Necromancer: Lucky, Warcaster, or just +2 con?

[Dalebert]

Can you help decide? Current status: level 16 yuan-ti (originally human) wizard with 22 int, 14 con, resilient con, and leadership feat (14 cha).

I'm mostly down to Lucky or +2 con but warcaster isn't completely out of the running.

Lucky: obvious benefit including re-rolling a failed concentration check. It's never a bad feat IMHO. Small downside: It's a limited resource that I have to consciously manage and stress about. "Should I use it now or hold it for that boss fight?"

+2 con: Will raise my HP and survivability, my con saves for everything including concentration checks, and when my prof is +6 that means I won't even need to roll concentration checks on any dmg less than 22.

Warcaster: Not intuitive to take for a full caster. However, as a necromancer, I have the resources to be surprisingly resilient when I need to be. Vampiric Touch is a fun one but requires I wade into battle. Every time I kill something with a spell, I gain extra necromancer healing. My pet wight can cast Life Transference to heal me for quite a lot in a pinch via Ring of Spell Storing. When I hang back and do wizard stuff, I hardly ever take dmg and rarely get to use the free healing I get from killing things. Though I normally don't take opp attacks, maybe I would if I could cast a spell on an opponent! My concentration checks will be amazing and yet I will always still have to roll them just for that 1 in 400 chance of double 1s. I'd have a better chance of making the higher dmg ones though. A downside: I might fail to fully exploit it OR end up altering my playstyle so that I would.

Or do you have a different suggestion?

[Man_Over_Game]

I wouldn't bother with War Caster. Even if you are resilient, the Concentration Advantage is a mild help with your setup, and the Opportunity Attack bonus will never be relevant. Who's a better target than the Wizard?

I'd focus on a Con ASI. At higher levels, that means a big chunk of HP for a Wizard. Another 16 HP you can take, which inevitably means that your HP-gaining features will find more use (as you'll be able to play more aggressively).

[Contrast]

I'd go for Lucky personally. You've got your bases covered, time to have some fun :smallwink:

Alert is a decent option you didn't mention. You could try and convince your DM to drop the racial requirement on Prodigy and make your character super good at something.

[Dalebert]

Alert is a decent option you didn't mention. You could try and convince your DM to drop the racial requirement on Prodigy and make your character super good at something.

That does seem to be a popular wizard feat. I think the idea is to get your fireball off before the melees have waded in with the baddies.

[Aprender]

Lucky is always a great option. +16 HP and +1 to avoid failing conc checks at this point isn't likely that amazing (though useful), so the con is less appealing to me. Warcaster isn't appealing at all to me for you.

I'd second alert, but if you want a legitimately funny (but still useful) suggestion: inspiring leader.

Imagine every morning as you cast your animate deads to reinstall control over your undead horde, you also give a series of rousing speeches that add 16 + your charisma HP to the undead masses that call you master. Nothing in the feat description says it can't be used more than once on new people, can't be used on undead, or requires an actually inspiring set of circumstances.

[Corran]

That does seem to be a popular wizard feat. I think the idea is to get your fireball off before the melees have waded in with the baddies.
Summons too. Playing before your summons means they get a turn during the first round of combat. Plus, warding against surprise is generally very useful for a caster.

Between the 3 feats mentioned, I'd go with lucky. Mainly for rerolling initiative and saves, although boosting certain skill checks might come handy too sometimes. It's not as good as warcaster for concentration saves or as alert for initiative/surprise. But it covers more things at once, and since you don't really depend on it so much as to have to spam these rerolls, I think 3 rerolls is a decent number to get you through the day.

[Dalebert]

I'd second alert, but if you want a legitimately funny (but still useful) suggestion: inspiring leader.

Honey, please... That was my level 4 feat. My skeles now have 45 HP counting those temps. The fact it also covers the party and my homonculus is just icing. The confusion is my bad. I just lazily called it "leadership feat" in my op.

So now I feel like it's down to either Alert or Lucky.

[Aprender]

You expected me to read your original post before commenting! That's not how I roll... Oh wait. SQUIRREL!

Anyway. What was I saying?

Yeah, alert and lucky are awesome. :)

[Dalebert]

I've decided on alert due to some fun combos this opens up. As a Yuan-ti, I can already run around inside my own cloud kill. With alert, I can attack normally inside it while enemies have disadvantage against me. And that's on to of the other benefits like not being surprised and init bonus.