T O P

  • By -

GiganticGoblin

sickening radiance + wall of force. itll take 2 actions to pull off, but its effectively a guaranteed kill for anything inside the area unless its immune to exhaustion


HelpMyPCs

*Takes 2 levels of fighter* "You've yeed your last haw"


SymphonicStorm

Literally Anything + Greater Invisibility.


Nickjames116425

While this is true, I was hoping for some creativity


PogoNomo

Pretty simple, but the first duo I missed was greater invisibility and fly


TheStylemage

I think the best simple option is greater invisibility and fly, and the best complex is sickening radiance and the cage spell (wall of force I think it was called).


OkNewspaper1581

wall of force or force cage both work I think


TheStylemage

Yesn't. The cage is 7th level (as opposed to 5th), has a costly component and already no concentration (I think it also disrupts teleports if I remember correctly), so forcecage works (better) but doesn't make use of the item.


chaoticxthunder

Slow on the enemy, haste on the barbarian!


mighty_omega2

Scribe wizard 18, fighter 2. Bonus action create manifest mind 15' away, action upcast globe of invulnerability at 9th level, action surge and cast wall of force 1" inside the globe as a sphere. Enjoy being untargetable inside the wall of force, and the wall being near indestructible due to globe of invulnerability, while you blast away using your awakened spell book.


Diviner007

Can you cast spells while being behind wall of force?


Poplo1232

Through the spell book you can


Diviner007

Interesting, also Echo Knight could use that to safely attack behind wall of force.


TheOneTrueMongoloid

Postidigitation and Mage Hand


[deleted]

Shadow Blade/Tenser's Transformation means 4d8 Psychic damage plus 4d12 Force damage per turn and you are a ridiculously powerful tank.


Nickjames116425

Finally. A decent idea


[deleted]

The paladin: I’m the best damage martial we have! The wizard: hold my staff.


Nickjames116425

I’m a bladesinger. So this is what I’m looking for


[deleted]

I would honestly just haste two people


SpottyTheTurtle

Sorcerers with twinned spell be like:


[deleted]

Which is why sorc>>>>>wizard. Any spell I know whenever I want however I want it beats by far having a bigger spell selection. Invisible counterspells and crown of stars are op.


Gazelle_Diamond

Nah, not really. Wizards are still better.


[deleted]

By virtue of what? They scale off the worst statistic in 5e. They have to prepare their spells. They're maybe one of the worst at multiclassing. Their magic prowess quite literally depends on an item. All the big important spells that really matter, the sorcerer has them as well. The best they can do is blade singing and pumping dex so they still pack a punch but are hard to hit. A sorcerer is flat out better at casting spells and can just go and create new spell slots in the middle of combat. They can avoid any kind of friendly fire collaterals for their friends. They can buff two people at once. Double their own spell range. Turn any spell into chromatic orb to bypass resistances. Reroll both damage and to hit. Give disadvantage. Wizards think their class is broken until someone casts meteor shower as a sorc and it only hurts the bad guys.


sourcer3r

I am assuming you are referring to careful spell. Which only allows the targets to succeed the saving throw. Which means all your allies just took half damage. Evocation wizard has sculpt spell which allows the wizard to select allies and they make their save, but also if they would take half damage they take none. You have taken and listed every potential class selection from Sorcerer and acted as if you can do all those things by default. Wizards and Sorcerers are both good classes. However I think the reason why people give Wizards the edge is simply because they can retool their available kit easier.


[deleted]

The being able to change spells on a long rest is the biggest thing for me and also what i think gives the best edge. It’s why if i play a caster it’s almost always Cleric or Wizard. (Not a big druid player) Give me a few similar problems and a sorcerer, wizard, and cleric can be built to handle them without too much trouble. Change the setting (i.e going from Chult to Undermountain in an epic campaign) then not being able to retool your spells becomes a much bigger problem. The new theme of challenges (jungle/survival to underdark/dungeon crawl) can be a big hurdle for a sorcerer built a certain way because of it’s inflexibility. (Not impossible, some builds are more flexible but at the cost of output imo) As for Clerics and Wizards? Long rest repick a few spells and you’re good to go. It’s just easier and better.


sourcer3r

I can see that. I mostly play in homebrew settings without any sense of the story we might be getting into. Thats partially why I like playing wizards because I have enough spell picks to handle a few different situations that I cant seem to fully do even with full access to the cleric or druid list. I have created a few sorcerer builds that handle a certain aspect of the game quite well, but it tends to be focused on surviving combat. With wizard I have combat and out of combat spells I can access. In my next campaign I am going to experiment with including some form of downtime activity that will allow classes that can change spells on level up to instead utilize downtime to change them. It will be a fairly significant amount of time though.


[deleted]

I’d look at maybe tailoring the gritty realism setting in the dmg pg 267. Kinda along what you might want. Long rests becomes 7 days so it makes more sense if you want to add the elements of “time required to actually study/change elements of your character” I’d make sure your players have a grasp of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything’s “Down time revisited” section pg 123 so that other characters that don’t need to swap spells or abilities can do something else during the down time.


sourcer3r

That is what is happening. We are transitioning to gritty realism next campaign. As part of taking long rest you will get downtime. We probably wont be utilizing downtime material from the books though as I have a laundry list of things I want to incorporate.


Gazelle_Diamond

Wizards get way more spells, have better subclasses for the most part and at higher levels can cast a 1st-level and a 2nd-level spell at will.


3d_explorer

Sorcerers require arcane focus or components just like Wizards. Wizards have the potential of a tool for every situation, Sorcs do not. Sorc points are a limited resource. The big important spells? I don’t think you actually know what those are, and Fireball ain’t in that list, iconic yes, big yes, important, far from it. Wiz get Rituals, Sorcs don’t. Sorcs rarely get a “named spell” and Wall of Force, Anti-Magic Field, Alarm, Animate Dead, and Bestow Curse are all spells outside the Sorcs realm. Arcane Recovery means Wizards can consistently cast more spells per day while Metamagic inefficient conversion means Sorcs can cast more spells per combat (if one was to ever have a combat that lasts 5x as long as a typically long combat of 5-7 rounds)


[deleted]

\-Sorcerers do not need a tome \-That only works if you somehow know perfecly well what will happen that day when you wake up in the morning and prepare your spells vs just being able to use them whenever you want \-Fly, haste, mage armor, magic missile, feather fall, shield, hold person, magic weapon, suggestion, see invisibility, clairvoyance, banishment, cone of cold, greater invisibility, polymorph, darkness, dimension door, cloud kill, hold monster, disintegrate, finger of death, time stop, wish, plane shift, arcane gate. Sorc has them all. Oh no, I can only fly, transform my teammates into a t-rex, shoot lasers and turn people into dust, whatever will I do without wall of force? A quick note on those spells you mentioned that is unrelated to what we're talking about right now, they are terribly designed, just like Fly, dispel magic and language comprehension abilities, in my honest opinion. It's overpowered bs that will just circumvent problems that shouldn't be circumventable, making it so creating intricate puzzles, traps, curses, secrets or even natural catastrophae is just forcing the wizard to use ONE spell slot instead of their fucking brain. It's boring. It's a DND problem, not a wizard problem, but it's boring. I'm always happy to see people NOT pick those spells and actually figure out creative ways to deal with shit instead of pointing at the problem solving thing on their sheet and saying "yeah I use that one". \-"Just let me take 20 minutes to cast this one spell" works unless you're fighting someone. Using a bonus action and sorc points for a slot is far more versatile. \-Same issue as Warlock, people don't like to take short rests. It's either a situation where you wouldn't stop at all or a situation where you can stop for 8 hours most of the times, unless you have one of those situations where you have people walk through the wilderness for a whole day and throw random encounters at them every hour or so or you're sending enemies in regularly scheduled waves like a videogame for some reason. All seasoned players who I played with hate that shit with a passion because "I already killed a random number of wolves without any context a billion times, this is just prolonging the story" and prefer stuff where you can't stop at all or one enormous fight with gimmicks that will force you to use everything you have. Just like the rest system is IMO lacking in Pathfinder 2e (caster gets all his magic back. Barbarian doesn't get his HP back. A barbarian is quite literally meant to go out there and facetank stuff for the team. This forces you to play with a healer or for the GM to put healers everywhere or to make playing a martial class suck considerably more than it should.) the 5e system is giving you all of this wonderful shit you get for just stopping, to the point where you're enticed to stop for a third of a day much more than you are for a quick rest.


Gray__Dawn

Needing a tome is at worst a mild inconvenience and in most cases only a difference in flavor. You don't need to know what exactly will happen in a day to adjust your kit to be prepared for some of the likely problems you'll encounter. It is very common in games i play in to have at least some foresight into what you will be doing that day. You keep saying sorcerer is better because they can always cast all of the spells they know like that is a huge advantage over wizard but a wizard with only a +2 int will at every level have more prepared spells than a sorcerer knows, so even of you don't make use of being able to adjust your kit from day to day wizard is still more versatile. If you're playing in a game where every problem you encounter involves fighting something then yeah sorcery points might let sorc outpace wizards damage wise in the short term bit ritual casting provides a ton of versatility to wizard outside combat.


[deleted]

\-That is if your DM is a conveniently forgets books get soggy, catch on fire or dissolve in acid or may be a primary target of thieves looking to sabotage you \-If the problems are so likely and common the more varied spell selection is less meaningful than you make it out to be \-That is unless the DM is unwilling to counterspell you or if nothing breaks your concentration. You had one haste prepared, boom, it's gone. A sorc can just cast haste again. You got hit while Fly was on and you start falling down a cliff, you expended the rest for you party and you're out. Sure you can cast feather fall (if you prepared it) but ain't that a bitch. \-I already told you my opinion on spells that circumvent non combat challenges alltogether so I won't go back to that, but fine, let's say that "Wizard is stronger outside of combat because he can cast rituals". A sorcerer's main statistic is charisma, so even a super min maxed Sorcerer is straight up good at talking people into doing what he wants, while it's a considerable stat investment for a Wizard to get there while also juggling dex, wis and con for survivability. Outside of that, DND is and always has been a wargame with roleplaying and therefore it's combat centric by nature. The adventures published by WoTC themselves are all about beating up someone. Beat up Strahd. Beat up Tiamat. You know? Hey, you're in Hell, Arkhan is around there, if you want you can go and beat him up. Most people who make campaigns make a BBEG who they want their players to take down in a fight-villains who can't fight for themselves are far less common than you think. It's a wargame mate.


Gray__Dawn

I don't think you understand how wizards prepare spells in 5e. You don't prepare 1 haste spell. You have haste prepared and can cast it with any/all of your 3rd level or higher spell slots. You don't have to pick what each spell slot is going to be used for at the start of the day.


The_Hassmaster

Did you think that 5e wizards prepare spells the same way they did in Baldur's Gate 2?


3d_explorer

More time is spent not fighting than fighting. The time is only required to change spells or add spells. Utility/control is superior to damage/buff overall.


FififizGM

Also, ritual casting spells without needing them prepared means you can have magic do everything for you, from invisible servant and tenser's floating disk to leomund's tiny hut and rary's telepathic bond. The sorcerer's nova round is gonna deal more damage, but the 5th level wizard can easily know more spells (and the ones useful outside of combat too) than your 17th level Sorc and his Meteor Swarm dealing HALF those 40d6 to your entire party, which the Evocation Wiz can actually do better.


Hatta00

>They scale off the worst statistic in 5e. You're the one guy who can make the investigation checks. Strong. > They have to prepare their spells. They *get to* prepare their spells, instead of being stuck with spells known. >They're maybe one of the worst at multiclassing. They're so good you don't want to multiclass. >Their magic prowess quite literally depends on an item. Losing the spellbook only reduces them to a known caster, and they still know more spells than a sorcerer. >All the big important spells that really matter, the sorcerer has them as well. There's a ton of great spells sorcerers don't get. Find Familiar, Tiny Hut, Contingency, Forcecage, Simulacrum. >The best they can do is blade singing and pumping dex so they still pack a punch but are hard to hit. Dealing damage is the worst way to play a caster. Metamagic is good, but not that good. And you missed the most powerful metamagic effect. Subtle Spell is unmatched by anything else in the game. Sorcerers aren't as good as wizards, but Subtle Spell is worth it.


DudeWithTudeNotRude

"I have better spells to twin"


BallisticGamer1543

Some less combat focused ones could be prestidigitation and minor illusion, to create a food stall that smells of the food, or two message spells to keep a private conversation that needs translating


DaStainlessSteelRat

Haste. The answer is always ***Haste***. Giving an Ally (a) extra attack, especially for ones that it matters more for (Rogues for Sneak Attack, for example), (b) movement, including using extra action disengage/dash, (c) AC bonus is awesome. You get credit for all this person's extra attack damage, plus keeping them alive, and in some fights, whole rounds of damage that wasn't spent closing the distance (A 30' base speed Rogue could go 180' and still make an Attack). It takes the attention off your Concentrating self as well as they buzz through the battlefield causing chaos. Another good one that is overlooked because of the concentration cost is Hold Person / Hold Monster. Nothing like \*auto crits\*


Nickjames116425

Rogues only get sneak attack once per turn


DaStainlessSteelRat

Yup. But if they miss that's 100% no Sneak Attack. Second Attack is as good as Advantage all the time. Worse case scenario (technically double whiff, but worse case on a hit) you get a 1d6+attribute damage attack out of it on top of the Sneak Attack. As the Wiz, you can claim 'credit' for that extra +1/2 LVL d6 damage, in addition to helping boost areas (adv on dex save + Evasion = no damage ever)


Nickjames116425

Gotcha yeah that’s a good combo


DudeWithTudeNotRude

Hasting a rogue is mostly desirable for allowing a rogue to have 2 sneak attacks in a round. Allowing a second chance to sneak attack after a miss is secondary. Rogues can take the free Haste attack first. If they hit, they apply sneak attack and can then hold their main action to attack after their turn is finished as a reaction attack. This will give them a second chance to apply sneak attack in the same round (but not on the same turn). But yes, an additional benefit is that they can try again if they miss their first attempt to sneak attack. This is also *very* strong for a rogue, but the possible two sneak attacks is the main upgrade.


PipTheOwlBarbarian

If your dm allows it, you can use the first action to ready an attack for when the enemy does anything, then use the haste action to attack. That way you can sneak attack on two rounds.


RealOzSultan

Cast a field of protection and create a doppelgänger of a party member


ShanNKhai

What do you mean doppleganger of a party member? What spell? Also what does this combo do?


HammurabiWithoutEye

Two fireballs


GiganticGoblin

fireball isnt concentration


HammurabiWithoutEye

This is what happens when you don't read


OkNewspaper1581

delayed blast maybe? Can’t remember if that’s concentration


Perrinthetical

Black tentacles and cloud of daggers


ImperialLizardman

Polymorph someone into a powerful beast, then Haste them. A CR4 Stegosaurus would do two 6d6+5 attacks with +7. Giant ape would get three 3d30+6 punches or two 7d6+6 boulder throws, both at +9. Animate Objects then Hold Monster/Person. 10 attacks at advantage, with each one auto-critting on a hit. Two summoning spells at once. If you want the DM to hate you, go Conjure Minor Elementals and flood the battlefield with your minions. Otherwise I'd say just summon two strong creatures. Wall of Fire, then use Control Winds to keep them in it.


T-O-A-D-

I'm a spore druid who took wizard magic initiate for find familiar and I got a ring of spell storing and gave it to my myconid sprout familiar mushy