Meme builds continues: Agathys Meat Bard Core

[Snowbluff]

Alright, super easy combine with some wiggle room based on what's available.

Part 1: The build

Lore Bard 10

Magic Secret Spells:
Armor of Agathys: Lot's of HP and a thorn effect
Aid: More HP. I love this spell. It's more HP for you and a friend.
Warding Bond: Resistance. Take some damage for the target.

Find Greater Steed OR Find Familiar: The former is better but you'll need a Ring of Spell Storing. The latter is weaker but can pull off the effect without a ring but is much weaker.

Feats:
If Find Steed: Mounted Combatant. Gives your pet evasion, and lets you soak damage for your pet.
If Find Familiar: Inspiring Leader. AFAICT you can't share Armor of Agathys with a familiar, so this is some more HP for it and your team (doesn't stack with AoA for you, however).

Part 2: The Combo!
1) Cast Aid. Get more HP for you, your pet, and one more target.
2) Cast Armor of Agathys.
2a) Share with Steed
2b) Use Inspiring Leader to buff your Familiar, and the rest of your team.
3) Have your Pet use Warding Bond on your (either through a Ring of Spell Storing or through the familiar touching you with it, which functions as if it's the caster).
4) Be meaty.
4a) Have your familiar hide somewhere safe but nearby so it's only soaking HP for your rather than taking damage itself.
4b) Ride on your mount so it gets evasion. Use the feat to soak hits for it so the AoA lasts as long as possible.

Your familiar will have base + your level + your cha + 5( Aid slot level -1) in HP. That can be up to 66 HP.

Your Steed will have base + 5 (AoA slot level) + 5( Aid slot level -1) in HP. 139 on a Griffon (for a Medium character) or 113 for A Peryton (if you're Small).


Part 3: "What do I do now?"

I intentionally made this build not require many levels and no multiclassing. You're free to stay a bard, buff your team, get more powerful magics, etc.

Some other options:

Wizard (Blade Singer or Abjurer): Both of these can soak damage with Arcane Ward or Song of Defend, which can preserve your AoA further.

Rogue: Get uncanny Dodge and evasion to soak more damage.

Something with shields and heavy armor: Qualify for Shield Master (for better dexterity saves and an evasion like reaction) and Heavy Armor Master (for soaking more damage). Cleric can be added later to do this, as their heavy armor is a class feature for a domain. For other classes, take them first as they usually lose it if your multiclass into them.

Paladin: A mix of above, knowing warding bond, and getting get to saves for your friend.

Part 4: "What happens when we cast Warding Bond on the thing casting Warding Bond on us?"

Your head explodes.

Hypothetically, you bounce half the damage between you, rounding down odd damage. Sounds like a pain, IMO. Probably don't do this. Probably memier with Heavy Armor Master if your DM say the damage is technically from a melee attack, which then gets reduced further.

There's probably a ruling against this, in which case I say "good because I don't want to be calculating the HP saved."

[JackPhoenix]

What's the meme?

[Snowbluff]

What's the meme?

I didn't explain this very well, but you're super meaty. AoA and Aid benefit from resistance from warding bond. Most anything that melee attacks you will die before it can kill you. The pet basically doubles up on the these effects, and counts as an HP battery (kind of like the old Vigor + Share Pain + Psicrystal in 3e).

[Brookshw]

I keep hoping one of these threads will be a play off of Alice's Agatha's Restaurant. Sigh. :smallfrown:

[Ganryu]

May I just say, this is a beautiful build good sir.

[Rara1212]

Alright, super easy combine with some wiggle room based on what's available.
Part 4: "What happens when we cast Aid on the thing casting Aid on use?"

Your head explodes.

Hypothetically, you bounce half the damage between you, rounding down odd damage. Sounds like a pain, IMO. Probably don't do this. Probably memier with Heavy Armor Master if your DM say the damage is technically from a melee attack, which then gets reduced further.

There's probably a ruling against this, in which case I say "good because I don't want to be calculating the HP saved."

Do you mean "Warding bond" ? If so, I think there is a clause in the spell that says something about it. But even if there isn't one, you can't be under the effect of2 of the same spell at the same time, the most powerful version takes effect.

[Mercurias]

From PHB p198: Healing can't restore THP and they can't be added together. If you have temporary Hit Points and receive more of them, you decide whether to keep the ones you have OR gain the new ones. For example, if a spell grants you 12 THP when you already have 10, you can have 12 or 10, not 22.

I don’t see anything that says Temp HP will ever stack. Having Aid is perfectly nice, but I don’t know that I would burn one of your precious few Magical Secrets with it when you can get Healing Spirit and have a much stronger effect.

You may also like Hellish Rebuke, which pairs well in melee with Armor of Agathys and makes any enemy hitting your character in melee pay very dearly for it.

[Snowbluff]

Do you mean "Warding bond" ? If so, I think there is a clause in the spell that says something about it. But even if there isn't one, you can't be under the effect of2 of the same spell at the same time, the most powerful version takes effect.
Derp, I did mean Warding Bond, lemme fix it.

You're not subject to the same effect, however. One gives resistance as the effect, the other causes you to take half of the damage the target (the person actually affected by the spell) takes.

May I just say, this is a beautiful build good sir.
Thank you, sir.

From PHB p198: Healing can't restore THP and they can't be added together. If you have temporary Hit Points and receive more of them, you decide whether to keep the ones you have OR gain the new ones. For example, if a spell grants you 12 THP when you already have 10, you can have 12 or 10, not 22.

I don’t see anything that says Temp HP will ever stack. Having Aid is perfectly nice, but I don’t know that I would burn one of your precious few Magical Secrets with it when you can get Healing Spirit and have a much stronger effect.

You may also like Hellish Rebuke, which pairs well in melee with Armor of Agathys and makes any enemy hitting your character in melee pay very dearly for it.
Aid isn't Temporary HP. It's real HP.


Each target's hit point maximum and current Hit Points increase by 5 for the Duration.


You gain 5 temporary hit points for the duration.

Aid HP can be recovered like more HP as well, and unlike Healing spirit, Doesn't waste my Concentration, and can't have it's concentration broken.

[Chronos]

Even with Inspiring Leader, your familiar is going to have a grand total of 16 HP. With the kind of damage you'll be facing at tenth level, your familiar is going to die after the first hit, or maybe two.

[Snowbluff]

Even with Inspiring Leader, your familiar is going to have a grand total of 16 HP. With the kind of damage you'll be facing at tenth level, your familiar is going to die after the first hit, or maybe two.

You missed the part of the aid spell, which at 10 I would say put in a 4th level slot for a lot of HP (15). Plus it's only taking the damage you take. This means that it provides about 31 HP battery, which is quite a bit when you consider a bard at level 10 will have about 73 HP.

Assuming you went with 14 Con, Aid 15, AoA 25 (not strictly necessary, but I find this level of thorns funny), you have 113 and a 31 HP battery for 144, assuming you aren't taking odd damage. A fighter would only have 84 at 14 con. Now the fighter would certainly do more damage, but that's not the point of this build, which is to provide a meaty basis for further meat.

EDIT: Also you teammate who got the third part of the aid spell would have +30 HP.

[Wildarm]

How about a double meat bard sandwich?

2 Bards with the same build:

Fighter 1/Lore Bard 6
Feats: HAM
Grab AoA and Warding Bond for magical secrets
Plate+Shield will give you a solid AC(21 with warding bond)
Max Cast AoA and the warding bond each other
You'll have 15 AoA Temp HP and resistance to all damage and -3 to physical damage.

Example of damage
20 damage incoming melee hit on Bard A
Reduced to 7 on Bard A - Deals 15 Ice damage back
Reduced to 2 on Bard B
Reduced to 0 on Bard A

Pros
- Very tanky vs physical attacks - Effectively resistance to piercing/bludgeoning/slashing
- Great AC
- You can pretty much ignore anything that does low damage per hit.

Cons:

- As a Lore bard you don't have a strong melee ability
- No way to punish enemies who don't engage you in melee
- Requires a lot of spell slots from 2 players
- Weak vs non-physical attacks
- Can't use concentration spells effectively as you will have to make ALOT of DC10 rolls

Final option is to burn your cutting words to reduce damage even further. Unfortunately, cutting words applies to the damage roll before resistance but still not a bad thing to extend your AoA a few hits further. Using the same 20 damage incoming could reduce that by 1d8(lets say 5):

Bard A takes 4 damage - Enemy takes 15 damage
Bard B takes 0 damage

The other nice thing is that you have 2 cutting words reactions per round to do this so even if one person is ganged up on, you should still have a strong chance of keeping their AoA up and running.

[Quoz]

At level 10, you will still have one magical secret of 5th level or lower to add and have not used your concentration.

- Circle of Power (Paladin 5th level spell, 10 min, concentration). 30 foot aura. All allies get advantage on all saves vs magic and take no damage from 'save for half' effects.

- Polymorph. It's a Bard spell, so no magic secrets needed. It gives you the biggest heap of HP you can get, and you can share with your steed (steed can only transform into a beast of it's own CR, but that still doubles base HP)

- Spirit Guardians. (Cleric 3rd level, 10 min concentration) check with your GM whether this qualifies for spell sharing with your steed, but even without it deals continuous damage and limits enemy speed.

- Shadow of Moil (Warlock 4, 1 min Concentration) AoA's big brother. Gives you advantage, enemies disadvantage, and offers retaliation to a broader range of attacks against you.

Feat: Aberant Dragonmark. May not be available in your campaign, but is perfect for this theme as a feat can get. +1 con plus a cantrip and 1st level spell from the sorcerer list is good enough (shield or Absorb Elements are quite nice), but the real gem is it lets you upcast spells without using a higher spell slot. In exchange, you lose one hit die and take it as damage. Lets see, is upcasting Aid or AoA worth taking 1d8 of damage? Heck yeah.

[Wildarm]

Feat: Aberant Dragonmark. May not be available in your campaign, but is perfect for this theme as a feat can get. +1 con plus a cantrip and 1st level spell from the sorcerer list is good enough (shield or Absorb Elements are quite nice), but the real gem is it lets you upcast spells without using a higher spell slot. In exchange, you lose one hit die and take it as damage. Lets see, is upcasting Aid or AoA worth taking 1d8 of damage? Heck yeah.

Can you use the dragonmark upcasting on a spell other than the one gained from the feat? I didn't get that impression from my reading:

You can increase the power of your aberrant spells at the risk of your own vitality. When you cast a spell with your
aberrant mark, you can use one of your Hit Dice to increase the spell’s level by 1.
Immediately after you cast the spell, roll the Hit Die. You take damage equal to the number rolled.

If it was allowed, a Warlock 2/Abjurer X would be pretty happy taking that as a feat. The HD of damage even comes off your ward which you can recharge and getting Absorb Elements 1/LR is a nice bonus to protect your AoA against non-physical attacks.

The original poster pure bard build would also work fine if it could upcast all it's spells like that.

[Snowbluff]

How about a double meat bard sandwich? You've made my meat bard sound like an adult film. ;-;


2 Bards with the same build:

Fighter 1/Lore Bard 6
Feats: HAM
Grab AoA and Warding Bond for magical secrets
Plate+Shield will give you a solid AC(21 with warding bond)
Max Cast AoA and the warding bond each other
You'll have 15 AoA Temp HP and resistance to all damage and -3 to physical damage.

Example of damage
20 damage incoming melee hit on Bard A
Reduced to 7 on Bard A - Deals 15 Ice damage back
Reduced to 2 on Bard B
Reduced to 0 on Bard A

Pros
- Very tanky vs physical attacks - Effectively resistance to piercing/bludgeoning/slashing
- Great AC
- You can pretty much ignore anything that does low damage per hit.

Cons:

- As a Lore bard you don't have a strong melee ability
- No way to punish enemies who don't engage you in melee
- Requires a lot of spell slots from 2 players
- Weak vs non-physical attacks
- Can't use concentration spells effectively as you will have to make ALOT of DC10 rolls

Final option is to burn your cutting words to reduce damage even further. Unfortunately, cutting words applies to the damage roll before resistance but still not a bad thing to extend your AoA a few hits further. Using the same 20 damage incoming could reduce that by 1d8(lets say 5):

Bard A takes 4 damage - Enemy takes 15 damage
Bard B takes 0 damage

The other nice thing is that you have 2 cutting words reactions per round to do this so even if one person is ganged up on, you should still have a strong chance of keeping their AoA up and running.
Indeed, a good application of the Shield mastery feat would help a lot with the biggest source of non-physical attacks.

At level 10, you will still have one magical secret of 5th level or lower to add and have not used your concentration.

I did leave the concentration open on purpose, but correct me if I am wrong but I used all 4 of the magical secrets.

As for the spells, if you're going with the Steed, there are still 3 levels available on the Ring of Spell Storing Available. You could fit a Spirit Guardians on it and have your pet cast it before a fight.