this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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[Build Advice] Purple dragon knight multiclassing as Warlock or Sorcerer? (self.dnd)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by WetBeardHairs to c/dnd
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My character is an aristocratic heir from Cormyr who served as an officer of the Purple Dragons. His commission is more decoration... he's spent his time fighting one sided battles against orcs and buying his way through life. He is completely clueless about how the world around him works. He got wild-magicked into an entirely different realm - an ongoing Curse of Strahd campaign.

I didn't care for the build and mechanics as much as having a good character to roll play. He is loosely based on a character from a book. I worked up his backstory and found the Purple Dragon Knights from Cormyr. I'm not really familiar with the Forgotten Realms. I don't read dnd novels and I only have the handbooks I can get from the local public library.

Anyways. I intend to play face but I don't want my character to be worthless in combat. This is Barovia, so lots of vampires, warewolves, and zombies. My character is level 6: fifth level fighter and first level.... which? I don't want to sacrifice too much

Warlock:
A relatively common multiclass for PDK. Evil.
This is the guide I used for building my character. I can say that my family's estate is maintained by passing down a cult of worship to the warlock's patron as my backstory. Typical evil, ends justify the means. I kind of feel like this is less compatible with my character's backstory.

Sorcerer: An uncommon multiclass for any kind of fighter. The origin is rather simple - the wild magic that brought my character to Barovia instilled him with innate magical powers. I would choose the Wild Magic origin. This seems like a viable explanation and it is easy to fit into my character's backstory.

Is it possible to make the PDK+Sorcerer work well?

Edit: I'm not above totally scrapping the entire build. I could just go straight sorcerer and make it work. My party may thank me for that.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I strongly recommend not multiclassing for flavor--the only good reason in 5e to multiclass is for mechanics (Flavor is free, Mechanics are expensive). PDK flavor is great, but the mechanics are awful--and while both Warlock and Sorcerer would give you some mechanical advantages, they won't offer quite enough to make PDK good.

What about just being a Valor or Swords bard, flavored as a PDK? Mechanically, a Bard can do just about everything that the PDK subclass offers but better and sooner, and both Swords and Valor get you extra attack at roughly the same pace. Unless you are dead-set on heavy armor, you shouldn't need any feats or MCs to make this work for you (and if you are so inclined, then Heavily Armored on Valor Bard works just fine to be Str-based instead of Dex-based). The only mechanical caveat with Valor bard is that you need a musical instrument to cast some of your bard spells--you can either stick to Verbal and Verbal+Somatic spells, or else grab a lute. Flavoring the bard magic as "woah, my words and music are suddenly making thing happen, rather than just being entertainment" fits pretty well with your Wild Magic Sorcerer idea. And lastly, Bards make amazing faces.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

You already have 5 levels of fighter, you probably won't ever be "useless" in combat. That said, from an optimization standpoint, PDK is already considered one of the worst fighter subclasses, but you still have the basic kit of the fighter.

Two attacks, action surge, heavy armor, and high HP will go a long way to shore up any issues for a long while.

As for the multiclass, neither is particularly optimized, but they can still work. Of the two, I would probably go with the sorcerer anyways, pick up spells like shield, absorb elements, etc. Use quicken to cast a spell and make a full round of attacks, or action surge to cast two spells.

Overall, it won't be optimized, but it should still work fine. Your only sticking point is the amount of stats you're going to want to have, str, dex, con, and cha are all reasonably important.