Disclaimer: What follows is a rough build of a character I want to play at some point but likely won't as I DM more often than not, so if you like what you see, feel free to play it and tweak it. A few things to bear in mind: 1) I don't tend to build up my characters in a min/max sense so you won't see many ability scores maxed out. 2) I use the standard array to generate ability scores, this is mostly just for ease of reference when mulling over a build. 3) There may be some homebrew material mentioned so if you play adventurers league then this may not be a legal build. 4) I've a back catalogue of these so I'll post them as and when i cobble my notes into something that makes sense. 5) I won't be referencing many optional things from Tasha's Cauldron of Whatnot. 6) As always, feel free to post any questions, comments, feedback or general berating of my errors in rules or how abilities work.
Right, now that's out the way, lets move on to...…
Name: Ishii Kachikoshi aka the Blind Swordsman. (this build is heavily influence by the film series/character of Zaitoichi)
Basic Info:
Race: Variant Human (buffing Dex and Wis by +1 each and taking Fighting Initiate for the Blind Fighting fighting style).
Ability Scores: Str 12, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Ishii was affiliated with a criminal syndicate, as a blind beggar he would be tasked with pan handling in the market place, overhearing the conversations of those that moved through it and acting as a diversion for the pick pockets and petty thieves to ply their trade. Over time he trained with a blade for defence and his trainers marvelled at his prowess and dedication to learning blade craft. Eventually he grew tired of his life with the criminals and took to wandering, living the life of a masseuse and drunken gambler. His former associates have a bounty out for him but he has proven unusually difficult to kill.
Building and reasoning:
It’s worth remembering what the blinded condition is: A blind creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight and attack rolls against the blind creature have advantage and the blind creature’s attacks have disadvantage.
This build tries to use feats which will offset this condition but not remove it completely, this build does pose many tactical challenges and I think some interesting roleplay as well but all in all might be best for a one shot more than a campaign. This is a non-magic build as in; there will be no Find Familiar spells used to get around the blinded condition.
For the criminal background you do get proficiency with Thieves Tools and as long as someone can guide you to the lock in question you should be able to pick locks without trouble but searching for traps is likely going to be something for others in the party. Stealth is going to be challenging as well as you will not be able to tell where area’s of shadow or places to hide are, you’ll need to take queues from the other characters to guide you to places where you can hide but you might be able to move silently albeit at a reduced movement rate to make sure you don’t bump into anything. Jumping is also potentially a downfall as we’d have a hard job gauging distances.
I’ve not made any reference to how Ishii lost his sight so you can flavour that as you want, some options would be: Born blind, blinded as a punishment, blinded by accident or, potentially, faking being blind but this would require a lot of deception rolls and your fellow players may not enjoy the experience.
Lvl 1 Monk:
Starting equipment is going to be: Sword Cane (treat as short sword, when in scabbard it looks like a walking cane), an explorer's pack and 10 darts. As we start of with a 10ft radius of blind sight due to the Fighting Initiate feat we could use the darts but the likelihood of doing so over a melee attack is slim. The short sword we start off with is concealed in bamboo (or similar) cane and resembles a walking stick we use to tap the ground and find our way around. For starting skills we’re going for Athletics and Insight. This 10ft radius of blind sight you start with may, with DM approval/house rule, be extended to a range equal to your Passive Perception but at the cost of your Concentration as you mentally have to keep track of and assess the creatures that move in and out of this area. A big thing to remember is that any attack that originates outside of your area of blind sight will have advantage against Ishii and this will be a problem until we reach level 4.
Lvl 2 Monk:
We get Martial Arts, ki and Unarmoured Movement. There isn’t really anything to note at this level.
Lvl 3 Monk:
We gain Way of the Drunken Master as our Monastic Tradition. This is going to help make us very difficult to pin down in melee as any flurry of blows now also gives us a free disengage action and some bonus movement.
An interesting ability for us here is Deflect Missiles. The ability just says we can use our reaction when hit by a ranged weapon attack to try and catch the projectile, it does not say we need to be able to see it, so we can still use this ability even if we are blind although the ability to throw it back at the attacker is severely limited.
Lvl 4 Monk:
We get an ASI or Feat and we’re going for Alert. This gives Ishii immunity to surprise and attackers no longer get advantage on their attack rolls against him which is particularly useful for attackers that are outside our area of blind sight.
We also get Slow Fall and can use it as normal.
Lvl 5 Monk:
We get Extra Attack ad Stunning strike which work as normal.
Lvl 6 Monk:
Ki Empowered Strikes works as normal. The Drunken Master ability of Tipsy Sway should also work as normal, the leap to your feet ability works fine. The Redirect Attack ability should work as normal as long as the melee attack we are trying to redirect originates in our area of blind sight, some weapons with the reach property may stop this ability being used.
Lvl 7 Monk:
Evasion should work as normal, the ability does not say you need to see the effect.
Stillness of Mind works as normal.
Lvl 8 Monk:
We get an ASI or feat and we’ll take the Observation Feat (taking +1 Wisdom). Although the name of the feat would imply a sight based ability it actually buffs all senses and the only part we couldn’t use would be the ability to read lips.
Lvl 9 Monk:
Unarmoured Movement improves and we can now use it to walk up walls and along ceilings, being unable to see shouldn’t affect this too much.
Lvl 10 Monk:
Purity of Body works as normal.
Lvl 11 Monk:
Drunkards Luck works as normal.
Lvl 12 Monk:
We get an ASI or Feat. We take and ASI to boost Dexterity by +2.
Lvl 13-20 Monk:
All Monk abilities work as normal. At level 16 and 19 we do get two further ASI or Feats, of these I’d likely stick to further ASI to boost Dexterity or Wisdom as there are not many Feats that are useful and being blind does hamper any spell casting we might be get from feats.
In summary:
So assuming we take Ishii to level 20 and using the last two ASI’s to boost Dex by +2 and Wis by +2, we’d have the following: Ability Scores: Str 12, Dex 20, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 17, Cha 8 which would give AC18, we’d have 143hp, Passive Perception 22 (as long as it does not rely on sight), Blind Sight 10ft (potentially increasing to 22ft if the DM allows us to use passive perception range/concentration as noted above), We’d have proficiency in all saving throws + Evasion, DC for Monk abilities would be 17, Using Martial Arts we’d have a +11 to hit bonus, dealing 1d10+5 damage with martial arts/sword cane and two attacks per round as standard with the option to flurry of blows and stun when needed.
Disclaimer: What follows is a rough build of a character I want to play at some point but likely won't as I DM more often than not, so if you like what you see, feel free to play it and tweak it. A few things to bear in mind: 1) I don't tend to build up my characters in a min/max sense so you won't see many ability scores maxed out. 2) I use the standard array to generate ability scores, this is mostly just for ease of reference when mulling over a build. 3) There may be some homebrew material mentioned so if you play adventurers league then this may not be a legal build. 4) I've a back catalogue of these so I'll post them as and when i cobble my notes into something that makes sense. 5) I won't be referencing many optional things from Tasha's Cauldron of Whatnot. 6) As always, feel free to post any questions, comments, feedback or general berating of my errors in rules or how abilities work.
Right, now that's out the way, lets move on to...…
Name: Ishii Kachikoshi aka the Blind Swordsman. (this build is heavily influence by the film series/character of Zaitoichi)
Basic Info:
Race: Variant Human (buffing Dex and Wis by +1 each and taking Fighting Initiate for the Blind Fighting fighting style).
Ability Scores: Str 12, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Background: Criminal.
Class: Monk (Drunken Master).
Feats: Fighting Initiate (Blind Fighting), Alert, Observant, ASI.
Bio:
Ishii was affiliated with a criminal syndicate, as a blind beggar he would be tasked with pan handling in the market place, overhearing the conversations of those that moved through it and acting as a diversion for the pick pockets and petty thieves to ply their trade. Over time he trained with a blade for defence and his trainers marvelled at his prowess and dedication to learning blade craft. Eventually he grew tired of his life with the criminals and took to wandering, living the life of a masseuse and drunken gambler. His former associates have a bounty out for him but he has proven unusually difficult to kill.
Building and reasoning:
It’s worth remembering what the blinded condition is: A blind creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight and attack rolls against the blind creature have advantage and the blind creature’s attacks have disadvantage.
This build tries to use feats which will offset this condition but not remove it completely, this build does pose many tactical challenges and I think some interesting roleplay as well but all in all might be best for a one shot more than a campaign. This is a non-magic build as in; there will be no Find Familiar spells used to get around the blinded condition.
For the criminal background you do get proficiency with Thieves Tools and as long as someone can guide you to the lock in question you should be able to pick locks without trouble but searching for traps is likely going to be something for others in the party. Stealth is going to be challenging as well as you will not be able to tell where area’s of shadow or places to hide are, you’ll need to take queues from the other characters to guide you to places where you can hide but you might be able to move silently albeit at a reduced movement rate to make sure you don’t bump into anything. Jumping is also potentially a downfall as we’d have a hard job gauging distances.
I’ve not made any reference to how Ishii lost his sight so you can flavour that as you want, some options would be: Born blind, blinded as a punishment, blinded by accident or, potentially, faking being blind but this would require a lot of deception rolls and your fellow players may not enjoy the experience.
Lvl 1 Monk:
Starting equipment is going to be: Sword Cane (treat as short sword, when in scabbard it looks like a walking cane), an explorer's pack and 10 darts. As we start of with a 10ft radius of blind sight due to the Fighting Initiate feat we could use the darts but the likelihood of doing so over a melee attack is slim. The short sword we start off with is concealed in bamboo (or similar) cane and resembles a walking stick we use to tap the ground and find our way around. For starting skills we’re going for Athletics and Insight. This 10ft radius of blind sight you start with may, with DM approval/house rule, be extended to a range equal to your Passive Perception but at the cost of your Concentration as you mentally have to keep track of and assess the creatures that move in and out of this area. A big thing to remember is that any attack that originates outside of your area of blind sight will have advantage against Ishii and this will be a problem until we reach level 4.
Lvl 2 Monk:
We get Martial Arts, ki and Unarmoured Movement. There isn’t really anything to note at this level.
Lvl 3 Monk:
We gain Way of the Drunken Master as our Monastic Tradition. This is going to help make us very difficult to pin down in melee as any flurry of blows now also gives us a free disengage action and some bonus movement.
An interesting ability for us here is Deflect Missiles. The ability just says we can use our reaction when hit by a ranged weapon attack to try and catch the projectile, it does not say we need to be able to see it, so we can still use this ability even if we are blind although the ability to throw it back at the attacker is severely limited.
Lvl 4 Monk:
We get an ASI or Feat and we’re going for Alert. This gives Ishii immunity to surprise and attackers no longer get advantage on their attack rolls against him which is particularly useful for attackers that are outside our area of blind sight.
We also get Slow Fall and can use it as normal.
Lvl 5 Monk:
We get Extra Attack ad Stunning strike which work as normal.
Lvl 6 Monk:
Ki Empowered Strikes works as normal. The Drunken Master ability of Tipsy Sway should also work as normal, the leap to your feet ability works fine. The Redirect Attack ability should work as normal as long as the melee attack we are trying to redirect originates in our area of blind sight, some weapons with the reach property may stop this ability being used.
Lvl 7 Monk:
Evasion should work as normal, the ability does not say you need to see the effect.
Stillness of Mind works as normal.
Lvl 8 Monk:
We get an ASI or feat and we’ll take the Observation Feat (taking +1 Wisdom). Although the name of the feat would imply a sight based ability it actually buffs all senses and the only part we couldn’t use would be the ability to read lips.
Lvl 9 Monk:
Unarmoured Movement improves and we can now use it to walk up walls and along ceilings, being unable to see shouldn’t affect this too much.
Lvl 10 Monk:
Purity of Body works as normal.
Lvl 11 Monk:
Drunkards Luck works as normal.
Lvl 12 Monk:
We get an ASI or Feat. We take and ASI to boost Dexterity by +2.
Lvl 13-20 Monk:
All Monk abilities work as normal. At level 16 and 19 we do get two further ASI or Feats, of these I’d likely stick to further ASI to boost Dexterity or Wisdom as there are not many Feats that are useful and being blind does hamper any spell casting we might be get from feats.
In summary:
So assuming we take Ishii to level 20 and using the last two ASI’s to boost Dex by +2 and Wis by +2, we’d have the following: Ability Scores: Str 12, Dex 20, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 17, Cha 8 which would give AC18, we’d have 143hp, Passive Perception 22 (as long as it does not rely on sight), Blind Sight 10ft (potentially increasing to 22ft if the DM allows us to use passive perception range/concentration as noted above), We’d have proficiency in all saving throws + Evasion, DC for Monk abilities would be 17, Using Martial Arts we’d have a +11 to hit bonus, dealing 1d10+5 damage with martial arts/sword cane and two attacks per round as standard with the option to flurry of blows and stun when needed.