on multiclassing in the Player’s Handbook (p. 163), here’s what you need to know if you choose elementalist as one of your classes.
Ability Score Minimum. As a multiclass character, you must have at least a Wisdom score of 13 to take a level in this class.
Spellcasting. Unlimited slots are too unstable for most magic. You can only use unlimited spell slots to cast spells, and only to cast spells on the elementalist spell list.
Spellcasting
At 1st level, you tap into a wellspring of magic from a chaotic, roiling flood of elemental power.
Cantrips
You learn four cantrips from the elementalist spell list. You learn additional elementalist cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown in the Cantrips Known column of the Elementalist table. Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one of the cantrips you know with another cantrip from the Elementalist Spell List.
Spell Slots
The Elementalist Class table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell's level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.
Spells Known of 1st-Level and Higher
You know three 1st level elementalist spells of your choice from the Elementalist Spell List.
The Spells Known column of the Elementalist Class table shows when you learn more elementalist spells of 1st level or higher. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 11th level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level.
Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace any number of spells you know with other spells of your choice from the Elementalist Spell List. The new spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.
Spellcasting Ability
Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for any spells you learn using this feature, since you learn and cast spells using the force of your soul's connection to elemental confluence.
You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a spell you cast using this feature, and when making an attack roll with one.
Spell save DC
Spell attack modifier
Spellcasting Focus
You can use any kind of tattoo as a spellcasting focus for your elementalist spells. Elementalists often wreath themselves in body art, with each new design representing a different spell.
Elemental Force
When you reach 1st level, you can empower your magic to ensure its effects are as potent as possible.
You have a pool of d4s that you spend to empower your spells. The number of dice in your pool is equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of 1).
This die improves as you gain levels in this class, as shown in the Elemental Force Die column of the Elementalist table.
When you make a spell attack roll, you can spend a die from the pool to roll it and add it to the result. Alternately, when you force a creature to make a saving throw, you can spend a die to roll it and subtract it from the result. You can use this feature after the die is rolled but before the DM declares whether it succeeds or fails.
You regain any expended dice when you finish a long rest, provided you spend at least 10 minutes of the rest completing elemental rites. Some examples of elemental rites are given in the Elemental Rite Examples table.
Elemental Rite Examples
| Associated Element | Rite Example |
|---|---|
| Air | Creating a lightning rod, charging yourself with static electricity, making smoke signals. |
| Fire | Burning incense and rare herbs, cooking food, lighting and feeding a bonfire |
| Stone | Etching a pattern into a pebble, making jewellery, sculpting dirt or sand |
| Water | Submerging yourself in natural water until you're almost out of breath, making a pattern out of snow, dancing in rainfall. |
| Wood | Helping animals, planting or watering plants, decorating your hair with flowers. |
Spellcasting Style
At 2nd level, you improve your spells' combative use, choosing from one of the following spellcasting styles. The style gains an additional benefit once you reach 6th level in this class.
Accuracy
Whenever you cast an elementalist cantrip that deals damage, you can increase one of the damage rolls by 1d8 (this extra die is doubled by a critical hit as usual). Additionally, your spell attacks with elementalist cantrips score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20.
Accuracy Improvement. Once you reach 6th level, these benefits extend to all of your spells of 1st level or higher.
Pairs Well With: fire bolt, shocking grasp, chromatic orb, Flame element
Cunning
When a hostile creature's movement provokes an opportunity attack from you, you can use your reaction to cast an elementalist cantrip at the creature, rather than making an opportunity attack. The cantrip must only target the creature. If the target is damaged by the cantrip, its movement is halved until the start of its next turn.
Additionally, when you damage a creature within 5 feet of you with an elementalist cantrip on your turn, you can take the Dash, Disengage, or Help action as a bonus action.
Cheap Shots Improvement. Once you reach 6th level, this benefit extends to all your spells of 1st level or higher.
Pairs Well With: infestation, shocking grasp, magic missile, Frost element
Full Version Styles
Defense, Potency, and Focus appear in the full version! The full version also includes three more optional styles in the appendix.
Attuned Element
At 3rd level, you attune to a particular element as your permanent bond. Choose from Flame, Thunderclouds, Frost, Woodlands, or Mountain, each of which is detailed at the end of the class's description. Your choice grants you features at 6th level and again at 10th and 15th level.
Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Unstable Spellcasting
Once you reach 5th level, you gain an unlimited number of 1st level spell slots with which to cast your elementalist spells. The level of these spell slots increases as you gain levels in this class, as shown in the Spell Level column of the Elementalist table.
These unlimited slots are too unstable for most magic. You can only use unlimited spell slots to cast spells, and only to cast spells on the elementalist spell list.
Primordial Drain
This 9th level feature appears in the full version! But, actually, screw it, what the hell, it also appears here.
Beginning at 9th level, you can protect your allies from all surges of elemental power. As a reaction when you see one or more creatures within 60 feet of you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison or thunder damage from an effect, you can choose any number of those creatures. Those targets gain resistance to the triggering damage type until the start of your next turn (halving the incoming damage), and you regain one of your expended elemental force dice.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest. You can use this feature twice between short or long rests starting at 13th level and three times between short or long rests starting at 18th level.
Unstoppable Force
This 11th level feature appears in the full version!
Discorporate
This 14th level feature appears in the full version!
One with the Elements
This 20th level feature appears in the full version!
Flame Element
Fire destroys and consumes, and thus the powers of the flame element are hellbent on offense. Those who survive to Flame element's blessing are warriors, thirsty for a life of combat, characterised by the blazing swings of their violent, burning emotions.
Flaming Magic
Starting at 3rd level, you learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Flame Element Spells table. The spells count as elementalist spells for you, but they don't count against the number of elementalist spells you know.
Flame Element Spells
| Elementalist Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3rd | searing smite, wrathful smite |
| 11th | branding smite, flaming sphere |
| 17th | blinding smite, fireball |
Ashes to Ashes
At 3rd level, your touch sears like kindling embers. As an action, you can touch a flammable, nonmagical object that isn't being worn or carried to set it alight. The object must be Large or smaller.
The object burns until it is extinguished, and a creature can use its action to extinguish a 5-foot cube of the object. If any part of the object burns for 1 hour, that part is destroyed. You have a number of uses of this feature equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain any expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Once you reach 10th level, you can use this action on objects and buildings of any size.
Ignition
Beginning at 3rd level, whenever you deal fire damage with an attack, the next attack roll you make against the target before the end of your next turn has advantage.
Additionally, you can ignite your weapons. Whenever you hit with a weapon attack, you can change all of the attack's damage to fire damage to use this feature.
Searing Strikes
Beginning at 7th level, once per turn when you use an action or reaction to make an attack, you can expend a use of this feature to make one additional weapon attack as part of the same action. You have a number of uses of this feature equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain any expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Pyrophoric Mantle
This 10th level feature appears in the full version!
Arcanum: The Inferno
This 15th level feature appears in the full version!
Frost Element
Elementalists that survive the chilling touch of frost solidify themselves in a defensive shell of glacial ice. Able to endure the harshest winters, they slow their aggressors to a crawl before freezing them them solid.
Frozen Magic
Starting at 3rd level, you learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Frost Element Spells table. The spells count as elementalist spells for you, but they don't count against the number of elementalist spells you know.
Frost Element Spells
| Elementalist Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| 3rd | ice knife (XGtE/EEPC), mage armor |
| 11th | Snilloc's snowball swarm (XGtE/EEPC), mirror image |
| 17th | Leomund's tiny hut, sleet storm |
Tundra Walker
Once you choose this element at 3rd level, you are immune to the effects of extreme cold, and you ignore difficult terrain caused by ice, snow, or slippery surfaces.
Ice Shield
Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your bonus action to conjure a shield of solid ice in a free hand. The ice shield grants a bonus to AC equal to your Wisdom modifier while you wear it, in place of a shield's normal bonus. You don it as part of the bonus action, and can choose its appearance when you create it. It melts if you use this feature again.
If a creature hits you with a melee weapon attack while you're wearing an ice shield, the shield is destroyed, splinters into ice, and deals 1d12 cold damage to the attacker.
Snowdrift Cloak
At 7th level, you can use your action to surround yourself with a flurry of snow that lightly obscures the area within 10 feet of you for the next minute. Hostile creatures within the area are blinded, and must expend 2 feet of movement for every 1 foot they move.
Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you use it again.
Snowball Fight
This 10th level feature appears in the full version! And it lives up to the name, too!
Arcanum: The Cold
This 15th level feature appears in the full version!
Full Version Subclasses
Four more subclasses - the Mountains, the Woodlands, the Thundercloud and the Aether elements all appear in the full version, along with, possibly, one more! Maybe!
Elementalist Spell List
Cantrips (0 Level)
- Acid Splash
- Control Flames (EEPC/XGtE)
- Create Bonfire (EEPC/XGtE)
- Dancing Lights
- Displacement (New!)
- Fire Bolt
- Frostbite (EEPC/XGtE)
- Gust (EEPC/XGtE)
- Infestation (XGtE)
- Mage Hand
- Mending
- Mold Earth (EEPC/XGtE)
- Poison Spray
- Prestidigitation
- Produce Flame
- Ray of Frost
- Resistance
- Shape Water (EEPC/XGtE)
- Shocking Grasp
- Snow Flurry (New!)
- Spare the Dying
- Thunderclap (EEPC/XGtE)
- Thorn Whip
- True Strike
1st Level
- Aqua Jet (New!)
- Burning Hands
- Catapult (EEPC/XGtE)
- Chaos Bolt (XGtE)
- Chromatic Orb
- Chromatic Shockwave (New!)
- Earth Tremor (EEPC/XGtE)
- Elemental Defense (New!)
- Ensnaring Strike
- Entangle
- Expeditious Retreat
- Faerie Fire
- False Life
- Fire Seeds (New!)
- Fog Cloud
- Grease
- Jump
- Magic Missile
- Purify Food and Drink
- Solidify (New!)
- Witch Bolt
New Spells
Chromatic Shockwave
1st-level evocation, Elementalist
- Casting Time: 1 action, or 1 reaction when damage reduces your hit points to 0
- Range: 10 feet
- Components: S
- Duration: Instantaneous
You flood the area within range with energy from the elemental chaos. You choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, or thunder. Each other creature within range must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw, taking 2d8 damage of the type you chose on a failed save, or half as much on a success.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell at 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d8 for each level above the 1st.
Full Version Spells
The remaining new spells (displacement, snow flurry, aqua jet, elemental defense, fire seeds, solidify, burrow, and charge lightning) appear in the full version!
Making Similar Classes
Here's general advice for homebrewing other classes with unlimited spell slots.
Progression Speed. Spell slot levels can progress slightly faster than they progress in this class. Much of its power is found in other features, such as Spellcasting Style and the 7th level subclass features. You could just about manage raising slots to 2nd at 7th, 3rd at 11th, and 4th at 17th.
This class gets the vast amount of its of power from its subclass features and spellcasting style
I Cast Shield. Firstly, do not give players unlimited healing spells like cure wounds. Secondly, don't give players any reaction spells like shield, hellish rebuke, or absorb elements unless you want those effects to occur every single turn that they can occur. Finally, don't give players spells that let them enchant the whole party simultaneously, like darkvision and longstrider, without serious consideration. These spells are all only limited by the spell slots they consume - removing that limit can slow down gameplay, or break the game completely.
Avoiding The Big Sad. In classes like this, players get to cast one low level (and, usually, single target) spell or cantrip per turn. That means there is a high chance that the player's turn will be totally wasted. You have to mitigate this in your design, with some kind of "miss fixing" effect. Make their spells more accurate, make their misses deal damage, make them ignore magic resistance, give them an effect like Portent, Lucky, or Elemental Force etc.
Elementalist 5/Paladin 2/Sorcerer 2. Unlimited spell slots must be for spells only.
Give What It's Missing. The class is built on removing limitations on resources. This means you should give them some new resources to maintain, so that they have something interesting to manage and track during combat. Here, you get Elemental Force dice, Primordial Drain, and the 10th/15th level subclass features.
Optional Class Features
The full version has some optional extra features here, mirroring those presented in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
Where do I find the full class once it's finished?
This class will be finished by the end of June. It'll include 5 or 6 subclasses, depending on how things shake out. It'll be PWYW: 95% of money spent on it will go directly to charity, and the other 5% will to DMsGuild operational costs - just like everything I ever make!
You'll be able to find it here:
Credits
Thanks to Charlie, Jacob, Dickon, and James for their feedback on the Elementalist.
Special thanks to Persephone, Caeda, Havran, Korn, Naia, and Teench, and also thanks to Aoife, Equill, Ester, Firkka and Rose. You've been fantastic companions, and I've learned so much from DMing you all.
Thanks to Charlotte for being a lovely girlfriend and an especially good-hearted friend. Your sass is the best. I bet you won't read this, but your idea for acorn grenades worked a treat.