Illusionists Bracers and rogues.

[Meichrob7]

Illusionists Bracers are a rare magic item from Guildmasters guide to Ravnica that say “Whenever you cast a cantrips you may use a bonus action on the same turn to cast the same cantrips again.” This of course makes eldritch blast spamming more powerful but another thing I thought it might work with is rogues.

If a rogue makes an attack on their turn and on another creatures turn they can make two sneak attacks in a single round (provided they meet the normal requirements to make a sneak attack) because the limit is once per turn not once per round.

As far as I’m aware taking the ready action to ready an attack doesn’t count as making an attack until you actually make the attack as a reaction, however readying a spell does count as casting that spell (presumably so that it interacts with the rules about casting a spell as a bonus action to prevent you casting two spells in one round) so if you readied a booming blade or green flame blade the illusionists Bracers should let you use the same cantrip as a bonus action, letting you make a sneak attack on your turn and another one Whenever you hit with that readied spell.

Im not 100% sure I’m correct on the rules interactions here so if you see some mistake few free to correct me, but if it works feel free to make use of it in the very rare occasions that your DM lets you use things from planeshift books.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Seems to check out, although I feel the need to point out that the Bracer's are a Very Rare item, not Rare.

Another point of order is that the limit on casting leveled spells only applies per turn, not per round. For example, if you're a Sorcerer you can cast Firebolt and Quickened Fireball and then on someone else's turn you can also cast Shield or Counterspell.

I'm convinced this is an oversight with the wording on the bracers. It should probably say "when you use your action to cast a cantrip" instead of "whenever you cast a cantrip" to avoid such shenanigans. As it stands though, you're correct that a Rogue could probably use this pretty well to enable off turn sneak attacks.

[Meichrob7]

Seems to check out, although I feel the need to point out that the Bracer's are a Very Rare item, not Rare.

Another point of order is that the limit on casting leveled spells only applies per turn, not per round. For example, if you're a Sorcerer you can cast Firebolt and Quickened Fireball and then on someone else's turn you can also cast Shield or Counterspell.

I'm convinced this is an oversight with the wording on the bracers. It should probably say "when you use your action to cast a cantrip" instead of "whenever you cast a cantrip" to avoid such shenanigans. As it stands though, you're correct that a Rogue could probably use this pretty well to enable off turn sneak attacks.

I mean it being very rare means it’s not that broken. You can just use a Scimitar of speed and a 1 level dip into fighter or a feat to do the same thing. The fighter dip will give you enough damage through the dueling fighting style to make up for the postponed sneak attack dice scaling, and a feat could be used if you got some decent rolls and didn’t need a ton of ASI. Scimitar of speed also gives you a +2 bonus to hit which matters a lot because if you’re already using an action, bonus action, and reaction, you aren’t getting advantage unless a party member does something to give it to you so you need swashbuckler or a dedicated group strategy

The combo is also something you can do without a magic item, I have a character running who started as a barbarian3 and is taking 17 levels after that in arcane trickster. Bonus action to attack recklessly and hold an action till my owl familiar swoops in to take the help action. (You can even do it without multiclassing at all if you’re an arcane trickster and cast haste on yourself)

All things considered I don’t think it’s that broken for rogues, warlocks seem more likely to abuse it with eldritch blast spamming and that’s totally within the bracer’s RAI capabilities so rewording it wouldn’t do anything.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I mean it being very rare means it’s not that broken. You can just use a Scimitar of speed and a 1 level dip into fighter or a feat to do the same thing. The fighter dip will give you enough damage through the dueling fighting style to make up for the postponed sneak attack dice scaling, and a feat could be used if you got some decent rolls and didn’t need a ton of ASI. Scimitar of speed also gives you a +2 bonus to hit which matters a lot because if you’re already using an action, bonus action, and reaction, you aren’t getting advantage unless a party member does something to give it to you so you need swashbuckler or a dedicated group strategy

The combo is also something you can do without a magic item, I have a character running who started as a barbarian3 and is taking 17 levels after that in arcane trickster. Bonus action to attack recklessly and hold an action till my owl familiar swoops in to take the help action. (You can even do it without multiclassing at all if you’re an arcane trickster and cast haste on yourself)

All things considered I don’t think it’s that broken for rogues, warlocks seem more likely to abuse it with eldritch blast spamming and that’s totally within the bracer’s RAI capabilities so rewording it wouldn’t do anything.

I'm saying the Bracer's in general are too strong. Scimitar of Speed doesn't even compare all that favorably because (a) it's not Booming Blade and (b) with the Bracers you can use something like a Flame Tongue for even more damage when you cast Booming Blade.

I'm assuming that Barbarian is a Berserker to achieve the bonus action attack, which is even less favorable for more than a few reasons, the top two being that when you rage (which you have to do for the bonus action attack) you can't cast or concentrate on spells making Haste and Booming Blade unusable until you end your rage. The second is that Frenzy (which you must use for the bonus action attack) gives you exhaustion at the end of your rage, not good. It makes Arcane Trickster pretty pointless, you'd be better off taking a different subclass and instead spending a feat on Magic Initiate or Ritual Caster (I would favor Ritual Caster for a Barbarian) if you want Find Familiar.

The Bracers are too good. In the hands of just about every caster they are too effective.

[Meichrob7]

I'm saying the Bracer's in general are too strong. Scimitar of Speed doesn't even compare all that favorably because (a) it's not Booming Blade and (b) with the Bracers you can use something like a Flame Tongue for even more damage when you cast Booming Blade.

I'm assuming that Barbarian is a Berserker to achieve the bonus action attack, which is even less favorable for more than a few reasons, the top two being that when you rage (which you have to do for the bonus action attack) you can't cast or concentrate on spells making Haste and Booming Blade unusable until you end your rage. The second is that Frenzy (which you must use for the bonus action attack) gives you exhaustion at the end of your rage, not good. It makes Arcane Trickster pretty pointless, you'd be better off taking a different subclass and instead spending a feat on Magic Initiate or Ritual Caster (I would favor Ritual Caster for a Barbarian) if you want Find Familiar.

The Bracers are too good. In the hands of just about every caster they are too effective.

I suppose you’re right that the Bracers seem to be strictly better than something like the scimitar.

In terms of the Berzerker3/ArcaneTrickster17 I don’t think it classes as bad as you’d think. On paper you’re limited because your abilities have some conflict but in practice it works out pretty well. You save your frenzied rage for a boss fight or a fight at the end of the day so it’s exhaustion is not much of an issue. In a standard fight you don’t use any spells or rage, you just attack and abuse a familiar for advantage. The spells are situational either for out of combat or escape or things like shadow blade. Rage is saved for a fight where you need to focus less on damage and more on living, resistance plus uncanny dodge makes you really hard to kill.

So yah the abilities don’t work at the same time but you’d want to use them at different times anyways so it’s mostly fine. It’s a build centered around how my group’s dm balances his fights and challenges. If I had a different dm something like using sorcerer to quicken GFB or BoomingB for double sneak attack might be better, or just arcane trickster and using haste. But we usually have one big fight each day and usually don’t play till level 13+.

[Rukelnikov]

That manual has a couple broken items, Mizzium Apparatus is the greatest offender, and these bracers are likely the second.

Now, it may seem like it works, but the loophole that seemingly enables this tactic is the same one that nullifies it.

The current proposition is that since when readying a spell I'm actually casting it, and releasing it later, I did cast the spell in my turn, thus enabling me to use the same spell as a BA in the same turn.

Let's assume this works this way, then we are declaring that the action we used to cast the spell was the one on our turn, not when we release it.

The description for both BB and GFB states: "As part of the action used to cast this spell, you must make a melee attack with a weapon against one creature within the spell's range..."

Thus, by our interpretation of which action was used to cast the spell, we are forcing ourselves to take the attack on the same turn, i.e: that interpretation of "when" we cast the spells, makes GFB and BB uneligible to be readied.

It was a nice excercise mulling over this, good find!

[Blood of Gaea]

Honestly, even without allowing that trick to work, Rogues being able to blade cantrip twice a turn is really amazing.

I'd kill to get these on an Arcana Cleric.

I probably wouldn't hand out something like these unless the other players are going to be picking up some legendary items or artifacts.