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[Criptfeind]

I've really only briefly skimmed Tasha's Cauldron, so no surprise if I missed it. What combo allows that?

Never mind lol. I didn't realize magic missle worked like that, but I see now with a quick googling of Jims Tweet on the subject. Kinda cool if you're in a higher powered game.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Someone casting 5th level magic missile on my character was the closest he's ever come to dying. Just the whole health pool, deleted in one turn at the start of a major battle.

[Persus13]

Possibly. Although most games are a LOT lower-level. For sheer "can kill someone much higher-level" effect, the 3.x edition Launch Item (a level 1 version of the cantrip) Can put any object 400 + 40 * level feet away in any direction, with a limit that it weight 10 lbs or less. That puts it into the category of objects that weigh at least 1 lb, where the falling damage was 1D6 for 70 feet, plus d6 per 10 feet after that. The cantrip version had a reduced range and the best I saw was 8 silver for a gargantuan crossbow bolt (4d6 damage), or better with eschew materials feat.

Or the 1st transmuter power (5e) that allows you to turn anything into anything else, including water into purple worm poison. That requires someone be able to coat the team's weapons, but +46 damage per hit is nothing to sneeze at.

Which 5e is this? Because if this D&D, that's not how that ability works at all.

Um.  So... These Tasha's subclasses bring up some... Curious questions. Multiclassing questions.


If I'm reading all these things correctly, and we're using Crawford's intended calculations for Magic Missile, one could potentially (with a horrific 5-way multiclass split)... Gimme a second...

1d4+1, +1d8, +11, x21...

So, between 294 and 504 damage in one turn, no save or attack roll (requires one extra action as setup from a previous turn, but it's okay because it lasts for an hour at a time without concentration and can follow us around where we go).


To one target, and it's fire damage soooo... Yeah 

I'm interested in hearing this actually, although I'm guessing this involves Order of Scribes and Wildfire Druid in some capacity.

[IcyTea31]

x21

Which multiclass combo gives that high multiplier? Did you remember that multipliers work additively, e.g. three 2x multipliers become 4x?

[Kagus]

I'm interested in hearing this actually, although I'm guessing this involves Order of Scribes and Wildfire Druid in some capacity.

Bingo (and good morning, all)!

Dragon sorc (fire) 6/Wildfire druid 6/Scribe wizard 2/Fighter 2/Hexblade warlock 1

Order of operations:

Summon wildfire spirit. Here's where we need that extra action for setup, but as mentioned the spirit lasts for an hour at a time, doesn't take concentration and is capable of movement (flying movement at that). 1 action

Then we use the utterly stupid Hexblade's curse on the target. No roll involved here either. 1 bonus action

We cast Magic Missile using our 9th-level slot, and use our scribe book to change its damage type to fire (requiring us to have recorded Meteor Swarm or similar in the book, which is technically fine according to the rules since we don't need to be able to have exclusively wizard levels for the spell slots of spells we write down in our wizardly book). At 9th level, MM provides 11 missiles. 1 action

Action surge. No action

Using our surged action, we cast Magic Missile again using our next highest slot which is 8th level. 10 more missiles. 1 action


At Wildfire druid level 6, while our wildifire spirit is active we can add +1d8 to one roll of either fire damage or healing amount when casting an appropriate spell (one that heals or does fire damage, namely). The damage of every magic missile is calculated using one roll, according to Crawford, so it applies to the damage of each individual bolt.

Dragon sorc 6 gives a bonus equal to your Charisma modifier to one damage roll of a spell you cast that uses your attuned element. Again, one roll, so the modifier gets applied to every missile (and we can have 20 CHA here, because you don't technically need any more than 13 Wis or Int as far as either the druid or wizard are concerned). That's a +5 damage bonus, per each missile.

Order of scribes 2 gets us our fancy book, which lets us change the damage type of a spell on the fly so long as we have an example of that damage type at the spell level we're casting the spell at. So we need to have scribed 8th and 9th level spells with fire damage in order to get this to work, but beyond that we don't need to cast them and modifying a spell this way doesn't take any other sort of resources. Note that while the description does say that you can only do this when casting wizard spells, that doesn't actually mean anything important for us because we are casting MM as a wizard spell! Our INT doesn't matter in this case, because there are no attack rolls or save DC.

Fighter level 2 is obvious, action surge 4 lyfe.

Hexblade 1 is of course the 1-hit wonder that gives us the utterly stupid Hexblade's curse, a bonus action no-save no-concentration hex where "You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target. The bonus equals your proficiency bonus." There's that damage roll again! And at level 17, we've got a proficiency bonus of +6.


So the damage per missile is 1d4+1(base spell), +1d8(wildfire spirit bonus), +5(dragon sorcerer), +6(Hexblade's curse). And using up a 9th and an 8th level slot for casting MM, we end up with a total of 21 missiles.

Resulting in  1d4+1d8+12 x21 (okay, so it's x11 + x10 since you'll be rolling the d4 and d8 again, so sue me) fire damage with no save and no attack roll.


It's significantly weakened against fire immune monsters, as you'll have to use a different damage type and won't get either the +1d8 or the +5 bonuses in that case. ...and of course the entire thing is instantly and completely blocked by simply reacting with a casting of Shield, but meh 


Finally, something that can compete with the damage potential of Paladins! And at only level 17!

[Egan_BW]

I don't think you'll be able to get a 9th or 8th level fire damage spell with that setup. The calculation for what spells you can learn uses each class separately.

[Kagus]

I don't think you'll be able to get a 9th or 8th level fire damage spell with that setup. The calculation for what spells you can learn uses each class separately.

From Wizard class description:

"Copying a Spell into the book. When you find a wizard spell of 1st level or higher, you can add it to your spellbook if it is of a spell level you can prepare and if you can spare the time to decipher and copy it"

On preparing spells:

"You prepare the list of wizard spells that are available for you to cast. To do so, choose a number of wizard spells from your spellbook equal to your Intelligence modifier + your wizard level (minimum of one spell). The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots"

Via multiclass spell slot calculations, we do in fact have level 8th and 9th spell slots (I *did* make a goof, however... This doesn't work at character level 17 you need 3 more levels of some form of primary caster, but I forgot to write that down because at this point it doesn't really matter which primary caster class that is. Could be more sorc, or druid, or wiz, or even adding in cleric or bard for an even more schizophrenic split), which means we can technically prepare 8th and 9th level spells (even though we may not have any naturally from any of our classes), which in turn means that we can copy such a spell into our spellbook.



EDIT: Shit, go ahead and take at least 2 levels of Tempest cleric, and see if your DM will let you interpret the odd wording of Order of Scribes' element-changing function to rip lightning damage out of Prismatic Wall, and do a Meteor Swarm that rolls 40d6 lightning damage instead of 20d6 fire/20d6 bludgeoning.

Then channel divinity to simply deal max damage of 240

Round out the build with a single level of Bard, with instrument proficiency: Kazoo

[Criptfeind]

Actually reading those quotes I'm not sure if you can prepare 8th and 9th level spells like that. The sticking point seems to be that the order of scribes ability needs the spell in your spell book, and the spell book can only hold spell levels that you can prepare. You can not actually prepare 8th or 9th level spells unless you're actually a level 15th or 17th straight wizard, thus you can't use write them in your book, thus you can't scribe them to be fire?

Possibly you can find a spell book that already has such spells scribed in them and somehow make that your spellbook? that's a fairly common trope, but the rules surrounding it are a bit vague.

[Persus13]

Criptfiend and Egan are correct. The Multiclassing rules state that "You determine what spells you know and can prepare for each class individually, as if you were a single-classed member of that class." And as you yourself said, you can't copy a wizard spell if you can't prepare it.

At best you could cast this at third level by taking three more levels of wizard.

[Kagus]

Yep, I'd missed that part of the multiclassing rules section wording, and Crawford seems to back that interpretation up. S'pose that's why part of the errata was fixing the sidebar from saying "you can add it to your spellbook if it is of a level for which you have spell slots" to "you can add it to your spellbook if it is of a spell level you can prepare". That's good, I was starting to wonder why you wouldn't just take a 1-level dip in wizard to have access to all the utility spells up to and including 9th for multiclassers...

Ah well, so much for beating out Paladin damage potential!

Criptfiend and Egan are correct.

For someone insistent that people make their own interpretations of the rules, you seem rather definitive in this statement 

[Persus13]

Your build idea did make me think that a Tempest Cleric/Scribes Multiclass would be kinda fun actually. I don't know if it would work super well with magic missile, and there's not too many spells that deal thunder/lightning damage, but it seems like a fun alternative to the Tempest/Storm multiclass.

I'm a big fan of people interpreting rules on their own when the rules are vague, especially since there's several rules in the game that explicitly state that (DM being rules arbiter, Adjudicating Simultaneous Effects, etc.). But on a lot of occasions the rules aren't vague, people just haven't read them. And that's fine, especially in a game session when you're more focused on having fun then what page 43 of the PHB says. You said something recently about wanting to have the same experience at multiple tables. In my experience the biggest thing that causes people to expect different things at the table isn't rules being vague, its people not having actually read the rules (or just not remembering them) and going based off how their last DM ran things/how something worked in a previous edition/how a popular streaming show did it.

[Criptfeind]

If you want Kagus, you can drop the druid and sorcerer and just take an evocation wizard anyway, looses 94 damage from the 1d8 but is still at a respectable 254, and that's force damage, which I think at level 20 in a lot of cases you'd rather do 254 force instead of 349 fire.

[Kagus]

Your build idea did make me think that a Tempest Cleric/Scribes Multiclass would be kinda fun actually. I don't know if it would work super well with magic missile, and there's not too many spells that deal thunder/lightning damage, but it seems like a fun alternative to the Tempest/Storm multiclass.

Personally I'm a fan of the Tempest 2/Land druid (mountain) 5 combo, since it's SAD and I've already gone to the trouble of working up a backstory skeleton that explains the multiclass 

But yeah, Tempest Scribe would give considerably more versatility since you could shape that maxed lightning damage into a lot more different forms than just Lightning Bolt's 100x5' line... Plus heavy armor proficiency, and since it's only a 2-level dip you could just pick up some snazzy buffs and utility spells from Cleric and leave Wis at 13 to max out Int.


Currently I'm mostly fiddling with semi-gish tank options. I realized recently that the Eldritch Knight's level 7 "if you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action" works for defensive cantrips like Blade Ward. So just bop into the thick of it, Blade Ward yourself for resistance against piercing/slashing/bludgeoning, and make an attack while you're at it. Stacking resistance on top of some very decent AC from heavy armor + shield + misc. seemed like fun to me, so I decided to roll with the concept and see where it could be taken.

There are a few options that stand out for this, especially with the changes and additions in Tasha's, such as Valor bards, Bladesingers etc... But I'm trying to get the level down as much as possible so that the combo gets online earlier (the original plan was to stack resistance with damage reduction from the heavy armor master feat, but it appears that those don't interact in quite the way I was hoping  ... So that's less interesting and I'm moving on to other pastures). Magic Initiate Paladin looks promising, as does Arcana Cleric.

I'm also toying with the idea of that Gnomish Barbadin for maximum spelltank

If you want Kagus, you can drop the druid and sorcerer and just take an evocation wizard anyway, looses 94 damage from the 1d8 but is still at a respectable 254, and that's force damage, which I think at level 20 in a lot of cases you'd rather do 254 force instead of 349 fire.

Psh, but that's actual play!  We're not interested in "efficacy" or "versatility"! All that matters are biggest numbers

[Persus13]

EK with Blade Ward is pretty fun. Most of the time attacking multiple times is better, but it has its uses, particularly if you're able to block a door way or something.

[Enemy post]

I like the new Pathfinder bundle. Monster ecology has always been my favorite splatbook theme.