Errata: I had an error in my calculations at levels 13 and 17 - I accidentally added 10 damage to Cloud of Daggers for some reason - this lowers the damage numbers at those levels, but still keeps them at the top of the class overall. I'll adjust the spreadsheets accordingly. Also! Contingency only works on 5th level spells and lower and the spell only affects you - no Force Cage or Wall of Force or Crown of Stars! :) Also! I'm seeing people talk about Mage Armor - I'll admit, while I was working the build I was just thinking "Natural Armor and Mage Armor don't stack" and, while that's true, I don't believe there's any reason why you couldn't cast Mage Armor (which lasts for 8 hours without concentration), and benefit from it while wild shaped *instead* of your Natural Armor, since the PHB states "If you have multiple features that give you different ways to calculate your AC, you choose which one to use." So yeah, that's a 13 instead of an 11 (Alas, Brown Bears have a 10 Dex or it'd be higher). I'll take a +2 bump. Especially since it'll eventually be at an 18 when bladesinging... not bad at all.
Just synaptic-static yourself and everyone around you pays the price. I think thats kind of a worthwhile risk at your bladesong ac.... iv never done it yet but if you have held your reaction you should be able to just shield out of it and flavor a moon burst effect
They said there will be a three class multiclassing video, but now they started Spell Tier-Ranking, so we'll have to wait, sadly... Still, it was supposed to be about powerful builds, so it might be scary when You optimize them :D
Well bladesingers should be elves...so yeah... and personally I add the few twist of accepting elven armor and weapons for bladesingers... so nothing better than a double-bladed scimitar and bladesong...dancing through the enemies of orcs and similar
Colby I got a suggestion, Dungeon Dudes are doing a Spells tier list series as well, you can look for quirky or unique spells and try to make builds around using them, that could be really fun
As a wizard, this character won’t be a one-trick pony (make that bear). If conditions don’t look right for grapple and daggers, drop a nasty control spell and Wildshape to hide.
@@orangeflame568that's by far the biggest weakness of this build. If the enemy also doesn't care about hurting his ally, he can also just explode the bear using an AoE spell.
@@20storiesunder I want to say thank you! I've played my fair share of dnd with friends but haven't had the chance to join a campaign (run by a friend) in the past year. Your comment inspired me to say "fck it, I'll DM" and after talking with several friends who were interested I can officially say that now I'll be the one taking people to the mines. Again, thanks for the little push and wish me luck!
I love how you’ve taken several elements that individually people hate on and combined them into a great build. A druid/bladesinger multiclass is a challenge, but you made it work with cloud of daggers, no one’s first choice for 2nd level spells, and giff, no one’s first choice of ancestry. You announce you’re a giff druid/bladesinger and they start laughing, you up-cast cloud of daggers and they start laughing harder, then you wildshape into bear, drag them into cloud of daggers and hold them there until they die and suddenly they’re not laughing anymore.
I like the idea of taking two more druid for giant octopus. Flavor it with a piraty curved sword or rapier as the singer blade and sea shanties out of wild shape. Almost same str, more hp, and you now have a single 15' reach 2d6 tentacle attack that initates grapple to hold the poor soul in your piratey cloud of daggers. And that's just on land.
Relying on a +5 to hit to grapple will be very rough, especially later on. Similarly, the 10 speed will make it near impossible to drag enemies into the cloud of dagger. So unless you're playing an underwater or pirate-style campaign, I'd advice against it.
@@ya-dude I did not know who that was until you mentioned them. I am not a critter, because I do not enjoy watching others play except for maybe an hour at a time, which is why I made it through the Force Grey stuff & I did experience the first YT of Critical Roll, but not enough to know who that was. I do this for myself, but it works out that sharing it makes others happy too.
You can cheese the heck out of Contingency. "When I go 'rowr, rowr, rowr,' it casts fireball." Get a free action fireball (or whatever) while in bear form.
Re: Song of Defense and Concentration: I know the bear has a higher than typical chance of getting hit, but if you get hit by something big, you can use your reaction to drop the damage to a point where your concentration check is more manageable. "He gets hit for 30." (That's a 15 to save concentration) Second level spell to prevent ten damage? Now it's a ten.
Love the synergy between you and the Dungeon Dudes. I don’t know that “is it better than…” is the best question here. But certainly you can answer “yes!” to “is this a fun and powerful build.” Bonus points: super distinctive.
You win the internet man. Your videos are amazing, your break downs so thorough and interesting. And you're such a nice guy. Kudos to you and all that you do.
The more time passes the more I'm getting convinced Cloud of Daggers is the strongest damage spell at 2nd level, potentially period. No save, magical slashing damage, enter-and-start-of-turn clause, insane scaling, this spell is the best spellblade spell in the game.
Great advice for life there. Instead of lamenting that life doesn’t fit your desires, look for the opportunities. That kind of optimism and creativity are a recipe for success!
I would think that Mage Armour would be a fairly obvious pickup instead of Absorb (much though I love Absorb, taking that at Wizard 2 seems perfactly reasonable) or Silvery (if that is even allowed at your table). A 2 point AC bump to your bear form will help extend your wildshape durability.
I had kind of wandered away from the D&D side of RUclips for a bunch of reasons. And i had forgotten how much just putting your videos on in the background to listen to while I go about important but boring task made actually doing those tasks easier. Having something that my brain is willing to engage makes getting up and doing things feel in a reasonable time feel like a reasonable ask.
I will definitely use contingency for Polymorph, just for the memes. Think of the enemy working so hard to knock you out of your bear form and possibly your concentration only for you to insta transform into an Ooazaru from Dragon ball Z Edit: Also I would cough up the gold for simulacrum. What's better than one cloud of dagger casting , tough to hit and surprisingly nimble, shoving and dragging brown bear? two cloud of dagger casting....
Fascinating and fun build. Biggest weakness I see at higher levels is bear HP not scaling so potentially losing bear form every round. That being said I still want to use it for atleast a oneshot.
My first thoughts are that this will be really powerful. It'll have to be a bit MAD (erm.. multiple ability score dependent), but the combination should be crazy. Wizards and Druids are both difficult to multiclass out of, but I think this can work. Super excited for it!!!!
This build reminds me of the Fochlucan Lyrist prestige class of 3.5e, a singing performer with arcane and druidic magic that combined bardic song and lore with the primal magic of nature.
Was not ready for the unboxing content 😆But honestly, all your videos are just unboxing content for hugely entertaining character builds, so I'm not complaining 😄
The major drawback that is probably the biggest one is... 34 health. By level 10 enemies are going to be doing multi attacks that can eat through 34 health in a moment, or a fireball (or many other spells) and you only have ONE reaction fairly late in the build to even reduce the damage. I would imagine that you will be dropping out of bear form fairly often once reaching around level 10 (especially if you are the largest creature and or the enemies know anything about your tactics)
Very possible. I'm hoping that, with the help of either wild shape healing or, later, song of defense, we can mitigate that as much as possible, but don't forget: we're not going to be getting hit *every* time an enemy attacks, and we have two uses of wild shape per short rest... get knocked out, next round, new bear, keep grappling. I'd love to try it out in game and see how well it works outside of the lab.
@@DnDDeepDiveTrue, it really depends on the table... For example... my group at level 7 just had to fight a purple worm after a long adventuring day... minimum everyone had 2 levels of exhaustion. Somehow we pulled through using silence and pass without trace and some DM leeway on the reading of those!
I was wondering if someone had mentioned this, as 11 AC base and 34 hp is really weak in mid levels even. Even if we were to add +2 ac from mage armour and +5 from Bladesong, 18 AC will help somewhat, but 34 hp is really low, you'd be out of wildshape in a single round, meaning this combo cant be used often at all. True, you{re still mostly a wizard, but you{re sacrificing 2 levels for this trick, that may or may not pay out.
For this reason, Mirror Image should be cast before every combat if possible. Honestly, it's not a bad Contingency target either. Alternatively Glyph of Warding Dwarf gives the Armor of Agathys spell to bolster our hp. (RAW this probably has to be contingency? Not 100% if you can cast it pre-wildshape and have it carry over. Either way a good option tho)
I also love that this combo works really well with 2 characters in a party. Any spellcaster who can cast cloud of daggers and a rune knight fighter or path of giants barbarian can pull this off as a team that requires less set up. I know thats not the point of this channel, but I always enjoy seeing combos that work better with team work within a party anyways.
I LOVE this build. The flavor and background storyline are wide and varied. Having wild shape and wizard spells and zeroing out an enemy with grapple WHILE dumping out top tier damage? Bravo sir..
If your damage report is always at the same lvls. The portrait or design could change depending on that. "More damage letters or some" just an idea. Love the content.
I loved the dungeon dude’s series about multiclassing and looked forward to each episode every week. However, my favorite episode was the one about warlocks. I loved taking a deeper look at multiclassing into warlock beyond just Hexblade. That video was full of things I had never thought of before and I feel like you could spend several months making videos on ideas just from that one episode alone.
Was so stoked for what it was gonna be based off the short. Even more excited to see "Moon Singer" which is great fun. Good stuff as always. I love your friendly enthusiasm, even this many videos in. I'm gonna keep up with them all, too good to miss any. Had the Moon Singer realisation back in Feb 22. So excited to see someone do something with it. But thought you might enjoy my original concept for the build. Was more for flavour and fun rather than effect. Kalastar 5 bear barbarian 1 monk 2 blade-singer wizard 2 moon druid A turn into a Ape raging Resistant to all damage with a rapier add dex + Int + wis or con to ac +20ft movement
I played a similar grappling moon druid cheese grater. Same race and background, but concentrated on spike growth and took levels in rogue (scout) instead of bladesinger to give extra movement with bonus action and reaction. I used a moorbounder instead of a bear. Any enemy that got grappled was instantly shredded with all that forced movement through the spikes.
A fun thing I've seen for some people homebrewing that grappling makes the enemy occupy the same square is that they can have an infinite amount of creatures on the same square as long as you continuously grapple a creature that already has another grappled.
Stop it Colby, the moment I accept that I can't possibly have enough games to play the characters I want to play you come and give me ideas! There goes my afternoon xD
Normally when i play a moon druid i take the telepathic feat (the first time up until level 8 i had a patchwork quilt with things I could point to on it while in animal form "trap floor" "short rest later fight now" etc etc) I think for this though if you cant giff then the telekinetic feat would be really good lettinf you do some 5ft push/pull with your bonus action and spell DC each turn. There's also an argument that if theres no verbal or somatic components there'd be nothing stopping your bear form summoning a mage hand which could write messages in the sand or something
This brings up an interesting question I was once confronted with from a Druid/Cleric multiclass player: he was a Triton so he asked if I would allow him to ignore the swim speed restriction for wildshape since the character has a swim speed already and, in theory, as a low level Druid in the water he would probably be mostly exposed to swimming animals. I said yes, but made sure that the precedent didn’t also apply to Aarokocra’s fly speed.
Even though this build doesn’t make use of melee attacks that often in favor of grappling, I might rule that you could use the primal savagery cantrip while wild shaped, and make use of the Bladesinger extra attack.
I would contingency Cloud of Daggers potentially at 5th level to activate when i activate Wild Shape, so that you could be in Bear form, with cloud of daggers up, and have movement and a full action all on round 1. losing 1 level of upcasting on the spell but you are fully functional by round 1 instead of round 3. You could also cast Cloud of Daggers NEXT to the enemy in this scenario in round 1 which i see going as such: Run up to them, grapple, shove them prone, then drag them with left over movement into the spells radius to make them take the initial damage and the start of their turn.
I do think this is one of the most assumption dependant builds you've ever made: you're assuming that in any campaign at higher lvls than lets say 8 a brown bear would survive for more than 1 round. The likelihood that you're going to get shot out of wildshape just seems so high and at high lvls basically garentueed. At low lvls it might be good, but at high lvls it's probably better to not use wild shape at all. Typical enemies are going to do more damage than a brown bear has hp in 1 attack, and your AC is super low so it's more likely to hit than not. I love the build from a theory crafting standpoint to see what is possible in the best case scenario. And yes all your builds are best case scenario, but I just feel that this is the most best case scenario dependant build I've seen from you: both not that likely to actually happen and significantly worse if you're out of your optimal situation, since you're grapple would be pretty bad outside of wildshaping with that 8 strength. The build is really good at low levels, but that's true for all moon druids really, I don't think there is a mechanically stronger build at 2nd lvl than moon druid.
Tuesdays have become my favorite day just for these videos. Get a good cup of coffee, a blanket and ready to take notes on a class I would never have thought of on my own.
Had a cleric/paladin forge cleric who had two bandoliers of +1 adamantium daggers that I would just chuck on the ground and then animate them in future turns. That was a lot of fun.
One interesting benefit to Artificer if you are going to wear armor and take 2 levels for infusions, grab the armor of magical strength to add your INT modifier to your athletics checks up to 6x per day :)
Moon Druid 2/Wizard X has always been overlooked as a fantastic build. Lots of ways to do it. With the focus on Cloud of Daggers and Extra Attack with claws, I’d definitely take the Slasher feat on this particular one.
I'm starting out with a Dhampir Moon Druid and I was given a Claws of Insignia as a starting magic item (DM is actually going to improve it further as certain milestones, probably tiers, are met; kind of like 4e items.) So this build is looking better and better for me. Grapple, spiderclimb as bear (Dhampir movement) up a wall and hold the enemy in the cloud of daggers. If they get out of the grapple, fall damage. Then at about the 47:30 mark, you mention the same magic item and I was excited. But I remember that I got the idea from your Dhampir video, so of course you'd be thinking about this item.
I present to you the SwashBlade; a Rogue Swashbuckler/Wizard Bladesinger. You don't need allies or advantage to get sneak attack. Booming Blade attack and Fancy Footwork to strike and move away. It's fun to play.
Looks like somebody got a new editing tool they wanted to play with 😏 Quick side note, you can't use Contingency to cast Force Cage or Crown of Stars since they're not 5th level or lower (and doesn't target you). In fact, rules as written, Cloud of Daggers targets a point within 60 feet, and not a creature, so even though you could cast it so it technically affects you and no one else, it's not a spell that can target you, and therefore can't be used with Contingency. Love the build as always, and looking forward to episode 150!
Hippos truly are the most dangerous creatures known to man 😂 great video as always. Just a 2 cents on the outtakes if feedback is wanted on the change; the bleep to break up the cuts made me giggle but as someone that usually watches these videos multiple times (I listen back to old episodes to wind down for bed) the level of the bleep might wake me up if I’d drifted off so could come down slightly. If this is the first vid with the new editor I think I remember being mentioned, thanks for your work and great job fitting in to the style of the channel!
I like to do what I call the “Skinny Dip” (Barbarian 1/Bladesinger 2) so my character can ignore wearing armor. Did look at doing this with my Werewolf because a high Int + a beast’s Con makes for a pretty good AC.
Contingency Spell use: Polymorph into an even bigger tankier beast, for when you loose wild shape. It would be demoralizing to your opponents when one thinks they got the druid down, and they immediately pop up even more dangerous.
About to start a new 5E game with some friends and was trying to decide between playing a druid or another bladesinger. While I generally hate copying internet builds for my own characters, this one is exactly the kind of janky shenanigans I was looking to come up with and could not have come along at a more perfect time. And the fact that we are starting at level 7 with a single magic item (hello Insignia of Claws) just makes this all the better.
I would love to see you do a series of builds that are optimized for races / lineages which are not frequently used by players! Edit: TIL that, the light halo behind Colby is coming from a torch shining on the wall (see the last outtake). Love it!
This is perfect for a villain I was thinking about, i will definitelly make this character, buff a lot of stuff and turn this into my BBEG (Big BEAR Evil Girl). Thanks Colby.
I played this in a Level 20 battle royal, it was very potent. Created my own mounts with mounted Combatant and the extra AC was great. Replacing an attack with a cantrip is also super potent.
One thing to not is that enlarge reduce says that the creature maintains the enlarges features even if it can’t grow to that size due to outside conditions so either way it will allow you to grapple larger creatures
Great build, one idea for a bit more optimization. Take the Giant Foundling background which gives the Strike of the Giants feat, take Hill Giant option so you can attack with more damage and potentially make them prone without needing to use an attack dedicated to it. When you take Skill expert just use that opportunity to take athletics and then expertise it as well.
I would like to see if most DMs consider the "Multiattack" action that monsters have as the same as a PC taking the "Attack" action with Extra Attack. Grappling requires you to take the Attack action and replace an attack with a grapple, so it is technically not the same as taking the multiattack action that monsters get. That being said, if I was the DM, as long as the attack could reasonably grapple the target I'd allow it.
Is it silly that I have this mental image of a bear just grabbing an enemy in its jaws and just shaking its head back and forth to drag them in and out of the cloud of daggers? Raaar!
I would 100% every time start this build with fighter. Starting with Con save proficiency is top tier for ensuring you maintain concentration, second wind is stronger than expending a spell slot for healing, action surge will help get you going a full turn earlier, and if you feel cheeky you can take a 3rd level for Battlemaster for maneuvers, Eldritch Knight for spells (meh), Psi-Warrior for extra damage and more forced movement, or Rune Knight for Frost Rune to beef up your grapples even more
You should also be rest casting mage armour which will carry through just like enlarge/reduce would, so you will have a base AC of 17 in Bear form while blade singing.
Watching this made me scratch my head and ask myself "If I wanted to cast spells while wild shaped, how would I do that?". D&D 3.5 druids could cast spells while wildshaped with a feat, but 5th won't let you do it until waaaaaay too late in the game. So I began my quest, looking through all my available material and chatting with several Dungeon Masters, and settled on Bloodhunter: Order of the Lycan. You can become a lycanthrope fully capable of casting, enjoy advantage on all strength rolls, and damage resistance against anything that isn't a magic silver weapon. Rolled some dice, got a good spread, started 1 level paladin, human variant with the knight of solomnia background, went 5 levels blood hunter before swapping to druid. Critter of choice was a dire wolf, allowing me to become a large werewolf and retain the use of all my gear and spells. Went back to pally to pick up divine smite and finished out the build with all druid levels. It made for a very fun and effective monster hunter
The opposite would be a "Can't Touch This" ultimate glass, cannon kiting build: Giff Moon Druid, using a Quickling Wild Shape, who sprinkles in Echo Knight Fighter, and Assassin Rogue with crossbow expert and sharp shooter. You and the GM have to work out if you could use a fey creature instead for wild shape and how guns work. A quickling dual wielding two pistols (and an echo to always yoyo back to) is pretty terrifying!
You explained what was happening with the cloud of daggers and grappling and the only thing I want to do is upcast armor of agathys while doing all of this even though that gives up hippo strength to go mark of warding dwarf (or I guess a 1 level dip in warlock but that becomes hard due to the Cha requirement since you want Wis and Int)
I played this as a max int mostly druid + 2 levels of bladesinger and it was pretty fun. No extra attack but the AC, con and movement speed boosts were 👌🏻👌🏻
I just started playing a 2 bladesinger 2 moon druid eladrin with 17 int 14 wis 14 con. Even with the limited number of times you can bladesong, mage armor from wizard spell list greatly improves AC for almost any form and when you do sing you're very dodgy (giant spider with 19 AC lol). It's a super fun build I did not expect to work gameplay-wise and story-wise. I'm looking forward to getting air elemental to abuse the mage armor+bladesong combo for something like 22 AC.
I like flexible uses for spells. So if you use resources, then you should get to benefit. Enlarge should continue its effects during wildshape, mainly because other spells can be maintained.
I would love to see you do a sort of ridiculous build that has made some rounds around the web. Taking a single level in genie warlock, and having it interact with the spell "Glyph of Warding". As, from what I can tell RAW, you could set up a theoretically infinite number (as long as you had enough diamond dust) of glyphs inside your Genie's vessel as it is another plane. Allowing you in 1 turn, to enter your vessel, say the command word, activate all the glyphs you want, and leave the vessel in the same turn. And I know you usually only go to level 17, but if you took a full spell caster (or full spellcasting levels) to 19 after the 1 level of Genie Warlock, you could put up to 6th level spells in a glyph. And allowing you to concentrate on any other spell you want as your own concentration. And I say all of that to say I would love to see your calculations on something like this as I am sure you'd find stuff that I have missed.
Errata: I had an error in my calculations at levels 13 and 17 - I accidentally added 10 damage to Cloud of Daggers for some reason - this lowers the damage numbers at those levels, but still keeps them at the top of the class overall. I'll adjust the spreadsheets accordingly.
Also! Contingency only works on 5th level spells and lower and the spell only affects you - no Force Cage or Wall of Force or Crown of Stars! :)
Also! I'm seeing people talk about Mage Armor - I'll admit, while I was working the build I was just thinking "Natural Armor and Mage Armor don't stack" and, while that's true, I don't believe there's any reason why you couldn't cast Mage Armor (which lasts for 8 hours without concentration), and benefit from it while wild shaped *instead* of your Natural Armor, since the PHB states "If you have multiple features that give you different ways to calculate your AC, you choose which one to use." So yeah, that's a 13 instead of an 11 (Alas, Brown Bears have a 10 Dex or it'd be higher). I'll take a +2 bump. Especially since it'll eventually be at an 18 when bladesinging... not bad at all.
And they only target you...
Just synaptic-static yourself and everyone around you pays the price. I think thats kind of a worthwhile risk at your bladesong ac.... iv never done it yet but if you have held your reaction you should be able to just shield out of it and flavor a moon burst effect
They said there will be a three class multiclassing video, but now they started Spell Tier-Ranking, so we'll have to wait, sadly...
Still, it was supposed to be about powerful builds, so it might be scary when You optimize them :D
does mage armor count as a feature here? thought its only for monk and barbs with nat. armor
@@michelol8288 that’s unarmored defense ;)
The 'Oops all Bladesingers' party really coming along
Please and thank you
Oh nooo how could this happen 😂
Sign me up, I’ll play in that game!
Thay would be so cool!
[Edit: I'm gonna leave that typo in because it seems oddly appropriate.....or inappropriate]
@@Gavo172 what monsters would bet they all have silvery barbs too!
Moon Druid bladesinger elves are literally canon in my setting and I am glad this combo is getting a shine here in d4
That sounds like a wild setting 😅
Well bladesingers should be elves...so yeah... and personally I add the few twist of accepting elven armor and weapons for bladesingers... so nothing better than a double-bladed scimitar and bladesong...dancing through the enemies of orcs and similar
Colby I got a suggestion, Dungeon Dudes are doing a Spells tier list series as well, you can look for quirky or unique spells and try to make builds around using them, that could be really fun
Excellent idea for shorter vids!
I'd also like to see character combos. What two builds work together well on the battlefield?
Yeah, I've been trying to think of a way to make vampiric touch work (seems great thematically), but just can't
This build seems like the kind of thing that a DM would start building encounters specifically to counter after seeing more than twice.
If that's the case it will make things easier for the rest of the party. The monsters can't counter the whole party's tactics simultaneously.
so just have a caster and use crowd control
As a wizard, this character won’t be a one-trick pony (make that bear). If conditions don’t look right for grapple and daggers, drop a nasty control spell and Wildshape to hide.
Bear only has 34 HP and 15 AC. Bear form is pretty easy to drop once character is in tier 2 by just attacking it.
@@orangeflame568that's by far the biggest weakness of this build. If the enemy also doesn't care about hurting his ally, he can also just explode the bear using an AoE spell.
I came for the BG3, stayed for the fun DnD builds!
Next step is playing some tabletop ;)
BG3 has bought in table top curious players far better than crpgs of the past!
That's great, love seeing new folsk streaming in@@coreytaylor3633
I came for the fun DnD builds, stayed for the BG3 builds as well.
@@20storiesunder I want to say thank you! I've played my fair share of dnd with friends but haven't had the chance to join a campaign (run by a friend) in the past year. Your comment inspired me to say "fck it, I'll DM" and after talking with several friends who were interested I can officially say that now I'll be the one taking people to the mines. Again, thanks for the little push and wish me luck!
I love how you’ve taken several elements that individually people hate on and combined them into a great build. A druid/bladesinger multiclass is a challenge, but you made it work with cloud of daggers, no one’s first choice for 2nd level spells, and giff, no one’s first choice of ancestry.
You announce you’re a giff druid/bladesinger and they start laughing, you up-cast cloud of daggers and they start laughing harder, then you wildshape into bear, drag them into cloud of daggers and hold them there until they die and suddenly they’re not laughing anymore.
I like the idea of taking two more druid for giant octopus. Flavor it with a piraty curved sword or rapier as the singer blade and sea shanties out of wild shape. Almost same str, more hp, and you now have a single 15' reach 2d6 tentacle attack that initates grapple to hold the poor soul in your piratey cloud of daggers. And that's just on land.
Relying on a +5 to hit to grapple will be very rough, especially later on. Similarly, the 10 speed will make it near impossible to drag enemies into the cloud of dagger. So unless you're playing an underwater or pirate-style campaign, I'd advice against it.
The Moon Singer: D&D Build #149
Level 1:(see above) [druid 1 & race]
Level 2:(see above) [druid 2 & subclass]
Level 3:(@15:57) [wizard 1]
Level 4:(@17:55) [wizard 2 & subclass]
Level 5:(@21:01) [wizard 3]
Level 6:(@24:08) [wizard 4 & ASI]
Level 7:(see above) [wizard 5]
Level 8:(@31:05) [wizard 6]
Level 9:(@32:51) [wizard 7]
Level 10:(see above) [wizard 8 & ASI]
Level 11:(@38:09) [wizard 9]
Level 12:(@41:00) [wizard 10]
Level 13:(@42:11) [wizard 11]
Level 14:(see above) [wizard 12 & ASI]
Level 15:(@45:31) [wizard 13]
Level 16:(@47:07) [wizard 14]
Level 17:(@48:20) [wizard 15]
You study under flando?
@@ya-dude I did not know who that was until you mentioned them. I am not a critter, because I do not enjoy watching others play except for maybe an hour at a time, which is why I made it through the Force Grey stuff & I did experience the first YT of Critical Roll, but not enough to know who that was. I do this for myself, but it works out that sharing it makes others happy too.
I want the Paladin Bladesinger now!
You can cheese the heck out of Contingency. "When I go 'rowr, rowr, rowr,' it casts fireball." Get a free action fireball (or whatever) while in bear form.
Re: Song of Defense and Concentration:
I know the bear has a higher than typical chance of getting hit, but if you get hit by something big, you can use your reaction to drop the damage to a point where your concentration check is more manageable.
"He gets hit for 30." (That's a 15 to save concentration)
Second level spell to prevent ten damage? Now it's a ten.
Love the synergy between you and the Dungeon Dudes. I don’t know that “is it better than…” is the best question here. But certainly you can answer “yes!” to “is this a fun and powerful build.” Bonus points: super distinctive.
You win the internet man. Your videos are amazing, your break downs so thorough and interesting. And you're such a nice guy. Kudos to you and all that you do.
7:14 "they actually have a new candle, and they SCENT it to me" 😂
The more time passes the more I'm getting convinced Cloud of Daggers is the strongest damage spell at 2nd level, potentially period. No save, magical slashing damage, enter-and-start-of-turn clause, insane scaling, this spell is the best spellblade spell in the game.
Cloud of Daggers is definitely an underrated spell. Pushing/ pulling/ grappling opponents in it is devastating!
It's either Cloud of Daggers or Spike Growth
My mind is blown. I love the crazy combo!
I’m glad you brought up the poll because it clicked as soon as I saw this video. It’s an interesting question.
Great advice for life there. Instead of lamenting that life doesn’t fit your desires, look for the opportunities. That kind of optimism and creativity are a recipe for success!
I would think that Mage Armour would be a fairly obvious pickup instead of Absorb (much though I love Absorb, taking that at Wizard 2 seems perfactly reasonable) or Silvery (if that is even allowed at your table). A 2 point AC bump to your bear form will help extend your wildshape durability.
going to add to my pinned comment about this...
I had kind of wandered away from the D&D side of RUclips for a bunch of reasons. And i had forgotten how much just putting your videos on in the background to listen to while I go about important but boring task made actually doing those tasks easier.
Having something that my brain is willing to engage makes getting up and doing things feel in a reasonable time feel like a reasonable ask.
I will definitely use contingency for Polymorph, just for the memes.
Think of the enemy working so hard to knock you out of your bear form and possibly your concentration only for you to insta transform into an Ooazaru from Dragon ball Z
Edit: Also I would cough up the gold for simulacrum. What's better than one cloud of dagger casting , tough to hit and surprisingly nimble, shoving and dragging brown bear? two cloud of dagger casting....
Called it! I’ve played one of these and they’re so much fun
Fascinating and fun build. Biggest weakness I see at higher levels is bear HP not scaling so potentially losing bear form every round. That being said I still want to use it for atleast a oneshot.
Saw the same issue 34hp, with setup rounds and esp if high dpr should draw aggro. Could be a big problem.
My first thoughts are that this will be really powerful. It'll have to be a bit MAD (erm.. multiple ability score dependent), but the combination should be crazy. Wizards and Druids are both difficult to multiclass out of, but I think this can work. Super excited for it!!!!
This build reminds me of the Fochlucan Lyrist prestige class of 3.5e, a singing performer with arcane and druidic magic that combined bardic song and lore with the primal magic of nature.
That's a blast from the past! Thanks for reminding me for a Prestige Class I loved years ago!
Was not ready for the unboxing content 😆But honestly, all your videos are just unboxing content for hugely entertaining character builds, so I'm not complaining 😄
The major drawback that is probably the biggest one is... 34 health. By level 10 enemies are going to be doing multi attacks that can eat through 34 health in a moment, or a fireball (or many other spells) and you only have ONE reaction fairly late in the build to even reduce the damage. I would imagine that you will be dropping out of bear form fairly often once reaching around level 10 (especially if you are the largest creature and or the enemies know anything about your tactics)
Very possible. I'm hoping that, with the help of either wild shape healing or, later, song of defense, we can mitigate that as much as possible, but don't forget: we're not going to be getting hit *every* time an enemy attacks, and we have two uses of wild shape per short rest... get knocked out, next round, new bear, keep grappling.
I'd love to try it out in game and see how well it works outside of the lab.
@@DnDDeepDiveTrue, it really depends on the table...
For example... my group at level 7 just had to fight a purple worm after a long adventuring day... minimum everyone had 2 levels of exhaustion. Somehow we pulled through using silence and pass without trace and some DM leeway on the reading of those!
I was wondering if someone had mentioned this, as 11 AC base and 34 hp is really weak in mid levels even. Even if we were to add +2 ac from mage armour and +5 from Bladesong, 18 AC will help somewhat, but 34 hp is really low, you'd be out of wildshape in a single round, meaning this combo cant be used often at all. True, you{re still mostly a wizard, but you{re sacrificing 2 levels for this trick, that may or may not pay out.
For this reason, Mirror Image should be cast before every combat if possible. Honestly, it's not a bad Contingency target either.
Alternatively Glyph of Warding Dwarf gives the Armor of Agathys spell to bolster our hp. (RAW this probably has to be contingency? Not 100% if you can cast it pre-wildshape and have it carry over. Either way a good option tho)
I always love it when the Bardic Brawler gets a shoutout! I’m playing one at my table and just got to level six (blending time!)
Thanks Colbs! Love your D&D builds!
I also love that this combo works really well with 2 characters in a party. Any spellcaster who can cast cloud of daggers and a rune knight fighter or path of giants barbarian can pull this off as a team that requires less set up.
I know thats not the point of this channel, but I always enjoy seeing combos that work better with team work within a party anyways.
You can teally feel the new editor with all of those amazing sound effects!
🎉 thanks!
I agree, good job BlackthornEditor! Can’t wait to see progression of ideas and editing in a few months!
I LOVE this build. The flavor and background storyline are wide and varied. Having wild shape and wizard spells and zeroing out an enemy with grapple WHILE dumping out top tier damage?
Bravo sir..
I haven't clicked so fast before. Let's go MoonSinger.
Came for the build. Stayed for the singing.
This worked a lot better than I expected. Nicely done, Colby.
I like what you did inverting the camera, great editing on this video, really pleasant to see!
Thanks!
The editing is better than ever! I love the new damage report
Thanks to Dallin!
😁😁 thanks!
If your damage report is always at the same lvls. The portrait or design could change depending on that. "More damage letters or some" just an idea. Love the content.
@@krysuh6936 hmmm…. Sounds like a fun thing to try out!
Yeah it feels like when you succeed in doing a combo on a pinball machine :D
I loved the dungeon dude’s series about multiclassing and looked forward to each episode every week. However, my favorite episode was the one about warlocks. I loved taking a deeper look at multiclassing into warlock beyond just Hexblade. That video was full of things I had never thought of before and I feel like you could spend several months making videos on ideas just from that one episode alone.
Beast barbarian + undead warlock
I like the image of a gargantuan bear with person-sized meteors floating around them when you use crown of stars
Was so stoked for what it was gonna be based off the short. Even more excited to see "Moon Singer" which is great fun. Good stuff as always. I love your friendly enthusiasm, even this many videos in. I'm gonna keep up with them all, too good to miss any.
Had the Moon Singer realisation back in Feb 22. So excited to see someone do something with it. But thought you might enjoy my original concept for the build. Was more for flavour and fun rather than effect.
Kalastar
5 bear barbarian
1 monk
2 blade-singer wizard
2 moon druid
A turn into a
Ape
raging
Resistant to all damage
with a rapier
add dex + Int + wis or con to ac
+20ft movement
I played a similar grappling moon druid cheese grater. Same race and background, but concentrated on spike growth and took levels in rogue (scout) instead of bladesinger to give extra movement with bonus action and reaction. I used a moorbounder instead of a bear. Any enemy that got grappled was instantly shredded with all that forced movement through the spikes.
I've been wanting this for a while. So freaking happy
I ordered those candles for the people I play with for Christmas. Thanks for the suggestion.
A fun thing I've seen for some people homebrewing that grappling makes the enemy occupy the same square is that they can have an infinite amount of creatures on the same square as long as you continuously grapple a creature that already has another grappled.
Stop it Colby, the moment I accept that I can't possibly have enough games to play the characters I want to play you come and give me ideas!
There goes my afternoon xD
Normally when i play a moon druid i take the telepathic feat (the first time up until level 8 i had a patchwork quilt with things I could point to on it while in animal form "trap floor" "short rest later fight now" etc etc)
I think for this though if you cant giff then the telekinetic feat would be really good lettinf you do some 5ft push/pull with your bonus action and spell DC each turn. There's also an argument that if theres no verbal or somatic components there'd be nothing stopping your bear form summoning a mage hand which could write messages in the sand or something
I love that you made the giff/jiff joke, as its written into their setting info that the culture itself argues over the pronunciation!
Exactly what I'm looking for.. this Video could not have come out at a better time.
You need to do a bladesinger multiclass for all the classes now!
Very good build! What a fresh set of ideas to max out the power here
You are the Johnny of all Johnnys and I am here for it.
Now this is the kind of surprisingly effective nonsense I subscribed to you for Colby
This brings up an interesting question I was once confronted with from a Druid/Cleric multiclass player: he was a Triton so he asked if I would allow him to ignore the swim speed restriction for wildshape since the character has a swim speed already and, in theory, as a low level Druid in the water he would probably be mostly exposed to swimming animals. I said yes, but made sure that the precedent didn’t also apply to Aarokocra’s fly speed.
Even though this build doesn’t make use of melee attacks that often in favor of grappling, I might rule that you could use the primal savagery cantrip while wild shaped, and make use of the Bladesinger extra attack.
I love this, but, we would have to use our Druid spell mod (WIS) to hit, which is my great.
‘Swiss army bear’ sounds like a character out of girl genius. I love it.
I would contingency Cloud of Daggers potentially at 5th level to activate when i activate Wild Shape, so that you could be in Bear form, with cloud of daggers up, and have movement and a full action all on round 1. losing 1 level of upcasting on the spell but you are fully functional by round 1 instead of round 3. You could also cast Cloud of Daggers NEXT to the enemy in this scenario in round 1 which i see going as such: Run up to them, grapple, shove them prone, then drag them with left over movement into the spells radius to make them take the initial damage and the start of their turn.
i too amend my plan after realizing that contingency must be targeted on yourself
Fantastic video again. Thank you!
I do think this is one of the most assumption dependant builds you've ever made: you're assuming that in any campaign at higher lvls than lets say 8 a brown bear would survive for more than 1 round. The likelihood that you're going to get shot out of wildshape just seems so high and at high lvls basically garentueed. At low lvls it might be good, but at high lvls it's probably better to not use wild shape at all. Typical enemies are going to do more damage than a brown bear has hp in 1 attack, and your AC is super low so it's more likely to hit than not.
I love the build from a theory crafting standpoint to see what is possible in the best case scenario. And yes all your builds are best case scenario, but I just feel that this is the most best case scenario dependant build I've seen from you: both not that likely to actually happen and significantly worse if you're out of your optimal situation, since you're grapple would be pretty bad outside of wildshaping with that 8 strength.
The build is really good at low levels, but that's true for all moon druids really, I don't think there is a mechanically stronger build at 2nd lvl than moon druid.
Tuesdays have become my favorite day just for these videos. Get a good cup of coffee, a blanket and ready to take notes on a class I would never have thought of on my own.
Had a cleric/paladin forge cleric who had two bandoliers of +1 adamantium daggers that I would just chuck on the ground and then animate them in future turns. That was a lot of fun.
These are my two fav classes and subclasses combined
Damn, just when I think I know where the build is going. This was amazing!
One interesting benefit to Artificer if you are going to wear armor and take 2 levels for infusions, grab the armor of magical strength to add your INT modifier to your athletics checks up to 6x per day :)
Hippo hippie from outer space sounds like a song that I would definitely listen to
Sounds like a Bowie classic. 😂😂
Moon Druid 2/Wizard X has always been overlooked as a fantastic build. Lots of ways to do it. With the focus on Cloud of Daggers and Extra Attack with claws, I’d definitely take the Slasher feat on this particular one.
New favorite build. Now do all the classes that are left. Please and thank you.
I'm starting out with a Dhampir Moon Druid and I was given a Claws of Insignia as a starting magic item (DM is actually going to improve it further as certain milestones, probably tiers, are met; kind of like 4e items.) So this build is looking better and better for me. Grapple, spiderclimb as bear (Dhampir movement) up a wall and hold the enemy in the cloud of daggers. If they get out of the grapple, fall damage. Then at about the 47:30 mark, you mention the same magic item and I was excited. But I remember that I got the idea from your Dhampir video, so of course you'd be thinking about this item.
I present to you the SwashBlade; a Rogue Swashbuckler/Wizard Bladesinger. You don't need allies or advantage to get sneak attack. Booming Blade attack and Fancy Footwork to strike and move away. It's fun to play.
Looks like somebody got a new editing tool they wanted to play with 😏 Quick side note, you can't use Contingency to cast Force Cage or Crown of Stars since they're not 5th level or lower (and doesn't target you). In fact, rules as written, Cloud of Daggers targets a point within 60 feet, and not a creature, so even though you could cast it so it technically affects you and no one else, it's not a spell that can target you, and therefore can't be used with Contingency. Love the build as always, and looking forward to episode 150!
aye - pinned a comment on this one :)
Hippos truly are the most dangerous creatures known to man 😂 great video as always. Just a 2 cents on the outtakes if feedback is wanted on the change; the bleep to break up the cuts made me giggle but as someone that usually watches these videos multiple times (I listen back to old episodes to wind down for bed) the level of the bleep might wake me up if I’d drifted off so could come down slightly.
If this is the first vid with the new editor I think I remember being mentioned, thanks for your work and great job fitting in to the style of the channel!
Noted. I will lower the beeps for the future outtakes. 😊😊
A big weakness here is teleporting enemies, can't keep them grappled despite your great bonus and advantage
Huge singing space circus bear is a phenomenal addition for a spelljammer campaign.
I like to do what I call the “Skinny Dip” (Barbarian 1/Bladesinger 2) so my character can ignore wearing armor. Did look at doing this with my Werewolf because a high Int + a beast’s Con makes for a pretty good AC.
Nice build 👍 I love the new jingle just before damage reports. I guess that's Dallin's hand in the video 😉
👋 glad you like it!
Contingency Spell use: Polymorph into an even bigger tankier beast, for when you loose wild shape. It would be demoralizing to your opponents when one thinks they got the druid down, and they immediately pop up even more dangerous.
About to start a new 5E game with some friends and was trying to decide between playing a druid or another bladesinger. While I generally hate copying internet builds for my own characters, this one is exactly the kind of janky shenanigans I was looking to come up with and could not have come along at a more perfect time. And the fact that we are starting at level 7 with a single magic item (hello Insignia of Claws) just makes this all the better.
Ooh I like the title card and little guitar riff for the damage report
The combo I didn’t know I needed until today
Agreed
I would love to see you do a series of builds that are optimized for races / lineages which are not frequently used by players!
Edit: TIL that, the light halo behind Colby is coming from a torch shining on the wall (see the last outtake). Love it!
my friend was struggling to decide between a moon druid and a bladesinger. so this timing is very good him and very bad for me, the dm!
Great combo! Excellent Job!!! 💪👍
This is perfect for a villain I was thinking about, i will definitelly make this character, buff a lot of stuff and turn this into my BBEG (Big BEAR Evil Girl). Thanks Colby.
I played this in a Level 20 battle royal, it was very potent. Created my own mounts with mounted Combatant and the extra AC was great. Replacing an attack with a cantrip is also super potent.
One thing to not is that enlarge reduce says that the creature maintains the enlarges features even if it can’t grow to that size due to outside conditions so either way it will allow you to grapple larger creatures
Great build, one idea for a bit more optimization. Take the Giant Foundling background which gives the Strike of the Giants feat, take Hill Giant option so you can attack with more damage and potentially make them prone without needing to use an attack dedicated to it. When you take Skill expert just use that opportunity to take athletics and then expertise it as well.
Yeah this is alright, i like my stars druid/diviner wizard combo... astronomy and astrology all in one.
I would like to see if most DMs consider the "Multiattack" action that monsters have as the same as a PC taking the "Attack" action with Extra Attack. Grappling requires you to take the Attack action and replace an attack with a grapple, so it is technically not the same as taking the multiattack action that monsters get. That being said, if I was the DM, as long as the attack could reasonably grapple the target I'd allow it.
Is it silly that I have this mental image of a bear just grabbing an enemy in its jaws and just shaking its head back and forth to drag them in and out of the cloud of daggers? Raaar!
Hooray! New video! In love with the name :)
I would 100% every time start this build with fighter. Starting with Con save proficiency is top tier for ensuring you maintain concentration, second wind is stronger than expending a spell slot for healing, action surge will help get you going a full turn earlier, and if you feel cheeky you can take a 3rd level for Battlemaster for maneuvers, Eldritch Knight for spells (meh), Psi-Warrior for extra damage and more forced movement, or Rune Knight for Frost Rune to beef up your grapples even more
You should also be rest casting mage armour which will carry through just like enlarge/reduce would, so you will have a base AC of 17 in Bear form while blade singing.
Watching this made me scratch my head and ask myself "If I wanted to cast spells while wild shaped, how would I do that?". D&D 3.5 druids could cast spells while wildshaped with a feat, but 5th won't let you do it until waaaaaay too late in the game. So I began my quest, looking through all my available material and chatting with several Dungeon Masters, and settled on Bloodhunter: Order of the Lycan. You can become a lycanthrope fully capable of casting, enjoy advantage on all strength rolls, and damage resistance against anything that isn't a magic silver weapon. Rolled some dice, got a good spread, started 1 level paladin, human variant with the knight of solomnia background, went 5 levels blood hunter before swapping to druid. Critter of choice was a dire wolf, allowing me to become a large werewolf and retain the use of all my gear and spells. Went back to pally to pick up divine smite and finished out the build with all druid levels. It made for a very fun and effective monster hunter
The opposite would be a "Can't Touch This" ultimate glass, cannon kiting build: Giff Moon Druid, using a Quickling Wild Shape, who sprinkles in Echo Knight Fighter, and Assassin Rogue with crossbow expert and sharp shooter.
You and the GM have to work out if you could use a fey creature instead for wild shape and how guns work. A quickling dual wielding two pistols (and an echo to always yoyo back to) is pretty terrifying!
You explained what was happening with the cloud of daggers and grappling and the only thing I want to do is upcast armor of agathys while doing all of this even though that gives up hippo strength to go mark of warding dwarf (or I guess a 1 level dip in warlock but that becomes hard due to the Cha requirement since you want Wis and Int)
I played this as a max int mostly druid + 2 levels of bladesinger and it was pretty fun. No extra attack but the AC, con and movement speed boosts were 👌🏻👌🏻
I just started playing a 2 bladesinger 2 moon druid eladrin with 17 int 14 wis 14 con. Even with the limited number of times you can bladesong, mage armor from wizard spell list greatly improves AC for almost any form and when you do sing you're very dodgy (giant spider with 19 AC lol). It's a super fun build I did not expect to work gameplay-wise and story-wise. I'm looking forward to getting air elemental to abuse the mage armor+bladesong combo for something like 22 AC.
I like flexible uses for spells. So if you use resources, then you should get to benefit.
Enlarge should continue its effects during wildshape, mainly because other spells can be maintained.
I was literally thinking of a build like this that uses Shilelagh and Booming Blade
I would love to see you do a sort of ridiculous build that has made some rounds around the web. Taking a single level in genie warlock, and having it interact with the spell "Glyph of Warding". As, from what I can tell RAW, you could set up a theoretically infinite number (as long as you had enough diamond dust) of glyphs inside your Genie's vessel as it is another plane. Allowing you in 1 turn, to enter your vessel, say the command word, activate all the glyphs you want, and leave the vessel in the same turn. And I know you usually only go to level 17, but if you took a full spell caster (or full spellcasting levels) to 19 after the 1 level of Genie Warlock, you could put up to 6th level spells in a glyph. And allowing you to concentrate on any other spell you want as your own concentration. And I say all of that to say I would love to see your calculations on something like this as I am sure you'd find stuff that I have missed.
The part of my brain that connects Colby to Homelander was just waiting for him to say "Let's light this candle, huh!" the entire ad section.
😂
so im not the only one!! he just looks like a friendly homelandsr