fighter subclass for gloom stalker/rogue ?

[da newt]

I'm playing a gloom stalker 5 / AT rogue 5 that will be MCing into fighter. I highly doubt they will see beyond lvl 15. They have SS/XBE, an owl familiar, and +1 heavy Xbow. He's one of the higher DPR in the party and does his best to keep out of melee. We average 2 or 3 combats and one SR / day.


Would Battle Master or Samurai be a better subclass for increasing DPR and % of hits, and why? 3x/long rest ADV for a full turn vs 4x short rest maneuvers. I'm thinking the first round combo of dread ambusher and action surge w/ Sami ADV is probably best, but precision strike is very taste w/ SS too ...

[beargryllz]

If only you had a bow instead of a crossbow I'd say Arcane Archer 100%

Battle Master will work pretty well. Precision attack is just massive and will turn so many misses into hits

[da newt]

Thanks but arcane archer is a no.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'll agree with Battle Master for Precision Attack. Four times per short/long rest you'll get to add a d8 to your attack roll, deciding to use it after you've rolled to hit.

How many Fighter levels? Using a heavy crossbow, you can never make more than one attack per action, so gloom stalker's ambusher and extra attack aren't really helping. Ask your DM if you can find someone in a city to trade that crossbow to for a +1 longbow, and go arcane archer.

[Yakk]

XBE lats you make 3 attacks with a crossbow.

BM is very solid. Samurai's advantage takes your bonus action, and if you had it to spare you should be using a hand xbow.

BM precision doesn't double crit chance like Advantage, but it turns the same or more number of misses into hits per day, even with 1 short rest/day.

Suppose 18 AC with SS. You have +5 to hit, so hit on a 13+, for 1d10+15+1d6 HM damage per hit. You cast HM (bonus action) and open fire.

(.4*24+.05*9)*6, plus 3d6 sneak attack (nearly guaranteed) is about 70 damage.

OTOH, you get (.64*20.5 + .0925*5.5)*6 plus SA, which is about 90 damage.

The advantage was worth about 20 points.

If you save your BM dice for when you miss by 5 or less, they are each worth (1+7/8+6/8+5/8+4/8)/5 hits each, or 0.75. Each hit is 24 damage, so a BM die is worth 18 damage!

With 4 combats with 4 rounds each, that is 16 rounds and 36 attacks. Missing by 4 happens 0.2 of the time, somyou'd expect 7.2 of them. 7.2 times 18 is 129 damage/day. The 3 fighting spirits ... where worth 60 total.

Now I did burn a HM on the BM. But that is a pretty good use of a bonus action.

You can also use BM dice for other stuff, like 9 damage on a crit. Or on non-HM attacks. I suspect if I ran the HM-free math you'd still win with BM precision attack.

---

Let us try HM-free.

On 18 AC with SS, BM with 18 dex and a +1 xbow deals 5.5+15 = 20.5 per hit. They have a +4+1+4+2-5=+6 to hit, so hit on a 12+ (oops, made a mistake above).

45% hit chance 5% crit chance with +5.5 damage on a crit, so 9.5 damage per attack on 18 AC.

On an opening round of battle, gets 6 attacks for 57 damage.

The samurai has advantage, for 70% hit chance 10% crit chance (rounded), and the same damage. So 14.9 damage per attack, 6 attacks, is 89.4 damage. Nice!

Also, the chance the samurai lands a sneak attack is 99.9271%. The samurai can even crit-fish for the first 4 attacks (34.4% chance) and then use it on the first of the last two that hit (only 0.059049 chance of no sneak attack this way). So .344*10.5 + 10.5 * (1-0.059049) = 13.5 sneak attack damage.

The BM with only one attack with advantage (worst case) lands 0.7 sneak attacks and 0.1 sneak attack crits for 8.4. So that is another 5.1 damage for the samurai.

Without HM, each fighting spirit is worth 32.4 damage; but the BM's owl gave it advantage on its first attack, so only 27 extra damage, plus 5.1 extra sneak attack damage is 32.1. Times 2.5 (only 2 action surges/day) is 80.25 damage per day from Fighting Spirit on the first round over a similar "Spirit-less" attack round.

Now the BM dice. Again, we only use them when we miss by 5 or less, and we should get about 7 of those per day. This means burning a BM die has an average of 75% chance of turning a miss into a hit. 7*.75 = 5.25 extra hits per day.

Each hit is 20.5 damage, so 107.625 extra damage per day.

And at least some of those BM dice will turn missed sneak attacks into hits, or go with HM. And the BM can drop a HM for another 10.5 damage while the Samurai cannot.

BM is way, way better than it looks.

BM dice value in terms of damage:
Miss by 1: worth 20.5
Miss by 2: 18
By 3: 15.4
By 4: 12.8
By 5: 10.3
By 6: 7.7
By 7: 5.1
By 8: 2.6
Burn it on a crit: 9 (plus rider)
Burn it on a hit: 4.5 (plus rider)

So while I assumed we only used it on a miss by 5 or less, in a fight where you really really must drop something you can start burning them inefficiently.

[CTurbo]

Personally I say none of the above and stop at Fighter 2, then take more Rogue levels

[iTreeby]

Samurai's fighting spirit has the ability to enable sneak attack for you, which is nice. The fact that the advantage attacks are not conditional is a bonus, I'd go with samurai over cavalier. Eldritch knight gets you a few more cantrips and slots, which is nice.

Personally id go with the blood hunter order of the mutant, for the crimson rites, the mutagen, and the blood curse. Of course, you could also get the archery fighting style at this point, except you probably chose that at ranger 2 instead of defensive style.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

As gloom stalker and rogue gives you a lot of advantage generating options maybe champion crit range will be better.

Especially it get access to Elven Accuracy.

[bid]

Would Battle Master or Samurai be a better subclass for increasing DPR and % of hits, and why?
If your owl already gives you advantage, samurai doesn't add anything. With at most 2 encounters per short rest, BM 3 utterly trashes any other archetypes anyway.

Still, I would consider rogue 8 first. Let the others improve their DPR while you get a useful feat.

[Crgaston]

Another vote for stopping at Fighter 2 for Action Surge.

Gloomstalker 7 gives Wis save proficiency, Rogue 6 gives another 2 Expertises. There's your 15 levels right there.

[da newt]

At my table, the owl's HELP or a HIDE only provides ADV on the first attack, so Samurai would really help out for a NOVA first round w/ Action Surge for 6 shots w/ ADV & SS and two with an extra d8.

I had originally planned to use a hand crossbow for the BA attack, but found that it always created a stressful decision to attack again or cast/move HM or CUNNING ACTION, so I ditched it for the range and d10 of the heavy crossbow so that I could concentrate on moving tactically and setting up my next SA.

Usually my first shot is w/ ADV and no SS to ensure I land my SA, then the second shot is with SS if the target AC isn't too high. I almost always have HM on my target unless they were killed by my first shot, and I shot someone else w/ the second.

I'm pretty sure 4 lvls of fighter will be more beneficial than either more ranger or more rogue - evasion would be nice, expertise would help social stuff every once in a while, and an extra 3 or 6 SA is nice, but not more than making a miss a hit (especially w/ SS), and extra ranger levels for WIS saves and spell slots is kinda weak.

Thanks for all the data Yakk.

[greenstone]

Personally I say none of the above and stop at Fighter 2, then take more Rogue levels
Agreed. Four more levels of Rogue gives you +2d6 damage per round, every round, every combat. Nothing in Fighter equals that. It also gives Expertise, to help in the other two pillars of the game, and the incredibly useful Evasion.

[BigRedJedi]

Another vote for stopping at Fighter 2 for Action Surge.

Gloomstalker 7 gives Wis save proficiency, Rogue 6 gives another 2 Expertises. There's your 15 levels right there.

Samurai 7 also gets you Wisdom saves, and 6 got you an extra ASI.

[bid]

Samurai 7 also gets you Wisdom saves, and 6 got you an extra ASI.
But that's 7 levels away, while gloom 7 is 2 levels away.

[Arkhios]

Get more spell slots and bond your weapons with Eldritch Knight, maybe?