Optimized Order of Scribes Wizard Build: The Nerd of Prey

hey up toan Chris here our character today is the ultimate Bookworm intellectual and Scholar you know an Uber nerd this wizard takes study and homework to the highest level possible not even death can stop their cerebral Pursuits this wizard carries their obsession with Arana and other cognitive studies further than my obsession with d and d so high bar but our eggh head isn't just the penultimate academic they are also a fearsome opponent combat a nerd of prey if you will though we won't just be thinking about combat we're going to try to make a well-rounded character so in my last three videos I've been analyzing the feature of the order of scribe subclass for Wizard and in this video I'm going to put that analysis together to show one possible optimized build for the subass though I've seen a few comments mentioning multiclass with Tempest cleric to take advantage of switching damage types to lightning damage and then pushing around enemies like a bulldozer so if if you aren't aware I've already done that build it's called the shock chalk and if that's the build you're interested in click the link at the top of the screen what I want to do today is show a more order of scribes Focus build this is a subass that works great as a non- multiclass wizard or a wizard with a single level dip for Armor class when I make a build decision I'll do my best to cover the options and the benefits and costs of each of them want to start with the racial options and I'll start by saying you can make a really good wizard build with any racial option in the game so if you have a great concept for a Goliath wizard don't draw the conclusion that because it's not a quote unquote best racial option it can't be optimized and effective the vast majority of our power comes from the wizard class itself and the Order of scribe subass itself and the Goliath features they're just fine but there are races I do think are ideal picks so here's some factors I consider when picking a race for order of Scrib's wizard talked about this in the video analyzing manifest mind but moving around our manifested mind is going to be eating up our bonus actions like Pac-Man eating dots so races that have bonus action centered features are going to result in an overly bonus action hungry build otherwise races like Goblin or shatter Kai for example would be tempting speaking of bonus actions that's also going to affect our spell selection we don't want to overwhelm oursel with spells that are eating up our bonus action every round because we aren't going to have it I also consider size when I make a wizard because dimension door and thunderstep which are both fantastic go-to spells I mean you don't need to have both of them but you should have one of them have this bit where if you want to teleport with an ally they can't be larger than you and I'll tell you this comes up and it is frustrating when you play a Smalls siiz wizard if the stricks Haven spell Vortex Warp is available in your game I especially recommend it for Smalls siiz characters as it allows teleporting creatures bigger than you and it alleviates the inconvenience to some degree but in general I prefer a medium-size wizard speaking of stricks Haven I'm not going to be using stricks Haven content in this build but if it is available to you by all means you should take Vortex warp and you should take silvery barbs as well any flying race is always going to be a great option that's pretty much universally true unlimited flight is pretty much always good and the only real downside is restriction against medium and heavy armor but you can do Mage Armor a good dexterity I mean I would aim for a 16 dexterity and then put a shield on there and you're going to have a very respectable Armor class of course a multiclass dip is going to be needed for the shield proficiency and I guess it's debatable if that's really worth it good movement rates are also going to be a great option even if it's just used for moving into cover that you otherwise couldn't have or moving out of range while your manifested mind blows up the enemies so Centaur and dexi they do stand out as good options as well her and gon is always good for any wizard because winning initiative is just really nice one thing that I learned when doing the tier ranking analysis is that I have been sleeping on the reborn lineage from Ben Ron's guy to Raven Loft now if this source is unavailable to you this build works just fine with the other races that I've already mentioned or any other race you like but I've wanted to do a reborn build and this is an ideal opportunity I'll mention that any elf race is going to duplicate one of the primary advantages here so go ahead and pick any kind of Elf and you're going to be able to benefit from one of the interactions that I'm going to be using with this build reborn is a lineage so it's not a race per se and the difference is that there are mechanics for turning your human orc or any other race into a lineage though this is generally something that happens during game play not character creation and it's a DM option not a player option so I don't assume that we can just choose to play an era CRA that is also reborn however there are mechanics for choosing a lineage at character creation so that's what I'm doing here I mean I'm not saying don't leave your comments on how an eroka reborn would retain their fight speed I find them very informative so the idea of a reborn is that your character has lived a past life but death didn't end up being the end of the road you aren't quite Undead you aren't the undead subtype but let's just say you're Undead adjacent they provide several options as to how your reborn came to be that you can select or roll randomly if you prefer or make up your own when you choose reborn you get the standard option to take 3+ 1 to ability scores or a plus two and a plus one and place them wherever you like you get common and one other language of your choice I'll be choosing primordial I think it's useful for wizards to have though we're going to have a lot of languages with this character and our creature type is going to be humanoid and we can select medium or small size I'll select medium for the reason I mentioned earlier and we will have a walking speed of 30 ft and ancestral Legacy says that if we choose this lineage at character creation we gain proficiency in two skills of our choice this is going to be helpful to make sure our character has an Eclectic set of knowledge skills generally my goal here is if the party needs a check of any intelligence-based skills I'm going to be their guy in fact we may end up being better at intelligence-based skills than any other character is at any skill the Rogue has a good stealth bonus sure but check out what my Arana is going to be once this video is over we aren't just is talking about the intelligence-based skills we are going to jack them up big time I'll be choosing investigation and nature proficiency with these selections so deathless nature gives us a whole bunch of stuff so let's go through it we have advantage on saving throws against disease that's pretty rare and being poisoned Which is less rare and resistance to poison damage and that's not rare at all poison resistance is really good on a wizard as we have a to absorb Elements which gives us a lot of resistances but not poison resistance and protection from Poison is in a wizard spell meaning our defensive spell options for poison don't come until much higher level so that's a great fit for this character we have advantage on death saving throws this isn't really a big deal because ideally we aren't making death saving throws all that often but what this does do is reduce our chance of that potentially deadly natural one to a 1 in 400 chance when it's normally 1 in 20 and our chance of that natural 20 epic moment is up to almost 10% we don't need to eat drink or breathe I think the eating and drinking thing probably isn't going to come up but the breathing thing probably will that doesn't mean we don't want the water breathing ritual though because first of all our fellow party members probably do need to breathe and secondly a lot of DMS won't allow you to complete the verbal components of spells underwater without the ability to breathe water here's the big one though we don't need to sleep and Magic can't put us to sleep and we can finish a long rest in 4 hours so this character needs time to copy as many spells as possible into their spell book they will be doing it super fast but with those four extra hours we could copy an entire packed spell book easily I mean we could copy 120 levels worth of spells in four hours but also and this is really neat I think check this out according to the dungeon Masters Guide if you're crafting a magic item the assumption is that each day of work requires 8 hours once we get to 10th level in scribes wizard we can craft a scroll in half that time which means those 4 hours could be used to craft a scroll with a crafting time of 1 day which if we're using the Zenithar scroll crafting rules means we could create a first level spell scroll while everyone else is just finishing their long r they don't have to wait for us at all and if we want to create a scroll above first level or we're using the Dungeon Masters Guide times those four hours will count as a day of work so if we aren't copying spells we can be crafting Scrolls and constantly making progress without needing down time really at all now earlier I mentioned that you could take an elf race as a possible substitute for Reborn and this is why all elves get the trans feature which includes this same 4-Hour long rest mechanic so if reborn isn't available to you just pick the elf you like and it works fine if you are choosing a race that doesn't have this mechanic though it's also fine I mean this interaction is nice but it's not necessary for the build and we finish up with knowledge from a past life a real last but not least feature when we make an ability check that uses a skill and it doesn't matter if we're proficient or not we can roll a D6 after rolling and add the number to our check this is usable proficiency bonus times for long rest and that's going to be easy enough to use so I'm kind of thrilled that I've been wanting to make an optimized build for the reborn lineage and it just kind of fits this concept to a te more skill proficiencies in the skills we want bonuses on skill checks four extra hours each long rest to copy spells and craft Scrolls and some extra goodies on top that work really well for Wizard so that's our pick Let's let's go on to ability scores I'm going to be taking the plus two plus1 option with the plus two in intelligence of course and the plus one in Constitution with a point by that would be a 17 intelligence 14 dexterity 14 Constitution 13 wisdom and I've dumped Charisma and I've pumped up that strength to nine nine is really strong for a wizard but carrying all those books you know it got me swole I think for some of you my multiclass decision should be pretty obvious but I do want to discuss your options here with any wizard it's really tempting to take an armor dip so you take one level in another class and you get Proficiency in medium armor and Shields and that's going to give our wizard a solid Armor class if we choose a spell casting class with the required armor proficiencies we won't just get more spells we'll also get full spell slot progression so that leaves us with cleric artificier and Druid though with a druid the non-metal arm armor restriction should be considered though check with your DM a lot of them handwave that whole rule actually I should mention that someone suggested a magic Missile fire damage Focus build idea using scribes wizard here's the post from Ry there are three subclasses draconic wild fire and Celestial that add bonus to any fire damage spells since scrabs can cast magic Missile with fire damage do you see a build that focuses on magic Missile able to complete with the hex focer so the idea would be you take two levels in scribes wizard then you pick up magic Missile and a first level wizard spell with fire damage like burning hands so you could switch the missiles to fire damage then you pick up six levels of draconic sorcerer six levels of wildfire Druid and six levels of celestial Warlock and you would use your ability score increases to increase your charisma up to 20 so then you could cast magic Missile and add a d8 with your charisma twice to your damage roll so extra 14.5 which because of the weird way Jeremy Crawford tells us to use magic Missile where you're only supposed to roll one die and then you apply that damage result to every missile would mean that each missile would do 17 points of damage on average so that's 51 fire damage with a first level slot and 17 more per additional spell slot level now I could see doing this as a novelty build in a level 20 one shot or something something but it's not a character build I would want to play in a campaign for sure and it would take a long time to come together at all and man that build would suck against creatures in me into fire damage it's really a one trick pony also it's not really a scribes wizard when only 10% of your levels comes from scribes but it was an interesting enough idea I thought I would shout it out here thinking of these kinds of synergies with different multiclasses is a lot of fun the build % today doesn't rely on any of those kind of tricks artificer is kind of the go-to for Wizard armor dips and for good reason you get Constitution saving throw proficiency off the bat which is ideal though you might consider the resilient feed anyways at some point as you don't really want a weak wisdom saving throw they can be a real Achilles heal but you also don't have to worry about ability score since both the wizard and the artificer have intelligence as their primary score the disadvantage of artificer is the requirement to be holding the artificier spell focus whenever you cast an artificier spell for most Wizards this is mainly just an inconvenience you're constantly using your interaction to either pull it or put it away but for order of scribes wizard it actually presents a bigger problem since the order scribes wizard also has a mechanic where they need to hold their spell focus but it's not the same focus our spell book is our focus and only for our wizard spells the interaction rules allow you for storing a focus or drawing a focus but not for both so there is a specific conflict here cleric doesn't give us the Constitution saving throw proficiency but otherwise it's just much more clean and unlike a druid dip we get the advantage of gaining our subass as well as a subass feature right at level one now if you want the nonf flavorful but most powerful option here by all means take a pie dip you filthy min maxer but I think our concept is better served by the knowledge domain so we're going to take religion and insight as our starring proficiencies religion is an intelligence-based skill and insight isn't but it's a useful skill and we're going to have all the intelligence skills and more to spare so we can definitely afford Insight with blessings of knowledge we're going to learn two languages I've taken a bissal and infernal like with primordial it might be useful for dealing with creatures we might summon or might encounter and we get Proficiency in fact double proficiency so it's expertise I don't know why they don't call it expertise but that's what it is so these will be our two best skills Arcana and history are just the obvious choices I think so we are now proficient in every single intelligence based skill and we haven't gotten to our background yet now for spells it's relevant that these spells use wisdom as our spellcasting modifier and for us that's a plus one so I wouldn't be taking sacred flame or anything like that for domain spells we have command and again I wouldn't count on our poor spell DC for the command spell but identify starts our journey into rituals and it doesn't rely on our wisdom for canant trips I'm going to take guidance light we don't have dark vision by the way so definitely light and spare the dying none of these rely on wisdom for first level spells we'll only have two preparations now keep in in mind with cleric you can switch these out after long rest but my go-to preps would be bless and healing word bless is a top tier first level spell probably our big play at level one and healing word is one of those spells that technically relies on your casting ability score but not in a way that really matters if someone is at zero hit points and we have the spell slot we can bring them back up and they'll go right back down again if they get hit again just like they would be if we a wisdom of 20 so for backgrounds if you have the option to take Campaign World specific background nowadays most of them give you a free feat Dragon Lance backgrounds actually give you two free Feats by level four and Ravnica backgrounds can increase our wizard spell list so if any of these are available by all means take those if they aren't then take something like Sage that's what I've taken we'll need to select different skills since we're already more than proficient in ARA and his history so I'm going to grab acrobatics and perception they're both useful skill proficiencies and I have all the intelligence-based skills already and we're down to the point where our language selections are take what you want cuz we're into now common and five additional languages you fraking nerd for equipment going to grab scal mail a shield with an emblem spell focus on it so no conflict with holding our spell book later on and a like crossbow because at level one we might want to use that instead of wearing the shield since we don't have an attack handp at level two we'll start using the shield and the first level tactics pretty simple we're an intelligence-based skill expert and in combat we cast bless and then we shoot stuff with the crossbow Armor class will be okay at 16 not a super powerful first level character but it's one level you can see our list of skills and all of them not just intelligence skills can be boosted by both a guidance C trip and knowledge of a past life so add a D4 as well as a D6 if needed and that's like another plus six available on top of these modifiers okay so time to become an order scribes wizard so we're going to throw on two levels at a time here we're going to start with two levels of wizard but a third level character and a third level caster which means we have a couple of second level slots Arcane recovery will give us half our wizard level and spell slot recovery after a short rest once per long rest so this is a scaling feature that will continually just give us more spell slots to cast spells with one of the primary advantages of wizard over other spellcasters is the wizard doesn't just get ritual casting but they don't even need to prepare their ritual spells if the spell is in their book they can cast it as a ritual and as a scribes wizard well we'll get into that later the wizardly quill is a floating pen that supplies its own ink that we can erase but the big Point here is number two we can copy a spell into our spell book at an astounding 2 minutes per spell level for other Wizards it's 2 hours per spell level that's 60 times faster and our awaken spell book can be used as an Arcane focus and that's lucky because we have to hold it in order to use the awaken Spellbook feature now I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole in this video to discuss material components and free hands for casting because these rules are a bit of a mess in fifth edition what I will say is that our first feet is going to be warcaster so whether your DM is a stickler for the component rules or not we're going to be okay the second bullet it's the big one where we can switch damage types of our spells I went into this in detail in the first video Linked In the description so I won't repeat myself here but what this does mean is that we want spells in our spell book that give us different damage type options even if they aren't spells we would actually cast Force damage radiant damage and piercing bludgeoning and slashing damage those are the top tier damage types and the third bullet is our ability to cast a ritual spell without adding the additional 10 minutes normally required to cast the ritual so we could cast DET Tech magic with an action for example no other wizard is going to be able to do that because no wizard actually prepares the ritual spells this isn't really going to affect my spell ction is I generally want lots of rituals for any wizard it's just a nice little enhancement finally if you have a DM that likes to destroy or take away your spell book you do have a workaround with the ordered scribes allowing you to replace your book though if you have that kind of DM I am sorry and if you are that kind of DM stop it so we're into spell selection and it's taken me a long time to do a scribes build because honestly with a build video I can't make assumptions for what spells you will have the opportunity to add your spell book beyond the given two additional spells per level and an order of scribes wizard is desperately wanting to take advantage of that option for multiple reasons Beyond other Wizards both to fuel the feature that we just got where we can switch damage types and much later on for fueling our 14th level subclass feature so I think I'll just give my general advice here copy as many spells as you can if you have the gold and the spell to be copied then there's not really a spell that you shouldn't copy into your spell book I would certainly prioritize though within those restrictions so if you have a limited gold but you have all these spells to potentially copy start by copying the Spells you might actually cast first then consider damage type switching and finally the spells that are just Spiller but I'll just cover our standard spells with the build we definitely want an attack cantrip so we can put away our light crossbow and actually use our shield for plus two Armor class so I'm going to pick up Firebolt also pick up M sliver and finally I'll grab minor illusion so minor illusion is a versatile little cantrip and one of the better canant trips in the game I've devoted an entire video to it so I guess I'll link that at the top of your screen then Firebolt is our top damage can using an attack roll has a good range and it says we can Target objects which over time I've come to consider maybe the best Rider of any attack cantrip and mind sliver gives us a different damage type and targets a saving throw intelligence which is generally speaking the best saving throw to Target and we get a nice Rider here too giving the targeted creature a penalty on their next saving throw a first level wizard gets six spells in their spell book of first level and they get another two at level two so that's eight first level spells to choose so we're going to grab the go-tos for sure which are shield absorb elements and find familiar I pretty much always take these three it's also a good time to add in some offensive casting options I mean bless is still a good casting option at this point and it's probably what I would use my second level spell slots on but magic Missile gives us a decent just straight single Target damage option with a good range or the ability to split up the damage if we want and it's a reliable damage type long Strider is also a good option for upcasting it's basically twice is good cast with our second level slot giving two creatures a 10ft movement increase for an hour with no concentration I find myself taking long Strider pretty consistently when it's available it's just a solid buff for the level with great upcasting so that's five spells already so I would grab ritual spells with the other three comprehend languages detect Magic and unseen servant are all solid and all have a regular casting time of one action which we could use our awaken spell book to cast without the extra 10 minutes in a pinch so at third level we're now a proper scribes wizard adding our Shield to Armor class bumps it up to 18 that's a solid number of course when half plate becomes available grab it and bump it up to 19 out of combat we have an upcast long Strider to buff party members with a long duration and no concentration and in combat an upcast bless is probably our biggest play followed up by cantrips or a magic Missile if we want a damage boost though I would recommend holding back a first level Slaughter two for when we might need an absorb elements or a shield spell we really shouldn't need to switch damage Types on spells much at this level but if you do fight a creature that has a damage vulnerability well then you can tap absorb elements to switch out your magic Missile damage type for a number of damage type options we can prepare all our non-ritual spells by the way we even have one to spare maybe for a spell that we get to add to our spell book beyond this number hopefully so let's add two more levels this is now a fifth level character one cleric for a wizard and we'll have third level spell slots but no third level Spells at least for One More Level I've already mentioned that our ability score increase will be used to grab the war Caster feet this will take care of any issues casting spells with a shield in one hand and our spell book in the other it also protects our concentration which I think should be a priority for pretty much any devoted spellcaster and we can cast spells at a Target in place of making an opportunity attack against them which I don't really see coming up with this particular character very often we're adding one more cantrip so I'm liking Mage hand here Mage hand is basically a short range minor telekinesis cantrip if you play D and D I probably don't need to sell you on this pick and I'm going to select four more spells I'll take second level spells for all of these picks but again hopefully it's going to be more than four but these would be my four selections if they didn't come up as opportunities for extra describing web now becomes our biggest playing combat this is another spell I've devoted a whole video to so I guess I'll link that video up above as well if you don't know why web is good check that out but I think the value of web is pretty common knowledge at this point I would definitely grab tash's mind whip probably as one of my picks when I achieved fifth level and got third level spell slots because it's not just a solid spell it's a really solid upcast option for those slots like with long Strider basically twice as good when we cast it with a on Lev higher spell slot mind whip has a lot going for it it's a pretty solid debuff on an enemy with no concentration required so you could mind whip a creature caught in your we web spell and then that creature basically has no good options because if they use their action to free themselves from the web then they won't be able to move out of it and they'll likely just get caught again on their next turn mind whip also removes reactions which can be really useful and it does some damage not a lot but it's one of those spells that does half damage even if the target makes their saving throw which is intelligence again a good save to Target now there's two kinds of characters the first are characters who have a racial teleport option and the second are characters that really want to have Misty step we're in that second Camp easy pick also talked about how Missy step combines really nicely with our six level scribes feature that video is linked in the video description so this is an even better spell for us as a scribes wizard so to me this is a no-brainer pick so our last pick is going to be augury when we prepare web Tasha's mind whip and Misty step that is going to fill up our spell preparations so this is a good opportunity to add another ritual which doesn't need a preparation this is one of those divination rituals you only cast once per long rest because it starts to become unreliable after that but basically you ask a DM about a planed course of action and they'll give you a hint whether it's going to work out well or not nice little divination ritual so at this level with just our base picks we only have one damaging second level spell and that's tas's mind whip which does psychic damage and that's not a bad damage type but we don't have any options for switching that damage type again we want to be scribing spells whenever possible so maybe we do have an option to switch it something like cloud of daggers would allow us to switch Tasha's mind whip to slashing damage which is super reliable for example dragon's breath would give us several options even the absolutely rot dust devil spell would give us bludgeoning as a damage option speaking of bludgeoning damage yeah you could make a scribes build that focuses on delivering bludgeoning damage with spells and then you could take the crusher feet to add some Force movement on those spells which would be cool and yes I did consider that but there's a couple issues here that are kind of insurmountable the first is that Crusher Force movement only works once per turn that's a pretty big limitation but the bigger issue is it requires an attack that delivers bludgeoning and our spells are not going to be attacks except for our cantrips we don't have any bludgeoning cantrips and so sure we we could take chromatic orb and then you know you grab catapult for first level casting dust devil for second level casting erupting Earth for third EV black tentacles for fourth big B's hand can do bludgeoning damage with grasping hands so that's fifth investure of wind for sixth Whirlwind for seventh there's more spell options for bludgeoning than that but those are just some examples so it wouldn't be hard to make a character that throws chromatic orbs and scorching rays and always does bludgeoning damage and then can use the crusher feet I just don't think it's very optimal to be spending your spells on chromatic orb or a scorching Ray for a once per turn 5-ft movement on top of needing an additional feet but I thought the idea was at least worth mentioning I mean this kind of thing it comes up a lot with scribes wizard you can make a scribes wizard build that really leans into switching damage types and if you do that then you're looking for Synergy to get the most out of those damage types but with this build I will mainly just be switching damage types for reliability so at level five we'll just have enough preparations to prepare all our non- ritual spells and I think I've made the strategy clear enough we're going to do web as our big round one play Then tas's mind whip upcast to follow up if we're really ready to expend those big resources and if we're in a situation where web just isn't going to work then bless can be a backup I should also mention that by level five I think there's a pretty good chance we'll have half plate so I've added that in so we'll have a 19 Armor class now plus a shield Spell option and our proficiency bonus has gone up which has double the impact on skills with expertise so we've got a plus n for aana and history and again we got the D4 guidance canant trip and the D6 racial feature to boost those even higher if we need to and our other intelligence based skills are still solid at plus six so let's move on to level seven so level seven is huge for us we now actually have third level spells which are a significant jump from second level but we also have our Premier subass feature manifest mind check out the second video Linked In the video description for my lengthy rundown of the many things we can do with this very potent feature so I'm adding four spells again add more than this please but at level six level five in wizard level one in cleric the first two third level spells I'm adding are slow and leman's Tiny Hut so why slow well hypnotic pattern is fantastic fear is fantastic Fireball is fantastic and by all means take those instead if you prefer and I've taken those fairly consistently on various wizard builds and there are a number of ways in which slow is worse it debuffs enemies but it doesn't shut them down completely and they're getting an additional saving throw at the end of each of their turns to end the effect here's where slow is better though first there's no Friendly Fire and second and most importantly nobody is immune to slow I think slow is often undervalued but in my opinion it is a really solid third level pick and yeah it doesn't shut down enemies completely but it does make them a lot worse multi-attack options are gone armor class is lowered dexterity saving throws are made with disadvantage reactions are gone even if the creature had multiple reactions between turns which more do now and it can't do both an action and a bonus action on its turn and if it's a spellcaster that gets screwed up as well so it's just a really solid debuff but in all honesty I largely wanted to give slow a highlight in general and Fireball does switch damage types so that would be my other primary suggestion for this level so in other words if youall like Fireball take Fireball and it's still a really good pick at level seven my next two picks are a counter spell I think you pretty much have to take and prepare counter spell by six level in Wizard and I'm also taking Phantom Ste have I done a video on Phantom Steed as well yes I have so link up above I will say that if you do take Fireball I might choose a spell to give damage switching options instead of phantom Steed there's a number of options but something like erupting Earth is probably as good as any bludgeoning is super reliable so you can call it bludgeoning ball very alliterative now I should mention that none of the four spells I selected upcast I mean counter spell technically upcast but not normally you're normally casting at third level so our best upcast option for fourth level slots is still Tasha's mind Whip and there's nothing wrong with that a fourth level tash's mind whip is three times as good as a second level mind whip so our playing combat is now either web or slow here's how you decide if you have non-flying enemies in tighter formation web is probably the best play Slow is going to be the best option if you suspect enemies might be immune to restrain because a number R you need to cover a bigger area if the enemies are flying if the enemies are spellcasters or friendly fire is a consideration any one of those or multiples would be good reason to cast slow instead of web anyways that's round one then on round two it's largely like it was at fifth level except now we're using fourth level spell slots for tash's mind whip but a cantrip is fine if the fight is under under control if we lose concentration you're going to need to cast web or slow again also if your slowed opponents are saving and thus losing the slow effect then you may need to reapply and if you do that's what you do you reapply slow Phantom Steed and Tiny Hut are both huge rituals that make a big difference in gameplay tiny Hut makes resting much safer and Phantom Steed gives huge movement options way more than the long Strider spell though it's also a lot easier to remove so by all means do both for a character needing good mobility and we're on to level 9 which is eight levels in wizard one cleric and we've got to get our intelligence up that 17 intelligence is holding us back on spell preparations spell attacks and spell save DCS because we have a 17 intelligence that means we can afford a half feet here and I did consider that but instead I'm increasing my intelligence by one and my Constitution by one let me expl explain why so the go-to intelligence half Feats are generally either fate touched or telekinetic there's other ones but those are the big two Fay touched gives us Misty step which we already have but it is one free casting which is okay I guess and a first level spell with a free casting maybe I would grab command that actually uses intelligence or something like that I guess but neither of those are huge benefits telekinetic is a solid half feet but it's it's bonus action hungry and manifest mind is bonus action hungry too so it's not a great pick for an order scribes Wizard and you know resilient Constitution is going to be coming on this build so let's get some Synergy where it is also going to improve our ability score bonus which is going to pump up both our saving throw and give us more hit points I will say if you are playing in a campaign where you don't expect to get to level 13 then go ahead and take fate touched I guess we have three more preparations thanks to that intelligence boost and four spell selections and now I'm looking at fourth level spells there are many good options here Arcane eye is a nice spell banishment is solid and a great upcast option confusion is a spell I've come to appreciate more the more times I've used it like slow nobody is immune to confusion dimension door is a spell I almost always take even block tentacles is good and a nice upgrade to web autol Luke's resilience sphere is a flexible solid spell polymorph is probably the most wellknown good fourth level spell pick so I'm not going to take it but you can if you like Stone shape is really good utility if you just want to do more damage get Summon aberration and Float the beholderkin as far as you can from the action and get two decent single Target blasts every round and Wall of fire is a nice damage switching option and if you play in a group with characters that have Force movement options it is really solid in fact that's going to be my first pick wall of fire does okay damage but the key is to do the damage more than once that's when it becomes good damage because when we cast it creatures in the wall make a saving throw and take half damage on a success but if they take damage from the spell again then there's no saving throw they automatically take the full damage so that's what we want which is achieved by either having the enemy end their turn in the wall or on the side it's radiating heat which we choose at the time of casting or if they enter the wall on any turn we're not a forc movement character but there's a very good chance that someone maybe even multiple characters in our party are whether it's the repelling blast El blasters or the Swarm keeper swarms or telekinetic feet or grappling whatever these kinds of characters will really appreciate a wall of fire to throw enemies into really there's only one downside the damage type isn't super reliable so that's our next pick now we can't repair two additional Spells at eighth level anyways so this one is just for the Spellbook and damage switching so e block tentacles is being taken as well we can't prepare it but it gives us the option of a bludgeoning damage wall of fire which is pretty much a no-brainer but if you are using this build and you are playing in a group where people don't use Force movement then I would take summon aberration Instead at this level then at level 9 our intelligence modifier has gone up so we can prepare both spells we pick we also just got fifth level spell slots so banishment I think is the obvious first selection banishment like long Strider and tas's mind whip is a great upcast option targeting two creatures who are just gone if they fail a Charisma saving throw and Charisma is isn't a bad save to Target either if the target isn't from the plane you banish them from they're banished permanently after the minute is up but most of the time that doesn't really matter you drop concentration after all the other enemies are cleaned up and have the rest of the party ready actions to Bonk them when they reappear I don't remember the last time that a wizard drops concentration on banishment in order to have an enemy return after everything else is cleaned up and have that be really challenging it tends to be just is clean up and I'm also going to grab dimension door because of course I am dimension door allows you to bring along a passenger I discuss the value of the manifested mind and dimension door in that second link video but I pretty much grab this spell with any wizard that reaches this level so wall of fire banishment and dimension door are added to spell preparations and now banishment as well as wall of fire with blooding damage add to our big play options in combat with both our intelligence modifier and proficiency bonus increasing at level 9 we now have a base plus 12 for Arana in history for context a 20th level character with a 20 intelligence and normal skill proficiency would have plus 11 we have plus eight in our other intelligent skills with the standard options to boost them so onwards and upwards to 11th level we have 10 wizard one cleric master scrier was covered in that third link video and the only thing I'll repeat here is that Tasha's mind whip is going to be my daily spell scroll the scroll cast it at third level so that's when we get two Targets and it saves us a third level slot on something we might have used a third level slot on as well we can scrub Scrolls faster and cheaper and first level spell Scrolls is the play here if we're using xanthar that's a scroll which is the four hours we saved on Long resting so for one thing that does save us first level slots but for another thing it saves us spell preparations so I'm not going to worry about preparing long Strider or magic Missile I'm just going to craft Scrolls instead we don't need to upcast Long Strider if we can cast it several times and we're not a magic Missile centered build so upcasting magic Missile probably isn't the right play for us anyways what that means is we will now have four available spell preparations as we select new spells and that's some good timing so we're adding a canant trip and I think at this point we probably want to get Chill Touch so chill touch is a ranged attack hand trip like Firebolt but here's why we want it if we hit a creature with it it can't regain hit points until the start of our next turn this is going to be more of a problem at higher levels you start getting things like Mythic creatures that really get screwed with Chill Touch and this keeps us from needing to guess what damage type to do to stop regeneration or creatures with big healing plays and this keeps that from working it it's just a good cantrip to have for those situations now for the four selections I'll just say that if you're allows switching the damage type of animate objects that is probably a pretty good play I mean you could grab animate objects and then maybe steel wind strike and then you could have the animated objects do Force damage that'd be really good I don't think it works though I went through that in the first length video and I explained why I don't think it works but I'm not here to tell your DM how they should run it so if it is an option I would consider that route I'm starting with synaptics static there's a few things I love about this spell the big area the damage the intelligent saving throw and it applies a debuff as well that is fairly impactful and doesn't require your concentration to maintain and it can last a long time solid non-concentration fifth level Spell option and I'm also taking transmute Rock because it's also non-concentration and can really pair well with wall of fire this is a great Battlefield control spell and not needing concentration come on oh and also notice you can transmute the ceiling and it drops and it does a bit of bludging damage and I'm not recommending that but I'm pointing out that there is no reason to have our synaptic static deliver psychic damage when bludgeoning is available so I'd be doing synaptic static bludgeoning damage because a transmute Rock then wall of force because we're a wizard and wizards need to take wall of force and finally pass wall because this is a great utility spell and we're not always in combat and we want to be a Swiss army knife of useful tools and tricks outside of combat as well rituals help us with that but some of these spells can help us as well you can bypass all kinds of challenges and difficulties with pass wall this is another spell I've grown more fond of recently because I guess I run these one shots all the time with patrons and I don't think about pass wall when I'm designing the adventures but then someone in the party will have it and they're able to trivialize things I expected to be really difficult and so I'm kind of sold on passwall and so we're preparing all four of these and now not only do we have a number of big plays on round one but now we actually have a number of really big plays on round two well we're concentrating on a round one spell we can follow it up with a transmute Rock or a synaptic static for a huge onew punch so onwards and upwards level 13 so we're 12 Wizard one cleric and resilient constitution of course concentration is now protected much better a plus eight Constitution saving throw with Advantage if it's a concentration save due to damage technically there's a chance of failing a dc10 concentration save but it's 1 in 400 and it is going to be 0% eventually it's also another 13 hit points which is nothing to sneeze at so we will have two additional spell preparations and four more spells I am starting with contingency because Wizards take contingency at level 11 we have dimension door which is a great contingency option I mean potentially because I have heard that apparently some DMS won't let you pick the direction of your dimension door when it goes off through contingency so if you have one of those DMS then you probably want something else so I guess if you can inscribe auk's resilience sphere into your spell book that would be another option personally I allow the player to pick the direction of dimension door when it goes off but if you're not sure check with your DM a nice thing about contingency is when we're adventuring we don't need to prepare it because after it's cast it lasts for 10 days so we just prepare it when we cast it and then we prepare something else so I would do dimension door if maybe if I fall the 20 hit points or maybe when I say the magic word or blink twice rapidly something like that and yeah Mass suggestion because you kind of got to right it's unfortunate there are these spells that are just too good to pass up so you end up taking them every damn time but that's the game we have and I am not skipping Mass suggestion which will be my usual preparation at level 12 then at level 13 I'm going to grab ry's telepathic Bond because it's it's a good ritual and I only get one more spell preparation and I'm also going to take wall of ice because when you get to high levels half the fraking creatures have bonus action teleports but they all need to see the destination so let's get an opaque wall option they can just bust through the wall and then move through it but it's going to take time and it's going to deal some damage so it's all good if we pick up some more six level spells this is a good candidate for damage swapping as well and our proficiency bonus has gone up again so we have plus 9 or plus 14 on intelligence skills with all the stuff on to 15th level so 14 wizard one cleric we now have our final order describes feature one with the word and ideally our spell book is way bigger than just the selections I've made in this video in which case this is a reaction once prong rest that negates all damage and the cost is basically negligible also we get advantage on Arcana check so that is going to be a plus4 with Advantage now so start expecting 30 plus results especially once we start adding guidance and our racial features so here's the first time that we can just end this campaign if we're not having fun just take simulacrum and you can break D and D congratulations you just won I mean it would be a lot classier to quit the campaign so the rest of your group can still enjoy themselves but but if you want to be a prick you can use simulacrum and wreck it for everyone which is why I never recommend this spell anymore speaking of which I believe there was a comment on my manifest mind video saying that with simulacrum you could have two manifested minds operating at the same time and I have to say Well done commenter you just found the one way that simulacrum could be abused my first pick is teleport because I only get one more spell preparation but I don't necessarily need to prepare teleport it's that Swiss army knife outside of combat and all that Jaz but if we do need it we will need to take a long rest and force cage like Mass suggestion you just kind of got to and got to prepare it as well with my 12 level wizard selections reverse gravity is a nice Battlefield control option and etherealness which we can't keep prepared but we can keep it in our back pocket Swiss army knife and all that jazz and rather than go through level 16 to 20 of course we would grab Maze and wish probably true polymorph and Prismatic wall but as far as order scribes goes this is all the features here at level 15 and at level 16 and wizard I would be tempted to grab the alert feet and then maybe pump my intelligence to 20 at level 19 there that's the 20th level character if you are playing this character to level 20 so this build is not a trick build yes I will be switching damage types and engaging in manifest mind Shenanigans and cropping out spell Scrolls and ignoring damage and I am the intelligent skill monkey but for the most part this is the Wizard's wizard with the cleric dip we only set back our wizard spells slightly and we took spells that use those higher level slots well the saving throws are good the armor class is good the hit points are good we have an Eclectic set of spells we have Battlefield control damage debuffs utility concentration and non-concentration effective spells targeting a variety of saving throws when a saving throw is even granted now the one thing this particular build isn't going to be good at is single Target damage we've got some cantrips we got magic Missile uh but beyond that it's all like area of effect damage or non- damage and if that is something that you wanted on this character then I would suggest getting and preparing summon aberration that will really boost that particular Niche usually with my Wizards I don't really worry about it because there's always going to be other people who do the single Target damage and my job is the crowd control so at long last I am done with the build for the nerdiest wizard there ever was would you build it differently let us know in the comments otherwise until next time I'm going to sit back relax and have some fun DND is for everyone thanks everybody and I'll talk to you soon I want to thank some of the pat that allow me to continue this kind of content on this channel if you would be willing to support my work here please click the patreon link in the video description today I want to thank hey Mr Wonderful babra blue wolf John D tarus 9 elista Dorito Jared hurier John Wayne Joseph Hall Joseph robodo Joseph Rogers woo Carl Kong Lila Corps grave Michael Michelle Moxy Nemo Paul susac prometheo ntg Purge Thunder riken stall Rico Ryan Wilmont Shane and Todd Beyond Starfall Steven melene ear shine third and Wad and thanks to all my patrons

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 59,611

Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Optimization, Guide, Wizard, Wizards, charop, ultimate, best, most powerful

Id: pcpP7UnKYeM

Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2023