Fynbar Jenessa Human (variant) Sorcerer Level 11 AC 16 HP 69
Str: 8, Dex: 16, Con: 14, Int: 8, Wis: 10, Cha: 18
Background: Noble
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Skills: Perception / History, Persuasion / Arcana, Deception
Languages: Common, Elvish, Celestial, Draconic
1st Alert
4th +2 Charisma
8th Spell Sniper
12th +2 Charisma
16th Elemental Adept: Fire
Cantrips
Chill Touch
Fire Bolt
Frostbite
Light
Ray of Frost
Shocking Grasp
Eldritch Blast
Metamagic
Distant Spell
Quickened Spell
Twinned Spell
Level 1 (4 slots)
Shield
Magic Missile
Level 2 (3 slots)
Scorching Ray
Mirror Image
Misty Step
Level 3 (3 slots)
Blink
Fireball
Fly
Haste
Counterspell
Level 4 (3 slots)
Dimension Door
Greater Invisibility
Level 5 (2 slots)
Cone of Cold
Level 6 (1 slot)
Sunbeam
Level 7
Reverse Gravity
Level 8
Power Word Stun
Level 9
Meteor Swarm
Wish
Premise
I'm introducing this character mid-campaign at level 11, or possibly level 12, replacing a battle master who has had his fill of adventuring.
The current party composition consists of a bladesinger, a pact blade warlock, an oath of devotion paladin, a life cleric, a swashbuckler, a champion and a battle master. It's a big party. Between the lot of them, they are providing controlling, blasting, sniping, buffing, bashing and defending. There are no holes there. There also no really soft targets.
I would not be considering the introduction of a fifth caster were it not for the circumstance that the battle master's efficacy is in decline. He's not scaling with the combat challenges. He was great through the first 8 or 9 levels, but then the worm started to turn and now, as we start on level 11, he is falling off a performance cliff and he's become the cleric's patient-in-chief.
My intent, with this new character, is to place an emphasis on party buffing, which really plays well at higher levels.
At first, I thought to make this guy a half-elf. Better stats. A bit of flavor. I was going to take the Mending cantrip. Mending! Half-elves are dapper fellows. But the Alert feat beckoned and eventually I caved. Grognard.
Strategy
The posture and overall impact of a full-on spellcaster in 5e is shaped by the concentration mechanic. Typically, the caster will be concentrating on a single spell for the bulk of a combat and supplementing its effects with the casting of fire-and-forget spells.
The base mechanic of a sorcerer is arcane spells augmented with metamagic effects. The interesting wrinkle, the fiddly bits, is the ability to convert spell slots to metamagic and metamagic to spell slots through the currency of sorcery points.
Spellcaster concentration spells fall into three categories: control, AOE, and buffing. AOE blasts are perhaps the least effective option for a caster at this point in this campaign. We don't encounter hordes. The small numbers of monsters we do encounter stay spread out as a rule. Most encounters take place outside. So AOE spells are not as productive as they would be in other circumstances.
The wizard is delivering controller effects effectively, walls of force and save-or-suck spells. I don't want to step on his slippers. Also, legendary defenses have become common at level 10. That's not going to get better. But more to the point, I intend to buff, and the arcane buff spells are concentration spells.
This sorcerer is a ranged sniper with his concentration dedicated to buffery. Our warlock is a sniper, but two snipers are better than one and he won't mind the company. He probably won't notice. Well, perhaps he'll notice the Eldritch Blasts I'm picking up from Spell Sniper. No one likes to be ignored.
Alert and Spell Sniper should conspire to make the sorcerer an unfavorable target, minimizing his drain on the cleric's resources.
Tactics
I envision four basic combat profiles for the sorcerer, each based on concentration spell selection. Resource management, environmental circumstances and mood will dictate which of the four profiles gets adopted in any given encounter. We tend to have three combats per day/4.5 hour session. These encounters are usually of the deadly variety.
The four combat profiles are the default profile, the alternate profile, the mobility profile and the ill-considered profile. The first two profiles are the meat and potatoes, day to day practices. They feature a party buff concentration spell and metamagic assisted cantrip spamming. The mobility profile is more of the same, but it's a bit resource intensive, which means it puts me at a deficit for the rest of the day.
The ill-considered profile features a high level, damage directed concentration spell and some cantrip spamming. The ill-considered profile is so named because it both lacks a party buff and consumes too many resources to be in the regular rotation. But variety is the spice of life, cantrip spamming can get stale from overuse, and buffing is noticed most by its absence. I may never use the ill-considered profile.
The default combat profile starts with the sorcerer casting twinned Greater Invisibility on himself and the life cleric. Then he moves away from everyone. Thereafter, he spams twinned and quickened cantrips (and possibly scorching rays) with advantage on attacks, as he continues to move away from everyone.
If it's demons or devils, Greater Invisibility does not work. It doesn't work against other things as well. My DM has a new monster fetish (and a new minis addiction). I'm bound to be deeply chagrined at some point.
The alternate combat profile opens with twinned Haste on the sorcerer and the champion. The sorcerer then sprints to extreme range. In subsequent rounds he spams twinned and quickened cantrips, and sprints to extremer range.
The mobility profile starts with the sorcerer casting Fly on himself and three of his companions. The fighter, the paladin and the swashbuckler are probably the best targets, but Fly is a touch spell. I'll be (distant) touching the PCs I can reach. The swashbuckler has a really high initiative bonus and he can cover a lot of ground. The cleric is another reasonable choice, though I don't know if he'll make good use of it. The sorcerer then flies away and spams cantrips. This profile is over-budget, but will fall into line at higher levels, when Fly becomes more vital.
The ill-considered combat profile begins with Sunbeam, a persistent concentration spell that does radiant damage. Round two is a quickened personal buff spell, Mirror Image or Blink, and a second use of Sunbeam. Ensuing rounds feature more Sunbeam and perhaps, if the bank ain't broke, quickened cantrips. The ill-considered encounter profile is quite spendy. It's also situational. Line spells always are. But radiant damage is sweet.
Sorcery Points Economy
Let's assume three combats per day, with two of them being default profile (twinned Greater Invisibility) combats and one of them an alternate profile (twinned Haste) combat. That expends my daily allotment of 11 sorcery points as well as two 3rd level spell slots, three 4th level spell slots and one 5th level spell slot.
Trade in spell slots for sorcery points. Converting all but the spell slots required by the two Haste spells and the four Greater Invisibility spells yields 24 additional sorcery points.
Casting three cantrips per round via one Twinned Spell and one Quickened spell exhausts the 24 sorcery points in 8 rounds. Adding in the three buff rounds brings that to 11 rounds. That gives me 3.6 rounds per combat of elevated activity, with the balance filled by single cantrip castings.
I can stretch my resources a bit and even out the damage per encounter by casting only two cantrips per round during the Greater Invisibility combats, when the advantage on attacks will provide me with a better hit ratio.
Let's assume 5 rounds per combat. Round 1 is the buff round. That's four rounds of cantrip spamming.
For the two-per-day Greater Invisibility combats, let's assume that half the time I'll twin cantrips at separate targets, spending 1 sorcery point per round, and half the time I'll quicken cantrips at a single target, costing two sorcery points per round. That works out to an expenditure of 6 sorcery points on cantrip spamming per default encounter, 12 total, leaving 12 sorcery points for the Haste combat. That allows me 4 rounds of three cantrips per round during the Haste combat.
In the two Greater Invisibility encounters, if I favor twinned over quickened in a three to one ratio, I can stretch the cantrip spamming a wee bit, adding a quickened cantrip to one of the opening buff rounds. In practice, of course, I'll always do everything I can in round 1.
This budget does not allow for sorcery point depletion via Empowered Spell, so I have elected to take Distant Spell instead, despite having already doubled my attack ranges with Spell Sniper. Distant Spell allows me to cast touch spells like Greater Invisibility (but not twinned) or Fly at a range of 30 feet. It's not like I want to cast Chill Touch from 480 feet or anything. Who would do that? Certainly not me. Not as far as you can tell. Cuz that'd be stoopid. Like Int 8 stoopid.
The budget also does not accommodate blowing a 6th level spell slot on a spell, so both the mobility profile and the ill-considered profile are budget busters. Eh, waddayagonnado?
Of course, these combat profiles are amenable to variation. I can mix things up, toss an occasional Fireball, buff someone else for a change. What have you.
I'll have to hit the paladin with Greater Invisibility every once in a while. Half the party follows him around the battle grid to benefit from the save bonuses conferred by his Aura of Protection. (Focused fire!) Watching the metagaming that ensues when he's invisible will be fun. “I can hear him. He's in full plate. He makes a lot of noise. I only need to be withing 10 feet.” I'll help them out. “Where's the paladin? I don't see him anywhere. I don't know; he might have left.”
Actual gameplay will, no doubt, revise my thinking. And there's always the unexpected. It's not a game if there's no pucker factor. The DM, he likes the death saves.
First Contact with the Enemy
That's when the plan dies, right?. If I lose Initiative and get gored where I stand, and I'm down to 8 hit points before it's my turn, then Greater Invisibility is an ungood choice, as is hastily retreating to a great distance from the cleric. Fly invites an opportunity attack unless I refrain from flying. It's time to improvise.
If, all of a sudden, the entire neighborhood is heavily obscured or earthquakey, then it's time to Dimension Door out of Dodge.
If there is a fellow with robes and a pointy hat in the back ranks of the opposition, then encounter profiles be damned. Any NPC who knows how to spell “Feeblemind” or “Flesh to Stone” becomes combat profile Only. Kill the pointy hat! But first, lock him down.
Or whatever. One never knows what one never knows.
Multiclassing
I realize that the sorcerer class begs for multiclassing, and that three levels of warlock is the thing so marvelous that it must not be named. But, you know, we do have a warlock in our party, and he's a nice fellow. Snapping up Eldritch Blast is bad enough (but, hey, d10 force damage). Besides, my sorcerer likes his freedom. A binding contract with a great power holds little appeal, even for that sorlock cheese.
There's bard to consider as well. Hmm. There are things there worth plundering. More party buffery. Good for morale. And it would be a shame to hide all this Charisma from the world. That's a possibility. We don't have a bard. I'm thinking a base fiddle and beat poetry. Or maybe a sousaphone. A Hasted sousaphone.
So that's my sorcerer build, and my plan of attack. Are you impressed with how I've engineered free cantrips to be so terribly expensive? Are you entertained? What's that? tl;dr? Ah, well.
References
I like character build guides. For this build, I referenced:
“Caster Unleashed: Guru's Guide to Building and Playing a Sorcerer”
EvilAnagram's “How to Rend Fiends and Immolate People, A Guide to Sorcery”
RhaegarT's “Power Overwhelming: A Sorcerer Guide”
“Guide for optimized Sorcerer” by Sorxores
“DnD 5e - The Sorcerer Handbook” by RPG Bot (We disagree about everything)
All of these guides were united in their easy dismissal of Distant Spell. That made it a very compelling choice.
Edit: I see that the ENworld app deals poorly with ENworld tables. I suspected that might happen. Chrome on Android does OK. Not great, but OK. If it's an issue, lemme know & I'll reformat to plainer text.
Edit: I removed the tables. They were unreadable in the app. So now I know why no one uses tables.
Edit: Shaved off a language left over from when I was looking at half-elf as the race.
Str: 8, Dex: 16, Con: 14, Int: 8, Wis: 10, Cha: 18
Background: Noble
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Skills: Perception / History, Persuasion / Arcana, Deception
Languages: Common, Elvish, Celestial, Draconic
1st Alert
4th +2 Charisma
8th Spell Sniper
12th +2 Charisma
16th Elemental Adept: Fire
Cantrips
Chill Touch
Fire Bolt
Frostbite
Light
Ray of Frost
Shocking Grasp
Eldritch Blast
Metamagic
Distant Spell
Quickened Spell
Twinned Spell
Level 1 (4 slots)
Shield
Magic Missile
Level 2 (3 slots)
Scorching Ray
Mirror Image
Misty Step
Level 3 (3 slots)
Blink
Fireball
Fly
Haste
Counterspell
Level 4 (3 slots)
Dimension Door
Greater Invisibility
Level 5 (2 slots)
Cone of Cold
Level 6 (1 slot)
Sunbeam
Level 7
Reverse Gravity
Level 8
Power Word Stun
Level 9
Meteor Swarm
Wish
Premise
I'm introducing this character mid-campaign at level 11, or possibly level 12, replacing a battle master who has had his fill of adventuring.
The current party composition consists of a bladesinger, a pact blade warlock, an oath of devotion paladin, a life cleric, a swashbuckler, a champion and a battle master. It's a big party. Between the lot of them, they are providing controlling, blasting, sniping, buffing, bashing and defending. There are no holes there. There also no really soft targets.
I would not be considering the introduction of a fifth caster were it not for the circumstance that the battle master's efficacy is in decline. He's not scaling with the combat challenges. He was great through the first 8 or 9 levels, but then the worm started to turn and now, as we start on level 11, he is falling off a performance cliff and he's become the cleric's patient-in-chief.
My intent, with this new character, is to place an emphasis on party buffing, which really plays well at higher levels.
At first, I thought to make this guy a half-elf. Better stats. A bit of flavor. I was going to take the Mending cantrip. Mending! Half-elves are dapper fellows. But the Alert feat beckoned and eventually I caved. Grognard.
Strategy
The posture and overall impact of a full-on spellcaster in 5e is shaped by the concentration mechanic. Typically, the caster will be concentrating on a single spell for the bulk of a combat and supplementing its effects with the casting of fire-and-forget spells.
The base mechanic of a sorcerer is arcane spells augmented with metamagic effects. The interesting wrinkle, the fiddly bits, is the ability to convert spell slots to metamagic and metamagic to spell slots through the currency of sorcery points.
Spellcaster concentration spells fall into three categories: control, AOE, and buffing. AOE blasts are perhaps the least effective option for a caster at this point in this campaign. We don't encounter hordes. The small numbers of monsters we do encounter stay spread out as a rule. Most encounters take place outside. So AOE spells are not as productive as they would be in other circumstances.
The wizard is delivering controller effects effectively, walls of force and save-or-suck spells. I don't want to step on his slippers. Also, legendary defenses have become common at level 10. That's not going to get better. But more to the point, I intend to buff, and the arcane buff spells are concentration spells.
This sorcerer is a ranged sniper with his concentration dedicated to buffery. Our warlock is a sniper, but two snipers are better than one and he won't mind the company. He probably won't notice. Well, perhaps he'll notice the Eldritch Blasts I'm picking up from Spell Sniper. No one likes to be ignored.
Alert and Spell Sniper should conspire to make the sorcerer an unfavorable target, minimizing his drain on the cleric's resources.
Tactics
I envision four basic combat profiles for the sorcerer, each based on concentration spell selection. Resource management, environmental circumstances and mood will dictate which of the four profiles gets adopted in any given encounter. We tend to have three combats per day/4.5 hour session. These encounters are usually of the deadly variety.
The four combat profiles are the default profile, the alternate profile, the mobility profile and the ill-considered profile. The first two profiles are the meat and potatoes, day to day practices. They feature a party buff concentration spell and metamagic assisted cantrip spamming. The mobility profile is more of the same, but it's a bit resource intensive, which means it puts me at a deficit for the rest of the day.
The ill-considered profile features a high level, damage directed concentration spell and some cantrip spamming. The ill-considered profile is so named because it both lacks a party buff and consumes too many resources to be in the regular rotation. But variety is the spice of life, cantrip spamming can get stale from overuse, and buffing is noticed most by its absence. I may never use the ill-considered profile.
The default combat profile starts with the sorcerer casting twinned Greater Invisibility on himself and the life cleric. Then he moves away from everyone. Thereafter, he spams twinned and quickened cantrips (and possibly scorching rays) with advantage on attacks, as he continues to move away from everyone.
If it's demons or devils, Greater Invisibility does not work. It doesn't work against other things as well. My DM has a new monster fetish (and a new minis addiction). I'm bound to be deeply chagrined at some point.
The alternate combat profile opens with twinned Haste on the sorcerer and the champion. The sorcerer then sprints to extreme range. In subsequent rounds he spams twinned and quickened cantrips, and sprints to extremer range.
The mobility profile starts with the sorcerer casting Fly on himself and three of his companions. The fighter, the paladin and the swashbuckler are probably the best targets, but Fly is a touch spell. I'll be (distant) touching the PCs I can reach. The swashbuckler has a really high initiative bonus and he can cover a lot of ground. The cleric is another reasonable choice, though I don't know if he'll make good use of it. The sorcerer then flies away and spams cantrips. This profile is over-budget, but will fall into line at higher levels, when Fly becomes more vital.
The ill-considered combat profile begins with Sunbeam, a persistent concentration spell that does radiant damage. Round two is a quickened personal buff spell, Mirror Image or Blink, and a second use of Sunbeam. Ensuing rounds feature more Sunbeam and perhaps, if the bank ain't broke, quickened cantrips. The ill-considered encounter profile is quite spendy. It's also situational. Line spells always are. But radiant damage is sweet.
Sorcery Points Economy
Let's assume three combats per day, with two of them being default profile (twinned Greater Invisibility) combats and one of them an alternate profile (twinned Haste) combat. That expends my daily allotment of 11 sorcery points as well as two 3rd level spell slots, three 4th level spell slots and one 5th level spell slot.
Trade in spell slots for sorcery points. Converting all but the spell slots required by the two Haste spells and the four Greater Invisibility spells yields 24 additional sorcery points.
Casting three cantrips per round via one Twinned Spell and one Quickened spell exhausts the 24 sorcery points in 8 rounds. Adding in the three buff rounds brings that to 11 rounds. That gives me 3.6 rounds per combat of elevated activity, with the balance filled by single cantrip castings.
I can stretch my resources a bit and even out the damage per encounter by casting only two cantrips per round during the Greater Invisibility combats, when the advantage on attacks will provide me with a better hit ratio.
Let's assume 5 rounds per combat. Round 1 is the buff round. That's four rounds of cantrip spamming.
For the two-per-day Greater Invisibility combats, let's assume that half the time I'll twin cantrips at separate targets, spending 1 sorcery point per round, and half the time I'll quicken cantrips at a single target, costing two sorcery points per round. That works out to an expenditure of 6 sorcery points on cantrip spamming per default encounter, 12 total, leaving 12 sorcery points for the Haste combat. That allows me 4 rounds of three cantrips per round during the Haste combat.
In the two Greater Invisibility encounters, if I favor twinned over quickened in a three to one ratio, I can stretch the cantrip spamming a wee bit, adding a quickened cantrip to one of the opening buff rounds. In practice, of course, I'll always do everything I can in round 1.
This budget does not allow for sorcery point depletion via Empowered Spell, so I have elected to take Distant Spell instead, despite having already doubled my attack ranges with Spell Sniper. Distant Spell allows me to cast touch spells like Greater Invisibility (but not twinned) or Fly at a range of 30 feet. It's not like I want to cast Chill Touch from 480 feet or anything. Who would do that? Certainly not me. Not as far as you can tell. Cuz that'd be stoopid. Like Int 8 stoopid.
The budget also does not accommodate blowing a 6th level spell slot on a spell, so both the mobility profile and the ill-considered profile are budget busters. Eh, waddayagonnado?
Of course, these combat profiles are amenable to variation. I can mix things up, toss an occasional Fireball, buff someone else for a change. What have you.
I'll have to hit the paladin with Greater Invisibility every once in a while. Half the party follows him around the battle grid to benefit from the save bonuses conferred by his Aura of Protection. (Focused fire!) Watching the metagaming that ensues when he's invisible will be fun. “I can hear him. He's in full plate. He makes a lot of noise. I only need to be withing 10 feet.” I'll help them out. “Where's the paladin? I don't see him anywhere. I don't know; he might have left.”
Actual gameplay will, no doubt, revise my thinking. And there's always the unexpected. It's not a game if there's no pucker factor. The DM, he likes the death saves.
First Contact with the Enemy
That's when the plan dies, right?. If I lose Initiative and get gored where I stand, and I'm down to 8 hit points before it's my turn, then Greater Invisibility is an ungood choice, as is hastily retreating to a great distance from the cleric. Fly invites an opportunity attack unless I refrain from flying. It's time to improvise.
If, all of a sudden, the entire neighborhood is heavily obscured or earthquakey, then it's time to Dimension Door out of Dodge.
If there is a fellow with robes and a pointy hat in the back ranks of the opposition, then encounter profiles be damned. Any NPC who knows how to spell “Feeblemind” or “Flesh to Stone” becomes combat profile Only. Kill the pointy hat! But first, lock him down.
Or whatever. One never knows what one never knows.
Multiclassing
I realize that the sorcerer class begs for multiclassing, and that three levels of warlock is the thing so marvelous that it must not be named. But, you know, we do have a warlock in our party, and he's a nice fellow. Snapping up Eldritch Blast is bad enough (but, hey, d10 force damage). Besides, my sorcerer likes his freedom. A binding contract with a great power holds little appeal, even for that sorlock cheese.
There's bard to consider as well. Hmm. There are things there worth plundering. More party buffery. Good for morale. And it would be a shame to hide all this Charisma from the world. That's a possibility. We don't have a bard. I'm thinking a base fiddle and beat poetry. Or maybe a sousaphone. A Hasted sousaphone.
So that's my sorcerer build, and my plan of attack. Are you impressed with how I've engineered free cantrips to be so terribly expensive? Are you entertained? What's that? tl;dr? Ah, well.
References
I like character build guides. For this build, I referenced:
“Caster Unleashed: Guru's Guide to Building and Playing a Sorcerer”
EvilAnagram's “How to Rend Fiends and Immolate People, A Guide to Sorcery”
RhaegarT's “Power Overwhelming: A Sorcerer Guide”
“Guide for optimized Sorcerer” by Sorxores
“DnD 5e - The Sorcerer Handbook” by RPG Bot (We disagree about everything)
All of these guides were united in their easy dismissal of Distant Spell. That made it a very compelling choice.
Edit: I see that the ENworld app deals poorly with ENworld tables. I suspected that might happen. Chrome on Android does OK. Not great, but OK. If it's an issue, lemme know & I'll reformat to plainer text.
Edit: I removed the tables. They were unreadable in the app. So now I know why no one uses tables.
Edit: Shaved off a language left over from when I was looking at half-elf as the race.
Last edited:
