Being Fully Proficient

[LibraryOgre]

So, is it possible to make a build where you're proficient in EVERYTHING? All skills, all weapons, all saves?

[nickl_2000]

I'm not sure if you can get all skills in 6 levels only.

You need 14 levels in monk to be proficient in all saving throws, so you only have 6 more levels to work with to get all skills and a level in fighter or paladin.

[airless_wing]

The first thing that jumps as me is a Fighter, since they get all Armor, Weapon, and Shield proficiencies right off the bat. Their initial skill proficiencies aren't great, but they get enough ASIs to pick the Skilled feat and cover their weaknesses.
The Saving throws are the hard one there. Indomitable ability is really good for saving throws, but certainly isn't formal 'proficiency'.

[Man_Over_Game]

A level into Knowledge Cleric, a level into Bard, a level into Rogue, and I think that'd about cover as much as you could.

[VonDragon]

half elf, skilled and prodigy with add a few extra skills

[Max_Killjoy]

War Mage 2 gives you some boost to all Saves, but not true proficiency.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm not sure if you can get all skills in 6 levels only.

You need 14 levels in monk to be proficient in all saving throws, so you only have 6 more levels to work with to get 6 skills and a level in fighter or paladin.

So, let's see.

Variant Human: 1 free skill and a feat, which can be Skilled, so 4 skills.
Background: 2 skills
Fighter 1: 2 skills, All Armor, Shields, Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons
Monk 14: All Saves.

That's 8 skills, out of 18. If Skilled is taken instead of an ASI at 4 (11 skills), 8 (14 skills), 12 (17 skills), and 16 (18 skills and and 2 tools, 'cause why not).

So, I can do it by 16th (because I didn't know about the Monk).

[clash]

Half elf
Bard 3/Rogue 1/Knowledge Cleric 1/Fighter 1/Monk 14
With skilled and prodigy

Skills
Background 2
1 Rogue 4
1 bard 1
3 lore Bard 3
Skilled 3
Half Elf 2
1 Knowledge cleric 2
Prodigy 1
Total Levels 5
Total Skill proficiencies 18

Fighter 1 for armor and weapon proficiencies
Monk 14 for all saves

[VonDragon]

fighter 1/scout 15/knowledge cleric 1/ lore bard 3

half elf, background, skilled prodigy and resilient

this lack 2 saving throw proficiency and is the closest I can get

[Illven]

So, let's see.

Variant Human: 1 free skill and a feat, which can be Skilled, so 4 skills.
Background: 2 skills
Fighter 1: 2 skills, All Armor, Shields, Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons
Monk 14: All Saves.

That's 8 skills, out of 18. If Skilled is taken instead of an ASI at 4 (11 skills), 8 (14 skills), 12 (17 skills), and 16 (18 skills and and 2 tools, 'cause why not).

So, I can do it by 16th (because I didn't know about the Monk).

I dont believe you can take skilled multiple times.

[diplomancer]

Half-Elf rogue 1 (8 skills), lore bard 3 (1+3 skills), Knowledge Cleric 1 (2 skills and medium armor+shields proficiency), Ranger 1 (1 skill, simple and martial weapons proficiency), monk 14. Total of 15 skills, medium armor proficiency, shields, simple and martial weapons.

Take the skilled and the Heavy armor proficiency feats with your monk levels.

(You cant get 4 skills from Rogue AND heavy armor proficiency from fighter)

Horrible character, but possible.

[Max_Killjoy]

Don't the 5e multiclassing rules not give the Skills from the subsequent classes unless specifically mentioned in that table in the MC section?

[LibraryOgre]

I dont believe you can take skilled multiple times.

Missed that.

[clash]

Don't the 5e multiclassing rules not give the Skills from the subsequent classes unless specifically mentioned in that table in the MC section?

Yes but rogue and bard make up the difference when you multiclass

[Max_Killjoy]

Also, I think for "proficient in all Skills" I might just take enough Bard to get the "half proficiency bonus on anything you don't get the full bonus for" ability, and spend all the ASIs on getting +2s to abilities to get into higher + brackets as well.

From 17th character level onward, you'd get a +6 or +3 to every Ability check from the full or half proficiency bonus.

So maybe 4 levels of bard, and 16 of monk? Get all the ASIs from class levels, and the "all Saves" monk ability?

[diplomancer]

Yes but rogue and bard make up the difference when you multiclass

Ranger and Bard actually, a rogue has 1 less than he would if he'd started with it (edit for clarity: "since it only gives you one extra skill, and rogue starts with 4 instead of 2)

[LibraryOgre]

Ranger and Bard actually, a rogue has 1 less than he would if he'd started with it.

Ranger also gives the 1 skill on multiclassing.

[diplomancer]

Ranger also gives the 1 skill on multiclassing.

Yep, which is why its my choice to get the martial weapons proficiency, instead of Fighter or Paladin.

[CheddarChampion]

Half Elf - 2 skills
Background - 2 skills
Rogue 1 - 4 skills
Fighter 1 - Weapons, Medium Armor, Shields
Monk 14 - Saving Throws - 3 ASI's / Feats
Lore Bard 3 - 4 skills
Knowledge Cleric 1 - 2 skills
Heavily Armored - Heavy Armor
Skilled - 3 skills
Prodigy - 1 skill

Total if I have it right:
All weapons
All armor
All saving throws
18 / 18 skills

Goal achieved?

Edit: Diplomancer is correct about Ranger over Fighter - This means you can replace fighter and prodigy with ranger and one feat/ASI of choice.

[LibraryOgre]

Half Elf - 2 skills
Background - 2 skills
Rogue 1 - 4 skills
Fighter 1 - Weapons, Medium Armor, Shields
Monk 14 - Saving Throws - 3 ASI's / Feats
Lore Bard 3 - 4 skills
Knowledge Cleric 1 - 2 skills
Heavily Armored - Heavy Armor
Skilled - 3 skills
Prodigy - 1 skill

Total if I have it right:
All weapons
All armor
All saving throws
18 / 18 skills

Goal achieved?

Edit: Diplomancer is correct about Ranger over Fighter - This means you can replace fighter and prodigy with ranger and one feat/ASI of choice.

Looks that way to me. Anyone have refinements, or able to knock a couple levels off there?

[Max_Killjoy]

I was so fixated on the Skills and Saves that I forgot the Weapons and Armor.

Wait, what about Tool Proficiencies?

[diplomancer]

I was so fixated on the Skills and Saves that I forgot the Weapons and Armor.

Wait, what about Tool Proficiencies?

Downtime. A lot of it. Same for languages.

[Damon_Tor]

Downtime. A lot of it. Same for languages.

This. As long as you have time and money you can gain proficiency in every skill, tool and language regardless of class, race or background.

[Quietus]

If we count Resilient as a different feat for different stats, we can do it without Monk. Possibly skirting the edge of RAW to do it this way, but for a non-Monk take :

Half-Elf (2 skills)
Background (2 skills)
Rogue 12 - Scout subclass for Nature/Survival proficiency - Six skills, Dex/Int saves. Four ASI
Fighter 8 - Monster Hunter subclass for two of Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Nature, or Perception. Two skills, all weapon/armor/shields except heavy, three ASI

By my count, that is 12 skills accounted for. You have seven ASI; spend four on Resilient : Str, Con, Wis, Cha. One on Skilled (3 skills), one on Prodigy (1 skill - 18 total!), one on Heavily Armored

Seven skills have expertise (Nature/Survival from scout, four of your choice from Rogue, one of your choice from Prodigy)
You can never roll below 10 on any skill (Rogue 11)


As alternatives, you could drop two levels of Fighter to pick up a level of Ranger for another fighting style. Or, one level of either Bard or Ranger plus a level of a Cleric that gets you heavy armor proficiency, which frees up one ASI. You could even go Rogue12/Fighter6 and finish up with either Bard1 and Ranger1, or Warlock2 with Beguiling Influence, and go with a Variant Human for a feat. Or any other race that has a single skill profiency (all Elves, half orc).

[LibraryOgre]

This. As long as you have time and money you can gain proficiency in every skill, tool and language regardless of class, race or background.

I see where you can pick up tool and language proficiencies, but not skills.

[CheddarChampion]

By my count, that is 12 skills accounted for. You have seven ASI; spend four on Resilient : Str, Con, Wis, Cha. One on Skilled (3 skills), one on Prodigy (1 skill - 18 total!)

12 + 3 + 1 = 16 skills, yeah?

Edit: Quote Syntax.

[diplomancer]

Anyway, I dont think you can take the resilient feat several times anymore than you can take the skilled feat several times. They are both one feat with different choices, and you can't take the same feat twice.

[Quietus]

12 + 3 + 1 = 16 skills, yeah?

Edit: Quote Syntax.

Wow. Absolute failure of basic math. Derp in the extreme. Unfortunate. I still wonder if I could massage my way around that.

And Diplomancer - I agree that by the strictest read of RAW, I don't think you can take it more than once. I don't think in practice any DM outside of AL would really be inclined to stop you, I was mostly just looking at it for fun as a thought exercise to not involve Monk.

[CheddarChampion]

Quietus, your build might not get all 18 skills but you could leave out Medicine & Performance and it would probably play better than the one I proposed.
If the DM lets you take Resilient multiple times, like you said.

[Rukelnikov]

Looks that way to me. Anyone have refinements, or able to knock a couple levels off there?

Well, Drunken Master gives proficiency in Performance, so that's one less proficiency that we need to cover the basics.

I'd add Tavern Brawler to the taken Feats since it gives proficiency in Improvised Weapons, and we wanna be proficient in EVERYTHING.

I don't really know if its possible to do it in 18 or less, since getting all saves already takes 14 of our levels.

[diplomancer]

Wow. Absolute failure of basic math. Derp in the extreme. Unfortunate. I still wonder if I could massage my way around that.

And Diplomancer - I agree that by the strictest read of RAW, I don't think you can take it more than once. I don't think in practice any DM outside of AL would really be inclined to stop you, I was mostly just looking at it for fun as a thought exercise to not involve Monk.

Well, you need only 6 ASI and get 7, so Just swap one of your levels for knowledge cleric

[Quietus]

Well, you need only 6 ASI and get 7, so Just swap one of your levels for knowledge cleric

Unfortunately I think that would need all seven? Four for Resilient, one for Heavily Armoured, plus Skilled and Prodigy...

2 from race
2 from background
2 from Fighter
6 from Rogue
3 from Skilled
1 from Prodigy

That's the 16 I had already. Dropping to Fighter6/Rogue12 and losing Prodigy, can fit in one level of Knowledge cleric and one level of either Ranger or Bard, depending on whether you want Favored Terrain or Inspiration/a couple spells/an instrument I think?

[TripleD]

Anyway, I dont think you can take the resilient feat several times anymore than you can take the skilled feat several times. They are both one feat with different choices, and you can't take the same feat twice.

According to the PHB “You can take each feat only once, unless the feat's description says otherwise”.

Resilient is sadly not one of those feats, but you can take something like “Elemental Adept” multiple times.

[Chronos]

Where "something like Elemental Adept" means "Elemental Adept".

[BurgerBeast]

Unless I’m mistaken, a variant human fighter could proficiency in all saves by taking Resilent ()* at 1, 4, 6, and 8.

I don’t know if this helps builds, because I’m not sure if you can get all skills through classes alone, but this does seem better than using monk 14, because it saves you 6 levels.

*I’m AFB but I believe that Resilient can be taken multiple times, keyed to different abilities.

EDIT: Never mind.


According to the PHB “You can take each feat only once, unless the feat's description says otherwise”.

Resilient is sadly not one of those feats, but you can take something like “Elemental Adept” multiple times.

[TripleD]

Where "something like Elemental Adept" means "Elemental Adept".

Shrug. I don’t own any splatbooks. Just covering my bases in case another feat had been added that I didn’t know about.

As an aside, it is kind of weird that you can’t take things like “Skilled” and “Resilient” multiple times. They seem like exactly the kind of feats one should be able to double-dip.

[Chronos]

Resilient I can see, because they clearly wanted proficiency in saves to be tough to get, especially for covering all three of the common saves (currently only possible for a high-level monk or a rogue with Res(Con)). But Skilled, yeah, you can already get a bunch of skills anyway, what's three more?

[MeeposFire]

Monk 13 is currently still the only way to get prof in death saves so you need that if you want EVERYTHING. It also gives you all other save so there is that.

You get tools and languages with money and time but you still need skills so you need to get all of your skills using your other levels, races and other means.

[diplomancer]

If you are willing to fudge the requirements a little bit (i.e, not being fully proficient all the time, missing only one saving throw proficiency) there is a more playable build, I think, that even gets limited time proficiency with all tools and languages.

Half-elf Rogue 1 (8 skills) Lore bard 17 (4 skills), 2 Knowledge Cleric (2 skills, proficiency with any tool for 10 minutes once per short rest); get Tenser's Transformation as a magical secret, and grab resilient (wis), prodigy and skilled feats. End result is, if Tenser's transformation is on, proficiency in all saves except Cha and Death (but your cha is high at least) all armor and weapon proficiencies, all skill proficiencies (with 9 expertises!). You get the desired result at character level 16 (1/14/1).

You have 9th level spells and one ASI to spare -though if you want to actually use your Heavy armor proficiency with Tenser's transformation you would have to spend that ASI in getting heavy armor proficiency... which is still better than being a 14th level monk with Heavy armor proficiency ;) .

You could also shave off two levels of Bard to get War Mage; once per round you would have +4 to a cha save, giving you a total of plus 7 . Not quite proficient, but close enough (though its probably better to just stay bard and get foresight, since advantage is probably better than this plus 4)

Character with Str 10, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 11, Wis 13 (14 after Resiliency), Cha 16, with point buy (or str 8 int 13 if you want the War Wizard route) It's more playable, at least.

(also fun is the fact that if one other of your magical secrets was Find Greater Steed- and why wouldn't it be- and you choose a Pegasus, your mount also has proficiency in all saves except Int- Im almost wanting to play this character).

[MrStabby]

If you are willing to fudge the requirements a little bit (i.e, not being fully proficient all the time, missing only one saving throw proficiency) there is a more playable build, I think, that even gets limited time proficiency with all tools and languages.

Half-elf Rogue 1 (8 skills) Lore bard 17 (4 skills), 2 Knowledge Cleric (2 skills, proficiency with any tool for 10 minutes once per short rest); get Tenser's Transformation as a magical secret, and grab resilient (wis), prodigy and skilled feats. End result is, if Tenser's transformation is on, proficiency in all saves except Cha and Death (but your cha is high at least) all armor and weapon proficiencies, all skill proficiencies (with 7 expertises!). You get the desired result at character level 16 (1/14/1).

You have 9th level spells and one ASI to spare -though if you want to actually use your Heavy armor proficiency with Tenser's transformation you would have to spend that ASI in getting heavy armor proficiency... which is still better than being a 14th level monk with Heavy armor proficiency ;) .

You could also shave off two levels of Bard to get War Mage; once per round you would have +4 to a cha save, giving you a total of plus 7 (or 8 if you used an ASI for that). Not quite proficient, but close enough.

Character with Str 8, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 13, Cha 16, with point buy. It's more playable, at least.

(also fun is the fact that if one other of your magical secrets was Find Greater Steed- and why wouldn't it be- and you choose a Pegasus, your mount also has proficiency in all saves except Int- Im almost wanting to play this character).


If we are going down this route - would it not be easier to just true polymorph into whatever has the skills/saves you want?

[diplomancer]

If we are going down this route - would it not be easier to just true polymorph into whatever has the skills/saves you want?

Well, my suggestion would get proficiency in everything (except Cha saves, but with a high Cha nonetheless) during the time of the Tenser's transformation; your suggestion would get different proficiencies at different times (unless there is a creature I am unaware of that has proficiency in all skills and all saves... actually, I havent looked at the Monster Manual about this, so I might be wrong here, but I would find it quite likely that some skill proficiencies are not covered by ANY creature).

[diplomancer]

Also, the fact that it gets foresight makes it arguably even better at saves... even death saves... than the monk character.

I would probably give up the rogue level for one more level of bard for wish; yes, it would mean two less skill proficiencies, but this is a character with jack of all trades AND peerless skill, he is straight up better at any skill than the mostly monk character, it would definitely be my go-to character if I want proficiencies at everything. Alternatively, get rid of 1 level of knowedge cleric and give up the tool proficiencies, you have proficiency with at least thieves tools, one musical instrument, and one extra tool, ignoring backgrounds.


(Edit: That comes at the cost of having a crappy int save and a wonderful cha save, instead of two ok saves for cha and int- it's a shame that both bards and clerics give Cha saves- so if you really want the feel of proficiency in everything you might give up Wish and one caster level for that... character has good saves in the big 3 and ok saves in the others, all with advantage- alternatively, you can start with 8, 16, 14, 9, 13, 16 as a cleric, get Res int and use your ASI for Dex- end saves, with advantage, are +5, +4, +8, +6, +7, +9, the monk character S8, Dex 16, C14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 14) has +5, +9, +8, +6,, +8, +8, so noticeably better at Dex saves, without advantage, and about equal in all the others. The Rogue 1 Bard 17 knowledge cleric 2 has +5, +9, +8, +5, +7, +4, , slightly worse at the rare cha save, better at the rest, because advantage.

If I want to (probably not a good idea), I can use all my high level slots for Tenser Transformation (except the 9th), that is 5 uses of it (4 if I take one rogue level), probably enough for every combat.

Finally (though rhis is DM dependent) you can Wish for the missing save (have your simulacrum cast it if you are not a gambler.