Var
Explorer
Rather than derailing another thread, here's something I pieced together when looking for a couple answers to some questions that weren't related at the time.
Can I play a dedicated Healer/Mitigator that can outperform adding yet another DPS character to the party?
Notably not a controller by design, so it would work with abysmal stats.
Is there a way for an optimal build with a "suboptimal Race"(*lacking a main casting stat ASI) as Arcane Full Caster without screwing myself?
To achieve these goals we'll have to find something useful to do every turn while basically never being reliant on inflicting DC based harm to the other side.
The best way to do that is by either using the Help Action on your Rogue, GWF Paladin/Fighter, Blade Cantrip using buddy or by maintaining Blade Ward on yourself with Active Warding Bond against BPS inflicting opposition.
Improving on that we'll dip Order Cleric, add in a Concentration Buff Spell of our choice and the option for non concentration Buffs on top to increase party performance by enabling rather than contributing directly.
This assumes Warding Bond damage can be reduced by Bladeward (which can be cast while also casting another Spell in an emergency). Not not much of a stretch since it is RAW and a Sage Advice tweet confirming it, but YMMV depending on the DM. The real stretch is Warding Bond + Heavy Armor Master, but you'll probably get that pretty late considering you want Warcaster to maintain concentration despite taking damage through Warding Bond.
The core of the Build is Divine Soul Sorcerer for access to some non offensive oriented subclass features as well as access to Cleric Spells. Starting out as Sorcerer gets us Proficiency in Con Saves, which we'll need on top of Warcaster to use Warding Bond and maintain a Concentration Spell reliably. Since we're going to build around granting the party Resistance and grant reaction attacks when buffing with Spellslots, granting extra HP and Temp HP is going to be our bread and butter. Inspiring Leader and Aid will make our party the bane of opponents. Indiscriminate as we are, especially the Wizard and we ourselves are going to love that flat HP increase.
At level 2 we're going to dip Order Cleric, since we'd love to have all Armor Proficiencies, extra Cantrips, the whole Cleric lvl1 Spell portfolio to extend our limited Sorcerer spellselection and a sliver of extra HP. From then on it's straight up Divine Soul Sorcerer all the way.
Our Playstyle isn't going to change much. Throw out a concentration Spell Use Aid if it isn't up, potentially upcasting it with a higher slot. Keep Warding Bond running on whoever uses it best. Then flesh things out with Twin, Extend and Healing Word, while otherwise just chilling with the gan, letting them handle everything.
In between Inspiring Leader, Aid and Resistance for two party members (requiring a fairly costly setup since you want to cover the whole party with Platinum Rings) you'll significantly increase the HP pool of your party, while also reducing the damage they're taking.
Downsides would be that you'll really want a party of at least 3 other members. At first glance it steps a bit on the toes of possible (Bear-)Barbarians in the party, but they too love extra HP as well as your Concentration buff. And you can always Warding Bond the Rogue and Mage instead.
Since the "Core Spells" have a duration of 1/2 and 8/16 hours (base/extended) you're fairly spellslot efficient even for long days. Upcasting and Extending the highest level Aid you can manage before you call it a day is also nice. Especially in tier one double HP for D6 Hitdice classes and 40-50% extra for your Barbarian or Fighter will be very noticeable.
Best case all enemies do half damage (+half of that to you) against the ~60% increased hitpoint pool of your party. Add in CC abilities of your other party members or options like Sentinel to make damage stick to your Warding Bond buddy, now you're going to contribute a lot more to your group than another blaster.
Nothing stops you from picking up damage options to chip in some damage here and there, you're still 95% Sorcerer with eventually max Charisma. It just so happens you can twin Warding Bond on that pair of Tyrannosaurs to trigger an opportunity bite attack instead of casting Fireball.
As far as races are concerned you're very flexible. Maxing CHA is not a priority, it makes you a bit better of a healer, but nothing that would outperform a useful racial bonus. You're happy to pick up any stat other than INT (and even the INT races have nice stuff you want like Hobgoblin's Saving Face). Since you're not trying to attack stuff, Darkvision isn't a priority either.
STR enables you to wear the Heavy Armor Order Cleric gets you and opens up grappling.
DEX means you'll probably want to go with Medium Armor and get 14.
CON is arguably as important as CHA for you to boost your HP and Concentration (if not more).
WIS will have to be at least 13 to pick up that Cleric Level.
INT is your dump stat, but also your biggest weakness if it comes up.
CHA allows slightly better healing and offensive options if you want.
Classic VHuman gets you Warcaster+Inspiring Leader at level 5, which sure is nice, but not mandatory.
Odd (high level) alternative is Hilldwarf Divine Soul 1/Order Cleric 1/ Divine Soul 19. You don't need high CHA (but will eventually pick it up after Warcaster and Inspiring Leader anyway), extra WIS is nice to unlock the Cleric Multiclass (Resilient Wis to 14 never hurts later on), wearing Heavy Armor with no penalty at 10+ STR is also nice while being able to dump DEX since we're not a blaster and potentially even prefer being low on Initiative - and ofc, some extra HP for Warding Bond and all the roleplay goodness of being a Dwarf Sorcerer.
The build just gets better if you roll for stats and get that 18 to put in Con or Charisma, you don't need it, but sometimes you just want to be able to mix it up and cast Spirit Guardians.
Final notes are you're going to use a shield as your Holy Symbol and a Sorcerer Focus in the other hand until you get Warcaster. Think of something fun to do with the empty hand by then - holding a bouquet of daisies to or whatever. You don't need a maxed attack stat and can pick up fun Feats while remaining relevant in combat.
The option is available for terrible rolled stats, all you need is an 11 and a 13, Hilldwarf will make the rest happen for you.
Warding Bond and Blade Ward are not the be-all end-all answer to all questions. But that's why we picked up Order Cleric to get access to all those level 1 Spells we want for buffing. Leaves our limited Sorcerer options free to pick up Shield, Absorb Elements and utility disengage like Misty Step, just in case someone was under the impression we were the easiest target or something. We can also Dodge + Quicken Blade Ward if something absolutely wants to know how tough we are (Spoiler: We're tougher than the Fighter would be without our help).
Some traps to avoid:
Can I play a dedicated Healer/Mitigator that can outperform adding yet another DPS character to the party?
Notably not a controller by design, so it would work with abysmal stats.
Is there a way for an optimal build with a "suboptimal Race"(*lacking a main casting stat ASI) as Arcane Full Caster without screwing myself?
To achieve these goals we'll have to find something useful to do every turn while basically never being reliant on inflicting DC based harm to the other side.
The best way to do that is by either using the Help Action on your Rogue, GWF Paladin/Fighter, Blade Cantrip using buddy or by maintaining Blade Ward on yourself with Active Warding Bond against BPS inflicting opposition.
Improving on that we'll dip Order Cleric, add in a Concentration Buff Spell of our choice and the option for non concentration Buffs on top to increase party performance by enabling rather than contributing directly.
This assumes Warding Bond damage can be reduced by Bladeward (which can be cast while also casting another Spell in an emergency). Not not much of a stretch since it is RAW and a Sage Advice tweet confirming it, but YMMV depending on the DM. The real stretch is Warding Bond + Heavy Armor Master, but you'll probably get that pretty late considering you want Warcaster to maintain concentration despite taking damage through Warding Bond.
The core of the Build is Divine Soul Sorcerer for access to some non offensive oriented subclass features as well as access to Cleric Spells. Starting out as Sorcerer gets us Proficiency in Con Saves, which we'll need on top of Warcaster to use Warding Bond and maintain a Concentration Spell reliably. Since we're going to build around granting the party Resistance and grant reaction attacks when buffing with Spellslots, granting extra HP and Temp HP is going to be our bread and butter. Inspiring Leader and Aid will make our party the bane of opponents. Indiscriminate as we are, especially the Wizard and we ourselves are going to love that flat HP increase.
At level 2 we're going to dip Order Cleric, since we'd love to have all Armor Proficiencies, extra Cantrips, the whole Cleric lvl1 Spell portfolio to extend our limited Sorcerer spellselection and a sliver of extra HP. From then on it's straight up Divine Soul Sorcerer all the way.
Our Playstyle isn't going to change much. Throw out a concentration Spell Use Aid if it isn't up, potentially upcasting it with a higher slot. Keep Warding Bond running on whoever uses it best. Then flesh things out with Twin, Extend and Healing Word, while otherwise just chilling with the gan, letting them handle everything.
In between Inspiring Leader, Aid and Resistance for two party members (requiring a fairly costly setup since you want to cover the whole party with Platinum Rings) you'll significantly increase the HP pool of your party, while also reducing the damage they're taking.
Downsides would be that you'll really want a party of at least 3 other members. At first glance it steps a bit on the toes of possible (Bear-)Barbarians in the party, but they too love extra HP as well as your Concentration buff. And you can always Warding Bond the Rogue and Mage instead.
Since the "Core Spells" have a duration of 1/2 and 8/16 hours (base/extended) you're fairly spellslot efficient even for long days. Upcasting and Extending the highest level Aid you can manage before you call it a day is also nice. Especially in tier one double HP for D6 Hitdice classes and 40-50% extra for your Barbarian or Fighter will be very noticeable.
Best case all enemies do half damage (+half of that to you) against the ~60% increased hitpoint pool of your party. Add in CC abilities of your other party members or options like Sentinel to make damage stick to your Warding Bond buddy, now you're going to contribute a lot more to your group than another blaster.
Nothing stops you from picking up damage options to chip in some damage here and there, you're still 95% Sorcerer with eventually max Charisma. It just so happens you can twin Warding Bond on that pair of Tyrannosaurs to trigger an opportunity bite attack instead of casting Fireball.
As far as races are concerned you're very flexible. Maxing CHA is not a priority, it makes you a bit better of a healer, but nothing that would outperform a useful racial bonus. You're happy to pick up any stat other than INT (and even the INT races have nice stuff you want like Hobgoblin's Saving Face). Since you're not trying to attack stuff, Darkvision isn't a priority either.
STR enables you to wear the Heavy Armor Order Cleric gets you and opens up grappling.
DEX means you'll probably want to go with Medium Armor and get 14.
CON is arguably as important as CHA for you to boost your HP and Concentration (if not more).
WIS will have to be at least 13 to pick up that Cleric Level.
INT is your dump stat, but also your biggest weakness if it comes up.
CHA allows slightly better healing and offensive options if you want.
Classic VHuman gets you Warcaster+Inspiring Leader at level 5, which sure is nice, but not mandatory.
Odd (high level) alternative is Hilldwarf Divine Soul 1/Order Cleric 1/ Divine Soul 19. You don't need high CHA (but will eventually pick it up after Warcaster and Inspiring Leader anyway), extra WIS is nice to unlock the Cleric Multiclass (Resilient Wis to 14 never hurts later on), wearing Heavy Armor with no penalty at 10+ STR is also nice while being able to dump DEX since we're not a blaster and potentially even prefer being low on Initiative - and ofc, some extra HP for Warding Bond and all the roleplay goodness of being a Dwarf Sorcerer.
The build just gets better if you roll for stats and get that 18 to put in Con or Charisma, you don't need it, but sometimes you just want to be able to mix it up and cast Spirit Guardians.
Final notes are you're going to use a shield as your Holy Symbol and a Sorcerer Focus in the other hand until you get Warcaster. Think of something fun to do with the empty hand by then - holding a bouquet of daisies to or whatever. You don't need a maxed attack stat and can pick up fun Feats while remaining relevant in combat.
The option is available for terrible rolled stats, all you need is an 11 and a 13, Hilldwarf will make the rest happen for you.
Warding Bond and Blade Ward are not the be-all end-all answer to all questions. But that's why we picked up Order Cleric to get access to all those level 1 Spells we want for buffing. Leaves our limited Sorcerer options free to pick up Shield, Absorb Elements and utility disengage like Misty Step, just in case someone was under the impression we were the easiest target or something. We can also Dodge + Quicken Blade Ward if something absolutely wants to know how tough we are (Spoiler: We're tougher than the Fighter would be without our help).
Some traps to avoid:
- Twinning Haste every big fight. Dispel Magic or an opponent like a Mindflayer who can incapacitate us (triggering the downsides of Haste on two allies) will really mess us up. Don't screw your mates, just casting Bless instead to pump up their saves can be the best thing to do even at Tier 4.
- Using the Order Cleric Feature on someone who will need their Reaction this turn (i.e. a Rogue about to take a big hit, would be better off to use it for Uncanny Dodge). The best targets for this are usually the Bow/Crossbow wielder in the back or anyone save to regain their Reaction before they need it, which is why we often want to go dead last. Rogues are probably the best target we can ask for overall, but also have a potent and reliable use for their Reaction to begin with.
- Since every buff Spell (costing Spell Slots) "does damage" when cast by an Order Cleric (by triggering a Reaction), non Concentration Buffs like Warding Bond and Aid turn into pretty effective use of your action. With the Sorcerer opening up Twin, Quicken or Extend for more efficient use of Spellslots.
- blowing multiple Spellslots every fight.
- Blade Ward + Healing Word to pick up a downed ally or top off some health + Reaction Attack only takes a single first level Spellsot for a pretty good turn. But don't just throw out Healing Word to top off health or twinned and Extended Spells like candy for 3 rounds of every fight. Casting Bless or just spamming (even low DC) Cantrips might be all the contribution you'll have to bring for easy fights.
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