Builds that work particularly well together in combat?

[Wasp]

Hi everyone!

I was thinking --- are there characters or character builds that you think have some cool kind of synergy with other characters in combat? I mean characters can always work together of course, I was thinking more of things like for example a Battlemaster granting a Rogue an opportunity sneak attack through Commander's strike?

I am thinking about creating some kind of "tag team" that works very well together in combat (but may be very different outside).

[LudicSavant]

Hi everyone!

I was thinking --- are there characters or character builds that you think have some cool kind of synergy with other characters in combat? I mean characters can always work together of course, I was thinking more of things like for example a Battlemaster granting a Rogue an opportunity sneak attack through Commander's strike?

I am thinking about creating some kind of "tag team" that works very well together in combat (but may be very different outside).

There are so many of these. But here's just a few for now:


Order Domain Cleric + Rogue
Repelling/pulling blast Warlock + hazard casters (Create Bonfire, Spike Growth, etc)
Open Hand Monk + hazard casters (especially Reflex/Strength hazards, since they get autofailed when a foe is Stunned)
Lore Bard (or anyone else who can reduce damage rolls on allies) + Armor of Agathys users
Holy Weapon or Elemental Weapon users + Samurai archers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23842524&postcount=38). More generally, anything that adds per-attack damage buffs to Fighters (but especially high level Samurai, because they get even more attacks).
Crusader's Mantle (such as from a War Cleric) + A party of minionmancers (like Shepard Druids or Necromancers) and multiattackers (like a Hasted PAM vengeance Paladin sharing Haste with his horse, which is also attacking). Roll an entire crate of d4s.
Scout Rogue + Create Bonfire (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/8brsiw/scout_rogue_grapple_and_create_bonfire/). More generally, any "enters" hazards or Spike Growth with grapplers.

[nickl_2000]

Cavalier Fighter with Mounted Combatant and Moon Druid with Sentinel (acting as a mount).
Order Domain Cleric and any Rogue (shadowmonked on this one)
Paladin and Monk (at high level the monk will never fail a saving throw again).
Shadow Sorcerer casting darkness with Warlock who can see through darkness

[micahaphone]

I really like the combo of Ancestral Barbarian and another melee fighter who has Sentinel. When they stand next to each other, it's hard to attack either of them. A real Damned if you Do, Damned if you Don't scenario.

2 best buds, they always got each other's backs.

[airless_wing]

Land Druid + Fey Warlock is a ridiculously fun combo. The Druid can drop Plant Growth to halt melee enemies from ever reaching them, while the Fey lock can Repelling Blast enemies through Plant Growth and Spike Growth. The Fey lock isn't as hampered by Plant Growth as others would either, since they have several extra options for mobility and positioning.

[Fynzmirs]

Oathbreaker + Necromancer Wizard

[Xetheral]

I like combining a Moon Druid who has Sentinel with a Wolf-Totem Barbarian who has Mounted Combat. When one rides the other both (usually) get advantage in melee. Incoming attacks can be redirected to the raging Barbarian if desired, reducing the damage and (if it's a melee attack) triggering an opportunity attack from the Druid.

Add Ancients Paladin to either one (probably the Druid, who can better afford high charisma) to get a big boost to saves and resistance to spells for both characters.

Alternatively, make the rider a Bladesinger Wizard (splash Warlock or Conquest Paladin to get Armor of Agathys to be able to absorb more damage). To make sure the Druid can still get advantage, have the Druid be a Kobold for Pack Tactics.

The biggest downside to this pairing is coordinating between different initiatives. The rider may not be able to always take advantage of Extra Attack in melee, so make sure they have a ranged option too.

[Ertwin]

Str based Goliath, and a tanky melee focused dwarf/halfling

Step 1: Goliath yeets dwarf into a group of enemies
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.

[Teaguethebean]

I am playing a conquest paladin with the menacing feat and sheild master allowing me to lock down several enemies a turn and leave them prone. This combos perfectly with my team of an order cleric who uses spirit guardians and dodges and uses her bonus actions to make the swashbuckler rogue attack the prone enemies with his reaction. Kinda a 3 man strategy but we mesh together perfectly.

[Keravath]

Battlemaster fighter with Commander's Strike and any rogue.

[Potato_Priest]

Any number of Paladins, their saving throw auras stack. Add 1 Ancients paladin for advantage on saves and resistance vs. magic and an oathbreaker for bonus damage.

[nickl_2000]

Any number of Paladins, their saving throw auras stack. Add 1 Ancients paladin for advantage on saves and resistance vs. magic and an oathbreaker for bonus damage.

Are you sure on the saving throw aura? It's a general rule that abilities/features with the same name don't stack (see Unarmored Defense)

[Teaguethebean]

Any number of Paladins, their saving throw auras stack. Add 1 Ancients paladin for advantage on saves and resistance vs. magic and an oathbreaker for bonus damage.

Yeah they don't stack. Though that would be cool.

[Jophiel]

Working well for us, so far:

Druid summons critters to swarm around big monster. Bard (me) casts Dissonant Whispers, causing monster to flee and take a heap of opportunity attacks. Summoned critters chase and attack/swarm monster, keeping it from getting movement back towards us, monster maybe kills one or two but they're expendable. Repeat as needed.

[Merudo]

Glamour Bard + spellcasters / Booming Blade users.

Use booming blade, then the Glamour Bard moves the party away, and then the spell casters use AOE spells on the enemies.

[MaxWilson]

Hi everyone!

I was thinking --- are there characters or character builds that you think have some cool kind of synergy with other characters in combat? I mean characters can always work together of course, I was thinking more of things like for example a Battlemaster granting a Rogue an opportunity sneak attack through Commander's strike?

I am thinking about creating some kind of "tag team" that works very well together in combat (but may be very different outside).

A long range Sharpshooter Fighter plus a short-range Mobile Shadow Monk. Sharpshooter can destroy anything out in the open from his overwatch position, which gives PCs the strategic initiative. But you still have to actually go in and clean out any bad guys who are hunkered down, and Mobile Shadow Monk can absolutely destroy enemies in close terrain, especially if they are patient enough that enemies to relax enough that Pass Without Trace might grant surprise.

It'll be like a reverse slasher movie, or Batman Begins: every once in a while the monk shows up to take out an isolated enemy until they are down several men and all survivors are wounded and huddled together in a locked room, too afraid to move. (Then the monk sets the building on fire and the Sharpshooter shoots them as they flee from the flames.)

Watch Alien and contemplate what happens to Ripley if the alien were an intelligent Mobile Shadow Monk with Stunning Strike, paired with Sharpshooter sniper overwatch waiting outside the ship.

Rock, hard place.

[CheddarChampion]

Yeah they don't stack. Though that would be cool.

Yes and:
Ancients doesn't have an aura that gives advantage on saves.
Oathbreaker doesn't apply bonus damage to allies unless they are friends/undead.
Played straight, paladins of such oaths wouldn't get along.

[sambojin]

Moon Druid 6 and War Cleric 6.

All those restrain-on-hit attacks from Moon's wildshape are now virtually automatic with the +10 from War's Divinity (2/sr). There can also be summons to ping it off if you'd like. It's a lot more gruesome than you'd think. You've got plenty of other lockdown magic between the two of you as well, and some serious skillmonkey potential too.

Being able to switch it up from a front line melee team to a lockdown mini-blaster team on any encounter is fun too. Or just having one of you Hold Person'ing for advantage/auto-crits for everyone else. But +10 to-hit when the attack rider is grappled+restrained is pretty abusable, and works all campaign long.

It's not bad for stuff that has decent damage riders either. Stuff like Quetzalcoatlus dive attacks look a lot better at lvl8 when they're +14 to-hit for 6d6+2, instead of +4. Or Rhino charges at +17 for 4d8+5 with DC15Str proning at lvl6. But mostly it's for restrain-on-hit (0 movement, advantage to-hit for everyone, even shooters, disadvantage on attacks for them, and disadvantage for them on dex saves against your casters is very nice). Helps low-end stuff like Flaming Sphere and Spiritual Weapon hit as well, for synergy between you both.

If you like, feel free to make the War Cleric into a Mounted Combatant as well. Even if he's not riding the Druid, he can ride one of the summons, for fun and murder'y profit. There's a few decent large mounts that get Pack Tactics (Dire Wolf mostly) so both get advantage when riding around. Amusingly enough, the Moon can also change into a Velociraptor and ride around on the War Cleric, but that's mostly just for funsies, not effectiveness.

(not saying its better than say a Pally/War combo, especially for damage output, just saying its very good at putting restrained on any target you want. Which is also good)

[loki_ragnarock]

Druid casts Moonbeam. Every turn (not round, turn) that something moves through the space, it makes a save or takes radiant damage. This particular spell upcasts very efficiently when supported by a party built to support it.

Combine with:
Battlemaster Fighter with Pushing Attack.
Open Hand Monk.
Barbarian with Shield Master feat.
Warlock with Repelling Blast and/or Grasp of Hadar
Wizard with Thunderwave

Each additional participant increases the efficacy of the spell.

[CTurbo]

Wolf Totem GWM Barbarian and a Champion GWM Fighter with Sentinel

Wolf Totem Barbarian and a Elf Rogue with Elven Accuracy.

[sambojin]

Battlemaster and Moon Druid. Specifically for Menacing Attack and Restrain-on-hit. The frightened condition gives you disadvantage to all ability checks, it lasts until the end of your next turn with menacing, and escaping the grapple that is causing the restrained condition is an ability check (not a save, like most beast proning/etc stuff is).

If they fail that Menacing Wis save, they'll mostly fail any chance to escape the grapple/restrained too, this turn and next.

It's sort of like the Extend metamagic, but for restrain-on-hit. Plus, it lets the Fighter blend things up better too.

(yes, I primarily play druids)

[Shuruke]

Light domain cleric (tough feat high con. )
Glamour bard(dissonant whispers spam)
Shepherd druid/moon druid (lots of beasts and dm let them have moon druid scaling for wildshape)
Arcane trickster (sneak attacks and extremely hard to pin down.had elven accuracy and ring spell storing. Ranger npc would store pass without trace for +27 stealth)

Went from 1-20 in that campaign. Was only 2 times someone went down

One was my a.t being possesed by a ghost of someone whom he killed in his backstory

Other was from some poor decisions against yeth hounds.

We were a nuisance

[Daithi]

Any big grappler character and any character that can cast Spike Growth.
The grappler drags the grappled character thru tons of hit point damage.

[Wasp]

Hey! Those are some very cool ideas for "combos"! Love it!

[HiveStriker]

Hi everyone!

I was thinking --- are there characters or character builds that you think have some cool kind of synergy with other characters in combat? I mean characters can always work together of course, I was thinking more of things like for example a Battlemaster granting a Rogue an opportunity sneak attack through Commander's strike?

I am thinking about creating some kind of "tag team" that works very well together in combat (but may be very different outside).
There are many, many of these.

Basics are:
- High grappling ability + hazard: Monk + caster maintaining Spike Growth is the staple example.
- Push/pull effects + hazard: same idea, different means.
- Forced inaction: one guy with Sentinel or Booming Blade, another that can push enemy away afterwards, great against melee enemies.
- Ways to empower one particular attack: Grave Cleric, Battlemaster, Order Cleric have ways to provide big boost to another's attack.
- High aggro: put a Spirit Guardians Cleric with a Warding Bond to cover a martial friend with high attack, Cleric maintaining Dodge if needed, bonus point if Grapple: idea is to prevent enemies to flee from the heavy hitting friend.
- Party mobility: classic of Rangers and Druids, using Conjure Animals to conjure Giant Eagles or the like to provide mobile vantage points for archers or ways to cross cliffs / hazards to melee.

Probably two dozen more things. :)
One of my favorite: Shepherd Druid + martial with resilience (preferably Monk or Barbarian, with Rogue decent third): cast Plant Growth to make a pain for all melee enemies to move (leave a patch for melee to have some margin), cast Unicorn Aura + Healing Words or Bear Aura + Healing Spirit depending on your ally. If no Healing Spirit, add insult to injury by making ranged ineffective with a Wind Wall either to cover your backline of casters or force archers to close in, depending on set up point.

Any number of Paladins, their saving throw auras stack. Add 1 Ancients paladin for advantage on saves and resistance vs. magic and an oathbreaker for bonus damage.
Yeah, no they definitely DON'T stack.
There was for a time a very stupid tweet of one WoTC guy saying it stacked, before he realized how completely against every other writing rule of 5e and how game-breaking (I mean, 5E universe breaking really) that was and reverted it.

[micahaphone]

Paladin subclass auras stack, just not the main class one. So you won't get 2X (+cha to saving throw) but with a Devotion and Ancients paladin you do get immunity to fear + resistance to spell damage.

[W41Blackr4zr]

you could do something like;

a party of just bards (they can function as pretty much anything)
a party of just clerics (trust me I've been in one and they rock!)
or a party of just druids (not as good as the other two but having 4-6 bears attacking the enemies is always fun lol)

[Guy Lombard-O]

Working well for us, so far:

Druid summons critters to swarm around big monster. Bard (me) casts Dissonant Whispers, causing monster to flee and take a heap of opportunity attacks. Summoned critters chase and attack/swarm monster, keeping it from getting movement back towards us, monster maybe kills one or two but they're expendable. Repeat as needed.

Nice. As LudicSavant said, you could have the bard pick up & concentrate on Crusader's Mantle at the same time, and take that tactic to the next level.

[RogueJK]

Mastermind Rogue + Crit-Fishing Half-Elf Hexblade Warlock/Heroism Paladin with Elven Accuracy.

The Rogue's Bonus Action 30" Help means the Hexadin can have Triple Advantage nearly every round, with frequent 19-20 Crits (from Hexblade's Curse or Legendary Strike), plus Divine Smite to really unload upon critting.

(Also works with a Mastermind paired with a Champion Fighter with Elven Accuracy, just without the additional "nova" offered by Divine Smite.)

[Tellara]

Currently playing a monk and one thing I'd throw out is any monk with a control caster (God wizard, land druid). Control casters excel at locking down large groups, but the caster lockdown spells are a bit lacking. You can counterspell if it gets through. Blindness works reasonably well but it's a save every turn and casters have options even when blind. Most spells that really hurt casters target wis, which they're strong against. Monks have the best caster lockdown in the game, wizards can easily lock down minions and big dumb brutes. Between the two you can lock down entire encounters all day long. Clever wizards with short work days can get the job done by themselves tbh, but not having to worry about anything other than what they're stellar at makes life very easy.

[Amechra]

Holy Weapon or Elemental Weapon users + Samurai archers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23842524&postcount=38). More generally, anything that adds per-attack damage buffs to Fighters (but especially high level Samurai, because they get even more attacks).


I'd add Monks to this one - they hit their 3-4 attacks much faster than Fighters do, so you'll see the benefits earlier.

I was going to mention Sentinel Moon Druid + a Mounted Combatant, but I see that that's been mentioned.

Level 5+ Monks work very well in a party with anyone who has an ability that forces a Strength or Dexterity save, since Stunned makes people auto-fail those saves. Same goes for grapplers.

Thief Rogues in a party with people who like fire damage - being able to Use An Item as a bonus action lets you chuck two flasks of oil a turn, which supply a nice bit of bonus damage.

[LudicSavant]

I'd add Monks to this one - they hit their 3-4 attacks much faster than Fighters do, so you'll see the benefits earlier.
Which buffs do you have in mind?

[Arkhios]

Barbarian X/War Mage 2 works together surprisingly well in combat.

Sure, it's a bit MAD, but not so MAD that you couldn't pull it off, even with point-buy. Besides, aren't all barbarians mad in a way!?

Barbarians have very little use for Reaction in combat, and Arcane Deflection might turn out to be quite useful, as it stacks with having a shield, doesn't count as casting a spell, and can be used even while raging.

[Quietus]

One that I got to play in AL :

Arcana cleric + ancestral guardians barbarian - we did this as wood elf and red dragonborn, respectively. In combat, she mixed it up with Shilelagh (from magic initiate) and spirit guardians, with an AC of 21 and decent saves. Meanwhile, I was using my rage ability to make creatures want to target me and my 20 AC plus damage resistance, while also using the dragon roar feat to make them not want to advance toward me. Effectively we both had resistance to all physical and fire damage. We were just about to hit level 8, and that's when we would pick up double wisdom damage per scagtrip for the cleric, and shield master to get bonus action push effects, giving enemies the choice between staying where they are to avoid booming blade rider, or coming to attack us while we resist their damage.

[Undyne]

Grave domain Cleric, Zealot Barbarian. The classic Unkillable Tank. Zealots have an ability to not need material components if an ally is trying to revive them.

[HiveStriker]

Monk, especially 4E, with any caster that has either Spike Growth / Enlarge / Haste.
4E can Fly himself, all Monks have great speed, and can manage good Grapples if they wish to build around it (dip in Rogue, be a race that can pick Prodigy).

Have them grapple targets along Spike Growth (Monk staying "just outside" or "above" depending on context). Outdoors, 4E can dish insane damage when he can grapple targets, making Enlarge a good enabler when confronting Huge targets.

For those reasons, 4E Monk and Grassland Druid make a very powerful team (Druid having aforementioned spells -except Enlarge- but also classic Entangle), as well as Sorcerer (metamagics) and Bard (Bardic Inspiration to help on initial Grapple).

Technically though, any martial can be made as good as this: you just need a way to have high STR checks (Rogue's Expertise + Reliable Talent, Barb's rage), and a Ring of Spell Storing to let the martial cast favorite buff among those aforementioned, while you as a caster either double down on buff or set up adequate AOE. :)

It's just that this particular combo has nearly all built-in.

[Man_Over_Game]

Sentinel+Polearm Master Warrior, with Warlock packing the knockback EB. Badguy comes close, gets stabbed and loses his turn, then gets knocked back to do it again.

Crown Paladin with melee allies. Locks enemies down, heals nearby allies for a lot of HP.

Mastermind Rogue with an ally that is using GWM. Advantage every turn.

Mastermind Rogue with any other Rogue. Advantage (and so Sneak Attack) every turn.

Life Cleric using Heavy Armor Master, to use Warding Bond on an armored ally. Warding Bond's damage is mitigated by Heavy Armor Master, and then healed by the Life Cleric's self-healing features.

[Wasp]

Thanks for all the cool ideas! That's definitely a resource for the future!

[DKing9114]

My Devotion Paladin/Battlemaster Fighter and my friend's Totem Barbarian/Battlemaster Fighter have staggering nova potential.