The Arcane Spellbow - d4 #78 

the advantages of not needing a save to push an enemy hehe

Right? Of course, a DC 10 Str check is basically nothing, but hey, waste those turns! :)

It warms the cockles of my black half-orc heart to see you two supporting each other. Bravo, gentleman.

@@justenyoderyoder1294 I'm so glad to have learned the word "cockle" goes other places than just preceding "doodle-doo"

But you always have disadvantage with it....

Hexblade 5 Swrods bard 15 trust me it is sick

@@Razdasoldier this was one route I was gonna do with my swords bard but i went rogue instead for swashbuckler. We only got to lvl 9 anyway so it turned on just in time.

@@sauceploxx4565 Swashbuckler is such a great add-on for anyone who focuses on melee combat. I love them.

I'm going to be an Arcane Archer by being a Battlesmith Artificer soon

They are relentless and without mercy.

Yes, totally! 🤣🥰

500% brother

Super dope man! Taking this

No way, the dm will say that the target is prone and now you have disadvantage on ranged attacks.

Mission Accomplished! :)

U do need devils sight forthat, but thats awesome! Partymembers gonna hate you tho

It would be so much better for the arcane shots to scale with either intelligence or proficiency. (Intelligence because it is so often a dump stat.)

It should at least be like the spell slots of the Warlock, slowly increase and recharge on a short rest would make going straight arcane archer more viable.

Yeah I love it as a dip to boost a ranger or rogue build but it gets the biggest bang out of just 3 levels.

It is a great dip for some characters. F.I. Horizon Walker Ranger can change that Grasping Arrow dmg from Poison to Force, which helps extremely on high levels. Arcane Archer also recharges everything on short rest, but Ranger has everything limited by long rest, so those two help a lot. Other than that, Ensnaring Strike + Grasping Arrow work nice together - Enemy needs 2 actions to get out of both effects, one is damaging him on every move, second is damaging him every round. Just take 1st level as Fighter, then 5 as Horizon Walker, then 2 as Arcane Archer and continue all the way till lvl 17 in HW and 3 in AA. You don't need CBE feat, only SS, I would also probably go Half Elf for Piercer and Elven Accuracy (to profit both from spells like GoN, Zephyr Strike and Restrained Condition of enemies), rest in WIS for better saves. Let party move that grasped enemy to deal bonus dmg to him...

I played one and we made it scale with profiency and work closer to "grit" from Matt's gun slinger. It was really balanced and made the subclass fun.

Plus, the advantage of Hex at higher levels over Spirit Shroud is the ability to cast it and then get a short rest in before starting your adventuring day. Less nova, more general use. Hard to argue against Spirit Shroud once it's 2d8 and you have 3 spell slots, though.

Is getting free from a net an ability check, I thought it was a save? (Though I am not looking at the rules this moment, so I could be misremembering.)

Elegant in its simplicity, I like it. 👍

Thanks! :)

@@DnDDeepDive if you get a chance, one of the things I've been working with is a circle of the star's druid. My character is a reborn race and one of the things I got going for him is the only solid memory he has during his first death was the blinding beautiful stars up above him and then that's the first thing he also notices when he wakes back up as a reborn. Keep making great content and I will keep watching

Me too! :)

Was not expecting warlock, great plot twist

Awesome! Thanks for the kind words :).

Post-video report: Well, that didn't go the way I thought he would. Not disappointed with the results, though. The day before the video dropped I had the realization that Arcane Archer is structured like a Warlock: rely on normal attacks/cantrips for sustained damage, and when you need to do something big you have a very limited, but short-rest-dependent resource to draw from. So, combining the two just makes sense! I was hoping for a sustained damage build, but given what I just said nova probably makes more sense. Though as Colby pointed out, this build does have pretty decent sustained damage, and being able to do the full nova 1-2 times per short rest is super nice. So well done with the nova/sustained hybrid! All that said, I was mildly surprised and somewhat saddened to not see Battlesmith. Between Battle Ready eliminating MAD and the weaponized bonus action of the Defender, it could pair nicely with AA. Ah well, there's about 10,000 different ways to build a given character concept, and Colby's used a lot more Artificer than Warlock lately.

Can you elaborate on how you're doing this for your player? Trying to see how my DM and I cna be flexible with this class without having to take sharpshooter so early to be useful.

nice the rock reference.

Ooooooo I like that. Could use trip attack instead quick toss. More risk but better damage output.

@@attackduck9768 why trip attack? That would give you disadvantage on your ranged attacks. Pushing attack though would trigger grasping shot.

I think he is only planning on using Quick Toss, maybe that's why?

For this build they would be functionally identical as you would always want to use quick toss, but I think martial adept is the better pick because while you still only get a single d6 superiority die, it does let you pick two maneuvers.

martial adept is indeed the superior pick. or better yet get both so you have 2 superiority die that refresh on a short rest.

Ha ha!

So you made a plane?

@@Ouch193 Yup! An invisible plane that’s bigger on the inside.

If you want to make it even more fun you can make a Fish Bowl by combining the DoD bead with a Bead of Force. Bubble does force damage the (hopefully) envelopes a creature in a sphere almost filled with water. Whole thing only weighs a pound too, so go ahead and catapult it for good measure.

I'd keep the action surge for burst if you're doing eldritch blast anyway as your sustained dmg would be good enough and there's more value to bursting an enemy down early on by swinging the action economy to your side. I made a similar ranged attack + eldritch blast bladesinger last year. did a bunch of dmg both burst and sustained while having tons of spell slots available for defensive/utlilty spells. hope you don't mind I'll share my level 10 theorycraft here (played until level 16 though) and maybe you or others reading may pick up ideas: "the stoneslinger" fighter 2, bladesinger 6, hexblade 2 half-drow fighting style: superior technique-ambush asi: elven accuracy-cha invocations: agonizing blast, misty visions key spells: eldritch blast, tiny servant, magic stone tactics: pre-combat: create 2 tiny servants. use arcane recovery to recover a 3rd level slot. standing orders to pick up a magic stone you drop and throw it at your target. walk around in misty visions (choose an illusion atmospheric effect appropriate to the environment such as smoke, fog, mist, etc). continuous cast magic stone while walking. feel free to cast armor of agathys if expecting combat soon. round 1: bonus action: hexblade's curse the bbeg (walk out of the illusion then back in if you need to close distance) free action: drop 1 of the magic stones action: throw/sling 1 of the magic stones and agonizing blast x2 at super advantage action surge: throw/sling 1 of the magic stones and agonizing blast x2 at super advantage tiny servant 1: throw 1 of the magic stones at advantage tiny servant 2: does nothing reaction: shield, absorb elements, counterspell or hellish rebuke round 2 onwards: bonus action: cast magic stone free action: drop 2 of the magic stones action: throw/sling 1 of the magic stones and agonizing blast x2 at super advantage tiny servant 1: throw 1 of the magic stones at advantage tiny servant 2: throw 1 of the magic stones at advantage on turn 1 it bursts for 18d20 rolls with a 19-20 to crit. one of them is bound to crit and all attacks will most likely hit. each magic stone you throw/sling is dealing 1d6 + 8 and each agonizing blast is doing 1d10 + 8. without factoring crits on round 1 it's bursting for 3d6 + 4d10 + 52. that's 84.5 average burst dmg at level 10 without critting and the burst round on average should roll 1-2 crits. sustained dpr is 3d6 + 2d10 + 32 on 9 d20 rolls. that's an average of 53.5 sustained without critting. depending on DM fiat, you can have familiar drop caltrops or inhaled poisons around the battlefield or simply help your ally. The build was quite fun to play as i only used 1 level 3 spell slot and was dealing tons of dmg off of cantrips. all 1st level (including pact slots) and 2nd level slots were free to use. of course once i got to level 11 it got bonkers as eldritch blast scaled. went bladesinger the rest of the way for contingency.

@@TheRobversion1 Sir, I think you and I will have many conversations regarding builds in the future! Love it!!

@@TaylorAP13 Cool. glad you liked it. sure feel free to start a discussion with me if you see me anywhere of colby's comments section. :)

Eeeeeeagleeeeeee!

Earthbender build???

Indeed - I think the move might be permanent, but we'll see how the analytics treat the change :).

Thanks! Ok, got it on the to do list.

I've done a few to date, mostly Swords and Whispers, but this is probably the closest to what you're thinking... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VWZxs60tXgM.html

he has done a necromancer already. i suggest trying to find a way to be a player like either joining VTTs like forged concordance or have your players dm one-shots for you.

Ha ha thanks :). Journey before destination.

taking it a step further, it gives you a way to hit through a wall of force. another way to see through solid walls is through scribe wizard and placing the book within the walls.

fighter is arguably the best class to start in for any build and fighter 2 is also arguably one of the best multiclass dips in the game (in competition with hexblade).

@@TheRobversion1 totally

I originally planned on using it and/or Cloud of Daggers but the setup got a little too laborious :). But yes, if you could afford to throw out Spike Growth on Round 1, I'd say go for it, you'd just have to give up either Eldritch Smite or Spirit Shroud until very late game when we got a 3rd spell slot.

@@DnDDeepDive yeah exactly, I think I prefer the spike growth for the large radius, but if every there was a reason to action surge, battlefield control is one of them! The utility between the spike growth/ eldritch smite certainly give better coverage for what the spellbow can do against multiple/ single enemies! Keep up the great work! 😀

Repelling blast / Pulling blast + Spike Growth makes your EB on par with a bow with SS more or less.

heya jim. nice variation. wish i could play with an undead warlock but it's banned at my table. mine was an arcane archer 3, swords bard 4, hexblade 3. mine's more dmg focused than yours as i combined grasping arrow and cloud of daggers.

@@TheRobversion1 Heya. Does your GM not like some of the mechanics or is it flavour/theme that the undead warlock is banned for? (Colour me curious). Your variation is cool too. Sword bards are great with cloud of dagger, so a nice combo of classes.

@@jiminkpen9750 running another arcane archer for 1-2 shot this coming weekend or next. most likely next as my gf will kill me if i play dnd on valentines day weekend. haha. this time running an arcane archer + divine sorc with watery sphere as my concen spell of choice which i think will work well with grasping arrow. I think it was more of mechanics. the chronurgist set off warning bells in his head (offloading concentration on high level concentration spells) and didn't like it. echo knight as well to a lesser extent. to avoid any arguing and negotiating with future content and other classes/spells/races, he just declared all setting specific content is banned. I've also adopted the same rule as the few times i DM in a year we typically play in his homebrew world (MCU approach) so he's like kevin feige. we can't add in stuff that contradict certain rules and lore in his world.

@@TheRobversion1 sounds fun, defo hold off until after valentines day though ;) Another good combo with sorcerer (one of my favourite classes for sure, metamagic can be so fun). Totally understand keeping it simple with no setting specific mechanics, as some of it is problematic. I'm glad I am allowed to play one though, should be a blast.

@@jiminkpen9750 yeah sorc is my fave caster class and is something i use with a variety of my builds. quicken spell is overused in my builds. lol. my fave class though is gloomstalker but yeah sorcs, assassins, hexblades and fighters are my other preferred classes. how about you?

It's true! Hence the "run up, attack, run away" tactics :).

@@DnDDeepDive without any buff to your movement speed, you will get caught in melee quite often by enemies who are not the one you just melted. But the flight from elemental gift is nice to circumvent that a little bit.

Thanks! On the to do list :).