Bilbron Scribe Wizard - Character Build Series - D&D 5e 

Make sure to check out my other two videos about Order of Scribes Wizard! Review and Ratings Series: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z7LUBI9aviw.html Deep Dive Series Optimization: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-arVQCuip1H8.html

You had me at goblin wizard. My last character was a goblin diviner built to be as roguish as possible. It was so fun, and very effective. That bonus action hide is a hell of thing on a spellcaster. And that was pre Tasha's. I think Goblin makes an S tier caster race now that you can have a +2 in a mental stat. A couple thoughts on spell choices: I would look to pick up tiny hut + glyph of warding by 6th level, leaving summon fey off the list in favor of picking up hypnotic pattern when it should be (as soon as humanly possible lol). Glyph of warding is a very elegant spell for the Scribe. It provides 4 types for your fireball, while also being an excellent spell to cast through Manifest Mind. Tiny Hut is an excellent ritual spell that I believe every wizard should take regardless of additional synergy. Low opportunity cost and it combines very well with MM to give you a combo that can break encounters. Magic Circle is a spell I would be looking to get a scroll of as soon as possible. (For those times when the enemies can't seem to leave the mind alone) I love your use of Summon Greater Demon (and believe it's one of the best uses for MM), but would also like to give a huge shout out to Conjure Elemental. I believe that deserves to be a consideration for Scribes. The trick with Conjure Elemental is that you can summon it through MM and then immediately drop concentration. The elemental will be hostile, but the party is off safe in the distance. It lasts for an hour this way, as opposed to the 1d6 rounds a demon sticks around after dropping concentration. You can cast a second concentration spell the next turn and enjoy the power of two concentration spells at once. My favorite spell for this is cloudkill as the elementals are immune to the poison damage. Cloudkill also benefits greatly from Awakened Spellbook on its own. Bigby's Hand is a naturally strong spell that helps it get around its terrible damage type. Another bit of elegance. I would also personally snatch up Tasha's Otherwordly Guise + Investiture of Stone to curate immunities, but as I mentioned in your scribes analysis vid, this requires a big grey area around the wording of Awakened Spellbook and the game's definition of spells and damage types. If your DM rules in favor of this I think the only reason to not take it is because you want to temper back your power level. I don't think the Scribes Wizard has to lean so heavily on blasting. I think Fireball (and maybe Cloudkill) are enough. From there, a standard God Wizard build that utilizes Manifest Mind to its fullest will make for a very strong character.

I'm making a Goblin Wizard for a CoS campaign starting in a few weeks. It's quite the coincidence that this video appeared in my feed. ;) Radiant fireballs for days my friend!

I feel like something was overlooked here and so far I have seen anyone mention it so maybe I am wrong. But the awakened spellbook just allows you to cast the spell with the normal casting time. So Guards and Wards has a casting time of 10 minutes. Not as a ritual, just 10 minutes. The wording for the awakened mind ability is "When you cast a wizard spell as a ritual, you can use the spell’s normal casting time, rather than adding 10 minutes to it. Once you use this benefit, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest". That states specifically that you are removing the penalty for casting a ritual. Another spell you might think you could cast in combat due to this ability, but actually couldn't would be Tiny Hut. The tiny hut is a ritual. However, the original casting time is 1 minute. So, as a ritual, 11 minutes. If you are burning a spell slot, 1 minute. So a scribes wizard could cast this 1x / day with a 1 minute casting time. Not sure if this was brought up or not

The new spell Summon Draconic Spirit is a MUST!!! It gives you literally every elemental damage type!! So good!

It’s really cool seeing you on the gianttip forums and then sometimes seeing some of those conversations get reflected in videos. Specifically thinking of the recent thread on “what’s the best race for wizard post-Tasha’s” where goblin got brought up.

Thank you for your work 🙂

So, one thing I did was cast mass suggestion on a bunch of people, and because the spell lasts so long without need concentration I managed to get them to build the party a home base for free then I used other spells to wipe their memory of the event.

Bilbron's channel is great and he has a lot of intelligent insights that can help players be more effective in combat - I'm very grateful for his content I hope he keeps making great videos. However, I'd like to warn new players consuming this content as this could possibly lead some of you astray. He doesn't give any consideration to the world in which his character lives - a world full of peasants, guards, kings, heroes, etc. He focuses enirely on the mechanical advantage of the spells & features while ignoring the narrative consequences. D&D is a game of storytelling - you're all contributing to a group narrative. A character who summons demons in that living, breathing world would be considered criminal in most kingdoms - possibly sent to prison, maybe executed. Demon summoning, necromancy, enchantment - these practices would be criminal in most of the kingdoms of the forgotten realms, for example. Don't ignore the narrative for the sake of building a powerful character!

I once played a really fun barbarian rogue combination which did massive amounts of damage when it got off a sneak attack with. BTW if your playing a home game your DM will probably let you use some non-finesse weapons for sneak attack.

Greater invisibility would be a good concentration spell to have on this character as they can remain hidden far more easily.

One thing I like to do is cast concentration spells on a glyph of warding because that way I don't need to make concentration checks though it cost 200 gold a piece so please use responsibly. I personally used it to summon a few elementals when the party went up against an adult dragon which we were no where near strong enough to handle on our own so the multiple elementals coming out of the wood works were the only reason we survived the encounter along with clever use of mold earth to create cover because dragon breath.

I'm kinda surprised you didn't incorporate the ultimate blast spell, IMHO - Sickening Radiance. If you can trap a group in a room with your spellbook, they're dead. Also, IMHO, taking Misty Step as a Wizard spell is fine, and if you drop Dissonant Whispers, you can take Magical Secrets (Warlock) to give Eldritch Blast, another cantrip of your choice, and Hex or some other nice spell. I'm surprised you didn't list the multiple damage type spells to mesh with Awakened Spellbook, such as Dragon's Breath (also good to use on your familiar), Glyph of Warding, and Illusory Dragon (mentioned in your other videos). Still, I love (and didn't think about) the use of Conjuration/Summon spells through the Magical Mind.

I love the concept of this build. Personally, I would do the nuke from cover with animate objects, using force damage from bigbsy’s hand. Although it’s just funny to upcast a summoned demon and let it do the work for you as well.

Using shape change to become a pit fiend or dragon is a very fun thing to do.

I don't see why blink is not utilized more. In my wizard builds it is very very good. No concentration, yea you take yourself out of play for counterspell, but you can usually get a feel of what you will be facing and during the fight work around it... like kill the enemy wizard first! I have at this point played this character for over 2 years and never been unhappy that I cast it... I have had times when I was unhappy that I did not cast it by the way. And yes the goblin works well with a wizard build I play a shep druid that is a goblin and it feels at times that the hide action is an overkill. For a scribe wizard I think I would rather enjoy a flying creature...?? like an Owlin, but I get the synergy of the hide... you could make a barrel,, or in my case a cloud illusion... even 5 foot square to hover inside with no need to actually hide. But the class is amazing.. I will be playing one in my next campaign for sure. Good luck . God bless

Hi! First of all I wanted to thank you for the guide, you gave me some nice stuff to work on. Secondly I had a question for which I couldn't find the answer anywhere else: Due to the fact that absorb elements can be casted at higher levels, if I wanted to cast a Fireball made of acid am I able to make it just using absorb elementes to change the damge type or I really need a third level spell that allows me to do it? Thanks and keep up the great work!

Additionally, If you fed into that blasting archetype they want you to. You can use your Manifested Mind Spells to "Pre Nuke" Encounters and make it easier for your team to come clean up afterwards.

I totally forgot about the goblin's free disengange. I wonder if githyanki would still be better though for medium armor and a free misty step at level 5.

Any thoughts on using the bonus action Hide provided by Haste to get a poor man's version of a hide wizard? Obviously concentration is an issue, but a chronurgist can address that at 10+.

So thought: scribe wiz uses summon fey @4th level. Chooses Force dmg from within Fey spell. Would summon Fey be able to be its own dmg type change source for casting it at 4th and above?

Any good suggestions for something besides fey touched? My DM is not allowing it as it does not fit the story ( same for the shadow version).

is a 3rd level fireball still good spell at late levels of play?

Hey, I am currently playing this build. But where do you get the skill in stealth from? Or do you just get it once you get stealthy?

I would like to play this build but I plan to play AL. Any suggestions for a replacement for the race, since goblins are AL illegal?

Really good build, i wanna try something like this, but sicne we rolled stats mine are really good and i could easily take 13 wis without loosing int/dex/con, would it be worth taking a 1 lvl dip into cleric? if so would knowlegde, twilight or maybe something else be fitting?

While you might not need a dip for more AC on a "you're not even in the room" build (I'd even debate MA)... I still hold that the last level of Wizard sucks, and level 18 is kinda limited (albeit potentially awesome). Dipping a toe in Sorcerer or the right domain of Cleric could be useful if you could swing the stat reqs somehow, even for a Scribe Wizard (admittedly not as thematic perhaps but still). Also, be careful with using Wish to get necrotic Meteor Swam... some DMs might not allow that as technically the other spells cast from Wish are not originally 9th level, and a self-damage side effect might not count (certainly against RAI). If the DM does rule against the necrotic MS, Psychic Scream / Weird for psychic damage or Prismatic Wall for acid, lightning, and cold gives you a good variety of alternatives, and somehow I doubt anything would be immune to all of those (not to mention that in theory using 9th level for a single burst of damage tends to underachieve compared to other options).

so b/c wish can do necro damage to you, that counts as being able to do necro to change meteor swarm?

how are you taking mind sliver? isn't it limited to sorc and warlocks?

So how are you changing the damage to force damage with level 3 spells? You can only change it to type of the same slot used that appears in your awakened spellbook. Absorb Elements and Elemental Bane and Other Similar spells are really strong for adding options if you have a few rounds to slap mobs around with a few different types of damage to "Discover" potential weaknesses.

I can only find "Dissonant Whispers" on the bard spell list. What am I missing?

What is stealthy? Did you mean skulker?

Do you mean Skulker? Stealthy isn't a feat.

Guards and wards is not ritual, big sad.