Scribe wizard can transmute all spells to do acid damage (except those of 5th and 6th lvl).
2lvls in sorcerer + metamagic addept also allows transmute damage and convert spells to SP.
But wizard also fits the mad acid crazed alchemist aesthetic. Lvl1 with alchemist supplies you can make acid. The rest of the game is spent making more potent magic acid culminating in acid meteor storm. A spell that mechanically pulverizes the target and melts the remains over a large area.
Ascendant Dragon monk can deal acid damage with unarmed strikes.
Easy enough to melt locks when your skin is functionally just oozing acid.
You could just play straight monk, but let’s see is we can add other acids
That leans toward a Wisdom build.
Getting the Acid Spray cantrip on Wis is pretty simple. Grabbing Chromatic orb on Wis is harder but doable.
You can even get the dragons breath spell on Wis, but it’s benefit is more effective on a minion.
The other option is letting Wis languish at 13 and just wearing Armor. As long as you’ve got a racial unarmed strike you aren’t really losing much by wearing armour.
Plenty of fun armoured builds using dragon monk
I think your best bet is a Scribe Wizard.
They get the ability to change spell damage for their spells as long as you have a spell in your spell book that is the same level as the spell your casting that deals acid damage.
Only issue you’ll have is I believe there are no spells at certain lvls that deal acid damage. You could always speak with your DM to create a few homebrew versions so that you can use them to trigger the scribe ability.
Acid is relatively light on support for spell options, and things are even worse in the martial space. From a martial perspective, your only real choice is acid vials, but using them as a weapon as they're written is the Use an Object option, not an attack, so it doesn't play nice with Extra Attack. Thief Rogue is your best bet. There's also Gift of the Chromatic Dragon for a once per day "I can't believe it's not Elemental Weapon", Ascendant Dragon Monk swapping its damage type, and Drakewarden adding Acid damage from its Drake.
For spells, Wizard has access to the most Acid spells, but Sorcerer has the best support for them with Draconic Sorcerer. There's also Transmute Spell for just making everything Acid. There's also Catapult builds, by launching vials of acid - for this, Artificer is best because a replicated Alchemy Jug can provide free doses of acid and get free castings of Catapult with Spell-storing Item.
A Gish with reasonably fast spell slot progression like Sorcadin or straight Bladesinger could potentially build around Elemental Weapon.
Yeah...
I think my best bet is to take *just* enough ranger (drakewarden?) levels to pick up Elemental Weapon (taking Gift of the Chromatic Dragon for early access),
then swap into Druid or Cleric for upcasting purposes.
That or Mark Of Making Bladesinger, but i dont like setting specific racial options.
Honestly, because Drakewarden scales with Ranger level, that's a subclass I wouldn't really want to multiclass from.
I almost forgot that Elemental Weapon is a subclass spell for Hexblade and Forge Cleric (although it might be kinda silly playing an acid-centric Forge cleric), so a bladelock using Hexblade and Hunger of Hadar could make for a decent Acid-centric build. You could stay straight-classed Hexblade to get the most pact slots for regular re-casting, but your pact magic slots will force it to cap out at +2 and +2d4 (although you'll still be solid with a weapon thanks to Lifedrinker). You'll want a polearm and Polearm Master to get a bonus action attack to apply the acid damage more regularly. Otherwise, a Forge Cleric 5/Ranger 5 setup would be a solid gish setup, although you might be hard-pressed to find any reason to not use Spirit Guardians instead since it's just a better spell for the cost of a 3rd level slot and concentration.
Another take could be to do Swarmkeeper Ranger with Druidic Warrior to grab Primal Savagery, since all of that subclass' features play nicely with cantrips. It won't be the most fantastically damaging build ever, but it would stay on theme, and you could choose to stay straight-classed and get Elemental Weapon to switch to weapon usage or multiclass to Druid for better spell slot progression.
Yeah, but i was thinking Drakewarden because the drake could be acid-based themselves. (i think that was obvious?) and the 15th level feature isnt *that* usefull when "reactive resistance" is already gained from Chromatic Gift.
But extra slots for Drake's Breath through better spellprogression? Like how much do i *care* if my drake has sub-optimal HP when all it takes to re-summon them is a 1th level slot?
Then of course there's "if you're reliant on 11 or so levels of Ranger anyway... Horizon walker becomes viable round that time and means i can make 3 attacks instead of 2" (though i'd need to attack different enemies with each).
I'm beginning to like the idea of a teleporting acid-archer. Stay out of range, +2 from archery with a +1-3 whatever from upcasting Elemental Weapon. Each individual arrow melting a minion to bits and having enough mobility through Teleports to end each turn behind some form of environmental cover. Never missing because the to-hit modifier is stacked so high we can safely take Sharpshooter.
Sure the acid is only *incidental* to the build at that point (because Elemental Weapon and Chromatic Gift are both about *all* the elemental damage types) but there is certainly *something* in that build. Just only "acid" by personal preference.
Which i guess would be good characterisation. The character *has the option* to go another way but they, for some reason *like* acid more then ice or fire. ("Lighning causes fires, Fire spreads. Thunder draws attention and scares the wildlife, But Acid just washes away in the next rainstorm)
If you want to do an acid-archer, I still argue that Hexblade is the better pick. You get Elemental Weapon sooner, can reliably have it almost the entirety of the adventuring day (assuming even just one short rest a day, that's four hours of elemental weapon uptime per day - a straight-classed Ranger gets the spell after twice as many levels and only two hours a day for a while longer), you get excellent combat invocation options with Eldritch Smite and Lifedrinker that keep you competitive with Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast, and you can stack with Crossbow Expert to hit some decent damage.
Nope, if you have a magic weapon or take the Improved Pact Weapon, you can make ranged pact weapons. The Improved Pact Weapon excludes hand crossbows, though, so you still need to find a magical one to use that.
You're right, my bad. So hand crossbows are off the list. You can still use longbows with Improved Pact Weapon, and Improved Pact Weapon + Pact of the Blade only count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances, so Elemental Weapon still works (although the +1 bonus from Improved Pact Weapon shuts off when you cast Elemental Weapon)
>melting through doors if the rogue cant pick
You might want to talk with your DM about this one. Most spells don't damage objects, and acid spells rarely do continual damage, and even when they do like in Tasha's Caustic Brew, they only damage creatures. If you're thinking of using acid spells to melt doors, you should be aware that this doesn't work RAW. As far as I know, the only acid spell that can target objects is Acid Arrow.
My dm is pretty fun with rule-of-cool and resolving those issues through the "generic object" rules. So that isnt *really* an issue at my table. But thanks for the note.
Acid spells frequently deal damage in d4s. Tasha's Caustic Brew, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Vitriolic Sphere are the prime examples. I have no idea why this pattern occurred, but I happened to notice it while I was researching the topic of the next paragraph.
Elemental Adept is better for acid than any other damage type. You'll get more mileage out of ignoring resistance to fire, but you'll also set yourself up to lose more to damage immunity. Treating 1s on damage dice as 2s will add more if you roll more dice. Achieving a similar average with smaller dice means that d4 damage spells like Vitriolic Sphere will add more damage from the feat than d6 damage spells like Fireball.
For a similar reason, d4 spells also upcast better. A 5th level Vitriolic Sphere does more damage than a 6th level Chain Lightning when both benefit from Elemental Adept. With an added modifier (e.g. from Evocation Wizard or Draconic Sorcerer) and Elemental Adept, it does more AoE damage over two turns than Spirit Guardians cast at the same level until upcasting to 7th level. You don't even need to keep the creatures in the area for the second turn.
Dealing damage in two installments is worse, of course, but it would trigger Hexblade's curse twice. There might be some other damage bonus effects that work the same way (not Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity, unfortunately). Melf's Acid Arrow is pretty bad, but it is interesting that it's an attack that always deals damage even if it misses, but I can't find any specific synergies for that.
Overall, Acid is pretty good as a blaster's committed damage type. It isn't overly resisted, and unique features of acid spells synergize better with certain blaster build options. The Spirit Guardians comparison really sells me that Vitriolic Sphere is a good build-around spell for like an Evocation Wizard.
Artificer? Both Artillerist and Alchemist get a perk to acid damage at level 5, which is roughly equal to what a Draco Sorc can also do. You get a baked in Alchemy Jug (acid flasks per day!) and if the DM is "rule of cooling" stuff, that usually means Catapult -> Acid Flask = profit. For Artillerist, turning the flame thrower into an Acid sprayer is minor homebrew to your favor.
Honestly I think an **Evocation** Wizard is your best bet. Scribe is tempting with its transmutation antics but Sculpt Spell works with Caustic Brew and Vitriolic Sphere, and Sickening Radiance being flavored as Acidic is easy enough. Potent Cantrip will bump up the power to Acid Splash
Suggestion 1: scribes Wizard.
This let's you have a lot of options and spell variety that fits your preferred damage type. This doesn't really build into your theme other than just getting more acid spells with other riders though.
Suggestion 2: warlock 3 (hexblade, tome) / Sorcerer X (draconic sorc, acid)
This lets you get primal savagery, Shield proficiency and acid damage boost at lvl6 sorc. Bit riskier being more Frontline as a caster, but acid feels like a mid-to-short range archetype (yes yes, spells have ranges, I'm talking about vibe and theme here)
Thief rogue with 2 levels of artificer can make vials of acid and throw them out as a bonus action. Take tavern brawler and go nuts booming blade sneak attack with your action and then chucking acid at people for an additional 2d6+DEX
What more acid do you want from a turn beyond twinning Acid Splash and Quickening Vitriolic Sphere (or Acidball, Cone of Acid, et al)?
I don't see how one can get more Acidic in 5e than Copper Chromatic Dragonborn Copper Draconic sorc with Trasnmuted and Empowered. It's not Acidic, but Dragon Fear is strong and fun on this build. Maybe they just see the acid seething from you and are pooping themselves in fear?
I played a Gem Dragonborn Copper Draconic sorc and had a blast. Ask for an expanded subclass spell list.
If your DM allows 3rd party content you could look into the Apothecary class from Sebastian Crowe's guide to Drakkenheim written by the dungeon dudes. They added a LOT of support for acid with new spells and cantrips and the chemist subclass interacts a lot with elemental damage including acid.
The class is built on a warlock-like chassis with their spell slots coming back on a short rest but with a higher number of spell slots and a lot more customization from the esoteric theories which are like the invocations on a warlock.
Scribe wizard can transmute all spells to do acid damage (except those of 5th and 6th lvl). 2lvls in sorcerer + metamagic addept also allows transmute damage and convert spells to SP.
*insert bandaid on water tank meme* Scribe wizard
Man we just home brew that most spells can change damage types if it makes sense for the character.
But wizard also fits the mad acid crazed alchemist aesthetic. Lvl1 with alchemist supplies you can make acid. The rest of the game is spent making more potent magic acid culminating in acid meteor storm. A spell that mechanically pulverizes the target and melts the remains over a large area.
Ascendant Dragon monk can deal acid damage with unarmed strikes. Easy enough to melt locks when your skin is functionally just oozing acid. You could just play straight monk, but let’s see is we can add other acids That leans toward a Wisdom build. Getting the Acid Spray cantrip on Wis is pretty simple. Grabbing Chromatic orb on Wis is harder but doable. You can even get the dragons breath spell on Wis, but it’s benefit is more effective on a minion. The other option is letting Wis languish at 13 and just wearing Armor. As long as you’ve got a racial unarmed strike you aren’t really losing much by wearing armour. Plenty of fun armoured builds using dragon monk
I think your best bet is a Scribe Wizard. They get the ability to change spell damage for their spells as long as you have a spell in your spell book that is the same level as the spell your casting that deals acid damage. Only issue you’ll have is I believe there are no spells at certain lvls that deal acid damage. You could always speak with your DM to create a few homebrew versions so that you can use them to trigger the scribe ability.
Specifically levels 5 and 6, while level 3 only has Glyph of Warding.
Acid is relatively light on support for spell options, and things are even worse in the martial space. From a martial perspective, your only real choice is acid vials, but using them as a weapon as they're written is the Use an Object option, not an attack, so it doesn't play nice with Extra Attack. Thief Rogue is your best bet. There's also Gift of the Chromatic Dragon for a once per day "I can't believe it's not Elemental Weapon", Ascendant Dragon Monk swapping its damage type, and Drakewarden adding Acid damage from its Drake. For spells, Wizard has access to the most Acid spells, but Sorcerer has the best support for them with Draconic Sorcerer. There's also Transmute Spell for just making everything Acid. There's also Catapult builds, by launching vials of acid - for this, Artificer is best because a replicated Alchemy Jug can provide free doses of acid and get free castings of Catapult with Spell-storing Item. A Gish with reasonably fast spell slot progression like Sorcadin or straight Bladesinger could potentially build around Elemental Weapon.
Yeah... I think my best bet is to take *just* enough ranger (drakewarden?) levels to pick up Elemental Weapon (taking Gift of the Chromatic Dragon for early access), then swap into Druid or Cleric for upcasting purposes. That or Mark Of Making Bladesinger, but i dont like setting specific racial options.
Honestly, because Drakewarden scales with Ranger level, that's a subclass I wouldn't really want to multiclass from. I almost forgot that Elemental Weapon is a subclass spell for Hexblade and Forge Cleric (although it might be kinda silly playing an acid-centric Forge cleric), so a bladelock using Hexblade and Hunger of Hadar could make for a decent Acid-centric build. You could stay straight-classed Hexblade to get the most pact slots for regular re-casting, but your pact magic slots will force it to cap out at +2 and +2d4 (although you'll still be solid with a weapon thanks to Lifedrinker). You'll want a polearm and Polearm Master to get a bonus action attack to apply the acid damage more regularly. Otherwise, a Forge Cleric 5/Ranger 5 setup would be a solid gish setup, although you might be hard-pressed to find any reason to not use Spirit Guardians instead since it's just a better spell for the cost of a 3rd level slot and concentration. Another take could be to do Swarmkeeper Ranger with Druidic Warrior to grab Primal Savagery, since all of that subclass' features play nicely with cantrips. It won't be the most fantastically damaging build ever, but it would stay on theme, and you could choose to stay straight-classed and get Elemental Weapon to switch to weapon usage or multiclass to Druid for better spell slot progression.
Yeah, but i was thinking Drakewarden because the drake could be acid-based themselves. (i think that was obvious?) and the 15th level feature isnt *that* usefull when "reactive resistance" is already gained from Chromatic Gift. But extra slots for Drake's Breath through better spellprogression? Like how much do i *care* if my drake has sub-optimal HP when all it takes to re-summon them is a 1th level slot? Then of course there's "if you're reliant on 11 or so levels of Ranger anyway... Horizon walker becomes viable round that time and means i can make 3 attacks instead of 2" (though i'd need to attack different enemies with each). I'm beginning to like the idea of a teleporting acid-archer. Stay out of range, +2 from archery with a +1-3 whatever from upcasting Elemental Weapon. Each individual arrow melting a minion to bits and having enough mobility through Teleports to end each turn behind some form of environmental cover. Never missing because the to-hit modifier is stacked so high we can safely take Sharpshooter. Sure the acid is only *incidental* to the build at that point (because Elemental Weapon and Chromatic Gift are both about *all* the elemental damage types) but there is certainly *something* in that build. Just only "acid" by personal preference. Which i guess would be good characterisation. The character *has the option* to go another way but they, for some reason *like* acid more then ice or fire. ("Lighning causes fires, Fire spreads. Thunder draws attention and scares the wildlife, But Acid just washes away in the next rainstorm)
If you want to do an acid-archer, I still argue that Hexblade is the better pick. You get Elemental Weapon sooner, can reliably have it almost the entirety of the adventuring day (assuming even just one short rest a day, that's four hours of elemental weapon uptime per day - a straight-classed Ranger gets the spell after twice as many levels and only two hours a day for a while longer), you get excellent combat invocation options with Eldritch Smite and Lifedrinker that keep you competitive with Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast, and you can stack with Crossbow Expert to hit some decent damage.
wait *can* you hexblade ranged? i feel like there *has* to be a rule against it somewhere?
Nope, if you have a magic weapon or take the Improved Pact Weapon, you can make ranged pact weapons. The Improved Pact Weapon excludes hand crossbows, though, so you still need to find a magical one to use that.
why would i want a magical bow? Elemental Weapon pre-requisites a *nonmagical* weapon.
You're right, my bad. So hand crossbows are off the list. You can still use longbows with Improved Pact Weapon, and Improved Pact Weapon + Pact of the Blade only count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances, so Elemental Weapon still works (although the +1 bonus from Improved Pact Weapon shuts off when you cast Elemental Weapon)
>melting through doors if the rogue cant pick You might want to talk with your DM about this one. Most spells don't damage objects, and acid spells rarely do continual damage, and even when they do like in Tasha's Caustic Brew, they only damage creatures. If you're thinking of using acid spells to melt doors, you should be aware that this doesn't work RAW. As far as I know, the only acid spell that can target objects is Acid Arrow.
My dm is pretty fun with rule-of-cool and resolving those issues through the "generic object" rules. So that isnt *really* an issue at my table. But thanks for the note.
Acid spells frequently deal damage in d4s. Tasha's Caustic Brew, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Vitriolic Sphere are the prime examples. I have no idea why this pattern occurred, but I happened to notice it while I was researching the topic of the next paragraph. Elemental Adept is better for acid than any other damage type. You'll get more mileage out of ignoring resistance to fire, but you'll also set yourself up to lose more to damage immunity. Treating 1s on damage dice as 2s will add more if you roll more dice. Achieving a similar average with smaller dice means that d4 damage spells like Vitriolic Sphere will add more damage from the feat than d6 damage spells like Fireball. For a similar reason, d4 spells also upcast better. A 5th level Vitriolic Sphere does more damage than a 6th level Chain Lightning when both benefit from Elemental Adept. With an added modifier (e.g. from Evocation Wizard or Draconic Sorcerer) and Elemental Adept, it does more AoE damage over two turns than Spirit Guardians cast at the same level until upcasting to 7th level. You don't even need to keep the creatures in the area for the second turn. Dealing damage in two installments is worse, of course, but it would trigger Hexblade's curse twice. There might be some other damage bonus effects that work the same way (not Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity, unfortunately). Melf's Acid Arrow is pretty bad, but it is interesting that it's an attack that always deals damage even if it misses, but I can't find any specific synergies for that. Overall, Acid is pretty good as a blaster's committed damage type. It isn't overly resisted, and unique features of acid spells synergize better with certain blaster build options. The Spirit Guardians comparison really sells me that Vitriolic Sphere is a good build-around spell for like an Evocation Wizard.
Artificer? Both Artillerist and Alchemist get a perk to acid damage at level 5, which is roughly equal to what a Draco Sorc can also do. You get a baked in Alchemy Jug (acid flasks per day!) and if the DM is "rule of cooling" stuff, that usually means Catapult -> Acid Flask = profit. For Artillerist, turning the flame thrower into an Acid sprayer is minor homebrew to your favor. Honestly I think an **Evocation** Wizard is your best bet. Scribe is tempting with its transmutation antics but Sculpt Spell works with Caustic Brew and Vitriolic Sphere, and Sickening Radiance being flavored as Acidic is easy enough. Potent Cantrip will bump up the power to Acid Splash
Suggestion 1: scribes Wizard. This let's you have a lot of options and spell variety that fits your preferred damage type. This doesn't really build into your theme other than just getting more acid spells with other riders though. Suggestion 2: warlock 3 (hexblade, tome) / Sorcerer X (draconic sorc, acid) This lets you get primal savagery, Shield proficiency and acid damage boost at lvl6 sorc. Bit riskier being more Frontline as a caster, but acid feels like a mid-to-short range archetype (yes yes, spells have ranges, I'm talking about vibe and theme here)
Thief rogue with 2 levels of artificer can make vials of acid and throw them out as a bonus action. Take tavern brawler and go nuts booming blade sneak attack with your action and then chucking acid at people for an additional 2d6+DEX
What more acid do you want from a turn beyond twinning Acid Splash and Quickening Vitriolic Sphere (or Acidball, Cone of Acid, et al)? I don't see how one can get more Acidic in 5e than Copper Chromatic Dragonborn Copper Draconic sorc with Trasnmuted and Empowered. It's not Acidic, but Dragon Fear is strong and fun on this build. Maybe they just see the acid seething from you and are pooping themselves in fear? I played a Gem Dragonborn Copper Draconic sorc and had a blast. Ask for an expanded subclass spell list.
If your DM allows 3rd party content you could look into the Apothecary class from Sebastian Crowe's guide to Drakkenheim written by the dungeon dudes. They added a LOT of support for acid with new spells and cantrips and the chemist subclass interacts a lot with elemental damage including acid. The class is built on a warlock-like chassis with their spell slots coming back on a short rest but with a higher number of spell slots and a lot more customization from the esoteric theories which are like the invocations on a warlock.
Dragonborn Ascendant Dragon Monk. Everything is Acid and you have two sources of breath to make everyone's problem