Here are our sample characters: ddb.ac/characters/4017550/uMeqTr ddb.ac/characters/14738638/TYb6X3

Who else heard the roleplaying section and immediately went, "I want to make the brightest, sunniest, friendliest shadow sorcerer possible"?

You merely adopted the darkness. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see daylight until I was already a man.

Monty should start saying, “Billy Mays here and I’ve got a great new subclass for you!”

One thing I disagree with is not taking Hold Person/Monster. Usually the spell is meh, since an enemy will get to save against it every round, but given that Hound of ill omen gives disadvantage against the saves of your spells while it is next to a target, you can really have that spell stick around for longer than it otherwise would. Plus it means that your Hound is critting on each of its attacks as well, and the big bad dude next to it isn't killing it.

My husband and I play a drinking game to your (super great) videos: we drink every time you say "variant human" and "archetype". We love it, and your content! Tonight, we emptied our glasses when you said that variant human wasn't the preferred race. *raises cup* Here's to you!

"A Teifling or Dark Elf Shadow Sorsorer would be really edgy." My Attention whore Shadow Sorsorer Teifling: Look at my BEAUTIFUL Dancing Lights!

8 Int & Wis Shadow Sorcerer's origin: "once I was walking home, I turned a wrong corner & ended up in the Shadowfell. Fortunately I was able to leave that place as fast as I could! after that I started experiencing these things like casting spells. isn't it totally rad?"

Very detailed, very comprehensive introduction of shadow sorcerer! Everything is covered and explained just as always, I really like your videos guys, fantastic work, you are the best!

I was sure he was going to say as a strategy " I web them and then Veo kills the enamy while Pluto and I drink some health potions."

Amazing set boys! Love how you captured the 70s basement in a middle class Ontario neighborhood. Wood paneling, ping pong table and old book shelves. Makes me feel like a kid again - well done!

I'm new to the sorcerer scene, however like most of my characters, they need a dark touch. My shadow sorcerer's name is Runa, a far traveller from Sossal. Her reason for leaving: to track down the white dragon that killed her parents and left her village in ruin. After a strange visit into the shadowfell, where she saw echoes of her village ruins and met one of the Raven Queen's Ravens, she returned with new and growing shadow magic due to her exposure. What I love the most is that I gave her a nordic theme. She has hair as black as the shadows, eyes of icy blue frost, and skin as cold as the dead. Her black attire is a sort of nordic goth. It's a work in progress, but I love the idea it follows.

Hound of Ill Omen is also great when you have a GM that likes to have their big bad Misty Step away or otherwise try to flee if they are losing. Even if they don't catch up to them, knowing *roughly* where they went by following the dog is great.

Subtle Spell + Friends seems like a good combo for a character with a high Charisma. This is especially true is you take Disguise Self and the Actor feat. Multiclassing into Warlock two levels for the Mask of Many Faces Eldritch Invocation might even be worth it to completely abuse these combos.

Shadow magic and necromancy are universally my favorite types of magic (especially combined), so the Shadow Sorcerer is one of those perfect fits for me. When I hear "shadow magic" though, the first thing that comes to mind is firing shadow bolts, or creating tantacles of physical shadows that grab or slash my foes, and the Shadow Sorcerer doesn't seem to have anyting like that, nor does there seem to be any spells like that. I suppose some spells can be flavored to be more like that though.

Here for the best Sebastian boi and his beautiful DM

I was waiting for the end of the intro to end with "I am Sebastian Crowe and I just killed you."

Love this! Also want to point out, personally when I read the table for shadow sorcerer quirks it made me laugh out loud and envision a Wednesday Adams like character. Edgy and brooding is fun, but never underestimate the subclass’s potential for a comically macabre character as well, like Henry from Fire Emblem: Awakening, who makes crow and corpse puns and doesnt take his own safety or impending death seriously! I myself have a young shadow sorcerer who forgets to blink, and his distressing heavy eye contact often causes him to accidentally intimidate people he is trying to charm! 😄

Finally! Where warlock is my favorite class, Shadow Sorcery is my favorite subclass! It's so dark and mysterious and I turned that into my favorite character I ever played. I made a backstory where my character spent a year in the Shadowfell and instead of going mad or being overwhelmed by the darkness, he embraced it and became a shadow sorcerer. Such a fun subclass overall, I love it!

Really digging these new subclass vids. Looking forward to revisiting Drakkenheim next tuesday!

I’m a huge fan of the Hexblade, pact of the Blade 3/ Shadow sorcerer + for a dark gish type character. Thematically, summoning your weapons from shadow, and using devils sight and silent image invocations. Always able to see through darkness and really mold the shadows with silent image. Then pumping all that with the powers of a shadow sorcerer. Though I haven’t made this character myself, it is on my “to be played” list.

“This ability saves you from embarrassing deaths.” What?! Rewinds quickly. That must be why this video was recommended for me.

I've just started a new campaign where I'm playing a Yuan-Ti Pureblood Shadow Sorceress starting at L6. Watching this video gave me some great insights into how to RP her. Cheers DDs! 😎

My shadow sorcerer eventually found some spectacles of devils sight You wouldn’t believe how well a sorcerer that gets see-through darkness so cheaply can work

Dudes, just rewatch your older episodes, you really up your energy:) Amazing content, my top dnd stream and info dumps. Dimension 20 has amazing Dm as well, nice to see you guys connecting.

You can't use Darkness and Shadow Blade at the same time and that makes me sad.

Ah, my favorite Sorcerer origin. Shadow Hound on a boss for the saving throw disadvantage, and then Polymorphing it into a harmless little creature for fun.

39:20 Love ya’ Joe, but damn ya’ll we’re so close to the greatest squad of assassins in all of Drakkenhiem.

Is it just me, or would a drow shadow sorcerer make an excellent Harper agent?

Love that my favourite KZfaq channel is sponsored by my other favourite KZfaq channel.

My Shadow sorcerer is Shadow Nine, a warforged who was a military scout. Buried in a cave in, he's freed decades later radically different in both appearance and class. He gained2 crystals,1 of which is a arcane focus, the other holds a trapped entity who seems to be the source of SN's abilities...

Absolutely love hearing your picks for spells and reasonings, both role-play and practical. This is super helpful as the Sorceror is such a pain to narrow down due to their limited spell choices. Hope you guys go the opposite way and give us a Divine Soul Sorceror video soon! Curious to see how you'd spec them, as a backup healer or as a divine blaster 😁.

Awesome video guys. Your points about having a limited spell selection really hit home with me as I am playing a divine soul and I've found myself really struggling to pick spells due to having so much choice with 2 lists. Hopefully this might ease off a little with my 3 level dip into hexblade... But we'll wait and see. So if you guys ever decide to do a video on Sorlocks or Divine Soul Sorcerers count me in!

Thank you for the Elven Accuracy tip and flavored spell choices. Shadow Sorcerer is my back up character and this video was very helpful in inspiring my character creation. Love your videos

Shadow sorcerer and twilight domain cleric. An amazing pair thematically, roleplay wise, and mechanically.

I love that Psychic Scream specifies that being killed by it explodes your head!

I've been subscribed to dropout from the beginning. But I am glad you guys were able to connect with them in some way

That was a great episode. So interesting to hear theory crafting (not a pejorative) combined with practical experience.

so ideally you'd want to play a half elf shadow sorcerer with a 17 in charisma and upon reaching 4th level pick up the elven accuracy feat using it to increase your charisma to 1 then get 20 charisma at level 8 and then the rest can be left mostly to feats or if you want to increase you skills

Thanks for your nice, easy-understandable speech. Even for non-English viewer it's easy to understand you. It helps me to play better.

Another excellent benefit of the hound of ill omen is that it frees up a meta magic slot, since you are limited in the number of meta magic options that you can grab and heightened is almost a required choice for most sorcerers. This means that excellent thematic options like twin spell or subtle spell are kept available to you.

Thanks for the the video guys! I'm going into a new campaign as an Aasimar Shadow Sorc. and this has given me a lot of great ideas on what I'll be able to do.

So I'm about to view "The Battle of Temple Gate" and I'm super excited......still lovin the Campaign and all your vids.....kudos on the subclass guides....not sure it's been done before on KZfaq

I’ve made a shadow sorcerer named Corvus who is a Dark elf and he’s like a member of the Addams family in the sense that he’s a really nice person but is considered creepy or weird because he finds delight in things that are morbid or usually considered depressing, like he loves bad weather and rotting old mansions and is fascinated by horrible monsters

My favorite Sorceror subclass. So much synergy in multiclassing!

I was reading thru feat and found Svirfneblin Magic and instantly wanted to play Shadow Sorc with Deep Gnome. Really really strong feat for stealthy spell caster

Dimension 20 is awesome! The first season, Fantasy High (a play on "high fantasy"), the characters were teenagers in an adventuring academy high school. Dimension 20 also does a podcast with tips and advice, called Adventuring Academy.

I recently started playing a Shadow Sorcerer in HotDQ at an AL table. These were some great pointers!

Take a shot every time they say shadow

Beautiful timing, I'm starting to play as a shadow sorcerer tomorrow :)

Perfect video and long overdue. I don't necessarily agree with your opinions but shadow sorcerers have so many things going on that the more you talk about them the more insight you get in their abilities.

Hey Dungeon Dudes; long time fan here, with a question: You guys have demonstrated a very deep understanding of the 5E mechanics and you've made a LOT of valid and logical criticisms of the system's classes/spells. Can we ever hope to see you publish some lightly tweaked "Dungeon Dudes Approved" updated versions of Fifth Edition's more erroneous classes and spells? A lot of fans would pay money for those PDF's! Personally, I'd print them out and stick them right over their respective pages in my PHB.

15:54 to 16:00. Because there is very little limitation on the Shadow Walk ability at Level 14 (only in dim light or darkness to a point you can see), other than it's also a per bonus action ability and its max distance is 120 ft., a ShadowSorc. PC at night could effectively teleport/travel at will almost anywhere in a given game world. That's tentatively 240 ft. of movement per round (action + bonus action), not counting PC movement. That's 2400 ft. worth of sustained movement speed, per minute, at night (or about 27 miles per hour), which is just over 200 miles worth of movement at night per 8 hour period. A person can do a lot with that.

Great analysis of a Shadow Magic Sorcerer. You sold me with the “no embarrassing deaths” argument. If I am going to die. I want to die in glory not embarrassment.

Kelly: "If you're looking at the shadow sorcerer there is a chance that you are interested in playing a character that is a little dark and brooding and a little edgy"... Me, looking at Aimieel, oddball, overfriendly drow shadow sorceress: "Kinda nailied it?" Aimieel: Blows raspberries.

Man. Awesome topic. Before you guys mentioned it, I was on the idea of Dex and Cha from race. Drow ftw. Weapons proficiencies with Green-Flame Blade and advantage in the dark. Elven Accuracy is a good suggestion. Honestly, Spell Sniper and Whips, War Caster and Polearm Master. Whip main handed, staff off-hand to Polearm Master in War Caster for GF Blade on your whip. The range of the whip is fully utilized in this way due to Spell Sniper. Totally go Quickened and Subtle, then grab Twinned later Could multiclass into Arcane Trickster.

I love this show never stop!!!

What if I told you, there is no limit to how many active hounds you can have active at a time. If you have sp you can keep summoning them.

Seeing this after making a changeling whisper bard/shadow sorcerer multiclass makes me super excited to play them in my upcoming campaign

you guys are great - very helpful - I've played Rolemaster for the past 28 yrs and coming back to D&D (confused). I'd love to see your thoughts on a draconic origin sorcerer

Great episode. I just rolled a water genasi tempest cleric for a new campaign. Would love to hear your guys in depth thoughts on the sub class.

Thank you for making these guides, Dudes :D

i just started playing dnd my first char ever (liking it alot atm) and i took a fallen aasimar shadow sorcerer .. i just loved the necrotic shroud part

Hey there, I just started playing D&D 5E and my character happens to be a Shadow Sorcerer. Inspired by the first episode of Dungeons of Drakkenheim and being a long time Vampire Player and Storyteller I wanted to play a Warlock, but there already was one on the party. Then I found that a Shadow Sorcerer was even better fitting my desire to play an eloquent and ambivalent negotiator with a lot of depth but being a force to reckon with on the battlefield. Sebastian Crowe was kind of an inspiration for me in the first place. But then there was the table of oddities of the shadowmagic. It was pure fun! Now Daeithron is a pale and cold Half-Elf with long jet-black hair, the fine features of his father's noble race paired with deep amethyst eyes and the inner thrive and cold fire his mother gifted him with as he seemed to be a stillbirth. She called to all forces to save her son. The shadows answered and infused the boy who now seems to be dead if he's sleeping. I like being a deceiver, explorer and dark hero that scares the shit out of my fellow partymembers as well as out of the unfortunate creatures that happen to interfere with my endeavours. Coolest thing is the roleplay dynamics with the human Celestial Warlock on the party, who is fascinated but also irritated by him. He is great fun to play! If you like to take a look: www.dndbeyond.com/characters/74838697 And I know that it would have been more effective to take Con over Dex, but for him being heavily influenced by his elven heritage and having suffered from illness in his early years it seemed more fitting his story and concept to take Dex over Con.

It takes a certain dude to play shadow sorcerer

I just rolled up a Shadow Sorcerer for a campaign I joined on Saturday. As the daughter of a merchant, starting off with a +8 to Persuasion is pretty good (+3 CHA, +4 from Expertise in Persuasion, +1 from Luck Stone). Female Variant Human, Prodigy Feat, Noble background. For my two spells I chose Catapult so I could use any old object nearby as ammunition, and Chaos Bolt for diversity in damage types. Only hit I've landed so far was blindfiring a crossbow vertically into the forest canopy above when we were being followed by an enemy scout with disadvantage and only +2 to hit.

About the sorcery points, we homebrewed a little with my DM, allowing me to get my charisma modifier worth of sorcery points once per day on a short rest. Very usefull at lower levels and still helpfull on higher level ;) (specially with a +5 CHA modifier) oh and if you're looking for a race to play the Shadow sorcerer, the Yuan -ti's adavtage on spell saving throws and immunity to poison is sweeeeeeeet!

Changeling shadow sorcerer is what I’m currently playing and they’re a fun time to play. I built my character to be a blaster and a utility caster which at times can be a strain on the ol spell slots but I’m getting better at knowing when I should use supportive spells to mess with the enemies or focus on killing them. Either way twinned haste let’s me do both.

Oh great job on this one. Now I have to find a group to play this class

Yo, so... I accidently went to full screen and both your guys' eyes are gleaming in this video... it's beautiful

Celestial Warlock Guide would be cool, as would an Oath of Conquest Paladin guide!

Thanks for making this video :) Inspiring stuff.

Monty throwing out some Billy Mays vibes in the beginning promo.

I always slept on Shadow magic but recently I been wanting to try one so enjoy getting a sub from my random impulsive KZfaq searching. Was thinking about going a little more into a death theme because if you going to be edge you might as well go all the way; Blindness/Deafness, Eyebite and Blight pairs well with the Hound's effect making for some decent debuff while Enervation plus shadow walking to stay in range is just slasher villain fun and maybe add in Blink and Etherealness to play more into the ghostly theme depending on what the group has covered.

First of all, I really enjoy your videos... I'm really surprised you didn't talk about Dragon's Breath. It's a huge AE damage dealer round over round, the damage type can be chosen, it scales well, and can be twinned for just a massive boost to party damage output. The only limitation is range. It's such a powerful and flexible spell for a caster with limited picks. The other spell I'm surprised you overlooked is Fly. With all the talk of teleportation, Fly is fantastic for mobility in and out of combat. Who doesn't want to fly?

Winter Eladrin Shadow Sorcerer who is a descendant of the Queen of Air and Darkness. One day he will contact her and multiclass into warlock of the archfey. The fey theme matches the illusion magic and charm of a shadow sorcerer pretty well imo.

I’ve definitely overplayed this archetype. You can easily make minor changes like an high-elf given dark powers by Lolth the Spider Queen, slowly corrupting the High Elf into a drow.

I always get tempted to play a shadow sorcerer multiclassed with hexblade warlock (pact of the blade). Up cast sorcerer spells from warlock slots (as of invocations, thirsting blade, improved pact weapon, life drinker devils sight) and metamagic from sorcerer (quickened or subtle spell) and feats war caster and resilient only

Any thoughts on twinned Haste? I am tempted to take this to boost my 5th level party’s Paladin and Fighter, but also afraid that it might become the only spell they will let me cast (since it is concentration, I’d be pretty limited in what else I could do). Is it better to avoid that trap?

I actually made a pretty blasty shadow sorcerer by using a red dragonborn, and making a backstory similar to how shadow true dragons are made. I flavored all of my fire spells to be black flame, and I used the darkness and Scorching Ray as my pretty much go to. It was fun, even if it might not have been the most mechanically effective. :)

How to use the darkness: get away from your party and cast it on yourself. That way no one can see you, but your allies are not hindered

I play a shadow sorcerer Tabaxi in one of our games! He is so much fun! It has so many battle/control mage opportunities! (I play him like a shadow kitty ninja!) Edit: I debated on subtle spell for a long time but my first two metamagic choices were heightened spell and twinned spell! I have no regrets so far, and twinned spell is great and cheap for doubling up 1st level spells (as long as you stay within the parameters of twinned). Heightened is the really expensive one, but for those times you just really want them to fail your saving throw it's always good to have! Combine darkness with shadow blade and you become quite an adversary!

I use a book called dark arts players companion with my shadow sorcerer. That book has a lot of shadow spells and can help make a very dark spell caster.

Urchin/Criminal/Urban Bounty Hunter is basically my goto background for any character. Stealth and Thieves Tools are always useful skills to have.

Been having fun with this subclass. Combined it with Rogue Inquisitve to make a superior Arcane Trickster. Straight up monster to deal with when you combine Rogue avoidance and spell blasting Sorcerer.

Shadow Sorcerer multiclass with Gloom Stalker... Fun!!!!

This is Monty hang gesture “performance” skills at its highest form

One of my favourite races for the Shadow Sorcerer is the Fallen Aasimar, which fits so well the edgy theme and the mechanics. I'm kinda disappointed that you didn't talk about it

I have a really exciting idea for a Rogue / Shadow Sorcerer multiclass. Think of Corvo Attano from the Dishonored games and you're pretty much there. I'll most likely be playing that character concept in a new campaign, after my current ones have end.

Lovely video. I was listening to you both whole making a Shadow Sorcerer. The Background? Witchlight Hand The jist is I have a set of twin Halflings. Excentra and Dreer. Both were born from the same mother at the same time, but Excentra was born in the Feywild and Dreer in the Shadow Fell due to shinanigans. Hilarity ensued. They were raised by the other hands of the Whitchlight Carnival but got fired before the start of the game. Dreer is technically a Tiefling (Halfling with Shadow demon blood?) who dresses like a mime and has her focus fitted in the hilt of a whip. You mentioned Edge lords? Dreer is an Edge Duchess. Also, she had "Wooden Teeth" as her random trinket. I'm assuming she stole them out of spite. Thanks for the video. I'm off to the Bard video for Excentra!

Really loving these class/subclass videos!! Put the Spore Druid on your list and let us know what you think of it! :)

You guys prove how this can be taken so many different ways.

Taking a look at this now that I'm finally playing a Shadow Sorcerer (multiclassed with Grave Cleric--I've had to content myself with 12 CON even though I've rolled super well.) In terms of races, I know you illuminated the classic choices--but I'd like to make a case for the lightfoot halfling. The have that little charisma bonus--and being able to hide behind your enemies syncs up well with stealth. You get the most out of Eyes of the Dark because halflings don't have dark-vision, and Lucky is still amazingly good. Plus Brave makes sense. You aren't afraid of people--people are afraid of you. It's perfect if you want to go for the "creepy child who never blinks" theme. I actually think animate objects is kind of thematic if you want to go for a more poltergeisty "strange things happen around this person."

I have use mold earth to great success in campaigns by using it to create full cover, and to dig up valuable materials in conjunction with the locate object spell to fund the party with literally thousands of gold and the GM hates me for it doing this is also good for obtaining certain spell components that get consumed because often times diamonds are a consumed material components and why pay for diamonds when you can dig them up out of the ground

Just now seeing this video, I rolled stats for my first ever D&D game. I got 7 str, 15 Dex, 16 Con, 16 Int, 10 wis, and 18 charisma. I'm a changeling. Been having a lot of fun with this chr. And our DM is great at helping new people like me. Just got to level 4. On a mission to hunt down Cryovane. Probably not how his name is spelled.

Great video

My take on the shadow sorcerer (I was was inspired by Kelly to make one and he's almost done with LMoP, level 5) is to concentrate on their powers, which is advantage on attacks and disadvantage on saves. Half-elf for elven accuracy obviously. I started full defensively, taking mage armor, shield and absorb elements to make sure I survive long enough to throw powerful spells around. Shocking grasp is also a great tool with elven accuracy to reposition yourself better on the battlefield. For offence, I just got sleep at the start and moved to shadowblade at level 3. Shadowblade on a sorcerer is great because you can both twin and quicken booming blade to give yourself a limited form of extra attack. Otherwise, with 16 dexterity your light crossbow is just as good as anything until level 5, after which your main casual form of attack should be twinning your favourite cantrip. I took chill touch for that because I found it very thematic but on a power level, it's definatelly worse both than firebolt and frostbite. Once you get to level 7, just quicken polymorph on yourself and use giant ape reach to smash, or you know, just be boring and twin it on your most hurt and depleted teamates to ruin the DM's day. Advice: if you twin haste or polymorph, make sure you move away in all concecutive rounds, your character has earned the right to go afk and go make a coffee or something because you don't want that concentration to run out. The spell I would most love to have on my shadow sorcerer is dissonant whispers which should be a prime candidate for either magic initiate or a small dip in goo or bard. Summon the hound then whisper: disadvantage on the save and then both the hound and you make AOPs, with the hound having a chance to knock him over to boot. And the fun only begins when you twin it ;)

Dr. Falicer aka shadowman, from the princess & the frog is a great example. But I feel like he also had bard traits too.

My shadow sorcerer is only level 8 right now even split between sorcerer and swashbuckler rouge I'm a drow Urchin background My feats are Eldritch adept: devil sight Eleven accuracy (charisma) I started sorcerer and took rouge at 2nd level through 5th then doubled back and got 3 levels of sorcerer. As a drow I can cast darkness without using a spell slot then I can use sorcery points for extra castings. Devil sight means I can see in all darkness and can set myself up for lots of advantage sneak attacks Elven accuracy give me constant Super advantage so I roll a least one crit hit a session

I've never played a sorcerer, and I chose Shadow. This is helpful.