The Anti-Mage - D&D: Optimized #29

[Music] hello you wonderful people how's it going welcome to dnd optimized the show where each week we take a deep dive into one sometimes two specific character builds for dungeons and dragons 5e and we crunch numbers and we theorycraft and we try our best to make those characters as powerful as possible for the role that we've chosen to fit them in so if you enjoy the character creation aspect of d and making new characters and theorizing about how to make really cool fun and powerful characters um as much or almost as much as you enjoy playing the actual game well welcome home this is the place for you so we are super happy to have you my name is colby and um i'm your host so thanks for being here um before we jump in thank you everybody for your support please subscribe and like if you enjoy the content and check out other videos and share and comment and all of the things um we are we're still growing nicely and a little bit more quickly every week and i love it thank you um we're getting close to 5000 subscribers and i actually have a little surprise for when we do hopefully that will be sometime in the next couple of weeks or so so stay tuned for that all right so i put up another poll last week to see what everybody wanted me to do for my next build and after 1200 votes which is the most i've had to date anyway um we've we've got a winner now fyi um thank you for for voting and and even liking and commenting on that i think it's good for the youtube algorithm they tend to those community things like polls and little pictures and things like that that i post tend to only show up on your feed if you're using youtube via mobile if you're on an actual computer you can access those you just have to go to like the go to my channel and go to the community tab and you'll see kind of little updates and things like that that i post if you're curious to check them out no big deal um but anyway i do try to post something every two or three days just to kind of keep up the interactions and and thank you for interacting back it's good it's good for us anyway um after over 1200 votes to date um the winner was the the mage hunter mage slayer anti-mage kind of a a character that's specifically built to be good against enemy spell casters um so ever the man who tries to please his audience that's what we're gonna do our episode on today now i've i've got a confession to make as much as i love this character concept and i do i really had a hard time um coming up with a way to to build it to build the character in a way that was sort of quantifiable right um as most of you know a big part of what i do on this show is to get really crunchy with the numbers and not only try to figure out how much damage a character might do but at each level and at different enemy armor classes and things like that or or you know also how much damage they might take if i'm building a if i'm creating a character specifically designed to be sort of a tank build you know well i want to know how much damage are they going to take each round versus some hypothetical uh you know monsters or combat encounters how long is it going to take him to die right and things like that and this build was very challenging because um you know initially i thought okay if they're going to be really good at being sort of an anti-mage then they need to be bursty right and have good burst damage but the more i thought about it and started you know sort of researching and digging in the more i think i really realized that in in 5e there aren't a lot of features or subclasses or things like that that are really designed to help a character do more damage to an enemy spellcaster other than the mage slayer feat um someone will probably correct me on that i'm sure and point out something that is specifically designed to help you do more damage to spellcasters and and not other characters right and so it felt a little weird to try and just create like a burst damage character that i'm gonna say okay and this is my anti-mage right because it could also be an anti-just about anything they're just focused on burst damage um and so then i kind of thought well maybe i mean don't get me wrong there are a lot of things that that a character designed to be an anti-mage um would want in their arsenal no question it's just that not a lot if any of them outside that feat are necessarily designed to be like help you do more damage to spell casters right um and so then i thought well maybe um i need to sort of build them as a kind of a tank character and compare them to other tanks um because the comparing to other characters with the same sort of goal is is for me the one of the most important parts and most interesting things about kind of the numbers right in the first place the problem with comparing them to other tanks is that thus far the few tank builds that i've done there's only been three but they have been a little well they have been almost exclusively focused on being tanky against enemy weapon attacks right and and i admit that's an oversight i think on my part um but all of the sort of control um combat encounters that i was hypothetically putting my tanks up against were all like weapon-based damage right and there was no real um save or take damage from spells component to that um and so when i when i when i was creating this this anti-mage a lot of you know i'm trying to sort of get my checklist of things that are important for you know someone that's good against spellcasters um i was having a hard time sort of getting all of those boxes checked and also you know getting my character a really high armor class it's it's possible um but in order to do it i was sort of having to multi-class and sort of twist and turn and and kind of create this hybridy weird kind of tanky anti-mage thing and it just it didn't it didn't feel right to me the concept was was was getting convoluted so the end of the day for the for the second time only on this channel thus far the first being my support bard build i'm not really i'm not really going to be comparing this character numbers wise to like other i guess archetypes um in the game right tank or bursty or sustained damage or anything like that their damage is going to be pretty good they're going to be okay tanky but but they will pale in comparison for enemy weapon damage against enemy weapon damage anyway to other tank builds that i've done and and so it just doesn't feel particularly useful to sort of look at those numbers because that wasn't really the intent of the design and so they just don't really add up right they don't really they don't match up they don't stack up very well i am going to look at damage taken per round and rounds to die sort of my tank um stats right but only against a hypothetical never-ending fireball machine basically um and and crunch those numbers and say okay if this if this character were to get hit by a by an enemy fireball or have a caster cast an enemy fireball at them every single round you know what kind of damage would they be taking per round and um how long would it then take them to die and i do want to compare that to other tank builds and see you know how much better they fare because they do against other builds that were supposedly designed to be hard to kill in the end this character was not necessarily meant to be the best tank ever or the best sustained damage dealer ever or even the best burst damage dealer ever they were designed for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to hunt spell casters to stick to them like glue to be able to shrug off just about any spell that a caster can throw at them and just to disrupt them and make their lives miserable and and ultimately take them out and that is difficult to quantify right it's difficult to ask the question well how good is this character at you know sticking to an enemy spellcaster and resisting most of the damage and control that a caster might throw at them uh 25 you know it's just there's there's not a lot of numbers for me to hold on to there so anyway um it's difficult to quantify in a particularly effective way but it doesn't mean that the character isn't incredibly effective at what they do so in order to create the best anti-mage possible i first had to come up i think with a sort of checklist like i mentioned of features and abilities that i think it would be important for such a character concept here's what i've come up with first of all they need like bonuses and or advantages to saving throws against spells they need evasion or an evasion-like ability which we'll explain for those who don't know what that is we want resistance to spell damage as much as we can get we want ways to reduce damage from spell attacks that are sort of targeted single attacks right we definitely want ways to effectively stick to the target by either snaring them or maybe being able to teleport to them if they teleport away preferably both we want ways to prevent or negate spells you know counter-spell dispel magic silence those types of things that will prevent spells from from happening in the first place we want great ways to break concentration if an enemy caster is concentrating on a spell and then of course you know we need survivability and we need good damage potential so that we can ultimately take the take the enemy spellcaster out with that checklist in mind i actually ended up coming up with two character builds that i think check all of those boxes i like one better than the other and i think the primary reason is because um i was a big fan of the anti-mage character in um the warcraft 3 mod defense of the ancients for those who are familiar with that valve also created dota right dota 2 i guess or whatever and it's very popular um and and the one one of the one of these builds kind of has a very similar feel to that i think i was probably whether consciously or subconsciously inspired by um that character and that the concept the sort of assassiny very mobile um type of character concept there is a there is a a different version that i'll mention in the final thoughts if you want to stick around for that um that actually ends up being a little bit better of sort of an overall general tank um they're just a little beefier and a little more platy and shieldy and a little less assassinate and so anyway the preamble out of the way i present episode 29 the anti-mage let's jump into the build all right at level one we for our class we are going to start off as a rogue um we are going to be multi-classing no surprise to anyone uh but i wanted to start rogue primarily for their superior proficiencies they get more proficiencies including weapons and tools and more skills and that's really nice this character by the way can absolutely function as the party's rogue for all things sneaky lock picky disarmed trappy as well as make an okay tank particularly after the mid game early on not so much but against mages of course yes uh but but otherwise not until we hit kind of mid game will they get decently tanky um race of course custom that no we're not doing custom lineage i know sorry if i scared the baby we are going yuan freaking tea pure blood why naturally because uh you get advantage on saving throws against spells and spell effects so that's amazing um you could of course take a seder as well for that same benefit but i think the unt pure blood is is superior here i think thematically it just fits better it just feels a little more slinky assassinate which is kind of what i'm going for here um but they get some nice utility from their innate spell casting i'm not gonna really go into it but most importantly i think when compared to the seder they are immune to poison damage and being poisoned and there are plenty of spells out there that do poison damage and so you know having immunity from the get-go to one of those potential damage types is fantastic for us um now there is actually an argument for going variant human here um i know but hear me out if we did if we went very inhuman the free feat that we would be taking is mageslayer right um which gives us advantage on our saving throws against spells just like the racial from the yuan t but only if the spell was cast by a creature within five feet and so in my mind it's it's inferior yes we are going to do our best and be pretty effective at staying close to our targets but there's not always a guarantee that you're going to be able to do it sometimes the mage is going to you know teleport away and get a spell off or there will be multiple mages or it'll be the start of combat and you're you know 50 feet away from them and they'll cast a spell so i i wanted to have that advantage um all the time so yes this is what i'm telling you i'm building a mage hunter mage slayer and i'm not taking the mage slayer feet you idiot um here's the thing like i said the advantage is only if you stay within five feet and if we took that feat and we were on t that that aspect of the feet would be redundant the other things that we get from the feet are um you know when when they cast a spell and we're next to him we can make essentially use our reaction to make an opportunity attack against them that's great except this build is going to have a lot of uses for its reaction and i want to save that i want to hold on to that for defensive purposes yes we would get that extra attack off sometimes um but i i worry that we would use it and do that and then we'd regret it and and wish that we still had our reaction in order uh to sort of help defend against incoming spells and things um so i don't know how much we'd actually be getting that extra attack off um the other benefit that you have is when you when you hit a creature within five feet of view that is concentrating on a spell they have disadvantage on maintaining concentration that's fantastic however this build has a pretty innate concentration disruptor built into it already we won't get it for a few levels but we'll get there relatively soon and so that even feels a little bit redundant to me it would definitely be nice but but we kind of get that interruption from another place and we're making lots of attacks that's going to impose lots of concentration checks so i'm just not that worried about disrupting the the concentration that that a caster maybe may have and so all of those things said i'm not going to take the magislayer feet um i think it's it's going to be better put to you know increasing our abilities and our ability scores so we're going unt for the race um if you wanted to do slightly more damage at the risk of being a little less tanky against spells go ahead and take variant human and take the mage slayer feet as your free feet we're going snake human which is way cooler abilities for your ability scores assuming point by as always go 14 decks and then you get a plus two and a plus one from the from the pure blood right you get better uh better stat bonuses too so 14 decks plus two 15 wisdom plus one wisdom saves are important to not get yourself mind controlled and charmed and things but we've got another reason for having a good wisdom score which i'll get to in a moment um and give yourself a 14 constitution because hit points are good um equipment make sure that you get yourself a rapier two short swords thief stools uh if if you need to be the party rogue anyway and leather armor um and then rogues at level one get expertise which basically lets you double your proficiency bonus on a skill that you are proficient in or your thieves tools checks i'm going to go i'm going to go stealth and thieves tools because i'm assuming that that i'm kind of doubling as the party rogue here and of course rogues at level 1 get sneak attack and this was another big reason to start rogue because it gives us a nice little damage bump early on you know again if you have advantage on your attack or the enemy that you're attacking is within five feet of one of your allies then you get to do sneak attack damage which is an extra 1d6 once per turn on an attack that you make with as long as it's with a finesse weapon at level 2 we're going to take a level in monk so we are a monk one when we met our hero or maybe anti-hero they were a shady type they were they were roguish now they have heard about a monastery or perhaps met someone from said monastery that teaches things that sound particularly useful for their line of work um not one of those crappy you know stare out of your third eye and find inner peace monkish monasteries but you know these monks teach you how to make your body a weapon and draw on your body's energy to make you one with the shadows and give you incredible power and so you begin your monkish journey um monks give us a lot of things we need off of our anti-mage checklist especially the subclass that we're going for so at level one monks get unarmored defense it lets us throw off our leather armor and now add our wisdom modifier in addition to our dexterity modifier to our armor class so with a 16 deck and a 16 wisdom we have a 16 armor class which is not fantastic but it's better than it was and it will get better um we also get the martial arts feature which lets us use our dexterity for for unarmed strikes most well everybody else has to use their strength score for unarmed strikes right um and and we get when we when we attack we can make a bonus action unarmed strike um that lets us add our dex mod and it's a d4 it does a d4 of damage and that will scale with monk levels as well you can't use your rape here just yet because it's not a monk weapon and we only get martial arts benefits if we're if we're using monk weapons so for now short sword we're doing a short sword attack um action plus sneak attack damage if it hits plus an unarmed strike bonus attack um pretty decent damage for level two at level three you are a monk two and thanks to tasha's cauldron of everything um there is a new optional feature that we're going to take which basically says that any weapon can be a monk weapon if you focus on it um not any weapon but a rapier can and so we're going to start using our rapier from here and call it our monk weapon gives us a teeny bit of damage bump from our attacks and still allows us to get sneak attack damage because rapiers are finesse and get a bonus action on armed strike we also get key points key as i'm sure most of you know is the monks resource that we use to fuel all of our most potent abilities they work very similarly to like spell slots right they refresh on a short rest which is important and hopefully you can convince your companions and your dm to let you get lots of short rests so you can use your key points as much as possible because you just don't get enough of them i think um the the biggest complaint that i have that most people have who claim that monks could use a little bump in the power from wizards of the coast would say that they don't get enough key points or that their abilities cost too many key points things like that for now we can spend our key points on three things flurry of blows which basically says that um when you are making an unarmed strike as a bonus action if you spend a key point you can make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action which is great more damage and more chances to interrupt you know our spellcaster concentration and things we get patient defense which lets you spend a key point and then dodge as a bonus action right usually dodge requires an action and it just imposes disadvantage on all enemies attacking you for that round but it takes your action to dodge we get to do it as a bonus action which is a nice tanky feature and we also get step of the wind which lets us dash or disengage as a bonus action instead of again as an action which can be good if we you know if the mage is far away at the beginning of combat we really need to get up to him that's a nice way to do that and especially because we get unarmored movement as a level two monk as well which allows us to increase our move speed by 10 feet and that's that's really nice for getting to the back line where the spellcasters usually hang out right and sticking to our targets if they're able to try and get away from us monks get the best move speed of any class in game and it's really nice to have at level 4 we are a monk three we get the deflect missiles feature which is a nice tanky option um it's the first use of our reaction that comes up for us so against ranged weapon attacks we can use our reaction to reduce damage by it's a d10 plus our dex mod plus our monk level which at this level that will reduce most attacks to nothing you know if somebody's shooting a crossbow or a longbow at you or whatever um and that is fantastic um a nice little tanky feature now you can it's really cool of course right deflecting the arrow as it comes at you now you can spend a key point and catch the arrow and throw it back at the opponent but i would save those key points because again we don't have a ton of them and we really want them to help us lock down and take out those casters so we're gonna need them because at level three monk we get our monastic tradition our subclass and we are as you have probably deduced going way of shadow um i love this subclass so much it makes you feel like a ninja or our americanized interpretation of a ninja um or maybe nightcrawler right it's perfect for our purposes so at level three shadow monks get shadow arts the shadow arts feature which gives us the minor illusion cantrip which can be great for utility or to distract or disguise or cause other hijinks but then also as an action we can spend two key points why not one come on wizards it's not like monks are so powerful two key points um to cast a few spells we get darkness dark vision pass without a trace which is great for stealth for your whole party um and most important for us i think silence the silence spell won't totally shut casters down but it will if if you get them it's a 20-foot radius um bubble of silence and if if a caster is within it and the spell that they're trying to cast has a verbal component they can't cast it right most spells have verbal components not all of them but that will stop most spells from being cast at least within that zone of silence it's it's a nice soft shutdown i think on casters it will force them at the very least to move they might not even have enough movement to get out of it depending on where they are and where you cast it but even if they can it's going to force them to move before casting likely getting them closer to um your allies or yourself for that matter and thereby taking damage or maybe even forcing an opportunity attack against them um if they want to get out of the the silence bubble to to cast a spell so that's really nice and lets us check off the shutdown spells box of our list of things that we need out of an anti-mage at level five we are monk four we get our first ability score increase or feet and i'm going to recommend that that we bump our dexterity to an 18. we get so much out of dexterity additional armor class more damage more reliable attacks so that they will land and thereby potentially you know interrupt a caster um of course it increases our initiative it increases all of our roge skills like stealth and disarming traps and sleight of hand and all that stuff we also get slow fall at this level which is one of those abilities that that makes you feel so super awesome when you actually get to use it in game unfortunately you probably don't get to use it as much as we wish that we could but anyway it's really cool it just lets you reduce the damage that you take from falling and unless you're falling from a really big height it will typically reduce it to zero and it's fun and awesome when you get a chance to use it um drop down out of the rafters and ambush your uh mage victim at level six we are a monk five um and it's a very important level for us so we get extra attack right for more damage so now when we take the attack action we get to attack twice uh with that rape here giving us more opportunities to land sneak attack damage and things um our unarmed strike goes from a d4 to a d6 so again more damage there and we get our most important ability i think from monk's stunning strike this is probably what we want to be spending most of our key points on so if there's an enemy mage that you're going up against especially and it's the thing in my opinion that makes monks so good as an anti-mage archetype so when you hit an enemy with a melee weapon attack and yes unarmed strikes count as melee weapon attacks look it up in sage advice compendium if you need to um you can spend a key point to try and stun them and you could do this theoretically four times in a round you only have five key points so hopefully you don't have to do that but you know attack extra attack unarmed strike spend a key point for flurry of blow flurry of blows another unarmed strike you would get four attacks in a round and on each one of them you can try to stun them you got to spend a key point every time i wish maybe you can convince your dungeon master to not force you to have spent the key point if the stun doesn't stick because your target does get to make a saving throw a constitution save against your dc and your dc your difficulty check is based on your wisdom score which is actually a good argument for bumping wisdom before dexterity because we do get armor class from wisdom as well it would lower our damage um but worth considering anyway um when you make a melee weapon attack you spend a key point you attempt to stun them if they fail their save they are stunned and this is the best part until the end end of your next turn so you stun them now they're stunned for the entire round and then again on your turn they're still stunned at the beginning you can try to make more attacks against them you'll have advantage on them which is fabulous because they're stunned and you can try and stun them again if you have the key points and so theoretically you could lock this character down from one to 100 to zero right you could stun lock them as it were and keep them from moving keep them from making actions or reactions and all attacks against them have advantage and they are incapacitated which means if they were concentrating on a spell they lose concentration right so check that box for um for a reliable way to break concentration on casters um stunning is is super important and admittedly against most monsters it can be difficult to pull off because so many monsters that you fight especially the powerful ones have a high constitution bonus right and and so they will often not fail that con save but most casters um do not have a particularly high uh plus to their con saves and so they make very ideal and juicy and delicious targets for us to be stun locking down and keeping them in place doing more damage and interrupting their concentration you should be able to get it off fairly reliably okay so damage report for level six like i said i'm just going to look at kind of how we would do against spell damage i picked fireball because it's a pretty common and iconic spell and so against a dc-14 difficulty check 14 fireball of the third level which is the highest that you know that a character our level could cast right now assuming that that got cast on us every single round um we would take 15 damage per round or we'd have a 15 dtpr and our rounds to die would be only three that's not very good i know but it is about to get a lot better um by comparison you know the other three tank builds that i've done thus far and you can you can look at the graphs i've updated the graphs now for um for tank for master tank build or whatever comparison um check it out in the show notes or the video description they all those other three the tankidin the armor and the baritone barbarian all actually outperform us here at this level uh as far as surviving a never-ending fireball barrage um but not for long and of course they are much worse than we are at getting to and sticking on an enemy caster and you know keeping them shut down when they get there all right at level seven we are a monk six our movement speed goes up another five feet fantastic so now we are at what the 45 movement speed that's great and we get key empowered strikes which makes our unarmed strikes magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance to non-magical attacks and we get my very favorite uh shadow monk ability shadow step it's super awesome so when you are in dim light or darkness as a bonus action doesn't even require key points as a bonus action you can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see that is also in dim light or darkness you then have advantage on the first melee attack you make before the end of the turn okay night crawler now you won't always you know you the the the place you're trying to get won't always be in dim light or darkness right however you as a shadow monk can cast the darkness spell for two key points so in a pinch you know as an action you could cast darkness and then teleport to it preferably obviously close to the mage right so this is going to be a great way to sort of get out of any snares that the mage may throw at you that you somehow failed to you know resist and or close the gap to get to to get to that enemy mage quickly especially if they you know managed to teleport away from you or something um super cool super fun to use makes you feel um awesome okay at level eight monk seven uh you get two really great anti-mage abilities here first off evasion um we've been waiting for this one for a long time so now we can really just laugh at enemy fireballs and even dragon breath attacks and things like that other than white dragons because that's a con save anyway um whenever it's a spell effect or or you know you're making a deck save to avoid taking damage from an area effect thing whether it's a spell or even like a trap or something um you have basically if you if you fail the save you only take half damage if you succeed on the save you take no damage and that is huge for us because against spells remember we have advantage on the saving throw to begin with because we're unt um pure blood we have a high saving throw to begin with because our decks is really good and um you know zero damage if we succeed half if we fail which we really won't be almost ever we also get stillness of mind as monks here which is great um as an action it lets you end a charm or fear effect on yourself lots of mages have charm and fear abilities and non-mages as well i guess but now we don't really even care that much if we fail our save which we won't very often because we have a pretty good wisdom score and advantage against you know those things if they're spells anyway um but even if they land for whatever reason on our next turn we can just end it with an action and that's awesome at level nine we are a monk eight um we need to get some rogue levels but i really wanted to get this ability score increase and cap our dexterity so that's what we're gonna do with the ability score increase that we get here um and uh it lets us get another key point so that's important because you know now at least we have eight that feels since they renew on a short rest that feels like we can use a lot of them in every combat encounter and and sort of have them dependably when we need them for the most part as long as we're not using flurry of blows and you know just wasting our key points all the time um with a 20 dexterity our armor class is an 18 now getting better and let's do a damage report so against our proverbial uh never-ending fireball barrage um a a 15 dc fireball now and it's a level five fireball because that's what a caster of our level would be able to cast at us we would take on average one damage per round and our rounds to die would be 66 because that's how many hit points we have that's more like it the tankidin and the bear barbarian are dead in eight rounds at this level and uh the armor in seven so suck it other tanks all right at level 10 we are a rogue two um [Music] our anti-mage has decided to pause in their pursuit of the shadow arts and return to their roguish ways for a time to maybe apply the skills that they've learned to their trade and maybe even see if they can't find new ways to use the arcane arts that they have thus far been dabbling in so at rogue 2 we get cunning action which lets us dash or disengage or hide as a bonus action we could already dash or disengage as a bonus action by spending a key point now we don't have to do that so this is much better at level 11 we are a rogue three our sneak attack damage goes up to 2d6 once per turn and we get our roguish archetype and i think we ought to go arcane trickster um i think it fits really nicely with the theme of the character um we're kind of fighting fire with fire here with uh with some some spells um and we've kind of been dabbling in these shadow arts anyway um and learning some magical skills so anyway this lets us this gives us some nice benefits arcane trickster does we get mage hand for um with some kind of additional utility added on to it which i won't get into but then we also get two other wizard cantrips um i would take presta digitation for one and and this is why and i and i should have talked about this earlier when i was talking about shadow step you have to be in dim lighter darkness and then teleport yourself to dim light or darkness um you can cast darkness where you're going if you need to but if you're not in dim light or darkness and there's no dim light or darkness around you what do you do you need a solution some people would say that you could use your minor illusion cantrip that you get as a shadow monk to just minor illusion yourself in dim light and now you're in dim light and you can banff away um i think you could make that argument you might have to have that conversation with your dm you could probably also argue that like if there's a torch or something you could um i don't know minor illusion a you know a dark glass bubble around that torch and kind of dim the light i don't know why you couldn't necessarily but you know when in doubt discuss with your dm um and and i guess for that reason just in case they say i don't like that um take press to digitization as one of your cantrips because presta digitation you can snuff out a candle or a torch or even a bonfire or a campfire anyway um and so if you're in a in a dungeon and there's lots of torches creating bright light well you can snuff one of them out and now you've got a nice little dim light patch um so that's really good the other cantrip i would take would be booming blade um booming blade you know i i would if you're out of key points um and so you can't stun your target because you're out of key points or maybe you don't want to for some reason try to stun them maybe you think they have a high constitution or they're resistant to stuns or something like that booming blade can be a nice sort of soft snare to discourage them from running away because again when you when you cast booming blade you make a weapon attack and then they are sheathed in this um sonic energy and if they move they're going to take additional damage if they move of their own free will i guess and so no it's not going to prevent them from moving necessarily but it's going to be just a further discouragement to them moving away because they're going to take extra damage if they do in addition to an opportunity attack if they're just you know not teleporting or something it is overall less damage than just making two weapon attacks in an unarmed strike so i would probably only use booming blade in the above scenario scenario but it might be nice to have in a pinch you also as an arcane trickster get three first level mage spells two of them have to be from the enchantment or the illusion school and i freaking hate that i i should have brought that up in our um sliding into my dms episode last week where we talked about house rules this is something that i would absolutely want to see house ruled you know if you're if you're being an eldritch knight or an arcane trickster with the intent of sort of being able to pick up some cool magical abilities i hate that they get limited to a couple of schools of magic um that's me i would house rule that crap but anyway um so take what you want for the for the um the illusion or enchantment school spells here as first level spells there's some okay control options that i don't think they're particularly useful for us um at our level you know by this point and with our low intelligence score because they're intelligence based for like dc's and stuff um for the third spell that you take that does not have to be from one of those two schools i would probably go with absorb elements we've talked about it a lot on this show you know it lets you as a reaction when you when you take fire ice poison which we're immune to acid thunder damage lightning anyway elemental damage it lets you be resistant to that damage which is great for us right if if you run into a spell that does not allow you to use your evasion because it's not a deck save right and it's elemental like this and and you know or on the off chance that we fail our our saving throw uh you know on a deck safe um it just is a nice way to reduce a lot of different spell damage types not all obviously there's other damage types from spells force damage and psychic damage and things but this is going to help a lot on a lot of different spell attacks and even dragon breaths and things like that at level 12 we are a rogue four and we get another ability score increase or feet i would bump our wisdom to 18. it's important for our stunning strike right to land that stunning strike or make sure that it sticks because it raises the difficulty check for the enemy and it raises our own saves for a lot of you know control type spells that a wizard may throw at us and it bumps our armor class too so now we're a 19 armor class that's pretty good not to mention that if you are functioning as the party's rogue having a high perception score is pretty important for you know locating traps and hidden doors and things like that so um wisdom is good at level 13 we are a rogue five we get our sneak attack up to a 3d6 once per turn fantastic and we get uncanny dodge which is a big big deal for us it's a fantastic ability it improves our tankiness if you can see the attack and it lands then you can use your reaction to have the damage against you basically giving you resistance to that damage whatever the damage is as long as you can see it coming for that one attack now um it would work great against a caster who is using a spell attack spell right not like a fireball area attack but they're actually making an attack roll like an eldritch blast or something like that it's a bummer you can only do it to one attack per turn you know if they have multi attacks well you only get one reaction and so you can have the one so pick pick wisely which one you're going to reduce the damage on but it is especially nice against a big hit damage report for level 13 against a dc-16 never-ending fireball at level 7 fireball again we're taking one damage per round and you know we are surviving for 94 rounds uh at that rate so on the rare occasion that you fail a failure save against a fireball you'd still only take 10 damage on average because you have it even on a failed save and you could further reduce it with absorb elements to 5. so we're super awesome against those types of spells especially and most types of spells with our advantage on our saving throws and everything um the by comparison the tankidin uh was dead in ten rounds the baritone and barbarian and nine and the armorer at eight so we do fare very well against spells in general at level 14 we are a rogue six and we get another round of expertise which is great pick a couple more skills that you are proficient in double the proficiency for them so pick whichever you find yourself using most often at level 15 we are a rogue seven this is an important level for us um we get evasion again it's too bad it doesn't stack but um our sneak attack goes to 4d6 and you know i don't want to underestimate um the importance of of finding ways to bump our damage right um we are after all supposed to be a mage killer and not just a mage annoyer um and so we we do decent damage at this point to two casters especially in addition to being able to stick to them like glue and shrug off their spells the main reason i wanted to get to rogue seven was because now arcane tricksters get second level spells there's and there's some really good ones for us here and we've got you know more spell slots now so it feels like we can you know we can cast them when we need them again two of these spells that we that we get at this level have to be from the enchantment and the illusion schools but unlike level one there's some there's some really nice options in those schools for us here mirror image is nice and one that we talk about a lot it you know lets you summon three sort of images of yourself and then when somebody makes an attack against you they potentially attack one of the mirror images instead of you um it's great because it doesn't require our concentration it really helps our tankiness against targets that are making you know single target attacks against us um blur i like even more it's a concentration spell you cast it and um then it imposes disadvantage on all attacks against you as long as you maintain your concentration that's fantastic for our tankiness and misty step i think would be a good one to consider you know if you're if you are if you're in bright light and your dm is not okay with the you know minor illusion dim light around me and you're maybe outside so it's the sun shining down on you and you don't you can't like snuff out a torch to create dim light or something like that it's just a good teleport option to have in a pinch and and then there is hold person which some of you love this spell and i understand why it can be really good um it's fantastic because it paralyzes the target which is better than a stun all hits against a paralyzed target automatically crit automatic criticals the problem is it takes an action to cast um you're not a sorcerer so you don't have meta magic quick and spell options to cast it right they it requires your concentration they get to make a wisdom save to resist it and they get to make it every round and a lot of casters will have a high plus to wisdom and keep in mind that because this is an arcane trickster spell it's using your intelligence for the difficulty check so the likelihood of it sticking is kind of slim i think against most casters so i'm probably not going to take that plus we can stun them which is not quite but almost as good and do a lot more damage while we're at it so um yeah at level 16 you are a rogue 8 and we get our final ability score increase um i want to cap our wisdom that feels great to have a 20 decks and a 20 wisdom now our armor class is at a 20 naked which is just cool and um you know we have a lot of ways to resist damage especially magical damage but really at this point we've got a full suite of tank skills and spells um we're actually a pretty decent general tank and you know especially of course against magic damage at level 17 kind of a tough call here whether we go rogue or monk rogue 9 would be great it would get us another d6 to our sneak attack damage and and it gives you the magical ambush feature from arcane trickster it gives you if if you are hidden when you cast a spell on someone it gives them disadvantage on you know their resistance to the spell so maybe if you took um hold person and you wanted to have a better chance at it sticking that might be a decent option for you there personally i'd go back to monk um for two reasons i really want more key points you can never get enough um but also you get an unarmored movement speed benefit which lets you run up vertical surfaces and across liquids and it's just one of the coolest things in the game in my opinion i can never get enough of this please dungeon master you know give me a mage that dimension doors to the top of a column or across a big pond and thinks they're safe and let me just like dash and get to them and just continue to shut them down and make them feel like i cannot get away from this freaking anti-mage um give me this give me this one thing um anyway super cool and i love it so final damage report level 17 against a ninth level fireball um dc 17 uh we're still just taking one damage per round and our rounds to die are 120 but okay who uses a ninth level spell slot to cast fireball nobody that's who so fine meteor swarm okay a never-ending just meteor storm we are the planet that we live on passed through an asteroid belt i don't know but anyway round after round of meteors 17 dc meteor swarm does 40 d6 of damage and you make a deck save against it right now 20 of the dc is bludgeoning and 20 of it is fire now we can make our deck save and take no damage it doesn't matter what the damage type is so still against meteor swarm on average we are taking four damage per round and it takes us 30 rounds to die of non-stop beat meteor bomb bar the bombardment guess how long it takes the other tanks to die in this scenario so you've got the bear totem barbarian they do the best because they are resistant to both fire and bludgeoning damage right and they've got the best decks of of of the tanks that i've done so far so they're still taking 60 damage per round and their rtd their rounds to die is four um the paladin tank they get to thanks to their aura they get to add their charisma modifier to their saving throw um and we'll let them use the absorb element spell which i've been doing when i've been calculating thus far by the way um because they they do get access to that so that only lets them resist the fire damage though not the bludgeoning damage so their um damage taken per round is 84 and they're dead in three rounds and uh similarly the armorer you know they do get um they don't have dex proficiency their dex is lousy but they do get to add four to their save um as a reaction thanks to the war magic feature but they have fewer hit points so anyway they get to use absorb elements too they're taking 81 damage per round and they're dead in three rounds so um my my previous tank builds are very vulnerable to area of effect uh spell damage i've got to go revisit them and make sure i pick up the shield master feet or something right final thoughts you know um funny enough i didn't intend to do this when i started out but this build ended up very closely resembling the very first character that i ever played in um dungeons and dragons 5e and you know that that character was more focused on damage than than being like an anti-mage per se but it was really fun to relive um some things as i sort of recreated this character you know i do remember one glorious moment in that campaign there was a time where um there was a an enemy party waiting in ambush um for us and i managed to stealth in and sort of get behind enemy lines and i found an enemy caster they were hiding behind the curtain actually and um i got the jump on him got a surprise round off and took him from 100 to zero in a single turn and he never got to cast a single spell and it was so awesome and memorable and fun and um i think probably inspired me a little bit as i as i created this character that memory so you know um as always talk to your dungeon master before you play this character in your dungeon masters campaign let them know kind of the goal that you have why you're creating the character and and your intent to be this anti-mage um a good dm will find ways to give you lots of options to feel cool and powerful in game you know by throwing lots of different casters and caster types and things at you that that make it that will make it feel like oh gosh it's a good thing i'm here because i really am helping out my party right the bad dm will say oh you're going to be an anti-caster okay in that case i'm going to try and counter you and only throw a bunch of you know melee monsters at you that don't ever cast spells and you'll be sad my biggest regret with this build was not finding a good way to pick up counterspell and or dispel magic more levels in arcane trickster would have got us there but it was too much of an investment for me and would have delayed our monk levels forever and or just not even gotten us where we wanted to be with monk um it's an option if you just have to have that but i don't think arcane tricksters get into level 13 third level uh wizard spells um i almost instead of going arcane trickster i almost went into like a pure caster class probably shadow sorcerer which would be great thematically and give us some cool options and things but ultimately it it would have been a lot less damage sustainable damage it would have been um you know worse hit points worse tankiness um and obviously we wouldn't have the same level of sort of roguish utility and so you know i decided against it i i kind of felt like between our ability to teleport and really stick to the mage like glue and then lock them down with stuns and silence in a pinch we did a pretty good job at sort of preventing them from casting spells in the first place which is really sort of the purpose of having counter spell right there's definitely an anti-mage build that would focus on you just kind of standing in the back lines and just negating and countering and preventing uh and dispelling you know an enemy mage's magical effects and spells and things um i think it's probably an ab duration wizard maybe a war mage warcaster war magic wizard um but that's a very different character right and and not where i wanted to go with this one but check it out if that's something else that you kind of have in mind um but so yeah not having counterspell didn't cause me to lose too much sleep due to the way that we ended up building the character a little sleep admittedly um but speaking of alternatives so i promised an alternative if you wanted something that was maybe a little less night crawler ninja and a little more plate and shield you know condemn the heretic witches uh anti-mage and um really it's basically just an oath of the ancients paladin so you'd have some really nice advantages going oath of the ancients um you get shield and plate mail from the get-go which gets you to a 20 armor class a lot earlier as soon as you can afford that plate mail anyway um combined with your better hit points you just are a better sort of general tank or at least you have better general tankiness early on against you know weapon damage and things like that you also do though get to check a lot of the boxes on our anti-mage checklist your channel divinity and your spell list give you some nice snare options to sort of hold them in place lock them down you do pick up misty step at fifth level for teleport ability if you need to close the gap if they're getting away if they're in the back line um you do get the spell magic eventually if not counter spell but that's still a really nice to have um most importantly with the uh with the oath of the ancients pally your auras are phenomenal um your aura of protection at level six gives you lets you add your charisma modifier to all of your saving throws and your allies too if they're within 10 feet of you so that's fantastic right and you get the aura of warding which gives you resistance to all spell damage so you know combine that with your unt advantage against saving throws you get a buff to your saving throw and if somehow you fail and still take damage well you have resistance to all of that damage so you're barely going to feel warm when those mages throw their fireballs assuming that you work shield master into the shield master feet into your build by comparison at level 17 that meteor swarm damage you're going to be doing you're going to be taking about 14 damage per round on average and you'll survive it for 14 rounds so not quite as good against spells specifically as the build that we ended up with but maybe a nice compromise between sort of your traditional tank the other tank builds that i've created and this kind of specific very focused um mage slayer that we ended up with so anyway that is our show for the week thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it again please subscribe and like and comment and all the things check us out on facebook check us out on twitter and you know as always if you have a build that you'd really like me to do an episode on please let me know however you can and give me as much detail as you can and what role you want that character build to fill and i will do my best to optimize it thanks so much guys love you and i hope you have just a fantastic day talk to you soon

Channel: d4: D&D Deep Dive

Views: 83,043

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, dnd, 5e, guide, Anti-Mage, Mage Slayer, Mage Hunter, Shadow, Monk, Way of Shadow, Rogue, Arcane Trickster

Id: W8eviRB3l0A

Length: 64min 10sec (3850 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021