The Cheese-Grater

[Atomicwraith]

What do you all think of this build concept? It seems pretty powerful by level 6. Would it feel fun in the variety of situations you find yourselves in?

We start with a Swiftstride Shifter, the hardest-to-say race in D&D. This gives us faster movement (+10 when shifted, +5 otherwise), but lets us move 10 as a reaction when an enemies stops within 5 feet of us, without opportunity attacks. This will let us get the distance required for the rest of the build, should anyone get close to us.

At level 1 we take Nature Cleric. Heavy armor is important, as this guy will be attracting a lot of attention. Plate and shield is where we want to be.

Then we grab 2 levels of warlock, with Repelling Blast and Grasp of Hadar being the invocations. Which patron is a matter of taste. Hexblade is more dps, Celestial is more healing, and I like Raven Queen for this build if you think you will never go further in Warlock after level 6, as it gives a helpful familiar in Sentinal Raven right at level 1. Let’s say Raven Queen for now. A little crow on the shoulder mixes well with the nature vibe we have established.

Then we take a level of Sea Sorcerer. The key aspect we want is Curse of the Sea, which lets us +15 to forced movement we create, triggered by a cantrip, once per turn.

Finally we add two more levels of Nature Cleric, which gets us to Cleric level 3. And the key thing we need is Spike Growth.

You can see why the cheese grater image is relevant now, right?

So on the first round of combat, we can pick a nice kill zone, cast Spike Growth into a 20x20 patch, and move to a nice position say 5 feet on the friendly side of it. A bonus action Spiritual Weapon is extra carnage. On round 2, we Eldritch Blast pull some poor mob over the cheese grater. EB will do 2d10 (+CHAx2 if we ever get to level 5 in Warlock and can afford Agonizing Blast), and pull 25. For simplicity, lets assume perfect positioning, so the mob takes 4(2d4), or 20 points of damage. Then it gets stabbed in the face with Spiritual Weapon for 1d8+WIS. We all know what will happen next turn, right? Reaction to move back 5 so that the next attack does not suffer disadvantage, another stab to the face, EB+Repelling Blast (now we can push 35, though maybe 25 is more appropriate for balance), and back over the Spike Growth.

We’re doing this all for the cost of a level 2 spell (or two, if SW is added in), giving some tremendous battlefield control, and likely doing some nasty concentration-busting to enemy casters. It is perhaps most effective in a narrow hallway, but also very fun in more open space, as the shifter’s fast movement lets it dart around to get the best angle on enemies, and the physical dimensionality of it is fun.

How do we develop from here? Warcaster is obviously the feat we want first. Going to 5 in Warlock is attractive for Agonizing Blast, plus a Pact (I’m partial to Chain these days for the scouting shenanigans). Nature Cleric at 6 has Dampen Elements, which is another fantastic use of reaction to halve elemental damage to a friendly, and getting to Cleric 5 enables Spirit Guardians, a variant on this tactic that takes the cheese grater with you.

And at level 6, you have 10 Cantrips (3 from Cleric, 1 from Nature, 2 from Warlock, 4 from Sorcerer), 2 warlock SR slots at level 1, plus 3/2 slots of a level 3 Cleric, and heaps of useful low-level spells from 3 class lists. Most of the spells can be utility or buffs, as your combat resource usage is quite restrained. And you have strong AC with plate and shield, plus maybe Shield and Absorb Elements and Armor of Agathys.

Theme-wise, I like the concept of an elemental caster, who accumulates Produce Flame, Gust, Mold Earth, and Shape Water. If your Nature Cleric is less of a planty druid and more of a WOW Elemental Shaman, this is the kind of idea I'm aiming for.

What do you think? Would this work for your world?

[Xihirli]

So what jumped out to me the most is the ability scores you want and how rough it is to grab them all.



Swiftstride Shifter
DEX +2, CHA +1


Heavy armor is important
So you want a Strength of 15 or you cancel out a big part of why you picked SwiftShift. Since you're going Cleric MC you want a Wisdom of at least 13, and hopefully 14.
You don't have a bonus to Strength or Wisdom, so with Point Buy you've used 14 to 16 points.


Then we grab 2 levels of warlock, with Repelling Blast and Grasp of Hadar being the invocations.

You'll want Charisma as high as possible in that case, and your racial bonus is only +1. You want to start with a 16 here since it's your main damage stat. You've used 23 to 25 points in point buy and you cannot have a 16 in this and 15 in Strength with Standard Array.



Finally we add two more levels of Nature Cleric, which gets us to Cleric level 3. And the key thing we need is Spike Growth.

I mean... Spike Growth is okay? It's a good spell. I wouldn't put three levels into a class I have a poor main stat in just to get it.


Ultimately I think what you want is a Sorlock with a Druid or Cleric with Spirit Guardians in your party. Teamwork would deal with a lot of this. With point buy your Constitution is ten, and a high AC isn't going to save you from dragon's breath and cones of cold. Your racial +2 is sitting there doing nothing, and your build's stats aren't going to work with Standard Array.

So your build is pretty reliant on crossing your fingers and hoping for good stat rolls, but I think you'd be better served with a Sorlock or even a single-class Warlock to use your racial +2 Dex with Medium Armor or the Mage Armor invocation, and asking another player if they want to make a druid.

[Sparky McDibben]

Also, you'd have to wait till the next turn to cast spiritual weapon; I don't think you can cast two levelled spells in the same turn barring action surge.

[Sparky McDibben]

Also, if I'm DMing, your recurring enemies are going to get wise and start using flying or burrowing creatures as mook swarms after a while.

[Atomicwraith]

Thanks for the thoughts.

For stats, I was thinking 8/10/14/10/15/16. CHA is the focus, as its the main damage stat. I'm not following the need for STR; aer you perhaps thinking of the Longtooth Shifter? Swiftstride has no real need for STR... Anyways we are a heavy armor build, so a Dex of 10 is not lovely but it'll do to avoid penalties. A Con of 14 gives us +2 to HP, which is ok. I give Int a minor bump to 10, as I hate to play dumb characters, but these leftover points could go to STR or anywhere really. WIS goes as high as possible, but awkwardly to 15, awaiting some future Resiliant (WIS) bump to 16.

Its not optimized for stats, I confess. I suppose I'm just tired of SAD CHA builds in the Solock/Sorcadin/etc vein. But its not awful either I think. Am I missing something re STR?

[Darc_Vader]

You need strength to avoid the movement penalty for wearing heavy armour, which cancels out the speed boost from Swiftstride Shifter.

[Ninja_Prawn]

You take a 10 foot penalty to your speed if you wear splint or plate armour with less than 15 Str (and with chain if less than 13). Dumping Str cancels out the main benefit of your race pick.

I also note that your build relies on UA content, Races of Eberron and Xanathar's Guide to Everything, so I expect you'd face an uphill struggle getting all of those things into the same game.

Other potential issues with this build... it's a once/day trick, which means that you're essentially reliant on the 2d10 damage from your eldritch blast the vast majority of the time. At level 6, that's pretty rubbish. Even when you do commit all of your resources, you're looking at... 37.5 dpr? Doesn't sound that great. What's a sorcadin doing at level 6 when they go all in? As Sparky notes, you're also completely ineffective against anything that flies or that is able to engage you from more than about 40 feet away.

[Spectrulus]

A Hill Dwarf Would grant +2 Con, extra HP, +1 Wis for this cleric, and ignore armor strength restrictions. Then you could start with: 10 8 15 10 16 15, which when you get your first ASI at probably level 7, you could round off Con and Cha. It basically works the same, but has some mechanical background. Honestly you could also forgo warlock entirely, and use Thorn Whip, Lightning Lure, and Ray of Frost to keep things there. All easily attainable.

Interesting idea.

[Darc_Vader]

Actually, how does the heavy armour penalty affect the reaction movement? If it’s worded as ‘half your speed’ then it would definitely be affected, but if it just flat out says 10 feet or something like that would it be slowed too?

[Dualswinger]

Cheese grater builds work best when done as part of a pair due to concentration requirements. The best build I can think of is a tabaxi blend of Druid (for sg), rogue (for ba dash and expertise), wizard (for trans stone and longstrider) and monk (for bonus move). Use athletics with expertise to grapple and drag them along the ground.

Alternatively, you could take druid/cleric 3, wizard 17, abuse glyphs and shapechange to deal ludicrous amounts of damage, but the build only really completes at level20

[Zuras]

The simplest cheese-grater is just a Moon Druid Rogue. Take one level of Rogue for expertise in Athletics, multiple levels in Moon Druid, then cast Spike Growth, turn into a bear, and drag them all around the SG till your movement runs out. You can pick up a second Rogue level for Cunning Action, and drag things really far, really fast. If you take Stealth as your other expertise choice, you also have amazing infiltration abilities in a utility animal form. As an Air Elemental at 12th level you could drag a grappled small creature for 180 damage, or a medium one for 90. If you already grappled them the previous turn and they didn’t escape, you can dash twice and bump your movement to 270.

In theory, RAW a hasted Tabaxi wild shaped into an air elemental with longstrider could move 1600 feet in one turn (100’ x 2 x 2 = 400’ move, Action and bonus action dash plus haste action dash). Only 800 magical piercing damage against medium or large creatures, but you could definitely kill a kobold or gnome god this way.

[Dualswinger]

The simplest cheese-grater is just a Moon Druid Rogue. Take one level of Rogue for expertise in Athletics, multiple levels in Moon Druid, then cast Spike Growth, turn into a bear, and drag them all around the SG till your movement runs out. You can pick up a second Rogue level for Cunning Action, and drag things really far, really fast. If you take Stealth as your other expertise choice, you also have amazing infiltration abilities in a utility animal form. As an Air Elemental at 12th level you could drag a grappled small creature for 180 damage, or a medium one for 90. If you already grappled them the previous turn and they didn’t escape, you can dash twice and bump your movement to 270.

In theory, RAW a hasted Tabaxi wild shaped into an air elemental with longstrider could move 1600 feet in one turn (100’ x 2 x 2 = 400’ move, Action and bonus action dash plus haste action dash). Only 800 magical piercing damage against medium or large creatures, but you could definitely kill a kobold or gnome god this way.


Can an Air Elemental Grapple is the question though is the question. Many DMs I know say no, because they don't have hands. Same problem for bears and other wildshaped options. Plus you'd need to have Haste from a potion to maintain concentration on your SG.

Otherwise you could also sprinkle 2 levels of Fighter for Action surge to bump that damage up to an even 1k.

Don't forget that class features still work in Wildshape, so we'd be Druid 10/Rogue 2/Fighter 2/Wizard 2 (Bladesong)/Monk 2/Something else I'm sure I've missed 2. Gives us (with Mobile feat) a base Elemental speed of 120, total damage 1,200.

We could be a little cheesy here and manipulate the spell damage rules. Since a spell that can damage multiple creatures is said to make only a single damage roll, we could drop the levels in monk and take at least 3 in sorcerer, giving us empowerment meta magic. With that we can alter our average 2d4 roll to 6, making the damage 1,320.

This all assumes of course, that you can get your hands on the potions

[Chronos]

You could avoid all the multiclassing difficulties by just partying with a druid, ranger, or nature cleric, who casts the Spike Growth for you. And when you can both push and pull, mobility isn't all that crucial.

For pulling someone through using wildshape, doesn't that hurt you, too? Or do you not care, because it's just wildshape HP?


Can an Air Elemental Grapple is the question though is the question. Many DMs I know say no, because they don't have hands. Same problem for bears and other wildshaped options.
I can maybe see the argument for air elementals, but grappling is kind of a bear's whole thing.

[Dualswinger]

You could avoid all the multiclassing difficulties by just partying with a druid, ranger, or nature cleric, who casts the Spike Growth for you. And when you can both push and pull, mobility isn't all that crucial.

For pulling someone through using wildshape, doesn't that hurt you, too? Or do you not care, because it's just wildshape HP?


I can maybe see the argument for air elementals, but grappling is kind of a bear's whole thing.

Well yes :smallbiggrin: Having someone else use Spike Growth makes the builds much easier. But since when have powergamers ever wanted things to be easy? :smallamused:

As for the bear, bears get no grapple ability on their MM profile, and the PHB says that to make a grapple you need a free hand. If your bears have hands I'm not sure I want to play in your campaign! :smalleek:

[Zuras]

Can an Air Elemental Grapple is the question though is the question. Many DMs I know say no, because they don't have hands. Same problem for bears and other wildshaped options. Plus you'd need to have Haste from a potion to maintain concentration on your SG.

Otherwise you could also sprinkle 2 levels of Fighter for Action surge to bump that damage up to an even 1k.


If your DM isn’t letting bears and elementals grapple, I’d be looking for another DM posthaste, since that sort tend to think that they need to nerf whatever random set of abilities strikes their fancy as “overpowered” at any given moment.

Build-wise, unless you are building for a Level 20 one-shot, I wouldn’t take more than two non-druid levels, the first at Druid 2/Rogue 1, and the second at Druid 5/Rogue 2. Many higher level beast forms have an auto-grapple on hits, allowing you to damage and drag in the same turn, plus many other beasts have decent pounce attacks you can activate more easily with using disengage or dash from cunning action. Think of it more as a grappling/stealth build with the cheese grater as an extra trick.

[tsotate]

For pulling someone through using wildshape, doesn't that hurt you, too? Or do you not care, because it's just wildshape HP?
The trick is to pull them around the edge of the spike growth, so they're in it and you aren't. (Or be flying. I had a monk with Winged Boots who took out a very surprised lich that way.)

[Chronos]

I think a lot of DMs would rule that if you're dragging someone, they're behind you.

[Dualswinger]

I think a lot of DMs would rule that if you're dragging someone, they're behind you.

I’ve always ruled that since you’re giving up half your movement, each foot you move, the target moves with you. And to “rotate” costs movement even though you don’t