Entomancer help

[Mr.Spastic]

Hello Whamen and Gentlewhamen,

I need some help with a character concept. I am trying to play an Entomancer(like from Overlord) character. Their whole shtick is that they summon alot of bugs. My problem is that I cant decide on what race and class to be. Multiclass is available and I'm open to all suggestions.

[xyianth]

The druid comes to mind as having both the ability to wild shape into various insect forms and cast the most insect themed spells. However, lots of spells can be reflavored as being the effects of specific insects summoned into being. If you instead want to focus more on unique insect themed abilities, warlocks of 5th level or higher can pick up the cloak of flies invocation.

My specific recommendation is going to stray a bit into the unusual:

For your race, I would suggest a slightly reflavored aetherborn with their dark gift option to gain the Drain Life ability. Reflavor this as feeding on your victims. Drain Life is a natural attack, meaning you can use it in place of any attack and it is Str based. Based on how it is worded, you roll the damage once and inflict that damage and heal that much hp. This opens up an insteresting interaction with warlocks, chain pact specifically. Gift of the Ever-Living Ones invocation lets you treat any roll that result in restored hp to be treated as a maximum result. In the context of Drain Life, this means maximum damage as well. You will have to ask your DM about how this ability interacts with sources of extra damage. If adding extra necrotic damage to the attack also increases the amount of hp you heal, they get maximized as well. The hex spell in particular may grant this benefit since the extra damage in question is also necrotic.

Now, since this invocation requires chain pact, you will want to multiclass with another martial class to gain extra attack. Since you mentioned that you wanted to focus on summoning insects, that martial should also be a caster of some kind. My recommendation is to either combine it with a valor bard or conquest paladin. If you choose bard, you can pick up a few of the druid specific insect themed spells as your magical secrets, and you will have plenty of spell slots. If you instead choose conquest paladin, you can capitalize on the synergy of Cloak of Flies, the Menacing feat, and the Conquest paladin's Aura of Conquest.

My recommended build is: aetherborn fighter 1/hexblade warlock 3/conquest paladin 7/hexblade warlock +2/fighter +1/conquest paladin +4/hexblade warlock +2. Pick up the menacing and shield master feats when you can. Reflavor your spells to be the effect of summoning insects to inflict their effects. (for example, hex summons a parasitic tick that attaches itself to the target that increases damage dealt and forces disadvantage on an ability of your choice) Combining Cloak of Flies, Menacing, Shield Master, Maddening Hex, and the Aura of Conquest lets you have advantage on intimidate, expertise on intimidate, the ability to frighten a target within 30' with a successful intimidate check as an attack equivalent action, move next to a frightened enemy, dropping their speed to 0 and inflicting psychic and poison damage each round, and knocking them prone. You can then attack them with Drain Life at advantage keeping yourself topped off.

[Dualswinger]

It shouldn’t take too much mind bending to refluff the spore Druid as being surrounded by small mosquitoes instead.

The animate corpse ability could be handwaved away as the body being occupied by the larva of the Glyptapanteles wasp.

[Aett_Thorn]

Definitely Druid of some sort, I feel, and I would say either a Grassland Land Druid or a Shepherd Druid if we need to stay with official sources. However, Spores Druid is a good choice, as mentioned above.

Shepherd Druid could reflux the spirits to be more insecty without much problem. Bear->Beetle, Eagle->Wasp, and Unicorn->Butterly(?).

Between Conjure Animals, Insect Swarm, Giant Insect, etc, you should be able to make it feel the way you want. And heck, even spells like Fog Cloud could be fluffed as swarms of insects.

[nickl_2000]

Honestly Circle of the Shepherd Druid would be the best summoner of insects. They also can get the infestation cantrip as their main damage dealer.

[Mr.Spastic]

Thanks for the suggestions. My group is not using UA but I like the thoughts.

I think I will probably just go with Underdark Druid. Mainly for Web and Spiderclimb.

I like the spores reflavor idea. Sadly, Guild master's guide is not out yet.