Let's talk about something I should have discussed in the video: the potential conflict between "make a ranged spell attack" and using a weapon to make that attack. The wording for Magic Stone says that we (or someone else) can throw the stone or use a sling to throw it, and to do so we "make a ranged spell attack." Contrast that with the Archery fighting style, which tells us that you get a "+2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons." Similarly, the Sharpshooter feat says that you can make the attack at -5 to hit, +10 to damage when you "attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with." To me, there is no prohibition here from these features benefitting from a spell attack, so long as the spell attack is made with a ranged weapon we're proficient in (i.e. by putting the stone in a sling). Obviously, you and/or your DM may disagree. Now, making a ranged spell attack is 100% not the same thing as taking the attack action. So there's *definite* conflict with, say, Extra Attack. These are all absolutely things you'll want to discuss with your DM before playing this character in game, and I apologize for not bringing them up in the video! :)
Only half serious. A pebble is a small stone made smooth and round by the action of water or sand. Have a specially crafted handcrossbow to fire the stone? Lol
I think the bigger problem is the difference of making a ranged spell attack and making a ranged weapon attack with regards to the first bullet point of the Sharpshooter feat, allowing for ranged weapon attacks being made without disadvantage at long range. Since ranged spell attacks and ranged weapon attacks are, AFAIK, basically mutually exclusive, this build, which depends on making ranged spell attacks, wouldn't get the first benefit from sharp shooter, limiting it to usual 30/120 ft range of the sling. At least that's the problem I ran into recently while trying to build my own Swarmkeeper...
Makes a goblin that does not know they are magical. He just reaches into the bag to find "the good ones" and he cast magic stones without realizing it 😆
Magic item suggestion: The Two-Birds Sling from the Theros Book - "When you make a ranged attack with this sling and hit a target, you can cause the ammunition to ricochet toward a second target within 10 feet of the first, and then make a ranged attack against the second target."
About the constant upkeep in casting, I once used a PAMlock with a Staff of the Adder. While out adventuring, I would reactivate the snake head every minute or so, and the compromise that the DM and I reached is that when combat began I would roll a d10 to see how many rounds were left before it expired (since your character won't know exactly which of the 10 rounds per minute combat will break out). Try running that by your DM if they won't autoaccept the precast magic stone.
Also, couple RAW issues touched on in this video (not big changes, but it does affect it on the edges). 1) You can't ritual cast Find Familiar from Arcane Trickster, they lack the Ritual Casting feature and it's not a druid spell for you to use their Ritual Casting 2) You can only have one familiar, as both the druid feature and the spell involve casting the spell "Find Familiar." You can change the familiar's form when you recast it, though. 3) Interesting wrinkle with the sell Magic Stone. I don't recall the exact logic, but I recall awhile back in a RAW group that anything that boosts your spell attack modifier will stack with your ranged attack. If you have a wand of the war mage (or Enhanced arcane focus from the Artificer class) it will add, as well as a +1 sling (or repeating shot infusion). This gets a bit messy as you'll have to drop the wand to load the sling, and burn a "Use object interaction" to pick it back up before you fire, but it does help. As such, you should be able to get +2 to hit, and +1 to damage, if I recall correctly, with a 2 level dip into Artificer. I believe this is the Crawford Tweet: twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/940654827683631110?fbclid=IwAR1EkV8wg7aZMuX8kefR1AG8b1ITWuwACfU8ozAYcClv8rY6dr2qCH1swuc
I allowed that as a DM. But I ruled that if they rolled a 1 on the d10, then they had disadvantage on any dex save vs. traps, initiative rolls, etc. cuz they were caught while casting. Just to make it a little bit of a pro/con decision for them to be doing that.
I asked my DM about letting Magic Stone scale by adding to the number of stones you can enchant at one time. 3 at level 1, 5 at 5, 7 at 11, 9 at 17. It's really nice for keeping up with extra attack and preserving my bonus action. You could also propose 3-4-5-6 if they don't like 2 per scale-up.
Slings are THE weapon you bring to a skeleton infested crypt , rarely any thing ever satisfying as dealing 40 damage to a skelton with sharpshooter and a pebble XD
Heads up: you cannot benefit from the casting of Find Familiar twice, so you cannot have 2 familiars this way. I wish it wasn't so, but the Druid's Wild Shape replacement specifically states that you cast a modified version of the Find Familiar spell, so it would not combine with your Wizard version of the spell.
15:30 could RP that as PTSD. Who hurt this person? Do they need to make a saving throw in order to resist compulsively refreshing magic stone in inappropriate situations? Do the other PCs think they're insane? Do they refresh it more frequently when they're stressed out? Do they kind of tick sometimes when they cast it? Or rock back and forth?
Give the character a tick where they are always fidgeting by moving the pebbles around in their hand, like worry stones, casting the cantrip on them. Unless a surprise combat happens while they're hands were occupied, they always have magic stones on hand, literally. Plus it is a fun character quirk.
Goodberry > cure wound imho Zephyr's Strike is _so_ good - lets you use a bonus round to move if something ends its turn next to you. DMs love to put monsters in your face, if you're a ranged attacker.
My approach to the always casting magic stone problem would be for my character to invent a common magic item. Satchel of Magic Stones: This small pouch can store up to 20 stones, instantly transforming them into magic stones (as per the magic stone spell). The stones remain magical for up to 1 minute after they leave the pouch.
Great build Colby! Love that the sling has a narrow but awesome use. Ever thought of doing a build as a Kobold that focuses on animate object + summons? They cast spells that create allies and then they grovel, cower, and beg to give them advantage. Basically after turn 1 of a fight they just sit there useless and crying while doing big damage
Thanks! on the list! That said, I wonder if we could consider our animated objects as "allies," technically... hmmmm... it would seem almost silly to argue otherwise, but I can see some DMs getting hung up...
This would make an excellent vampire themed character! Use bats as your swarm, summon bat familiars, and shape shift into a bat. Absolutely love the build!
I was not expecting that, really! I'm very impressed that this build is actually very good, and all features only works because of the sling. Really good build, amazing me as always!
Love it. I’m picturing a fighter version of this that uses rune knight as an anti-David hurling bolders. Also let’s you push more creatures with crusher. Maybe those last three levels. 🤔
There is one other way of using your spellcasting ability to attack with a sling. Battle Smith Artificer with the Repeating shot infusion. I was literally working on that build yesterday. (But I still love the build! As usual)
This is one of the most clever and fun builds you have done so far! Im DMing for a swarmkeeper right now, and Ill be advising her to watch this. I would love to see a conquest paladin build for control/tanking sometime, maximizing the fear mechanic. giving a ton of enemies disadvantage on attack rolls and immobilizing them seems like it could be utilized creatively. perhaps a candidate for a 2-character build with a glass cannon melee build to dart in and take out debuffed enemies.
Thanks! You might enjoy this if you haven't seen it yet... (though the conquest pally bit comes on a little late) ua-cam.com/video/sV8MhBajXtE/v-deo.html
Very creative build, thanks so much! And I am sure there are DMs out there that would support it with regards to extra attack because it's more interesting than CBE and not overpowered. And also I wanted to say that I am happy for you that you have more and more sponsors! You deserve it 🙂 And by the way, I backed the Battlezoo Bestiary because of your ad 😉
I think if I make this character it would be a dryad and the magic stones are essentially acorns, while the swarm is twig blights. I would really want to use Hail of Thorns (hail of acorns) as well but only when not concentrating on spike growth. (Parts of this may not be mine originally, but I have had it in my head for a while, possibly thanks to someone here)
While spike growth does have higher damage potential, I think there's a really good spell that hasn't been mentioned that can (sort of) deal with the need for advantage: Web. (you get the spell anyway as part of the subclass) Web is able to restrain enemies in an area when they enter it or when they start their turn in the area, it also becomes difficult terrain. Now the interesting thing is how this combos with gathered swarm. A creature that escapes the web is not likely to have enough movement to get far enough away or into melee range due to the difficult terrain, which means that if you can hit them after they get out you can force them to make a save and throw them right back in if they fail. If you don't need to put anyone back into the sticky zone you can attack those inside with advantage because they are restrained. This might have less individual dpr but assuming that the wizard isn't chucking a fireball at it then it's massively boosting the dpr of your teammates while having massive control of the battlefield. Better yet, if someone else casts web(or a similar spell like black tentacles) then you can cast spike growth and throw them around inside the area, dying the webs red with blood. I was actually thinking of what build might work for bulling enemies with web and I forgot that swarmkeeper was also the swarm yeeter. Instead of starting with druid you can start as a fighter and pick up archery, then pick up druidic fighter from ranger. It's a little slower since you won't have the right stats from level 1-2 but if you're starting at level 3, no problem. Doesn't give as many spell slots but does allow you to pick up samurai for the 3/long rest advantage on all attack rolls per turn. I'm not sure how worth this is(I'm not much of a number cruncher) Another way to use a sling is as a ranged side-arm on a bladesinger. It's only an extra 1d4+dex(or 1d6+INT if you take artifice initiate or 1 level arty dip, or 2d4+dex if you go for dual wielding and hang a bunch of loaded slings off your belt to switch to) but it's better than nothing. But if ranged bladesinger is what you're going for it's better to just go drow(or astral elf) and focus on hand crossbows or to pick up the gunner feat on variant human if your gm allows it.
I like how a tonne of people I know, me included, make some of the weirdest swarms. My friend is going to have a swarm of ducks and I have made one which is just a gang of meerkats. To clarify something, these meerkats all have a name.
I absolutely adore this build. As a huge fan of rangers, and a sucker for SAD builds, and someone who just LOVES optimizing with rarely used weapons, this character is right up my alley! Thank you for the build :)
I love this build so much. Such a cool concept. I’ll be using variant human for mine. I picture a young little girl with her sling and her little magic friends.
I've been playing this build and really love it, my main confusion is how you missed that it's impossible to have 2 familiars at once! Because Wild Companion just says you cast the Find Familiar spell we have to use its full text which does state that "You can't have more than one familiar at a time. If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, you instead cause it to adopt a new form." Feels like a biiiig change from RAW to allow two familiars and it wasn't mentioned in the build haha.
I spent a lot of time considering a form of this build too, with magic stone and sling, so I'm really happy you made this. I definitely missed a few steps in my calculations, because you got it to work in a way that I couldn't. In the end I built a melee swarmkeeper with a whip, slasher feat, blindfighting, fog cloud, and some rogue dip for sneak attack. It doesn't deal as much damage, but it is very effective.
Mage Hand Story (in short): My DM contrived an epic tourney that came down to a 3 on 3 mounted combat between my party and the BBEG's Lieutenant. The Lord Herald waves the flag, combat is on, to the Death! My rogue casts Mage hand and un buckles the saddle of the Lieuy, fail Dexterity, he is on the ground. Our DM is awesome and we love him but all's fair...P.S. love the build. I'd also like to see more niche' builds.
This was great inspiration, I discovered that a Loxodon can double up on the Enhanced Weapon and Enhanced Arcane focus for a +4 a/d roll on Magic Stone!
Amazing build Colby! So fun and thematic and I also sing with joy seeing the Sling put to good use. But a quintessential slinger for me must be a halfling. David vs Goliath vibe is strong in this one. Missing out on the starting feat, but one can always resort to begging for the sake of the vibe xD
i may be mistaken, but you can cast spike growth, and the cantrip magic stone. magic stone is both a cantrip, and a bonus action spell. which is allowed to cast at the same time you cast a regular spell!
It's been a while since I've commented. But I just have to say that this is hands down my favorite build so far Colby! I think I'm on my 7th time watching this. My group starts our new campaign in two weeks and I'm going to be playing a variation of this with the gunner feat and my swarm will be a single animal. I think for flavour this works perfectly if you want to play a beastmaster where your animal companion is used more for control instead of damage. Thanks for the inspiration. Keep it up!
I'm doing a similar build using the 2024 rules. High Elf (Booming blade) will be good til 5th level in Melee and as a reaction attack with War Caster Feat. Guide (Shillelagh, Magic Stone, Healing Word) this way I can still take a fighting style with ranger level 2. Wisdom Based Swarm Ranger (5levels)/War Cleric, utilizing Magic Stone and Shillelagh cantrips. By level 8, I'll be able to cast spike growth and War Priest bonus action attack in the first round. After that will be 3 attacks a round until I run out of War Priest uses. 🤙 Potentially 6D4+1D6+5 with Magic Sling Stone + 15ft push and Slowed weapon mastery. Try escaping the spike growth in difficulty terrain and having 10 feet less movement! Ha! Or 6D4+1D10+5 with Shillelagh Quarterstaff + 15ft push and Topple weapon mastery. Now you can't do anything but stand up in the spike growth on your turn! Haha! 😊 EDIT: Going Druid is an option too, since I won't be using Sharp shooter. Circle of the Sea seems really good. Another 15ft push with a CON save this time. Very interesting!
Recommendation for saving youtube cards: make optimized playlists by class, i.e. a warlock class playlist would have a level 20 warlock build, but also every hexblade dip. Then, when you make a build you can use the cards to link to the playlists that use the same classes as in the build from the video.
If the build wasn't already so feat dependent, then I would probably find a way to include spell sniper to double the range, however that might be a good way to get the spell at level 1 with variant human or custom lineage, for a different kind of sling build
Could you do a 4/5 member party composition with optimized characters only? Maybe with newer builds or builds you've already done? Would be lit to get an overview of a crazily optimized power party that also complement each other well. PS. Absolutely love your optimized character series
Thanks! I get this request fairly often, but I'm just not sure I'll ever have the time to put it all together :). Or maybe it'd just be the Starry Twilight Build + the Bladesinger Nova (for perma dim light) coupled with the Yin Yang team up build :P.
a suggestion i would make for this build is to drop druid and go 3 levels samurai fighter. this gives us a fighting style, action surge for nova damage, and at 3rd level we can use fighting spirit to get advantage on both of our attacks without needing the complicated setup. 4 levels fighter to get the extra ASI early could also work.
Fighter is a good option, but when I look at Swarmkeeper ranger samurai isn't the fighter that jumps to mind for theming with the swarm. Echo knight gives great tools to use with the swarm that can all be flavored as your swarm doing something awesome.
I'd 100% allow this at my table, very few questions asked. I would like to point out, however, that I believe Jeremy Crawford's two cents on this (however valuable those cents may be), are that Magic Stone benefits attacks in general, ranged attacks, or spell attacks, but not weapon attacks. So while it would work with Extra Attack, which doesn't specify weapon attacks, it would not work with options that require you to attack with a "weapon". Even if you are using a sling.
When I built my swarmkeeper I chose circle of the stars druid and multiclassed one level into Cleric (arcana domain for more cantrips) to get access to healing word. exceptional healing with chalice form. Guiding bolt for free. If you ever get into melee range you can use Shillelagh, bonk your enemies with booming blade and push them away to gtfo.
RAW, Magic stone is a spell attack whether thrown or used as sling ammunition. It absolutely should count as a weapon attack though, and I would count it that way in-game. It's a spell I don't see often. Rangers usually go long-bow, druids use other spells, and it's on the artificer list, but is almost useless to them, as they all get better options at level 3.
Your videos are awesome! Sometimes i can't really follow what you are saying, because I'm quite new to DnD, but you're so positive about everything that you say that I keep going and watch how happy you are:-)
Such a fun build. Post Tasha’s I think ranger may be my favorite class. While I know they are not top tier the fact that they are middle of the pact is all I need. Keep up the great work.
I think the absolute best Mage Hand user is a capped intelligence Arcane Trickster that takes Telekinetic but only after learning it from Arcane Trickster, in order to double the range it is usable in. (I'm actually really surprised you've never mentioned that little bit from Telekinetic or utilized it, Colby!)
I was just looking up some of the UA options again, and ‘strike of giants’ feat and ‘Keenness of stone giant’ The strike of giants stone giant option counts for melee and thrown weapon attacks, so stacks with current path of giants UA subclass. Now, the Keenness of the stone giant will work as a magical ranged attack you imbue you PB worth of stones to become 1D10 bludgeoning damage using STR, CON, or WIS mod for hit and damage (using the stat you upgraded with this feat) “the magic remains in the rock until you hit with it or finish a long rest” Even if you can’t double dip magic stone with this, you can still have some extra high powered rocks that also knock creatures prone. Might not remain like this and might not be stackable, but it decently keeps in theme for this concept. So,
Actually says it has the thrown weapon property so it seems to stack together. you can stack this, that could be 1D6+ 1D10 + mod. For a PB worth of stones. And that means str test or be pushed 10ft + (selected mod) be knocked prone) and crusher feat will also stack. I like the idea of this on the UA path of giants.
Also Colby have you heard of a supplement called Playing Dead? It’s on the DMs Guild. It contains a Druid subclass called Circle of the Host, which gives you a beehive or something that your body is host too. I would pair that with Swarmkeeper for the flavour alone.
I was imagining slinging Goodberries to heal at range and slinging hornets for poison damage. A range version of the Way of Mercy Monk. Not for gameplay, just for giggles.
Something I like to rule with Magic stone is that you can use it on whatever small things you could throw. In which case, my favorite ideas for a swarmkeeper with magic stone is either a swarmkeeper with a swarm of chickens using magic stone on their eggs, or a crazy cat lady with a swarm of cats that she casts magic stone on to throw at her opponents.
Are you reading my mind Colby? Spying on me? My friend asked me to figure out a rogue healer after I made him a bard tank. So I was like, use the healer feat and thief. Then use alchemist to make more healing with the elixirs. Then he was like what’s next? I responded, well nature cleric gives me magic stone and bless, combined with a sling and sharpshooter and 2 levels of ranger I have a scary accurate rock pelter wearing heavy armor! After that he just kinda looked at me funny. You guys get me though, building is fun!!! Also I always liked the idea of combining this with fey wanderer to double duty as the face of the group and have powerful summons to gang up on people. And turning your mage hand invisible is in character because you wanted little fairies as a swarm, and little fairies would totally turn invisible and then pick locks and pockets for you!!!
Mage hand shenanigans: I have a swarmkeeper and a wild magic sorcerer playing in their first games that lasted more than 2 sessions. I have given them a few iconic items by giving them a bag of holding and an immovable rod, weighing 15lbs and 5lbs respectively. They came up with the idea of putting themselves in the bag (both small races) from the shoulders down, and putting the strap of the bag around the immovable rod. Then using the collective 20lbs of lift and 2 actions of the mage hand they can pilot it around like a little flying machine, click it in place and drop some snipes from above. I love playing with my engineer friends.
I LOVED my Snobold (dm homebrew), shep druid, Mastermind rogue lv 3. Our cleric loved the hawk spirit reaction for his guiding bolt, ba help action, action atk/heal or grovel for more advantages. The kobold makes the hawk spirit actually good, plus the kobold got adv with pact tactics...
One of my Adventurer's League characters is a Swarmkeeper Ranger/Mercy Monk combo (mostly a monk). His swarm is black and white butterflies. Healing with the white butterflies, harming with the black butterflies.
Something interesting about magic stone and his effective range. When you throw a normal stone it has a 30/60 ft of range, but using Magic Stone you can throw it at max range (60 ft) without disadvantage; this is important because this max range "passive" carries to the sling, effectively letting you shoot your shots to creatures 120 ft away without disadvantage. (Also, funny thing, real life slings shots can be as strong [if not more] as a 9 mm bullet)
@@DnDDeepDive please lose your mind more often. It reminded me how fun the game is when you optimized a character for roleplay instead of being a yummy yum crunchy number festival.
Only thing that could make the mage hand use better would be the telekinetic feat to get 60ft range. The bonus action is already saturated in this build but the feat comes with a fun shove than can even help allies move out of harms way or shove enemies.
love me some magic stone builds as i use this spell alot as additional dpr. btw i love the outtakes you include at the end of the vids. they weren't there before i took a "hiatus." since you took arcane trickster, the circle of the shepherd dip feels redundant. it just adds to the bonus action clog to use the hawk totem. you could've just used steady aim and the familiar to get your 2 advantage attacks. the wild companion is just completely inferior to the wizard version. since you were hankering for more sustained dmg, you could've just converted those 2 levels of circle of shepherd to 2 more rogue arcane trickster levels. or perhaps dipped genie lock 1 for genie's wrath. or if you were willing to consider a "limited resource" sustained, dipped psi warrior 3 for psionic strike (this is a sustained dmg bonus for me as you get a ton of psionic energy dice).
16:00 I think I’ve figured out how to rp this, you’re paranoid because you’re used to being in trouble & needing to defend yourself from threats. This works especially well with subclasses like Swarmkeeper because you could reason that you’re something of an outsider, what with you constantly being surrounded by a cloud of wasps or whatever. This works with the sling because it is traditionally a lowly, common weapon. I’d take the Urchin or Criminal background for extra flavour.
To think you also had this idea! I made a build like this 2 months ago! Just couldn’t resist stacking a magic +3 weapon with a magic +3 focus and some magic +3 ammunition and sharpshooter… and then favored foe. and i could take hex through fey touched. i chose fey wanderer, because afaik dreadful strikes does not specify the kind of attack you must hit with. though i missed the thing about extra attack. i thought it was like shillelagh. i shouldn’t have made it a half elf… sorry, i’ll go back to watching your video ^^"
I like combining Swarmkeeper Ranger, and Circle of Spores. So I can kill my enemies from afar with Necrotic daming as a reaction and turn them into Zombies. I like the theme of Infecting my fire ants swarm wth Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis. So I'll put a bunch of arrows in their body, and with their last bit strength as they crawl toards me to reach form my foot, my Ants will bite them and infect them Lanect Liver Flukes and turning them into Zombies. and then I use the Zombies as meet shields.
I feel like a reasonable solution to the magic stone issue would be to assume that, the spell and the material components both being pretty much free, the character will prepare a set amount of ammo every time the party takes a rest. If they have any magic stones left over at the end of the day, the enchantment wears off once a long rest has been completed. Totally on brand for a druid, since they'll already be prepping their spell list after every long rest anyway; and even if your DM loves to play with resource scarcity, they may not love it enough to run an entire combat encounter start to finish with the ranged damage dealer pausing after every three shots to cast a cantrip on some pebbles. At least. You know. Not *twice* ...
I absolutly love Swarmkeeper + Sling + Magic Stone + Crusher if you also have a battlefield controllmage with black tentacles/Wall of Fire or wathever or a Sentinel Character in your Party, the added utility of moving enemys would be great, consider Goliath as a Race for better crusher feat (Height) and maybe Telekinetic Feat for even more enemy moving, and better Magehand.
Good if you want to use sling, but not if your primary desire is to play Swarmkeeper. Swarmkeeper has such a huge synergy with PAM+GWM feats, that I would have problem playing with any other build. Just take 1st level as Fighter for CON saves, heavy armour and GWF FS, continue as Swarmkeeper. You get 3 attacks from lvl 6, you have free disengage (which pairs well with reach weapon and Ranger's bonus movement), you can later hover 10ft above enemy, so he cannot reach you, but you can, you can knock enemy prone with your swarm and follow with 2 attacks with advantage and at higher levels, you can profit from Guardian of Nature extremely well - 3 attacks with advantage, each with +1d6 bonus from GoN, +10 from GWM, once with +1d8 from swarm, ability to knock enemy prone and move 15ft, base movement 45ft (50 as Half-Elf). I don't know, how accuracy works in your calculations, but with +2 weapon, we are talking about 2x 1d10+1d6+17; 1x 1d4+1d6+17 and once 1d8 from swarm. So potential average dmg is 83.13 (before accuracy is considered) - and there are no "ifs" (if your enemy is in Spike Growth, if he is not successful with save, if he can be pushed anywhere,...). And you still get other Ranger goodies like temporary HPs from lvl 11, ability to turn invisible if needed (don't forget how well it pairs with Steel Wind Strike!), 1d10 HPs, good AC,... I find a lot of people talking about Rangers' lack of DMG increase at higher levels - they seem to forget that most Rangers get additional attacks at lvl 11 (Hunter, HW, BM, GS, arguably even FW), they all get nice source of advantage from lvl 10 (Nature's Veil) and fantastic boost from lvl 13 - Guardian of Nature (advantage and extra 1d6 dmg to each hit is huge!). And when they get to lvl 17, they get Steel Wind Strike, which can be used either with Nature's Veil or with GoN to do 5 attacks with advantage, each for 6d10 - this is average dmg of 181.1 per turn (before accuracy is considered). As a Sling build, I would probably rather build Kensei Monk with Sharpshooter and archery FS for 3 attacks per round (for the most time), up to 1d10 of weapon dmg, no drawback in melee and superb mobility, but this is exactly the build, that could use any other weapon for the same results (even Dart), so I get your point here and you get thumbs up for theme and flavour ;-).
Been a while since I heard that song. Does it mean what I think it does, brother? Also, great build! I love seeing uncommon weapons being used to great effect. Any hopes of seeing a blowgun get the same treatment?
Through Arcane Trickster you can get the Silvery Barbs spell. Great way to get advantage for one of your attacks when you don’t have your wild shape and to protect your allies/yourself
I thought this was a cute build idea in the beginning... and then the Arcane Trickster kicked in. Now I want to build myself a version and see what it would look like at a game. Nice job
Your characters armor should be 16. Hide armor, Dex modifier and shield. Even ancient armies field their slingers with shields, it was one of the reasons that they were preferred over bowmen until really good bows were available. If you are worried about the somatic component to cast a spell, just make the thong on the side of your sling long enough to tie to your wrist and "drop" it when you need to cast your spell. You might want to mention that the damage from The Magic Stone, shot from a sling, should be 1d6+your spellcasting ability modifier (3), or 1d6+3. The casting the spell every minute was what I used to do with Shillelagh, only I did it every six seconds. The DM quickly told me to stop, and he allowed me to have at least 9 melee rounds of shillelagh whenever combat began. 3ed level Rogues only get 2d6 sneak attack damage. Arcane Tricksters don't have Ritual Casting. Druids do, but only to cast Druid spells.
I have one heck of a mage hand story. We're playing ToA and we're level 11, and we decide we want to go shopping for magic items in Port Nyanzaru. We pick up some cool things, don't remember exactly what as this was a couple years ago now but the merchant says they have one item they could show us but we probably won't be able to afford. Us being curious of course want to see what it is, and lo and behold they bring out a Ring of Three Wishes which was 200,000 GP. We of course definitely cannot afford this but are excited that we can possibly get it if we save up. However, our rogue decides to play it risky, using his invisible mage hand and rolling a Nat20 Sleight of Hand check to steal the Ring from its box and before anyone can do anything he puts it on and wishes for everyone to know that the ring always belonged to him and that everyone who knows of its existence knew it was his, and it worked. Any hostility was immediately defused and he became the owner of the ring. Fortunately for my DM, the player was merciful with his last two wishes and just wished us all to be resistant to fire and that his ruined mansion that he bought back in Thundertree was rebuilt. An ancient red dragon in Chault did start coming for him once he claimed the ring but fortunately we managed to avoid that encounter once he used the last wish. Moral of the story is: don't show any super expensive magic items to a rogues, especially ones with an invisible mage hand
The stingshot is a build I've worked on. Different route though. I did an arcane stingshot. Had Arcane cleric with infestation and booming blade. Ranger swarmkeeper ranger. Also Bladesinger wizard.
Let's talk about something I should have discussed in the video: the potential conflict between "make a ranged spell attack" and using a weapon to make that attack. The wording for Magic Stone says that we (or someone else) can throw the stone or use a sling to throw it, and to do so we "make a ranged spell attack." Contrast that with the Archery fighting style, which tells us that you get a "+2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons." Similarly, the Sharpshooter feat says that you can make the attack at -5 to hit, +10 to damage when you "attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with." To me, there is no prohibition here from these features benefitting from a spell attack, so long as the spell attack is made with a ranged weapon we're proficient in (i.e. by putting the stone in a sling). Obviously, you and/or your DM may disagree. Now, making a ranged spell attack is 100% not the same thing as taking the attack action. So there's *definite* conflict with, say, Extra Attack. These are all absolutely things you'll want to discuss with your DM before playing this character in game, and I apologize for not bringing them up in the video! :)
Thank you so much for clarifying and finding an awesome way to use a sling 😁
Only half serious. A pebble is a small stone made smooth and round by the action of water or sand. Have a specially crafted handcrossbow to fire the stone? Lol
I think the bigger problem is the difference of making a ranged spell attack and making a ranged weapon attack with regards to the first bullet point of the Sharpshooter feat, allowing for ranged weapon attacks being made without disadvantage at long range. Since ranged spell attacks and ranged weapon attacks are, AFAIK, basically mutually exclusive, this build, which depends on making ranged spell attacks, wouldn't get the first benefit from sharp shooter, limiting it to usual 30/120 ft range of the sling. At least that's the problem I ran into recently while trying to build my own Swarmkeeper...
This would be a great topic for a Quick Ruling in the next Slidin' into my DM's.
@@TheOnlyRealIRONicMAN Correct. I must often fight on small battlefields, as that hasn't often been a problem for me when I'm playing ranged :)
Makes a goblin that does not know they are magical. He just reaches into the bag to find "the good ones" and he cast magic stones without realizing it 😆
Magic item suggestion: The Two-Birds Sling from the Theros Book - "When you make a ranged attack with this sling and hit a target, you can cause the ammunition to ricochet toward a second target within 10 feet of the first, and then make a ranged attack against the second target."
if a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, then 2 birds in the hand is better, of course
@@ghostfather1390 winner winner (double) chicken dinner
@@benoleno96 winner winner chicken chicken dinner dinner heh heh
oh oh
I I can't can't seem seem to to stop stop
@@ghostfather1390 well well you'd you'd better better
that attack would be made with dexterity with the original d4+dex. but it would be fun to push even more enemies around in your thorns
Level 1:(see above) [druid 1, race ]
Level 2:(see above) [ranger 1]
Level 3:(@17:55) [ranger 2 & fighting-style]
Level 4:(@18:55) [ranger 3 & sub-class]
Level 5:(@22:30) [ranger 4 & ASI]
Level 6:(@22:59) [ranger 5]
Level 7:(see above) [druid 2 & sub-class]
Level 8:(@32:47) [ranger 6]
Level 9:(@33:25) [ranger 7]
Level 10:(see above) [tanger 8 & ASI]
Level 11:(@36:19) [rogue 1]
Level 12:(@37:51) [rogue 2]
Level 13:(@38:13) [rogue 3 & sub-class]
Level 14:(see above) [rogue 4 & ASI]
Level 15:(@47:02) [rogue 5]
Level 16:(@47:31) [rogue 6]
Level 17:(@47:41) [rogue 7]
About the constant upkeep in casting, I once used a PAMlock with a Staff of the Adder. While out adventuring, I would reactivate the snake head every minute or so, and the compromise that the DM and I reached is that when combat began I would roll a d10 to see how many rounds were left before it expired (since your character won't know exactly which of the 10 rounds per minute combat will break out). Try running that by your DM if they won't autoaccept the precast magic stone.
Also, couple RAW issues touched on in this video (not big changes, but it does affect it on the edges).
1) You can't ritual cast Find Familiar from Arcane Trickster, they lack the Ritual Casting feature and it's not a druid spell for you to use their Ritual Casting
2) You can only have one familiar, as both the druid feature and the spell involve casting the spell "Find Familiar." You can change the familiar's form when you recast it, though.
3) Interesting wrinkle with the sell Magic Stone. I don't recall the exact logic, but I recall awhile back in a RAW group that anything that boosts your spell attack modifier will stack with your ranged attack. If you have a wand of the war mage (or Enhanced arcane focus from the Artificer class) it will add, as well as a +1 sling (or repeating shot infusion). This gets a bit messy as you'll have to drop the wand to load the sling, and burn a "Use object interaction" to pick it back up before you fire, but it does help. As such, you should be able to get +2 to hit, and +1 to damage, if I recall correctly, with a 2 level dip into Artificer.
I believe this is the Crawford Tweet:
twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/940654827683631110?fbclid=IwAR1EkV8wg7aZMuX8kefR1AG8b1ITWuwACfU8ozAYcClv8rY6dr2qCH1swuc
What is a pamlock
@@snazzyfeathers Polearm Master Warlock
@@snazzyfeathers Polearm master warlock. Often a hexblade, pact of the blade, but not always.
I allowed that as a DM. But I ruled that if they rolled a 1 on the d10, then they had disadvantage on any dex save vs. traps, initiative rolls, etc. cuz they were caught while casting. Just to make it a little bit of a pro/con decision for them to be doing that.
I asked my DM about letting Magic Stone scale by adding to the number of stones you can enchant at one time. 3 at level 1, 5 at 5, 7 at 11, 9 at 17. It's really nice for keeping up with extra attack and preserving my bonus action. You could also propose 3-4-5-6 if they don't like 2 per scale-up.
I really like this idea. Unlike Shillelagh, it makes a lot of sense for this one to have some sort of scaling to keep up.
fantastic
If your custom liniage turtle, the swarm could live in your shell!
I like that alot.
Or you could be a grung and rp a Suriname toad for a horror campaign.
Slings are THE weapon you bring to a skeleton infested crypt , rarely any thing ever satisfying as dealing 40 damage to a skelton with sharpshooter and a pebble XD
Heads up: you cannot benefit from the casting of Find Familiar twice, so you cannot have 2 familiars this way. I wish it wasn't so, but the Druid's Wild Shape replacement specifically states that you cast a modified version of the Find Familiar spell, so it would not combine with your Wizard version of the spell.
15:30 could RP that as PTSD. Who hurt this person? Do they need to make a saving throw in order to resist compulsively refreshing magic stone in inappropriate situations? Do the other PCs think they're insane? Do they refresh it more frequently when they're stressed out? Do they kind of tick sometimes when they cast it? Or rock back and forth?
Give the character a tick where they are always fidgeting by moving the pebbles around in their hand, like worry stones, casting the cantrip on them. Unless a surprise combat happens while they're hands were occupied, they always have magic stones on hand, literally. Plus it is a fun character quirk.
I thought you might go Circle of Stars: Archer when you grabbed Druid lvl 2, but the Shepherd does fit perfectly for a young King David
Never have I so consistently looked forward to a weekly UA-cam video. Great stuff!
Goodberry > cure wound imho
Zephyr's Strike is _so_ good - lets you use a bonus round to move if something ends its turn next to you. DMs love to put monsters in your face, if you're a ranged attacker.
Goodberry as dollops of honey from your bees.
@@cloauldew nice!
@@cloauldew Zephyr's Strike could be Killer Bee Strike!
My approach to the always casting magic stone problem would be for my character to invent a common magic item.
Satchel of Magic Stones: This small pouch can store up to 20 stones, instantly transforming them into magic stones (as per the magic stone spell). The stones remain magical for up to 1 minute after they leave the pouch.
Swarmkeeper and horizon walkers are my favorites ranger subclasses flavour wise, so I consider this vídeo as a personal gift hahaha
Great build Colby! Love that the sling has a narrow but awesome use. Ever thought of doing a build as a Kobold that focuses on animate object + summons? They cast spells that create allies and then they grovel, cower, and beg to give them advantage. Basically after turn 1 of a fight they just sit there useless and crying while doing big damage
Thanks! on the list! That said, I wonder if we could consider our animated objects as "allies," technically... hmmmm... it would seem almost silly to argue otherwise, but I can see some DMs getting hung up...
@@DnDDeepDive the Animate Object spell describes the objects as “creatures”, so thinking of these creatures as allies seems totally reasonable.
@@michaellavy3269 Makes sense to me. They are basically created summons.
@@michaellavy3269 I'd agree. I mean, if they're not allies... what are they? Definitely not enemies...
Crusader's Mantle spell?
This would make an excellent vampire themed character! Use bats as your swarm, summon bat familiars, and shape shift into a bat. Absolutely love the build!
Excited for a David build lol.
I love the idea of high fiving my hand shaped swarm spirits after an awesome move
Can I just say, that the little song you sang at the beginning really made me smile? I love those moments of impromptu creativity 🤗
I was not expecting that, really! I'm very impressed that this build is actually very good, and all features only works because of the sling. Really good build, amazing me as always!
Thanks!
I agree. This is one of the builds too where all of the choices feel right to me. Both for RP, Utility and combat effectiveness.
Love it.
I’m picturing a fighter version of this that uses rune knight as an anti-David hurling bolders. Also let’s you push more creatures with crusher. Maybe those last three levels. 🤔
I *almost* went Rune Knight :).
@@DnDDeepDive Fire Rune also applies to any weapon attack, not just melee. So… stack it up!!
There is one other way of using your spellcasting ability to attack with a sling. Battle Smith Artificer with the Repeating shot infusion. I was literally working on that build yesterday. (But I still love the build! As usual)
It also takes away the need for a bonus action cantrip casting
@@androlgenhald476 Yep, having Int as our attack stat is really nice if we can get it. Went this route with my Blood Hunter build...
That opening song made me smile. I haven't heard it in a long time.
If you know, you know.
It was a pleasant surprise!
This is one of the most clever and fun builds you have done so far! Im DMing for a swarmkeeper right now, and Ill be advising her to watch this.
I would love to see a conquest paladin build for control/tanking sometime, maximizing the fear mechanic. giving a ton of enemies disadvantage on attack rolls and immobilizing them seems like it could be utilized creatively. perhaps a candidate for a 2-character build with a glass cannon melee build to dart in and take out debuffed enemies.
Thanks! You might enjoy this if you haven't seen it yet... (though the conquest pally bit comes on a little late) ua-cam.com/video/sV8MhBajXtE/v-deo.html
@@DnDDeepDive I had missed this one! Thanks!
@@DnDDeepDive ah yes now that I've watched it, it's exactly what I had in mind! That sounds so fun to play. Great stuff as always
Very creative build, thanks so much! And I am sure there are DMs out there that would support it with regards to extra attack because it's more interesting than CBE and not overpowered.
And also I wanted to say that I am happy for you that you have more and more sponsors! You deserve it 🙂 And by the way, I backed the Battlezoo Bestiary because of your ad 😉
Thanks! And good to know!
As soon as I heard the primary song I knew it was gonna be a good build.
Loved that into singing. Wasn't expecting that
*psst* your utah is showing
Share with us this primary day and be our friend in a very special way
@@chickenman2489 😬😬😂😂
Hello, hello, hello, hello. Im glad i came your way.....to share with you on dungeoning day and to smite the dragons in an optimized way..
ha! yes!
40:00 need telekinetic feat to 'technically" be the best mage hand user.
I think if I make this character it would be a dryad and the magic stones are essentially acorns, while the swarm is twig blights. I would really want to use Hail of Thorns (hail of acorns) as well but only when not concentrating on spike growth. (Parts of this may not be mine originally, but I have had it in my head for a while, possibly thanks to someone here)
While spike growth does have higher damage potential, I think there's a really good spell that hasn't been mentioned that can (sort of) deal with the need for advantage: Web. (you get the spell anyway as part of the subclass)
Web is able to restrain enemies in an area when they enter it or when they start their turn in the area, it also becomes difficult terrain. Now the interesting thing is how this combos with gathered swarm. A creature that escapes the web is not likely to have enough movement to get far enough away or into melee range due to the difficult terrain, which means that if you can hit them after they get out you can force them to make a save and throw them right back in if they fail. If you don't need to put anyone back into the sticky zone you can attack those inside with advantage because they are restrained.
This might have less individual dpr but assuming that the wizard isn't chucking a fireball at it then it's massively boosting the dpr of your teammates while having massive control of the battlefield. Better yet, if someone else casts web(or a similar spell like black tentacles) then you can cast spike growth and throw them around inside the area, dying the webs red with blood.
I was actually thinking of what build might work for bulling enemies with web and I forgot that swarmkeeper was also the swarm yeeter.
Instead of starting with druid you can start as a fighter and pick up archery, then pick up druidic fighter from ranger. It's a little slower since you won't have the right stats from level 1-2 but if you're starting at level 3, no problem. Doesn't give as many spell slots but does allow you to pick up samurai for the 3/long rest advantage on all attack rolls per turn. I'm not sure how worth this is(I'm not much of a number cruncher)
Another way to use a sling is as a ranged side-arm on a bladesinger. It's only an extra 1d4+dex(or 1d6+INT if you take artifice initiate or 1 level arty dip, or 2d4+dex if you go for dual wielding and hang a bunch of loaded slings off your belt to switch to) but it's better than nothing. But if ranged bladesinger is what you're going for it's better to just go drow(or astral elf) and focus on hand crossbows or to pick up the gunner feat on variant human if your gm allows it.
Love that spoiler alert :P. Also thank you. Im literally brainstorming a swarm keeper build using slings. Also, go go chicken swarm keeper
Haha awesome, I'm working on a strength based grappler one gotta keep them inside the ensnare/web!
Kind of want to make a kobold artificer with swarm lvl 3 who uses a sling
The boy in the green tunic shivers in fear
I like how a tonne of people I know, me included, make some of the weirdest swarms. My friend is going to have a swarm of ducks and I have made one which is just a gang of meerkats.
To clarify something, these meerkats all have a name.
ha!
I'm going to use this, or some variation of this to build a Kobold PC. One of their signature weapons is a sling.
I absolutely adore this build. As a huge fan of rangers, and a sucker for SAD builds, and someone who just LOVES optimizing with rarely used weapons, this character is right up my alley! Thank you for the build :)
I love this build so much. Such a cool concept. I’ll be using variant human for mine. I picture a young little girl with her sling and her little magic friends.
I've been playing this build and really love it, my main confusion is how you missed that it's impossible to have 2 familiars at once! Because Wild Companion just says you cast the Find Familiar spell we have to use its full text which does state that "You can't have more than one familiar at a time. If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, you instead cause it to adopt a new form."
Feels like a biiiig change from RAW to allow two familiars and it wasn't mentioned in the build haha.
I spent a lot of time considering a form of this build too, with magic stone and sling, so I'm really happy you made this. I definitely missed a few steps in my calculations, because you got it to work in a way that I couldn't. In the end I built a melee swarmkeeper with a whip, slasher feat, blindfighting, fog cloud, and some rogue dip for sneak attack. It doesn't deal as much damage, but it is very effective.
Mage Hand Story (in short): My DM contrived an epic tourney that came down to a 3 on 3 mounted combat between my party and the BBEG's Lieutenant. The Lord Herald waves the flag, combat is on, to the Death! My rogue casts Mage hand and un buckles the saddle of the Lieuy, fail Dexterity, he is on the ground. Our DM is awesome and we love him but all's fair...P.S. love the build. I'd also like to see more niche' builds.
Ha! Awesome!
i love the use of hawk spirit. Not the most usually considered application of this ability
This was great inspiration, I discovered that a Loxodon can double up on the Enhanced Weapon and Enhanced Arcane focus for a +4 a/d roll on Magic Stone!
Amazing build Colby! So fun and thematic and I also sing with joy seeing the Sling put to good use. But a quintessential slinger for me must be a halfling. David vs Goliath vibe is strong in this one. Missing out on the starting feat, but one can always resort to begging for the sake of the vibe xD
Thanks for returning the calm music. Great video again btw.
i may be mistaken, but you can cast spike growth, and the cantrip magic stone.
magic stone is both a cantrip, and a bonus action spell. which is allowed to cast at the same time you cast a regular spell!
It's been a while since I've commented. But I just have to say that this is hands down my favorite build so far Colby! I think I'm on my 7th time watching this. My group starts our new campaign in two weeks and I'm going to be playing a variation of this with the gunner feat and my swarm will be a single animal. I think for flavour this works perfectly if you want to play a beastmaster where your animal companion is used more for control instead of damage. Thanks for the inspiration. Keep it up!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed and hope you have fun!
I'm doing a similar build using the 2024 rules.
High Elf (Booming blade) will be good til 5th level in Melee and as a reaction attack with War Caster Feat.
Guide (Shillelagh, Magic Stone, Healing Word) this way I can still take a fighting style with ranger level 2.
Wisdom Based Swarm Ranger (5levels)/War Cleric, utilizing Magic Stone and Shillelagh cantrips.
By level 8, I'll be able to cast spike growth and War Priest bonus action attack in the first round. After that will be 3 attacks a round until I run out of War Priest uses. 🤙
Potentially 6D4+1D6+5 with Magic Sling Stone + 15ft push and Slowed weapon mastery. Try escaping the spike growth in difficulty terrain and having 10 feet less movement! Ha!
Or
6D4+1D10+5 with Shillelagh Quarterstaff + 15ft push and Topple weapon mastery. Now you can't do anything but stand up in the spike growth on your turn! Haha! 😊
EDIT: Going Druid is an option too, since I won't be using Sharp shooter. Circle of the Sea seems really good. Another 15ft push with a CON save this time. Very interesting!
Recommendation for saving youtube cards: make optimized playlists by class, i.e. a warlock class playlist would have a level 20 warlock build, but also every hexblade dip. Then, when you make a build you can use the cards to link to the playlists that use the same classes as in the build from the video.
If the build wasn't already so feat dependent, then I would probably find a way to include spell sniper to double the range, however that might be a good way to get the spell at level 1 with variant human or custom lineage, for a different kind of sling build
Could you do a 4/5 member party composition with optimized characters only? Maybe with newer builds or builds you've already done?
Would be lit to get an overview of a crazily optimized power party that also complement each other well.
PS. Absolutely love your optimized character series
Thanks! I get this request fairly often, but I'm just not sure I'll ever have the time to put it all together :). Or maybe it'd just be the Starry Twilight Build + the Bladesinger Nova (for perma dim light) coupled with the Yin Yang team up build :P.
Props to you, Colby
Making a sling wielding build so much fun-looks like a blast to play!
a suggestion i would make for this build is to drop druid and go 3 levels samurai fighter. this gives us a fighting style, action surge for nova damage, and at 3rd level we can use fighting spirit to get advantage on both of our attacks without needing the complicated setup. 4 levels fighter to get the extra ASI early could also work.
Fighter is a good option, but when I look at Swarmkeeper ranger samurai isn't the fighter that jumps to mind for theming with the swarm. Echo knight gives great tools to use with the swarm that can all be flavored as your swarm doing something awesome.
I'd 100% allow this at my table, very few questions asked. I would like to point out, however, that I believe Jeremy Crawford's two cents on this (however valuable those cents may be), are that Magic Stone benefits attacks in general, ranged attacks, or spell attacks, but not weapon attacks. So while it would work with Extra Attack, which doesn't specify weapon attacks, it would not work with options that require you to attack with a "weapon". Even if you are using a sling.
I was having a cruddy morning and your singing intro here was wonderful for helping me out. THANKS!
Ha ha any time! :)
When I built my swarmkeeper I chose circle of the stars druid and multiclassed one level into Cleric (arcana domain for more cantrips) to get access to healing word. exceptional healing with chalice form. Guiding bolt for free. If you ever get into melee range you can use Shillelagh, bonk your enemies with booming blade and push them away to gtfo.
I really like the arcane trickster dip. The utility is wonderful AND it advances your spell casting which is a very nice side-effect.
RAW, Magic stone is a spell attack whether thrown or used as sling ammunition. It absolutely should count as a weapon attack though, and I would count it that way in-game. It's a spell I don't see often. Rangers usually go long-bow, druids use other spells, and it's on the artificer list, but is almost useless to them, as they all get better options at level 3.
Your videos are awesome! Sometimes i can't really follow what you are saying, because I'm quite new to DnD, but you're so positive about everything that you say that I keep going and watch how happy you are:-)
Ha ha thanks! Glad you are here :)
Such a fun build. Post Tasha’s I think ranger may be my favorite class. While I know they are not top tier the fact that they are middle of the pact is all I need. Keep up the great work.
I think the absolute best Mage Hand user is a capped intelligence Arcane Trickster that takes Telekinetic but only after learning it from Arcane Trickster, in order to double the range it is usable in. (I'm actually really surprised you've never mentioned that little bit from Telekinetic or utilized it, Colby!)
Oh nice! Another build I will try out in a one shot!
I was just looking up some of the UA options again, and ‘strike of giants’ feat and ‘Keenness of stone giant’
The strike of giants stone giant option counts for melee and thrown weapon attacks, so stacks with current path of giants UA subclass.
Now, the Keenness of the stone giant will work as a magical ranged attack you imbue you PB worth of stones to become 1D10 bludgeoning damage using STR, CON, or WIS mod for hit and damage (using the stat you upgraded with this feat) “the magic remains in the rock until you hit with it or finish a long rest”
Even if you can’t double dip magic stone with this, you can still have some extra high powered rocks that also knock creatures prone.
Might not remain like this and might not be stackable, but it decently keeps in theme for this concept.
So,
Actually says it has the thrown weapon property so it seems to stack together. you can stack this, that could be 1D6+ 1D10 + mod. For a PB worth of stones.
And that means str test or be pushed 10ft + (selected mod) be knocked prone) and crusher feat will also stack.
I like the idea of this on the UA path of giants.
So excited to watch this build unfold!
Also Colby have you heard of a supplement called Playing Dead? It’s on the DMs Guild. It contains a Druid subclass called Circle of the Host, which gives you a beehive or something that your body is host too.
I would pair that with Swarmkeeper for the flavour alone.
I was imagining slinging Goodberries to heal at range and slinging hornets for poison damage. A range version of the Way of Mercy Monk. Not for gameplay, just for giggles.
Character is a juggler, constantly juggling the 3 magic stones, recasting it whenever they can feel that it has lapsed.
Keep up the good work, Colby and crew :D
Something I like to rule with Magic stone is that you can use it on whatever small things you could throw.
In which case, my favorite ideas for a swarmkeeper with magic stone is either a swarmkeeper with a swarm of chickens using magic stone on their eggs, or a crazy cat lady with a swarm of cats that she casts magic stone on to throw at her opponents.
I love this. I like the idea of hummingbirds for the swarm.
Are you reading my mind Colby? Spying on me? My friend asked me to figure out a rogue healer after I made him a bard tank. So I was like, use the healer feat and thief. Then use alchemist to make more healing with the elixirs. Then he was like what’s next? I responded, well nature cleric gives me magic stone and bless, combined with a sling and sharpshooter and 2 levels of ranger I have a scary accurate rock pelter wearing heavy armor! After that he just kinda looked at me funny. You guys get me though, building is fun!!!
Also I always liked the idea of combining this with fey wanderer to double duty as the face of the group and have powerful summons to gang up on people. And turning your mage hand invisible is in character because you wanted little fairies as a swarm, and little fairies would totally turn invisible and then pick locks and pockets for you!!!
Nice!
Mage hand shenanigans: I have a swarmkeeper and a wild magic sorcerer playing in their first games that lasted more than 2 sessions. I have given them a few iconic items by giving them a bag of holding and an immovable rod, weighing 15lbs and 5lbs respectively. They came up with the idea of putting themselves in the bag (both small races) from the shoulders down, and putting the strap of the bag around the immovable rod. Then using the collective 20lbs of lift and 2 actions of the mage hand they can pilot it around like a little flying machine, click it in place and drop some snipes from above. I love playing with my engineer friends.
Ha! Awesome!
sadly Mage hand can't activate magic items, we tried something similar with a rope and immovable rod.
I LOVED my Snobold (dm homebrew), shep druid, Mastermind rogue lv 3. Our cleric loved the hawk spirit reaction for his guiding bolt, ba help action, action atk/heal or grovel for more advantages. The kobold makes the hawk spirit actually good, plus the kobold got adv with pact tactics...
Oh and the sneak atk isn't much, but the slingshot gets sneak too...
One of my Adventurer's League characters is a Swarmkeeper Ranger/Mercy Monk combo (mostly a monk). His swarm is black and white butterflies. Healing with the white butterflies, harming with the black butterflies.
Something interesting about magic stone and his effective range.
When you throw a normal stone it has a 30/60 ft of range, but using Magic Stone you can throw it at max range (60 ft) without disadvantage; this is important because this max range "passive" carries to the sling, effectively letting you shoot your shots to creatures 120 ft away without disadvantage.
(Also, funny thing, real life slings shots can be as strong [if not more] as a 9 mm bullet)
"Who cares about the damage?" Who are you and what have you done with Colby? XD
Ha ha! Sorry, lost my mind for a sec. Won't happen again >.>
@@DnDDeepDive please lose your mind more often. It reminded me how fun the game is when you optimized a character for roleplay instead of being a yummy yum crunchy number festival.
This may be the build that gets me to try the Swarmkeeper. Thank you.
Woo hoo!
Only thing that could make the mage hand use better would be the telekinetic feat to get 60ft range. The bonus action is already saturated in this build but the feat comes with a fun shove than can even help allies move out of harms way or shove enemies.
love me some magic stone builds as i use this spell alot as additional dpr. btw i love the outtakes you include at the end of the vids. they weren't there before i took a "hiatus."
since you took arcane trickster, the circle of the shepherd dip feels redundant. it just adds to the bonus action clog to use the hawk totem. you could've just used steady aim and the familiar to get your 2 advantage attacks. the wild companion is just completely inferior to the wizard version. since you were hankering for more sustained dmg, you could've just converted those 2 levels of circle of shepherd to 2 more rogue arcane trickster levels. or perhaps dipped genie lock 1 for genie's wrath. or if you were willing to consider a "limited resource" sustained, dipped psi warrior 3 for psionic strike (this is a sustained dmg bonus for me as you get a ton of psionic energy dice).
16:00 I think I’ve figured out how to rp this, you’re paranoid because you’re used to being in trouble & needing to defend yourself from threats. This works especially well with subclasses like Swarmkeeper because you could reason that you’re something of an outsider, what with you constantly being surrounded by a cloud of wasps or whatever. This works with the sling because it is traditionally a lowly, common weapon. I’d take the Urchin or Criminal background for extra flavour.
Don't forget Create Bonfire, let your swarm shove them back into it. It uses concentration, but it is an extra option.
To think you also had this idea!
I made a build like this 2 months ago!
Just couldn’t resist stacking a magic +3 weapon with a magic +3 focus and some magic +3 ammunition and sharpshooter…
and then favored foe. and i could take hex through fey touched.
i chose fey wanderer, because afaik dreadful strikes does not specify the kind of attack you must hit with.
though i missed the thing about extra attack. i thought it was like shillelagh.
i shouldn’t have made it a half elf…
sorry, i’ll go back to watching your video ^^"
I like combining Swarmkeeper Ranger, and Circle of Spores. So I can kill my enemies from afar with Necrotic daming as a reaction and turn them into Zombies.
I like the theme of Infecting my fire ants swarm wth Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis.
So I'll put a bunch of arrows in their body, and with their last bit strength as they crawl toards me to reach form my foot, my Ants will bite them and infect them Lanect Liver Flukes and turning them into Zombies.
and then I use the Zombies as meet shields.
Lake Isle of Innisfree is my favourite poem 🤩 amazing!!
I feel like a reasonable solution to the magic stone issue would be to assume that, the spell and the material components both being pretty much free, the character will prepare a set amount of ammo every time the party takes a rest. If they have any magic stones left over at the end of the day, the enchantment wears off once a long rest has been completed. Totally on brand for a druid, since they'll already be prepping their spell list after every long rest anyway; and even if your DM loves to play with resource scarcity, they may not love it enough to run an entire combat encounter start to finish with the ranged damage dealer pausing after every three shots to cast a cantrip on some pebbles.
At least. You know. Not *twice* ...
The zoom in at 36:50 is so good.
I absolutly love Swarmkeeper + Sling + Magic Stone + Crusher if you also have a battlefield controllmage with black tentacles/Wall of Fire or wathever or a Sentinel Character in your Party, the added utility of moving enemys would be great, consider Goliath as a Race for better crusher feat (Height) and maybe Telekinetic Feat for even more enemy moving, and better Magehand.
Lol nice opening. I think I know how you spent your childhood Sunday mornings!
Good if you want to use sling, but not if your primary desire is to play Swarmkeeper.
Swarmkeeper has such a huge synergy with PAM+GWM feats, that I would have problem playing with any other build.
Just take 1st level as Fighter for CON saves, heavy armour and GWF FS, continue as Swarmkeeper.
You get 3 attacks from lvl 6, you have free disengage (which pairs well with reach weapon and Ranger's bonus movement), you can later hover 10ft above enemy, so he cannot reach you, but you can, you can knock enemy prone with your swarm and follow with 2 attacks with advantage and at higher levels, you can profit from Guardian of Nature extremely well - 3 attacks with advantage, each with +1d6 bonus from GoN, +10 from GWM, once with +1d8 from swarm, ability to knock enemy prone and move 15ft, base movement 45ft (50 as Half-Elf).
I don't know, how accuracy works in your calculations, but with +2 weapon, we are talking about 2x 1d10+1d6+17; 1x 1d4+1d6+17 and once 1d8 from swarm. So potential average dmg is 83.13 (before accuracy is considered) - and there are no "ifs" (if your enemy is in Spike Growth, if he is not successful with save, if he can be pushed anywhere,...).
And you still get other Ranger goodies like temporary HPs from lvl 11, ability to turn invisible if needed (don't forget how well it pairs with Steel Wind Strike!), 1d10 HPs, good AC,...
I find a lot of people talking about Rangers' lack of DMG increase at higher levels - they seem to forget that most Rangers get additional attacks at lvl 11 (Hunter, HW, BM, GS, arguably even FW), they all get nice source of advantage from lvl 10 (Nature's Veil) and fantastic boost from lvl 13 - Guardian of Nature (advantage and extra 1d6 dmg to each hit is huge!). And when they get to lvl 17, they get Steel Wind Strike, which can be used either with Nature's Veil or with GoN to do 5 attacks with advantage, each for 6d10 - this is average dmg of 181.1 per turn (before accuracy is considered).
As a Sling build, I would probably rather build Kensei Monk with Sharpshooter and archery FS for 3 attacks per round (for the most time), up to 1d10 of weapon dmg, no drawback in melee and superb mobility, but this is exactly the build, that could use any other weapon for the same results (even Dart), so I get your point here and you get thumbs up for theme and flavour ;-).
25:30 magic stone is a cantrip. You can cast spiked growth and magic stone on the same turn
Another good job with this character keep up the good work
Been a while since I heard that song. Does it mean what I think it does, brother?
Also, great build! I love seeing uncommon weapons being used to great effect. Any hopes of seeing a blowgun get the same treatment?
It probably does :). Blowgun user on the list!
@@DnDDeepDive I knew it! That said, it's a little odd that I haven't heard it in a while seeing as I'm a primary teacher... I blame covid xD
@@MatthewDragonHammer ha!
That intro freaked me out. I haven’t heard that song in 20+ years… you sly sob
Through Arcane Trickster you can get the Silvery Barbs spell. Great way to get advantage for one of your attacks when you don’t have your wild shape and to protect your allies/yourself
I thought this was a cute build idea in the beginning... and then the Arcane Trickster kicked in. Now I want to build myself a version and see what it would look like at a game. Nice job
Build Suggestion: A spellcaster that focuses on Acid and Poison damage, using the elemental adept feat or poisoner feat
On the list!
Your characters armor should be 16. Hide armor, Dex modifier and shield. Even ancient armies field their slingers with shields, it was one of the reasons that they were preferred over bowmen until really good bows were available. If you are worried about the somatic component to cast a spell, just make the thong on the side of your sling long enough to tie to your wrist and "drop" it when you need to cast your spell.
You might want to mention that the damage from The Magic Stone, shot from a sling, should be 1d6+your spellcasting ability modifier (3), or 1d6+3.
The casting the spell every minute was what I used to do with Shillelagh, only I did it every six seconds. The DM quickly told me to stop, and he allowed me to have at least 9 melee rounds of shillelagh whenever combat began.
3ed level Rogues only get 2d6 sneak attack damage.
Arcane Tricksters don't have Ritual Casting. Druids do, but only to cast Druid spells.
I have one heck of a mage hand story. We're playing ToA and we're level 11, and we decide we want to go shopping for magic items in Port Nyanzaru. We pick up some cool things, don't remember exactly what as this was a couple years ago now but the merchant says they have one item they could show us but we probably won't be able to afford. Us being curious of course want to see what it is, and lo and behold they bring out a Ring of Three Wishes which was 200,000 GP. We of course definitely cannot afford this but are excited that we can possibly get it if we save up. However, our rogue decides to play it risky, using his invisible mage hand and rolling a Nat20 Sleight of Hand check to steal the Ring from its box and before anyone can do anything he puts it on and wishes for everyone to know that the ring always belonged to him and that everyone who knows of its existence knew it was his, and it worked. Any hostility was immediately defused and he became the owner of the ring. Fortunately for my DM, the player was merciful with his last two wishes and just wished us all to be resistant to fire and that his ruined mansion that he bought back in Thundertree was rebuilt. An ancient red dragon in Chault did start coming for him once he claimed the ring but fortunately we managed to avoid that encounter once he used the last wish. Moral of the story is: don't show any super expensive magic items to a rogues, especially ones with an invisible mage hand
on my current swarmkeeper build the first asi/feat i took was eldrich innitate taking the mage armor option, and with a sheild i have a AC of 18
The stingshot is a build I've worked on. Different route though. I did an arcane stingshot. Had Arcane cleric with infestation and booming blade. Ranger swarmkeeper ranger. Also Bladesinger wizard.
Awwwww... no metal intro music. 😭 But looking forward to seeing if you can actually make a sling usable... 🧐