I wanted to build a con artist rouge who favors CHA abilities over the regular sneaky DEX stuff. So 20 CHA was the goal. Going hexblade for the CHA dam modifier and the booming blade cantrip was then a natural choice. I then crunched the numbers and rolled the die and now I am slightly worried that the dam might outshine my fellow travelers. I am quite new to DnD so I don't know if this is normal, also my group has a few new players so they are unlikely to min/max to a crazy degree.
Below are the numbers i came up with at different lvls for booming blade with sneak attack with a rapier. For this I consider booming blade to do full DAM every time since if my melee target chooses not to move then I am super happy for the 1 turn stun and if I get to melee with a range or mage mob then I am also likely to be happy about it. Keep in mind that the DAM is from a single cantrip with a single weapon so a bonus action is still available.
I wanted to build a con artist rouge who favors CHA abilities over the regular sneaky DEX stuff. So 20 CHA was the goal. Going hexblade for the CHA dam modifier and the booming blade cantrip was then a natural choice. I then crunched the numbers and rolled the die and now I am slightly worried that the dam might outshine my fellow travelers. I am quite new to DnD so I don't know if this is normal, also my group has a few new players so they are unlikely to min/max to a crazy degree.
Below are the numbers i came up with at different lvls for booming blade with sneak attack with a rapier. For this I consider booming blade to do full DAM every time since if my melee target chooses not to move then I am super happy for the 1 turn stun and if I get to melee with a range or mage mob then I am also likely to be happy about it. Keep in mind that the DAM is from a single cantrip with a single weapon so a bonus action is still available.
From here sneak add 1d6 extra every other level and booming becomes silly at lvl 11 total lvls.
1. Your math is good—— check. At leve 5 booming blade is 2d8, and if they move another 2d8— that said I am not readjusting everything below to accommodate. Just know the 1d8 difference is 1 min 4.5 avg 8 max.
2. works as you imagine as long as not in a sphere of silence or anti magic field
3. Level 5 there. 4 rogue 1 hex. Your average dam is 29. 10 min, max 48. Sure that’s good.
but to give you a comparison. A barbarian berserker. Level 5. Same +4 str mod as your cha. Can do 3 attacks, reckless so always at advantage so 2x the odds of a crit, per hit, as you. And would do 3d12+4+4+4 so min 7 max 48 average 31.5 and that’s not including rage. With rage, add 6 more damage.
min 13 max 54 avg 37.5. And they are twice as likely to have a crit.
also, with them having multiple attacks vs just your one attack. There’s a less % chance of a miss and 0 damage.
so damage output. You’re fine. You won’t outshine Paladins, or other DPS more dominant builds. But you’ll certainly hold your own.
4. One thing to note, is using booming blade and being a swashbuckler you should fancy footwork constantly move away, either forcing them to move and trigger booming blade or to do something else. Cause that’s an extra 2d8 damage (thunder type) if they move, at level 5.
Fancy footwork was the prime reason why I choose to calculate booming blade for its full DAM. Flanking all day long baby!
It seems I am getting what I want. Another thing I am slightly concerned with is my AC. With medium armour(14 DEX) and a shield I am sitting at 18 or 19 AC or 21/22 without a shield but shield spell up. If I end up with warlock 3(pact of the blade) it can go to 24 with a shield and shield spell. With the added bonus of uncanny dodge, that seems quite strong to me.
If you're using a Rapier and a Shield, then you cannot cast any spells that have a Somatic component while you're using both items. You can't cast Shield if you're holding both a Rapier and a Shield unless you get the War Caster feat. That feat also lets you do Booming Blade as a reaction, which you would not be able to do without the feat. It is probably worth it for you to get the feat instead of getting +2 charisma, especially since getting charisma won't help your AC (whereas if Dex was your attack stat, you could boost your AC and your chance to hit and your damage by getting +2 dex).
Keep in mind that if you have any teammates that are also melee damage dealers, that they'll probably be standing next to your target much of the time, and in those cases the target might not move and take damage from Booming Blade. Booming Blade will be much more powerful once your party learns to not stand next to your target. And it's not as useful against mages or archers, either, because they won't have to move to attack.
Rogues are good at dealing damage, but there are so many other classes that can keep up with what you're doing. Sharpshooters and Great Weapon Masters both get to add 10 damage to each attack for a -5 on their attack roll, and with two attacks each round, this adds up pretty quickly. With 16 Dex and a Longbow (and the archery fighting style to get +2 to attack rolls, helping mitigate the -5 penalty), and two attacks, that would be 20+6+2D8. A level 5 Ranger Hunter with Horde Breaker and Sharpshooter can get 3 attacks every round as long as there are two enemies adjacent to each other, so it would have 30+9+3D8 damage (and with a Longbow, it would have 600ft range with no penalty for attacking from far away). A level 5 Barbarian Berserker with Great Weapon master would do 3 attacks each round with a -5 penalty, but advantage on the attack rolls, and attacking with a Great Sword would give it 30+9+6+6D6 damage, with 3 different chances attacking with advantage to get a crit. And Paladins get their smites along with extra attack and possibly the Great Weapon Master feat. Heck, even a level 5 Cleric will quite often cast Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon during the first two rounds of combat and still get to do a melee attack with its action, thus dealing 3D8 damage (half on a successful Wisdom Save) to any enemies that start their turn within 15ft, plus 1D8 + strength on their melee attack and 1D8 + wisdom on their bonus action Spiritual Weapon attack. Against a large number of melee enemies, Spirit Guardians will do a huge amount of damage. And of course, at level 5, your Wizard or Sorcerer will start casting Fireball whenever it sees a bunch of enemies grouped up, and deal 8D6 damage to all enemies within 20ft of the center of the fireball. If there happened to be 8 enemies all grouped up, that would be 64D6 damage in one round (assuming they all fail their dex saves).
Fancy footwork was the prime reason why I choose to calculate booming blade for its full DAM. Flanking all day long baby!
It seems I am getting what I want. Another thing I am slightly concerned with is my AC. With medium armour(14 DEX) and a shield I am sitting at 18 or 19 AC or 21/22 without a shield but shield spell up. If I end up with warlock 3(pact of the blade) it can go to 24 with a shield and shield spell. With the added bonus of uncanny dodge, that seems quite strong to me.
At a certain point. (Usually around level 7) ac doesn’t really matter anymore. Eventually everything can hit you at decent odds. What matters more is having HP to take the hits you do take.
obviously keep your ace as well as possible because each 1 ac is 5% chance of not getting hit more, but if I had to choose between 22 ac and 75 hp on my fighter and 16 ac and 110hp on the same fighter. I would choose the 2nd one. (Level 11 fighter for example’s purpose hypothetical argument. Call 22ac guy 10 con, and 16ac guy 12 con but rolled better)
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I wanted to build a con artist rouge who favors CHA abilities over the regular sneaky DEX stuff. So 20 CHA was the goal. Going hexblade for the CHA dam modifier and the booming blade cantrip was then a natural choice. I then crunched the numbers and rolled the die and now I am slightly worried that the dam might outshine my fellow travelers. I am quite new to DnD so I don't know if this is normal, also my group has a few new players so they are unlikely to min/max to a crazy degree.
Below are the numbers i came up with at different lvls for booming blade with sneak attack with a rapier. For this I consider booming blade to do full DAM every time since if my melee target chooses not to move then I am super happy for the 1 turn stun and if I get to melee with a range or mage mob then I am also likely to be happy about it. Keep in mind that the DAM is from a single cantrip with a single weapon so a bonus action is still available.
rouge 1/lock1 : 1d8(rapier) + 1d6(sneak) + 1d8(booming) + 3 (CHA) = 2d8 + 1d6 + 3
rogue 4/lock 1 he would do: 4d8 + 2d6 + 4
at rogue 9/lock 2 he would do: 6d8 + 5d6 +5
For full calculation:
rogue 2 hex 1 : Hide from cunning action making sneak easier to pull off
rogue 3 hex 1: 1d8(rapier) + 2d6(sneak) + 1d8(booming) + 3 (CHA) = 2d8 + 2d6 + 3, RAKISH AUDACITY makes sneak a lot easier.
rogue 4 hex 1: 1d8(rapier) + 2d6(sneak) + 3d8(booming) + 4 (CHA) = 4d8 + 2d6 + 4
From here sneak add 1d6 extra every other level and booming becomes silly at lvl 11 total lvls.
1. Your math is good—— check. At leve 5 booming blade is 2d8, and if they move another 2d8— that said I am not readjusting everything below to accommodate. Just know the 1d8 difference is 1 min 4.5 avg 8 max.
2. works as you imagine as long as not in a sphere of silence or anti magic field
3. Level 5 there. 4 rogue 1 hex. Your average dam is 29. 10 min, max 48. Sure that’s good.
but to give you a comparison. A barbarian berserker. Level 5. Same +4 str mod as your cha. Can do 3 attacks, reckless so always at advantage so 2x the odds of a crit, per hit, as you. And would do 3d12+4+4+4 so min 7 max 48 average 31.5 and that’s not including rage. With rage, add 6 more damage.
min 13 max 54 avg 37.5. And they are twice as likely to have a crit.
also, with them having multiple attacks vs just your one attack. There’s a less % chance of a miss and 0 damage.
so damage output. You’re fine. You won’t outshine Paladins, or other DPS more dominant builds. But you’ll certainly hold your own.
4. One thing to note, is using booming blade and being a swashbuckler you should fancy footwork constantly move away, either forcing them to move and trigger booming blade or to do something else. Cause that’s an extra 2d8 damage (thunder type) if they move, at level 5.
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Thanks for the comprehensive answer!
Fancy footwork was the prime reason why I choose to calculate booming blade for its full DAM. Flanking all day long baby!
It seems I am getting what I want. Another thing I am slightly concerned with is my AC. With medium armour(14 DEX) and a shield I am sitting at 18 or 19 AC or 21/22 without a shield but shield spell up. If I end up with warlock 3(pact of the blade) it can go to 24 with a shield and shield spell. With the added bonus of uncanny dodge, that seems quite strong to me.
If you're using a Rapier and a Shield, then you cannot cast any spells that have a Somatic component while you're using both items. You can't cast Shield if you're holding both a Rapier and a Shield unless you get the War Caster feat. That feat also lets you do Booming Blade as a reaction, which you would not be able to do without the feat. It is probably worth it for you to get the feat instead of getting +2 charisma, especially since getting charisma won't help your AC (whereas if Dex was your attack stat, you could boost your AC and your chance to hit and your damage by getting +2 dex).
Keep in mind that if you have any teammates that are also melee damage dealers, that they'll probably be standing next to your target much of the time, and in those cases the target might not move and take damage from Booming Blade. Booming Blade will be much more powerful once your party learns to not stand next to your target. And it's not as useful against mages or archers, either, because they won't have to move to attack.
Rogues are good at dealing damage, but there are so many other classes that can keep up with what you're doing. Sharpshooters and Great Weapon Masters both get to add 10 damage to each attack for a -5 on their attack roll, and with two attacks each round, this adds up pretty quickly. With 16 Dex and a Longbow (and the archery fighting style to get +2 to attack rolls, helping mitigate the -5 penalty), and two attacks, that would be 20+6+2D8. A level 5 Ranger Hunter with Horde Breaker and Sharpshooter can get 3 attacks every round as long as there are two enemies adjacent to each other, so it would have 30+9+3D8 damage (and with a Longbow, it would have 600ft range with no penalty for attacking from far away). A level 5 Barbarian Berserker with Great Weapon master would do 3 attacks each round with a -5 penalty, but advantage on the attack rolls, and attacking with a Great Sword would give it 30+9+6+6D6 damage, with 3 different chances attacking with advantage to get a crit. And Paladins get their smites along with extra attack and possibly the Great Weapon Master feat. Heck, even a level 5 Cleric will quite often cast Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon during the first two rounds of combat and still get to do a melee attack with its action, thus dealing 3D8 damage (half on a successful Wisdom Save) to any enemies that start their turn within 15ft, plus 1D8 + strength on their melee attack and 1D8 + wisdom on their bonus action Spiritual Weapon attack. Against a large number of melee enemies, Spirit Guardians will do a huge amount of damage. And of course, at level 5, your Wizard or Sorcerer will start casting Fireball whenever it sees a bunch of enemies grouped up, and deal 8D6 damage to all enemies within 20ft of the center of the fireball. If there happened to be 8 enemies all grouped up, that would be 64D6 damage in one round (assuming they all fail their dex saves).
At a certain point. (Usually around level 7) ac doesn’t really matter anymore. Eventually everything can hit you at decent odds. What matters more is having HP to take the hits you do take.
obviously keep your ace as well as possible because each 1 ac is 5% chance of not getting hit more, but if I had to choose between 22 ac and 75 hp on my fighter and 16 ac and 110hp on the same fighter. I would choose the 2nd one. (Level 11 fighter for example’s purpose hypothetical argument. Call 22ac guy 10 con, and 16ac guy 12 con but rolled better)
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