In the grand cosmology of D&D, I think the Shadowfell has always held a special allure for me - despite the fact that I think it's probably less fleshed-out than other planes. There's a giant asterisk to that, of course, which is that the entire Ravenloft setting exists within it, but Ravenloft pre-dated the official introduction of the Shadowfell, and was ret-conned to exist within it with the Shadowfell's introduction in 4th edition.
I don't know that I've ever really had my mind wrapped fully around the Sorcerer class, which has many of the same spells as Wizards, but can't be as broad in their utility, even as they bend those spells with metamagic to do things Wizards can't.
Still, the Shadow Sorcerer has always appealed to me, since I first saw it in Xanathar's. Let's see what hte proposed revamp would look like.
Shadow Spells:
Like Clerics, Paladins, and Warlocks, Sorcerers are now largely getting extra spells from their subclass. The old version of this subclass did get Darkness, but the UA version gets a full list:
1st: Bane, Inflict Wounds
2nd: Darkness, Pass without Trace
3rd: Hunger of Hadar, Summon Undead
4th: Greater Invisibility, Phantasmal Killer
5th: Contagion, Creation
There are some pretty good ones here - Pass Without Trace makes your party far more likely to succeed at sneaking around, even if you have loud heavy-armor-wearers. Summon Undead is also quite nice for a class that doesn't get nearly as many summon spells as the other arcane spellcasters.
Level 3:
Eyes of the Dark gives you 120 feet of Darkvision and 10 feet of Blindsight. Additionally, you can see through magical darkness that are part of spells you cast.
Ok, so let's look at the changes: the old version didn't give Blindsight, and the "see through magical darkness" only worked when you cast the Darkness spell using Sorcery points - the feature allowed you to cast it without a spell slot if you spent 2 Sorcery Points.
The blindsight is a nice boost, though I wonder if we could just effectively give them Devil's Sight. If you had a Warlock with that invocation, you'd be in this weird place where the Warlock could see through the Sorcerer's Hunger of Hadar, but the Sorcerer couldn't see through the Warlock's.
You might notice a lack of Strength of the Grave - that will come, but not for a while.
Level 6:
Spirits of Ill Omen lets you cast Summon Undead without the material component (which costs 300 gold, which is not nothing at low-tier-2). You can also cast it without a spell slot once per long rest. Also, when you cast the spell, you can modify it to not require concentration, but it only lasts 1 minute, and ends early if you cast it again.
Notably, this fixes what I think was an oversight with the GOO Warlock's "Create Thrall" feature in the 2024 PHB, where you can actually just cast Summon Aberration on every turn to get three (or later four) Aberrations all attacking together.
Thematically, this is a replacement for Hound of Ill Omen. The old version simply used the Dire Wolf stats, which meant it didn't scale up when you got into higher levels. But the Hound's biggest benefits were that it would impose disadvantage on the saving throws of the target you sent it after.
I will say that I think this feature is probably more broadly useful, and you can 100% flavor your undead spirit as a hound if you like. (Also, while casting Summon Undead at its base level is not great, the lack of a spell slot means you could potentially cast this as your action and then quicken some other good spell, as the only rule is that you can't cast multiple spells using spell slots in a turn.
Level 14:
Shadow Walk lets you use a bonus action to teleport up to 120 feet to an unoccupied space you can see, provided you both start and end in dim light or darkness.
This feature is unchanged. This is obviously going to be situational. You can create an area of darkness for yourself, but creating two might be harder. In a deep, dark dungeon, this is an amazing bit of free Misty Steps that go four times as far, but outdoors on a bright day, it'll be hard to use.
Level 18:
Umbral Form allows you to use a bonus action to transform for 1 minute, or until you're incapacitated. You can use the feature once for free per long rest, or spend 6 Sorcery points (no action required to spend them) to restore your use. The Umbral Form gives you Incorporeal Movement, as well as resistance to all damage except Force and Radiant, and then gives you Strength of the Grave.
Strength of the Grave works in the following way: if you would drop to 0 HP and not die outright, you can make a Charisma saving throw with a DC equal to 5 plus the damage taken, and on a success, your HP instead becomes equal to three times your Sorcerer level (so 54 at level 18, and eventually 60 at level 20).
Let's unpack this:
Umbral Form works very similarly to its old version (though the old version's incorporeal movement weirdly did a flat 5 damage to you if you end your turn inside an object, rather than 1d10).
However, the really big change is that Strength of the Grave only works while you're in Umbral Form. Not only have they moved this feature all the way from level 1 to level 18 (you could have expected it to move to level 3, given that everyone has to wait until then for a subclass,) but it also mean's it's not on all the time.
However, it's not a pure nerf - the old version could only go off once per long rest, and would be shut down if the damage included radiant damage or a critical hit. Essentially, the old version is a once-a-day potential get-out-of-jail-free card.
In theory, you could, several times during a fight, get restored by the new Strength of the Grave, for what amounts to a pretty chunky amount of healing - even at level 18, 54 HP is quite a lot. On the other hand, enemies are hitting very hard at this level, so meeting that DC is not guaranteed (though it depends on the monster. I ran an encounter for my recently-18 party on Monday that included a Dragon Turtle, and its breath weapon did 16d6, or an average of 56 damage on a failed save, which means I don't think anyone could succeed on that DC 61 saving throw. Now, that's extreme. Still, its bite is 3d10+7+2d6, or an average of 30 damage, and a DC 35 is also very unlikely to be surmountable. Again, this is when fighting one big monster, rather than a bunch of smaller ones. (That said, we're also halving all damage except Force and Radiant, which would make these DCs far more manageable).
Really, the toughest part of this is just not getting it until level 18.
So, overall?
I think this is a tough one. I think we're probably looking at a buff overall, though I feel like we lost some of the weirdness of the Hound of Ill Omen to get what is, again, probably a less ambiguous and more generally useful feature.
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