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Current build

Seriously, I had no idea there would be a fifth essay in this series. I even joked about that last time.

However, here we are!

I’ll restate my goal: I’m trying to create the best build I can given the role-playing picture I have of Druid Angela: an Arctic Druid, wielding two staffs, who might reasonably solo Tactician mode (provided you’ll accept a coterie of minions and buffing Protectors as “solo”).

I know there are more powerful builds out there, if one wants to create a character with the highest possible damage outputs (e.g., Throwzerker, Gloomstalker Assassin, Open Hand Monk). This is not about one-hit kills of the bosses. This is about backing a fanfic storyline with practical game mechanics.

Rather than making a detailed list of Arctic Druid Angela’s gear as of the last time I went over it, here’s a picture. I hope it’s easier to read than a list, or at least easier to skip over.

The Protectors cast these buffs on Druid Angela and her minions:

Her standard opening moves and combat strategy:

I should add: In many cases, if the enemy doesn’t immediately attack the moment they see her, she doesn’t have to rush to cast Create Water. She can walk up to them, cast that spell, and the enemies won’t become aggressive. It’s when she casts the Ice Storm that they’ll get grumpy.

All of this works. In my standard test on Tactician difficulty, against an encounter that I cannot surprise, I have not lost a single combat since I adopted this build, even when unexpected enemies showed up.

So far, so good. But can we do better?

A couple of improvements

Now we have a wall of text, pondering rules and points. If that doesn’t interest you, keep scrolling. There’ll be some pictures (and some more fanfic!) further down.

Potent Robe

What had me return to the tests was a notion: What if I tried the Potent Robe? How would that compare to using Robe of the Weave?

Why might this be better for Druid Angela?

The Potent Robe is good for any spellcaster that uses Charisma for spellcasting, and frequently casts cantriops. In particular, it’s excellent for a Sorcerer or a Warlock that relies on Eldritch Blast. At higher character levels, that cantrip has multiple blasts and the Potent Robe’s bonus applies to each individual attack.

Druid Angela uses Wisdom for spellcasting. Her “bread and butter” spell is the cantrip Ray of Frost, which (with Haste) she’ll use twice per round. So the Potent Robe will add a bonus to each use of Ray of Frost, with that bonus depending on her Charisma.

I don’t think Druid Angela should change her Wisdom; if her Wisdom gets too low her other spells won’t be as effective. But we can otherwise redistribute her stats to give her a higher Charisma. She was “born” in playthrough 8, in which she was a hireling and not the “face” of the party. She didn’t need a high Charisma then. I put the extra points into her Strength, so she could do more damage with her off-hand weapon attack.

I didn’t think all the way through. For spellcasters like Gale in playthrough 7, I gave them their first level in Fighter and the rest in spellcaster levels. If you do that, you can pick Two-Weapon Fighting Style. That causes your Ability modifier (typically Strength or Dexterity) to be added to your off-hand weapon.

When I gave Druid Angela twelve levels of Druid of the Land, she never had Two-Weapon fighting. (The Dual Wielder Feat, which Druid Angela has, allows her to use two staffs at once but doesn’t add to the off-hand damage.) So those points in Strength were not being used to damage anyone. They allowed her to carry more stuff, and provided a mild resistance to being shoved, but that was pretty much it.

So let’s make use of the bonus from Potent Robe: change STR 14->12; change CHA 12->14.

I would have transferred more points from Strength to Charisma, but the D&D attribute system doesn’t permit it.

Take another look at the comparison picture above. When switching from Robe of the Weave to Potent Robe:

• She loses Arcane Enchantment, which means her spells are slightly less likely to take effect.
• She gains Gregarious Caster, which means her Ray of Frost does more damage when it hits. At 14 CHA, that adds 2 points of damage to each Ray of Frost.
• BUT: The whole point of Arctic Druid Angela’s combat strategy is to make her enemies Wet or Chilled. That means they take double damage from Cold-based spells and attacks, including Ray of Frost (and the bonus Cold damage from Mourning Frost).

  So the 2 extra points of damage from Gregarious Caster becomes 4 points of Cold damage. Two Rays of Frost each round gives 8 points of damage. It adds up!

• She also loses 1 point of Armor Class, going from a +2 AC bonus to +1, and taking her overall AC from 23 to 22. Is that a significant difference? We’ll see when I test this build below.
• It helps to consider that boosting her Ray of Frost damage, even slightly, is probably more effective than trying to boost the Bludgeoning damage from her off-hand quarterstaff. Lots of opponents are Resistant to Bludgeoning damage. Fewer are Resistant to Cold damage.

  She likes to bop enemies on the head, since it gives her something to do with her Bonus Action. But it shouldn’t be her focus.

Mask of Soul Perception

Let’s see if we can overcome some of what we lose in the above trade with another trade:

Let’s take a look at that trade:

• The Hood of the Weave gives +2 to Spell Attack rolls. The Mask of Soul Perception gives +2 to all Attack rolls, including spell attacks. So the Attack roll for Ray of Frost remains unchanged, while her Attack roll for her off-hand staff improves. This helps makes up for the loss of Arcane Enchantment from Robe of the Weave.

  Note that a bonus to an Attack roll only affects how often you hit; it does not affect the damage you do. Except, of course, that an attack that misses does no damage!

• The Mask also gives +2 to Initiative. That, plus the +3 Initiative from the Hellrider Longbow (see her gear photo above), gives a total +5 to her initiative. That happens to be the bonus granted by the Alert Feat, something she can’t purchase with her current build. These bonuses compensate for that. With these changes, her Initiative is 8, which is adequate at higher levels.
• She loses +2 to Spell Save DC. That, plus losing the +1 Spell Save DC from Robe of the Weave, puts her at -3 Spell Save DC compared to her previous gear. That does increase the chance that enemies will save against her spells. (Ray of Frost uses an Attack roll, not a Spell roll; it’s not affected by this.)
• However, look carefully at the description of Ice Storm above, in her strategy picture. If an enemy saves against it, it does half damage. Her strategy makes the enemies Vulnerable to Cold. If the enemy saves against Ice Storm, but takes double damage from Cold, the effects cancel; the Ice Storm does its normal amount of damage.
• There’s a subtle benefit from this swap: She’s no longer uses any gear from the Weave set (Robe of the Weave, Hood of the Weave, Cloak of the Weave). In general, spellcasters covet these items. If she’s in a party with another spellcaster, she’s not competing with them.

  To be practical, this build does have her using some highly-coveted items like Disintegrating Night Walkers and Markosheshkir. Some players may not accept the excuse that she’s a pan-temporal spirit fighting Evil across the Realms.

Let’s test!

The test was successful. Did it go better than my previous tests? Hard to say. It’s likely that it represents an incremental improvement at best. But sometimes victory is measured in lots of small numbers adding together.

Shillelagh

That did not end my tests. I wanted to see if I could add Shillelagh to the off-hand attacks. That cantrip boosts the damage of staffs and clubs by your spellcasting modifier; that’s based on Wisdom for Druids. It would also make it more likely for the off-hand attack to hit.

That would be nice, but there’s a problem: If you hold two staffs and cast Shillelagh, the effect is only applied to the main-hand staff. The off-hand weapon is unaffected.

I tried casting the spell multiple times, in the hope that the effect would skip a main-hand weapon if it were already affected. No such luck.

I knew of another way to solve the problem: Cast Shillelagh on the main-hand weapon, then swap weapons. The problem with that:

• It takes too long, at least on a console. On the desktop, I assume one can swap main-hand and off-hand weapons with a simple drag-and-drop. On the console, that’s not possible. It would take several turns to do the same thing, while the effect of Shillelagh ticks down.
• The key benefit of Markoheshkir is Kereshka’s Favour. The bonus of Frost of Dark Winter is an important part of Druid Angela’s strategy.

  If you let go of the staff, even momentarily, Kereshka’s Favor goes away. For example, Druid Angela would lose it if she used Wild Shape to transform into an animal. Perhaps drag-and-drop swapping on the desktop interface isn’t “letting go”, but any swap maneuver on the console definitely is.

So I tried a third way: If your main hand holds a weapon that’s not a staff or club, Shillelagh will skip it and affect the weapon in the off hand (if it’s a club or staff).

Of course, that goes against my mental image of Druid Angela wielding two staffs in combat.

However, the whole point of testing is to test. Let’s give it a try.

I looked over what spellcaster one-hand weapons were available in the game. I found only two:

After I did this test, I realized I should have considered Phalar Aluve for its Shriek ability. Since that ability only lasts five turns, it’s likely that it wouldn’t last a significant number of turns if I added it to the combat setup.

Given a choice between the Sylvan Scimitar and the Internal Rapier, the latter is clearly the better choice for Druid Angela. She’s never going to try to hit anyone with her main-hand weapon; she’ll always cast Ray of Frost instead. So the Rapier’s +1 to Spell Save DC at least offers her something, plus she’d get a Cambion as an additional minion.

Then I faced a rough choice: It was clear that the Infernal Rapier was inferior to either one of Druid Angela’s staffs, at least as far as her Cold strategy was concerned. Its only benefit was the bonus damage it would allow Shillelagh to give her off-hand weapon. This was already looking like a bad deal, but for the test I had to decide: which staff to give up?

I finally settle on giving up Markoheshkir. My reasoning is that while both staffs brought much to the strategy, Markoheshkir brought slightly less. Also, in the unlikely event that (a) this test worked, and (b) Druid Angela found herself in a party with other spellcasters, there’d be a bigger demand for Markoheshkir than for Mourning Frost.

All of this was speculation. What happened in the test?

Not much.

I got through it, but it was harder because Druid Angela’s Cold spells did less damage, and it was more difficult to sustain the Chilled condition.

I also had forgotten something about the Cambion:

Bottom line: The Cold strategy was less effective, and the Cambion was only good as a potential meat shield. The extra damage added to Druid Angela’s off-hand attack didn’t compensate for that.

Verdict: Fail.

Well, almost a failure. I’ll save that part for the end of the essay.

Know your minions

This essay series is supposed to be a review of combat possibilities that involve Arctic Druid Angela. In order to avoid a sixth essay…

…let’s discuss a separate topic: Druid Angela’s minions.

In the discussion below, you’ll see me use the term Proficiency bonus. That’s a general bonus added to many of a character’s die rolls. It’s +2 for levels 1-4, +3 for levels 5-9, and +4 for levels 9 and above.

Aegean, the Water Elemental

My thanks to Real Angela for suggesting this name for the Water Elemental.

In the course of researching this essay, I discovered that the Water Elemental is unique among the Elementals in that both their melee and magical attacks are affected by their Strength. That means that Druid Angela can boost Aegean’s combat abilities by giving them a Giant Strength Elixir.

In a previous post, I went over how to give consumables to summoned creatures.

I also learned I wasn’t using Aegean’s attacks properly. If a target is already Chilled, by all means use Multiattack. But if it’s not, use Slam, to apply Chill to the target. Then do a Multiattack next round.

Save Winter’s Breath for when the enemies have nicely lined up within the small cone-shaped area of effect. Winter’s Breath has a special effect on Burning enemies, but things don’t tend to burn around Arctic Druid Angela.

Daphne, the Dryad

In my previous essay on Druid Angela, I reported that Druid Angela had named the Dryad “Daphne”.

If Aegean’s attacks are based on Strength, Daphne’s attacks are based on… well, nothing but her level.

As you look at these combat logs, you’ll see that Karma takes damage when Druid Angela does. That’s because it was Karma who cast Warding Bond on Druid Angela.

You may also notice that Druid Angela had to roll Saving Throws against an effect called Grasp of the Forest:

I show Daphne’s stats without any buffs. That’s because, in the test battle, Daphne took too much damage. Druid Angela re-summoned her after the battle for these images.

This highlights Daphne’s main problem: She’s squishy. Even fully buffed, her Armor Class is only 16. She can perhaps take one blow from 12th-level enemies, but probably not two.

Creak, the Wood Woad

Like Aegean, Creak’s main combat attribute is Strength. An Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength would suit him too.

Creak is not as squishy as Daphne is. The reason why you see buffs in the above image is that he survived the test combat, while Daphne did not.

The mistake I constantly make with Creak is that, if he gets too far away from Daphne, he loses the Nature’s Step aura she provides. I send him across fields of ice, only to watch him slip and fall. That’s true of other minions like Scratch and Us, but I’m more likely to forget because of the forest connection he has with Daphne.

I should also remember that he Regenerates if he walks across a vine-covered surface, such as the one he can create if he casts Entangle at an enemy.

Us, the Disguised Kitty

Scratch

Scratch, as everyone knows, is the best boi in all the Realm. However, he can be hard to position in combat. If he’s too close to the enemy, he could fall to various enemy effects. If he’s too far away, he might not be able to Help anyone in time. Like Us, he was often targeted by the Steel Watcher in the tests. Like Daphne, with all the buffs he might survive one blow, but not two.

Freezing Foes

Let me interrupt the minion discussion before we get to the last one. There’s a strategy I’ve neglected to pursue. It’s even possible it will warrant a sixth essay in the future.

If you use Cold damage against a Wet or Chilled enemy, that damage is doubled. There’s an additional option: Apply the Wet condition on an enemy that’s already Chilled.

Then that enemy is Frozen.

The enemy is Incapacitated and can’t do anything. It becomes Vulnerable to Bludgeoning, Thunder, and Force damage.

Druid Angela doesn’t have access to Thunder or Force damage. Bludgeoning is a different story: her off-hand attack has a Bludgeoning component; you can see that in a couple of images above. The attacks of Aegean, Daphne, and Creak all include Bludgeoning damage.

So it’s possible that she could cast Create Water or break a water bottle on a Chilled enemy, then have one of the minions with Bludgeoning attack for double damage. Her Bludgeoning damage with her off-hand attack is low so it’s best if a minion does this.

This sounds nice, and I may try it in another test. But there are two problems with the Frozen strategy:

• As soon as a Frozen enemy takes Bludgeoning, Thunder, or Force damage, the Frozen condition ends. So only the damage from a single blow is doubled.
• A Frozen enemy becomes un-Frozen at the start of their next turn. If you’re not able to make a Bludgeoning attack between the time the enemy is Frozen and their next turn, the effort is wasted.

This isn’t necessarily a total minus. Being Frozen keeps the enemy from making Opportunity Attacks. If you can coordinate the timing so that Aegean or Creak can get to the enemy in time, their blow might do a lot of damage.

It would take quite a bit of coordination.

All I can say right now is: I’ll think about it.

Let’s finalize the minion discussion. Real Angela also supplied the name for…

The Last Minion