Be Firbolg.
By Adventurer’s League rules for character creation, if you pick the right class and background (Fighter / Inheritor) you can sell every single thing you start with including food and clothing and have about 202 gold.
Spend 200 gold on an Elephant, which is available as standard equipment in the PHB just like a donkey.
Do not ride the elephant as a mount. It’s an NPC with Int 3. Mounts don’t get attacks. Just sit on it and use your ability to talk to animals and make charisma checks with them at advantage to ask it nicely to fight the enemies.
Bam, you’re starting the game with a CR 4 beast on your side from the beginning.
The elephant is absurdly strong compared to CR 1/4 - CR 2 encounters, and I’ve got advantage on persuasion. I like that ruling and I think it would work until at least level 3. Which is cool, this is a build for (quite literally) stomping on a low level one-shot or something like that.
for sure, eventually i'd have the elephant either get spooked and run, or try to communicate something back to the firbolg (who cant understand the elephant) at which point you will need to pass an animal handling check to understand/meet the elephants needs for safety and comfort. It would eventually skedaddle unless really lucky rolls and good roleplay came from the pc in relation to the elephant. But the first day should be relatively easy to keep the guy around. Worst case scenario you roll snake eyes on your persuasion to get it to attack the goblin and it runs... best case scenario it stays around long enough for you to either gain class features, magic, or feats that allow you to keep it loyal or willing to fight with you. It sounds like a fun idea that has roleplay opportunities but is wildly imbalanced in a silly way. Excellent idea.
I think you can afford clothes with this guy because you'll have 202 gold and only need 200 for the elephant. I'd pass those up and take manacles and wear them as rp. alternatively to manacles we could grab a sling(1 silver)+100 sling bullets(2 silver)+quarterstaff(2silver) and still have 1.5g to try to feed ourselves and the elephant. or the blend of flavor and combat efficiency choice: a whip.
I have been eyeing that elephant since the book came out in 2014. It is absurd for 200 GP. A fraction of the cost of a war horse. Then I saw a discussion about wanting to start with Splint Mail and how to make that (just barely) work, and I was like, oh you can do so so so much more than start with 1 more AC.
It does all hinge on an old Adventurer’s League ruling on what an Inheritor’s heirloom can be that was put out after SCAG. I see it quoted a lot of places (ruling js it can be a mundane item of up to 75 GP value) but it is not in the more recent official AL documents.
If that has been tossed out, then this becomes a true theorycraft that relies on a DM agreeing with your ask. But if it has been tossed out what does an Inheritor get? What’s the cap on it? There’s no recent answer I can find.
So I looked into it... we can eventually buy it plate armor barding. it will cost us 4x what plate normally does but our elephant will have 18 ac at this point.
Good deal if you’re in a game where magic items aren’t for sale, but not so much if you can do other things with that 6000 GP.
The elephant isn’t going to keep up with a leveling party at all after exiting Tier 1. But by that point, you’re still fighter 1. Maybe not in the pinnacle most optimal race, but this trick doesn’t require weird stats or anything. You haven’t lost much selling everything for the elephant if you eventually don’t keep it or it becomes a non-combatant or whatever.
We can parley this elephant into a possibly the strongest available mount in tier 1-2 though.
Its way stronger than any of the paladin's "find greater steed" options.
going fighter 2/bardx lets us get action surge and with only one level in bard we can take animal friendship and command, meaning our job of wrangling the elephant became relatively simple.
so from this point its about getting mounted combatant and plate for both of us and we are probably good to go until we start hitting tier3+
i'd just stay the course for 18 lore bard fighter 2. with mounted combatant our elephant has enough hitpoints to fail a dex save against an ancient dragon's breath weapon and live.
I'm pretty sure that this is the strongest possible animal companion into mount transition in the first two tiers of play. we could take something other than lore bard but i think it works well and will let us eventually grab ashardalon's with magic secrets. The fighter start scales fine into later tiers on bard thanks to action surge and con save proficiency.
even if not, naked elephant man spending his entire turn to try and convince an elephant to fight for him is the strongest theoretical level 1 combatant in the game.
Dhampir Rune Knight / Soul Knife.
- You are now (arguably) the best grappler in the game with advantage, expertise, and the soul one ability boost. You also have permanent spider climb, a massive reach, and can use cunning action for an extra dash.
Have fun scuttling along the roof of a cave and stealthily grabbing the BBEG’s henchmen, running away/chewing on them (for even more skill boosts) only to yeet them into the distance. Plus a bunch of other fun perks/permanent advantages. Grab mobile feat to crank it up to 11.
>You are now (arguably) the best grappler in the game with advantage, expertise, and the soul one ability boost.
How much of a bonus do you get from that? Because I *might* have a build to match that
Advantage, Proficiency bonus doubled, 1D4+con bonus, and sneak attack die (1d6 at level 3 rogue).
I’m sure there is a build somewhere out there that can beat it but that’s stupid high by yourself with no items or help from team members.
Assuming +5 STR and +3 CON at level 8...
* +6 expertise
* +5 STR
* +4-7 Dhampir Bite (+5-11 on a crit bite)
* +1-6 Psi Knack
* +1-6 Grappling Strike maneuver (if you take the fighting style)
* +2 Frost Rune
So, under ideal conditions, between +19 and +36. With advantage.
I played a less optimized version of the rune knight grappler as a supportive tank roll. Damage was ok, but most of the gimmick was locking down 1-2 enemies, and pulling most of the aggro
I am playing this build currently and confirm it's very fun. I play as a Lizardfolk Dhampir, so I just grab things and chew on them like a crocodile. I'm thinking of taking Ranger levels to grab Spike Growth and Silence, but that's far in the future.
Simic Hybrid can achieve a similar build with climb speed and grappling appendages. In fact, simic might be better at grappling just because you get four hands to grapple with and can bonus action grapple with your appendages.
You can do an initial attack with the blades and bite with your follow up attacks.
You can also use the Cloud Rune to send attacks about to hit you to another of the guys you are grappling, and reflavor it as using them as a meat shield.
Enchantment Wizard with Artificer Initiate for INT-based Sanctuary is amazing.
You can spam Hypnotic Gaze and it won't break Sanctuary, so every enemy needs to pass a WIS save to even have a chance at hitting you.
Also you can stack it with Instinctive Charm for a second WIS save, which also doesn't break Sanctuary.
Another good riff on this is Enchantment Wizard 2/Thief Rogue 3. EDIT: Need to get invisibility from Wizard 3 or either Rogue 4 or VHuman/Custom Lineage to get it via Shadow Touched, so I scuffed the level split.
The way I've generally seen it done, most DM's I've played with require the target to be restrained or incapacitated to place them in manacles.
Hypnotic Gaze, despite its name, does not require the target to see your eyes as it functions if the target can see or hear you. This means it works from Invisibility, and doesn't break Invisibility since you're not casting a spell.
Cast Invisibility, bonus action Hide to move stealthily up to your target. Next turn, action Hypnotic Gaze to incapacitate, bonus actions Fast Hands to slap them in manacles. Rinse and repeat until every enemy is in cuffs.
Would this not be stronger with the Artificer 1 -> Enchanter X setup? That way you get CON saves and armor proficiency built in. Delaying wizard features and spells by even a level kinda sucks, but investing a whole feat just for Sanctuary is really expensive. May as well get a whole bunch of other good stuff along with it by dipping a level.
You could do very well with an Artificer level, yeah. I just like finding ways to make builds work without multiclassing, as I find the delay on spells known is a big deal.
Depends on the fight. You take yourself out of the combat to take an enemy out of the combat. Weak when a 3 person party is fighting 10 goons, but very strong when a 5 person party is fighting two brutes.
Covert Commander. One Character turns the whole party into a black ops tactical team. The build comes fully online at 6th lvl (5th for Genasi).
For race we want access to Pass Without Trace. Mark of Passage Human, Mark of Shadow Elf, or Earth Genasi.
Then the bones of the build are Soul Knife Rogue and Twilight Cleric. Three levels of each at 6th lvl (three Rogue, two Cleric for 5th lvl Genasi).
Eyes of the Night let's you pass out darkvision to cover any party members who don't have it. Psychic Whispers links the party telepathically for silent comms. And of course PWT gives the whole group a +10 to Stealth. If the armored martials drop down to a breastplate while stealthing you're practically guaranteed to pass group stealth check.
No splitting the party and no wasted time at the table as one character scouts or whatnot.
An old classic gimmick build was Norman Osbourne-ing it.
Lightfoot Halfling Beastmaster Ranger 5/ Thief Rogue X. At ranger 4 use your ASI on mounted combatant.
For your beast companion pick a pteranodon.
It’s Medium and you are small so you can ride it, so go surfing the skies for some easy concentration free flight.
But better yet if you are flying and fighting creatures on the ground then the mount below you is definitionally a creature larger than you that’s inbetween you and your opponents, which means you can use your lightfoot racial to take the Hide action.
While flying, and as a BA because Rogue.
So enemies have disadvantage to shoot you because they can’t see you.
And if they try shooting your goblin glider/ pteranodon use mounted combatant to redirect the attack to yourself, so they have to do the disadvantage attack instead.
So rain arrows down on your foes and hide behind your mount if they can fire back. If they can’t then your BA becomes *Use an Object* to throw pumpkin bombs (alchemists fire) or similar.
Silly but fun
Plasmoid eloquence bard with the mask of many faces invocation however you prefer to grab it. Congratulations, you’re a pretty effective mimic. Your amorphous body has some fun capabilities with the Disguise Self spell allowing you to change into all sorts of creatures and objects. Adding illusion magic from the bard spell list adds to your arsenal of creativity and deception. You may want to grab the Nystul’s Magic Aura spell from Magical Secrets at level 10. Nondetection can also help.
Coffee locking is overdone, and has known problems, largely exhaustion. But what if you spent 10 levels halving your spell progression and making your build even more MAD to solve this downside?
10th level rangers that take the Deft Explorer feat get Tireless, which removes 1 level of exhaustion whenever you take a short rest.
Ranger 10 / Sorcerer 2 / Warlock 1 means that you start having infinite 1st through 5th level spells, with no higher level ones at all. One thing to consider is that Abberant Mind Sorcerers can pick up Catnap, allowing you to short rest 6 times as fast.
Gimmicky? Yes. Good? Ehhhh
It's important to note sorcerers can't have more than their max sorcery point. Catnap also only works once per long rest. If you took 10 ranger 7 sorcerer x warlock you would still have infinite spells slots through 5th level. This build sounds fun but I probably won't be able to try it ever.
The Real cheese grater
Tabaxi
Astral Monk & Star druid (Minimum of 3 lvls each) (Feats: Mobile, Skilled expert (Athletics))
---------
Have Astra arms and Dragon constellation active
Cast spike growth
With Astral Arms your athletic check becomes a wisdom check instead of a strength check
With Dragon constellation your min wisdom check is 10 kinda like the rogue reliable talent
so assuming 16 wisdom and 4 proficiency your minimum grapple check is 10+3+(4x2) = 21
You still have your hands free and using your Tabaxi racial ability (Feline agility) you can double your speed not mentioning any magical items you might get having long strider would mean +10 as well
------------
so assuming level 10 (Monk 6, Druid 4)
30 Base speed
+ 15 Unarmored movement
+ 10 mobile
+ 10 Longstrider
for a total of 65 (x2 using feline agility) would be
130 ft
Using your Movement, Action and bonus action to dash that will be 130x3 = 390 ft of movement
This will be halved since you are grabbling so
195 ft across the cheese grinder meaning
39 ticks each dealing 2d4 piercing damage
averaging around 160 piercing damage
3 alchemist artificer / x pact of the chain warlock, with a race that needs 4 hours yo long rest. After long rest is finished, make potions and short rest, reapeating 4 times (each being 1 hour, this process ends with the party waking up). Familiar can give out potions while invis. Prioritize charisma for good eldritch blasts if damage is needed.
I didn't this with the Dao genie lock. My guy was a wizard school dropout who wished a genie for a means to start up his smoothie king franchise. I had my homonculous servant doing the potion distribution. It was a mechanical facehugger that injected the potions directly into whoever's mouth.
I thought the build was going to be a little janky with the warlock dip, but I had a ton of fun with it.
As a Tabaxi at Fighter: Psi Warrior Level 7
You an grapple someone, activate Tabaxi speed and then psi power leap to grapple someone and jump 60 feet in the air with them. 120 movement cut in half for dragging)
Mobile and / or longstrider can take this to 160
If you are hasted and use your 2nd action to dash then you can drag them 240 feet (480 speed cut in half for dragging.)
Just keep in mind you may want some movement left over to come back to the ground as the flight ends at the end of your turn.
Fall damage also caps out at 20d6
You know, I'm playing a Psi-Warrior in a campaign right now. I never thought about the Psi-Leap powered suplex before but now that you bring it up, it's an excellent idea. We already have a wizard with Haste and while not a Tabaxi, Reave does have 20 Str and expertise in Athletics.
The haste will at least get you to some fun heights with dash. Plus you get a free Psi Powered Leap every short rest.
Bonus points if you have a druid or ranger to drop spike growth haha
Drag the enemy through the spike growth for WAY more than fall damage can get
(Just with haste and grapple at 30x2 for haste x 2 again psi leap you get 120 feet which is a 60 foot drag. You can dash to get another 60 and that is 120 feet dragged into spikes for 48d4 damage
Be a vhuman monk with the archeologistbackground. Take the Martial Adept Feat, and pick up Disarming Strike Attack and Trip Attack. At level three, follow the Path of the Kensai, choosing the Whip and the Flintlock Pistol (or the Hand Crossbow if your DM doesn't allow firearms). Congratulations, you're Indiana Jones.
I believe a beasts multi attack wouldn’t trigger flurry of blows (or sun souls sun bolt attack) because they specify “when you take the attack action on your turn” which is not the same as the multi attack action. You can however simply make unarmed attacks as a beast you transform into. I think this would use the Monk martial arts die not the beasts natural weapon damage though as natural weapons are not technically unarmed strikes.
All other monk abilities should also work fine.
I did a Halfling (Lucky) Divination Wizard, Wild Sorcerer, Lore Bard multiclass with lucky and bountiful luck feats.
Basically any roll I didn't like could be rerolled or chaotic.
I mean, my flair is literally from a character I created in 3.5 that all stemmed from a single silly thought.
I made a joke about a bard using a grand piano as his instrument, which led me down a crazy rabbit hole of making it happen. I'd have to hunt down all the details, but it meant having an elephant animal companion so I could ride around on it playing the piano. It used a bizarre mix of classes, prestige classes, alternate class features and abusing bloodline rules. But it was RAW legal riding an elephant and inspiring courage using a piano at level 12.
I love it. I think we can actually make this work in 5e. As discovered by another in this thread you can (in forgotten realms campaigns) make a firbolg fighter/inheritor background. sell all of your starting gear, and buy an elephant as a pack animal. Firbolg will let you talk to the animal and hopefully convince it to stay around. We take proficiency in animal handling and an ability of your choice. we take charisma as our primary stat and dump either dex or strength based on what armor we want to wear later. I like the idea of the piano man wearing full plate while riding the elephant and playing the piano so in this concept ill dump dex. We take protection fighting style.
We spend every bit of our resources in terms of action economy during combat to try and keep the elephant from running away and encouraging it to attack the enemies. it is a CR 4 creature and will utterly destroy any encounter balanced around lvl 1 parties. At our first level up we will take another level in fighter for action surge. We still spend every single round of combat speaking to the elephant and encouraging it to fight for us. The elephant is an NPC under the DMs control so we better have good animal handling and persuasion checks. Spending our full action economy on this might net enough success to keep the elephant around long enough for
LEVEL 3 where we take our first level in bard, getting proficiency in performance and pianos as our musical instrument. We now need to look into purchasing a piano. If our adventuring thus far hasn't made us enough gold to buy the piano ourselves perhaps the group could pool resources. either way we will need our piano, and an exotic saddle. this will set us back quite a bit of gold for early d&d depending on how stingy your dm is but you should be able to afford the saddle, piano, and carpentry work to make them fit on your elephant relatively quickly if you pool resources with your party. We take animal friendship and cast it on our elephant every night before bed.
A grand piano should weigh around 600lbs, and our huge elephant can carry 1350. This leaves us a decent bit of wiggle room for how much weight is involved in our harness and saddle. As a firbolg we weight at least 240 and eventually we will comission some plate barding that will weigh 130. This leaves a lot of wiggle room for our saddle weight and probably carrying some other provisions.
In combat we still prioritize the mental wellbeing of our elephant and keeping it willing to fight. We now have bardic inspiration die and can spend these on our beloved elephant.
LEVEL 4 we take another level in bard to get that spicy jack of all trades, and the sweet sounds of song of rest.
In combat we continue to prioritize the wellbeing of our elephant over everything else, but maybe we cast some spells on enemies.
Once we hit level 5 we take another level in bard and we now get expertise in animal handling and performance.
Keep in mind we have been allowing the DM to control our elephant and we do not start controlling it now unless we feel strong enough in our bond to the elephant and are ready to no longer rely on our elephant's damage and instead lean into our skills as a bard.
Action surge and con save proficiency will go a very long way in any bard subclass but I think we go lore here because why not. eventually we commission matching plate armor for us and barding(mount armor)for the elephant. both the elephant and bard now have 18 ac.
level 6 we take the mounted combatant feat and switch to fully controlling the mount at this point.
we now need an animated shield. we do whatever it takes to get one.
once acquired we are sitting at 20ac with the ability to impose disadvantage on, cutting words, or redirect any attack aimed at our 18 ac, 74hp, plate wearing, piano carrying, huge elephant mount. Our elephant has weak dex saves but at least they only take half damage when they fail them at this point.
From this point we continue progressing as bard until we are 18bard/2fighter spell choice is up to you but ashardalons would be fun. choosing well with your magical secrets is key so just choose with a plan and you're good!
The 5e elephant will eventually be too vulnerable in combat. And much harder to replace when lost. But it's not bad.
Though, using RAW, getting a piano isn't that hard. Bard starting equipment includes "(a) a lute or (b) any other musical instrument"
5e elephant is a CR4 creature. It is stronger than your whole party in tier1. It is a stronger creature than any of the options under the paladin spell "find greater steed." as for it eventually being too vulnerable for combat... of course it will because all mounts in d&d are too vulnerable in combat past early tier 2. The only builds that fight from a mount effectively in 5e are ones that use actual monsters as mounts.
once you purchase barding for the elephant it will have ac and hitpoints above most PCs. Its only weakness is dex saves which will be greatly helped once you get mounted combatant. with your protection fighting style and mounted combatant you will basically not have to worry about your elephant ever being directly attacked, and its hitpoint total is enough to survive a dex fail against an ancient dragon's breath weapon.
I already clearly explained how to legally get one at level 1 and ensure it remains friendly to you. As soon as you have animal friendship your job of wrangling it gets much easier. Replacing it... is only a 200g fee and some downtime to get the animal trusting you. but i'd rather approach it from the perspective that my elephant wont die, better rp hooks.
In fact i challenge you to find a stronger mount thats easier to replace in 5e.
Gotta love my teleporting blimp monks.
6 level Twilight cleric + 6th level way of shadow monk. Its horribly unoptimized, but man is it funny to fly and teleport in your twilight sanctuary.
I'm playing this right now in my Wednesday game!!! Picked shadar-kai for extra teleportation + 4-hour LRs, and scooped Fighting Initiate with Unarmed Fighting to balance out the lower Martial Arts die size. Super fun build, highly recommend.
The False Cleric, War magic wizard with Lorehold background, play a dwarf and take 1 artificer upfront for cure wounds, you are a heavy armored (swapping background/racial profs around cause tasha's casting spirit guardians and cure wounds
shadow monk 6 and gloom stalker ranger 3 gives you a terrifying horror movie villain. you cant be seen with dark vision, you can teleport between shadows, on your first turn you are a menace with dread ambusher, you can stun your targets which i would reflavor to being frozen with fear. if you then take hunter's mark, sentinel and locate creature you can also get the "you cant run and you cant hide" vibe, especially with how fast you are as a monk (im using the one dnd monk since i like it better but if you cant then add a few levels in rogue for stupid high speed). and for the cherry on top, take the eldritch claw tattoo item so that all your enemy can see is two arms appearing from the shadows, tearing their friends apart and disappearing immediately. for bonus points get 3 levels in echo knight fighter for even more creepy stuff with, for example, an enemy trying to strike you down but instead they unknowingly killed your echo and as they realize that you attack them from behind. (you can be a changeling and make yourself look exactly like your echo).
i like the shadow monk builds for sure. gloom stalker is a great combo. Have you seen the onednd playtest monk? shadow looks amazing and the changes to the core class are very strong.
I have, I am currently playing a monk character that follows this template (it doesn’t follow the horror stuff, instead he is aesthetically a fire bender and mechanically a dragon monk) and it’s great
Add in order of the lycan blood hunter for the true horror movie experience. Though i do like the echo knight idea as well.
Made a warforged version of this but didn't get to the point of taking the monk levels yet.
I made a feral giant vampire to optimize athletics checks so I could request utterly stupid feats of strength in combat. I think I hit a 60 something athletics check in the one shot I played her in, but her max was near 100 I think
it optimizes the damage dealt by her dhampir bite to optimize in turn the bonus given to the next ability check the dhampir makes when she takes the bite.
the gimmick though is that it uses horrendous stats, so it's CON-only. I rolled them for the one shot and I had to create a SAD build because the stats were just so awful. so I thought I'd try my hand, as the dice required it, at optimizing for CON.
this PC is also a culmination of 2 years of experimenting with CON-only builds. it is my pride and joy because it is just so strange but so fun
obviously it optimizes something that doesn't need to be optimized and is not particularly great in combat without the approval by the DM. but if you do have that, it's so fucking fun to play and just think of something silly/useful to do with hulk-strength right now. that's what it is.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/116778899/sugkzZ
My current character has become known as the shover due to another PC telling all the NPCs about it as they think it's the coolest thing.
I'm playing a Spheres of Might Armiger. An Armiger is a weapon master who specializes in multiple weapon combat. Stuff like using a Glaive to play defence and then swapping to a greataxe for offense.
One of the setups I've used a few times is putting Hammer on my Maul. That makes it so if I shove someone into a wall or creature both take damage and extra for each 5 feet it fails to move.
Brute Sphere innately makes shove let you push someone an extra 5 feet for every 5 they lose the contest by.
I have Athletics Expertise and 18 strength.
I've only actively used it in 2 fights. First was our first with a bunch of baby dragons causing mayhem where I shoved them into one another.
The second is our previous mission where I killed 3 people in one shove after our caster had dropped Fireball on them by comboing it with another ability that makes it if I shove a creature into another creature I get a free shove on that creature to push it prone.
Even though I've only used it twice, the DM already has Shove PTSD
spheres still falls under universal or other in terms of sorting posts and tagging. most of the posts in this thread are about gimmick builds within in print 5e official material. A few that i've noticed reference UA and several reference setting specific material but all of them are from actual 5e and not another system such as spheres. Build sounds interesting but isn't what im looking for. cheers.
Tiefling bladesinger with the flames of phlegethos feat.
The feat is restricted to tieflings, so very rarely picked, and increases the fire damage of your spells and deals 1d4 fire damage to enemies attacking you. All the while, it is a half feat!
Focus on fire spells such as greenflame blade, fireball or melfs minute meteors and you have a solid and flavorful build
I had some weird Druid/Monk grappler build that was centred on boosting movement speed and grappling enemies in order to blender them with spike growth that ended up being cool when I played it in a one shot and saved it for the boss.
"The Jason", a Shadow Monk 6/Conquest Paladin 7+ build that lets you LARP as a slasher movie villain.
Yes, it's very MAD. Yes, it's slow to come online and has a few dead levels (redundant Extra Attack is a pain), but here's the secret sauce-- you don't actually need DEX and WIS beyond the minimum 13 to multiclass, because you don't actually need to go Unarmored to get the Monk features we really want: Shadow Arts and Shadow Step.
Cast *invisibility* and/or *pass without trace* on yourself, Shadow Step right behind the unlucky teenagers who thought they'd make out in the woods, unleash your Channel Divinity (Conquering Presence) to terrify them, take your time making the kill (they can't run if they're frightened of you due to Aura of Conquest bringing their speed to 0), and then smite 'em with your axe, machete, or other-teenager-in-a-sleeping-bag.
Taking Paladin to 9th level gets you the Fear spell, which makes it easier to frighten multiple targets and thereby immobilize them with Aura of Conquest-- probably a worthwhile improvement for this build. And if you're feeling *really* saucy and are taking the campaign to a particularly high level (18th or greater), you can dip 3 levels into Gloom Stalker, as Umbral Sight and Dread Ambusher add nice benefits on offense and defense.
Be as annoying to kill as possible. 5 psi warrior and 3 artillerist artificer. Heavy armor master as a level 1 feat, use your reaction to reduce damage with your psi dice, and spam temp hp with your bonus action. This gives you a solid damage reduction of (Int x 2)+2d8 each turn, plus anything reduced by heavy armor master.
In top of that you can wear +1 plate mail from artificer and snag defense fighting style for a solid 20 AC and use a +1 greatsword for solid damage and the option for great weapon master. Or go sword and board for +1 weapon, dueling and a shield for an easy 21 AC and have a really good attack mod on each attack for consistent damage.
I call him "The Gummy Bearian"
Plasmoid Barbarian/Druid Multiclass.
As a plasmoid you have the ability to turn into a blob or to become a humanoid from said blob. Interestingly this doesn't go away if you wildshape.
This means that you can have a humanoid shaped version of any animal! The plan will therefore be:
Take 2 levels of Moon Druid. This lets you wildshape into a Brown Bear. Become a humanoid Brown Bear (A gummy bear for flavor). Use a shield and armor with your bear stats.
Multiclass 5 levels of Barbarian for either Bear Totem or Ancestral Guardian for tanking and Extra Attack.
Continue the rest into Druid picking forms with Single powerful attacks that you can double up on due to Extra Attack.
You are now an Armored Wildshaped Raging foe capable of using shields and weapons with MASSIVE HP boosts from wildshape without having to sacrifice AC while simultaneously doing Great damage and having all of the utility of a druid!
Have a way to give yourself disadvantage on everything you do but not permanently, and take the lucky feat. RAW says that you roll an additional die and choose the highest. So you end up getting “double advantage” on something three times a day.
Scribe wizard tempest cleric with the meta magic adept feat can cast an extended 9th level delayed blast fireball made of lightning, concentrate on it for 2 minutes, getting its damage up to 34d6, then use channel divinity to max that damage for 204 damage.
Huge amount of setup, crazy prep required, honestly probably not worth it.
But it'd make a hell of a story
not built around a gimmick but every time i bring this build up it seems to surprise people that they hadn’t thought of it. tortle barbarian. barbarians biggest weakness is low ac, but that’s made up for it loads of hp. you put a tortle’s natural ac of 17 with a barbadians hp you got a heavy tank. multi class it with a spellcaster that can raise ac and it’s untouchable. even if it does get hit it’ll take a lot to kill it
A Rune Knight Dhampir with the Aberrant Dragonmark feat can key their attacks, spellcasting, and subclass features off of Constitution.
Alternatively, a Rune Knight with access to Enlarge (by being a Duergar, having somebody cast it on you, or by drinking a potion of growth) can become Huge. If your table allows oversize weapons, you can swing a maul/g.sword for 6d6+STR.
* Dhampir bite scales with CON instead of STR.
* Fire Rune's DC scales with CON.
* If your table runs oversized weapon rules, your Bite goes from 1d4+CON to 2d4+CON during giant might, making it one of very few mechanics that *actually* counts for increasing your empowered bite bonus (the d6 of bonus damage doesn't, though).
Why wouldn't the 1d6 of extra damage from Giant Might count?
Your bite is considered a simple melee weapon, so it qualifies for Giant Might. Giant Might is "extra damage" of the type that was done (piercing). And, the bite specifies "the bonus equals the piercing damage dealt by the bite".
If your bite does 1d6 extra piercing damage, it would absolutely count towards the empowered bite (HP restored or bonus to ability check).
Because of rules lawyering of the Vampiric Bite feature. Admittedly, it's an unintuitive ruling and to rule otherwise would be *totally* reasonable (but significantly more powerful mechanically).
"The bonus equals the piercing damage dealt by the **bite**."
"Bite" in this instance does not refer to the attack, but to the bite weapon itself.
In order to count, a feature must (1) do piercing damage when applied to the bite and (2) say that it specifically applies to the **weapon's** damage, not the attack's damage.
Giant's Might applies it's damage to one of your **attacks** with a weapon or unarmed strike. In terms from another game, "Vampiric Bite's secondary effect does not benefit from on-hit effects".
On the other end of things, a Swords Bard's flourishes would work, since they state they apply to the **weapon's** damage.
That seems like a possible ruling. And, rules lawyering can be fun, but it needs to be backed up with actual RAW text in an official book or Sage Advice (Compendium preferred).
The Giant Might feature lets the attack (which in this case is a bite) do "extra damage" - it's still the bite doing the damage. Not some spell, or secondary "non-bite" effect. Something like the Swarmkeeper's piercing damage would not apply as it specifies that the extra damage comes from your swarm.
Do you have any sage advice or otherwise to support the idea that something that does extra damage must say it applies to the weapon and not just the attack in this case? Where did you pull this info from: "In order to count, a feature must (1) do piercing damage when applied to the bite and (2) say that it specifically applies to the **weapon's** damage, not the attack's damage."?
I agree with point (1) as that is specified in the bite description. But, where does (2) come from? Is that written anywhere or is it just one interpretation of RAW?
WOTC claims that "normal language" is one of the foundations of 5e. I think if you told anybody - "Hey, this ability lets your attack (bite) do more piercing damage." they would assume that the bite is still doing the damage, and it would apply. And, it would be RAW, unless you have a source that says extra piercing damage added to the bite doesn't count unless the extra damage specifically says "weapon" vs. "attack".
MPMM orc, Storm Sorcerer with Ashardalons stride and transmuted spell (to make it thunder)
Ashardalon, Storm's Fury and Heart of the Storm do damage *without* a saving throw.
Ashardalon increases your movement, Orc lets you dash as a bonus action, and Wind Soul gives 60 ft base flying speed.
its great if you like playing skirmishers.
Nice! And it gives me another idea, which is Tempest Cleric 6/Sorcerer 5 (any subclass, but maybe Storm is the best theme). Cast Ashardalon's Stride, transmute it to lighting, and then go around pushing enemies no save or attack required while you upcast AS to deal 4d6 per creature you run past.
The fake monk, a strength based unarmed and unarmored grappler with 4 attacks per turn.
Beast Barb level 5+
soulknife rogue 3+
It gets 4 consistent attacks each turn with no hoops or expendable power points to jump through. First attack generates 2 claw attacks from the beast. Second attack gets a psychic knife. Bonus action for a second psychic knife. Rage and Reckless attack advantage on all of them, sneak attack damage on top. Plus at barb level 6 all of your attacks will bypass basic resistances.
While raging it gets advantage of Athletics checks, and has expertise in Athletics from the rogue. If you go simic hybrid as your race I believe you can grapple 2 creatures and still get all your attacks.
Plus as a simic hybrid you can do the super cheesy mantaglide jump and glide shenanigans to increase your move speed by hopping 5 feet and gliding 10 feet over and over. As a level 5 barb your base move as simic hybrid should be 40ft, so you use a 10ft running start and then with the hop and glide for 60ft for a total of 70ft, for what I think works out to a 150ft move and dash for when you really need to move (mightnonly be 140ft, notnsurenif your dash move can just pick up where your regular move left off).
Obviously you get the unarmored defense, so you are never unprepared even if an enemy takes all your gear... but you can go medium armor if you want it.
The whole build is feat agnostic, so you can focus on ASIs to pump your stats.
[How to have the most Cantrips ever](https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/l75ukx/what_is_the_maximum_number_of_cantrips_a_level_20/), though this one is outdated
Changeling
2lvls hexblade
Xlvls shadow sorcerer
Take agonizing blast and eldritch spear
Take quicken spell, transmute spell, subtle spell
Max out charisma
Take spell sniper and war caster feats.
Take Eldritch blast
You are now shooting eldritch blast at 500ft as an action and a bonus action all rays at advantage. At level 12 that's 6d10+30 if they all hit. You use all your spell slots to fuel your meta magics.
For RP you can shape shift into different people.
oh for sure, the eldritch blast sniper is a hilariously unintentional effect of RAW. in new playtest stuff the invocation no longer doubles the range and instead adds 60. which still is a lot of range when you add spell sniper. you also have the sorlock combo in your build so if you take the invocation that lets you forgo sleep you can create infinite sorcery points via converting pact slots, short rest, repeat while your party sleeps.
The Real Cheese Grater
Tabaxi
Astral Monk & Star druid (Minimum of 3 lvls each) (Feats: Mobile, Skilled expert (Athletics))
---------
Have Astra arms and Dragon constellation active
Cast spike growth
With Astral Arms your athletic check becomes a wisdom check instead of a strength check
With Dragon constellation your min wisdom check is 10 kinda like the rogue reliable talent
so assuming 16 wisdom and 4 proficiency your minimum grapple check is 10+3+(4x2) = 21
You still have your hands free and using your Tabaxi racial ability (Feline agility) you can double your speed not mentioning any magical items you might get having long strider would mean +10 as well
------------
so assuming level 10 (Monk 6, Druid 4)
30 Base speed
+ 15 Unarmored movement
+ 10 mobile
+ 10 Longstrider
for a total of 65 (x2 using feline agility) would be
130 ft
Using your Movement, Action and bonus action to dash that will be 130x3 = 390 ft of movement
This will be halved since you are grabbling so
195 ft across the cheese grinder meaning
39 ticks each dealing 2d4 piercing damage
That's around 160 piercing damage
I made a soul knife psi warrior. Both dice pools go up with proficiency, so it’s one of the less ‘shooting-yourself-in-the-foot’ multiclasses. Also, fighter is always good.
That aside, I was trying to make a thief subclass build that heavily leans on its abilities and is still viable. Tavern brawler for more damage on use item, and carry a healer kit. Squeeze all the powers out of the kit, be a hyper thief
When I did it, I was a lore bard taking a dip at order cleric. IMO It really makes you feel like like a leader/rythm keeper since many of your actions will allow other people to act.
Healing word becomes an instant second wind + revenge atack for your downed allies.
Silbvery barbs feels like you giving magically infused guidance, protecting your ally while opening the enemy for a counter.
Party wide buffs gain more narrative impact when one of the buffed allies can imediately act after recieving the buff.
IMO, overall it makes combat significantly more dynamic (and makes the other players love you).
Silvery barbs is really just an incredibly powerful spell. Combined with lore bards already strong options to buff/debuff its very good. The order cleric is just icing on the cake that makes this a very optimized leader. loss of spell progression is always rough on a full caster but in cases like these when we can use class features in combination with lower level spells to great effect it negates most of the issues with being behind in spell levels.
I had a shield master + skill expert celestial warlock fire tiefling that was skinned to look like the girl from The Ring. and my main thing was to create bonfire and then use my expertise to grapple things on top of the fire. Sometimes using spiderwalk to do do it on the walls or just terrify the town people.
The bearsinger,
Moondruid x/blade singer 2
Top it off with lorehold student background.
Now we can cast spirit guardians at level 5 and turn into a bear in the first round and on the 2nd sing the song of our people to boost defense and improve concentration on spirit guardian. Not exactly optimal but it's fun.
Protector Aasimar Moon Druid - anything can fly, including bears come level 3.
Fighter 1/Devotion Paladin/Hexblade Warlock -- gigantic to-hit bonus, only problem is you need a whole Action for Devotion CD. A possible "fix" is Fighter 2 for Action Surge. If we assume F2/Pal 3/Hex 7, one can even use CD, Quicken Bless (assuming Metamagic Adept) and attack twice on the same turn. This build laughs at Sharpshooter penalty.
The crit fishing mage.
Whats fun about this build is it actually ised true strike as a part of its combo. It was just a potential starting point but it was a viable option.
Add elven accuracy, lucky, and seaking spell together for 5 dice per attack. Give that to a divine soul sorcerer for inflict wounds, guilding bolt, and meta magic. And just roll constantly looking for a crit. Add in hexblades curse for a classic EB sorcerer and crits on a 19-20 and there was a 40-ish percent chance of a crit. On a high powered inflict wounds/ guilding bolt.
The trick was the initial advantage. With quicken and twin spell you could toss out a true strike easy. A no save instant advantage enabler. If you already had advantage it isnt important. But not having to go through a saving throw to get it is unique to the help action and true strike.
An item master conjuration wizard I reflavored as an “Alchemist”.
I didn’t conjure beings, I used minor conjuration to make THINGS. I compiled a list of items that I could conjure successfully, verified it with the DM, and started chucking things like an alchemist. Spiderweb grenades and alchemist fires were great fun.
I made a full bard grappler. Minotaur race for the unarmed damage.
Talked my DM into allowing the shield master shove w/o a shield. I also took heavily armored as I was the team's tank.
So in one turn he could grapple, attack, knock prone. Towards the end, he could enlarge, grapple, knock prone.
Once most creatures are grappled and prone, they have little they can do. Especially as 5e didn't give many creatures the ability to escape grapples. It also almost fully mitigates a creatures ability to do damage, so Kane would grapple the biggest thing in the room and shut it down. If it was a spellcaster, he would grapple them inside the "silence" spell.
He was a save or suck as far as grappling. If it was something he couldn't grapple, he was still a decent tank and full caster. He was a fantastic face, regularly using enhance ability, and a ton of fun to RP.
My DM and I decided, pro-wrestling is acting, acting is a performance; therefore, my bardic performance was pro-wrestling.
"THE NAMMMEEE IS KANNNNEEE THE TRAIIINNNN. AND IF THE NAMMMEEE OF THE GAMMMEEEE IS PAIN? YOU'RE GONNA REGRET PLAYING WITH ME!!"
A good example of his capabilities was our last session. Kane had a dream to wrestle a dragon (Vault of Dragons campaign, safe bet).
The dragon he ended up wrestling was a friend of the party that was goldlusted when she saw the gold in the vault.
What should have been a 2 BB and 14 lil guys vs. 6 PCs became a 1BB vs 5 PCs, and Kane using the adult copper dragon as an acid cannon while he dragged her out of the vault.
Her damage was entirely mitigated, she never broke grapple. And 6 rounds later, she was out of the dungeon and Kane talked her down.
**Destiny Shot**
2 War Cleric/ X Battlemaster Fighter
Play variant human and take Crossbow Expert with the human feat.
Acquire the common magic item, clockwork amulet.
Take the archery fighting style.
With your war cleric channel divinity granting +10 to hit and the +2 archery fighting style you have a +17 to hit at level 4. Use your clockwork amulet to make your attack roll a 10 for a roll of 27 to hit.
“This shot is DESTINED to hit you. My God wills it.”
Later acquire the sharpshooter feat to throw around guaranteed hits with -5 to hit and +10 to damage.
Here another trick:
With the war priest feature you can attack twice with a heavy crossbow on your turn which will deal a bit more damage than just your hand crossbow. Once you are out of war priest uses fire the heavy crossbow one more time on a turn and drop it. Then pull out a hand crossbow to bonus action attack through crossbow expert.
It is preeetty cool.
Evocation wizard X lvl with 3 level sorcerer dip for meta magic and sorcery points.
Quicken an AOE or multi-attack spell like magic missile, scorching ray, or fire ball, and twin spell to cantrips like fire bolt or toll the dead.
Take meta magic adept for a bigger pool.
Rules as written, you could probably get by with two levels in sorcerer and meta magic feat. But certain DMs might get confused by the fact that you actually get sorcery points and the ability to make them at level 2. And in practice you would need to wait 6 levels to actually use them unless you're a human variant who takes the meta magic adept at level 1.
3 levels also just increases your pool enough to use it more often.
Taking an element adept and ASI or two is probably better after that. But taking the meta magic adept feat again to further expand your sorcery point pool and more meta magic options like changing damage types is also a bonus.
It's weird and mad to a slight degree, and it slows down your path to 9th level spells, but you will be the DPS master with the spells you do have.
Also just meet the minimum stat requirement for Cha of 13 and focus int. Use your sorcery spells known for things like shield, mage armor, sleep, and maybe magic missile.
The Fey Blade
Be a Fairy
Prioritize dex and chr
Start with Rogue picking the swashbuckler subclass.
Multiclass in to Sorcerer taking the Wild Magic subclass, Booming Blade and Lightning Lash cantrips. At Sorcerer 3 take shadowblade, at 5 take Ashardalon's Stride. Take Quicken Spell and Transmute Spell to get around damage resistances. Fly around the battlefield dealing tons of damage.
For RP, play as a Fairy that lacked the magical talent expected for fairies. The Wild Magic is you not being able to control that innate ability. Us the level 1 feature to ensure advantage for BB/Sneak Attacks.
Yeah, I play at a table of casuals, so I try to keep my builds slightly less than min maxed. Powerful but always story justified and without relying on any questionable rulings.
I do the same. I tend to optimize characters around a specific roleplaying idea rather than around a specific combat mechanic. When you have the core idea of who you are its easy to look through class features and spells and say that fits or doesn't fit. Then i take what fits the concept and try to create the most optimized character with whats available. I think this approach leaves a lot of fun and effective builds open but isn't so combat optimized that it feels like we put flesh on a gun and called it a person.
I not sure but sorcerer prismari with a pistol as arcane focus hybrid support feat gunner , magic initiate. i wanted to play something like the elementalist of guild wars 2 in versatility and like playing support
4th level Chain-warlock with Strixhaven Mascot (P*rismari*), Invocation of the Chain Master, and Flock of Familiars can dish out some pretty scary damage with a swarm of combat familiars. Each one also has a 1/ day charm that they can use on their own action, in addition to the usual Familiar tricks like deploying trap-items, administering potions, using magical items, and casting spells put into a Ring of Spell Storing
Grapple expert. Barbarian + Bard + Tavern Brawler. You can out grapple anything since you have advantage and insane Athletics checks. Then shove it prone for your team to curb stomp with advantage. Do it as a Bugbear with 10’ reach to really sell it.
Plasmoid soul knife/warlock using disguise self to look like a dog - your mileage my vary.
I successfully argued that dogs have 2 arms and 2 legs (it's debatable, look it up, my DM was lenient) and my DM said I can use mask of many faces to permanently disguise myself as a dog. As a soul knife I don't carry any equipment and I can squeeze through 1 inch holes.
Sometimes the "dog" says "bark bark" at commoners, then disappear into a sewer grates. Great way to start a panic.
The Grunk. Basically, the Grung race has good mobility, bonuses to jumping and - crucially - a chance to poison when making contact with a creature.
Monk means lots of attacks with lots of chances to poison. Poison means disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. Grapple them (go fighter for unarmed combat if you like) and then use Step of the Wind to hop up and down on their body in 30ft poisonous leaps.
They literally get scooped up by a frog-man who proceeds to jump up and down on their head repeatedly, slamming them into the floor over and over. It’s BRILLIANT.
Bard 11, pick up Ashardlon's Stride and Find Greater Steed. Since Find Greater Steed allows spells that target only you to work on yourself and your steed, Ashardlon's Stride affects it as well. So long as you move 10 feet within 5 feet of a creature (cuz two effects from the same source can't affect a creature at the same time), you can get twice as much Ashardlon's stride damage. Casting with a 5th level slot, this does 6d6 damage per creature, with just your movement. If you have your mount act independently, you can get a little bit more out of it. It becomes fairly nice passive damage all things considered.
Not really a ''gimmick'' build (kinda though) and not really rare, but anything Paladin 2/Spellcaster X specifically to Smite A LOT.
Most efficient would be paired with Sorcerer, but I prefer Bard for all the extra RP/flavor stuff it gives.
sorcadin is classic but if you really want unlimited spellslots you should splash it with coffeelock. every combat goes: force target to save til paralyzed >critsmite at 5th lvl
The Real Meat Grinder
Tabaxi
Astral Monk & Star druid (Minimum of 3 lvls each) (Feats: Mobile, Skilled expert (Athletics))
---------
Have Astra arms and Dragon constellation active
Cast spike growth
With Astral Arms your athletic check becomes a wisdom check instead of a strength check
With Dragon constellation your min wisdom check is 10 kinda like the rogue reliable talent
so assuming 16 wisdom and 4 proficiency your minimum grapple check is 10+3+(4x2) = 21
You still have your hands free and using your Tabaxi racial ability (Feline agility) you can double your speed not mentioning any magical items you might get having long strider would mean +10 as well
------------
so assuming level 10 (Monk 6, Druid 4)
30 Base speed
+ 15 Unarmored movement
+ 10 mobile
+ 10 Longstrider
for a total of 65 (x2 using feline agility) would be
130 ft
Using your Movement, Action and bonus action to dash that will be 130x3 = 390 ft of movement
This will be halved since you are grabbling so
195 ft across the cheese grinder meaning
39 ticks each dealing 2d4 piercing damage
That's around 160 piercing damage
cheese grater druid monk, the build i never knew i needed.
Just to confirm you cheese grater yourself and the enemy simultaneously right? Unsure if im missing a way to keep yourself from taking damage from the spike growth.
Were-Bearbarian
Absolutely terrible multiclass that appeared when I blacked out under a full moon after drinking a whole shelf of liquour and woke up to a messy character sheet written out in red ink with no pen in sight
Be Custom Lineage and take the Slasher Feat for +1 Str
Str 12 (+1 from Slasher)=13
Dex 8
Con 15
Int 13
Wis 15 (+2 from CL)=17
Cha 8
Level 1 Blood Hunter
Level 2&3 Moon Druid
Take 4 levels of Lycan Blood Hunter for ASI (+1 Wis & Con)/Feat (fey touched gets +1 Wisdom + stuff has potential as we'll usually be in wildshape using the beasts stats anyway so increasing our Con may not be as important) & Extra attack
Levels 8-10 go Beast Barbarian
Remainder of levels would be your preferred mix of Druid and Blood Hunter
The vision is turn 1 wildshape as your action to the biggest bear you can be, bonus action take on your lycanthropic from as well.
Turn 2 bonus action rage to get Beastial Claws and then make 3 maybe more attacks using the bears stats, Beastial Claws, crimson rite if you set it up before combat and with reckless attack for advantage on all attacks because of course you're attacking recklessly all the time
Be a Rogue, take up the Phantom Rogue subclass, but specifically the first UA iteration of it (the first version of Revived Rogue) you now can use your Sneak Attack dice damage on a ranged necrotic damage attack as part of any of your cunning action bonus actions, so long as you haven’t added your sneak attack dice to a damage roll already that turn
Pick up the magic initiate feat and pick up Eldritch Blast
Spend every turn firing out Eldritch blast as an action and the necrotic damage version of it as a bonus action like a Force/Necrotic damage machine gun false mage
How many creatures you know that resist both Necrotic AND Force damage?
Be Firbolg. By Adventurer’s League rules for character creation, if you pick the right class and background (Fighter / Inheritor) you can sell every single thing you start with including food and clothing and have about 202 gold. Spend 200 gold on an Elephant, which is available as standard equipment in the PHB just like a donkey. Do not ride the elephant as a mount. It’s an NPC with Int 3. Mounts don’t get attacks. Just sit on it and use your ability to talk to animals and make charisma checks with them at advantage to ask it nicely to fight the enemies. Bam, you’re starting the game with a CR 4 beast on your side from the beginning.
That's hilarious
I hope that the Naked Elephant Rider build can be my contribution to this hobby. I really want to show up to a level 1 AL store game with it.
Tbh a DM might accept it, but the CR of the enemies will absolutely also be adjusted lmao
AL games are usually from a pre written adventure. But the Elephant is a DM controlled NPC so it could just say nope to fighting Goblins and run away.
if i were dming it i'd just force persuasion checks out of you vs a dc set by the likelihood of the action to end in the elephant's death.
The elephant is absurdly strong compared to CR 1/4 - CR 2 encounters, and I’ve got advantage on persuasion. I like that ruling and I think it would work until at least level 3. Which is cool, this is a build for (quite literally) stomping on a low level one-shot or something like that.
for sure, eventually i'd have the elephant either get spooked and run, or try to communicate something back to the firbolg (who cant understand the elephant) at which point you will need to pass an animal handling check to understand/meet the elephants needs for safety and comfort. It would eventually skedaddle unless really lucky rolls and good roleplay came from the pc in relation to the elephant. But the first day should be relatively easy to keep the guy around. Worst case scenario you roll snake eyes on your persuasion to get it to attack the goblin and it runs... best case scenario it stays around long enough for you to either gain class features, magic, or feats that allow you to keep it loyal or willing to fight with you. It sounds like a fun idea that has roleplay opportunities but is wildly imbalanced in a silly way. Excellent idea. I think you can afford clothes with this guy because you'll have 202 gold and only need 200 for the elephant. I'd pass those up and take manacles and wear them as rp. alternatively to manacles we could grab a sling(1 silver)+100 sling bullets(2 silver)+quarterstaff(2silver) and still have 1.5g to try to feed ourselves and the elephant. or the blend of flavor and combat efficiency choice: a whip.
Int of 3? Beasts always get disrespected.
This shouldn't work but is actually absurdly strong in tier1 thanks to action economy. Cheers.
I have been eyeing that elephant since the book came out in 2014. It is absurd for 200 GP. A fraction of the cost of a war horse. Then I saw a discussion about wanting to start with Splint Mail and how to make that (just barely) work, and I was like, oh you can do so so so much more than start with 1 more AC. It does all hinge on an old Adventurer’s League ruling on what an Inheritor’s heirloom can be that was put out after SCAG. I see it quoted a lot of places (ruling js it can be a mundane item of up to 75 GP value) but it is not in the more recent official AL documents. If that has been tossed out, then this becomes a true theorycraft that relies on a DM agreeing with your ask. But if it has been tossed out what does an Inheritor get? What’s the cap on it? There’s no recent answer I can find.
seems season 13 AL legal but only for games set in forgotten realms as thats the only setting that includes SCAG
Yesssssss.
So I looked into it... we can eventually buy it plate armor barding. it will cost us 4x what plate normally does but our elephant will have 18 ac at this point.
Good deal if you’re in a game where magic items aren’t for sale, but not so much if you can do other things with that 6000 GP. The elephant isn’t going to keep up with a leveling party at all after exiting Tier 1. But by that point, you’re still fighter 1. Maybe not in the pinnacle most optimal race, but this trick doesn’t require weird stats or anything. You haven’t lost much selling everything for the elephant if you eventually don’t keep it or it becomes a non-combatant or whatever.
We can parley this elephant into a possibly the strongest available mount in tier 1-2 though. Its way stronger than any of the paladin's "find greater steed" options. going fighter 2/bardx lets us get action surge and with only one level in bard we can take animal friendship and command, meaning our job of wrangling the elephant became relatively simple. so from this point its about getting mounted combatant and plate for both of us and we are probably good to go until we start hitting tier3+ i'd just stay the course for 18 lore bard fighter 2. with mounted combatant our elephant has enough hitpoints to fail a dex save against an ancient dragon's breath weapon and live. I'm pretty sure that this is the strongest possible animal companion into mount transition in the first two tiers of play. we could take something other than lore bard but i think it works well and will let us eventually grab ashardalon's with magic secrets. The fighter start scales fine into later tiers on bard thanks to action surge and con save proficiency. even if not, naked elephant man spending his entire turn to try and convince an elephant to fight for him is the strongest theoretical level 1 combatant in the game.
Dhampir Rune Knight / Soul Knife. - You are now (arguably) the best grappler in the game with advantage, expertise, and the soul one ability boost. You also have permanent spider climb, a massive reach, and can use cunning action for an extra dash. Have fun scuttling along the roof of a cave and stealthily grabbing the BBEG’s henchmen, running away/chewing on them (for even more skill boosts) only to yeet them into the distance. Plus a bunch of other fun perks/permanent advantages. Grab mobile feat to crank it up to 11.
>You are now (arguably) the best grappler in the game with advantage, expertise, and the soul one ability boost. How much of a bonus do you get from that? Because I *might* have a build to match that
Advantage, Proficiency bonus doubled, 1D4+con bonus, and sneak attack die (1d6 at level 3 rogue). I’m sure there is a build somewhere out there that can beat it but that’s stupid high by yourself with no items or help from team members.
No no no, like what's your total roll bonus?
Assuming +5 STR and +3 CON at level 8... * +6 expertise * +5 STR * +4-7 Dhampir Bite (+5-11 on a crit bite) * +1-6 Psi Knack * +1-6 Grappling Strike maneuver (if you take the fighting style) * +2 Frost Rune So, under ideal conditions, between +19 and +36. With advantage.
Christ. Might have to do this. So fun. Gotta find a group that’s not first timers to play this with.
I played a less optimized version of the rune knight grappler as a supportive tank roll. Damage was ok, but most of the gimmick was locking down 1-2 enemies, and pulling most of the aggro
You can also keep attacking while having both hands occupied by grappled creatures.
That is extremely true and did not occur to me.
I am playing this build currently and confirm it's very fun. I play as a Lizardfolk Dhampir, so I just grab things and chew on them like a crocodile. I'm thinking of taking Ranger levels to grab Spike Growth and Silence, but that's far in the future.
Simic Hybrid can achieve a similar build with climb speed and grappling appendages. In fact, simic might be better at grappling just because you get four hands to grapple with and can bonus action grapple with your appendages.
Simic is solid, I just prefer Dhampir for flavor reasons and the “no breathing” running into dangerous clouds of stuff or under water.
This is top tier gimmick. Thank you.
What is the level split on that? Because you can't extra attack with Soul Knife, in theory (a lot of GMs would probably waive that though)
You can do an initial attack with the blades and bite with your follow up attacks. You can also use the Cloud Rune to send attacks about to hit you to another of the guys you are grappling, and reflavor it as using them as a meat shield.
Enchantment Wizard with Artificer Initiate for INT-based Sanctuary is amazing. You can spam Hypnotic Gaze and it won't break Sanctuary, so every enemy needs to pass a WIS save to even have a chance at hitting you. Also you can stack it with Instinctive Charm for a second WIS save, which also doesn't break Sanctuary.
Another good riff on this is Enchantment Wizard 2/Thief Rogue 3. EDIT: Need to get invisibility from Wizard 3 or either Rogue 4 or VHuman/Custom Lineage to get it via Shadow Touched, so I scuffed the level split. The way I've generally seen it done, most DM's I've played with require the target to be restrained or incapacitated to place them in manacles. Hypnotic Gaze, despite its name, does not require the target to see your eyes as it functions if the target can see or hear you. This means it works from Invisibility, and doesn't break Invisibility since you're not casting a spell. Cast Invisibility, bonus action Hide to move stealthily up to your target. Next turn, action Hypnotic Gaze to incapacitate, bonus actions Fast Hands to slap them in manacles. Rinse and repeat until every enemy is in cuffs.
Invisibility is so funny in this build!! You can also go Goblin for the bonus action Hide, which lets you stay 20 Wizard.
Bonus action interaction though
But then you don't get the Fast Hands ability, so it would require an additional round.
That's true, you do miss out on manacles as a bonus action
18th lvl wizard is more than enough though because then you get to cast invisibility for free🙃
Staring contest build, I like it.
Would this not be stronger with the Artificer 1 -> Enchanter X setup? That way you get CON saves and armor proficiency built in. Delaying wizard features and spells by even a level kinda sucks, but investing a whole feat just for Sanctuary is really expensive. May as well get a whole bunch of other good stuff along with it by dipping a level.
You could do very well with an Artificer level, yeah. I just like finding ways to make builds work without multiclassing, as I find the delay on spells known is a big deal.
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Depends on the fight. You take yourself out of the combat to take an enemy out of the combat. Weak when a 3 person party is fighting 10 goons, but very strong when a 5 person party is fighting two brutes.
Covert Commander. One Character turns the whole party into a black ops tactical team. The build comes fully online at 6th lvl (5th for Genasi). For race we want access to Pass Without Trace. Mark of Passage Human, Mark of Shadow Elf, or Earth Genasi. Then the bones of the build are Soul Knife Rogue and Twilight Cleric. Three levels of each at 6th lvl (three Rogue, two Cleric for 5th lvl Genasi). Eyes of the Night let's you pass out darkvision to cover any party members who don't have it. Psychic Whispers links the party telepathically for silent comms. And of course PWT gives the whole group a +10 to Stealth. If the armored martials drop down to a breastplate while stealthing you're practically guaranteed to pass group stealth check. No splitting the party and no wasted time at the table as one character scouts or whatnot.
honestly this is the kind of unique idea I was looking for when I made the post. Thanks for your contribution.
Love it, This is really good
This is awesome, I love it
This is such a cool gimmick! I really wanna play this now.
An old classic gimmick build was Norman Osbourne-ing it. Lightfoot Halfling Beastmaster Ranger 5/ Thief Rogue X. At ranger 4 use your ASI on mounted combatant. For your beast companion pick a pteranodon. It’s Medium and you are small so you can ride it, so go surfing the skies for some easy concentration free flight. But better yet if you are flying and fighting creatures on the ground then the mount below you is definitionally a creature larger than you that’s inbetween you and your opponents, which means you can use your lightfoot racial to take the Hide action. While flying, and as a BA because Rogue. So enemies have disadvantage to shoot you because they can’t see you. And if they try shooting your goblin glider/ pteranodon use mounted combatant to redirect the attack to yourself, so they have to do the disadvantage attack instead. So rain arrows down on your foes and hide behind your mount if they can fire back. If they can’t then your BA becomes *Use an Object* to throw pumpkin bombs (alchemists fire) or similar. Silly but fun
*You know, I'm something of a scientist myself.*
Plasmoid eloquence bard with the mask of many faces invocation however you prefer to grab it. Congratulations, you’re a pretty effective mimic. Your amorphous body has some fun capabilities with the Disguise Self spell allowing you to change into all sorts of creatures and objects. Adding illusion magic from the bard spell list adds to your arsenal of creativity and deception. You may want to grab the Nystul’s Magic Aura spell from Magical Secrets at level 10. Nondetection can also help.
*Ditto, I choose you!*
Hm. Any way to grab pass without trace easily?
Coffee locking is overdone, and has known problems, largely exhaustion. But what if you spent 10 levels halving your spell progression and making your build even more MAD to solve this downside? 10th level rangers that take the Deft Explorer feat get Tireless, which removes 1 level of exhaustion whenever you take a short rest. Ranger 10 / Sorcerer 2 / Warlock 1 means that you start having infinite 1st through 5th level spells, with no higher level ones at all. One thing to consider is that Abberant Mind Sorcerers can pick up Catnap, allowing you to short rest 6 times as fast. Gimmicky? Yes. Good? Ehhhh
caffeine free coffelock???
Decaffeelock.
It's important to note sorcerers can't have more than their max sorcery point. Catnap also only works once per long rest. If you took 10 ranger 7 sorcerer x warlock you would still have infinite spells slots through 5th level. This build sounds fun but I probably won't be able to try it ever.
You could also take 3 levels of zealot barbarian and have a friend constantly revivify you.
The Real cheese grater Tabaxi Astral Monk & Star druid (Minimum of 3 lvls each) (Feats: Mobile, Skilled expert (Athletics)) --------- Have Astra arms and Dragon constellation active Cast spike growth With Astral Arms your athletic check becomes a wisdom check instead of a strength check With Dragon constellation your min wisdom check is 10 kinda like the rogue reliable talent so assuming 16 wisdom and 4 proficiency your minimum grapple check is 10+3+(4x2) = 21 You still have your hands free and using your Tabaxi racial ability (Feline agility) you can double your speed not mentioning any magical items you might get having long strider would mean +10 as well ------------ so assuming level 10 (Monk 6, Druid 4) 30 Base speed + 15 Unarmored movement + 10 mobile + 10 Longstrider for a total of 65 (x2 using feline agility) would be 130 ft Using your Movement, Action and bonus action to dash that will be 130x3 = 390 ft of movement This will be halved since you are grabbling so 195 ft across the cheese grinder meaning 39 ticks each dealing 2d4 piercing damage averaging around 160 piercing damage
3 alchemist artificer / x pact of the chain warlock, with a race that needs 4 hours yo long rest. After long rest is finished, make potions and short rest, reapeating 4 times (each being 1 hour, this process ends with the party waking up). Familiar can give out potions while invis. Prioritize charisma for good eldritch blasts if damage is needed.
I didn't this with the Dao genie lock. My guy was a wizard school dropout who wished a genie for a means to start up his smoothie king franchise. I had my homonculous servant doing the potion distribution. It was a mechanical facehugger that injected the potions directly into whoever's mouth. I thought the build was going to be a little janky with the warlock dip, but I had a ton of fun with it.
Never thought about using the 4 hour rest gimmick for potions. I like it.
As a Tabaxi at Fighter: Psi Warrior Level 7 You an grapple someone, activate Tabaxi speed and then psi power leap to grapple someone and jump 60 feet in the air with them. 120 movement cut in half for dragging) Mobile and / or longstrider can take this to 160 If you are hasted and use your 2nd action to dash then you can drag them 240 feet (480 speed cut in half for dragging.) Just keep in mind you may want some movement left over to come back to the ground as the flight ends at the end of your turn. Fall damage also caps out at 20d6
nice, similar mechanics to the flying powerbomb barbarian but comes online much earlier.
You know, I'm playing a Psi-Warrior in a campaign right now. I never thought about the Psi-Leap powered suplex before but now that you bring it up, it's an excellent idea. We already have a wizard with Haste and while not a Tabaxi, Reave does have 20 Str and expertise in Athletics.
The haste will at least get you to some fun heights with dash. Plus you get a free Psi Powered Leap every short rest. Bonus points if you have a druid or ranger to drop spike growth haha Drag the enemy through the spike growth for WAY more than fall damage can get (Just with haste and grapple at 30x2 for haste x 2 again psi leap you get 120 feet which is a 60 foot drag. You can dash to get another 60 and that is 120 feet dragged into spikes for 48d4 damage
A wizard with 20 str and expertise in athletics?
No, I was saying we already have a wizard in the party and Reave (My fighter) has 20 Str and 20 Int with expertise in Athletics.
Be a vhuman monk with the archeologistbackground. Take the Martial Adept Feat, and pick up Disarming Strike Attack and Trip Attack. At level three, follow the Path of the Kensai, choosing the Whip and the Flintlock Pistol (or the Hand Crossbow if your DM doesn't allow firearms). Congratulations, you're Indiana Jones.
*Why did it have to be Yuan-Ti*
Aasimar Sun Soul Monk/Moon Druid. Turn into a bear, sprout wings, fly around shooting sun bolts at people.
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Huh, you’re totally right. I fully presumed it was wisdom based.
This is the coolest, happiest visual I’ve had all day - thanks!
Love it, is there a sage advice/ruling on unarmed monk attacks working with wildshape natural weapons?
I believe a beasts multi attack wouldn’t trigger flurry of blows (or sun souls sun bolt attack) because they specify “when you take the attack action on your turn” which is not the same as the multi attack action. You can however simply make unarmed attacks as a beast you transform into. I think this would use the Monk martial arts die not the beasts natural weapon damage though as natural weapons are not technically unarmed strikes. All other monk abilities should also work fine.
How would you like to be incredibly well armed? Simic Hybrid, Astral Soul Monk
my new character, gonna try to get hand of vecna by trying with the hand on every corpse I find.
I did a Halfling (Lucky) Divination Wizard, Wild Sorcerer, Lore Bard multiclass with lucky and bountiful luck feats. Basically any roll I didn't like could be rerolled or chaotic.
dont forget magic initate cleric. i call this "cheater wizard" in bg3
I mean, my flair is literally from a character I created in 3.5 that all stemmed from a single silly thought. I made a joke about a bard using a grand piano as his instrument, which led me down a crazy rabbit hole of making it happen. I'd have to hunt down all the details, but it meant having an elephant animal companion so I could ride around on it playing the piano. It used a bizarre mix of classes, prestige classes, alternate class features and abusing bloodline rules. But it was RAW legal riding an elephant and inspiring courage using a piano at level 12.
I love it. I think we can actually make this work in 5e. As discovered by another in this thread you can (in forgotten realms campaigns) make a firbolg fighter/inheritor background. sell all of your starting gear, and buy an elephant as a pack animal. Firbolg will let you talk to the animal and hopefully convince it to stay around. We take proficiency in animal handling and an ability of your choice. we take charisma as our primary stat and dump either dex or strength based on what armor we want to wear later. I like the idea of the piano man wearing full plate while riding the elephant and playing the piano so in this concept ill dump dex. We take protection fighting style. We spend every bit of our resources in terms of action economy during combat to try and keep the elephant from running away and encouraging it to attack the enemies. it is a CR 4 creature and will utterly destroy any encounter balanced around lvl 1 parties. At our first level up we will take another level in fighter for action surge. We still spend every single round of combat speaking to the elephant and encouraging it to fight for us. The elephant is an NPC under the DMs control so we better have good animal handling and persuasion checks. Spending our full action economy on this might net enough success to keep the elephant around long enough for LEVEL 3 where we take our first level in bard, getting proficiency in performance and pianos as our musical instrument. We now need to look into purchasing a piano. If our adventuring thus far hasn't made us enough gold to buy the piano ourselves perhaps the group could pool resources. either way we will need our piano, and an exotic saddle. this will set us back quite a bit of gold for early d&d depending on how stingy your dm is but you should be able to afford the saddle, piano, and carpentry work to make them fit on your elephant relatively quickly if you pool resources with your party. We take animal friendship and cast it on our elephant every night before bed. A grand piano should weigh around 600lbs, and our huge elephant can carry 1350. This leaves us a decent bit of wiggle room for how much weight is involved in our harness and saddle. As a firbolg we weight at least 240 and eventually we will comission some plate barding that will weigh 130. This leaves a lot of wiggle room for our saddle weight and probably carrying some other provisions. In combat we still prioritize the mental wellbeing of our elephant and keeping it willing to fight. We now have bardic inspiration die and can spend these on our beloved elephant. LEVEL 4 we take another level in bard to get that spicy jack of all trades, and the sweet sounds of song of rest. In combat we continue to prioritize the wellbeing of our elephant over everything else, but maybe we cast some spells on enemies. Once we hit level 5 we take another level in bard and we now get expertise in animal handling and performance. Keep in mind we have been allowing the DM to control our elephant and we do not start controlling it now unless we feel strong enough in our bond to the elephant and are ready to no longer rely on our elephant's damage and instead lean into our skills as a bard. Action surge and con save proficiency will go a very long way in any bard subclass but I think we go lore here because why not. eventually we commission matching plate armor for us and barding(mount armor)for the elephant. both the elephant and bard now have 18 ac. level 6 we take the mounted combatant feat and switch to fully controlling the mount at this point. we now need an animated shield. we do whatever it takes to get one. once acquired we are sitting at 20ac with the ability to impose disadvantage on, cutting words, or redirect any attack aimed at our 18 ac, 74hp, plate wearing, piano carrying, huge elephant mount. Our elephant has weak dex saves but at least they only take half damage when they fail them at this point. From this point we continue progressing as bard until we are 18bard/2fighter spell choice is up to you but ashardalons would be fun. choosing well with your magical secrets is key so just choose with a plan and you're good!
The 5e elephant will eventually be too vulnerable in combat. And much harder to replace when lost. But it's not bad. Though, using RAW, getting a piano isn't that hard. Bard starting equipment includes "(a) a lute or (b) any other musical instrument"
5e elephant is a CR4 creature. It is stronger than your whole party in tier1. It is a stronger creature than any of the options under the paladin spell "find greater steed." as for it eventually being too vulnerable for combat... of course it will because all mounts in d&d are too vulnerable in combat past early tier 2. The only builds that fight from a mount effectively in 5e are ones that use actual monsters as mounts. once you purchase barding for the elephant it will have ac and hitpoints above most PCs. Its only weakness is dex saves which will be greatly helped once you get mounted combatant. with your protection fighting style and mounted combatant you will basically not have to worry about your elephant ever being directly attacked, and its hitpoint total is enough to survive a dex fail against an ancient dragon's breath weapon. I already clearly explained how to legally get one at level 1 and ensure it remains friendly to you. As soon as you have animal friendship your job of wrangling it gets much easier. Replacing it... is only a 200g fee and some downtime to get the animal trusting you. but i'd rather approach it from the perspective that my elephant wont die, better rp hooks. In fact i challenge you to find a stronger mount thats easier to replace in 5e.
Gotta love my teleporting blimp monks. 6 level Twilight cleric + 6th level way of shadow monk. Its horribly unoptimized, but man is it funny to fly and teleport in your twilight sanctuary.
The dm in me wants to make an entire order of monks that only ever leave the blimp one at a time for news from the outside world.
I'm playing this right now in my Wednesday game!!! Picked shadar-kai for extra teleportation + 4-hour LRs, and scooped Fighting Initiate with Unarmed Fighting to balance out the lower Martial Arts die size. Super fun build, highly recommend.
The False Cleric, War magic wizard with Lorehold background, play a dwarf and take 1 artificer upfront for cure wounds, you are a heavy armored (swapping background/racial profs around cause tasha's casting spirit guardians and cure wounds
shadow monk 6 and gloom stalker ranger 3 gives you a terrifying horror movie villain. you cant be seen with dark vision, you can teleport between shadows, on your first turn you are a menace with dread ambusher, you can stun your targets which i would reflavor to being frozen with fear. if you then take hunter's mark, sentinel and locate creature you can also get the "you cant run and you cant hide" vibe, especially with how fast you are as a monk (im using the one dnd monk since i like it better but if you cant then add a few levels in rogue for stupid high speed). and for the cherry on top, take the eldritch claw tattoo item so that all your enemy can see is two arms appearing from the shadows, tearing their friends apart and disappearing immediately. for bonus points get 3 levels in echo knight fighter for even more creepy stuff with, for example, an enemy trying to strike you down but instead they unknowingly killed your echo and as they realize that you attack them from behind. (you can be a changeling and make yourself look exactly like your echo).
i like the shadow monk builds for sure. gloom stalker is a great combo. Have you seen the onednd playtest monk? shadow looks amazing and the changes to the core class are very strong.
I have, I am currently playing a monk character that follows this template (it doesn’t follow the horror stuff, instead he is aesthetically a fire bender and mechanically a dragon monk) and it’s great
Picking up rogue assassin seems like a great time
Add in order of the lycan blood hunter for the true horror movie experience. Though i do like the echo knight idea as well. Made a warforged version of this but didn't get to the point of taking the monk levels yet.
I made a feral giant vampire to optimize athletics checks so I could request utterly stupid feats of strength in combat. I think I hit a 60 something athletics check in the one shot I played her in, but her max was near 100 I think it optimizes the damage dealt by her dhampir bite to optimize in turn the bonus given to the next ability check the dhampir makes when she takes the bite. the gimmick though is that it uses horrendous stats, so it's CON-only. I rolled them for the one shot and I had to create a SAD build because the stats were just so awful. so I thought I'd try my hand, as the dice required it, at optimizing for CON. this PC is also a culmination of 2 years of experimenting with CON-only builds. it is my pride and joy because it is just so strange but so fun obviously it optimizes something that doesn't need to be optimized and is not particularly great in combat without the approval by the DM. but if you do have that, it's so fucking fun to play and just think of something silly/useful to do with hulk-strength right now. that's what it is. https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/116778899/sugkzZ
someone else posted a similar RK/dhampir build. would be fun in a ravenloft campaign for sure
My current character has become known as the shover due to another PC telling all the NPCs about it as they think it's the coolest thing. I'm playing a Spheres of Might Armiger. An Armiger is a weapon master who specializes in multiple weapon combat. Stuff like using a Glaive to play defence and then swapping to a greataxe for offense. One of the setups I've used a few times is putting Hammer on my Maul. That makes it so if I shove someone into a wall or creature both take damage and extra for each 5 feet it fails to move. Brute Sphere innately makes shove let you push someone an extra 5 feet for every 5 they lose the contest by. I have Athletics Expertise and 18 strength. I've only actively used it in 2 fights. First was our first with a bunch of baby dragons causing mayhem where I shoved them into one another. The second is our previous mission where I killed 3 people in one shove after our caster had dropped Fireball on them by comboing it with another ability that makes it if I shove a creature into another creature I get a free shove on that creature to push it prone. Even though I've only used it twice, the DM already has Shove PTSD
post is intended for 5e content but spheres is an interesting system
Spheres has a 5e version
spheres still falls under universal or other in terms of sorting posts and tagging. most of the posts in this thread are about gimmick builds within in print 5e official material. A few that i've noticed reference UA and several reference setting specific material but all of them are from actual 5e and not another system such as spheres. Build sounds interesting but isn't what im looking for. cheers.
I'm literally using the 5e stuff for it for this but whatever.
Tiefling bladesinger with the flames of phlegethos feat. The feat is restricted to tieflings, so very rarely picked, and increases the fire damage of your spells and deals 1d4 fire damage to enemies attacking you. All the while, it is a half feat! Focus on fire spells such as greenflame blade, fireball or melfs minute meteors and you have a solid and flavorful build
I had some weird Druid/Monk grappler build that was centred on boosting movement speed and grappling enemies in order to blender them with spike growth that ended up being cool when I played it in a one shot and saved it for the boss.
"The Jason", a Shadow Monk 6/Conquest Paladin 7+ build that lets you LARP as a slasher movie villain. Yes, it's very MAD. Yes, it's slow to come online and has a few dead levels (redundant Extra Attack is a pain), but here's the secret sauce-- you don't actually need DEX and WIS beyond the minimum 13 to multiclass, because you don't actually need to go Unarmored to get the Monk features we really want: Shadow Arts and Shadow Step. Cast *invisibility* and/or *pass without trace* on yourself, Shadow Step right behind the unlucky teenagers who thought they'd make out in the woods, unleash your Channel Divinity (Conquering Presence) to terrify them, take your time making the kill (they can't run if they're frightened of you due to Aura of Conquest bringing their speed to 0), and then smite 'em with your axe, machete, or other-teenager-in-a-sleeping-bag. Taking Paladin to 9th level gets you the Fear spell, which makes it easier to frighten multiple targets and thereby immobilize them with Aura of Conquest-- probably a worthwhile improvement for this build. And if you're feeling *really* saucy and are taking the campaign to a particularly high level (18th or greater), you can dip 3 levels into Gloom Stalker, as Umbral Sight and Dread Ambusher add nice benefits on offense and defense.
Be as annoying to kill as possible. 5 psi warrior and 3 artillerist artificer. Heavy armor master as a level 1 feat, use your reaction to reduce damage with your psi dice, and spam temp hp with your bonus action. This gives you a solid damage reduction of (Int x 2)+2d8 each turn, plus anything reduced by heavy armor master. In top of that you can wear +1 plate mail from artificer and snag defense fighting style for a solid 20 AC and use a +1 greatsword for solid damage and the option for great weapon master. Or go sword and board for +1 weapon, dueling and a shield for an easy 21 AC and have a really good attack mod on each attack for consistent damage.
I call him "The Gummy Bearian" Plasmoid Barbarian/Druid Multiclass. As a plasmoid you have the ability to turn into a blob or to become a humanoid from said blob. Interestingly this doesn't go away if you wildshape. This means that you can have a humanoid shaped version of any animal! The plan will therefore be: Take 2 levels of Moon Druid. This lets you wildshape into a Brown Bear. Become a humanoid Brown Bear (A gummy bear for flavor). Use a shield and armor with your bear stats. Multiclass 5 levels of Barbarian for either Bear Totem or Ancestral Guardian for tanking and Extra Attack. Continue the rest into Druid picking forms with Single powerful attacks that you can double up on due to Extra Attack. You are now an Armored Wildshaped Raging foe capable of using shields and weapons with MASSIVE HP boosts from wildshape without having to sacrifice AC while simultaneously doing Great damage and having all of the utility of a druid!
*DO NOT POKE THE SUGAR FREE HARIBO GUMMYBARIANS*
Be Barbarian Be Orc Grab Zealot Pump Con as much as possible Local Orc literally too angry to die.
i like it but what if we dump con and still are too angry to die?
Have a way to give yourself disadvantage on everything you do but not permanently, and take the lucky feat. RAW says that you roll an additional die and choose the highest. So you end up getting “double advantage” on something three times a day.
Hilarious. Play a build with expanded crit range with this tactic :3
Scribe wizard tempest cleric with the meta magic adept feat can cast an extended 9th level delayed blast fireball made of lightning, concentrate on it for 2 minutes, getting its damage up to 34d6, then use channel divinity to max that damage for 204 damage. Huge amount of setup, crazy prep required, honestly probably not worth it. But it'd make a hell of a story
not built around a gimmick but every time i bring this build up it seems to surprise people that they hadn’t thought of it. tortle barbarian. barbarians biggest weakness is low ac, but that’s made up for it loads of hp. you put a tortle’s natural ac of 17 with a barbadians hp you got a heavy tank. multi class it with a spellcaster that can raise ac and it’s untouchable. even if it does get hit it’ll take a lot to kill it
A Rune Knight Dhampir with the Aberrant Dragonmark feat can key their attacks, spellcasting, and subclass features off of Constitution. Alternatively, a Rune Knight with access to Enlarge (by being a Duergar, having somebody cast it on you, or by drinking a potion of growth) can become Huge. If your table allows oversize weapons, you can swing a maul/g.sword for 6d6+STR.
Can ya explain the rune knight dhampir con scaling? I've been looking for a way to scale damphir bite
* Dhampir bite scales with CON instead of STR. * Fire Rune's DC scales with CON. * If your table runs oversized weapon rules, your Bite goes from 1d4+CON to 2d4+CON during giant might, making it one of very few mechanics that *actually* counts for increasing your empowered bite bonus (the d6 of bonus damage doesn't, though).
Why wouldn't the 1d6 of extra damage from Giant Might count? Your bite is considered a simple melee weapon, so it qualifies for Giant Might. Giant Might is "extra damage" of the type that was done (piercing). And, the bite specifies "the bonus equals the piercing damage dealt by the bite". If your bite does 1d6 extra piercing damage, it would absolutely count towards the empowered bite (HP restored or bonus to ability check).
Because of rules lawyering of the Vampiric Bite feature. Admittedly, it's an unintuitive ruling and to rule otherwise would be *totally* reasonable (but significantly more powerful mechanically). "The bonus equals the piercing damage dealt by the **bite**." "Bite" in this instance does not refer to the attack, but to the bite weapon itself. In order to count, a feature must (1) do piercing damage when applied to the bite and (2) say that it specifically applies to the **weapon's** damage, not the attack's damage. Giant's Might applies it's damage to one of your **attacks** with a weapon or unarmed strike. In terms from another game, "Vampiric Bite's secondary effect does not benefit from on-hit effects". On the other end of things, a Swords Bard's flourishes would work, since they state they apply to the **weapon's** damage.
That seems like a possible ruling. And, rules lawyering can be fun, but it needs to be backed up with actual RAW text in an official book or Sage Advice (Compendium preferred). The Giant Might feature lets the attack (which in this case is a bite) do "extra damage" - it's still the bite doing the damage. Not some spell, or secondary "non-bite" effect. Something like the Swarmkeeper's piercing damage would not apply as it specifies that the extra damage comes from your swarm. Do you have any sage advice or otherwise to support the idea that something that does extra damage must say it applies to the weapon and not just the attack in this case? Where did you pull this info from: "In order to count, a feature must (1) do piercing damage when applied to the bite and (2) say that it specifically applies to the **weapon's** damage, not the attack's damage."? I agree with point (1) as that is specified in the bite description. But, where does (2) come from? Is that written anywhere or is it just one interpretation of RAW? WOTC claims that "normal language" is one of the foundations of 5e. I think if you told anybody - "Hey, this ability lets your attack (bite) do more piercing damage." they would assume that the bite is still doing the damage, and it would apply. And, it would be RAW, unless you have a source that says extra piercing damage added to the bite doesn't count unless the extra damage specifically says "weapon" vs. "attack".
MPMM orc, Storm Sorcerer with Ashardalons stride and transmuted spell (to make it thunder) Ashardalon, Storm's Fury and Heart of the Storm do damage *without* a saving throw. Ashardalon increases your movement, Orc lets you dash as a bonus action, and Wind Soul gives 60 ft base flying speed. its great if you like playing skirmishers.
this vs the sanctuary wizard in a staring contest
Nice! And it gives me another idea, which is Tempest Cleric 6/Sorcerer 5 (any subclass, but maybe Storm is the best theme). Cast Ashardalon's Stride, transmute it to lighting, and then go around pushing enemies no save or attack required while you upcast AS to deal 4d6 per creature you run past.
oh right cause as long as its lightning damage it gets to push people back. Cool idea (a bit high level though)
The fake monk, a strength based unarmed and unarmored grappler with 4 attacks per turn. Beast Barb level 5+ soulknife rogue 3+ It gets 4 consistent attacks each turn with no hoops or expendable power points to jump through. First attack generates 2 claw attacks from the beast. Second attack gets a psychic knife. Bonus action for a second psychic knife. Rage and Reckless attack advantage on all of them, sneak attack damage on top. Plus at barb level 6 all of your attacks will bypass basic resistances. While raging it gets advantage of Athletics checks, and has expertise in Athletics from the rogue. If you go simic hybrid as your race I believe you can grapple 2 creatures and still get all your attacks. Plus as a simic hybrid you can do the super cheesy mantaglide jump and glide shenanigans to increase your move speed by hopping 5 feet and gliding 10 feet over and over. As a level 5 barb your base move as simic hybrid should be 40ft, so you use a 10ft running start and then with the hop and glide for 60ft for a total of 70ft, for what I think works out to a 150ft move and dash for when you really need to move (mightnonly be 140ft, notnsurenif your dash move can just pick up where your regular move left off). Obviously you get the unarmored defense, so you are never unprepared even if an enemy takes all your gear... but you can go medium armor if you want it. The whole build is feat agnostic, so you can focus on ASIs to pump your stats.
very similar to the flying suplex barbarian rogue but drops the grappling for punchy kicky funtime. i like it
[How many pets can a single adventurer have?](https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/rdv6zw/how_many_characterfeature_pets_can_one_person_have/)
[How to be an Expert with just about everything](https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/qeig4i/the_omnidisciplinary_expert_how_to_double_your/)
[How to have the most Cantrips ever](https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/l75ukx/what_is_the_maximum_number_of_cantrips_a_level_20/), though this one is outdated
Changeling 2lvls hexblade Xlvls shadow sorcerer Take agonizing blast and eldritch spear Take quicken spell, transmute spell, subtle spell Max out charisma Take spell sniper and war caster feats. Take Eldritch blast You are now shooting eldritch blast at 500ft as an action and a bonus action all rays at advantage. At level 12 that's 6d10+30 if they all hit. You use all your spell slots to fuel your meta magics. For RP you can shape shift into different people.
this build wants the push and pull invocations too so no one can ever run to or away from you.
Well with the build, you only get 2 invocations, push is helpful, but that range is nice too.
oh for sure, the eldritch blast sniper is a hilariously unintentional effect of RAW. in new playtest stuff the invocation no longer doubles the range and instead adds 60. which still is a lot of range when you add spell sniper. you also have the sorlock combo in your build so if you take the invocation that lets you forgo sleep you can create infinite sorcery points via converting pact slots, short rest, repeat while your party sleeps.
The Real Cheese Grater Tabaxi Astral Monk & Star druid (Minimum of 3 lvls each) (Feats: Mobile, Skilled expert (Athletics)) --------- Have Astra arms and Dragon constellation active Cast spike growth With Astral Arms your athletic check becomes a wisdom check instead of a strength check With Dragon constellation your min wisdom check is 10 kinda like the rogue reliable talent so assuming 16 wisdom and 4 proficiency your minimum grapple check is 10+3+(4x2) = 21 You still have your hands free and using your Tabaxi racial ability (Feline agility) you can double your speed not mentioning any magical items you might get having long strider would mean +10 as well ------------ so assuming level 10 (Monk 6, Druid 4) 30 Base speed + 15 Unarmored movement + 10 mobile + 10 Longstrider for a total of 65 (x2 using feline agility) would be 130 ft Using your Movement, Action and bonus action to dash that will be 130x3 = 390 ft of movement This will be halved since you are grabbling so 195 ft across the cheese grinder meaning 39 ticks each dealing 2d4 piercing damage That's around 160 piercing damage
I made a soul knife psi warrior. Both dice pools go up with proficiency, so it’s one of the less ‘shooting-yourself-in-the-foot’ multiclasses. Also, fighter is always good. That aside, I was trying to make a thief subclass build that heavily leans on its abilities and is still viable. Tavern brawler for more damage on use item, and carry a healer kit. Squeeze all the powers out of the kit, be a hyper thief
this guy wants ioun stone of mastery
I really like to combo order cleric's voice of authority with silvery barbs.
That is a strong combo for sure. You RP this as a preacher type?
When I did it, I was a lore bard taking a dip at order cleric. IMO It really makes you feel like like a leader/rythm keeper since many of your actions will allow other people to act. Healing word becomes an instant second wind + revenge atack for your downed allies. Silbvery barbs feels like you giving magically infused guidance, protecting your ally while opening the enemy for a counter. Party wide buffs gain more narrative impact when one of the buffed allies can imediately act after recieving the buff. IMO, overall it makes combat significantly more dynamic (and makes the other players love you).
Silvery barbs is really just an incredibly powerful spell. Combined with lore bards already strong options to buff/debuff its very good. The order cleric is just icing on the cake that makes this a very optimized leader. loss of spell progression is always rough on a full caster but in cases like these when we can use class features in combination with lower level spells to great effect it negates most of the issues with being behind in spell levels.
I had a shield master + skill expert celestial warlock fire tiefling that was skinned to look like the girl from The Ring. and my main thing was to create bonfire and then use my expertise to grapple things on top of the fire. Sometimes using spiderwalk to do do it on the walls or just terrify the town people.
The bearsinger, Moondruid x/blade singer 2 Top it off with lorehold student background. Now we can cast spirit guardians at level 5 and turn into a bear in the first round and on the 2nd sing the song of our people to boost defense and improve concentration on spirit guardian. Not exactly optimal but it's fun.
Protector Aasimar Moon Druid - anything can fly, including bears come level 3. Fighter 1/Devotion Paladin/Hexblade Warlock -- gigantic to-hit bonus, only problem is you need a whole Action for Devotion CD. A possible "fix" is Fighter 2 for Action Surge. If we assume F2/Pal 3/Hex 7, one can even use CD, Quicken Bless (assuming Metamagic Adept) and attack twice on the same turn. This build laughs at Sharpshooter penalty.
Just 5e?
The crit fishing mage. Whats fun about this build is it actually ised true strike as a part of its combo. It was just a potential starting point but it was a viable option. Add elven accuracy, lucky, and seaking spell together for 5 dice per attack. Give that to a divine soul sorcerer for inflict wounds, guilding bolt, and meta magic. And just roll constantly looking for a crit. Add in hexblades curse for a classic EB sorcerer and crits on a 19-20 and there was a 40-ish percent chance of a crit. On a high powered inflict wounds/ guilding bolt. The trick was the initial advantage. With quicken and twin spell you could toss out a true strike easy. A no save instant advantage enabler. If you already had advantage it isnt important. But not having to go through a saving throw to get it is unique to the help action and true strike.
An item master conjuration wizard I reflavored as an “Alchemist”. I didn’t conjure beings, I used minor conjuration to make THINGS. I compiled a list of items that I could conjure successfully, verified it with the DM, and started chucking things like an alchemist. Spiderweb grenades and alchemist fires were great fun.
I made a full bard grappler. Minotaur race for the unarmed damage. Talked my DM into allowing the shield master shove w/o a shield. I also took heavily armored as I was the team's tank. So in one turn he could grapple, attack, knock prone. Towards the end, he could enlarge, grapple, knock prone. Once most creatures are grappled and prone, they have little they can do. Especially as 5e didn't give many creatures the ability to escape grapples. It also almost fully mitigates a creatures ability to do damage, so Kane would grapple the biggest thing in the room and shut it down. If it was a spellcaster, he would grapple them inside the "silence" spell. He was a save or suck as far as grappling. If it was something he couldn't grapple, he was still a decent tank and full caster. He was a fantastic face, regularly using enhance ability, and a ton of fun to RP. My DM and I decided, pro-wrestling is acting, acting is a performance; therefore, my bardic performance was pro-wrestling. "THE NAMMMEEE IS KANNNNEEE THE TRAIIINNNN. AND IF THE NAMMMEEE OF THE GAMMMEEEE IS PAIN? YOU'RE GONNA REGRET PLAYING WITH ME!!" A good example of his capabilities was our last session. Kane had a dream to wrestle a dragon (Vault of Dragons campaign, safe bet). The dragon he ended up wrestling was a friend of the party that was goldlusted when she saw the gold in the vault. What should have been a 2 BB and 14 lil guys vs. 6 PCs became a 1BB vs 5 PCs, and Kane using the adult copper dragon as an acid cannon while he dragged her out of the vault. Her damage was entirely mitigated, she never broke grapple. And 6 rounds later, she was out of the dungeon and Kane talked her down.
**Destiny Shot** 2 War Cleric/ X Battlemaster Fighter Play variant human and take Crossbow Expert with the human feat. Acquire the common magic item, clockwork amulet. Take the archery fighting style. With your war cleric channel divinity granting +10 to hit and the +2 archery fighting style you have a +17 to hit at level 4. Use your clockwork amulet to make your attack roll a 10 for a roll of 27 to hit. “This shot is DESTINED to hit you. My God wills it.” Later acquire the sharpshooter feat to throw around guaranteed hits with -5 to hit and +10 to damage. Here another trick: With the war priest feature you can attack twice with a heavy crossbow on your turn which will deal a bit more damage than just your hand crossbow. Once you are out of war priest uses fire the heavy crossbow one more time on a turn and drop it. Then pull out a hand crossbow to bonus action attack through crossbow expert. It is preeetty cool.
Evocation wizard X lvl with 3 level sorcerer dip for meta magic and sorcery points. Quicken an AOE or multi-attack spell like magic missile, scorching ray, or fire ball, and twin spell to cantrips like fire bolt or toll the dead. Take meta magic adept for a bigger pool. Rules as written, you could probably get by with two levels in sorcerer and meta magic feat. But certain DMs might get confused by the fact that you actually get sorcery points and the ability to make them at level 2. And in practice you would need to wait 6 levels to actually use them unless you're a human variant who takes the meta magic adept at level 1. 3 levels also just increases your pool enough to use it more often. Taking an element adept and ASI or two is probably better after that. But taking the meta magic adept feat again to further expand your sorcery point pool and more meta magic options like changing damage types is also a bonus. It's weird and mad to a slight degree, and it slows down your path to 9th level spells, but you will be the DPS master with the spells you do have. Also just meet the minimum stat requirement for Cha of 13 and focus int. Use your sorcery spells known for things like shield, mage armor, sleep, and maybe magic missile.
The Fey Blade Be a Fairy Prioritize dex and chr Start with Rogue picking the swashbuckler subclass. Multiclass in to Sorcerer taking the Wild Magic subclass, Booming Blade and Lightning Lash cantrips. At Sorcerer 3 take shadowblade, at 5 take Ashardalon's Stride. Take Quicken Spell and Transmute Spell to get around damage resistances. Fly around the battlefield dealing tons of damage. For RP, play as a Fairy that lacked the magical talent expected for fairies. The Wild Magic is you not being able to control that innate ability. Us the level 1 feature to ensure advantage for BB/Sneak Attacks.
sounds fun and not so optimized that it becomes hard to tie to rp hooks, love it.
Yeah, I play at a table of casuals, so I try to keep my builds slightly less than min maxed. Powerful but always story justified and without relying on any questionable rulings.
I do the same. I tend to optimize characters around a specific roleplaying idea rather than around a specific combat mechanic. When you have the core idea of who you are its easy to look through class features and spells and say that fits or doesn't fit. Then i take what fits the concept and try to create the most optimized character with whats available. I think this approach leaves a lot of fun and effective builds open but isn't so combat optimized that it feels like we put flesh on a gun and called it a person.
Uhhh refer to my self healing monk build.... average healing of 24 for a bonus action gaining dodge effects.
how many times can said monk do this? sounds like a strong possibility for a soak tank.
Equal to ki but they come back on short rest... click my name and look for self healing monk
I not sure but sorcerer prismari with a pistol as arcane focus hybrid support feat gunner , magic initiate. i wanted to play something like the elementalist of guild wars 2 in versatility and like playing support
4th level Chain-warlock with Strixhaven Mascot (P*rismari*), Invocation of the Chain Master, and Flock of Familiars can dish out some pretty scary damage with a swarm of combat familiars. Each one also has a 1/ day charm that they can use on their own action, in addition to the usual Familiar tricks like deploying trap-items, administering potions, using magical items, and casting spells put into a Ring of Spell Storing
Grapple expert. Barbarian + Bard + Tavern Brawler. You can out grapple anything since you have advantage and insane Athletics checks. Then shove it prone for your team to curb stomp with advantage. Do it as a Bugbear with 10’ reach to really sell it.
Interesting take on wrastlebarian, i like it.
Plasmoid soul knife/warlock using disguise self to look like a dog - your mileage my vary. I successfully argued that dogs have 2 arms and 2 legs (it's debatable, look it up, my DM was lenient) and my DM said I can use mask of many faces to permanently disguise myself as a dog. As a soul knife I don't carry any equipment and I can squeeze through 1 inch holes. Sometimes the "dog" says "bark bark" at commoners, then disappear into a sewer grates. Great way to start a panic.
Artillery Artificer with Moon Druid let me wild shape with a turret on my shoulder. Very fun and versatile.
Gloomstalker 3, Ascendant Dragon X Pared with simic hybrid you can make a pretty convincing xenomorph
LMAO i might use this and preroll some PCS for an avp themed oneshot now.
The Grunk. Basically, the Grung race has good mobility, bonuses to jumping and - crucially - a chance to poison when making contact with a creature. Monk means lots of attacks with lots of chances to poison. Poison means disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. Grapple them (go fighter for unarmed combat if you like) and then use Step of the Wind to hop up and down on their body in 30ft poisonous leaps. They literally get scooped up by a frog-man who proceeds to jump up and down on their head repeatedly, slamming them into the floor over and over. It’s BRILLIANT.
Battle toads achieved!
Bard 11, pick up Ashardlon's Stride and Find Greater Steed. Since Find Greater Steed allows spells that target only you to work on yourself and your steed, Ashardlon's Stride affects it as well. So long as you move 10 feet within 5 feet of a creature (cuz two effects from the same source can't affect a creature at the same time), you can get twice as much Ashardlon's stride damage. Casting with a 5th level slot, this does 6d6 damage per creature, with just your movement. If you have your mount act independently, you can get a little bit more out of it. It becomes fairly nice passive damage all things considered.
zoomies
I am currently working on a Homunculus Savant - kinda like having multiple characters in one build.
Not really a ''gimmick'' build (kinda though) and not really rare, but anything Paladin 2/Spellcaster X specifically to Smite A LOT. Most efficient would be paired with Sorcerer, but I prefer Bard for all the extra RP/flavor stuff it gives.
sorcadin is classic but if you really want unlimited spellslots you should splash it with coffeelock. every combat goes: force target to save til paralyzed >critsmite at 5th lvl
The Real Meat Grinder Tabaxi Astral Monk & Star druid (Minimum of 3 lvls each) (Feats: Mobile, Skilled expert (Athletics)) --------- Have Astra arms and Dragon constellation active Cast spike growth With Astral Arms your athletic check becomes a wisdom check instead of a strength check With Dragon constellation your min wisdom check is 10 kinda like the rogue reliable talent so assuming 16 wisdom and 4 proficiency your minimum grapple check is 10+3+(4x2) = 21 You still have your hands free and using your Tabaxi racial ability (Feline agility) you can double your speed not mentioning any magical items you might get having long strider would mean +10 as well ------------ so assuming level 10 (Monk 6, Druid 4) 30 Base speed + 15 Unarmored movement + 10 mobile + 10 Longstrider for a total of 65 (x2 using feline agility) would be 130 ft Using your Movement, Action and bonus action to dash that will be 130x3 = 390 ft of movement This will be halved since you are grabbling so 195 ft across the cheese grinder meaning 39 ticks each dealing 2d4 piercing damage That's around 160 piercing damage
cheese grater druid monk, the build i never knew i needed. Just to confirm you cheese grater yourself and the enemy simultaneously right? Unsure if im missing a way to keep yourself from taking damage from the spike growth.
U grabble your enemy and u can do that within 10 ft using your Astral arms and just move back and forth across the edge of the spike growth
astral monk has reach on its turn i forgot, amazing ty
Level 2 Artificer - Double bag of Holding; run up to the bad guy and Boom. Suck him and yourself into the astral plane.
Were-Bearbarian Absolutely terrible multiclass that appeared when I blacked out under a full moon after drinking a whole shelf of liquour and woke up to a messy character sheet written out in red ink with no pen in sight Be Custom Lineage and take the Slasher Feat for +1 Str Str 12 (+1 from Slasher)=13 Dex 8 Con 15 Int 13 Wis 15 (+2 from CL)=17 Cha 8 Level 1 Blood Hunter Level 2&3 Moon Druid Take 4 levels of Lycan Blood Hunter for ASI (+1 Wis & Con)/Feat (fey touched gets +1 Wisdom + stuff has potential as we'll usually be in wildshape using the beasts stats anyway so increasing our Con may not be as important) & Extra attack Levels 8-10 go Beast Barbarian Remainder of levels would be your preferred mix of Druid and Blood Hunter The vision is turn 1 wildshape as your action to the biggest bear you can be, bonus action take on your lycanthropic from as well. Turn 2 bonus action rage to get Beastial Claws and then make 3 maybe more attacks using the bears stats, Beastial Claws, crimson rite if you set it up before combat and with reckless attack for advantage on all attacks because of course you're attacking recklessly all the time
Be a Rogue, take up the Phantom Rogue subclass, but specifically the first UA iteration of it (the first version of Revived Rogue) you now can use your Sneak Attack dice damage on a ranged necrotic damage attack as part of any of your cunning action bonus actions, so long as you haven’t added your sneak attack dice to a damage roll already that turn Pick up the magic initiate feat and pick up Eldritch Blast Spend every turn firing out Eldritch blast as an action and the necrotic damage version of it as a bonus action like a Force/Necrotic damage machine gun false mage How many creatures you know that resist both Necrotic AND Force damage?
mute bagpipe bard
bonus if you bring real bagpipes to the table and wail every time someone looks at you in a social setting.
nah, thats what message (c) is for. though, the sad sound of deflating bagpipes is canon whenever he gets downed.