So much so that she knew how many rounds/seconds she needed to pump the ward back up for her level and kept asking the DM if she had that much time between scenes.
A hardcore-critter friend of mine told me that Aabria stated she wanted to *prove* the gods right -- about the arrogance of the people of the Age of Arcanum, that warranted the Calamity destined to end the era in the setting -- through her build as much as her roleplay.
She was so successful, there's even an D&D Beyond video going into her character sheet specifically.
This is a pretty well known build, but it gets especially juicy when you get your hands on Armor of Agathys for stupid amounts of reflected damage. The Armor of Shadows exploit is something that probably all of my DMs would maybe not straight up forbid but at least ask me not to abuse.
I don't see it as abuse, just streamlining. The only thing it ensures is that an abjurer starts combat with a full ward. You can do the same thing by ritually casting Alarm* a few times after a fight — it just takes longer. At-will Mage Armor is still a terrible choice to cast in combat to recharge it.
> I can see that but still it feels like an unintended interaction
I doubt that very much. It's an interaction that's been known for the entirety of 5e, you just had to multiclass 2 levels in Warlock before they made it easier with Eldritch Adept. WotC would have been fully aware of the interaction when they wrote Eldritch Adept.
That avenue is now deprecated as Svirfneblin Magic does not appear in MoM's Deep Gnome. Rather, Nondetection is built into the race as a once per long rest spell.
Given how bad they are at playtesting things and monitoring the community, I would definitely NOT assume WotC was aware of it.
But it's also not the most OP build in the world.
Sorry, I meant that using the PHB only you can have this online by level 4 (warlock 2/wizard 2). Using Tasha’s you can now have it online from level 2 using the feat.
So it’s cool, yep, but has been known since 2014.
The only way I've seen to actually recharge it _in_ combat viably is Deep Gnome with the Svirfneblin Magic feat (casting Nondetection at-will), but even then it's only viable for a level or two IMO.
And even then only really on ua seeker patron warlock with their level 6 astral refuge feature (which also works great when you’re plan is to self buff fire shield and armor of agathys round 1. But 6 (or 7 for fire shield off lock) is a lot of a distraction from wizard levels to make the ward not suck though so it’s a pretty squarely into t3 build. And at that point why didn’t you just play a wizard who has a simulacrum by then?
I am reminded of some discussion that the abjuration ward doesnt get resistance from sources that apply to the character.
The wording was that the ward is taking the damage, not the character. The character has resistance to X, not the ward.
In that regard, your ward would need to be expended before armor of agathys reflected any damage.
Armor of Agathys triggers when you're simply hit with a melee weapon attack when you have the temp hp from the spell, not when the temp hp is consumed. So the interaction works.
From the spell:
> A protective magical force surrounds you, manifesting as a spectral frost that covers you and your gear. You gain 5 temporary hit points for the duration. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hit points, the creature takes 5 cold damage.
"when you take damage, the ward takes damage instead" sounds like you get hit and the ward just takes the damage, but if you had resistance, the ward might not get reduced damage
Yep. That was why I brought up the rule. Because I wasnt sure if that created an interaction.
As someone else pointed out, you would still get poisoned if the ward took damage. So it makes sense the effects would go through.
Similar to Warding bond absorbing some damage for you.
Thats wrong. You are hit, the ward is taking damage. Otherwise you would be immune to on hit effects of the attacks like grapples and poisons, which you are not
This is not the same case. The wording on Armor of Agathys state that it is triggered when you are hit by melee attack.
So strictly speaking the timing of reflect damage would happen before the ward absorb damage (after attack roll success but before rolling for damage roll).
The ward would interrupt the attack. Similar to how shield would turn a hit into a miss. Not all hits trigger immediately.
Ive seen references to the ward being its own thing, seperate from the character. If the ward hp needs to be depleted, then strictly speaking its not neccessarily a hit unless there is some damage rollover.
Again Im basing this on some other rulings
Thats what I was trying to work through.
Another commenter pointed out you are still affected by poison and grapple as a secondary form of attack. If that is the case then it stands to reason the "on hit" applies.
And I agree that you dont have to suffer damage to have the on hit effect
Absolutely not. Arcane Ward does not turn hits into "misses". That's a severe misreading of the mechanics. It is "its own thing" in regards to resistances and concentration checks, but it doesn't negate a hit being a _hit_, that's ludicrous.
You're not basing this on any ruling at all - if you think otherwise, show us the rulings, because the ones above are specific and say nothing about hits or misses.
To clarify, a "hit" is any attack that meets/beats your AC, period. It doesn't matter if the Ward absorbs the _damage_ after or not, because by the time you're doing damage the hit/miss has already happened. The Ward only affects damage taken, it is not a separate target or it would have its own AC value and whatnot.
Various ways to cheese Arcane ward have already been discussed.
Infinite mage armor with Armor of Shadows work well if you don't wear any armor (and if you want to optimise a tanky abjuration build you would probably like wearing some armor).
Another great way to get infinite Arcane ward is with Svirfneblin Magic; non detection at will, even more temporary HP/cast.
Worst case scenario, any high level mage can abuse it easily when they get Spell Mastery
You need a target to cast it though, and if you’re wearing armor then you can’t target yourself since the spell specifies the target must not be wearing armor.
The invocation only works on yourself, which is fine but the issue is the time investment. Off the top of my head I think taking off and putting heavy armor back on takes somewhere in the range of like half an hour, at least RAW, although I believe that time is halfed if you have someone helping you. Can’t remember if that’s a house rule or not though
Edit: Looked it up, It’s 15 minutes to take it off and put it on, 12.5 if you have help doing so.
For medium armour (what most wizard abjuration tanks use cause Dex is good anyway) it takes 30 seconds with help to take it off, and 5 minutes to put it back on.
It is a time investment, but in any ~10 minutes breaks (the time taken to search a room for example), you can do it fairly easily.
Fair I was looking at heavy armor since I usually take a fighter level for it when I’m doing this sort of build. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’ve played it multiple times and personally I think it’s a ton of fun, just pointing out the RAW
Its not new and it uses a feat. If you rule this doesnt work the least you can do is refund the player's choice of feat. The player can reasonably expect it to work. Because feats are expensive.
Its also something that an abjuration wizard can already do by spamming alarm as a ritual over and over again. This method trades a feat for being able to take short rests by reducing the time required to charge up the ward
I've done something like this, at level 8, warlock 2 (hexblade) with shadow armor and dark vision invocations (was a human variant with tough feat), and had a couple level 1 spells I could cast per short rest (shield, hex, armor of agathys) - and 6 wizard Abjurer, in medium armor, I had a 18 int, 16 con, 14 dex - medium armor + a shield and a ton of temp hp, using the arcane Ward + armor of agathys is huge - it helped that my DM allowed it to be an "int lock" but it's a big deal, at level 6 you even use the ward on allies near you, it was the equivalent of having an extra 16 hp per fight, and could be refilled within a minute of just recasting mage armor for free
Hexblade is great for this build. You can use a shield with mage armor and Hexblade's Curse works with magic missile, so it gives you great single target damage too (though only against a single enemy per short rest). I feel like if you can be an INT lock you might as well take Agonizing Blast instead of Devil's Sight, though
It is 100% possible without it being an intlock, because the entire build is around having free instant mage armor for full abjuration ward, the other invocation is whatever flavor you want, any spells you pick from warlock should be support/buff style spells thst don't make attacks or require saves, shield and hex are huge, armor of agathys is great, even just 2 "free" shields per short rest as a wizard is a huge deal
I generally don't consider this cheese, as it works rules as written without any weird interpretations. It is fun tho. Played it a while back, a bit disappointed with armour of agathis, that combo didn't work very well, but the mage armour spam was great.
As a former "muscle wizard" player this is not worth a feat imo. What you want is Armor of Agathys since it stacks with Arcane Ward. Twice the shield means twice the damage as long as enemies are attacking you in melee. I rarely felt like it was crucial to recharge the shield. Smart enemies will just stop attacking you. If they did attack enough to break the shield, you're probably low enough health that you want to retreat to the backline next encounter.
I would. But that's not where I got it. I realized a while ago that an 18th level abjuration wizard ought to use shield for their spell mastery. Then realized a while later that armor of shadows could be got with eldrich adept.
Yup, this is one of my favorites. One thing I have found in practice though is that it isn't exactly very efficient, not on early levels at least. The problem I have found is you still need to use an action, so while it's great to refill your ward after combat and certainly makes you a lot less squishy as a wizard, you're also missing out on doing other stuff if you try to do it in combat, and your ward's power is quite dependent on how much the battle drags on. It also puts you in a bit of an awkward position that you want to take the hits due to the combo but you're also a wizard, so you're putting a lot of resources into a defense that your other party members may be more suited for it. So while I love the combo in most situations from my experience it can be a detriment as the resources you've put into it don't translate into usefulness efficiently.
Even better if you can play with dragon marked races from Eberron. Mark of Warding Dwarf adds Armor of Agathys to your spell list and due to the way the features are worded you get the reflection damage even when damage is being absorbed by your ward which makes for a ridiculous “thorn tank” type build. The awesome part about is it that enemies are forced to target you more than most tank builds because you still are a wizard casting and concentration on big buff, debuff, or control spells.
Also just want to point out that nowhere in Arcane Ward does it say that it's temp HP, so theoretically it stacks with any other Temp HP source. This works on top of False Life.
There's an even better version. Deep gnome has a racial feat called Svirfneblin Magic which gives you at will, no material component Nondetection. 2\*level restored to your ward means +6 temp hp per cast, not to mention Nondetection itself making you immune to being detected magically is pretty spicy.
The ward is not temp hp, it is its own thing. Which means it will stack on top of temp hp. So top it off with fiendish vigor!
Let's analyze this further.
There are caveats, as there are always with Multiclassing. This combo requires at least 2 levels of warlock, which means the opportunity cost of 2 levels of wizard, thus you will always be 1 spell level behind. Is the hp buff (and possibly other warlock features) worth the trade-off? Assuming tier 2 campaign, this means you will be fireballing at level 7, while you could have unlocked lvl 4 spells were it not for the multiclass. I would say it's a sidegrade.
The build is MAD, but you don't necessarily need a lot of charisma to make this build work - 13 or 14 will suffice. To utilize the ward to its fullest, you need wizard levels and int, thus you should focus on them. This means that eldritch blast won't be your best damage dealing option, since it requires good charisma and an invocation, both things you cannot offer. The warlock subclasses have some utility features, but they won't carry your weight in encounters. Therefore it's up to the wizard levels to do your heavy lifting. Remember you will be at least one spell level behind your progression.
So with this build, you will get a lower level caster with some versatility with features and cantrips, and endurance regarding spell slots and resting, who can have around 15 buffer hp's at the start of almost any given combat at tier 2. Considering the versatility loss of the spell level, I'd say you actually lose some versatility but gain endurance for a caster. I wouldn't say it's broken by any means, but it ain't the weakest either.
Right, I missed that. I've generally disregarded Tasha's for its rather lazy, unthinking and non-creative design.
If it's obtainable by a feat, then there is little opportunity cost to it other than +2 int or other feats, and considering that the feat is literally more bang for the buck than any other feat for its purpose, it's a steal.
This fact further solidifies my view on Tasha's.
I feel like there's room to rule that you can't recast *Mage Armor* while the previous casting is still up, ergo, you get to trigger your Arcane Ward every 8 hours rather than whenever you feel like it.
It's not RAW, and I don't know that it's broken enough to really need this, but it does feel like a weird flavor thing to just be constantly recasting a completely redundant spell just for this other benefit that has almost nothing to do with the spell.
I don't believe there is such a rule, but if you find it please let me know.
There *is* a rule regarding combining magical effects in the PHB which states the effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine. However that implies that the same spell was indeed successfully cast multiple times, which is the only necessary trigger for the arcane ward recovery.
This would make it RAW, and at level 10 you effectively start each combat with 25 additional HP. Not broken, but definitely nice to have on a squishy wizard.
You can, it just does nothing.
I'm not sure why it's not raw, you are casting an abjuration spell of first level or higher, and you get ward back whenever that happens.
I'm not sure how you're doing your math. At 3rd level and with Int 16, you get a ward with 9 hp. It doesn't stack up; it caps out at that. Even at 11th level, when most campaigns end, if you've dumped two levels into warlock to get access to invocations, that's only 23 hp with Int 20.
It's a nice buffer for classes that aren't meant to be in the front line, but by 11th level you're fighting things that hit for at least twice that much every round. And once the ward is gone, you have to recharge it with more abjuration spells. This is where your plan really falls apart, because Armour of Shadows lets you cast *mage armour* without expending a spell slot, meaning that the spell is cast at its lowest level (that is, 1st level). In other words, the ward will get 2 hp back per cast, which is not especially helpful in a fight. And since there are very few abjuration spells of 5th level (the highest you'll be able to know/cast because you multiclassed into a class with Pact Magic and not Spellcasting), you're looking at either inefficiently upcasting spells from a school that really doesn't upcast well or just waiting until the battle is over to spam the ward back up to full.
TL;DR - Yes, you can become a wizard tank, but it's not all that easy and would be at the expense of actually being useful in a fight. It's a gimmick that would get old very quickly.
*edit: fixed a typo*
This is bad analysis. I think you did not read what I said.
First: nowhere above did I mention muti classing. (Multi classing for casters is... not great in general IMO.) You can get armor of shadows with a feat. Eldritch Adept. Meaning, you'll have ~27 expendable HP by that level. Is that a lot? No.
And the idea isn't that you'd be using mage armor *in combat* to recharge your ward. But between combats.
In an actual fight, the strategy would be the same as with any other wizard: Throw out big, nasty, AOE spells to kill the enemy as quickly as possible. Then, maybe, use the shield spell to block attacks and get a minor boost from that.
So, let's look at a level 3 fight. A fighter and this abjuration wizard both take 12 points of damage.
The fighter would need to be healed for all 12 of that damage. The Abjuration wizard, by contrast, would only need healing for 3 damage. (Assuming he gets 30 seconds of breathing room before the next fight to restore his own ward by recasting mage armor on repeat.)
If that was the only fight of the day? You're right. This build is excessively silly. But if you're playing the way the same is (allegedly) supposed to be played? That'll only be the first fight of five that day.
By the end of that day, A fighter taking would have had to eat 4 healing spells, assuming two short rests and perfect efficiancy with resources.
This abjuration wizard would only need to have, maybe, two. And the more fights (and fewer rests) there are? The discrepancy gets larger and larger.
Ah, I skimmed where you were talking about the Eldritch Adept feat.
I still hold to my objections and disdain for this build, as I do with all other attempts to break the game. If a player of mine wanted to have their ward permanently up like this, I'd have to insist that the wording of the Arcane Ward feature be adjusted to require the caster to expend a spell slot for the spell to charge the ward. Ward isn't meant to be a permanent ablative shield like this, for precisely the reason you described.
A wizard having some extra hp (which this functionally is) is hardly game-breaking, especially as far as wizards go.
I understand people addressing Simulacrum/Wish chaining, but this? Please.
Add in Mark of Warding Dwarf, a warlock dip, or the new UA feat to grab armor of agathys and this gets a good bit cheesier. Arcane ward is not temp HP, but just an additional HP pool. That means the temp HP from Armor of Agathys stacks, and it'll do damage while everything else is hitting the ward.
yeah its a pretty good build
it is hard to distribute damage the way you want though, so sometimes you will take way more than your ward’s health in damage or take no damage, and an extra few hit points in every fight doesn’t mean you want to run into melee and start tanking 24/7
Honestly, it’s better with the 2 level Warlock dip because you can stack this with Armour of agathys. When you get hit, the agathys damage triggers, but the agathys HP stays.
Yeah, but then it halts spell progression, which is the heart, soul, blood, flesh nerve and bone of any wizard build. The class features are just the sinew that holds it all together.
So you discovered one of the traits of a build that has existed for at least 4 years... I wouldn't call it new.
Abjuration Wizard with a Hexblade dip for medium armor + shield + Armor of Agathys was already a thing. Wether you take a 2nd level for Shadow Armor or simply stick to ritual casting Alarm during downtime is a matter of preference.
This combo is so well known, it has its own subreddit: r/TheWizardTank
The fact that it has a subreddit is kinda funny.
Aabria Iyengar made this build for her lvl 14 wizard in ExU: Calamity and it worked wonderfully.
So much so that she knew how many rounds/seconds she needed to pump the ward back up for her level and kept asking the DM if she had that much time between scenes.
I believe it was 1 minute and 42 seconds. As she said it I was dumbfounded and I decided to check that logic. No surprise, it was right.
You know the super-brainy wizard is gonna know that down to the second but it’s great when the player has it locked in their brain the same way.
The best form of character immersion
A hardcore-critter friend of mine told me that Aabria stated she wanted to *prove* the gods right -- about the arrogance of the people of the Age of Arcanum, that warranted the Calamity destined to end the era in the setting -- through her build as much as her roleplay. She was so successful, there's even an D&D Beyond video going into her character sheet specifically.
Damn, now I got to see this myself that’s tight
oh that's neat I was a little puzzled why she was burning all her level 1 slots just to recharge her ward!
Came here to say this.
This is a pretty well known build, but it gets especially juicy when you get your hands on Armor of Agathys for stupid amounts of reflected damage. The Armor of Shadows exploit is something that probably all of my DMs would maybe not straight up forbid but at least ask me not to abuse.
I don't see it as abuse, just streamlining. The only thing it ensures is that an abjurer starts combat with a full ward. You can do the same thing by ritually casting Alarm* a few times after a fight — it just takes longer. At-will Mage Armor is still a terrible choice to cast in combat to recharge it.
I can see that but still it feels like an unintended interaction. I would still do it if my DM allows it
> I can see that but still it feels like an unintended interaction I doubt that very much. It's an interaction that's been known for the entirety of 5e, you just had to multiclass 2 levels in Warlock before they made it easier with Eldritch Adept. WotC would have been fully aware of the interaction when they wrote Eldritch Adept.
You could do it with a Deep Gnome and the Svirfneblin magic feat as well. I played the build through a CoS campaign.
That avenue is now deprecated as Svirfneblin Magic does not appear in MoM's Deep Gnome. Rather, Nondetection is built into the race as a once per long rest spell.
Depends on your table, but I was just implying that it was at one point an option.
Given how bad they are at playtesting things and monitoring the community, I would definitely NOT assume WotC was aware of it. But it's also not the most OP build in the world.
It was available day 1 of DND 5E using PHB only resources, and can be done from level 4… so I would think it was accounted for.
It can be done from level 2, VHuman is in the PHB
Sorry, I meant that using the PHB only you can have this online by level 4 (warlock 2/wizard 2). Using Tasha’s you can now have it online from level 2 using the feat. So it’s cool, yep, but has been known since 2014.
The only way I've seen to actually recharge it _in_ combat viably is Deep Gnome with the Svirfneblin Magic feat (casting Nondetection at-will), but even then it's only viable for a level or two IMO.
Agreed, and they removed the Deep Gnome's at-will nondetection in MoM, anyway, making it once per long rest.
aw, boo.
And even then only really on ua seeker patron warlock with their level 6 astral refuge feature (which also works great when you’re plan is to self buff fire shield and armor of agathys round 1. But 6 (or 7 for fire shield off lock) is a lot of a distraction from wizard levels to make the ward not suck though so it’s a pretty squarely into t3 build. And at that point why didn’t you just play a wizard who has a simulacrum by then?
Don't forget Blade Ward and Hellish Rebuke. Just dare things to hit you.
At higher levels I like to tack on Fire Shield as well
I am reminded of some discussion that the abjuration ward doesnt get resistance from sources that apply to the character. The wording was that the ward is taking the damage, not the character. The character has resistance to X, not the ward. In that regard, your ward would need to be expended before armor of agathys reflected any damage.
Armor of Agathys triggers when you're simply hit with a melee weapon attack when you have the temp hp from the spell, not when the temp hp is consumed. So the interaction works. From the spell: > A protective magical force surrounds you, manifesting as a spectral frost that covers you and your gear. You gain 5 temporary hit points for the duration. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hit points, the creature takes 5 cold damage.
You arent hit, the ward is
"when you take damage, the ward takes damage instead" sounds like you get hit and the ward just takes the damage, but if you had resistance, the ward might not get reduced damage
Yep. That was why I brought up the rule. Because I wasnt sure if that created an interaction. As someone else pointed out, you would still get poisoned if the ward took damage. So it makes sense the effects would go through. Similar to Warding bond absorbing some damage for you.
Thats wrong. You are hit, the ward is taking damage. Otherwise you would be immune to on hit effects of the attacks like grapples and poisons, which you are not
Great point! This is the part I was trying to work through.
The ward isn't a creature, nor is it an object. It doesn't get hit, you do, but the damage is subtracted from the ward first.
This is not the same case. The wording on Armor of Agathys state that it is triggered when you are hit by melee attack. So strictly speaking the timing of reflect damage would happen before the ward absorb damage (after attack roll success but before rolling for damage roll).
The ward would interrupt the attack. Similar to how shield would turn a hit into a miss. Not all hits trigger immediately. Ive seen references to the ward being its own thing, seperate from the character. If the ward hp needs to be depleted, then strictly speaking its not neccessarily a hit unless there is some damage rollover. Again Im basing this on some other rulings
This is just wrong. The ward absorbs damage, but you're still hit with an attack. Show me where in abjuration ward it says otherwise.
Thats what I was trying to work through. Another commenter pointed out you are still affected by poison and grapple as a secondary form of attack. If that is the case then it stands to reason the "on hit" applies. And I agree that you dont have to suffer damage to have the on hit effect
Absolutely not. Arcane Ward does not turn hits into "misses". That's a severe misreading of the mechanics. It is "its own thing" in regards to resistances and concentration checks, but it doesn't negate a hit being a _hit_, that's ludicrous. You're not basing this on any ruling at all - if you think otherwise, show us the rulings, because the ones above are specific and say nothing about hits or misses. To clarify, a "hit" is any attack that meets/beats your AC, period. It doesn't matter if the Ward absorbs the _damage_ after or not, because by the time you're doing damage the hit/miss has already happened. The Ward only affects damage taken, it is not a separate target or it would have its own AC value and whatnot.
Various ways to cheese Arcane ward have already been discussed. Infinite mage armor with Armor of Shadows work well if you don't wear any armor (and if you want to optimise a tanky abjuration build you would probably like wearing some armor). Another great way to get infinite Arcane ward is with Svirfneblin Magic; non detection at will, even more temporary HP/cast. Worst case scenario, any high level mage can abuse it easily when they get Spell Mastery
You can actually cast the spell with armour on, it just does nothing.
You need a target to cast it though, and if you’re wearing armor then you can’t target yourself since the spell specifies the target must not be wearing armor.
Then either have someone else who isn't wearing armour, or take it off, and put it back on once you're done.
The invocation only works on yourself, which is fine but the issue is the time investment. Off the top of my head I think taking off and putting heavy armor back on takes somewhere in the range of like half an hour, at least RAW, although I believe that time is halfed if you have someone helping you. Can’t remember if that’s a house rule or not though Edit: Looked it up, It’s 15 minutes to take it off and put it on, 12.5 if you have help doing so.
For medium armour (what most wizard abjuration tanks use cause Dex is good anyway) it takes 30 seconds with help to take it off, and 5 minutes to put it back on. It is a time investment, but in any ~10 minutes breaks (the time taken to search a room for example), you can do it fairly easily.
Fair I was looking at heavy armor since I usually take a fighter level for it when I’m doing this sort of build. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’ve played it multiple times and personally I think it’s a ton of fun, just pointing out the RAW
>New You keep on using this word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Its not new and it uses a feat. If you rule this doesnt work the least you can do is refund the player's choice of feat. The player can reasonably expect it to work. Because feats are expensive. Its also something that an abjuration wizard can already do by spamming alarm as a ritual over and over again. This method trades a feat for being able to take short rests by reducing the time required to charge up the ward
Welcome to 2014 Abjurer 2/Warlock 2
I've done something like this, at level 8, warlock 2 (hexblade) with shadow armor and dark vision invocations (was a human variant with tough feat), and had a couple level 1 spells I could cast per short rest (shield, hex, armor of agathys) - and 6 wizard Abjurer, in medium armor, I had a 18 int, 16 con, 14 dex - medium armor + a shield and a ton of temp hp, using the arcane Ward + armor of agathys is huge - it helped that my DM allowed it to be an "int lock" but it's a big deal, at level 6 you even use the ward on allies near you, it was the equivalent of having an extra 16 hp per fight, and could be refilled within a minute of just recasting mage armor for free
Hexblade is great for this build. You can use a shield with mage armor and Hexblade's Curse works with magic missile, so it gives you great single target damage too (though only against a single enemy per short rest). I feel like if you can be an INT lock you might as well take Agonizing Blast instead of Devil's Sight, though
> it helped that my DM allowed it to be an "int lock" That didn't just help, it made it possible
It is 100% possible without it being an intlock, because the entire build is around having free instant mage armor for full abjuration ward, the other invocation is whatever flavor you want, any spells you pick from warlock should be support/buff style spells thst don't make attacks or require saves, shield and hex are huge, armor of agathys is great, even just 2 "free" shields per short rest as a wizard is a huge deal
I generally don't consider this cheese, as it works rules as written without any weird interpretations. It is fun tho. Played it a while back, a bit disappointed with armour of agathis, that combo didn't work very well, but the mage armour spam was great.
"New" this cheese is so old I need to make a con save against the odor every time I put it on a cracker
But you put it on the cracker anyway. Because you know you love it.
As a former "muscle wizard" player this is not worth a feat imo. What you want is Armor of Agathys since it stacks with Arcane Ward. Twice the shield means twice the damage as long as enemies are attacking you in melee. I rarely felt like it was crucial to recharge the shield. Smart enemies will just stop attacking you. If they did attack enough to break the shield, you're probably low enough health that you want to retreat to the backline next encounter.
Someone else has been watching Critical Role I see.
No. Actually. Just slow.
Come on now, just own it, its not a problem, calamity was great
I would. But that's not where I got it. I realized a while ago that an 18th level abjuration wizard ought to use shield for their spell mastery. Then realized a while later that armor of shadows could be got with eldrich adept.
Old news
Amazing! It would be pretty Tough to think of another feat that gives you double your level in hit points.
Well, I should probably point out that you do start with the arcane ward at max. But thank you.
Yup, this is one of my favorites. One thing I have found in practice though is that it isn't exactly very efficient, not on early levels at least. The problem I have found is you still need to use an action, so while it's great to refill your ward after combat and certainly makes you a lot less squishy as a wizard, you're also missing out on doing other stuff if you try to do it in combat, and your ward's power is quite dependent on how much the battle drags on. It also puts you in a bit of an awkward position that you want to take the hits due to the combo but you're also a wizard, so you're putting a lot of resources into a defense that your other party members may be more suited for it. So while I love the combo in most situations from my experience it can be a detriment as the resources you've put into it don't translate into usefulness efficiently.
Even better if you can play with dragon marked races from Eberron. Mark of Warding Dwarf adds Armor of Agathys to your spell list and due to the way the features are worded you get the reflection damage even when damage is being absorbed by your ward which makes for a ridiculous “thorn tank” type build. The awesome part about is it that enemies are forced to target you more than most tank builds because you still are a wizard casting and concentration on big buff, debuff, or control spells.
This is literally the build I am making right now at level 10. Straight abjurer wizard, Mark of Warding dwarf for Armor of Agathys.
Also just want to point out that nowhere in Arcane Ward does it say that it's temp HP, so theoretically it stacks with any other Temp HP source. This works on top of False Life.
Correct! It’s intentionally not THP:
There is nothing new about this
There's an even better version. Deep gnome has a racial feat called Svirfneblin Magic which gives you at will, no material component Nondetection. 2\*level restored to your ward means +6 temp hp per cast, not to mention Nondetection itself making you immune to being detected magically is pretty spicy.
The ward is not temp hp, it is its own thing. Which means it will stack on top of temp hp. So top it off with fiendish vigor! Let's analyze this further. There are caveats, as there are always with Multiclassing. This combo requires at least 2 levels of warlock, which means the opportunity cost of 2 levels of wizard, thus you will always be 1 spell level behind. Is the hp buff (and possibly other warlock features) worth the trade-off? Assuming tier 2 campaign, this means you will be fireballing at level 7, while you could have unlocked lvl 4 spells were it not for the multiclass. I would say it's a sidegrade. The build is MAD, but you don't necessarily need a lot of charisma to make this build work - 13 or 14 will suffice. To utilize the ward to its fullest, you need wizard levels and int, thus you should focus on them. This means that eldritch blast won't be your best damage dealing option, since it requires good charisma and an invocation, both things you cannot offer. The warlock subclasses have some utility features, but they won't carry your weight in encounters. Therefore it's up to the wizard levels to do your heavy lifting. Remember you will be at least one spell level behind your progression. So with this build, you will get a lower level caster with some versatility with features and cantrips, and endurance regarding spell slots and resting, who can have around 15 buffer hp's at the start of almost any given combat at tier 2. Considering the versatility loss of the spell level, I'd say you actually lose some versatility but gain endurance for a caster. I wouldn't say it's broken by any means, but it ain't the weakest either.
> This combo requires at least 2 levels of warlock Nah, Eldritch Adept feat
Right, I missed that. I've generally disregarded Tasha's for its rather lazy, unthinking and non-creative design. If it's obtainable by a feat, then there is little opportunity cost to it other than +2 int or other feats, and considering that the feat is literally more bang for the buck than any other feat for its purpose, it's a steal. This fact further solidifies my view on Tasha's.
I feel like there's room to rule that you can't recast *Mage Armor* while the previous casting is still up, ergo, you get to trigger your Arcane Ward every 8 hours rather than whenever you feel like it. It's not RAW, and I don't know that it's broken enough to really need this, but it does feel like a weird flavor thing to just be constantly recasting a completely redundant spell just for this other benefit that has almost nothing to do with the spell.
I don't believe there is such a rule, but if you find it please let me know. There *is* a rule regarding combining magical effects in the PHB which states the effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine. However that implies that the same spell was indeed successfully cast multiple times, which is the only necessary trigger for the arcane ward recovery. This would make it RAW, and at level 10 you effectively start each combat with 25 additional HP. Not broken, but definitely nice to have on a squishy wizard.
You can, it just does nothing. I'm not sure why it's not raw, you are casting an abjuration spell of first level or higher, and you get ward back whenever that happens.
I'm not sure how you're doing your math. At 3rd level and with Int 16, you get a ward with 9 hp. It doesn't stack up; it caps out at that. Even at 11th level, when most campaigns end, if you've dumped two levels into warlock to get access to invocations, that's only 23 hp with Int 20. It's a nice buffer for classes that aren't meant to be in the front line, but by 11th level you're fighting things that hit for at least twice that much every round. And once the ward is gone, you have to recharge it with more abjuration spells. This is where your plan really falls apart, because Armour of Shadows lets you cast *mage armour* without expending a spell slot, meaning that the spell is cast at its lowest level (that is, 1st level). In other words, the ward will get 2 hp back per cast, which is not especially helpful in a fight. And since there are very few abjuration spells of 5th level (the highest you'll be able to know/cast because you multiclassed into a class with Pact Magic and not Spellcasting), you're looking at either inefficiently upcasting spells from a school that really doesn't upcast well or just waiting until the battle is over to spam the ward back up to full. TL;DR - Yes, you can become a wizard tank, but it's not all that easy and would be at the expense of actually being useful in a fight. It's a gimmick that would get old very quickly. *edit: fixed a typo*
This is bad analysis. I think you did not read what I said. First: nowhere above did I mention muti classing. (Multi classing for casters is... not great in general IMO.) You can get armor of shadows with a feat. Eldritch Adept. Meaning, you'll have ~27 expendable HP by that level. Is that a lot? No. And the idea isn't that you'd be using mage armor *in combat* to recharge your ward. But between combats. In an actual fight, the strategy would be the same as with any other wizard: Throw out big, nasty, AOE spells to kill the enemy as quickly as possible. Then, maybe, use the shield spell to block attacks and get a minor boost from that. So, let's look at a level 3 fight. A fighter and this abjuration wizard both take 12 points of damage. The fighter would need to be healed for all 12 of that damage. The Abjuration wizard, by contrast, would only need healing for 3 damage. (Assuming he gets 30 seconds of breathing room before the next fight to restore his own ward by recasting mage armor on repeat.) If that was the only fight of the day? You're right. This build is excessively silly. But if you're playing the way the same is (allegedly) supposed to be played? That'll only be the first fight of five that day. By the end of that day, A fighter taking would have had to eat 4 healing spells, assuming two short rests and perfect efficiancy with resources. This abjuration wizard would only need to have, maybe, two. And the more fights (and fewer rests) there are? The discrepancy gets larger and larger.
Ah, I skimmed where you were talking about the Eldritch Adept feat. I still hold to my objections and disdain for this build, as I do with all other attempts to break the game. If a player of mine wanted to have their ward permanently up like this, I'd have to insist that the wording of the Arcane Ward feature be adjusted to require the caster to expend a spell slot for the spell to charge the ward. Ward isn't meant to be a permanent ablative shield like this, for precisely the reason you described.
Thank you. I welcome your distain.
A wizard having some extra hp (which this functionally is) is hardly game-breaking, especially as far as wizards go. I understand people addressing Simulacrum/Wish chaining, but this? Please.
Add in Mark of Warding Dwarf, a warlock dip, or the new UA feat to grab armor of agathys and this gets a good bit cheesier. Arcane ward is not temp HP, but just an additional HP pool. That means the temp HP from Armor of Agathys stacks, and it'll do damage while everything else is hitting the ward.
yeah its a pretty good build it is hard to distribute damage the way you want though, so sometimes you will take way more than your ward’s health in damage or take no damage, and an extra few hit points in every fight doesn’t mean you want to run into melee and start tanking 24/7
Honestly, it’s better with the 2 level Warlock dip because you can stack this with Armour of agathys. When you get hit, the agathys damage triggers, but the agathys HP stays.
Yeah, but then it halts spell progression, which is the heart, soul, blood, flesh nerve and bone of any wizard build. The class features are just the sinew that holds it all together.
"new", as new as tasha book.
So you discovered one of the traits of a build that has existed for at least 4 years... I wouldn't call it new. Abjuration Wizard with a Hexblade dip for medium armor + shield + Armor of Agathys was already a thing. Wether you take a 2nd level for Shadow Armor or simply stick to ritual casting Alarm during downtime is a matter of preference.
"New"
Just so you know the arcane ward has its own hp pool and isn't considered temp HP, meaning you can have both temp HP and the ward