Help making an agile gish character.

[Tekrow]

Hey guys, I'm looking for builds in making a lighter and swifter melee gish. Something more like Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher series, using medium or even light armor and a two handed weapon or dual wielding, complimenting his abilities with magic for some ranged attacks and other effects, instead of being a more heavy armored fighter. Think something like a Jedi, or something like that. Doesn't necessarily has to be a dex based fighter tho.

[Callak_Remier]

Fighter 3, Bladesinger17.

Action Surge cast 2 spells a turn once every short rest.

Focus dex int and use a Rapier.

Your welcome

[Crgaston]

It’s tough to beat the Fighter/Bladesinger combo. Here’s something a little different though.

Fighter 2, Gloomstalker or Assassin 3, and Bladelock 15. I suppose Hexblade would be the obvious choice, but they’d all be fun. You’ll want Dex and Cha even on a Hexblade, though, and I’d probably want Archfey just for the Greater Invisibility and Misty Escape. Or Goolock for the Telepathy.

Gloomstalker would give you another Fighting Style, +Wis to initiative, some minor spells, a nice Darkvision boost, and Invisibility to infravision. Plus a little half-action-surge and damage boost every time you roll initiative. This plus Hexblade would be the way to go if you want to use a 2 handed weapon.

Assassin would give you 2d6 sneak Attack and Advantage on anyone you beat in initiative. Plus Expertise and Cunning Action. Not to mention Surprise Auto-Crits. Plus it’s slightly less mad, but you want a little Wis anyway.

It’s a tough call.

[McSkrag]

An eldritch knight is an excellent melee gish. You can go DEX with TWF and medium armor, or STR with a 2-handed weapon and GWM and heavy armor, or sword + shield with dueling for either DEX or STR.

Mountain Dwarves, and Goliaths are a good choice for STR builds. High Elves are perfect for DEX builds. And of course Variant Humans are a good choice for either.

A variant human eldritch knight would play a lot like Geralt.

[nickl_2000]

Blade or Valor Bards would also be a solid choice.

Another would be a straight monk with Magic Initiate for magic (or a dip into arcana cleric). You can do Kensai if you want to two handed wield a longsword or wield a spear/staff. If you don't like MI or a dip, a sun soul monk lets you "hurl searing bolts of magical radiance." That seems like it might be fitting.

[BobZan]

The agile 2 handed gish is only viable via Hexblade.

A Hexblade/UA Ranger Hunter or Gloom Stalker with monstrosities and aberrations as Favored Enemies.

Sage Background.
Vhuman feat: GWM

Basic Array
8
14
12
10
14
16

[Tekrow]

Is there a way of making a dex based paladin? With maybe multiclassing into Bard or Warlock.

[Mikal]

Blood Hunter is totally an Expy of a witcher.
Barring that, I'd probably do a mixture of Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, and Bladesinger.

[nickl_2000]

Is there a way of making a dex based paladin? With maybe multiclassing into Bard or Warlock.

Absolute you can have a dex based Paladin, but you still need 13 strength and 13 charisma to multiclass.

[BobZan]

Is there a way of making a dex based paladin? With maybe multiclassing into Bard or Warlock.

A Dex Paladin is doable and it's very solid.

A multiclassed Dex Paladin is counterintuitive, since Paladins are already MAD. You need 13 Str and Cha to multiclass away.

Your stats should be something like: 13 15 12 8 8 15

[Tekrow]

Absolute you can have a dex based Paladin, but you still need 13 strength and 13 charisma to multiclass.

How would that work? I have mostly played mages or ranged characters, so I'm not sure how some of the melee feats work.

[nickl_2000]

How would that work? I have mostly played mages or ranged characters, so I'm not sure how some of the melee feats work.

There is no longer a requirement that a Paladin have 13 strength and 13 charisma to take the class. You only need 13 str/cha to multiclass. You can take any class you like at level 1 with any stats. In this case you would boost dexterity, constitution, and charisma as your main stats and go into battle with a Rapier and Shield and in light armor. You take the defense, protections, or dueling fighting style. You can still use the sentinel feat without any issue and you would smite with your spell slots.

You wouldn't be able to take Great Weapon Master or Polearm Mastery, but you could take Defensive Duelist for a good reaction. You could also look at Mounted Combatant for your Paladin Steed or Tough.

I played in a low level campaign where we had a dex paladin and it was silly how sneaky we were.

[Biggstick]

How would that work? I have mostly played mages or ranged characters, so I'm not sure how some of the melee feats work.

You wouldn't necessarily even need any melee feats for this to work. Simply using ASI's to max out Dexterity and Charisma would be great. If you're looking for a more magical feel though, picking up the Magic Initiate feat (Warlock) for Eldritch Blast wouldn't be a bad choice. While it's not as good as picking up Warlock levels for EB/AB, you'll still have a solid ranged attack (that does force damage) and you won't have to worry about having 13 Strength for multiclassing purposes.

Personally though, if I were considering an agile gish character, I'd look at just a single-classed Bladesinger. They have a built in move speed buff, Shadowblade from Xanathar's, Haste, massive AC, and the utility of a Wizard's spellbook for Ritual useage outside combat. The character has the tools of a Wizard, but it doesn't have to act like one all the time as a Bladesinger.

[rbstr]

Ranger does this pretty well. You've got self buff spells in Hunter's Mark, Zephyr Strike, and Guardian of Nature and also magic attacks via ensnaring strike and several AOE-focused spells over the spell levels. Plus it's got useful non-attack spells with useful effects, absorb elements, spike growth, silence, pass without trace, healing spirit and so on.

You can do strength-based with medium armor and focus on spells that don't actually really need high Wis to use or a more regular Dex/Wis base. interesting MCs with fighter, rogue, cleric, druid, even monk.

Horizon Walker has particular Gish flavor IMO with it's every-turn Planar Warrior magic-weapon thing and eventually some funky combat blink-teleporting. Also neato extra spells.

But it is a bit hard to do a strength ranger that also wants to use spells with saves/attack rolls unless you've got better-than-standar-array stats.

[Tekrow]

What about a Dual Wielding Dex Hexblade? Is something like that good?

[nickl_2000]

What about a Dual Wielding Dex Hexblade? Is something like that good?

The challenge there is that you can only use Charisma on one of your weapons. So, as a hex blade you would be using one weapon with your charisma and one weapon with your dex mod to hit. Although you don't have to use charisma to hit and do damage if your Dex is higher.

[Mr.Spastic]

Warlocks would be my recommendation. Hexblade is fun because of the expanded spell list and the invocations you can take to enhance melee combat. you also have medium armor proficiency and hexblades curse stacks on the damage and gives healing. With the warlock spell slots magic wont be your focus but you would have some fun options. You can also get booming blade and green flame blade. You could also go for ranged with the improved pact weapon invocation. The benefit is that your combat and magic stats are the same.
For stats
str-8
dex-14-15
con-14-15
int-10-12
wis-12
cha-15

[Grod_The_Giant]

Honestly? It sounds like you're looking for Ranger. An agile gish, augmenting their weapon skills with a touch of magic? That's Ranger all over.

[samcifer]

How would that work? I have mostly played mages or ranged characters, so I'm not sure how some of the melee feats work.

You can start at level 1 with any class you wish regardless of your beginning stats, but if you wish to take any levels of any other class, you will need to have a minimum of 13 on each of the main stat(s) of your starting class as well as the class you wish to multiclass into.

For example:

You start off as a paladin, but wish to multiclass into a monk because you want features from both classes. Paladin requires a minimum of 13 in both strength and charisma and monk requires a minimum of 13 in both dexterity and wisdom. Because of this, you need 13 or higher an all four stats of strength, dexterity, wisdom and charisma in order to multiclass to have levels of both classes. Your intelligence and constitution scores do not matter for multiclassing (for intelligence this is only true because ou are not wanting any levels in wizard.)

If you want to start as a paladin and wish to take levels as a bard, paladin needs 13+ in both strength and charisma and bard requires 13+ charisma. All other stats (dexterity, constitution, intelligence and wisdom) can be as low or high as you want because they are not relevant for multiclassing. Because you have 13 or more in both charisma and strength, you can take bard levels as a paladin without issue.

See pg. 193 of the Player's Handbook for the requirements of each class for multiclassing.

[PandaPhobia]

Hey guys, I'm looking for builds in making a lighter and swifter melee gish. Something more like Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher series, using medium or even light armor and a two handed weapon or dual wielding, complimenting his abilities with magic for some ranged attacks and other effects, instead of being a more heavy armored fighter. Think something like a Jedi, or something like that. Doesn't necessarily has to be a dex based fighter tho.

variant human eldritch knight:3 monk:3 w/ mobile feat. take longstrider as one of your spells, and you will be able to outrun anything on the battlefield. get your dm to give you stacking damage for runups or a charge attack, and you're golden.

I used this in a home game and ended up outrunning a god.

[Nifft]

Rogue 3 (Arcane Trickster) means you're an exceptionally agile gish all in one class. This is compatible with TWF but a 2-hander is not recommended. Layer on some Abjurer if you want more casting. Works great with just a single rapier.


Hexblade gets medium armor and access to martial weapons. Three levels gives you everything you need to be a medium-armor magical 2-handed weapon master; then you can go into Paladin or Sorcerer (or both), or you can stay Hexblade forever.


Paladin / Sorcerer is a classic. Str based, but you're okay with that.

[GlenSmash!]

Hey guys, I'm looking for builds in making a lighter and swifter melee gish. Something more like Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher series, using medium or even light armor and a two handed weapon or dual wielding, complimenting his abilities with magic for some ranged attacks and other effects, instead of being a more heavy armored fighter. Think something like a Jedi, or something like that. Doesn't necessarily has to be a dex based fighter tho.

While not that popular due to being Multiple Attribute Dependent, a high Strength, medium Dex character in medium armor is a great way to be an agile, 2-hander wielding character.

My favorite Geralt options are Fighter: Eldritch Knight or Ranger: Hunter, Monster Slayer, or Gloom Stalker.

For example a Variant Human Ranger with 16, 14, 14, 10 (or 8), 12, 8(or 10) built using the standard array and starting with the Great Weapon Master feat. From the get go he will hit very hard, be decently hard to hit in Medium Armor with the defense Fighting style, still be a decent shot with a bow, decent at stealth, and great at athletics. Plus he'll have a lot of utility spell's helpful in a lot of situations.

For more of a witcher theme: Absorb Elements makes a great Quen substation. Gust of Wind for Aard. Spike growth re-fluffed as Yrden. Daylight and Flame arrows for Igni. Zephyr strike, or Guardian of Nature for Heliotrope, etc. Plus Huunter's Mark for Witcher senses. All of the Gloom Stalker bones spells are great for Axii. plus getting Darkvision makes it my favorite witcher Substitute.

Eldritch Knight gets worse spell progression, but a has better spell list for a Witcher.

[Vogie]

Eldritch Knight with a 2 level dip in War wizard.

Resourceless Shield spells, having a second attack after a melee cantrip via War Magic, lots of 1st level spell slots and ritual casting