Silkensword
2017-11-26, 07:37 PM
Disclaimer: I'm making no claims for the late-game scaling or out of combat viability of this build. I am, however, offering you a build that at level 6 attacks four times in the first round of combat with action surge, and at level 14, when this build completes, has a grand total of eight attacks in the first round of combat- all of them with advantage, assuming you're in darkness and your enemy relies on darkvision. But let's get into the meat of this.
Levels 1-3: you'll want to get to level 3 in Ranger and become a gloomstalker. Take the archery fighting style you get from this, and humanoids are the obvious choice for most classical assassins' favoured enemy.
4-6: Start investing in fighter levels. I haven't had the time to do any sort of calculation what would be optimal, but Arcane Archer and Battlemaster seem the most interesting here. AA seems good due to better AoE options, but BM has better lockdown. You could pick up great weapon fighting style if you go the BM route, as AA will make you MAD anyway for Int, so If you prefer not to go in that direction, you could invest in Str instead and be deadly with a Greatsword or similar weapon. Of course, you could attempt to forego any sort of MADness and build a purely Dex oriented build, with the potentiality of rogue levels in the future.
8: assuming you have kept building fighter, you now have, in your first turn of combat:
Bonus action: used for hunters mark or similar, potentially an off-hand attack (attack 0)
Action: attack 1, which activates Dread Ambusher= attack 2, leaving you with your second attack from being a level 5 fighter, attack 3
Action surge
Action: attack 4, since it's still your first turn in combat Dread Ambusher activates again, granting you attack 5, and finally, your second attack from being a level five fighter, attack 6. If you have a magical weapon or other fun things that apply additional debuffs or damage, this should be fairly silly coming from a level 8 character who, by the way, is making all of these attacks at advantage in a lot of situations due to being invisible to darkvision.
Might add onto this later on, looking forward to a friendly discussion of optimization in this thread! :)
Levels 1-3: you'll want to get to level 3 in Ranger and become a gloomstalker. Take the archery fighting style you get from this, and humanoids are the obvious choice for most classical assassins' favoured enemy.
4-6: Start investing in fighter levels. I haven't had the time to do any sort of calculation what would be optimal, but Arcane Archer and Battlemaster seem the most interesting here. AA seems good due to better AoE options, but BM has better lockdown. You could pick up great weapon fighting style if you go the BM route, as AA will make you MAD anyway for Int, so If you prefer not to go in that direction, you could invest in Str instead and be deadly with a Greatsword or similar weapon. Of course, you could attempt to forego any sort of MADness and build a purely Dex oriented build, with the potentiality of rogue levels in the future.
8: assuming you have kept building fighter, you now have, in your first turn of combat:
Bonus action: used for hunters mark or similar, potentially an off-hand attack (attack 0)
Action: attack 1, which activates Dread Ambusher= attack 2, leaving you with your second attack from being a level 5 fighter, attack 3
Action surge
Action: attack 4, since it's still your first turn in combat Dread Ambusher activates again, granting you attack 5, and finally, your second attack from being a level five fighter, attack 6. If you have a magical weapon or other fun things that apply additional debuffs or damage, this should be fairly silly coming from a level 8 character who, by the way, is making all of these attacks at advantage in a lot of situations due to being invisible to darkvision.
Might add onto this later on, looking forward to a friendly discussion of optimization in this thread! :)