The Omen Archive

Braius Doomseed analysis

Sam Riegel is back, and he’s brought with him—forgive us—a real beefy boy!

Braius Doomseed is a minotaur Bard/Paladin multiclass, wielding a drippy black double flail. We have not yet been made aware explicitly how his 14 levels are distributed between the two classes. We can, however, extrapolate a fair bit of information about his build from the gameplay in his debut, Episode 98: The Nox Engine.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. We know that he is at least a 3rd level College of Tragedy Bard, as Braius used the Sorrowful Fate feature to change the save Dominox had to make against Dorian’s Otto’s Irresistible Dance spell to a Charisma save (03:09:43) (confirmed by Sam to be this feature at 03:11:57).

Sorrowful Fate does the following:

When you or an ally you can see forces a creature to make a saving throw, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to change the type of saving throw to a Charisma save instead.

Sam did, however, forget to use the secondary part of that feature, which would allow him to do psychic damage equal to the value of a Bardic Inspiration die roll when a creature fails the associated save. Also, if Dominox had reached 0 hit points within 1 minute of failing the save, he would have been magically compelled to “utter darkly poetic words before succumbing to their injuries.”

Level 3 in College of Tragedy also confers the following feature, called Poetry in Misery:

Whenever you or an ally within 30 feet of you rolls a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to soliloquize and regain one expended use of your Bardic Inspiration feature.

Information on this subclass can be found on page 167 of Tal’Dorei Reborn. This particular subclass does not confer any additional spells beyond the standard Bard fare, so cannot account for any spells Braius has that fall outside of the Bard or Paladin spell lists.

That brings us to the next thing we can suss out: Braius’ possible Paladin Oaths. We know that Braius has both the Misty Step (03:12:47) and Moonbeam (03:13:07) spells. There are only two known Paladin Oaths that give access to Moonbeam: Oath of the Ancients and Oath of the Watchers. Oath of the Ancients seems like a likely option, as it also gives access to Misty Step at paladin level 5; however, that on its own cannot act as definitive proof as to Braius’ Paladin subclass, as we don’t yet know what feats Braius may have on board and—as Imogen , Chetney, and Orym know well—Misty Step can also come from the Fey Touched feat. Another point in favor of Oath of the Ancients is the fact that Braius did not make use of the Aura of the Sentinel initiative bonus conferred by Oath of the Watchers at paladin level 7. However, since this is a new character with quite a lot of features to juggle, it is entirely possible that Sam simply forgot this feature. We know, however, that he must have whatever features are associated with level 7 in his Oath because of his use of Blinding Smite (02:37:12), a 3rd level Paladin spell. Paladins do not get access to 3rd level spells until they reach level 9 in the class.

All of this points to Braius having at least three levels in Bard and at least nine levels in Paladin, which leaves two levels unaccounted for (as Braius, unlike the rest of the party, is already at level 14). This is where things get a little tricky.

Unfortunately, Sam did not give out any Inspiration during Episode 98, so we can’t use his Bardic Inspiration die as an indicator. This moves from a d6 to a d8 at Bard level 5, so if in future episodes Braius’ inspiration die is revealed to be a d8, we’ll know he is a level 5 Bard. For now, though, we’ll instead take a look at his use of Lay on Hands to inform our speculation.

Braius used this Paladin class feature twice during Episode 98: once on himself, and once on Orym. A Paladin has points in their Lay on Hands pool equal to 5 times their Paladin level. Based on our previous analysis that he is at least Paladin level 9 and Bard level 3, that means Braius has a minimum of 45 and a maximum of 55 points in his pool. Orym’s healing was stated outright to be 30 points (03:40:10), leaving Braius between 15 and 25 points to have used on himself previously. In another bit of poor luck for our analysis, however, Sam did not state the exact amount of healing Braius did to himself. Since he said that Dorian’s 24 points of Cure Wounds healing got him “halfway” (01:05:07), it seems reasonable to assume that it was more than 15 points, since calling 24 and 15 approximately equivalent halves seems like a bit of a stretch. 20 and 25, indicating Paladin levels 10 and 11, are much closer. If we were to take Braius’ comment about Dorian getting him halfway completely literally, then we could definitively call him a level 11 Paladin. However, there’s one more wrinkle.

When Braius used his Blinding Smite spell on his melee weapon attack, he rolled 4d8 (02:38:11). The base damage for a flail is 1d8, and Blinding Smite adds 3d8 radiant damage. However, a level 11 Paladin has the feature Improved Divine Smite, which means that all melee weapon attacks gain an additional 1d8 radiant damage. That means that if Braius were a level 11 Paladin, he should have rolled 5d8 damage on the attack (02:37:46), as initially stated before Matt let Sam know that Dominox would be immune to the additional poison damage granted by Braius’ weapon (02:37:59).

This leaves us with two possible options: either Braius is a level 4 Bard/level 10 Paladin and Sam rounded up when saying 24 damage got him halfway there, with Braius healing himself for 20 points of Lay on Hands, or Braius is a level 3 Bard/level 11 Paladin and Sam either misunderstood Matt’s reminder not to add Poison Pen’s extra poison damage or forgot about the level 11 Improved Divine Smite. Either mistake would make quite a bit of sense with a new character in a high stakes situation! However, because of the uncertainty here, we cannot say definitively which it may be. We also do not yet know what Braius’s Paladin Fighting Style is. We’re looking forward to seeing more of him and finding out for sure.

All told, here is what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, barring any homebrew changes: