So, this Artificer I just built in the previous four posts is, more or less, the character that I intended to play in what wound up being a short-lived Spelljammer game. Some of my choices might have been shuffled around a bit (I had the Shipwright background, because I had him as a crafter of spelljamming vessels. Actually, using old backgrounds, I could probably just go with that, or I could pick up Wildspacer from the Spelljammer box set, which also grants Tough - I'd just use my free human origin feat for Magic Initiate).
While he never actually made it past level 2 before our DM got too busy with work, he's a character I'd be excited to play.
My Wizard hit level 9 a little while back, and I've generally imagined characters as if they were keeping pace with that campaign when toying around with builds. But now that I have Abram leveled up to the same level, I figured I'd talk about what my general combat strategy would be and see what kind of damage output I might have.
So, at this level, he's got a +10 to hit with his built-in weapon, and adds 6 to the roll. (While D&D Beyond has fixed the armor training issues, it still doesn't account for the +1 bonus to the armorer weapons).
His party in that truncated campaign was, or was going to be, an Aberrant Sorcerer, Stars Druid, Soulknife Rogue, and Twilight Cleric (of course, the Rogue and I didn't get our subclass yet, and in the 2024 rules, none of us would have). Thus, a tanky Guardian model was what I expected to use as my default, but I think I'm more inclined toward the Dreadnaught version currently.
By level 9, I'd almost certainly have the GP to buy the 100g gem needed for Homunculus Servant. I actually had this already as an infusion at level 2, which is no longer possible. Abram is a middle-aged man who is married, and he and his wife (an orc lawyer who I didn't mean to make basically She-Hulk, but now I think she looks like a slightly older Tatiana Maslany as an orc in my mind) bonded over pulp crime books (not, actually, unlike the kind of things that go on in Sharn - maybe that's where the books are set) and so his Homuculus looks like a floating metal orb, but it has a kind of animated sprite of an Almiraj (a mythical horned rabbit, which has a statblock in Tomb of Annihilation) dressed in a fedora and trenchcoat that is projected in front of it like a hologram, named 1N5P3C70R - a design that my DM confessed was so cute she said she would never try to kill the homunculus.
But, the point is that I would be able to get that by this level (and even upcast it to 3rd level to get a little more HP and its ability checks and saving throws). Inspector (I'm going to write it non-1337-speak style for my own sanity) will thus be up and able to snipe at foes with no action required by me. However, we've got a special trick to use with it:
When combat breaks out, I'm going to use a bonus action to cast Dragon's Breath on Inspector. Thereafter, for the rest of the fight (or until they take him down) he's going to use his action to do a 30-foot cone for 3d6 damage - I'll probably choose Acid, as a pretty reliable type.
This is going to be a pretty consistent source of damage to supplement my own power. The one downside is that I won't be able to push and pull enemies (unless they're Small or Tiny) on the first turn because I can't get Giant's Stature yet.
But, I will still have an action to attack, and so I can make two Force Demolisher attacks at +10 to hit and dealing 1d10+6 per hit (11.5 average).
Naturally, the Dragon's Breath is going to be very good against groups of enemies. The save DC is 17, which is pretty respectable, but just to borrow Cody's convention from D&D Deep Dive, we'll assume that there's a 50% success rate. Dragon's Breath still does half damage on a save.
Therefore, for every target we hit, we're getting 10.5 on a failure or 5.25 on a success, for around 7.875 damage each time.
Now, the great thing is that even on turn 1, we're still basically doing our full damage potential, because while Inspector is skipping his Force Strike, he's fine just doing this more powerful dragon breath option, and we still have our action to attack.
If we assume we're fighting a pair of Cloakers (total XP is 7,800, which is a Moderate-difficulty encounter for 5 9th level PCs) we're actually only dealing with an AC of 14.
So, our Force Demolisher attacks are going to hit 85% of the time (surprisingly low ACs on most CR 8 monsters). So, for our hits, we're talking 11.5 x 85%, or 9.775, and then a 5% chance to get 1d10 more, or 5.5x5%, or .275, meaning we have 10.05 damage per attack, or 20.1 with both attacks.
With an actual stat block, we can also calculate their chance to succeed against the Dragon's Breath. They have a +2 to Dex saves, so they actually only save on a roll of 15 or higher, meaning that they fail 70% of the time. So, 10.5x70% is 7.35, and then they take 5.25 30% of the time, or 1.575, giving us 8.925 damage per turn, or 17.85 if we can hit both targets.
Just to add another wrinkle, if we say that we can only hit both of them 50% of the time, we'll average that to 13.3875.
Thus, each round, we can expect to do about 33.4875 damage.
Note that if we want to really blow through things, we can also use Lightning Bolt (on later turns) instead of attacking. This will deal 28 damage 70% of the time and 14 damage 30% of the time, or 23.8 damage on average, so it'll actually outdo our own attacks, and if we can hit both of them, that doubles to 47.6.
Cloakers only have 91 HP, so if we can pull off this level of damage, between the five players, we should have them down really fast.
Actually, one downside to going with Dreadnaught here is that even if we use Giant's Stature, the Cloakers are still too big for us to push and pull them around. Still, I think we make up for it.
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