D&D 5E [GUIDE] Arrive on Time - A General Guide to Wizardry

I'm considering leaving firebolt and chill touch as blue, but bringing the rest down one rank.

On the Save / To Hit discussion above: Also consider critical hits in the equation. The average expected damage by spells with to hit rolls is higher than a save spell, even if the % change of inflicting the spell on an enemy is the same.

Please bit the black text! I'm with Legacy, can't read.

hbarsquared said:

Please bit the black text! I'm with Legacy, can't read.

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I don't yet have ownership of the OP so I can't make any changes. I will fix up the formatting once i get control.

1.) Grim Touch is really better than some people think. The key observation: it gives you HP healing once per turn, not once per round. If you cast Evard's Black Tentacles for example, each creature affected takes 3d6 damage at the start of its turn, which means that if six orcs die in one round, you get 8 HP per orc = 48 HP total that round.

Can be abused with cagefuls of chickens (2 cp each) and Fire Shield to heal relatively large amounts of damage for cheap, even during combat. (Use your bonus action each turn to roll it over to another cageful of chickens.) Fighter 1/Necromancer X is surprisingly tanky already even without abusing Grim Touch--adding in cheap healing would make it even tankier.

2.) Necromancer's Command Undead: if nothing else, you can Command one of your own ghouls created via Create Undead. Armor it up in plate armor and a shield and you'll have a nifty little minion with AC 20, 36+ HP (even more if you went the Inspired Leader route), and a paralyzing attack. Even better, Command a Wight that you created, and now you get not only your own up-armored Wight for free but also all of the zombies that it creates (which you can also armor). If you happen to luck into a Zombie Beholder (Int 3, one random paralyzing/fear/enervation/disintegration ray per turn) or a Mummy Lord (Int 11, essentially unkillable, spellcaster, high damage per turn and legendary actions that can damage, stun, blind, or prevent healing) you may have a tough decision to make about what to keep.

3.) Geas for Necromancers: when you create undead, normally you need to expend spell slots to keep control over them. Only, you don't necessarily need to do so. Geas V will charm a creature for 30 days (more at higher levels; permanently at 9th level) and force damage it for 5d10 once per day when it disobeys your instructions, which can be anything non-obviously suicidal. It's probably worth keeping most of your skeletons and zombies under your control just so you can command them telepathically with your bonus action, but for more expensive undead like Wights (which like skeletons are not immune to charm) it might be worth Geasing them to "follow my Wight Baldrick here and do whatever he does without harming anyone he does not attempt to harm". The wights can shrug off your Geas for 5d10 damage, but at least you know they can't harm you (because they're Charmed), and depending on how much Geas "hurts" to disobey they may be inclined to follow the Geas.

4.) Miscellaneous comment on Geas: it combos well with Dream. Geas will do 5d10 damage every day, Dream will (often) prevent that damage from healing. Net result: within several days, you have a dead target (traitor).

5.) Animate Objects and Darkness: if you have a party member who likes to use Darkness, like a Shadow Monk or a Warlock with Devil's Sight, it's worth bearing in mind that animated objects have Blindsight 30'. Within a darkened area they are even more murderously good than usual. Earth Elementals also have Tremorsense, which is basically the same thing.

6.) Planar Binding: even when you first get it at 5th level, Planar Binding is notable for removing the concentration requirement on spells. So at 9th level you could, for example, conjure an Earth Elemental, Planar Bind it for 24 hours (cost: 1000 gold), and then in combat use your concentration on Stinking Cloud to both obscure the elemental from its enemies (advantage on everything) and poison enemies (elemental is immune). At 9th level that's pretty pricey, and therefore niche, for something that only lasts 24 hours, but it scales rapidly. Totally worth considering even if you only want a couple of elementals.

7.) Mage armor doesn't require concentration and has a long duration. Consider putting it on anyone with a good Dex who is likely to take hits: a 2nd level Moon Druid in Giant Hyena Shape (AC 12 => 15); an air elemental (AC 15 => 18); an animated ghast (AC 13 => 16).

Hemlock said:

1.) Grim Touch is really better than some people think. The key observation: it gives you HP healing once per turn, not once per round. If you cast Evard's Black Tentacles for example, each creature affected takes 3d6 damage at the start of its turn, which means that if six orcs die in one round, you get 8 HP per orc = 48 HP total that round.

Can be abused with cagefuls of chickens (2 cp each) and Fire Shield to heal relatively large amounts of damage for cheap, even during combat. (Use your bonus action each turn to roll it over to another cageful of chickens.) Fighter 1/Necromancer X is surprisingly tanky already even without abusing Grim Touch--adding in cheap healing would make it even tankier.

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Haha, okay, first point is well taken and I didn't even consider it, so that's nice. The cage of chickens thing is asking for your DM to troll you. I mean, it kinda fits the necromancer flavor which I like, but I'm guessing you won't be able to get away with it for long before you get smacked.

2.) Necromancer's Command Undead: if nothing else, you can Command one of your own ghouls created via Create Undead. Armor it up in plate armor and a shield and you'll have a nifty little minion with AC 20, 36+ HP (even more if you went the Inspired Leader route), and a paralyzing attack. Even better, Command a Wight that you created, and now you get not only your own up-armored Wight for free but also all of the zombies that it creates (which you can also armor). If you happen to luck into a Zombie Beholder (Int 3, one random paralyzing/fear/enervation/disintegration ray per turn) or a Mummy Lord (Int 11, essentially unkillable, spellcaster, high damage per turn and legendary actions that can damage, stun, blind, or prevent healing) you may have a tough decision to make about what to keep.

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Good Point.

3.) Geas for Necromancers: when you create undead, normally you need to expend spell slots to keep control over them. Only, you don't necessarily need to do so. Geas V will charm a creature for 30 days (more at higher levels; permanently at 9th level) and force damage it for 5d10 once per day when it disobeys your instructions, which can be anything non-obviously suicidal. It's probably worth keeping most of your skeletons and zombies under your control just so you can command them telepathically with your bonus action, but for more expensive undead like Wights (which like skeletons are not immune to charm) it might be worth Geasing them to "follow my Wight Baldrick here and do whatever he does without harming anyone he does not attempt to harm". The wights can shrug off your Geas for 5d10 damage, but at least you know they can't harm you (because they're Charmed), and depending on how much Geas "hurts" to disobey they may be inclined to follow the Geas.

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Yea. I'm not sure how my DM will play out Geas, so it kinda depends on that. That said, there are probably better uses for Geas.

4.) Miscellaneous comment on Geas: it combos well with Dream. Geas will do 5d10 damage every day, Dream will (often) prevent that damage from healing. Net result: within several days, you have a dead target (traitor).

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A lot of investment for a wight, but yea not a bad use of Dream. I will add a note.

5.) Animate Objects and Darkness: if you have a party member who likes to use Darkness, like a Shadow Monk or a Warlock with Devil's Sight, it's worth bearing in mind that animated objects have Blindsight 30'. Within a darkened area they are even more murderously good than usual. Earth Elementals also have Tremorsense, which is basically the same thing.

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As if animate objects wasn't OP enough. Yea, this is really good.

6.) Planar Binding: even when you first get it at 5th level, Planar Binding is notable for removing the concentration requirement on spells. So at 9th level you could, for example, conjure an Earth Elemental, Planar Bind it for 24 hours (cost: 1000 gold), and then in combat use your concentration on Stinking Cloud to both obscure the elemental from its enemies (advantage on everything) and poison enemies (elemental is immune). At 9th level that's pretty pricey, and therefore niche, for something that only lasts 24 hours, but it scales rapidly. Totally worth considering even if you only want a couple of elementals.

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Nice observation. Will add a note.

7.) Mage armor doesn't require concentration and has a long duration. Consider putting it on anyone with a good Dex who is likely to take hits: a 2nd level Moon Druid in Giant Hyena Shape (AC 12 => 15); an air elemental (AC 15 => 18); an animated ghast (AC 13 => 16).

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True, I didn't even consider putting it on your summons. Makes an already great spell even better.

Yay, i can now edit the OP. Look forward to new updates

Still having some problems getting bold to work going from google docs to the forum, so I went with green instead of black.

Are you going to add other things to the equipment section? Also at lv 17 when you get your level 9 consider that your spell save is 8+6+5 at least (standard 8 plus top tier prof plus int mod) which is 19 where the average monster has +4 to 5 for dex saves meaning the monster saves 30% of the time meaning 70% will face average 140, 30% average 70 still has a higher average than you say. But again using the power of teamwork it should not matter if your allies can stun them or something

Can't wait to see your thoughts on the SCAG stuff. Bladesinger is something that I'm going to have to play at some point.