Control/Buff Build to teach Players

[Orc_Lord]

Tl:tr Need a good control/buff build to show newish players a different kind of play

I have been DMing my core group for about two years. Recently one of them felt comfortable enough to start running a game.

My core group where all introduced to D&D by me, I have been playing for 20 years now. I feel like they are my kids where I nurtured and helped them grow as role-players. Introduced them to different styles of play, exposed them to different kinds of D&D from dungeoncrawls to pure social, puzzles, exploration, tactical combat, combat with theater of the mind.

Now that I get to play I want to teach them on this side of the table as well. Let me be clear, I don't want to backseat DM.

Instead I want to show them see other aspects of play.

Some stuff I would like
1. Teach them that you don't have to always be doing damage to contribute to combat
2. Teach them that sometimes players can be an evil character.. without being a murder hobo (I like LE alignment for this)
3. Teach them about multiclass and what to look for when combining classes
4. Will have 6-8 encounters a day, so I don't want to twirl my thumbs for a lot of them

Also I don't want to steal the spotlight. Being optimized is fine but not munchkin level. They really don't give the game enough thought sometime and I feel like some of them have not realized how tweaking your character can be a different kind of fun.

So, now that I have given my long introduction comes the question.

What is a good build for will kind of satisfy the list above (the alignment of LE is not mandatory)?

I am thinking about a Life Cleric 1/Druid maybe a Sorlock focusing on EB and control spells...

I have a bunch of background ideas so no matter the build I probably have a backstory to match it.

Some ideas would be nice.

[Talionis]

My thinking would be a character like a Wizard with a lot of known spells, id stay away from Sorcerer becauee of how few spells known and I would not do more than a small dip in Warlock because i think you want to cast spells often, so youd want more slots.

Dipping multiple classes for lots of utility cantrips is fun.

Also i will suggest Ritual Magic feat to add even more spells known and being able to help the party with ritual spells not being flashy but having their uses.

[Orc_Lord]

I would not do more than a small dip in Warlock because i think you want to cast spells often, so youd want more slots.

One of the appeals of a Sorlock is that you can trade warlock spells for sorcery points to sorcery spells. Granted they do have a more limited choice, but between that mechanic and the Divine Sorcerer there is some potential there.

[opaopajr]

Any of the core four classes would do. Yes, even the fighter, because someone needs to stand in the way of pain, and Dodge with Second Wind is strong out the gate. The best thing would be to fill out your supplements to your packaged equipment (Explorer's Kit, etc.), and show them the power of One Free Interact with an Object and the generic moves in the Combat chapter.

Easy mode for this is Cleric, Rogue & Wizard Medium due to squishiness, and Fighter is Hard mode due to going against expectations and requiring lateral thinking.

How much do you want to teach them, and how on the ball do you want to be while playing?

[Orc_Lord]

Being forced to think about what I am doing is great.

I kind of want a challenge and variance if I can help it.

[solidork]

Cleric 1/Wizard X could be good. Conquest Paladin could also be good, it just takes a while for your lockdown to really come online.

[Orc_Lord]

Cleric 1/Wizard X could be good. Conquest Paladin could also be good, it just takes a while for your lockdown to really come online.

What kind of Cleric?

[Talionis]

One of the appeals of a Sorlock is that you can trade warlock spells for sorcery points to sorcery spells. Granted they do have a more limited choice, but between that mechanic and the Divine Sorcerer there is some potential there.

Are you talking about Coffeelock? I genuinely wouldnt want to show my table that. If I had a player that wanted to play a Coffeelock I would let them but wed spend a lot of time on. Limits.

But my criticism of Sorcerer remains even if Divine Sorcerer does have the best list of spells in the game to pick from, and i think it mostly does. You get so few spells on your list and I pictured your goal to highlight a number of good spells huh our players werent using.

In many ways a Cleric/Wizard has as good a spell list to pick from but will have access to so many more spells over the course of the campaign.

Maybe I picked up the wrong vibe from uour first post.

[Orc_Lord]

Are you talking about Coffeelock? ..snip...

Maybe I picked up the wrong vibe from uour first post.

I guess I was talking about Coffeelocks, I didn't know it by that name. I was thinking about actual short rests, not 8 short ones instead of a long rest, cause that's ridiculous.

I want to help everyone else to have fun. Not showcase good much damage I can do per round, so I think your have the right vibe.

[opaopajr]

Being forced to think about what I am doing is great.

I kind of want a challenge and variance if I can help it.

Hard mode Fighter it is then. You will need to play up your Action Surge and One Free Interact with the Environment (OFIE). You will also need to select your Background and Feats meaningfully for lateral utility instead of damage output.

Be sure to pick up a variety of weaponry and equipment. Things most people forget: pitons (spikes), extra rope, smaller concealable light sources, hammer, crowbar, climbing gear, chalk, mirror, etc. Set things up so people DO NOT have to spend spell slots, or take extra Ability checks, to get things done.

People habitually underuse items and environs, even in video games, to make things easier. They look to their widgets to deal with problems like the saying, 'those with hammers look for nails'. Mundane methods are valuable because it is readily available to all -- and is essentially throwing mere copper or silver at the problem.

Remember, your OA can use a melee attack, such as grapple, shove, a melee net attack... Or you can use your Protection Shield style for your Reaction if you have it. :smallwink: Try ability checks during combat, like for example Intimidate as you Dodge. Improvise an Action and remind the GM the scene should be more than a barren, uninteractive arena.

Take the Fighter to remind the table D&D is more than pushing buttons on your character sheet! :smallsmile:

[Galactkaktus]

I would recommend the wizard lots of control spells and their version of ritual caster allows you to contribute to alot of things outside of combat aswell.

[Blood of Gaea]

What kind of Cleric?
Both knowledge and arcana work quite well for a dip as a wizard.

[Mortis_Elrod]

Forge or Life cleric maybe Light/Shepherd Druid. Should give you enough of everything.

Alternatively Bard + Divine Soul is something to look at. Though you won’t be as tanky.

Druid has a lot of control spells and cleric a lot of small buffs with forge cleric giving more (magic weapon/elemental weapon) and Shepherd Druid has some nice buffs options. Life is always great if you want to heal more, and Light has a cool blinding effect that is useful.

No idea if you’ll make it to higher levels so I’ll give a level 10 build.

Forge Cleric 6/Shepherd Druid 4. Hill Dwarf seems appropriate, you could have been a Farmer who had to make his own tools because it takes too long to get to nearest town, with a healthy respect for proper animal husbandry and nature.

Start Forge Cleric 1. This way you can give out either +1 AC or +1 weapon. Always fun to have plus you get to start with heavy armor. Then you can go 4 levels into Druid to get the Shepherd goodies as soon as possible and an ASI. Finish the rest as Forge cleric and there you go, you have a decent support/controller and if you want you can offensive pretty easily. Moonbeam + Spirutal Weapon + Hawk Spirits while you sit in the back waving your arms around would be pretty fun. Toll the dead if you don’t need to move the beam is also great.

[CaptAl]

Shepherd druid with Ritual casting (wizard) feat for a familiar. Massive utility, don't have to prepare your ritual spells unless they are druid exclusive spells, buffs, heals, debuffs for days, and your damage tends to be over time which helps with not outshining the other PC's. A level of Monk for unarmored defense and a reliable melee presence can't hurt. Or a couple levels of ranger to up your combat presence and double down on the exploration pillar of the game could also be flavorful and synergistic.

[iTreeby]

I honestly don't understand why no one is suggesting bard. Not only do you get to ace social encounters with expertise, you also get bardic inspiration, showing how strong non-combat can be. You can definitely be evil as a bard without any issues. Any neat control spells bard doesn't have can be picked up with magical secrets, you could even get a familiar that way (or through a warlock multiclass) and have it use the help action as another buff.

[tieren]

I don't know if we are allowed to post links to other forums, but I suggest you find Treantmonk's guide to wizards, Being a God.

He goes into great detail on how to be a wizard who doesn't do damage (buff/control). Would be a great way to demonstrate a different style of play to new players.

[Sirithhyando]

To add a possibility to what was said, divination wizard is very different to play than other classes/subclasses.
Deciding rolls is always a nice trump card to have and you can use it for your allies too.

Having a 20 waiting and making sure the rogue does his crit at the right moment or deciding a low roll on a save for a monster is a great way to control encounters.


but I suggest you find Treantmonk's guide to wizards, Being a God.
And this, this is my favorite guide, you should take the time to read it.

Here's part 1 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IeOXWvbkmQ3nEyM2P3lS8TU4rsK6QJP0oH7HE_v67QY/edit) and part 2 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZHzEjiHvtDItZE2ixfoYwqi7brTO-ag8uBJndE5saro/edit) of this guide

[rbstr]

Glamour Bard is perfect for this.
It's "Battlefield Control" the archetype.

Add 2-5 levels of Fey Warlock for damage dealing.

[Orc_Lord]

I honestly don't understand why no one is suggesting bard. Not only do you get to ace social encounters with expertise, you also get bardic inspiration, showing how strong non-combat can be. You can definitely be evil as a bard without any issues. Any neat control spells bard doesn't have can be picked up with magical secrets, you could even get a familiar that way (or through a warlock multiclass) and have it use the help action as another buff.

I was already thinking about bard. A challenge I am going to have is this campaign will be combat heavy and have 6-8 encounters per day.


I don't know if we are allowed to post links to other forums, but I suggest you find Treantmonk's guide to wizards, Being a God.

Yes, I really liked his guide from 3.5 and I have read his Pathfinder and his 5e one.


Glamour Bard is perfect for this.
It's "Battlefield Control" the archetype.

Add 2-5 levels of Fey Warlock for damage dealing.

This sounds interesting. I haven't looked too much in the new bard archetypes. I will take a look. Also for whatever reason I didn't consider a warlock/bard multiclass.

[rbstr]

This sounds interesting. I haven't looked too much in the new bard archetypes. I will take a look. Also for whatever reason I didn't consider a warlock/bard multiclass.

At level 3:
Bonus action with your inspiration die to allow allies to move and give them THP (which scales up with level).
Some charm ability
Level 6: You can cast Command as a bonus action w/o using a spell slot. Once a day for a minute.
Level 14: Weird defensive thingy that either forces enemies to attack someone else or have disadvantage against your spells. 1 minute long, long or short rest recharge.

Plus the Fey aspect of it gives you an angle for being a bit malevolent/chaotic in an interesting way I think.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'd recommend arcana cleric, if you are going to have 6-8 encounters per day. Pick your two cantrips with care so that you can use things like minor illusion or dancing lights to distract the enemy.

[Orc_Lord]

So the recommendations I got have been

Life/Forge/Arcana Cleric 1/Wizard X
Glamour Bard/Shepherd Druid
Shepherd Druid with Ritual Casting
Glamour Bard with maybe 2-5 Fey lock levels
Bard/Divine Soul Sorcerer
Diviner Wizard
Fighter

My only mechanical concern is that we will be having 6-8 encounters a day for these suggestions

Any thoughts on this?

[sombrastewart]

I had success enabling my fellow players with the maneuver based fighter who's heading I can't think of at the moment. Most common method was to trip an enemy for our great hammer wielding paladin to tent-peg.

I'm in a campaign right now where I'm a Knowledge Cleric 1/Wizard 3, and I'm trying to be all about utility with very little straight damage. It has taken some getting used to.

Kudos to you, man, for wanting to do this!

[Orc_Lord]

I had success enabling my fellow players with the maneuver based fighter who's heading I can't think of at the moment. Most common method was to trip an enemy for our great hammer wielding paladin to tent-peg.

I'm in a campaign right now where I'm a Knowledge Cleric 1/Wizard 3, and I'm trying to be all about utility with very little straight damage. It has taken some getting used to.


There is at least one or two people being ranged so prone is not always great for them.

Also why did you go cleric? For the skills and languages?

[JeffreyGator]

With 6-8 encounters / day you are mostly worried about at-will and short rest control or damage abilities.

Some good things to think about for at-will control:
Frostbite or vicious mockery makes stuff less effective at range.

Minor Illusion or Warlock misty visions gives at-will illusions.

Chill Touch prevents healing, ray of frost decreases movement.

Eldritch blast can move people and possibly also slow them.

Booming Blade discourages movement.

Warlock spells and Bardic inspirations (eventually) become good short rest resources for all day fighting as is the d6 bardic SR healing boost.

I'm a fan of Bardlocks so this may work quite well for you. The Arcana Cleric / Lock might also give you enough interesting options.

[sombrastewart]

Also why did you go cleric? For the skills and languages?

Knowledge skills, armor proficiency, and a little flavor.

Basically, he enjoyed knowing stuff, but the cleric strictures annoyed him.

[Orc_Lord]

With 6-8 encounters / day you are mostly worried about at-will and short rest control or damage abilities.

I'm a fan of Bardlocks so this may work quite well for you. The Arcana Cleric / Lock might also give you enough interesting options.

What's a good break down for a Bardlock? Also what achetypes?

I was literary looking into bardlocks when I refreshed my post..

[opaopajr]

Six to eight encounters a day really favors robust and Short Rest classes. A Fighter is really robust and runs off of SRs. If push comes to shove you could tip the scales of combat encounters by Fighter beatdowns.

That said, it will not be an easy challenge to teach players through it:

First, you gotta stay atop your support game and not slip into being the party's crutch heavy. They gotta figure out how much bite they can chew.

Second, most people don't pay attention to, or appreciate, how mundane ways end things in the party's favor. There's a strong competitive mentality that if it isn't isolated to my avatar's class/race/etc. that it's not worth the effort, because someone else could (and should) do it. Basically a form of grabbing spotlight glory due to specialization, while diminishing the everyday contributions anyone can offer.

A Fighter is technically hard mode for teaching how to do cooperative support roles. Most won't give it its due, enamored as they are with push-button widgets. I would not fault you for going for an easier way to instruct.

(That said, using a support Feat might be the compromise needed. It shows some push-button widget for cooperation, if the other players are absolutely not getting it. Might I suggest a starting fighter with only +0 and/or +1 on their STR & DEX scores and the rest in solid Ability checks? That way lateral redundancy strengths will matter more... like a Rogue who has a spare Fighter friend who can also pick locks & investigate while they scout up ahead.)

[rbstr]

What's a good break down for a Bardlock? Also what achetypes?

I was literary looking into bardlocks when I refreshed my post..

I would either go mostly bard or mostly lock. You can't get caster multi-class slots when you MC warlock so you don't get upcasting like with bard/sorc or something.
You need at least 5 levels of Bard for short-rest Inspiration Die, and the level 6 College feature is usually quite good to have.
Warlock needs level 2, for EB + Agonizing. Level 3 has the pact boon.

IMO 2Warlock/18 bard or 15warlock/bard. The former is more long-rest oriented and also will have a more supporty spell list, Glamour's inspiration THP scales with bard level as well. The latter is more short rest oriented and will probably be a bit more combative.
In both cases I'm inclined to get bard to 5 as quickly as possible. But in the heavy warlock you could do like warlock 2, bard 1, warlock 5, bard 5?

I like glamour/fey because it seems interesting, but really any archetype works. I guess Glamour/Celestial are a bit redundant with the bonus action heals/thp.

[JeffreyGator]

What's a good break down for a Bardlock? Also what achetypes?

I was literary looking into bardlocks when I refreshed my post..

First I played such as a half-elf and progressed as follows:
LoreBard4 > HexTome 3 > Bard+1 > Lock +2 > Bard+1 (and then the final encounter of SKT was over and we had "won" and could retire to our castle.
(at 20 I would have likely ended up 11 bard/9 lock but that game wasn't going that far)

Half-Elf Urchin, Expertise in Perception and sub-optimally Performance
Invocations Agonizing, misty visions, Tome of Ancient secrets.

The rituals from tome of ancient secrets are great for a supportive role, I also picked up guidance from the tome level.

If you are going to be less in the front-line than this character could be then medium armor + shield + shield spell are less important to you. any lock variant works.
I would start bard if not playing the hexblade for rapier and more instruments.

For the bard glamour wasn't out yet and that would be a strong consideration for the use of inspiration rather than making enemies fail saves/miss.


For feats we played with the Zman variant giving everyone a bonus level one feat and so I had Spell Sniper, Warcaster and then +2 cha.
You will likely put +cha sooner. I had both GFB and Booming Blade.


To be different than what I had already played I would have a tiefling (feral, vicous mockery variants) next time perhaps or an aasimar.

Glamour Bard 5/Celestial TomeLock 6 would be pretty interesting compared to the build I played. Firebolt and greenflame blade would be the go-to damage options and there would be one more invocation available.

[MilkmanDanimal]

What's a good break down for a Bardlock? Also what achetypes?

I was literary looking into bardlocks when I refreshed my post..

If you want some defenses and martial capability, Hexblade clearly makes sense for the Warlock side, though Fiend can give you a stable set of temporary HP which can keep you going if you just want to sit back and be an Eldritch Blast monkey. If you want support, level 3 gives you either Chain or Tome for scouting vs. even more utility. From the Bard side, Lore is sort of the ultimate support class. The thing is, Warlock/Lore Bard can work really well either focusing on the Warlock side of things or the Bard side; Warlocks get all the invocations which can give all sorts of useful flavor to a character, while Lore Bard can help in all sorts of ways via Inspiration/Cutting Words, and loads of spell options.