Kaladin Stormblessed - D&D: Optimized #31

[Music] you guys hi how's it going i feel like it's been a long time since i've done uh like a usual weekly build episode and it hasn't it's only been a week but there's been so much else going on in the channel as you well know um and so i'm so excited to just get back to the bread and butter today and do another build so anyway welcome to dnd optimized this is the place where we like to take a look at a character one or maybe two do a deep dive on them for dungeons and dragons 5e and crunch numbers and theorycraft and find synergies and ultimately just try to create powerful awesome fun characters to play so if you enjoy character creation in dungeons and dragons almost as much as you enjoy playing the actual game then welcome home and we are so happy to have you my name is colby and i will be your host the channel has been returned to me after a a brief hiatus trapped in the dungeon of uh my my dungeon mistress anyway happy to have you welcome so i have a few things that i need to mention before we jump in today um first of all i apologize for not being able to respond to all of the comments that i've been getting in the videos lately i've kind of recently realized that just looking at the comments that youtube highlights for me um does not actually show me all of the comments that are being made in the videos and um especially after a couple of days go by after i've posted something and so i've kind of gone back to a couple of videos from a few weeks ago and realized oh man there's all these comments here that i haven't even seen and didn't even know were there and the reality is i'm probably not going to be able to get to all the comments and and i feel bad for that because i i do like interacting with you guys and i don't want you to think that i'm not hearing you or ignoring you i do my best to read them all but thank you for understanding and patience um if if i'm not getting to to something that you've asked about second announcement um do be aware that um in every episode i like to post uh spreadsheets and graphs and things showing you what the numbers look like for this particular build and also comparing them to others other builds with the same sort of role in game um a lot of people don't realize that i think you look in the video description and you'll see links to the math and the graphs and hopefully that's a useful tool for you be aware of our subreddit um we're building a nice little community there and it's been a great way to sort of for people to interact with each other um i do try to read all of the threads there i don't get to all of them as far as comments go but i love to see all the interaction and people sort of bouncing ideas off of each other and looking for feedback and stuff which is awesome let's keep that up i now have apparently a tick tock account um thanks largely to preston who started it for me and then mr rogers who's kind of managing it now so be on the lookout for that and thanks for following and uh liking the videos and stuff and then finally i have a favor to ask of you guys so as many of you know i am a big fan of taking a custom lineage race and calling myself a custom l for a half elf and thereby qualifying uh my character for an elven accuracy feat i don't do it in every build i've done it in a lot particularly obviously since tasha's came out um i know that some of you very loudly uh think that this is not permissible according to rules as written and i think you have a valid argument it is something that we allow at our table it is something that as far as i can tell the d d community is very divided on and also as far as i know wizards of the coast has not given an official response on yet here's what i'm asking if you guys would be so kind uh take a moment and send a tweet to jeremy crawford and asked him you know can can the custom lineage racial you know race or racial option or whatever qualify me for feats with racial prerequisites however you want to word that right i'm hoping that we can get an official response from wizards and tell you what if he responds and says no that's not as it you know not as intended whatever i will be happy to eat crow and you know redact all of my previous i'm not going to take the videos down but i'll i'll make a full admission of of guilt and overreach i'm personally pretty confident that um it's just a matter of time before they unshackle feats from racial prerequisites but again i could be wrong and ultimately i just want to know i just want an answer right so we don't have to keep having this debate uh in the comments and um and and frankly for my own knowledge and well-being you know going forward creating builds um creating characters that i'm actually going to end up playing in game all those kinds of things so maybe if we can get enough people bugging him about it he'll actually give us a ruling and uh we can put the issue to rest um okay on to the episode as many of you know i am a big fan of brandon sanderson's books um he might be my my favorite contemporary fantasy author um i suppose along with patrick rothfuss and george r r martin but he has the the significant advantage of being a very prolific writer who releases several books a year as opposed to one book every several years like those other two favorites um i think of all of his books the stormlight archive is his best series and in fact i think he would agree and he's gone on record as as saying as much um and and so i've had a lot of people request builds based on um fantasy characters or you know fictional characters whether from tv or you know movies or books and things like that and obviously thus far i've largely refrained from doing something like that for my own personal reasons which maybe i'll get to in the final thoughts of this particular episode needless to say it's not something that i've done yet however the demand has increased it seems like of late in fact we even talked about it yesterday in the um in the q a video uh that we had a lot of fun putting together for you guys um and the the most commonly requested uh you know make a character based on something from on a character from fiction do an episode on a character from fiction uh the most common has been from the stormlight archive and it happens to coincide with the character um who i've sort of been most interested in trying to replicate in dungeons and dragons namely kaladin storm blessed um who is sort of the main character in the series at least one of the main characters i would say basically the main character um so that's what we're going to do today episode 31 uh caledon storm blessed um now if you haven't read the books yet i would ask that you indulge me and i thank you for doing so uh you might not be interested you might not be aware of who this character is and um let me just say that i think the character concept is a pretty interesting one and we actually the results are um are surprising to me they're they're good um the character despite the constraints we put on ourselves um ends up being pretty powerful and i think would be fun to play in game um so i hope that you still enjoy and will be willing to to give this a try for everybody else who is a fan of the books and potentially really excited about this i guess you're welcome but know that there are some major spoilers at least up through book two the end of book two of the stormlight archive in what i'm gonna talk about today and even some minor spoilers through the end of book four which is the most recent in the series um so you've you've had that warning um and we can proceed the challenge with trying to force a character that exists outside of dungeons and dragons to sort of conform to the rules of the game right is that it often feels like you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole to me that problem is exacerbated by the fact that i'm not i'm not super interested in just making a character that fits a theme as those who have been watching for a while know right i also want to make make sure that they're really powerful right so so working with self-imposed restrictions is great so long as the character can both be on point thematically but also be at least viable if not you know more than viable and better than average as far as how they perform in game in combat of course especially um so to that end i'm going to do something similar today um to the anti-mage build that i did a couple of weeks ago i have a checklist of things that uh caledon's character from the book must have i think if we're going to try to sort of recreate him in d you know skills abilities spells powers that kind of thing um but similar to the sorcerer with the magic touch episode um i i i don't want to allow um powers and abilities that the character himself doesn't display in the books i'm going to be pretty strict with myself and saying look if if kaladin the character caledon in the books can't cast fireball this character can't cast fireball right um but of course all while also trying to optimize him for fantastic damage because he's one of the most powerful characters in this world of rochar that brandon sanderson has created right so so just to sort of check off the boxes of things that he should be able to do to me is insufficient um because maybe the number one box is he's really awesome and powerful and so he needs to be that too right he needs to be very effective in combat um so again the priority will be getting his abilities first make sure that we check those boxes but then optimize uh his his damage essentially uh in in combat in game uh so here's the checklist um first as i mentioned he has to have amazing martial prowess mostly with the spear he's notoriously talented fighting with a spear but he should also be able to eventually at least be able to use a greatsword as well i would say i guess you could say a long sword but to me greatsword fits a little better he needs to be able to fly sorry that was number two he needs to be able to manipulate gravity in several ways usually by touching a thing and then essentially changing the the way that gravity affects the thing making it float or shoot or stick to the ground right and or being able to make other people fly or get stuck right so it's sort of gravity manipulation is the way that i would phrase it for those who are unfamiliar with the magic system of this world and lashings and stormlight and all that stuff he needs to have a a little uh fairy-like companion um her name is sil and think of her for those unfamiliar as almost like a little tinkerbell she's a windspring and she is his companion and she talks to him and she doesn't really do much other than interact with him um well okay fine that's debatable we'll we'll get into it but anyway he needs to be able to summon a weapon at will into his hand he needs to be able to heal himself not others that's that's for different characters in the book but he can at least heal himself um he needs to be able to to to be lit up to light or glow that's kind of an important aspect of things that happen when he is sort of using magic uh in the books right uh when he's breathing in storm light and holding storm light um and and that's it that's my list i'm not gonna get into too much into like his personality what his personality should be like um you know yes he's a protector yes he's a leader that's for you to role play so that's our checklist um just a quick note before we jump into level one stay tuned at the end of the build i'm gonna go into final thoughts and kind of give an alternative to the build that i'm going to come up with now that is fairly different it's more tanky it's less damage but i think it would it would work just as well and you might prefer it to the the one that i'm going to get into so let's jump into the build at level one you know the biggest challenge that i had is knowing where to start with this character there were several options but we are actually going to start off with sorcerer surprising probably quite a few of you uh it will make sense eventually just trust me the main reason that we start with sorcerer really is because as opposed to picking it up later is because um sorcerers are proficient in constitution saving throws and i really like that um we're going to we're going to want that for sure later um so yeah we're going to start with sorcerer as for race um we're going variant human don't get upset with me he is a human and so what else can i do i could take a regular human but why go regular human when you can get a free feet um so for our free feet we are going to take polar master and that's great for us super on point as i mentioned kaladin is always fighting with a spear and the polar master feed benefits when you're using a spear or a bunch of other weapons to make an attack you can as a bonus action um make a an attack with sort of the blunt end or the butt of the spear as well it's it's only a d4 of damage instead of you know the d8 that the spear will be giving us because um side note spears are versatile meaning that you can use them in one hand and that's a d6 of damage or two hands for a d8 of damage i'm assuming two hands for a d8 that's how caledon fights he doesn't really use a shield when he's fighting in the book so that's what we're going to do anyway polar master is fantastic it has some other benefits as well but for our purposes the the most important one is that you also can make an attack of opportunity on someone when they first enter your space which is nice it will actually end up giving you a lot of free attacks on on your enemies and so yeah polar master as far as ability scores go i'm assuming point by as usual you're going to want to take a 15 dexterity plus one as a variant human you get plus one in two ability scores right so dexterity plus one for 16 um charisma of 15 plus one and then a 14 constitution for hit points and your constitution and concentration saving throws and then whatever else you want in your other ability scores equipment okay this is a little tough we're going to be proficient eventually with medium armor and with shields but kaladin doesn't really ever use medium armor or any armor for that matter or shields in the books maybe until the very end of book four um and in a couple of other rare instances um but instead he's always just wearing a uniform his bridge four uniform and he fights in that right how can you arguably send you know create a frontline character and send them into combat um for melee fighting without a lot of armor i will admit that this is the the biggest potential weakness i think of this character is they are a little squishy um let's be aware of that going into this and and go go in you know with eyes wide open we're gonna find ways to help augment that through some spells and through some other abilities and things but um just just be aware and that's something that we're going to want to sort of plan for and um be careful about but so as far as equipment goes really all you need is a spear and you know your other necessities um sorceress origin so at level one sorcerers get their subclass their sorceress origin and this is actually another main reason why i wanted to take a level in sorcerer because you can't very well be storm blessed if you're not a storm sourcer right or a tempest cleric or something i guess but it makes more sense to to go storm sorcerer for us this is so this is perfect thematically but also we get a little tempestuous magic feature that's nice um it lets you fly so check the box uh lets you fly 10 feet without taking an opportunity attack when you cast a first level spell so you're not going to be doing that a ton but it will be kind of nice and cool and also a way to potentially either get you into combat or you know get you safely away from the front lines if need be um without taking an opportunity attack speaking of spells there are a few um that we that we really want um and and that motivated me to take a sorcerer level here as well so thematically they're just really great for us um cantrips first of all the gust can trip um i think it can push things to sort of simulate lashing you know and that sort of gravity control that we talked about um the light can trip is important for us to simulate the way that kaladin glows when he when he's holding power when he breathes in storm light right um i and you know you'd probably have to cast it on yourself to really kind of simulate how it works in the book um i really like the dancing lights cantrip for sil it lets you create up to four but it can be just one if you want uh sort of glowing orbs or you could probably flavor it as like a ribbon like so often looks in in the books right um and you know you create this light it dances it flits around um the the downside there is it only lasts a minute instead of sort of permanent as sil should probably be but since it's a cantrip you can kind of just cast it whenever you want as long as you've got an action free right um so yeah i like that for so there's another option that we'll look at as well though for sale um let's see yeah unfortunately we only get two cantrips so um pick your favorites uh but then as far as first level spells that we get as a sorcerer um the really important one for me here is catapult so the way catapult works is as an action you infuse something with stormlight essentially you you touch it and then you essentially make it fly up to 90 feet in a straight line in any direction you choose as though you had manipulated gravity and now it's falling you know that way or that way instead of down like most things normally fall um that's great it if it hits something it does 3d8 of damage which is actually not bad for a first level spell and at first the object can only weigh up to five pounds but you can upcast it for an additional five pounds per spell level and an extra d8 of damage per spell level so it's pretty it's a pretty good range damage option for us actually um featherfall is another great first level spell it lets you fall safely to the ground from you know on high simulating putting like a half lashing on yourself or whatever to let you drop slowly without hurting yourself and and by the way i apologize i'm probably going to screw up the the terminology of the different lashings in the book and um they sometimes escape my memory exactly what the what the what the nomenclature the correct terminology is but um forgive me for that for for those of you who are big fans of the books anyway um you can with uh with featherfall you can do the same to others which is actually really great um you know infuse them with stormlight and let them fall safely just know that of course kaladin would probably have to touch the person falling uh instead of casting it at a 60-foot range like you know the spell says we can do as it's written at level two we are going warlock and we're going warlock for most of the rest of this character's life um some of us might have to broaden our paradigm on what it means to be a warlock it's not necessarily evil or dark right what it means is that we have made a pact or an oath with an otherworldly being and kaladin absolutely makes a pact with an otherworldly creature and it is where all of his power comes from right that creature is the spren named sil and i think of all of the character classes for this reason alone it makes the most sense to to call khaled in a warlock um now as for who your otherworldly patron is we're gonna go hexblade and just so you know i have not okay i have done one hex blade in any character build for the last four months so if any of you guys give me crap about it i'm gonna reach through the internet and we'll smack you um all right so hexblade is fantastic here because first of all both the hex blade and later pact of the blade are the absolute best option for kaladin thematically and for damage we'll get into it in a second don't worry i'm not taking darkness and devil sight all right now as a hex blade we get the hex warrior feature it gives us the ability to use charisma as our attack stat and it makes a it makes a lot more sense than strength i think for the spear since caledon was never really described as a particularly strong character he was agile and quick but he also has a very strong personality he's a great leader sometimes it just feels like he wills his way to victory um so i think charisma is is a really good uh you know thing to call how he's making his attacks here of course we also get uh hexblade's curse as as a hex blade basically once per short rest we can put our hex blades curse on a target and then against that target until they die every time we hit them we get to add our proficiency bonus in damage which um is really nice i think you know i'm fine to to allow this you know we flavored it as kaladin just being hyper focused on his target on his opponent he's very often facing off in single combat against you know a very powerful opponent whether it be amaram or zeth or whatever the nice thing about this too is that when you finish off your target you get to self-heal so that's on our checklist we can check that box as far as spells go the one that i want to mention in particular is unseen servant i think that this makes a nice a nice substitute for sil if dancing lights just doesn't do it for you in the books sill often doesn't show herself to anyone but kaladin so it makes sense that the servant would be invisible as the spell description says and it doesn't really attack or do anything so really doesn't ever help khaled and out in combat other than become his weapon of course um but uh you know the the downside with unseen servant is it only lasts an hour um so ultimately find familiar might be a better option here the problem with find familiar is it's a wizard spell and i don't want to take any wizard levels and i don't want to sacrifice any feats in order to get it but if you really feel like you just have to do that in order to to replicate your sill you know go for it um that you know the thing is like i said so doesn't really help caledon in combat much at all and so it's very possible that you could just talk with your dm and say look like i want to have this little companion that basically just interacts with me and nobody else can really see her they probably think i'm crazy right um and she just kind of floats around and we interact and communicate but but she doesn't give me any like in-game advantage so would you be okay with that flavor-wise and i would think that they probably would be but anyway do what you have to do there i've given you a few options as for other spells um we do all hex blades get access to the shield spell which is great it doesn't count against our known warlock spells we just get it automatically and i would be okay with using this as a reaction it essentially lets you raise your armor class by five potentially causing an attack to miss and then your armor class stays at that level until your turn um you know i'd be okay with it i think you know you can flavor it as kaladin just causing an attack to miss due to his supernatural speed or maybe even putting a lashing on an enemy as they're making attack at him or on their weapon or something like that so yeah i think it's fine lightning lure might work if you can flavor it as more of a sort of a lashing that you're somehow using to pull a target towards you instead of a whip made of lightning like the spell description says it pulls a target towards you and does some damage to him i don't know that might be stretching a little i might not use it i don't think but it's an option for you expeditious retreat is the last one that i'll that i'll mention here um it makes you move more quickly i think that's that's probably fair game uh it lets you dash as a bonus action anyway um the rest of the spells to me don't really feel like they mesh much with the windrunner's abilities windrunner being the class of knight radiant that kaladin belongs to call it a subclass all right at level three you are a warlock ii and warlocks at level 2 get eldritch invocations and they're just special cool little abilities that are unique to warlocks we get two eldritch implications right now and the two that i would recommend are armor of shadows this lets you cast mage armor on yourself at will without spending a spell slot or material components and mage armored basically just puts your armor class at a 13 if you're not wearing any armor so this is great for us it really helps up until now our our armor class has only been a 13 so now it's a 16 with our dex bonus not amazing but not terrible right um we can get by with that especially with help from shield shield spell and stuff and yeah i i'm fine i can live with with major armor kaladin is often using his his martial prowess and help from his stormlight infused abilities to avoid you know getting hit in combat and things and i i just look at mage armor in that same way uh fiendish vigor is another invocation that um is great that we can kind of use to simulate self-healing uh it lets us cast the false life spell on ourselves at will without expending a spell slot which basically lets us take on some temporary hit points not exactly healing but it's close enough in my book right to sort of bolster our defenses and in in combat and sort of heal ourselves as it were or make ourselves more durable thanks to the stormlight that we are infused with um at level four you are a warlock iii and we get our packed boon and as i already alluded to um we want for our packed boon the pact of the blade i think this is the best simulation of summoning a shard blade or a or a shardspear or i guess a sill blade as he tends to call it in the book um you know where sil essentially becomes his weapon um it's it's one of the things that most convinced me that we needed to go with a warlock a hex blade warlock um we're told from pack to the blade you can use your action to create a packed weapon in your empty hand you can choose the form that this melee weapon takes each time you create it and as we know uh cal sometimes he'll summon a spear sometimes it will be a huge sword sometimes even a little dagger and any other form of summoning a weapon in d d rules that i could find anyway didn't give us quite the same degree of versatility that pact of the blade gives us [Music] because you know again it lets you it lets you just decide what form the weapon takes when you summon it in your hand right eldritch knights can bond with a weapon and then summon that specific weapon into their hand but they don't get to choose what form it takes it's just one weapon you know so there's there's things like that but i think pact of the blade most closely imitates the way kaladin can summon weapons into his hand in the book so anyway um the nice thing about having pact of the blade also is that from a numbers perspective anyway it lets us take as an invocation uh improved packed weapon which makes that weapon that we summon a plus one weapon to hit and to damage um and yes you can summon a great sword here if you wanted uh and now it could count sorry as your hex played weapon um and you could use charisma to attack with it but just keep in mind that you'd be doing less damage overall even though it's a great sword as a 2d6 because we have the polar master feet and you know with a spear we we get that bonus action attack uh with the blunt end of the spear and it just ends up being more damage overall to fight with the spear and frankly caledon is more comfortable with the spear generally speaking throughout the book so it makes sense to keep to keep going spear we get second level spells at this level and i'll mention a couple here that we might be able to work with so hold person lets you paralyze a humanoid if they fail a wisdom save meaning if they're paralyzed attacks against them have advantage and any attacks that land automatically crit so it's potentially a very powerful spell i think you can you know flavor it as you sort of infusing the character with with storm light and causing them to stick to a wall or maybe stick to the ground or something like that right again it can be great for both control and burst damage if you're going to though rely on hold person and use it regularly i would probably consider taking a couple more levels in sorcerer at some point anyway if not early on because then you'd get meta magic and you could take the quicken spell option from metamagic and then cast whole person as a bonus action instead of as an action and then you could make your attacks at least your regular action attacks uh in that same turn and take advantage of having advantage and if you hit it crits otherwise you might cast hold person as an action on your turn and then on the enemy's turn they would get a chance to make a saving throw and potentially get out of being paralyzed and it didn't benefit you a lot other than controlling them for a round right so anyway that's if you're going to use hold person the only other spell that i'll mention here is spider climb it lets you move along vertical surfaces and even even along ceilings just as though you had lashed yourself to a wall or or i mean i guess done done a lashing to make the wall down or the ceiling down for that matter uh as windrunners and zeth often do when they're fighting in combat right at level five you are a warlock four and we get our first ability score increase or feet i would recommend bumping our charisma since it's what we use for attacking as well as for our spells so now your charisma would be an 18. at level six we are a warlock five and we get an additional invocation so now we can have up to three invocations and i definitely recommend taking the thirsting blade invocation here we couldn't get it until level five um but basically it lets us get two attacks on our turn uh just as though we had gotten the extra attack feature from you know one of the martial classes um and so now we get three attacks on our turn right when we take the attack action we get sharp end of the spear sharp end of the spear and then you get your butt action um which is our favorite action so uh we also get uh third level spells and i will mention two first and foremost fly obviously so check that box we can fly now um and that's very important to any self-respecting windrunner and we get spirit shroud i'm gonna allow this spell and i'll explain why so spirit shroud as a bonus action you cast it it requires your concentration and then um you supposedly call call forth spirits of the dead which flit around you for the spells duration i think we can flavor this as wind spread so they're not they're not spirits of the dead they're wind spread they flit around you in combat and you know this this happens at several key moments in the book um caledon gets surrounded by lots of wind spread that seem to come to his aid they encourage him they help him um and and by the end of the book actually by the end of book four that is uh that's a sort of almost on-demand feature um minor spoiler so anyway it lets you add a d8 of radiant damage to each attack that you make um and it also slows down your enemies within 10 feet of you almost as though they were buffeted by strong winds or kind of they have like a half lashing on them or something um to keep them from you know moving the way that they want to move uh every two levels that you up cast spirit shroud does an extra d8 of damage per hit so as a fifth level spell it would do 2d8 for example um all right let's do our first damage report so assuming that we get three attacks in a turn um and we're using both hands to make those spear attacks right which we are because it's versatile uh and the spear gets is a plus one because of our uh improved packed weapon we have an 18 charisma and you're using spirit shroud um and your target is is affected by a hex blade's curse i know that's not sustainable right i know that that's only one target per short rest i'm just i'm trying to show sort of what our caledon can do when he is fully infused in with stormlight and attacking in full force um against an enemy with an armor class of 10 you would be averaging 49 damage per round and against an enemy with an armor class of 15 it would be 37 damage per round not bad not bad at all granted this is only on your cursed target otherwise your dpr is going to be about six less per turn at this level which is still pretty respectable so at level seven um you know at this point i feel like we've really checked all of the boxes that were on our checklist as far as the the powers that kaladin has and needs in order to you know represent his character as written in the books um so you've kind of got your core you've got your core paladin the question from here is you know what can we do to make him hit harder and still stay within the limits that we've set for ourselves and stay true to the character i think we stay with warlock and that will become apparent as we go so we are a warlock six at hexblade level six you get a feature called a cursed spectre but sadly i i don't think we can use it um you kill someone and then you raise a spectre from its corpse to fight alongside you and i just can't find a good way to justify that being something that caledon could and would do maybe you disagree if so let me know and give me your explanation you do also get another invocation at this level which is great uh eldritch mind is a favorite it gives you advantage on your saves to maintain concentration and we've got proficiency in constitution saves now we get advantage too uh and that's great we're using a lot of concentration spells spirit child obviously but others as well fly and all those so that's a big help and i don't know why it wouldn't work for kyle kaladin to be super focused and you know have that advantage it doesn't seem outside of the realm of sort of the limits that we've set for ourselves so um at level nine you are a warlock eight and we get another ability score increase or feet and that is most welcome i say we bump our charisma again and cap it at 20. so now uh yeah that is that is really good for us so damage report uh not much has changed since level six and our last damage report just one more charisma well one more plus to our charisma bonus and uh our charisma our proficiency bonus went up which helps our exploits curse as well but so anyway assuming our target is cursed uh and they have a 10 armor class we are doing 55 damage per round on average and against a 16 armor class character we are doing 44 damage per round so um we plateaued a little bit but we're gonna get some bumps at level 10 we're a warlock nine and we get yet another invocation and we have got a perfect one um ascendant step uh it was not available to us until level nine or we would have taken it sooner but it lets us cast levitate on ourselves at will without expending a spell slot or material components it's not exactly at will flying well it is but you can only go 20 feet high into the air um you know it's totally on point it's it's it's a it's a it's a poor man's fly spell um that really can be super useful in a lot of situations and simulate the way that kaladin often will hover uh both in and out of combat it just looks really cool so that is perfect for us also we get fifth level warlock spells and i can see a couple that you might want to consider hold monster is essentially the same as whole person but it works on non-humanoids now as well so again i think if you flavor it as you know sticking somebody to a wall or to the ground it could it could work um if uh oh and and there is then another really interesting one um that's great for rp if nothing else so contact other plane um as written this spell says that you essentially contact a demigod and ask it up to five yes or no questions um you have to make an intelligence check and if you fail it you are insane until you finish a long rest um and you don't have a very high intelligence score most likely so use at your own risk but i could totally see this being similar to times in the book when caledon speaks with the storm father right um as you all know if you're fans of the book um the storm father is a splinter essentially of honor and honor is the being that until recently most rosharens worshipped as the almighty so the storm father is 100 percent a demigod and and works perfectly here um keep in mind this works as a ritual spell so it doesn't require a spell slot if you've got 10 minutes to cast it and um you know you could really wait until night until you're done with your day's battle go out into the high storm and you know cast this ritual spell and try to converse with the storm father and if you fail your intelligence check and you go insane then you just go to bed and hope you don't get ambushed uh until morning and then you'll wake up sane again um ultimately i'm assuming that we're going to be using our fifth level spell slots to upcast spirit shroud so that every attack now will do 2d8 on hit um at level 11 we are we are a warlock 10. uh and hex blades get a cool feature called armor of hexes it's very nice for our survivability if our cursed target hits us with an attack we can use our reaction so you can't if you can't use shield spell and this you kind of have to choose right but especially if you don't have spell slots or if shield spell isn't going to get you there maybe they crit you we can use our reaction roll a d6 and if you get a 4 or higher so 50 chance the attack misses regardless of what the attack roll was which is really great again especially on those critical hits um i don't know why we couldn't use this right kaladin can be hard to pin down in a fight um he's he's squirrely and he's very resistant to damage and all of those things so um that's great for us level 12 we're a warlock 11 and we finally get a third level spell slot uh up until now we've still only had two warlock spell slots fortunately we've had some sorcerer spell slots um for shield and catapult and things and of course you know since we are a warlock our spell slots reset the warlock spell slots reset on a short rest but still it's nice to have three we also get our first mystic arc our condom arcanum our condom this basically lets you take a sixth level warlock spell and cast it once per long rest without expending a spell slot which is a good thing because from here on out our our spell slots cap at fifth level so we don't have any sixth level we spell slots right so basically it's like other casters who get one six level spell slot once per day um until very late game i guess the only one i can really see working the only six level spell i can really see working within our character restrictions here is investiture of the wind um it requires concentration and for 10 minutes ranged weapon attacks have disadvantage on you very similar to when caledon's doing his bridge runs and somehow all of those arrows seem to just be missing him uh you can fly but then also you can create this little essentially a little tornado from like i think a 60-foot range and it essentially pushes targets and does damage to them i'm not sure we could use this unless unless maybe you cast it around yourself and you were like touching the targets and sort of infusing them and thereby pushing them away and somehow they're taking damage maybe they hit a wall or something i don't know maybe you could get away with flavoring it that way otherwise i don't know that it really works um definitely not from range anyway because after all sure he's a windrunner by name but windrunners don't really control the wind so much as fly with it they run with the wind right at level 13 you are a warlock 12 and we get another ability score increase or feet i personally would be i think looking for a way to increase survivability if i were playing this character in game maybe via the tough feat that gives you two hit points per level which would be a nice bump for us or maybe a bump to our dexterity to increase our armor class and other things um of course if we're optimizing for damage we should probably take the piercer feet uh because when you make a piercing attack an attack that does piercing damage and our spears do it lets us reroll once per turn the damage die on on one of those attacks which is a damage bump and also when we crit we get to roll an extra damage die so similar to having brutal critical brutal critical for example um and so you know again we're trying to push the limits of our damage i'll assume that we took the piercer feet here when we're crunching numbers again if it were me i probably wouldn't do it i'd probably take tough i think but you do what you want to do and we're exploring the limits of the possible as always most importantly here at warlock 12 we get yet another invocation and one of the best ones available to us comes at level 12 the life drinker invocation which lets us now double our charisma bonus in damage when we hit with a packed weapon so now instead of doing plus five to damage from our charisma we do plus 10 to damage with our charisma plus one because we have improved packed weapon of course by now hopefully you've got a magic spear that you're using instead um and using that invocation for something else so damage report at level 13 against an enemy with a 10 armor class you are averaging assuming they're they're cursed hex plates curse you're averaging 88 damage per round and against an enemy with a 17 armor class you're averaging 71 damage per round and that is quite good it's a little bit less if you don't have hex blades curse up but it's still pretty decent at level 14 you are a warlock 13 and we get our seventh level mystic arcanum um the only seventh level spell that i could really see kind of sort of working but not really would be etherealness so you basically you cast the spell and you step into the ethereal plane where it overlaps you see where i'm going here with our current plane and it would be very similar to i think um stepping into shadesmar like they do in the books which is another sort of plane of existence but whose geography sort of lines up with the rosharin one of course the big problem here is that wind runners in the book don't innately have the ability to do that unless they are um at an oath gate as far as i know um so maybe if your friend shalon shows up and takes you to shadesmar you can you cast a spell summon challan and she ports you into shadesmart i don't know um cool if you can work it out talk it over with your dm if you really want to try and do this um one bummer is that since we don't technically have seventh level spell slots we can't up cast spirit shroud to a seventh level spell so we're sort of stuck at 2d8 despite the fact that we have a seventh level spell that we can cast um problem with warlocks at level 15 we are a warlock 14 and we get our ultimate hex blade ability and it's a good one the master of hexes so now when the creature who is cursed by our hex blades curse dies um instead of it ending and we heal we can as a bonus action transfer it to another target and continue to receive that plus uh damage on each hit as per our proficiency bonus right um again we don't we don't get hp back every time until the very last one dies and you know we're no longer transferring it then we'd heal from from that final one but uh it does make our damage a lot more sustainable now now we get that damage for an entire combat encounter as opposed to just one target per short rest right um at level 16 i think if we're still playing the game at this point um it might be time to leave warlock behind and to focus a little more on our marshall skill more fully so i want to take a couple of fighter levels i like fighter for a number of reasons um one we get the great weapon fighting style and that lets us re-roll ones and twos uh on our weapon attacks that use when we make an attack holding a weapon with two hands which we are um so that's a nice damage bump and keep in mind that that that stacks essentially with the piercer feet because you get to re-roll once per turn the damage that you roll with with the spear attack with a piercing attack so that can really kind of bring our average up at least once per turn and really on every attack with the great weapon fighting style we get second wind uh which is a fantastic and perfect you know self-heal ability uh that any self-respecting windrunner would or knight radiant i guess would would have right it's a d10 of healing plus your fighter levels it's not a ton but it's it's something um and then another thing you might want to consider and frankly you might want to consider this much earlier in your character's life span this is a semi big spoiler warning for the end of book four but kaladin does eventually get the ability to have shard plate or i don't even know what you call it it's not it's it's the progenitor to shardplate i suppose um and so wearing plate armor wouldn't after all necessarily be outside the realm of possibility of what caledon is capable of doing if you were playing kaladin as he exists by the end of book four and not you know the end of book two or whatever like i said at the beginning of the of the video um i mean the problem is of course mundane plate mail doesn't really replicate what shardplate does which for those who don't know is think of it as like magical plate male armor it's super durable gives you increased strength and uh and absorbs all kinds of damage and stuff like that um it comes close it's better than than nothing obviously um and of course it would greatly improve our survivability so if this is something that you're comfortable with and you like you know i would consider taking it much earlier uh maybe even starting at fighter one so that you could get it um but again depending on sort of what version of kaladin you want to play right um the problem one big problem with it is because of our low strength score plate mail has a 15 strength requirement and if you don't meet that requirement you can wear it if you're proficient in it but you suffer a 10 foot move penalty per turn um so we wouldn't be able to move very well which doesn't feel like you're really wearing plate or sorry shard plate right it's supposed to have the opposite effect so that's a bummer find some mithril plate if you can and then that is gone and now it's magic armor and it more closely replicates um what shardplay is like in the books anyway so here's a perfect example of something you can maybe discuss with your dungeon master and say this is my character this is what they should be able to do this is my arc this is what i want to be able to accomplish do you think we could maybe work in finding some mithril plate along the way and you know and then when i find it maybe i take a level in fighter you know that's something that you can work out maybe you don't like to create spoilers for yourself in your own dnd campaign i guess i don't know but anyway definitely an option and something i would encourage at level 17 i would take fighter 2 you might as well that way you can pick up action surge uh for some nice on-demand burst damage again action surge once per short rest you can basically get two actions in a turn um and so you'd get some extra attacks or you know do other extra things if you need another action but it does a great job of emulating kaladin at sort of the peak of his fighting efficiency when he's trying to take down his nemesis during the climax of of one of the books or something right um final damage report at level 17 against an enemy with a 10 armor class you would be averaging 97 damage per round and uh against an enemy with a 18 armor class it would be 78 and that is pretty sustainable at least for an entire combat encounter you almost broke the centennial barrier congratulations so final thoughts um as usual with these builds where i kind of intentionally shackle myself as it were i'm i'm pleasantly surprised by the results despite the lines that we drew around our character that we had to stay in between you know look at the graph in the spreadsheet for this episode if you check if you check the one for this episode i actually put both um the numbers as they are against a cursed opponent and then a non-cursed opponent and then when i compare you know this build against other sustained damage builds that i've done i use the non-cursed numbers until level 17 when you're able to essentially have curse up for an entire combat round a combat encounter sorry and so doing that even then this character still falls quite comfortably at the upper end of tier two for sustained damage builds third place in in tier two which is which is really quite nice and quite powerful again keeping in mind that these are against all other builds that i've sort of tried to optimize for for damage right so even even last place in tier two i think is pretty good compared to you know your sword and board fighter or you know whatever um so anyway better than i expected uh and that seems to usually be the case with with these kinds of things which which is great um one thing i'll suggest if you and your dm are comfortable with this i would consider maybe trying to use a halberd instead of a spear you know chop off the blade and and just use the pointy end of the halberd for your attacks um if you can get away with that you know make it a little more pointy and a little more a little less bladey and and then you would have reach um you'd get a d10 instead of a d8 it would still qualify for polar master and of course you could take the great weapon master feat and get that nice extra 10 damage per hit at a -5 to attack um [Music] i didn't do it here because it felt like i was maybe bending things a wee bit too much i don't know that i can assume that you and or your dm would be comfortable with that and frankly since we didn't have a reliable source of advantage um you know great weapon master is fantastic at low enemy armor classes but it's a little less fantastic once you get into the mid and upper uh armor classes you know without advantage so anyway i i decided against it ultimately but it's an option there are a lot of other ways that you could try to recreate caledon in d um i looked at a ton more than i wish that i would have almost in hindsight um oath of devotion paladin is super on point thematically uh but their skill set and their spell list didn't really get us what we needed i didn't think i mean i guess you could take three levels until you got that oath but it just didn't really do a lot for us other than feel sort of like a knight radiant you know what i mean um i considered going bladesinger as i'm sure some of you in the comments are probably already saying uh you know shadowblade makes a decent uh simulation of summoning a weapon into your hand um you you'd need to flavor it as a spear probably instead of a one-handed blade i don't know a blade of shadow just felt wrong for to me first for for a sill blade you can't use two weapons to attack with it really um and i don't know the the the sort of bonding with the otherworldly being to get your powers and the improved sort of versatility that you could summon any weapon with pact of the blade um that we got from warlock just felt just felt better more on point to me um i even looked at like a gravaturgist wizard because they get a lot of sort of like effect gravity type things that do a pretty decent job of simulating lashings the problem is you'd have to get to level 10 in gravitor just before you got the really good ones and then we're really forsaking all of our marshall skills and abilities um i promised an alternate build i actually wrote up show notes for for this build and then ultimately scrapped it at the end because for a number of reasons but i still think that it could work if you don't like the the hex blade route um i would suggest going monk one star start as a monk like caledon started humbly as all good um heroes in epic fantasy novels do um but you get some nice things from monk you get um you get unarmored defense so it would bump our ac nicely um among other things you get you know bonus action unarmed strike attack um which is as powerful as the the butt action of a spear um but anyway so so you wouldn't have to take the polar master feet i guess is what i'm saying um but then monk one and into fighter and fighter specifically eldritch knight fighter doing that with probably a feat along the way for magic initiate wizard to get a spell or two that you wouldn't otherwise get from eldritch knight i think can check all the boxes for us we'll eventually be able to fly uh and and you know things like that um so yeah i would say monken to eldritch knight um essentially at the end of the day we would be tankier because monks can um they can they can essentially choose a monk weapon and you know it's going to be your spear and now you get to use dexterity to make your attacks with that instead of strength and that works for caledon i think and then you keep putting points into dexterity and it bumps your armor class higher and higher fighters get more more um feats and ability score increases and they get more hit points per level as well so you're just going to be a little tankier your damage is going to be like half and ultimately i think that's probably the main reason why i decided to scrap it because even though it fit i thought warlock was hex blade especially was both more on point thematically but just did so much more damage at the cost of survivability admittedly and so you know you choose what you think is is closer to what you would want to play in game and go for it um i'm not sure if i'll ever do this again where i take a character from fiction and uh try and recreate them in d um the squarepad groundhole thing is is troubling but more important than that i think um you know d d is really more i i feel it's about telling your own story and so i tend to kind of shy away from trying to tell someone else's um but you know what you might have really liked it it could be really fun for a one shot um i think at the very least maybe as as a non-caledon windrunner um in a home brew sort of rochar world that is something i think i would be interested in playing um and and this could serve as a nice template for that but but above all i would love to know your thoughts on it you know would you like to see more of this kind of thing um where we're sort of taking characters from fiction and trying to recreate them in d or if it's not really your cup of tea that's totally okay let me know please you can you can do it nicely but do let me know um and if anyone knows brandon sanderson or has access to um his his ear or his inbox man i'd love to get his feedback on this um so anyway maybe we maybe we tweet at him while we're tweeting at jeremy crawford that's the show for the day um you guys are fantastic thank you so much for your support don't forget to subscribe and like and share and comment and all the things i hope you have a fantastic day love you so much you

Channel: d4: D&D Deep Dive

Views: 41,751

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, dnd, 5e, guide, Kaladin, Stormblessed, Windrunner, Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive, Syl, Shard Blade, Hexblade, Storm Sorcerer, Armorer, artificer

Id: o8uYaEdz4Ac

Length: 65min 36sec (3936 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021