Hitting tier 3 in D&D, while ostensibly only the halfway point of its level progression, feels like a graduation into the true epic levels. As a DM who has run a mostly-high-level campaign now for over 5 years, let me tell you that you hit a point where you struggle to challenge the players.
This is the point at which pure casters get spells that generally are too powerful to let them cast more than once a day (you do eventually get multiple 6th level spell slots, but only much later). While maybe not as big of a power explosion as the 4-5 transition is, it's still a big deal.
As a reminder, our Armorer is now in +1 Plate with a +2 Shield and a Cloak of Protection, giving them an AC of 24, and thanks to taking Magic Initiate: Wizard with the Sage background, they also have the Shield spell. Their AC is high enough that only really super-powered threats are going to be able to hit them with any real consistency. But we're now hitting levels where we might start to encounter such beings.
Feat-wise, we have Tough and Magic Initiate, and we took War Caster at 4, but just capped our Intelligence with an ASI at level 8.
Let's see what we're getting and what choices we're making.
Level 11:
Here, we get Spell Storing Item. The real question, then, is what spell to store. We can now store up to 3rd level spells in this thing, getting twice our Intelligence in uses per day. Sadly, this is not technically a magic item with charges, so we can't recharge it with Magic Item Tinker to cheat out some higher level spells out of it.
Damage-wise, Lightning Bolt is one possibility, just to give us ten extra casts of it each day (and we can hand it to our friends). That's honestly not that bad an idea, but it does make for some samey gameplay.
Alter Self is another possibility if we need to do some underwater adventuring, as we can pass it between allies to let everyone benefit from it individually (and maintain their own concentration).
One hilarious use would be to put Homunculus Servant in it - while the caster can only conjure one of these at a time, if each party member casts it, you should be able to have a Homunculus for every party member. That 1d6+2 damage per turn doesn't sound so bad when it's 5d6+10 every turn. (While the spell does have a costly component, the component isn't consumed, so this should work.)
Still, once summoned we'll want to use this on some other spell. Again, Lightning Bolt might be the easiest go-to option to give us nigh-unlimited use of it. This does 8d6 damage on a failed save, so if we compare it to our attacks, the Dreadnaught is making two attacks for 1d10+6 at this level, or 11.5, and the Infiltrator is doing one attack for 2d6+6 (13) and a second attack for 1d6+6 (9.5,) meaning that this is going to hit harder than those in single target (if we assume a 50% success rate on the dex save, it's about 21 damage on average, which is just shy of matching the weapon attacks if they hit every single time).
So it's not a bad choice, to be frank. Get ready to cast lots of Lightning Bolts. It's not technically unlimited, but it's 10 uses before you ever spend any spell slots, so... you know. That's fairly sustainable unless you're in a real slog of a day.
Level 12:
Here we get our third general feat. If we chose to delay capping our Intelligence by taking Fey Touched at level 8, we will want either one more Intelligence half-feat, or possibly set ourselves up for level 16 by doing an ASI to get 20 Int and 15 or 17 Con (depending on how we started). Among the Int half feats we don't already have, we could go Elemental Adept if we want to really lean into Lightning Bolt (and I do think this is one of those damage types were resistance is more common than immunity). Shadow Touched could also be an option to just take another Int half feat. Telekinetic and Telepathic also work decently.
But I think I like having capped my Int at 8 so that I can focus on some good defensive feats here. Heavy Armor Master will let us reduce incoming Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage by our PB, which is 4 at this level (and soon to be 5). That's pretty good, though we're going to be avoiding so many attacks that the ones that actually land are probably going to be hitting hard enough to devalue this kind of subtractive damage reduction. It's still appealing, of course (and we can get a bump to Con).
I think Shield Master is probably the more obvious choice. While it can only boost our Strength (which we tend to ignore,) the main benefits are quite good - we're always using a Shield anyway, so we can use this to get pseduo-evasion against some of the big dex-save abilities (it only works if we succeed on our save, so it's not quite as good as the Rogue/Monk ability). Now, the Shield Bash feature is probably only coming up on Guardian if we're using Dreadnaught to push foes away, but we can also pull them to us, and then knock them prone. Note, of course, that our DC is not going to be very good because we have low Strength (we might even have a +0, meaning our DC at this level is going to be a pitiful 12).
If we're truly ok with where our ability scores are, we could consider picking up a Fighting Style or Origin feat. Defense could push our alread-absurd AC even further. Dueling would actually, straight-up, be a pretty good damage bonus (though it would not work for Infiltrator, as it has to be a melee weapon. Despite doing 1d10 damage and having reach, the Force Demolisher is a one-handed melee weapon).
Level 13:
At level 13, we get 4th level spells.
Summon Construct is a strong option - especially now that most monsters aren't immune (and only rarely resistant) to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. I think the Clay Golem option is probably the best damage option (though against swarms, the Iron one might be better). We always want to cast these at even levels, so you'll just cast this at base level and it'll be attacking twice for 1d8+8 (or 12.5 damage per attack, so 25 on average - discounting misses and crits of course).
Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is another good one, which can either isolate a foe or protect an ally.
Freedom of Movement is a hell of a spell, and gets particularly powerful when you start facing giant enemies that can swallow you.
We'll also get Fire Shield and Greater Invisibility for free. The former is especially good when in a place with lots of fire-based or cold-based enemies, but even if you're in a neutral setting, it'll punish those who hit you. That said, we're so hard to hit that we might not get a whole lot out of this backlash damage. It's non-concentration and lasts 10 minutes, but we also are going to be a little precious with our 4th level slot for now.
Greater Invisibility can make us a menace on the battlefield, though it's less useful if we're actually trying to sneak around, as we already get advantage on Stealth if in Infiltrator mode.
Level 14:
Two major things at level 14:
We're now going to be able to attune to five magic items (nice) and we get a Flash of Genius use back on a short rest.
But more importantly, we reach the final list of options for Replicate Magic Item.
First off, we swap out our +1 Plate for +2 Plate.
Next, we pick up Ring of Protection. That's right, we now have an AC of 26 (+2 Plate gives us 20, +2 Shield gives us 4, Cloak of Protection gives us 1, Ring of Protection gives us 1. That's 26, baby!) and can push that to 31 with the Shield spell. Hot damn.
Now, there are various specific options (including the ring,) but we can also create any rare wondrous item that isn't cursed. Let's consider some options:
Mantle of Spell Resistance is pretty good, though it's specifically advantage on saves against spells, not all saving throws.
Necklace of Fireballs is one where we can play some shenanigans with Magic Item Tinker, fueling it up with 1st level spell slots to cast 3rd level fireballs (though at a lower DC than our own spells).
You can pick up one of the various Elemental-summoning items like Censer of Controlling Air Elementals.
You might not be able to stack up a Cloak of Displacement with a Cloak of Protection, but it might actually amount to an even lower chance for targets to hit you (and makes it far less likely they land a crit). I still might prefer the boost to my saves, but it's something to consider.
A Cube of Force gives you a whole ton of spell options, including Wall of Force (which we'll get eventually).
Helm of Teleportation is also a powerful option if your party doesn't have someone who can do this.
And Daern's Instant Fortress is, I've got to be honest, such a hilarious freaking option that I'd be tempted to take it.
Finally, an Amulet of Health might be a solid option, especially if we haven't put all that much into Constitution, just setting it to 19 (meaning at this level, along with the Tough feat, we'd have 157 HP. A Barbarian with +3 to Con and without the Tough feat would have 132).
Level 15:
At 15, we get our last subclass features.
Each of our in-built weapons get a damage increase.
The Force Demolisher goes up to 2d6 (so we should be hitting for 2d6+6 on each hit, or 13. We can also now go to Huge size when we enlarge, and get an addition 5 feet of reach (meaning we can hit a creature 20 feet away from us).
Thunder Pulse goes from a d8 to a d10, which is not much of a jump. But, we also get a reaction where we can pull a target that fails a strength save to us, giving us a little bit of that Dreadnaught utility, and thus can better keep foes focused on us. (This has limited uses, but so does Giant Stature).
The Lightning Launcher upgrades to 2d6. It should still have the 1d6 extra once per turn, so you'll now be hitting for 3d6 on your first attack and 2d6 on your second. The target you hit also gets disadvantage on their attacks against you, so you can really fire away with impunity. The fact that a lot of "caster" enemies like Liches now have attacks as their default action really benefits this high-AC build.
Also, you can use a bonus action to give yourself a fly speed of twice your normal speed Int times per day, but only for one turn. I think the intent here is that you can fly up to a high perch to snipe down at foes. Hell, toss out a Daern's Instant Fortress and then immediately fly your 70 feet to the top (remember that our speed in Infiltrator Armor is 5 feet higher).
I think our game plan isn't changed a ton by these, and we'll have probably fallen into a favored armor model to suit the needs of the party by this point. But these are all fairly nice boosts (Guardian gets the smallest damage boost by far, though).
Level 16:
Our last General Feat. Honestly, I'd say probably pick up whatever you didn't get earlier. If you have an Amulet of Health, you truly don't need to think about getting Con up any higher, so go nuts. The only stats we truly need to be good on this character are Int and Con, though if we're already happy with where those are, we can think about feats that boost other abilities. I never hate having good Wisdom. Also, further boosts to Strength are going to be nice just to help us carry all this stuff.
And there we go. Honestly, I think the biggest boost in power is the level 14 Wondrous items. This is when you start to get truly insane things, and especially given that some of those items (like the Instant Fortress) are really meant to be limited by the draining charges and or the inability to repair them - if our fortress gets damaged, we can just toss out the old one and make a new one on the next long rest.
I will say that once we get Spell-Storing Item and/or make our own Necklaces of Fireballs, we might just be a Lightning Bolt/Fireball turret. I do wish that we had some better weapon-damage-boosting spells at our disposal to encourage us to focus on our own weapons. Still, that's going to be some very sustainable stuff.
Next, we'll look at tier 4. I don't really know to what extent our power progression will work out that well in the last tier of play, but we'll take a look.
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