bullets poisoned with every poison in the game 21d6 + auto crit
peicer feat +20 to each hit
arrows of slaying
20 attacks
((4x5.5)+(42x3.5)+(12x5.5) +20+10)x16=5300 on avrige
I see a few things wrong here.
1. You're getting 20 attacks from 4 attacks + action surge (4 more) plus 3 hastes (4*3), right? That's improper. First of all, effects of the same name don't (can't) stack. See page 205 of the PHB2014 for spell effects specifically. And no, using a potion of speed does not bypass this rule. So, you may have at maximum one haste. That leaves you with 4+4+4 attacks, which is 12. But that's also improper. Haste states that "Until the spell ends, the target's speed is doubled, it gains a +2 bonus to AC, it has advantage on Dexterity saving throws, and it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can only be used to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action"(p. 250, PHB). Emphasis my own.
You may therefore only make 9 attacks; one from haste, four from multiattack, and four from action surge. I don't know what "potion misscalqubility" means, so I'll be ignoring it.
2. You use a hunting rifle, which fighters don't have proficiency with. You'd want the gunner feat, which you don't have.
3. You say hunting rifles deal 4d10 damage, which is incorrect. I'm assuming that you're acting as if all hits are crits? If so, I move to the discussion of poisons...
4. The following poisons are classified as injury poisons, and therefore may be applied to bullets at great expense: Drow Poison, Purple Worm Poison, Serpent Venom, and Wyvern Poison. Drow Poison is a DC 13 Con save and gives the poisoned condition on a fail, with an 8 or below also causing unconsciousness. It deals zero (0) damage. Purple Worm Poison is a DC 19 Con save and deals 42 (12d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. Serpent Venom is a DC 11 Con save and deals 10.5 (3d6) damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. Wyvern Poison is a DC 15 Con save and deals 24.5 (7d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. If every save is failed--an unlikely event with such low DCs, legendary resistance, and the commonplace nature of Con save proficiency--then a total of 12d6+3d6+7d6=22d6 damage is applied.
Let's assume out of an abundance of kindness that the target fails the Drow Poison saving throw by 5 or more, falling unconscious. I presume that this is where you got auto-crits from, but that's absurd. Three things are relevant here. Creatures which fall unconscious fall prone, attacks against them have advantage, and attacks from attackers within five feet are critical hits. Your build uses a gun. Guns are ranged weapons. No critical hits are scored. No advantage is received either, because attacks against prone creatures from more than five feet away have disadvantage, which cancels.*
Thus, exactly zero (0) attacks are "auto crit[s]" as you so described.
5. The piercer feat allows you to reroll a single attack damage die every turn, which is a negligible effect. It also allows for additional crit damage, but we've established that you're not getting any auto crits, and I don't have the energy to calculate the chance of a critical hit to find your 'true' average damage. Suffice to say that piercer wouldn't add much.
6. An Arrow of Slaying is defined as a "Weapon (arrow), very rare." Bullets are not arrows. Guns do not shoot arrows, at least in Dungeons and Dragons. I'm stuck here, am I missing some new update to how guns work?
All that being said, let's recalculate your damage. It won't be perfect because you haven't provided key details such as your dexterity modifier (I'm assuming +5), and because I will assume that all attacks hit and none crit. I will also (very) generously assume that every single poison saving throw is failed.
Nine (9) attacks are made with a hunting rifle.
Each attack is 2d10 (rifle) +5 (dex modifier) + 22d6 (poisons) =11 + 5 + 77 = 93.
9*93= 837 average damage (roughly). While this is technically the highest damage on the thread, calling it as such would be a disingenuous statement. For this full damage to take effect, the target would need to fail 27 constitution saving throws in a row, including nine DC 11 saving throws (I'm disregarding Drow Poison saves because Drow Poison is useless here). No other legitimate build on this thread has made such an absurd and far-reaching assumption. If others did, then DxJxC would have the highest damage build, whose description can be found here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/tips-tactics/52011-the-highest-possible-damaging-builds?comment=2 I believe their build would do 855 damage on average with just the addition of Purple Worm Poison, and a whole lot more if one added the other weaker poisons. Note also that your build requires an absurd amount of preparation rounds, which theirs does not.
*A note: Yes, you could theoretically be making all attacks from five feet of range to get critical hits, but then the math gets even more absurd. Firstly, from a practical standpoint, you might have difficulty getting into range safely and effectively with all of the needed prep rounds. Secondly, Drow Poison sucks. The target would need to roll an 8 every single attack (9 times), because Drow Poison specifies that "the creature wakes up if it takes damage, " so the status would need a reset. Excepting a few weird outlier (Halaster Blackcloak, for example), every CR 20+ creature has a constitution saving throw bonus of 7 or greater (and many have a high enough bonus to auto-succeed all or most of the poison saves), meaning that they'll never fall unconscious. Even a creature which has a low one will almost always succeed this save, and can use Legendary Resistance to negate any extremely unlucky rolls. The chance of that autocrit is essentially nil, hence why many of the good builds use Assassin's autocrit feature.
My apologies if I missed something or did some math wrong; this thread seems replete with error-laden posts, so mine would fit right in.
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO. The best name for the mad gibber
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO. The best name for the mad gibber
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
There is also no reason you can't target the skin
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO. The best name for the mad gibber
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
There is also no reason you can't target the skin
The game has no mechanic for targeting specific portions of one's body. I'm not saying that all attacks would be hitting armor/cloth, just that there's no way to say whether they are or aren't. Because you can't say for certain that it happens one way or the other, you have to assume that the more restrictive possibility applies. Otherwise, I could just say "every attack I make hits my enemy's eyes and they go blind." That's clearly not within the scope of the rules of the game, and neither is what you propose. If you want to play that way that's fine, but when you're playing RAF, this entire thread seems somewhat redundant.
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
There is also no reason you can't target the skin
The game has no mechanic for targeting specific portions of one's body. I'm not saying that all attacks would be hitting armor/cloth, just that there's no way to say whether they are or aren't. Because you can't say for certain that it happens one way or the other, you have to assume that the more restrictive possibility applies. Otherwise, I could just say "every attack I make hits my enemy's eyes and they go blind." That's clearly not within the scope of the rules of the game, and neither is what you propose. If you want to play that way that's fine, but when you're playing RAF, this entire thread seems somewhat redundant.
correct
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO. The best name for the mad gibber
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
There is also no reason you can't target the skin
The game has no mechanic for targeting specific portions of one's body. I'm not saying that all attacks would be hitting armor/cloth, just that there's no way to say whether they are or aren't. Because you can't say for certain that it happens one way or the other, you have to assume that the more restrictive possibility applies. Otherwise, I could just say "every attack I make hits my enemy's eyes and they go blind." That's clearly not within the scope of the rules of the game, and neither is what you propose. If you want to play that way that's fine, but when you're playing RAF, this entire thread seems somewhat redundant.
correct
Great. So Carrion Crawler Mucus doesn't work, and the build doesn't produce crits.
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
There is also no reason you can't target the skin
The game has no mechanic for targeting specific portions of one's body. I'm not saying that all attacks would be hitting armor/cloth, just that there's no way to say whether they are or aren't. Because you can't say for certain that it happens one way or the other, you have to assume that the more restrictive possibility applies. Otherwise, I could just say "every attack I make hits my enemy's eyes and they go blind." That's clearly not within the scope of the rules of the game, and neither is what you propose. If you want to play that way that's fine, but when you're playing RAF, this entire thread seems somewhat redundant.
correct
Great. So Carrion Crawler Mucus doesn't work, and the build doesn't produce crits.
The build then does 1450 damage
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"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO. The best name for the mad gibber
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I see a few things wrong here.
1. You're getting 20 attacks from 4 attacks + action surge (4 more) plus 3 hastes (4*3), right? That's improper. First of all, effects of the same name don't (can't) stack. See page 205 of the PHB2014 for spell effects specifically. And no, using a potion of speed does not bypass this rule. So, you may have at maximum one haste. That leaves you with 4+4+4 attacks, which is 12. But that's also improper. Haste states that "Until the spell ends, the target's speed is doubled, it gains a +2 bonus to AC, it has advantage on Dexterity saving throws, and it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can only be used to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action"(p. 250, PHB). Emphasis my own.
You may therefore only make 9 attacks; one from haste, four from multiattack, and four from action surge. I don't know what "potion misscalqubility" means, so I'll be ignoring it.
2. You use a hunting rifle, which fighters don't have proficiency with. You'd want the gunner feat, which you don't have.
3. You say hunting rifles deal 4d10 damage, which is incorrect. I'm assuming that you're acting as if all hits are crits? If so, I move to the discussion of poisons...
4. The following poisons are classified as injury poisons, and therefore may be applied to bullets at great expense: Drow Poison, Purple Worm Poison, Serpent Venom, and Wyvern Poison. Drow Poison is a DC 13 Con save and gives the poisoned condition on a fail, with an 8 or below also causing unconsciousness. It deals zero (0) damage. Purple Worm Poison is a DC 19 Con save and deals 42 (12d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. Serpent Venom is a DC 11 Con save and deals 10.5 (3d6) damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. Wyvern Poison is a DC 15 Con save and deals 24.5 (7d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. If every save is failed--an unlikely event with such low DCs, legendary resistance, and the commonplace nature of Con save proficiency--then a total of 12d6+3d6+7d6=22d6 damage is applied.
Let's assume out of an abundance of kindness that the target fails the Drow Poison saving throw by 5 or more, falling unconscious. I presume that this is where you got auto-crits from, but that's absurd. Three things are relevant here. Creatures which fall unconscious fall prone, attacks against them have advantage, and attacks from attackers within five feet are critical hits. Your build uses a gun. Guns are ranged weapons. No critical hits are scored. No advantage is received either, because attacks against prone creatures from more than five feet away have disadvantage, which cancels.*
Thus, exactly zero (0) attacks are "auto crit[s]" as you so described.
5. The piercer feat allows you to reroll a single attack damage die every turn, which is a negligible effect. It also allows for additional crit damage, but we've established that you're not getting any auto crits, and I don't have the energy to calculate the chance of a critical hit to find your 'true' average damage. Suffice to say that piercer wouldn't add much.
6. An Arrow of Slaying is defined as a "Weapon (arrow), very rare." Bullets are not arrows. Guns do not shoot arrows, at least in Dungeons and Dragons. I'm stuck here, am I missing some new update to how guns work?
All that being said, let's recalculate your damage. It won't be perfect because you haven't provided key details such as your dexterity modifier (I'm assuming +5), and because I will assume that all attacks hit and none crit. I will also (very) generously assume that every single poison saving throw is failed.
Nine (9) attacks are made with a hunting rifle.
Each attack is 2d10 (rifle) +5 (dex modifier) + 22d6 (poisons) =11 + 5 + 77 = 93.
9*93= 837 average damage (roughly). While this is technically the highest damage on the thread, calling it as such would be a disingenuous statement. For this full damage to take effect, the target would need to fail 27 constitution saving throws in a row, including nine DC 11 saving throws (I'm disregarding Drow Poison saves because Drow Poison is useless here). No other legitimate build on this thread has made such an absurd and far-reaching assumption. If others did, then DxJxC would have the highest damage build, whose description can be found here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/tips-tactics/52011-the-highest-possible-damaging-builds?comment=2 I believe their build would do 855 damage on average with just the addition of Purple Worm Poison, and a whole lot more if one added the other weaker poisons. Note also that your build requires an absurd amount of preparation rounds, which theirs does not.
*A note: Yes, you could theoretically be making all attacks from five feet of range to get critical hits, but then the math gets even more absurd. Firstly, from a practical standpoint, you might have difficulty getting into range safely and effectively with all of the needed prep rounds. Secondly, Drow Poison sucks. The target would need to roll an 8 every single attack (9 times), because Drow Poison specifies that "the creature wakes up if it takes damage, " so the status would need a reset. Excepting a few weird outlier (Halaster Blackcloak, for example), every CR 20+ creature has a constitution saving throw bonus of 7 or greater (and many have a high enough bonus to auto-succeed all or most of the poison saves), meaning that they'll never fall unconscious. Even a creature which has a low one will almost always succeed this save, and can use Legendary Resistance to negate any extremely unlucky rolls. The chance of that autocrit is essentially nil, hence why many of the good builds use Assassin's autocrit feature.
My apologies if I missed something or did some math wrong; this thread seems replete with error-laden posts, so mine would fit right in.
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If you want me to rework that, okay
fighter level 20
arrows of slaying +6d10
oathbow (longbow) 1d8+3d6
potion of speed I said poition misscalqubility because if you roll just right on that table in the DMG (2024), you can get hasted twice
posions 22d6
corrion crawler mucus DC 13 con save or paralyzed, that's where the auto crit comes from
Dexterity +10
peircer feat +20 on each crit
ten attacks each of them auto criting (yeah, im going to assume that the monster fails all of the con saves)
(2d8+6d6+12d10+44d6+10+30)=290x10=2900
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne
See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread
part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine
Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO.
The best name for the mad gibber
Carrion Crawler Mucus is a contact poison, not an injury poison, and so it can’t be used. As I said before, assuming all failed con saves is a huge and unrealistic allowance. Many builds on this thread would be substantially better than yours if they all did an extra 22d6 damage every hit and auto-critted without assassin. How do you have a plus 10 dex modifier? Do you mean potion miscibility? The effect on that table that “both potions work normally” doesn’t apply it they have the same effect. Or rather, it does but then you just get haste twice, and since spell effects of the same name don’t stack only one hast applies. Same would be true if you made the haste spell permanent with a roll of 100 then cast it on yourself. Two hastes isn’t an option. Overall, using poisons for these types of builds is a useless exercise. It’s not a meaningful added damage bonus in any real game (especially considering how common poison immunity is), and can also be generically applied to almost every martial build here for big numbers. There might be other issues with your revised version, but I don’t have time to look thoroughly through the post. Please excuse any typos.
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Why can't you apply contact poison to arrows?
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne
See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread
part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine
Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO.
The best name for the mad gibber
An interesting question.
From a RAI perspective, you clearly can't. Injury poison is applied to weapons, contact poison isn't. If that wasn't a distinction, then injury poisons wouldn't exist. All ammunition is an object, not all objects are ammunition. From a common sense perspective, the application might be allowed, but it won't work against an enemy with clothing or armor. If you shoot an arrow at a person and the poison only works when it touches exposed skin, then it'll move too quickly from the cloth/armor to a place lodged inside the flesh. Contact poison doesn't affect flesh, just skin. But I guess you could argue that, RAW, time has no meaning and the few milliseconds of contact with skin are enough.
From a RAW perspective, my interpretation is that it's still not effective. You could coat arrows with contact poison, but there's no RAW way of just aiming for skin, so we need to assume you're aiming for non-exposed skin. Whether it's covered by scales or clothes or armor or something else, it's not exposed. Thus, when the contact poison touches the skin as the arrow makes its way through the cloth/scales/armor towards the flesh, the skin isn't exposed and the poison doesn't work. The arrow can't draw a line of sight to the skin till it has already penetrated, at which point it's too late.
Thanks to Halfast and Cynophobia for the advisory role they played in this post.
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There is also no reason you can't target the skin
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne
See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread
part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine
Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO.
The best name for the mad gibber
The game has no mechanic for targeting specific portions of one's body. I'm not saying that all attacks would be hitting armor/cloth, just that there's no way to say whether they are or aren't. Because you can't say for certain that it happens one way or the other, you have to assume that the more restrictive possibility applies. Otherwise, I could just say "every attack I make hits my enemy's eyes and they go blind." That's clearly not within the scope of the rules of the game, and neither is what you propose. If you want to play that way that's fine, but when you're playing RAF, this entire thread seems somewhat redundant.
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correct
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne
See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread
part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine
Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO.
The best name for the mad gibber
Great. So Carrion Crawler Mucus doesn't work, and the build doesn't produce crits.
N/A
The build then does 1450 damage
"The Biggest problem D&D player face is their own bad decisions." "What doesn't kill you makes you more likely to die."- Thauraeln_The_Bol "Well, hey, if it ain't broke, then break it!"Former_Queen_Yvonne
See my homebrew spells, monsters, and this thread
part of the cult of science, and the Cult of the Nothic, and plays on Tenbrae Sine Fine
Please help us!!! (Link) Nickname is Colton. PM ME THE WORD TOMATO.
The best name for the mad gibber