School of Optimancy: you have practiced and studied the art of preparing the most optimal spells for any situation

Don't need the cleric level - Artificer 14 gives 5 attunement slots and you also ignore all attunement requirements (like class)

I love how the wizard is going to look at this poor guy with pity on her face while she casts Forcecage and wins the combat in one action

Just a note; you don't technically need the cleric or wizard levels since artificer 14 lets you ignore level, class, and race restrictions. That means you would just be a bard artificer. Conversely you could lower the DC by 2 from 35 to 33 and be a 20 level artificer, and that wouldn't even be a bad build...

If you are getting silly with it, Epic Boon in the DMG allows a +2 bonus to a stat multiple times to a max of 30, and it does not have the time limit restriction of the tomes.

This build: "Behold my limitless POWER" *casts Shatter*

For the bard instruments, what I've seen JC says on Twitter is you only need to hold the instrument to use it as a spell focus where if you were to give bardic inspirations, then you would have to play the instrument.

I love that you included magic items in this build and would love to see them included in your optimized builds, not just for the 20th-level character but for each of the tiers of play.

You can be inhabited by one of the Trickster Gods, Obo'Laka, which can grant you the power to attune to one additional magic item.

In some ways this is the most powerful character you've ever built! An artificer could probably even negotiate creating many of the items.

I'm sure some night, in the midst of that almost-asleep twilight daze, I would've unsuccessfully pondered this question. (Maybe I have and simply don't remember!) Now, I have an answer. 😄👍🏻

Love your content! I have been following your works since 2010ish with PF1!

All this just reminds me how awesome 2nd ed. was when it came to spell interactions. When Tome of Magic came out, it revolutionized extended spell warfare (at least in my circles who used to run the GenCon circuits back in the day). Suddenly, mage duels were a consequence of these new spell listings (like Malison), which could affect opponents who had a % of Magic Resistance (MR). MR totally hamstrung high level mages when it came to targetable spells, which is why we haven't really seen it represented as anything else other than an Advantage jig in 5th ed.

Just need another friend artificer to cast feeblemind on so they have a intelligence of 1, and then they could use flash of genius on a creature to give them a -5 to a saving throw.

just burning through legendary resistance is more of an option if you have multiple characters playing along. I often play Conquest paladins, and have helped end encounters by forcing enemies to burn legendaries on cheap wrathful smites, opening them up to a banishment or the like from full casters in the party.

Not sure how many tables this would work at, but as a DM, my reading of the Artificer 14 feature (you ignore all class, race, spell, and level requirements on attuning to or using a magic item) is that the collection of +3 to save DC items work for any spell you cast, as you ignore the requirement of both their attunement and use. I think that would let you get a DC of 42 (8 base, 10 Int, 18 6x +3 items) with 18 levels in Artificer.

Love the idea. I know I'll never be able to get close to that so I will just have to stick to the Staff of Power, Robes of the arch Magi, a CHA tome and in my case a +3 Blood well vial with a +2 CHA from the deck of many things. (I did insane and pulled 13 of the 22 cards in one sitting lost all my toys but got 50k gold to buy new if I can find them.) So my DC would top out at 28 and I have an AL legal Warlock with a 25 and I have to explain it at every table CHA 22 Staff of Power and +3 Rod of the Pact keeper. And if that isn't enough he also has a Staff of the Magi but he is a different story.

i actually already knew about the oversight with the amulet of the devout because i used it on a battlesmith in a high level one shot I played, I had ridiculous DC for my spells from a +3 all purpose tool and a +2 amulet of the devout (which i dont think actually helped out in the combat too much)

Honestly one of my favorite builds is the genasi 20th level barbarian, which is the only way to get a spell save dc above 19 without magic items, as genasi use constitution for their spell casting, and 20th lvl barbs can have a 24 con, giving them a dc of 21

When you're paranoid that people are lying to you so you spend your entire life acquiring some of the rarest items in the world just to make sure that nobody passes when you cast Zone of Truth twice a day.

Feel the need to mention the stars druid level 6 feature, which can (when you roll woe) reduce saving throw by 1d6

"My spell list is full of save or suck spells!" "Aren't those risky to use?" "Not with the abomination I'm playing."

12:50 "Technically both of these items need to be held in order to stack these bonuses" I'm looking forward to the "one man band" bard build (stock photos abound for that). I mean, Thri-Kreen is a solution, but I'm not sure how many people would want to play one. I think the bard could use both hands to play the Reveler's Concertina (both items' description only say you need to hold them to get the increase to spell save DCs, but I'm being a pessimist), tie the Rhythm-Maker's Drum to their back, and use a mechanism that lets them play the drum with a foot (like tying the drumstick to it).

This is a great video for the DMs out there on how to make your monsters harder. Just give them 4x daily uses of silvery barbs (EACH!)

I have an lightfoot halfling arcane trickster 9/wizard X for this reason. Lightfoot for the ability to hide behind anyone of medium size or greater. Arcane trickster's 9th level Magical Ambush for giving disadvantage to the spell's targets when casting while hidden. Yes, it only starts coming online as a caster at level 13+ but once that starts to happen it is fun to see loads of enemies suffering the full effect of fireballs, slows, hypnotic patterns and so on.

Wear a belt of storm giant strength around your head rambo-style for a 29 int * * DM permitting

If your DM lets you choose summons, you can summon mites with blood boiling hex with conjure woodland beings.

Monks need their dragonhide belt for sure, especially when a nat 1 on Constitution saving throw is still a 20 cuz they have +19 to con saves :(

Sometimes, you just REALLY need to land that Hideous Laughter.

I think I would flavor this build as "the funniest man alive" because he has ridiculous spell DC but just uses it for Hideous Laughter

This character really needs a Sorcerer friend for Bend Luck. Otherwise, it's just underpowered.

I still enjoy these "just for fun" videos now and then. :)

Peace cleric 1/ Lore bard 19 is your best bet I'd think. You'd lose the plus 3, from robes and the ion stone but... well fullcasting with that much magical secrets and buffing your party isn't fair, it's still a 32. As far as effective DCs go you can likely just reach the 50-60s with enough debuffs fairly easily. I'd make a video on that.

use Sequester on yourself while in the Feywild to wait out all the hundred years, and when you return [if you're lucky or if you do a service] hardly any time might pass at all [like less than a year] if you get the 'days to minutes' effect

Well, when I woke up today I wasn't expecting a video to serve as magic item guideline for my lore bard/divine soul/order cleric but here we are! Jokes asside, nice video!

There's a reliable way to give a target disadvantage on saving throws that you might have missed: the Shadow Magic Sorcerer's Hound of Ill Omen ability that give the target of the Hound disadvantage on Saving Throws against spell you cast (as long as the hound is within 5 feet of it) The hound can move through other creatures and objects and takes 5 force damage if it ends its turn inside an object. RAW you could let the hound sit in the ground under or next to the target and take 5 damage until it dies (which at level 6 when you get this ability is 8 rounds -> 37HP from dire wolf plus 3THP from half your sorcerer level, 40total HP) This ability costs a bonus action and 3 sorcery points (same point cost as a heightened spell) and lasts for 5min or until either the hound or target die. It's a relatively cheap way to either obliterate a single target or take it out of the fight entirely (using save or suck spells like Hold Person/Monster, Polymorph, Disintegrate...) Keep up the good work treantmonk, love your videos

next video suggestion: a character that can consistently cause a good chance of an enemy failing a spell save? you mentioned a lot of ways to do it, but i didn't catch if those were ways you could easily pull off 3 times per day (enough to burn through legendary resistances). it'd be cool to see what you could do for a monster-hunting mage.

Since the artificer can ignore class and race prerequisites, the artificer could raise that bonus to 37 with enhanced arcane focus in one hand and all purpose tool in the other...I believe

I only use Heightened Spell on spells like Slow or Time stop. It's a great opener spell for boss battles or for cluch moment last resort.

Thrikreen lvl 20 Artificer +3 all purpose tools +3 Amulet of the Devout +2 Robe of the archmagi +3 Moon Sickle +3 Rhythm Maker's Drum +3 Blood well Vial +6 Proficiency bonus and a maxed out int to get a +5 you get a total of 36 for your spell save DC's and +28 to hit on spell attacks and the best part is it's playable and enjoyable, and you've not even gone M.A.D.

I love the mental image of a Thri Kreen Bard One Man Band with the drum & accordion

Step 1 obtain scroll with wish. Step 2 consult a lawyer on how to write a statement that has no ambiguous language in it. Cast wish spell framing it to avoid shenanigans wish for intelligence equivalent to onter

Cool topic, Chris, thanks! I may have missed it but did you mention the Shadow Sorcerers Houd of IL-Omen? It's another possibility for disadvantage against your spells.

Hey Treantmonk, love the video. Is their a timeframe which we can expect a video from you on the new feats? Pretty interested to hear your thoughts on them.

18:35 Bag of Beans - Nest of Eggs times infinite = arbitrarily high ability scores, due to "a creature permanently increases its lowest ability score by 1" having no limit (thanks to Pack Tactics for making a video about that btw. otherwise I wouldn't know) and as far as I'm aware, there's no total limit for ability scores or casting dc in D&D, just that about every other way of rising this didn't forget to mention to what value at max

For the tomes, you could rent or buy a safe on planes of hell. 1 day of time on that plane is only a minute of time on the prime material plane. They would reset every 26 days. (25.342)

since artificer wizard and sorcerer all use parts of the arcane spell list you could just take all three classes get all 3 DC boosting items for each class plus the cleric one that is written wrong then cast a spell that all 3 arcane classes give you, letting you use the bonus from all the items. 38 spell save DC that way.

Haha. ~17:00 in, "I promised you a great spell DC. I didn't promise you a good character."

I will just take a 19 div wiz / 1 knowledge cleric without the bard stuff but a staff of power for a 32 instead.

When I played a Bard who got a golden fiddle from Asmodious after winning it in a play off. If Johnny had lost, his souls would be cast out and his body become a vessel for Asmodious. Anyway, my DM and I reflavored the rhythm maker’s drum as new strings to put on my golden fiddle.

you can instead of using the concertina, use a +3 moon sickle and staff of the woodlands , then take a +3 amulet of the devout,, then loun stone then robe of the arch mage and if you have a 30 in wis its 8+7+10+3+3+2+2 for the same total (35), and you can now take a variant human or something other than a thri kreen. (however if you somehow got even more attunement slots you could take a +3 wand of the warmage) for a total of 38

A 13th level rogue Thief can also bypass an item’s class, race, and alignment restriction. Tack on a casting class to 7th level for some cool attack spells, such as banishment or polymorph, and you’re good to go for most of those presented items as a playable PC.

Lol you WILL be disturbed by my dissonant whispers

I don't think I can top your DC but I can make your character more viable with one swap. swap the Ion stone of mastery for a mizzium apparatus and take experience in arcana and you get access to the entire board spell list up to the level of your highest spell slot and you still have a 34 spell save dc

Adding to the discussion, if bloodhunter is an option (it's homebrew, I know, but it's popular and allowed at most tables I've played at) some of the Mutagens from Order of Mutant can be used to increase your casting score. Sagacity for example grants +4 int at 11th character level, so with 8 levels in Wizard or Artificer and 3 levels in bloodhunter it's possible to reach 24 intelligence

Bloodhunter has ways to increase mental stats which can go above the threshold of 20 so you can have an int of like 24

Magic Beans can also increase your attributes but it requires a lot of beans to do it. But they are also rare AND consumable, so its much more likely you can find/buy them.

The tomes increase your cap by 2, you do not need to stop at 30. Specific beats general. So the general rule that a stat is capped at 30 is surpassed.

Very similar to an "Ultimate Summoner" build I made. Special note: you can bypass all those pesky spell Action requirements by pre-casting those spells into Glyphs of Warding. And you can bypass the "can't move it more than 10 feet" by casting your glyphs in a Demiplane... but then it costs you an Action/Bonus action (Quickened) to cast Demiplane which means you still lose a round for setup... unless, I suppose, you already cast demiplane before Combat... but then you're gonna want to cast it on an Actual door strapped to the fighter's back so your Demiplane could be mobile... not that I've thought about this or anything...

You can use multiple instances of the same item, stock up on those +3 amulets and ignore the instruments.

Reminds me of the max initiative build. If im remembering correctly, your analysis of that character was "this character is crap", LOL

That's hilarious. "My level 2 Bard spells have a save DC of 35. Now I'm gonna shove my Detect Thoughts spell right up your @$$." 🤣

Be a first level wizard, find a kobold, poke it with your dagger down to 1 hp, cast sleep. Guaranteed to work and no save, which means the DC is infinite.

...we're gonna see how high we can legally get... Treantmonk - 2022

Very, very niche but if you're playing a Chronurgy Wizard you could age the Tome by 100 years and theoretically keep using it once per day.

2:23 I'd love to get your opinion on how you would go about making an educated guess on what saving throw to target. do you just know the monsters? ask for descriptive advice on the creature? maybe based on the weapons they use? something else? phisical stats I feel can sometimes be guessed, they all have high CON and either high STR or DEX and maybe I can ask DM if the creature looks muscular or fast... still advice would be apreciated. but when it comes to mental stats, It gets a lot harder to guess. Some times i'm facing a caster and recognize it as a cleric spell and might guess high WIS, or i'm up against Strad and expect hich CHA, but generally it's very hard... like what would you target against a bear? do you always default to INT unless you have a reason not to? I'd love to see a video of how you would systemathically go about deciding what spell DC to use

Tmw when you’re playing a Cleric 1 dip/Wizard in a campaign rn. Time to get an Amulet of the Devout.

Artificer gets the Enhanced Arcane Focus Infusion for +1 and eventually +2 to all spell attack rolls. I know it's not strictly applicable, as this video is specifically about DC's, but it's another way to improve a spellcaster! (And since this Frankenstein build took 14 levels of Artificer anyway, you may as well! lol)

I enjoy the occasional TO video, and I appreciate you clearly warning about it being TO!

There could be some shapechange/true polymorph creature that has some ability that lets you increase your spell save DC, but I don't think it's worth losing the attunement slots from artificer. We don't need higher ability scores and aside from a few monsters with "cleric" or "wizard" in parenthesis next to their name that could in theory substitute for multiclass requirements if we were turned into them, I didn't see anything in particular that was useful.

Now you can cast Suggestion and Hideous Laughter on any monster without fail... oh they're all immune to charm and incapacitate.

Abberant Dragonmark casts with constitution. LV 20 Barbarian boosts con above 20.

You could consider the -1D6 effect to be a flat -1, since it will always subtract at least that much

Goodness... Imagine capping out your spell dc at mere 19... What a game

Can you do a video about crafting magic items or the role of magic items in optimizing? I liked your section in this video about them.

If you allow the blood hunt then you can get a plus 3 to intelligence

now the question is: which bard spell should the thri-kreen choose to cast/upcast

my imortal tree wizard waiting 99 years to use again the tome of health so i can reach more hp also the campain is heavy homebrewed so we are low level even tho quite powerfull theres lots of space to grow so i do want to have stats above 20 like the paladin already have

You forgot the most fun way of raising your save dc: taking conjure minor elementals for magical secrets as a level 10 bard and making 8 chwingas give you supernatural charms over and over again until you get the obe that gives you +4 charisma to a max of 22. Definitely no consequences to doing this, you totally won't end up with an abomination of a character afterwards.

Chronurgy isn't official content, if we're counting that then I'm sure I can find a dozen other homebrew ways to increase save DCs or hand out saving throw penalties on the Dmsguild or D&D beyond

I know Blood Hunter isn’t normally included in these conversations, but it is fun to know that a Order of the Mutant Blood Hunter can give you +5 to an Ability (even over 20). Of course, this is pointless if you just reread a book over and over.

I have a wizard right now in a level 17 game; 22 int from a tome of clear mind, +3 arcane grimoire, staff of power, and robe of the archmagi pump my spell save to 25 👍🏼 +19 to hit with spell attack rolls

My method of getting enemies to fail saves: Letting my DM borrow me dice. (my weighted dice but they don't need to know that.)

Taking three levels in mutant blood hunter allows you to increase your intelligence above 20, which would mean higher spell DC without magic items

Only way I found to get a higher spell DC: Since Artificer 14 lets you ignore requirements for magic items, you can devote a few more levels into Artificer to get Artificer 18, giving you an additional attunement slot. What can you do with this additional attunement slot? Why, another Ioun stone of Mastery of course! +1 proficiency bonus for a total DC of 36

So Trikreen bard to play two instruments at once. Edit: Hah! Called it!

Would a Warforged Chronomancer be immune to *that* exhaustion?

I think I saw a Dungeon dudes video that mentioned some items that increase saving throw DC, but can only be used by warlocks.

No magic items and Pure DC winner has to be a lvl20 barbarian with aberrant dragonmark feat(or one of the races with con save spells). 24con = 7 mod + 8+ 6 prof = 21 spell savr DC.

I’ve been wanting to see this video for years lol now I wander what would be its counter part, can a character get their save up enough to beat this guys spell save DC? My thoughts are”Yuan-Te, cleric peace domain, artificer alchemist,paladin watcher, & I’m not sure what else?”.

Fucking hell man, bonkers. You've given me an idea on a BBEG who's trying to get some decent magical items though.

Other then the race choice. You could also argue you are one of those One Man Bands. Like Dick van Dyke for a bit in Merry Poppins. Whereby you play the drum with your feet and the concertina with your hands.

Great moderately effective big bad. He can't do too many things to you, but you're not avoiding it.

Was thinking this video was going to be the rest of the play test (feats). When is that vid gonna drop?

Replace the Reveler's Concertina with Rod of the Pact Keeper and you get an additional +1

you could use the drum on your back like an one man band, if your dm allows it

Doesn't the aberrant dragonmark use your con? Which means this feat on a barbarian can gain an extra plus 2 from their capstone.

"I cast Vicious Mockery on the Orc, if they fail the Wisdom check of DC35 they take 10 damage." ;)

Is cleric needed? 14 artificer removes the class restrictions for Amulet of the devout. Fun video and thanks for codifying this. i play an artificer in AL and have a ludicrous DC and spell to hit (not as high as this video of course because it is a practical character) but I have very few spells where it breaks the game when I cast them. Probably my best move is Web in my spell storing item at a DC 27 few things make the save. I do like this for casting low-level debuffs like Bane however which I got through Fey touched.

Missed any blessings/epic booms maybe? 🤔 From the top of my head, no books around at the moment.