Shadow Magic Sorcerer Guide for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

before we get into this week's episode it's time to start spreading the news brought to you by the official sponsor for this video dimension 25 returned with the unsleeping city season 3 of their D&D live play Brennan the Dungeon Master has rewritten the history of New York City to include a dark magical world and gathered veteran college humor comedians to explore its mysterious underbelly filled with more secrets than we know it's a great example of how to adapt D&D Fivey rules into a modern setting and I'm actually surprised they didn't use more homebrew yeah Brennan really immerses the world by introducing each character with their own mini adventure during the first session it's really cool but it's like I'd do differently at my own game table I've been immensely entertained by the show so far and I've even Cribs some notes of my own for creating an immersive atmosphere and hilariously engaging player characters you can watch the full series and much more at drop out TV you can even get 50% off your subscription if you sign up by following the links below both episodes are available right now on their youtube channel follow the links down below to learn more and now onto this week's episode through the streets of a ruined city a pack of Noel's pursue a lone man quartering him down a darkened alley they smiled to each other laugh in their hyena light voices they have their quarry the figure turns to face the Noles and smirks as he raises a hand and snaps a finger causing a shroud of darkness to envelop him as the Beast turned to each other confused beams of shadowy energy fire forth from the darkness causing three of them to collapse dead to the ground the last remaining null stands there horrified by the massacre around him as a low growl from the darkness and leaping forth a shadowy hound drags the final monster to his doom stepping out of the darkness is the shadow sorcerer greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Keller McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we discuss everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe so that you never miss an episode this is our in-depth guide to the shadow sorcerer subclass in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition you're gonna need a copy of Zanna thar's guide to everything which introduced the subclass to the game as well as the players handbook to follow along with us today we're gonna be taking a look at their abilities class features as well as spells mana magic feats and races that work best for your shadow sorcerer there's a lot to cover to find our way in the shadow fell so let's get rolling shadow sorcerers are born from the fel energies that originate in the extra planar realm known as the shadow fell a dark mirror of the Material Plane through which the energies of the Night death negative energy and cold find true power if you're looking at the shadow sorcerer there's a chance that you're interested in playing a character that is a little dark and brooding and a little edgy there are many sources of magic and bloodlines that can bind your characters to the shadow deities such as the Raven Queen or terrible entities such as orcas the demon Prince of undeath vecna or other Lich Lord that hold power over the energies of death and shadow may be a distant ancestor of your shadow sorcerer you might bear the terrible curses of creatures like the shadow kai or the demon queen loth playing a shadow sorcerer means you get to really embody the shadowy energies that come from this source of magic being able to describe your spell's with a little bit more darkness to them and coming up with new ideas on how these spells look and feel based on the character you're playing beyond these great role-playing there are many fantastic mechanical reasons why it's a lot of fun to play a shadow sorcerer the abilities of the shadow sorcerer are just really well placed in this kind of darker McCobb sort of attitude that he has and being able to play around with these is a lot of fun in game the shadow sorcerer really bridges the difference between the wild magic sorcerer with its unpredictable and untamed energies and the dragon sorcerer which has a very elemental theme as well as other subclasses like the storm sorcerer and the divine soul which associate your characters with a very strong theme that might not be what you're interested in if you are interested in more of the dark demonic edge your sort of themes to connect your character to the shadow sorcerer is the perfect subclass for you and the powers of the subclass reflect on that really really nicely getting some of the most unique abilities and interesting ways to use the sorcerers meta magic and sorcery points on top of their spouse selection as well the shadow sorcerer really opens up this door for the sorcerer class that allows you to take a look at a more subtle and sneaky version of the sorcerer who relies a little bit on stealth and the shadows to get around as well as being able to use things like illusion magic that really feel at home with this subclass so the sorcerer itself can fill many different party roles but when we're choosing the shadow sorcerer specifically how does that bear out what we can do with our sorcerer in combat exploration and social interaction Kellie the one thing that the shadow sorcerer has in terms of combat is a lot of control over darkness they gain things like the darkness ability a lot of they're really cool traits that they pick up along the way involve being able to enhance their chances of hitting with spells and being able to survive death which actually makes them a little bit harder than some of the other sorcerer classes because they can get up from The Brink's of death I agree I think that the shadow sorcerer is one of the strongest ticks for a player that's interested in playing a sorcerer but is interested in subtle forms of battlefield control magic as manipulating the environment and particularly darkness I do think that a shadow sorcerer is going to be right at home in missions that rely on subtlety and stealth because of their the ability to control the shadows and get the drop on their enemies by using darkness to their advantage in exploration and infiltration scenarios the shadow sorcerers natural ability to work well in the darkness to increase the darkness around them combined with a really smart spell selection means that you can really be this utility caster that is helping your party get into dangerous environments use the cover of darkness to get in and get out especially if you're gonna expand that with illusion magic and spells like dimension door and invisibility you can really be this excellent utility caster as well with a very limited subset behind that abilities because sorcerers are always limited in that way as a charisma based spell casting class you're gonna be really good at persuasion deception or intimidation whatever skill set that you want to choose you're gonna have the ability scores and the proficiency to match and that's really gonna speak to the way you want to roleplay the sorcerer with a shadow sorcerer I do feel that if you are going for that brooding attitude you might be leaning more towards deception and intimidation but you might be a straight-up charmer who just happens to be an emo kid yeah you might be the nightmare you might be the thing that haunts the darkness and creates nightmares in your enemies you could be a very subtle manipulator so I think there's very different ways that you can take your characters role-playing direction depending on how they identify with the stuff of shadows and especially the broader theme of the night sleep darkness and dreams are all really fertile ground for thinking about your character's identity if you're gonna play as a shadow sorcerer so in summary what would you say are the biggest strengths of the shadow sorcerer the strengths of the shadow sorcerer are really their ability to control darkness to have that darkness spell that they can see through their ability to just be that charisma based spell caster also gives them really good social avenues to be the face of the party as well as a blaster or a battle fee controller they can really fill several different roles in the party and that is a strength that you can build a shadow sorcerer to really fit in where you need them to be I think that the shadow sorcerer runs into a really big problem the sorcerer class as a whole which is there's so much that you want to be good at but you are really limited in your spell selection and you are really limited in your sorcery points and you're gonna be tempted by a lot of those blaster spells which really aren't the strength of the shadow sorcerer I think that their strength is in the darkness and in their control and utility abilities and as soon as you want to have a smorgasbord of blaster spells in addition to all that utility magic you certainly start looking at the limited number of spells that a sorcerer knows and be like maybe I should just play a wizard instead so it's a really tough call in that respect shots fired I do think that it is nice to have a few Blasi spells speaking from experience but the the shadow sorcerer does have those limits and I do find that from experience I am thirsty for sorcery points in almost every game and the games where I do feel like I was the biggest badass on the battlefield I usually am going into the next combat with almost nothing the last thing that appointed is that the shadow sorcerer suffers from the same thing that warlocks have and other classes that really like hanging out in the darkness and that is when your allies can't see in the dark and because the shadow sorcerer is able to conjure areas of darkness that they can see in but it's magical darkness so unless you got a warlock as a sidekick you don't have anybody else that can see in that and that can be a party dynamic problem it's a strong ability but how your other party members deal with the darkness can really impact how potent your abilities end up being I do notice that the further I get into the campaign the less I'm using my darkness because if we're in small spaces darkness just hinders the party you know the human fighter can't see in that darkness sorcerers are an outlier they are one of the few classes in the game that select their subclass right away at first level because it's their sorceress origin and in the case of the shadow sorcerer you gain two abilities right off the bat eyes are the dark and strength of the grave eyes of the dark allow you to gain dark vision out to a hundred and twenty feet which is great especially if you're playing a race that doesn't already have dark vision on top of that you can use to sorcery points to cast the darkness spell and allow yourself to be able to see within that magical darkness that abilities a little bit of an outlier again because that doesn't come online right away at first level you have to wait pal third level to be able to get that and you get a bonus spell known so the darkness Bell doesn't count I guess your spells no it is a good battlefield control or defensive maneuver to be able to have on the battlefield to just shroud yourself in darkness that only you can see through does give you an edge in combat the strength of the grave ability allows you to make a charisma saving throw whenever you take damage that would reduce you to zero hit points if you succeed on the saving throw which has a DC of five plus the damage taken you stay up at a single hit point but then you can't use that ability again until you take a long rest this will literally save your life yeah depending on how hard you get hit that is the one thing that I do notice about this ability it is very very useful and it's good to always have that chance but as you increase in levels that chance is gonna get lower and lower for you to be able to get back up and the other diminishing thing is it won't save you from a critical hip or radiant damage if you take more than 20 damage on a hit your chances of being able to get back up if you're reduced to zero on that hit are really minimal yeah if you if you eat a great axe attack from a frost giant that deals 25 points of damage you have to make a DC 30 charisma saving throw which even with your proficiency and a high charisma modifier your chances of making that even as a very high level character are low so it does work really well if you're dropped by minions so really I would say that this ability saves you from embarrassing deaths I think the most potent and amazing ability is the Hound of ill-omen which you get at level 6 literally the reason I chose this class was because I loved the idea of having a shadowy hound that I could summon that would single out a target chase them down attack them and give me a bonus on being able to hit them with a spell so the Hound of ill-omen has many different disclaimers and exceptions but the basic idea here is that you're gonna use your bonus action on your turn summon the Hound within 30 feet of a target that you SiC it against the Hound that is summoned is a monstrosity not a beast its medium-sized not large and it uses the same stats as the direwolf from the monster manual it also gets a few extra cool abilities like temporary hit points and the really fantastic ability that if you cast a spell against the quarry of the Hound and it's within 5 feet of that target that target then gets disadvantaged on its saving throw which is credible so pairing this with a good mix of spells that requires saving throws that you can use in conjunction with the Hound is key to a good shadow sorcerer I think so the thing to bear in mind with this is that this ability is about on par with the sorcerers heightened spell in that a magic it cost the same amount of surgery points to do it but with the Hound of ill-omen as long as the Hound is there every spell you cast against that target is going to benefit from that disadvantage to it saving throw so you're getting more bang for your buck if you're hitting a big boss with multiple spells that require saving throws also keep in mind that the other benefit is that your Hound gets to attack every turn so you're piling on more damage and the hound has pack tactics so if you have an ally that's also up front fighting that same target you now have advantage on the hounds attacks as well and how can then pull the target prone and really be that extra Ally on the battlefield the impact of a summon creature on combat is so massive and this is just such a subtle ability it's like getting a much more powerful spell and the fact that is not a spell so you summon it as a bonus action and you can still cast a leveled spell makes it just phenomenal the only downside to the hound is that once the target dies or five minutes pass it goes away so you can't SiC the hound against another target over the course of the the same combat encounter so it really is something you use against the priority target or the boss monster it's also why you don't always bust this hound out in every single combat encounter I usually reserve it for if there is a main target or a big target that you need to take out that is when the Hound comes into play otherwise siccing it on a minion and then having that minion die after one round and the Hound goes away seems like a bad use of three sorcery points from there the shadow sorcerer does not gain any new abilities to level 14 when they get the fantastic shadow lock ability that allows them to teleport between areas of shadow as a bonus action up to a hundred and twenty feet this is just great it's basically a free teleportation you don't need a teleportation spell as long as there's shadows around you can teleport yeah create your own area of Darkness and teleport to and from it the key thing here about the shadow sorcerer is that unlike the shadow monk who can't see in their own magical darkness the shadow sorcerer can so if you're in an area of dim light or darkness and you want a teleport somewhere where there is not currently dim light or darkness you can create it with the darkness spell and teleport there or if you're in an area of light you cast darkness on yourself and then use that to teleport into the darkness as well so you actually had your own cool little built-in escape tool right here that is really handy and for some reason I hadn't really considered the use of the shadow spell in conjunction with the shadow walk yeah which is just a really potent combination that can really save your life or help just get into or out of places yeah it kind of steps on the toes of dimension door although dimension door I think is still a much more flexible and powerful spell because it's not contingent on line of site but it does mean that you know you might as well not take misty step as a high level shadow sorcerer an eighteenth level you gain Umbra form which makes you turn into a shadow that is resistant to all damage except radiant and force you can also walk through creatures and objects is it as if they were difficult terrain this ability cost six sorcery points to activate and it only lasts for one minute it's a great high level ability I think six or three points is a pretty high cost to activate it I wish it would have been a passive ability like sprouting wings I can see this as the oh my gosh I need to get out of here and I have six sorcery points left ability or the work planning and infiltration and we're gonna get into this place and who's our stealth operator the guy that can walk through walls and become a shadow it could be very useful but I don't see me wanting to use that if I know I'm going into a big combat or something it could be very useful as an ability that you got ten levels earlier and didn't come online at 18th level as an 18th level sorcerer because by this level you have ninth level spells and wish so you already have had the ability to have resistance to all damage and you can probably cast spells like wish and teleport yourself around I don't think that for the cost of six sorcery points it's what I would pay there's a lot of things that you can do with six sorcery points is an 18th level sorcerer like twinning a sixth level spell which i think is gonna do a lot more than this that's fair I think it's a pretty disappointing high level ability all the abilities of the shadow sorcerer are on the table how are we going to build this character and it starts off with a key question what are your ability squares going to be charisma is their number one it's got to be Constitution is my number two and then after that I kind of usually go with either dexterity or wisdom which is really for the skills that I want to use or the saving throw that I want to be better at yeah I agree with that I think if you were doing a point by character I put 15 in charisma max that out right away and then I would probably be really tempted to put a 15 in Constitution or dexterity and then let the rest fall out from there I think I want to have at least 14 in both my dexterity and Constitution and then the other points I'm gonna allocate based on how I want to role play the characters mental stats there's a case that you could make a sorcerer that completely dumps their strength wisdom and intelligence and just goes completely does that whole thing where you have eight strengths eight intelligence eight wisdom and then 15 in the other three stats it's really tempting to do that that character is gonna be so dumb I know I don't think no wisdom no intelligence no just a walking angry brooding jerk yeah and I think too as a shadow sorcerer you want to have some intelligence and wisdom behind you because you want to be able to fully take advantage of your social skills and you want to be able to take advantage of the fact that in stealth environments the last thing in the world you want is to be mucking around in the dark and then fail a perception check so I think that at least putting a 10 or 12 in your intelligence and wisdom is a pretty good idea I don't know how we go much higher than that unless I roll the stats enrolled really well so we're looking at the shadow sorcerer what races are gonna work best for this subclass so I think that there are a few natural fits for the shadow sorcerer depending on how edgy you want to be because the sorcerer really attracts the people of kind of the peripheral races those that are the outcasts those that are the destitute those that are the half-breeds and so half elves and tea flings shadow kai and dark elves are all fantastic shadow sorcerers I think they you end up with a pretty edgy character if you're playing a dark elf or a tiefling shadow sorcerer but I think you know you just lean into the tropes you're at one crank that emo knob up to 12 yeah and mechanically I think they're all fantastic as well I now want to play a drow sorcerer with a sweet pea haircut who people just don't understand him you know one understands the darkness in my soul I think this is one of the few cases where the variant human is not the clear winner and if you're playing a variant human you're not playing a half-elf or a dark enough which means you can't take elven accuracy which is another awesome feat for a shadow sorcerer because you're gonna have advantage a lot on your attacks and those are really the two biggest feats for me if we're talking about building a shadow sorcerer is take the half elf so you can get elven accuracy because I'm combining elven accuracy with the ability to see in your own darkness spell is a great one to come yeah so you cast darkness on yourself and now you have super advantage on all of your attacks so if you build this character that has that pound of ill-omen with a few spells that require saves and then you have some spells that are direct hits with elven accuracy and darkness you now have the ability to gain benefits to all of your spell casting would you say you're taking advantage of the cover of darkness very well I would say that yeah yeah you will you are you're getting advantage and disadvantage all over the place you might take skulker as another feat which could be pretty interesting because you're probably gonna have a smorgasbord of spells other sorcerer staples like elemental adapt might not be what you're going for is the shadow sorcerer I think you're gonna be really diverse with your damage types so elemental adept isn't gonna give you the advantage that it would with other sorcerers so let's talk about some of the skills and backgrounds that might work best for our shadow sorcerer yeah I think a shadow sorcerer naturally falls into the criminal charlatan bounty hunter sort of backgrounds again they're coming from the shadowy place and having skills that support stealth deception proficiency in thieves tools maybe even slate of hand are all really gonna mint your natural spell casting really the background is going to depend on how you want to play that shadowy character I think for me the essential skills to pick up as a shadow sorcerer are stealth perception and deception and maybe intimidation or persuasion if you want yeah I fully agree stealth is gonna be so important especially since you are that character that plays around in the shadows that is your thing so that is really important I picked up all three of the social skills because for me if I have a character that has such high charisma why not benefit in all social situations no matter what the DM asks me to roll to pass a argument or a discussion of some kind I have the tools to get past it so if you want to be the face of the party if you want to be the talker you can just pick up any of those social skills now that's where playing the human might come into play because you could take the prodigy feet and get expertise in something like stealth or persuasion or deception and that's the one thing where the bard kind of has the game occupied with the stealth and social skills but if you wanted to you know give the bard a run for their money as a shadow sorcerer you play yeah yeah you could so to summarize I think with the shadow sorcerer with the unique skills and ability scores and feats I'm probably going to max out my charisma as soon as possible get proficiency in stealth perception and deception and once my charisma score is maxed out I'll probably then start looking at feats like war caster and lucky and skulker that sounds about right to me again I would take elven accuracy if you're playing a half-elf or I might even take prodigy if you're playing a human as a half health you might have an odd charisma score as you start to level up so that's where you can squeak in elven accuracy because it does give you the +1 yeah so now getting into the meat of the class meta magic and spells so first off we've talked about how the meta magic is very very restrictive for sorcerers and in fact we have a whole guide to meta magic options for sorcerers so Kelly when you pick your meta magic options as your shadow sorcerer what did you go for I went with quick and spell and empowered why did you take those two I took those two because originally I was imagining a more blasty character and so quick and spelled gave me tools to use both a Blasi spell and maybe a utility tan trip or something like that being able to do certain tasks at the same time as using spells and then empowered was just fun for upping a fireball or another blasty spell being able to say oh no I rolled too many ones let's redo that so I disagree with you I think that as a shadow sorcery you gotta have subtle spell I I think it's a mistake not to take it personally you know what Monte I disagree with me too and I wish I had taken subtle spell takes Auto spell as a shadow sorcerer and don't look back I think that it is such a huge enabler for the stealth gameplay for everything the shadow sorcerer wants to do I think is the number one pick for for them and then I personally would be really tempted to take twin spell because I think that there's a lot of really good options that you can take with support magic and utility magic that you're gonna get a lot of mileage out of it although I don't think quicken spells about choice at all I think that you could make the case either way depending on how your spouse election is gonna quicken spell is never a bad choice it just comes up less with the play style I think the shadow sorcerer speaks to then it would with certain other subclasses the thing is though as the shadow sorcerer you're gonna be spending so many sorcery points on eyes of the dark and the Hound of a lawman so taking an economical meta magic choice like subtle spell or empowered spell or even quicken spell which is only ever to sorcery points is a really good choice because twin spell is really expensive it uses up more sort of three points than basically any other meta magic option and so I would definitely take it by level ten you definitely want quickening twin but I think subtle is the way to go so now we've talked about the meta magic why don't we discuss what spells we might take for our shadow sorcerer I mean there's always going to be good spells for all spell casters but what really speaks the shadow sorcerer well you got such a limited choice so I've really tried to narrow mine down because it's so easy to list all of the spells that a sorcerer can possibly take but we can never get around the fact that the sorcerer is only ever going to get 15 and at any given level of play you're gonna be really limited by your choices for cat trips I'm gonna take minor illusion mage hand and prestidigitation 100% of the time and then I would probably take chill touch andraia frost the only thing that you have that's different than mine is I took fire bolt instead of ray of frost and I don't have prestidigitation I have mold earth that more came from a place where I wanted to try mold or that yeah but it has been useful I do feel like the illusion sort of spells the mage hand and the minor illusion really kind of can speak to a shadow Sorcerer's abilities I think that's really cool and chill touch just seems on point yeah it feels thematic as we get into first level spells what were your top two picks for first level spells so first of all I think that we need a defensive spell and I love shield I think that shield works really well with a sorcerer because it they're squishy character and being able to have that +5 to AC and a pinch can be really helpful and actually using a spell slot to not take a massive amount of damage is endlessly helpful see I disagree with you I think I would take Mage Armor over shield if I only had to pick one I think that having +3 AC all the time is better than having +5 for one or two big hits the other smell I took was burning hands because I do believe that you do want some way to damage the enemies depending on your party dynamic if you have a lot of people that are doing damage this might change but for me I always like having something to back myself up with however this is not a long-term spell I did end up switching out burning hands later I think I would pick up sleep right away and I would then retrain that for something like disguise self I actually love the idea of disguise self because you charisma based spellcaster mixing the deception with the disguise self is really good that's gonna be the recurring theme in my spell choices I'm going for the absolute enchanter illusionist in my spell choices that's fair yeah first second level I picked web and scorching ray again picking one that I felt was like really thematic of a shadow sorcerer I love the web but then I also I love blasting I went totally different from you again I chose phantasmal horse invisibility and suggestion those are my top three for second level strat the shadows were for spells first of all all three of them are really cool twinned okay because twin invisibility at third level is super useful turning to party members invisible for an infiltration great way to set up a fight phantasmal force is a problematic spell we've talked about this before and so if your DM is gonna give you problems about how it works if you have disagreements with your dungeon master over how to interpret this spell you might not want to take it but it's really cool when you can't win it you know that sounds all great but I can't help but discuss how great web is yeah at pinning down enemies and impacting the battlefield to help out all of your allies but I mean suggestion a twin suggestion could stop a fight from even happening a subtle suggestion and really go far that's like a mind worm right there my spell choices for third level were hypnotic pattern counter spell and fireball I completely agree with you on all three of those I think hypnotic pattern is pretty unbeatable and for me it fits my illusionist theme I think that counterspell is absolutely essential although if you have someone else in your party that can cast it you might want to not take it I keep talking about how it's good to have a few Blasi spells at the end of the day if you take fireball you're probably good in the blast you department now for my very purest illusionist shadow sorcerer I'm not take fireball I'm gonna take major image because I want the ultimate illusion spell it is the Swiss Army knife of illusions it gets around all the other problems with all the other illusion spells because you can concentrate on it you can cast it as a six level spell and then you don't have to concentrate on it and it has an indefinite duration or you can manipulate it change it it's very very large if you've got the creativity and you've got a DM who embraces that creativity major image might be the last spell you ever need to cast so when we look at fourth level spells I went with polymorph and wall of fire but I bet you're gonna have some different spells to look at not on the polymorph front that's fair it's best spell in the game I don't know how you cannot take it I I stand by the fact that if you have access to polymorph you take polymorph yeah I took the mentioned or I think I seem to recall that you took the Thunder step which I did take fun yourself yeah I took dimension door I think that there's actually less stand out fourth level spells for sorcerers and actually across most classes so I'm happy with just having polymorph and Dimension Door I think that those two spells alone give me everything I need for my sorcerer one that does seem pretty on point with the theme of a shadow sorcerer is sickening radiance yes so you've got shadow and light and beware the light as well it it's not either of our favourite spell but it is one that if you are really trying to hone in on what feels shadow sorcery yeah that one kind of speaks to me so as we come to fifth level spells I am fighting my urge to take animate objects and I'm gonna take seeming synaptic static and telekinesis as my fifth level picks I am taking animate objects and you're not going to stop yeah but that's more of me talking about my favorite spells I feel like if we're talking about the shadow sorcerer synaptic static is almost like it does seem like it's very pretty on point for like the whole illusion enchanter like that to me I'm taking synaptic static as my damage-dealing spell because I felt my third level spells were really crowded with my control spells like I'm going to be using counter spell major image and have not a Katerine a lot so I kind of inverted the purpose of my 5th and 3rd level spells where I took the damage dealing spells for my 5th level spells and the control spells for my third would you drop fireball for synaptic static yeah I think that I would let firewall stay off the list because chances are I'm going to be casting hypnotic pattern and counter spell using my 3rd level spells so as we get into the very high level spells our 6th 7th and 8th level spells these are where the decisions getting really really tight for the sorcerer because really you can only afford to pick one spell of each level so you gotta make it a good one I picked for my 6th level spells either mental prison or math suggestion both seem on point with a shadow sorcerer I love mental prison the the description of mental prison describes that possibly you're surrounding the enemy with like fangs and darkness and I think that that feels super on point yes just trapping an enemy in evil darkness and mental prison is a great option for Quinn yeah yeah especially I really like the idea of twinning mental prison 7th and 8th level spells for the sorcerer really disappoint me I am NOT impressed with any of them and I think that the only ones that I would really be interested in taking here would be teleport plane shift and maybe power word stun but everything else kind of makes me go I don't care too much yeah honestly I agree there's there's not a whole lot out there and when you get to those high-level spells I still feel like I'm relying on the spells that I took earlier in the game and these are just kind of ones that are there in case I need them and when we get to the 9th level spells I think you've only got one option really one must have which is wish meteor swarm wish you got a take wish because it's gonna give you access to everything else along the way that you didn't have until now and you're probably gonna be using wish to cast lower-level Wizards spells like contingency and simulacrum because you didn't get those leveling up but at the same time if we're talking about the theme of a shadow sorcerer do you think wish feels appropriate or is that you pulling the wishes out of the shadow felt it is making the stuff of dreams become real okay fair enough I think psychic scream sounds also on point with a shadow sorcerer it's not usually my pick for a ninth level but yeah we have the great advantage here is that Kelly has now played thirty five sessions plus as a shadow sorcerer in our dungeons of Drakon hime campaign so Kelly what are your go-to strategies would have been the most effective things that you have found is your sorcerer so when I'm playing my shadow sorcerer I really like the use of the darkness spell that I can see through and combined with some of my blasty spells that will give me advantage on my attacks as well as also combining the Hound of ill-omen with some of my more interesting smells like hypnotic pattern or polymorph that requires saving throw to give that enemy disadvantage on that safe so you try to assess at the start of combat whether this is gonna be a combat that you're gonna rely on darkness and blasting for or the Hound of Illinois omen and concentration for those are my two go-to strategies and yeah if there's a big boss I usually do the Hound of ill-omen if there's a bunch of minions I'll do the darkness and blasty I think that the shadow sorcerer does really really well teaming up with other characters like rogues warlocks of gloom stalker Rangers shadow monks and other characters that are at home in the shadows and working together stealthily and intelligently and I think that in a party that was very interested in long-term planning I think the shadow sorcerer as an illusionist could really rock it being able to sneak forward with the rogue with the gloom stalker ranger to help them set up an ambush like imagine a shadow sorcerer supporting an assassin rogue and a gloom stalker Ranger and what that could do especially if you were then using illusion magic to conceal that approach and help those two characters to get away it might work much better than when you have a giant battle master fight or clunking around beside you yeah so we've created a shadow sorcerer that you can check out in the links below at 5th 9th and 13th level also you can check out my shadow sorcerer Sebastian Crowe that we play in the dungeons of dragon Hein in the links below so this has been a look at the shadow sorcerer in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition if you've made an awesome shadow sorcerer that you want to tell us about let us know in the comments below if you're enjoying the channel and want to help support our work please consider checking us out on patreon you can find out how you can support us by following the links in the description below and if you want to see me playing a shadow sorcerer you can check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes on the playlist right up over here and we have plenty more guides to the classes and subclasses of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition wait up over here please subscribe to our channel so you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 133,972

Rating: 4.9295106 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: UQmoptyvGJY

Length: 40min 26sec (2426 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019