[Theorycraft][5e] Minotaur Fighter with Shield Master Feat

[luizeba]

Hi guys :)

I'm playing a D&D game where all the players and the DM are goddamn munchkins. We love being min-maxers, and we always end up with a super strong party who's able to beat encounters way more difficult than the expected.

We have started a new campaign and I'm creating my character. I ended up as the party fighter, and I thought about this build:

Race: Minotaur (Unearthed Arcana)
Why: Horns! Horns are a 1d10 melee weapon (usable with a Shield) that grants advantage on **ALL** checks made to shove a creature

Class: Fighter
Why: Fighters have Ability Score Improvements enough to burn it on feats and attributes.

Level 1: Defense (+1 AC) fighting style
Why: I haven't found a better fighting sytle, to be honest. My DM disallowed using Duelist with horns (and I agree with him, as it's not RAW).

Level 3: Battle Master
Why: Battle Master has the Riposte Maneuver, that allows me to use my Reaction often. My view of min-maxing is being able to use as much actions as possible, so having regular action + bonus action + reaction is important to me.

Level 4: Shield Master Feat
Why: This feat is pinnacle of the build! With this, if I attack, I can use a bonus action to shove a creature EVERY TURN.

As my DM agrees with the Sage Advice regarding the possibility to use the Shove Bonus Action BEFORE the attack, the whole build is around this trategy:

1) Start my turn using a Bonus Action to shove an enemy. My character has advantage on shoves (Minotaur) and proficiency in Athletics (background/class).
At level 4, I'll have output [highest 1 of 2d20]+2 (Proficiency) +3 (16 STR, horrible rolls) with an average shove roll of 18.82!

2) Use my Action to Attack the shove'd enemy that's prone with horns (1d10+3). As he's prone, the attack has advantage, too.

2b) If the shoved went good and the enemy is prone, I can burn my action surge to take max utility of the advantage.

3) My party has other two melee characters (homebrew melee Warlock and Monk), and they can also take advantage of the proned enemy.

4) As I have a high AC (heavy armor, shield and +1 AC from fighting style) and will be a strong melee damage-dealer, enemies will end up attacking me a lot and missing me a lot. That means that I'll be able to use my Riposte Maneuver a lot, adding a lot of extra damage.


What's you guys opinion on it? How can I improve it or develop the build on higher levels?

[Foxhound438]

Way ahead of you, fam

So basically, instead of battlemaster, take eldritch knight. Multiple reasons, but I'll start by adding a bit to your own plan:

Grapple them. After you knock them down, hold them there. Keep your bonus action free on later turns, which will be useful, as seen momentarily...

So the big benefits of EK in this case are War Magic and Create Bonfire. First round, use the attack action and respond with the bonus action knockdown from shield master. When they fall, immidiately action surge to put a create bonfire directly under them, then finish your turn's attack sequence with a grapple to hold them both prone and in a fire, possibly attempting twice, and if you grab them the first time you get in with the horns. Second round on you cast booming blade (your horns count as a weapon so it's legit), followed up by a war magic attack.

If you don't have Action surge up, that's not a big deal. Simply lead with fire, get the bonus action horn attack, and the next turn just keep it in place and drag them onto the fire once you grapple them. War magic some more booming blades at them and repeat using the same fire as the last guy to scorch the next.

If you were wondering, the reason you need to Create Bonfire before grappling the target is that CB has a somatic component, and shield in one hand, scrub in the other locks you out of those. Luckily the weapon cantrips lack somatic components, so having horns on your skull works fine for those.

Past level 11 the BB+WM loses steam, but skull-smashing a guy three times while holding them in a 3d8 per turn fire is pretty good none the less. Extra points if you take Storm Sphere and use that at the highest of levels in place of bonfire, but mostly from a coolness perspective than for optimization.

Probably take war caster somewhere for the BB opportunity attacks to make you extra sticky. Resilient wis, as always, is a must-have. Start out 16/8/14/16/10/8 with the int racial boost, 3 feats leaves 4 ASI's for AS boosting, put 2 in str, 1 or 2 in con, and 1 or 0 in int. Sad panda about wis ending up odd after Resilient, but we can't have everything in our janky gimmick builds.

Anyways, last pro tip for the EK build: take enlarge/reduce. This will allow you to shove things as large as huge, albeit at the cost of your concentration. +1d4 per attack, with advantage, should cover the damage lost from not having bonfire active, but in any case the point is to be able to knock down the big bosses.



If, however, you are in fact dead set on battlemaster, which is also very good for this, I would highly recommend sweeping strike for when the Shield Master shove fails. Rare as that is, a backup plan is great to have. Also, grapple the things. You having advantage is fine, but them having no way to easily get back up means they have disadvantage, which is just gravy, all day.

[SharkForce]

at higher levels, i'd probably mix in some rogue levels. how high will depend on what you're really looking forward to in fighter... personally, i'd probably start looking elsewhere by level 11 at the latest.

you could also throw in some caster levels instead of taking eldritch knight as your subclass if you want to try the create bonfire strategy... sorcerer works well if you can manage a decent charisma, because quicken goes well with melee characters :) a few levels of sorcerer would give you the weapon cantrips (which, together with rogue levels and warcaster feat, can give you a scary enough opportunity attack that most enemies won't want to risk getting hit) and some decent buffs.

[beargryllz]

Find a way to double your proficiency bonus in athletics

Rogue dip is the easiest

Now you will almost always knock somebody over, even if they're larger than you are!