Hello, I'll participate in a 6 to 15/16 campaign based on Strixheaven with a flexible DM (lucky me) and decided to roll a Wizard looking into building the reflect abjuration gimmick. With that in mind and decent rolls for abilities with a free feat and three uncommon magic items to choose from, this is what I got going:
Race: Mark of warding dwarf Class: Wizard/Abjuration Rolled Ability: 10,15,15,17,13,12
Mandatory Strixheaven Background Quandrix
With this, I get Armor of Agathys, the main mechanic. I will use UA's true strike for melee and probably telekinetic for +1 int as a feat, caping int at 20 out of the gate.
Now, the main crux of my dilemma is:
What is a good AC number to trigger the reflect effect but not get hit too much?
Multiclass for heavy armor? Cleric or fighter?
Eldritch Adept—Armor of Shadows (infinite Mage armor), for recharging Ward
UA Heavy armor Master Feat (reduces dmg, increases survivability, and extends the use of Armor of Agathys reflect effect). Being a dwarf, ignore the penalty of lack of strength.
War Caster or Resilient (con) or another Asi
If Multiclassed should I first take the fighter/cleric or stick to wizard for the saving throw proficiencies
You'll have fun in Strixhaven (we are at the beginning of year 2) but the DM will probably have to work in some one-shots (and redo some mechanics) since Strix is kind of skimpy. Nice that you are taking a race with extra spells since you won't get a lot of scribing money (I had to work out side hustles with my DM for my quandrix Owlin Evoker).
I usually only take war caster on a spellcasting build where I don't have a free hand. I do like Fey touched (put the point in INT) with gift of alacrity (if DM allows CR) for the initiative boost to better control or destroy the battlefield. Resilient CON could be useful. ASIs are always good.
Oh, since you know that you're only going to level 15 or 16, sure, you can start with one level in Twilight cleric for martial weopons (you probably wont use these), light, medium, and heavy armor, better darkvision, shared Darkvision, and another initiative boost.
Twilight seems to be the better choice for heavy armor, with all the good extra features. Also, it seems you can charge the Arcane ward by casting spells from magic items, so I'm looking into that a bit.
Yeah, the feat tax is getting heavy to perfect the build but if UA feats are used then it is less painful, War Caster(UA) gives +1 con and HAM(UA) gives +1 con as well so it is a win on the constitution front but now its a matter of order.
I'd recommend getting things like the Tough feat if you really want to go for a Juggernaut Wizard, and especially if you take a level into Cleric or something similar for the Armor Class, which should allow your Arcane Ward to stay up longer. Still, the Shield spell might be enough to take care of your AC problems. I'd say get Cleric over Fighter for Armor, mostly because of the great healing spells.
One dip into Cleric/Twilight provided a lot of benefits. My debate with Tough Feat is almost solved as it seems I can almost do without it with the data accumulated below.
So doing some testing and fighting some monsters I could confirm the benefit of a few things:
UA War Caster is a must for this build (+1 int)(I read before and thought it was Con) and that OoA spells reaction to keep them close if needed.
With HumbleWood we get the reaction Spiny Shield Spell which reduces melee damage by 2 d4 per spell level while doing that same amount of damage to the enemy in melee this is better than Shield Spell since it allows us to do extra damage, extending the Arcane ward and Armor of Agathy's use while also being Abjuration which recharges the Arcane Ward.
UA Heavy Armor Master dmg reduction synch well with this strategy for the above reasons
Need a good reason to have enemies keep hitting me since I'll be reflecting quite a bit of damage and not intelligent enough would want to hit me again after getting damage on his face.
Cant use a shield in one hand if I wanna use the Spiny Shield spell since it requires a material component and I need a spell Focus and a weapon.
UA Magic Initiate would provide Int-based Shillelagh to use with UA True Strike, but this version of UA Magic Initiate is too early in the playtest and still involves Spell List so it's iffy plus another feat tax.
UA Half feats are great for patching holes in the ability scores, which lead to more varied builds without much loss on stats.
Hello, I'll participate in a 6 to 15/16 campaign based on Strixheaven with a flexible DM (lucky me) and decided to roll a Wizard looking into building the reflect abjuration gimmick. With that in mind and decent rolls for abilities with a free feat and three uncommon magic items to choose from, this is what I got going:
Race: Mark of warding dwarf Class: Wizard/Abjuration Rolled Ability: 10,15,15,17,13,12
Mandatory Strixheaven Background Quandrix
With this, I get Armor of Agathys, the main mechanic. I will use UA's true strike for melee and probably telekinetic for +1 int as a feat, caping int at 20 out of the gate.
Now, the main crux of my dilemma is:
Any ideas on how to better refine this?
You'll have fun in Strixhaven (we are at the beginning of year 2) but the DM will probably have to work in some one-shots (and redo some mechanics) since Strix is kind of skimpy. Nice that you are taking a race with extra spells since you won't get a lot of scribing money (I had to work out side hustles with my DM for my quandrix Owlin Evoker).
I usually only take war caster on a spellcasting build where I don't have a free hand. I do like Fey touched (put the point in INT) with gift of alacrity (if DM allows CR) for the initiative boost to better control or destroy the battlefield. Resilient CON could be useful. ASIs are always good.
Oh, since you know that you're only going to level 15 or 16, sure, you can start with one level in Twilight cleric for martial weopons (you probably wont use these), light, medium, and heavy armor, better darkvision, shared Darkvision, and another initiative boost.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Twilight seems to be the better choice for heavy armor, with all the good extra features. Also, it seems you can charge the Arcane ward by casting spells from magic items, so I'm looking into that a bit.
If you're going cleric and will have a shield and a weapon or item in your other hand, you will probably want war caster to cast with your hands full.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Yeah, the feat tax is getting heavy to perfect the build but if UA feats are used then it is less painful, War Caster(UA) gives +1 con and HAM(UA) gives +1 con as well so it is a win on the constitution front but now its a matter of order.
I'd recommend getting things like the Tough feat if you really want to go for a Juggernaut Wizard, and especially if you take a level into Cleric or something similar for the Armor Class, which should allow your Arcane Ward to stay up longer. Still, the Shield spell might be enough to take care of your AC problems. I'd say get Cleric over Fighter for Armor, mostly because of the great healing spells.
One dip into Cleric/Twilight provided a lot of benefits. My debate with Tough Feat is almost solved as it seems I can almost do without it with the data accumulated below.
So doing some testing and fighting some monsters I could confirm the benefit of a few things:
UA Half feats are great for patching holes in the ability scores, which lead to more varied builds without much loss on stats.