This thread is for general power gamer discussion.
I invite you to show your most Min-Maxy builds. I am going to start off with a burst damage max out.
1 Take 3 levels of Assassin rogue
2 take 11 levels of Ranger, take archery fighting style, hoard breaker for hunter’s prey, and volley for multi-attack
3 take 3 levels of wizard, and choose the invisiblity spell
4 if you want to take this to level 20, use arcane archer fighter for the remaining 3 levels.
during combat, cast invisibility on yourself and go away from the fray. Next, use your volley to attack as many foes as possible, the ones next to the group you volleyed will be hit by your hoard breaker, and because you are invisible, you have advantage on attack rolls and get sneak attack damage. Use a heavy crossbow, or a longbow if you use arcane archer, and also, with arcane archer, use bursting arrow. You can also take the classes in different orders.
damage per target: (longbow, with auto-crit) 2d10 piercing + (sneak attack) 2d6 + (bursting arrow) 2d6 force + dexterity modifier. Total 2d10 + 4d6 + dex. You can hit around 20 monsters at once. And you can use normal stealth instead of invisibility to free up concentration for the flame arrows spell and deal an extra 1d6 fire damage, for a new total of 2d10 + 5d6 +dex, and further you can add action surge for a total of 4d10 + 8d6 + 10 (this assumes you are at level 20, and have 20 dex)
Real attack, using dice:23+33+10
Enjoy, and post your own
Edit: rules: only assume 1 magic item please
Edit: sorry about dice manipulation, but it got screwed up while I edited the post, so every edit re-rolls the dice...
Hoard breaker only applies once on your turn while the advantage would only apply to the first attack roll which would end the invisibility. That said hoard breaker volley is a good way to pump out high damage. I recently encouraged a player to combine it with Divine Favor.
One of my strongest builds is Fighter 12, Lock 4, Sorc 4. For single target damage fighter gets you Extra Attack (2) Lock gives you Agonizing Blast and Devil's Sight, and Sorc grants you Quickened Spell. So in a normal round you can fire 7 times (3 arrows and 4 rays) from magical darkness giving advantage on every attack, and use Sharpshooter to add 10 to each of the arrows. Further you can use Action Surge to fire 3 more arrows on your turn.
Level 3: Learn Bursting Arrow for free multi-target damage, Grasping Arrow for tough monsters.
Level 4: Elven Accuracy (+1 DEX, 18 total)
Level 6: +2 DEX (20 total)
Level 7: Learn Shadow Arrow
Level 8: Sharpshooter feat
Use Shadow Arrow on your first attack; if you hit and the enemy fails its save, it's blinded beyond 5 feet, giving you advantage on the rest of your attacks. Elven Accuracy lets you roll 3d20 instead of 2d20. Use Action Surge and spam Sharpshooter; if you miss, use Curving Shot to reroll the attack against a nearby enemy. This gets even better at level 11 when you get 3 attacks.
Take Armor of shadows (mage armor at will) eldritch invocation.
Be the ultimate conterspeller/tank. Your mage armor at will completely regenerates your ward in between every fight. And you have resistance to magical effects. And, you still get spell mastery.
--
Also, Eldritch knight until you get the thing where you can do a weapon attack as a bonus action after casting a cantrip Then stick with warlock, pact of blade, and UA fey patron moonbow as your pact weapon. Also take agonizing and extended
You become basically a great artillery (that isn't that squishy) with super range at which you can blast things with your four-beam eldritch and then make a free attack with your moonbow (which by the way you can expend spell slots in order to basically do paladin smite.) It is very impractical because you would never actually encounter much where the target is far enough away for this to be useful, but still fun to nuke things from a distance and still be useful outside of that.
Hoard breaker only applies once on your turn while the advantage would only apply to the first attack roll which would end the invisibility. That said hoard breaker volley is a good way to pump out high damage. I recently encouraged a player to combine it with Divine Favor.
One of my strongest builds is Fighter 12, Lock 4, Sorc 4. For single target damage fighter gets you Extra Attack (2) Lock gives you Agonizing Blast and Devil's Sight, and Sorc grants you Quickened Spell. So in a normal round you can fire 7 times (3 arrows and 4 rays) from magical darkness giving advantage on every attack, and use Sharpshooter to add 10 to each of the arrows. Further you can use Action Surge to fire 3 more arrows on your turn.
Are we looking for single target damage or total damage dealt? if it's total damage dealt I'm pretty sure it's an Evocation Wizard casting Meteor Swarm with the feat Elemental Adept- Fire, into a sphere 100% filled with tiny flying creatures, thus hitting something like 10,000 of them for 40d6 damage each, dealing on average 148 damage to each of them and dealing a total amount of damage well in excess of 1,000,000. I'm not going to calculate the exact amount because 1) it's a silly number, and 2) it depends on how many tiny creatures can fit inside that 40' radius sphere, and I don't feel like calculating that.
If we're looking at single target damage, it's gotta be a 20th level Eldritch Knight wielding a +3 hand crossbow, under the effects of Haste (self cast), using their action surge, who spent the previous 4 turns coating the requisite arrows in purple worm venom, and who has sharpshooter, for a total of 10 attacks, each of which does 1d6 (Crossbow) + 5 (Dex) + 10 (Sharpshooter) + 3 (Weapon) + 2 Bracers of Archery + 12d6 (Purple Worm Venom) damage, average 650ish damage.
Are we looking for single target damage or total damage dealt? if it's total damage dealt I'm pretty sure it's an Evocation Wizard casting Meteor Swarm with the feat Elemental Adept- Fire, into a sphere 100% filled with tiny flying creatures, thus hitting something like 10,000 of them for 40d6 damage each, dealing on average 148 damage to each of them and dealing a total amount of damage well in excess of 1,000,000. I'm not going to calculate the exact amount because 1) it's a silly number, and 2) it depends on how many tiny creatures can fit inside that 40' radius sphere, and I don't feel like calculating that.
If we're looking at single target damage, it's gotta be a 20th level Eldritch Knight wielding a +3 hand crossbow, under the effects of Haste (self cast), using their action surge, who spent the previous 4 turns coating the requisite arrows in purple worm venom, and who has sharpshooter, for a total of 10 attacks, each of which does 1d6 (Crossbow) + 5 (Dex) + 10 (Sharpshooter) + 3 (Weapon) + 2 Bracers of Archery + 12d6 (Purple Worm Venom) damage, average 650ish damage.
Which build are you referring to? The second one is only designed to tank, not deal damage.
P.S. You can combine the first two builds.
P.S.S. The feat in build two is “heavily armored” not “heavy armor master”.
Also, why would there be a ton of little tiny guys just waiting in a big clump. I get the idea, but when I made this thread was looking for general application builds. I can see your idea working really well on minion type things, i.e. goblins.
This is pure theory crafting because no GM has ever let me play it. It is potentially game breaking but has some severe downsides, as well as some fun role play opportunities built in.
Divine Soul Sorcerer 9/Warlock 9 (any subclass but I prefer the Hexblade because of the Hex Warrior feature.)/ 2 levels in any class. Needs the Greater Restoration spell and at least one healing spell from the Sorcerer, the Pact of the Tome and Aspect of the Moon eldritch invocation* from the Warlock. Basically, it lets you store extra spell slots indefinitely. Stop taking long rests and instead take multiple short rests (using the Greater Restoration spell to remove the level of exhaustion you will get from not taking long rests); convert tyour sorcery points onto spell slots, convert warlock spell slots into sorcery points and use the short rests to restore your warlock spell slots. Rinse and repeat.
Upsides:
Has potentially hundreds of spell slots.
Has access to the spell lists of the Sorcerer, Cleric and Warlock classes.
Downsides:
Only has up to 5 th level spell slots which can make some encounters difficult.
Has a substantial daily gold requirement in spell components.
Needs to use spells to heal because your health and hit dice aren’t restored by long rests.
As for role playing opportunities I would play the extra magic and use of the Grater Restoration spell as an addiction, the spell components for Greater Restoration could be stolen or you could run out and have to find more, also you are basically stealing and hoarding magic from your Warlock Patron and it could get angry and start sending things after you.
*It doesn’t technically need the Pact of the Tome and Aspect of the Moon eldritch invocation. It’s mostly there so the GM can’t say that the character goes crazy from lack of sleep.
You can min/max for anything. Here are two of my favorites:
Cantrips. Drow bard 1/cleric 1 (Arcana)/druid 2 (Land)/fighter 4 (Eldritch Knight)/rogue 4 (Arcane Trickster)/sorcerer 1 (any)/wizard 2 (Illusion)/warlock 5 (Celestial) with Pact of the Tome, Magic Initiate, Drow High Magic, and Spell Sniper. 34 cantrips, at-will detect magic, Improved Minor Illusion, Improved Mage Hand, and three Eldritch Invocations, which can be used to get at-will spells, get abilities that resemble at-will spells, or improve eldritch blast. If you pick Draconic Bloodline, you have what amounts to at-will self-only mage armor, but wearing the medium armor you're proficient with as a cleric is probably a better idea. And it only uses official content.
Communication. Cleric 1 (Knowledge)/monk 13 (any)/mystic 2 (Nomad)/warlock 2 (Great Old One) with any two-language background (like Sage), any three-language race (like half-elf or high elf), Nomadic Mind, Linguist, Observant, Beast Speech, Eyes of the Rune Keeper, et cetera. You speak 10 or more languages, you can temporarily learn whatever language you need by focusing on Nomadic Mind, you can read all writing, you have telepathy out to a range of 30 feet, you have telepathy out to a range of 120 feet, you can understand all speech, anyone who understands any language understands what you say, you can speak with animals, you can read lips, and you can pick up to two languages to temporarily learn whenever you finish a rest. Maybe (probably) drop the cleric level and go warlock 5 for speak with dead. Uses UA content but, frankly, doesn't need it.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
You can min/max for anything. Here are two of my favorites:
Cantrips. Drow bard 1/cleric 1 (Arcana)/druid 2 (Land)/fighter 4 (Eldritch Knight)/rogue 4 (Arcane Trickster)/sorcerer 1 (any)/wizard 2 (Illusion)/warlock 5 (Celestial) with Pact of the Tome, Magic Initiate, Drow High Magic, and Spell Sniper. 34 cantrips, at-will detect magic, Improved Minor Illusion, Improved Mage Hand, and three Eldritch Invocations, which can be used to get at-will spells, get abilities that resemble at-will spells, or improve eldritch blast. If you pick Draconic Bloodline, you have what amounts to at-will self-only mage armor, but wearing the medium armor you're proficient with as a cleric is probably a better idea. And it only uses official content.
Communication. Cleric 1 (Knowledge)/monk 13 (any)/mystic 2 (Nomad)/warlock 2 (Great Old One) with any two-language background (like Sage), any three-language race (like half-elf or high elf), Nomadic Mind, Linguist, Observant, Beast Speech, Eyes of the Rune Keeper, et cetera. You speak 10 or more languages, you can temporarily learn whatever language you need by focusing on Nomadic Mind, you can read all writing, you have telepathy out to a range of 30 feet, you have telepathy out to a range of 120 feet, you can understand all speech, anyone who understands any language understands what you say, you can speak with animals, you can read lips, and you can pick up to two languages to temporarily learn whenever you finish a rest. Maybe (probably) drop the cleric level and go warlock 5 for speak with dead. Uses UA content but, frankly, doesn't need it.
I like the Polyglot, fun idea taken to the max.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
The whole idea of this class is to take the Polearm Master feat and the Sentinel feat to dish out large amounts of damage and take advantage of your reaction do dish out some additional attacks. As a fighter you also get an additional ability increase at lvl6 which is nice, you have the second highest hit die in the game (barbarian beats it with a d12), you have proficiency in heavy armor, you gain different fighting styles, and you can also choose fighter subclasses to offer flexibility.
Race: Human (Variant) add 1 to str. and 1 to con.
Class: Fighter
Starting Ability Scores (Point Buy): Str. 15, Dex. 12, Con. 15, Int. 8, Wis. 9, and Cha. 12
Level 1- For your fighting style go with Great Weapon Fighting. You'll be rolling a lot of dice and it's nice getting the opportunity to re-roll 1s and 2s.
Level 2- You gain more features but don't need to make any decisions.
Level 3- You now get to choose your subclass, go with Battlemaster. This will enable you to make moves favorable for yourself and your team versus your enemies (you'll also gain additional damage dice). For the Battlemaster maneuvers I would suggest Pushing Attack, Lunging Attack, and Maneuvering Attack.
Level 4- Now you get an ability score increase or a feat of your choice. In this case we'll skip the ability score increase for now and select the Sentinel feat. This helps you fight people that disengage, spellcasters that try to run away, or people that try to attack an adjacent ally.
Level 5- You gain more features but don't need to make any decisions.
Level 6- You get an ability score increase or a feat of your choice. Now that we've selected the feats we wanted at level 1 and 4 we can start bumping our ability scores. Here we will add 2 to the strength ability score.
Level 7- You gain 2 more Battlemaster maneuvers. Take Trip Attack and Disarming Attack.
Level 8- You now get another ability score increase or a feat of your choice. We'll raise our str. score to the full 20.
Level 9- You gain more features but don't need to make any decisions.
Level 10- You gain 2 more Battlemaster maneuvers. Just pick what you like or what'll seem useful to you.
Any other feats you may want to pick up along the way as you continue working your way up to lvl 20 would be: Great Weapon Master, Mage Slayer, Savage Attacker, Martial Adept, and/or Resilient.
Hope you have fun with this build! It's very scary and powerful in combat.
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This thread is for general power gamer discussion.
I invite you to show your most Min-Maxy builds. I am going to start off with a burst damage max out.
1 Take 3 levels of Assassin rogue
2 take 11 levels of Ranger, take archery fighting style, hoard breaker for hunter’s prey, and volley for multi-attack
3 take 3 levels of wizard, and choose the invisiblity spell
4 if you want to take this to level 20, use arcane archer fighter for the remaining 3 levels.
during combat, cast invisibility on yourself and go away from the fray. Next, use your volley to attack as many foes as possible, the ones next to the group you volleyed will be hit by your hoard breaker, and because you are invisible, you have advantage on attack rolls and get sneak attack damage. Use a heavy crossbow, or a longbow if you use arcane archer, and also, with arcane archer, use bursting arrow. You can also take the classes in different orders.
damage per target: (longbow, with auto-crit) 2d10 piercing + (sneak attack) 2d6 + (bursting arrow) 2d6 force + dexterity modifier. Total 2d10 + 4d6 + dex. You can hit around 20 monsters at once. And you can use normal stealth instead of invisibility to free up concentration for the flame arrows spell and deal an extra 1d6 fire damage, for a new total of 2d10 + 5d6 +dex, and further you can add action surge for a total of 4d10 + 8d6 + 10 (this assumes you are at level 20, and have 20 dex)
Real attack, using dice:23+33+10
Enjoy, and post your own
Edit: rules: only assume 1 magic item please
Edit: sorry about dice manipulation, but it got screwed up while I edited the post, so every edit re-rolls the dice...
Hoard breaker only applies once on your turn while the advantage would only apply to the first attack roll which would end the invisibility. That said hoard breaker volley is a good way to pump out high damage. I recently encouraged a player to combine it with Divine Favor.
One of my strongest builds is Fighter 12, Lock 4, Sorc 4. For single target damage fighter gets you Extra Attack (2) Lock gives you Agonizing Blast and Devil's Sight, and Sorc grants you Quickened Spell. So in a normal round you can fire 7 times (3 arrows and 4 rays) from magical darkness giving advantage on every attack, and use Sharpshooter to add 10 to each of the arrows. Further you can use Action Surge to fire 3 more arrows on your turn.
Extended Signature
Volley and Whirlwind Attack are both single attacks (with multiple attack rolls.) I don't know if it's RAI or not but arguably you'd do the whole volley before invisibility wears off.
High Elf Arcane Archer:
Use Shadow Arrow on your first attack; if you hit and the enemy fails its save, it's blinded beyond 5 feet, giving you advantage on the rest of your attacks. Elven Accuracy lets you roll 3d20 instead of 2d20. Use Action Surge and spam Sharpshooter; if you miss, use Curving Shot to reroll the attack against a nearby enemy. This gets even better at level 11 when you get 3 attacks.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Abjurer 18 / Warlock 2
Take Armor of shadows (mage armor at will) eldritch invocation.
Be the ultimate conterspeller/tank. Your mage armor at will completely regenerates your ward in between every fight. And you have resistance to magical effects. And, you still get spell mastery.
--
Also, Eldritch knight until you get the thing where you can do a weapon attack as a bonus action after casting a cantrip Then stick with warlock, pact of blade, and UA fey patron moonbow as your pact weapon. Also take agonizing and extended
You become basically a great artillery (that isn't that squishy) with super range at which you can blast things with your four-beam eldritch and then make a free attack with your moonbow (which by the way you can expend spell slots in order to basically do paladin smite.) It is very impractical because you would never actually encounter much where the target is far enough away for this to be useful, but still fun to nuke things from a distance and still be useful outside of that.
Tank wizard
1 mountain dwarf race
2 wizard class
3 heavy armor master
4 plate armor
Combine above post with war magic school and barbarian levels for even more HP/defense, plus, a raging wizard!
So long as you aren't planning to cast or concentrate while raging.
Extended Signature
Are we looking for single target damage or total damage dealt? if it's total damage dealt I'm pretty sure it's an Evocation Wizard casting Meteor Swarm with the feat Elemental Adept- Fire, into a sphere 100% filled with tiny flying creatures, thus hitting something like 10,000 of them for 40d6 damage each, dealing on average 148 damage to each of them and dealing a total amount of damage well in excess of 1,000,000. I'm not going to calculate the exact amount because 1) it's a silly number, and 2) it depends on how many tiny creatures can fit inside that 40' radius sphere, and I don't feel like calculating that.
If we're looking at single target damage, it's gotta be a 20th level Eldritch Knight wielding a +3 hand crossbow, under the effects of Haste (self cast), using their action surge, who spent the previous 4 turns coating the requisite arrows in purple worm venom, and who has sharpshooter, for a total of 10 attacks, each of which does 1d6 (Crossbow) + 5 (Dex) + 10 (Sharpshooter) + 3 (Weapon) + 2 Bracers of Archery + 12d6 (Purple Worm Venom) damage, average 650ish damage.
Also, why would there be a ton of little tiny guys just waiting in a big clump. I get the idea, but when I made this thread was looking for general application builds. I can see your idea working really well on minion type things, i.e. goblins.
So I guess that is pretty general
This is pure theory crafting because no GM has ever let me play it. It is potentially game breaking but has some severe downsides, as well as some fun role play opportunities built in.
Divine Soul Sorcerer 9/Warlock 9 (any subclass but I prefer the Hexblade because of the Hex Warrior feature.)/ 2 levels in any class. Needs the Greater Restoration spell and at least one healing spell from the Sorcerer, the Pact of the Tome and Aspect of the Moon eldritch invocation* from the Warlock. Basically, it lets you store extra spell slots indefinitely. Stop taking long rests and instead take multiple short rests (using the Greater Restoration spell to remove the level of exhaustion you will get from not taking long rests); convert tyour sorcery points onto spell slots, convert warlock spell slots into sorcery points and use the short rests to restore your warlock spell slots. Rinse and repeat.
Upsides:
Downsides:
As for role playing opportunities I would play the extra magic and use of the Grater Restoration spell as an addiction, the spell components for Greater Restoration could be stolen or you could run out and have to find more, also you are basically stealing and hoarding magic from your Warlock Patron and it could get angry and start sending things after you.
*It doesn’t technically need the Pact of the Tome and Aspect of the Moon eldritch invocation. It’s mostly there so the GM can’t say that the character goes crazy from lack of sleep.
You can min/max for anything. Here are two of my favorites:
Cantrips. Drow bard 1/cleric 1 (Arcana)/druid 2 (Land)/fighter 4 (Eldritch Knight)/rogue 4 (Arcane Trickster)/sorcerer 1 (any)/wizard 2 (Illusion)/warlock 5 (Celestial) with Pact of the Tome, Magic Initiate, Drow High Magic, and Spell Sniper. 34 cantrips, at-will detect magic, Improved Minor Illusion, Improved Mage Hand, and three Eldritch Invocations, which can be used to get at-will spells, get abilities that resemble at-will spells, or improve eldritch blast. If you pick Draconic Bloodline, you have what amounts to at-will self-only mage armor, but wearing the medium armor you're proficient with as a cleric is probably a better idea. And it only uses official content.
Communication. Cleric 1 (Knowledge)/monk 13 (any)/mystic 2 (Nomad)/warlock 2 (Great Old One) with any two-language background (like Sage), any three-language race (like half-elf or high elf), Nomadic Mind, Linguist, Observant, Beast Speech, Eyes of the Rune Keeper, et cetera. You speak 10 or more languages, you can temporarily learn whatever language you need by focusing on Nomadic Mind, you can read all writing, you have telepathy out to a range of 30 feet, you have telepathy out to a range of 120 feet, you can understand all speech, anyone who understands any language understands what you say, you can speak with animals, you can read lips, and you can pick up to two languages to temporarily learn whenever you finish a rest. Maybe (probably) drop the cleric level and go warlock 5 for speak with dead. Uses UA content but, frankly, doesn't need it.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
The whole idea of this class is to take the Polearm Master feat and the Sentinel feat to dish out large amounts of damage and take advantage of your reaction do dish out some additional attacks. As a fighter you also get an additional ability increase at lvl6 which is nice, you have the second highest hit die in the game (barbarian beats it with a d12), you have proficiency in heavy armor, you gain different fighting styles, and you can also choose fighter subclasses to offer flexibility.
Race: Human (Variant) add 1 to str. and 1 to con.
Class: Fighter
Starting Ability Scores (Point Buy): Str. 15, Dex. 12, Con. 15, Int. 8, Wis. 9, and Cha. 12
Level 1- For your fighting style go with Great Weapon Fighting. You'll be rolling a lot of dice and it's nice getting the opportunity to re-roll 1s and 2s.
Level 2- You gain more features but don't need to make any decisions.
Level 3- You now get to choose your subclass, go with Battlemaster. This will enable you to make moves favorable for yourself and your team versus your enemies (you'll also gain additional damage dice). For the Battlemaster maneuvers I would suggest Pushing Attack, Lunging Attack, and Maneuvering Attack.
Level 4- Now you get an ability score increase or a feat of your choice. In this case we'll skip the ability score increase for now and select the Sentinel feat. This helps you fight people that disengage, spellcasters that try to run away, or people that try to attack an adjacent ally.
Level 5- You gain more features but don't need to make any decisions.
Level 6- You get an ability score increase or a feat of your choice. Now that we've selected the feats we wanted at level 1 and 4 we can start bumping our ability scores. Here we will add 2 to the strength ability score.
Level 7- You gain 2 more Battlemaster maneuvers. Take Trip Attack and Disarming Attack.
Level 8- You now get another ability score increase or a feat of your choice. We'll raise our str. score to the full 20.
Level 9- You gain more features but don't need to make any decisions.
Level 10- You gain 2 more Battlemaster maneuvers. Just pick what you like or what'll seem useful to you.
Any other feats you may want to pick up along the way as you continue working your way up to lvl 20 would be: Great Weapon Master, Mage Slayer, Savage Attacker, Martial Adept, and/or Resilient.
Hope you have fun with this build! It's very scary and powerful in combat.