Optimization for levels 3 to 9

[Wasp]

Hi everyone

considering that many campaigns never will reach those fabled higher echelons of play - what are your favorite builds that are optimized for levels 3 to level 9?

Assume the campaign starts at level 3 - so you don't have to deal with levels 1 or 2 - and will never reach level 10 - what characters do you think would be the best/most fun in this level range? What classes have an advantage here? What spells here? Does this change your thoughts on multiclassing and dips? And what about feats - would any race stand a chance against the Variant Human?

Would love to hear your thought!

[Lyracian]

what characters do you think would be the best/most fun in this level range? What classes have an advantage here? What spells here?
I think lower levels helps Martial characters as Spell casters do not dominate everything but I think they are all viable. Clerics, Fighters, Paladins, Rogues, and everything else all work well all through Tier 2.



Does this change your thoughts on multiclassing and dips?
If I am taking a one level dip on a character as first or second level I still would. The other point I tend to dip is about level 10 so that is out for your games. I can still see building an Eldritch Knight/Wizard or Fighter/Rogue.


And what about feats - would any race stand a chance against the Variant Human?
Half-Elf jumps out to me as better. Only a single level until getting a Feat at Level 4. Human might have the edge in Point Buy but with rolled stats Half-Elf is my pick. Dwarven Cleric or an Elf, for a lot of classes, are other picks I would take over Human depending on my build plan.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'd say this level of play strongly favors Warlocks, Monks and Wizards.

Warlocks due to the fact that their Short Rest spell slots have hit the x2 mark and the limitations on their casting hasn't become relevant quite yet.

Monks due to the fact that their damage scaling hasn't yet become an issue and they've started to get enough powers and Ki points to really make a difference.

Wizards because they're getting to the point where they'll have some powerhouse spells that few can compete with, before the other casters are able to bridge that gap. They also have the most rituals, which is important when players have few spells overall at this level.

Although my personally favorite mid-low level build is Barbarian 1, Moon Druid X. From level 3 to Tier 3, it's a power house of a build that demolishes everything in your path with nearly infinite amounts of HP and tanking power, with just a single level off of your spellcasting.

[Deathtongue]

Paladin 1 / Hexblade Warlock 1 / Paladin X. All of your ASIs go into Charisma. If you choose a paladin with a strong level 7 aura like Conquest or Ancients it's almost nothing but upside. And in case your game goes past level 9 you're still set up quite well for character levels 10, 11, 12, and 13.

Even if you plan to go with a two-handed weapon for your Paladin, Warlock gives an extra short rest spell slot, Hexblade's Curse, two cantrips, and most importantly access to the Shield Spell.

[8wGremlin]

So 3 to 9 are where nearly all my campaigns get to, so I tend to optimise for these levels.
Some of the best characters are all pretty simple but I'll give you a run down of my favourites

Vhuman CoffeeLock - but healer and buffer. Hexblade warlock 2/ Divine Soul Sorcerer 1+.
often frowned upon by gamers, in actual play, in actual dungeons if you start with a long rested character, (after every downtime), then it's fine. Picked up lots of twin buff and quicken spells to help the rest of the team.

Straight Tortle shepherd Druid one of the best and most versatile characters i've played, I had my doubts about them as they didn't seem powerful or optimised to me, but this has been one of the most fun character's i've played, very powerful when it reaches 5th level, especially coming from Chult (land of the dinosaurs)

Vhuman Gloomstalker Ranger 5/ Eldritch knight Fighter x wielding only a hand-crossbow this has been one of the most hard hitting characters I've played, their first round alpha strike has taken out many an encounter. picking crossbow mastery and sharpshooter and then ritual magic (wizard) made the character more versatile especially with all the utilitarian wizard rituals.
(against the giants, firing from with in a leomund's tiny hut, has got to be one of my favourite scenes)

and lastly my Standard Winged tiefling Arcane Cleric urban bounty hunter with magic initiate Druid, for some thorn-whip/shillelagh can trip fun, as well as picking booming blade, and chill touch for the arcane cantrips, poten casting makes for this to be even more dangerous.

All those have been my most fun to play over the last few years.
I hope they provide you with some thoughts,

Kia Kaha (Māori: stay strong)

[SLOTHRPG95]

Single-classed Ranger actually does pretty well in this level range. Sure, there's a temptation to jump off after 5th level for Rogue, but you're missing out on 3rd-level spells and shorter term you're missing out on Iron Mind or Ethereal Step (or Defensive Tactics if you went Hunter). And you're not even getting Uncanny Dodge or Evasion in return, so the cost/benefit calculus is skewed from what it'd otherwise be.

[Chugger]

For a melee striker, any vaHum that optimizes the feats SS or GWM is great.

The key to making SS or GWM work is to mitigate the -5 to hit penalty so you land that +10 damage as often as possible.

BM fighter is one great way to do this. You essentially only use Precision and convert misses to hits. Especially w/ SS and f.s. archery (+2 to hit), you can largely cancel out the -5 penalty and hit most ac's often enough for this to work well. You recover your sup dice every short rest.

Advantage on attack also largely eliminates the penalty. Barbs recklessly attacking. Gloomstalker can get adv in many fights. A hexblade fighting inside darkness w devil's sight. Someone cast faerie fire on target. Your familiar gives you an advantage. You can look up a list of how to get adv.

Self-casting bless is not as good imho giving 5e's action economy. You have to waste a full turn to cast it. If the fight only lasts 3 rounds - we have many fast fights - you wasted a third of your damaging potential casting a buff. If someone else can buff you - maybe. "But my fighter MC's 1 lvl cleric to get bless and I a.s. to cast it" - great you still wasted an "action" casting a buff and not hurting something. It's not horrible, but I prefer the other ways of mitigating the penalty. Now if you always fight long fights, bless makes sense but on its own is not enough. Bless only mitigates half the penalty. Bless and f.s. archery = near full mitigation.

A lock casting EB + hex with the invo to add cha damage is pretty consistently powerful and nasty. You get tired of hexing and EBing, but it's effective. Sorlock is crazy good but not so much at these levels - but if you typically have one "boss fight" per adventuring day, sorlock is powerful. On a boss fight they can burn SP and quicken cast EB a few times - and damage the crud out of one target.

A bard w/ a bardic instrument can control like crazy for about half those levels using hypnotic pattern - disad on ST because hp is a charm effect, and the instrument imposes a disad on all STs for charm type spells. Hyp Pat doesn't work on whole classes of beings, like undead and constructs.

A basic cleric rocking spirit guardians and spir weapon and toll the dead is too often overlooked. On rnd 1 he casts spir guardians - every badguy in 15' of him takes 3d8 per round. On rnd 2 spir guard goes off automatically now, so b.a. cas spir weapon - and for the action cast Toll the Dead.

That's 13.5 av dam to each badguy in 15' + about 7.5 or 8.5 damage from spir weapon + 13 damage to one target from Toll Dead. Per round. It eats a lvl 3 and a lvl 2 slot, so if you have many fights per day this becomes a problem.

Moon druid is just plain great at this level, especially if you understand which animal to turn into and what spell to have running (cast on round one a concen spell - it stays with you - then go into animal form). Spike growth is killer. Conjure animals is killer. Giant octo - you can hold your breath 1 hr out of water - you have 15' reach and you grapple and restrain on a hit. Now everyone has an advantage to hit your target. You have to be bold and creative to make moon druid work. Far too often I see a moon druid just turn self into a bear and charge into combat - how boring. Why not cast a spell first? Why always a bear? Well, bears hit hard and are good - but giant elk - giant octo - dire wolf - there are other animal forms that work much better in some fights.

A div wizard is pretty powerful, esp on a day they roll at least one low portent number. Now you can control without chance of failure one creature a day. You just have to understand which control spells to take and which are great. Hold person is tricky to use and often fails - you cast it and the target fails ST, great it's paralyzed. But now its turn comes and it gets to roll again - and passes - you essentially wasted a spell. You can ready your spell to go off after its turn so your party is guaranteed to have a full round to crit it, but readying can fail.

That's why I like the control spells you can't just roll out of. Suggestion - if it can understand you - permanently removes a creature from the fight - the only way it can return to the fight is if you take damage and fail concen - or if someone dispels you. Levitate is good for creatures that weigh under 500 lbs and have no meaningful range attack. Say two werewolves or wereboars attack. Levitate one and its up in the air, helpless and unable to roll out of it. Focus on the one you didn't float, kill it - then kill the other that's floating with cantrips/arrows. Classic divide and conquer. Hypnotic Pattern is tricky cuz a smart enemy can wake up his buddies. If you HP 3 badguys but miss their cast, he can magic missile each on his next turn - hurtin them a bit but waking them all up. So anyway, you really need to know how to use these spells - when they work and when they don't.

A simple rogue w/ booming blade can cause a lot of damage and has expertise on a lot of skills, for non combat help. At lvl 5 a high elf swashbuckler or any rogue arcane trickster can hit a target for 1d8 rapier + 1d8 booming blade + 3d6 sneak attack + 3 dex bonus. That's 22.5 average damage. Now move away (use b.a. to disengage if AT) - and if target has no ranged attack it is in a bind. If it moves it takes iirc 2d8 more damage (at least 1d8 more) from bb - or if it doesn't move you have locked it down and made it useless for a turn. Either is very strong.

[LudicSavant]

would any race stand a chance against the Variant Human?

Yuan-Ti, Aasimar, Goblins, Warforged, most of the elves and half-elves, Hill Dwarves, Hobgoblins, the winged races, some of the better Dragonmarked races, and Simic Hybrids are all examples of things that stand a chance against Variant Human for a 3-9 game.


Does this change your thoughts on multiclassing and dips? Not that much, since most of my builds are already designed to have a smooth progression (e.g. be good at all levels rather than focusing on 20).

[Eldariel]

Vuman Wizard with Alert. It's really that simple. You can go Diviner, War Wizard or Bladesinger (if the DM allows), but most specialities hit their groove a bit later so you want to pick something with a good level 2 ability. But yeah, getting the highest level spells on each level is just insane. You start the game with Levitate & Suggestion as your big nukes (maybe Web) and soon you get to add Hypnotic Pattern to the mix. You cap out with level 5 spells, which are conveniently insanely strong (Wall of Force, Telekinesis, Bigby's, etc.). Overall, the default progression is just good and you get to max out your casting stat (or alternatively to take Res: Con and get your casting stat to 18). Lots of good AOE disables (and even damage if you feel like it) and you hit the high points in time for them to truly be game-altering (even Fireball is a good spell on level 5 if you aren't fighting primarily Fiends or something).

[MrStabby]

I really like the cleric over this level.

You get enough cash to take advantage of the armour proficiency. This is the range you get all your domain spells over. This is the range your pretty much get all your class abilities. This is the range over which you get your stand out spells.

The two ASIs are just the amount you need for something like resilient and a casting stat boost.

[Wasp]

Yuan-Ti, Aasimar, Goblins, Warforged, most of the elves and half-elves, Hill Dwarves, Hobgoblins, the winged races, some of the better Dragonmarked races, and Simic Hybrids are all examples of things that stand a chance against Variant Human for a 3-9 game.
Well, that *was* meant as a bit of a provocation, I admit :smallbiggrin:

While I do think that the bonus feat can be extremely useful for some builds in tier 2 it's not really necessary for others - and that's probably not too different from other tiers.

[Ogre Mage]

I really like the cleric over this level.

You get enough cash to take advantage of the armour proficiency. This is the range you get all your domain spells over. This is the range your pretty much get all your class abilities. This is the range over which you get your stand out spells.

The two ASIs are just the amount you need for something like resilient and a casting stat boost.

I agree, the cleric is an excellent class in both Tier 1 and 2. I particularly like the light domain cleric. Radiance of the Dawn is a very powerful and often encounter-ending effect in Tier 1. Warding Flare is great too as most monsters don't have multiple attacks yet. Once you get into Tier 2 you are a d8 HD medium armor wearing cleric who can cast fireball, an extremely powerful spell for the tier. And enemies who rush in close get punished with spirit guardians. ha ha ha