Sorcerer: Aberrant Mind Summoner: D&D 5e

hey optim answers Chris here I'm finishing up my focus summoning build videos today and I saved the best for last I love this concept this build and the results but before we get into the build here's my mandatory spiel about watching my video on why I'm making optimized summoning builds using the summoning spells from Tasha's culture of everything I've linked it right at the top of the screen for you check it out come back then continue watching this this is the third summoning build I've done using these spells the other two are the dreadnacromancer and the cyan of Cthulhu using the Necromancer Wizard and fathomless Patron warlock respectively this one uses the aberrant mind sorcerer and it's kind of weird I wanted to do an aberrant mind build on his channel for quite a while and now I have two aberrant mine builds in pretty close succession though the concepts for the builds are very very different as is the build itself our story starts with a simple kobold she in her pack like so many kobolds are enslaved by an evil dragon dwelling in the deep dark caves beneath the great Mountain I hope that Dragon gets its Just Desserts well who boy does it ever because it just so happens that in this case those deep dark caves look like a pretty good home for a mine flare Enclave the dragon was subdued and The Enclave had a great idea maybe the dragon might be a nice host for the enclaves Elder brain bye bye Dragon hello Elder brain Dragon most of our characters pack were either killed or they simply went from one slavery to the next however the Elder brain Dragon sent something different in our character something strange and Powerful the weirdest thing of all though this elder brain felt an attraction to this kobold in fact it thought if it created a connection to this kobold she might blow their mind okay that was terrible very sorry but regardless our character gains an awful power with this link and she goes into the outside world changed in a very eerie and unnatural presence with psionic powers that continually grow more and more Unstoppable okay so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on levels one through six because we get into the summoning at level seven but I'll give you some Basics you probably want the Sleep spell at level one but you'll trade that out later you'll want Mage Armor right from level one otherwise your armor class will be terrible at level three you'll probably want the web spell and then probably hypnotic pattern or fear at level five but we'll trade out some of those once we start concentrating on summoning most of the time because we want to get some non-concentration options so we're going to look at this character from level seven and then we're gonna go right to level 20 with this build I'll insert some regular damage calculations because oh boy we can deliver damage by the way if you want to see the 20th level character sheet I've linked it in the video description so first off why kobold well for a draconic cry draconic cry allows us to provide a pretty substantial buff to our party by using a bonus action the mechanics are pretty simple we use their bonus action and any attacks against any of our enemies that were within 10 feet of us that could hear us will have Advantage this is a huge boost for your party but guess what it is a huge scaling buff to our summon creature and yeah I'll show you how much when we get to the math so we're small size 30 foot movement speed 60 foot dark vision and we get kobold Legacy this allows us to choose from three options either a craftiness for an extra skill proficiency Defiance for Advantage on saving throws against the frightened condition or draconic Source 3 for a sorcerer can trip truly craftiness it's a no-brainer selection here so take craftiness I took survival but take a different skill if you like but skip defiant Central conic sorcery we're taking the plus two plus one one option for ability scores for Constitution and Charisma the plus two for Charisma of course and by level seven we'll have an eight strength 15 dexterity 16 Constitution eight intelligence eight wisdom and 18 Charisma so regarding skill proficiencies and background take what you like I took the urchin background I mean there's no slave of a dragon background but I don't know we can rename it I grab persuasion and deception as class skills okay so as a sorcerer we're using Charisma for spell casting and it says an event in our past left an indelible mark on you yeah that's a big check mark aberrant mind is a really solid sorcerer subclass let's just go through what we've already got at seventh level psionic spells gives us just a ton of extra spells we've already gotten everything up to seventh level on this chart and whenever we level up we can switch a spell here with another that's either divination or enchantment on the wizard sorcerer warlock spell list also this is is an entirely different feature than our normal sorcerer spell selection so you can actually switch two spells when you level up one from Sonic spells and one from your regular sorcerer spells now I'm just going to list the spells that are available to switch to that I think are pretty good candidates for switching these spells so they're silvery barbs if your table uses that spell Tasha's hideous laughter locate object suggestion Tasha's mind whip confusion reletham psychic Lance hold monster and synaptic static now if you're wondering if I forgot to list the third level spells unfortunately I didn't there just aren't very good enchantment and divination spells on these lists for third level so switching out arms of Hadar is pretty obvious I'll be switching that for Tasha's hideous laughter yeah it is a concentration spell so we won't use it while our Summit is active but it is really nice and cheap as a twin Spell option a creature that fails at saving throw is incapacitated and Falls prone that is a pretty harsh debuff on an enemy potentially taking them out of the fight for several rounds we'll keep dissonant Whispers which is also a good twin Spell option and doesn't use concentration the creature makes a saving throw or has to use its reaction to move as far from us as its speed will allow it also takes 3d6 psychic damage though the upcast option for this is poor so we would just cast it at first level but potentially twinned of course we'll happily take the Mind sliver can trip Target's intelligence which is usually the best one to Target and you'll note that there is a lot of targeting intelligence with this particular build does some damage and gives a D4 penalty on the next saving throw before the end of our next turn I'm going to switch comma motions to Tasha's mind whip another non-concentration option and another spell that requires an intelligent saving throw which is typically a weak save on Monsters if the creature fails it takes some damage loses its reaction and on its turn it has to choose whether to use its movement take an action or take a bonus action this spell is particularly effective against creatures that don't have ranged attacks because without a reaction party members can just back away and then the creature has no good options on their turn I'm going to keep detect thoughts it's a utility spell and definitely comes up and I think it's thematically appropriate for a character as well so third level spells I'll keep sending sending is a useful spell basically it's your long-range communication spell also thematically again probably the right choice hunger of Hadar though I think we need to switch that out and I guess we'll take tongues there is occasionally some useful utility also the telepathy we get through aberrant mind isn't one of those kinds that bypasses language restrictions for fourth level spells we'll switch out black tentacles for rollathan's psychic glance this is a non-concentration option it does okay damage targets that weak intelligence saving throw and incapacitates the target use this one against non-intelligence-based spellcasters or enemies with a big ranged action this one also shuts down legendary actions and of course we'll switch out some an aberration for confusion that was me casting confusion on you did you make your saving throw because of course we keep some elaboration I mean it is the main focus of the build after all now what I really love about this one is the beholderkin has a 150 foot range attack it delivers reliable psychic damage and it gets a fly speed with hover so we'll summon our little Beholder float it behind the party like probably out of area of effects spell behind the party and just snipe away with it on its turn ideally if there's a corner to float behind after its turn all the better of all the three summon builds I've done for these spells this one is definitely the most durable because with that long range attack it has the least likelihood of being targeted with damage effects okay so telepathic speech so we have telepathy uses our bonus action and once we set this up it has good range it is not a limited use thing so you can use this as often as you like you just know our little go bold will be flashing images like this submit to the Elder brain submit submit level 6 is a really nice level for subclass features on the aberrant mine sorcerer Sonic sorcery lets us cast our psionic spells without components so it's kind of the ultimate subtle spell if there is a component consumed by the spell then you need that component but you know what's really nice here well some elaboration has a costly component but it is not consumed by the spell so we can just skip that part go psionics also we can cast sound expels either by expanding spell slots or sorcery points equal to the Spells level and here's font of magic which we got at second level you can see converting a spell into sorcery points is a bonus action on your turn you can expand one spell slot and gain a number of sorcery points equal the slots level so if we convert a slot then we get a number of sorcery points equal to that slots level and if we use Sonic spells to cast we can expand sorcery points equal to the Spells level so it's an even trade that is not something that Sorcerers usually get usually sourcers if they want to create spell slots with their sorcery points they have to use the chart right here and you'll see that this is not a favorable conversion rate for them and again another feature at six level psychic defenses gives us resistance to psychic damage and advantage on saving throws against being Charmed or frightened so remember when we were talking about kobold and I said the extra skill was a no-brainer well we're a sorcerer so we have the sorcerer can chips already even an extra one because of the average mind psionic spells and now we have the advantage against being frightened so yeah the extra skill is a no-brainer and our wisdom save on this character is not going to be good so advantage on these saves that are usually wisdom is not a bad thing to have alright so that's what the subclass gives us let's look at the base class so metamagic my first pick is extended spell summon aberration is a one hour duration extend that and you can even take a short rest and you can still have your summon creature afterwards and twin spell I already mentioned some spells that are great and cheap twin spell options so let's grab the med magic at fourth level we're going to grab Faye touched that gives us Misty step and I've selected the command spell as a first level option it's another non-concentration spell that upcasts well or for a sorcery point you could twin it this also gets our Charisma up to 18. alright let's talk about the rest of our spells we actually have to cast these with components like a chump so starting with our cantrips I took Firebolt it's a d10 scaling damage which is one of the better cantrip damages and I've mentioned this regularly but this cantrip is the one that lets you cast it on objects so you can use it to burn through the locked door for example I mean sometimes you just want to destroy something instead of someone frostbite I mean it's not something I would cast regularly it has an okay debuff as a writer causing disadvantage on an attack but the saving throw is Constitution which is not ideal but we're Sorcerer And sources probably get more cantrips than they actually need we've got magehand for that useful utility we also have prestidigitation that's again just for all that minor utility the spell offers and minor illusion is one of the only illusions that doesn't use concentration and there's some useful utility here too and potentially some combat applications as well so for first level spells I've got absorb elements a very strong first level reaction spell and speaking of strong first level reaction Spells Of course I've got the shield spell it is a must-have spell which is unfortunate but if something's a must-have then you take it and I have Mage Armor this character is not an armor wearer I mean we can get armor proficiency but I don't want to slow down our casting progression and that will leave us with a weak 15 Armor class so we will need that Shield spell with second level spells I selected blindness deafness largely because we can cast it while concentrating targets a strong saving throw but it is a fairly cheap twin spell and blindness is a pretty strong debuff I selected web because if we aren't concentrating on summoning for some reason this is a really strong control spell especially for a second level spell for third level spells I added counterspell Fireball is non-concentration and can do some solid damage with the long range and a nice sized area of effect okay so I'm explaining Fireball probably the best known to file in the game dimension door I added for fourth level spells I'm probably using my fourth level slot at level 7 for summon aberration but maybe not and I'll explain that more later and dimension door is a spell you want on your list it has great utility and it's just a get out of emergencies kind of spell so we've got ourselves a whole lot of known spells that's six can trips and 18 known leveled spells almost half of them are psionic okay now we're going to talk about the fun of psionic sorcery so there is a big benefit of playing this particular Summoner over say the wizard dread Necromancer build I presented recently at seventh level we would just have one fourth level slot they could potentially recover it once with a short rest and Arcane recovery so a wizard could potentially do two summons but we have extend spell and psionic spells and we can cast it even more times than they can so basically we're going to use the hell out of this Sonic spells feature so we cast some an aberration that's four Source three points then we extend it so that's five we have two sorcery points left so do we really need those second level slots maybe not so let's say we convert two of these now we're back up to six sorcery points we cast some an aberration again extended again and we're down to one sorcery point so let's convert that third second level slot that's two more sorcery points and a third level slot that's another five another extended sum and aberration and so on this character can actually just summon aberration as often as they need to cover all the combats you could possibly expect even for a long day that's something you're just not going to be able to do with anything but aberrant mind also we didn't even use our fourth level slot so dimension door is still available so let's talk about damage so at level seven we're gonna throw a fire bolt I'm assuming a 60 chance to hit so we're putting 0.65 here because we're adding the critical chance so it's 0.65 times 11 is 7.15 then our beholderkin sixty percent chance to hit times 11.5 times 2 is 13.8 0.5 times 4.5 times 2 is 0.45 that is a total of 21.4 DPR or 20 over the Baseline now if we want to spike that damage all we got to do is use our bonus action and we'll do a draconic cry so if we do the draconic cry now our Firebolt has an 84 chance to hit times 11 equals 9.24 then 0.1 for criticals times 11 equals 1.1 oh and I'm going to bring this up because I think it's a funny story but usually when I do damage calculation assuming Advantage I'll find at least one comment and often multiple comments saying um actually the chance to crit with Advantage doesn't double so it should be 0.0975 listen I round to two decimal places it's a difference here of 0.03 damage it is not significant though now I know the comment will be um actually the difference is 0.0275 anyway we're adding our beholderkin 0.84 times 11.5 times 2 equals 18.48 and 0.1 times 4.5 times 2 equals 0.9 or 29.72 damage that is 68 above our Baseline now just for clarity we get a number of draconic cries equal to our proficiency bonus this is not sustained DPR but if we do want to spike our damage the spikes are damaged by 38.878504-672-8972 percent moving on well the next time the Baseline scales is level 11 so let's look at that then we're going to look at level 17 and then I'll cap off the build by upping up to 20th level so we get another metamagic at level 10 I grabbed heightened spell this is a meta magic that you want to grab later on because it's super expensive for low-level spells but if we twin an eighth level spell cost eight sorcery points heightening it costs three so you can see the difference and why you would want this later in your build for our Sonic spells I'm switching out rari's telepathic bond for synaptic static this is a good blast spell again we're targeting intelligence no concentration it gives that D6 penalty to attack rolls and check this out it does soundic damage and our summon is immune I would still avoid or summon though because it could still get that D6 penalty to attacks and we don't want that and I'll keep telekinesis it's a good spell and if for some reason we don't want to summon it's a strong alternative at eighth level I'll grab resilient dexterity this improves our initiative our armor class and gives us Proficiency in two of the three important saving throws the other I think obvious option here is to take resilient wisdom instead but if you do that if you want to use this build but you would rather have the stronger wisdom saving throws then you probably want to arrange the ability scores a bit differently we get yet another cantrip I just took mold Earth but pick what you like I added the fly spell and yeah it is concentration but if we need to fly our options are limited I mean eventually we will have another fly option but I'm still going to keep flying on the list because you can cast it on other people and I added vitriolic sphere does a bit more damage than Fireball but more importantly it is a more reliable damage type with this one they actually take less than half the damage if they make their saving throw because they outright avoid the secondary damage I am adding wall of stone this one uses concentration but if we concentrate the full duration the wall is permanent and this has some out of combat utility use and I added Mass suggestion because you know of course I did okay so now we can talk strategy and here's what I need to talk about summoning with summon aberration upcast to sixth level so we can do that neat trick I talked about it level 7 to cast summon aberration as a six level spell multiple times right actually unfortunately no at least according to Stage advice we can't do it that way so this is from Sage advice what level is a spell if you cast it without a spell slot such a spell is cast at its lowest level possible which is the level that appears near the top of its description unless you have a special ability that says otherwise the only way to increase the level of the spell is to expand a higher level spell slot when you cast it it doesn't say you can use the sorcery points to cast your Sonic Spells at higher levels and since it doesn't then according to Sage advice you can't this is actually fully in line with how the rules work everything that gives you spell slots seems to make sure you don't get extras of your six level spell slots and higher fauna magic it restricted to fifth level spells or lower how about Arcane recovery fifth level spells are lower what about warlock pack slot stop scaling up at fifth level spells and Mystic Arcanum can only be used once land druid's natural recovery capped to fifth level spells harness Divine Powers actually capped at third level spells and in Leisure DM ignores the sage advice and decides to interpret Sonic spells differently than the designers intended we do not have a loophole that said I am still totally extending that Beholder can I summon with our one six level slot so Blast away with your fifth level and lower spells and if we need extra summons then you cast it at fourth level for these damage calculations I'm assuming the sixth level casting and unfortunately our chance to hit drops this time I didn't increase my Charisma and assuming Armor class is scaling faster than a proficiency bonus we're now looking at a 55 chance to hit now I'm assuming it can trip with our action here but we'll have a fair number of spells so there's a good chance we would throw a fireball or a synaptic static or something else instead but using Firebolt at level 11 we have 0.6 which is the 55 chance to hit plus the five percent chance to crit times 16.5 is 9.9 and then our beholderkin has a 55 chance to hit times 13.5 average damage per attack times 3 attacks is 22.28 and 5 chance to crit times 4.5 times 3 is 0.68 add those all together we're at 32.86 or 21 over Baseline now what happens if we do a draconic cry while our Firebolt now has an 80 chance to hit or 16.5 damage or 13.2 then add 0.1 times 16.5 equals 1.65 and then our beholderkin has an 80 chance to hit times 13.5 times 3 is 32.4 and then and 0.1 times 4.5 times 3 is 1.35 that is 48.6 or 79 over our Baseline now moving on we're going to go up to 17th level where the Baseline scales again we're going to take distance spell this can double the range of a spell and if it does have a range of touch we get a 30 foot range at 12th level we'll increase our Charisma score to 20 and we get another really nice feature at 14th level so this is revelation in flesh it's our subclass feature this gives us yet another bonus action option it is super cheap One Source rate point is nothing at 14th level and we transform ourselves for 10 minutes though if we want this does give us the option we can spend more sourcery points and get more of these features so if you want you can spend four sorcery points and you get them all so the Mind players have tentacles on their faces well we can have that too but they would be eye tentacles and the ability to see invisible creatures a flying speed and this one is not concentration we also get hover a swimming speed twice our walking speed and I guess turn into an ooze move through his faces as narrow as one inch and Escape grapples and restraints and yeah I mean the only one I'd probably worry about having up like before I go into combats is the flying one we are totally going to use that all the time and the others I mean I'd use them as they're needed it's only a bonus action if you do at 16th level we get alert for that plus five bonus to initiative and Immunity to being surprised and there's the no advantage to being attacked by unseen enemies remember when we roll initiative we're not just rolling for ourselves we're rolling for a summon creature as well we pick up the crown of stars spell yet another bonus action this one gives us a ranged 4012 radiant damage attack you get seven of them with one casting we'll take teleport not something I normally cast in combat but massive utility outside of combat and eighth level spells yeah I'm not taking any eighth level spells summon operation is my eighth level spell but ninth level spells you bet so I went back on Fourth between wish and psychic scream but I decided I kind of want both of them so I got rid of blindness deafness and so I could select them both however we'll only be able to cast one of course so psychic scream is just me being a slave to my concept it is the right spell for this character you choose up to 10 creatures in range you add a distant spell meta magic if you need to and they all make intelligence saving throws and if you didn't use distant spell you might want to heighten it and then you can pick one of them to have disadvantage on that saving throw because if they fail they'll take 14 D6 psychic damage and are stunned they take half damage and no stun if they pass then if they are stunned they get another saving throw at the end of each of their turns to end it otherwise they stay stay stunned by the way it is not uncommon for creatures to have no chance to make an intelligent saving throw against a high level Caster if you target such a creature they will be stunned and they will be stunned forever oh and stun is not easy to get rid of like the mercy monk can do it but lesser restoration greater restoration neither of them work to remove stun so I got curious and went down a rabbit hole to see how would you get rid of the stun if you were affected by a psychic scream so like I said the mercy monk could do it and there is not much else in the game so part of the problem here is that the spell is instantaneous so it has an instantaneous duration and that means it's not applicable to dispel magic even anti-magic won't affect the stun condition so I was only able to find one other way in the game you can remove the stunt condition from a creature and that's power word heal and that's it so Mercy monk power deal otherwise stunned forever now I may have been overseeing slightly but I did really go far down the rabbit hole and like even Wish isn't a 100 guaranteed to remove a stun though it very likely would remove a stun but it would have significant consequences for you to use it that way and of course there are ways that you can enhance saving throws so if a creature normally couldn't make their saving throw maybe you could enhance it so that they could that's another possibility but it is really really difficult to get rid of a stun if it has an instantaneous effect and no duration and that affects both this spell it'll actually also affects uh power words stun but speaking of the wish spell of course as I mentioned I took the wish spell on this character as well so you'll have psychic scream and wish only one ninth level slot but you get to choose which one you want to cast oh I I forgot to mention the most important part if something dies from this spell its head explodes I want to finish off tmat with this l so I can describe all five of her heads blowing up let's be honest we're probably not casting Firebolt at all in combat anymore we're gonna have so many spouse slots so for damage calculations I'm just gonna assume Fireball or synaptic static are just being spammed now those are both spells that will likely hit multiple targets but I am not going to add damage to multiple Targets in my calculations we're just going to look at the damage to a single enemy spreading damage around is just so different from single Target damage it's apples and oranges and the comparisons end up not really telling you anything here's what I will tell you about multi-target damage is if you need to spread the damage around in order to exceed Baseline then you do not exceed Baseline okay so I'm going to do two calculations here one with draconic Cry of course but we have some other bonus action options and I thought it'd be interesting let's assume with the first one that we have crown of stars up I mean between crown of stars and draconic cry we might very well cover every single combat round we have in a day which damage calculation is going to be higher we're going to do more damage by using our bonus action for crown of stars or are we going to do more damage using our bonus action for draconic cry well let's start with crown of stars so our Fireball are synaptic static or whatever I'm using 0.75 that takes into account taking full damage if they fail their save or half damage if they make it times 28 average damage is 21. then our beholderkin sixty percent chance to hit times 15.5 per attack times 4 attacks 37.2 then 0.05 chance to crit times 4.5 times 4 is 0.9 and then our moat from crown of star sixty percent chance to hit times 26 average damage is 15.6 and this one has a chance to correct so 0.05 times 26 is 1.3 gives us a total damage of 76. our Baseline is 35.4 at this level this is 115 over Baseline that's fantastic then we have our level 17 except this time we're using our bonus action for draconic cry so our blast spell the damage doesn't change stays at 21. but the beholderkin is going to do a whole bunch more damage so they have an 84 chance to hit times 15.5 times 4 attacks 52.08 0.1 times 4.5 times 4 is 1.8 that gives us 74.88 damage per round or 112 percent of our Baseline so yeah they're almost identical it's 76 for the crown of stars 74.88 here just about the same damage and in both cases fantastic damage I mean mean technically speaking draconic cry is probably going to do more damage because I'm just including the beholderkin and I'm not including the rest of the party that all have Advantage as well so I mean in reality draconic cry will probably do more damage but just for us alone it's just about matching using chronic Stars which is the seventh level spell now if you wanted to go straight sorcerer from here you could but I want to get some armor and a shield on this character and there's lots of ways to do it we could grab Bard I mean with three levels we could go Valor and get medium armor and shield though we wouldn't get the actual Iron Man Shield until Level 20. I mean we could get leather armor or studded leather armor but that's worse than Mage Armor we could grab a hex play dip and then we would have a pack slot I mean if you want others blast you could grab two levels and I really did consider that but I have to tell you I am sick of hex light dips so instead I grab fighter one level in fighter gives us our medium armor and shield proficiency and we can take a fighting style of defense and that's going to increase Armor class even better so our Armor class jumps a lot we get second win for minor healing let's move on so we're going to take a second level in Fighter for Action surge action surge is really good on a spellcaster I mean action surge is really good on anybody including a spellcaster now the nice thing about action surge is so we have ways we can cast spells as a bonus action in the game like if we took the quickest spell metamagic but as soon as you cast a spell as a bonus action any other spell you cast on that turn has to be a cantrip however if we want to cast two leveled spells on our turn then what we need to do is instead of casting as a bonus action we need to get a second action and action surge does that for us so if we use our action surge we can cast two leveled spells on the same turn now I have to say I was originally planning to go back to sorcerer to get the final subclass feature and that feature is warping implosion and I don't like this feature it is going to be really hard to use it effectively I mean if it didn't have friendly fire then it might be worth thinking about how to make this work but with the friendly fire I mean it's just probably not going to be anything you ever use so you know what I just grabbed a third level in fighter and I took Battle Master I wondered if I could even find three Maneuvers I wanted this character and lo and behold I did now Ambush allows us to add our superiority dye to an initiative role and I mean that's going to be a number of my dice right there because I'm going to use this in every combat bait and switch gives a nice Switcheroo with an ally and one of you gets a good armor class boost and then we have commanding presence this advantage on some Charisma ability checks so yeah if you want the extra sorcery point and the fifth level spell slot I get that go back to sorcerer for the final level I don't think it's that big a difference either way but I like initiative boosts and that's blow their mind the third build using Tasha's summons what I really like about this particular build and I'm just going to be blunt here it's the summon that's least likely to die in combat that big ranged attack super nice I originally wanted a range attack on the seven Undead spell with the dreadnacromancer 2 but I explained in that video why I kind of had to go a different way but here we get all that ranged attack goodness and lots of nice non-concentration spells to back our summon creature up now these are three concepts but honestly if you want to throw these summon spells on your Bard with magical Secrets or your higher level cleric with seven Celestial I think those are worthy options too but really it will kind of be more of the same so in my next video I think we're going to take a break from summoning at least for now and until then I'm gonna sit back relax and have some fun d d is for everyone thanks everybody talk to you soon [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 48,882

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

Id: -QsvzNZTiMM

Length: 34min 21sec (2061 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022