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Being able to attack effectively when there are melee enemies surrounding you is quite nice. But having to split your main stat between Str and Cha is a high cost, and I agree that you don't get that much in return. Plus, you lose out on the other pacts. I haven't figured out any great uses...

Nice -- Polearm Master plus War Caster is a great combo for Warlocks. It works by RAW, though some DMs might take issue with Polearm Master triggering an opportunity attack that doesn't use the polearm. However, I don't think it works with Sentinel. Reducing the target's movement to 0 happens...

At 3rd level, a chain-pact Warlock with Voice of the Chain Master becomes the (almost) perfect scout. Her familiar can be flying and invisible, and she can telepathically communicate with it and see through its senses at any distance and for an unlimited time. If it gets caught, no big deal --...

That example is about scaling based on spell slot used, not character/caster level -- Burning Hands doesn't scale based on level. They talk about adding together your levels in certain classes to determine your available spell slots, but there's never a "caster level" defined.

Looking at the new DM Basic Rules, a mammoth seems like the best choice for this -- CR 6 beast with 126 hp. It also has some quite respectable attacks.

Wow, that's pretty brutal. I can't look at my PHB right now -- were there any changes from the alpha (if you have access to both)? I think it was intended to take effect right away and not be cured for at least three rounds, as written. The problem for legendary monsters is that they can't...

I had been thinking of lances as essentially jousting lances and kinda silly to use on foot. Reading over the rules, though, they're perfectly reasonable mechanics for pikes: two-handed, reach, disadvantage attacking within 5'. They'd need some special rule to actually make them effective...

Amusingly, a barbarian using Reckless Attack is far less likely to fumble -- 1 in 400 instead of 1 in 20.

I've been wondering about that, but I don't see anything that says cantrip scaling is based on caster level -- the cantrip descriptions just talk about "level", and lacking any qualifiers I have to assume that means character level. There are some other weird cases of that, like the warlock...

The half-damage-on-a-miss invocation didn't make it into the PHB. It's also unclear how you add Cha to the blasts -- I would guess once per target (so more total damage if you split up the beams) based on Mike Mearls' tweet about Empowered Evocation plus Magic Missile. Eldritch Knight is the...

Twinned Spell lets you hit more targets but not stack extra damage/effects on the same target. If you really want to stack up the Fireballs, how about this: 2 levels of Fighter 2 levels of Wizard (evocation) 6 levels of Sorcerer (draconic) You'd be falling well behind on the level of your...

If you start with the two levels of Fighter, you also get heavy armor and proficiency on Constitution saves for concentration. It's a strong combo by the time you hit 7th level (for double fireballs), but losing two caster levels puts you a big step behind pure Wizards in other ways. I'd call...

If the player and DM both want lots of wild surges, it's easy to make that happen. The wild mage can use Tides of Chaos for advantage on a roll, and after that the DM can trigger a guaranteed wild surge on any spell the sorcerer casts. That resets Tides of Chaos, so then you can repeat the...

Actually, if you have to "interact with an object" to double-tap with the same hand crossbow, you'd have to do the same thing even if you're wielding, say, a sword and a hand crossbow. You'd get one bonus attack per combat (assuming the crossbow starts loaded), but from then on it will only be...

The idea is that you're making two attacks with the hand crossbow using the Crossbow Expert feat -- there are no attacks with the shield. It's just that if you can make both your regular and bonus attacks with the same hand crossbow, you might as well use your other hand for a shield.

I've been thinking about the Sorcerer and how I feel about them compared to Wizards, so I'll give this a go. Overall, they're very similar to Wizards. I'd say that the differences between Wizard and Sorcerer are no larger than the differences between subclasses in some other classes. So...

Hmm. Assuming it works, hand crossbow plus shield seems more effective all around than TWF when you take the feats for each. You'd have both higher damage (e.g. 2d6 + 6 vs 2d8 + 3) and higher AC (shield vs. +1 AC). If you add in the fighting styles (Archery vs. TWF) it becomes dependent on...

The Crossbow Expert feat was changed slightly from the Alpha. Its last bullet point now reads "When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a loaded hand crossbow you are holding." (emphasis added). The "loaded" is new. My guess...

Ah, I completely missed the line about it ending if the caster leaves the area of the dome -- that prevents multiple domes as well as most of the creative uses. However, I think making ranged weapon attacks out of the dome still works fine. If an object (e.g. an arrow) is inside the dome when...

Barbarian, hands down. There are many things more important about each character than their ability to dish out damage in combat, but it's still something I find fun to analyze. I was planning to model the damage output of various classes via a simulated adventuring day and other complicated...