So for a new campaign we're playing, our DM is basing it off Fantasy High from Dropout (if you haven't seen it go check it out on youtube. Such a good group of players!). Anyway, my character is going to be son of the Vice Principle of the school everyone goes to (because the setting is basically an isolated town set in the fantasy equivalent of the 1980s) and is a dragonborn. Personality wise, he's a tough looking kid who doesn't say much and keeps to himself, but isn't a bad or rebellious person. He's just not great at expressing himself socially, so most of his time is spent doing his own thing, which will make it fun to see how he deals with being part of a group.
Main point is he's going to be a draconic sorcerer, but I want to have him to also be able to throw down in melee combat too. So like he hits people with flaming fists up close or fireballs them from a distance. Lots of fire, so maybe people see him as something of a pyromaniac haha...
How would you suggest going about this? My current thoughts are 1-2 levels in fighter and get unarmed fighting or dueling then reflavor his blades as fists, but I know that would slow down his spell progression. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to do this right and what ability scores to focus on?
If you use a weapon like a dagger. True strike (radiant instead of fire but close and gm may let you change it) will be your friend. Also you should see if you can talk to your if you can use green flame blade cantrip. If I was your GM and you asked to use ether spell with just your fist I would alow it after you take unarmed fighting.
Another thing you can as is if you get Produce flame (druid cantrip) can you change it to a melee attack instead of range. This option may be the best as you can get it from Origin Feats so no lose in spell from progression..
Like I said very up to your GM. I hope these 3 options help.
The hard part will be surviving in melee. The fighter dip will provide you armor, and I think you're going to need it. Paladin might be a better dip to maintain your spell level progression. If legacy content is allowed, you might want to grab greenflame blade, otherwise, truestrike is probably the play.
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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.
Greatly depends on group composition. An arcane caster in melee is fine, as long as the encounters are balanced for it (enemies that do small amounts of damage or have low to hit bonuses). But if the encounters are balanced toward the 20 AC fighter (monsters with higher to hit bonuses and likely higher damage as a result), and the arcane caster tries to go into melee - they better have something like Blur, Shield, and Misty Step spells or they'll get slaughtered (and remember, arcane full casters don't have hp to spare).
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Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
That's really the issues with people who talk about "tanky bladesingers". They equate not being hit often with being tanky. When they do get hit though, whoooo baby, that can hurt.
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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.
If you want a Sorcerer that can stand in Melee, you're going to want to multiclass (start) with a couple of levels of Fighter, or go SorLock/Socadin... go with whichever suits your character concept better.
Maybe he's a loner because he has a couple of levels of Fighter to start and is behind everyone else magic wise... or he's not as magically adept and had to make a pact with something to get enough power to deal with his peers... or he feels so strongly about something he's made a vow, and it impacts his studies at school.
This is high school, man... what flavor of drama are you looking for?
Instead of a Fighter dip, take a level of Paladin to get Searing Smite. Use True Strike with your action, then an upcast Searing Smite for a bunch of fire damage with your bonus action.
My suggestion would be 2 level dip into Warlock. This gets you 3 Eldritch Invocations and 2 1st level pact slots. There is even an argument for 3 levels to pick up a subclass, archfey is a good choice since the sheer amount of misty step casts that gives can be a life saver.
My recommendation for eldritch invocations would then be, Fiendish Vigor, Pact of the Blade and Agonizing Blast (your favourite cantrip, or eldritch blast). Fiendish Vigor is 12 TempHP for every encounter, Pact of the blade allows you to use Charisma for performing attacks with your weapon and Agonizing Blast is just more damage on a cantrip.
You can honestly run in melee range pretty easily as a draconic sorcerer in 2024 rules. The unarmored charisma defense is pretty good, and the increased health helps make up for the d6 hit dice. By level 8 you can have an 18 AC easily starting with a 16 in dexterity and 16 or 17 in charisma. If your dm allows older content green-flame blade would fit thematically but if you want to use charisma for the attack you would need to take a level in warlock.
I have a character very similar that's 13 draconic sorcerer/ 3 genie warlock. They took lucky as an origin feat for the advantage on demand. They have pact of the blade, agonizing blast(green-flame blade), and lessons of the first ones(tough). Green-flame blade with agonizing blast is good and with quicken you can do it twice. I actually grabbed the weapon mastery feat so that I could use vex and get advantage on basically every attack when combined with lucky.
I forgot to note in my previous update the options for getting Shillelagh also, Pact of the Tome (from warlock dip) gets you Shillelagh or getting Magic Initiative (Druid) and choosing charisma can get it too. This makes a Quarterstaff (or club) use Charisma and improves the damage die of the weapon too. If you can get a staff of defense, it can be used as a quarterstaff and gives more castings of the Shield spell (2 to 4 per day), also it's own +1 AC.
Pick dwarf for your species for 1 extra hp per level.
Pick tough for your starting feat for extra 2hp per level.
Draconic sorcerer gives 1 extra hp per level.
With 14 constitution and the above options you are getting 10hp per sorcerer level.
Option 1
Go two weapon fighting. Prioritize dex and charisma for draconic unarmored defense and start with dip fighter for two weapon fighting style then go the rest in sorcerer.
Starting scores would be 8, 16 (15+1) 14, 8, 10, 17 (15+2)
Option 2
Prioritize strength and charisma. Start with one level paladin for smite spells, heavy armor and weapon proficiency, then go the rest in sorcerer. Take gwm feat.
Starting scores woyld be 16(15+1), 10, 14, 8, 8, 17(15+2)
Regardless if option 1 or 2 is taken, when you get 3rd level spells take haste and quicken that on round one so you can attack twice with a heavy weapon or 3x with two weapon fighting . Starting on round two, attack as normal and your bonus action can be divine smite, quickened true strike or an attack with the dual weilder feat depending on which way you go.
Either way, your armor class (with haste and the shield spell), damage and hp should be good enough to jump in melee most of the time.
Hello all,
So for a new campaign we're playing, our DM is basing it off Fantasy High from Dropout (if you haven't seen it go check it out on youtube. Such a good group of players!). Anyway, my character is going to be son of the Vice Principle of the school everyone goes to (because the setting is basically an isolated town set in the fantasy equivalent of the 1980s) and is a dragonborn. Personality wise, he's a tough looking kid who doesn't say much and keeps to himself, but isn't a bad or rebellious person. He's just not great at expressing himself socially, so most of his time is spent doing his own thing, which will make it fun to see how he deals with being part of a group.
Main point is he's going to be a draconic sorcerer, but I want to have him to also be able to throw down in melee combat too. So like he hits people with flaming fists up close or fireballs them from a distance. Lots of fire, so maybe people see him as something of a pyromaniac haha...
How would you suggest going about this? My current thoughts are 1-2 levels in fighter and get unarmed fighting or dueling then reflavor his blades as fists, but I know that would slow down his spell progression. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to do this right and what ability scores to focus on?
If you use a weapon like a dagger. True strike (radiant instead of fire but close and gm may let you change it) will be your friend. Also you should see if you can talk to your if you can use green flame blade cantrip. If I was your GM and you asked to use ether spell with just your fist I would alow it after you take unarmed fighting.
Another thing you can as is if you get Produce flame (druid cantrip) can you change it to a melee attack instead of range. This option may be the best as you can get it from Origin Feats so no lose in spell from progression..
Like I said very up to your GM. I hope these 3 options help.
I spell Goodly.
The hard part will be surviving in melee. The fighter dip will provide you armor, and I think you're going to need it. Paladin might be a better dip to maintain your spell level progression. If legacy content is allowed, you might want to grab greenflame blade, otherwise, truestrike is probably the play.
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
Greatly depends on group composition. An arcane caster in melee is fine, as long as the encounters are balanced for it (enemies that do small amounts of damage or have low to hit bonuses). But if the encounters are balanced toward the 20 AC fighter (monsters with higher to hit bonuses and likely higher damage as a result), and the arcane caster tries to go into melee - they better have something like Blur, Shield, and Misty Step spells or they'll get slaughtered (and remember, arcane full casters don't have hp to spare).
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
That's really the issues with people who talk about "tanky bladesingers". They equate not being hit often with being tanky. When they do get hit though, whoooo baby, that can hurt.
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
If you want a Sorcerer that can stand in Melee, you're going to want to multiclass (start) with a couple of levels of Fighter, or go SorLock/Socadin... go with whichever suits your character concept better.
Maybe he's a loner because he has a couple of levels of Fighter to start and is behind everyone else magic wise... or he's not as magically adept and had to make a pact with something to get enough power to deal with his peers... or he feels so strongly about something he's made a vow, and it impacts his studies at school.
This is high school, man... what flavor of drama are you looking for?
Instead of a Fighter dip, take a level of Paladin to get Searing Smite. Use True Strike with your action, then an upcast Searing Smite for a bunch of fire damage with your bonus action.
My suggestion would be 2 level dip into Warlock. This gets you 3 Eldritch Invocations and 2 1st level pact slots. There is even an argument for 3 levels to pick up a subclass, archfey is a good choice since the sheer amount of misty step casts that gives can be a life saver.
My recommendation for eldritch invocations would then be, Fiendish Vigor, Pact of the Blade and Agonizing Blast (your favourite cantrip, or eldritch blast). Fiendish Vigor is 12 TempHP for every encounter, Pact of the blade allows you to use Charisma for performing attacks with your weapon and Agonizing Blast is just more damage on a cantrip.
You can honestly run in melee range pretty easily as a draconic sorcerer in 2024 rules. The unarmored charisma defense is pretty good, and the increased health helps make up for the d6 hit dice. By level 8 you can have an 18 AC easily starting with a 16 in dexterity and 16 or 17 in charisma. If your dm allows older content green-flame blade would fit thematically but if you want to use charisma for the attack you would need to take a level in warlock.
I have a character very similar that's 13 draconic sorcerer/ 3 genie warlock. They took lucky as an origin feat for the advantage on demand. They have pact of the blade, agonizing blast(green-flame blade), and lessons of the first ones(tough). Green-flame blade with agonizing blast is good and with quicken you can do it twice. I actually grabbed the weapon mastery feat so that I could use vex and get advantage on basically every attack when combined with lucky.
I forgot to note in my previous update the options for getting Shillelagh also, Pact of the Tome (from warlock dip) gets you Shillelagh or getting Magic Initiative (Druid) and choosing charisma can get it too. This makes a Quarterstaff (or club) use Charisma and improves the damage die of the weapon too. If you can get a staff of defense, it can be used as a quarterstaff and gives more castings of the Shield spell (2 to 4 per day), also it's own +1 AC.
A Enspelled Staff for shield is cheap(uncommon). so you make make it easly if you have woodworking tools.
I spell Goodly.
Pick dwarf for your species for 1 extra hp per level.
Pick tough for your starting feat for extra 2hp per level.
Draconic sorcerer gives 1 extra hp per level.
With 14 constitution and the above options you are getting 10hp per sorcerer level.
Option 1
Go two weapon fighting. Prioritize dex and charisma for draconic unarmored defense and start with dip fighter for two weapon fighting style then go the rest in sorcerer.
Starting scores would be 8, 16 (15+1) 14, 8, 10, 17 (15+2)
Option 2
Prioritize strength and charisma. Start with one level paladin for smite spells, heavy armor and weapon proficiency, then go the rest in sorcerer. Take gwm feat.
Starting scores woyld be 16(15+1), 10, 14, 8, 8, 17(15+2)
Regardless if option 1 or 2 is taken, when you get 3rd level spells take haste and quicken that on round one so you can attack twice with a heavy weapon or 3x with two weapon fighting . Starting on round two, attack as normal and your bonus action can be divine smite, quickened true strike or an attack with the dual weilder feat depending on which way you go.
Either way, your armor class (with haste and the shield spell), damage and hp should be good enough to jump in melee most of the time.