Shadar-Kari Shadow Sorcerer

[Drad1713]

I’m new to D&D and just made a Shadar-Kai Shadow Sorcerer and am trying to figure out how to fully take advantage of both my shadow magic features and meta magic when selecting my spells. I don’t want to go pure blaster or straight utility and kinda go 50/50. With this in mind what advice for spells (combat&non-combat) would experienced players recommend?

[Skyblaze]

For most efficient metamagic go cheap for the first 2 choices, empower and subtle are the most commonly recommended.

As for spells, I'd pick two damage types to focus on then also choose whether your utility spells will be buffs or debuffs. At least, that's my strategy.

[sophontteks]

Take subtle and empower so you can afford the shadow sorcerer's other abilities.

Scorching ray is much better for you then normal because your darkness is a consistent source of advantage on your attacks. Its a good spell when you can actually count on all the rays hitting, and you can. There aren't many other non-cantrip spells that can crit, and you'll be critting quite often when you are rolling each ray with advantage.

Phantasmal force is a good swiss army knife with subtle. I talk about it a lot. Its a difficult spell to fully grasp. Its essentially an illusion of your choosing that is completely real to the target to the point where they will justify its existence even if it doesn't make sense. The illusion can do anything. It can even be things you don't know of, but the target does. You can create an illusion of their child, and they will believe its their child. Its on a difficult save for most enemies, you can subtle cast it from stealth without breaking stealth, or subtle cast it right in front of them and they won't know its a spell at all, let alone one of your doing. Enjoy watching them take 10d6 damage while you drink some ale.

Fireball is, well, its fireball. It works really well with empowered, so you'll want it.

Hold person with the hound is going to bring a lot of pain. The risk of it failing is pretty small when they have disadvantage. The perks are extreme. Everyone gets advantage on all attacks and every hit is an auto crit. Would combo well with scorching ray if it wasn't overkill.

Those are the spells I'd build around early on. Fill in with some defensive options and you'll be solid from there. This should, at least, give you an idea what this sorcerer can give to the party.

EDIT: Probably obvious but hold monster is also really good for you. It an ok spell for just about anyone but its amazing for you. They have disadvantage vs. your spells for each save, so unlike everyone else, they probably aren't getting out of it.

[Drad1713]

Take subtle and empower so you can afford the shadow sorcerer's other abilities.

Scorching ray is much better for you then normal because your darkness is a consistent source of advantage on your attacks. Its a good spell when you can actually count on all the rays hitting, and you can. There aren't many other non-cantrip spells that can crit, and you'll be critting quite often when you are rolling each ray with advantage.

Phantasmal force is a good swiss army knife with subtle. I talk about it a lot. Its a difficult spell to fully grasp. Its essentially an illusion of your choosing that is completely real to the target to the point where they will justify its existence even if it doesn't make sense. The illusion can do anything. It can even be things you don't know of, but the target does. You can create an illusion of their child, and they will believe its their child. Its on a difficult save for most enemies, you can subtle cast it from stealth without breaking stealth, or subtle cast it right in front of them and they won't know its a spell at all, let alone one of your doing. Enjoy watching them take 10d6 damage while you drink some ale.

Fireball is, well, its fireball. It works really well with empowered, so you'll want it.

Hold person with the hound is going to bring a lot of pain. The risk of it failing is pretty small when they have disadvantage. The perks are extreme. Everyone gets advantage on all attacks and every hit is an auto crit. Would combo well with scorching ray if it wasn't overkill.

Those are the spells I'd build around early on. Fill in with some defensive options and you'll be solid from there. This should, at least, give you an idea what this sorcerer can give to the party.

EDIT: Probably obvious but hold monster is also really good for you. It an ok spell for just about anyone but its amazing for you. They have disadvantage vs. your spells for each save, so unlike everyone else, they probably aren't getting out of it.

That’s really helpful! Are there any negatives to using Maximillian's Earthen Grasp in place of Hold Monster/Person?

[Sception]

A two-to-three level dip into hexblade warlock would probably be worth your while at some point in your progression, probably a bit later on, as you don't want to delay your first couple ASIs. While far from necessary, it's a great thematic fit for shadar-kai, and a great mechanical compliment ti shadow sorcerer.

Eldritch blast plus the agonizing blast invocation is a much stronger attack cantrip than you get otherwise, the added damage and crit range from hexblade's curse is great for crit fishing with scorching rays or eldritch blasts cast from darkness, the medium armor and shield proficiencies will save you spell slots and spells known otherwise burned on mage armor.

If you only go for two levels, then a couple short-rest-recharging first level slots for shield or endure elements will still be quite useful for you. Or, if nothing else, you can churn them into sorcery points for one extra darkness per short rest.

If you go for three levels instead, you can pick up either a super useful imp familiar (which can spend most of its time in raven form for thematics) via chain pact, or grab tome pact with the associated invocation for a bunch of useful & thematic cantrips (guidance, spare the dying, etc) plus a few first level ritual spells, including find familiar for a regular raven familiar which, while not as useful as the chain pact's imp familiar, is still very good and even more thematic. And the two short rest slots go to level two, which you can turn into enough sorcery points to use your darkness ability two extra times per short rest, which shohld let you cast darkness-you-can-see-through (without burning a warlock invocation on devil's sight) in pretty much every combat.

As for timing of the dip, shadar-kai frustratingly doesnt get a chatisma boost. This is fine fluff-wise, and their dex and con boosts won't go to waste, but sadly the most shadow magicky classes that fit their thematics and aesthetics best really want that cha, so the lack of it does and will hurt. If you're in a point buy game, DEFINITELY start with the highest cha you can, 15. Thankfully, as a shadow sorcerer you have easy access to advantage in most encounters to help you hit. Otherwise for most of your early career, lean on buff spells, environmental spells, and other spells that dont allow saving throws, unless you're confident that you're targeting a particularly weak save. Once your cha finally gets to 20, you can afford to relax a bit here.

Because you need cha desperately, and multiclasding delays ASIs, you probably shouldnt dip warlock at all before sorcerer 8, and maybe not before 12. I certainly wouldnt take the third level of warlock before sor 12 unless your were planning to take more than three warlock levels, which is perfectly viable, but would mean you'd never see 9th level spells. So do dip warlock, but not right away.

At level 4 take elven accuracy, giving you cha 16 and triple dice advantage, further helping your attack rolls and fishing out more crits, and your next two ASIs after that should both be +2 cha.

Of course, that all is if you're playing point buy. If you're rolling stats, and roll at least one 16 or higher to put into cha, then the build gets a lot easier and you can multiclass sooner without worrying about your spell attacks and save DCs lagging behind.

[sophontteks]

That’s really helpful! Are there any negatives to using Maximillian's Earthen Grasp in place of Hold Monster/Person?
Yeah, a few.

When anyone hits a paralyzed target, its an auto crit. Restrained doesn't do that.

If the creature is moved away from that grasp by any pushing effect, it would break free. Things like Gust of wind, shadow step, gust, push, etc

Strength saves are one of the easiest for monsters to make.

It takes an action to deal the damage every round.

On the plus side the creature doesn't auto save every round. But it does make the hold person saves at disadvantage.

[jiriku]

To expand on the good advice given by sophontteks, almost any single-target spell with a save is a good pairing for the hound. But of course, 3 sorcery points is expensive so be mindful that you won't be calling it up every time you cast such spells.

Also, since you get special benefits for using your innate darkness spell, other spells that require concentration are a little less good for you. They'll always be competing with darkness. Pay special attention to spells that don't require concentration, and remember that attack spells requiring concentration (there are a few) aren't compatible with darkness so you won't get your easy advantage with them.

[Drad1713]

A two-to-three level dip into hexblade warlock would probably be worth your while at some point in your progression, probably a bit later on, as you don't want to delay your first couple ASIs. While far from necessary, it's a great thematic fit for shadar-kai, and a great mechanical compliment ti shadow sorcerer.

Eldritch blast plus the agonizing blast invocation is a much stronger attack cantrip than you get otherwise, the added damage and crit range from hexblade's curse is great for crit fishing with scorching rays or eldritch blasts cast from darkness, the medium armor and shield proficiencies will save you spell slots and spells known otherwise burned on mage armor.

If you only go for two levels, then a couple short-rest-recharging first level slots for shield or endure elements will still be quite useful for you. Or, if nothing else, you can churn them into sorcery points for one extra darkness per short rest.

If you go for three levels instead, you can pick up either a super useful imp familiar (which can spend most of its time in raven form for thematics) via chain pact, or grab tome pact with the associated invocation for a bunch of useful & thematic cantrips (guidance, spare the dying, etc) plus a few first level ritual spells, including find familiar for a regular raven familiar which, while not as useful as the chain pact's imp familiar, is still very good and even more thematic. And the two short rest slots go to level two, which you can turn into enough sorcery points to use your darkness ability two extra times per short rest, which shohld let you cast darkness-you-can-see-through (without burning a warlock invocation on devil's sight) in pretty much every combat.

As for timing of the dip, shadar-kai frustratingly doesnt get a chatisma boost. This is fine fluff-wise, and their dex and con boosts won't go to waste, but sadly the most shadow magicky classes that fit their thematics and aesthetics best really want that cha, so the lack of it does and will hurt. If you're in a point buy game, DEFINITELY start with the highest cha you can, 15. Thankfully, as a shadow sorcerer you have easy access to advantage in most encounters to help you hit. Otherwise for most of your early career, lean on buff spells, environmental spells, and other spells that dont allow saving throws, unless you're confident that you're targeting a particularly weak save. Once your cha finally gets to 20, you can afford to relax a bit here.

Because you need cha desperately, and multiclasding delays ASIs, you probably shouldnt dip warlock at all before sorcerer 8, and maybe not before 12. I certainly wouldnt take the third level of warlock before sor 12 unless your were planning to take more than three warlock levels, which is perfectly viable, but would mean you'd never see 9th level spells. So do dip warlock, but not right away.

At level 4 take elven accuracy, giving you cha 16 and triple dice advantage, further helping your attack rolls and fishing out more crits, and your next two ASIs after that should both be +2 cha.

Of course, that all is if you're playing point buy. If you're rolling stats, and roll at least one 16 or higher to put into cha, then the build gets a lot easier and you can multiclass sooner without worrying about your spell attacks and save DCs lagging behind.

Aside from the thematic significance is there any real loss in picking hexblade for a sorcerer over celestial, archfey, fiend, or great old one? I mentioned the idea to a friend and he tried to hard sell me against hexblade and that you lose out on a lot of you don’t normally fight with a weapon.

[Sception]

Hexblade absolutely does not need to go melee. It has one feature - ONE - that is tied to melee combat, hex warrior, and hex warrior mostly exists as a stealth fix for pact of the blade. Take hex warrior away entirely, and hexblade would still be a perfectly viable warlock patron - maybe not topping fiend for combat power or GOO for out-of-combat utility, but still quite effective and not missing a thing. What you're left with when you ignore hex warrior is a curse-themed warlock subclass, like you might expect from a hag/witch patron, heavily mechanically oriented around the signature hexblade's curse ability, which, yes, is only usable once per short rest, but that's not exactly outside the norm for warlock patron features (fey presence is 1/short rest, fiend's luck is 1/short rest, etc).

And even without the explicit (if half hearted) lore connection to the Raven Queen, that cursing theme aligns very well with the raven queen's attraction to misfortune and disaster.

Mechanically, a shadow sorcerer, especially one struggling under an ever-so-slightly-suboptimal charisma bonus, is strongly incentivized to launch ranged attacks from the cover of darkness. The advantage you gain offsets your slightly lower accuracy, and the extra pops of crit damage offsets your slightly lower spell damage (for those spells that apply casting stat to damage). The warlock dip contributes well to this with the greatly improved cantrip damage from eldritch/agonizing blast. It's not a surprising fit since sniping from darkness is already a common warlock blaster strategy.

Hexblade doesn't offer a lot of utility outside of what you're already doing, but it directly adds onto what you're already doing in a way that none of the other patron options do. Hexblade's curse lets you pick out one stronger enemy per short rest, and apply an extra bonus to every damage roll against them (scaling with character level, so it works fine in a multiclass even with only a single level of hexblade), PLUS an expanded crit range on attack rolls against the same target, which is beautiful for you since you're already prone to crit frequently with multiple attack roll spells and advantage from attacking out of darkness. Both these benefits work just fine with ranged attacks and spells, they aren't limited to melee at all.

Even the tacked on 'hex warrior' feature that does relate to melee (allowing you to use cha as your attack & damage stat with a one handed melee weapon) also comes with medium armor and shield proficiencies which are likely to be useful to your character, and again will save you a slot otherwise spent on mage armor or the like.


It's true that a melee-based warlock (multiclass or otherwise) would be handicapping themselves if they took any warlock patron other than hexblade, but the reverse absolutely is not true. A hexblade is in no way locked into melee.
Arguably blaster hexblades are even better off than melee hexblades, and in particular are better able to take advantage of the benefits offered by their signature curse ability using spells with more attack and damage rolls than a melee hexblade is usually able to make in a round.


............


None of that's to say that dipping hexblade, or even warlock generally, is required to make a good shadow sorcerer, shadar-kai or otherwise. Just that it's a very good fit mechanically, and for a shadar-kai sorcerer in particular is an even stronger fit thematically. Again, though, I wouldn't recommend multiclassing right away. Gotta prop that charisma up a bit first.

[Drad1713]

Hexblade absolutely does not need to go melee. It has one feature - ONE - that is tied to melee combat, hex warrior, and hex warrior mostly exists as a stealth fix for pact of the blade. Take hex warrior away entirely, and hexblade would still be a perfectly viable warlock patron - maybe not topping fiend for combat power or GOO for out-of-combat utility, but still quite effective and not missing a thing. What you're left with when you ignore hex warrior is a curse-themed warlock subclass, like you might expect from a hag/witch patron, heavily mechanically oriented around the signature hexblade's curse ability, which, yes, is only usable once per short rest, but that's not exactly outside the norm for warlock patron features (fey presence is 1/short rest, fiend's luck is 1/short rest, etc).

And even without the explicit (if half hearted) lore connection to the Raven Queen, that cursing theme aligns very well with the raven queen's attraction to misfortune and disaster.

Mechanically, a shadow sorcerer, especially one struggling under an ever-so-slightly-suboptimal charisma bonus, is strongly incentivized to launch ranged attacks from the cover of darkness. The advantage you gain offsets your slightly lower accuracy, and the extra pops of crit damage offsets your slightly lower spell damage (for those spells that apply casting stat to damage). The warlock dip contributes well to this with the greatly improved cantrip damage from eldritch/agonizing blast. It's not a surprising fit since sniping from darkness is already a common warlock blaster strategy.

Hexblade doesn't offer a lot of utility outside of what you're already doing, but it directly adds onto what you're already doing in a way that none of the other patron options do. Hexblade's curse lets you pick out one stronger enemy per short rest, and apply an extra bonus to every damage roll against them (scaling with character level, so it works fine in a multiclass even with only a single level of hexblade), PLUS an expanded crit range on attack rolls against the same target, which is beautiful for you since you're already prone to crit frequently with multiple attack roll spells and advantage from attacking out of darkness. Both these benefits work just fine with ranged attacks and spells, they aren't limited to melee at all.

Even the tacked on 'hex warrior' feature that does relate to melee (allowing you to use cha as your attack & damage stat with a one handed melee weapon) also comes with medium armor and shield proficiencies which are likely to be useful to your character, and again will save you a slot otherwise spent on mage armor or the like.


It's true that a melee-based warlock (multiclass or otherwise) would be handicapping themselves if they took any warlock patron other than hexblade, but the reverse absolutely is not true. A hexblade is in no way locked into melee.
Arguably blaster hexblades are even better off than melee hexblades, and in particular are better able to take advantage of the benefits offered by their signature curse ability using spells with more attack and damage rolls than a melee hexblade is usually able to make in a round.


............


None of that's to say that dipping hexblade, or even warlock generally, is required to make a good shadow sorcerer, shadar-kai or otherwise. Just that it's a very good fit mechanically, and for a shadar-kai sorcerer in particular is an even stronger fit thematically. Again, though, I wouldn't recommend multiclassing right away. Gotta prop that charisma up a bit first.

Thanks for your input, this helps a lot! I’m not even considering multiclassing till at least 11(when I get my 3rd metamagic). I’m currently 7 and have 18 charisma so I’ll max at 8 with my ASI. I’m really excited to try this now!

[Sception]

Dipping 2 to 3 levels (or more, depending on how attached you are to higher level spell slots) of hexblade after maxing out your cha bonus with the 12th level of shadow sorcerer will work well for you then. Again, I do recommend starting with 15 cha so you can bump it up to 16 via elven accuracy at level 4, letting you grab EA's bonus to attacks with advantage (something you'll be doing a lot) without slowing down your cha improvement.

obviously the same strategy would work better for a half elf with their +2 cha, starting with a 17 instead of a 16, bumping up to cha 18 at level 4 with elven accuracy and capping at cha 20 at level 8, thus staying on par with max casting stat generally. However, while shadar-kai are elves and thus /theoretically/ half-shadar-kai are possible, whether are not they actually exist, or even can exist, depends heavily on how you and your DM fill in the rather wide gaps that currently exist in 5e shadar-kai fluff, and filling in those gaps in a way that would provide a place for half elves as anything other than an extremely unlikely one off incident would involve stretching pretty far from what little fluff there currently is for them.


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That said, even for plain old regular Shadar-kai, you do still have to fill in some of these gaps. Things like, do shadar-kai reproduce at all? When they die, their souls return to the raven queen to get new bodies, but it's unclear whether this a new adult body for the same individual shadar-kai, or whether that soul is reincarnated in a new shadar-kai child, the same way as it works for 'normal' elven souls that return to Corellon before reincarnating as a new individual with a new identity. How you and the DM interpret this kind of affects how appropriate shadar-kai are as adventuring heroes to begin with, even before you get to questions of whether half shadar kai are possible. And as a player of a shadar-kai PC your backstory will be pretty different if you were born in the last century as a shadar-kai infant and raised by shadar-kai parents vs being born so long ago you can't even remember what it was to be a child. Furthermore, if each individual is effectively a thousands-of-years-old immortal, then it doesn't make much sense for one to be starting off as a level 1 sorcerer. You can still make it work though, if you assume the raven queen takes a tithe of memories and experiences from each reincarnating Shadar-Kai soul, forcing them to basically start over as a blank slate even if they aren't reincarnating as an entirely new person from childhood.

Or: do shadar-kai even have 'normal' interactions with non-shadar-kai? The only interactions described so far are shadar-kai raids (which in some places seem to be described as non-violent and almost entirely secret interactions where they just steal trinkets and personal treasures, and in other places are described as exclusively-violent murder sprees where they only root around their victim's possessions for such trinkets after killing them) and preparing pilgrims to meet the raven queen (which might be out of a peaceful desire to help others, or might be purely out of fear of the raven queen getting mad if they are rude to her her guests). They're described as controlling 'lands', does that mean they actually have a functioning society in the shadow fell? & if so, do they trade with others? What do they eat? Are there shadar-kai farmers & craftspeople? Because the monster descriptions seem to imply they're more, well, monstrous, in a way that doesn't really jive with shadar-kai having day jobs (though it also doesn't jive with shadar-kai PCs existing).

The monster descriptions imply shadar-kai are a sort of inately, elementally evil alien creature more akin to demons or undead rather than something like orcs or goblins or lizardmen or just plain old bandits - creatures that are frequently hostile but not innately so. If you want to play a shadar-kai PC, or allow players to do so if you're the DM, then I recommend interpreting those descriptions mostly as acts or fronts put on to deliberately unnerve enemies.


You also need to decide if the Raven Queen, and thus the shadar-kai who follow her, is an overtly evil and unnatural corrupting force, or a more neutral and natural, if creepy one. The description so far tries to leave room for either to be true, but once they're an actual thing in your game you can't really have it both ways. Evil raven queen has shadar-kai PCs mostly working the way Drow PCs do - only as exiles (self-imposed or otherwise) from an overtly evil society and enemies of the evil would-be goddess who rules it. In that case, you also have to decide whether anti-raven queen shadar-kai are rare, one-off things, or if there are entire societies of them the way there are with anti-lolth drow, though the fact that shadar-kai souls return to the raven queen on death for reincarnation makes that harder to work. Neutral raven queen allows for shadar-kai PCs to adventure with the party while still serving the raven queen and maintaining ties to their home community.

As with the different interpretations of shadar-kai reincarnation, both can conceivably work in game, but you and your DM do kind of have to commit to one or the other. I personally prefer a more neutral, more distant raven queen. One who spends her time in isolation and only communicates with even her closest followers via vague and cryptic signs and portents. This allows for multiple factions of shadar-kai that interpret those signs and portents in different ways, some being more hostile and violent - killing victims to steal their trinkets, deliberately causing tragedies to create the sorrowful sentiments that their queen feeds on, while others take a more reserved and peaceful approach, following in the wake of tragedies and taking the memories or reminders of those tragedies for their queen without harming anyone, even viewing their mission as one of compassion, lessening grief by taking the physical reminders of it.

but that's all homebrew bologna without much grounding in canon, so you may take or leave it. How you fill in the gaps in 5e shadar-kai fluff is up to you and your DM, but those are gaps that you'll kind of need to fill in if you want to play a shadar-kai character in game.