Introduction

Sapient ooze creatures from outer space, plasmoids are the first playable ooze in 5e, allowing you to live your dream of being a boneless, shapeless pool of self. If you don’t want to be shapeless, you have the option of adopting a humanlike shape (two-ish arms, two-ish legs, as many as one head), and once you’re in that shape you’re mostly a jiggly humanoid.

Most of the Plasmoid’s traits center around being an ooze. You’re good at grappling, you can ooze through small spaces, you’re resistant to both acid and poison, and you can create a pseudopod to poke things from 10 feet away.

With their advantage in grapples and damage resistances, the Plasmoid is clearly built to be a front-line martial character, but unless you’re build around Strength there’s little benefit. That makes the Plasmoid appealing for a narrow subset of classes and builds which have Extra Attack and which generally work when build around Strength.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

  • Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
  • Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
  • Green: Good options. Useful often.
  • Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Classes

Artificer

Acid and poison resistance are great for front-line builds, and you can use an infusion to add another damage resistance, making you very durable.

Barbarian

Resistance to acid and poison are nice for front-line martial characters. Advantage to initiate grapples is nice, but you can get that from Rage.

Bard

Bards shouldn’t be taking hits frequently enough for the damage resistances to matter, and you can’t squeeze through a hole while carrying an instrument.

Cleric

Clerics need armor, shields, and holy symbols, so squeezing through holes is out of the question. The damage resistances are nice if you’re playing a front-line build.

Druid

If you need to squeeze through a 1-inch hole, turn into an octopus. You can do that without dropping your equipment.

Fighter

Resistance to acid and poison are nice for front-line martial characters, and Advantage to initiate grapples is fantastic for the Fighter. Take high Strength and proficiency in Athletics, and you’ll do pretty well. You likely still want Expertise to support the grapple/shove combo, though.

Monk

Easily the Plasmoid’s best option since monks function so well without equipment. A plasmoid monk can squeeze through a gap, spend their turn attacking, then squeeze back out to wait in safety while the round passes.

Way of the Astral Self is unique in that it allows the Monk to grapple effectively. Combined with the Plasmoid’s Advantage to initiate grapples, there’s some appeal here.

Paladin

Resistance to acid and poison are nice for front-line martial characters, and Advantage to initiate grapples is fantastic. However, you don’t get as many attacks or ASIs as the fighter, so it’s much more difficult to optimize for grapple/shove.

Ranger

The damage resistances are nice, but rangers need armor and weapons, so using the Plasmoid’s ability to squeeze through holes while scouting is risky. Strength-based rangers are hard to build compared to Dexterity-based rangers, and being better at grappling likely isn’t enough to solve that challenge.

Rogue

The damage resistances are nice, but rogues need armor and weapons, so using the Plasmoid’s ability to squeeze through holes while scouting is risky.

Sorcerer

Sorcerers have plenty of good spells which don’t require material components so it’s easy to build a sorcerer that can function without equipment. But be cautious about sneaking around alone with d6 hit dice.

Warlock

Warlocks have plenty of good spells which don’t require material components so it’s easy to build a warlock that can function without equipment.

Wizard

Wizards need to haul a spellbook around, so squeezing into holes is difficult on top of the inherent risk of being anywhere alone as a wizard. The damage resistances are nice but can be replaced by spells.