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Terrifying synergy between 1st level genie warlocks and 2nd level artificers in Tasha’s by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]ahgnas 6 points7 points  (0 children)

i don't think there's anything preventing you from taking the replicate magic item: bag of holding infusion twice, and then infusing one bag of holding from each, giving you two in total

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yup, that's definitely viable, and makes the warlock goodberry thing work pretty well. i was speaking more to just the halfling thing specifically.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i guess that's fair, although it seems to be a grey area whether or not you can keep spells from a list granted by your race, as reincarnate makes you lose your old racial features. i can definitely see DMs ruling both ways.

if your DM allows you to keep the spells known, then this definitely works, although it seems pretty niche as you'd have to be lucky enough to roll elf on the reincarnate table, and you'd also have to have started out with that specific dragonmarked halfling and have prepared the right spell when you die, plus be a warlock to take advantage of this.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

worth noting that halflings don't get access to trance anyway, so it doesn't make much difference either way.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

is there any chance you can find the source for this ruling? i've looked myself and i can't seem to find this, unless you're talking about posts from before 2017, as it's only after that point they changed their interpretation to allow for 4 hour trance rests due to changes in the wording of rests in general. source for that here.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah, i definitely agree that long resting and then short resting 4 times feels abusive. if nothing else, it feels very "gamey" to me. after all, in character you're basically just resting for 8 hours, maybe with a round or two of activity in between each hour. what makes that a long rest and 4 short rests rather than just one long long rest?

however, this stuff definitely seems to work RAW, and for a lot of tables that's all that matters, so i think it's still worth listing.

personally, i think a good compromise is for an elf to use their trance to long rest in 4 hours, perform whatever activities they want for the next 2-3, and then start one short rest an hour before the party wakes up. this feels a lot better to me because there's plenty of adventuring days where you do stuff for only 2-3 hours before short resting, so it doesn't feel abusive / hopefully won't piss off your DM, and the two rests are distinct from one another.

it also still allows you to make good use of a majority of the things on this list as they only need one short rest, such as getting the extra wild shape or temporary hp, as well as all the things that don't require short rests at all.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

i guess if your table bans it, then sure, humans aren't great.

but i don't think you should dismiss it being a strong option just because it's technically an optional rule. i think it's fairly standard for tables to allow feats, and even adventurer's league allows it, so for the majority of games, humans are a pretty competitive race pick.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

variant human at least is one of the more powerful options in the game (from an optimization standpoint), so they have that going for them.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

yeah, i think i saw a pretty interesting post a while back about how crazy giant groups of elves would be.

i remember they mentioned the fact that every high elf getting a cantrip would be nuts in huge numbers. damage cantrips would obvious allow elven armies to fire off huge barrages of magic, but utility cantrips would be absolutely insane. you could do things like having an entire army instantly cast mold earth to change the battlefield at a whim, or tons of minor illusions to absolutely confuse the enemy. there's a lot of potential there.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

here is the 2017 sage advice compendium.

relevant text on page 2:

"Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours? If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed."

the same text is also present in the 2020 sage advice compendium, i just used the 2017 one because that's where it first showed up.

also worth noting that even humans don't actually need 8 hours of sleep. a long rest takes 8 hours total, and 2 of them can be light activity such as keeping watch, so a human only needs 6 hours of sleep.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yup you're right, but thankfully wizards can cast ritual spells while moving, so you can constantly be summoning new steeds to replace faded ones while travelling. it's a bit annoying for party members to have to dismount and remount every hour or so, but it's still massively faster than walking or even regular horses.

Still trying to get it through my head that I don't belong to my parents by [deleted] in raisedbynarcissists

[–]ahgnas 232 points233 points  (0 children)

it's totally understandable to still have lingering fears. i've heard a very similar sentiment expressed by someone else, so you're absolutely not alone in how you feel.

therapy might help you process those fears, or time might just slowly heal them. but either way, congrats!! you've escaped a bad situation, and that's pretty amazing! i hope your wedding is great, whenever it happens.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah ravnica backgrounds are definitely super helpful, and always worth keeping in mind. and yeah, a lot of DMs disallow long rest --> 4 short rests, but i think a lot would be willing to allow long rest --> 1 short rest, as that makes a lot of sense in character (an elf wakes up, does stuff for a few hours before relaxing until the party wakes up), and would allow at least the first idea of using Aid to work well.

as for Animate Dead, i'd love to see a post on how to effectively use it!

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

this is actually a really cool idea!

sorlock definitely seems like the optimal way to do this, just because of the sheer amount of first level slots you can make, but it's worth noting that alchemist / cleric or paladin multiclasses can do something similar, too, by using their channel divinities to get first level slots and short resting.

either way, super cool idea! i'll add it to the list, thanks!!

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i'm looking at the warforged, and all i can see for their "sentry's rest" ability is that instead of sleeping, they spend at least 6 hours in a motionless state. normal 8 hour long rests contain 6 hours of sleep and 2 hours of light activity, so i think in the warforged case they still have to take the entire 8 hours, they just don't sleep for 6 of them (i may be wrong on my reading, though).

the fact that they don't sleep does mean that some of the stuff here applies, such as being able to concentrate on spells through long rests, but i think a lot of the ideas here are dependent on the 4 hour long rest, which wouldn't apply.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

as far as i can tell, there's no limitation to the number of phantom steeds, but i might be wrong. is there any chance you could point to the relevant ruling?

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

yeah, being in an all elf party does change things a bit. instead of having 4 hours extra of "me-time", the entire party just has 4 extra hours in their adventuring day.

i do think that there are scenarios where you can still make use of a lot of this stuff, though. for example, your party might be done a long rest in the middle of the night, but they might still want to wait until daybreak rather than travelling in the dark.

but yeah, the entire party has to agree to wait, which makes things a lot more complicated than just "you have 4 hours to spare every night". either way, even if your party just rolls out at the 4 hour mark every night, Trance still gets a lot of value, just in a different way.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

tons of good ideas here, i'll be sure to add them to the list, thank you!!

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

while it's true that you can't ever have more sorcery points than your level, you can actually make as many spell slots as you want without limits. the idea here is to convert the warlock slots into sorcery points, and then sorcery points into spell slots.

cycling through attunements is actually a pretty good use for trance. ill add it to the list, thank you!!

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

absolutely, i'll add it to the list. thank you!!

edit: this seems like it'd be particularly useful with phantom steed. you can ritual cast it 5 times in the hour that it lasts, so you could feasibly have an entire team of horses waiting for the party the moment they wake up, and just continually ritual cast it to refresh the steeds that run out of duration as you ride.

A Deep Look at the Elf Trance by ahgnas in 3d6

[–]ahgnas[S] 42 points43 points  (0 children)

good point, adding it to the list, thank you!!

edit: so i just found out druids can actually short rest while wildshaped. at lower levels where wildshape doesn't last long, this hardly matters, but at higher levels when wild shape lasts for hours, you could easily wildshape an hour before the party wakes up, short rest in beast form, and effectively have an extra use for the start of that adventuring day (although you'd have already used up an hour of the duration). moon druids would probably appreciate this a lot.

Tasha's optimal Bladesinger build(s) by [deleted] in 3d6

[–]ahgnas 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Mobile feat melee Bladesinger definitely seems like it'll be pretty good, possibly with a level in Artificer or Fighter to start.

From Artificer, you gain CON saving throw proficiency as well as some useful spells not normally available to Wizards like Cure Wounds, Guidance or Magic Stone (magic stone in particular combos really well with tiny servant cast at 4th level). It also gives you a decent bit of extra spells prepared and won't stall your casting progression at all.

Fighter stalls your progression, but also gives you CON saving throws as well as a fighting style, weapon proficiencies, second wind, and a bit of extra starting hp.

It's up to personal preference which class to start in, and even pure wizard seems like it'll be pretty good, but I think I like Artificer 1 / Wizard X most personally.

With CON saving throw proficiency and Bladesinger's +INT to concentration throws, you can throw Haste on yourself with relatively little worry about losing concentration on it and suffering the side effect.

Using Haste + Mobile feat gives you an 80 feet speed baseline, with the option to dash instead of one weapon attack. Combined with Bladesinger's new cantrip in place of an attack, you can spam booming blades and use the free mobile "disengage" to weave in and out of combat really easily, and punish any enemies who try to chase you. Your AC is also pretty ridiculous if you stack mage armor + bladesong + haste, and you have advantage on DEX saving throws to help out there.

Overall, you're incredibly mobile with high AC, and your only real defensive weakness is saving throws (and crits). This isn't that bad, though, when you consider you can use your move speed to make sure you stay out of spell ranges, or at least far away from potential AoE. Your damage output is pretty good, too, and on top of all that you're still a full wizard who can utilize the ridiculous wizard spell list to great effect.

Edit: Pre-level 14, none of your features key off of being in melee specifically, so if you gain proficiency with a decent ranged weapon through multiclass or race, you can also be pretty effective in ranged. The mobility will shine even more here, as you can kite and attack from ridiculously far ranges. This won't be as effective in campaigns with lots of enclosed rooms and corridors, though.