Amechra
2021-04-19, 02:11 PM
I recently got it into my head that a High Elf Kensei (picking up Booming Blade as my Elf cantrip) might be a fun character to play post-Tasha's. My main rationales are...
Accuracy boosts (such as, I dunno, Focused Aim and Unerring Accuracy) are at their best when you can make one big attack. Booming Blade is one of the best ways to pick one up without a lot of multiclassing.
Ki-Fueled Strike means that we can follow up our big Booming Blade hit with a bonus-action attack — two longsword attacks + the Booming Blade rider feels on-par, if not better, than two longsword attacks + Flurry of Blows.
After 6th level, the Kensei can always trigger Ki-Fueled Strike if they want/need to — use Focused Aim on a miss and Deft Strike on a hit. Other subclasses can swing this, but usually they're either using a special action (Shadow, Elements) or they're better off just flurrying anyway (Mercy, Sun Soul).
Booming Blade works really well with Mobile, which is a feat that most Monks are already looking to pick up. Jog up, hit someone, and jog away — if they follow you, they take a chunk of damage. If they try to hit you with ranged attacks... you're a Monk.
You're going to be a pretty decent switch-hitter (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?626095-The-Way-of-the-Zen-Archery-A-Mini-Guide-To-The-Post-Tasha-s-Kensei). If something too far away to profitably slash, you can pull out your longbow and fire off three attacks per turn.
It's pretty stylish. One strike for big damage, and then they get hurt some more if they dare to move? Sweet.
Oh, yeah, and Tasha's lets you trade in that +1 Int for +1 Wis. Which is pretty solid if you're doing point buy or the standard array.
I'm reasonably certain that the damage would be decent — I'm not sure how to treat the "conditional" damage from Booming Blade when crunching numbers, but it looks like it wouldn't be out of place in a party where people aren't beelining for the Objectively Correct Options For Martial Damage. On top of that, it's a setup that would be absolutely fine with picking up Elven Accuracy + Sharpshooter (if you want to optimize your ranged damage), since you have a big melee attack that you can use Elven Accuracy with — it'd be very tight stat-wise, though.
As for ki usage... by the time this comes online, you'll have 6+ ki points to play with between short rests, and you only need to spend 1 ki point on any round where you want to maintain your damage. You shouldn't have too many problems with running out of ki if your party tends to take a short rest every couple of encounters — the only exception is if you need to throw out some Stunning Strikes to burn through some legendary saves, but that's not going to be your primary combat role.
I'm curious about how people would optimize this "combo" (it's hardly worth the term) — the one big tweak I can think of is replacing the High Elf part with a one level dip in Arcana Cleric (which would also let us pick up a few cool spells for utility purposes), but that would also delay everything by a level... and this is a build that properly comes online at 6th level, so I'm not sure if that delay would actually be worth it unless you were starting at higher levels.
Accuracy boosts (such as, I dunno, Focused Aim and Unerring Accuracy) are at their best when you can make one big attack. Booming Blade is one of the best ways to pick one up without a lot of multiclassing.
Ki-Fueled Strike means that we can follow up our big Booming Blade hit with a bonus-action attack — two longsword attacks + the Booming Blade rider feels on-par, if not better, than two longsword attacks + Flurry of Blows.
After 6th level, the Kensei can always trigger Ki-Fueled Strike if they want/need to — use Focused Aim on a miss and Deft Strike on a hit. Other subclasses can swing this, but usually they're either using a special action (Shadow, Elements) or they're better off just flurrying anyway (Mercy, Sun Soul).
Booming Blade works really well with Mobile, which is a feat that most Monks are already looking to pick up. Jog up, hit someone, and jog away — if they follow you, they take a chunk of damage. If they try to hit you with ranged attacks... you're a Monk.
You're going to be a pretty decent switch-hitter (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?626095-The-Way-of-the-Zen-Archery-A-Mini-Guide-To-The-Post-Tasha-s-Kensei). If something too far away to profitably slash, you can pull out your longbow and fire off three attacks per turn.
It's pretty stylish. One strike for big damage, and then they get hurt some more if they dare to move? Sweet.
Oh, yeah, and Tasha's lets you trade in that +1 Int for +1 Wis. Which is pretty solid if you're doing point buy or the standard array.
I'm reasonably certain that the damage would be decent — I'm not sure how to treat the "conditional" damage from Booming Blade when crunching numbers, but it looks like it wouldn't be out of place in a party where people aren't beelining for the Objectively Correct Options For Martial Damage. On top of that, it's a setup that would be absolutely fine with picking up Elven Accuracy + Sharpshooter (if you want to optimize your ranged damage), since you have a big melee attack that you can use Elven Accuracy with — it'd be very tight stat-wise, though.
As for ki usage... by the time this comes online, you'll have 6+ ki points to play with between short rests, and you only need to spend 1 ki point on any round where you want to maintain your damage. You shouldn't have too many problems with running out of ki if your party tends to take a short rest every couple of encounters — the only exception is if you need to throw out some Stunning Strikes to burn through some legendary saves, but that's not going to be your primary combat role.
I'm curious about how people would optimize this "combo" (it's hardly worth the term) — the one big tweak I can think of is replacing the High Elf part with a one level dip in Arcana Cleric (which would also let us pick up a few cool spells for utility purposes), but that would also delay everything by a level... and this is a build that properly comes online at 6th level, so I'm not sure if that delay would actually be worth it unless you were starting at higher levels.