So I'm currently building a charcter concept that I like, Its been linked before but to sumarrize its Rogue 11(Ass)/Ranger 5(Gloom)/Fighter 4(Champion)
The ranger levels come in the first 6 so it comes online very quickly most notably I get to pick 4 spells with 4 level 1 slots and 2 level 2 slots
Things to note with this build is that it uses crossbow expert/sharpshooter so my bonus action is largely already in use
Initially the spells I chose were
- Hunters Mark
- Cure Wounds
- Pass Without a Trace
- Silence
Now these 4 I thought at the time all had use that would scale well, Cure Wounds was mostly just to pick party members up if they go down, not so much about healing, Pass without a trace obviously scales quite well as does silence as there's no saves or rolls
But hunters mark I've never once wanted to use. In nearly all times that it comes up just attacking one more time has been better, ive worked out that I would basically need 3 perfect hits with it to make it worth more than an extra attack (as normal attack is 10+Prof+D6), to be honest its just never come up, and if the opponent doesnt last a few rounds its completely a waste.
So I was trying to work out what else to get. Absorb Elements came to mind but I get uncanny dodge and it sort of competes for the reaction and the tiny little damage doesn't really compete when i have to waste a spell slot, detect magic seemed like it could be useful but we have a few spell casters already
Then I also thought that Zephyr Strike could be quite useful if i dont have any allies around and want to give myself advantage for a sneak attack, this is honestly the front runner but wanted to know what you guys think
Healing Spirit is great if your DM lets you use the pre-nerfed version.
Healing spirit would probably compete with the bonus action, but might be a better idea than Cure Wounds in a longer fight. Zephyr Strike is a good option for what it does. Maybe something like Hail of Thorns or Spike Growth if your DC is high enough, and Spike Growth doesn't really need thre DC to be good to be effective in the right scenarios. Alarm or Goodberry could also be good. I probably would only choose one of Cure Wounds, Healing Spirit, or Goodberry though. Also, make sure at least one spell is a 1st level spell (which probably eliminates Healing Spirit unless you take zephyr or hail to use those slots).
If you want to use sharpshooter, Battlemaster may be the better choice. It allows you roll an extra d6 in case the - 5 makes you miss the target. And even damage wise it is better then Champion.
How many times do you roll a 19 in a day? That is a 5% chance for the extra sneak damage, unless you already used it in that turn. Now with Battlemaster, you can turn a miss into a hit, you can use a reaction to counter and since it is on someone else turn, cause sneak attack (requires some planing with weapons) or you can add extra damage to any hit plus a bonus effect. 4 times per short rest.
Ok few answers here but first of all thanks to everyone who gave input, ill put in what I think of your ideas
Jesse_DND - Not bad ideas, Fog Cloud isn't a bad idea but i know for a fact our wizard has it due to the fact that he has made a joke about the fact that he farts it out, longstrider is again a cool idea but Zephyr Strike gives me the quick boost of speed too that I think i'd be wanting to use the longstrider for, other than that we're currently doing TOA so i haven't really found that an extra 10ft would often enough make the difference. Darkvision again while useful as a gloomstalker I have it, the rest of our party are an elf, a wind genasi, a dwarf and a human who is that druid thats on fire so he emits light (And has the flametongue sword so constant torch), so not hugely useful. We're using the most up to date so healing spirit is nothing but a weak heal that doesn't seem worth it I also already have 2 lvl 2 spells and only 2 slots so I was more leaning towards a lvl 1. Cure Wounds is barely a heal as such its more just a way to pick up people who are down. So I appreciate your ideas I don't believe any of them are superior to Zephyr Strike.
Jhfffan - Healing spirits level 2 is what hurts it for me, were it level 1 id probably go with it, i don't have many spells I can take so taking both doesn't seem like a great idea hence why i picked one. Wanting Silence and Pass w/o a trace also means that i already have 2 lvl 2 slots so i'm more looking at lvl 1s.
Hail of Thorns to me suffers for the same reason that Hunters Mark did...I believe its basically in every was inferior to just attacking again with my bonus, even at level 2 at max hit (2 10s on a D10) it does 2 more damage than the average of a sharpshooter, not enough bang for my buck
Spike growth is tempting but its a level 2 which again suffers from the whole spell slots issue of only having 2. All in all i think that silence and pass w/o a trace would be better.
Goodberry - We have a druid but in general this is a good choice
Bhuraelea - I've had a few people suggest Battlemaster, thing about battlemaster is that id end up with 4 D8 superiority die, which is not a lot. That can easilly be burned in 2 turns then the battle master is doing literally nothing, while the extra critical is always going to be active, sure its only 5% more but a 10% chance to crit is nothing to scoff at, it also opens up the massive turn 1 Zerg this is capible of (if i go first and chose to action surge i roll everything at advantage and hit 7 times or 14 rolls, improved crit gives me close to 87% chance to crit at least once that has sneak attack also, to me thats far more valuable than 4 battle maneuvers)
All in all i thank you all for your time but none of those options jumped at me as much as Zephyr Strike, being able to turn on my sneak attack is almost too useful compared to these other options
Ok few answers here but first of all thanks to everyone who gave input, ill put in what I think of your ideas
Jesse_DND - Not bad ideas, Fog Cloud isn't a bad idea but i know for a fact our wizard has it due to the fact that he has made a joke about the fact that he farts it out, longstrider is again a cool idea but Zephyr Strike gives me the quick boost of speed too that I think i'd be wanting to use the longstrider for, other than that we're currently doing TOA so i haven't really found that an extra 10ft would often enough make the difference. Darkvision again while useful as a gloomstalker I have it, the rest of our party are an elf, a wind genasi, a dwarf and a human who is that druid thats on fire so he emits light (And has the flametongue sword so constant torch), so not hugely useful. We're using the most up to date so healing spirit is nothing but a weak heal that doesn't seem worth it I also already have 2 lvl 2 spells and only 2 slots so I was more leaning towards a lvl 1. Cure Wounds is barely a heal as such its more just a way to pick up people who are down. So I appreciate your ideas I don't believe any of them are superior to Zephyr Strike.
Jhfffan - Healing spirits level 2 is what hurts it for me, were it level 1 id probably go with it, i don't have many spells I can take so taking both doesn't seem like a great idea hence why i picked one. Wanting Silence and Pass w/o a trace also means that i already have 2 lvl 2 slots so i'm more looking at lvl 1s.
Hail of Thorns to me suffers for the same reason that Hunters Mark did...I believe its basically in every was inferior to just attacking again with my bonus, even at level 2 at max hit (2 10s on a D10) it does 2 more damage than the average of a sharpshooter, not enough bang for my buck
Spike growth is tempting but its a level 2 which again suffers from the whole spell slots issue of only having 2. All in all i think that silence and pass w/o a trace would be better.
Goodberry - We have a druid but in general this is a good choice
Bhuraelea - I've had a few people suggest Battlemaster, thing about battlemaster is that id end up with 4 D8 superiority die, which is not a lot. That can easilly be burned in 2 turns then the battle master is doing literally nothing, while the extra critical is always going to be active, sure its only 5% more but a 10% chance to crit is nothing to scoff at, it also opens up the massive turn 1 Zerg this is capible of (if i go first and chose to action surge i roll everything at advantage and hit 7 times or 14 rolls, improved crit gives me close to 87% chance to crit at least once that has sneak attack also, to me thats far more valuable than 4 battle maneuvers)
All in all i thank you all for your time but none of those options jumped at me as much as Zephyr Strike, being able to turn on my sneak attack is almost too useful compared to these other options
thanks
The reason that I would take and use Hail of Thorns is for the AOE potential. It's not a lot of damage, but it could hit a fair number if they are bunched right. Being able to kill multiple creatures or trigger the higher damage from the features and spells that do it (like Toll the Dead) could be interesting. It's filling a niche much like Zephyr Strike would.
Zephyr Strike is nice for ensuring that sneak attack damage and I don't blame you for choosing it. I like that it gives you a disengage on a bonus action that isn't actually a disengage. That could free up a feat if you were thinking about Mobile.
I can understand the desire to diversify your spells by spell slot used. That's part of the reason I thought that Healing Spirit would be out. Spike Growth would give a different use for your spell slots by causing the terrain to become difficult terrain. However, choosing that would almost force you to drop Cure Wounds in favor of Zephyr Strike to get the most out of your 1st spell slots and does cause a log jam of options at 2nd. Again, I don't blame you for wanting that diversity instead.
While I 100% see the use of hail of throrns in terms of powering up things like Toll of the Dead outside of that 1D10 is fairly weak damage when compared to the damage I can do with a bonus action attack, the odds of me killing much with it past level say 4 or 5 is fairly unlikely and this is assuming we've left a bunch of enemies bunched together on like 1-3 hit points and even then due to its fairly low damage output if they save they could easily live, Zephyr Strike isn't really about the damage bonus it does at all, I was never looking for things that boost my damage as due to only taking 5 levels in ranger damage spells wont scale well at all past level 6-7 at best. Instead I wanted them all for Utility, Cure Wounds to pick allies up, silence for stealth and to disrupt mages and Pass Without a Trace is for Stealth of course.
Zephyr Strike is an option when I have to disengage as it lets me do that, make 60ft of distance (human race so 30ft movement) and keep attacking and a little bonus damage to boost, its all around better than me bonus action disengaging that I get as a Rogue. So it becomes useful every time I want to disengage and create distance which seems like a likely scenario and mix that with the ability to turn on my sneak attacks (which would have been useful last session I had where we all got split up and i had no way to get sneak attacks outside of bonus action hide but there was barely anything to hide behind)
Spike Growth was tempting as something to throw behind as we ran but at level 2 it lost almost completely based on that. I love silence and pass w/o a trace and i don't really want to give them up, being able to assist a whole group sneaking is almost invaluable more so when 2 of them are heavy armor and silence has saved me with a dangerous puzzle once and again helps me sneak in crazy situations, I would never want to drop them.
I only have 2 level 2 spell slots so it seems largely pointless to have more than 2 level 2 spells which would mean my lvl 1 slots are entirely for cure wounds (which isn't bad) but i'd feel a bit top-loaded.
But again this is just showing my thought process, i respect and thank everyone for ideas because you all made me look over and re-think all my choices, spike growth is very good and almost could have replaced silence if not for the fact that I find the utility of it SO good.
Thanks you
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So I'm currently building a charcter concept that I like, Its been linked before but to sumarrize its Rogue 11(Ass)/Ranger 5(Gloom)/Fighter 4(Champion)
The ranger levels come in the first 6 so it comes online very quickly most notably I get to pick 4 spells with 4 level 1 slots and 2 level 2 slots
Things to note with this build is that it uses crossbow expert/sharpshooter so my bonus action is largely already in use
Initially the spells I chose were
- Hunters Mark
- Cure Wounds
- Pass Without a Trace
- Silence
Now these 4 I thought at the time all had use that would scale well, Cure Wounds was mostly just to pick party members up if they go down, not so much about healing, Pass without a trace obviously scales quite well as does silence as there's no saves or rolls
But hunters mark I've never once wanted to use. In nearly all times that it comes up just attacking one more time has been better, ive worked out that I would basically need 3 perfect hits with it to make it worth more than an extra attack (as normal attack is 10+Prof+D6), to be honest its just never come up, and if the opponent doesnt last a few rounds its completely a waste.
So I was trying to work out what else to get. Absorb Elements came to mind but I get uncanny dodge and it sort of competes for the reaction and the tiny little damage doesn't really compete when i have to waste a spell slot, detect magic seemed like it could be useful but we have a few spell casters already
Then I also thought that Zephyr Strike could be quite useful if i dont have any allies around and want to give myself advantage for a sneak attack, this is honestly the front runner but wanted to know what you guys think
Thanks
Fog Cloud can come in quite handy under certain circumstances.
Longstrider may be useful if you have a melee ally.
Could you or an ally use Darkvision?
Healing Spirit is great if your DM lets you use the pre-nerfed version.
Healing spirit would probably compete with the bonus action, but might be a better idea than Cure Wounds in a longer fight. Zephyr Strike is a good option for what it does. Maybe something like Hail of Thorns or Spike Growth if your DC is high enough, and Spike Growth doesn't really need thre DC to be good to be effective in the right scenarios. Alarm or Goodberry could also be good. I probably would only choose one of Cure Wounds, Healing Spirit, or Goodberry though. Also, make sure at least one spell is a 1st level spell (which probably eliminates Healing Spirit unless you take zephyr or hail to use those slots).
If you want to use sharpshooter, Battlemaster may be the better choice. It allows you roll an extra d6 in case the - 5 makes you miss the target. And even damage wise it is better then Champion.
How many times do you roll a 19 in a day? That is a 5% chance for the extra sneak damage, unless you already used it in that turn. Now with Battlemaster, you can turn a miss into a hit, you can use a reaction to counter and since it is on someone else turn, cause sneak attack (requires some planing with weapons) or you can add extra damage to any hit plus a bonus effect. 4 times per short rest.
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]Ok few answers here but first of all thanks to everyone who gave input, ill put in what I think of your ideas
Jesse_DND - Not bad ideas, Fog Cloud isn't a bad idea but i know for a fact our wizard has it due to the fact that he has made a joke about the fact that he farts it out, longstrider is again a cool idea but Zephyr Strike gives me the quick boost of speed too that I think i'd be wanting to use the longstrider for, other than that we're currently doing TOA so i haven't really found that an extra 10ft would often enough make the difference. Darkvision again while useful as a gloomstalker I have it, the rest of our party are an elf, a wind genasi, a dwarf and a human who is that druid thats on fire so he emits light (And has the flametongue sword so constant torch), so not hugely useful. We're using the most up to date so healing spirit is nothing but a weak heal that doesn't seem worth it I also already have 2 lvl 2 spells and only 2 slots so I was more leaning towards a lvl 1. Cure Wounds is barely a heal as such its more just a way to pick up people who are down. So I appreciate your ideas I don't believe any of them are superior to Zephyr Strike.
Jhfffan - Healing spirits level 2 is what hurts it for me, were it level 1 id probably go with it, i don't have many spells I can take so taking both doesn't seem like a great idea hence why i picked one. Wanting Silence and Pass w/o a trace also means that i already have 2 lvl 2 slots so i'm more looking at lvl 1s.
Hail of Thorns to me suffers for the same reason that Hunters Mark did...I believe its basically in every was inferior to just attacking again with my bonus, even at level 2 at max hit (2 10s on a D10) it does 2 more damage than the average of a sharpshooter, not enough bang for my buck
Spike growth is tempting but its a level 2 which again suffers from the whole spell slots issue of only having 2. All in all i think that silence and pass w/o a trace would be better.
Goodberry - We have a druid but in general this is a good choice
Bhuraelea - I've had a few people suggest Battlemaster, thing about battlemaster is that id end up with 4 D8 superiority die, which is not a lot. That can easilly be burned in 2 turns then the battle master is doing literally nothing, while the extra critical is always going to be active, sure its only 5% more but a 10% chance to crit is nothing to scoff at, it also opens up the massive turn 1 Zerg this is capible of (if i go first and chose to action surge i roll everything at advantage and hit 7 times or 14 rolls, improved crit gives me close to 87% chance to crit at least once that has sneak attack also, to me thats far more valuable than 4 battle maneuvers)
All in all i thank you all for your time but none of those options jumped at me as much as Zephyr Strike, being able to turn on my sneak attack is almost too useful compared to these other options
thanks
The reason that I would take and use Hail of Thorns is for the AOE potential. It's not a lot of damage, but it could hit a fair number if they are bunched right. Being able to kill multiple creatures or trigger the higher damage from the features and spells that do it (like Toll the Dead) could be interesting. It's filling a niche much like Zephyr Strike would.
Zephyr Strike is nice for ensuring that sneak attack damage and I don't blame you for choosing it. I like that it gives you a disengage on a bonus action that isn't actually a disengage. That could free up a feat if you were thinking about Mobile.
I can understand the desire to diversify your spells by spell slot used. That's part of the reason I thought that Healing Spirit would be out. Spike Growth would give a different use for your spell slots by causing the terrain to become difficult terrain. However, choosing that would almost force you to drop Cure Wounds in favor of Zephyr Strike to get the most out of your 1st spell slots and does cause a log jam of options at 2nd. Again, I don't blame you for wanting that diversity instead.
While I 100% see the use of hail of throrns in terms of powering up things like Toll of the Dead outside of that 1D10 is fairly weak damage when compared to the damage I can do with a bonus action attack, the odds of me killing much with it past level say 4 or 5 is fairly unlikely and this is assuming we've left a bunch of enemies bunched together on like 1-3 hit points and even then due to its fairly low damage output if they save they could easily live, Zephyr Strike isn't really about the damage bonus it does at all, I was never looking for things that boost my damage as due to only taking 5 levels in ranger damage spells wont scale well at all past level 6-7 at best. Instead I wanted them all for Utility, Cure Wounds to pick allies up, silence for stealth and to disrupt mages and Pass Without a Trace is for Stealth of course.
Zephyr Strike is an option when I have to disengage as it lets me do that, make 60ft of distance (human race so 30ft movement) and keep attacking and a little bonus damage to boost, its all around better than me bonus action disengaging that I get as a Rogue. So it becomes useful every time I want to disengage and create distance which seems like a likely scenario and mix that with the ability to turn on my sneak attacks (which would have been useful last session I had where we all got split up and i had no way to get sneak attacks outside of bonus action hide but there was barely anything to hide behind)
Spike Growth was tempting as something to throw behind as we ran but at level 2 it lost almost completely based on that. I love silence and pass w/o a trace and i don't really want to give them up, being able to assist a whole group sneaking is almost invaluable more so when 2 of them are heavy armor and silence has saved me with a dangerous puzzle once and again helps me sneak in crazy situations, I would never want to drop them.
I only have 2 level 2 spell slots so it seems largely pointless to have more than 2 level 2 spells which would mean my lvl 1 slots are entirely for cure wounds (which isn't bad) but i'd feel a bit top-loaded.
But again this is just showing my thought process, i respect and thank everyone for ideas because you all made me look over and re-think all my choices, spike growth is very good and almost could have replaced silence if not for the fact that I find the utility of it SO good.
Thanks you