Upcoming campaign, and I am wavering between a monk and a ranged Fighter samurai, that I want to build up to a Rogue assassin, for the automatic crit surprise ability at level 3, and then Human variant Sharpshooter feat, Fighting spirit action surge. Help on other optimization/role play options?
What's the rest of your party like? Because the assassin thing often doesn't work as well in play at it seems like it would on paper. There's actually a thread now in the rogue area about it.
Upcoming campaign, and I am wavering between a monk and a ranged Fighter samurai, that I want to build up to a Rogue assassin, for the automatic crit surprise ability at level 3, and then Human variant Sharpshooter feat, Fighting spirit action surge. Help on other optimization/role play options?
Variant Human is strictly worse than Custom Lineage, although the very best Samurai are Half-Elves or Elves, due to Elven Advantage.
Samurai doesn't make you any better at achieving surprise - all it does is mean you can burst out of hiding and maintain advantage even if your assassin ability granting you advantage from going first doesn't apply because you screwed up your initiative roll. You'd be significantly better off finding ways to spike your initiative, like being a Harengon. There's a reason the traditional combo is Assassin/Gloom Stalker/Battle Master.
There's even less synergy with Monk here, although I assume you'd be looking to lean into Shadow Monk or something.
Only other thing I can think of that's worth pointing out is that the new MPMM Bugbear is looney tunes on the standard Assassin/Gloom Stalker/Battle Master and should also be great for your concept.
I meant try to achieve suprise, then use the samurai ability to get advantage for sneak attack, which all crits, with action surge will mean 2-6(depending on level) auto cutting d10 attacks, plus sneak attack, with a high chance of hitting because of advantage. As for the monk, I meant a remade version, forgot to say that, or I would play this.
As noted, the downfall of the build is how rare surprise attacks truly are. Yes, when you DO get them, you will light it up, but you need to keep in mind that those instances will be minimal, so MOST of your attacking will be without surprise. Using a Rogue mix to grab some SA damage is a solid plan and the Samurai is a good idea for advantage, to increase crit chance, but SA is easy to have trigger, just shoot an enemy standing within 5' of an ally. To note, I think you should go deeper Rogue to increase SA die count, which will offset the lower damage dice (could be a d12 if using Strength in melee)
Rogue/Fighter mixes almost ALL work pretty well, due to most of the best features for the classes being simple class features and front-loaded, so the synergy is great. It'll be tons of fun no matter how you split it, I would bet, so enjoy!
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Upcoming campaign, and I am wavering between a monk and a ranged Fighter samurai, that I want to build up to a Rogue assassin, for the automatic crit surprise ability at level 3, and then Human variant Sharpshooter feat, Fighting spirit action surge. Help on other optimization/role play options?
What's the rest of your party like? Because the assassin thing often doesn't work as well in play at it seems like it would on paper. There's actually a thread now in the rogue area about it.
I meant try to achieve suprise, then use the samurai ability to get advantage for sneak attack, which all crits, with action surge will mean 2-6(depending on level) auto cutting d10 attacks, plus sneak attack, with a high chance of hitting because of advantage. As for the monk, I meant a remade version, forgot to say that, or I would play this.
As noted, the downfall of the build is how rare surprise attacks truly are. Yes, when you DO get them, you will light it up, but you need to keep in mind that those instances will be minimal, so MOST of your attacking will be without surprise. Using a Rogue mix to grab some SA damage is a solid plan and the Samurai is a good idea for advantage, to increase crit chance, but SA is easy to have trigger, just shoot an enemy standing within 5' of an ally. To note, I think you should go deeper Rogue to increase SA die count, which will offset the lower damage dice (could be a d12 if using Strength in melee)
Rogue/Fighter mixes almost ALL work pretty well, due to most of the best features for the classes being simple class features and front-loaded, so the synergy is great. It'll be tons of fun no matter how you split it, I would bet, so enjoy!
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.