War Caster - Feats in D&D 5e

the best mages never lose their focus in the heat of battle today we're talking about the war castor feet in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition [Music] greetings battle mages my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes today we're taking a look at the war caster feet in D&D 5e now war caster is one of the most popular feats for any spell caster in Dungeons and Dragons to select it's also one of the most potent ones we're going to look at why this is and break down the unique rules interactions that surround this feat even though it tends to be pretty passive in play we're also gonna take a look at various class combination spells and other feats that work well alongside this one we're also going to brainstorm a couple cool role-playing ideas for various battle mages of different classes and take a look at a couple tips for Dungeon Master's before getting a little bit of extra challenges to that you can throw in front of your war casters so let's get rolling so why don't we start by explaining the actual rules of how the war caster feat works yeah like all feats war caster is a feat that you can select instead of an ability score increase when your character reaches an appropriate level in their class war caster is one of the few feats that has an additional prerequisite in that you must have the ability to cast at least one spell in order to take it that's not really a difficult prerequisites have since almost every class in the game has the ability to to gain spells in in some waiting somewhere so what does the feet actually give us as benefits let's take a look you have advantage on Constitution saving throws that you make to maintain your concentration on a spell when you take damage you can also perform the somatic components of spells even when you have weapons or a shield in one or both hands when a hostile creatures movement provokes an opportunity attack from you you can use your reaction to cast a spell at the creature rather than making an opportunity attack the spell must have a casting time of one action and must target only that creature the biggest benefit of this feat and the reason why almost all spellcasters selected is the first clause that you have advantage on Constitution saving throws made to maintain concentration on a spell when you take damage yeah and as a spell caster you're going to be making a lot of concentration checks a lot of the best spells in the game require concentration so Kelly let's just briefly recap how the core rules for concentration work and then we can talk about how that works with the war caster feet yeah first of all some spells will say that they require concentration to use and this is important because you could only concentrate on one spell at a time it's a very hard restriction in the dungeon dragon Smith Edition game rules if your concentration ends or is broken somehow the spell that you're concentrating on its effects immediately end one way that you can lose concentration if you are incapacitated or you die you lose concentration it should be pretty obvious yeah right the most common way though to lose concentration is that when you take damage while you're concentrating on a spell you need to make a Constitution saving throw in order to maintain your concentration the DC for this check is normally 10 or 1/2 of the damage that you took whatever is higher what this means is in practice any attack that only deals 20 points of damage or less is always going to be at DC 10 and then as soon as the damage gets higher than that it adds up you have to make this check every single time you take damage so if an archer shoots you 3 times you have to make 3 concentration checks now I'll qualify that I say there's a shorthand called the concentration checked that we often use because that's come from prior editions of D&D but it's actually a constitution saving throw and this is really important yeah it's important because any skill or ability that that alters your saving throws or enhances them or anything like that affects the concentration saving yeah so if you're a proficient in cost and saving throws under the effects of a bless spell in fact if that's the spell you're concentrating on it would apply or in a Paladins or protection all those bonuses apply to the Constitution saving throw that you make to maintain concentration on your spell and this whole taking damage and needing to make Constitution saving throws this is why the war caster feat really shines yep because as we said before when you lose concentration on a spell that spell slot is gone the effect is over so it's a huge loss of resources not the least of which is because if you want to get that spell effect going again now you need to cast it again use the spell slot again any creatures that might have been trapped by whatever effect you're casting are now free they can escape it's a huge problem and so taking damage is the most common way that you're going to lose concentration although the DM can also have you make concentration saving throws from environmental effects as well and that has a little a little caveat with yet the rules because the war caster feet gives you advantage on any Constitution saving throw you make to maintain concentration as long as that was caused by damage if it isn't caused by damage like let's say you're rocking back and forth on a ship or in the middle of an elemental storm and your DM asks you to make a check or a saving throw you don't get your advantage for more caster on that one now you have done some really cool math to kind of determine the the the way that work has to really enhances your abilities to make concentration of people in the community have math this one out and here's what it breaks down to so normally if you have a character that has 14 Constitution and they're making the saving throw they have about a 65% chance of making the dc-10 concentration saving throw if you have war caster and that same Constitution score it goes up to 80 7.75% which is a huge boost it really means that you can rely on that for the most common saving throw that you have to make yeah if you're also proficient in Constitution saving throws or have any other bonus it's like now over 90 percent so one of the other aspects of the feat is that if you're wielding a weapon and a shield you can still make the somatic components of your spouse yeah and this is a really interesting and sometimes complicated reality it's most common with like clerics and paladin's because they're often gonna have a weapon in shield in hand so the important thing with the war caste Rafi is that it's a specific exception when you have weapons and shields in your hands but if you're carrying some other object like a box or a treasure chest or carrying a person the war caster feet wouldn't apply yeah and you still need the other components of your spell mainly material components you're still gonna need that this doesn't negate that yeah and so there's a lot of spells that have somatic components but no material components and there's some that are material components but no verbal components there's actually not many spells that have a material component but no somatic component yeah the interesting thing with this though is that you can you still need to have your hand free to manipulate those material components or you got to be holding your arcane focus like an orb or a staff or a wand I really like the image of the cleric who has the shield with their holy symbol painted onto it yeah that then they can use that as their holy symbol yeah and then that fulfills all the material components for your spells right the weird complexity behind that is that if you're a cleric with your holy symbol painted on your shield and a mace in your other hand and you don't have the war caster feet there's certain spells that you won't be able to cast because you can't perform the somatic components if you are doing the weapon and shield thing as a cleric as an elders Knight as a paladin you still want to be able to smoothly cast all your spells taking warcasters basically gonna solve all your problems but just double-check that through all your spells that you know which ones have the material components and which ones have the somatic components some people might find this just to be a huge amount of bookkeeping in a real pin so you have my blessing if you were yeah yeah there's certain there's certain rules that just get kind of convoluted and yeah fusing and it's meant to prevent some like a gracious interactions but I can't necessarily think of what those might be as a DM I like to use my discretion like I think that there's certain circumstances where it's okay to say yes I believe that you could perform the somatic and material components like if you're using a two-handed sword I can totally see you just take your hand off the sword cast the spell go back to what you were doing Yeah right even like if you have a shield a lot of shields you can like let go and it's still strapped to your arm mm-hmm and you could in theory do that a lot of people argue that anyone that's actually had a shield strapped to their arm will tell you that you definitely cannot furnace yeah what about the the third component of this feat which is the ability to replace your opportunity attack with the casting of a spell so I got to be completely honest and I have never seen anyone use this ability i I've yeah I've seen it like once or twice actually when you say never I feel like elda broom may have done it once at our table really but if you did it was a long time ago and I don't know yeah um but maybe I maybe I I feel like I've just only seen this like in theory it's really really cool in theory like every time I see it that's actually probably tied for my favorite part of the feat but in theory also often times they play spell casters that I like to keep in the mid or back lines anyway so getting into combat I'll usually like teleport away or I'll just continue to stay in combat and like oftentimes I don't find myself in situations where an enemy is fleeing from me and I get to make an opportunity attack with a spell the thing is a pretty tight restriction you have to target you have to cast a spell that only is a casting time of one action and it has to target that creature and only that creature so no fireballs yeah no fireballs so you could cast something like hold per disintegrate which would be all like somebody tries to get away from you and you disagree write another spell that's great with this is like booming blade or green flame blade or sword burst like the the melee type attack spells at once oh yeah that require a melee attack yeah heart of the spell those those I think are what Excel with this feature does the war caster feat interact with the riders of pull our master and Sentinel that effect opportunity attacks so specifically this is the part in the Sentinel feat that says when you hit someone with your opportunity attack their speed is reduced to zero and with the pull our master feet that says that you make an opportunity attack when someone enters your reach yeah now with with Sentinel the tricky part there is the text of war caster says that you're replacing your opportunity attack with the casting of spell you make you cast a spell rather than make an opportunity attack yeah so Sentinel wouldn't apply but with polar master it's a polar masters as you get to make an opportunity attack and war caster says you can cast a spell instead of making an hour rather than making an opportunity attack so that one works yeah this seems a little kooky to me yeah the the ROS text here is a little convoluted and strange yeah I'm really curious to know what people's thoughts on these interactions are I really like to know if anyone's like played a character that took all these feats and did it work like was it something that happened because taking pull our master and war caster and then playing like a war domain cleric seems like it would be really good this seems obvious but who should take war caster basically every primary spell caster and deity if you're casting spells warcasters it's just one of the best feats the fake yeah concentration spells are the game-changing spells in your battlefield tactics and you really want to get that spell out there and hopefully keep it in play for the entire combat and so the question with war caster really isn't are you going to take it but when in your characters progression are you going to pick it up and the answer is usually as early as possible yeah it usually is the hard choice there is are you gonna take it ahead of maxing out your primary spell casting ability yeah right which again is why humans are so good yeah variant humans so you can take war caster right away because definitely like if you have to wait until 8th level to max out your ability scores and then you can't take war caster to level 12 as a wizard well by that time you know the ship is almost halfway sailed should you take resilient for Constitution or the war caster feet because the resilient Constitution feet will get you proficiency in Constitution saving throws which for anyone except a sorcerer is something that's always on your mind like sorcerers and eldritch Knights are proficient already yeah and if you're proficient in concentration it makes sense to take the war cast your feet first yeah with the math on it basically boils down to this is that Intel you get to a point where your proficiency modifier is +4 and you have at least a constitution of 14 that's when resilient becomes as mathematically good almost as the war caste Rafi overall I think if you can take both that's the way to go because it makes the odds of making the concentration saving throws like 97% why don't we talk about some of some of the role-playing and tips for DMS so I just love the name war caster I mean if you're casting spells in battle I want to be a war cast yeah it's kind of like an iconic image of the battle mage of like the spell slinger the spell sword that is on the front lines of a battlefield and like pushing back the enemy with a wall of fire or bringing down the walls of a castle with an earthquake it's such a fantastic image to get behind the role-playing of and there's some really cool subclasses that into that archetype yeah whenever whenever I play a spellcaster I remember always thinking like I should be on the back lines but the way I've always played my spellcasters is that I'm actually like half the time leading the charge I mean it's not the best way to do it but yeah if I have that warcasters feed I'm a little more likely to be able to handle being in the fray then being on the back lines evoke Asian school wizards or the actual war wizard from Zenith Aris guide to everything and the sword the sword mage war domain cleric yeah and even like paladin's I think paladin's are often ones that benefit from taking a more caster because they are on the frontlines now for DMS who have a player at their table who have war caster we talked about this a little bit earlier but the environmental hazards that kind of negate the abilities of forecaster for your concentration checks if you want throw a curveball at your war caster they're caught their advantage on Constitution saving throws to make concentration checks doesn't apply to non damaging effects and in fact there's a spell called sleet storm that people forget about because sleet storm actually forces characters inside the area of the spell to make concentration checks yeah against the spell save DC of the spell caster it's a really brutal so as with all of our tips for DMS in our feats episode it's like sometimes you want to let that war caster be the badass on the battlefield but if if you're getting to a time where you say you know what I want to throw a curveball at them environmental like throwing them into a storm an actual sleet storm or having a wizard who cast lead storm or like you said before the rocking boat all of that sort of stuff can kind of throw them off their game without gaining the benefits yeah of the work has to feet and at the same time the reality of why people take the war caster feet and why you you don't really need to worry about it too much as a DM is that concentration spells are fun yeah and players get really disappointed when their concentration gets broken if it's an interesting challenging moment but it's one of those like gamey sort of things where it really is a huge disadvantage when you lose concentration on a spell because you took damage and so it does let players continue to do the thing that they love doing I do think that players often like to take to the back lines when they're concentrating on something and that's why I always like to have enemies in my encounters that can get those attacks in on them force them to start making those concentration checks because either they got a 90 percent chance they got to make that roll three times I probably one of the saddest moments is when I polymorphed into a tier X and before I really got to do anything you knocked me out of the concentration and I lost it and I went back to being a little wizard and I was like without just wasting a high-level small slot and I didn't get to do anything now the interesting thing about polymorph too is that if you polymorph yourself and you have more caster I think you lose the feet but a wild shape druid maintained the benefits of war caster so certain things can still apply so watch out for those weird little interactions like that with the war caster feet but in general it's a great feat most of your spell casters are gonna take it as a DM and it's something really to just make sure that they're they're rolling their advantage they don't forget it I actually find that players that take it forget what they took it and then forget to pick up the two dice so if you do take the work extra feet remember you took it because it's gonna help you out yeah so this has been our guide to the war caster feet in touch of the Dragons fifth edition we hope that you feel inspired to get into the fray with your spell casters and I'm really curious to know if the other elements the feet like the opportunity attack spell casting however come up in your games if you have interesting stories about how it's come into play tell us about it in the comments below and if you want to know more about how spells and spell casting works in D&D we have a video on that right up over here and we have a complete guide to all the actions taking combat rate up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

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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, war caster, war, caster, feat, concentration, resilient, polearm master, sentinel, battlemage, spellswords

Id: Fik5AmGBUlE

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 26 2018