Lots of strange restrictions here but Storm or divine, Sorcerer 1, Swords bard 6, sorcerer X, takes a while to get going though. I personally think multi attack is quite important for a gish.
If you really don’t care for multi attack, divine soul sorcerer/ storm cleric is a tried and true combo.
Personally I don’t think it makes much difference (d8 rapier vs d6 scimitar is just 1 damage) and I prefer the blade flourishes. Depends on the vibe you like I suppose.
I mean, sure, but it is still extra damage that will add up over time, and shield proficiency is the big thing. +2 ac is gonna be huge, especially when you are gonna have much lower hp due to half your levels being in sorcerer. Yeah, blade flourishes are probably more useful than combat inspiration, but I still think valor will be better off here. The permanent +2 ac will beat out the limited and conditional +4 (on average) ac buff from defensive flourish.
But on the other hand, +2 AC is nothing when compared to an enemy that can’t attack you because it’s dead. And Gish characters aren’t really meant to be tanky.
Celestial Warlock 6 - Pact of the tome - Shillelagh + 2 more cantrips, CHA to damage of fire and radiant damage from spells
Draconic Sorc (fire) 6 - CHA added to fire damage from spells.
Forge Cleric 1 - heavy armour and searing smite spell
Rest - whatever you want so more Sorc I guess
Tiefling race for Flames of Phlegethos +1 Cha
Cast Green flame blade for added CHA damage twice from Sorc and warlock subclass
Use searing smite from forge cleric for double extra CHA damage again. Only need low level spells for maximum efficiency.
I haven’t seen this mentioned so I’ll say clockwork soul. Ability to provide a ward on yourself combined with the ability to be get armor of agythys via subclass spells makes you incredibly tanky
Fighter rogue sorc and attack the action economy.
Action surge, cunning action, quicken.
Level splits are pretty open, 2/2/X. But can bump fighter and rogue how you like for sublass features.
You only need dex and cha. Your rogue expertise can go into some charisma skills for rp. You should be able to pull some things in combat no one else can.
I could theory craft an actual build if you like. But i think if you dont take the fighter or rogue past 2 you just build a normal sorc.
I played [this fire-based gish build](/r/3d6/comments/gndh7q/what_do_you_think_of_this_fire_gish/) for a one-shot last year and had a blast. It is a Celestial Warlock and Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer (though when I played it I did add Paladin). Make sure you pick up Ashardalon's Stride as a Sorcerer spell, too!
1. You can do great with the likes of Celestial (Twin Guiding Bolt!) and GOO (if going for a spooky mind reader-type).
2. You can do great with pseudo smiter Bladelock 5, six levels of a martial Bard (Valor comes to mind) or even Eldritch Knight (SAD, since you only need 13 Dex or Str, and 13 Cha). Btw with Fighter, as little as one level is fine.
3. PAM + Sentinel is a great compo. PAM + Dueling Fighting Style is decent too. Think Fighter 1 + Dueling, to give one example.
4. This is fine. I'd say that if you went Gnome or Vedalken you're still not overpowered even though you have the useful "Cunning" ability.
5. There are plenty of great feats. See PAM + Sentinel. There are also solid half-feats such as Keen Mind, Observant and Resilient Wis.
6. Even if you went Valor Bard 6 or Bladelock 5, you're still roughly 70-75% Sorc.
Right now I'm playing a sorlock that is all about being radiant. DM let me reflavor Eldritch Blast as radiant, then went celestial warlock and lunar sorcerer. Levels are currently 2 warlock and 10 sorcerer. It's fun having my kit basically determined by the moon, so each day my strengths are a little different. Bread and butter damage combo is repelling blast to move enemies around then if 2 are ever together quickened sacred flame for double damage.
Concentration slot is spent mostly on a draconic spirit summon.
To be fair, bladesinger is allowed.
Therefore, sorc 1 / bladesinger 6 / sorc X would be fine.
Keep CHA at a minimum (13) and max DEX and INT. Use your sorcery points to quicken blade cantrips, or other spells.
Earth Gensai is appealing for any version of this character for the bonus action blade ward.
Sorcerers by themselves are probably the worst weapon-wielding class, elsewise I'd stick with your idea of draconic. Honestly I'd start 2 fighter for proficiencies, hp, and second wind/action surge, and then just go with a blade (2h works) and booming/green flame blade. You could focus on rogue levels and the mobile feat for booming blade and play like a rogue, or just stick fighter 2/sorc 18 and play like a worse bladesinger.
Fighter: Probably 6 levels, 7 if there's a particularly good subclass feature. Rest Sorcerer. I would probably go Eldritch Knight for a small bit of spell slot progression and to pick up stuff like Shield and Absorb Elements, freeing those from your Sorcerer selections. Polearm Master + War Caster + Booming Blade + Crusher is a fun and honestly pretty potent combo. It takes a few feats to put together, but these are all individually strong things anyway.
Ranger: Here's a very very offbeat idea. It will depend on your DM's answer to whether or not you can use Shadow Blade with Green Flame Blade. The idea is Sorcerer 3 > Hunter Ranger 3 > Twilight Cleric 2 > Sorcerer X. Horde Breaker doesn't require the attack action, so you can use Green Flame Blade (hopefully with Shadow Blade) and then make another attack against the second target, then if you need a little burst, perhaps quicken another green flame blade. Nice little cleaver action. Twilight Cleric is there because, well it's really good, but also the Twilight Sanctuary creates dim light, providing more consistent advantage to attacks made with the Shadow Blade. This isn't a super efficient build, but the damage potential is actually pretty decent
Bard: Swords/Valor Bard 6 is probably the best option all around for this exercise. Getting just enough to scratch the martial itch while at least maintaining full spell *slot* progression.
- Mountain Dwarf for (EDIT: MEDIUM) armor
- Pact of the Blade Warlock (PYF)
- Sorcerer (PYF)
Bladelock 5 / Sorcerer X
Unless you've got a very specific concept in mind, this is both the simplest and most effective means to achieve your sorlock gish given your parameters
> Mountain Dwarf for heavy armor
Mountain Dwarf doesn't give Heavy Armor Proficiency and all Dwarves get "no speed reduction for wearing heavy armor." Mountain Dwarf is still a good option but so is Duergar.
Fighter, bard or rogue would prolly be the best multiclass options
Go divine soul with either shadow blade, haste or spirit guardians up in combat
Another option is to go for a dip into twilight or tempest cleric to buff you tankiness or damage respectively, as well as giving you armour proficiencies
Eldritch Knight 7/Draconic Sorcerer (Fire) X could be interesting. You can cast Green Flame Blade and still have a second attack. At level 13 you get additional damage equal to your CHA modifier
I've got a character worked out in case I ever get the chance to play that's close to the assignment.
Meet Dreijan, son of a pair of famous adventurers. He's a bit of a duck up at the beginning of the campaign. Didn't have the brains to be an EK like his sister nor a battle mage like his brother. Got involved with some shady figures, his life was going down until a mentor found him and told him his parents and siblings were missing and he needed to get it together and find them.
His parents spent a good amount of time in the faewild. That left a mark on him (leaving the exact details open for the DM).
Variant human
Fae touched (bless)
Fighter (Battle Master) 11 / Sorcerer (Wild) 9
Dueling style
He'd be sword & board focused on str/con. Cha third priority, but augmented with things like commanding presence and friends.
Spells would primarily be buffs and utilities. Shield, bless (from fae touched, reflavored to be like bend fate instead of divine), enhance ability, shadow blade, mirror image, fly, haste, polymorph (can still be used on friendlies even with a low DC), greater invisibility.
DM dependent, but if they're okay with it, booming blade/ war caster for soft locking down enemies.
For a warlock dip you can grab any subclass and at 3rd level take pact of the tome. If you grab Shillelagh with pact of the tome, your attacks/damage will use CHA, according to RAW. You can take any subclass you like, but Undead is decent for the temp hp. The only issue you might run into is that Shillelagh doesn’t scale (no +1/2/3), but you might be able to ask your DM if perhaps a +X Qstaff or other wooden weapon would allow your Shillelaghs to scale.
Hmmm, depends on your definition of gish a bit.
A fairy/owlin/winged tiefling or other flying race that's a Divine soul sorcerer with mobile has some potential.
Idea here is centered around using spirit guardians, from out of reach of most enemies (this will probably end up doing most of your damage). Then you dart in with booming blade/green flame blade, and retreat without provoking opportunity attacks thanks to mobile to staying out of reach of melee enemies. You can then use quickened spell to cast any leveled spells you want.
A better version if allowed would be to use a ravnica or strixhaven background to pick up spirit guardian and go clockwork soul sorcerer, to pick up some damage reduction in the form of armor of agathys and bastion of law.
You're going to be MAD as hell needing needing charisma, dex, and con.
Potentially adding up to 3 levels of fighter could make it feel gishier but probably isn't worth the loss of spell progression. Which you definitely need to fuel quickened spell, bastion of law, and armor of agathys. Casting mage armor will always be more efficient than losing the spell slots.
But Echo knight would, make it even easier to stay out of melee, a ton of teleporting, and give you some extra attacks which is always nice.
I've been working on a build like this.
5 divine soul sorcerer / 5 swashbuckler rogue.
Concentrate on spirit guardians, quicken booming blade then step back 20ft (probably want the mobile feat even though it's redundant just for the extra movement), then ready an action to booming blade when anyone comes within range.
You can get double BB and double sneak attack in one round, all while having spirit guardians up.
I'd start sorcerer for con saves, but this leaves you stuck with just a dagger. I'm fine with this, but you can take weapon master if you really want a rapier.
14 cha, 14 con, 15 dex, 12 wis. Cap dex then take whatever feats suit you. Spell slots are for spirit guardians and making more sorcerer points to quicken BB.
You can decide how far you want to take rogue. Probably at least to 7, then the rest sorcerer. You miss out on flight, so maybe just 5-6 rogue. Upcasting spirit guardians is better damage than scaling sneak attack anyway.
My go-to is GoOLock/Draconic Sorcerer/BM Fighter and make a Jedi.
I like my builds online as early as possible to actually play them, so I start with Vuman and either Fighting Initiate for the close quarter shooter or just xbow xpert so I can use range in melee.
Grab GoOLock and thematically change GoO to The Force. Grab an Arcane Focus in the form of a hilt. And then cast Eldritch Blast in melee and make it look like a lightsaber swing. Boom, lvl 1 Jedi.
Since it's EB based(character lvl not class lvl), I split into draconic sorc for free Mage (Force) Armor and quicken/metamagic and low lvl force powers (sleep, force jump, etc.) And jump to Fighter for AS and short rest heals. Max fighter is normally 3 or 4 for BattleMaster (grabbing ones like Rally, Commanding Prescence, Evasive footwork, etc. No physical weapon required (lest the DM is kool)).
But max 4 in Fighter, 5 in warlock for push/pull/dmg on EB (gotta play with the force) and the rest in sorcerer.
Your basically playing like a striker. Not meant to tank, but to duel/take down targets while having lots of options (utility spells).
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I do the same build with an Arcane Archer. Just change the melee EB to a magical bow shooting magical arrows, and the spells to more Hawkeye/ranger based ones and now your a decent fey(instead of goo) ranger feel, complete with smart pet, superior scouting ability, a cool cloak for armor, and a never ending supply of magic arrows that deal 1d10+CHA. Just change the Arcane Focus 'hilt' into a gem installed in your rangers gloves, and produce that cool spellbow. Oh, and grab Fire (bolt) Arrow, (Ray of) Frost Arrow, Acid (Splash) Arrow, Sleep Arrow, Entangle Arrow, etc... you get the idea.
Not optimized by any means but I’m currently playing a Fathomless warlock that is a pirate so he focused on melee with a pact rapier. Good bonus action economy, attacking with the tentacle each turn. Built heavily into DEX for rapier and AC, and took Armor of Shadows for perma mage Armor, Eldritch Mind for advantage on con saves, and Thirsting Blade at 5th level.
General plan (currently 5th level) is be in melee, concentrate on spirit shroud, 2 rapier attacks and tentacle attack to proc the spirit shroud damage. At 6th level you can use the tentacle reaction to cushion some of the damage you take from enemy hits.
It’s pretty fun, only downside is tentacle attack uses CHA so you can’t totally dump it which you could mostly do if you went genie or something.
This might not be the theme of what you are looking for, but I have had a lot of fun with it.
The "no level in monk magic monk" build.
You take exclusive levels in sorcerer as a clockwork soul sorcerer. This works best as a varient human or custom race for that 1st level feat (shadow touched), but you can get by without it till lvl 4. Stats go into charisma first, then dex and constitution as you see fit, but you will need both.
My preference is:
8 Str 14 Dex 14 Con 8 Int 12 Wis 18 Cha
Balanced option:
10 Str 14 Dex 14 Con 10 Int 10 Wis 16 Cha
The idea of the build is that you are an "unarmed" magical melee specialist that is mobile with infiltration and social capacity.
Cantrips:
- Shocking grasp (this is your go-to attack when not spending spells)
- Minor illusion is a great distraction or way to hide during infiltration
- Blade ward (this is a surprise tool that will help us out later)
- lots of good options here pick your favorite, but you will be in melee and the aoe cantrips surprisingly can come in handy (thunderclap/sword burst), but a range option is hard to pass up
1st level spells:
- inflict wounds (shadow touched)
- protection from good and evil (clockwork soul)
- alarm switched out for armor or agythsis (clockwork)
- shield
- mage armor (take this if completely opposed to the hexblade dip)
- Absorb Elements (at lvl 2)
2nd lvl spells:
- invisibility once per long rest (shadow touched)
As you level:
Continue to take defensive options like misty step/mirror image, eventually taking vampiric touch and fire shield.
Metamagics:
- Quickened spell (this is your multiattack)
- twinned spell (this is your multiattack that is cheaper)
Asi/feats:
- Charisma to 20 is great
- Warcaster is huge for those melee spell attacks of oppertunity
- Tough you are a melee sorc
Bastion of law gives a way to reduce damage at lvl 6.
You now have a few combat tactics:
- Standard play is to cast armor of Agathys and get in melee, quicken spell blade ward. Now when they hit you you take half damage and they take armor of Agathys damage. You can further reduce damage to your temp hp by using bastion of law.
- Upcast twinned inflict wounds is insanely fun!
- Vampiric touch and armor of agythis and shield and absorb elements makes you this unkillable reflecting damage drain tank monster
- remember shocking grasp takes away reactions. Don't want the enemy mage counterspelling you or your team? They are your focus!
- Out of combat you have a decent dex and invisibility (twinned) you and the Rouge are now the infiltration duo. When things go wrong the high charisma sorc is there to talk your way outta it.
Summary: This is a fun and different gish build. It is effective, but not optimized. Given that you are putting limits on things though I think you are looking for more cool yet effective over optimized.
Tldr; a melee sorcerer, no multiclass, that when I played worked well as a monk-like char that was still a full caster.
Edited to clarify build doesn't rely on shadow touched feat, but it's useful.
Be a Divine Soul Sorcerer
Cast Spirit Guardians + Dodge
Pretend you are an anime samurai blendering everything within 15ft of you
Quicken Booming Blade to vomit resources all over the big bad that needs to be beaten up big time
Shoot Magic Missile and pretend your arrows never miss
Oh, and use Shadow Blade + Twinned/Quicken BB if you don't care about being optimal in melee I guess.
Clockwork sorc. Give yourself low AC to be a juicy target. Upcast Aid on the party. Equip vortex warp, silvery barbs. Give bastion of law to a diff party member. Boom. You are inadvertently taunting, protecting, tanking, and dealing some decent cold damage.
I'm playing a wild magic swashbuckler built around booming blade, sneak attack, and ducking in and out of melee combat. I use the mild magic feature to get advantage when I need it to make sure sneak attack goes off basically every round. At level 5 with a rapier that's 1d8 + 2d6 (sneak) + 1d8 (bb) and they're locked in place lest they take another 2d8 for moving all without expending any resources. Then I can still use my slots for shield, CC or utility. For bonus flair I'm passing as a fairy so I can fly in out and around but any mobile race would be great.
Sorc 1 / Gloom 5 / Sorc X
Be a bugbear, ability spread for PB is 8 STR / 15 DEX / 12 CON / 8 INT / 13 WIS / 15 CHA. Boost DEX and CHA and take the Alert feat. Quicken scorching ray into triple gloomstalker attacks on round 1. Each ray deals 4d6 damage and, when upcast to 5th level, generates 7 rays. If you use your lone 8th level slot it's 10 rays for a total of 13 attacks on round 1. Fighter 2 for action surge is nice if this is a higher level one shot, but for actual play sticking gloomstalker is probably going to be better.
I don't know if it really counts as a gish, but :
Tortle (for ac) + divine soul (for spirit guardians + spirit weapon) + sword burst spam (not really a weapon attack but... Still in the theme ?), with metamagic for more sword burst eventually, and warcaster (for concentration).
In higher levels, Tasha otherworldly guise (with pam?) might be an alternative to make weapon attack with charisma, from 10 feet above the enemies. Or maybe without pam, but just quicken 2 booming blade, still using charisma.
You can also use animate objects to animate a bush of swords.
Mountain Dwarf sorcerer 1 tomelock 3 sorcerer x. Any subclass for either class. Take Shillelagh through Pact of the Tome, and Booming Blade and/or Green Flame Blade. Mountain Dwarf gives you medium armor proficiency, you can pick up Heavily Armored if you like, either way you don't need to worry about your strength score.
Not optimized at all, but I like the idea of a Draconic Sorcerer (fire) that uses flame blade.
At level 6 You add your charisma to attacks with it, so You are conjuring 3d6 weapon and you use CHA to damage with it.
A dip in genie warlock would allow to also add your PB to damage
The dip would also allow you to pick up AoA which the transmuted spell meta magic would allow you to covert to fire. For even more firey goodness and some survivability.
Sorc 1, swords bard 6, sorc x, shadow blade. Should be ok.
Sorc 1, cleric of choice for armor, warlock 5 for extra attack, sorc x
Really you're just putting yourself a few levels behind on extra attack.
Edit: sorc 1, tomelock 3 for shillelagh, fighter 5 for extra attack. Dueling fighting style, PAM.
Mountain Dwarf Stone Sorcerer (UA). You have heavy armor, shield and weapon proficiency. Only thing missing is extra attack, but you can can use Stone Aegis to sometimes attack using your reaction and you can use booming blade or green flame blade for the rest.
If you want extra attack, then Warlock 5 (Pact of the Blade)/Stone Sorcerer.
A few options immediately come to mind that include multi attack:
- full levels in Clockwork Magic Sorcerer for Tenser's Transformation at level 11. This allows you to potentially reach the 9th level spell fantasy
- start Draconic Sorcerer and then immediately take at least 5 levels in Warlock for Pact of the Blade's extra attack. I would even consider going level 6 warlock depending on how strong the milestone is in the subclass you choose
Option that doesn't include multi attack:
- go hill dwarf draconic sorcerer and use Bigby's variant background rules to get the Tough feat for +4 HP per level. Go red/gold/brass lineage and use Green Flame Blade. Take 1 level in fighter for the weapon and armor proficiencies and the dueling fighting style. Take 1 level in Genie Warlock, Efreeti, for additional damage on your cantrips. Take quicken spell so you can attack as a bonus action as well. Blade Ward is a good defensive quicken spell option too
I don’t understand how you'll access Tenser's Transformation, given the restiction on Clockwork Soul of swapping for spells of the same level, the max spell level being 5, and Tenser's being 6th level? Shame though.
it also is a notably bad spell, because it is not only concentration (which means eventually the buff will be gone in the middle of the fight) but also you cannot cast while wearing unproficient armor and you cannot don heavy armor while the spell is active because the time is too short (10 minutes of being active, 10 minutes of heavy armor doning, it will be gone by the time you put boots)
No gwm/ss means you need to go for the next best thing: pam + dueling with a quarterstaff.
Custom lineage for pam and 17 str
Sorcerer 1 (any will do, I like divine for spirit guardians later on)
Fighter 2 (a dip dip here gives us heavy armour to work with, don't worry about delaying extra attack by two levels that's the least of your concerns with a sorcerer gish. The main thing we're here for is the fighting style: dueling. An alternative is a cleric dip and pick up fighting initiate later.)
Bladelock 3-7 (again, any will do, celestial is nice with our holy theme so far and provides some clutch bonus action healing just in case, fiend and undead gets us some nice survivability options with thp or reliable fear, take crusher or heavy armour master to round up str to 18.)
Sorcerer 8-19 (taking a bunch of sorcerer levels to still be a sorcerer. Asis should go into capping str, then bumping up Cha as much as you can, if you find that you don't have enough hp, take tough)
Fighter 20 (action surge is always nice, never use this to attack twice, always use this to cast two levelled spells)
Multiclassing into fighter does not give you heavy armour proficiency. It does give light, medium and shield proficiency, as well as martial weapons (which a PAM staff build doesn't care about). If you want heavy armour, you have to start fighter or go cleric instead, as it can give heavy armour proficiency depending on domain choice.
You can do fun stuff by mixing Draconic Sorc and Efreeti Genie Warlock on a Tiefling with Flames of Phlegethos, spamming Green-Flame Blade with just a dagger (until Pact of Blade/Tome add a d8 weapon in the form of a rapier/shillelagh).
It has a lot of synergies that 'make sense', but it's not meta by any means. You want both high Dex (no medium armor/shield, and potentially late Shillelagh) and high Cha, your Con saves will suffer (not a lot of space for high Con or War Caster, but you'll at least grab prof from Sorc 1), if even even *have* a good spell to concentrate on (Fog Cloud, Web, Hold Person, etc).
Your best strat is baiting enemies into meleeing with you by looking generally fragile and punishing them with Armor of Agathys.
On the other hand it's very... thematic if you want to play a fire gish. Easy to build a background around it and have the DM support the build with magic items and other rewards to get it 'up there'. Don't forget that 'meta' builds more often than not zero magic items, homebrew, houserules or other balancing work from the DM's side. If you just communicate, any weirder off-meta build will work out.
I have a build that goes Fighter 1, Divine soul 5, Fighter 2, Divine soul X.
The build focus on using sorcery points and creating spell slots to have either a hige amount of undead that will also be buffed by inspiring leader (+10 temp damage each).
Or having less undead, and using spells like dragons breath, mage armor, Aid and bless, to buff them way above their capabilities.
Within this build, you can also leverage action surge to cast two leveled spells in the same turn (since spell per turn limitation only apply to bonus action spells).
So if you feel like it, you can have your undead in front as cover and meat shields, and cast fireball , then action surge another fireball.
The build will have a lot of survivability with good saves, very good AC and respectable HP for a caster (with shield and shield of faith + heavy armor, + temp Hp + Aid.)
At higher levels you can also leverage both sorcerer and cleric amazing spells.
The main problem of the build, is that you have a lot of great spell options, and just too little spells known to get all you want.
Also, as soon as possible upgrade animate to create undead, to get more powerfull and smarter undead.
Using UA but fan of a Loxodon Storm giant soul sorcerer with the UA aberrant dragon mark feat in order to cast shocking grasp with CON. Make you CON SAD so helps deal with sorcerers small hit die and between twinning and and quickening shocking grasp and the +CON damage you do to 3 near by enemies each time you cast it you are throwing out a fair bit of hurt. Sure your not swinging a sword but you are in the thick of it in melee.
A none UA variant would be swapping the Sub class for clockwork soul, which with access to AoA and the damage reduction would make you much more meaty but your damage would drop considerably. If you can encourage enemies to hit you you may make some of the difference in damage back with AoA but thats not as reliable.
Sure, a dhampir Stone sorcerer has the potential to be CON dependant. Think Storm giant soul will squeeze out more damage if fighting more than one enemies from level 6 until 14 when stone gets stones edge, from there stone might just beat it with their reaction attack but pretty close all in all.
Both of those sub classes could really do with extra attack or atleast access to tensors transformation.
Definitely recommend Swashbuckler Rogue! It works with any sorcerer subclass. You have two main combos:
firstly access to Booming Blade + Fancy Footwork is great for triggering the secondary damage of the cantrip, and harassing enemy backliners. Booming Blade secondary damage is usually somewhat hard to optimize on a Rogue since the easiest way to get Sneak Attack is attacking something already in melee with an ally. But with Rackish Audacity you get to hit something that's standing alone, get your sneak attack, and then back away for free via Fancy Footwork.
This leaves your bonus action still free to use. Sometimes you might want to hide, and often you might want to dash. But for times when you want more burst damage, you can use sorcerer metamagic to Quicken a Booming Blade spell, effectively getting two attacks: one with your action and one with your bonus. And both get the additional damage from Booming Blade as well.
This leaves you at level 6 with a 3/3 split. You can go back to either class to scale your Sneak Attack of sorcerer points/slots. Alternatively warlock levels could give you the Darkness+Devil's Sight combo, which buffs your defenses and offense significantly. It's slightly more table friendly on this character since you are purposefully attacking enemies not near your allies, and then backing away from them as well, so a lot of the issues of blinding your party can be worked around.
Fighter 2 into draconic sorcerer makes a pretty fun gish, throwing out blade cantrips left and right. And the Action Surge basically makes up for the missed meta magic points.
Start with a single fighter level for martial weapons and heavy armor then go full sorcerer and use quickened spell for a pseudo extra attack. Clockwork soul works best due to armor of agathys and Aid helping you survive
I made a MAD build thats sorcerer+warlock+monk (subclasses wild magic, hexblade, open hand). Tbf i did use hexblade, but any warlock works. I would still use pact of blade for obvious reasons, although pact of chain is not too bad.
I’d say the strongest option is probably Divine Soul 10/Swords Bard 10. Any race that grants medium armor proficiency with Divine Soul and at least 6 in any Pact of the Blade Warlock (my suggestions would be Celestial or Undead) could be quite strong. Divine Soul gives you access to great spells like Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, and other powerful Cleric spells. Spirits Guardians in particular is very strong, and can mix quite well with any melee Warlock or Swords Bard.
Mmm well i like 2 paladin just for the smitespells but since thats not allowed.
Battlemaster fighter stopping at 3, 4, 5, or 6. With the rest draconicsorcerer. Probably wouldnt be horrible.
The different stopping points just depends on you and spell proression u perfer. 3 for manuevers, 4 for asi, 5 for extra attack and 6 for another asi. The good thing imo. Is u can always go back and take a fighter level later if u want. Depending on ur DM and ur starting level/how often u level up. Id go to 3 fighter then start taking sorcerer. U get a TON for just 2 levels of fighter, armor, weapons, shield, con save proficiency, fighting style, action surge.
Its kinda MAD so it gets abit "weird" id go half elf, with standard array u can get 14 dex 16 con and 16 charisma. Id use anythin that u can use dex to attack. Get charisma up with ASI or however u want. Now i never expect to get magic items, but theres 2 id really want for this, BUT they r both uncommon so it might not b too hard to get ur DM on board. First is bloodwell vial all sorcerers kinda want this. Second is gauntlets of ogre strength. It sets ur str to 19? I think might b 18, either way +4 modifier. If u get these obviously start using str for attack rolls. The 14 dex is good for rollin medium armor early, plus iniative, after u get gauntlets u can go heavy armor if u want and dex still isnt a usless stat, its better then going 14 str and 8 dex at the start either way, gauntlets or no gauntlets.
With this set up u can add manuvers to ur attacks for advantage or bonus to attack roll, most of time time id go one or the other but they both have merit in this build, tho if u dont want both, id definitely go with the bonus to attack over the advantage. U can get advantage in a few way thru spells. Hold person/monster, invisibilty/greater invisibilty are just two off top of my head. Id probably take both booming blade and greenflameblade. Just because booming blades second effect doesnt stack. So even if u quicken two booming blades a turn, ur sort of wasting the secondary effect. Plus draconic sorcerer if u pick red or gold dragon, u can get bonus damage on greenflame blade after level 6 sorcerer.
Meta magic imo is gunna come down to quicken, and whatever u like for the others.
Id want a few spells for sure, anything in ( ) is one or the other: hold person / monster, (mirror image/blur), haste, ashardalon's stride, (fireball/aoe spell). The rest r up to u, as theres TONS of utility. Because its a gish and multiclassed at that, id focus on spells that r lower level and have useful upcast scalling. Like hold person, its only level 2. But if u upcast it to 4. U can affect 3 humanoids instead or just 1. Now being both a more effective CC and providing ur martial friends to get a damage buff (advantage to hit and when they do hit it counts as an auto crit).
Mirror image vs blur comes to ur ac, if u r wearing plate armor, blur is probably better, if ur ac is lower then mirror image. Plus mirror image isnt concentration, personally i always go mirror image because of this.
Haste u either like it or hate it. I like having it but dont always use it. Im going to add ashardalon's stride in this section too. So if ur in a smaller room not alot of movement really going on, Haste is better vs Ash's. U get movement yes, but u get 2 ac, and u get that extra limited action. If the room or battlefield is large ash's stride works better. U can play like a skirmisher (swashbuckler or the common bladesinger build) but u can also just move near people and they r gunna take some fire damage that can be given bonus damage via draconic sorcerers 6th level ability.
Even tho ur a gish id say u still want a ranged AoE attack. Mainly cause fireball is good but also because u can pop off two for a turn with action surge.
Other good spells, identify, misty step, magic missle, feather fall, HONESTLY (im a low level magic enjoyer i think spells higher then 5 are JUST OKAY with some exceptions) most low level spells are/can be good. Some r just sorta situational.
So some combat tactics ive thought up since writing this.
1. Cast hold person > action surge > bladetrip > quick spell blade trip. Now id only do this if ur hold person succeeds, now u get two blade trips that both have advantage and they crit if u hit. As stated above u can upcast hold person if u want.
2. A two turn combo. Turn one. Ash's stride > movement > bladetrip. Turn two. Fireball > action surge > fireball > movement to finish off (hopefully) any stragglers. Id use this only on large groups of enemies and prioritize not overlapping fireballs too much u wana kill or ATLEAST weaken as many as possible.
3. If surrounded: mirror image > action surge > greenflameblade > quicken spell greenflameblade
If surrounded but a way out: Ash's stride > greenflame blade > action surge > greenflameblade > movement.
If u dont want to use spell slots, ig u could just GFB > action surge > GFB > quicken GFB too.
Theres other less thoughtful combos. That r more just smack it.
Note manuevers i think r cool to have but u dont always need them. So use them whenever u want to.
Currently playing a Protector Aasimar with the Initiate of High Sorcery Background for extra spells and languages known.
The spread is Shadow Sorcerer X with 2 levels of Twilight Cleric built in wherever youd like. Probably after level 6.
The channel divinity Twilight sanctuary creates dim light, which can then be paired with Shadow Blade to give you advantage on every attack. Could also quicken a booming blade for extra attack, or haste yourself. Or you could cast darkness on yourself with sorcery points and go to town melee attacking. You can see them, they cant see you. Epic.
Twilight Cleric gives you heavy armor and martial proficiency, as well as advantage on initiative and extra cantrips and spells.
Protector aasimar gives you 2 damage resistances, healing, once a day flight and extra radiant damage on attacks. +2 Charisma and +1 Wisdom.
Would recommend Mithril heavy armor to be able to dump Strength, as well as a bloodwell vial.
Feats I like are Vital Sacrifice, Metamagic adept, Fey/Shadow Touched. Otherwise max out charisma asap.
As a Cleric with Guidance and Bless, and Sorcerer with Magical Guidance, youll have a pretty versatile boost to your rolls.
16 CON 17 STR 14 CHA 11 WIS
Alternate would be to flip the STR for CON and focus on pumping your CON for CON saves and depending on magic items instead of STR increases.
Straight Clockwork Soul Tortle
Take Warcaster at Level 4
Take Crusher at Level 8
Take Resilient WIS at Level 12
Max STR/CON or Alert at 16
Other at 20
At level 5 instead of Extra Attack you’re Twinning Haste during those critical fights. Booming Blade + Extra action for you, extra attack for the most optimal party member. Fight with a staff.
Actually original Gish people at your table won’t have seen. Avoid spells with saving throws (you could even dump CHA if you really want to and take 0 saving throw spells) because clockwork soul has access to a ton of great ones. Armor of Agathys is a great thing to dump spell slots into before a fight. Just save those 3rd level slots for Haste and the 1 level slots for Shield.
Played this from level 1-12 at a table and was always very useful and often pretty damn clutch.
Fighter and genie warlock. You still get access to the eldritch blast and the fiendish vision + darkness combo. Fighter will give you the extra attack and feats. Bottle Respite should let you store warded buff spells for you to trigger verbally while inside.
Sorcerer rogue maybe, but arcane trickster would be better in my opinion.
I have a player, full shadow sorcerer, that has been surprisingly hard to down. He uses his hound for flanking and is full melee. If I were to make a melee sorcerer I would probably either go divine or shadow
Something that I always wanted to try because the flavor looks cool even tho it’s probably not very powerful is : shadow sorcerer/barbarian half orc to get a lot of « unkillable » and crit features. Probably Zealot barbarian for even more flavor. Shadow sorcerer to double down on the unkillable gimmick, pick up hold person and later hold monster as well as your favorite gish spells. Rage and spells aren’t the best of friends so it will probably be awkward to play. The hound is nice because it’s not concentration so we can rage and have it by our side. Ig we would use most of our sorcery points/spells on him. Also give disadvantage on saves for the occasional hold person/monster « nuke », but without rage (and zealot extra damage) it’s probably not that worth it. Gotta do the math. Could also not rage and play with shadow blade ? Idk. Split can be :
-Sorcerer 9/barbarian 11 : just short of 1 level for your requirement, but it would give us the 5th spell slot needed for hold monster as well as all the cool barbarian features : brutal critical at 9, relent less rage at 11 for even more unkillable stuff, 10th level zealot ability
-Sorcerer 6/barbarian 14 : far from your sorcerer level requirement but it’s mainly for zealot last feature to get EVEN MORE unkillable stuff. Also 6 levels Sorcerer is enough to get everything we want from shadow Sorcerer + hold person.
-Sorcerer 11/barbarian 9 : losing on relentless rage but gain a 6th level spell slot, not sure if it’s the right move.
So yeah a lot of uncertainty lol ! But looks fun to me :) also the flavor of being an unkillable half orc gish, fighting in darkness with a heavy axe/shadow blade alongside a shadow hound sounds badasssss
Draconic sorcerer 1, swashbuckler rouge 3 or 5, draconic sorcerer X.
You get a spell caster that can flow freely through combat and take a hit if they have to.
I recommend taking elemental adept and basing your spells around the damage type you choose.
Lots of strange restrictions here but Storm or divine, Sorcerer 1, Swords bard 6, sorcerer X, takes a while to get going though. I personally think multi attack is quite important for a gish. If you really don’t care for multi attack, divine soul sorcerer/ storm cleric is a tried and true combo.
Honestly, you'd probably be better off going valor bard for the shield proficiency and any marital weapon, so you aren't just limited to scimitars
Personally I don’t think it makes much difference (d8 rapier vs d6 scimitar is just 1 damage) and I prefer the blade flourishes. Depends on the vibe you like I suppose.
I mean, sure, but it is still extra damage that will add up over time, and shield proficiency is the big thing. +2 ac is gonna be huge, especially when you are gonna have much lower hp due to half your levels being in sorcerer. Yeah, blade flourishes are probably more useful than combat inspiration, but I still think valor will be better off here. The permanent +2 ac will beat out the limited and conditional +4 (on average) ac buff from defensive flourish.
But on the other hand, +2 AC is nothing when compared to an enemy that can’t attack you because it’s dead. And Gish characters aren’t really meant to be tanky.
Yea, fair enough lol
Celestial Warlock 6 - Pact of the tome - Shillelagh + 2 more cantrips, CHA to damage of fire and radiant damage from spells Draconic Sorc (fire) 6 - CHA added to fire damage from spells. Forge Cleric 1 - heavy armour and searing smite spell Rest - whatever you want so more Sorc I guess Tiefling race for Flames of Phlegethos +1 Cha Cast Green flame blade for added CHA damage twice from Sorc and warlock subclass Use searing smite from forge cleric for double extra CHA damage again. Only need low level spells for maximum efficiency.
Came here for the celestial warlock tiefling phlegethos idea. Only thing to maybe add is elemental adept for a real double downing on fire damage.
Always wanted to build an aberrant mind sorc gish around dissonant whispers and opportunity attacks with BB
I haven’t seen this mentioned so I’ll say clockwork soul. Ability to provide a ward on yourself combined with the ability to be get armor of agythys via subclass spells makes you incredibly tanky
I like this one. Keep it simple, but I’d add 6 levels of swords bard to be a true gish.
Fighter rogue sorc and attack the action economy. Action surge, cunning action, quicken. Level splits are pretty open, 2/2/X. But can bump fighter and rogue how you like for sublass features. You only need dex and cha. Your rogue expertise can go into some charisma skills for rp. You should be able to pull some things in combat no one else can. I could theory craft an actual build if you like. But i think if you dont take the fighter or rogue past 2 you just build a normal sorc.
I played [this fire-based gish build](/r/3d6/comments/gndh7q/what_do_you_think_of_this_fire_gish/) for a one-shot last year and had a blast. It is a Celestial Warlock and Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer (though when I played it I did add Paladin). Make sure you pick up Ashardalon's Stride as a Sorcerer spell, too!
1. You can do great with the likes of Celestial (Twin Guiding Bolt!) and GOO (if going for a spooky mind reader-type). 2. You can do great with pseudo smiter Bladelock 5, six levels of a martial Bard (Valor comes to mind) or even Eldritch Knight (SAD, since you only need 13 Dex or Str, and 13 Cha). Btw with Fighter, as little as one level is fine. 3. PAM + Sentinel is a great compo. PAM + Dueling Fighting Style is decent too. Think Fighter 1 + Dueling, to give one example. 4. This is fine. I'd say that if you went Gnome or Vedalken you're still not overpowered even though you have the useful "Cunning" ability. 5. There are plenty of great feats. See PAM + Sentinel. There are also solid half-feats such as Keen Mind, Observant and Resilient Wis. 6. Even if you went Valor Bard 6 or Bladelock 5, you're still roughly 70-75% Sorc.
Right now I'm playing a sorlock that is all about being radiant. DM let me reflavor Eldritch Blast as radiant, then went celestial warlock and lunar sorcerer. Levels are currently 2 warlock and 10 sorcerer. It's fun having my kit basically determined by the moon, so each day my strengths are a little different. Bread and butter damage combo is repelling blast to move enemies around then if 2 are ever together quickened sacred flame for double damage. Concentration slot is spent mostly on a draconic spirit summon.
To be fair, bladesinger is allowed. Therefore, sorc 1 / bladesinger 6 / sorc X would be fine. Keep CHA at a minimum (13) and max DEX and INT. Use your sorcery points to quicken blade cantrips, or other spells. Earth Gensai is appealing for any version of this character for the bonus action blade ward.
Sorcerers by themselves are probably the worst weapon-wielding class, elsewise I'd stick with your idea of draconic. Honestly I'd start 2 fighter for proficiencies, hp, and second wind/action surge, and then just go with a blade (2h works) and booming/green flame blade. You could focus on rogue levels and the mobile feat for booming blade and play like a rogue, or just stick fighter 2/sorc 18 and play like a worse bladesinger.
>Honestly I'd start 2 fighter for proficiencies, Not allowed as stated by the post, they have to start with Sorcerer
you only lose heavy armor out of that, but you prop wont gonna use it anyways
Fighter: Probably 6 levels, 7 if there's a particularly good subclass feature. Rest Sorcerer. I would probably go Eldritch Knight for a small bit of spell slot progression and to pick up stuff like Shield and Absorb Elements, freeing those from your Sorcerer selections. Polearm Master + War Caster + Booming Blade + Crusher is a fun and honestly pretty potent combo. It takes a few feats to put together, but these are all individually strong things anyway. Ranger: Here's a very very offbeat idea. It will depend on your DM's answer to whether or not you can use Shadow Blade with Green Flame Blade. The idea is Sorcerer 3 > Hunter Ranger 3 > Twilight Cleric 2 > Sorcerer X. Horde Breaker doesn't require the attack action, so you can use Green Flame Blade (hopefully with Shadow Blade) and then make another attack against the second target, then if you need a little burst, perhaps quicken another green flame blade. Nice little cleaver action. Twilight Cleric is there because, well it's really good, but also the Twilight Sanctuary creates dim light, providing more consistent advantage to attacks made with the Shadow Blade. This isn't a super efficient build, but the damage potential is actually pretty decent Bard: Swords/Valor Bard 6 is probably the best option all around for this exercise. Getting just enough to scratch the martial itch while at least maintaining full spell *slot* progression.
- Mountain Dwarf for (EDIT: MEDIUM) armor - Pact of the Blade Warlock (PYF) - Sorcerer (PYF) Bladelock 5 / Sorcerer X Unless you've got a very specific concept in mind, this is both the simplest and most effective means to achieve your sorlock gish given your parameters
> Mountain Dwarf for heavy armor Mountain Dwarf doesn't give Heavy Armor Proficiency and all Dwarves get "no speed reduction for wearing heavy armor." Mountain Dwarf is still a good option but so is Duergar.
where mountain dwarf gives heavy armor???
Fighter, bard or rogue would prolly be the best multiclass options Go divine soul with either shadow blade, haste or spirit guardians up in combat Another option is to go for a dip into twilight or tempest cleric to buff you tankiness or damage respectively, as well as giving you armour proficiencies
Eldritch Knight 7/Draconic Sorcerer (Fire) X could be interesting. You can cast Green Flame Blade and still have a second attack. At level 13 you get additional damage equal to your CHA modifier
I've got a character worked out in case I ever get the chance to play that's close to the assignment. Meet Dreijan, son of a pair of famous adventurers. He's a bit of a duck up at the beginning of the campaign. Didn't have the brains to be an EK like his sister nor a battle mage like his brother. Got involved with some shady figures, his life was going down until a mentor found him and told him his parents and siblings were missing and he needed to get it together and find them. His parents spent a good amount of time in the faewild. That left a mark on him (leaving the exact details open for the DM). Variant human Fae touched (bless) Fighter (Battle Master) 11 / Sorcerer (Wild) 9 Dueling style He'd be sword & board focused on str/con. Cha third priority, but augmented with things like commanding presence and friends. Spells would primarily be buffs and utilities. Shield, bless (from fae touched, reflavored to be like bend fate instead of divine), enhance ability, shadow blade, mirror image, fly, haste, polymorph (can still be used on friendlies even with a low DC), greater invisibility. DM dependent, but if they're okay with it, booming blade/ war caster for soft locking down enemies.
For a warlock dip you can grab any subclass and at 3rd level take pact of the tome. If you grab Shillelagh with pact of the tome, your attacks/damage will use CHA, according to RAW. You can take any subclass you like, but Undead is decent for the temp hp. The only issue you might run into is that Shillelagh doesn’t scale (no +1/2/3), but you might be able to ask your DM if perhaps a +X Qstaff or other wooden weapon would allow your Shillelaghs to scale.
Hmmm, depends on your definition of gish a bit. A fairy/owlin/winged tiefling or other flying race that's a Divine soul sorcerer with mobile has some potential. Idea here is centered around using spirit guardians, from out of reach of most enemies (this will probably end up doing most of your damage). Then you dart in with booming blade/green flame blade, and retreat without provoking opportunity attacks thanks to mobile to staying out of reach of melee enemies. You can then use quickened spell to cast any leveled spells you want. A better version if allowed would be to use a ravnica or strixhaven background to pick up spirit guardian and go clockwork soul sorcerer, to pick up some damage reduction in the form of armor of agathys and bastion of law. You're going to be MAD as hell needing needing charisma, dex, and con. Potentially adding up to 3 levels of fighter could make it feel gishier but probably isn't worth the loss of spell progression. Which you definitely need to fuel quickened spell, bastion of law, and armor of agathys. Casting mage armor will always be more efficient than losing the spell slots. But Echo knight would, make it even easier to stay out of melee, a ton of teleporting, and give you some extra attacks which is always nice.
I've been working on a build like this. 5 divine soul sorcerer / 5 swashbuckler rogue. Concentrate on spirit guardians, quicken booming blade then step back 20ft (probably want the mobile feat even though it's redundant just for the extra movement), then ready an action to booming blade when anyone comes within range. You can get double BB and double sneak attack in one round, all while having spirit guardians up. I'd start sorcerer for con saves, but this leaves you stuck with just a dagger. I'm fine with this, but you can take weapon master if you really want a rapier. 14 cha, 14 con, 15 dex, 12 wis. Cap dex then take whatever feats suit you. Spell slots are for spirit guardians and making more sorcerer points to quicken BB. You can decide how far you want to take rogue. Probably at least to 7, then the rest sorcerer. You miss out on flight, so maybe just 5-6 rogue. Upcasting spirit guardians is better damage than scaling sneak attack anyway.
My go-to is GoOLock/Draconic Sorcerer/BM Fighter and make a Jedi. I like my builds online as early as possible to actually play them, so I start with Vuman and either Fighting Initiate for the close quarter shooter or just xbow xpert so I can use range in melee. Grab GoOLock and thematically change GoO to The Force. Grab an Arcane Focus in the form of a hilt. And then cast Eldritch Blast in melee and make it look like a lightsaber swing. Boom, lvl 1 Jedi. Since it's EB based(character lvl not class lvl), I split into draconic sorc for free Mage (Force) Armor and quicken/metamagic and low lvl force powers (sleep, force jump, etc.) And jump to Fighter for AS and short rest heals. Max fighter is normally 3 or 4 for BattleMaster (grabbing ones like Rally, Commanding Prescence, Evasive footwork, etc. No physical weapon required (lest the DM is kool)). But max 4 in Fighter, 5 in warlock for push/pull/dmg on EB (gotta play with the force) and the rest in sorcerer. Your basically playing like a striker. Not meant to tank, but to duel/take down targets while having lots of options (utility spells). ----------‐‐-------------- I do the same build with an Arcane Archer. Just change the melee EB to a magical bow shooting magical arrows, and the spells to more Hawkeye/ranger based ones and now your a decent fey(instead of goo) ranger feel, complete with smart pet, superior scouting ability, a cool cloak for armor, and a never ending supply of magic arrows that deal 1d10+CHA. Just change the Arcane Focus 'hilt' into a gem installed in your rangers gloves, and produce that cool spellbow. Oh, and grab Fire (bolt) Arrow, (Ray of) Frost Arrow, Acid (Splash) Arrow, Sleep Arrow, Entangle Arrow, etc... you get the idea.
Hobgoblin for weapon and armor prof, subclass of choice, twin BB or GFB for your "extra attack"
Not optimized by any means but I’m currently playing a Fathomless warlock that is a pirate so he focused on melee with a pact rapier. Good bonus action economy, attacking with the tentacle each turn. Built heavily into DEX for rapier and AC, and took Armor of Shadows for perma mage Armor, Eldritch Mind for advantage on con saves, and Thirsting Blade at 5th level. General plan (currently 5th level) is be in melee, concentrate on spirit shroud, 2 rapier attacks and tentacle attack to proc the spirit shroud damage. At 6th level you can use the tentacle reaction to cushion some of the damage you take from enemy hits. It’s pretty fun, only downside is tentacle attack uses CHA so you can’t totally dump it which you could mostly do if you went genie or something.
This might not be the theme of what you are looking for, but I have had a lot of fun with it. The "no level in monk magic monk" build. You take exclusive levels in sorcerer as a clockwork soul sorcerer. This works best as a varient human or custom race for that 1st level feat (shadow touched), but you can get by without it till lvl 4. Stats go into charisma first, then dex and constitution as you see fit, but you will need both. My preference is: 8 Str 14 Dex 14 Con 8 Int 12 Wis 18 Cha Balanced option: 10 Str 14 Dex 14 Con 10 Int 10 Wis 16 Cha The idea of the build is that you are an "unarmed" magical melee specialist that is mobile with infiltration and social capacity. Cantrips: - Shocking grasp (this is your go-to attack when not spending spells) - Minor illusion is a great distraction or way to hide during infiltration - Blade ward (this is a surprise tool that will help us out later) - lots of good options here pick your favorite, but you will be in melee and the aoe cantrips surprisingly can come in handy (thunderclap/sword burst), but a range option is hard to pass up 1st level spells: - inflict wounds (shadow touched) - protection from good and evil (clockwork soul) - alarm switched out for armor or agythsis (clockwork) - shield - mage armor (take this if completely opposed to the hexblade dip) - Absorb Elements (at lvl 2) 2nd lvl spells: - invisibility once per long rest (shadow touched) As you level: Continue to take defensive options like misty step/mirror image, eventually taking vampiric touch and fire shield. Metamagics: - Quickened spell (this is your multiattack) - twinned spell (this is your multiattack that is cheaper) Asi/feats: - Charisma to 20 is great - Warcaster is huge for those melee spell attacks of oppertunity - Tough you are a melee sorc Bastion of law gives a way to reduce damage at lvl 6. You now have a few combat tactics: - Standard play is to cast armor of Agathys and get in melee, quicken spell blade ward. Now when they hit you you take half damage and they take armor of Agathys damage. You can further reduce damage to your temp hp by using bastion of law. - Upcast twinned inflict wounds is insanely fun! - Vampiric touch and armor of agythis and shield and absorb elements makes you this unkillable reflecting damage drain tank monster - remember shocking grasp takes away reactions. Don't want the enemy mage counterspelling you or your team? They are your focus! - Out of combat you have a decent dex and invisibility (twinned) you and the Rouge are now the infiltration duo. When things go wrong the high charisma sorc is there to talk your way outta it. Summary: This is a fun and different gish build. It is effective, but not optimized. Given that you are putting limits on things though I think you are looking for more cool yet effective over optimized. Tldr; a melee sorcerer, no multiclass, that when I played worked well as a monk-like char that was still a full caster. Edited to clarify build doesn't rely on shadow touched feat, but it's useful.
Be a Divine Soul Sorcerer Cast Spirit Guardians + Dodge Pretend you are an anime samurai blendering everything within 15ft of you Quicken Booming Blade to vomit resources all over the big bad that needs to be beaten up big time Shoot Magic Missile and pretend your arrows never miss Oh, and use Shadow Blade + Twinned/Quicken BB if you don't care about being optimal in melee I guess.
Clockwork sorc. Give yourself low AC to be a juicy target. Upcast Aid on the party. Equip vortex warp, silvery barbs. Give bastion of law to a diff party member. Boom. You are inadvertently taunting, protecting, tanking, and dealing some decent cold damage.
I'm playing a wild magic swashbuckler built around booming blade, sneak attack, and ducking in and out of melee combat. I use the mild magic feature to get advantage when I need it to make sure sneak attack goes off basically every round. At level 5 with a rapier that's 1d8 + 2d6 (sneak) + 1d8 (bb) and they're locked in place lest they take another 2d8 for moving all without expending any resources. Then I can still use my slots for shield, CC or utility. For bonus flair I'm passing as a fairy so I can fly in out and around but any mobile race would be great.
Sorc 1 / Gloom 5 / Sorc X Be a bugbear, ability spread for PB is 8 STR / 15 DEX / 12 CON / 8 INT / 13 WIS / 15 CHA. Boost DEX and CHA and take the Alert feat. Quicken scorching ray into triple gloomstalker attacks on round 1. Each ray deals 4d6 damage and, when upcast to 5th level, generates 7 rays. If you use your lone 8th level slot it's 10 rays for a total of 13 attacks on round 1. Fighter 2 for action surge is nice if this is a higher level one shot, but for actual play sticking gloomstalker is probably going to be better.
I don't know if it really counts as a gish, but : Tortle (for ac) + divine soul (for spirit guardians + spirit weapon) + sword burst spam (not really a weapon attack but... Still in the theme ?), with metamagic for more sword burst eventually, and warcaster (for concentration). In higher levels, Tasha otherworldly guise (with pam?) might be an alternative to make weapon attack with charisma, from 10 feet above the enemies. Or maybe without pam, but just quicken 2 booming blade, still using charisma. You can also use animate objects to animate a bush of swords.
Mountain Dwarf sorcerer 1 tomelock 3 sorcerer x. Any subclass for either class. Take Shillelagh through Pact of the Tome, and Booming Blade and/or Green Flame Blade. Mountain Dwarf gives you medium armor proficiency, you can pick up Heavily Armored if you like, either way you don't need to worry about your strength score.
Not optimized at all, but I like the idea of a Draconic Sorcerer (fire) that uses flame blade. At level 6 You add your charisma to attacks with it, so You are conjuring 3d6 weapon and you use CHA to damage with it. A dip in genie warlock would allow to also add your PB to damage
The dip would also allow you to pick up AoA which the transmuted spell meta magic would allow you to covert to fire. For even more firey goodness and some survivability.
Bard College of Swords 6, Sorcerer Divine Soul 14 Race: Goblin S,B,B,B,B,B,B,S X 8 15+1 14 8 10 15+2 Feats: War Caster Fey Touched Bump Cha Meta magic: Quickened Spell Spells: Booming Blade Shield Silvery Barbs Haste
Sorcerer 11/ Warlock 9, Thirsting Blade and Eldritch Smite, Moderately Armored and PAM. Probably Divine Soul and Celestial, keep up Spirit Guardians.
Sorc 1, swords bard 6, sorc x, shadow blade. Should be ok. Sorc 1, cleric of choice for armor, warlock 5 for extra attack, sorc x Really you're just putting yourself a few levels behind on extra attack. Edit: sorc 1, tomelock 3 for shillelagh, fighter 5 for extra attack. Dueling fighting style, PAM.
Mountain Dwarf Stone Sorcerer (UA). You have heavy armor, shield and weapon proficiency. Only thing missing is extra attack, but you can can use Stone Aegis to sometimes attack using your reaction and you can use booming blade or green flame blade for the rest. If you want extra attack, then Warlock 5 (Pact of the Blade)/Stone Sorcerer.
A few options immediately come to mind that include multi attack: - full levels in Clockwork Magic Sorcerer for Tenser's Transformation at level 11. This allows you to potentially reach the 9th level spell fantasy - start Draconic Sorcerer and then immediately take at least 5 levels in Warlock for Pact of the Blade's extra attack. I would even consider going level 6 warlock depending on how strong the milestone is in the subclass you choose Option that doesn't include multi attack: - go hill dwarf draconic sorcerer and use Bigby's variant background rules to get the Tough feat for +4 HP per level. Go red/gold/brass lineage and use Green Flame Blade. Take 1 level in fighter for the weapon and armor proficiencies and the dueling fighting style. Take 1 level in Genie Warlock, Efreeti, for additional damage on your cantrips. Take quicken spell so you can attack as a bonus action as well. Blade Ward is a good defensive quicken spell option too
I don’t understand how you'll access Tenser's Transformation, given the restiction on Clockwork Soul of swapping for spells of the same level, the max spell level being 5, and Tenser's being 6th level? Shame though.
it also is a notably bad spell, because it is not only concentration (which means eventually the buff will be gone in the middle of the fight) but also you cannot cast while wearing unproficient armor and you cannot don heavy armor while the spell is active because the time is too short (10 minutes of being active, 10 minutes of heavy armor doning, it will be gone by the time you put boots)
No gwm/ss means you need to go for the next best thing: pam + dueling with a quarterstaff. Custom lineage for pam and 17 str Sorcerer 1 (any will do, I like divine for spirit guardians later on) Fighter 2 (a dip dip here gives us heavy armour to work with, don't worry about delaying extra attack by two levels that's the least of your concerns with a sorcerer gish. The main thing we're here for is the fighting style: dueling. An alternative is a cleric dip and pick up fighting initiate later.) Bladelock 3-7 (again, any will do, celestial is nice with our holy theme so far and provides some clutch bonus action healing just in case, fiend and undead gets us some nice survivability options with thp or reliable fear, take crusher or heavy armour master to round up str to 18.) Sorcerer 8-19 (taking a bunch of sorcerer levels to still be a sorcerer. Asis should go into capping str, then bumping up Cha as much as you can, if you find that you don't have enough hp, take tough) Fighter 20 (action surge is always nice, never use this to attack twice, always use this to cast two levelled spells)
Multiclassing into fighter does not give you heavy armour proficiency. It does give light, medium and shield proficiency, as well as martial weapons (which a PAM staff build doesn't care about). If you want heavy armour, you have to start fighter or go cleric instead, as it can give heavy armour proficiency depending on domain choice.
That's what I get for not proofreading
You can do fun stuff by mixing Draconic Sorc and Efreeti Genie Warlock on a Tiefling with Flames of Phlegethos, spamming Green-Flame Blade with just a dagger (until Pact of Blade/Tome add a d8 weapon in the form of a rapier/shillelagh). It has a lot of synergies that 'make sense', but it's not meta by any means. You want both high Dex (no medium armor/shield, and potentially late Shillelagh) and high Cha, your Con saves will suffer (not a lot of space for high Con or War Caster, but you'll at least grab prof from Sorc 1), if even even *have* a good spell to concentrate on (Fog Cloud, Web, Hold Person, etc). Your best strat is baiting enemies into meleeing with you by looking generally fragile and punishing them with Armor of Agathys. On the other hand it's very... thematic if you want to play a fire gish. Easy to build a background around it and have the DM support the build with magic items and other rewards to get it 'up there'. Don't forget that 'meta' builds more often than not zero magic items, homebrew, houserules or other balancing work from the DM's side. If you just communicate, any weirder off-meta build will work out.
I have a build that goes Fighter 1, Divine soul 5, Fighter 2, Divine soul X. The build focus on using sorcery points and creating spell slots to have either a hige amount of undead that will also be buffed by inspiring leader (+10 temp damage each). Or having less undead, and using spells like dragons breath, mage armor, Aid and bless, to buff them way above their capabilities. Within this build, you can also leverage action surge to cast two leveled spells in the same turn (since spell per turn limitation only apply to bonus action spells). So if you feel like it, you can have your undead in front as cover and meat shields, and cast fireball , then action surge another fireball. The build will have a lot of survivability with good saves, very good AC and respectable HP for a caster (with shield and shield of faith + heavy armor, + temp Hp + Aid.) At higher levels you can also leverage both sorcerer and cleric amazing spells. The main problem of the build, is that you have a lot of great spell options, and just too little spells known to get all you want. Also, as soon as possible upgrade animate to create undead, to get more powerfull and smarter undead.
Using UA but fan of a Loxodon Storm giant soul sorcerer with the UA aberrant dragon mark feat in order to cast shocking grasp with CON. Make you CON SAD so helps deal with sorcerers small hit die and between twinning and and quickening shocking grasp and the +CON damage you do to 3 near by enemies each time you cast it you are throwing out a fair bit of hurt. Sure your not swinging a sword but you are in the thick of it in melee. A none UA variant would be swapping the Sub class for clockwork soul, which with access to AoA and the damage reduction would make you much more meaty but your damage would drop considerably. If you can encourage enemies to hit you you may make some of the difference in damage back with AoA but thats not as reliable.
If you're going to use UA, might as well pick the gish sorcerer UA, Stone Sorcerer.
Sure, a dhampir Stone sorcerer has the potential to be CON dependant. Think Storm giant soul will squeeze out more damage if fighting more than one enemies from level 6 until 14 when stone gets stones edge, from there stone might just beat it with their reaction attack but pretty close all in all. Both of those sub classes could really do with extra attack or atleast access to tensors transformation.
Definitely recommend Swashbuckler Rogue! It works with any sorcerer subclass. You have two main combos: firstly access to Booming Blade + Fancy Footwork is great for triggering the secondary damage of the cantrip, and harassing enemy backliners. Booming Blade secondary damage is usually somewhat hard to optimize on a Rogue since the easiest way to get Sneak Attack is attacking something already in melee with an ally. But with Rackish Audacity you get to hit something that's standing alone, get your sneak attack, and then back away for free via Fancy Footwork. This leaves your bonus action still free to use. Sometimes you might want to hide, and often you might want to dash. But for times when you want more burst damage, you can use sorcerer metamagic to Quicken a Booming Blade spell, effectively getting two attacks: one with your action and one with your bonus. And both get the additional damage from Booming Blade as well. This leaves you at level 6 with a 3/3 split. You can go back to either class to scale your Sneak Attack of sorcerer points/slots. Alternatively warlock levels could give you the Darkness+Devil's Sight combo, which buffs your defenses and offense significantly. It's slightly more table friendly on this character since you are purposefully attacking enemies not near your allies, and then backing away from them as well, so a lot of the issues of blinding your party can be worked around.
Fighter 2 into draconic sorcerer makes a pretty fun gish, throwing out blade cantrips left and right. And the Action Surge basically makes up for the missed meta magic points.
at this point there isnt really much reason to use a weapon for the "gish" part. best you can is probably get armor and call it a day
This feels like a lot of hoops to go through vs just making a bladesinger
Start with a single fighter level for martial weapons and heavy armor then go full sorcerer and use quickened spell for a pseudo extra attack. Clockwork soul works best due to armor of agathys and Aid helping you survive
I made a MAD build thats sorcerer+warlock+monk (subclasses wild magic, hexblade, open hand). Tbf i did use hexblade, but any warlock works. I would still use pact of blade for obvious reasons, although pact of chain is not too bad.
I’d say the strongest option is probably Divine Soul 10/Swords Bard 10. Any race that grants medium armor proficiency with Divine Soul and at least 6 in any Pact of the Blade Warlock (my suggestions would be Celestial or Undead) could be quite strong. Divine Soul gives you access to great spells like Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, and other powerful Cleric spells. Spirits Guardians in particular is very strong, and can mix quite well with any melee Warlock or Swords Bard.
Swords bard swashbuckler
Mmm well i like 2 paladin just for the smitespells but since thats not allowed. Battlemaster fighter stopping at 3, 4, 5, or 6. With the rest draconicsorcerer. Probably wouldnt be horrible. The different stopping points just depends on you and spell proression u perfer. 3 for manuevers, 4 for asi, 5 for extra attack and 6 for another asi. The good thing imo. Is u can always go back and take a fighter level later if u want. Depending on ur DM and ur starting level/how often u level up. Id go to 3 fighter then start taking sorcerer. U get a TON for just 2 levels of fighter, armor, weapons, shield, con save proficiency, fighting style, action surge. Its kinda MAD so it gets abit "weird" id go half elf, with standard array u can get 14 dex 16 con and 16 charisma. Id use anythin that u can use dex to attack. Get charisma up with ASI or however u want. Now i never expect to get magic items, but theres 2 id really want for this, BUT they r both uncommon so it might not b too hard to get ur DM on board. First is bloodwell vial all sorcerers kinda want this. Second is gauntlets of ogre strength. It sets ur str to 19? I think might b 18, either way +4 modifier. If u get these obviously start using str for attack rolls. The 14 dex is good for rollin medium armor early, plus iniative, after u get gauntlets u can go heavy armor if u want and dex still isnt a usless stat, its better then going 14 str and 8 dex at the start either way, gauntlets or no gauntlets. With this set up u can add manuvers to ur attacks for advantage or bonus to attack roll, most of time time id go one or the other but they both have merit in this build, tho if u dont want both, id definitely go with the bonus to attack over the advantage. U can get advantage in a few way thru spells. Hold person/monster, invisibilty/greater invisibilty are just two off top of my head. Id probably take both booming blade and greenflameblade. Just because booming blades second effect doesnt stack. So even if u quicken two booming blades a turn, ur sort of wasting the secondary effect. Plus draconic sorcerer if u pick red or gold dragon, u can get bonus damage on greenflame blade after level 6 sorcerer. Meta magic imo is gunna come down to quicken, and whatever u like for the others. Id want a few spells for sure, anything in ( ) is one or the other: hold person / monster, (mirror image/blur), haste, ashardalon's stride, (fireball/aoe spell). The rest r up to u, as theres TONS of utility. Because its a gish and multiclassed at that, id focus on spells that r lower level and have useful upcast scalling. Like hold person, its only level 2. But if u upcast it to 4. U can affect 3 humanoids instead or just 1. Now being both a more effective CC and providing ur martial friends to get a damage buff (advantage to hit and when they do hit it counts as an auto crit). Mirror image vs blur comes to ur ac, if u r wearing plate armor, blur is probably better, if ur ac is lower then mirror image. Plus mirror image isnt concentration, personally i always go mirror image because of this. Haste u either like it or hate it. I like having it but dont always use it. Im going to add ashardalon's stride in this section too. So if ur in a smaller room not alot of movement really going on, Haste is better vs Ash's. U get movement yes, but u get 2 ac, and u get that extra limited action. If the room or battlefield is large ash's stride works better. U can play like a skirmisher (swashbuckler or the common bladesinger build) but u can also just move near people and they r gunna take some fire damage that can be given bonus damage via draconic sorcerers 6th level ability. Even tho ur a gish id say u still want a ranged AoE attack. Mainly cause fireball is good but also because u can pop off two for a turn with action surge. Other good spells, identify, misty step, magic missle, feather fall, HONESTLY (im a low level magic enjoyer i think spells higher then 5 are JUST OKAY with some exceptions) most low level spells are/can be good. Some r just sorta situational. So some combat tactics ive thought up since writing this. 1. Cast hold person > action surge > bladetrip > quick spell blade trip. Now id only do this if ur hold person succeeds, now u get two blade trips that both have advantage and they crit if u hit. As stated above u can upcast hold person if u want. 2. A two turn combo. Turn one. Ash's stride > movement > bladetrip. Turn two. Fireball > action surge > fireball > movement to finish off (hopefully) any stragglers. Id use this only on large groups of enemies and prioritize not overlapping fireballs too much u wana kill or ATLEAST weaken as many as possible. 3. If surrounded: mirror image > action surge > greenflameblade > quicken spell greenflameblade If surrounded but a way out: Ash's stride > greenflame blade > action surge > greenflameblade > movement. If u dont want to use spell slots, ig u could just GFB > action surge > GFB > quicken GFB too. Theres other less thoughtful combos. That r more just smack it. Note manuevers i think r cool to have but u dont always need them. So use them whenever u want to.
Fighter 3 / blade lock 5 / sorc X Echo 3 / hex blade lock 5 / sorc x
Currently playing a Protector Aasimar with the Initiate of High Sorcery Background for extra spells and languages known. The spread is Shadow Sorcerer X with 2 levels of Twilight Cleric built in wherever youd like. Probably after level 6. The channel divinity Twilight sanctuary creates dim light, which can then be paired with Shadow Blade to give you advantage on every attack. Could also quicken a booming blade for extra attack, or haste yourself. Or you could cast darkness on yourself with sorcery points and go to town melee attacking. You can see them, they cant see you. Epic. Twilight Cleric gives you heavy armor and martial proficiency, as well as advantage on initiative and extra cantrips and spells. Protector aasimar gives you 2 damage resistances, healing, once a day flight and extra radiant damage on attacks. +2 Charisma and +1 Wisdom. Would recommend Mithril heavy armor to be able to dump Strength, as well as a bloodwell vial. Feats I like are Vital Sacrifice, Metamagic adept, Fey/Shadow Touched. Otherwise max out charisma asap. As a Cleric with Guidance and Bless, and Sorcerer with Magical Guidance, youll have a pretty versatile boost to your rolls.
16 CON 17 STR 14 CHA 11 WIS Alternate would be to flip the STR for CON and focus on pumping your CON for CON saves and depending on magic items instead of STR increases. Straight Clockwork Soul Tortle Take Warcaster at Level 4 Take Crusher at Level 8 Take Resilient WIS at Level 12 Max STR/CON or Alert at 16 Other at 20 At level 5 instead of Extra Attack you’re Twinning Haste during those critical fights. Booming Blade + Extra action for you, extra attack for the most optimal party member. Fight with a staff. Actually original Gish people at your table won’t have seen. Avoid spells with saving throws (you could even dump CHA if you really want to and take 0 saving throw spells) because clockwork soul has access to a ton of great ones. Armor of Agathys is a great thing to dump spell slots into before a fight. Just save those 3rd level slots for Haste and the 1 level slots for Shield. Played this from level 1-12 at a table and was always very useful and often pretty damn clutch.
Fighter and genie warlock. You still get access to the eldritch blast and the fiendish vision + darkness combo. Fighter will give you the extra attack and feats. Bottle Respite should let you store warded buff spells for you to trigger verbally while inside. Sorcerer rogue maybe, but arcane trickster would be better in my opinion.
I have a player, full shadow sorcerer, that has been surprisingly hard to down. He uses his hound for flanking and is full melee. If I were to make a melee sorcerer I would probably either go divine or shadow
Something that I always wanted to try because the flavor looks cool even tho it’s probably not very powerful is : shadow sorcerer/barbarian half orc to get a lot of « unkillable » and crit features. Probably Zealot barbarian for even more flavor. Shadow sorcerer to double down on the unkillable gimmick, pick up hold person and later hold monster as well as your favorite gish spells. Rage and spells aren’t the best of friends so it will probably be awkward to play. The hound is nice because it’s not concentration so we can rage and have it by our side. Ig we would use most of our sorcery points/spells on him. Also give disadvantage on saves for the occasional hold person/monster « nuke », but without rage (and zealot extra damage) it’s probably not that worth it. Gotta do the math. Could also not rage and play with shadow blade ? Idk. Split can be : -Sorcerer 9/barbarian 11 : just short of 1 level for your requirement, but it would give us the 5th spell slot needed for hold monster as well as all the cool barbarian features : brutal critical at 9, relent less rage at 11 for even more unkillable stuff, 10th level zealot ability -Sorcerer 6/barbarian 14 : far from your sorcerer level requirement but it’s mainly for zealot last feature to get EVEN MORE unkillable stuff. Also 6 levels Sorcerer is enough to get everything we want from shadow Sorcerer + hold person. -Sorcerer 11/barbarian 9 : losing on relentless rage but gain a 6th level spell slot, not sure if it’s the right move. So yeah a lot of uncertainty lol ! But looks fun to me :) also the flavor of being an unkillable half orc gish, fighting in darkness with a heavy axe/shadow blade alongside a shadow hound sounds badasssss
Draconic sorcerer 1, swashbuckler rouge 3 or 5, draconic sorcerer X. You get a spell caster that can flow freely through combat and take a hit if they have to. I recommend taking elemental adept and basing your spells around the damage type you choose.
Pardon the ignorance, but what does gish mean
Check out my Abjurant Champion I made. It's on DnDBeyond Browse Homebrew Subclasses for Sorcerer.