Most powerful/effective builds that don't overshadow your teammates?

[bendking]

What I mean by the title is what are some powerful builds that don't necessarily do the most damage, but are still highly optimized to be very helpful to the party.
EDIT: Not looking for replies like "full casters with minimal amount of damage spells", more like specialized characters which constitute a "build".

To further clarify (taken from a comment):
I'm not asking you to make me a build, I'm offering you to concisely describe a certain support-ish build that you would describe as being highly optimized, so not just any build as well.
For example, I would say even AT/BS split applies for this description, since even though it does some nice damage for sure, it never reaches the damage peaks of being an optimized melee-combatant/nova burster and doesn't overshadow other melee combatants while still offering a lot of utility to the party.

[stoutstien]

Any full caster that focus on buffing and debuffing. Bards are my personal favorite due to also having BI dice to hand out. really didn't take any specific bill just the spells you pick are more focus on supporting your party then hurting the bad guys. A well placed grease and a barbarian with gwm is a simple combo.

On the flip side you can have well-built melee characters that are really good at setting up the party Caster or striker. Taking full advantage of expertise and Athletics. shoving and grappling can be a simple I hold you punch combo.

My personal favorite: the party cheerleader

Order domain cleric 2/ then rest in glamour bard.

turning your bonus action casting a spell into an attack from a barbarian or rogue is glorious.

[Man_Over_Game]

What I mean by the title is what are some powerful builds that don't necessarily do the most damage, but are still highly optimized to be very helpful to the party.

Any non-damage oriented Cleric (Not Death, not Tempest, not War, most of everything else). Glamour Bards in a large team, and Lore Bards that are focused on support. Divine Soul Sorcerers when played properly (focusing on buffs and control spells). Druids, specifically Dreams and certain Land picks, are good choices too.

[bendking]

Any full caster that focus on buffing and debuffing. Bards are my personal favorite due to also having BI dice to hand out. really didn't take any specific bill just the spells you pick are more focus on supporting your party then hurting the bad guys. A well placed grease and a barbarian with gwm is a simple combo.

On the flip side you can have well-built melee characters that are really good at setting up the party Caster or striker. Taking full advantage of expertise and Athletics. shoving and grappling can be a simple I hold you punch combo.

My personal favorite: the party cheerleader

Order domain cleric 2/ then rest in glamour bard.

turning your bonus action casting a spell into an attack from a barbarian or rogue is glorious.


Any non-damage oriented Cleric. Glamour Bards in a large team, and Lore Bards that are focused on support. Divine Soul Sorcerers when played properly (focusing on buffs and control spells). Druids, specifically Dreams and certain Land picks.

I clarified what I mean in the edit.
Full casters are an obvious (though not bad) suggestion, I'm looking for something a bit more specific.

[Man_Over_Game]

I clarified what I mean in the edit.
Full casters are an obvious (though not bad) suggestion, I'm looking for something a bit more specific.

The thing is, though, your criteria narrows it down to roughly half of the Full Casters. Which make up half of the roster. Assuming you chunk out the more "selfish" builds of the remaining 1/4 of the build options, you're looking at a remaining 1/6 or so.

You're basically asking us "Make me a build using these 1/6 of all possible builds". We need to refine it a little more than that. What kind of contributions do you like? What are you looking to do outside of combat? What things are you NOT willing to do (like worship a god)?

Because I can throw out a dozen different support builds that all are amazing that do different things. Is a Thief Healer applicable? Are you willing to be a melee tank? Are we talking no damage, or just as little as possible? We gotta know what YOU want.

[bendking]

The thing is, though, your criteria narrows it down to roughly half of the Full Casters. Which make up half of the roster. Assuming you chunk out the more "selfish" builds of the remaining 1/4 of the build options, you're looking at a remaining 1/6 or so.

You're basically asking us "Make me a build using these 1/6 of all possible builds". We need to refine it a little more than that. What kind of contributions do you like? What are you looking to do outside of combat? What things are you NOT willing to do (like worship a god)?

Because I can throw out a dozen different support builds that all are amazing that do different things. Is a Thief Healer applicable? Are you willing to be a melee tank? How munchkin are you willing to be? We gotta know what YOU want.

I'm not asking you to make me a build, I'm offering you to concisely describe a certain support-ish build that you would describe as being highly optimized, so not just any build as well.
For example, I would say even AT/BS split applies for this description, since even though it does some nice damage for sure, it never reaches the damage peaks of being an optimized melee-combatant/nova burster and doesn't overshadow other melee combatants while still offering a lot of utility to the party.

Other than the builds being highly-optimized and not doing all the damage, I have no other criteria really. Just go wild man. Nothing I won't do.

[Ironheart]

One build that I've been mulling over is an Aasimar Purple Dragon Knight build that picks up the Healer and Inspiring Leader feats. The idea behind the build is that you make short rests incredibly meaningful and take the pressure of healing away from Clerics and Druids so that they can focus on other things. At later levels, you make the rogue and battlemaster fighter very happy when you action surge, and other than that, it's a pretty simple build that leaves a lot of room for customization.

Other builds that lend themselves under buffing teammates probably include Divination Wizards, Mastermind Rogues, and most bards. I think a common thing for a lot of these builds is careful use of the Enhance Ability Spell - on demand advantage for an hour is nothing to sniff at.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm not asking you to make me a build, I'm offering you to concisely describe a certain support-ish build that you would describe as being highly optimized, so not just any build as well.
For example, I would say even AT/BS split applies for this description, since even though it does some nice damage for sure, it never reaches the damage peaks of being an optimized melee-combatant/nova burster and doesn't overshadow other melee combatants while still offering a lot of utility to the party.

Gotcha!

One of my favorites is a Life Cleric Martyr. Pick up Heavy Armor Master, pick up Warding Bond, pick up 3 levels into Sorcerer, and now you bond to two allies as you absorb damage on their behalf, reducing the damage that you take from nonmagical weapons, and then healing yourself at the same time that you heal your allies. Use the Distant and Twinned Metamagics so you can do thing like Revivify/Cure Wounds at Range, or Twin Cure Wounds for a massive patch job for two allies.

[bendking]

One build that I've been mulling over is an Aasimar Purple Dragon Knight build that picks up the Healer and Inspiring Leader feats. The idea behind the build is that you make short rests incredibly meaningful and take the pressure of healing away from Clerics and Druids so that they can focus on other things. At later levels, you make the rogue and battlemaster fighter very happy when you action surge, and other than that, it's a pretty simple build that leaves a lot of room for customization.

Other builds that lend themselves under buffing teammates probably include Divination Wizards, Mastermind Rogues, and most bards. I think a common thing for a lot of these builds is careful use of the Enhance Ability Spell - on demand advantage for an hour is nothing to sniff at.

I like the Purple Dragon Knight build! Really cool idea. Thanks.


Gotcha!

One of my favorites is a Life Cleric Martyr. Pick up Heavy Armor Master, pick up Warding Bond, pick up 3 levels into Sorcerer, and now you bond to two allies as you absorb damage on their behalf, reducing the damage that you take from nonmagical weapons, and then healing yourself at the same time that you heal your allies. Use the Distant and Twinned Metamagics so you can do thing like Revivify/Cure Wounds at Range, or Twin Cure Wounds for a massive patch job for two allies.


Awesome. How would you progress through a build like that? Go do Life Cleric 2 then take Sorcerer 3 and continue with Life Cleric? I assume you'll get most of your Sorcery Points from burning slots?

[stoutstien]

Something to keep in mind when it comes to building pure party support style characters you got to know what the rest of the party's going to be before you build it.

[Guy Lombard-O]

Don't know that this counts as optimized, and it isn't even one character.

But a Wolf Totem barbarian, paired with an Ancients paladinX/hexblade 1 with Shield Master feat, always seemed like a good combo to me. The barbarian gives the paladin advantage (expanded by hexblade curse) to fish for crit-smites, and the paladin tanks up the barbarian by knocking down enemies (so barbarian doesn't have to reckless), and helps patch up any save deficiencies and gives spell damage resistance.

[Man_Over_Game]

Awesome. How would you progress through a build like that? Go do Life Cleric 2 then take Sorcerer 3 and continue with Life Cleric? I assume you'll get most of your Sorcery Points from burning slots?

Most of the build focuses on using Warding Bond, and you'll want a few castings of it to make it work right. The level 6 feature is also pretty important, I feel.

So my recommendation is:

Level 1-6: Life Cleric.
Level 7-9: Sorcerer
Level 10+: Life Cleric.




To be honest, though, you can be fully optimized in most scenarios just by being a single classed caster with the right feats. Inspiring Leader is good for anything with Charisma that doesn't use Temporary Hitpoints. Glamour Bards do better in larger teams, Lore Bards do better in smaller teams, Dreams Druids work better in stealthy/tactical teams, and Divine Soul Sorcerers work best in a team with a strong melee lineup.

[Mercurias]

A Half-Elf Lore Bard 18/Knowledge Cleric 2 with Ritual Casting (Wizard) would be a really nice skill monkey and magic generalist with loads of healing, support, and control.

[KingFerret]

One of my favourite builds that also works well when wanting to avoid any spotlight hogging/making other players feel good/powerful is a grapple build.

There's an excellent guide (https://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468737-The-Grappler-s-Manual-(2-0)-Grappling-in-5th-Edition) on ENworld that really goes in depth for all of the cool things you can do with grappling so if you're not sure on the basics of grappling that's a great place to start.

There's so many great things about grappling as a combat method so here's just a few:


You make your teammates stronger and feel good. The grappler is the Oprah of giving out advantage. With the right feat you can even give pseudo advantage on caster allies whose cantrips ands spells cause saving throws.
It feels like teamwork. Combat can sometimes feel like just a bunch of people waiting their turn to hit a walking pile of hitpoints, but grappling is tactical and encourageas teamwork. Advantage is one thing but also dragging enemies into and out of range of allies attacks or even their aoe/ground effect spells like spike growth, but also the grappler is an excellent target for buffs. Nothing gets a table whooping more than when the wizard enlarges the fighter to grapple the dragon so the barbarian can coup de grace it.
The grappler really interacts with the environment around him. As a grappler you become acutely aware of environmental hazards or drops and falls more than any other character. How does this relate to your question you ask? In my experience players feel most 'overshadowed' by player characters who are incredibly strong 'on paper' through optimisation and theorycrafted cheese. They are more likely to be on your side if the strong things you are doing are due to clever/interactive play and may be inspired by it rather than put down.
Finally, grapplers can also fill any other role in a party. Bards make excellent bards if yuo require supportive casting, rogues and rogue/barbarians can function as incredible frontline tanks or scouts while also being grapplers, or a fighter for hybrid damage dealer (if the party needs it).



My personal favourite grappler build is a pure fighter Battlemaster. Even though I love the optimization mini-game away from table, for actual play I am happiest with an extremely simple statblock in order to help me focus on roleplay - both in combat and out. This sort of character makes a natural leader to a party too - someone who focuses on getting the best out of his/her team.

EDIT: Honestly you can do all the fancy multi-classing you want but you'd be hard pressed to find something more optimal than a pure battlemaster grappler - it is extremely strong. Particularly if you're allowed to pick up prodigy: athletics for expertise.