Wizard Subclass Tier Rankings (Part 4) in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode before we get into this week's topic kelly and i have a very special announcement to make we are launching our very first kickstarter on june 28th dungeons of drakenheim is a 5th edition module for characters level 1 to 13 based on season 1 of our live stream campaign the book features almost all the locations that we developed for the original campaign all put together in a way that you can run them at your very own game table you can explore the fantastic ruins of the city of drakenheim devastated by a mysterious meteor haunted by vicious mutated monsters and clashed over by five rival factions not only that but this book is going to contain brand new magic items spells horrible monsters and our rule set for eldritch contamination to help add an element of dark fantasy and cosmic horror to your game tables our amazing partners at ghost fire games have actually sponsored this week's episode and are helping us put together this amazing book so you can join our kickstarter by following the links below so that you can be notified as soon as the kickstarter goes live on june 28th and now let's get rolling this week is part four of our tier rankings for the subclasses available to wizards in dungeons and dragons 5th edition and this time around we are taking an in-depth look at the brand new subclasses that were introduced in tasha's cauldron of everything which is a little bit of a unique case here for the wizard because we've got a returning champion from the sword coast adventures guy that was reimagining tasha's now if you look on the screen right now you're going to see again the criteria that we use to rank the subclasses we've pitted the subclasses against each other and not those of other classes we also are not using multi-classing as a major component when judging these classes when we are ranking the subclasses we consider all elements of the dungeons dragons game from combat exploration social interaction problem solving and much much more it's not just about who is the best damage dealer or who can crank their ac the highest it is about the complete package and how it augments the base features of the wizard subclass tasha's cauldron of everything introduced the order of the scribes wizard as well as a reimagining of the well-loved blade singer wizard so let's dive into it with the blade singer the blade singer wizard was originally introduced in the sword coast adventures guide but was updated and adjusted in tash's cauldron of everything and there are a couple key small changes but we're going to be discussing the class as it is presented in patches one of the most important changes though is that when it was originally introduced the blade singer was only for elves but now anyone can play a blade singer regardless of your lineage origin or race and i'm really happy with that change because limiting it to one race seemed like that would have made it a d tier in my books it makes it very restrictive that i think that opening the blade singer up to anything particularly the custom lineage in taxes cauldron of everything really adds a lot of gas to what we can accomplish with with a blade singer the blade singer follows along the traditions of weaving sword and spell and right away when you when you take the blade singer subclass you gain proficiency in light armor and one one-handed melee weapon of your choice as well as the performance skill reflecting the fact that the blade singer kind of weaves magic art and sword play all together although the one-handed weapon that you choose to gain proficiency in doesn't actually have to be a sword at second level you gain the primary feature of this class blade song blade song can be activated as a bonus action and it lasts for one minute there are quite a few restrictions though in order to be able to use the blade song and keep it up these restrictions include not wearing heavy armor or medium armor not using a shield and if you use two hands to attack it ends blade song as well you can activate blade song a number of times per day equal to your proficiency modifier and you regain all uses of it when you finish a long rest when you activate bladesong you get some really awesome benefits though your walking speed increases by 10 feet and you gain a bonus to your ac as well as constitution saving throws to maintain concentration on a spell equal to your intelligence modifier so if you have a plus three bonus to your intelligence that plus three applies to your ac and that will stack with things like your dexterity modifier if you're using mage armor if you're wearing light armor um or even things like the shield spell because of this ability depending on how your ability scores work out blade singers in blade song can crank their ac to the stratosphere especially if you're using spells like shield and mage armor finally you also gain advantage on dexterity acrobatics checks if that ever comes up at six level you're going to gain extra attack but this one has a little bit of a difference to the normal extra attack feature in that you can replace one of those attacks with a cantrip this works exceptionally well if you are using a cantrip like booming blade or green flame blade note however that this only applies when you take the attack action on your turn you can only replace an attack with a cantrip under the same conditions that extra attack would activate i've seen a couple people have misconceptions here and think that this allows you to say for instance make the offhand attack that you would get for two weapon fighting and make that into a cantrip or make the extra attack that you can make with haste into a cantrip it doesn't work that way only when extra attack would apply can you turn one of those attacks into casting a cantrip instead at 10th level you gain song of defense as a reaction you can expend a spell slot to reduce the damage you are taking by 5 times the amount of the spell slot used so if you use a 5th level spell slot you reduce 25 damage finally at level 14 you gain the song of victory ability while your blade song is active you add your intelligence modifier to the damage rules of your melee weapon attacks so first and foremost when the blade singer was originally released in the sword coast adventures guide there were a few things that i wasn't a fan of but seeing the rendition here and the way that it's been improved is actually outstanding there's a lot to love in this subclass i think that by combining the sort of sword and spell you get a character that almost rivals the hex blade warlock for the best gish in the game and i think arguments could be made in either case on which one you would prefer to play the blade song ability allows you to bump up your ac and protects you from making those concentration saves which are both key elements of being a squishy character like a wizard which which really does allow you to then be up on the front lines or be in combat i think the coolest thing about the blade singer is that it is an excellent vehicle for some of the really inspiring spells that blend magic and sword play we mentioned of course the sword coast adventures guide cantrips like booming blade which i think is kind of the poster child for this but even green plane blade or sword burst are all really worthy contenders to take as a blade singer but then on top of that you have spells like shield absorb elements and counter spell which give you an amazing defensive package for any any melee character would just love to have those spells and you're just getting them by merits of being a wizard but then you add on the fact that on the wizards spell list you have spells like shadow blade and spirit shroud and fire shield and greater invisibility and then things like steel wind strike and tensor's transformation so there's a lot of spells that just right off the page are like oh i can build a really awesome character that probably is way more satisfying to play as a blend of magic and swordplay than an eldritch knight i know that we don't normally compare across classes here but i do think that the blade singer really brings home the archetype of blending swordplay and magic in a way that the elder tonight and the hex blade don't always achieve i'll also say that a lot of the spells that you just listed are ones that i think are brilliant spells that are hard to find the right place to use them on most characters but the blade singer advertises this sort of build that actually makes these the bread and butter of what this character's going to do and i think that's really amazing to actually bring these spells into the spotlight and have a place for them at the table the only problem with all these spells is that wizards have a lot better spells overall than these spells and so if your goal is to deal the most damage you can possibly do for your spell slots well tensors tran a wizard buffed up with tensor's transformation might not actually do as much damage as a wizard who just cast animate objects and so as a blade singer you are constantly in this kind of mode of should i go in and start stabbing people or should i just be a wizard and of course it's fine to be a wizard with blade song on you can buff your ac up make all your concentration checks and just standing there with blade song on and doing normal wizard things is pretty good yeah it is a little bit more of a complicated build because then you need to start planning out not only should you have spells that excel you into melee combat but also spells that you can rely on that might actually be better suited for you as a wizard and the complications don't necessarily end there with the blade singer and although i absolutely love this class one thing that i still struggle with is the distribution of my ability scores yeah and this is a major one for me now some people out there probably play with different rule sets maybe you roll for stats and you ended up with 318s in which case you know good job you can play a blade singer that would be super overpowered like i think a lot of discussions around the blade singer i feel like people are talking about a theoretical blade singer that has 20 dexterity 19 constitution and 20 intelligence and in theory you could have that character but that character doesn't exist until you're either very high level and have no feats or you rolled hot with your ability scores and any character is going to be broken with 318s yeah and and it this doesn't necessarily make this a bad sub class at all it just is a complication that a few things like the paladin also suffer from this complication as well sometimes but it is the complication of i want high intelligence i want high constitution and i do want high dexterity it is tough like there is really beautiful builds that you can make with the blade singer but there is also that argument that well your constitution uh saving throws for concentration get buffed by blade song but you're still a 1d6 hit die character yeah and so having a low constitution means that if somebody does bypass your ac you're kind of screwed there there is a way to build a blade singer where you just kind of ignore your intelligence and you do the same sort of thing that an eldritch knight would where you buff up your dexterity you take all the things that augment your weapon damage you focus on feats that help you operate on the front line and then you take the wizard spells that don't care what your intelligence score is but i think that that does mean that you really lose out a little bit when you want to do things like put hypnotic pattern down or banish a fiend or use any of your spells that rely on attack rolls or saving throws but you get this problem of like what ability score increases are you going to take what feats are you going to take the real question of are you going to take warcaster where are you going to take it when it's it's not easy to figure out these problems my my last thing with the the blade singer that i think is important to point out is amongst their amazing abilities and when you read down their list of abilities they all sound so great there's one little hidden trap here though and that is the 10th level ability song of defense which you get at 10th level allows you to expend a spell slot to forego a certain amount of damage but what's tricky here is that in the example that we gave earlier where you expend a fifth level spell slot to block 25 points of damage this sounds great but keep in mind that you also have access to first level spells like shield and absorb elements if you cast absorb elements against the breath attack from a young dragon you are actually going to save more than you would by expending a fifth level spell slot and you're going to empower your next attack so in most cases you actually have a better option to use lower level spells to save yourself keep in mind you also have counterspell which can just undo all the damage from a spell attack so that 10th level ability although it sounds great on paper if you compare it to the access you have to other options that cost you less it actually comes out as a pretty bad ability that you gain i would trade the song of victory ability for something else so that when blade song was active i could make my melee attacks using my intelligence modifier for the attack and damage roles i love this class i really really like it i think that it is probably one of if not the strongest sword and spell arcane sword and spell uh options in the game i don't think it is the best wizard i think the divination wizard the chronography widget and the enchanter wizard all of those subclasses augment your spells and not a single thing that the blade singer gets augments your spell casting aside from giving you the bonus to concentration checks and i'll tell you right now the other those other subclasses they don't have a problem concentrating on their spells because they boost their intelligence take warcaster and take resilient and it's a non-issue for all of those subclasses in the grand scheme of things comparing it directly to the strongest wizard subclasses i think it ends up being like an a plus i i there's a part of me that really wants to give it an s but i don't think it's i i think that the the divination wizard and the chronergy wizard just kind of say oh that's cool that you can stab people but meanwhile i just won the entire encounter with a single spell when it comes down to it i'm i'm willing to fully agree with with the a plus ranking do i think this is one of the coolest subclass options for wizards yes if you were excited about the blade singer there's zero reason not to play one however when i do look at the subclasses that i've ranked as tier it's usually because i can find maybe the smallest problem with them and beyond that they're they're nearly imperfect this one is one that i can poke a few holes in and i have a few i don't want to call them problems or detriments i just want to call them complications in my build structure for a blade singer and those complications make it just shy of an s for me yeah it feels like a subclass that is promising you everything but there's caveats like it it does it feels like it's this close to having its cake and eating it too and i think that if it if it could use intelligence for attack roles it would absolutely be s here uh and if in the future there is like another spell that gets introduced it could tip it over and i i think like if we were doing a ranking video on all the gish characters in d this might be the s tier gish but comparing it to all the other wizards it's the a-plus to your wizard yeah and it's absolutely head and shoulders over other s-tier classes for other other classes yeah yeah yeah so so if we were comparing it in the grand scheme of things blade singer is pretty high up there yeah but it unfortunately i i think the the only reason why the blade singer uh doesn't get an s is because the divination wizard and the chronogy wizard are also available to this class if those if those didn't exist i think it would be but it it those they do and i don't think that they're anywhere near the same level of power so let's move on to the brand new subclass introducing tasha's cauldron of everything the order of scribes wizard this is the wizard who is the book nerd i guess most wizards are book nerds this one's doubles down the order of the scribes wizard is the equivalent of someone who loves dungeons and dragons so much they start a youtube channel about it let's take a look at their abilities starting at second level they get their wizardly quill this is a small magical quill that you can conjure up and you can write it in any color ink you so desire so this looks like a ribbon feature but the most noble thing the most notable thing about it is that you cuz spend half as much gold and time to scribe found spells into your spell book which having been a player who has spent over 40 000 gold pieces scribing spells into my spell book that's significant savings like this is like circus of values level savings here coupons baby coupons also at second level you gained awakened spell book your spell book is now a sentient item that works as an arcane focus but most notably one of the coolest features of this ability is that you can now change the damage type of a spell you cast into a different damage type as long as you have another spell of the same level that does that damage type so if you have lightning bolt and fireball you can now do lightning ball and well not fire bolt but you get where i'm going with this you just have to note that like there's not every spell is available at every level for example there's no third level spell that does force damage so you can't have a force ball so be careful with that the other thing that's kind of tricky and not really explained here is if i take something like chromatic orb does that mean that i now have access to all damage types to change my other spells well all the ones that you can have for chromatic orb or the inverse like if i have prismatic wall prepared and psychic scream can i turn all the damage of every layer of my prismatic wall to psychic damage how does that how does that stack up right not only that this ability continues with the fact that if you cast a ritual spell you no longer have to add the 10 minutes that are normally accounted for when you cast spells as a ritual you cast them for their normal casting time that's also amazing but you could only do that once per day so still useful at bringing down like a really fast tiny hut but i think another like understated amazing feature of this is that you can replace your awakened spell book over the course of a short rest by using your wizardly quill so one of the things that often gets talked about with wizards is what happens if you lose your spell book well if you are a scribes wizard you can conjure your quill out of thin air so if they take your spell book from you you can conjure your quill and get some paper bind them together quick as a book and rewrite your whole spell book right there as a short rest so you can never really lose your spell book with this subclass which is it doesn't happen very often it's it's something i think in all my years of playing i think i've only seen this ever happen once but it's there at six level you gain manifest mind now as long as your spell book is on your person you can use a bonus action to conjure up the mind of your spell book into a tiny sentient floating object this manifested mind can see and hear and can communicate with you telepathically on all things that it sees and hears if it moves 300 feet away from you it no longer functions it disappears and you can also cast spells through the manifested mind the only limit on this is that you can only cast as many spells as your proficiency modifier but there's no restriction on what level the spells are or that they need to be touch spells so i think the shenanigans that you can get up to with this are off the chain this is basically a different take on a familiar because it can't attack or take actions because it's completely intangible so it can be taken out with the spell magic but it can't actually be attacked damaged and destroyed it is visible and it can move through creatures but it can't go through walls or objects and doors but it doesn't really say like how big it is or what it can slip into like you could send it ahead as a scout in the same way that you would you're familiar but then once you find out where all the enemies are sleeping in the barracks you could cast cloud kill through it and walk away without ever entering i like also the idea we talked about this of you hiding in a rope trick and sending your awakened mind out to just scout the dungeon and fireball the like you could only cast a number of spells through this equal to your proficiency modifier but like once your proficiency modifier gets to like three or four like i can think of a way to end a combat encounter with three or four spells especially with an intangible object that can't be targeted for dealing damage to it yeah so this feels really appropriate for a scribe wizard who is the big nerd of the wizards which is saying something yeah yeah and the sky wizard doesn't want to get into it they want to stand way back they're like oh you guys are going into the dungeon i'll send my manifested mind all the way sending your drone out yeah yeah and then they can just wreck stuff and if you run out of proficiency bonus level spells then i guess you got to go in and get your hands dirty but still it's great i think you can execute some next level shenanigans with this this is one of those that as a dm if you didn't realize what the scribe wizard could do and you have a dungeon planned out they could wreck your whole dungeon just by using this ability so then at level 10 you become a master scrivener and you can take your quill after finishing a long rest and basically make a spell scroll of any first or second level spell that you know the spell that you create with this is automatically up cast to third level so basically you're getting an extra second-ish level spell slot you actually can't give the scroll to somebody else it's intelligible to anybody other than you it would be really cool if you could give it to somebody else actually um the other interesting thing about this ability is that it also allows you to create spell scrolls twice as fast for half the cost how impactful this is going to be is going to depend on your campaign and your dm how much treasury you get and how much downtime you get but it could potentially be a big deal depending on your play style at 14th level you gain one with the word if you have your manifested mind conjured if you are about to receive damage you can actually use your reaction to make your manifested mind jump in the way of that damage absorbing all of it and disappearing you also have to roll 3d6 and that many levels of spell so if you roll let's say nine you can either do one ninth level spell or three three third level spells but they disappear from your spell book for one d6 long rests so there is a bit of a cost to doing this but you get to avoid all damage when i look at this ability it isn't something that you want to use all the time this is something that will happen if you're in one of those i'm about to take a hundred damage and die horribly or i can bump my manifested mind in place i might lose access to some spells for a while but i didn't die but you also have to weigh out is being revivified an option because then maybe dying isn't as bad as losing 3d6 spells from your spell book i mean if your spell book has some throwaway spells like weird and fantastical killer and um witch bolt in there you could just kind of stuff your spell book with some bad spells to use for this purpose because like yeah i'm not gonna miss which bolt yeah but then why are you taking that spell in the first place also just for this ability but there is also a gamble like rolling 3d6 what if you roll three sixes then you're going to be losing a lot of spells yeah you are but you it could still just be the two worst seventh level spells that you have right true so like mordenkainen's sword is not a great spell but it's a seventh level spell so if you keep that in your spell book so i guess this also if you are a wizard who has picked up a few extra spell books along the way and inscribed them into your own spell books so now you have a plethora of spells at your disposal some of which you never use then yes this this ability raises in stock yeah because remember the cost of scribing spells into your spell book is halved right so maybe like losing the value of those spells those expendable spells and then tuning that down that could be less than the cost of resurrection true i think overall the scribes wizard presents a really cool concept for a wizard because a lot of their abilities have to do with careful planning and not getting into the thick of it unless you have to the two abilities manifested mind and awakened spell book offer so much that it makes this class really really good yeah the other abilities aren't as amazing but none of them hinder the abilities of a wizard i i think the strength of the subclass really depends on just how many shenanigans you can come up with that use manifested mind there's this whole discussion of like being able to tactically cast the spell from another position on the battlefield from you but i don't think that that's actually the strongest way to use this ability i think the strongest way to use this ability is to basically ambush people at a distance with your like drone strike enemies with your spells i want to walk up to the goblin camp see it and then fly my manifested mind over top of it dropping fireballs like yeah yeah it like it it's shenanigans and i think that that alone makes it an a i i agree i think that this is an a subclass there's not really anything bad here there are some abilities that are incredible and some that are okay and together that makes a pretty well-rounded subclass where you're going to get the most out of what you can do with the manifested mind and how many damage type changes you can make in case you're ever dealing with resistances or things like that this wizard isn't going to worry about it it is unfortunately one of those things where you there is hypothetically a campaign where these just abilities are not relevant right and the ability to change out the damage types of your spells is cool but some of the best spells available to wizards are already spells that deal force thunder or psychic damage so like i've i've made plenty of wizards that don't even bother with fireball and aren't even worried about fire resistance and immunity because all my spells are spells that are never resisted anyways i i would say that this one is like an a minus yeah overall i i think that again it presents a really strong wizard option um for the person who is excited to play this class yeah for creative play like i i and well we're putting them both on the eighth here both the blade singer and the order of the scribes i do think that there's a gulf in power and i i do think that there is an argument that the scribes wizard is a b and that the blade singer is an s yeah and i think i think giving them both an a is because of the the other subclasses and kind of whether they presented more options and more versatility and more power to the class overall whereas um i think the blade singer is stronger than the scribes wizard but it's they're they're both kind of in that a round but the scribes wizard just unlocks this crazy play but they both do they unlock a really different playstyle option for the wizard and both those play styles are good having played a scribes wizard uh briefly i i didn't even use the abilities to their full potential just because the campaign the one shot that we did didn't really call for some of them but i still had a blast playing around with the abilities and even imagining up an even nerdier version of a wizard my wizard was like an angry librarian who didn't want to deal with any of this crap and that i think was a treat to play and it's it's fun i think these are both excellent subclasses i love them i really love the direction that they're going with with these and for me personally i would rather have more subclasses around the power level of the blade singer and the order of the scribes than more chronologists and divination wizards i agree so with that being said let's take a look at how our community ranked these two subclasses so we got over 6000 responses for our survey this time around and for the blade singer 42.3 percent of respondents gave it an s-tier ranking with 35.7 percent of respondents giving it an 8th year ranking and 16 giving it a b tier ranking with just slivers for the c tier and d tier i think very conclusively it deserves that rank yeah i we gave it an a plus the community clearly loves this subclass i'm wondering if in the grand scheme of all wizards do we think it's the best as a community tell us do you think that the blade singer is the best wizard subclass i think that the biggest thing i look through a lot of the comments and i think the biggest thing with the blade singer is the knee jerk reaction to how high a blade singer's ac gets i think that a lot of dungeon masters who have had blade singers in their party have seen blade singers that have cranked their ac into the low 30s and that is really good but high ac alone does not an s to your subclass make when we look at order of the scribes they landed with a 26.6 for s tier a 34.7 percent for eight here 26.2 for b 9.8 for c and just a sliver for d so this actually landed pretty safely in the a tier with almost equal parts s and b uh so that that makes them very middle a tier by the community which i think is deserving for the order of scribes wizard i you know overall seeing the community rankings i'm pretty much in complete agreement i i do i think that there is a case that the blade singer is asked here i think that the scribes wizard enables a potentially game breaking play style um but i both i love both these subclasses i think they're both great i i i love both of these more than some of the other subclasses i gave an s tier two in the wizard i i have to admit if i'm the next wizard that i'm gonna play is almost certainly gonna be a wastelander hi i think so too yeah so up on screen right now you're going to see our final rankings for all of the wizard sub classes there's a lot it's a bit messy yeah yeah that was a lot and next to that you see the community rankings for all of the wizard subclasses uh we everybody loves wizards wizards are great yeah i think it's really clear from from all this that uh is is the wizard the best class in the game it's i think there's a strong argument to be said that the wizard is the strongest class in the game like across the whole range of things looking at this i think you see with the wizard overall a very satisfying spread of subclasses i think that any wizard played well regardless of subclass is going to excel yeah so this has been a look at our wizard tier rankings part 4 in dungeons and dragons 5th edition tell us about your thoughts on these two subclasses in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you're interested in supporting our work please follow the links in the description below to join our community and don't forget to check out our live play shadows of drakenheim which airs tuesday nights at 6 p.m eastern at twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more tier rankings for the other classes in dnd 5e right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 319,283

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

Id: 5nK9vVim29U

Length: 34min 3sec (2043 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021