The Most Broken Race/Class Combo

[Beastrolami]

The point of this thread is to post the most broken, OP race class combos you have built, or seen. You are not limited to any particular role, but you should try to avoid generalizations, i.e. elf wizard level 5 with spell loadout x.

I have been tinkering, and believe i have found the best SOLO class. i know there are some amazing things you can do with support, and i'm not trying to build the best party possible (although we should try that). This class is good enough it shouldn't need a party, and covers most of the roles as well if not better than any other single class.

Assumptions:
27 point buy system (lets be honest, it's more fair this way)
optional feat rule, including human variant (who doesn't use this?)
low level character (i'm sure it would work well at higher levels, but it does best at low level 1-3)
all attacks hit (this is for the combat sim at the end... of course it's not realistic, but it actually tips the scale in our opponent's favor)

The Build
let's start with race. Human, the variant is.... technically balanced, i see no reason to keep players from using it, but it is amazing, and personally i see no reason to play anything but human.
ability score increase: two different ability scores of your choice increase by 1.
skills: you gain proficiency in one skill of your choice.
feat: you gain one feat of your choice.

so let's buy our ability points: 15 wis (9), 15 con (9), 12 str (4), 10 dex (2), 10 cha (2), and 9 int (1). (27 points)
Human variant lets us put our ability points in wis and con, for +3 wis, and con, +1 str, and -1 int (this last one can be moved to either dex or cha if u want. The next step is the skill proficiency, and that all depends on the type of game you are apart of, so i am going to leave skills and background up to you, this is a build, not a character mold.

The last thing we need to take care of before we move on to the class build is the feat. We are going to take magic initiate Choose a class: bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard. You learn two cantrips of your choice from that class’s spell list.
In addition, choose one 1st-level spell from that same list. You learn that spell and can cast it at its lowest level. Once you cast it, you must finish a long rest before you can cast it again.
Your spellcasting ability for these spells depends on the class you chose: Charisma for bard, sorcerer, or warlock; Wisdom for cleric or druid: or Intelligence for wizard.
We are going to choose warlock. The cantrips don't really matter, i would advise choosing ones that don't require a roll because you don't have high cha, so... blade ward, and true strike. For the 1st level spell, we are going to take Hex. Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: 90 feet
Components: V, S, M (the petrified eye of a newt)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
You place a curse on a creature that you can see within range. Until the spell ends, you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage to the target whenever you hit it with an attack. Also, choose one ability when you cast the spell. The target has disadvantage on ability checks made with the chosen ability. If the target drops to 0 hit points before this spell ends, you can use a bonus action on a subsequent turn of yours to curse a new creature. A remove curse cast on the target ends this spell early.
that's pretty OP with almost any casting class, the problem with the spell is you can't cast another concentration spell, so this won't work well with a support class. It would work well with almost any other class tho, the one i believe is the most OP is Cleric.
The first thing to do when creating a cleric is choosing a domain, and i choose (you pikachu!!!) Tempest. bonus proficiencies
At 1st level, you gain proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor.
Also at 1st level, you can thunderously rebuke attackers. When a creature within 5 feet o f you that you can see
hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to cause the creature to make a Dexterity saving throw.
The creature takes 2d8 lightning or thunder damage (your choice) on a failed saving throw, and half as much
damage on a successful one. You can use this feature a number o f times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
It's starting to bend, but we have one more thing to cover, spells. clerics have spellcasting abilities, and without concentration we are limited to healing or dps, at this point build whatever you enjoy playing the most... for me, that's dps, so i'll give a quick dps build. might as well take sacred flame, and thaumaturgy as cantrips. The main first level spell you want is guiding bolt. Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: 1 round
A flash of light streaks toward a creature of your choice within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 4d6 radiant damage, and the next attack roll made against this target before the end of your next turn has advantage, thanks to the mystical dim light glittering on the target until then.
Oops, did i forget about equipment? since you have proficiency in heavy armor and martial weapons, let's grab some chainmail, and a maul (warhammer if ur dm has a problem with spellcasting with a two handed weapon)... also cuz THOR!!!

So, let's do a quick combat test at level 1... assuming you go first, for extra dps goodness!!!!: first turn, cast hex as a bonus action (choosing dex as the aility score with disadvantage), and guiding bolt for 5d6 damage, using your movement to charge towards the enemy. The enemy (if they are melee) hit you, ouch. Time to rebuke them for 2d8 damage or dex save (with disadvantage) for half. Your turn... maul time!!! whack (with advantage) for 3d6 damage, and wash rinse, repeat. with cleric spellcasting, you could even have healing spells loaded up so that you can keep yourself up if the damage gets to be too much. The average damage from 2 full rounds of combat (again, assuming everything hit) is: 52 damage at level 1!!!!, besides that, you can be ranged spellcasting dps, healer, melee dps, and don't forget you're wearing heavy armor, so if u have to... tank.

Problems: If u are getting into a lot of close combat to pop off that thunderous rebuke, you have to roll concentration for hex everytime you get hit. Cleric hit die is pretty low, so you will make a poor tank. Your saves aren't special so you could be easily taken down by traps, or enemies that force you to make a saving throw. Thunderous rebuke is melee range only, so you have to be up close, getting hurt to (with low hit die) to make use of it....

I think this is a pretty broken class, if you guys can make it better, or think you have a better race/class build, Let's See IT!!!!!

[HoarsHalberd]

let's start with race. Human, the variant is.... technically balanced, i see no reason to keep players from using it, but it is amazing, and personally i see no reason to play anything but human.


It has some real contenders:
Half orc: More attribute points, extra crit damage and darkvision (as a human, if there was a feat that gave +1 strength and darkvision, I'd take it all day)
V-human benefit: feat, freedom of attribute placement, freedom of skill placement

Half elf: +2 cha and equal attribute freedom, 1 more skill, immunity to sleep and resistance to charm, darkvision.
V-Human benefit: Feat

Mountain Dwarf: 2 more attribute points, bonus proficiencies in tools, armour, weapons, darkvision, free movement in heavy armour with low strength, resistance to poison.
Human: Feat, skill, freedom of attribute placement, +5 ft.

On topic, I'd go a half-elf arcane trickster rogue with spells with no DC, expertise in stealth, persuasion, deception and thieves tools and maybe a two level dip into warlock for darkness/devil sight. Get crossbow mastery and stealth my way through a campaign as much as possible. For OP solo-ness, a rogue that can go invisible and cast pass without trace is going to be hard to beat. He might not have the overwhelming DPR, but catching and killing him is going to be impossible.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

That's a nice high-damage combo at lvl 1 with hex and Guiding bolt. Not sure how many enemies you'll face at first level that will have the HP to justify it though. And you better hope you don't blow your concentration save when you take that hit, since you've already used up all your spells for the day. In fact, I'd say any tactic that relies on a concentration spell and taking hits has an inherent flaw.

[ChubbyRain]

General OP and not really specifically... I'm not getting into MC options.

Water Genasi Knowledge Cleric is quite nasty without much effort.

In terms of martials the Cunning Knight (V.Human str based rogue w/shield master) can be pretty OP compared to other non-casters. Self generating advantage + sneak attack is fantastic.

[KorvinStarmast]

build discussion
OK, so what is it that you were building?
A warlock?
A cleric?
A warlock cleric?

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

Water Genasi Knowledge Cleric is quite nasty without much effort.

I'm curious, 'cause I'm not seeing it based on the book entries of that race/class. Is there some special ability this has over other clerics? Seems like just a normal cleric build without any particular "trick".

[rhouck]

Discussing level 1 "broken" is pretty pointless. If you want broken at level 1, then take take Heavy Armor Master which knocks off 3 damage from each attack against you. Kobolds, Cultists, Acolytes... they'll all be doing the minimum 1 damage to you almost all the time. Of course that lasts for a whopping 300 xp and then you're no longer level 1...

If realistically considering "broken", then I'd discuss class combos in the 5-10 and 11-15 ranges, as that's where the meat of relevant gameplay is really happening. There are all sorts of weird issues at levels 1-4 (e.g., heavy armor master, land druids, etc) that do not remain broken once you hit levels 5+.

[Beastrolami]

I'm curious, 'cause I'm not seeing it based on the book entries of that race/class. Is there some special ability this has over other clerics? Seems like just a normal cleric build without any particular "trick".

The "trick" is that we're basically multi-classing in warlock without losing a cleric level. You burn your free human feat for Hex, which requires no save, and costs a bonus action, but it gives you 1d6 extra damage on all attacks (not just 1 per turn) and you can choose a save which the target has disadvantage on. This allows any class to take one of the best class features from warlock (and since warlock level 1 can only cast 1 spell) you are taking warlock level 1, without your patron feature.


OK, so what is it that you were building?
A warlock?
A cleric?
A warlock cleric?

it's essentially a cleric/warlock multiclass, but it doesn't lose any cleric levels, so it is essentially a pure cleric dps build.


Discussing level 1 "broken" is pretty pointless. If you want broken at level 1, then take take Heavy Armor Master which knocks off 3 damage from each attack against you. Kobolds, Cultists, Acolytes... they'll all be doing the minimum 1 damage to you almost all the time. Of course that lasts for a whopping 300 xp and then you're no longer level 1...

If realistically considering "broken", then I'd discuss class combos in the 5-10 and 11-15 ranges, as that's where the meat of relevant gameplay is really happening. There are all sorts of weird issues at levels 1-4 (e.g., heavy armor master, land druids, etc) that do not remain broken once you hit levels 5+.

level 2 you can use your channel divinity to make any thunder or lightning damage max damage, and at level 3 you get 2nd level spells. level 4 another feat (player discretion), and level 5 3rd level spells. so you could cast shatter and channel divinity for 24 damage or save for 12. Again, i mentioned in the assumptions that it was a low level OP build, and i have heard rumors of breaking 6th level spells. The 30 avg damage per turn is pretty OP, even at 5th level, and the class doesn't lose any tanking, or dps capabilities, it is just most clearly OP at level 1.

[SharkForce]

quick correction: hex gives the target disadvantage on a *check* of your choice, not a save.

you can thus make them bad at grappling, or bad at talking to people, or bad at noticing things (all of which have value) but you cannot make them more likely to fail their save against a web or hold person spell.

but you *can* make them bad at escaping from the web spell, or recognizing an illusion as false.

[Beastrolami]

ahh you're right, that does make it less OP

but the fact that any human can get a better version of hunter's mark at level 1 makes them a lot more broken

[Psikerlord]

ahh you're right, that does make it less OP

but the fact that any human can get a better version of hunter's mark at level 1 makes them a lot more broken

Isnt Hex 1/day via magic initiate, and broken via concentration damage? I dont see this as a broken combo at all. A nice one, but not OP.

[Lolzyking]

I'm going to say that Variant Human Monk/rogue is a great contender for soloplay

17 level as Open hand monk,

Notes
-Proficiency in all saving throws
-Evasion
-Unarmored AC of 20
-3 20 hp self heals per long rest
-Unarmed strike is 1d10 and knocks prone or knocks back on hit
-Immune Charm, Fear, Poison, Disease, Magical aging, Immunity to 85 fall damage (70 feet of fall damage if they all rolled 6s, so a 100 ft fall is probably safe)
-You can speak with everything
-Deflect missiles
-move speed of 55 base, on walls and water too
-Stunning strike

The real game wreckers of openhand are Tranquility and quivering palm
- tranquility= Sanctuary for 8 hours, meaning the enemy has to pass a dc 18 wisdom saving throw to cast a spell or attack you after every rest.( I have literally walked straight through a big bads dungeon to talk to him, ask him to surrender, then walk out with his **** ***)
- Quivering palm, as if being untouchable was bad enough, monks have the last save or die in the game still.


Rogue
What do we get? 4 more skills, Thieves tools, Expertise( Stealth and Perception), sneak attack, thieves cant, cunning action, and the first archetype feature

Either go Assassin for round 1 crits, Poisoner kit and disguise kit proficency, Arcane trickster for mage hand shennanigans, or swashbuckler if the dm lets you for that sweet advantage.

- For background
Go with custom
Persuasion and Investigation,
Herb kit, navigators tools
Wanderer or researcher feature

list of proficiencies
-Insight
-Athletics
-Stealth (expertise)
-Perception (expertise)
-Sleight of hand
- Acrobatics
- Persuasion
-Investigation

tools
Alchemist tools
Thieves tools
Poisoner's kit
Disguise kit
Herbalism kit
Navigator's tools
mason tools

Feats
Vhuman feat Ritual caster, this is probably the final keystone of bull**** needed to troll the dm

Asi and stats
Point buy 27
15 dex +1 +2+2=20
15 wisdom +1+2+2=20
11con
10 int
10 str
10 cha

list of feats if you roll for stats and can afford feats while maxing out dex and wisdom
Skulker
Defensive duelist


This build isn't about DPR, even though it isn't bad at that, 4d10+20+2d6, if assassin 8d10+20+4d6 on round for a max of 112 round 1 damage, its average damage is 46 per round
Ac is 20 or higher (26 with defensive dueling)
proficiency in all saving throws, and a lot of other things.
Immunity to a lot of statuses
untouchable to a good number of creatures
has a save or die that works even if the enemy teleports away
Can speak to and understand anything that has any form of intelligence.
Ritual casting

[Beastrolami]

now that's what i like to see!!! pretty broken.... i also like the rogue warlock build with darkness and devil sight that someone mentioned

[Geodude6]

Aarakocra monk

[Lolzyking]

My favorite part of the monk with ritual caster

"chill the **** out mr lich, I'm out of ki and you are going to give yourself a aneurism if you keep trying to hurt me, wait for me to cast leomunds tiny hut, take a nap, and then I will give you the beating of a life time, okay?"

[Gnomes2169]

Aarakocra ANYTHING*

*Fixed.

More seriously, monk is okay since it increases the fly speed... But it locks the bird into melee, which sort of negates that advantage. A fighter/ ranger/ rogue who uses dex and ranged weapons would be a bit more devistating, especially with sharpshooter and a longbow (rogue would have to MC or grab the... great weapon master... feat... oh gods I never though it would actually be useful, to get the longbow goodness).

At that point, they can stay at 600 ft in the air and force disadvantage on attack rolls for every monster in the game. And be out of range for spellcasters. Before then, an Aarakocra can just fly at 150 ft and impose disadvantage on anything without a longbow.

A rogue or ranger can add a dash into that to esure that only the fastest flying enemies can catch up, or to ensure ground enemies can't escape (100ft flying with dash is no joke). This does make you basically immortal as long as you are outside/ in a high-ceiling place, so pretty op.

[Lolzyking]

Thou hast not met the monk dart, its fury is outrageous

[Beastrolami]

i've heard you can water whip enemies into the air for added fall damage as well (aarakocra elements monk)

[SharkForce]

*Fixed.

More seriously, monk is okay since it increases the fly speed... But it locks the bird into melee, which sort of negates that advantage. A fighter/ ranger/ rogue who uses dex and ranged weapons would be a bit more devistating, especially with sharpshooter and a longbow (rogue would have to MC or grab the... great weapon master... feat... oh gods I never though it would actually be useful, to get the longbow goodness).

At that point, they can stay at 600 ft in the air and force disadvantage on attack rolls for every monster in the game. And be out of range for spellcasters. Before then, an Aarakocra can just fly at 150 ft and impose disadvantage on anything without a longbow.

A rogue or ranger can add a dash into that to esure that only the fastest flying enemies can catch up, or to ensure ground enemies can't escape (100ft flying with dash is no joke). This does make you basically immortal as long as you are outside/ in a high-ceiling place, so pretty op.

or, you know, they just walk under a tree and now you can't shoot them at all. meanwhile, the rest of the party is getting slaughtered because they just lost your entire contribution.

if the party was attacked by a flying monster, would they just stand there drooling like idiots while it slaughters them from out of reach, or would they work to negate its advantage? why wouldn't monsters do the same?


Thou hast not met the monk dart, its fury is outrageous

eh, it really isn't. flurry and martial arts bonus attacks are unarmed only, unfortunately. monk darts will eventually do as much damage as a heavy crossbow... but can still only be thrown twice per round, and monks don't have any interesting bonuses to add.

[Gnomes2169]

or, you know, they just walk under a tree and now you can't shoot them at all. meanwhile, the rest of the party is getting slaughtered because they just lost your entire contribution.

if the party was attacked by a flying monster, would they just stand there drooling like idiots while it slaughters them from out of reach, or would they work to negate its advantage? why wouldn't monsters do the same?

The thing is that sharp shooter negates everything but total cover, and beyond running into a cave, house or hiding in a tropical rain forest, there is very, very little that will give a creature total cover from all possible angles. If a creature was attacking the party from 600ft away, the creature would have disadvantage on its attacks, and party members with longbows would attack back. Otherwise, unless there were caves, a city or heavy tree cover around, there isn't much a party can do to fight back... Unless your wizard/ sorc has meteor swarm. But that's cheating there. :smalltongue:

Also, the party does not come into the equation in this thread. The opening post literally asked for the best solo-character builds, so flying Aarakocra with a longbow is perfectly valid.


eh, it really isn't. flurry and martial arts bonus attacks are unarmed only, unfortunately. monk darts will eventually do as much damage as a heavy crossbow... but can still only be thrown twice per round, and monks don't have any interesting bonuses to add.

Additionally, a dart has a short range of 20, and a maximum range of 60. So the monk is out-ranged by: All shortbows and magic missiles, a good number of dragon breath weapons, all longbows (and until very high levels, the monk cannot dash to get out of reach of the longbow's short range), javelines, all boulders thrown by giants, a good number of siege weapons (of which, only the trebuchet and cannon can reach a person with a longbow), and a lot more things besides.

Throwing darts isn't exactly happy fun time for your monk.

[SharkForce]

The thing is that sharp shooter negates everything but total cover, and beyond running into a cave, house or hiding in a tropical rain forest, there is very, very little that will give a creature total cover from all possible angles. If a creature was attacking the party from 600ft away, the creature would have disadvantage on its attacks, and party members with longbows would attack back. Otherwise, unless there were caves, a city or heavy tree cover around, there isn't much a party can do to fight back... Unless your wizard/ sorc has meteor swarm. But that's cheating there. :smalltongue:

Also, the party does not come into the equation in this thread. The opening post literally asked for the best solo-character builds, so flying Aarakocra with a longbow is perfectly valid.


it can ignore partial cover all it wants. a single tree is going to make you impossible to see, and likely even provides total cover from above. which will give it disadvantage just like the people it is trying to shoot, if it can even shoot at all; most likely, they will step out, shoot (getting their full attack action), and it will be limited to making a single shot with a readied action.

then, it will run out of arrows, and there goes that.

hard to kill, sure. but it isn't going to crush encounters without difficulty.

[Gnomes2169]

Neither will a 17 monk/ 3 rogue. Or a cunning knight. Or really any solo class. However, (going with your tree example) the flying Aarakocra with sharpshooter can honestly just maneuver around the tree at about ground level while keeping enemies out of melee and still keeping them in sight. A single tree does not stop a flying foe with that much range.

It trades its ability to attack everything, all the time and in all the ways for massive ranged dominance, which keeps it from being attacked at all in most casses (much like the cunning knight). It can even grab stealth to make it more untouchable, given it is a dex focused build, and can do things like attaching self-buffing spells (with ranger or eldrich knight) and maneuvers (battlemaster or magic-less ranger) to inflict statuses/ more damage on enemies.

Running out of arrows is really the only problem the build has... Except every other build has the problem of running out of hitpoints. And after your shooty shooty Aarakocra runs out of arrows, they can then go to melee and begin expending their hit points like every other build has been doing all day.

Always-on flight and that much range is seriously just that good.

[Beastrolami]

just to clarify (and break up the monk argument) i said I was building a solo class, because there are too many factors and variables that go into having the perfect party... if u think you know the perfect party build, go ahead and say it, i think the main purpose of this thread is to find ways to break the game for players

[Lolzyking]

A monk will not lose to a ranged opponent because of deflect missles, also the monk/rogue clearly has bow access now.

monk level (17)+1d10+6 averages 28, most ranged attacks will never do 28 damage

[Gnomes2169]

Okay, so you stop one non-magic, non-breath, non-boulder, non-siege attack. And if you start monk, you actually don't get any of the rogue's weapon proficiencies, so no shortbow (which you could only fire twice for 1d6+5 to 1d6+8 damage depending on magic weapons (2d6 sneak attack on one) anyway) unless you start rogue (and then lose prof with any monk weapons not on the rogue list).

However, you have reached level 20. After any properly-scaled enemy's first attack, there will be a second and likely a third and fourth following it up. Since you only get one reaction a round, you aren't exactly going to be able to stop all of those attacks. Or you are going to fight a swarm of smaller enemies, who can fill the sky with arrows. Or you will fight spellcasters. And even equipped with a shortbow to get you out of basically melee (dart range), a lot of these creatures will equal or exceed your range.

On top of this, a fighter or ranger will get a fighting style (archery) which enhances their capabilities to fight like this, and they will also get different maneuvers, spells or subclass features (which can be maneuvers and spells). Monks are almost completely geared towards unarmed melee combat, and have nothing to enhance their ranged capabilities. As such, the fighter (any) or ranger (hunter, especially the no-magic variant) will be a superior choice to the monk.

Plus, they start with longbow proficiency and can rely on different stat lines that max dex and then just grab feats. Monk will want to max dex and wis, and will lose 1 of their ASI's from MC more than 1 level. They don't have any ASI's for feats.

[Lolzyking]

Okay, so you stop one non-magic, non-breath, non-boulder, non-siege attack. And if you start monk, you actually don't get any of the rogue's weapon proficiencies, so no shortbow (which you could only fire twice for 1d6+5 to 1d6+8 damage depending on magic weapons (2d6 sneak attack on one) anyway) unless you start rogue (and then lose prof with any monk weapons not on the rogue list).

However, you have reached level 20. After any properly-scaled enemy's first attack, there will be a second and likely a third and fourth following it up. Since you only get one reaction a round, you aren't exactly going to be able to stop all of those attacks. Or you are going to fight a swarm of smaller enemies, who can fill the sky with arrows. Or you will fight spellcasters. And even equipped with a shortbow to get you out of basically melee (dart range), a lot of these creatures will equal or exceed your range.

On top of this, a fighter or ranger will get a fighting style (archery) which enhances their capabilities to fight like this, and they will also get different maneuvers, spells or subclass features (which can be maneuvers and spells). Monks are almost completely geared towards unarmed melee combat, and have nothing to enhance their ranged capabilities. As such, the fighter (any) or ranger (hunter, especially the no-magic variant) will be a superior choice to the monk.

Plus, they start with longbow proficiency and can rely on different stat lines that max dex and then just grab feats. Monk will want to max dex and wis, and will lose 1 of their ASI's from MC more than 1 level. They don't have any ASI's for feats.

Fair enough about the weapon proficiency

but with Evasion, and Proficiency in all saves(plus a ki re roll on failed ones), breath weapons, and stray seige equipment aren't the scariest thing in the world

also with 110 movement with step of the wind, only a heavy crossbow/longbow/ eldritch sniper is at a safe firing range. but with 110 movement you could find full cover.

plus with tranquility, most of the time enemies lose their nerve when they point an arrow at you.

[Gnomes2169]

Fair enough about the weapon proficiency

but with Evasion, and Proficiency in all saves(plus a ki re roll on failed ones), breath weapons, and stray seige equipment aren't the scariest thing in the world

Fair enough on breath weapons in particular, though at higher levels the save DC's get ridiculous. However, siege equipment has an attack roll, it doesn't force a save.


also with 110 movement with step of the wind, only a heavy crossbow/longbow/ eldritch sniper is at a safe firing range. but with 110 movement you could find full cover.

80 movement base, 160 if you dash 1 ki as a bonus action), but enemies can move too. And you are still only making 2 attacks at +14 that deal 1d6+8 damage at most. Since you won't really have sharpshooter (you just don't have the ASI's), you will likely be contained to that 80 ft starting area a shortbow has, and if you move your full movement, you will have to fly back if you want to attack again, meaning that enemies will be able to attack you freely every-other round. Also, since it will be a choice between not having sharpshooter and not having 20 wis (and that maxed wisdom is rather important for you), if you are in an area with enough cover for you to fly and hide behind, you can bet that whatever you are fighting will take advantage of it too, and you will have just the worst time dealing with it.

The battle master fighter with a similarly enchanted longbow meanwhile is making 4 attacks/ round (possibly 8) at +16 that deal 1d8+8 apiece, with the possibility of adding up to 7d12 and secondary effects (like inflicting the feared condition to keep enemies from coming closer) per short rest. He has sharp shooter. So he can start from 400 ft away with no problem, fly 50 ft away, and not have to worry about counter attacks or a creature moving out of range. He also can take full advantage of cover without having to worry about anything but full cover from his enemies. In a straight comparison, the fighter will win hands down in the vast majority of situations, and often do it faster than the monk by multiple rounds. They deal more that 2x the damage at more than 2x the range.

Ranger is in a similar boat as the fighter, except instead of the rather insane single-target DPS, they can just throw out AOE/ on hit effects and concentration buffs with their spells. Still doing far more than the monk at range.


plus with tranquility, most of the time enemies lose their nerve when they point an arrow at you.

Read the spell sanctuary again (which is what Tranquility gives you as a free cast at the end of a long rest). The instant you take the attack action, the spell ends. Meaning that the instant you take the attack action, tranquility ends. So... No. Most enemies will keep their nerve just fine.

[Lolzyking]

That is correct, other classes will out do the monk at range, the reason I mention tranquility is that with it, a monk will wait until melee range before taking the attack action.

[Gnomes2169]

That is correct, other classes will out do the monk at range, the reason I mention tranquility is that with it, a monk will wait until melee range before taking the attack action.

Then why go Aarakocra in the first place? The strongest reason to grab the race is at-will flight, and being in melee basically invalidates that. Which is why I brought up that a more range oriented class that can take advantage of flight would be better at being solo with that particular race. Especially given a longbow's range. Your Aarakocra monk will be just as good as a wood elf (actually, slightly worse given their lack of immunities to sleep/ resistance to charm) at being a monk, and they only have darkvision on the variant human, both of which offer more to a melee-focused character than flying next to someone and getting locked in melee with them.

For a solo character, the more you can stay out of range, and thus prevent yourself from losing HP, the better it is. After that, adding in as much over-all effectiveness as you can in terms of DPR/ status effects will determine which particular build is superior to the others. Fighter will always be the DPR king, but ranger can do quite a lot with their arrows. Now that I think about it, something like a fighter (battlemaster) 11/ ranger (hunter) 9 would work absolute wonders, just given how they would mesh together in effectiveness.

[Beastrolami]

ok, so aarakocra's are Op... so are rogues, monks, fighters?rangers? what else u got for me? i listed a low level OP, u guys when high level, let's talk about mid level, 7-14? what's an OP build

[SharkForce]

the game is largely balanced quite well up to ~11th level imo. there are outliers, but it's all fairly close.

even the "broken" stuff at low levels tends to have a counter (not so much the moon druid spike at levels 2-4 i suppose).

even at 11th level, you're not looking at instant problems... it's just that game-changing abilities are starting to come into play for some people, while others gain not-so-game-changing abilities. it's the beginning of the problem that is going to grow over the next few levels.

[Shalom1211]

OK so I think I've made a great one for level 8, a 5 rouge 3 bard half elf,

With the +2 to charisma and the +1 to two other stats is a good start

If you like having proficiencies, you will have a field day with this class, start as a rouge and get your 4 and then two from your background, add in the two for a half elf and your already at 8, now throw in the bard multiclass and get one more and then choose college of lore for an extra three proficiencies, that brings it to 12.

Now for the expertise, you get 4 skills that you can have expertise with already and two more in one more rougue level.

Also an added bonus from the bard side each skill your not proficient in you can add have your proficiency bonus with jack of all trades to them

Finally leveling up from level 8 you will want to go with the rougue side as at level 6 two more expertise and you start building up your dodging, not to mention at rouge level 10 (or 11, I forget off the top of my head) any roll for an ability check your proficient in that's under ten, automatically becomes a ten is real helpful.

If you guys see anything that can be improved on let me know.

[Elminster298]

One of my favorites might not be straight up OP but is very versatile up close and at range. I'm AFB so forgive errors please.

I played a character that mechanically plays similar to Ironman. Final build is Eldritch Knight 8/Bladelock 12. Prioritize cha for Eldritch blast and lifeleech(? +cha to melee dmg) then either str for more dmg or con for more tank. Crossbow expert and warcaster for Eldritch blast in melee and concentration on hex. Agonizing and repelling blast for damage and forced movement. The build comes online at EK 7/BL 2 so CL 9. Great melee, decent ranged, fair-good tank based on invocations, spells, and choice of fighter style. Only thing truly lacking is a decent ability to heal which could be helped with a dip in cleric or bard but those don't have much synergy otherwise.

[Klorox]

Level 1: barbarian, or any variant human who wears heavy armor and takes the heavy armor master feat. Both give you damage reduction which is great at any level, but especially at level 1.

Level 2: circle of the moon druids. Shape change is great, and it just gets better for lasting in melee. Feel free to combine the druid with barbarian for damage reduction in animal form.

At most levels, an arcana cleric is a great option. Starting from level 1, I suggest the magic initiate feat. Take shillelagh and whatever druid cantrips you'd like. Take booming blade and green flame blade as your arcane cantrips and go to town. Everything for this character is based off wisdom. It's your attack stat and your casting stat. Works great.

Also, a nature cleric is a great option for similar reasons. Take shillelagh for lots of fun. The variant human can take heavy armor mastery, or a hill dwarf can wear plate mail with a low strength and still get around just fine.

There's a great guide on here for a paladin/sorcerer. This is another wonderful combo, and depending on your level split, you'll be dishing out a lot of damage because you can smite much more than any single classed paladin. You can also get your CHA bonus to saving throws and extra attack.

Any rogue with the booming blade cantrip is great. You can get it by being an arcane trickster or with the magic initiate feat.

Eldritch knights are also great. You can get an amazing armor class by level 3 (with the shield spell), and you're actually better off spending your ASI on your physical stats and on feats than on becoming MAD and worrying about INT.

I ran a EK to level 13 and never regretted having an 8 INT.

[Gignere]

For solo I like the variant half elf take Drow magic, rogue/Warlock build. Start rogue to get 4 skills, background urban bounty hunter. Then go 3 levels of fiend Warlock and take tome to get rituals for added versatility and familiar shenanigans. After that take 2nd level in rogue and the basic chassis of the build is done. You'll rely on SCAG cantrips + darkness and devil sight along with bonus action hide. For enemies that can see through darkness you will abuse armor of agathys and the rogue reaction to take half damage.

Abilities to start would be:

8 15 14 8 12 14 after racials it would be
8 16 15 8 12 16

Once you get to level 5 lock go back to rogue, you can pretty much pick anything from arcane trickster, assassin and swashbuckler to gain additional benefits and the choice is contingent on personal play style, they are all effective. I didn't completely build this to 20 pretty much stopped at level 12 5 rogue and 7 Warlock.

This character is mainly theorycraft since it is my backup character in my current campaign.

It has good skills, magic, dpr and good defense from being nearly untargetable from bonus action hide.

[Klorox]

Ooops, I forgot the solo part of the discussion.

Variant human arcana cleric (mono-class) or a half elf paladin 6/sorcerer X

Either can fight well, and cast both offensive and defensive spells.

[Sabeta]

I've played a number of builds via Adventurer's League and Roll20, so I thought I would weigh in a bit.

Aarakocra are plainly banned. A Level 1 Aarakocra with a +1 Magic Longbow could eventually solo a Tarrasque provided he had enough ammunition. Even if you can't beat his 25 AC you can hit on a Crit, so just bring more than ~400 arrows and you should be dandy. That being said, my favorite builds always incorporate Warlock.

Charisma Class X/Warlock 2 is really hard to go wrong with. Bard gets a little less than Paladin and Sorcerer do, but all of them have amazing synergy. I'll post my favorite

V.Human Paladin 17/ Warlock 3
-Oath of Ancients
-Fey Pact of Tome
Weapon: One-Hand Quarterstaff / Shield
Armor: Chainmail, Half Plate, Full Plate (Full Plate requires 15 Strength, making you slightly MAD, but is optimal)
Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Shillelagh, plus whatever else you want.
Spells: Bless, Hex, plus whatever else you think would be useful.
Feat: Polearm Master
Fighting Style: Dueling or Protection
Invocations: Agonizing/Repelling Blast, Devil Sight

Your choices here don't directly matter; however a Vengeance/Infernal, Ancients/Great Old One, or Devotion/Fey all work. Infernal is probably the most optimal, but good luck telling your DM you're a Paladin of Mielikki who just casually made a pact with Mephistopheles one night. I've met laissez-faire DMs who would allow something like that. I've also met DMs who will forbid Paladin/Cleric x Warlock completely because of a "Conflict of Interest".

As for stats. If you want Plate Armor you're going to have to give up something significant. You kind of need Charisma as high as it goes, and you want Con to be as high as possible as well, but the rest are dump stats for you. I would personally choose dumping Dex and Int, but it always leaves a sour taste in my mouth to willfully choose a stupid character but then always make smart battle decisions. Especially when you're doubling down as the party Face. Here's probably the best stat spread I could come up with

14/8/15/10/10/16

At level 4 put a point into Strength and Con to even those numbers out, and then you're good to go. You can take the Racial Bonus off of Strength and move it to Constitution if you're willing to take the Heavy Armor Master feat at some point. 8 Intelligence would be more optimal than 8 dex, but to be honest I like the idea of a slow bulky tank guy. Especially since we have Eldritch Blast to take care of things too far away from us to worry about. Oh, and you can Dump Strength if you're content in Half-Plate. I think there might be some issue casting like this since both of your hands are tied up, but I think Quarterstaff qualifies for Arcane Focus, so I don't think too many DMs would be super anal about it. If they are, just don't cast as often or take Warcaster at your soonest convenience.

The general idea here is to exploit Shillelagh to turn Paladin into a SAD Melee/Caster. Just throw it on whenever you're about to battle someone and then repeatedly whack them with the stick. 1d8+mods and 1d4+mods is pretty fun, but getting to throw in an extra smite every turn is icing on the cake. Devil's Sight takes care of being human (and then some), and Short Rest spell slots means more Smites/Day for glorious crusading. At Paladin level 11 Polearm Master goes from really good to broken as you gain a free 1d8 to every attack. Oh, and don't forget those opportunity attacks. If you find you're happy with your stats or you rolled stats you might have time to take Sentinel Feat as well for more delicious goodies.

There are other builds that can be just as or even more tanky, but this one hits the right balance between stupidly hard to kill and stupidly strong at the same time. At least, in my opinion.

[Jjj111]

I fee like you'll like this combo Beastrolami


level 9 - half orc 3 levels of assassin rogue with 6 levels of battle master fighter
1x great axe build + magic initiate for hex + GWM + reroll 1s and 2s + 4d8 maneuvering dice
each hit: 1d12 (great axe) + 1d6 (hex) + 10 + str

2d12 + 2d6 + 20 + 2*str \\ per turn with a free bonus action
4d12 + 4d6 + 40 + 4*str \\ per turn with action surge with a free bonus action

Adding in crits (and half orc brutal critical feature):
12d12 + 8d6 + 8d8 + 40 + 4*str = average of 194 (excluding rerolls, so more like 250) with max of 308\\ assuming all strikes hit on surprise round with assassin

[Sans.]

Obviously Deep Gnome Abjurer.

[JackOfAllBuilds]

Also to the build in the first post:
You can't cast Hex and Guiding Bolt on the same turn, as both are above Level 0 Cantrips

[Specter]

This isn't exactly broken, but at lower levels should be great at sustained damage and survival.

Half-Orc Champion 6
Fighting Style: Dueling (battleaxe and shield)
Feats: Mounted Combatant, Heavy Armor Master
ST18, DX10, CO16, IN10, WI12, CH9
58HP

So basically you get advantage against all medium > creatures, while still having 20AC, reducing non-magic damage by 3, diverting attacks from your horse and sporting a 19% crit chance (3d8+6, avg 19.5) with every attack. And if they reduce you to 0, you still get another shot at being alive. This guy could wreck a small platoon.

[Anderlith]

I have to say, if you are playing a Cha class, & not looking at getting as many feats as you can, as fast as you can, then Half-Elf is superior to Vuman.

Half elves get
+2 cha
+1 stat
+1 stat
2 Skills
Feyblood
Darkvision
& Elven language

Vuman get
+1 Stat
+1Stat
1 Skill
1 Language
1 Feat

At fourth level the halfelf will want a feat & the vuman would want cha unless they sorely wanted another feat. So the cha of the elf & the feat of the human cancel out, leaving the halfelf in the lead with more skills, darkvision, & fey resistances.

So a half paladin wins. (Or replace with other appropriate cha class)

[Phoenix042]

You asked for level 7 - 14, so here's a pretty good one at level 8:

Half-orc assassin rogue 3 / open-hand monk 5, an absolute ninja-assassin build.

For ability scores, we'll buy:

15 str / 15 dex / 13 con / 8 int / 12 wis / 8 cha

With half-orc, we end up with 17 str and 14 con, and at monk 4, we'll increase str and dex for a final set that looks like:

18 str / 16 dex / 14 con / 8 int / 12 wis / 8 cha

A modest 14 AC naked, but we don't really care about AC with this build. In a straight fight, we've got some decent tools at our disposal (flurry-knockdowns, extra attack, sneak attack against prone targets, etc). But we're not here for straight fights; this build is all about surprise. We're trying to synergize the assassin's ability to crit with every attack against opponents who haven't acted yet with the half-orc's extra die of damage on a crit, and combine that all with the monk's ability to get off four attacks in a row at level 5, two rounds in a row.

So lets look at a surprise attack from our ninja-assassin:

We can move up to 40ft without screwing up our attack routine, pouncing from the shadows like a panther. We make two regular attacks with the attack action, each at +7 to hit, and each normally does 1d6 + 4 damage. We do this damage whether armed or not, but we should make our first two attacks be with finesse weapons like shortswords, so that we can sneak attack if we hit with one of them.
Because we have our foe surprised, we have advantage on our attacks and all hits are crits (from assassinate), so they actually do 3d6 + 4 damage (the extra d6 is from half-orc's brutal critical feature). If at least one hits, we also do an extra 4d6 damage.
Then we can use our bonus action to flurry at the low cost of 1 ki point, and do two more attacks just like the first two, but with rider effects. Since we have advantage, it's not uncommon to land all attacks in the first round, which would be a total of 16d6 + 16 damage, or about 72. In resources, we have so far spent 1 ki point to land this combo.

If there's a ledge, cliff, or window nearby, we'll try to knock them back with open-hand technique and make them fall. If the fall is less than 60ft or so, we'll just follow them down next round, using slow-fall to ignore any potential falling damage we might take.

Then we roll initiative. With a +3, we have a decent chance of winning vs our target, though it's not a certainty by any means. If we do, we can actually repeat the previous round for another potential 72 damage, a total of 144 damage, before our enemy gets a chance to react. At that point, we've spent 2 ki points, out of our 5 per short rest. We still have plenty left over for more flurries if need be, but any round in which we're attacking a target that has acted is pretty much a wasted round, so this character should usually flee if he ever fails to kill someone after a full two-round combo like that.
So if they're still standing after our first two attacks this round, we can use stunning strike to try and keep them from acting next round too. This is unlikely to work often (DC 12 con save), but it's worth spending a ki point on in critical moments on the off-chance that it works, because if it does, we can repeat our 72 damage trick next round too, for a total of 216 damage before they have acted yet. At that point, most things in the monster manual never will act, ever again.

Out of combat, we've got expertise in stealth and one other skill (athletics is a solid choice), and plenty of skill proficiencies (7, including intimidate from half-orc). When I first thought up this character, I imagined him as a sort of snake-themed assassin, maybe trained by yaun-ti, and wielding two poisoned shortswords (not two-weapon fighting, just alternating which sword he uses with each attack, for the extra poison) in a sort of fang-like fighting style.

Other really good assassin rogue 3 / x 5 builds include battlemaster fighter (critical hits multiply the superiority dice too, and action surge + two weapon fighting can land 5 attacks in round one for absolutely silly damage - something like 122.5 on average with all hits, though this costs them all of their resources per rest) and paladin, for the smite-crit combo and really good single hit damage. The paladin can only really go full nova twice per day, but with three critical-hit smites in one round, it's a pretty devastating nova, at around 120.5 damage in one round. Technically, he could do that back to back if he won initiative, netting 241 average damage in two rounds, the same as the monk's damage across three rounds.

[MrFahrenheit]

Halfling (doesn't matter which subrace) divination wizard. Hits its stride at level 2 with portent, and capitalizes on it only a couple levels later when it takes the Luck feat at 4. Greater portent at 14 is icing on the cake, as this build is fully effective ten levels earlier. Talk about dice control...

[Malifice]

You asked for level 7 - 14, so here's a pretty good one at level 8:

Half-orc assassin rogue 3 / open-hand monk 5, an absolute ninja-assassin build.

For ability scores, we'll buy:

15 str / 15 dex / 13 con / 8 int / 12 wis / 8 cha

With half-orc, we end up with 17 str and 14 con, and at monk 4, we'll increase str and dex for a final set that looks like:

18 str / 16 dex / 14 con / 8 int / 12 wis / 8 cha

A modest 14 AC naked, but we don't really care about AC with this build. In a straight fight, we've got some decent tools at our disposal (flurry-knockdowns, extra attack, sneak attack against prone targets, etc). But we're not here for straight fights; this build is all about surprise. We're trying to synergize the assassin's ability to crit with every attack against opponents who haven't acted yet with the half-orc's extra die of damage on a crit, and combine that all with the monk's ability to get off four attacks in a row at level 5, two rounds in a row.

So lets look at a surprise attack from our ninja-assassin:

We can move up to 40ft without screwing up our attack routine, pouncing from the shadows like a panther. We make two regular attacks with the attack action, each at +7 to hit, and each normally does 1d6 + 4 damage. We do this damage whether armed or not, but we should make our first two attacks be with finesse weapons like shortswords, so that we can sneak attack if we hit with one of them.
Because we have our foe surprised, we have advantage on our attacks and all hits are crits (from assassinate), so they actually do 3d6 + 4 damage (the extra d6 is from half-orc's brutal critical feature). If at least one hits, we also do an extra 4d6 damage.
Then we can use our bonus action to flurry at the low cost of 1 ki point, and do two more attacks just like the first two, but with rider effects. Since we have advantage, it's not uncommon to land all attacks in the first round, which would be a total of 16d6 + 16 damage, or about 72. In resources, we have so far spent 1 ki point to land this combo.

If there's a ledge, cliff, or window nearby, we'll try to knock them back with open-hand technique and make them fall. If the fall is less than 60ft or so, we'll just follow them down next round, using slow-fall to ignore any potential falling damage we might take.

Then we roll initiative. With a +3, we have a decent chance of winning vs our target, though it's not a certainty by any means. If we do, we can actually repeat the previous round for another potential 72 damage, a total of 144 damage, before our enemy gets a chance to react. At that point, we've spent 2 ki points, out of our 5 per short rest. We still have plenty left over for more flurries if need be, but any round in which we're attacking a target that has acted is pretty much a wasted round, so this character should usually flee if he ever fails to kill someone after a full two-round combo like that.
So if they're still standing after our first two attacks this round, we can use stunning strike to try and keep them from acting next round too. This is unlikely to work often (DC 12 con save), but it's worth spending a ki point on in critical moments on the off-chance that it works, because if it does, we can repeat our 72 damage trick next round too, for a total of 216 damage before they have acted yet. At that point, most things in the monster manual never will act, ever again.

Out of combat, we've got expertise in stealth and one other skill (athletics is a solid choice), and plenty of skill proficiencies (7, including intimidate from half-orc). When I first thought up this character, I imagined him as a sort of snake-themed assassin, maybe trained by yaun-ti, and wielding two poisoned shortswords (not two-weapon fighting, just alternating which sword he uses with each attack, for the extra poison) in a sort of fang-like fighting style.

Other really good assassin rogue 3 / x 5 builds include battlemaster fighter (critical hits multiply the superiority dice too, and action surge + two weapon fighting can land 5 attacks in round one for absolutely silly damage - something like 122.5 on average with all hits, though this costs them all of their resources per rest) and paladin, for the smite-crit combo and really good single hit damage. The paladin can only really go full nova twice per day, but with three critical-hit smites in one round, it's a pretty devastating nova, at around 120.5 damage in one round. Technically, he could do that back to back if he won initiative, netting 241 average damage in two rounds, the same as the monk's damage across three rounds.

Youre doing surprise wrong.

[jaappleton]

Yuan-Ti with anything.

Any race that gets innate magic resistance shouldn't be allowed.

[jaappleton]

Halfling (doesn't matter which subrace) divination wizard. Hits its stride at level 2 with portent, and capitalizes on it only a couple levels later when it takes the Luck feat at 4. Greater portent at 14 is icing on the cake, as this build is fully effective ten levels earlier. Talk about dice control...

I've wanted to play this for awhile, playing it as a controller of fate, someone who gets visions of the future.

[Biggstick]

You asked for level 7 - 14, so here's a pretty good one at level 8:

Half-orc assassin rogue 3 / open-hand monk 5, an absolute ninja-assassin build.

For ability scores, we'll buy:

15 str / 15 dex / 13 con / 8 int / 12 wis / 8 cha

With half-orc, we end up with 17 str and 14 con, and at monk 4, we'll increase str and dex for a final set that looks like:

18 str / 16 dex / 14 con / 8 int / 12 wis / 8 cha

You can't multiclass into or out of Monk without 13 Wisdom.

[Steampunkette]

Yuani-Ti Pureblood Sorclock.

Stay at range, enjoy magic resistance when someone does pull out magic against you, wind-wall to keep regular ranged attacks from hitting.

[joaber]

Funny how many "broken" builds involve assasin 3. Looks like people forget that the crit only work in first round, agaist a surprised creature.
If combat take more than 3 rounds, if you don't surprise in half of encounters (which is normal), it's a expensive 3 level dip.
And nova damage is for BBEG, moat of the time, you'll not surprise that guy.
Good in paper, or with a soft dm.

[Specter]

Funny how many "broken" builds involve assasin 3. Looks like people forget that the crit only work in first round, agaist a surprised creature.
If combat take more than 3 rounds, if you don't surprise in half of encounters (which is normal), it's a expensive 3 level dip.
And nova damage is for BBEG, moat of the time, you'll not surprise that guy.
Good in paper, or with a soft dm.

Yeah, Assassin is mostly for killing mooks in one hit when you're scouting alone, a la Metal Gear Solid. On a full-party boss fight they aren't very dangerous.

[Dudu]

Yeah, Assassin is mostly for killing mooks in one hit when you're scouting alone, a la Metal Gear Solid. On a full-party boss fight they aren't very dangerous.

That's precisely how I see Assassin's skill in practice. Not that impressive at all.

[monkey3]

Take 2 levels of Warlock somewhere in there. I don't care what you do with the other 18 levels.
Max Chr. I don't care what you do with the other stats.

Win!

:)

[coredump]

let's start with race. Human, the variant is.... technically balanced, i see no reason to keep players from using it, but it is amazing, and personally i see no reason to play anything but human.
If something is so "amazing" that there is 'no reason to play anything else" That is kind of the definition of 'broken'




The last thing we need to take care of before we move on to the class build is the feat. We are going to take magic initiate
We are going to choose warlock. The cantrips don't really matter, i would advise choosing ones that don't require a roll because you don't have high cha, so... blade ward, and true strike. For the 1st level spell, we are going to take Hex.
Blade ward and True strike are probably the worst spells in the game.



So, let's do a quick combat test at level 1... assuming you go first, for extra dps goodness!!!!: first turn, cast hex as a bonus action (choosing dex as the aility score with disadvantage), and guiding bolt for 5d6 damage, using your movement to charge towards the enemy. The enemy (if they are melee) hit you, ouch. Time to rebuke them for 2d8 damage or dex save (with disadvantage) for half. Your turn... maul time!!! whack (with advantage) for 3d6 damage, and wash rinse, repeat. with cleric spellcasting, you could even have healing spells loaded up so that you can keep yourself up if the damage gets to be too much. The average damage from 2 full rounds of combat (again, assuming everything hit) is: 52 damage at level 1!!!!, besides that, you can be ranged spellcasting dps, healer, melee dps, and don't forget you're wearing heavy armor, so if u have to... tank.
Hex from MI is only 1/day, only lasts 1 hour, and takes concentration. Not overly useful.
Hex effects 'checks' not 'saves'.
You can't cast Hex and Guiding bolt on the same turn.
You are assuming you pass the concentration checks
Assuming everything hits, is a *big* assumption.


As for broken class... I would go with Evoker10+, because they are simultaneous, now every magic missile does 1D4+6 damage, so level 5 spell will auto hit for ave 59.5 damage. Can take Fighter 2 for Action Surge, or keep going wizard to cast level 8-9 magic missiles. (With Greater invis of course)


As for broken party.... take a standard mix, but every one starts with 2 levels of warlock for Devil Sight, and you need a method for casting Darkness. Now entire party gets adv on attacks, and badguys get disadvantage.

We did this on a playtest by accident, it was hilariously broken.

[nmitchell2]

Practically any full spellcaster that reaches 9th level spells is broken. Let's give you an example; my lvl20 Lore Bard with Wish and a lot of spare time before our epic campaign.

I have multiple Demiplanes under the effects of Hallow and Mordekainen's Private Sanctorum permanently with a Clone and a Teleportation Circle in, but I used Modify Memory to remove all knowledge of them from my character's memory. There is literally no possible way of locating or entering these Demiplanes unless I die and a Clone wakes up in one. I have one Demiplane "active" with a Teleportation Circle in that I use for storage. That's it. I'm literally immortal. Also, I have a Simulacrum that rules my kingdom in my stead because I'm off adventuring.

When we reach lvl21, I will use True Polymorph to turn into a Solar. Just for the bants.

[Mortis_Elrod]

Practically any full spellcaster that reaches 9th level spells is broken. Let's give you an example; my lvl20 Lore Bard with Wish and a lot of spare time before our epic campaign.

I have multiple Demiplanes under the effects of Hallow and Mordekainen's Private Sanctorum permanently with a Clone and a Teleportation Circle in, but I used Modify Memory to remove all knowledge of them from my character's memory. There is literally no possible way of locating or entering these Demiplanes unless I die and a Clone wakes up in one. I have one Demiplane "active" with a Teleportation Circle in that I use for storage. That's it. I'm literally immortal. Also, I have a Simulacrum that rules my kingdom in my stead because I'm off adventuring.

When we reach lvl21, I will use True Polymorph to turn into a Solar. Just for the bants.

are....are you light yagami?

[Beastrolami]

Haha, I was young and stupid when I created this thread.

Notable OP builds I've seen.

EK Tank, who stacks defensive buffs to AC, Absorb Elements, Shield, and Dodge action. (Disadvantage against 21 AC minimum, and resistance to elemental damge)

Yuan-ti Paladin Tank - Level 6 has +4 to all saves, advantage against magic, with 23 AC Shield of Faith. Oath of Crown can make a meat blender, trapping enemies within 30ft, and turning on Spirit Guardians.

Fighter, Paladin, Bard. Stack extra attacks and Action surge, Oath of emnity for Advantage and Smite with high level spell slots. easily do avg 150 damage.

Fighter Rogue - Get sharpshooter, expertise in perception, hide from 600 ft away and snipe with sneak attack, advantage and +10 from sharpshooter. Also Shoot, dash as bonus and kite forever.

Human Swashbuckler with Magic Initiate - go warlock, take booming blade and hex. Sneak attack scales with level, booming blade scales with level, hex adds some extra oomph. You are essentially immunse to AOPs, so you can take full advantage of booming blade.

Most OP high level casting is using Wish to cast Simulacra without time or material components. Instant clone of enemy under your control.

[Zene]

the game is largely balanced quite well up to ~11th level imo. there are outliers, but it's all fairly close.

even the "broken" stuff at low levels tends to have a counter (not so much the moon druid spike at levels 2-4 i suppose).

even at 11th level, you're not looking at instant problems... it's just that game-changing abilities are starting to come into play for some people, while others gain not-so-game-changing abilities. it's the beginning of the problem that is going to grow over the next few levels.



Could you expand on this a bit? Sorry if it's a dumb question, but my first two characters just hit Tier 3, so I haven't seen much Level 11+ play. Who starts to pull ahead?

[Specter]

Yuan-ti Paladin Tank - Level 6 has +4 to all saves, advantage against magic, with 23 AC Shield of Faith. Oath of Crown can make a meat blender, trapping enemies within 30ft, and turning on Spirit Guardians.

This is why Volo's races are not serious. They didn't consider any class or multiclass when creating them. Aasimar Paladin is also major league OP.

[SharkForce]

Could you expand on this a bit? Sorry if it's a dumb question, but my first two characters just hit Tier 3, so I haven't seen much Level 11+ play. Who starts to pull ahead?

pretty much any full spellcaster starts to go a bit nuts at that point. spells like mass suggestion and globe of invulnerability start to come into play. getting a third attack or +1d8 radiant damage on every attack are pretty good abilities, but they're not that big a deal compared to a full day multi-targeting mind control spell with no concentration requirement. later on, you start adding in some stuff that can really alter the world; planar binding or mass suggestion or geas in higher level slots get massive durations, long-range teleportation that you can use in the middle of a fight easily, non-concentration spells start to get a little more common, finger of death gives access to theoretically unlimited numbers of zombies, mirage arcane lets you quickly reshape massive areas of land with illusions that you can interact with physically, simulacrum lets you copy powerful enemies or allies easily, and it just starts to get out of hand.

fighters and paladins and similar continue to be useful in combat, but their ability to alter the world with just class abilities is significantly reduced, and if the full spellcasters start using those powerful abilities to change the world in their favour and turn adventuring downtime into stored power...

for example, a high level wizard or druid can use planar binding and summoning spells to create reasonably high CR minions that last for months at a time without requiring concentration. when a druid can spend a couple thousand otherwise mostly-useless gold to create a couple of fey giant ape bodyguards that have damage and hit points remarkably similar to a warrior, and can also block off a huge amount of battlefield terrain, can grapple, are honestly probably almost as intelligent (giant apes are i think int 7 :P ), you can start to feel like a fighter is perhaps not *that* essential. when a wizard can do the same but with invisible stalkers, or cast a long-lasting antipathy, or store an extra spell slot in a contingency during downtime, or otherwise increase their combat effectiveness later on, well...

the fighter and barbarian might justly ask how they are supposed to turn their downtime into saved up combat power to be used in emergencies as well, or even just yesterday's unused resources. when the fighter can watch a lone wizard or bard threaten to bring down entire kingdoms on their own, and then wonder why they don't get anything like that, the well-balanced game starts to look a lot less well-balanced. i don't know that i've ever seen anyone suggest that in 5e you absolutely need a powerful warrior to support the kingdom in order for it to be able to stand on its own, but it seems like they all need powerful spellcaster allies to have a prayer of withstanding a serious assault from a lone spellcaster, again, it doesn't seem that balanced to me at least :P

though again, this doesn't start until level 11, and certainly is not fully in place at that point... level 11 is the beginning of where you start to see spellcasters being able to change the world, while most non-spellcasters just keep on doing pretty much the same thing they've always done, but with slightly bigger numbers.

[Zene]

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you for the explanation!

[jaappleton]

OP race? Yuan-Ti has to take the cake. I have no issue with any Monstrous race but that one.

But I ban any race with at-will flight.

Ones that are damn strong but not banned? Human Variant and Volo's Aasimar.

[Beelzebubba]

...this doesn't start until level 11, and certainly is not fully in place at that point... level 11 is the beginning of where you start to see spellcasters being able to change the world, while most non-spellcasters just keep on doing pretty much the same thing they've always done, but with slightly bigger numbers.

...and the game that attempted to fix it, D&D 4e, that scaled up martial powers to have some spell-like environmental control, and scaled down casters to be less godlike, was so hated by a subset of the gaming populace that it sparked an online war that rivaled the demon/devil Blood War in the Abyss.

You have to go to different games to see martial characters with the reality-altering power of, say, Achilles, Heracles, or Gilgamesh.

[Phoenix042]

Youre doing surprise wrong.

Because I'm overvaluing it? Or do you think I'm handling the actual mechanics wrong?


You can't multiclass into or out of Monk without 13 Wisdom.

Ah, I overlooked that. I've been ignoring the ability score requirements for multiclassing in my games, so I guess I forgot.

That does break this particular build, thanks for pointing it out.

Still, the fighter or paladin versions are very strong in their niche, and it's not too hard to grab that 13 wisdom.


Funny how many "broken" builds involve assasin 3. Looks like people forget that the crit only work in first round, agaist a surprised creature.
If combat take more than 3 rounds, if you don't surprise in half of encounters (which is normal), it's a expensive 3 level dip.
And nova damage is for BBEG, moat of the time, you'll not surprise that guy.
Good in paper, or with a soft dm.

If you ignore niche or situational power, the game is too well designed to allow for the kind of builds I'd consider "broken," like the OP asked for.

(With the obvious exception of very high level spellcasters that have too much free time, both in and out-of game).

If you can set this up or you get lucky, there's no denying that it's very strong.

Really, the assassin 3 / something x builds aren't "broken" either, for exactly the reason several people all decided to so vehemently call me out on: the combo only works some of the time.

You shouldn't be trying to deny that adding bonus damage on a crit synergizes well with an ability that occasionally allows you to auto-crit, or that those features each also synergize with features that give you extra attacks. Whether the combo is always useful or not, trying to grab lots of features that make several other features you have more useful or powerful is exactly the kind of stacking-up style math shenanigan that "breaking" balance would require you to participate in, if breaking the game balance were possible.

And if this combo *never* works on anyone important or otherwise difficult to defeat, then your DM is likely being too oppressive. There is a middle-ground to be found.

Still, in this case it's not like the 3 levels in rogue gets you nothing except assassinate. The rogue dip has several useful features for such characters.

But apparently I've stepped on a sore spot, so I'll just start pretending assassin isn't really good at what it sets out to be good at from now on while posting in this forum.

[Matrix_Walker]

[SPOILER=Paladin/Warlock]Charisma Class X/Warlock 2 is really hard to go wrong with. Bard gets a little less than Paladin and Sorcerer do, but all of them have amazing synergy. I'll post my favorite

V.Human Paladin 17/ Warlock 3


I've got a level 5 Pally with a 16 STR and CHA... (Vengeance re-flavored to Justice), My GM for that game has greenlit me to MC into Warlock (Undying Light, Hello Radiant bonus!). I'm going for the Aura next level for sure, then I have to decide if I want two levels of Warlock before going to to 11 levels of pally...


Yuani-Ti Pureblood Sorclock.

Stay at range, enjoy magic resistance when someone does pull out magic against you, wind-wall to keep regular ranged attacks from hitting.

I was thinking Winged Tiefling for high altitude EB

[Crusher]

Human Swashbuckler with Magic Initiate - go warlock, take booming blade and hex. Sneak attack scales with level, booming blade scales with level, hex adds some extra oomph. You are essentially immunse to AOPs, so you can take full advantage of booming blade.

This is pretty close to what I was going to suggest: High Elf Swashbuckler, take Booming Blade as your cantrip.

No need to waste feats or multiclass. Try to talk the DM into letting you trade proficiency in a skill or tool for Whip proficiency (Lion Tamer background? You've got a zillion skills anyway, losing one won't hurt you much). If successful you might not even need to take Swashbuckler because you can take Spell Sniper at level 4 and wreak havoc.

Its a very solid build to begin with and gets bonus points for being one of the very, very few builds that's min/maxed with a race other than vHuman.

[Maxilian]

Wizard

Cast Glyph with Earthquake with the condition when certain item is affected it activate

Make that certain item the first rock that enter the glyph, use Flesh to Stone on yourself

Now you have a totally broken Wizard

[minemeer]

so... this char requires rolling well so not point buy but i thought i'd post it just to post it.
20 dex,con,char, other three can be whatever with preferably high wis
main class is valor bard with 1 level in life cleric and barb and 2 levels fighter.
fighter take defense fs
barb has 22 bc you have a 20 con/dex and a shield the shield activates defense fs for a 23 ac
take the tough and war caster feats
as a hill dwarf you get +1 hp for a +8 to hp. using average HP levels you should have about 200 HP at level 14
so 200 hp with self heal and bonus from life cleric of 2+spell level a cure wounds level 2 heals 2d8+14
with this method you can cast cure wounds or healing word and attack twice action surge to cure wounds and second wind
also at level ten you can take shield from wizard and heal from cleric and with 1 level of cleric you can cast shield of faith with shield of faith and shield you can temporarily have a 30 AC
you effectively have a semi skill monkey from bard with mediocre damage and the ability to tank everything and heal it

[minemeer]

so... this char requires rolling well so not point buy but i thought i'd post it just to post it.
20 dex,con,char, other three can be whatever with preferably high wis
main class is valor bard with 1 level in life cleric and barb and 2 levels fighter.
fighter take defense fs
barb has 22 bc you have a 20 con/dex and a shield the shield activates defense fs for a 23 ac
take the tough and war caster feats
as a hill dwarf you get +1 hp for a +8 to hp. using average HP levels you should have about 200 HP at level 14
so 200 hp with self heal and bonus from life cleric of 2+spell level a cure wounds level 2 heals 2d8+14
with this method you can cast cure wounds or healing word and attack twice action surge to cure wounds and second wind
also at level ten you can take shield from wizard and heal from cleric and with 1 level of cleric you can cast shield of faith with shield of faith and shield you can temporarily have a 30 AC
you effectively have a semi skill monkey from bard with mediocre damage and the ability to tank everything and heal it i'm a power gamer that utilizes my insane luck for stats to my advantage so any build i post will probably only be capable of being used with my luck

[Pex]

Goblin Fighter Battlemaster is quite effective. Move up to bad guy next to party member. Attack bad guy. Use Goad maneuver. Hope he fails the saving throw. Use bonus action to Disengage. Bad guy has Disadvantage on attacks not against the Goblin. If move to attack the Goblin, provoke Opportunity Attack from party member.

[minemeer]

Funny how many "broken" builds involve assasin 3. Looks like people forget that the crit only work in first round, agaist a surprised creature.
If combat take more than 3 rounds, if you don't surprise in half of encounters (which is normal), it's a expensive 3 level dip.
And nova damage is for BBEG, moat of the time, you'll not surprise that guy.
Good in paper, or with a soft dm. I can see the whole not getting surprise half the time HOWEVER a seriously weak char made mostly for RP in our game who has three levels of rogue for assassin as a result did 320 damage recently we had a special item in our campaign that does a d100 with the surprise its a crit and with a crit it activates half orcs brutal crit he did 3d100's in one attack and then used a bonus action to attack again using war cleric doing a fourth d100 SO it can be seriously destructive if used correctly not only that but at third level you get a sneak attack bonus of 2d6 you can use a bonus action to hide dash or disengage at level 2 AND get expertise and a free ability at level 1 it has massive benefits

[Zene]

Goblin Fighter Battlemaster is quite effective. Move up to bad guy next to party member. Attack bad guy. Use Goad maneuver. Hope he fails the saving throw. Use bonus action to Disengage. Bad guy has Disadvantage on attacks not against the Goblin. If move to attack the Goblin, provoke Opportunity Attack from party member.

Nice trick! Can also do this with vHuman with Mobile feat. Or just use a ranged attack; no need to disengage in that case.

[MaxWilson]

The point of this thread is to post the most broken, OP race class combos you have built, or seen. You are not limited to any particular role, but you should try to avoid generalizations, i.e. elf wizard level 5 with spell loadout x.

I vote for the Combat Medic: Sorcerer/Life Cleric/Lore Bard. Since you're asking for race too, let's make her a goblin for extra LOLz with Stealth Expertise. She's a ridiculously good support character.

Start off: Sorcerer 1 (for Con save proficiency and Shield and Expeditious Retreat and Fire Bolt), doesn't matter what type but I like Wild Sorc.
Then: Life Cleric 1 (for heavy armor, Bless)
Then: Lore Bard 1-6, take Aura of Vitality as one Magical Secret.
For your other magical secret, there are a number of decent options. (1) Conjure Animals is pretty good for the other magical secret and gives you some real combat punch when needed. (2) Pass Without Trace is another valid choice, if you want to be more of a ninja-medic type, and allows you to exploit your Nimble Escape even while wearing heavy armor. (3) Spike Growth is a pretty good control spell.

At this point, you're an 8th level spellcaster, and you have spell slots 4/3/3/2. Even a single 3rd level spell slot on Aura of Vitality heals 120 HP per casting, and a 4th level slot heals 130 HP, so you can heal 620 HP per long rest and still have seven spell slots left over for Bless/Faerie Fire/Sanctuary/Shield of Faith/whatever. Plus of course you have Cutting Words like any other Lore Bard, and you have both Expertise (in Stealth of course, and probably Perception or Athletics for the other) AND Nimble Escape to keep you safe during combat, plus heavy armor whenever you want it.

Then: Sorcerer 2-3. Take Careful and Extended Spell as your metamagics. I recommend Web as one of your 2nd level spells, and perhaps Blur or Enhance Ability as the other, depending on how combat-centric you want to be.

Now you're 10th level, and you have 4/3/3/3/2 spell slots. A 3rd level spell slot plus a sorcery point now buys you Extended Aura of Vitality, which heals 240 HP per casting. 4th level slots buy you 260 HP, and 5th level slots buy you 280 HP, for a grand total of 2060 HP of healing per long rest--not that you'll ever need it, because honestly even merely 620 HP of healing probably broke the game wide open back at 8th level. In fact, even regular 70-HP Aura of Vitality makes the game pretty easy in my opinion (two castings can get a near-dead Barbarian back on his feet at full HP), so the Combat Medic version is ridiculous overkill and basically makes it so that attrition is not a thing at your table.

In addition, since you're not ACTUALLY going to be spending all of those spell points on healing, you can spend time casting spells such as Careful Web and Careful Stinking Cloud in just the right location so that the party can fight inside of it (automatically making any saves, because Careful) and the enemy can't reach them without subjecting themselves to the effect (and enemies are NOT immune). Careful Web is a cheap and powerful combo that both imposes disadvantage on enemy attacks (if they are stuck), gives allies advantage to attack them (if they are stuck), slow enemies down (difficult terrain), and lets Skulkers exercise their preternatural hiding abilities to hide (because light obscurement). Careful Stinking Cloud simply denies enemies attacks and other actions, plus creates heavy obscurement which can give you advantage on certain attacks and (again) allows you to hide, even without Skulker. (Stinking Cloud also goes well with animated skeletons tossing nets, btw, if anyone in the party happens to have skeletons, since you can't leave the cloud without escaping the net, and you can't escape the net without your action, which the stinking cloud seriously impairs. Nice synergy. Also, the heavy obscurement within the cloud cancels out the usual disadvantage penalties for throwing nets within 5' of the target.)

After 10th level you can do whatever you want. I like the idea of going Chainlock 5 for some more offense plus short-rest spell slots (for even MORE healing, 480 HP per short rest, plus infinitely bankable sorcerer spell slots) and sinking the rest in Lore Bard so you wind up as a Sorcerer 3/Life Cleric 1/Warlock 5/Lore Bard 6, with 8th level spell slots for Mass Suggestion and Planar Binding. The only really important thing you miss out on relative to a full Bard is Wish access, but that's not needed for a support caster role. (You also miss out on two ASIs, but again, they are not really needed for a support caster.) You still have Raise Dead and Greater Restoration, plus ridiculously good HP healing, Bless access, Cutting Words, good AC + Shield spell, four magical secrets, etc., etc.

[Klorox]

Goblin Fighter Battlemaster is quite effective. Move up to bad guy next to party member. Attack bad guy. Use Goad maneuver. Hope he fails the saving throw. Use bonus action to Disengage. Bad guy has Disadvantage on attacks not against the Goblin. If move to attack the Goblin, provoke Opportunity Attack from party member.

I love it.

[Klorox]

IMHO, for power it's hard to beat a yuan-ti paladin 2/sorcerer X.

You're almost a full caster, and you can shake it up in melee too.

[the_brazenburn]

A variant human paladin. For your skill, pick Animal Handling. Buff Strength and Dex. High stats in both of those. For your feat, pick Dual Wielder. Now for the OP... By 7th or 8th level, you should be able to attain a pair of +1 lances and a warhorse. Scale mail (maybe +1). You can now deal 4d12 (lance)+20 (assuming Strength 18)+7d8 (divine smite) in one turn. That's an average total of 72 damage in one turn. OP.

[Findulidas]

I personally think that there are many inherent balance issues with many of the monster races in volo, not just the yuan ti. Although that one certainly is the most op one. Abusing the reach of the bugbear, dexbased kobold fighter and perhaps even the goblin ability are just a bit strong. Granted these are not strong enough for me to be upset about it if the DM allows a PC to pick it unlike the yuanti though.

[Maxilian]

I personally think that there are many inherent balance issues with many of the monster races in volo, not just the yuan ti. Although that one certainly is the most op one. Abusing the reach of the bugbear, dexbased kobold fighter and perhaps even the goblin ability are just a bit strong. Granted these are not strong enough for me to be upset about it if the DM allows a PC to pick it unlike the yuanti though.

Why a Kobold Fighter? He have no way to work around the sunlight sensitivity thing.

[Findulidas]

Why a Kobold Fighter? He have no way to work around the sunlight sensitivity thing.

In most of my campaigns 75% of all the fights have been outside of sun, inside that cave, in the dungeon, in the tower, in the thick forest, in the mist, in the dark land of mordor, in the castle, during night/dusk/early dawn or you name it. When the sun is a problem then the disadvantage is nullified by the advantage you get from the ability. In campaigns where sun isnt present you just have advantage on all ranged attacks in any decent party. Thats just a bit too much for me.

Granted -2 strength is a bitch, but as a dex based fighter strength is a dump stat. The race just is badly made overall with minus stats, sunlight sensitivity and a really op ability.

[KorvinStarmast]

A monk will not lose to a ranged opponent because of deflect missles, also the monk/rogue clearly has bow access now.

monk level (17)+1d10+6 averages 28, most ranged attacks will never do 28 damage
If you make the Monk out of a Wood Elf, you have Long Bow proficiency at level 1.

[krunchyfrogg]

so... this char requires rolling well so not point buy but i thought i'd post it just to post it.
20 dex,con,char, other three can be whatever with preferably high wis
main class is valor bard with 1 level in life cleric and barb and 2 levels fighter.
fighter take defense fs
barb has 22 bc you have a 20 con/dex and a shield the shield activates defense fs for a 23 ac
take the tough and war caster feats
as a hill dwarf you get +1 hp for a +8 to hp. using average HP levels you should have about 200 HP at level 14
so 200 hp with self heal and bonus from life cleric of 2+spell level a cure wounds level 2 heals 2d8+14
with this method you can cast cure wounds or healing word and attack twice action surge to cure wounds and second wind
also at level ten you can take shield from wizard and heal from cleric and with 1 level of cleric you can cast shield of faith with shield of faith and shield you can temporarily have a 30 AC
you effectively have a semi skill monkey from bard with mediocre damage and the ability to tank everything and heal it

If you need "incredible luck with rolling" to build a power character, the character isn't broken, the player is.

Do it with point buy.

[minemeer]

If you need "incredible luck with rolling" to build a power character, the character isn't broken, the player is.

Do it with point buy. you are right you can probably do the same with 32 point buy thoughthis is just a char i made and thought i'd post

[Potato_Priest]

Halfling/gnome beast master rangers are OP, in the same vein as Aaracockra.

They can pick a pteranodon as their beast, and ride it to shoot things from very long ranges. The Pteranodon even has the flyby feature, so they an engage in melee almost risk-free.

[sightlessrealit]

Wizard

Cast Glyph with Earthquake with the condition when certain item is affected it activate

Make that certain item the first rock that enter the glyph, use Flesh to Stone on yourself

Now you have a totally broken Wizard

<-< I don't get it.........

[Pex]

<-< I don't get it.........

The wizard is literally broken.

[DnD Coliseum]

mystic dwarf is quite broken

[Beastrolami]

mystic dwarf is quite broken

Could you elaborate?

also.... fighter (sharpshooter) is pretty OP.

At level 20, you can make 4 attacks per round. On the first round of combat, you can make 5 attacks per round, and action surge for 10. Each of these attacks deals 1d8+5(dex)+10(sharpshooter feat)+12(sharpshooter class, half level+2) for a total of 10d8 (avg 45)+50+100+120 damage = 315 damage assuming every attack hits, and there are no crits. If you have a remotely competent party, or magic items, you can have an ally give you advantage for crit fishing, and you have enough feats as a fighter you can take elven accuracy for three dice rolls on advantage meaning you will crit at least once, in 10 shots, and you are pretty much guaranteed to hit with all 10. Not to mention, you can do this from 600 feet away without any buffs or magic items, although they can make the build even scarier.

[Sir cryosin]

The point of this thread is to post the most broken, OP race class combos you have built, or seen. You are not limited to any particular role, but you should try to avoid generalizations, i.e. elf wizard level 5 with spell loadout x.

I have been tinkering, and believe i have found the best SOLO class. i know there are some amazing things you can do with support, and i'm not trying to build the best party possible (although we should try that). This class is good enough it shouldn't need a party, and covers most of the roles as well if not better than any other single class.

Assumptions:
27 point buy system (lets be honest, it's more fair this way)
optional feat rule, including human variant (who doesn't use this?)
low level character (i'm sure it would work well at higher levels, but it does best at low level 1-3)
all attacks hit (this is for the combat sim at the end... of course it's not realistic, but it actually tips the scale in our opponent's favor)

The Build
let's start with race. Human, the variant is.... technically balanced, i see no reason to keep players from using it, but it is amazing, and personally i see no reason to play anything but human.
ability score increase: two different ability scores of your choice increase by 1.
skills: you gain proficiency in one skill of your choice.
feat: you gain one feat of your choice.

so let's buy our ability points: 15 wis (9), 15 con (9), 12 str (4), 10 dex (2), 10 cha (2), and 9 int (1). (27 points)
Human variant lets us put our ability points in wis and con, for +3 wis, and con, +1 str, and -1 int (this last one can be moved to either dex or cha if u want. The next step is the skill proficiency, and that all depends on the type of game you are apart of, so i am going to leave skills and background up to you, this is a build, not a character mold.

The last thing we need to take care of before we move on to the class build is the feat. We are going to take magic initiate Choose a class: bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard. You learn two cantrips of your choice from that class’s spell list.
In addition, choose one 1st-level spell from that same list. You learn that spell and can cast it at its lowest level. Once you cast it, you must finish a long rest before you can cast it again.
Your spellcasting ability for these spells depends on the class you chose: Charisma for bard, sorcerer, or warlock; Wisdom for cleric or druid: or Intelligence for wizard.
We are going to choose warlock. The cantrips don't really matter, i would advise choosing ones that don't require a roll because you don't have high cha, so... blade ward, and true strike. For the 1st level spell, we are going to take Hex. Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: 90 feet
Components: V, S, M (the petrified eye of a newt)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
You place a curse on a creature that you can see within range. Until the spell ends, you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage to the target whenever you hit it with an attack. Also, choose one ability when you cast the spell. The target has disadvantage on ability checks made with the chosen ability. If the target drops to 0 hit points before this spell ends, you can use a bonus action on a subsequent turn of yours to curse a new creature. A remove curse cast on the target ends this spell early.
that's pretty OP with almost any casting class, the problem with the spell is you can't cast another concentration spell, so this won't work well with a support class. It would work well with almost any other class tho, the one i believe is the most OP is Cleric.
The first thing to do when creating a cleric is choosing a domain, and i choose (you pikachu!!!) Tempest. bonus proficiencies
At 1st level, you gain proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor.
Also at 1st level, you can thunderously rebuke attackers. When a creature within 5 feet o f you that you can see
hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to cause the creature to make a Dexterity saving throw.
The creature takes 2d8 lightning or thunder damage (your choice) on a failed saving throw, and half as much
damage on a successful one. You can use this feature a number o f times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
It's starting to bend, but we have one more thing to cover, spells. clerics have spellcasting abilities, and without concentration we are limited to healing or dps, at this point build whatever you enjoy playing the most... for me, that's dps, so i'll give a quick dps build. might as well take sacred flame, and thaumaturgy as cantrips. The main first level spell you want is guiding bolt. Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: 1 round
A flash of light streaks toward a creature of your choice within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 4d6 radiant damage, and the next attack roll made against this target before the end of your next turn has advantage, thanks to the mystical dim light glittering on the target until then.
Oops, did i forget about equipment? since you have proficiency in heavy armor and martial weapons, let's grab some chainmail, and a maul (warhammer if ur dm has a problem with spellcasting with a two handed weapon)... also cuz THOR!!!

So, let's do a quick combat test at level 1... assuming you go first, for extra dps goodness!!!!: first turn, cast hex as a bonus action (choosing dex as the aility score with disadvantage), and guiding bolt for 5d6 damage, using your movement to charge towards the enemy. The enemy (if they are melee) hit you, ouch. Time to rebuke them for 2d8 damage or dex save (with disadvantage) for half. Your turn... maul time!!! whack (with advantage) for 3d6 damage, and wash rinse, repeat. with cleric spellcasting, you could even have healing spells loaded up so that you can keep yourself up if the damage gets to be too much. The average damage from 2 full rounds of combat (again, assuming everything hit) is: 52 damage at level 1!!!!, besides that, you can be ranged spellcasting dps, healer, melee dps, and don't forget you're wearing heavy armor, so if u have to... tank.

Problems: If u are getting into a lot of close combat to pop off that thunderous rebuke, you have to roll concentration for hex everytime you get hit. Cleric hit die is pretty low, so you will make a poor tank. Your saves aren't special so you could be easily taken down by traps, or enemies that force you to make a saving throw. Thunderous rebuke is melee range only, so you have to be up close, getting hurt to (with low hit die) to make use of it....

I think this is a pretty broken class, if you guys can make it better, or think you have a better race/class build, Let's See IT!!!!!


If your looking for damage would it not be better to go with the light domain to pick up scorching ray. Scorching ray does 2d6 per ray with hex your adding a extra 1d6 to each ray. But the problem is you only get hex for a hour per day. Sorry I don't know if this was a low lv build.

[Sir cryosin]

Halfling/gnome beast master rangers are OP, in the same vein as Aaracockra.

They can pick a pteranodon as their beast, and ride it to shoot things from very long ranges. The Pteranodon even has the flyby feature, so they an engage in melee almost risk-free.

Yes the pet won't provoke aoo's but you are also leaving the enemy threating area. So they can hit you.

[Sir cryosin]

Wizard

Cast Glyph with Earthquake with the condition when certain item is affected it activate

Make that certain item the first rock that enter the glyph, use Flesh to Stone on yourself

Now you have a totally broken Wizard

I don't see that as op just clever.

[Maxilian]

I don't see that as op just clever.

Its a joke... and its not supposed to be OP, its supposed to be Broken... like the Wizard.:smallbiggrin:

[SharkForce]

I don't see that as op just clever.

*facepalm*

it's a joke. the wizard has literally been broken into pieces.

[Zene]

Yes the pet won't provoke aoo's but you are also leaving the enemy threating area. So they can hit you.

The mount is the one moving, so the mount is the one that provokes. Ordinarily, if a creature gets an attack of opportunity against a mount, it can choose to target the rider instead (I think it's in the Mounted Combat rules section of the PHB, don't have it handy though). However in the case of flyby, the mount does not provoke, so there is no opportunity for the opponent to choose to hit the rider instead. Flyby on mounts is pretty insane like that.

[krunchyfrogg]

The mount is the one moving, so the mount is the one that provokes. Ordinarily, if a creature gets an attack of opportunity against a mount, it can choose to target the rider instead (I think it's in the Mounted Combat rules section of the PHB, don't have it handy though). However in the case of flyby, the mount does not provoke, so there is no opportunity for the opponent to choose to hit the rider instead. Flyby on mounts is pretty insane like that.

Is there some official ruling on this?

It's pretty darn cool.

[Maxilian]

Is there some official ruling on this?

It's pretty darn cool.

This is the closest i could find, but same thematic.
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/06/09/mount-disengage/

http://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/04/20/can-a-mount-disengage/

[EvilAnagram]

I think we should take the time to extoll the virtues of stupid choices.

Specifically, the Lightfoot Halfling Wild Sorc/Divination build.

St 8 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 13 Wis 9 Cha 16

Luck at level 4, two level dip for Divination. And throw in a three level dip into Lore Bard.

At level 11, you get two Diviner rolls, six sorcery points for Bend Luck, advantage on demand, and Lore Bardic Inspiration, plus the Lucky rerolls and the Lucky Halfling feature.

I don't know if you'll be effective, but everyone around you will.

[Destructor]

On topic, I'd go a half-elf arcane trickster rogue with spells with no DC, expertise in stealth, persuasion, deception and thieves tools and maybe a two level dip into warlock for darkness/devil sight. Get crossbow mastery and stealth my way through a campaign as much as possible. For OP solo-ness, a rogue that can go invisible and cast pass without trace is going to be hard to beat. He might not have the overwhelming DPR, but catching and killing him is going to be impossible.

Sounds a lot like my character: I have a half-elf swashbuckler rogue with hexblade pact of the blade warlock (3 level dip). Nice DPS with two handaxes (Hexblade lets you use them with CHA), and of course, being invisible is also fun. Invisibility, Darkness as my 2nd level spells, and any 1st level that will help is good (I personally pick Hex and Charm Person).
Invocations: Devil's sight, Agonizing blast (yes, I'll have the cantrip)

Eldritch blast will be our ranged attack option, and minor illusion cantrip for obvious reasons.

As for the skills: Deception (Expertise), Stealth, Intimidation (Expertise), Persuasion, Sleight of hand, Acrobatics, Insight (Expertise), Perception. Also expertise in Thieves' Tools
I didn't pick Stealth Expertise, because that will be covered by invisibility and Darkness.

I would personally pick the Charlatan background, but it's really your choice.

It would end up as a slightly higher-DPS option, a party face, and the guy who nobody can see. I love rogues

[MilkmanDanimal]

I think we should take the time to extoll the virtues of stupid choices.

Specifically, the Lightfoot Halfling Wild Sorc/Divination build.

St 8 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 13 Wis 9 Cha 16

Luck at level 4, two level dip for Divination. And throw in a three level dip into Lore Bard.

At level 11, you get two Diviner rolls, six sorcery points for Bend Luck, advantage on demand, and Lore Bardic Inspiration, plus the Lucky rerolls and the Lucky Halfling feature.

I don't know if you'll be effective, but everyone around you will.

Taking 20 did a video basically on that character. It was called "The Most Annoying Character Ever", because all you'd ever do at that table would be watch that player reroll.

[Keravath]

Hex is once/long rest using magic initiate ... requires concentration ... which won't last on a 1st level character in melee without warcaster or con save proficiency. Hex only give disadvantage on ability checks and not saves.

It is an effective combination if you want to use most of your spell resources in one round. However, far from OP due to resource usage.

----------

In the longer term, I would think a yuan-ti pureblood, hexblade warlock, + sorcerer or paladin could be very effective.

[MaxWilson]

The thing is that sharp shooter negates everything but total cover, and beyond running into a cave, house or hiding in a tropical rain forest, there is very, very little that will give a creature total cover from all possible angles.

If you're caught in the open with no options for total cover, just drop prone. Sharpshooter now has disadvantage against you, which generally makes the -5/+10 option a bad idea.

Also, total cover doesn't need to protect you from all possible angles to be useful. WWI trenches obviously didn't protect you from artillery shells bursting above you, or enemies in your own trench segment, but they were still useful, and total cover is equally useful in 5E combat if you've got it. It constrains your enemy's tactical options. One of the many reasons why Mold Earth is a great cantrip, f'rex.

[Gadzooks]

If we're talking about lower levels(As the thread was supposed to be about I think), then I don't think you can beat a Barbarian 1/Circle of the Moon Druid 2. With resistance from the Barbarian and 2 Wild shapes using, say, a Dire wolf(which I believe has 37 hit points), you can get to around 100 effective hit points total. Especially at lower levels, I think that's pretty OP.

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

Weird. 3 levels of warlock won't give you necromancy...

[Marywn]

Tabaxi monk

[Man_Over_Game]

Gnome + STR Tank. Gnomes have advantage on mental saving throws. Good for Barbarian or Moon Druid.
Flight + Monk. Monks benefit from mobility and have Slowfall for when flight turns against you. Grab Kensei or Sun Soul and go to town.
Tortle + melee caster. The high AC means you no longer have to worry about MADness, and you can just afford to stack your casting attribute and Constitution. Works great with Sorcerer and Shocking Grasp.
Drow/ Feral Tiefling + Gloom Stalker Ranger. Gain Darkness as a spell and see through it like a Warlock.
Half Elf (Variant: High Elf) + Charisma Gish. Get a free melee cantrip while improving your Charisma score.
VHuman + Fighter. It wouldn't be cliché if it wasn't worth doing. So many options here, between starting the GWM, Sentinel, PAM combo or combining Crossbow Expert with Archery.
Ghostwise Halfling + Moon Druid. Telepathically talk while shapeshifted!
Lightfoot Halfling + Ranged Rogue. Hide behind allies each turn for an easy ranged, consistent sneak attack (Talk with DM before abusing).
Hill Dwarf + Gish. +1 HP per level is enough for most Gish characters to feel tanky enough to stick around on the front lines.
Half Orc + Moon Druid. Being knocked out of your wild shape can be a scary thing, especially if you're surrounded. You will now greatly improve your chances to jump back into wild shape or escaping. Additionally, with the large number of attacks from Wild Shape creatures, you can get good mileage out of your Half Orc critical feature.

[Keravath]

This isn't exactly broken, but at lower levels should be great at sustained damage and survival.

Half-Orc Champion 6
Fighting Style: Dueling (battleaxe and shield)
Feats: Mounted Combatant, Heavy Armor Master
ST18, DX10, CO16, IN10, WI12, CH9
58HP

So basically you get advantage against all medium > creatures, while still having 20AC, reducing non-magic damage by 3, diverting attacks from your horse and sporting a 19% crit chance (3d8+6, avg 19.5) with every attack. And if they reduce you to 0, you still get another shot at being alive. This guy could wreck a small platoon.

Just to point out - you can't get 18 strength and 2 feats on a half-orc at level 6 using point buy.

[Keravath]

.. lots of good suggestions deleted ..
Drow/ Feral Tiefling + Gloom Stalker Ranger. Gain Darkness as a spell and see through it like a Warlock.
..


I don't see this one. Gloomstalker gives you darkvision, as do drow and tiefling. However, I don't think any of them give you the ability to see through magical darkness. Am I missing something?

The only ways I know to get the darkness-devils sight ability are warlock and shadow sorcerer when they use spell points to cast darkness.

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't see this one. Gloomstalker gives you darkvision, as do drow and tiefling. However, I don't think any of them give you the ability to see through magical darkness. Am I missing something?

The only ways I know to get the darkness-devils sight ability are warlock and shadow sorcerer when they use spell points to cast darkness.

Gloom Stalker allows you to see through normal and magical darkness, although some non-official resources may not reflect this properly. That's why it was such a big deal when it first came out, because the only way to see through magical darkness before this was with Warlock.

[Edit] Whoops, I was wrong. I totally thought that it gave you magical darkvision. Sorry about that.

One interesting thing of note is that it does still make you invisible to creatures who rely on darkvision to see you. So even though they can see through the magical darkness, they don't see you. And you don't see them. So you both attack each other normally (assuming you know what square they're in).

[JackPhoenix]

This thread is year and half old. Just because one person ignore the rules doesn't mean everyone has to.


Just to point out - you can't get 18 strength and 2 feats on a half-orc at level 6 using point buy.

You can, if one of those feats gives you +1 Str... like, say Heavy Armor Master.

[Damon_Tor]

My favorite part of the monk with ritual caster

"chill the **** out mr lich, I'm out of ki and you are going to give yourself a aneurism if you keep trying to hurt me, wait for me to cast leomunds tiny hut, take a nap, and then I will give you the beating of a life time, okay?"

What Lich wouldn't just use Dispel Magic on the hut?

[BarneyBent]

Re the OP, Hex seems completely wasted on a character that is a) in melee, b) generally only gets one attack per round, and c) has far better uses for both concentration and/or bonus action (Spiritual Weapon will outdo Hex damage in most cases, and definitey once you start scaling; Bless probably better than Hex in most cases at lower levels, while Spirit Guardians is amazing once you get it).

A better option would be to pair with Monk or Fighter (esp with PAM). There is no concentration competition, and while there is competition for the bonus action, that’s only when you’re trying to get more attacks to benefit from it.

Pure theory craft here, but I reckon an Aaracokra Ranger 4 (Gloomstalker)/Kensei Monk 5+ is going to be fairly broken.

4 levels of Ranger (Gloomstalker) gives you a fighting style (Archery), an extra attack on your first round (Dread Ambusher), WIS bonus to initiative, 10 extra feet of
movement on your first turn (great if you’re caught flatfooted in a dungeon), and Hunter’s Mark 3 times per day (usually enough to last across two combats).

Kensei Monk allows you to do an extra 1d4 per ranged attack by expending a bonus action, plus the other Monk features such as deflect missiles which make you almost impossible to kill at range.

So first turn you take flight, cast Hunter’s Mark, and take three shots with your longbow, dealing 3d8+3d6+15 = 39 damage.

Subsequent turns, you take 2 shots but add 2d4, so 2d8+2d6+2d4+10 = 31 damage.

Assuming 3 rounds per combat, that’s about 34 damage per turn.

With Archery, you’re about 10% more likely to hit, so factor that into overall damage calcs.

Compare to a fighter archer who is making 2 attacks per turn, and once per short rest an extra 2. Assuming two combats per rest and each combat is 3 rounds, that averages to an extra third of an attack per turn, so we’ll say 2.3d8 + 2.3 * mod = approx 22 damage per turn. We’ll go Battlemaster now, so that’s 5 superiority dice per short rest which is 5/6ths of a superiority dice per round of combat on average, but for simplicity let’s just say one per turn. So we can add 4.5 damage plus rider effects which are admittedly very useful. Fighter is now doing 26.5 damage per turn at level 9, still well below our Ranger-Monk.

Take sharpshooter to ignore all but complete cover and range disadvantage, and you can basically fire from up to 600ft at will, almost unhittable at that distance. You’re doing melee-level damage and are basically unhittable. And of course as a Monk you’re perfectly capable of getting into melee if you need to, holding your longbow in one hand or switching to your melee Kensei weapon and making (at least one) unarmed strike in your attack to make use of Agile Parry for +2 AC. You’re still benefiting from Hunter’s Mark remember so that’s when you’ll want to burn those Ki points you haven’t been using at range (except for the occasional attack from Misile Deflection).

For melee damage, let’s assume a longsword for melee Kensei weapon, swinging two-handed. First turn you set up HM and attack 3 times (remember, Gloomstalker), using longsword for 2 and unarmed strike for 1 to trigger Agile Parry.

2d10+1d6+3d6+3*DEX = 40 damage per turn, though without Archery fighting style benefit to hit.

Subsequent rounds, you’re using your 5 ki points per short rest to Flurry. With at an average of three rounds per combat twice per short rest, and the first round being taken by hunters mark, you’re going to have on average 4 turns to use this per short rest so you’ve got plenty. That gives you 4 attacks in melee all benefiting from Hunter’s Mark, 3 unarmed and 1 longsword.

1d10+3d6+4d6+4*DEX = 50 damage on average at an entirely sustainable rate of Ki useage and 19-20 effective AC.

Unhittable heavy damage dealer at range, and even heavier damage dealer in melee with a very high AC.

Oh and once you get to level 6 Monk (10 overall) you can do another d6 ranged damage per turn for a ki point. Not a massive difference but still, you’ve got 6 ki points at that point which is enough to make use of it most turns on average, and it’s something to use your ki points on while staying at range.

You do delay Evasion by doing this, which is a pain, but given you will be mostly at range and can position yourself well away from your allies, it’s not really in your enemies interest to target you with an AoE attack - and if they do then that’s one attack that hasn’t been directed towards the entire rest of your party who have likely already been hit much more than you.

You might consider at some point also taking a level of Cleric/Druid for some utility cantrips and spells, plus extra spell slots in case you lose concentration on Hunter’s Mark (you’ll be a 3rd level caster with the Ranger levels). Forge Cleric would be good for a +1 Longbow (especially if you take it early). War Cleric would give you Divine Favor which might make a decent alternative to Hunter’s Mark when it doesn’t make sense to concentrate your damage on a single opponent. Tempest might be good if you plan on being in melee more (though in that case I’d suggest forgetting ranged at all and change the build to be more melee focused). Arcana gives you the best utility cantrips. Probably down to party composition which one you take.

If you had to play this character from level 1, I’d probably go Monk 1-5, Ranger 1-4, Monk 6, Cleric 1, Monk the rest of the way. Sharpshooter at Ranger 4.

Starting stats would be STR 8, DEX 16, CON 13, INT 10, WIS 16, CHA 12. DEX to 18 at level 4. If you’re stuck in melee more than you’d like, consider Resilient CON at level 12-13 (Monk 8, overall level depends on if you dipped Cleric or not), or even level 9 (Ranger 4) instead of Sharpshooter to maintain Hunter’s Mark.

[Crgaston]

Re the OP, Hex seems completely wasted on a character that is a) in melee, b) generally only gets one attack per round, and c) has far better uses for both concentration and/or bonus action (Spiritual Weapon will outdo Hex damage in most cases, and definitey once you start scaling; Bless probably better than Hex in most cases at lower levels, while Spirit Guardians is amazing once you get it).

A better option would be to pair with Monk or Fighter (esp with PAM). There is no concentration competition, and while there is competition for the bonus action, that’s only when you’re trying to get more attacks to benefit from it.

Pure theory craft here, but I reckon an Aaracokra Ranger 4 (Gloomstalker)/Kensei Monk 5+ is going to be fairly broken.

4 levels of Ranger (Gloomstalker) gives you a fighting style (Archery), an extra attack on your first round (Dread Ambusher), WIS bonus to initiative, 10 extra feet of
movement on your first turn (great if you’re caught flatfooted in a dungeon), and Hunter’s Mark 3 times per day (usually enough to last across two combats).

Kensei Monk allows you to do an extra 1d4 per ranged attack by expending a bonus action, plus the other Monk features such as deflect missiles which make you almost impossible to kill at range.

So first turn you take flight, cast Hunter’s Mark, and take three shots with your longbow, dealing 3d8+3d6+15 = 39 damage.

Subsequent turns, you take 2 shots but add 2d4, so 2d8+2d6+2d4+10 = 31 damage.

Assuming 3 rounds per combat, that’s about 34 damage per turn.

With Archery, you’re about 10% more likely to hit, so factor that into overall damage calcs.

Compare to a fighter archer who is making 2 attacks per turn, and once per short rest an extra 2. Assuming two combats per rest and each combat is 3 rounds, that averages to an extra third of an attack per turn, so we’ll say 2.3d8 + 2.3 * mod = approx 22 damage per turn. We’ll go Battlemaster now, so that’s 5 superiority dice per short rest which is 5/6ths of a superiority dice per round of combat on average, but for simplicity let’s just say one per turn. So we can add 4.5 damage plus rider effects which are admittedly very useful. Fighter is now doing 26.5 damage per turn at level 9, still well below our Ranger-Monk.

Take sharpshooter to ignore all but complete cover and range disadvantage, and you can basically fire from up to 600ft at will, almost unhittable at that distance. You’re doing melee-level damage and are basically unhittable. And of course as a Monk you’re perfectly capable of getting into melee if you need to, holding your longbow in one hand or switching to your melee Kensei weapon and making (at least one) unarmed strike in your attack to make use of Agile Parry for +2 AC. You’re still benefiting from Hunter’s Mark remember so that’s when you’ll want to burn those Ki points you haven’t been using at range (except for the occasional attack from Misile Deflection).

For melee damage, let’s assume a longsword for melee Kensei weapon, swinging two-handed. First turn you set up HM and attack 3 times (remember, Gloomstalker), using longsword for 2 and unarmed strike for 1 to trigger Agile Parry.

2d10+1d6+3d6+3*DEX = 40 damage per turn, though without Archery fighting style benefit to hit.

Subsequent rounds, you’re using your 5 ki points per short rest to Flurry. With at an average of three rounds per combat twice per short rest, and the first round being taken by hunters mark, you’re going to have on average 4 turns to use this per short rest so you’ve got plenty. That gives you 4 attacks in melee all benefiting from Hunter’s Mark, 3 unarmed and 1 longsword.

1d10+3d6+4d6+4*DEX = 50 damage on average at an entirely sustainable rate of Ki useage and 19-20 effective AC.

Unhittable heavy damage dealer at range, and even heavier damage dealer in melee with a very high AC.

Oh and once you get to level 6 Monk (10 overall) you can do another d6 ranged damage per turn for a ki point. Not a massive difference but still, you’ve got 6 ki points at that point which is enough to make use of it most turns on average, and it’s something to use your ki points on while staying at range.

You do delay Evasion by doing this, which is a pain, but given you will be mostly at range and can position yourself well away from your allies, it’s not really in your enemies interest to target you with an AoE attack - and if they do then that’s one attack that hasn’t been directed towards the entire rest of your party who have likely already been hit much more than you.

You might consider at some point also taking a level of Cleric/Druid for some utility cantrips and spells, plus extra spell slots in case you lose concentration on Hunter’s Mark (you’ll be a 3rd level caster with the Ranger levels). Forge Cleric would be good for a +1 Longbow (especially if you take it early). War Cleric would give you Divine Favor which might make a decent alternative to Hunter’s Mark when it doesn’t make sense to concentrate your damage on a single opponent. Tempest might be good if you plan on being in melee more (though in that case I’d suggest forgetting ranged at all and change the build to be more melee focused). Arcana gives you the best utility cantrips. Probably down to party composition which one you take.

If you had to play this character from level 1, I’d probably go Monk 1-5, Ranger 1-4, Monk 6, Cleric 1, Monk the rest of the way. Sharpshooter at Ranger 4.

Starting stats would be STR 8, DEX 16, CON 13, INT 10, WIS 16, CHA 12. DEX to 18 at level 4. If you’re stuck in melee more than you’d like, consider Resilient CON at level 12-13 (Monk 8, overall level depends on if you dipped Cleric or not), or even level 9 (Ranger 4) instead of Sharpshooter to maintain Hunter’s Mark.

This is great! Alternately, after Monk 5 and Ranger 4, you could go Inquisitive Rogue. Expertise your Insight and enjoy Sneak Attack on an enemy even when you have no allies adjacent to them.

[Klorox]

Re the OP, Hex seems completely wasted on a character that is a) in melee, b) generally only gets one attack per round, and c) has far better uses for both concentration and/or bonus action (Spiritual Weapon will outdo Hex damage in most cases, and definitey once you start scaling; Bless probably better than Hex in most cases at lower levels, while Spirit Guardians is amazing once you get it).

A better option would be to pair with Monk or Fighter (esp with PAM). There is no concentration competition, and while there is competition for the bonus action, that’s only when you’re trying to get more attacks to benefit from it.

Pure theory craft here, but I reckon an Aaracokra Ranger 4 (Gloomstalker)/Kensei Monk 5+ is going to be fairly broken.

4 levels of Ranger (Gloomstalker) gives you a fighting style (Archery), an extra attack on your first round (Dread Ambusher), WIS bonus to initiative, 10 extra feet of
movement on your first turn (great if you’re caught flatfooted in a dungeon), and Hunter’s Mark 3 times per day (usually enough to last across two combats).

Kensei Monk allows you to do an extra 1d4 per ranged attack by expending a bonus action, plus the other Monk features such as deflect missiles which make you almost impossible to kill at range.

So first turn you take flight, cast Hunter’s Mark, and take three shots with your longbow, dealing 3d8+3d6+15 = 39 damage.

Subsequent turns, you take 2 shots but add 2d4, so 2d8+2d6+2d4+10 = 31 damage.

Assuming 3 rounds per combat, that’s about 34 damage per turn.

With Archery, you’re about 10% more likely to hit, so factor that into overall damage calcs.

Compare to a fighter archer who is making 2 attacks per turn, and once per short rest an extra 2. Assuming two combats per rest and each combat is 3 rounds, that averages to an extra third of an attack per turn, so we’ll say 2.3d8 + 2.3 * mod = approx 22 damage per turn. We’ll go Battlemaster now, so that’s 5 superiority dice per short rest which is 5/6ths of a superiority dice per round of combat on average, but for simplicity let’s just say one per turn. So we can add 4.5 damage plus rider effects which are admittedly very useful. Fighter is now doing 26.5 damage per turn at level 9, still well below our Ranger-Monk.

Take sharpshooter to ignore all but complete cover and range disadvantage, and you can basically fire from up to 600ft at will, almost unhittable at that distance. You’re doing melee-level damage and are basically unhittable. And of course as a Monk you’re perfectly capable of getting into melee if you need to, holding your longbow in one hand or switching to your melee Kensei weapon and making (at least one) unarmed strike in your attack to make use of Agile Parry for +2 AC. You’re still benefiting from Hunter’s Mark remember so that’s when you’ll want to burn those Ki points you haven’t been using at range (except for the occasional attack from Misile Deflection).

For melee damage, let’s assume a longsword for melee Kensei weapon, swinging two-handed. First turn you set up HM and attack 3 times (remember, Gloomstalker), using longsword for 2 and unarmed strike for 1 to trigger Agile Parry.

2d10+1d6+3d6+3*DEX = 40 damage per turn, though without Archery fighting style benefit to hit.

Subsequent rounds, you’re using your 5 ki points per short rest to Flurry. With at an average of three rounds per combat twice per short rest, and the first round being taken by hunters mark, you’re going to have on average 4 turns to use this per short rest so you’ve got plenty. That gives you 4 attacks in melee all benefiting from Hunter’s Mark, 3 unarmed and 1 longsword.

1d10+3d6+4d6+4*DEX = 50 damage on average at an entirely sustainable rate of Ki useage and 19-20 effective AC.

Unhittable heavy damage dealer at range, and even heavier damage dealer in melee with a very high AC.

Oh and once you get to level 6 Monk (10 overall) you can do another d6 ranged damage per turn for a ki point. Not a massive difference but still, you’ve got 6 ki points at that point which is enough to make use of it most turns on average, and it’s something to use your ki points on while staying at range.

You do delay Evasion by doing this, which is a pain, but given you will be mostly at range and can position yourself well away from your allies, it’s not really in your enemies interest to target you with an AoE attack - and if they do then that’s one attack that hasn’t been directed towards the entire rest of your party who have likely already been hit much more than you.

You might consider at some point also taking a level of Cleric/Druid for some utility cantrips and spells, plus extra spell slots in case you lose concentration on Hunter’s Mark (you’ll be a 3rd level caster with the Ranger levels). Forge Cleric would be good for a +1 Longbow (especially if you take it early). War Cleric would give you Divine Favor which might make a decent alternative to Hunter’s Mark when it doesn’t make sense to concentrate your damage on a single opponent. Tempest might be good if you plan on being in melee more (though in that case I’d suggest forgetting ranged at all and change the build to be more melee focused). Arcana gives you the best utility cantrips. Probably down to party composition which one you take.

If you had to play this character from level 1, I’d probably go Monk 1-5, Ranger 1-4, Monk 6, Cleric 1, Monk the rest of the way. Sharpshooter at Ranger 4.

Starting stats would be STR 8, DEX 16, CON 13, INT 10, WIS 16, CHA 12. DEX to 18 at level 4. If you’re stuck in melee more than you’d like, consider Resilient CON at level 12-13 (Monk 8, overall level depends on if you dipped Cleric or not), or even level 9 (Ranger 4) instead of Sharpshooter to maintain Hunter’s Mark.

There are some great ideas in this thread but this one is just so different I really like it.

Why not go ranger 5 for extra attack? I’m unfamiliar with kensei (or monks in general, TBH), does that give you extra attack?

[Ganymede]

The most broken class-race combo I've ever seen is an Elven Battlerager in a campaign that restricts that class to dwarves.

[BarneyBent]

This is great! Alternately, after Monk 5 and Ranger 4, you could go Inquisitive Rogue. Expertise your Insight and enjoy Sneak Attack on an enemy even when you have no allies adjacent to them.

Hmm, Rogue isn’t a bad idea, but you’ve already got HM and the Monk features competing for bonus action - it’s hard to justify Inquisitive when you’re likely to be targeting the biggest enemy with HM anyway, who’s likely to have your tank within 5ft.

I’d be more inclined to go Scout, allowing you to stay out of melee easier, Assassin giving you advantage against everybody who hasn’t taken a turn yet (WIS mod to initiative helps there!) plus auto-crits against all surprised enemies, or Arcane Trickster allowing you to get those extra spell slots for maintaining HM (and ignore Cleric) plus other utility with cantrips and such.

Another option would be a 2 level dip into War Wizard for spell slots and reaction bonus to AC and saving throws, and INT mod to initiative (only going to be +1 but still!). Would have to rearrange stats so that the 13 is in INT. Or the 13 could go into CHA for a Hexblade dip, giving you Hexblade’s curse.

[BarneyBent]

There are some great ideas in this thread but this one is just so different I really like it.

Why not go ranger 5 for extra attack? I’m unfamiliar with kensei (or monks in general, TBH), does that give you extra attack?

Monks get Extra Attack at 5, yeah.

[Crgaston]

Hmm, Rogue isn’t a bad idea, but you’ve already got HM and the Monk features competing for bonus action - it’s hard to justify Inquisitive when you’re likely to be targeting the biggest enemy with HM anyway, who’s likely to have your tank within 5ft.

I’d be more inclined to go Scout, allowing you to stay out of melee easier, Assassin giving you advantage against everybody who hasn’t taken a turn yet (WIS mod to initiative helps there!) plus auto-crits against all surprised enemies, or Arcane Trickster allowing you to get those extra spell slots for maintaining HM (and ignore Cleric) plus other utility with cantrips and such.

Another option would be a 2 level dip into War Wizard for spell slots and reaction bonus to AC and saving throws, and INT mod to initiative (only going to be +1 but still!). Would have to rearrange stats so that the 13 is in INT. Or the 13 could go into CHA for a Hexblade dip, giving you Hexblade’s curse.

Oh, for sure the other Rogue archetypes have lots to offer, true, but I think you may be overestimating the Bonus Action conflict with Insightful Fighting.

Having high initiative means that often your tank won't be next to the BBEG on your first round. This can be mitigated through either the Assassin's advantage (assuming you go before the BBEG) or with Insightful Fighting (assuming you win the check). There are lots of other scenarios in which it can be difficult to get SA damage on ranged attacks. Insightful Fighting can be useful in many of them.

HM takes a Bonus Action, a spell slot, and Concentration to add 1d6 per hit. The Kensai feature takes a Bonus Action every round to add the 1d4 per hit. Insightful Fighting starts at +2d6 and scales upwards from there, and it only requires that 1 of your 2 ranged attacks hits to get the full benefit. Since it lasts 1 minute per use and doesn't take Concentration, you can go ahead and stack on HM and even the Kensai feature if you wish in subsequent rounds. It is also transferable without your primary target having to hit 0HP, so if you're targeting the BBEG and you need to switch targets before he falls, you can do so and transfer the guaranteed SA with a Bonus Action.

Another way to use ranged DPS is as crowd control in larger fights, focusing on eliminating/distracting mooks quickly while your tank and whoever deal with the BBEG. So in that case you might not bother with HM (especially after Rogue 5), saving the slot for later, or another spell entirely. This really depends on the types of encounters your DM throws at you, but it's another tool in the toolbox. And in that case, yes, it's putting pressure on your Bonus Action uses, but at least it's relatively resource-free.


The Scout's Skirmisher feature looses some luster once you hit Rogue 5, as you have to choose between it and Uncanny Dodge for your Reaction use. Skirmisher procs on the end of their turn, and if they're within 5' of you, presumably they've attacked you. If they hit you, do you use Uncanny Dodge to soak the damage? Or do you save the reaction for a free disengage when you can already disengage as a Bonus Action at the start of your next turn? Scout's bonus Expertises are fantastic in the right campaign, though, especially with Ranger on the menu.

[BarneyBent]

Oh, for sure the other Rogue archetypes have lots to offer, true, but I think you may be overestimating the Bonus Action conflict with Insightful Fighting.

Having high initiative means that often your tank won't be next to the BBEG on your first round. This can be mitigated through either the Assassin's advantage (assuming you go before the BBEG) or with Insightful Fighting (assuming you win the check). There are lots of other scenarios in which it can be difficult to get SA damage on ranged attacks. Insightful Fighting can be useful in many of them.

HM takes a Bonus Action, a spell slot, and Concentration to add 1d6 per hit. The Kensai feature takes a Bonus Action every round to add the 1d4 per hit. Insightful Fighting starts at +2d6 and scales upwards from there, and it only requires that 1 of your 2 ranged attacks hits to get the full benefit. Since it lasts 1 minute per use and doesn't take Concentration, you can go ahead and stack on HM and even the Kensai feature if you wish in subsequent rounds. It is also transferable without your primary target having to hit 0HP, so if you're targeting the BBEG and you need to switch targets before he falls, you can do so and transfer the guaranteed SA with a Bonus Action.

Another way to use ranged DPS is as crowd control in larger fights, focusing on eliminating/distracting mooks quickly while your tank and whoever deal with the BBEG. So in that case you might not bother with HM (especially after Rogue 5), saving the slot for later, or another spell entirely. This really depends on the types of encounters your DM throws at you, but it's another tool in the toolbox. And in that case, yes, it's putting pressure on your Bonus Action uses, but at least it's relatively resource-free.


The Scout's Skirmisher feature looses some luster once you hit Rogue 5, as you have to choose between it and Uncanny Dodge for your Reaction use. Skirmisher procs on the end of their turn, and if they're within 5' of you, presumably they've attacked you. If they hit you, do you use Uncanny Dodge to soak the damage? Or do you save the reaction for a free disengage when you can already disengage as a Bonus Action at the start of your next turn? Scout's bonus Expertises are fantastic in the right campaign, though, especially with Ranger on the menu.

You make a decent point, but sneak attack starts at 1d6 per turn - leaving aside reactions for for the moment, that’s not huge damage. It does start scaling at Rogue 3, but we’re comparing to 1d6 and 1d4 for every attack. I’d rather set up HM first (especially in the first round where you get 3 attacks instead of 2, so 3d6 straight off the bat).

Rogue levels certainly aren’t a bad idea, but again, Assassin or AT seem the better options as they allow you to get HM up immediately. Unless you’re getting to Rogue 5 (3d6 SA), prioritising your BA on achieving SA instead of setting up HM is a poor use of resources, though granted it becomes better than Kensei’s Shot (2d4) by Rogue 3.

Took a closer look at Skirmisher and yeah, agree, it’s not as good as it looks at first glance. Pity.

Honestly, probably a better option is a EK 7/Hexblade 2 firing off 2 Agonizing blasts and a Crossbow as a bonus action while maintaining Hex (at level 10, take Warlock 3 and Blade Pact for a Longbow you can use Charisma with). Whack it on a Winged Tiefling (even better if you can combine Winged with a MToF variant with CHA 2, DEX 1, instead of just Feral or PHB).

That works out as 3d10 + 3d6 + 2*CHA + 1*DEX = 39 damage once you’ve set up Hex, less in the opening round as you can only get in two attacks. So a bit behind Ranger/Monk, but will scale better as you get a third beam at level 11.

Still think a Ranger/Monk build will kick ass in melee if you build for that. Put it on a Ghostwise Halfling - you’ll gain Darkvision, make the best possible use of the Halfling luck feature with all those attacks, and won’t be tied to Kensei, though the +2 AC is very handy and a whip could be good to give you reach.

[dvillani112]

aarakocra blood hunter, order of the lycan. longbow as primary, studded leather armor, shield, longsword.
@ level 2, blood curse of marked, mutual suffering, archery fighting style
level 3 lycan, advantage on strength, use if you must do melee combat w/ longsword, shield. Also advantage on wis checks w/ smell, sight
level 4 +dex+wis
level 5 double attack
starting scores
str 14
dex 15 (+2, +1)
con 12 (+1)
int 10
wis 13 (+1)
cha 8
bit of a charisma dump, but solid build. use long range most of the time, land/hover and use melee if necessary

[Ventruenox]

Mödley Crüe: Thread necromancy is a forbidden art.