Quickened Spell and Green Flame Blade

trentonjoe · Jan 3, 2019

If a sorcerer casts a quickened green-flame blade, can she make two melee attacks in one round?

TwoSix · Jan 3, 2019

Sure can.

Swarmkeeper · Jan 3, 2019

I would say yes. The quickened casting counts as a bonus action. Per the PHB rules on bonus action spells, you can then cast a cantrip with your action, and that cantrip can be green-flame blade. The cost, of course, is the two sorcery points.

doctorbadwolf · Jan 4, 2019

Decent Nova potential for a melee Sorc. Wonder if it’s worth it to dip Hex and Fighter on a melee sorc? Get fighting style, Cha atk+dmg, Action Surge, but lose a couple spell points and spell progression.

Three booming or greenflame blade attacks in a round, 4 with a feat and opportunity attack, could be pretty high output, especially if you can save it for a round where you have advantage for all the attacks.

jmartkdr · Jan 4, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
Decent Nova potential for a melee Sorc. Wonder if it’s worth it to dip Hex and Fighter on a melee sorc? Get fighting style, Cha atk+dmg, Action Surge, but lose a couple spell points and spell progression.

Three booming or greenflame blade attacks in a round, 4 with a feat and opportunity attack, could be pretty high output, especially if you can save it for a round where you have advantage for all the attacks.

There's a reason sorcerer/paladin is sometimes considered OP: they can not only pull off the up-top combo, but drop high-level smites on one or both if they hit.

Zardnaar · Jan 4, 2019

Action surge doesn't play nice with the quickened spell. It does play nice with haste though so you can be hasted for an extra attack the action surge then quicken GFB.

We had a melee beat down sorcerer who used to tank around. It was one of them form the UA playtest stuff think it was the Storm Sorcerer.

doctorbadwolf · Jan 4, 2019

jmartkdr said:
There's a reason sorcerer/paladin is sometimes considered OP: they can not only pull off the up-top combo, but drop high-level smites on one or both if they hit.

Sure, but the cool thing here is that it doesn't require any levels of Paladin, opening up a different avenue to explore for melee sorcs who don't want to be paladins. So, if you want to maximise your sorc levels while also staying viable in melee, you pick Dragon Sorc (or giant soul if that comes out someday), and spend 2-3 levels multiclassing (depending on whether you just mc fighter, or fighter and warlock), and get a huge bump.
Or, you might have someone who wants to be a tougher, harder hitting SorLock without diluting the warlock/sorcerer too much. IMO, in either case, for many builds Paladin gives a lot more chaff than wheat, while for other builds it's the opposite.

Zardnaar said:
Action surge doesn't play nice with the quickened spell. It does play nice with haste though so you can be hasted for an extra attack the action surge then quicken GFB.

You can GFB 3 times with Quickened Spell and Action Surge. QS makes it a bonus action, AS gives you another action.

Also, as an aside, GFB and BB combine really well with Polearm Mastery and Sentinel feats, and I just haven't played much heavy fighters in 5e so I never realized it before. I have a Booming Blade using Mage Slayer/War Caster, but I think what I'm doing there has been Sage Adviced into houserule territory? I don't recall what the ruling was that interfered with it...maybe it was just the teleportation spell not triggering it because your reaction happens after the trigger is resolved?

Also, even more aside, I know that reactions happen after the triggering event, not before, but that gets weird with Sentinel. I wonder if it would be a reasonable ruling (not a reading of the rules, just a DM ruling) that a character with Sentinel and Mage Slayer can get a melee attack in as a reaction when a spell that moves the target out of range is used. I don't want feat chains to be a thing, but I feel like if you've invested that much in locking down casters, that synergy benefit is reasonable.

Anyway, Quickened Spell is great for melee sorcerers that don't want to MC deep enough to get Extra Attack, and take weapon cantrips instead.

Also, Haste doesn't work with GFB or BB, at all. You can't use them with your hasted action.

jmartkdr · Jan 5, 2019

Also, as an aside, GFB and BB combine really well with Polearm Mastery and Sentinel feats, and I just haven't played much heavy fighters in 5e so I never realized it before. I have a Booming Blade using Mage Slayer/War Caster, but I think what I'm doing there has been Sage Adviced into houserule territory? I don't recall what the ruling was that interfered with it...maybe it was just the teleportation spell not triggering it because your reaction happens after the trigger is resolved?

You can use booming blade with Warcaster - but not GFB since it targets more than one creature. BB would also re-envelope the target for extra fun.

It does not work with mage slayer, since it's not an opportunity attack. Not that it's really OP if you've been doing it that way.

Zardnaar · Jan 5, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
Sure, but the cool thing here is that it doesn't require any levels of Paladin, opening up a different avenue to explore for melee sorcs who don't want to be paladins. So, if you want to maximise your sorc levels while also staying viable in melee, you pick Dragon Sorc (or giant soul if that comes out someday), and spend 2-3 levels multiclassing (depending on whether you just mc fighter, or fighter and warlock), and get a huge bump.
Or, you might have someone who wants to be a tougher, harder hitting SorLock without diluting the warlock/sorcerer too much. IMO, in either case, for many builds Paladin gives a lot more chaff than wheat, while for other builds it's the opposite.

You can GFB 3 times with Quickened Spell and Action Surge. QS makes it a bonus action, AS gives you another action.

Also, as an aside, GFB and BB combine really well with Polearm Mastery and Sentinel feats, and I just haven't played much heavy fighters in 5e so I never realized it before. I have a Booming Blade using Mage Slayer/War Caster, but I think what I'm doing there has been Sage Adviced into houserule territory? I don't recall what the ruling was that interfered with it...maybe it was just the teleportation spell not triggering it because your reaction happens after the trigger is resolved?

Also, even more aside, I know that reactions happen after the triggering event, not before, but that gets weird with Sentinel. I wonder if it would be a reasonable ruling (not a reading of the rules, just a DM ruling) that a character with Sentinel and Mage Slayer can get a melee attack in as a reaction when a spell that moves the target out of range is used. I don't want feat chains to be a thing, but I feel like if you've invested that much in locking down casters, that synergy benefit is reasonable.

Anyway, Quickened Spell is great for melee sorcerers that don't want to MC deep enough to get Extra Attack, and take weapon cantrips instead.

Also, Haste doesn't work with GFB or BB, at all. You can't use them with your hasted action.

Point I forgot that. I did see a MC sorcerer quicken a haste then action surge for something like 6 or 8 attacks so I was thinking along those lines. I have seen the quicken+ action surge eldritch blast combo though but mostly GFB is really only good on the arcane cleric MC shenanigans aside.

I think the kiddie combo.abuse was one of the old UA playtest Sorcerers that was a mountain Dwarf fire dragon using GFB + quicken and/or haste to have 3 or 4 attacks with charisma damage to everything. Using a battle axe two handed in medium armor. One of my players got half way there and pulled off 4 attacks a round level 6 or so.

doctorbadwolf · Jan 5, 2019

jmartkdr said:
There's a reason sorcerer/paladin is sometimes considered OP: they can not only pull off the up-top combo, but drop high-level smites on one or both if they hit.

Zardnaar said:
Action surge doesn't play nice with the quickened spell. It does play nice with haste though so you can be hasted for an extra attack the action surge then quicken GFB.

We had a melee beat down sorcerer who used to tank around. It was one of them form the UA playtest stuff think it was the Storm Sorcerer.

jmartkdr said:
You can use booming blade with Warcaster - but not GFB since it targets more than one creature. BB would also re-envelope the target for extra fun.

It does not work with mage slayer, since it's not an opportunity attack. Not that it's really OP if you've been doing it that way.

That's what it was! Thank you! Yeah, it's not a huge boost, so I don't think we'll end up changing how we've done it, but I do need to point it out to the DM, since he is more "by the book" than I am when i'm DM.

Sentinel, War Caster, and Booming Blade basically means they cannot escape you unless they're an absolute tank, which is fun. Mix that with Swashbuckler, and at level 9 rogue you're like, hey, come get me, <stab> come on come get me <move away without op. attack>, and they can either follow and get rekt, or not follow and be useless on their turn. It's basically the 4e "chicken-defender" swordmage, but somehow even more mean?

Probably a good thing rogues have no access to the use of polearm master and SA...if there were no weapon restrictions on rogues, a polearm swashbuckler w cantrips would be the most frustrating PC to fight ever.