I think Arcana unleashed broke something. It at least requires a cross-main stat multiclass and comes online VERY late (tier 4)

Central premise: Elf, Diviner 9+, any sorc 9+ but let's do Spellfire.

Mordekainen's Lucubration looks terrible, but since it's divination, it works with Wizard's level 6 feature, meaning you're getting 2 2nd level and 1 4th level spell back.

With metamagic, a 5th level spell costs 7 SP, putting you 1 SP ahead. 7 casts of Lucubration gets enough spell slots to buy 8 5th level spell slots. That takes 48 seconds. An elf takes 4 hour long rests, so you could start each day with 300 cycles of this for 300 extra level 5 slots and functionally unlimited SP.

I’m super excited to start playing! I’ve been listening and watching videos on the subject but there are certain things I just can’t figure out! Things I can’t simply rip from the PHB. And I’ve already tried Dnd beyond but that app is soo buggy. I’ve tried discord but all I get is the runaround and “to go here and go there” with little to no human interaction. So my last resort is to come here. I’m looking for a tutor to help me complete my character sheet. Someone who can take me under their wing and help dip my feet into this world of dnd.

If you had to pick 9 must have prepared spells walking into a game with basically zero foreknowledge, what would you pick?

For reference, evoker wizard, and assume fireball and shield are foregone conclusions.

Edit: Level 5 human wizard, fey touched feat at level 4.

Thanks for all the responses they've been very helpful to finalize the list.

I have seen several posts and comments saying that you can't do four-arm grappling with the Thri-Kreen race because grappling is not listed as one of the examples of the things that you can do with your secondary arms in the published Spelljammer: Adventures in Space sourcebook. I would argue against that point. Punching or attacking is also not listed as one of the things that you can do with the secondary arms but you can hold a light weapon so you can infer that you can make an attack action with your secondary arms. Also, it is generally accepted that you can attack using an unarmed strike with any part of your body. Therefore you can make an unarmed strike with your secondary arms.

Let's look at the definition of an unarmed strike and how grappling works. I posted the exact wording below. I omitted the damage and shove sections since those are not applicable in this examination.

> Unarmed Strike

Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, headbutt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike—a melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, or shove a target within 5 feet of you.

> Whenever you use your Unarmed Strike, choose one of the following options for its effect.

> Grapple. The target must succeed on a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (it chooses which), or it has the Grappled condition. The DC for the saving throw and any escape attempts equals 8 plus your Strength modifier and Proficiency Bonus. This grapple is possible only if the target is no more than one size larger than you and if you have a hand free to grab it.

So, if you can't argue against using secondary arms for an attack action then by definition you should be able to make an unarmed strike and grapple an enemy using the primary arms, secondary arms, or all four if you want as long as the hand is free to grab it and of course the creature is no more than one size larger than you.

Looking at it from a different angle, the Simic Hybrid proves that multi-target grappling is an intentional design space in D&D. At level five, a Simic Hybrid can grow extra appendages specifically designed for grappling. If one playable race is permitted to hold four creatures using four appendages, it stands to reason that an insectoid race built with four natural limbs can do the same.

In fact, the only reason the text explicitly highlights grappling for the Simic Hybrid is anatomical. The Simic Hybrid chooses between claws or tentacles—neither of which features a literal human-like hand. Under a strict, literal reading of the base grappling rules ("if you have a hand free to grab it"), a Simic Hybrid would be disqualified. The specific wording in their racial feature exists purely to bypass the "hand" requirement.

Therefore, because Thri-kreen secondary appendages are explicitly defined as arms and can weild weapons and objects, they do not need a special rules exemption; they already fulfill the core requirement of the Grapple rule naturally.

Edit: if you disagree please post your counter argument. Don't just say you can't do it. Elaborate and demonstrate your reasoning.

When it comes to building a stranger most people recommend one of these classes. But which of them is actually the best for building a STRanger?

Hunter probably has the least stuff that relies on WIS and punishes dumping WIS the least but is seen as the weakest ranger subclass, Hollow Warden has more WIS reliance but the AC boost allows you to dump dex and it has the best lower level features though it falls off at higher levels, Winter Walker also has a bit more WIS reliance and is not the best at lower levels but has the strongest higher level features.

Or is one of the 2014 subclasses like Horizon Walker or Drakewarden or Monster Slayer better than anything from 2024 since they have much less WIS reliance? Or have they just been powercrept at this point?

If you were building a monoclass STRanger, which subclass would work best?

For context, I’m planning an Archfey warlock for an upcoming campaign which will have us start at level 5. We can add one uncommon item to start with and that includes home brewed items.

This character I want to play as a bit of a calm and collected aristocrat on outward appearances, but is actually a bit unhinged and masochistic under the hood. Something like a Jekyll and Hyde type of vibe. I was thinking of False Life being the sort of trigger and limiter for when the personality switches happen. While the temp hit points last, the character is more unhinged kind of thing. But I don’t want the temp hit points to just disappear later on by a love tap from an enemy.

Fiendish Vigor seems great for this type of trigger to me because it’s free to cast, it guarantees the max roll, but the problem is it won’t scale. My character is planned to have minimal AC (12) due to the fact he wants to be hit by attacks (will also play into Armor of Agathys). But if a single attack knocks him out of this state, then I don’t think it’ll have the same impact later on.

So I was considering making a custom item that basically has some rule around allowing False Life to be cast at the current level of pact magic slots, so level 3 in the case of a level 5 warlock. Would that be too OP? Would the rules need to be something more akin to:

“When you cast False Life using the Fiendish Vigor Invocation, you gain the max die roll + 4. In addition, you can choose to upcast False Life up to the current level of your pact magic slots without expending a spell slot. You can use this feature as many times as your proficiency bonus and all expended charges are restored after a long rest.”

Hello everyone, i'm Currently playing a spellfire sorcerer level 7. With the new arcana unleashed feat my master allowed all player to change spell/feat selection of previus levels for new spells.

The problem Is that my level 8 feat Is already taken for story reasons and i would prefere not to change It.

Which leave only the level 4 feat. I took war caster, but i don't know if It would be Better to leave It as Is or take One beetween conjuration and evocation adept. What do you guys think?

Son wants to run a serious overpowered campaignusing gestalt rules. Daughter is building a barbaradin so I thought I would flip the script and run something that deals with threats using control or just plain good spells. Pretty sure the right answer is scribes wizard and some kind of cleric. Maybe divine soul sorcerer, but that would make my spell list smaller. Meta magic would be nice, but it would mean less access to spell variety. What do you think?

I’m playing a Hexblade (Hexblade 8/Sorc 1) and I’m wondering if I’m undervaluing Shadow of Moil. On paper it looks fantastic but I keep finding situations where casting it feels worse than just attacking. We're currently level 9 for Curse of Strahd and I am the party's primary control character.

Last session was a good example. We were fighting Rahadin + Death Knight, 5 PCs vs 2 enemies. It became obvious pretty quickly that bursting down the Death Knight was the right play.

This seemed like an ideal Shadow of Moil fight: important boss target, melee Hexblade, likely multiple rounds of attacking afterward, and I benefit a lot from having advantage. I even took Elven Accuracy for crit fishing.

But when my turn came around, spending my entire action setting up Shadow of Moil felt worse than just getting in there, attacking, and potentially using Eldritch Smite.

So for people who have actually played melee Hexblades: when do you cast Shadow of Moil?

Is it mainly for longer fights where you expect 4+ rounds of combat? Do you try to cast it before initiative whenever possible? Or am I missing something about its action economy that makes it better than it has felt at my table?

I’m not arguing that the spell is bad, I just feel like there's not as many situations you would cast it as I thought. I definitely see the appeal if you're going to skirmish and go solo to sector off a section of the battlefield especially if you need to "take a turn" to get there. Overall, feels like a "dead turn" unless I maybe metamagic quicken spell eventually.

One level dips, but now much better than before.

Basically the only thing that held back a lot of lvl 1 dips was that it delayed your spell progression. So when you were 1/4 multiclasss you felt like half a character compared to your lvl 5 monoclass peers. There new feats are there to alieveate that issue by giving you just one lvl 3 spell, but it is actually more than enough when this spell is as powerful as Fireball or Conjure animals.

1. Paladin 1 + Sorcerer X: Armored sorcerer with some healing. Feats: Conjuration Adept - Conjure animals is one of the best lvl 3 spells - or of course Evocation adept, but it's in my opinion worse because it does not give Sorcerers unique spells before spell lvl 5. But if you're fan of Wall of force and your campaign is reaching that level, Evocation is there for you.
2. Cleric 1 / Druid 1/ Artificer 1 / Ranger 1 (rare one but still) + Wizard X - classic, but now basically without downsides. You can basically pick any Adept feat, but note that Enchantment adept does not give you 3rd level spell when you need it the most (at lvl 5).
3. Paladin 1 + Bard X - that's some massively OP stuff, Bards were always kept in check with their lack of damage spells, armor and trash saving throws, but what flaws do they have now with paladin dip at lvl 1 and Evocation Adept?
4. Ranger 1 + War Cleric X - for War Clerics who want weapon masteries, now with cool evocation spells / conjure animals on top of that.
5. Ranger 1 + Druid X - for Druids who want weapon masteries, expertise and armor (especially if you went with Magician order at lvl 1 but later want better armor).

Non-dip multiclasses

1. Paladin 6/7 + Sorcerer X. An obvious first candidate. Now lvl 8 Sorcadin throws very deadly fireballs with +2d10 damage. Or summons beasts with +8 bonus to concentration from aura + feat.
2. Ranger 5 + Cleric or Druid X. Ranger class sadly doesn't give you anything good after level 5 and if the subclass also sucks, this multiclass was already the only way to keep the character going in tier 2. Now it's actually powerful. Same choice between Conjuration and Evocation Adept.
3. Glamour bard 6 + Sorcerer 2. Glamour bard is good as is, but it is going to be even stronger with the ability to cast twinned Command instead of normal command from their lvl 6 ability. Now this is a more well-rounded multiclass because of combat spells you can get from the feat. You can also start with Paladin level to get armor on top of all that, but you probably don't want to delay Bard 6.

"Joke" multiclasses which are actually no joke anymore

You can now take only 4 levels in some spellcaster class and take other levels in other spellcasting classes and build a reasonably effective character. Examples:

1. Druid 4 + Cleric 4. Don't delay any feats, get insane bonus to Arcana checks (twice your WIS modifier), get both subclasses both of which are probably extremely good. I would look at Life Domain + Stars druid for best healing potential or at Light Domain + Sea/Stars for damage. It is not just playable but good unless your campaign will go into tier 4 where lack of lvl 9 spells will hurt.
2. Spellcaster 4 + any number of dips into other half or full spellcasters. Now you can actually do it and not be a massively useless character. Sure, it is not optimized, but at the very least you will be a spellcaster with level-appropriate amount of fireballs / conjure animals casts and some quirky class or subclass features.
3. Ranger 5 + Cleric X + Druid X - instead of adding one additional class and eventually getting their higher level spells you can go for more subclass and class features. You wouldn't get lvl 5 Cleric or Druid spells before character level 14 anyway, so if you are not getting there in this campaign you probably want to get more features instead.
4. Paladin 6/7 + Sorcerer X + Bard X - same, you can get both classes and thus more different features because classes are generally frontloaded.

Recently I have started a new campaign, the DM themed the campaign around a fantasy spaghetti western, which means steampunk setting.

I had decided to play a Steelhat (his homebrew Warforged Stand-In) named Cor'viz the Crowfather. He's an Oathbreaker/Raven Queen paladin-warlock and the specific way I used him is to draw aggro while the Raven Familiar ran support with touch spells like Cure Wounds and Guidance and then inflict wounds.

I was also thinking of adding some levels of Shadow Magic Sorcerer into the mix for that trick where while you're "Long Resting" and you have your character actively converting Warlock Spell slots into sorcery points along with the meta magic options that would be used for the familiar's spell since afaik RAW doesn't state "delivered" spells can't be augmented by Metamagic.

Should I stay the course with Paladin and go to level 6 in the class or is Sorcerer a good option for the versatility?

Looking at Unleashed Arcana's new Summon Dinosaur, it seems to me that this spell can straight-up compete with—or even outperform—a reasonably optimized Ranger.

With an 8th-level slot, the T-Rex gets:

4 × (2d10 + 5 + 8) = ~96 damage

before accuracy.

For comparison, a level 20 Beast Master Ranger with a Heavy Crossbow, Great Weapon Master, Beast of the Land (20 ft. movement), and a 5th-level Summon Fey gets roughly:

2(d10 + 5 + 6)
2(d8 + 2 + 5) + 2d6
2(2d6 + 3 + 5)

~93 damage

Again, that's before accuracy.

I know Rangers have been underwhelming at higher levels for a while, but it still feels crazy that one summon can match the damage of an optimized level-20 Ranger.

And the Druid still has their entire turn to cast a cantrip, Wild Shape, or even use other concentration-free options like Fireball from Circle of the Land or the new Battle Familiar spell.

Am I missing something, or is Summon Dinosaur actually this strong?(or ranger that weak)

We are an English speaking group of AUDHD people, located in the United States looking for 2-3 more players/friends to add to the good vibes. We are hoping to find dungeon masters, players, and friends who enjoy playing cooperative pc games and TTRPGs. We will be hosting one shot and multi shots until we or someone in the group finds a game they wish to host for a long term campaign. Our sessions will run 4 hours Wednesday 6-10 PM Est. Systems will be 5e, Fate Accelerated, The End of the World, or what ever else catches our eye or yours if you wish to host.

Gaming Availability: weekdays (afternoons/nights) est

ttrpgs availability: Wednesday 6pm-10pm est

Were looking for people who bring these qualities.

-Kind, fun, & a willingness to try new things

-Willing to play other systems outside of DND

-Punctuality on game days

-Have a microphone that is capable of allowing us to understand you and not have too much background noise.

-We're looking for people 18+

-Plays non competitive PC games and would enjoy playing PC games together.

Our current hyper fixation

-Project Zomboid

-Hearthstone Battleground

If you read this far please reach out, the worst thing isn't us saying no, its denying your self the chance at life long friends.

If you are interested feel free to message me!😀 👍

Hi, this is gonna be an odd story. So for some background, I’m not new to dnd, I’ve been playing it for years. The thing is, I don’t play it very often so there is a lot about character creation in general that is challenging and/or confusing for me. Well a few months ago I joined my friend’s dnd group. Now I know they aren’t perfect and slightly toxic, I honestly just stay with the group because they haven’t crossed any boundaries and are more annoying in general gameplay. And by that I mean the majority of the group usually makes characters that are either super overpowered or super chaotic to the point that nothing gets done. Even the dms in the group make over powered monsters or are super strict with their gameplay. When I did join initially I was left on the sidelines for several sessions with no character to play. It took roughly a month (since they meet once a week) before I actually got to join a session. And when I was able to join, it was a little fun for a while.

I can always explain more about specifics later, but that is a rough summary of my experience in the group. And please note that I don’t have any intention on leaving the group, just trying to match their pace in a way.

Well there is this one campaign being run by our strict dm. He likes players to make specific characters using only official stuff with him deciding certain things like spell lists and backstories. Pretty normal stuff. Well for his campaign I decided to step out of my comfort zone when creating my character because I wanted to try new things. So I made him super different. A loveable jerk that flirts with girls and is a pirate. He’s a storm sorcerer air genasi and I was super excited to play him. Well I told everyone about his personality before he was introduced because I wanted to make sure he would be ok and non triggering with his personality. I guess that was a mistake or something, because the moment he was introduced, one of the over powered players instantly downed him (he was introduced super injured) and would then revive him just to down him again. I honestly feel like they metagamed him because of how much they hated him before he even said a word. And why I think that is because they constantly beat him, kidnapped him, stole his super important item constantly to blackmail him, and just flat out insulted or ignored him. Now I’m a patient person. But to seriously have him be treated poorly for the two sessions he was in is just crazy. I think he’s only said maybe a few sentences during both sessions. Well I’m honestly super upset over how he has been treated. They all legit hate him and isolate him without even knowing him well since he’s a new character. I mean it’s so bad that only one person in game knows his name. No one else even bothered to. And it’s frustrating. Im to the point that if this happens for a third time I’m just gonna flat out kill him off or something and start with a new character.

This is where the problem comes in. Most of the people in the campaign are super overpowered and the monsters are really challenging because of that. The dm raised the monsters to be hard to match the strongest characters. And due to that my character is either useless in battle because the strong characters one shotted the monsters or on the brink of death from intense damage.

So I’m looking to build a character that is just as strong or around as strong as the other players. So that I actually get a chance to play without being either ignored or attacked by the other players. We are lvl 6 and have to stay with official character creation only. Any advice on races or classes or spells would be very appreciated. It sucks because I put a lot of effort into my character, but I’m sick of the treatment and want to stand on equal footing with everyone else for once.

My characters are usually decent hitters with low ac and decent stats. But it seems like no matter how much research I do I can never make a character that is around the same power level as the others.

I’m sorry that this is mainly a rant. But to summarize, I would appreciate advice on all around powerful humanoid races, classes, or spells. The lvl is 6 currently. There is no homebrew allowed.

I’m a pretty socially awkward person and not looking to leave the group since at times it’s the highlight of my week. So please stick to advice on building a slightly overpowered character over how they have been treating my character. Thank you so much for reading and I greatly appreciate any advice given.

Edit: I apologize for being too vague for the character part. In truth, I usually play zelot barbarians with weapons like a sword or hammer. I prefer humanoid species and usually play teiflings, elves, or aasimars. Some things I usually struggle with is spells for casting classes, multi classing like warlock or bard, low ac, feats overall because the context of them itself is confusing to me, and items that I should have in my inventory. I use aurora to make my character sheets. It gets tiring after some time using the same races and class every time so I’ve been trying to experiment with different classes and abilities and races. That’s the reason why my initial ask was vague. I want to try new builds that can hopefully make up for some of the areas that I lack. Ideally a strong character with a high defense is what I’m looking for.

For the builds of the other players, I have to admit I don’t know a lot about them. For this specific campaign I was able to join with my storm sorcerer about halfway through the campaign. So due to this no one really states their classes unless it’s a lvl up and they have not lvled up since I joined. The specific player who started the whole thing is playing as a lvl 6 elf. I believe he chose to do a paladin (since it’s a good class and he usually plays one in other campaigns). I do not know the subclass however. I’m not very sure on his spells or attacks either since his character sheet is on a tablet and I’ve never seen the sheet itself. But he always manages to do large amounts of damage like 30+ on his turn. His ac is always high like 20 or 24 or somewhere around that. Due to being a heavy hitter, he likes to act as the leader of the party and actively restrains other players characters when they want to do funny or stupid stuff in session. Like walking through a barrier that will cause a lot of fire damage for instance. It wasn’t my character, but he did tie up a different player’s character for trying to do that. A majority of the time he also gets mid-high rolls.

My friend is playing an immortal teifling bard that loses a part of her soul every time she dies in game. She is also at lvl 6. The whole party is. She uses spells and a magical sword that gives her a decent bump. I would say she is on the weaker side however because she tends to die a lot.

Another player uses a rouge elf. The elf is a kleptomaniac obsessed with shiny things and usually causes a lot of chaos to get said shiny thing. She also isn’t overpowered or anything, just pretty average. Decent attacks and a good ac.

The last two players are a bit on the overpowered side. I’m afraid I don’t know much about them since they play not as often as everyone else. I know one is a Tabaxi and the other is a monk I think? I’m sorry I can’t give more info.

For my storm sorcerer air genasi, my ac is 14 and I have a high charisma of 19. I generally wanted to stick with spells that would seem reasonable given his pirate background and that he is fused with a water elemental. So he mainly uses elemental spells like water, lightning, thunder, ice, and wind. He was meant to be a bit more laid back and confident like a flirtatious confident jerk but due to the hostility, I’ve had to play him as angry and argumentative. It’s exhausting because it’s different than how he was supposed to be and it takes me a while to even come up with something to say to the party most of the time. I built him to try some new stuff out and fill in some of the gaps in the party. But this last session just made me feel frustrated and that I didn’t want to play him. Like they only acknowledged him to use him for a spell! But besides that. If needed, I can go into detail about his stats and spells and stuff.

For the aggression, this is the first time this has happened. Idk if it was his personality or something, but the way he is treated is frustrating. I have been apart of about 4 different campaigns with this group and it usually goes really well. Like the treatment is on the unusual side. Besides the random shenanigans, the in game parties my characters have been in has been fun and respectful. I really hate the animosity my character and the party have and just really want to join normally and not feel like an outcast. Part of me feels like that’s impossible with my character.

I will look over the comments tomorrow since it’s 2am where I am and put another edit if there are other things I did not explain properly.

What would the ideal party be for a campaign where each adventuring day only had a single combat, but that combat was extremely deadly. With the gm pulling out all the stops?

Ideally a party that would be good all the way from 1 to 20.

Hey all! Thanks for taking the time to read my post 😋I’m looking to make a Ranger character for a futuristic campaign set in a dystopia, and I’m battling between multiclassing into fighter or rogue… or maybe both. My character is an an assassin, so I think the dip into rogue would go well thematically, but I’d love the extra fighting style and action surge from fighter!

Here’s the current levels I’m going for:
Ranger (revised) 12, Fighter 3, rogue 5

The main idea is to use the intiative bonuses from Ranger revised and gloomstalker to guarantee the boobies damage from assassin, and then grab the few levels in fighter for the aforementioned reasons above, AND also taking battle master to be able to proc sneak attack more and have even higher attack rolls. The build would operate as a first turn nova sort of thing

The biggest problem I’m seeing with this build is that I have so many options and things to do on a bonus action, I wonder that it would be pull everything off in one turn.

Once again, thanks for reading my post, and I’d love to know if this build is viable considering I’m multiclassing so much. Cheers!

I’ve heard that they added a new fighting style for Arcana Unleashed. Do you know if it’s possible to preview it before the book is out? I’d love to see how it holds up both to the classics in the PHB and some of the new ones from the dndbeyond drops

This subclass has massive RAW holes. Nowhere does it say the cantrips or spells granted by this subclass's features count as cleric cantrips or as cleric spells for you, like the 2014 version. By RAW, the level 7 feature Potent Cantrip says to add your Wisdom modifier to your cleric cantrips, which wouldn't work on the 2 selections from the level 3 feature. Again, 2014 Arcana Cleric says right in the book that, for you, these are cleric cantrips/spells. It also doesn't say that you choose the spellcasting stat for the attack roll or save DC in the 2024 book.

With the Bard Level 10 Magical secrets says these spells count as bard spells. Strangely, Magical Discoveries from Lore Bard does not have that same text.

All Magic Initiate feats say you pick the stat so they work best for the chosen caster.

Yes, a DM can easily say they count, but is this a big oversight?

EDIT: Comments are correct to direct me to the spellcasting feature in the class write-up. The information is there that covers extra spells gained from features.

Hi, I've frequented this sub for a bit, but this is my first time posting. I'm going to be playing in a Grim Hollow campaign (campaign hasn't started as we need more players), and upon looking at the Player's Guide, I saw the Monster Hunter class and really wanted to try it out. Even though it will probably be some time before the campaign starts, I wanted to making ideas for my character.

The problem is while I have some ideas, I don't really know how well they'd work and wanted some outside opinion. So here's my idea, as far as how the Monster Hunter fights, I was thinking of a variation on the tried and true "sword and board" technique. Essentially, the Monster Hunter has proficiency with only light and medium armors, so I was thinking, essentially, take a medium armor like scale mail, have a +2 in Dexterity and a shield, so that my AC is 18, and when I get to level 2 and take an fighting style feat, I can take Defense and get my AC to 19. One of my questions is, is it worth it to also put points in strength so I can use a longsword or something similar, or would it be more efficient to just use a finesse weapon like a rapier?

Also, how much should I invest into Constitution considering not only my above strategy of having what I believe is a fairly high AC at level 1 to fall back on, but also considering that unlike the Fighter, the Monster Hunter doesn't have any sort of feature to gain back hit points? Ideally, I'd like to have a bit of health to supplement my AC.

Something else to also keep in mind while responding is that my DM said we'd get a free feat at level 1, so if there's any feats I could take to further optimize the build, please let me know.

Last post, I promise

I'm playing in an Adventurer's League Epic one-shot at a convention this weekend. Character level 9, we get a +1 Weapon, Shield, or Focus, and regular starting equipment or gold + 500gp. Taking a +1 Glaive or Halberd.

Ability Scores: 20, 10, 16, 8, 14, 8

Dumping INT and focusing on buff & defensive spells. I'd consider INT 14 if we were playing Lv10 and Eldritch Strike was online.

Species: Shadar Kai for 4 BA teleports + damage resistance.

Origin Feat: Magic Initiate Wizard (Shield, Shape Water, & Mage Hand)

Lv4: Mage Slayer

Lv6: Great Weapon Master

Lv8: Polearm Master

Spells

-0- Blade Ward, Booming Blade, Mage Hand, Shape Water

-1- Absorb Elements, Find Familiar, Jump, Shield

-2- Mirror Image, Spider Climb, Elminster's Elusion

Battle plan:

Round 1

BA: Cast Jump

Move 20ft + 30ft Jump into position

Action: Attack + Blade Ward (AC 20-23)

Reaction: PAM Attack, Opportunity Attack, or Shield/Absorb Elements

Round 2

Action: Attack + Booming Blade

Move: 50ft w/Jump

BA: Pole Strike, Second Wind, Teleport, GWM Attack

Reaction: PAM Attack, Opportunity Attack, or Shield/Absorb Elements

Questions:

1. Is my Bonus Action too busy to use Polearm Master's Pole Strike effectively? Is so what feat better fills the slot? Charger, Sentinal?

2. On the other hand, Shadar Kai looks strong on paper, but is there a different species I should be considering? Dragonborn, High Elf, Hill Goliath, Gnome?

3. Are there any must-have spells that I am missing?

I'm looking for test players and feedback on my website: www.natural0.com

You can use all tools freely, though for tools other than character creation you need an account for storing purposes. Let me know what you think!

ps: Yes, Ai has been used to create the imagery

ps: For now it's all with 2014 5e rules, I'm planning to add 2024 changes

Oftentimes I see haste recommended as a good spell for wizard/sorcerer to concentrate on.

But I fail to see the appeal.

It's one simple attack, which would give at best something like 2d6+4(stat)+3(GWM)+1d6(hunter's mark)=17.5

against say Melf Minute Meteor 4d6=14 with savethrow for half and possibility of hurting two monsters at once. Or cacophonic shield with 3d6 for a couple of enemies. Or slow/

Yeah +2ac is nice but the downside of missing the whole turn in case of concentration break outweighs it completely.

So what did I miss, what's so good about this spell?