That's really up to you. I told you which spells *I* would choose. You have to ask yourself how you intend to play the character. You said you want to be social, but what do you mean by that? As I mentioned when I play "face" characters (which is often since I love sorcerers and warlocks) I rely on my skills in social situations. Even if I am looking to play a charming, personable character, I look to my skills and class features rather than magic. The reason why, I'll cut and paste from the charm spell itself:
When the spell ends, the creature knows it was charmed by you.
Usually, that means that the creature is going to be angry at me. So, for a spell like that, you have to ask yourself "how often will I need to charm something, when I won't care if it's angry afterwards?" My experience is, that's rare. The NPCs that I socially interact with and try to influence, for the most part, I will want them to /stay/ pleased with me. The Persuasion skill is a more reliable way to do that. So when else could I use charm? Well, I could charm someone in combat. That's got some benefits:
A charmed creature can't attack the charmer or target the charmer with harmful abilities or magical effects.
The charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature.
Nice, he can't hit /me/ but he can wail on my companions. That's not as helpful as it could be. Sleep, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, or Dissonant Whispers is a better way to remove a creature from combat for a period of time.
What you /can/ use charm for is to charm something to get advantage on social skills, then try to make it do something. You don't want to do this to the king who employs you, but the enemy you need to keep alive...you don't care if he hates you. Charm him to get advantage, then Intimidate or Persuasion him into surrendering peacefully. Definitely a useful case, but are you going to use this option very often? Probably not.
Unlike damage dealers, bards and other control types need to put a lot of thought into their spell selection. How do you envision yourself using the spell, and how often do you think that situation will come up? Right now, my bardlock acts as the "face" for my party. My bard (2 levels of bard, will go bard three next level up, I'm level 5 total atm) spells are: Feather Fall, Charm Person, Faerie Fire, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and Cure Wounds.
- I picked Charm Person because it seemed like a solid bard pick. I've never used it. I've never found a situation that I thought it might be a good spell to cast. When I level up next time, I plan to swap it out for something useful, probably dissonant whispers.
- Faerie Fire I've used a couple of times. Mostly, I use Hex in my concentration, but when the situation presents itself, I will Faerie Fire to give my teammates (and myself) advantage.
- Feather Fall I picked knowing I wouldn't use it much; it's one of those spells that's usually useless, but if you need it you REALLY need it.
- Cure Wounds gets used a lot. Our cleric|paladin multiclass never heals, so my character (which I intended to be a blaster) has been doing the party's healing. The rest of the party has noticed that the warlock is the one doing most of our healing. I have cure wounds instead of healing word because I am a celestial warlock with healing light as a bonus action. I /planned/ to do emergency healing and mostly focus on damage.
- Tasha's I only recently picked up, and have used it once. It was a game changer; I completely shut down one of the DMs bigger monsters with it and kept him out of the fight while we dealt with minions. I wish I'd have taken Dissonant Whispers instead, but Tasha's was good for me. Will definitely keep it.
- Disguise self; I have this as a Glasya tiefling. I used it once. I didn't really need to. Meh. This could be useful in a more intrigue based game, my campaign hasn't had much call for it though. Not an awful pick depending on your DM/campaign, but very situational.
- Heroism. Looks kind of weak to me. I don't think I'd ever pick this.
- Illusory Script? Doesn't look very useful for most situations.
- Longstrider. Useful tactically. Doesn't sound very "social" though.
- Silent Image; nice spell, more useful minor illusion. I don't think that it's 1st level spell slot better than cantrip minor illusion though. I do love me some minor illusion. Uses conc though. Eww.
- Sleep? Low level game changer. I'd have this if I was a level 1-4 bard, no question.
- Speak with Animals? very niche. Pass.
- Thunderwave; great spell. Just not one that I find myself wanting to use. I try to stay out of situations where I could actually use this. If I was a frontline bard, this would be a must have. Not very social though.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Thanks for helping! Sorry for the confusion about being a "social" character. I meant that the character tries to prevent their friends from being sad.
From that perspective, I think that's going to be more a class features and RP thing. I've seen some people describe Hit Points as more than just a measure of remaining health. It's a measure of morale, stamina, defenses, etc. Think of it like this; if I stab you in the chest with a rapier, you're going to die whether you're level 1 or level 20. So, a "hit" in game doesn't necessarily represent an actual weapon strike, it represents wearing down their defenses, sapping their morale...reducing their ability to offer resistance.
From this perspective, a bard does a great job of making their friends feel better with spells and with bardic inspiration. For a bard, their heals may not be the more typical "Sarafina closes her eyes and whispers a prayer, and the healing magic soothes into the weary barbarian". It could be something like "Sarafina says "Look, his guard is starting to slip! You're breaking through his defenses!" which raises the Barbarian's morale and allows her to continue fighting. Same deal with your level 2 song of rest, fluff that into story time, where when you guys are taking a rest, you're telling the party of what you saw of their deeds in the last battle. "Did you see Grogna? She was just batting that orc's puny blade around and striking him at will! That orc never saw what hit him!" That makes Grogna feel pretty good about herself and raises that morale...and thus her hit points go up.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
What should I use, then?
Hello! I am just a relatively new D&D player, who also likes SimplePlanes and War Thunder.
My characters are:
That's really up to you. I told you which spells *I* would choose. You have to ask yourself how you intend to play the character. You said you want to be social, but what do you mean by that? As I mentioned when I play "face" characters (which is often since I love sorcerers and warlocks) I rely on my skills in social situations. Even if I am looking to play a charming, personable character, I look to my skills and class features rather than magic. The reason why, I'll cut and paste from the charm spell itself:
When the spell ends, the creature knows it was charmed by you.
Usually, that means that the creature is going to be angry at me. So, for a spell like that, you have to ask yourself "how often will I need to charm something, when I won't care if it's angry afterwards?" My experience is, that's rare. The NPCs that I socially interact with and try to influence, for the most part, I will want them to /stay/ pleased with me. The Persuasion skill is a more reliable way to do that. So when else could I use charm? Well, I could charm someone in combat. That's got some benefits:
Nice, he can't hit /me/ but he can wail on my companions. That's not as helpful as it could be. Sleep, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, or Dissonant Whispers is a better way to remove a creature from combat for a period of time.
What you /can/ use charm for is to charm something to get advantage on social skills, then try to make it do something. You don't want to do this to the king who employs you, but the enemy you need to keep alive...you don't care if he hates you. Charm him to get advantage, then Intimidate or Persuasion him into surrendering peacefully. Definitely a useful case, but are you going to use this option very often? Probably not.
Unlike damage dealers, bards and other control types need to put a lot of thought into their spell selection. How do you envision yourself using the spell, and how often do you think that situation will come up? Right now, my bardlock acts as the "face" for my party. My bard (2 levels of bard, will go bard three next level up, I'm level 5 total atm) spells are: Feather Fall, Charm Person, Faerie Fire, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and Cure Wounds.
- I picked Charm Person because it seemed like a solid bard pick. I've never used it. I've never found a situation that I thought it might be a good spell to cast. When I level up next time, I plan to swap it out for something useful, probably dissonant whispers.
- Faerie Fire I've used a couple of times. Mostly, I use Hex in my concentration, but when the situation presents itself, I will Faerie Fire to give my teammates (and myself) advantage.
- Feather Fall I picked knowing I wouldn't use it much; it's one of those spells that's usually useless, but if you need it you REALLY need it.
- Cure Wounds gets used a lot. Our cleric|paladin multiclass never heals, so my character (which I intended to be a blaster) has been doing the party's healing. The rest of the party has noticed that the warlock is the one doing most of our healing. I have cure wounds instead of healing word because I am a celestial warlock with healing light as a bonus action. I /planned/ to do emergency healing and mostly focus on damage.
- Tasha's I only recently picked up, and have used it once. It was a game changer; I completely shut down one of the DMs bigger monsters with it and kept him out of the fight while we dealt with minions. I wish I'd have taken Dissonant Whispers instead, but Tasha's was good for me. Will definitely keep it.
- Disguise self; I have this as a Glasya tiefling. I used it once. I didn't really need to. Meh. This could be useful in a more intrigue based game, my campaign hasn't had much call for it though. Not an awful pick depending on your DM/campaign, but very situational.
- Heroism. Looks kind of weak to me. I don't think I'd ever pick this.
- Illusory Script? Doesn't look very useful for most situations.
- Longstrider. Useful tactically. Doesn't sound very "social" though.
- Silent Image; nice spell, more useful minor illusion. I don't think that it's 1st level spell slot better than cantrip minor illusion though. I do love me some minor illusion. Uses conc though. Eww.
- Sleep? Low level game changer. I'd have this if I was a level 1-4 bard, no question.
- Speak with Animals? very niche. Pass.
- Thunderwave; great spell. Just not one that I find myself wanting to use. I try to stay out of situations where I could actually use this. If I was a frontline bard, this would be a must have. Not very social though.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Thanks for helping! Sorry for the confusion about being a "social" character. I meant that the character tries to prevent their friends from being sad.
Hello! I am just a relatively new D&D player, who also likes SimplePlanes and War Thunder.
My characters are:
From that perspective, I think that's going to be more a class features and RP thing. I've seen some people describe Hit Points as more than just a measure of remaining health. It's a measure of morale, stamina, defenses, etc. Think of it like this; if I stab you in the chest with a rapier, you're going to die whether you're level 1 or level 20. So, a "hit" in game doesn't necessarily represent an actual weapon strike, it represents wearing down their defenses, sapping their morale...reducing their ability to offer resistance.
From this perspective, a bard does a great job of making their friends feel better with spells and with bardic inspiration. For a bard, their heals may not be the more typical "Sarafina closes her eyes and whispers a prayer, and the healing magic soothes into the weary barbarian". It could be something like "Sarafina says "Look, his guard is starting to slip! You're breaking through his defenses!" which raises the Barbarian's morale and allows her to continue fighting. Same deal with your level 2 song of rest, fluff that into story time, where when you guys are taking a rest, you're telling the party of what you saw of their deeds in the last battle. "Did you see Grogna? She was just batting that orc's puny blade around and striking him at will! That orc never saw what hit him!" That makes Grogna feel pretty good about herself and raises that morale...and thus her hit points go up.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Thanks.
Hello! I am just a relatively new D&D player, who also likes SimplePlanes and War Thunder.
My characters are: