Thought I'd post a fun little combo I've been using, which (as far as I know) no one else has mentioned thus far. Namely Armor of Agathys combined with the Abjuration ward from the Abjuration school of Wizardry. This is an extremely fun combo which, due to abjuration ward absorbing the damage (but not the hit) before your temporary hit points go down which makes Armor of Agathys one of the most fun spells in the game.
For example, my warlock 2 wizard 18 build can recharge the ward at will with armor of shadows invocation, has medium armor and shield and can out tank (and out damage) the fighter as long as I have spell slots.
What's more, let's say you cast armor of agathys at 8th level end game. That's 40 temp hp and by then I've got a 41 hp ward. An adult red dragon attacking me (without flame breath) deals an average of 26, 15, 15 in it's normal multiattack sequence. That's 51 damage to me, and in exchange it takes... 120 damage. If it hits with all three of the attacks a second time the adult red dragon is down to 16 hp while you've taken only 22 points of damage. You still have every other spell slot left. And that's IF it hits you.
I can gurantee the concept is fun to play around with and DEFINITELY makes a front line mage tank viable, especially with all the other aburation ward abilities such as the resistances and advantage against magic.
Just for the sake of any furture argument about whether this is allowed:
Armor of Agathys: "If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have these hit points, the creature takes X cold damage"
Abjuration Ward: "Whenever you take damage the ward takes the damage instead"
As such, at least in RAW, Abjuration Ward intercepts the damage but not the hit. Which makes sense considering poison effects etc still activate when hitting an abjuration ward.
But yeah, it's a fun concept that allows for some interesting mage builds based on reflecting damage while tanking.
I'd say the iffy part of that combo is if Armor of Shadows really counts as a spell, what with not spending a slot and all, rather than the intersection or Armor of Agathys and the ward. I'd consider it a class feature that emulates the effects of a spell, for the precise reason that it costs nothing and circumvents what is meant to be a limit on the ward recharging. Sweet combo, regardless; I always knew I liked that spell.
I'd say it definitely counts as a spell.
I'd also say that AoA would not apply since it's technically not hitting you while you have the ward up. The benefit of things not hitting you being that you don't have to make concentration checks until it breaks through your ward.
I'm a little confused by your statements. The combo is Armor of Agathys + Arcane Ward. But you are stating you cast Armor of Shadows at 8th level end game. Armor of Shadows is just Mage Armor at will. Why would you be casting Mage Armor as an 8th level slot? Did you mean you cast Armor of Agathys with a level 8 slot? That would get you 40 cold damage per hit, 40 Temp HP's, and set your ward to 41 HP as it is an abjuration spell. You could then use Armor of Shadows at will to keep the ward up without expending slots to do so but would only add 2 HP per casting of Armor of Shadows back to the ward. Once the ward is set, recasting abjuration spells only adds twice the spell level in HP back to the ward. Not super useful mid combat but pre combat or post combat you could technically get it back up to the max by spamming Armor of Shadows as Armor of Agathys has a 1 hour duration (no concentration required).
worrgrendel1 wrote:
TheCriticalFail wrote:
Don't you have a level 1 & 2 spell you can cast without burning a spell slot at Wizard 17 or 18... which means you can cast shield as a reaction to prevent further hits in the event you actually take enough damage to get past your ward. It recharges your ward a little bit, too. Too bad you can't slide AoA to a fighter the way you can slide your ward.
I thought that was what you meant and I do like the combo.
I also agree that Armor of Agathys works as you suggest with the Arcane Ward. The Arcane Ward states "whenever you take damage", which implies that you have been hit, "the ward takes the damage instead", which is lessening the AMOUNT of damage you physically take to your HP total. I would see it as follows:
Dragon: I HIT your AC of 20 with all 3 of my attacks for 51 damage.
AoAGuy: My Arcane Ward absorbs 41 of that damage and I lose 10 temporary HP's from Armor of Agathys (dropping it to 30 temporary HP's remaining) buff and you take 120 cold damage.
Dragon: Umm... I need to rethink attacking this guy...
AoAGuy: I...ummm...look REALLY bad off... the next hit could kill me! (rolls bluff)...
worrgrendel1 wrote:
Let's throw Fire Shield on top, lol.
I thought that the arcane ward regained HP based on the slot used to cast an Abjuration spell. I am away from my book, but I seem to recall this being brought up before and it being shot down because Armor of Shadows isn't using a spell slot to cast Mage Armor.
Is there any build that just isn't better with warlock 2?
I'd note two problems:
Recharging the ward is not a feature of the ward in general, it is while the ward is at 0 hp.
SvG only works when the S of SvG doesn't conflict with some other S. It isn't clear which happens first, the reduction of the temp hp or the reduction of the ward
Undrhil wrote:
So here is a question for your wise heads... This is all good for a 20th level fighting a dragon, but.... what level does this come on line? Is it a usable tactic at lvl 3? 5? when?
And do you want to be easier to hit? Maybe you could close your eyes (blinded) so they get advantage...??
Undrhil wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Yeah, thats what I was afraid of... I have a character concept in mind, and this build would be a great fit.... but we will mostly be playing lower level stuff.... May still try it out.
Seems like the displacer cloak is cool for being nigh invincible, but it ruins your schtick of dealing damage when you get hit. I would think you would almost want to give them Advantage, not disadvantage.
Armor of Shadows states: You can cast Mage Armor on yourself at will, without expending a spell slot or material components.
I would argue that Mage Armor is a level 1 spell and uses a level 1 spell slot. Armor of Shadows lets you do it without expending the slot. It's like the Signature Spell feature for Wizards, cast a level 1 or 2 spell without expending a slot. It still holds the appropriate level spell slot, it just doesnt expend it when cast.
You could stack Fire Shield but you would use up a 4th level slot to cast it. It doesnt scale up. And only does 2d8 cold or fire (your choice) per hit. FIre Shield is also Evocation, not Abjuration so you lose the synergy of at least adding some HP's back to your Arcane Ward. Might be worth it for the cold/fire resist but otherwise I could make better use of a 4th level slot. Stoneskin might be a better choice as it would grant resistance to non-magical damage but I dont know wether or not that would apply before or after the ward. It is concentration for 1 hour so you would get synergy with casting time of AoA but it is expensive to spam cast (100 gp) but might be worth it if you got to half damage BEFORE it hit your ward. Concentration wouldnt really be a problem because you arent taking any actual damage due to your Ward and the Temp HP's from AoA.
Coredump00 wrote:
Nah it pretty clearly says, "Whenever you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level of higher, the ward regains a number of hit points equal to twice the level of the spell." It does not say, "While at 0 hit points, whenever..."
They wanted to make it clear that the ward stays active while at 0 hp, not assign some arbitrary restriction to it in a completely different sentence. Seeing as how you can only create the ward once per long rest and it doesn't expire until you finish a long rest, they clearly wanted to prevent people from attempting to weasel their way into having more than one ward at a time.
The ward also takes damage first. "When you have temporary hit points and take damage, the temporary hit points are lost first, and any leftover damage carries over to your normal hit points."
Key words being you and take damage. It also wouldn't make any sense for it to bypass your ward completely if you run out of THP.
If you gain the ability to cast something at-will that is normally a higher level spell, you cast it at its lowest spell level when you cast it in that way.
For your build path you started as a Warlock and went Wizard after? Or did you go 2 warlock -> 5 wizard.
Hmmm, Temporary HP vs. Arcane Ward, that's a tough one. I believe Temporary hit points would be lost first.
Temporary - When you have temporary HP and take damage, the temporary HP are lost first. And in the example, the temporary HP absorbs the damage, any leftover damage gets assigned to you. Page 198.
Arcane Ward - Whenever you take damage, the ward takes the damage instead. Left over damage is applied to you. Page 115.
But these rules are kind of fighting each other so I could see DM's going either way with it.
At first glance, it seems a little out of whack for a 1st level spell (even with an 8th level slot). I'd probably house rule it so the attacker only takes damage equal to the amount of damage he does to the frost-shield. So if a creature does 23 damage to the shield, he takes 23 cold damage. It may or may not be a real problem at those levels so I'd have to see it in action to see if it was a real problem.
- Eck
Eck wrote:
Ravix wrote:
TheCriticalFail wrote:
worrgrendel1 wrote:
Ravix wrote:
It's 1st level or HIGHER.
You're putting things together that do not go together.
A few thoughts on temp HP, (feel free to disagree we each have our own views after all) Temp HP is hp that gets burned up before regular HP.
The ward expressely redirects damage that you would take to itself first, so from where I am standing it looks like the ward would be used first.
Since when temp hp is reduced you are still treated as being damaged.
Ravix wrote:
Holy crap, this is tempting me so much to make a Abjurer Tank Mage instead of a Bard when I finally get to play and not DM. I can just imagine the look of horror on my friends face as he watches his boss mob get tanked and pwned by a "squishy" mage, the euphoria!
Now I can't stop thinking about ways to make it the most optimal (in an intresting way). More AC? To be truly tanky? Armor of Shadows for infinite ward refills? (I might actually DM rule that out if I can find a good reason for it, because as much as I want to use powerful features I as a dm know how it feels when my monsters get wrecked by a seemingly broken feature for the level). Less AC to actually get hit? Actually, you might want the AC because the things that can hit you will usually be the stronger ones you want to reflect damage on. The weaker ones you dont want to waste your temp hp or ward hp on.
My biggest beef with your setup is casting Mage Armor while wearing armor to recharge your ward. Shouldn't you be required to meet the spell's requirements to actually cast it? Since you don't, you don't cast the spell, and thus don't recharge your ward. Unless you're taking you're armor off, cast it repeatedly, then don your armor. That just screams cheese to me, though.
Also, why wouldn't DR work with this? The attack hits, damage is done, said damage is reduced, then the ward is now triggered and takes any damage the caster would've taken from the melee attack.
Danny_Montanny wrote:
TheCriticalFail wrote:
I don't think your Arcane Ward has to be at 0 points to recharge it. Yeah it's in the same paragraph but they are spearate sentences. I think it's in the same paragraph to just inform the reader that the Ward remains active for recharging even when it's completely depleted to 0 hp and explains how to recharge the shield when it's less than max.
And I agree with Macv12 on it requiring spell slots and not just infinite-cast abjuration spells.
- Eck
Eck wrote:
It doesn't say anything about needing a spell slot, if you want to rule it that way in your campaign that's fine but it's not RAW.
Sorcerers can't learn AoA.
If you have a ward up you're not taking damage until the ward is dropped, ergo no THP effected until ward dropped.
Ravix wrote:
I'm not sure if Mommy_was_an_Orc is arguing for or against my interpretation.
Sentence 1: While the ward has 0 hit points, it can't absorb damage, but its magic remans.
Sentence 2: Whenever you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, the ward regains....
Sentence 1 is telling me "Hey, unlike some other spells similar to this (like those granting temporary hp) the magic is still there when it loses all its hp."
Sentence 2 tells us here's how you recharge your Arcane Ward.
They aren't directly related. If they were, there should be an "and when at 0 hp, you can recharge it like so" instead of a "<period> Here's how you recharge it."
Ravix wrote:
Eck wrote:
Mommy_was_an_Orc wrote:
I think these two sentences are related because this paragraph is showing us how this ability is different from Temporary Hitpoints. You read it and think the're related because this paragraph is showing us that these two sentences are directly related to each other. Why is the last sentence in its own paragraph? Because it's not related to the idea of the 2nd paragraph. I'm not trying to read it like a lawyer, though given that I'm part robot, that does tend to happen from time to time. In this case though I'm clearly not in the RaW camp given my earlier posts (Like when I agreed with you on the spell slots issue).
You read it and say your implied meaning is obvious. I read it and say that my implied meaning is obvious. At this point we're going to have to agree to disagree on this point. 
/hugs
- Eck
Eck wrote:
I totally see this combo working. Though you should remember, AoA only does damage to melee attackers, so there is nothing stopping breath weapons, spells or ranged attacks from taking those temp HP gained from the spell before all that damage is dealt/negated.
Im totally seeing a moon druid, fiend warlock, abjurer wizard, bear barbarian, openhanded monk build making a very non tanky tanker.
Alright, was away in Amsterdam for a few days and seems like I missed a few things. Pretty glad to see so much discussion on this topic though.
First things first, with regards to some of the back and forth comments regarding temp HP and the ward (mostly between myself and Ecks), Temp HP states "whenever you have temporary hit points and take damage, the temporary hit points are lost first", as was stated by Ecks earlier with the argument that since this is specific they would be lost before the arcane ward. However the ward states, "whenever you take damage, the ward takes damage instead". As such, when hit with a ward you haven't really taken any damage and thus the temporary hit points being lost first doesn't kick in. The ward's specific statement would kick in before that of the temp HP. Also worth noting however that the way you mentioned houseruling it earlier was also completely fair and would take no complaints from me. Just wanted to make a statement regarding the Temp HP as per RAW after reading up on it.
Secondly, with the regards to the build itself (which I played till about level 10 at which point I needed to drop out of that session due to lack of time), in my experience it's in no way particularly exploitative or broken. If it were, I would not be using it. What I tend to do is try and find ways to use the rules to make new build options rather than try and actually gain any in game advantage. But in terms of how it plays, the spell slot expenditure in order to gain the benefits is significant and in combination with the fact that it relies entirely on enemies just attacking you in melee and not taking any attempt to use countermeasures, means that while powerful the effects are also VERY specific. At level 9 I could take about 40 points of damage while reflecting 20 damage per hit. While that's a lot... it's taking a fourth level spell slot and I still have no way to ensure enemies attack me. If they ignore me and just focus on the rest of the party... I'm about as strong as a normal mage (and 2 levels behind) except I already wasted a spell slot I could have used to help on a now useless buff. Equally, enemies with particularly high damage single attacks rather than multiattack tend to cut through this build easily. And AOE's and ranged attacks counter it hard. To put it in context, there have so far been only three times I've used a spell slot of level 3 or higher for something like this rather than say, fireball. And even something like suggestion is normally far more useful.
Essentially I'd say this build is a little like the necromancer. Powerful in the right situation, but if you keep burning your spell slots on it then you've lost the rest of your abilities as a wizard and also similarly it can be countered hard by certain things.
Anyway, great discussion so far XD While I'm firmly in the "At least by RAW and I like to hope by RAI since more interesting build options are more interesting build options" camp, I also agree with a lot of other points people here have been saying, especially regarding the ward potentially only recharging only at 0hp, which I'm still not quite sure how to read. I also can see the problem with the infinite recharge and while I don't think it's particularly broken I would also have no issue with someone houseruling that as a no in one of my games.
But yeah, at the very least this thread seems to have made people somewhat aware of a new build combo and provoked discussion around it so great!
Where does it say that you can cast a warlock spell using a 'normal' spell slot.
I realize it is legal, just don't know where to find it.
Coredump00 wrote:
Macv12 wrote:
For those that don't think this works... Mr. Crawford says otherwise: (At least about the 'recharging' part)
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2014/09/21/infinite-hp/
You could also just use Alarm as a ritual over and over. It would work the same, just take a lot longer. (like a *lot* longer.... but still work)
Sorry for a bit of a necro, but.....
Wouldn't Blade Ward actually be useful with this build?
You still get 'hit', so you still deal out damage, but now you only lose 1/2 of the THP or Abjuration ward that you would otherwise..... Right? Sure, it takes your action, but you could still move to provoke AoO, plus it lasts until the *end* of your next turn.
Turn 1: Blade ward, run past bad guys (AoO, deal damage)
T1 them: Get hit, deal damage
Turn 2 Cast other spell, run past bad guys (AoO, deal damage)
T2 them: Get hit, deal damage
Repeat as desired.... Am I missing something?
Coredump00 wrote:
I'm using AoA with Barbarian Rage DR / Reckless Attack. He's MAD as all get out, but fun to play. Who would've thought an 8 ft tall Goliath Barbarian would be so well spoken.
That's hilarious. Bladelock it up. So what if you can't cast spells? You really only need to dip barbarian 1 instead of essentially dipping warlock 2.
WizardV wrote: