An Eclectic Collection of Fun and Effective Builds

[Evaar]

My first thought for making use of a 10 foot shove ability is Polearm Master plus Sentinel. Knock a thing away, make it hard to get back to you. There’s some problem there, though, with redundant bonus action attack options.

Next thought is Oath of Conquest Paladin. When you get the aura reducing enemy speeds to 0, that ability to shove makes you the master of the battlefield. But Conquest typically pushes Charisma first, so your stats aren’t perfect.

If you can find a way to pick up Spike Growth (or just be in a party with someone who has it), you add free damage to your shove.

[Poe]

Yeah, it seems like it is very hard to optimise a minotaur to make the most of its innate abilities. Much less a cavalry minotaur. :/

[Citadel97501]

I've posted this elsewhere before but I'm still looking for ways to perfect this build

A Mark of Hospitality Halfling Life Cleric 1 / Artificer 11 can create a spell storing item of Goodberry that heals up to 400 hp. If you go artillerist or take the boros background you can instead create a spell storing item of scorching ray that can be cast 10 times in a single round by tiny servants. If you go alchemist and dip 3 levels into tomelock, you can get aspect of the moon and brew 18 potions a night in lieu of sleep.

If you refluff the goodberries as dishes featuring goodberries, refluff the potions as, healing snacks, refluff the tiny servants sharing a spell-storing item of scorching ray as animated slices of birthday cake sharing a birthday candle of doom you've got 15 / 20 ingredients ready for the ultimate iron chef build.

Well that or you could build a chronomancer and refluff the time-delayed spell bead as a buff pastry (or as I like to call it, a HASTEry)

That definitely looks interesting, although aren't those goodberry uses only 4 hp per action to feed the good berry? This seems to make that more of a between rest effect? That being said, I was really looking at a mix of Celestial Warlock & Alchemist because I thought it looked like a lot of fun for a support character. That 1 level dip into Life Cleric looks great, although I think if your going to do the life cleric dip you might as well go all in on potions & divine energy with an Artificer: Alchemist 13 + Divine Sorcerer 3 + Celestial Tome-lock 3, Life Cleric 1.

Reasonably MAD: 2 casting traits to 20, and the requisite 14's to Dexterity & Constitution. (3 feats from Warlock for a total of 6 attribute points)
Proficiency: Light, Medium, & Heavy Armor, Shield, Simple Weapons, all Crossbows
2: 5th level spells: (Quickened: Armor of Agathys should be one?)
3: 4th & 3rd level spells
1st & 2nd level slots spent for extra potions & sorcery points.
2 random +10 chosen Potions not even using any real coffee lock abuse...that is just taking one short rest between making some potions.
2: 2nd level Warlock slots
Cantrips: Too Many: 16?
Invocations: Aspect of the Moon, Agonizing Blast?
Infusions: 8 known, 4 active
Spell Storing Item: I really suggest an offensive one as your healing is already absurd.

Healing:
-4d6 non-spell healing from Warlock although this requires a long rest to recover.
-2d4+9 from a Warlock Healing Word, or 2d8+9 from a Warlock Cure Light Wounds.
-Once per short rest: 2d4 to save or attack roll from Favored of the Gods.
-Alchemist Healing Words: 5th level slot is 3d4+12 per target with one more getting another 5.

[LudicSavant]

Hey Poe! I saw your PM!

I really want to create a minotaur character, using Ravnica minotaurs, and wondering how you would go about it? At this stage, he's still kinda murky. I have had heaps of ideas, but many of them just don't seem to work well together. I originally thought of a monk-barbarian, but that doesn't seem to work. There is fighter-barbarian, paladin-barbarian, something with bards. Nothing really seems to have a lot of synergy though. The campaign will be starting at level 6 and progress to around level 12, so it needs to be something that is designed to come online at an early level. I find the usual vhuman with sentinel, GWM and PAM gets a little tiresome.

The main things are I'd like to capitalise on their high strength and their racial abilities to push things around. The character will be a tank, but he's someone who ideally takes the pressure off other characters, so ways to draw attention to him, or protect other PCs by being near them would be ideal.

My current thinking is barbarian ancestral guardian, fighter battlemaster. That kinda feels a little boring, but useful.

I am also starting to think of making him mounted, so maybe paladin-barbarian ancestral guardian would work well.

My original inspiration was a bit like Teal'C (I'm not sure if you ever saw Stargate SG1), so strong, endurable and spiritual (so str, con, wis), but that's open to change. I'd rather not just put everything in my physical atts and have the mental ones low. The attribute values we have to work on are 16, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8 before modifiers.


I'd love to see what you can do with both a mounted and non-mounted character!

Thanks a lot. :)

Poe/Milan

Unfortunately, I don't think you're missing much when you say there's not a ton of super juicy synergy for the minotaur. And I am not familiar with the character of Teal'C.

That said, let's take a look at what the race offers and see how we can make the best of it:

- +2 Str / +1 Con means that (if you're using point buy) you want to pair it with Fighter or Barbarian, and not much else (for Paladins, I highly value Cha). The ability to start with 17 Str means you can even out to 18 with Heavy Armor Master or Tavern Brawler if you're so inclined.

- 1d6+Str horns. which can count as melee weapons or unarmed attacks. The best thing I can think of to do with these is to hit someone while grappling and using a shield. Unfortunately, it still has some downsides (that something like a Simic Hybrid or Loxodon Grappler wouldn't have), which is that you can't use your magic/buffed weapon, and the only type of damage worse than nonmagical BPS is Poison.

- Goring Rush: The best thing I can think of to do with this is to make it less likely that you'll lose your rage from being kited as a Barbarian. Still, the bonus action requirement means you can't do it on the turn you enter rage, which is the most important time to be able to close with the enemy. The fact that you have to use your nonmagical 1d6+Str horns is a disadvantage, as is the fact that you can't grapple or shove with this attack.

- Hammering Horns: Another bonus action, this one is probably going to see the most use comboing with other people in your party casting hazard effects with an "enters or starts turn" clause (or other things like Spike Growth).

Ancestral Guardian seems like a good choice for them that works well with the tools they offer. As an AG, landing just one weapon attack is enough to mark a foe and maintain your rage, so Goring Rush might occasionally help. And your horns mean you can be a shield grappler without needing to invest in Tavern Brawler, kind of like the Simic Hybrid build I posted earlier in the thread (though you'll lack some of the Simic's advantages). And hammering horns lets you rack up some damage with team combos, plus helps you disengage from melee (which is something that the Ancestral Guardian actually likes to do, it's why they often take Mobile).

Basically as an AG, you make allies even tankier than raging Barbarians with respect to marked targets, so it's useful to be able to Disengage without eating OAs after marking someone. Then you can wander over and lock down some second guy with a grapple, and start bashing him in the face with your horns while still having the benefit of a shield (which I personally think is a better fighting style for AG than GWM). That sort of thing.

As for investing in Str/Con/Wis and having a spiritual side, that sounds like an Ancestral Guardian taking Res(Wis) to me. Not sure how it would match up with other aspects of Teal'C since, again, I'm not that familiar with the character.

[Poe]

For some reason I couldn't include your quotes in my message, LudicSavant. :/

Yeah, to be totally honest I'm very disappointed with the way they made minotaurs. They could have been a really cool race, but there just doesn't seem to be much way to get one that isn't a standard fighter or barbarian. At least not one that's competitive with a lot of other races. In some ways, I am thinking of just reskinning a different race, but I'm not sure yet. They don't even get powerful build, which is ridiculous.

My starting array (which we all start with) are 16, 15, 14, 12, 10 and 8. So I could have an 18 strength and 16 constitution right off the bat, but if I wanted paladin, I'd need to assign the 14 to that. Not ideal.

Yeah, hammering horns would definitely be pretty useful there!

I think battlemaster/ancestral guardian is probably the only thing that'll work well with this race. I would love the ability to have an immortal steed that can disappear when we enter dungeons, but taking paladin or bard and the charisma requirement just for that really can't be justified.

Thanks :)

[Poe]

Hmmm... after reading your edit about ancestral guardian, it started to sound even more appealing... :)

Part of my thinking with the horns is to push someone away (a shame horns can't be used for a prone shove), thereby marking them, but since they're gone I can run off and get into combat with someone else. Or else run back to someone I need to defend. Or just hit, break off with mobile, engage someone else, then push them over then run off some more. ;)

[LudicSavant]

For some reason I couldn't include your quotes in my message, LudicSavant. :/

Try clicking "Reply with quote" under my post, or typing

[quote="LudicSavant"] (text to be quoted) [/quote]

[Poe]

Try clicking "Reply with quote" under my post, or typing

It says that I can't post links until after 10 posts. Although, I'm probably close to 10 posts now! :D

[ftafp]

That definitely looks interesting, although aren't those goodberry uses only 4 hp per action to feed the good berry? This seems to make that more of a between rest effect? That being said, I was really looking at a mix of Celestial Warlock & Alchemist because I thought it looked like a lot of fun for a support character. That 1 level dip into Life Cleric looks great, although I think if your going to do the life cleric dip you might as well go all in on potions & divine energy with an Artificer: Alchemist 13 + Divine Sorcerer 3 + Celestial Tome-lock 3, Life Cleric 1.

Reasonably MAD: 2 casting traits to 20, and the requisite 14's to Dexterity & Constitution. (3 feats from Warlock for a total of 6 attribute points)
Proficiency: Light, Medium, & Heavy Armor, Shield, Simple Weapons, all Crossbows
2: 5th level spells: (Quickened: Armor of Agathys should be one?)
3: 4th & 3rd level spells
1st & 2nd level slots spent for extra potions & sorcery points.
2 random +10 chosen Potions not even using any real coffee lock abuse...that is just taking one short rest between making some potions.
2: 2nd level Warlock slots
Cantrips: Too Many: 16?
Invocations: Aspect of the Moon, Agonizing Blast?
Infusions: 8 known, 4 active
Spell Storing Item: I really suggest an offensive one as your healing is already absurd.

Healing:
-4d6 non-spell healing from Warlock although this requires a long rest to recover.
-2d4+9 from a Warlock Healing Word, or 2d8+9 from a Warlock Cure Light Wounds.
-Once per short rest: 2d4 to save or attack roll from Favored of the Gods.
-Alchemist Healing Words: 5th level slot is 3d4+12 per target with one more getting another 5.

Sorcerer is a good choice, though we seem to be compounding on the healing when we more or less have it down. Also, because this is a coffeelock build that also builds up normal spellcasting slots, I have to wonder if maybe we're going about this wrong. Hospitality is a charisma race after all. What if instead of Artificer being the main class we focused on warlock?

Mark of Hospitality
Life Cleric 1/Alchemist Artificer 3/??? Sorcerer 3/??? Tome Warlock 13
By 20th level you're churning out 120 sorcery points per long rest, which is equivalent to an 18th level caster with a lot more flexibility. None of those spells would be above level 5, but you could have as many spells slots as a 20th level half-caster, churn out 20 potions, 200 hp worth of goodberries, and still have enough 14 points left over to quicken for days while you use your goodberris and alchemist potions for healing and buffs.

The question is how do you progress this monstrosity of a build?

[Citadel97501]

Sorcerer is a good choice, though we seem to be compounding on the healing when we more or less have it down. Also, because this is a coffeelock build that also builds up normal spellcasting slots, I have to wonder if maybe we're going about this wrong. Hospitality is a charisma race after all. What if instead of Artificer being the main class we focused on warlock?

Mark of Hospitality
Life Cleric 1/Alchemist Artificer 3/??? Sorcerer 3/??? Tome Warlock 13
By 20th level you're churning out 120 sorcery points per long rest, which is equivalent to an 18th level caster with a lot more flexibility. None of those spells would be above level 5, but you could have as many spells slots as a 20th level half-caster, churn out 20 potions, 200 hp worth of goodberries, and still have enough 14 points left over to quicken for days while you use your goodberris and alchemist potions for healing and buffs.

The question is how do you progress this monstrosity of a build?

I would definitely say we start as Artificer, as your going straight into your role getting your defenses - Medium Armor + INT/CON saves, Weapon training, Infusions & Elixers. Then applying all of the further enhancements to your build through the other stuff. Although if your starting at level 1 you might want to squeeze in the 4th level of Artificer first just for the ASI, as otherwise its going to take forever. So something like this.

Starting at level 7 or lower: Artificer 4 - Life Cleric 1 - Celestial Warlock 4 - Divine Soul Sorcerer 3 - Celestial Warlock 5 through 12
Starting at level 8 or higher: Artificer 3 - Life Cleric 1 - Celestial Warlock 3 - Divine Soul Sorcerer 3 - Celestial Warlock 4 through 13

[ftafp]

Reposting this from the throwdown threads because this is the end result of the discussion. I hope you're happy what resulted because I sure am. Obscenely.

The Hex Spoon: AKA The Only Hearth Still Burning

Level 20 level split: Life Cleric 1 / Hexblade of the Tome 11 / Shadow Sorcerer 5 / Alchemist 3

Race: Mark of Hospitality Halfling

Stats: Str 8 Dex (12 + 2) Con 10 Int 13 Wis 14 Cha (15 + 1)

Background: Acolyte

Starting level: Life Cleric 1

Meet Lilly. Born into a land wracked by famines, Lilly's parents turned her over to the Temple of the Kitchen Goddess at an early age so she would be one less mouth to feed. There she would spend most her days, baking bread bread that was half sawdust for the people while the high priests fattened themselves on fine meats and wines. She didn't like this hypocracy, but she bore with it until one day while baking bread she found herself in want of a spoon. Spoons are sacred to the Kitchen Goddess, so sacred that she struggled to find one base enough to actually use for cooking. Her search brought her to the catacombs where she found a single wooden spoon bound in chains. "Why is this spoon treated so badly" she wondered aloud. It was then when her fingers touched it that she realized the truth. A spark of magic went into the ground, and through a crack in the floor sprouted a grape vine with 10 glistening berries. She ate one and with just that her belly was sated. "The high priests have been keeping this from the people?" She shouted. Without a second though she unlocked the chains and disappeared into the night, never to set eyes on the church again.

From the beginning goodberry is the best spell in your arsenal. For a single spell slot a day you get 40 hp worth of healing that can be broken up into 4hp chunks and saved for later, and you'll be able to feed yourself too. 14 dex along with scale mail a shield and shield of faith give you 20 AC, which is extraordinary at level 1. Your sacred flame is a bit weak at this level, but you wont need it long

At 5th level: Life Cleric 1 / Hexblade of the Tome 4

After many days, Lilly found an abandoned farm stand and took shelter there. She made a decision: she would use this magic spoon to feed the people. She would charge only those who could afford it, and take only what she needed to survive. At first there were only a few customers, but they brough friends to her, and those friends brought friends, and soon she could not feed everyone. Then the cutthroats muscled in. They took all she had, gave nothing in return, and shook down all her customers for food and for coin. They would be back she knew. Her plan was ruined. As she cried that night a whisper spoke to her, and she swore it was coming from the spoon: "All is not lost. You can still do them good. Let me give you the strength to feed them, protect them as no one else can." She agreed. The next time the cut-throats came to her, she showed them what she could do.

1 level of hexblade gives you friends, eldritch blast, armor of agathys and shield, as well as hexblade's curse, 2 gives you agonizing blast and master of many masks. 3 gives you pact of the tome, and 4 gives you a cha boost. 3 is where you start making choices. mask plus friends makes you an amazing face, but now you have access to some new abilities that might take precedence. one of your invocations can be swapped with devil's sight if you want that cheese, but in a few levels you'll be getting that from sorcerer, or you can take aspect of the moon. why would you? because goodberries last 24 hours, so you could stay up all night using you warlock slots for goodberries and then short resting. in a single night you can produce 640 hp worth of goodberries, and we're just getting started.

At 11th level: Life Cleric 1/ Hexblade of the Tome 7/Shadow Sorcerer 3

Lilly provided for the people, and soon her farm stand grew into a great market. She alone was the sole employee, and gained a reputation as a strong woman, a socialite and a fine chef as well. In a land where food was rare, she became a symbol of bounty, and in time she even discovered powers of her own. However, as her reputation grew, so too did her infamy. Some said she was a witch who had blighted the lands so that she alone could control the food supply. Most dismissed it, but they couldn't help but wonder.

Once you get hexblade 5, you can now have three of the invocations mentioned above, and you have 3rd level spells to boot. now is the time to switch to Shadow sorcerer. After 2 levels if you have aspect of the moon then congratulations, you are officially a coffeelock churning out 48 sorcery points a night. thats a lot of spells, or up to 960 hp worth of goodberries. your choice. Admittedly, you won't be able to use all of these, as you can only keep 2 sorcery points at a time, and your slots will generate 3. 1 more level of sorcerer will let you keep the rest and give you access to metamagic. quicken spell is a must. you also can those points for eyes in the dark cheese. ordinarily thats a a white room technique that will handicap your party in most games, but you don't need a party, do you. Remember that you can never have more sorcery points than your sorcerer level at one time, so right now for now you'll have to store your sorcery points as slots. By level 7 there will again be overflow, but more levels of sorcerer can quench that need


At 17th level: Life Cleric 1/ Hexblade of the Tome 11/Shadow Sorcerer 5

The wells ran dry one summer. When Lilly began charging for her goodberry wine the people started to chafe. "She is making a profit off this!" they whispered. And those whispers led to cries of outrage. One night a mob assembled outside her mansion, and though her wards held she cowered sick at heart behind her walls. "Spoon," she whispered, "why do they act as if I dried thier wells?" The spoon said nothing for a moment, then it said "Because you did." Lilly looked stricken. "Every time you cast goodberry, I pulled some water from the earth to make them. I offered to let you feed them as no one else could, and I made good on my promise. Now none of them can feed themselves." Lilly looked sick at the spoon that had made her what she was through famine and drought, and was sick at heart. With a shout she lifted the spoon and broke it over her knee. "No hexes," she whispered, "No witchcraft. This is my power now, and I will give these people what they need on my own."

Keep the power boosts coming! By this level you can be churning out 120 sorcery points a night, which at this level will mostly be stored as slots of 1st through 3rd level. For the record, you can cast goodberry 60 times at 1st level if you choose. you can feed 600 people a day with that, or heal up to 24000 hp. again, your choice. By this point you'll be a half-caster, but you'll have half again as many spell slots as a pure wizard of the same level. Use this power wisely, you'll need it.

At 20th level: Life Cleric 1/ Hexblade of the Tome 11/Shadow Sorcerer 5/Alchemist 3

That night, Lilly opened her wine cellar to the people, and repaid them for every drop she had sold. She worked tirelessly through the following weeks and months, not sleeping, not relaxing, until at last she hit upon the solution. If religion couldn't save the people, and magic could not either she would turn to the only force left to fill their bellies. She would turn to science, and in time, she would find a way to bring the water back.

Artificer may seem like a strange choice, and admittedly it is optional, but your coffeelock shenanigans mean that you have a ridiculous number of 1st level spell slots you can spend on buff potions, which last until your next long rest rather than 24 hours, meaning you can stockpile and sell them as you wont be sleeping much, and with quicken spell you have plenty of time to use them.

[LudicSavant]

Reposting this from the throwdown threads because this is the end result of the discussion. I hope you're happy what resulted because I sure am. Obscenely.

What are the ASIs/feats?

[ftafp]

What are the ASIs/feats?

ASIs are Max Charisma and War Caster. If you don't want to use a dragonmark, go V. Human and take Magic Initiate: Druid to get Goodberry as well as shape water and mold earth. This is a purely charisma build starting at level 2

[DevanAvalon]

Really don't want this thread to die, so uh... Any builders want to take a crack at maybe doing a "monster trapper" build? the goal being to capture monsters alive for whatever reason?

[Civis Mundi]

Really don't want this thread to die, so uh... Any builders want to take a crack at maybe doing a "monster trapper" build? the goal being to capture monsters alive for whatever reason?

I'll bite. I've been playing around with the new summon spells from this UA. Specifically, I think summon undead spirit has enormous potential, though it's likely to get nerfed. This build also utilizes some Invocations from the Class Variants UA.

There's a lot of different ways to go in terms of race and subclass.

Races: Almost any +CHA race will do nicely. I think the best choices are Aasimar (Protector or Scourge) is likely the best bet for damage, Changeling for max CHA and Shapechanger, Half-Drow for Half-Elf stats with free Drow spells, Tiefling for similar reasons, Ghallanda Halfling for aid as a spell known, or Warforged for extra survivability.

Subclasses: Archfey might actually be the most fitting for this challenge, since sleep will be a great tool for knocking monsters out without trapping them. It'll work a little like Pokemon--get them real low on HP, then cast sleepfor a surefire knockout. But I went with Celestial for a more support-heavy build, and because I like the flavor. Plus, Ghallanda Halfling also offers sleep.

I went into a ton of different racial options you might use. Warforged is probably the weakest of those listed, but some of my favorite flavor. I'd build a Warforged version of this build as "Reliquary," a divine machine hosting the remains of saints and summoning their spirits. I think the optimal option is the Ghallanda Halfling--aid is just really nice to have.

Jerome Gravedew, Keeper of the Grateful Dead: Ghallanda Halfling Celestial Warlock 10

Stats: STR 8 / DEX 16 / CON 14 / INT 8 / WIS 12 / CHA 20 (4th and 8th level ASI go into CHA)

Invocations: Agonizing Blast, Investment of the Chain Master (Class Variant UA), Gift of the Everloving Ones, Voice of the Chain Master, Chain Master's Fury

Spells: eldritch blast + cantrips of choice (mind sliver from another UA takes this to the next level), armor of agathys, cure wounds, sleep, aid, invisibility, revivify, summon undead spirit, dimension door, guardian of faith, hold monster, wall of light

Jerry Gravedew has a sprite familiar with Pact of the Chain. The sprite spends most of its time invisible. In combat, you use your bonus action to command your Sprite to attack from invisibility. It should have Advantage from attacking from hiding with a +6 to hit with its longbow. On a hit, the target must make a CON save or be poisoned for 1 minute. For extra fun, if they fail the save by 5, they fall unconscious, or until it takes damage or a creature takes an action to shake it awake. Normally this a DC 10 save, but with Chain Master's Investment, it uses your spell DC instead. If mind sliver is available, this is just insane.

Now, this maneuver is more or less safe for the sprite depending on how your DM runs Initiative. Technically, the sprite acts on its own initiative, but most every DM I've played with would rather spare themselves the headache. Instead, they tend to allow the familiar to act on your initiative. This isn't essential for the combo to work, but it does help. If the sprite gets to act on or just after your turn, they can use their own action to turn invisible after you use your bonus action to command them to make one attack. Handily, Chain Master's Fury does not require the familiar's action to use.

What's great about this is it doesn't even require any limited resources to use.

Even if you don't knock your target out automatically, you can send your Putrid Spirit after any poisoned targets, granting you two extra attempts to paralyze. Presumably, you could order them to attack non-lethally, just as you could decide your own attacks are non-lethal.

Most everything else is gravy, but aid and guardian of faith's 8 hour durations make them great with Warlock spell slots. Aid, cure wounds, and revivify make for a decent support character, especially combined with Healing Light and Celestial Radiance. Inspiring Leader might be a fun feat to pick down the line. Hold monster, wall of light and sleep are some more great tools to capture creatures, especially if they're immune or resistant to poison. Summon undead spirit is also great for scouting with the Ghostly Spirit, and the Skeletal Spirit is great for damage.

[Lavaeolus]

Really don't want this thread to die, so uh... Any builders want to take a crack at maybe doing a "monster trapper" build? the goal being to capture monsters alive for whatever reason?

These are just some first thoughts rather than a full build, but to my mind, this character has two things they need to 'do':

• Render the enemy non-hostile or (unrecoverably) incapacitated. Honestly, the simplest, all-else-fails way to do this is to just knock them out with a melee attack. Melee spell attacks work too, so there's a lot of flexibility here. There are other ways of rendering an enemy unconscious -- drow poison, sleep / eyebite spell, suffocate them somehow, have a sprite help you -- but nothing's wrong with the simplest solution. Still, if you could use any of the others to bring a fight to a close early, hey. Plus it'd be thematic.
  
  
  • But... Where this might be a problem is the rare situation where a creature is immune to being unconscious. This is unfortunate. The cleanest way? Charm them somehow, either magically or not. Otherwise? This is a bit more DM-dependent territory. I could, at least, consider allowing you to apply manacles or tie up a creature as an action, provided they were incapacitated and no one else was attacking you.
    
    Maybe bring some spells that can incapacitate, then? Most immune to unconscious are immune to paralysis and the like, though. Lure them into an actual trap you've set up in advance? (Please don't look at the cage mysteriously hanging up in the sky by a rope.) Of course, this is a pretty niche situation. Permanently containing most of these if they're unwilling is likely going to be a pain in any case, so I can't fault a monster trapper who just doesn't make the attempt.
    
    If we do take them on, our best bet is to eschew fighting them altogether. Resilient Sphere or Polymorph are good temporary solutions, which may work if you can offload them somewhere or have somewhere to put them. (Though the Sphere only lasts a minute.) Otherwise, high-level magic is the best way: Scatter to teleport them into cages; Demiplane, Force Cage or Imprisonment to outright capture them with magic.
  
  
• Prevent an enemy from escaping or fleeing. Fun fact: a character who is solely incapacitated can still move. More than that, some enemies could conceivably just leave if they realise a fight's not going their way. Once the enemy's down, this is less of a concern (beyond a DM who's harsh about them trying to escape while being transported somewhere). You could, I suppose, be really fast and perceptive, hoping to use that to make fleeing untenable. Or you could reduce their movement somehow, either with magic or grappling. Or you could crowd control with spells. If you don't want to do any of that, you could try tracking them somehow.

Now, I'm reading this in more a 'animal capturer' than 'bounty hunter' type thing, and to be honest, most of the time none of what I said'll come up. Anyone who is decent in melee and brings along some rope should be a pretty good trapper, methinks. My first thought was some sort of Pied Piper-esque Bard, putting their Expertise in Animal Handling and maybe Athletics. My second thought was just to mix in some Paladin to increase their melee capabilities.

Paladin 2 / Bard X is good enough on its own merits, but for a more significant Paladin multiclass I could see, from a thematic level, Ancients Paladins or Glory Paladins having a reason to want to capture creatures alive to protect and/or showcase. The Ancients Paladin might need to twist their oath a bit to justify it, but I think you could tie it together. The Glory Paladin might just be, well, a gloryhound. See the chimera! Stay back, kids; it does bite!

Can't really beat a Wizard at just magically trapping their enemies, though. But the higher-level stuff can be easier said than done.

[Klorox]

Alright, let's build a Nuclear Wizard!

At Lyracian's request, I'll be providing multiple versions using different races.

Anyways, this is a strong one, so be aware of what level of optimization your group's comfortable with. You can afford to tone it down a bit and still have a highly competent character.

What's a Nuclear Wizard?
To my knowledge the term “nuclear wizard” was coined here as a name for builds that take advantage of the synergy between Empowered Evocation and Hexblade’s Curse, which (among other things) transforms the humble Magic Missile into one of the best-scaling single target damage options in the game.

As good as a NW's Magic Missile is, a well-played high level Evoker doesn’t really just spend their entire turn casting one spell and doing nothing else (which is basically what happens in the Reddit post). Like any high level Wizard, a large part of their strength is their versatility and action economy. And Evokers have a great kit already.

Build 9: The Nuclear Wizard

“I cast Magic Missile”

Hexblade 1 / Evoker 17 / Fighter 2
Race: Yuan-Ti (alternatively, anything listed in the "Nuclear Races" section below)
Stats (Point Buy): 16 Int / 14 Con / 14 Dex / 14 Cha
ASIs: Max Int, Resilient (Con), Alert
Fighting Style: Defense
Sample Cantrips: Prestidigitation, Minor Illusion, Create Bonfire, Toll the Dead, Control Flames, Lightning Lure, Frostbite

Optional stuff:
If you want a GGtR background: Orzhov (replace a cantrip with Guidance and take Spirit Guardians)
Not-too-rare gear to keep an eye out for: A mere Uncommon, attunement-free Wand of Magic Missile becomes pretty ridiculous in a Hexblade/Evoker's hands. If they're available, you basically want as many as you can get. Anything that will increase your AC/saves is great, too.

The End of the Path of Explosions: Silly Max Level Nova Shenanigans
This is a demonstration of why it's called the Nuclear Wizard. You can just sort of keep stacking damage about as high as you want, as long as you're willing to grind up all your resources and unleash it in one catastrophic explosion. Time to make Megumin proud.

Spoiler: Explooooooosion!

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The first thing you've got is Magic Missile, which deals 1d4+1+5(Empowered Evocation)+6(Hexblade's Curse) guaranteed damage per bolt. So for example in a 9th level slot it'd do 11d4+132 (159.5) unmissable damage, piercing Legendary Resistance, Magic Resistance, AC, saves, pretty much any conventional defenses. Even Shield can just get Counterspelled. Or just overwhelmed with the sheer amount of effects you put out, because you see...

We're not done. We can Action Surge and use another one with an L8 slot, for 145 guaranteed damage (now up to 304.5). And then your Simulacrum can do it, getting you to 609 unmissable damage. That's already enough to one-shot an Ancient Red Dragon through all their defenses, and we can easily push our damage even further. Everything beyond this point is frankly overkill. So let's talk about overkill.

Both you and your Simulacrum can be concentrating on an Overchanneled DoT (like upcast Spirit Guardians from Orzhov). If Hexblade's Curse was used on a previous turn, you still have your bonus action, which can be, say, a charge of Crown of Stars firing off for 4d12+11. And then all of your minions act... your familiar, simulacrum's familiar, Wished-up Greater Steed, animated dead, whatever. If you had a chance to cast a pair of Otiluke's Freezing Spheres (1 from you, 1 from your simulacrum) before the fight, they can throw them for another 16d6+22 AoE/save for half damage each. And both you and your Simulacrum can pop Contingency for 2 more 5th level spells for your choice.

And you can still have any of your non-concentration buffs up, like See Invisibility, Armor of Agathys, Fire Shield, or whatever. So on the slim chance that anyone survives and dares to hit you, they'd take all that and a Hellish Rebuke for their trouble.

You can similarly set yourself up for AoE annihilation instead of single target, switching out the 4 Magic Missiles for 2 Meteor Swarms and 2 upcast AoEs of choice (while things like Spirit Guardians and Freezing Sphere are already AoE). Or abuse Prismatic Wall.

If you want even more single target damage, you can use Wish for Hallow:Vulnerability to Force with your Action, then Action Surge for a Magic Missile, and then have your Simulacrum throw two Magic Missiles, for a total of ((145+145+159.5)*2) or 899 average damage if they fail their save against Hallow. And then another 128 if you both can hit with an Overchanneled Bigby's Hand (which are also Force damage, so you'd get 4*8*2*2). And then potentially add Freezing Spheres and Crown of Stars and so forth.

Basically, as long as you're willing to invest the resources and a little set up, you can do a nearly arbitrary amount of damage, pushing well into 4 digits. And it doesn't even take setup for the "one-shot an Ancient Red Dragon" part. In order to have a chance to survive, your foe needs to have very specific counters (like Subtle Shield, pre-cast Globe of Invulnerability, or Contingency:GTFO), the ability to cheat death (like Clone), or go first in the game of rocket launcher tag and hope that when the dust clears, you can't reply.

Mind, this is the extreme case, rapidly burning through your level 20 resources. However, even if you use a much more resource efficient combo you're still doing some real damage. For example, just a 5th level HC/EE Magic Missile alone is 101.5 guaranteed damage, and is only a fraction of your available action economy. You've got more than enough resources to do a wide variety of powerful combos throughout the day.

Note that all those crazy action economy shenanigans? Sorcerers don't get any of those spells on their list. Freezing Sphere, Contingency, Simulacrum, Wall of Force, you name it. All the big action economy spells are on the Wizard list. They need to use Wish to get even limited access to any of this, and a Sorcerer's Wished-up Simulacrum can't cast 9th level spells. A Wizard has no such limitations.

Okay, so you get to annihilate the final encounter of the whole campaign with a Macross Missile Massacre. But every optimizer worth their salt already knows that high level Wizards are bananas. What about the rest of the game?

Well, turns out they actually scale quite smoothly throughout the game (albeit being rather more... sane prior to grabbing their highest level tools). Your role will be a versatile mix of control, utility, and blasting (both single target and AoE).

Progression
At level 1, you start as a Hexblade, and basically get to play gish for all of one level. You pick 2 cantrips that don't depend much on your Cha, and learn 2 spells which you'll have prepared forever. They will be Armor of Agathys and either Shield or Hellish Rebuke. I usually pick Shield.

(If you're wondering why you might consider Shield even though it's not a Warlock exclusive spell, it's because whatever you pick for your 2 Warlock spells will be prepared forever. Picking Shield is basically saying "I don't care much about the Warlock's spell list, and just want more space to prepare Wizard spells")

That Hexblade level's going to do a lot for you. Namely, it will make your AC comparable to a Dex Eldritch Knight, give you a regenerating spell slot for things like Shield/Absorb Elements, and give you Hexblade's Curse (allowing you to deal some serious damage 1/short rest, especially with multi-hitting spells). Armor of Agathys and Hellish Rebuke both upcast well.

Many people reflexively think of Cha-based multiclasses when it comes to dipping Hexblade, but really, you only need 13 Cha to reap the benefits. None of the stuff we're getting here cares about your Charisma (except optionally Hellish Rebuke).

At level 2, you start to play more like you will for the rest of the game. You’re now a Wizard 1 / Hexblade 1. Compared to a regular Wizard, you’ll have 5 cantrips (instead of 3), 6 spells prepared (instead of 5), 6 spells per DMG standard adventuring day (instead of 4), and medium armor + shield + Shield for up to 19/24 AC (whenever you get your half-plate). And you’ll have Hexblade’s Curse 1/short rest (a mean boss-killer). And Poison Immunity / Magic Resistance from being a Yuan-Ti.

In other words, you’re considerably safer and have a good bit more resources to spread out over a day than a typical Wizard. Twice as many spells over a standard adventuring day if you assume they’re spending a slot on Mage Armor. More if you consider they’ll need to use Shield more often than you since they can be hit more often.

So, obviously you can do the basic God Wizard things like Fog Cloud or Silent Image or whatever, and they’re as good as ever. But you also can dish out some real damage, either with or without spell slots.

You should summon a familiar (owl is always a good choice for Flyby and a considerable 18 passive perception / 120 foot Darkvision) and keep some materials available to resummon them if necessary. You should also keep some rituals going whenever you can. It's not difficult to keep up an Unseen Servant or Floating Disk all day (since you can cast rituals while moving, and they last an hour). Use the Unseen Servant to carry a Control Flames bullseye lantern, vials of oil, ball bearings, healing potions, or the like.

Your bread and butter spell slotless combo is going to be setting down a Bonfire and using Toll the Dead (or some other good cantrip) + using your Familiar to give someone Advantage or use an object + having your Unseen Servant use oil or ball bearings or shine a Control Flames bullseye lantern or something. Used right this can really rack up, especially with a little help from teammates to help move people around (think a grappler, repelling blaster, thorn whipper, or slightly later a Pushing Attack Battle Master or Open Hand Monk or any of a ton of other things. And you can move enemies yourself with Lightning Lure or Thunderwave). Don’t forget that Create Bonfire can hit multiple squares, so at worst it’s just like a way better version of Acid Splash if you’re not using your Concentration for something else.

Your go-to slotted AoE will be Thunderwave, which you can use to knock people into hazards (like your own bonfire) on top of just doing some decent AoE damage. Your good AC (not to mention access to Armor of Agathys and Hellish Rebuke) means you can afford to position more aggressively for this than a typical Wizard.

And when you really want to kill someone, you throw down Hexblade’s Curse and use Magic Missile for 3d4+9 (16.5) guaranteed damage. Plus having your Concentration effect running, and your Unseen Servant, and your Familiar.

How does that cursed Magic Missile stack up to the DPR of other low level characters? Well, it’s about the same average damage as a GWM/GWF greatsword Fighter using Action Surge against an AC 14 target. And that’s if you’re using Magic Missile and nothing else on your turn. But of course, there is more that can happen during a round, and every damage roll you make against the foe will add your Proficiency bonus from Hexblade’s Curse.

Your familiar giving Advantage to one attack of that same GWM Fighter (against that same AC14 target) contributes about 6 DPR. A burning oil square will do another 5 guaranteed every time someone enters or ends their turn there (which of course your allies can force). A Bonfire square will add 1d8+2 per proc (with a Dex save to negate). A decent grappler can easily make both of these proc twice per turn. Or you could have Armor of Agathys up and have someone take 5 damage for hitting that. And then Hellish Rebuke them for 2d10+2/save for half (average 10.3 DPR against a +0 Dex save). And all of these possibilities are being added on top of what was already comparable to a GWM/GWF greatsword Action Surge.

Not too shabby for a level 2 Wizard, eh? Incidentally, that combo will never stop being relevant (because Magic Missile is well worth upcasting on this build, and all of your cantrips will scale and improve with Evoker features).

Continuing your progression, the level 2 combo will never stop being relevant. Hexblade's Curse will scale with your proficiency, keeping the damage of everything up when you want to go nova on someone. Your cantrips will double in damage at 5, become Potent at 7 (don't underestimate the difference between save negates and save for half on your DPR. For example, against a foe with a +3 Wis save at level 7, Potent Toll the Dead will deal ~39% more DPR), and will scale in damage again at 11 (another die and Empowered Evocation). This, plus your Bonfire action economy and ever-expanding list of rituals, helps ensure that your resourceless output is always at least respectable.

Now, I'm not going to go over every single Wizard spell that you should use here (this is already a long enough post). I'm going to be focusing mostly on Evocation spells, since that's what's changed the most from standard Wizard strategies.

For level 2 slots, your level 1 spells actually upcast pretty well. L2 Thunderwave matches the damage of Shatter (if not the range and area) while still knocking people back, and even a non-cursed L2 Magic Missile will out-DPR Scorching Ray against a target of AC14 or higher (and with curse MM is a good deal better). Turns out "just can't miss" really matters. The important blasting additions in L2 slots are the Concentration spells, like Flaming Sphere or Dragon's Breath. Cast it on a minion and watch 'em dish out a sculpted 3d6/save for half AoE every turn, with an element of your choice.

Eventually you'll probably want to pick up See Invisibility, as well as other abilities that let you spot people, since many of your abilities require you to be able to see a target (Magic Missile included). However, you also have a lot of abilities that don't (AoEs, ally buffs, etc), so you can respond that way too.

For level 3 slots, Fireball and Melf's Minute Meteors (or Spirit Guardians if you went Orzhov) are obvious choices for advancing your blasting career. And there's just a ton of great spells at this level... Sleet Storm, Hypnotic Pattern, Counterspell, Life Transference, etc. Phantom Steed is a particularly useful ritual to pick up.

If you're not averse to animating the dead, that becomes a potent action economy tool, essentially allowing you to convert downtime into minions.

For level 4 slots, Storm Sphere and Sickening Radiance are exceptional area denial spells since Sculpt Spells allows allies to walk through them safely (which means that enemies have to walk into the area if they want to engage them in melee. Or that allies can all surround them and get OAs if enemies try to leave. That sort of thing). Storm Sphere also upcasts decently well, since both the AoE and the bonus action scale (meaning that the damage can go up by 2d6 per slot level).

You also can grab Fire Shield, which you can combine with Armor of Agathys and Hellish Rebuke to really make people regret engaging you in melee (though I usually just stand back unless allies need pressure taken off of them). And of course all the usual goodies like Polymorph and Evard's Tentacles and the like.

For level 5 slots, the highlights on the Evocation list are Wall of Stone, Cone of Cold, Wall of Force, Bigby's Hand, and (surprisingly) Dawn, which actually becomes a half decent spell now that allies can move through it. Wall of Stone also offers a unique advantage; it's an Evocation spell, so allies automatically make their Dex saves. And if a target makes its Dex save against Wall of Stone, they can use their Reaction to move up to their speed.

Animate Objects is also a noteworthy damage spell. Also, Bestow Curse upcasts well at this level (if cast with a level 5 slot, it lasts 8 hours and doesn't require Concentration).

When you hit level 11, you get Empowered Evocation, which means your Magic Missile upcasting really takes off (and with Hexblade's Curse will generally be your biggest single target nova option from here on out), and that all of your other Evocation spells get a meaningful bump too.

Once you have this ability, it becomes important to remember exactly what counts as a single damage roll and what doesn't. Per PHB pg.196, spells like Fireball roll the damage die just once, and apply that roll to all targets (or in the unique case of Magic Missile, potentially the same target multiple times).

Side note: If you can get your hands on a merely Uncommon Wand of Magic Missiles (either by finding, buying, or crafting it), they are simply amazing for you with Empowered Evocation. They let you upcast, and they recharge daily. They're also non-attunement, so you could just have a bandolier of the things and spam upcast Magic Missiles to your heart's content.

For level 6 slots, you get some important action economy tools unique to the Wizard. Contingency allows you to "store" a 5th level spell slot for a week, and unleash it without an action using whatever trigger you want. Even before you consider the amazing action economy implications, this basically allows you to use a non-adventuring day to give you an extra spell slot on an adventuring day. Otiluke's Freezing Sphere basically lets you hand a vastly larger radius Fireball to a minion to throw with their action instead of yours, meaning that as long as you have a couple rounds to prepare before kicking down the door you can set up some insane first round novas.

Wall of Ice is also worth a mention due to the tricks you can do with Sculpt Spells. For example, you could use it on an ally engaged in melee to disengage them (pushing them to one side of the wall without damaging them) while damaging and blocking off the enemy. Also, your team can walk through the frigid air freely, while your enemies will take damage.

For level 7 slots, there are three important spells on the Evocation list: Forcecage, Crown of Stars, and Whirlwind.

Crown of Stars is a cornerstone of your blasting strategy from here on out. It basically does for you what Quicken Spell does for a Sorcerer, giving you 7x 4d12+5 shots as a bonus action, without eating your Concentration. For a Sorcerer to get 7 cantrip shots in with Quicken Spell, they'd need to spend a whopping 14 Sorcery points (which would take 2 7th level spell slots to create, or could be converted into 2 5th level spell slots). So I'd say this isn't a bad deal at all, resource-wise.

Whirlwind takes on a whole new luster thanks to Sculpt Spells. In addition to its usual uses, allies can move inside of it to get at the foes trapped within, or to protect themselves from enemies outside. The Whirlwind will automatically block projectiles by sucking them up, and anything hostile trying to close to melee will take damage and be Restrained. They get a save every turn to escape, but that just hurls them away through the air and lands them prone far away from the protected ally.

In addition to this, you get a truly game-changing spell unique to the Wizard list: Simulacrum. You can think of Simulacrum as allowing you to buy spell slots and actions with gold pieces. It can even add another Overchannel. Speaking of which...

At level 15 you get Overchannel, an important ability to master. It maximizes all damage from a spell, including DoT effects, so things like Bigby's Hand, Storm Sphere, Wall of Fire, Fire Shield, Dawn, Sickening Radiance, or Spirit Guardians (if you took Orzhov, it's a Wizard spell for you) are particularly useful. Yet another reason that ongoing effects are a great choice is because you can potentially cast them out of combat, heal up the damage, and go into battle.

For instant, non-Concentration damage, Fireball, Cone of Cold, and Vitriolic Sphere are all solid choices. Great for vaporizing swarms. For single-target, a max proficiency Hexblade's Curse Magic Missile will only go up from 101.5 (average) to 112 damage with Overchannel, so I don't usually use it for that.

Spoiler: Overchannel management

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Some people are overly scared of doing any damage to themselves at all with this, but I think playing around the self-inflicted damage is an important aspect of Overchannel. So how can you manage it?

• You get 1 Overchannel/day free. So does your Simulacrum. So potentially 2 freebies before you have to damage either yourself or your Simulacrum.
• As mentioned above, it's possible to Overchannel something with a good duration out of combat and heal up. Good if your party's out of combat healing is efficient enough.
• Sometimes, the self-damage will be less than the amount of consequences the party will avoid by shaving even one round off the lifespans of Team Monster at high levels. 10d12 is a lot, but plenty of high level encounters can do worse. For example, you might clear out an enormous horde of minions, or save downed allies who are about to be finished off. Just use your good judgment; this is for calculated clutch plays, not for spamming and hoping for the best.
• Many spells do some level of guaranteed damage (because of save/half). If you can guaranteed end the combat by using Overchannel, then nobody's going to finish you off even if you drop yourself to zero.
• The amount of damage you can take is limited by the 0hp gate. If you're already at like 5 hit points, then using Overchannel to finish a combat right now has less of an opportunity cost in healing resources, and can very well save your life.
• Also, pay attention to the initiative order. For example, if your familiar goes right after you, you can Overchannel with 5 hit points left then have your familiar feed you a cheap Healing Potion to pop you back up, leaving you in about the same place you started (7+2d4 hit points probably wasn't going to get you an extra hit from that Ancient Dragon any more than 2+2d4 was). For another example, if your Life Cleric is about to use a big AoE heal on already-wounded party members anyways, you might want to get in on that.
• A cautionary note: If you Overchannel with very low hit points and a scaled up self-damage, you risk death by massive damage. It's negligible-to-nothing at 10d12 (less than 0.1% if you have 5 hit points and 94 max hp, which is the minimum you'll have at level 15), but can get pretty high if you do it at 15d12 or more. Don't overdo it. While I don't agree with the "only ever use it 1/day" philosophy, it's still not for spamming.

For level 8 slots, you get stuff like Maze and Clone.

For level 9 slots, you get stuff like Wish, Prismatic Wall, Foresight, and Meteor Swarm.

For level 19 and 20 we can jump off into Fighter, now that we've got our precious 9th level spell slot. Taking the Defense fighting style will bump your AC, but that's not why we're here. Action Surge will serve as your devastating capstone, allowing you to cast a second 1 Action casting time spell in a round (and have your Simulacrum do so, too).

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Variants/Notes

Spoiler: Nuclear Races

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You want a bonus to Intelligence (so you can start with at least a 16), and at least 14 dexterity and 13 charisma (to qualify for Warlock), and to put whatever’s left over into Con.

One interesting caveat of this is that the “+2 Cha, +1 Int” typing, usually anti-synergistic, actually works out just fine for you… which means that Yuan-Ti is even more attractive than normal. Not that they need it, the race already is overloaded with powerful features; most notably immunity to a common damage type and status effect, and Advantage on all saves against spells and other magical effects.

However, many other races also fit in here well. Basically anything with a bonus to Intelligence and one of your secondary stats will do.

1) A plain old PHB tiefling can take the same statline as a Yuan-Ti and give you Fire Resistance and a couple extra spell slots. Having an upcast Hellish Rebuke at level 3 is nice.

2) You could also take the Winged Tiefling variant from SCAG for at-will flight.

3) Or any of the Tieflings from MToF, combined with the Feral variant from SCAG to make their statlines appropriate. Yes, you can combine those. So feel free to get whatever racial spells you want.

4) A Variant Human can take a starting array of 16 int / 14 Con / 14 Dex / 14 Cha if they take Res(Con) as their bonus feat. Then they can have a progression like Res(Con) > Max Int > Warcaster > Alert.

5) Half-Elf has enough stats to end up with an array of 16/14/14/14/10/8 or 16/15/14/14/8/8 (which will end up at 16/16 when you take Res(Con). They've also got a bunch of variants to choose from in SCAG.

6) Simic Hybrids can get the desired statline, +1 AC from their carapace, and some gliding wings or a climb speed.

7) A Gnome could start with the usual 16/14/14/14 array, or they could go 17/14/14/13. In exchange for that point of Charisma, they can get an Int-boosting half-feat when reaching level 4, like Observant, Keen Mind, or Fade Away (from XGtE).

8) There are plenty of good options in Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron: Changelings, Humans with the Mark of Making or Passage, Dwarves with the Mark of Warding, and Warforged Envoys are all great.

Spoiler: Choosing Cantrips

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For cantrips I recommend Create Bonfire and any 6 of the following: Shape Water, Control Flames, Mold Earth, Prestidigitation, Lightning Lure, Fire Bolt, Toll the Dead, Minor Illusion, Frostbite, Thunderclap, or (if Orzhov) Guidance. At least 2 of those should be attack cantrips. Here's why I recommend those spells:

Create Bonfire This gives you a very worthwhile use for your Concentration for when you’re not dumping spell slots on it. Like a little at-will Cloud of Daggers. Works great with Potent Cantrip.

Create Bonfire isn’t a totally brainless spell; to really get the most out of it you’re going to have to use a little strategy. But for skilled parties, it can really pay off, giving you a source of repeating damage that leaves your Action free and saves your slots for when you really need them.

The most important things to remember are...
A) Five foot cubes can affect multiple squares on a grid, making this an effective AoE. In fact, besides the Concentration aspect, it’s just a straight up superior AoE to Acid Splash.
B) The damage can be activated once per turn, not once per round.
C) It ignites things, so you can just have an Unseen Servant or Familiar or the like pour out oil touching the area and have it get lit up immediately. This makes for even meaner combinations with grapplers and the like.
D) Players can surround a foe in a Create Bonfire square in such a formation that leaving the Create Bonfire square will provoke OAs from at least one of them.
E) It’ll deal some guaranteed damage with Potent Cantrip.

Mold Earth: This has occasionally been called the most underrated cantrip in the game. And while I wouldn't be counting on having the time and space to make 200 foot pitfalls before hitting bedrock, there is quite a lot you can do with it.

Spoiler: A bunch of cool stuff you can do with Mold Earth

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Like other “shape element” cantrips this scales with your creativity and resourcefulness, and distinctly lacks a Verbal component (so you can mess with things without revealing your position).

The first bullet point in the spell's description is the most important one. I’ve seen at least one person say “you can do that with a shovel!” I think that they lack a sense of scale.

The ability to instantaneously excavate a 5x5x5 foot cube’s worth of earth (125 cubic feet / ~4.6 cubic yards / about 5000 pounds of rather average dirt) in 6 seconds gives you an ability to create earthworks and excavations comparable to an army of people with shovels and entrenching tools. You can move 75,000 cubic feet of earth in an hour. That’s no joke. That’s like 250 commercial dump trucks worth of dirt. Literally tons upon tons upon tons of dirt. Mind, you might move less than that in practice (since you might have to move some clumps of dirt more than 5 feet for your engineering project of choice), but even a fraction of that amount is astronomically beyond the scope of what one can do with a shovel in that sort of time frame. This is an architect’s dream.

Some examples of uses (some may require some good old fashioned manual labor in addition to use of the spell, but the spell greatly expedites the process):

• Signalling/communicating with allies silently (via the “make shapes appear” function)
• Create pit traps.
• Create earthworks fortifications, cover, etc.
• Construct shelters surprisingly quickly.
• Redirect a river or lava flow.
• Burrow under a building.
• Sink aforementioned building, or otherwise undermine its foundations. Sapper work in general.
• Dig a grave instantly.
• Dig up a grave instantly, for you grave robbers and necromancers out there.
• Excavate buried ruins with one man instead of 100.
• Block off dungeon passageways until you’re ready to go through them.
• Reinforce an unstable structure.
• Hide underground.
• Activate pressure plates and other traps by sending mounds of earth ahead of you. Why sacrifice innocent summoned minions when you can just use sand?
• Cleaning.

Some examples of possible mid-combat uses:

• Create cover around a ranged character (think digging a foxhole surrounded by dirt mounds). ¾ cover is frequently better than the Dodge action, and this action can be taken on behalf of an ally. Sure, the wall’s only “loose earth” but it’s a considerable lot of it (~4.6 cubic yards of dirt plus ~4.6 cubic yards of hole. To get an idea of how enormous that is, here's just 2 cubic yards, with no foxhole. So think almost 5 times that space to work with)
• Fill in a hole, while someone is in it. Multiple characters with the cantrip can both make the hole and fill it in, potentially burying a foe alive in a single round. A DM will probably permit some some sort of reaction for that, though.
• Block up Tucker’s Kobolds’ stupid tunnels. Possibly after throwing some smoke generating fire in there. See how they like it.
• An enemy is standing near a cliff edge. You shape the earth they’re standing on into a steep slide.

The main thing holding this spell back is that it’s limited by environment. That said, loose earth isn’t exactly a particularly rare type of terrain; it applies to most outdoor environs, and in a medieval setting it would apply to quite a few indoor ones as well. And you always have the option of bringing some earth with you (such as for the pressure plates usage I suggested).

Side note: The term "loose earth" is rather ambiguous. After all "loose" is a relative term, some dirt is packed tighter than other dirt, and all dirt is loose compared to stone. Thankfully the intent has been clarified in Sage Advice; it basically refers to any dirt short of solid stone. Basically, if you can use a shovel on it, you can Mold it.

Shape Water: Like other “shape element” cantrips this scales with your creativity and resourcefulness, and distinctly lacks a Verbal component (so you can mess with things without revealing a hidden position).

This thread has a solid collection of ideas for uses.

Minor Illusion: An at-will, non-concentration illusion? Shut up and take my cantrip slot!

One interesting tidbit is that this (alongside all of the "shape element" cantrips) has no Verbal component, so you can mess with things without revealing a hidden position.

Fire Bolt: Toll the Dead is the standby damage cantrip, but what if you really want to target AC? For ranged Evocation cantrips that target AC, it's basically either this or Ray of Frost. This one has higher damage, twice the range, and can target objects. Though this doesn't work with Potent Cantrip, it's nice to have a 120 foot range option on hand.

Ray of Frost is a solid alternative if your team is set up to take advantage of the slows. Some people like to deliver Shocking Grasp through their familiars to get rid of reactions, too. Whichever you go for, I wouldn't take more than 1 AC-targeting cantrip.

Both of these, however, are subject to the disadvantages of ranged attack rolls. Enemies can give you Disadvantage by being in melee with you or being prone, or they could get cover from any number of sources (including your own melee front line). And they won't benefit from Potent Cantrip.

Control Flames: This is my personal favorite of the 3 "light" spells. Dancing Lights is limited by the fact that it requires precious Concentration, and the main trick I see advocated for it (lighting up enemies while keeping your allies obscured in darkness) can be accomplished by alternative means, like an Unseen Servant with a bullseye lantern, or lighting the room on fire (it's utility, I say!). Light can only produce 20ft bright/20 ft dim light, and can only create a single effect.

By contrast, Control Flames can produce 60 ft bright / 60 ft dim (equivalent brightness to the Daylight spell) with a hooded lantern, or 120 ft bright / 120 ft dim with a bullseye lantern. Even a lowly, expendable torch will provide 40/40 and can be dropped or tossed like a flare. Additionally, it can maintain up to 3 effects, rather than just one. And it doesn't take Concentration.

The main advantage of Light is that its a waterproof, completely expendable light that doesn't take up your hand. But I can make a permanent one of those with Continual Flame without using up a precious cantrip slot, and the one made by Continual Flame can illuminate magical darkness if upcast to level 3 or higher (since as a general rule, lights created with a slot of level 3 or higher illuminate magical Darkness).

In addition to its utility as a light spell, Control Flames can do some other things. Here's a few ideas:

• No Verbal component means you can do things like animate some guardsmens' torches to make it appear like they're sputtering out naturally in a gust of wind, without revealing your Hidden position. Useful against enemies that don't have Darkvision.
• It's an efficient fire extinguisher. Other cantrips can do this, but not with a similar level of efficiency. Given that spells like Fireball ignite everything flammable in the area, it can be handy to be able to clean up your own messes. (Note: While you can't extinguish magic fire, the fires created as collateral damage of magic are usually nonmagical)
• You can change the color of flames, and nothing is stopping you from choosing a color that's not in the visible spectrum.
• You can exacerbate the effect of things like Alchemist's Fire, oil flasks, or squares lit on fire by your various spells (because while you can't manipulate magical flame, you can manipulate the nonmagical fires that they might start as collateral damage).
• Performance art. Minor Illusion is great, but it can't make something animated.

Lightning Lure: A d8 base damage that works with Potent Cantrip and Empowered Evocation, and can pull people into your Create Bonfire or other hazards. The downside is that it’s short range, and the damage only triggers if the enemy ends up within 5 feet of you (which sadly limits its synergy with Potent Cantrip).

Toll the Dead: The straight up highest damage single target cantrip prior to getting Empowered Evocation, and competitive even after that (e.g. 4d12 is more than 4d8+5). Very consistent output with Potent Cantrip. Also doesn't care about cover, people being in melee with you, etc.

Some people suffer from loss aversion bias and skip this because it doesn't work with Empowered Evocation. That would be a mistake, since Potent Toll the Dead will often outperform Empowered Fire Bolt.

Thunderclap: Gives you access to a 15-foot diameter aoe (e.g. extending 5 feet from each edge of your square) that’s compatible with Potent Cantrip and Empowered Evocation. Handy for clearing away mook swarms. The main disadvantage is that you need to be right up close.

Better than Sword Burst mostly because it’s compatible with Empowered Evocation. The difference in save types doesn't matter that much (unlike big guys, little mooks often have fairly similar Dex and Con saves, and these spells are for little mooks).

Frostbite: The main selling point of Frostbite is that it works with both Potent Cantrip and Empowered Evocation, and thus can be a solid pick for the last cantrip you learn (e.g. when you have both of those things). It still won't do as much damage as Toll the Dead (despite EE), but Toll the Dead doesn't give people Disadvantage.

It's better when allies all have an at least decent AC (because Disadvantage helps less if they just have a bad 14 AC vs enemies with +10 to hit anyways).

Prestidigitation: If you didn't have Prestidigitation, you would have to live like a martial peasant. You'd have to clean the blood off your robes. You'd have to go without chilling your drink to the perfect temperature. And you would have to endure the actual flavor of trail rations. And you couldn't pleasantly scent your scarf and pull it up over your nose when skulking through smelly old dungeons. It's undignified.

Spoiler: Feats

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Alert is a great defensive and offensive feat for a Wizard. It'll prevent unseen foes from getting advantage, prevent them from surprising you (one of the deadlier scenarios in 5e), and allow you to go first, which often means weakening or killing enemies before they get to act.

Resilient (Con) will help you maintain Concentration and help you make saves against various nasty things.

If you have more space for feats due to rolling high on Intelligence, being a VHuman, or simply want to change things up, here's some more good choices:

Warcaster will improve your Concentration and allow you to apply pressure with OAs (something that's very doable when you have access to stuff like a good AC, Fire Shield, Armor of Agathys, Hellish Rebuke, and hazard spells).

Inspiring Leader scales primarily based on level, and with 13 Cha you qualify for it! If your party doesn't have a lot of sources of temporary hit points, this will provides more hit points than a Con bump for your whole team and your minions (your familiar might actually be able to survive a hit).

A +2 Con bump doesn't hurt. I prefer this to Tough since it will improve your Concentration and saving throw.

Lucky is a decent all-around feat for everyone, mostly for negating crits and retrying saving throws. It's something you take after you have all the other feats you really want in order to lower the chances of failing that crucial saving throw.

If you happen to have an odd Int score, you can bump it up with Observant or Keen Mind. The latter becomes attractive if your DM rules that you can memorize your spellbook so that you can re-scribe it if it's lost (and if your DM is the kind where that sort of thing is a real possibility). Flames of Phlegethos is good for this if you're a Tiefling.

Speaking of Tieflings, you might go Res(Con), end up with an odd Con score, and then bump it back up to even with Infernal Constitution. Now you've got 3 resistances, all to some of the most common damage types (Fire, Cold, Poison), and Advantage on saving throws against one of the more common status effects (Poisoned).

Spoiler: Multiclassing

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You can take the Hexblade level at pretty much any time in your progression, it doesn't need to be first. However, taking it first will give you +2 hit points and proficiency in Charisma saving throws, which is good because it evens out your saves. A defense is only as strong as its weakest link, after all.

You also can choose to leave out Fighter and instead take more levels in Wizard. Doing so will give you an extra ASI, an extra 6th level spell slot, and access to Spell Mastery, which allows you to pick 2 at-will spells. There are a lot of good options there.

What's good for Spell Mastery? Personally, I usually feel like I already have enough slots for blasting, and offensive options here won't be that far ahead of your Empowered/Potent cantrips. It's hard to go wrong with Shield and Mirror Image for Concentration-free defenses that you can have up all the time.

This loses out on the devastating nova potential of Action Surge, but honestly your novas are already really mean without it, and some tables will prefer you don't do quite that much damage

Spoiler: How do I get my resourceless contribution up as a Wizard?

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Asmodeus kills a kitten familiar every time a Wizard player thinks the entirety of their resourceless contribution is just casting Fire Bolt. I’m here to tell you that you’ve got options. Good ones!

First, use rituals. Use them all the time. You can cast them while moving, so be casting one at every spare moment just in case there happens to be ten minutes between things happening. Many good rituals last for an hour with no Concentration (Phantom Steed, Unseen Servant, etc) so you can have multiple ones going at a time. Some might as well be permanent features (for example, Water Breathing lasts 24 hours and affects the entire party, which means you just cast it as part of your daily routine and everyone breathes water forever).

Things like opening a fight with 200 foot moves (Phantom Steed) or having an Unseen Servant laying out ball bearings as a bonus action or using a potion on an ally or even just shining a Control Flame bullseye lantern on things can really add up.

Second, use your familiar. Use them all the time. Have that owl flyby and use the Help action to boost the DPR of an ally (ideally someone like a Rogue or GWM user or something) and then get to a safe location. The difference between their normal DPR and advantage DPR? That’s part of your unselfish DPR contribution, and didn’t even take any of your actions. Familiars can also do things like pour out vials or oil or drop caltrops or carry Control Flames lanterns or whatever.

Also don’t forget that Mr. Owl has a very respectable passive perception of 18 (13+5 from keen sight and hearing) and 120 foot darkvision. And can fly around. And a bunch of other things. Basically, familiars are awesome. If they die just resummon them for a pittance.

Third, Create Bonfire is a great way to use your Concentration when you’re not using it on actual spells. It’s a solid AoE (remember, 5-foot cubes can affect multiple squares, see “how AoE spells work on a grid”) that deals damage comparable (or superior if it hits 2+ targets) to most other cantrips when it’s thrown out... but creates a persistent hazard that allows for recurrent damage, potentially once per turn (not once per round). If you’ve got a stunner or restrainer or a grappler or a repelling eldritch blaster or a Pushing Attack battlemaster or a Thorn Whipper or an Open Hand Monk or any of a ton of other things in your party, you can be proccing that over and over again (not to mention being able to do so with your own abilities, like Thunderwave or Lightning Lure). And you can have your familiar or unseen servant pour an oil vial on an area touching the space (which the bonfire will then ignite) for more damage every time they enter it or end their turn there. And once you get Potent Cantrip it’ll do damage even if the enemy saves. And there’s no risk to your own team from the hazard since you can just drop Concentration at any time, even off-turn.

You can even set it up before a fight begins to save on action economy (for example, setting it right near the dungeon door you’re about to kick in). You also can get some damage off enemies trying to leave the square (since ideally your teammates should be positioning for OAs).

Great cantrip that can really rack up damage with a little teamwork, while leaving your action free for #4.

Fourth, your other cantrips. For raw damage, there’s Toll the Dead (targeting Wis and benefiting from Potent Cantrip) or Fire Bolt (targeting AC and benefiting from Empowered Evocation, and allowing you to take advantage of your familiar’s Help if you don’t have anyone better to use it on at the moment). Lightning Lure can benefit from both PC and EE, and can pull people into your hazards (like Create Bonfire, burning oil, or slotted spells). Thunderclap gives you a 15-foot diameter AoE that benefits from PC and EE. Frostbite’s damage becomes decent with PC and EE and can give an opponent Disadvantage to attack. There’s also the creative cantrips, like creating cover with Minor Illusion or Mold Earth.

So now you combine all of these things simultaneously (and potentially more, I’m just giving you the short list here. Seriously the Wizard optimization rabbit hole goes deep). So you’ve got your unseen servant pouring out oil on your Bonfire square (which potentially hit multiple enemies when you first cast it), which then does (tier)d8/save for half (Potent Cantrip) and 5 guaranteed (oil) every time you can get someone to enter it or end their turn there. And you’ve got your familiar granting Advantage on an attack (contributing more DPR to the party). And you’re throwing out a Toll the Dead or a Frostbite for (tier)d6+5/save for half and giving the enemy Disadvantage. And you’ve got your archer on a phantom steed riding around. All at the same time.

And you haven’t even used a single spell slot yet.

Whew. Wizards have a lot to cover (I actually cut this down pretty considerably from my original draft, since it was too long). Anyways, hope you enjoy!

There's an awful lot of stuff in here and I'm not perfect, so please let me know if I messed anything up and I'll correct it posthaste

I think I might be having a slow morning, so could you please explain to me how to use oil with Create Bonfire, and what it does?

Thanks!

[LudicSavant]

I think I might be having a slow morning, so could you please explain to me how to use oil with Create Bonfire, and what it does?

Thanks!

Have a familiar or unseen servant or the like spread it on the ground where you cast or will cast Create Bonfire. It is now a more dangerous square of area denial / hazard.

[Klorox]

Have a familiar or unseen servant or the like spread it on the ground where you cast or will cast Create Bonfire. It is now a more dangerous square of area denial / hazard.

Ok, but are you basically saying the oil spreads the bonfire spell, or is there some mechanical benefit I’m missing?

It sounds like you’re making a cantrip well twice as well, which is awesome.

[Klorox]

Also, @ludicsavant, does this build still function reasonably well as a control wizard? I’m thinking you need to do more than just cause damage all the time.

[Citadel97501]

Ok, but are you basically saying the oil spreads the bonfire spell, or is there some mechanical benefit I’m missing?

It sounds like you’re making a cantrip well twice as well, which is awesome.

Not really, here is the mechanical breakdown using the oil rules on page 152 of the PHB.
1) Oil can be used as an improvised weapon, and if you hit they get soaked in it.
2) The oil is lit by the target or area taking any fire damage, within a minute.
3) Once the oil is lit the target takes 5 fire damage for 2 rounds.
4) If an area is covered in oil and then lit, anyone entering the area or ending their turn in it will take 5 fire damage.
(Note: This is for one pint of oil, and you should be able to make bigger areas with more oil flasks, or alchemy jugs.)

This makes me think of trying an arsonist build :)
Tiefling: Fire resistance just in case, and its normal benefits. Flames of Phlegethos is also cool here.
-Artificer 3 - Alchemist, Alchemy Jug & Bag of Holding
-Warlock 3 - Pact of the Chain: Imp, with Repelling blast & Gift of the Ever Living ones (Maximized self healing?).
-Alchemy Jug: So that is 2 uses of an oil flask per day. Sadly you can't spend multiple infusions to give your party extra uses of this, but it is entirely possible to store it up and give it to your familiar. Its also relatively cheap at 1 sp per use.

The imp has immunity to fire, flight, and invisibility at will, and can carry up to 22 flasks (500 with the bag of holding, that is only 50 gold!), so you simply use him for oil dispersal. If he somehow gets hit or drops them or has to stay in the square he is immune. It only takes his action if he actually throws a flask of oil, and would be better off just spilling it over suitable areas which only costs an item use.

You can also make A LOT of the alchemy potions, although you will miss out on the true Coffee-Lock, Aspect of the Moon + Alchemist.
-Don't bother with this concept with certain modules, (Gives hateful glare towards Descent into Avernus...my poor Celestial Warlock with staff of the adder.)

[LudicSavant]

Ok, but are you basically saying the oil spreads the bonfire spell, or is there some mechanical benefit I’m missing?

No. It just makes an oil fire square per pg152 of the PHB.

Also, @ludicsavant, does this build still function reasonably well as a control wizard? I’m thinking you need to do more than just cause damage all the time.

Yes. It is extremely effective as a control wizard.

Thinking of Evokers as "just doing damage all the time" is like thinking of Clerics as "just healing all the time." They actually have quite a few tricks up their sleeve that improve their ability to control the field. Sculpt Spells does some interesting things with wall and hazard spells, for example. You can even straight up tank with that build if you want to; you have an Eldritch-Knight-like AC and way more slots to burn on way better defensive and lockdown spells, including goodies like Armor of Agathys.

The thing that makes the Nuclear Wizard so good is that it does not trade versatility for raw power. It's just strong all around. The options it takes help just about everything a Wizard does, not just its damage.

[Klorox]

Thanks guys.

I’ve always had it in my head that evokers are so one dimensional and I’m really glad to hear that’s not the case.

I have a new campaign starting soon and I’m really struggling to decide what to play.

TY for all these great builds!

[Hairfish]

Thanks guys.

I’ve always had it in my head that evokers are so one dimensional and I’m really glad to hear that’s not the case.

I'm not sure I grasp where this line of thinking is coming from. Unlike every other caster (and half-caster) class, the wizard is the only one whose potential spell list isn't altered by their subclass. An illusionist, a transmuter, and an evoker have exactly the same spells to choose from.

Any one-dimensionality on the part of a wizard PC is entirely the fault of the player. With the exception of a DM having house rules that restrict spell list access, I guess.

I have a new campaign starting soon and I’m really struggling to decide what to play.

TY for all these great builds!

I gave the arcana cleric build in the OP a whirl and had a blast. I went tabaxi instead of v.human and just did dex-based attacks with a dagger + BB/GFB in lieu of picking up shillelagh, so I was a bit less effective in damage dealing. However, the racial double-move ability was great for first-round formation busting with spirit guardians. And chasing down bosses after they'd eaten enough smites from the paladin.

[Evaar]

I'm not sure I grasp where this line of thinking is coming from.

Because it's how folks have been trained to think. Keep in mind most people skim the rulebook, myself included, and may not fully grasp all the implications of what they're reading. Evoker intuitively suggests you're going to use Evocation spells, which are mostly the blow stuff up spells. So your first impression would be that it's the blow stuff up subclass. And the features seem at first glance to be largely based around blowing stuff up better.

And like, look at the first couple sentences about Evocation from the Wizard guide on this forum and linked in the pinned thread:

Boooooom! This is when you don't want to play a sorcerer but still just kinda want to kill stuff.

So if you look at all that and don't think about how you can subvert that, your first impression is that it's the basic wizard subclass that blows stuff up. Much like the Champion is the fighter who hits stuff more good.

It's contributions from folks like Ludic and others who can really broaden horizons. Otherwise unless you work hard to really analyze this stuff on your own and get into the nitty gritty of the rules and strategy, you're probably going to assume that the thing does what it says on the tin.

[Kvard51]

I've been theory-crafting a build I think looks fun. As I'm about to get a chance to play it (from level 1), I thought I'd share it with the Playground. Feel free to use, abuse, or make it better. I give you:

The Skill Monkey's Country Cousin


Tabaxi Rogue (Scout)12/Warlock (Raven Queen) 3/Bard (Lore) 4/Ranger 1

OK, the point of the build is to be more of a Wilderness Skill Monkey. Background-wise, take one that fits your RP ideas, but try to make sure it doesn't have Deception/Persuasion/Nature/Survival, because you will pick those up later as class features.

Another important consideration is when to MC (or IF, when it comes to the Ranger level). In my mind, the best way to do this is 1st level in Rogue for all the skills, 2nd and 3rd in Warlock for the Raven (to make your perception beast) and Beguiling influence for two more skills (Deception/Persuasion), then take two more levels in Rogue to get into Scout and grab Survival and Nature (w/ functional Expertise). After that, take the Rogue and Bard levels as you see fit. I'd go Rogue 4 for the ASI, then start Bard. The Ranger level is an optional one. If you prefer another ASI/Feat, go Warlock 4. If you actually have exploration or a lot of difficult terrain battles, the Ranger level can really help with those.

So anyway, the actual build:

Rogue 1 - Remember that Tabaxi get's Prof in Perception and Stealth, so choose 4 other skills (not Survival/Nature/Deception/Persuasion), I like Expertise in Perception and Stealth here, but you might want yours in Thieves' Tools.

Warlock (Raven Queen) 1 - You get your Raven with all it's Perception bonuses and scouting ability. It can also provide Disadvantage for your SA.

Warlock (Raven Queen) 2 - Invocations. Grab Beguiling Influence to add Prof in Deception and Persuasion. I like Beast Speech here, also, as it fits the flavor. But your mileage may vary, depending on the campaign you are in.

Rogue 2 - Cunning Action

Rogue 3 - Take the Scout Sub-class, you add Nature and Survival w/ functional Expertise here (same thing, just not so named). You also get your first increase to Sneak Attack and a great Movement buff.

Rogue 4 - Time for an ASI/Feat. This is a great spot, as you can pump your Dex or add a feat. I like the new UA feat, Eldritch Adept, here. You will never gain another invocation through levels, so this is nice if there is something you really want. If not, Bump Dex. At this point, you have Prof in 12 total skills w/ Expertise in 4 of them.

Bard 1 - OK, this is a very flexible level. I take Bard 1 here, but you may find you need more damage. If so, take Rogue 5 to get to 3d6 SA. Alternatively, you may need the Ranger level if you are dealing with a lot of wilderness exploration. You could even grab your other Warlock levels, for another Feat or ASI. But w/ Bard 1, we get a little more spellcasting and Bardic Inspiration. Remember to grab things that improve your support role, because your CHA isn't high enough to expect to win many saves.

Bard 2 - If you went Rogue 5 last level, go ahead and take 6 for more Expertise. But you gain that next level w/ Bard 3, anyway. So Bard 2 here, primarily for Jack of All Trades. Now you are at least functional at every skill check. You also gain Song of Healing, which will help your party w/ heals even if it is a small amount.

Bard 3 - OK, you have a choice here w/ sub-class. In the description I chose Lore Bard, but Eloquence is pretty amazing here, too. Flexibility vs. Focus. Lore offers 3 more skills, giving us Prof in 15 of the 18 total skills and Expertise in 6 of them (5 if you chose Thieves' Tools). But Eloquence adds a lot of power to your Deception and Persuasion by making it impossible to roll below a 10 on those checks. Both Cutting Words and Unsettling Words are decent Bonus-Action debuffs, so go with whichever school makes more sense to your game.

Bard 4 - Get that ASI/Feat. I like Prodigy, if your DM will allow a Tabaxi to take a Racial Feat. If not, you can take Skilled to add the final three skills to your Prof list. Or max Dex. Or add a Fighting Style. Or more Spells. Or whatever. You know the drill.

Rogue 5 - SA 3d6 and Uncanny Dodge.

Rogue 6 - Expertise for two more skills. You could have proficiency in 16 skills w/ Expertise in 9 of them (if your DM let you take Prodigy) or Prof in all 18 w/ Expertise in 8 (w/ Skilled) W/ Jack of All Trades, you are more than functional in all skills at this point. (If you took Eloquence, you have less total skills, but more expertises).

From here, it's however you want it. I like to get Warlock 3 so I can add a Pact Boon (Tome for more utility, Chain for a powerful familar that can help in many ways to go with your Raven, or even Blade for for never being disarmed. I guess Talisman could help with your skills if you took Eloquence and/or Prodigy and feel like you need those last few skills to have a better chance of success. Obviously, if you plan to skip Ranger, this is a good time for Warlock 4 for another ASI/Feat. Then finish out w/ Rogue to at least 11 for Reliable Talent. I prefer 12 for that final ASI/Feat. Just another choice w/ regard to your Ranger level, or really anything you qualify for here.

Anyway, I think this can be a fun, flavorful support build that isn't totally gimped for damage (6d6 SA), particularly for a wilderness campaign.

Do your thing, GitP.

[Miele]

Thanks guys.

I’ve always had it in my head that evokers are so one dimensional and I’m really glad to hear that’s not the case.

I have a new campaign starting soon and I’m really struggling to decide what to play.

TY for all these great builds!

I'm currently playing an evoker Nuclear Wizard (lock1/wiz5 right now): I have Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Fireball and the 2 cantrips Create Bonfire and Toll the Dead. Every other spell is either for buffing or for control. I'm a firm believer in the best form of Crowd Control (death), but I don't need a hundred tools to deliver it: single target, multi target, at will. Sculpt spells in my group is immensely useful: I run with a battlemaster, a barbarian, a rogue and a champion (I'm lucky the ranger was nice enough to stay ranged).

I'd like to have a few more spells to scribe, but that's in the realm of what my DM will give me: consider he just dropped us almost naked on an island hundreds of kilometers from civilization, without any gear but a single item (I chose my spell focus!). He didn't allow me the spellbook, he gave me the possibility to recover one spell/day by scribing it somehwhere: I made ink with water and coal and started tatooing my lovely gnome body After 3 weeks I'm back to full power, but it's going to be hard to find a new spell scroll here...

[Klorox]

The Passive Soul
Passive combat support to boost your party from 1 to 20

The passive soul focuses on stacking hitpoints, redistributing damage, and healing the desperate. It maximizes action economy by keeping the party up and fighting longer, by making their actions more effective, and by getting the most out of your spells.

The passive soul gets going straight from level 1 and plays through 20. Spell selection is the most important part of building a sorcerer and the build's spell selections are optimal right from the start. I'll go into excessive detail on which spells make the cut. Other aspects of the character, like background and skills, are largely irrelevant to the build.


Tactics

Prior to combat, buff your party. Explain to your DM and your party that this will be a regular thing, and not to skip past it. Don't forget. Every day, and whenever you need to during the day, use Inspiring Leader. As you gain levels, your morning routine may include Extended Mage Armor, Extended Aid, and Extended Death Ward. Eventually you may also prepare a daily Heroes' Feast.

During combat, the default first turn is spent on Bless. It needs to happen early in a fight for maximum effect. The range is only 30 feet and turn 1 has the best chance of your allies being close to you. Make sure you always Bless yourself for the concentration bonus, especially prior to gaining War Caster. If you move this round, make sure to stay near your future Warding Bond target.

Turn 2 tends to be a Warding Bond. Have a chat with your default Bond target before the game, explaining what is going to happen and emphasizing the 60' distance limit. The trickiest part is getting close enough to touch the target without putting yourself at risk of melee. Bond is not always required and sometimes it's a really bad idea (if facing AOE damage, swarms or environmental effects that might damage you too). Once Bond is up, your default action on other turns is Blade Ward to reduce incoming damage to yourself from the Bond. If you need instant protection, you can cast both Bond and a Quickened Blade Ward.

The remainder of your spell list is reactionary in nature. Healing spells, Sanctuary, Absorb Elements, Counterspell, Revivify, Polymorph, etc. For these you have to weigh the situation and your remaining resources. Many are good candidates to Twin.

Sanctuary has the highest learning curve for effective use. It can really save yourself or an ally if they are focused. If you are casting Sanc on yourself and can Twin it to an ally, do it, even if just to disrupt an enemy turn or two. You'll also have to learn how your DM reacts to Sanc. Do they attack anyway and possibly lose the action? Do they use metagame knowledge for their monsters and move on to another target?


Level by Level

+ is a gained spell
- is a discarded spell
HP and THP are your maximum buffed values at a given level.


Versatile Human Divine Soul
16 Charisma, 16 Dexterity, 14 Constitution
Feat: Inspiring Leader

1) +Healing Word, +Sanctuary, +Bless (law option)
HP: 8
THP: 4
Cantrips: Take Blade Ward for synergy with Warding Bond. Otherwise, cantrip choice isn't key to the build. Guidance and Frostbite are solid choices.

Inspiring Leader is a huge buffer at this level for your entire party. Apply it every morning and during every short rest. It might keep instant-death crits from taking a young life.

Bless comes from the Law option. Bless is such a good spell that we won't ever discard it. It will occupy our concentration slot most of the time.

With an unarmored AC of 13, Sanctuary is a defensive pick. It's a bonus action to cast. Sanc doesn't take concentration and scales with your save DC. It can be twinned on yourself and someone under fire. Pay attention to the initiative order; you can disrupt many enemy actions with a properly-timed sanc. Or you can just open a fight with fire bolt followed by sanc. You won't need to sanc every fight, depending on enemy types and positioning, but it's an amazing little spell when you do need it. And you won't have to worry about it dropping due to offensive action on your part - you don't take any!

If you aren't a fan of Sanctuary, the alternative is Mage Armor. That boosts your AC to 16, and you will cast with Extended metamagic every morning. It will save spell slots over Sanctuary use, but a 16AC is only average. That means you need Shield in the build too, which is already tight on spell slots.

2) +Cure Wounds
HP: 14
THP: 5

Cure Wounds is a stopover until your build comes fully online next level. Between it and Healing Word, for one level you'll have flexibility in action economy and in ranges. Cure is more potent, benefits more from Empowered Healing (if you keep it) which has a close range, and Cure is touch. That all lines up. But sometimes you need to heal at range and 1HP is enough. Other times you need your action or bonus action for something else. Quickening a Cure Wounds would be grossly inefficient. So we'll keep both on the roster, at least until...

3) -Cure Wounds, +Aid, +Warding Bond
Metamagic: Twinned, Extended
HP: 20
Aid buffer: 5
THP: 6

Twin metamagic is key to the build and will be how most of your sorcery points are spent. Extend doubles your Aid and Death Ward to fill an entire adventuring day for a single sorcery point. That matters if your DM tries to say "Aid is 8 hours? Sorry, it's gone now, you cast it this morning but now it's the evening."

Aid can be used either in combat or before. In combat, it becomes a nice 3-target heal and buff in one, but you need an action to do it. Casting before combat saves you in action economy, but you lose Aid as a 3-target heal. Finally, you could cast Aid after your first combat of the day. That gets you both a healing effect and the buff.

With an 8 (16 Extended) hour duration and no concentration requirement, Aid should usually be cast at your highest spell level available. Target yourself, the tank and a front-line DPS. Aid adds "real" hit points which can be healed when lost. On top of Inspiring Leader, you're adding a sizable buffer to the party.

To put these HP totals into perspective, a 3rd-level fighter with 16CON would have 31HP. So do you, fully buffed with Aid and Inspire. But you aren't tanking on the front lines. At least I hope not. What to do with all those HP?

That's where Warding Bond comes in. One hour duration, no concentration, +1AC and +1 saves to your new best friend. That's your tank, by the way. Oh, and they get resistance to everything, but you take all damage they do take (after their newly-acquired resistance).

The result is damage smoothed out among the party instead of stacked on a single person. Bless (and soon, War Caster) will boost all of the concentration checks you will be making. Sanctuary will help ensure you only take Bond damage. Empowered Healing, Twinned cures can keep you both up and running. Bond is also why we'll take Absorb Elements, but not Shield. If you take bond damage from a Fireball, you can then Absorb your half of that damage.

Warding doesn't always have to go on a tank. It's a bit pointless if your tank is a barbarian (they already resist nearly everything). Rogues are another good option. They can evade blasts and Uncanny Dodge to halve incoming damage (taking 1/4 damage after resists), reducing what you take as well. Placing it on a fellow caster could let them decide when to Shield or when to simply take half damage.

The component for Warding Bond is a set of platinum rings (100gp total). If you want the potential for full party coverage you can give these out ahead of time, one ring per party member, and wear all of the other paired rings yourself.

Note that the Bond breaks past 60 feet of distance between the pair. Your ally needs to pay attention to that. Also, you can use distance to intentionally break a bond, simply walking away; otherwise it takes a full action to break. You might want to unbond if a friend in a clearly fatal situation (lava, etc) could drag you down too.

4) +Absorb Elements
ASI: War Caster
HP: 26
Aid buffer: 5
THP: 7

War Caster is required to keep concentration spells up while taking Warding Bond damage. We don't want it at level 1, THP are too important at low level, so it has to come at 4. Bless, War Caster and the sorc's Con save proficiency really stack concentration checks in your favor. Each check is at 1d20+1d4(bless)+2(Con bonus)+2(save proficiency), with advantage. That's an average roll of 17 per die before advantage, and that will increase with your Con and proficiency bonus.

Math time! For a Ward-caused concentration DC to exceed the base value of DC10, the initial incoming damage to your ally would have to exceed 40. That's 20 damage to them, 20 to you. In my experience, such high damage from a single blow primarily comes from things like magic spells and dragon breath. We can mitigate those with Absorb Elements. Besides keeping you alive, it can make a concentration DC more reasonable. A whopping 80 incoming elemental damage could go to your Ward, causing you to take 40, then be halved to 20 for a simple DC10 concentration check.

5) +Counterspell
HP: 32
Aid buffer: 10
THP: 8
Spell snapshot: Absorb Elements, Bless, Healing Word, Sanctuary, Aid, Warding Bond, Counterspell

Remember that generic fighter? Now they have 45 hit points. Buffed with Aid and Inspire, you have 50. If that fighter joins your party, he rockets up to 63. If Warded, he has resist all for 126EHP (that's Effective HP).

Thus far we've been concentrating on Bless. It's that good. We could Twin haste now, but I would instead keep up with Bless and upcast as necessary to get everyone. Target anyone that just unlocked Extra Attack. It really helps mitigate the hit penalty on GWM or Sharpshooter. Meanwhile, Twin haste is expensive in both spell slots and sorcery points and doesn't really give enough in exchange. Bless also doesn't have the nasty pseudo-stun that happens when Haste expires. You have a fantastic concentration but I still don't like to risk it.

Instead we'll take Counterspell. It can prevent a huge amount of incoming damage, or even counter a counter to let your metamagic heals get through.

If you want a comedy option, take Gaseous Form. Sure it's concentration, but you'll be a puff of wind with damage resistance floating next to your Warded buddy, taking half of the half damage they take. You can't do much, but you can still take the Help action. If you need to cast you can drop concentration at a whim.

6) +Revivify
Empowered Healing gained
HP: 38
Aid buffer: 10
THP: 9

In addition to saving your allies, Revivify can help out if a party member gets too murderous and kills someone they shouldn't have, or if rocks fall on a low-HP NPC. That 'oops' will cost 300GP per cast.

If you have the gold and DM approval, you may want to simply buy a few Revivify scrolls and save this spell slot for something else. Discuss it with your party and they might chip in. Instead, you could take Cure Wounds for use with Empowered Healing, or Mass Healing Word.

7) +Polymorph
HP: 44
Aid buffer: 15
THP: 10

Poly is a powerful, Twinnable heal of sorts, to use when things are looking grim. Just remember no one can spellcast in the new form.

An entire guide could be written on Poly. For you it means a giant pile of free HP for Warding Bond. The only downside is you lose Bless and can't cast further spells, but can still concentrate on the Poly.

8) +Death Ward
ASI: +Charisma
HP: 50
Aid buffer: 15
THP: 12

Another fire-and-forget buff. Think of it as Concentration Insurance. Twin on yourself and a spellcaster buddy. If a sudden burst takes you down it won't be a knockout and you won't lose concentration, saving that spell slot. If you are buffing in the morning and aren't sure when combat may occur, it can be more efficient to cast a pair of Extended Death Wards. That gives you 16 hours (essentially all day) and avoids the risk of an expiring Death Ward that also cost you 4 sorcery points. Extending twice comes out to 2 points and 2 slots, instead of 8 points and 2 slots for twinning twice.

9) +Greater Restoration
HP: 56
Aid buffer: 20
THP: 13
Spell snapshot: Absorb Elements, Bless, Healing Word, Sanctuary, Aid, Warding Bond, Counterspell, Revivify, Death Ward, Polymorph, Greater Restoration

GR gets rid of a laundry list of nasty effects. 100 gold is burned each cast.

Now that you have access to 5th-level spells, there is an optional spell swap available: Revivify for Raise Dead. There are pros and cons for each, and the choice is yours. I prefer to keep Revivify. If you can buy scrolls of either spell, stock up.

10) +Mass Cure Wounds
Metamagic: Quickened
HP: 62
Aid buffer: 20
THP: 14

Quicken metamagic twists the action economy in your favor and adds options for combat tactics. Quicken a spell and disengage with your action. Quicken a spell and also cast Blade Ward to tank bond damage. By now you may have some magic items that work well with Quicken, too.

Mass Cure Wounds is like spending a 3rd level slot on Cure Wounds, except it hits 6 people. That's not something we could do with Twin Cure Wounds or Healing Word. If your whole party got nuked, this is the solution. At least until we get Mass Heal.

11) +Heroes' Feast
HP: 68
Aid buffer: 20 (5th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 15

Heroes' Feast is broken. Advantage on Wisdom saves and immunity to poison and frighten for the entire party for the entire day. Oh, it also gives 2d10 max HP (which don't stack with Aid). You should still cast an up-leveled Aid on your 3 'important' party members, but Feast HP will help the others out. In exchange it costs 1000gp per cast. Make the party help out with expenses. It's not like they have anything better to spend that gold on, right?

12) ASI: +Charisma
HP: 74
Aid buffer: 20 (5th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 17

13) +Feather Fall
HP: 80
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 18

Generally, at this level I take Feather Fall out of pure paranoia, in anticipation of getting wings. Our 6th-level slot is eternally consumed by Heroes Feast and there's nothing we want to ditch for Feather Fall later on. Just get it now. It's gravity insurance.

If you think you'll stay airborne with no problem (after all, Otherworldly Wings aren't dispellable and only fade away if you fall unconscious, which also means you can't cast Feather Fall), your options open up a bit. Wall of Stone is an interesting, non-hostile control spell. If Heroes' Feast isn't being cast daily, you could also take Heal.

14) Otherworldly Wings gained, a flying speed of 30. Hover above the battle like the angel you are.
HP: 86
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 19

15) +Holy Aura
HP: 92
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 20

Advantage on all saves and disadvantage on all incoming attacks for your entire party? Yes, please! Extend this one.

16) ASI: +2 Con
HP: 114
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 21

17) -Mass Cure Wounds, +Mass Heal, +Wish
Metamagic: Subtle
HP: 122
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 22

18) Unearthly Recovery gained
HP: 130
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 23

You gain a bonus heal of 70HP at this level, though it's only usable if you drop below 70HP. Not bad, but it can't exactly compete with Mass Heal.

19) ASI: +2 Con
HP: 153
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 24

20) Sorcerous Restoration gained.
HP: 161
Aid buffer: 30 (7th level slot)
Feast buffer: 2d10 to party members without Aid
THP: 25

So what do we have? A typical party of 5 has about 250HP of buffer to lose before the group is even taking real damage. That damage is split more evenly to everyone, and they have great saves and tons of healing at the ready. If you drop them to 0 they get back up at 1, or they turn into giant apes with a ton of fresh HP, or they can't even be attacked thanks to Sanc. I wouldn't want to fight those guys.

Final spell snapshot: Absorb Elements, Bless, Healing Word, Sanctuary, Aid, Warding Bond, Counterspell, Revivify, Death Ward, Polymorph, Greater Restoration, Heroes Feast, Feather Fall, Holy Aura, Mass Heal, Wish

I love it! I can't help but this it would help a ton having that overused hexblade dip. Medium armor, shields, eldritch blast if you're bored, ect.

[Benny89]

Guardian of Balance, also called a Spell Breaker

This build is specific to Eberron, and so it it's "theme" and powers.



You always thought that arcane magic and power of nature is one and the same thing - the cosmic balance, the two sides of the same coin, welded by faith. You deeply believe that we should care about nature and our roots, while using magic to bring hapiness to common people. You want to be their guide in life, a shepherd that will teach them that everything has place in a world and everything creates a balance, a wheel of life. Your divine powers, so rarely seen in Eberron, only enforce your authority and put more responsibilities on you.

You are The Guardian, who upholds this very sacred idea of Balance, the bridge between what's natural, magical and holy. And that faith gives you powers that others would only dream of. Cause your powers are of divinity, nature and arcane!

But that's not all. Even your birth was special, rare. You were born with Dragonmark that already branded you as someone destined for great things. You are Sentinel, one that protects and cares.

Build:

1 Druid/X Arcana Cleric, Mark of Sentinel Variant Human.

Stats: CON 17, DEX 14, WIS 16. You can put 10 in either INT or CHA, what you prefer.

The idea of the build is to take advantage on Mark of Sentinel features (which means we lose level 1 Magic Initiate: Druid from normal Variant Human) while still starting from level 2 with standard Arcana Cleric combo to not waste ASI and trying to catch up with Magic Initiate feat.

All the Powers You Get:

The Druid level 1 dip, which gives us:

1. Shillelagh, so our melee bread and butter, allowing us to attack in melee with our WIS stat.
2. Fearie Fire, one of the best level 1 spells in game, normally unavailable to Clerics.
3. Good Berries, which is one of the best off-combat healing source in game. Just convert all your remaining slots before long rest every day and you always have resource to heal someone between combat or even get them up by feeding them with berry. Not to mention - one berry is whole day of nutrition, which has a lot of utility value in survival situations.
4. Entangle - good CC spell that targets strength so good vs low-STR enemies (like Goblins or Kobolds for example)
5. Earth Tremor - a decent 1st level AOE spell.
6. Couple other utility spells like: Beast Bond, Animal Friendship, Longstrider, Jump, Speak with Animals
7. Ice Knife - decent offensive spell
8. Thunderwave - very good 1st level AOE spell
9 . Fog Cloud - good AOE utility spell
10. Charm Person
11. Absorb Elements - a very, very good reaction spell to have and increase our tankiness as Cleric

So as you can see that one level dip gives us absolutely tons of good stuff that Clerics normally don't get. Not to mention the mad synergy with Arcana Cleric.

Class Progression:

If you prefer to keep WIS and CHA saves vs WIS and INT saves of Druid, start as Arcana Cleric and on 2nd level take Druid. Makes really no difference. You can also start as Druid and then go Cleric. Again - makes no difference apart from proficiencies and maybe your backstory/roleplay. It also really only changes your "power" in level 1 gameplay. With Druid you can already have Good Berries/Fearie Fire and WIS attacks, while as Cleric you will have to rely on cantrips for 1st level mostly, which is as good. So chose starting class based on your backstory preference.

My would be to start as Cleric who studies magical arcanas and try to guide other to not misuse magic and use it to help others and who then learnt to study and appreciate nature and it's power and how it all fits together as perfect Balance. He seens the progression of technology in Eberron as something good, but at the same time as something that can easly disturb the balance of nature. And so he teaches others how to balance everything and uphold the best of both worlds.

Mark of Sentinel Variant Human, what you get:

1. First of all: +2 CON and +1 WIS. What do you want more on Cleric?
2. Shield spell once per long rest. Not bad, not terrible, but since it's slot-free, you won't be regretting using it when some big hit is coming your way.
3. Sentinel's Intuition - "When you make a Wisdom (Insight) or Wisdom (Perception) check, you can roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the ability check". We are SAD WIS class/build here so a free d4 to Insight and Perception, which are WIS based are great bonuses to have.
4. Vigilant Guardian. "When a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to swap places with that creature, and you are hit by the attack instead". 1/long rest. Well it's not bad utility if you are full HP and your party-member will be killed/downed by enemy attack. It can work really well vs surprise attacks. But it's not why we are here.
5. Spells of the Mark. - now this is why we are here. We get the following spells to our spelllist to chose from (which is great on Clerics who has access to their full spelllists!):
1st: compelled duel, shield of faith
2nd: warding bond, zone of truth
3rd: counterspell, protection from energy
4th: death ward, guardian of faith
5th: Bigby's hand

This mark gives us for our Arcana Cleric two very powerfull spells: Counterspell and Bigby's hand. Having Counterspell on Cleric on top of all his spells is just great. I always thought that Arcana Cleric should have both Dispel Magic and Counterspell, but here it is finally. Now no magic can stand vs us. We have so many ways to prevent and dispel enemy magic that it's a no joke. We are truly the masters of Arcana.

Bigby's Hand I don't think I have to introduce. Phenomenal spell to have, great utility + damage and something that no Cleric can get.

What your Arcana Cleric powers give you:

It all comes together now. So your mastery over Arcana Domain gives you the following benefits:

1. You of course get all the goodies of Cleric like Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, Revivify, Healing Word and so on.
2. Arcane Initiate: "When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain proficiency in the Arcana skill, and you gain two cantrips of your choice from the wizard spell list. For you, these cantrips count as cleric cantrips". We all now why we are here: Booming Blade + Green Flame Blade, combining with Shillelagh, giving us: Magical Damage (Shillelagh makes Quarterstaff a magic weapon), d8 dice weapon (Shillelagh), WIS attacks and WIS damage + BB/GFB. Not only it's awesome for Cleric in front line, but it also synergize (as most of us know) we our next Arcana features
3. Spell Breaker."Starting at 6th level, when you restore hit points to an ally with a spell of 1st level or higher, you can also end one spell of your choice on that creature. The level of the spell you end must be equal to or lower than the level of the spell slot you use to cast the healing spell". - I mean come on. Think about it: you can cast upcasted healing word and dispel enemy spell from party member. Regeneration spell? Mass Healing Word? Not only that however. Your arsenal vs enemy magic is just enormous: Spell Breaker, Counterspell, Slience, Antimagic Field and Dispel Magic. You can just wave hand in combat and make enemy casters change profession to fighters after that as you deny all magic around you untill Wizards behave themselves!
4. Potent Spellcasting. "Starting at 8th level, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip". Ok, how about we add another +5 damage mod to Booming Blade and GFB. Not only to first strike but also to it's riders? Suddenly our level 11 BB will deal 3d8 + 10 and 3d8 + 5 on rider. Whose the best melee cleric now? Not to mention we also get +5 damage mod to Toll of The Dead, Sacred Flame and so on. If you took Lighting Lure instead of GFB you can now pull enemies back into your Spirit Guardians (after hitting them with BB OA) for nice 3d8 +5 damage at level 11 (12).
5. Arcane Mastery. "At 17th level, you choose four spells from the wizard spell list, one from each of the following levels: 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. You add them to your list of domain spells. Like your other domain spells, they are always prepared and count as cleric spells for you". As of you are not already an Arcane Master - now you get: Mass Suggestion/Eyebite/Magic Jar/Freezing Sphere/Tenser, Simulacrum, Feeblemind, Wish (and so - Greater Steed)? Sure, no problem.
6. Domain Spells. Most interesting ones: Magic Missile (good on Tier 1 gameplay), Magic Weapon (good to support your teammate if needed), Nystul's Magic Aura (not bad utility), Arcane Eye (again, great utility), Leomund's Secret Chest, Teleportation Circle and of course Dispel Magic.

ASI progression

So on level 5: I strongly suggest taking +2 WIS at first. While War Caster might be tempting, I don't think It's that important right now. More WIS is more direct damage from BB/GFB, higher DC on SGs, higher couterspell value/dispel magic etc.

Level 9: War Caster. Now those OA Booming Blades will hurt as crazy and you get War Caster just in the same time as you get Potent Spellcasting.

Level 13: +2 WIS obviously to get 20 WIS and maximize our DC and melee damage

Level 17: RES (CON) +1 CON for 18 CON + War Caster making our concentration pretty unbreakable.


The Sweet Taste of Your Power:

To summary, you get great Druid spells like Good Berries, Absorb Elements (which normally only Nature Cleric gets), Shillelagh, Fearie Fire and couple others, you get all anti-magic features you can think of: Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Spell Breaker, Silence, Antimagic Field. You also get BB + GFB, medium armor and shields (so at least 19 AC), absorb elements, potent spell casting WIS bonus x2 to BB/GFB and bonus to your Cleric cantrips, you get all good stuff from cleric like SGs, SW, Sacred Weapon, Regeneration etc, you get Bigby's Hand (!), you get Wish and Simulacrum on level 18.

To put that into perspective you can run into enemies with classic combo of Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapn, smacking them with GFB/BB for 4d8 + 10 (+ 3d8 + 10 on GFB to second target or 4d8 + 5 on rider from BB) and as a reaction you can cast either: Absorb Element, Counterspell or Shield. You can use Dodge action and force enemies to try to move away from you (difficult terrain), provoking OA from War Caster of BB for 8d8 + 15 damage thunder damage total. You also have access to magical damage from weapon from level 2 + best damage type thunder and magic blunt + Spirit Guardians + best anti-magic tools you can dream of.

Not to mention combos you can do with Wish, Simulacrum, having Gteater Steed and access to all level 1-8 wizard spells thanks to Wish. You can have Clone, Sim, Jar, you can have Reverse Gravity + Prismatic Wall from Sim, you can have Force Cage etc. Just tons of good stuff on top of cleric spells. Your sim can buff you with Holy Weapon for example and so on.

Also once you have Regenerate spell = with Spell Breaker each turn whoever has Regenerate on him - will dispel one hostile magical effect on him every turn from spells 7th and below level.

When it comes to armor- I leave it to your table how you treat metal armors for Druids and how you treat it for multiclass with only 1 level of Druid etc. We don't think metal armor or not makes or unmakes druid, same as being vegan or not does not make or unmake animal lover. So I leave it to you, but I don't think with normal DM, even if he will stick not "no metal armor", you will have problems finding armor/shield made from scales/stones/monster parts/chitin/monster plates etc. Remember that you are also Guardian of Balance so you don't believe in absolutes or extremes. So I run in metal half-plate :).


Alternative Build Path (no Counterspell):

Reason for this build is pretty much to give Arcana Cleric Counterspell + Bigby's Hand. I think both are perfect tools that makes Arcana Cleric best all around martial-caster-support-area denial build. Bigby's Hand on enemy caster coupled with Counterspell is just not fair even. Also thanks to Counterspell - you can't be counterspelled (because Counterspell can Couterspell :D ).

However, if you have in your party a member that will already take care of Counterspelling (ask him though if he will use and prepare it, don't just look at spelllist of class) like Wizard or Lore Bard (even more if it's Abjurer) or even Sorcerer if he want to specialize in that- then there is alternative build for this that will give Arcana Cleric few great goodies combined:

Shield spell, Absorb Elements spell and Lighting Lure cantrips (to pull enemies back into your Spirit Guardians for example or to other hazard).

So, instead of starting as Variant Human Mark of Sentinel, we start as standard Variant Human with the following stats: 14 DEX, 16 CON, 16 WIS and again: 10 in either INT or CHA.

This gives us first level feat, and we choose: Aberrant Dragonmark. What it gives us is:

1. Cantrip from Sorcerer spell list: we choose Lightning Lure
2. 1-st level spell from Sorcerer spell list which we both LEARN and can cast from dragonmark.
3. +1 CON, which will get our CON to 17, which later will get our CON to 18 with RES (CON)

Then we still dip one level Druid for Shil, berries, Absorb Elements etc.

ASI progression stay the same: +2 WIS, War Caster, +2 WIS, RES (CON) +1 (18)

With this build we lose Counterspell but we are getting even more scary in front lines with Shield spell (+5 AC on reaction) and Absorb Elemements (50% elemental damage absorbtion on reaction), which combining with our boosted SCAG cantrips + Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon makes use super scary front liner.

This alternative way but still uses Dragonmark :). Just different. You have to chose if you prefer Counterspell or Shield spell :).

[Citadel97501]

That sounds like an utter blast Benny89, seriously that concept is definitely something I need to try for my next long term game :)