I was thinking of their new usage for Surprise attack and how to maximize damage from a bugbear assuming that they are attacking an enemy that hasn’t taken a turn in combat yet. I play in an online community that frequently runs 1shots with the rule of 1 purple and 1 blue item when playing high level characters and whatever standard weapons/armor and equipment we need. We are always challenged with making Characters as strong as we can imagine. I once made a Level 17 Echo Knight than singlehandedly took on an Aspect of Bahamut on his own while the rest of the group were occupied with other enemies (that’s a deadly encounter for 6 level 20s)
I came up with Champion 15, Assassin 3 and Paladin 2. Using standard array stats and a 2/1 race AS split. Dump stat Str, 15 Dex, 14 Con, 13 Cha and the others as you see fit. Put your +2 to Dex and your +1 anywhere.
As a Champion you would take Two Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon Fighting as your fighting styles. ASIs would be +2 Dex, Piercer feat with Dex modifier, Savage Attacker, Dual Wielder and Marshall Adept (picking 2 damage dice rolls)
Drop 2 levels in to Paladin to get 2d8 smite damage
Drop 3 levels in to rogue to get Assassinate feature and 2d6 sneak attack
The equipment I would choose are Belt of Fire Giant Strength and a Spear +2, Studded Leather and a bunch of rapiers. This would give a +13/+15 to hit and each attack would be with advantage if we assume attacking an enemy that hasn’t taken a turn yet.
The flow of my turn would be; Wielding a spear with 2 hands, attack 3 times and then use Action Surge then follow up with 2 more attacks for a total of 5d8+45, switch to 1 handed attack and draw a rapier for 1 more attack and a BA attack for 1d8+7 and 1d6+9. Adding to those a Surprise attack bonus of 14d6 (6 attacks 1 BA attack) and 2d6 Sneak attack, 2d8 smite and a 1d6 superiority damage dice
That is 8d8+18d6+61 on one turn and you can reroll the damage dice up to 3 times (piercer, great weapon fighting and savage attacker)
Are there any alternatives to consider, or similar builds that could be more/as effective?
Your Smite damage is NOT worth it. Two more levels of Champion gets you a feat, an extra use of Indomitable, and and extra action surge.
One more Action Surge should do more damage and (if one round later) than your low level of Smiting (even if done during your crit round). Two rounds of Action Surger per day is worth more. Also another indomitable (failed save re-roll) is worth more than the other stuff you get from Paladin.
You have also spent a LOT to get TWF. Worse weapon, dex instead of strength, feat, and fighting style. Drop that crap and replace with a different TWF alternative. Pole arm Master or Charger work well. Also, your fighting style can be replaced with: Superior Technique which gives you a Battle Maneuver, so you do not need to take Martial Adept.
No longer using Dex, switch to better armor.
Piercer is not really worth it. But Slasher is....
Savage Attacker is NOT worth it if you already have Great Weapon fighting. Incremental benefit.
If you drop the Paladin, Savage Attacker, Piercer, and Rapier/TWF, and replace the TWF fighting style with Superior Technique, to get the Maneuver, you get 5 more feats (+1 from Champion levels, no piercer, no TWF, no Savage, No Martial Adept)
Consider:
Replace your +2 spear with a +2 Great sword. Everything is two handed, doing 2d6+2. Changing a 1 or 2 on a d6 works much better than trying to decide to reroll a 1d8.
1. Slasher Feat, instead of Piercer, which gives it Disadvantage and reduces it's speed. Ups your Strength +1
2 Charger feat instead of TWF. Uses your BA to charge getting an extra attack at +5 damage. Have to move 10 ft, but...
3 Mobile to add ten ft of movement and negate any AoO. This lets you charge more often.
4 Gift of the Chromatic Dragon: +1d4 damage for 1 minute after using your BA, which ideally you do BEFORE initiative starts.
5 Last feat: Consider Mage Slayer or Grappler, you are super strong. May never use them, but they help out depending on your opponent.
2 Levels of Conjuration Wizard (More a Quality of life/justification thing, if it's a oneshot and the DM is willing to give you access to GP equivalent in value to a very rare magic item), 15 Samurai Fighter, 3 Gloomstalker Ranger.
The two key feats are Poisoner (Possibly optional, but a good idea) and Crossbow Expert.
The Build revolves around maximizing your number of attacks and chances to hit with prepoisoned ammunition. What kind of poison would you want to use? Purple Worm Poison is the best available in the DMG at a DC 19 Con save for 14d6 (42 average) or half on a fail. That is applied to EVERY attack since you can apply an injury poison and it will last until washed/used. If you can't buy/start with it, Conjuration Wizard can produce a big batch of it since it's non magical, even if it will take you a bit to apply it to all the pieces.
Samurai is taken for the auto advantage if you aren't surprising the enemy, and the ability to exchange one advantage for an extra shot. Gloomstalker gets you +2 attacks (Since it stacks with Action Surge). Crossbow Expert nets you an attack with your bonus action. Using Action Surge you have 11 attacks, that are all applying the poison. Even assuming that the creature targeted manages to make every save (which isn't too likely since it's a dc 19 and con saves don't get high enough to make that a 5% chance of failure), that's still somewhere in the ballpark of 230 average damage just on the poison alone.
Final Damage tally would look something like 11d6 piercing (crossbow) + 55 (Dex mod) + 2d8 (Dread ambusher x2) + 132d6 Poison (Ignores resistance thanks to poisoner feat, but doesn't skip immunity sadly). You'd of course have to factor in odds of missing, since even with advantage and +13 (20 dex, +6 proficiency bonus, archery fighting style, can have more with magic ammo/crossbow) you'd still be looking at probably missing at least a few. There is also the fact that this build doesn't actually need to surprise an enemy to function, since you can trade your bonus action attack for advantage, and be able to use a heavy crossbow instead of a hand crossbow for better damage/range.
Race choice doesn't really matter TOO much, but Elven Accuracy as a feat should be a default requirement with on demand advantage thanks to samurai. Bugbear also works well with the concept though, since all of those attacks can benefit off of it's racial +2d6 per hit. Not quite sure on how that math works out for which has the higher average.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
How much damage can my Bugbear do?
I was thinking of their new usage for Surprise attack and how to maximize damage from a bugbear assuming that they are attacking an enemy that hasn’t taken a turn in combat yet. I play in an online community that frequently runs 1shots with the rule of 1 purple and 1 blue item when playing high level characters and whatever standard weapons/armor and equipment we need. We are always challenged with making Characters as strong as we can imagine. I once made a Level 17 Echo Knight than singlehandedly took on an Aspect of Bahamut on his own while the rest of the group were occupied with other enemies (that’s a deadly encounter for 6 level 20s)
I came up with Champion 15, Assassin 3 and Paladin 2. Using standard array stats and a 2/1 race AS split. Dump stat Str, 15 Dex, 14 Con, 13 Cha and the others as you see fit. Put your +2 to Dex and your +1 anywhere.
As a Champion you would take Two Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon Fighting as your fighting styles. ASIs would be +2 Dex, Piercer feat with Dex modifier, Savage Attacker, Dual Wielder and Marshall Adept (picking 2 damage dice rolls)
Drop 2 levels in to Paladin to get 2d8 smite damage
Drop 3 levels in to rogue to get Assassinate feature and 2d6 sneak attack
The equipment I would choose are Belt of Fire Giant Strength and a Spear +2, Studded Leather and a bunch of rapiers. This would give a +13/+15 to hit and each attack would be with advantage if we assume attacking an enemy that hasn’t taken a turn yet.
The flow of my turn would be; Wielding a spear with 2 hands, attack 3 times and then use Action Surge then follow up with 2 more attacks for a total of 5d8+45, switch to 1 handed attack and draw a rapier for 1 more attack and a BA attack for 1d8+7 and 1d6+9. Adding to those a Surprise attack bonus of 14d6 (6 attacks 1 BA attack) and 2d6 Sneak attack, 2d8 smite and a 1d6 superiority damage dice
That is 8d8+18d6+61 on one turn and you can reroll the damage dice up to 3 times (piercer, great weapon fighting and savage attacker)
Are there any alternatives to consider, or similar builds that could be more/as effective?
My first instinct says gloom stalker/fighter, possibly with assassin mixed in if you can reliably get surprise. Haven't done a build for it though.
Your Smite damage is NOT worth it. Two more levels of Champion gets you a feat, an extra use of Indomitable, and and extra action surge.
One more Action Surge should do more damage and (if one round later) than your low level of Smiting (even if done during your crit round). Two rounds of Action Surger per day is worth more. Also another indomitable (failed save re-roll) is worth more than the other stuff you get from Paladin.
You have also spent a LOT to get TWF. Worse weapon, dex instead of strength, feat, and fighting style. Drop that crap and replace with a different TWF alternative. Pole arm Master or Charger work well. Also, your fighting style can be replaced with: Superior Technique which gives you a Battle Maneuver, so you do not need to take Martial Adept.
No longer using Dex, switch to better armor.
Piercer is not really worth it. But Slasher is....
Savage Attacker is NOT worth it if you already have Great Weapon fighting. Incremental benefit.
If you drop the Paladin, Savage Attacker, Piercer, and Rapier/TWF, and replace the TWF fighting style with Superior Technique, to get the Maneuver, you get 5 more feats (+1 from Champion levels, no piercer, no TWF, no Savage, No Martial Adept)
Consider:
Replace your +2 spear with a +2 Great sword. Everything is two handed, doing 2d6+2. Changing a 1 or 2 on a d6 works much better than trying to decide to reroll a 1d8.
1. Slasher Feat, instead of Piercer, which gives it Disadvantage and reduces it's speed. Ups your Strength +1
2 Charger feat instead of TWF. Uses your BA to charge getting an extra attack at +5 damage. Have to move 10 ft, but...
3 Mobile to add ten ft of movement and negate any AoO. This lets you charge more often.
4 Gift of the Chromatic Dragon: +1d4 damage for 1 minute after using your BA, which ideally you do BEFORE initiative starts.
5 Last feat: Consider Mage Slayer or Grappler, you are super strong. May never use them, but they help out depending on your opponent.
2 Levels of Conjuration Wizard (More a Quality of life/justification thing, if it's a oneshot and the DM is willing to give you access to GP equivalent in value to a very rare magic item), 15 Samurai Fighter, 3 Gloomstalker Ranger.
The two key feats are Poisoner (Possibly optional, but a good idea) and Crossbow Expert.
The Build revolves around maximizing your number of attacks and chances to hit with prepoisoned ammunition. What kind of poison would you want to use? Purple Worm Poison is the best available in the DMG at a DC 19 Con save for 14d6 (42 average) or half on a fail. That is applied to EVERY attack since you can apply an injury poison and it will last until washed/used. If you can't buy/start with it, Conjuration Wizard can produce a big batch of it since it's non magical, even if it will take you a bit to apply it to all the pieces.
Samurai is taken for the auto advantage if you aren't surprising the enemy, and the ability to exchange one advantage for an extra shot. Gloomstalker gets you +2 attacks (Since it stacks with Action Surge). Crossbow Expert nets you an attack with your bonus action. Using Action Surge you have 11 attacks, that are all applying the poison. Even assuming that the creature targeted manages to make every save (which isn't too likely since it's a dc 19 and con saves don't get high enough to make that a 5% chance of failure), that's still somewhere in the ballpark of 230 average damage just on the poison alone.
Final Damage tally would look something like 11d6 piercing (crossbow) + 55 (Dex mod) + 2d8 (Dread ambusher x2) + 132d6 Poison (Ignores resistance thanks to poisoner feat, but doesn't skip immunity sadly). You'd of course have to factor in odds of missing, since even with advantage and +13 (20 dex, +6 proficiency bonus, archery fighting style, can have more with magic ammo/crossbow) you'd still be looking at probably missing at least a few. There is also the fact that this build doesn't actually need to surprise an enemy to function, since you can trade your bonus action attack for advantage, and be able to use a heavy crossbow instead of a hand crossbow for better damage/range.
Race choice doesn't really matter TOO much, but Elven Accuracy as a feat should be a default requirement with on demand advantage thanks to samurai. Bugbear also works well with the concept though, since all of those attacks can benefit off of it's racial +2d6 per hit. Not quite sure on how that math works out for which has the higher average.