A friend of mine thinks a chaos bolt focused sorcerer won't be as good as it seems, so I want to either prove him right or wrong. How should I go about kinda minmaxing chaos bolt?
Metamagic - Empowered Spell: Now this will work, and it's cheap too.
Feat - Elemental Adapt (Cold): This will add two more 'bounce' triggers, rolling a '1' and a '2', or rolling a '2' and a '1'.
So with Empowered Spell and Elemental Adapt (Cold) combined, you'll have the following scenarios, assuming you have enough sorcery points:
Get you bounce immediately by rolling a double, rolling a '1' and a '2', or rolling a '2' and a '1'.
Rolling a '1' or '2' on one dice and not a '1' nor a '2' on the second dice. Spend a sorcery point, re-roll the second dice, and hope to get a '1' or '2', causing the bounce to occur.
Not rolling a double, nor a '1', nor a '2'. Spend a sorcery point and re-roll both dice.
While I love Chaos Bolt and if I ever play a Sorcerer it will be a Wild Magic Sorcerer who will know that spell at 1st level, it doesn’t scale very well. It’s a fun spell and it has great potential, when you upcast it to 3rd level you do 2d8 + 3d6 damage. Compare that to Lightning Bolt and you’ll start using other spells instead of it as you advance in level.
Feat - Elemental Adapt (Cold): This will add two more 'bounce' triggers, rolling a '1' and a '2', or rolling a '2' and a '1'.
Interesting interpretation of the rule. I never would have thought of it, but the way it is worded seems RAW and RAI. Not sure if it effects anything else in a similar manner.
If you use the default critical rules which say roll double the number of dice (doubling the value is an alternate rule) then you're far more likely to get two of the d8s the same (about 2 out of 3 times). If this is the case - then getting Hexblade Warlock for Hexblade's Curse is a good idea. It lets you get a crit on a 19 as well as 20 (against the hexed target).
A friend of mine thinks a chaos bolt focused sorcerer won't be as good as it seems, so I want to either prove him right or wrong. How should I go about kinda minmaxing chaos bolt?
Warlock word be better, then have hex spell and hexblade patron. See how much you'll annoy them. Take shadow sorcerer, and be the master of Shadows.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
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Oooh I like that.
Assuming you want to maximize the chance of Chaos Bolt bouncing, you'll need ways to manipulate the damage die.
So with Empowered Spell and Elemental Adapt (Cold) combined, you'll have the following scenarios, assuming you have enough sorcery points:
While I love Chaos Bolt and if I ever play a Sorcerer it will be a Wild Magic Sorcerer who will know that spell at 1st level, it doesn’t scale very well. It’s a fun spell and it has great potential, when you upcast it to 3rd level you do 2d8 + 3d6 damage. Compare that to Lightning Bolt and you’ll start using other spells instead of it as you advance in level.
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Interesting interpretation of the rule. I never would have thought of it, but the way it is worded seems RAW and RAI. Not sure if it effects anything else in a similar manner.
If you use the default critical rules which say roll double the number of dice (doubling the value is an alternate rule) then you're far more likely to get two of the d8s the same (about 2 out of 3 times). If this is the case - then getting Hexblade Warlock for Hexblade's Curse is a good idea. It lets you get a crit on a 19 as well as 20 (against the hexed target).
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