I have recently been loving playing and DMing for Dungeons and Dragons 5e. As part of my DMing I have created a few different homebrew creations. This guard is one that I think is really effective. You can find the page for it on DNDBeyond here.
The goal with this was to create a magically trained guard for a high magic area that utilizes some of the abilities of the war magic subclass for wizards. It was used in a prison in combination with more traditional guards.
General
- Armor Class – 12 (14 with Mage Armor)
- Hit Points – 17 (3d6 +6)
- Speed – 30 feet
Ability Scores
- Strength – 10 (+0)
- Dexterity – 13 (+1)
- Constitution – 11 (+0)
- Intelligence – 15 (+2)
- Wisdom – 10 (+0)
- Charisma – 11 (+0)
Languages, Saving Throws, Skills
- Saving Throws:
- Intelligence: +4
- Wisdom: +2
- Skills:
- Arcana: +4
- History: +4
- Languages:
- Common
- Any other appropriate language
- Challenge Rating: 2 (450 XP)
- Proficiency Bonus: +2
Traits
- Spellcasting: 4th Level, Spell Save DC 12, +4 to hit
- Cantrips (at will):
- Fire Bolt
- Friends
- Message
- 1st Level (4 slots):
- Charm Person
- Mage Armor
- Sleep
- Alarm
- 2nd level (3 slots):
- Hold Person
- Arcane Lock
- Detect Thoughts
- Cantrips (at will):
- Tactical Wit: Your keen ability to assess tactical situations allows you to act quickly in battle. You can give yourself a bonus to your initiative rolls equal to your Intelligence modifier.
Actions
- Dagger: Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +2 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) piercing damage.
Reactions
- Arcane Deflection: You have learned to weave your magic to fortify yourself against harm. When you are hit by an attack or you fail a saving throw, you can use your reaction to gain a +2 bonus to your AC against that attack or a +4 bonus to that saving throw. When you use this feature, you can’t cast spells other than cantrips until the end of your next turn.
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English Transcript:
00:00:00:03 - 00:00:13:14 Bennett Tomlin Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my Dungeons and Dragons Channel where we take the rules of 5e and figure out how to use, exploit, and homebrew in order to make our games more fun. Today we'll be focusing on the homebrew part of the equation. 00:00:13:17 - 00:00:31:03 Bennett Tomlin In my homebrew world of Terravial on the continent of Eorwild there's a city called Hafnia. In the city of Hafnia they have mandatory military service, and as part of that, they've developed a high quality magic college with a particular focus on war magic. 00:00:31:03 - 00:00:35:28 Bennett Tomlin Because of this, the City Guard contains conventional martial guards like you would expect. 00:00:36:01 - 00:00:39:29 Bennett Tomlin But they also have a few members who have studied and trained in war magic. 00:00:39:29 - 00:00:47:02 Bennett Tomlin I wanted to create a stat block that represented a relatively mundane guard who had been trained in this type of magic 00:00:47:02 - 00:00:59:13 Bennett Tomlin help develop that. I started with the features that the War Magic Wizard subclass gets uniquely at these early levels. The two of these that are going to be really important for us are tactical wit and arcane deflection. 00:00:59:17 - 00:01:26:18 Bennett Tomlin Tactical which just gives us a small boost to our initiative allowing us to add our intelligence, boosting it from plus one to plus three, which is a nice little boost for our guard who needs to be ready to maintain the peace in a world full of what are effectively chaotic superheroes. The other feature we need to take a look at is arcane deflection, which lets us use our reaction to add plus two to our AC or plus four to a saving throw, which does help increase our survivability. 00:01:26:20 - 00:01:35:27 Bennett Tomlin But when you use it, you're not allowed to cast a spell other than cantrips in the next round, which hurts this feature because we're not so great at physical attacks. 00:01:35:27 - 00:01:42:27 Bennett Tomlin We do have firebolt though we can use that as our cantrip And so at the very least, this is good if this guard needs to retreat. 00:01:42:27 - 00:01:47:25 Bennett Tomlin Adding these features onto a relatively low level stat block gets us pretty close to what we want. 00:01:47:27 - 00:01:49:29 Bennett Tomlin So let's talk about what those stats look like. 00:01:49:29 - 00:02:02:20 Bennett Tomlin We start with plus zero across the board. In most skills, strength can wisdom and charisma. We have a plus to an intelligence and a plus one in dexterity. We're better than average, but this is not a high level guard we're dealing with. 00:02:02:20 - 00:02:13:16 Bennett Tomlin base AC is only 12. But as DMs, we're going to assume that since these are magic users, they cast mage armor at the beginning of their shift and actually have an AC of 14. 00:02:13:16 - 00:02:20:04 Bennett Tomlin these guards have 17 hit points because they're fourth level wizards, so six HP at level one and three extra D6. 00:02:20:06 - 00:02:40:07 Bennett Tomlin It's not super high, but it is like two and a half goblins and makes this a decently formidable character to put in low level encounters. It's helped by the fact that war magic guards almost always go out on patrol with at least one martial guard to help engage threats, keep them further away, and allow the magic guard to really thrive. 00:02:40:12 - 00:02:58:15 Bennett Tomlin The other things we really need to highlight before we get into spells and how to play this is just our skills in saving throws. We have a plus two proficiency bonus, so we have a plus for intelligence save and a plus to wisdom save. We're plus zero in every other save. There's proficiency in our canon history giving us a plus four on those. 00:02:58:15 - 00:03:01:09 Bennett Tomlin But that doesn't really matter. It's a guard, Right? 00:03:01:09 - 00:03:12:06 Bennett Tomlin Also, make sure you remember that you have that bonus to initiative because this character is not super sturdy. We want to get them into the combat early so they've got a chance that you get some things off. 00:03:12:06 - 00:03:18:01 Bennett Tomlin now we get into the tricky part for building a spell using NPC and that spell loadout in how to use them. 00:03:18:01 - 00:03:23:22 Bennett Tomlin We're a fourth level wizard with a plus four to hit under spell attacks and a DC 12 spell save. 00:03:23:22 - 00:03:41:16 Bennett Tomlin Starting with kinship. We take firebolt friends in message messages used to help coordinate with other guards. Friends is used if they need to step up and help with interrogation or try to calm down a challenging situation. And Firebolt is the primary damage dealer for this guard. 00:03:41:16 - 00:03:47:15 Bennett Tomlin our first level spells we have four slots for, but we're generally using one at the beginning of the day to cast major. 00:03:47:21 - 00:03:49:09 Bennett Tomlin So behave as if you have three. 00:03:49:09 - 00:04:08:23 Bennett Tomlin We use those for charm person, which can be used to calm down potentially volatile situations. Mage armor as we mentioned, sleep which these guards used to try to subdue enemies. And alarm which was added to this spell list. Because when these guards were being deployed in my world in the first encounter, my players encountered them. 00:04:08:26 - 00:04:19:12 Bennett Tomlin They were at the largest prison in Hafnia. And so they used things like alarm to like different areas of the prison off and know if someone crossed it. 00:04:19:15 - 00:04:36:24 Bennett Tomlin Finally, the second level spells that we have our whole person, which is used to try to lock down someone who needs to be arrested or otherwise neutralized. Arcane lock, which was used to help lock prisoners up and detect thoughts, which again comes into play if this word magic guard is called in for an interrogation. 00:04:36:24 - 00:04:41:16 Bennett Tomlin How exactly you play this card is going to depend a little bit on the situation you drop them in for. 00:04:41:16 - 00:04:56:12 Bennett Tomlin When my players encountered them, they were trying to bust their Zhentarim handler out of prison. So in that case, the guards were primarily throwing out hold person spells to try to lock down various players and using Firebolt for damage as the more martial guards tried to engage. 00:04:56:12 - 00:05:05:03 Bennett Tomlin if instead the word magic guard is called to a bar brawl they may instead try something like charm person to get people to calm down or sleep to incapacitate 00:05:05:03 - 00:05:06:28 Bennett Tomlin them for long enough to shackle them. 00:05:06:28 - 00:05:21:16 Bennett Tomlin If they're investigating a crime, they're going to rely on charm, person friends and detect thoughts to try to gather information as they move through the case, they need to luck someone in prison. Well, that's where the alarm and arcane lock spells that I mentioned come up. 00:05:21:16 - 00:05:27:03 Bennett Tomlin You, of course, can always choose to use your action to attack with your dagger, but you shouldn't and mostly won't. 00:05:27:07 - 00:05:33:21 Bennett Tomlin There's a few other things you can do to make this build a little bit stronger or different that I think I want to mention. Before we close out this video, 00:05:33:21 - 00:05:56:22 Bennett Tomlin you could add shield or absorb elements into the first level spells. Both of these spells would make sense. And if I was playing a low level war magic character, I would certainly have them, frankly, as a DM keeping track of that many reactions and that many varied AC and like resistances was not something I wanted to do in low level encounters, so I decided against it. 00:05:56:24 - 00:06:03:13 Bennett Tomlin Plus, we do have Arcane Deflection, which is not as powerful as shield, but does give us a little bit of that same benefit. 00:06:03:13 - 00:06:14:19 Bennett Tomlin Plus, you don't want to make low CR monsters too beefy. It can be fun when you're homebrewing to try to make things as powerful or as scary as possible. But remember, we want this to fit in our world. 00:06:14:26 - 00:06:32:09 Bennett Tomlin This is someone who has been studying as part of their mandatory service, as part of the state funded college to learn these skills. They are going to be good. They're going to be far better than the average citizen, but they are not like an exceptional adventurer or something who has left that path to go find something on their own. 00:06:32:09 - 00:06:41:17 Bennett Tomlin if you really want to make this more powerful then in your head: bump this to a fifth level wizard, give them a few extra hit points, add fireball and counter spell, 00:06:41:19 - 00:06:44:00 Bennett Tomlin increase your proficiency to plus three. 00:06:44:00 - 00:06:54:03 Bennett Tomlin and suddenly your spell save DC is higher, your attack roll is higher and you are able to more effectively shut down other magic users who this guard may come across. 00:06:54:03 - 00:07:03:19 Bennett Tomlin Fans of this channel might be shouting at me for including Fireball because I previously did an entire video where I said there are bunch of spells better than fireball at that level. 00:07:03:22 - 00:07:10:26 Bennett Tomlin And I stand by that. But these are guards again, the look in your players eyes the first time you hit them with a fireball is worth it. 00:07:10:26 - 00:07:22:07 Bennett Tomlin But you may decide against it. Deciding that an urban guard, when it used something with a 20 foot radius because the risk of collateral damage is too high, maybe they're using a more targeted lightning bolt or something else. 00:07:22:10 - 00:07:24:20 Bennett Tomlin Play with what fits in your world. 00:07:24:20 - 00:07:26:08 Bennett Tomlin If I was actually playing 00:07:26:08 - 00:07:42:01 Bennett Tomlin this leveled up version of this with they had just that single third level spell slot, I would almost certainly be saving it for counterspell. Nonetheless, unless I, you know, had multiple of these guards and then I'd have a couple move up to counter spell and a couple stay back to Fireball and then fire bolt. 00:07:42:04 - 00:07:42:28 Bennett Tomlin But 00:07:42:28 - 00:07:45:13 Bennett Tomlin I think the more important takeaway from this 00:07:45:13 - 00:07:53:10 Bennett Tomlin is that building a homebrew creature that the party will face is different than building a character who will be a member of the party. 00:07:53:10 - 00:08:05:10 Bennett Tomlin And it's even different than building like what I call named NPCs named. Named NPCs are powerful people who are often allies of the party and those I'm willing to cheese up a bit. 00:08:05:17 - 00:08:15:03 Bennett Tomlin I'm willing to make more complex builds with more for me to keep track of because they're not standard. They are meant to be these unique individuals in the world. 00:08:15:03 - 00:08:23:21 Bennett Tomlin Overall, I've been pretty happy with this homebrew when I need a relatively low CR magic user and it fit very well in my world. 00:08:23:21 - 00:08:28:16 Bennett Tomlin first I want to know, do you think this could work in your world? Do you have things I should have done differently? 00:08:28:19 - 00:08:33:16 Bennett Tomlin Let me know in the comments and make sure to check out some of my past videos. Thank you.
