Creating a Touch Caster

[Lavaeolus]

If you've played a D&D caster you're probably familiar with touch spells: things like Shocking Grasp, Inflict Wounds or Spare the Dying, spells that cast out of your hands to hurt an opponent or save an ally. There's also a fair few spells, such as the ironically-named Vampiric Touch, which don't actually have a range of 'Touch' but are similarly themed around getting up close and channelling magic for your ends.

And while these are all cool, I've always used them more as situational tools in the toolkit than something I've ever really focused on. Shocking Grasp might be useful if an enemy gets close, but if I can fling a Fireball or manipulate the battlefield from far away, hey. If I have deliberately gone into melee, with a Bard or a Cleric or whathaveyou, I've gone in with a weapon to back me up.

The idea of running into the frontlines and channeling fire, lightning or dark magic into people with my bare hands is appealing, though, so I've been wondering about how to best optimise doing just that. I know that familiars can be used to channel touch spells, which I wouldn't want to focus on but could be a fun thing to take advantage of. I feel like Clerics would be strong: Spirit Guardians and heavy armour generally make for a decent melee spellcaster, although the former might sort of undermine the touch spells.

Unfortunately, I admit to not really knowing what spells here would be most worth using, which class would have the best spell list, and whether any specific class/subclass might be nice. So at the risk of giving you all a frustratingly vague prompt, I turn to the forums for any thoughts.

If I had to set out my goals, I'd say I want out of this character:


A melee frontliner, ideally unarmed
Who focuses on touch spells (and perhaps other spells that fit in with that theme)
And takes advantage of any unique synergies or strategies this might open up

[RogueJK]

There's actually not "a fair few" offensive touch spells in 5E... rather only "a few", period. It basically comes down to only:

Shocking Grasp
Inflict Wounds
Vampiric Touch
Contagion
(Plus sorta the Primal Savagery cantrip, kinda)

And Contagion is a terrible spell, requiring a successful touch attack AND three failed saving throws by the enemy over the next three rounds before they suffer its primary effects. That's awful, especially for a 5th level spell slot. It's basically intended to be used by the DM against PCs, not the other way around. So don't bother with that one.

Your best (really only) option is a Death or Grave Cleric, who have access to both Inflict Wounds and Vampiric Touch, and you can go with either the Kobold or Air Genasi race from MotM to get WIS-based Shocking Grasp. Or if you'd rather have Primal Savagery instead of Shocking Grasp, you can do similar with a VHuman/CLineage Cleric, taking Magic Initiate Druid at Level 1 to get Primal Savagery plus something like Thorn Whip and Absorb Elements.

Between Grave and Death, I'd definitely go with Death Cleric, since they can also use their Channel Divinity to effectively "smite" with their touch spells, which will go a long way towards boosting the otherwise lackluster damage of the few touch spells. (You can also apply that extra damage to the BA melee attack from Spiritual Weapon too.)

It'd look something like this:
Kobold or Air Genasi Death Cleric
STR 10
DEX 13+1
CON 15+1
INT 10
WIS 15+1
CHA 8
ASIs: Warcaster at Level 4, +2 WIS at 8 and 12
Racial Touch Cantrip: WIS-based Shocking Grasp
Death Cleric Touch Spells: Inflict Wounds (1st), Vampiring Touch (3rd)
Wear Medium Armor and use a shield, but leave your other hand empty.

Other than the use of Shocking Grasp instead of a weapon, you're basically a standard Death Cleric. Hanging out on the front lines with Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon + Shocking Grasp/Inflict Wounds/Dodge Action will be your go-to, applying your Touch of Death CD damage boost as appropriate. Use Chill Touch (acquired via Reaper) and Toll the Dead at range when needed, including twinning them on two adjacent enemies when appropriate.

[NecessaryWeevil]

I asked the same question a while ago. You may find this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?651773-Class-Suggestions-Needed&highlight=necessaryweevil) thread helpful.
I ended up relying on Eldritch Blast plus Crossbow Expert so I could deliver Eldritch Punches.

[renzdog]

contagion poisons the target (if you hit) until three saving throws are made. I agree it isn't the best spell, but it is pretty decent against creatures with strong melee attacks ... especially if they have legendary resistances.

[Unoriginal]

If I had to set out my goals, I'd say I want out of this character:


A melee frontliner, ideally unarmed
Who focuses on touch spells (and perhaps other spells that fit in with that theme)
And takes advantage of any unique synergies or strategies this might open up


Not spells, but from lvl 3 onward a Dragon Ascendant Monk can strike people with fire, cold, lightning, acid and poison- infused unarned attacks.

Maybe you could make an Air Genasi monk for WIS-based Shocking Grasp like suggested above and powerful energy-infused touches?

[RogueJK]

Not spells, but from lvl 3 onward a Dragon Ascendant Monk can strike people with fire, cold, lightning, acid and poison- infused unarned attacks.


Similarly, a Way of Mercy Monk can both harm and heal with its touch.

Again, it's not a caster like you're wanting, but you do get the flavor of someone who fights unarmed and channels magical energy via their touch.

[Psyren]

For race here I'd recommend Bugbear - both because their "touch" is actually 10ft, and because their Surprise Attack damage boost ability should apply to your touch spells as well.

[Frogreaver]

The Lucky feat and guiding bolt / chromatic orb work well as melee combo as well.

[Unoriginal]

The Lucky feat and guiding bolt / chromatic orb work well as melee combo as well.

How do you mean?

[JNAProductions]

How do you mean?

Disadvantage means you roll 2d20kl1. Lucky adds a d20 and you pick which one to keep.

By one reading, you then get 3d20kh1.
By my reading, you get the higher of 2d20kl1 and 1d20.

[Joe the Rat]

There's a fair few close spells to play with here - the close self AoEs like thunderwave and burning hands, dragon breath, to the big shots like lightning bolt and cone of cold, which does carry decent range, but the aoe starts with you.
Shadow blade fits as well, though I don't know if "summonable weapon" breaks your unarmed preference.
You want some good punishers for people trying to hit you - shadow of moil, flame shield, Armor of Agathys if you can swing it. Absorb elements is a good one as well - the return damae just speciifes melee attack, not melee weapon attack. So a shocking grasp (or a thorn whip, heh heh) is a valid use.

The biggest issue you are going to run into is survivability - the richest spell options are also the squishiest.

[Quietus]

There's actually not "a fair few" offensive touch spells in 5E... rather only "a few", period. It basically comes down to only:

Shocking Grasp
Inflict Wounds
Vampiric Touch
Contagion
(Plus sorta the Primal Savagery cantrip, kinda)

And Contagion is a terrible spell, requiring a successful touch attack AND three failed saving throws by the enemy over the next three rounds before they suffer its primary effects. That's awful, especially for a 5th level spell slot. It's basically intended to be used by the DM against PCs, not the other way around. So don't bother with that one.

Your best (really only) option is a Death or Grave Cleric, who have access to both Inflict Wounds and Vampiric Touch, and you can go with either the Kobold or Air Genasi race from MotM to get WIS-based Shocking Grasp. Or if you'd rather have Primal Savagery instead of Shocking Grasp, you can do similar with a VHuman/CLineage Cleric, taking Magic Initiate Druid at Level 1 to get Primal Savagery plus something like Thorn Whip and Absorb Elements.

Between Grave and Death, I'd definitely go with Death Cleric, since they can also use their Channel Divinity to effectively "smite" with their touch spells, which will go a long way towards boosting the otherwise lackluster damage of the few touch spells. (You can also apply that extra damage to the BA melee attack from Spiritual Weapon too.)

It'd look something like this:
Kobold or Air Genasi Death Cleric
STR 10
DEX 13+1
CON 15+1
INT 10
WIS 15+1
CHA 8
ASIs: Warcaster at Level 4, +2 WIS at 8 and 12
Racial Touch Cantrip: WIS-based Shocking Grasp
Death Cleric Touch Spells: Inflict Wounds (1st), Vampiring Touch (3rd)
Wear Medium Armor and use a shield, but leave your other hand empty.

Other than the use of Shocking Grasp instead of a weapon, you're basically a standard Death Cleric. Hanging out on the front lines with Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon + Shocking Grasp/Inflict Wounds/Dodge Action will be your go-to, applying your Touch of Death CD damage boost as appropriate. Use Chill Touch (acquired via Reaper) and Toll the Dead at range when needed, including twinning them on two adjacent enemies when appropriate.

I did something similar to this. I used a fallen aasimar (mordenkainen's monsters of the multiverse version). As of level 5, I could bonus action to Necrotic Shroud, action cast Vampiric Touch, to do 3d6+3(proficiency, from the shroud)+15(5+2x level from death cleric's channel divinity), and heal half of that. At level 6 that would become 3d6+3+17, with two channel divinities to power it. Plus spiritual weapon and inflict wounds for lower level round-to-round magics.

If you can live without the Necrotic Shroud (it's nice, but hardly necessary), you could do something similar with Goblins to apply Fury of the Small, or you could go with any race that can get you a druid cantrip (wood elves and VHumans with Magic Initiate come to mind) to pick up Primal Savagery. That would get you four of the five spell options here, all powered off of your Wisdom score.

[MadMusketeer]

A Divine Soul Sorcerer would allow you access to all spells previously mentioned (except Vampiric Touch, but that spell sucks anyway, and Primal Savagery, which is probably fine) and would allow you to use the Distant Spell metamagic to get 30ft range on Touch spells at the cost of 1 sorcery point per use. This does kinda go against the vision for the build, but if you're investing a lot of build resources into Touch spells, being able to use them in a wider range of situations could be valuable. Also, this might be really obvious, but since it hasn't been mentioned so far in this thread: plenty of healing or resurrection spells (such as Cure Wounds and Revivify) are also touch spells, meaning you can work those into the build as well to use when appropriate.

The main disadvantages to going DSS is that you lose the AC and Death Cleric smite, along with a lower HD. The first is easily solved with multiclassing: either do the standard thing and dip Hexblade to get medium armor and shield, which makes you SAD but has a slightly worse AC, or take the honestly also viable (so long as you can make the 15 Strength and 13 Wisdom work on a CHA caster) option of just dipping Cleric like was standard for Wizards before Artificers to get more AC (or, alternatively, get busted abilities like Emboldening Bond). Either way works fine. You still have lower health, but you have more ways around having to be in melee while having touch spells be an actual build choice, not just something you can opt out of at the next long rest.

[Kane0]

I really wish Vampiric Touch was a better spell, but you can do a fun double-up of Primal Savagery with a Beastmaster Ranger using Share Spells to get their companion to attack with it too. But you will likely want some way to add in +Stat to the damage or regular attacks (like from Bladesinger Extra Attack or EK War Magic), and Share Spells comes in at level 15 so that's basically impossible.

Edit: Instead, try this:

Armorer Artificer 3+ / Bladesinger 6+
Take the gauntlets, combo a shocking grasp with a thunder punch. It's a thematically lovely combo, plus the target can't opportunity attack you and has disadvantage to attack others which means you don't necessarily need to take the Mobile feat to dance away again and make their life with attack rolls miserable (though you absolutely can for the extra speed or accounting for misses).

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'm currently playing a Death Cleric and I've got to say their quasi Smite Channel Divinity is way under-rated. Just pasting this damage onto what you were already going to do with no impact on the action economy is great. Someone on here a while ago calculated it as more than a Paly using every spell slot they have for Divine Smite.

However, there are a couple of issues which have been touched on to some extent. 1st Spirit Guardians is a great spell and Vampiric Touch... isn't, and they both use your concentration. VT is a little better if you DM OKs your Channel Divinity damage factoring into the amount of healing you get. I like Inflict Wounds better mostly because Spirit Guardians is still in play.
If I was going to commit to IW as a way to deal my CD damage and keep SG in the mix then I'd probably use a feat to get Telekinetic and not worry about Spiritual Weapon. Why? Well with TK you can drag someone into your SG beginning on round 1 and do double damage. On round 2 you've got IW (and another TK attack). You couldn't be casting SW until round 3 anyway, so A) it's likely a waste of a slot given the number of rounds of combat remaining, B) it's not better than TK if you're not adding CD damage, and C) you've already cast 2 leveled spells, so how many are you going to budget per encounter anyway?

I get this plan isn't the full on Vampiric Touch: poke 'em every round, but Vampiric Touch is tough to make work, unless you have a very easy combat or you can manage to incapacitate your opponents. When I've tried it with my character in more deadly combats my hp tend to go backwards fast. So maybe VT is your backup plan for easy encounters or healing from unsuspecting cows or farmers or gobins...:biggrin:

[Quietus]

I'm currently playing a Death Cleric and I've got to say their quasi Smite Channel Divinity is way under-rated. Just pasting this damage onto what you were already going to do with no impact on the action economy is great. Someone on here a while ago calculated it as more than a Paly using every spell slot they have for Divine Smite.

However, there are a couple of issues which have been touched on to some extent. 1st Spirit Guardians is a great spell and Vampiric Touch... isn't, and they both use your concentration. VT is a little better if you DM OKs your Channel Divinity damage factoring into the amount of healing you get. I like Inflict Wounds better mostly because Spirit Guardians is still in play.
If I was going to commit to IW as a way to deal my CD damage and keep SG in the mix then I'd probably use a feat to get Telekinetic and not worry about Spiritual Weapon. Why? Well with TK you can drag someone into your SG beginning on round 1 and do double damage. On round 2 you've got IW (and another TK attack). You couldn't be casting SW until round 3 anyway, so A) it's likely a waste of a slot given the number of rounds of combat remaining, B) it's not better than TK if you're not adding CD damage, and C) you've already cast 2 leveled spells, so how many are you going to budget per encounter anyway?

I get this plan isn't the full on Vampiric Touch: poke 'em every round, but Vampiric Touch is tough to make work, unless you have a very easy combat or you can manage to incapacitate your opponents. When I've tried it with my character in more deadly combats my hp tend to go backwards fast. So maybe VT is your backup plan for easy encounters or healing from unsuspecting cows or farmers or gobins...:biggrin:

For my fallen aasimar death cleric, I've played her as not actually wanting the darker powers that come with that. She's become the group mom, and typically only uses vampiric touch/wings/smite when something truly dangerous shows up and drops big damage on us, something where healing would be less useful than eliminating the threat. I've used it before to go from near-death to good health, then turn around and use life transference to give away some of that healing to someone else, so they also went from critical to relatively healthy.

I have a pretty good track record of critting when she goes full necrotic mama bear, too. It's only an extra 3d6, but still feels great when it happens.