Danielqueue1
2019-12-20, 04:57 PM
In all of my games I automatically ban all UA material, so this wouldn't fly in my games, but the new UA barbarian has a subclass feature so exploitable I just had to build a character never to be used. Without further ado, for the playground the mana battery and magic dynamo builds.
Self sustaining, mana battery guidelines
1 Accept that you will be a support character and underpowered in direct combat but not useless.
2 this is all about sustain, if you only have 1 fight a day anyway, you will be wasting your time. You will be able to keep the party going through an arbitrary number of fights, without resting making your party extremely long lasting in a mega dungeon, it is all about letting the rest of the party shine.
3 any coffee-locks in your party will be made entirely redundant. Let them know before you start.
hill dwarf wild barbarian
Pointbuy
STR 14
DEX 12
CON 15 +2(dwarf)
INT 8
WIS 14 +1 (dwarf)
CHA 8
Put the first 6 levels in barbarian and the first ASI into Con and Wis. With the extra health from hill dwarf, you will have an absurd amount of health to survive with, play like a normal barbarian. Accept your attacks won't hit as much or as hard as other martials.
Do with the other subclass features as you see fit. The real magic comes from Magic Reserves.
Magic ReservesAt 6th level, you can channel the magic surging inside you into other creatures. As an action, you can touch a creature and roll a d4. The creature recovers an expended spell slot of a level equal to the number rolled. If the creature you touch can’t recover a spell slot of that level, the creature instead gains temporary hit points equal to five times the number rolled. You take force damage equal to five times the number rolled. When you reach 14th level in this class, you increase the die to a d6.
If you have a druid with healing spirit, a life domain cleric, or a bard who took aura of vitality as a magical secret, you can end the combo here, do whatever you want for the rest. But the self sustaining mana battery is all about the whole Self sustaining part.
At level 6 use those magic reserves to top people off as you see fit it the combo starts at level 7.
At level 7 multiclass into life domain cleric. Take whatever spells you want you get cure wounds for free. And now the combo begins.
Having already used a first level spell slot for something target yourself with magical reserves. On a roll of 2-4 you give yourself temp HP equal to 5 times the roll. Then damage yourself for 5 time the roll in that order Resulting in nothing happening. On a roll of a 1 you take a measly 5 damage and recover one of your 1st level spell slots. Use that spell slot to cast cure wounds on yourself healing 1d8 +3(Wis mod) +3(life cleric) for a minimum of 7 hp recovered from losing 5 hp. Repeat until you are full health. Then top off all other characters' hp and spell slots to full. Now your party will always enter combat at full health and slots and usually with some temp HP. This process is ineficient however. It is guaranteed, but takes forever.
Level 8 take a level in druid. Get goodberry. Now you are trading 5 HP for a guaranteed 10 berries with 4 HP per berry for a total gain of 35 HP. Share the love with each spell slot and get the party on its feet faster. Stock up on berries for later in the day, feed a whole army! If you took create water, from cleric or druid you can supply a whole platoon without issue. But still it is a slow process.
Level 9
Put another level in Druid whatever subclass you want. If you want to keep the group-hug mechanic, go shepherd druid. Fast temp HP, or pulse heal the group as you top off yourself. But that's not the important part, the important bit is getting that 2nd level spell slot. Up until now you wasted a precious 6 seconds 3 times out of 4 as you had no spell slots to restore of second level or higher. Now you only waste a turn half the time, doubling how fast you can full heal and recharge the party's spells. And you have enough left over to use other utility functions however you want to.
Level 10 another druid level, pick up healing spirit and turn one 2nd level spell slot into an average of 75 hp single target without any grapple shenanigans. 75 HP turns into an average of 15 levels worth of spell slots without spending an action eating a goodberry you can now fully charge up the party in the time it takes for the party to search the room for loot.
"But," I hear the people say, "that's a concentration spell! And you are damaging yourself every round, surely it will fail!" to such naysayers I point out you started as a barbarian, you have profficiency in Con saves and a +4 Con mod. Magic reserves deals a maximum of 20 damage meaning the worst possible DC you have to deal with is 10 meaning you only fail on a natural 1. Between needing to roll a 4 on magic reserves to not automatically succeed, and need to roll a nat 1 to fail even if you do, you only have a %1.25 percent chance of failure. And even if it fails you already got a minimum of 5 health back from starting your turn in the spirit's space, if you are worried about it failing, just wait one more round before handing out spell slots like people throw candy in a parade.
Level 11, you are good to do whatever you want at this point, but because we got this train going lets keep it going. Another druid level gets you an ASI, and 3rd level spell slots. 2 points in Con makes it impossible to fail concentration saves and more health for turning into slots. Targetting yourself, you now have only a 1 in 4 chance of wasting an action on magic reserves, there aint no stopping this train. 3rd level healing spirit now heals an average of 120 hp equivalent to 24 levels worth of spells. At this point doing this in the middle of a fight is actually a valid, if annoying, tactic.
And if you want you can put the rest of the points in barbarian to boost it up to 6th level spells
•Barbarians never have to worry about leveraging their bajillion health points
•Bards can spam their battlefield control spells against even just for flavor
•Clerics can have 4th level aid, death ward and freedom of movement up on everyone all the time. Have spirit guardians and spiritual weapon up before opening any door.
•druids already have good sustain... more summons!
•Fighter eldritch knight is at maximum power all day long! (except action surge) other fighters stay at full health
•monks actually want rests, but now you can cut it down to just getting ki back.
•paladins SMITE EVIL!!! Every attack, every combat all day long!
•Rangers have full health and spells
•Rogue doesn't care too much unless it is arcane trickster.
•Sorcerer, unlimited spells means unlimited sorcery points. Move over cofeelock, step down Sorcerer king, who needs an hour to recharge warlock slots when the battery gives you three times as many per minute? And you can turn them all into 5th level slots without a single point of multiclassing
Warlock is kinda grumpy about the whole thing.
Wizard gets moar fireballs, more counterspells, more dispel magic, moar fireballs, more everything.
And you can sustain everyone the whole day for HP and spells.
---
Magic Dynamo is just the above with only 1 level of life cleric relying on someone else to heal it most of the time and getting to 14 as fast as possible for 6th level slot recovery for the whole party.
Self sustaining, mana battery guidelines
1 Accept that you will be a support character and underpowered in direct combat but not useless.
2 this is all about sustain, if you only have 1 fight a day anyway, you will be wasting your time. You will be able to keep the party going through an arbitrary number of fights, without resting making your party extremely long lasting in a mega dungeon, it is all about letting the rest of the party shine.
3 any coffee-locks in your party will be made entirely redundant. Let them know before you start.
hill dwarf wild barbarian
Pointbuy
STR 14
DEX 12
CON 15 +2(dwarf)
INT 8
WIS 14 +1 (dwarf)
CHA 8
Put the first 6 levels in barbarian and the first ASI into Con and Wis. With the extra health from hill dwarf, you will have an absurd amount of health to survive with, play like a normal barbarian. Accept your attacks won't hit as much or as hard as other martials.
Do with the other subclass features as you see fit. The real magic comes from Magic Reserves.
Magic ReservesAt 6th level, you can channel the magic surging inside you into other creatures. As an action, you can touch a creature and roll a d4. The creature recovers an expended spell slot of a level equal to the number rolled. If the creature you touch can’t recover a spell slot of that level, the creature instead gains temporary hit points equal to five times the number rolled. You take force damage equal to five times the number rolled. When you reach 14th level in this class, you increase the die to a d6.
If you have a druid with healing spirit, a life domain cleric, or a bard who took aura of vitality as a magical secret, you can end the combo here, do whatever you want for the rest. But the self sustaining mana battery is all about the whole Self sustaining part.
At level 6 use those magic reserves to top people off as you see fit it the combo starts at level 7.
At level 7 multiclass into life domain cleric. Take whatever spells you want you get cure wounds for free. And now the combo begins.
Having already used a first level spell slot for something target yourself with magical reserves. On a roll of 2-4 you give yourself temp HP equal to 5 times the roll. Then damage yourself for 5 time the roll in that order Resulting in nothing happening. On a roll of a 1 you take a measly 5 damage and recover one of your 1st level spell slots. Use that spell slot to cast cure wounds on yourself healing 1d8 +3(Wis mod) +3(life cleric) for a minimum of 7 hp recovered from losing 5 hp. Repeat until you are full health. Then top off all other characters' hp and spell slots to full. Now your party will always enter combat at full health and slots and usually with some temp HP. This process is ineficient however. It is guaranteed, but takes forever.
Level 8 take a level in druid. Get goodberry. Now you are trading 5 HP for a guaranteed 10 berries with 4 HP per berry for a total gain of 35 HP. Share the love with each spell slot and get the party on its feet faster. Stock up on berries for later in the day, feed a whole army! If you took create water, from cleric or druid you can supply a whole platoon without issue. But still it is a slow process.
Level 9
Put another level in Druid whatever subclass you want. If you want to keep the group-hug mechanic, go shepherd druid. Fast temp HP, or pulse heal the group as you top off yourself. But that's not the important part, the important bit is getting that 2nd level spell slot. Up until now you wasted a precious 6 seconds 3 times out of 4 as you had no spell slots to restore of second level or higher. Now you only waste a turn half the time, doubling how fast you can full heal and recharge the party's spells. And you have enough left over to use other utility functions however you want to.
Level 10 another druid level, pick up healing spirit and turn one 2nd level spell slot into an average of 75 hp single target without any grapple shenanigans. 75 HP turns into an average of 15 levels worth of spell slots without spending an action eating a goodberry you can now fully charge up the party in the time it takes for the party to search the room for loot.
"But," I hear the people say, "that's a concentration spell! And you are damaging yourself every round, surely it will fail!" to such naysayers I point out you started as a barbarian, you have profficiency in Con saves and a +4 Con mod. Magic reserves deals a maximum of 20 damage meaning the worst possible DC you have to deal with is 10 meaning you only fail on a natural 1. Between needing to roll a 4 on magic reserves to not automatically succeed, and need to roll a nat 1 to fail even if you do, you only have a %1.25 percent chance of failure. And even if it fails you already got a minimum of 5 health back from starting your turn in the spirit's space, if you are worried about it failing, just wait one more round before handing out spell slots like people throw candy in a parade.
Level 11, you are good to do whatever you want at this point, but because we got this train going lets keep it going. Another druid level gets you an ASI, and 3rd level spell slots. 2 points in Con makes it impossible to fail concentration saves and more health for turning into slots. Targetting yourself, you now have only a 1 in 4 chance of wasting an action on magic reserves, there aint no stopping this train. 3rd level healing spirit now heals an average of 120 hp equivalent to 24 levels worth of spells. At this point doing this in the middle of a fight is actually a valid, if annoying, tactic.
And if you want you can put the rest of the points in barbarian to boost it up to 6th level spells
•Barbarians never have to worry about leveraging their bajillion health points
•Bards can spam their battlefield control spells against even just for flavor
•Clerics can have 4th level aid, death ward and freedom of movement up on everyone all the time. Have spirit guardians and spiritual weapon up before opening any door.
•druids already have good sustain... more summons!
•Fighter eldritch knight is at maximum power all day long! (except action surge) other fighters stay at full health
•monks actually want rests, but now you can cut it down to just getting ki back.
•paladins SMITE EVIL!!! Every attack, every combat all day long!
•Rangers have full health and spells
•Rogue doesn't care too much unless it is arcane trickster.
•Sorcerer, unlimited spells means unlimited sorcery points. Move over cofeelock, step down Sorcerer king, who needs an hour to recharge warlock slots when the battery gives you three times as many per minute? And you can turn them all into 5th level slots without a single point of multiclassing
Warlock is kinda grumpy about the whole thing.
Wizard gets moar fireballs, more counterspells, more dispel magic, moar fireballs, more everything.
And you can sustain everyone the whole day for HP and spells.
---
Magic Dynamo is just the above with only 1 level of life cleric relying on someone else to heal it most of the time and getting to 14 as fast as possible for 6th level slot recovery for the whole party.