I thought earlier that you were against including racial feats. Unless I'm mistaken that's how a Tasha's custom lineage race wizard would achieve a 20 int and a feat by level 11? So just want to make sure we are on the same page.
*In principle I'm open to whatever racial options you want to go with.
I was mostly referring to narrowly race-specific things like the half-orc's crit boost or Elven Accuracy. Custom Lineage characters cannot take any race-specific feats as their race is Custom Lineage, even if they physically appear to be exactly the same as an Elf or whatever. I
would normally have just chosen something with an Int bonus, but it's not possible to get both 20 Int
and a regular (that is, not "half") feat at level 11. Just wanted to make clear why I was choosing that, as otherwise I would not have, and the feats I'm considering (almost certainly either War Caster or Elemental Adept) are not particularly crazy.
On the subject: it looks like I was derping (I blame the insomnia) and not realizing that spells like
flame sphere and
storm sphere are "Concentration spells that increase damage." I was thinking "buffs that cause damage to be higher" rather than "spells that must be concentrated upon to do repeated damage." So that's definitely a conversation we'll have to have.
On this note, I ask what you think is fair in regards to trip attack since it has a requirement the enemy be Large or smaller.
Few non-"solo" creatures are bigger than large IIRC--my sources indicate it's very roughly only 10% of all creatures, most of which seem to have the markings of being a "solo" or otherwise "mega-threat" type creature for their CR. So, although it may be a bit unrealistic/inaccurate, I'm cool with the narratively "lesser" creatures (the cannon-fodder and lieutenant types) are subject to it assuming a failed save, but all "solo"-type ones cannot be affected, assuming you are as well. If not we can be more precise about it. (In actual fact, I'm sure
some solos are small enough to be affected and some minions too big, e.g. throwing the stegosaurus at the enemy while the mad scientist runs away, but this seems like a good simplifying metric that still represents both the benefits and the limitations.)
Sounds good. If you have any differently sized AOE's we need to bring up feel free. But if we can set the bounds on a small AOE and big one then hopefully the rest can be easily extrapolated from there.
Yeah. Will probably do that tomorrow since, as stated, I'm in a better way but have a lot on my plate today/tonight.
Sure. My initial thoughts would be to increase number of targets for an AOE by 0.5 due to the evokers level 2 ability. I could see it going a bit higher.
As a first past that seems fine.
Some people play that magic missile gets the evokers damage bonus to every dart and some play that it only applies to one dart. I can see the ability either way from RAW but i always play it applies to one dart.
AIUI, it has been explicitly clarified in Sage Advice that the Evoker damage bonus applies to only one damage roll, not to every missile. Same for
scorching ray, for example. So we'll go with the more conservative estimate.
I wasn't super concerned with defenses beyond basic armor/shield for the fighter and mage armor and a few shield spells for the wizard. So personally I think it's safe to ignore defensive items. For magic weapons I think a +1 weapon should be default but I was going to run various scenarios with them for the Fighter. A +1 focus seems reasonable there as well.
Then we are of like mind. Cool.
I was going to do a ranged fighter, a melee fighter and possibly a hybrid range/melee fighter.
M'kay. In that case, I think I may end up doing Divination (as the more "generically powerful" Wizard), Evocation (as the "almost all damage, utility is what
rituals are for" Wizard), and maybe War or Abjurer (as the "survivalist"-type Wizard).
I follow that. If we are talking movement though I think we need to think about enemy movement and OA's. There's quite a bit to explicitly account for there. Or we can just make a general statement like the amount of OA's a melee fighter gets to make will roughly make up for the attacks he doesn't get to make due to needing to get in range some rounds. Not perfect, but maybe reasonable enough while greatly simplifying calculations.
Yeah, let's just go with that. There's already a ton of calculations involved as it is. Again, a simplifying assumption, but the gain of precision would be at too great a cost of effort.
Since you mentioned above you were not planning on using concentration spells for damage i don't think we really need to focus on concentration checks and the possibility of losing concentration on one of those spells early. There's alot to consider if we were, from NPC targeting, to defenses, mobility/kiting, conentration save bonus, etc. If you change your mind and want to use a concentration spell for damage or self buffing let's iron something reasonable out for this at that time?
Also, are assuming 24 combat rounds and 2 short rests spread over 8 encounters?
See above on the Concentration thing. Given War Wizard specifically improves saves, it's probably a conversation worth having at some point, but not right now, my brain is still re-gelatinizing.
And yeah those numbers seem reasonable. To be clear, don't forget that you get any short-rest abilities at the end of a long rest too. I doubt you
would forget, but hey, it's worth mentioning.
