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grailfinders · 2 months ago

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Grailfinders Viewers' Choice #30 B: Sodom's Beast/Draco

great news everyone! life stopped kicking my ass quite as hard, so we’re back and better than ever! or at least, more employed than ever. still, that means Grailfinders is back on the menu, and to celebrate we’re solving that little tie we left off with by making both of them!

next on the chopping block is Sodom’s Beast a.k.a. Draco, the nero that never was, and never could be. I really don’t get why people thought making Maxwell’s Demon would be hard, I swear like half the roster explicitly can’t exist in a standard fate timeline, what makes him special?

anyways, gripes aside, she’s a Rune Knight Fighter to sneak in a rapid shift in perspective during her ascensions, as well as a Shadow Sorcerer to make dragons pop out of every which where while also making her wildly hard to whittle down.

check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Species and Background

I really wanted to make draco a tiefling for the horns, but we have to account for both forms of draco so that severely limits our options with going full 2024, and you never go full 2024. so with that, we’re going with Custom Lineage. this way, you get +2 Charisma to continue to exist no matter what the universe says, as well as Darkvision to clown on those pathetic humans, and the Crusher feat for +1 Strength as well as the ability to push any creature you hit with bludgeoning damage with no saves needed, and if you deal critical bludgeoning damage, everyone can pile on and get advantage on their attacks against the poor son-of-a-gun until your next turn.

Draco doesn’t do melee too often in her animations, but when she does she’s either using a giant flaming magichand or she’s a 7’ tall dommy mommy, so either way throwing her weight around is justified.

and of course, we’re using the variant Noble background for History and Intimidation proficiency.

Ability Scores

in order for draco to exist at all, her Charisma has to be pretty high, so let’s start there. after that, grab some Strength- you might not use melee often in FGO, but D&D’s another beast altogether. also we need it for multiclassing. after that is Constitution. you don’t die easy, that’s kind of why you’re here.

I mean that’s why everyone’s here, but you know what I mean.

your Dexterity is barely positive if you’re using the standard array, you’re either blasting people with magic or you’re wearing armor, either way we don’t care about getting hit too much. this means your Intelligence is a bit low- just because you probably had access to greater learning doesn’t mean you had to use it- and we’re dumping Wisdom. Nero’s wisdom was never high, and you are a walking impossibility, which can’t be good for your common sense.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: as I said earlier we need that sweet, sweet platemail, which means we need to start here. as a fighter you get proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, as well as Animal Handling and Athletics. you might be a terrifying hellbeast now, but you’re still nero. I’m sure you’re even better at “handling” lions now.

first level fighters also get a Fighting Style, and while your sword is great you use it one-handed, so you get the Dueling style for +2 damage to all attacks made with a single one-handed weapon. also your Second Wind lets you heal yourself as a bonus action.

2. Fighter 2: second level fighters get an Action Surge once per short rest, letting you take two actions in one turn with no restrictions. yes, this is one of the few options in the game to cast two leveled spells in one turn, don’t let it go to your head.

3. Fighter 3: at third level you can finally become a Rune Knight, giving us one of the two options available for your golden grail ability. yeah, it turns out there’s very few ways to pretend to help your enemies while actually sabotaging them, that’s probably a little cerebral for WotC. I am of course, talking about Rune Carving. every long rest you can carve a rune into a weapon, armor, shield, jewelry, or other hand-held object. while holding or wearing those objects, you and only you can get a cool bonus, but you can also invoke the rune once per short rest for an extra special bonus regardless of where the rune is. so this is all a roundabout way of saying you can add say, a Fire rune to someone’s armor, feed them a story about how it doubles your proficiency with tools while holding it, and then when you fight them you can invoke it to stick them in chains, which is the closest we could come to stunning them like the actual skill.

yes, it’s all very tortured, but at least you can also use the Cloud rune to get advantage on all sleight of hand and deception checks, and redirect peoples’ attacks so they hit their allies, corrupting them for all of five seconds with grail mud.

the bigger (literally) reason we’re here is for Giant’s Might, which lets you grow to large as a bonus action. the rules might say you take up a 10’x10’x10’ cube now, but that’s just what being 6’1” is like. you need a lot of legroom. you also get advantage on strength checks and saves, and you deal an extra d6 once per turn when you hit with a weapon attack. you can reach third ascension proficiency times a day.

4. Fighter 4: fourth level fighters get their very first Ability Score Improvement, and we’re getting a twofer today thanks to rounding up your Strength and Charisma. more hitting, more spells, what’s not to love?

5. Fighter 5: for our final fighter level, you can fling a flurry of fisticuffs at your foes thanks to Extra Attack. it’s an extra attack, just like the title says. you may notice doubling down is a theme of this build.

6. Sorcerer 1: bouncing over to sorcerer nets you some Spells, which you cast using your Charisma. you’ve got your filler cantrips like True Strike and Blade Ward, as well as your actually useful stuff like Control Flames and Green-Flame Blade. we’re going for something of a diet paladin build this go-around, all the classic smites with none of the holiness.

but we also need some dragonfire, which is why we’re picking up Burning Hands as well, plus Mage Armor for your lower ascensions.

but that’s not all! Shadow magic sorcerers also get Eyes of the Dark, an extra-strength darkvision that comes with a free copy of Darkness in two more levels. you can cast this one with just sorcery points if you want to see through it.

you also get Strength of the Grave, letting you make a charisma save to avoid reaching 0 HP once per day, unless you drop to a critical hit or radiant damage. I wouldn’t worry overmuch about holy knights though, we’ll have… other ways of dealing with them.

7. Sorcerer 2: second level sorcerers get a Font of Magic, which is just an extra spell slot right now but we can use the points for other stuff later. also you can cast Absorb Elements now, because aside from your fire rune this is the only way to get fire on your sword for a bit.

8. Sorcerer 3: third level sorcerers get to use their sorcerer points for fun stuff like Extended and Empowered spells. the former doubles the duration of the spells and the latter lets you reroll some of the damage dice to stoke your flames even higher!

that will really help your accuracy with spells like Crown of Madness, which makes a cool crown for an enemy that also forces them to attack a random nearby creature each turn. checks and balances, y’know.

9. Sorcerer 4: fourth level sorcerers also get an ASI, and Durable is the only halfway decent constitution bonus feat left that doesn’t require another feat first, so now your constitution is higher and you roll slightly better with your hit dice- essentially if you roll below your constitution score, you can act as though you rolled that 2 instead. which isn’t great, but sorcerer hit dice are teeny, so it’ll get some use.

you can also cast Message for the chaldea-standard communicator, and you get Flame Blade! this makes a one-handed sword that probably doesn’t count for your dueling bonus but it’s stronger than a greatsword and it’s fire!

10. Sorcerer 5: at fifth level you get Magical Guidance, letting you spend sorcery points to re-roll a failed skill check. it’s not quite regular nero’s imperial privilege, but it can be helpful. and with the advent of third level spells, you get the one actual rigged present you can give an enemy, Haste! it doubles the target’s movement speed, adds extra AC, gives them advantage on dexterity saves, and they get an extra turn to boot!

obviously it would be a lot more directly useful on your party, but when you end the spell the affected person loses a turn. you can stop concentrating on a spell whenever you want.

11. Sorcerer 6: at level six, shadow sorcerers can summon a Hound of Ill Omen, a mini-dire wolf, a.k.a. our very first dragon! it can also knock people around and it gets advantage when attacking things with friends around, it also relentlessly targets a single person, passing through objects in a beeline to them, until they’re dead!

you can’t kool-aid man your way through walls just yet, but you can use Ashardalon’s Stride to keep up, and deal damage at the same time.

12. Sorcerer 7: seventh level sorcerers get fourth level spells like Banishment. if your target fails their charisma save you can slap them back to whatever heaven they came from, and if you keep concentration for a full minute they have to stay there.

13. Sorcerer 8: use your next ASI to become an Elemental Adept, letting your fire-based spells ignore resistances, and you can bump any 1 rolled up to a 2. if we’re going all-in on one element, it had better be hot.

you also get a more permanent solution to your holy people problem with Gate Seal, to prevent those sorts of summons in a 30’ cube for a full day. screw gods, deliver until nero that which is nero’s.

14. Sorcerer 9: ninth level sorcerers get fifth level spells, so we can finally summon an actual dragon. or at least we can Summon Draconic Spirit. for up to an hour, you can make a dragon that’ll fight on your side, but like most modern summoning spells it’s very undertuned. it has less HP than you do, for one. still, a dragon is a dragon!

15. Sorcerer 10: tenth level sorcerers get another kind of metamagic, like Heightened. this forces a target to reroll their save against your spell, which given your biggest get-out-of-divine-punishment-free card is a save or suck spell, that will be seeing a lot of use.

you can also cast Friends partly because I was running out of cantrip ideas, but ignore that because you also get Bigby’s Hand! Whether it’s baby draco’s big slapper or the mouth of a dragon, you can reflavor this baby in plenty of ways, so have fun and go wild.

16. Sorcerer 11: eleventh level sorcerers get sixth level spells, and to be honest I’m sick of trying to copy draco’s skills or bio stuff, let’s get some damage and some animations. Sunbeam is a giant freakin’ laser that can blind enemies, and you can keep shooting lasers out for up to a minute after casting.

17. Sorcerer 12: with our last ASI, you can get the Gift of the Chromatic Dragon for some diet smites, adding a d4 of fire damage to your sword for a minute once a day. you can also react to give yourself resistance to an elemental damage type proficiency times a day.

18. Sorcerer 13: we’re also getting to our final spells, starting with our seventh level spell Draconic Transformation. for a minute after casting, you get especially beastly, gaining blindsight, a breath weapon, and wings. it’s not as fast as teleportation, but it’s a lot more flexible.

19. Sorcerer 14: but we’re not done just yet! we still get one more shadow goody, Shadow Walk. as a bonus action you can teleport from one shadow to another, because walking is for peasants.

20. Sorcerer 15: at our final level, you get your truly final spell, Sunburst. it sucks that at the very end they swap out fire for radiant, but this is still a massive fireball, and I won’t say no to a massive fireball.

Pros & Cons:

Pros:

with access to plate mail, a decent amount of HP, and plenty of resistances, you are pretty tough for a gish. the winner is whoever survives the fight, so survivability is never a bad addition to a build.

with long-term damage bonuses from dueling, giant’s might, chromatic gifts, and so on, you have plenty of consistent damage. with action surge and high-level damage spells, you also have some burst damage. and since you can do both, you have plenty of flexibility when it comes to how you fight. some times slow and steady wins the race, sometimes you have to beat someone down before they escape with a macguffin, and you can help with both.

with flight, teleportation, and boosted speed, you can get around easily and always be in an advantageous position. and with crusher, that position is usually “next to a cliff”. you can play merry hell with enemy positioning, and just being around you is a stage hazard.

Cons:

fire. about a tenth of the enemies in D&D are straight-up immune to fire, so even with elemental adept there’s a decent chance you’ll have almost zero magical damage in some fights. even without direct damage you have some options though…

unfortunately your options are save or suck spells, which are very powerful when they work, which is why a good chunk of the game is dedicated to making sure they don’t. banishment and crown of madness can change the course of a fight if they hit, but that’s a big if.

you have a little bit of everything, but you excel at nothing. you have no capped stats, your HP is good but not great, you have some control spells but not a lot of concentration, and you have damage spells but they’re all one type. but at least you’ll always have something to do, unlike some people.

#fgo #fate grand order #D&D 5e #DND #sodom's beast #nero claudius

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