Character Codex: Imani (Part 2)

Greetings and welcome back to the Character Codex! We’ll finish up Imani in this post, leveling up to 20, but more importantly, getting the last and ultimate skill of her kit.

© Paladins

Advancement

Level 11 (Wizard 9/Fighter 2) – 5th level spells. Okay so this is the first chance to get our Dragon. Summon Draconic Spirit (Dragon’s Call) brings forth a corporeal dragon for an hour as long as concentration is kept. It can be any one of the non-physical damage types and gains that resistance, 30ft cone breath attack, and a 10ft rend attack. It does have a few things going for it: It’s AC and health scale with the spell slot used, as does a little of the rend damage. The resistance it gains is shared with you. It has Multiattack, making a number of Rend attacks equal to half the spell’s level and then a Breath Weapon. For a 5th level spell slot, that’s two rends and a breath. It can walk, swim, fly, and you can mount it. On the downside: Rend is only 1d6 + 4 + spell level, and isn’t magical. The Breath Weapon is only 2d6 and has no scaling. However, at the end of the day, it’s another ally on the battlefield that goes after you do, needing only verbal commands to attack. That’s a win.

One thing I should have mentioned in the previous post is that you might want to pick up Find Familiar and conjure a Pseudodragon as a stand-in to the dragon you can summon in later levels.

Level 12 (Wizard 10/Fighter 2) – Empowered Evocation comes online here. Now we can add our Intelligence modifier to one damage roll of any wizard evocation spell we cast. And for a refresher, that’s the vast majority of our spells. Great for area of effect damage. That extra damage works on cantrips too. Oh yeah, another cantrip choice. Maybe Light, so you can see in the dark.

Level 13 (Wizard 11/Fighter 2) – 6th level spells. An upcast of Summon Draconic Spirit will make its Multiattack better, as well as a few other things. And we can nab Freezing Sphere as an upgrade to Rime’s Binding Ice. Although it does have an automatic root mechanic, targets need to be in a body of water (or at least standing in some water).

Level 14 (Wizard 12/Fighter 2) – ASI/Feat time! Max out Intelligence to 20, and gain an extra spell to learn. Pick up some utility spells. Maybe Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Feather Fall, or Shield.

Level 15 (Wizard 13/Fighter 2) – 7th level spells. There are two fun spells we can get here. Delayed Blast Fireball, allows you to hold your firepower into a small bead to detonate later, which makes it stronger. And Draconic Transformation, if you’d like to say you fused with your dragon. You’d lose a lot, mainly the damage resistance, swim speed, and Rend attacks. But the Breath Weapon extends to 60ft, doing 6d8 force damage. Our Elemental Adept feats won’t help with this damage. These are not things Imani can do, but you might want to spice things up sometimes.

Level 16 (Wizard 14/Fighter 2) – The Overchannel feature that we acquire at this level allows us to automatically deal maximum damage of a spell from 1st to 5th level. That would further amplify the damage Imani can do, especially when coupled with Empowered Evocation. While you can use Overchannel as many times as you want, every time after the first time before you take a long rest, you’ll take 1d12 necrotic damage that ignores resistance and immunity. And as a Wizard main, probably best not to use that too often.

Level 17 (Wizard 15/Fighter 2) – 8th level spell! Illusory Dragon (Dragon’s Call) is the spell we’ll learn now. This is what we were holding out for. When it appears, enemies that can see it must make a Wisdom saving throw. If they fail, they are frightened for 1 minute. They can only repeat the save if they end their turn out of line of sight, with a successful save removing the frightened condition. Despite being a concentrated illusion, the damage it causes is very real. 7d6 in a 60 foot cone, choosing between acid, cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, or poison for damage. It also has 60 feet of movement. It’s damage and movement all come at the cost of your bonus action. The dragon succeeds on all saving throws, and attacks automatically miss it. However, as an action, a creature may make an Investigation check on it versus our spell save DC. If they win out, that creature has advantage against the dragon’s breath attacks.

Imani’s dragon does FrostFire damage, so work with your DM to see if your Illusory Dragon can do 4d6 of cold damage and 3d6 of fire damage (or vice versa) if you’d like to go that route.

Level 18 (Wizard 16/Fighter 2) – Last ASI/Feat of the build, so now’s the time to grab War Caster. The main benefit of the feat for us is the advantage on concentration checks it grants. This will help our +2 Constitution modifier greatly.

Level 19 (Wizard 17/Fighter 2) – 9th level spells! We’ve done it. The pinnacle, the zenith, the mountaintop of spell levels! The most thematic one would be Meteor Swarm. However, since we have all the spells this build needs, you could go ahead pick something stylish like Foresight, Prismatic Wall, True Polymorph, or fall back on snagging Wish.

Level 20 (Wizard 18/Fighter 2) – And now for the capstone of the build; Spell Mastery. With it, we can choose a 1st and 2nd level spell from our spellbook to cast at will, but only at its lowest level. There are a lot of choices with the 1st level spells, but the 2nd level ones come down to Aganazzar’s Scorcher or Rime’s Binding Ice. I guess it all comes down to do you lean more towards fire or cold damage.

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Okay. We’ve reached the end of this part of the build. Let’s see what we can do!

Level 20 stats are STR 8 (-1), DEX 14 (+2), CON 14 (+2), INT 20 (+5), WIS 12 (+1), CHA 10 (+0). With a Spell Save DC of 19, it’s great. Best skills are +11 Arcana, Investigation, and Nature, +8 Acrobatics, +7 Insight, and +5 History and Religion. The rest still have a +2 down to a -1 modifier, and AC is also still at 17.

At 20th level I’ve achieved a lot of things I set forth in accomplishing:

• Pretty much did everything needed in the first ten levels, with the exception the dragon, which we got some variations of.

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Techniques

Since the matter of casting two leveled spells was addressed in the previous Techniques, all that’s left to say here is that the only thing needing to be decided is how you’d like to manifest the dragon: Summon Draconic Spirit, Draconic Transformation, or Illusory Dragon. If you want an additional temporary party member, cast Summon Draconic Spirit. Or, if the draconic spirit is looking a bit weak, fuse with it and cast Draconic Transformation. Finally, to be more inline with her abilities in the Paladins game, cast the spell Illusory Dragon and send it forth to obliterate your foes, while you stay far away from harm.

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That will wrap up this build. What do you think about Imani?

For the next character, let’s meet up in the Kingdom of Ivalice.

Until then, stay safe and have fun!

Peace!