Dunno. Arcane Tricksters tend to have a higher DEX modifier than INT (and then pick spells that don’t care about the spellcasting modifier), so they are better off with Booming Blade (if stealth is already off the table) or Green Flame Blade unless they run into something that is resistant or immune to nonmagical damage at levels 3-4 and don’t have magic weapons. Might work well with a maxed INT Arcane Trickster / Bladesinger build though.
Not really, it replaces the attack stat with the spellcasting stat, kind of like shillelagh but only for a single attack, and then stacks some radiant damage on it at higher levels (+1d6 from level 5 then cantrip leveling). It can also replace the damage type with radiant. Useful for any weapon-using caster class that doesn’t get multiattack:
Clerics would be a great target audience for this, except it’s not on their spell list. sigh Magic Initiate (Druid) it is.
It could be useful for non-hexblade warlocks too.
It’s a great damaging cantrip for bards who severely lack those.
It’s good for even a sorcerer or a wizard, it turns the light crossbow into a long-range radiant-damage cantrip.
Arcane tricksters: could be useful depending on the build, probably pairs really well with a headband of intellect. (Edit: Or an extremely INT-focused Arcane Trickster with a 2-level wizard dip for the bladesong.)
Eldritch knights: really useful at levels 1-4 if you’re running into some monster that resists or is straight-up immune to nonmagical damage. Markedly decreases in usefulness once you get multiattack and/or a magic weapon.
Probably good for artillerist artificers (they are not in the UA so it’s unknown whether they’ll get this cantrip), might be good for alchemists, OK for battlesmiths until they get multiattack, and redundant for armorers.
How I’d improve it further:
Make its casting time 1 attack and limit it to once per turn in the fluff. That way it stays useful for eldritch knights, bladesingers (scratch that, bladesingers can cast this in place of an attack already), valor and swords bards, and the two multiattacking artificers (less so for the armorers, but even then, it gets them a good ranged attack in a guardian suit or a good melee attack in the infiltrator).
Add it to the cleric spell list. They are the full casters most likely to go into melee even without the multiattack.
Yeah, he was a condescending sexist prick to the Kiyoshi warriors (initially), and while it did earn him some beatings, it didn’t get him a restraining order and he even got with Suki in the end. That’s high CHA alright.
The basic setup will be quite simple: after ruining the country’s plans to set up proper anti-dragon defenses in the capital, he will land on top of the city hall and tell them that he is bored of random raids and now demands the respect and tribute that a dragon deserves. Namely, one million gold pieces and 20 of “their young” per month. First delivery expected in 15 days.
Diplomacy would be viable, if the party could somehow convince the country to give up a significant chunk of their GDP and 20 children per month. But I doubt they would do that.
After which, they will have those two weeks to cross the frozen northern wilderness (a hex crawl with 100 traversable tiles) and confront the dragon directly. There are a number of set encounters and locations on those hexes (the most notable is Clawhold, the only permanent settlement of the Tabaxi tribe who populate the north, and the 13 abandoned mountaintop fortresses that they might come back and clear out even after they take care of the dragon). The dragon himself is nesting in the far northeastern corner of this map (the party starts from the southwest, obviously) in a mountain named the Pillar of Lights.
Not a global reputation yet because he is fairly young (he is growing much faster than the average dragon due to the great nutrition he receives, namely a steady stream of adventurers from the nearby city) but he has been the bane of a small country (~the size of Luxemburg) for the last few months, and killing him is getting urgent because it’s already spring but the fields are still frozen solid due to his influence on the local climate.
Though a famed dragonologist did notice that his behavior changed considerably; instead of randomly raiding villages he started targeting Skyfleet installations up north, pushing the city’s Skyfleet back and getting them away from his mountain.
Well, I don’t think my players are here but I’ll put it in spoiler tags anyway. Those playing in a world called Yphilios, don’t expand this.
::: spoiler Frostfang’s equipment
The dragon they will have to fight, Frostfang, is an adult white dragon. But he is not your typical “huge polar bear with wings” white dragon. Frostfang found a nice little golden ring on the head of a wizard he ate that fits his claw pretty well, and this ring (Headband of Intellect) made him a lot smarter and enabled him to learn the spells from the wizard’s books (and other books that other dead wizards left behind).
In addition to the ring and the spells, he has been learning blacksmithing from an artificer he has kept captive for this purpose, and wears a breastplate made from the breastplates of all the paladins who tried to kill him. It is a Breastplate of Radiant Resistance. (There are three paladins in the party, sue me.)
He also has a Dagger of Warning. Partially because of the Warning property, and partially because this way he can cast Steel Wind Strike. Because I’m evil.
Maybe I’ll also give him a piecemaker. Lair actions are one thing, but a six-foot metal bolt flying at you at mach 3 is another.
Condition: “(The decanter is uncorked and thrown, then gets within 1 foot of a creature other than who has thrown it OR six seconds after someone says ‘Geyser’) AND nobody has said ‘Frixfraxfrux’ in the last six seconds”. What to say: “Geyser”.
Condition: “Six seconds after someone says ‘Geyser’ AND nobody has said ‘Frixfraxfrux’ in the last six seconds.” What to say: “Geyser”.
Resilient Sphere in a Ring of Spell Storing given to the familiar.
Tell the Familiar to ready an action: cast Resilient Sphere on a given enemy just as the decanter is within 1 foot of them. Then uncork the decanter and throw it at the enemy.
When the Decanter is within 1 foot of the enemy, your familiar casts Resilient Sphere to encase the enemy, and MM1 activates, saying Geyser. The decanter starts producing 30 gallons per round because MM1’s activation activates MM2, and MM2’s activation activates MM1 again. And so on.
I’ll switch to metric because I like units that actually make a modicum of sense. Let’s say a medium creature is at most 8 feet tall, that’s 2.4 m, the enclosing sphere has a radius of 1.2 m. The decanter produces 30 gallons per round, that’s 113 liters. The enclosing sphere’s volume is 7.23 m^3 which is 7230 liters. A bipedal medium creature that tall is likely going to weigh around 150 kilos, if it’s a humanoid then its density is roughly equal to water’s so that’s 150 liters of the sphere occupied by the creature. This leaves us 7088 liters to fill which is unfortunately much more than what the decanter can fill in 1 minute. In fact, it would take around 6 minutes to fill the sphere.
Bummer.
Maybe you can tie together 10 decanters?
(Though TBF a bit of alchemy could likely create a CO-producing bomb. Doing that with the familiar-spell-storing-ring trick could work, enclosing the enemy in a sphere of lethal gas for 1 minute. But even that is an awful lot of prep for suffocating someone when you could use the same spell slot to summon an azer and hug the enemy to death or 4 magma mephits and roast them in their armor.)
I’ll have to put it in series of comments. Lemmy doesn’t seem to have a comment length counter but it has a comment length limit. Even then, this is the TL;DR version of the full document.
Dates are given as BAR meaning Before Auberentian Reckoning, the time in the game currently is 1622 AR.
Stirrings of Sapience (~30 MY BAR - ~500 kY BAR)The Third Civilization is the first time sapient organic life has evolved in this multiverse. The First Civilization came from another multiverse 30 million years in the past and left ~12 million years ago to another multiverse. The Second Civilization was made of pure spiritual energy, evolved from the echoes of the First Civilization’s souls around 9 million years ago (from the game’s perspective); they could only manipulate the physical realm by possessing some animals. (Their favorite targets were simian creatures because of their useful limbs.) ~5 MY ago they found the natural pathways to the outer and inner planes plus the Feywild and Shadowfell-equivalents where their spiritual energy could embody without having to possess creatures and left. Currently they are known as gods and high-ranking celestials, archfiends, archfey, and the highest of the primordials. And then ~2 MY ago those simian creatures that they liked possessing started evolving true sapience and sentience, climbed down from the trees and started walking on two legs, etc. Some groups of these beings (basically Homo Erectus) even made their way into the more friendly inner planes (the plane of Earth and the plane of Water), the Feywild-equivalent, and even the Shadowfell-equivalent. As their society and culture evolved, so did the complexity of their brains (also spurred on by the use of fire which started on the Material Plane by the group that would evolve into Homo Sapiens Sapiens). The Second Civilization entities noticed that after death their more complex neural patterns didn’t dissipate but instead passed on into the outer planes they inhabited, empowering them enough to affect changes on the Material Plane.
The Soul War and the First Divine Concordat (~500 kY BAR - ~200 kY BAR)This sparked the Soul War, ~500 000 years ago. The Second Civilization entities on the Outer Planes were divided on how they should proceed with these new creatures. Many saw them as creatures similar to the First Civilization whose spark of sentience eventually led to the evolution of the Second Civilization, and as such they considered them peers worthy of respect (or at least free-willed creatures that might end up making good allies or powerful servants). Others just saw them as a convenient power source that needs to be captured and harnessed. This ideological split led to the groups currently known as the Gods and the Fiends. The Primordials and the Fey were initially neutral in the conflict. The war raged on for 300 000 years, using the Material Plane as the battlefield and many of the early hominids as pawns. When it rippled into the inner planes, the Primordials and the Fey tried to play peacemaker but the differences between the gods and fiends seemed irreconcilable. After long debate they joined the war on the side of the gods. In response the fiends started developing weapons capable of massive multiplanar destruction. The gods were willing to fight to the bitter end, but the Fey-Primordial alliance offered a compromise that was acceptable to both parties. The war ended with the victory of the gods but the fiends were allowed to build three thrones for themselves, and those who sit on the thrones would have the powers (and responsibilities, and limitations) of a god. (These were the Throne of Tyranny, the Throne of Corruption, and the Throne of Destruction.) This was also when the first Divine Concordat was signed, severely limiting the direct contact between the outer planes and the material plane, and limiting the powers of fiends and celestials. (Elementals and Fey got a special exception since their planes are more closely-linked; they are capable of entering the Material Plane uninvited but their power there is only on the level of a mortal.) Part of the Concordat was also the reconstruction of the Material Plane and the inner planes; gods, fey, primordials and even fiends were allowed to create new sapient races (with an ever-evolving set of limitations, e.g. after the creation of dragons they limited the maximal size and lifespan of the new races, and so on). This is the start of the Third Civilization in its earnest.
The Rise and Fall of the Giant Kings (~200 kY BAR - ~30 kY BAR)For ~150 000 years most races lived as primitive hunter-gatherers. But giants who evolved to colonize some of the more inhospitable regions (that were also affected by the magical fallout of the Soul War) had much longer lifespans, and this helped them develop their magic and technology. When they saw that the smaller races also started developing technology similar to their own, they knew that they wouldn’t stop, so the Cloud Council decided to conquer them in order to prevent them from becoming a threat. This started the Age of Giant Kings ~50 000 years ago, with most humanoid settlements on the Material plane and the elemental planes being ruled by a fire giant or ice giant in the name of their cloud giant emperors. This didn’t last too long however. The cloud giants required tribute, and the fire and ice giants, wanting to curry favor with the cloud giants began teaching magic and technology to the small ones. This was forbidden by the cloud giants, per se, but they ruled so distantly that this was rarely enforced. The small ones organized resistance cells and began teaching these technologies and magic to other settlements whose giant king didn’t do so. Then ~30 000 years ago the organized resistance achieved their first success, slaying one of the cloud giant emperors who ruled over the continent that was the ancestral homeland of the humans. The next couple of decades were a series of rebellions, ending with 90% of the giants dead. The smaller races were aided by the fey, some giants who were sympathetic to their cause (mostly fire and ice giants), and some rumors say that even the gods helped them since the giant rule was uncomfortably similar to what the fiends wanted. In the end the Cloud Giant High Emperor enacted the Curse of Forgetting on the world: everything that the giants knew would be forgotten and nobody would be able to re-learn it for 100 generations. He warded his own palace and close circle of advisors but unbeknownst to him one of the advisors was a rebel and he sabotaged the wards, leading to not only the smaller races but also the giants forgetting their magic and technology. What the High Emperor didn’t account for was that the smaller races had their own homegrown technology and magic too, so the Curse of Forgetting completely backfired, making the smaller races the dominant people on the planet. This ended the Great Giant Civilization overnight, with the remaining giants retreating to the elemental planes or the most unhospitable reaches of the world. With Giant lifespans being much longer than those of the smaller races, their 100-generation curse also lasted much longer; they only began reclaiming their knowledge well into the life of the Fourth Civilization.
Antiquity and the first great empires (~30 kY BAR - ~23 500 BAR)The Antique Period of the Third Civilization started with the First Bronze Age, during which people were unable to learn iron working or stonecutting, those being technologies that the Giants taught them. So this age was dominated by small settlements of wood, clay, and bronze, with bronze working, woodworking, and pottery being technologies they knew even before the giant conquest. 3000 years later the shorter-lived races suddenly found themselves able to invent ways to cut stone into shapes more complex than axe-heads and knives, and even smelt that elusive iron. The longer-lived races followed in a few millennia. For the next 3500 years this civilization developed similarly to civilization on Earth, but their reliance on magic led to some differences (i.e. they never discovered gunpowder or steam power; that is a technology unique to the Fourth Civilization). At the end of this period the planet was dominated by three superpowers with ever-shifting alliances between them, locked in a cold war. This cold war heated up at the end of that period, and the use of powerful arcanotech weapons led to an increase of volcanic activity which pushed the planet into a centuries-long volcanic winter. Crops failed, trade faltered, and starvation caused a population collapse. Some technology was preserved in religious and secular institutions but the surviving population was reduced to iron age levels. It took the climate millennia to stabilize and allow the population to start increasing again.