I hope this is the right place for this thread, it's the first time I post on this forum. Apologies if it isn't.
For my next campaign, I was thinking of playing as a "Mighty Glacier" character - very slow, but very tough. My inspiration comes a little bit from Fezzik, from The Princess Bride. He's a massive dude, rather lovable, kinda slow, kinda stupid, but he can't be taken down easily, and if he hits you, you're not getting back up. I figured playing as an Orc using only his fists as weapons would be fantastic for what I had in mind.
However, this is the first time I'm going for an unarmed build. I thought about going for a Monk at first, but Monks are all about Dexterity, which is the opposite of what I want to go for. I tried looking up builds online but I'm not seeing any answers that satisfy me. Which is why I'm coming to you fine people.
Which class should I go for to fulfill my inspired character idea? In what direction should I specialize this class towards? Is playing an Orc even viable for this idea or should I consider another race?
Yeah, I would second the Barbarian suggestion. The Fighters end up getting 3-4 attacks per round which doesn’t sound “slow” to me. But a Barbarian with rage damage and the Unarmed Fighting fighting style sounds more like that “Mighty Glacier” concept to me. Maybe also look into either the Tavern Brawler feat too. That would be pretty “Fezzik” in nature and allow him to be proficient with throwing those rocks. In fact, I would probably start with Tavern Brawler as the early feat and take the Fighting Style (or a 3-level dip for Champion) later.
I concur with the 3 level dip in champion...maybe 4 so you don't miss the ASI. Doing it that way gets you the fighting style (so you don't have to speed a feat on it) and the improved crit range. That along with your reckless attacks makes it so much more likely to crit...and it is the crit punch that you do not stand up from...TKO.
The only other thing at that point is looking for ways to add additional damage dice so they get doubled on the crit as well...
Maybe talk to your GM about allowing you to reflavor the Divine Fury on Zealot Barbarian to be cold damage instead of necrotic or radiant...shouldn't be a balance issue since the cold damage type is patently worse...but it works flavor wise with the idea of a "Mighty Glacier"
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Founding Member of the High Roller Society.(Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
You might consider a Goliath for the "Mighty Glacier" instead of an orc. That at least was the first thing that came to my mind flavor wise, but it's not necessary.
Barbarian is a solid choice though I don't mind the idea of Fighter either, especially if you aren't likely to get much above 11th level in the campaign.
Tavern Brawler came to mind as a possible feat, but it has some overlap with the unarmed fighting style. Still, you could combine it with the Crusher feat for the 5ft movement to suggest that your heavy blows are staggering the opponent and the advantage on a crit can be because you've dazed them. Skill Expert (expertise in athletics) works to take advantage of the grappling tie ins (1d4 from unarmed fighting style, bonus action to grapple from Tavern Brawler), though it does work better on a fighter since barbarians have fewer ASIs and have advantage on strength checks while raging.
If you look at the Battlemaster Builds in the fighter section of Tasha's, you can get a few more ideas about how to build a Brawler or a pugilist. Not all of the ideas will be ideal for you, but it can help. You don't have to pay attention to the maneuvers unless you are actually choosing Battlemaster or getting superior technique fighting style or martial adept.
Finally, consider some of the tattoos from Tasha's as ways to get you some valid magical weapons (and possibly armor) or asking to reskin some of the other magical weapons as brass knuckles style weapons and having them still interact with the unarmed fighting style as such
Unarmed fighting is never going to be as good as weapon fighting in this game. The number one class that uses it is the Monk and they get to send out two unarmed attacks as a bonus on top of their weapon attacks. At level 2. If unarmed attacks were as strong as weapons, that would be 4 weapon attacks a turn -- nobody else can do that until like 17th level, that's absurd.
And why would it be? Why would anyone go to the trouble of forging swords if you can just punch?
My suggestion for anyone contemplating an unarmed strongman character is to save that concept for a different game, and pick up a weapon.
Anyway barbarians are fast too. You might try a Rogue -- it'll be jank, but I believe two of the Rogue subclasses get a (possibly irrelevant) bonus for moving slowly, and you can put Expertise into Athletics and grapple pretty well. One attack per round can feel slow I guess, and Sneak Attack means you can hit like a truck. There's a dwarf subrace that gets you medium armor I think, and then a feat could get you up to heavy, or you could take Tough. Again -- jank, but who knows. Could be fun.
My suggestion for anyone contemplating an unarmed strongman character is to save that concept for a different game, and pick up a weapon.
someguy3657, ignore that.👆Is it technically true? Yeah. Does optimization matter? No, because the DM should always be scaling everything to the party anyway. If you do more damage, then the enemies will just get tougher. If you do less, the DM should scale things to compensate.
If you wanna make a punchy Barbarian, then I say get down with your bad self, and rub some funk on it. Yeah, your DPR will be lower, but that’s what DMs are for, to drop rings of extra punchiness (or whatever) into the campaign. (That was also part of why I had suggested the 2 feat combo, so you would be able to use your bonus action to grapple a mofo, and then get an bit of dammy in.)
Or if you want to have fast hard punches be a lv 2 human monk with fighting initiate to pick up unarmed fighting style...now you are putting down three attacks a round with a d8 damage die.
Only problem with that is the feat becomes dead weight at lvl 11 when your unarmed die actually gets to a d8 naturally, but maybe your GM will let you retrain the fighting style into protection or something at that point.
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Founding Member of the High Roller Society.(Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
The average difference between 1d4+mod Vs. 1d8+mod is 2 damage. Grappling requires Str (Athletics) and most Monks dump Str so that last part is null too. If you wanna do more damage early just play a race with a natural weapon.
Just a thought: use of flavor/skinning might be your better option, if your DM allows it. Here is what I mean:
Be a goliath barbarian and wield a maul. But flavor this as "my strike with a fist is as powerful as using a maul"...
As long as you follow all the rules for mauls (ie. you wield it, you have to have 2 hands to use it and at least 1 hand to hold it, you can be forced to "drop" it, etc) then I don't see any problem using this to represent your powerful fists. And then don't cheat and use it as a "weapon attack" or use great weapon fighting, as it breaks the spirit of the flavor/skinning. If you get thrown in jail and have everything taken from you, don't try to use the maul attack.
Unarmed fighting is never going to be as good as weapon fighting in this game. The number one class that uses it is the Monk and they get to send out two unarmed attacks as a bonus on top of their weapon attacks. At level 2. If unarmed attacks were as strong as weapons, that would be 4 weapon attacks a turn -- nobody else can do that until like 17th level, that's absurd.
And why would it be? Why would anyone go to the trouble of forging swords if you can just punch?
My suggestion for anyone contemplating an unarmed strongman character is to save that concept for a different game, and pick up a weapon.
Anyway barbarians are fast too. You might try a Rogue -- it'll be jank, but I believe two of the Rogue subclasses get a (possibly irrelevant) bonus for moving slowly, and you can put Expertise into Athletics and grapple pretty well. One attack per round can feel slow I guess, and Sneak Attack means you can hit like a truck. There's a dwarf subrace that gets you medium armor I think, and then a feat could get you up to heavy, or you could take Tough. Again -- jank, but who knows. Could be fun.
Sneak attack doesn't trigger off of unarmed strikes, even monk unarmed strikes, since they are neither ranged attacks nor are they made with a finesse weapon.
Unarmed fighting is never going to be as good as weapon fighting in this game. The number one class that uses it is the Monk and they get to send out two unarmed attacks as a bonus on top of their weapon attacks. At level 2. If unarmed attacks were as strong as weapons, that would be 4 weapon attacks a turn -- nobody else can do that until like 17th level, that's absurd.
And why would it be? Why would anyone go to the trouble of forging swords if you can just punch?
My suggestion for anyone contemplating an unarmed strongman character is to save that concept for a different game, and pick up a weapon.
Anyway barbarians are fast too. You might try a Rogue -- it'll be jank, but I believe two of the Rogue subclasses get a (possibly irrelevant) bonus for moving slowly, and you can put Expertise into Athletics and grapple pretty well. One attack per round can feel slow I guess, and Sneak Attack means you can hit like a truck. There's a dwarf subrace that gets you medium armor I think, and then a feat could get you up to heavy, or you could take Tough. Again -- jank, but who knows. Could be fun.
Sneak attack doesn't trigger off of unarmed strikes, even monk unarmed strikes, since they are neither ranged attacks nor are they made with a finesse weapon.
Yes, which is why you should use a weapon, like I said. ;)
As others have stated, Goliath Barbarian with something like Crusher or Tavern Brawler is probably your best bet. However... it might be worth thinking about a re-skinned Rune Knight
Rune Knight gets you:
Giant's Might, which increases your size to Large, gives you advantage on STR checks (grappling) and lets you do extra damage on one unarmed strike a turn
the Stone Rune, which allows you to incapacitate a foe for up to a minute as a reaction. You could reflavor it as hitting them so hard they're dazed
the Frost Rune (which is generally the worst one but fits your idea), giving you a bonus on STR checks even outside of your Giant's Might. BONUS: you also get advantage on Animal Handling checks, and we all know Fezzik was good with horses
at seventh level you also can take the Hill Rune, which is pseudo-barb damage resistance
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As much as I like the idea of an Unarmed Barbarian Beefcake, there's a lot of caveats you have to make to reach it... spending a feat, multiclassing, etc.
I think the easiest way to make this build is to go for Battlemaster Fighter... I know that battlemaster is flavored as being a sort of tactical genius with an academic understanding of combat, but you could easily reflavor it as someone who is just instinctively really good at combat and focus on the maneuvers that feed into that flavor. So you can do things like Intimidate an opponent as part of an attack, or punch a dragon in the face so hard you knock them prone. Just ignore the maneuvers that do things like command your allies or that focus on evasion.
I second fighter. As mentioned, Barbarians are actually pretty quick - and for good reason. If you Rage and then start slowly plodding towards your target, you may very well lose your Rage before you ever get to it. Barbs are designed to be pinballing across the battlefield. And yeah, flavor over optimization and all that but Rage is so crucial to how a Barbarian functions that you really shouldn't choose the class if your concept is going to conflict with it. Fighter seems the way to go.
Generally barbarians rage once they get to their target, and I assume when they mean "best slow unarmed build" I assume they don't mean slow as in "I have 10ft of movement and all the enemies are 50 ft away" but rather slow as in "not monk/not making a ton of attacks per turn".
In which case Barbarian with Unarmed Fighting Style fits. Fighter works too but not quite as well. Any subclass for either works.
Edit: Technically a raging barbarian at least gets half damage at 50 feet away, and they can maintain their rage as long as they get attacked. A unarmed fighter at that distance is worse off even ignoring rage (d12 hit die vs d10 hit die and both have the same range).
As everyone else has stated, Barbarian (any subclass) and Rune Knight are your best choices. Either way, grab Unarmed Fighting Style and see if you prefer Tavern Brawler (BA Grapple) or Crusher (better strikes). Or you could go for both if you're planning to go to a high enough level.
Additional options are Skill Expert (Athletics) or +2 STR/CON/whatever.
Worth noting Barbarian also opens up unarmed defense, if you're into that kind of thing.
I hope this is the right place for this thread, it's the first time I post on this forum. Apologies if it isn't.
For my next campaign, I was thinking of playing as a "Mighty Glacier" character - very slow, but very tough. My inspiration comes a little bit from Fezzik, from The Princess Bride. He's a massive dude, rather lovable, kinda slow, kinda stupid, but he can't be taken down easily, and if he hits you, you're not getting back up. I figured playing as an Orc using only his fists as weapons would be fantastic for what I had in mind.
However, this is the first time I'm going for an unarmed build. I thought about going for a Monk at first, but Monks are all about Dexterity, which is the opposite of what I want to go for. I tried looking up builds online but I'm not seeing any answers that satisfy me. Which is why I'm coming to you fine people.
Which class should I go for to fulfill my inspired character idea? In what direction should I specialize this class towards? Is playing an Orc even viable for this idea or should I consider another race?
Thank you!
Maybe a fighter with the unarmed fighting style.
Or a barbarian, and at level 4, you take the fighting initiate feat: unarmed fighting.
Yeah, I would second the Barbarian suggestion. The Fighters end up getting 3-4 attacks per round which doesn’t sound “slow” to me. But a Barbarian with rage damage and the Unarmed Fighting fighting style sounds more like that “Mighty Glacier” concept to me. Maybe also look into either the Tavern Brawler feat too. That would be pretty “Fezzik” in nature and allow him to be proficient with throwing those rocks. In fact, I would probably start with Tavern Brawler as the early feat and take the Fighting Style (or a 3-level dip for Champion) later.
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I concur with the 3 level dip in champion...maybe 4 so you don't miss the ASI. Doing it that way gets you the fighting style (so you don't have to speed a feat on it) and the improved crit range. That along with your reckless attacks makes it so much more likely to crit...and it is the crit punch that you do not stand up from...TKO.
The only other thing at that point is looking for ways to add additional damage dice so they get doubled on the crit as well...
Maybe talk to your GM about allowing you to reflavor the Divine Fury on Zealot Barbarian to be cold damage instead of necrotic or radiant...shouldn't be a balance issue since the cold damage type is patently worse...but it works flavor wise with the idea of a "Mighty Glacier"
Founding Member of the High Roller Society. (Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
You might consider a Goliath for the "Mighty Glacier" instead of an orc. That at least was the first thing that came to my mind flavor wise, but it's not necessary.
Barbarian is a solid choice though I don't mind the idea of Fighter either, especially if you aren't likely to get much above 11th level in the campaign.
Tavern Brawler came to mind as a possible feat, but it has some overlap with the unarmed fighting style. Still, you could combine it with the Crusher feat for the 5ft movement to suggest that your heavy blows are staggering the opponent and the advantage on a crit can be because you've dazed them. Skill Expert (expertise in athletics) works to take advantage of the grappling tie ins (1d4 from unarmed fighting style, bonus action to grapple from Tavern Brawler), though it does work better on a fighter since barbarians have fewer ASIs and have advantage on strength checks while raging.
If you look at the Battlemaster Builds in the fighter section of Tasha's, you can get a few more ideas about how to build a Brawler or a pugilist. Not all of the ideas will be ideal for you, but it can help. You don't have to pay attention to the maneuvers unless you are actually choosing Battlemaster or getting superior technique fighting style or martial adept.
Finally, consider some of the tattoos from Tasha's as ways to get you some valid magical weapons (and possibly armor) or asking to reskin some of the other magical weapons as brass knuckles style weapons and having them still interact with the unarmed fighting style as such
Unarmed fighting is never going to be as good as weapon fighting in this game. The number one class that uses it is the Monk and they get to send out two unarmed attacks as a bonus on top of their weapon attacks. At level 2. If unarmed attacks were as strong as weapons, that would be 4 weapon attacks a turn -- nobody else can do that until like 17th level, that's absurd.
And why would it be? Why would anyone go to the trouble of forging swords if you can just punch?
My suggestion for anyone contemplating an unarmed strongman character is to save that concept for a different game, and pick up a weapon.
Anyway barbarians are fast too. You might try a Rogue -- it'll be jank, but I believe two of the Rogue subclasses get a (possibly irrelevant) bonus for moving slowly, and you can put Expertise into Athletics and grapple pretty well. One attack per round can feel slow I guess, and Sneak Attack means you can hit like a truck. There's a dwarf subrace that gets you medium armor I think, and then a feat could get you up to heavy, or you could take Tough. Again -- jank, but who knows. Could be fun.
Choir, please don’t take offense at this post, I mean none, and like and respect you.
someguy3657, ignore that.👆Is it technically true? Yeah. Does optimization matter? No, because the DM should always be scaling everything to the party anyway. If you do more damage, then the enemies will just get tougher. If you do less, the DM should scale things to compensate.
If you wanna make a punchy Barbarian, then I say get down with your bad self, and rub some funk on it. Yeah, your DPR will be lower, but that’s what DMs are for, to drop rings of extra punchiness (or whatever) into the campaign. (That was also part of why I had suggested the 2 feat combo, so you would be able to use your bonus action to grapple a mofo, and then get an bit of dammy in.)
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Or if you want to have fast hard punches be a lv 2 human monk with fighting initiate to pick up unarmed fighting style...now you are putting down three attacks a round with a d8 damage die.
Founding Member of the High Roller Society. (Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
Only problem with that is the feat becomes dead weight at lvl 11 when your unarmed die actually gets to a d8 naturally, but maybe your GM will let you retrain the fighting style into protection or something at that point.
Founding Member of the High Roller Society. (Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
The unarmed fighting style is a terrible waste of an ASI for Monks. At 1st level they can already do 1d8 with a quarterstaff.
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*whiny voice* but I wanna be punchy!*/whiny voice*
Plus you still have to flurry unarmed, so it would be 1d8 + 2d4 + 3xDex or Str vs 3d8+3xDex or Str
Founding Member of the High Roller Society. (Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
The average difference between 1d4+mod Vs. 1d8+mod is 2 damage. Grappling requires Str (Athletics) and most Monks dump Str so that last part is null too. If you wanna do more damage early just play a race with a natural weapon.
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Just a thought: use of flavor/skinning might be your better option, if your DM allows it. Here is what I mean:
Be a goliath barbarian and wield a maul. But flavor this as "my strike with a fist is as powerful as using a maul"...
As long as you follow all the rules for mauls (ie. you wield it, you have to have 2 hands to use it and at least 1 hand to hold it, you can be forced to "drop" it, etc) then I don't see any problem using this to represent your powerful fists. And then don't cheat and use it as a "weapon attack" or use great weapon fighting, as it breaks the spirit of the flavor/skinning. If you get thrown in jail and have everything taken from you, don't try to use the maul attack.
Sneak attack doesn't trigger off of unarmed strikes, even monk unarmed strikes, since they are neither ranged attacks nor are they made with a finesse weapon.
Yes, which is why you should use a weapon, like I said. ;)
Why would a pure Barbarian (or Monk) care about sneak attack?!? They want Fezzik, not Vizzini.
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As others have stated, Goliath Barbarian with something like Crusher or Tavern Brawler is probably your best bet. However... it might be worth thinking about a re-skinned Rune Knight
Rune Knight gets you:
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As much as I like the idea of an Unarmed Barbarian Beefcake, there's a lot of caveats you have to make to reach it... spending a feat, multiclassing, etc.
I think the easiest way to make this build is to go for Battlemaster Fighter... I know that battlemaster is flavored as being a sort of tactical genius with an academic understanding of combat, but you could easily reflavor it as someone who is just instinctively really good at combat and focus on the maneuvers that feed into that flavor. So you can do things like Intimidate an opponent as part of an attack, or punch a dragon in the face so hard you knock them prone. Just ignore the maneuvers that do things like command your allies or that focus on evasion.
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I second fighter. As mentioned, Barbarians are actually pretty quick - and for good reason. If you Rage and then start slowly plodding towards your target, you may very well lose your Rage before you ever get to it. Barbs are designed to be pinballing across the battlefield. And yeah, flavor over optimization and all that but Rage is so crucial to how a Barbarian functions that you really shouldn't choose the class if your concept is going to conflict with it. Fighter seems the way to go.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Generally barbarians rage once they get to their target, and I assume when they mean "best slow unarmed build" I assume they don't mean slow as in "I have 10ft of movement and all the enemies are 50 ft away" but rather slow as in "not monk/not making a ton of attacks per turn".
In which case Barbarian with Unarmed Fighting Style fits. Fighter works too but not quite as well. Any subclass for either works.
Edit: Technically a raging barbarian at least gets half damage at 50 feet away, and they can maintain their rage as long as they get attacked. A unarmed fighter at that distance is worse off even ignoring rage (d12 hit die vs d10 hit die and both have the same range).
As everyone else has stated, Barbarian (any subclass) and Rune Knight are your best choices. Either way, grab Unarmed Fighting Style and see if you prefer Tavern Brawler (BA Grapple) or Crusher (better strikes). Or you could go for both if you're planning to go to a high enough level.
Additional options are Skill Expert (Athletics) or +2 STR/CON/whatever.
Worth noting Barbarian also opens up unarmed defense, if you're into that kind of thing.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.