Just reading the Clockwork Soul Sorcerer and have noticed that the 'reaction' aspect of Bastion of Law (was Bulwark of Law in UA) has been removed. It now reads -
The ward is represented by a number of d8s equal to the number of sorcery points spent to create it. When the warded creature takes damage, it can expend a number of those dice, roll them, and reduce the damage taken by the total rolled on those dice.
Is this an oversight soon to be a RAW/RAI issue or indeed accurate? Using 5 sorcery points this can effectively negate between 5 - 40 points of damage WITHOUT use of a reaction. Not bad.
Great feature. PLUS...... as you level you can replace your clockwork spells with abjuration/transmutaiton sorcerer/warlock/wizard spells...
So ally this 5 x d8 shield feature with Aid and wait for it, Armor of Agathys.... huge extra health points and a little bit of retribution is someone gets in your face and attacks.
THIS is the class for me. Armor of Agathys is one of the reasons I typically pick certain Pally subclasses or Warlock. I'm overjoyed at this.
So let's say you normally run with 80hp, and the beast does 50 damage to you. Let's say you have 20hp extra from Aid, 20hp from Armor of Agathys, and can roll 5 x d8 to reduce the damage. So that 50 dmg reduces to 28 with the clockwork shield, takes your Armor of Agathys away, leaving 8 dmgp to be soaked up by your extra Aid hp. So you're left with 92hp after a blistering attack, instead of 30hp. And nothing to stop you reapplying those barriers.
Just to point out the feature takes an ACTION to put onto a creature. So the rolling to remove the damage doesn't take a Reaction, but to put the ward on someone to begin with takes an action.
"You can tap into the grand equation of existence to imbue a creature with a shimmering shield of order. As an ACTION, you can expend 1 to 5 sorcery points to create a magical ward around yourself or another creature you can see within 30 feet of you. The ward lasts until you finish a long rest or until you use this feature again.
The ward is represented by a number of d8s equal to the number of sorcery points spent to create it. When the warded creature takes damage, it can expend a number of those dice, roll them, and reduce the damage taken by the total rolled on those dice."
Just to point out the feature takes an ACTION to put onto a creature. So the rolling to remove the damage doesn't take a Reaction, but to put the ward on someone to begin with takes an action.
When the warded creature takes damage, it can expend a number of those dice, roll them, and reduce the damage taken by the total rolled on those dice."
Who cares? You put it on after you wake up, it stays on until the next day or you need to apply it again after a punishing fight. The main thing is, it requires no REACTION to use the d8's. Brilliant feature and it's separate from both normal hp and temp hp. A great feature for yourself or your familiar, augments AID spell and the Armor of Agathys the class gives you brilliantly.
I wasn't arguing that it isn't a good feature, just stating that applying it does take an action so it can't be just given in the middle of a fight. Yeah it's great if you want to buff up a single character, whether yourself or another before a fight, but don't expect to add it to the ally that is coming close to falling in combat without sacrificing your action and the SP.
It's also ya know 1-5 sorcery points dumping 5 of your 6 points into it at lvl 6 means no metamagic unless your burning your spells slots on a 5d8 shield which again is 5d8 with no bonuses at all so your average should be 22-23 dmg. It can spike lower or higher but that is our mathematical average. That is a pretty big investment for 22 damage, at times it'll keep you alive for sure but I can't imagine to many times you'd wanna suck down 5 SPs like that until higher end tiers but I dunno.. feel like by that point there should be something much more powerful you can do with 5 SPs at tier 3-4 than a 22 dmg shield.
I'd feel like it'd be amazing if it was just a reaction to do it not requiring an action to drop it first but it's a decent ability as is if you know your about to face something you'd want some sponge on
A perma buff is permanent. It doesn't go away. That's what perma means - it's short for permanent.
The ward only lasts until you take a long rest or use the feature again, or until its used up.
The only way this is permanent is if you never take a long rest, never take damage and never use the feature again. At which point it'll be useless and you may as well not be playing.
Nifty feature, and the lack of reaction is so it can be useful at later levels against things like Multiattack which most enemies end up having. The protection's useful, nothing overpowered, comparable to Abjurist's ward but that's it. It's not OP, game-breaking and is not permanent unless you basically stop playing.
The falseness of this thread title and original post confuses me.
I've seen it criticized for taking up too many sorcery points to be viable too often, I mean at level 6 it takes all but one of them if you want the big buff, but what about this:
Spell-less sorcerer. You level sorcerer to 6 to get access to Bastion, then you multiclass into fighter or paladin or something fighty and melee, and you only use your spell slots for conversion into sorcery points. At Sorc. 6 you have 3 level 3 spell slots, and 3rd level slots can be converted into 5 sorcery points as a bonus action. If you reserve all your spell slots for conversion, you can bulwark to your heart's content and not take damage if you don't really want to.
Now I know this is largely theoretical since this build mostly doesn't come online till around level 11 (since you'll want multiattack on your melee class), and most groups don't play till that high and what are you going to do till you get there? It's a loooooong walk for a fine drink of water, but if your group's planning a high level one shot or something it could work.
*edit*
Just noticed it's only 5 sorc points to make a 3rd level spell, but converting one only gets you 3. That's a bit of a hit to your damage negation, but could still work as long as your Bastion can stay up for longer than a few turns and you're not burning through them as fast.
Sounds like giving up a lot for 4 uses of the shield instead of playing a lvl 11 paladin and using shield of faith/aid or auras or whatever
Clockwork Sorcerer gets Aid spell also, and Armor of Agathys if you choose it when levelling up. So you’d have your bastion shield HP, your Aid spell HP, and your Armor of Agathys temp HP, AND your shield spell reaction. FRankly, I’d grab a couple of levels of War Wizard to give +4 reaction to important saves, compares well with Pally auras up to +5, without going the whole 6 levels. Go mad, get a level of Peace cleric for +1d4 to save/attacks/checks also, without using an action/bonus/reaction. Go Satyr or Yuan-Ti to give yourself advantage on all those saves which are magical. Win.
EDIT: Also gets greater restore, which I’m shocked a Pally doesn’t get, seeing as they get lesser restore.
Also, Shield of Faith is a waste of concentration.
Bit of a tangent buut just want to check my understanding of clockwork sorcerer. I got a bit excited at having access to abjuration and transmutation spells for access to AoA and tensers transformation for a gish sorcerer. However on second reading you can only swap out you clockwork spells for these and they must be the same level.
With the clockwork spells stopping at level 5 with the likes of greater restoration I presume that means i cant swap them out for the level 6 tensors transformation? Or have a I missunderstood and you can swap any sorc spell?
Bit of a tangent buut just want to check my understanding of clockwork sorcerer. I got a bit excited at having access to abjuration and transmutation spells for access to AoA and tensers transformation for a gish sorcerer. However on second reading you can only swap out you clockwork spells for these and they must be the same level.
With the clockwork spells stopping at level 5 with the likes of greater restoration I presume that means i cant swap them out for the level 6 tensors transformation? Or have a I missunderstood and you can swap any sorc spell?
No, the spell you swap from that table must be replaced by one of the same level. So if you swap out Greater Restoration, a 5th level spell, you must replace it with another 5th level spell : not higher or lower. And the replacement spell must be from the abjuration or transmutation school of magic, even if the spell being replaced isn't from that school. But it can be from the sorc, warlock or wizard spell list.
It's restrictive by design for balancing purposes since these spells are in addition to the normal 15 you get from the main class.
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.
Question on how this works. It’s always you can expend a number of the d8’s and reduce the damage the amount rolled. Do you have to state how many you are rolling before you roll? So if you have 5d8 and take 15 damage do I have to state I’m using x number of dice? Or can you roll 2 dice and if it isn’t enough roll one more and if that isn’t enough roll another until I reduce it to zero or whatever number I’m comfortable with?
Seems like a lot of effort wasted to just protect you from a small handfuls of attacks. Even more so if your going to waste 6 levels on Sorcerer and the never cast sorcerer spells again. And even more so when you realize that to get some proper numbers out of both aid and Armor of Agathys you actually need to use multiple medium or high level spell slots and multiple turns to set it up for each hit.
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Just reading the Clockwork Soul Sorcerer and have noticed that the 'reaction' aspect of Bastion of Law (was Bulwark of Law in UA) has been removed. It now reads -
The ward is represented by a number of d8s equal to the number of sorcery points spent to create it. When the warded creature takes damage, it can expend a number of those dice, roll them, and reduce the damage taken by the total rolled on those dice.
Is this an oversight soon to be a RAW/RAI issue or indeed accurate? Using 5 sorcery points this can effectively negate between 5 - 40 points of damage WITHOUT use of a reaction. Not bad.
That's correct, there's no reaction involved. Note that the dice are still expended though, so this isn't a permanent buff.
Great feature. PLUS...... as you level you can replace your clockwork spells with abjuration/transmutaiton sorcerer/warlock/wizard spells...
So ally this 5 x d8 shield feature with Aid and wait for it, Armor of Agathys.... huge extra health points and a little bit of retribution is someone gets in your face and attacks.
THIS is the class for me. Armor of Agathys is one of the reasons I typically pick certain Pally subclasses or Warlock. I'm overjoyed at this.
So let's say you normally run with 80hp, and the beast does 50 damage to you. Let's say you have 20hp extra from Aid, 20hp from Armor of Agathys, and can roll 5 x d8 to reduce the damage. So that 50 dmg reduces to 28 with the clockwork shield, takes your Armor of Agathys away, leaving 8 dmgp to be soaked up by your extra Aid hp. So you're left with 92hp after a blistering attack, instead of 30hp. And nothing to stop you reapplying those barriers.
Just to point out the feature takes an ACTION to put onto a creature. So the rolling to remove the damage doesn't take a Reaction, but to put the ward on someone to begin with takes an action.
"You can tap into the grand equation of existence to imbue a creature with a shimmering shield of order. As an ACTION, you can expend 1 to 5 sorcery points to create a magical ward around yourself or another creature you can see within 30 feet of you. The ward lasts until you finish a long rest or until you use this feature again.
The ward is represented by a number of d8s equal to the number of sorcery points spent to create it. When the warded creature takes damage, it can expend a number of those dice, roll them, and reduce the damage taken by the total rolled on those dice."
Who cares? You put it on after you wake up, it stays on until the next day or you need to apply it again after a punishing fight. The main thing is, it requires no REACTION to use the d8's. Brilliant feature and it's separate from both normal hp and temp hp. A great feature for yourself or your familiar, augments AID spell and the Armor of Agathys the class gives you brilliantly.
I wasn't arguing that it isn't a good feature, just stating that applying it does take an action so it can't be just given in the middle of a fight. Yeah it's great if you want to buff up a single character, whether yourself or another before a fight, but don't expect to add it to the ally that is coming close to falling in combat without sacrificing your action and the SP.
It's also ya know 1-5 sorcery points dumping 5 of your 6 points into it at lvl 6 means no metamagic unless your burning your spells slots on a 5d8 shield which again is 5d8 with no bonuses at all so your average should be 22-23 dmg. It can spike lower or higher but that is our mathematical average. That is a pretty big investment for 22 damage, at times it'll keep you alive for sure but I can't imagine to many times you'd wanna suck down 5 SPs like that until higher end tiers but I dunno.. feel like by that point there should be something much more powerful you can do with 5 SPs at tier 3-4 than a 22 dmg shield.
I'd feel like it'd be amazing if it was just a reaction to do it not requiring an action to drop it first but it's a decent ability as is if you know your about to face something you'd want some sponge on
How is this a perma-buff?
A perma buff is permanent. It doesn't go away. That's what perma means - it's short for permanent.
The ward only lasts until you take a long rest or use the feature again, or until its used up.
The only way this is permanent is if you never take a long rest, never take damage and never use the feature again. At which point it'll be useless and you may as well not be playing.
Nifty feature, and the lack of reaction is so it can be useful at later levels against things like Multiattack which most enemies end up having. The protection's useful, nothing overpowered, comparable to Abjurist's ward but that's it. It's not OP, game-breaking and is not permanent unless you basically stop playing.
The falseness of this thread title and original post confuses me.
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I had a thought about Bastion of Law.
I've seen it criticized for taking up too many sorcery points to be viable too often, I mean at level 6 it takes all but one of them if you want the big buff, but what about this:
Spell-less sorcerer. You level sorcerer to 6 to get access to Bastion, then you multiclass into fighter or paladin or something fighty and melee, and you only use your spell slots for conversion into sorcery points. At Sorc. 6 you have 3 level 3 spell slots, and 3rd level slots can be converted into 5 sorcery points as a bonus action. If you reserve all your spell slots for conversion, you can bulwark to your heart's content and not take damage if you don't really want to.
Now I know this is largely theoretical since this build mostly doesn't come online till around level 11 (since you'll want multiattack on your melee class), and most groups don't play till that high and what are you going to do till you get there? It's a loooooong walk for a fine drink of water, but if your group's planning a high level one shot or something it could work.
*edit*
Just noticed it's only 5 sorc points to make a 3rd level spell, but converting one only gets you 3. That's a bit of a hit to your damage negation, but could still work as long as your Bastion can stay up for longer than a few turns and you're not burning through them as fast.
Sounds like giving up a lot for 4 uses of the shield instead of playing a lvl 11 paladin and using shield of faith/aid or auras or whatever
Clockwork Sorcerer gets Aid spell also, and Armor of Agathys if you choose it when levelling up. So you’d have your bastion shield HP, your Aid spell HP, and your Armor of Agathys temp HP, AND your shield spell reaction. FRankly, I’d grab a couple of levels of War Wizard to give +4 reaction to important saves, compares well with Pally auras up to +5, without going the whole 6 levels. Go mad, get a level of Peace cleric for +1d4 to save/attacks/checks also, without using an action/bonus/reaction. Go Satyr or Yuan-Ti to give yourself advantage on all those saves which are magical. Win.
EDIT: Also gets greater restore, which I’m shocked a Pally doesn’t get, seeing as they get lesser restore.
Also, Shield of Faith is a waste of concentration.
Bit of a tangent buut just want to check my understanding of clockwork sorcerer. I got a bit excited at having access to abjuration and transmutation spells for access to AoA and tensers transformation for a gish sorcerer. However on second reading you can only swap out you clockwork spells for these and they must be the same level.
With the clockwork spells stopping at level 5 with the likes of greater restoration I presume that means i cant swap them out for the level 6 tensors transformation? Or have a I missunderstood and you can swap any sorc spell?
No, the spell you swap from that table must be replaced by one of the same level. So if you swap out Greater Restoration, a 5th level spell, you must replace it with another 5th level spell : not higher or lower. And the replacement spell must be from the abjuration or transmutation school of magic, even if the spell being replaced isn't from that school. But it can be from the sorc, warlock or wizard spell list.
It's restrictive by design for balancing purposes since these spells are in addition to the normal 15 you get from the main class.
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Fair play, had a feeling that was the case. Drat, was hoping I was wrong and looking forward to hulking out with AoA and Tenser's transformation.
You can still get AoA though?
He can't get Tenser's transformation 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
Question on how this works. It’s always you can expend a number of the d8’s and reduce the damage the amount rolled. Do you have to state how many you are rolling before you roll? So if you have 5d8 and take 15 damage do I have to state I’m using x number of dice? Or can you roll 2 dice and if it isn’t enough roll one more and if that isn’t enough roll another until I reduce it to zero or whatever number I’m comfortable with?
Can you use this between adventures to build up a massive pool of damage negation?
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No.
It says "The ward lasts until you finish a long rest or until you use this feature again."
Seems like a lot of effort wasted to just protect you from a small handfuls of attacks. Even more so if your going to waste 6 levels on Sorcerer and the never cast sorcerer spells again. And even more so when you realize that to get some proper numbers out of both aid and Armor of Agathys you actually need to use multiple medium or high level spell slots and multiple turns to set it up for each hit.