Nerdarchy had a recent video talking about the Ultimate Archer where they discuss the different class features that would make for a good archer and so I built this as a bit of theory crafting. It would have to be a character you start at level 20, but he/she would be pretty deadly.
First-round, 8 attacks at +9, rolling 3 dice each for 20d6+2d8+128 (not including Crits), all subsequent rounds have 4 attacks at +9 for 6d6+64 (not including Crits).
They have a pretty solid versatility in spells, a Steel Defender and an Owl familiar, granting 2 attacks at advantage per turn (rolling 3 dice each) for improved crit chance.
I may be missing something but how do you get four attacks on subsequent rounds? 11 levels in fighter give you 3 attacks a round. The extra attack from Dread ambusher is only on the first round.
I may be missing something but how do you get four attacks on subsequent rounds? 11 levels in fighter give you 3 attacks a round. The extra attack from Dread ambusher is only on the first round.
The Crossbow Expert feat allows the extra attack: 3 attacks from the attack action and 1 attack from the Crossbow Expert bonus action.
Interesting. I guess I always read that third part is in you head a DIFFERENT one handed weapon and used the hand crossbow in your off hand. It seems just very odd that it would allow another attack if main handing the crossbow.
Thank you for the clarification and I see that it was confirmed in the Compendium.
It does not make logical sense but it is the rules.
I always hated nova chasing. It seems so counter to the entire spirit of D&D.
"I can do four hundred damage in the first round of combat with no saves!" "Great. Can you do literally anything else? And can you do it before level 20?" "...I, uhh...do I have to...uhhhhh...is...is that a real question?" "Get away from my table, please."
That said, I do love me some archers. My absolute favorite is, sadly, something that only really gels when given 12+ levels to solidify, but if ever I get the chance to play a high-level one-shot or minicampaign? I can guarantee you my Feywarden would be the character I used for it.
An odd pile of multiclassing that takes longer than I like to turn on, but if you can get it all put together, the Feywarden is pretty much my favorite high-level character. Take Battlemaster with a Maneuver set dedicated to disruptive techniques - Pushing Attack is primo, Goading Attack is a surprisingly cool little debuff for a distance character (eat disadvantage against everything you can actually reach, dikkbagg), and Maneuvering Attack is great for saving allies from harrowing fights when used cannily. More to taste, with Precision helping out a ton with Sharpshooter nonsense
Two levels of Ranger give a second fighting style, which most players would take as Defense but I actually like to pick up as Dueling. My Feywarden is a keenly trained elven guerrilla warrior who's just as adept with his blades as he is his bow. Not to mention Hunter's Mark, which works even better for high-level fighters than it does rangers. Scout is similar; rogue levels are taken to give me Expertise in things a keenly trained elven guerrilla warrior should bloody well be good at, and the minor Sneak Attack is a nice boost. The end result (at the level 12+ you need for all this to really start gelling) is a character that feels much more like the slippery, deadly wildlands hunter than any straight Ranger does, with a bevy of manipulative trick shots and rock-solid round-over-round damage that doesn't rely on gimmicky "I USE ALL MY BUILD'S DAILY RESOURCES AT ONCE TO BLOW UP THIS BEHOLDER IN ONE ROUND MAAAAHAHA I WIN D&D 4EVER!!1!" nova-chaser schyte.
I love the Feywarden because it can do everything. Ten skill proficiencies, four of them Expertise-level. Adept with both long-distance and close melee combat. With the species/feat set I use, it's also basically a low-level Druid without any druid levels or restrictions against Druish Shit - Wood Elf Magic and MI:Druid gives me three Druidic cantrips and a small but useful suite of spells to complement my handful of Ranger spells and let the character produce the sort of subtle woods-witchcraft such a character damn well ought to have in my book.
God I wish I could play the dumb thing sometime...
I always hated nova chasing. It seems so counter to the entire spirit of D&D.
"I can do four hundred damage in the first round of combat with no saves!" "Great. Can you do literally anything else? And can you do it before level 20?" "...I, uhh...do I have to...uhhhhh...is...is that a real question?" "Get away from my table, please."
That said, I do love me some archers. My absolute favorite is, sadly, something that only really gels when given 12+ levels to solidify, but if ever I get the chance to play a high-level one-shot or minicampaign? I can guarantee you my Feywarden would be the character I used for it.
An odd pile of multiclassing that takes longer than I like to turn on, but if you can get it all put together, the Feywarden is pretty much my favorite high-level character. Take Battlemaster with a Maneuver set dedicated to disruptive techniques - Pushing Attack is primo, Goading Attack is a surprisingly cool little debuff for a distance character (eat disadvantage against everything you can actually reach, dikkbagg), and Maneuvering Attack is great for saving allies from harrowing fights when used cannily. More to taste, with Precision helping out a ton with Sharpshooter nonsense
Two levels of Ranger give a second fighting style, which most players would take as Defense but I actually like to pick up as Dueling. My Feywarden is a keenly trained elven guerrilla warrior who's just as adept with his blades as he is his bow. Not to mention Hunter's Mark, which works even better for high-level fighters than it does rangers. Scout is similar; rogue levels are taken to give me Expertise in things a keenly trained elven guerrilla warrior should bloody well be good at, and the minor Sneak Attack is a nice boost. The end result (at the level 12+ you need for all this to really start gelling) is a character that feels much more like the slippery, deadly wildlands hunter than any straight Ranger does, with a bevy of manipulative trick shots and rock-solid round-over-round damage that doesn't rely on gimmicky "I USE ALL MY BUILD'S DAILY RESOURCES AT ONCE TO BLOW UP THIS BEHOLDER IN ONE ROUND MAAAAHAHA I WIN D&D 4EVER!!1!" nova-chaser schyte.
I love the Feywarden because it can do everything. Ten skill proficiencies, four of them Expertise-level. Adept with both long-distance and close melee combat. With the species/feat set I use, it's also basically a low-level Druid without any druid levels or restrictions against Druish Shit - Wood Elf Magic and MI:Druid gives me three Druidic cantrips and a small but useful suite of spells to complement my handful of Ranger spells and let the character produce the sort of subtle woods-witchcraft such a character damn well ought to have in my book.
God I wish I could play the dumb thing sometime...
This is what I love/hate about you man/lady/person of indeterminate gender [insert preferred pronoun here]. That is a brilliant fu(|<!/\/9 idea that I want to do it like you have no idea, only I have already committed to a Goblin Battle Master who uses a light crossbow with a similar theme you have there. I planed to do a variant of the Crossbow Expert+Sharpshooter murder machine that you referenced in another thread. I went with Goblin instead of Wood Elf for the RP aspect, optimization be damned. I had considered Tabaxi or Variant Feral Tiefling as well, but they don’t get to use a goblin voice.
I kind of agree with Yurei. That kind of a build is not for me. That being said, maybe you're trying to build a level 20 character for a level 20 one-shot and the character is built to serve a specific purpose. My games are about the journey, but not everybody is looking for the kind of games I'm looking for.
Go shoot your shot, or your eight shots or whatever :)
PERSONAL LORE DUMP NOBODY ELSE CARES ABOUT AHEAD. Mostly because it's semi-relevant to Sposta's point, but still. Be Ye Warned.
Heh. In my own homebrew setting (that I'm currently not able to run/play in, but which I'm working on as I go anyways +_+), Feywardens are the elite guardians of Elvengroves, which is where elves live. Tyberos elves are isolationist and deeply connected to the Feywild; any given Elvengrove has a Feystone at its center that acts as a tangible connection to the Feywild. It's not quite a standing, stabilized portal to the Feywild, but it is a locus where energies from that plane bleed into ours. Elves are steeped in those energies from birth; humans who manage the difficult trick of somehow migrating to an Elvengrove are steeped in those energies as well, with their later descendants becoming gradually more elf-like. Half-elves in Tyberos aren't the mongrel children of elves and humans (THAT IS NOT HOW GENETICS WORKS, GYGAX DX), but are instead these 'Feytouched' humans whose bloodlines have been influenced by proximity to a Feystone for generations.
They Feywarden is minmaxy as hell, yeah. For a given definition of 'minmax', anyways. Heh, but to me that's almost a feature, because the fluff lines up with the crunch so beautifully in this case. Feywardens display elements of several different 'regular' classes to outsiders looking in because their training emphasizes different things than 'regular' classes do. It's a ranger but it's not a ranger, it's a fighter but it's not a fighter, it's a rogue but it's certainly not a rogue. The Feywarden is simply the Feywarden; the fact that other peoples have aped bits and pieces of the Feywarden's training over the years and turned them into other sub-disciplines is no business of the Grove's. Everything in this build is there to fit the ideal of an elite elven hunter-warrior who furthers his Grove's interests and who can dispatch entire bands of invaders with naught but his bow, his skill, and deadly, terrifying patience.
Take Legolas, put him through a woodchipper, use the bloody mulch to fertilize the soil in which you plant the seed spawned from the midnight meeting of a feral druid and a Navy SEAL, nurture it with decades of intensive training in the handling of weapons and every conceivably necessary discipline of the woods, give it a fertilizer shot of the primal magics of the woods, and eventually you may grow a Feywarden.
Provided you can tolerate the absolutely godawful process that is starting one of these things at any level at all below tenth +_+. I honestly refuse to do it - if you don't have bare minimum five levels of Battlemaster, three of Scout and two of Ranger, the Feywarden's basic training is incomplete and it should not be allowed to leave its Grove. Or, in OOC terms, your build is a hot horrible mess that just does not work the way it should because your focus is split so many different ways.
So I know the thread is old and I kinda derailed it the first time anyways (sorry, Aaron @_@), but I figured I'd drop this here for Sposta, since he showed interest.
Was talking this character idea over with some buddies and came to the realization that it actually works much better as a four-class split (ugh I hate my brain). Instead of squeezing an extra feat out of it with a fourth rogue level for MI:Druid, just take an actual level of Druid. You lose absolutely nothing - the fourth rogue level offers nothing but the ASI, no extra sneak dice or class features or nada.
You still get two Druish cantrips, but instead of just one once-a-day Faerie Fire, you get a full caster level. With four levels of Ranger, that's just enough to tip over into a third-level caster, and thus double your spell slots. Go from three first-level slots from Ranger to four first and two second, with four prepared Druish spells. You get Druidic as a language, which is on brand for Feywardens, and the best bit is that you still get a d8 hit die for the level. You lose literally nothing in the switch save for a metal armor/shields restriction that the Feywarden doesn't care about anyways given its strong bias towards light armor.
So now your fighter/rogue/ranger is a fighter/rogue/ranger/druid, and is even more primal and effective for it. Provided you have the fifty years' time it takes to train one of these ******** properly, at least. Four-class combo...oof. Bad Yurei. Bad.
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Nerdarchy had a recent video talking about the Ultimate Archer where they discuss the different class features that would make for a good archer and so I built this as a bit of theory crafting. It would have to be a character you start at level 20, but he/she would be pretty deadly.
https://www.ddb.ac/characters/22171165/BYvfyt
First-round, 8 attacks at +9, rolling 3 dice each for 20d6+2d8+128 (not including Crits), all subsequent rounds have 4 attacks at +9 for 6d6+64 (not including Crits).
They have a pretty solid versatility in spells, a Steel Defender and an Owl familiar, granting 2 attacks at advantage per turn (rolling 3 dice each) for improved crit chance.
How would you build it?
The link in your post doesn't work. Here's a corrected link:
https://ddb.ac/characters/22171165/BYvfyt
Anyway, here are my comments:
Otherwise, looks like a lot of fun!
I may be missing something but how do you get four attacks on subsequent rounds? 11 levels in fighter give you 3 attacks a round. The extra attack from Dread ambusher is only on the first round.
The Crossbow Expert feat allows the extra attack: 3 attacks from the attack action and 1 attack from the Crossbow Expert bonus action.
Arcane shot doesn't work with crossbows. Go battle master instead or switch to longbow.
Interesting. I guess I always read that third part is in you head a DIFFERENT one handed weapon and used the hand crossbow in your off hand. It seems just very odd that it would allow another attack if main handing the crossbow.
Thank you for the clarification and I see that it was confirmed in the Compendium.
It does not make logical sense but it is the rules.
I was looking at possible 10 Sword Bard, (Haste/Swift Quiver) 4 Samurai Fighter, 3 Assassin Rogue, 3 Gloomstalker Ranger.
You come online really at 10 with Swift Quiver getting 4 attacks a round.
Blade Flourish to add damage and add utility 3x per short rest (just says attack so I assume a ranged attack qualifies)
Sneak attack adding 2d6
Samurai helps you get advantage
Gloomstalker and Action surge makes this hit like a truck first round.
Bard adds tons of utility and such bringing your initiative to at least +9 and a +8 to hit with a regular bow using Sharpshooter.
Leaves 1 level to pick up an ASI somewhere of gain sixth level spells on bard...
I always hated nova chasing. It seems so counter to the entire spirit of D&D.
"I can do four hundred damage in the first round of combat with no saves!"
"Great. Can you do literally anything else? And can you do it before level 20?"
"...I, uhh...do I have to...uhhhhh...is...is that a real question?"
"Get away from my table, please."
That said, I do love me some archers. My absolute favorite is, sadly, something that only really gels when given 12+ levels to solidify, but if ever I get the chance to play a high-level one-shot or minicampaign? I can guarantee you my Feywarden would be the character I used for it.
The Feywarden
Feywarden Sketch Sheet
Requirements: 7+ Battlemaster, 2+ Ranger, 3+ Scout
An odd pile of multiclassing that takes longer than I like to turn on, but if you can get it all put together, the Feywarden is pretty much my favorite high-level character. Take Battlemaster with a Maneuver set dedicated to disruptive techniques - Pushing Attack is primo, Goading Attack is a surprisingly cool little debuff for a distance character (eat disadvantage against everything you can actually reach, dikkbagg), and Maneuvering Attack is great for saving allies from harrowing fights when used cannily. More to taste, with Precision helping out a ton with Sharpshooter nonsense
Two levels of Ranger give a second fighting style, which most players would take as Defense but I actually like to pick up as Dueling. My Feywarden is a keenly trained elven guerrilla warrior who's just as adept with his blades as he is his bow. Not to mention Hunter's Mark, which works even better for high-level fighters than it does rangers. Scout is similar; rogue levels are taken to give me Expertise in things a keenly trained elven guerrilla warrior should bloody well be good at, and the minor Sneak Attack is a nice boost. The end result (at the level 12+ you need for all this to really start gelling) is a character that feels much more like the slippery, deadly wildlands hunter than any straight Ranger does, with a bevy of manipulative trick shots and rock-solid round-over-round damage that doesn't rely on gimmicky "I USE ALL MY BUILD'S DAILY RESOURCES AT ONCE TO BLOW UP THIS BEHOLDER IN ONE ROUND MAAAAHAHA I WIN D&D 4EVER!!1!" nova-chaser schyte.
I love the Feywarden because it can do everything. Ten skill proficiencies, four of them Expertise-level. Adept with both long-distance and close melee combat. With the species/feat set I use, it's also basically a low-level Druid without any druid levels or restrictions against Druish Shit - Wood Elf Magic and MI:Druid gives me three Druidic cantrips and a small but useful suite of spells to complement my handful of Ranger spells and let the character produce the sort of subtle woods-witchcraft such a character damn well ought to have in my book.
God I wish I could play the dumb thing sometime...
Please do not contact or message me.
This is what I love/hate about you man/lady/person of indeterminate gender [insert preferred pronoun here]. That is a brilliant fu(|<!/\/9 idea that I want to do it like you have no idea, only I have already committed to a Goblin Battle Master who uses a light crossbow with a similar theme you have there. I planed to do a variant of the Crossbow Expert+Sharpshooter murder machine that you referenced in another thread. I went with Goblin instead of Wood Elf for the RP aspect, optimization be damned. I had considered Tabaxi or Variant Feral Tiefling as well, but they don’t get to use a goblin voice.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I kind of agree with Yurei. That kind of a build is not for me. That being said, maybe you're trying to build a level 20 character for a level 20 one-shot and the character is built to serve a specific purpose. My games are about the journey, but not everybody is looking for the kind of games I'm looking for.
Go shoot your shot, or your eight shots or whatever :)
"Not all those who wander are lost"
PERSONAL LORE DUMP NOBODY ELSE CARES ABOUT AHEAD.
Mostly because it's semi-relevant to Sposta's point, but still. Be Ye Warned.
Heh. In my own homebrew setting (that I'm currently not able to run/play in, but which I'm working on as I go anyways +_+), Feywardens are the elite guardians of Elvengroves, which is where elves live. Tyberos elves are isolationist and deeply connected to the Feywild; any given Elvengrove has a Feystone at its center that acts as a tangible connection to the Feywild. It's not quite a standing, stabilized portal to the Feywild, but it is a locus where energies from that plane bleed into ours. Elves are steeped in those energies from birth; humans who manage the difficult trick of somehow migrating to an Elvengrove are steeped in those energies as well, with their later descendants becoming gradually more elf-like. Half-elves in Tyberos aren't the mongrel children of elves and humans (THAT IS NOT HOW GENETICS WORKS, GYGAX DX), but are instead these 'Feytouched' humans whose bloodlines have been influenced by proximity to a Feystone for generations.
They Feywarden is minmaxy as hell, yeah. For a given definition of 'minmax', anyways. Heh, but to me that's almost a feature, because the fluff lines up with the crunch so beautifully in this case. Feywardens display elements of several different 'regular' classes to outsiders looking in because their training emphasizes different things than 'regular' classes do. It's a ranger but it's not a ranger, it's a fighter but it's not a fighter, it's a rogue but it's certainly not a rogue. The Feywarden is simply the Feywarden; the fact that other peoples have aped bits and pieces of the Feywarden's training over the years and turned them into other sub-disciplines is no business of the Grove's. Everything in this build is there to fit the ideal of an elite elven hunter-warrior who furthers his Grove's interests and who can dispatch entire bands of invaders with naught but his bow, his skill, and deadly, terrifying patience.
Take Legolas, put him through a woodchipper, use the bloody mulch to fertilize the soil in which you plant the seed spawned from the midnight meeting of a feral druid and a Navy SEAL, nurture it with decades of intensive training in the handling of weapons and every conceivably necessary discipline of the woods, give it a fertilizer shot of the primal magics of the woods, and eventually you may grow a Feywarden.
Provided you can tolerate the absolutely godawful process that is starting one of these things at any level at all below tenth +_+. I honestly refuse to do it - if you don't have bare minimum five levels of Battlemaster, three of Scout and two of Ranger, the Feywarden's basic training is incomplete and it should not be allowed to leave its Grove. Or, in OOC terms, your build is a hot horrible mess that just does not work the way it should because your focus is split so many different ways.
Please do not contact or message me.
Yeah, we’re starting at level 1 so.... But I do love your Faewarden and hope to play it sometime.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
So I know the thread is old and I kinda derailed it the first time anyways (sorry, Aaron @_@), but I figured I'd drop this here for Sposta, since he showed interest.
Was talking this character idea over with some buddies and came to the realization that it actually works much better as a four-class split (ugh I hate my brain). Instead of squeezing an extra feat out of it with a fourth rogue level for MI:Druid, just take an actual level of Druid. You lose absolutely nothing - the fourth rogue level offers nothing but the ASI, no extra sneak dice or class features or nada.
You still get two Druish cantrips, but instead of just one once-a-day Faerie Fire, you get a full caster level. With four levels of Ranger, that's just enough to tip over into a third-level caster, and thus double your spell slots. Go from three first-level slots from Ranger to four first and two second, with four prepared Druish spells. You get Druidic as a language, which is on brand for Feywardens, and the best bit is that you still get a d8 hit die for the level. You lose literally nothing in the switch save for a metal armor/shields restriction that the Feywarden doesn't care about anyways given its strong bias towards light armor.
So now your fighter/rogue/ranger is a fighter/rogue/ranger/druid, and is even more primal and effective for it. Provided you have the fifty years' time it takes to train one of these ******** properly, at least. Four-class combo...oof. Bad Yurei. Bad.
Please do not contact or message me.