5e Dueling and Thrown styles

[BerzerkerUnit]

I feel like a crazy person but work with me please.

Bonus actions can be taken at any time during your turn. I rule this as: If you have a viable bonus action, you can use it to interrupt your own attack routine as you desire. I'm a lot more flexible than some with the timing, but for our purposes here, pls use the below example.

Example: Fey Touched Fighter with Misty Step moves to attack an enemy and downs them with first attack, misty steps to another and uses remaining attacks on a different foe.

So let's say I have a Fighter 5 with both Dueling and Thrown and 6 handaxes in a butcher's belt. On their turn, with two hand axes in hand they declare they're throwing handaxes as attacks.

Axe 1 gets the benefit of the the thrown style. Per PHB this triggers two weapon fighting allowing a bonus action to be used to throw the 2nd axe, however the Fighter has an empty hand which now affords the option of throwing Axe two with the benefit of Thrown and Dueling Styles. As a fighter 5 with extra attack they have 1 attack from their Attack Action remaining. The Thrown style affords them the option of drawing an axe as they throw it, however again, they will still have an empty hand.

Damage each should look like:
d6+Str+2
d6+4 TWF
d6+Str+4

Right?

Any insight is appreciated.

[Amechra]

Yeah, this works. It probably shouldn't, but it does. And you don't even need to interrupt your Attack action — you just need to go "throw main-hand weapon" -> "throw off-hand weapon (gets Dueling bonus)" -> "Bonus Action: draw and throw off-hand weapon (gets Dueling bonus)".

Heck, arguably Thrown Weapon Fighting actually lets you get the Dueling bonus on all of your attacks — after all, you can draw (and therefore "hold") the light off-hand weapon you're going to make your TWF attack with as part of that action.

[Naanomi]

If you use darts you can also tie in archery combat style...

[Amechra]

If you use darts you can also tie in archery combat style...

And you can stack all of that by 10th level if you go Champion and take the Fighting Initiate feat.

I can dig it.

[Gurgeh]

Darts won't work with Duelling since they're a ranged weapon, but they definitely let you stack Archery and Thrown fighting styles.

[Naanomi]

Darts won't work with Duelling since they're a ranged weapon, but they definitely let you stack Archery and Thrown fighting styles.
Darn, well... I guess you can squeeze out a tiny bit more damage with darts and two weapon style if you really wanted to?

[Sherlockpwns]

Darts won't work with Duelling since they're a ranged weapon, but they definitely let you stack Archery and Thrown fighting styles.

It gets worse. You also can’t twf with ranged weapons, so you also can’t huck darts as a bonus action.

But yes, you can throw 3 axes.

So far the best thrower I can think of is adding in a minimum 3 levels of soul knife.

This would let you gain both dueling and thrown on all attacks AND your stat bonus. Depending if you build str or dex the final attack (min level 8) is either a d6 for str or d4 for dex

The attacks are
Throw a soul knife.
Bonus action soul knife.
Draw and throw a real axe or dagger.

That all said, spending a feat for a fighting style is kinda crap. Essentially at best you are gaining 6 damage a round. Assuming you aren’t rolling 20s out the gate, a stat increase is just mathematically better, albeit less fun.

[Gurgeh]

Darts give you access to Sharpshooter, which can let them outpace the melee weapons provided you have ways to handle the accuracy penalty.

If you're willing to burn resources then the Quick Toss manouevre gives you a more powerful bonus action attack than what you can get from the Soulknife or regular two-weapon fighting (better die size than the soulknife secondary attack and you get to add both your ability score modifier and your superiority die to the damage roll - plus you can upgrade to javelins for longer range). It's obviously limited by your stock of dice.

Both Quick Toss and darts have the additional benefit of letting you fight with a shield, enjoying better AC than someone who needs to keep both hands free could get.

[Sherlockpwns]

Darts give you access to Sharpshooter, which can let them outpace the melee weapons provided you have ways to handle the accuracy penalty.

If you're willing to burn resources then the Quick Toss manouevre gives you a more powerful bonus action attack than what you can get from the Soulknife or regular two-weapon fighting (better die size than the soulknife secondary attack and you get to add both your ability score modifier and your superiority die to the damage roll - plus you can upgrade to javelins for longer range). It's obviously limited by your stock of dice.

Both Quick Toss and darts have the additional benefit of letting you fight with a shield, enjoying better AC than someone who needs to keep both hands free could get.

To be clear sharpshooter outpaces everything, everywhere. If you start going down this route you just end up with an artificer/fighter with a repeating hand crossbow, shield, and crossbow expert, because quick toss is nice, but you’ll run out quickly if you want to use it every round.

There is nothing wrong with the old dart chucker for burst dpr either. I’d still take a 2 dip artificer for the dart thrower so you can have a returning magic weapon (magical thrown weapons are rare and none of the core book ones are returning). The extra +1 to hit and damage is a big bonus too, plus some spells.

But the OP asked specifically for dueling and throwing style combos, so I stuck to what I believe is the optimal dpr selection for that.

One thing that is particularly nice about the thrower build with rogue is it is fairly feat light and agnostic to the rest of the character. You can just as easily make a fighter 1 / rogue 19 as you could a paladin 17 / rogue 3. Or even something super weird like Rogue 3 / fighter 5 / barbarian 2 that uses str instead of dex (Stacking a lot of flat +2s). Edit: Apparently I forgot you can't rage throw an axe. How lame.

The only real requirement is to find a way to get two fighting styles and 3 levels of rogue.

[Gurgeh]

Yeah, that's fine - though in the Barbarian case I'm not sure what they're getting from the multiclass beyond D12 hit dice, since rage and Reckless Attack only apply to melee attacks and are mutually exclusive with the +2 damage from Thrown Weapon Fighting; seems like they'd have been better off going deeper into Fighter for the ASI and subclass feature, or taking two levels in Ranger to get a featless second fighting style.

I'd strongly prefer strength to dexterity for any thrown weapon fighter who wasn't using Sharpshooter with darts, since the only other finesse option is daggers; strength not only gives you access to better damage dice, it also gives you significantly longer range thanks to javelins.

[BerzerkerUnit]

Darts give you access to Sharpshooter, which can let them outpace the melee weapons provided you have ways to handle the accuracy penalty.

If you're willing to burn resources then the Quick Toss manouevre gives you a more powerful bonus action attack than what you can get from the Soulknife or regular two-weapon fighting (better die size than the soulknife secondary attack and you get to add both your ability score modifier and your superiority die to the damage roll - plus you can upgrade to javelins for longer range). It's obviously limited by your stock of dice.

Both Quick Toss and darts have the additional benefit of letting you fight with a shield, enjoying better AC than someone who needs to keep both hands free could get.

For my part, the delineation between "melee and ranged weapons" at every table I've played at has been whether the weapon lists a range, not the table, so you don't need darts, sharpshooter can still be used with daggers, hand axes, etc.

I respectfully but very earnestly do not care if one of the developers has weighed in on this, hatchet and javelin throwing have been a sports for more than 2 millenia, you can absolutely throw with the same kind of accuracy as you can shoot an arrow or huck a sling stone. If sharpshooter were explicitly meant for "weapons that have small striking surface area" or some similar nonsense, they should have written it with the words "darts, bows, crossbows, and slings" instead of "ranged weapons."

If anyone wants to get that technical about it, let me introduce you to my sharpshooting tavernbrawler that throws nets around doors and through arrow slits that deal 1d4+dex+10 damage in addition to restraining targets.

[Sherlockpwns]

For my part, the delineation between "melee and ranged weapons" at every table I've played at has been whether the weapon lists a range, not the table, so you don't need darts, sharpshooter can still be used with daggers, hand axes, etc.

I respectfully but very earnestly do not care if one of the developers has weighed in on this, hatchet and javelin throwing have been a sports for more than 2 millenia, you can absolutely throw with the same kind of accuracy as you can shoot an arrow or huck a sling stone. If sharpshooter were explicitly meant for "weapons that have small striking surface area" or some similar nonsense, they should have written it with the words "darts, bows, crossbows, and slings" instead of "ranged weapons."

If anyone wants to get that technical about it, let me introduce you to my sharpshooting tavernbrawler that throws nets around doors and through arrow slits that deal 1d4+dex+10 damage in addition to restraining targets.

Well, I suppose if you find a table that allows it, then this build becomes a lot more complex. The feat is a bit of a weird corner case with ranged weapons, I'll certainly give you that. Both the first two parts of the feat work with thrown weapons (as they specify ranged attack, not ranged weapon). Then you're vying for 3 fighting styles and a feat for "maximum chuckage!" It's probably a dumb idea, but the logic I have is if the table allows sharpshooter for thrown weapons it would allow archery fighting style for them too. So at the end of a long adventuring career you could be adding +14 to a hit from styles & sharpshooter, which would be a lark.

How can that be built? Well, the easiest way is pure fighter champion of course, but probably not the optimal way. This method would net you out 2 fighting styles as part of the class, leaving the last one (dueling I suppose) as a feat. But that is super lame, not every attack benefits from dueling, and who wants to crit more often on a mere d6.

I still really like the psy-rogue, but I personally hate mixing sharpshooter and sneak dice. Rogue 3 fighter X certainly will get you there (around level 9 I believe), but let's go a different path. A weirder path maybe.

I think Fighter 6 is still going to be the most expedient route to get up and running. As stated earlier in the thread, Battle Master Quick Toss may be the best way to get maximum defense and damage, plus the value of Trip, goading, and precision (for sharpshooting) is not to be overlooked. An alternative is Rune Knight, though you'd have to use the above method of having two axes and not getting dueling on one attack. No reason other than I like the idea of being a big person throwing things (ok the fire restrain and cloud abilities are top notch as well).

But lets go back to Battle Master and master some battles.

I'd go style: archery & feat: Sharpshooter at 1, then take thrown weapon and dueling at 4 and 6.

I'd then dip into Artificer 2 for returning weapon (and something else, probably +1 AC, but who knows).

At level 8 you could have a returning Javelin with sharpshooter and 3 styles attached to it (and a shield).

The first two attacks would do 1d6+14+str and have relative -2 to hit (vs. a regular guy throwing the javelin with the same str)

The bonus action attack would do 1d6+14+str+1d8 with the same to-hit penalty.

The real advantage here is around level 8 is where you're likely to encounter more and more resistant enemies (probably before that, but life's tough), so a magic weapon is going to come in clutch, plus you effectively now have unlimited ammo. Lots of tables will hand wave arrows, but javelins? that's not as likely. I'd even consider detouring at 5 to grab this at level 7 and then pick up dueling at 8.

The optimal path from here is probably just to continue with fighter, picking up more uses of quick toss and that juicy 3rd attack at character level 13.

The only downsides to this I see are even though that relative to-hit value is pretty good, you're still likely at a lower str score than another fighter at level 8, unless you're at a table with rolled stats. The fighter 8 and 12 ASIs basically must be str increases (though if you have an odd value, piercer for javelins or slasher for axes could be fine). So your real to-hit difference may be -3 to -4.

Also, the bigger problem, that you can only bonus-action throw at full power 4-6 times per rest. After that you'll need to decide if you want to only have your attack actions or if you want to drop the shield and shift to axes and keep the DPR higher. This is something that you kind-of have to decide in advance, since you'd need to swap the returning weapon infusion to the axes; as a result I probably would choose Axes over Javelins. How often are you really attacking something over 60ft away! I'd still keep a javelin or axe handy either way though in case you know you're going to need extra range or extra attacks.

It seems like an absurd number of feats to for what boils down to "I throw stuff" in every combat, but that'd be my hot take. Without sharpshooter/archery, I think the decision for rogue is a heck of a lot easier.

[Slider Eclipse]

Well, I suppose if you find a table that allows it, then this build becomes a lot more complex. The feat is a bit of a weird corner case with ranged weapons, I'll certainly give you that. Both the first two parts of the feat work with thrown weapons (as they specify ranged attack, not ranged weapon). Then you're vying for 3 fighting styles and a feat for "maximum chuckage!" It's probably a dumb idea, but the logic I have is if the table allows sharpshooter for thrown weapons it would allow archery fighting style for them too. So at the end of a long adventuring career you could be adding +14 to a hit from styles & sharpshooter, which would be a lark.

How can that be built? Well, the easiest way is pure fighter champion of course, but probably not the optimal way. This method would net you out 2 fighting styles as part of the class, leaving the last one (dueling I suppose) as a feat. But that is super lame, not every attack benefits from dueling, and who wants to crit more often on a mere d6.

I still really like the psy-rogue, but I personally hate mixing sharpshooter and sneak dice. Rogue 3 fighter X certainly will get you there (around level 9 I believe), but let's go a different path. A weirder path maybe.

I think Fighter 6 is still going to be the most expedient route to get up and running. As stated earlier in the thread, Battle Master Quick Toss may be the best way to get maximum defense and damage, plus the value of Trip, goading, and precision (for sharpshooting) is not to be overlooked. An alternative is Rune Knight, though you'd have to use the above method of having two axes and not getting dueling on one attack. No reason other than I like the idea of being a big person throwing things (ok the fire restrain and cloud abilities are top notch as well).

But lets go back to Battle Master and master some battles.

I'd go style: archery & feat: Sharpshooter at 1, then take thrown weapon and dueling at 4 and 6.

I'd then dip into Artificer 2 for returning weapon (and something else, probably +1 AC, but who knows).

At level 8 you could have a returning Javelin with sharpshooter and 3 styles attached to it (and a shield).

The first two attacks would do 1d6+14+str and have relative -2 to hit (vs. a regular guy throwing the javelin with the same str)

The bonus action attack would do 1d6+14+str+1d8 with the same to-hit penalty.

The real advantage here is around level 8 is where you're likely to encounter more and more resistant enemies (probably before that, but life's tough), so a magic weapon is going to come in clutch, plus you effectively now have unlimited ammo. Lots of tables will hand wave arrows, but javelins? that's not as likely. I'd even consider detouring at 5 to grab this at level 7 and then pick up dueling at 8.

The optimal path from here is probably just to continue with fighter, picking up more uses of quick toss and that juicy 3rd attack at character level 13.

The only downsides to this I see are even though that relative to-hit value is pretty good, you're still likely at a lower str score than another fighter at level 8, unless you're at a table with rolled stats. The fighter 8 and 12 ASIs basically must be str increases (though if you have an odd value, piercer for javelins or slasher for axes could be fine). So your real to-hit difference may be -3 to -4.

Also, the bigger problem, that you can only bonus-action throw at full power 4-6 times per rest. After that you'll need to decide if you want to only have your attack actions or if you want to drop the shield and shift to axes and keep the DPR higher. This is something that you kind-of have to decide in advance, since you'd need to swap the returning weapon infusion to the axes; as a result I probably would choose Axes over Javelins. How often are you really attacking something over 60ft away! I'd still keep a javelin or axe handy either way though in case you know you're going to need extra range or extra attacks.

It seems like an absurd number of feats to for what boils down to "I throw stuff" in every combat, but that'd be my hot take. Without sharpshooter/archery, I think the decision for rogue is a heck of a lot easier.

Honestly I thought the optimal route would be to start as a Mountain Dwarf and pick up 2 levels in Ranger and either Artificer or Paladin depending on party composition and how generous your DM will be with Magic Items.

16 Levels of Battle Master gets you plenty of ASI's and only loses out on the second use of Action Surge, while just 2 levels of Ranger gets you one of your Fighting Styles and the Favored Foe Feature for additional damage on each of your attacks on eventually 6 targets per Long Rest making it a very powerful dip for a Fighting Style heavy build like this. Early on you need to figure out how generous your DM is with Magic Items however, as the reason that an optimal thrower starts as a Dwarf is for the Dwarven Thrower, one of the few Returning weapons in the game and a very powerful one at that. If you don't expect to really get access to it until towards the end of the campaign Artificer 2 becomes basically mandatory for the Returning Infusion, otherwise you can go Paladin for Smites and the Dueling Fighting Style. as an additional Benefit of going Dwarf you don't lose Movement speed in Heavy Armor allowing you to Minimize your Dex as long as you're careful to avoid sticking close to your teammates to minimize the need to make Dex Saves.

Featwise this build would at minimal want Sharpshooter and Crusher, as well as Fighting Initiate for the Artificer Build. as for how I'd build this I'd start with a Point buy of 17/12/14/13/13/8 (Swap Cha and Int for Paladin version) as a Fighter 1 picking up Thrown Weapon for my Fighting Style. From there I'd immediately go for the 2 levels of Artificer to get access to the Returning Weapon Infusion ASAP and put it on my Light Hammer. Then go Fighter until you reach Battle Master 8 (10th level), picking up Fighting Initiate: Archer, Sharpshooter and Crusher in the process bumping up Str to 18 and granting some solid means of crowd control thanks to the effects of Crusher. This is when I'd make the dip in Ranger getting the final Fighting Style and Favored Foe for more damage. by this point You can throw three hammers per round pushing opponents up to 15 ft in any direction while dealing +19+1d4 damage on two of them with the third dealing an additional 1d8 on top of that. Additionally you'll have access to a couple 1st level spells from the Ranger (I'd recommend Zephyr Strike and Hunter's Mark as additional Bonus Action outlets) which could further boost that damage. and you still have 3 ASI's remaining from your Fighter levels and and Additional Extra Attack to gain as you progress into T3/T4 play.

[Khrysaes]

Honestly I thought the optimal route would be to start as a Mountain Dwarf and pick up 2 levels in Ranger and either Artificer or Paladin depending on party composition and how generous your DM will be with Magic Items.

16 Levels of Battle Master gets you plenty of ASI's and only loses out on the second use of Action Surge, while just 2 levels of Ranger gets you one of your Fighting Styles and the Favored Foe Feature for additional damage on each of your attacks on eventually 6 targets per Long Rest making it a very powerful dip for a Fighting Style heavy build like this. Early on you need to figure out how generous your DM is with Magic Items however, as the reason that an optimal thrower starts as a Dwarf is for the Dwarven Thrower, one of the few Returning weapons in the game and a very powerful one at that. If you don't expect to really get access to it until towards the end of the campaign Artificer 2 becomes basically mandatory for the Returning Infusion, otherwise you can go Paladin for Smites and the Dueling Fighting Style. as an additional Benefit of going Dwarf you don't lose Movement speed in Heavy Armor allowing you to Minimize your Dex as long as you're careful to avoid sticking close to your teammates to minimize the need to make Dex Saves.

Featwise this build would at minimal want Sharpshooter and Crusher, as well as Fighting Initiate for the Artificer Build. as for how I'd build this I'd start with a Point buy of 17/12/14/13/13/8 (Swap Cha and Int for Paladin version) as a Fighter 1 picking up Thrown Weapon for my Fighting Style. From there I'd immediately go for the 2 levels of Artificer to get access to the Returning Weapon Infusion ASAP and put it on my Light Hammer. Then go Fighter until you reach Battle Master 8 (10th level), picking up Fighting Initiate: Archer, Sharpshooter and Crusher in the process bumping up Str to 18 and granting some solid means of crowd control thanks to the effects of Crusher. This is when I'd make the dip in Ranger getting the final Fighting Style and Favored Foe for more damage. by this point You can throw three hammers per round pushing opponents up to 15 ft in any direction while dealing +19+1d4 damage on two of them with the third dealing an additional 1d8 on top of that. Additionally you'll have access to a couple 1st level spells from the Ranger (I'd recommend Zephyr Strike and Hunter's Mark as additional Bonus Action outlets) which could further boost that damage. and you still have 3 ASI's remaining from your Fighter levels and and Additional Extra Attack to gain as you progress into T3/T4 play.

Favored foe is a level 1 ranger feature.
Level 2 is fighting style and spells.

Paladin 2 also gets a fighting style and spells AND smites, so arguably paladin may be better, but you wont have many spells.

Therefore, you can get the same number of fighting styles as a 16 Fighter, 2 Arti, 2 Paladin, you need 13 str, 13 int, and 13 Cha to do this.

Which is better than 13 str, 13 dex, 13 wis, and 13 INT or 13 CHa for 2 ranger.

[Slider Eclipse]

Favored foe is a level 1 ranger feature.
Level 2 is fighting style and spells.

Paladin 2 also gets a fighting style and spells AND smites, so arguably paladin may be better, but you wont have many spells.

Therefore, you can get the same number of fighting styles as a 16 Fighter, 2 Arti, 2 Paladin, you need 13 str, 13 int, and 13 Cha to do this.

Which is better than 13 str, 13 dex, 13 wis, and 13 INT or 13 CHa for 2 ranger.

Honestly, I forgot that Ranger isn't Strength or Dex, my train of thought was based on mistakenly thinking Ranger could be taken with 13 str/wis. Remembering this fact yea, better to go Paladin even if you're only really getting a couple uses of Divine Smite out of the deal. Granted, at that point it may just be better to take the Artificer levels to Armorer 4 and take the Fighting Initiate feat for the boost to Speed and Stealth Checks as you'd only be getting Divine Smite 3 times a day max and Paladin doesn't have a very good spell list outside of Bless. That would in turn let you dump Cha as well for better Con/Int.

[Gurgeh]

as an additional Benefit of going Dwarf you don't lose Movement speed in Heavy Armor allowing you to Minimize your Dex as long as you're careful to avoid sticking close to your teammates to minimize the need to make Dex Saves.
Heavy armour only reduces your movement speed if your strength doesn't meet the minimum requirements, but you seem to be assuming this will be a strength build and not a dexterity one, so there's no way you'll be suffering speed penalties in the first place. Even full plate only needs 15 strength, which you should have from level 1 if you're running a Mountain Dwarf.

[Slider Eclipse]

Heavy armour only reduces your movement speed if your strength doesn't meet the minimum requirements, but you seem to be assuming this will be a strength build and not a dexterity one, so there's no way you'll be suffering speed penalties in the first place. Even full plate only needs 15 strength, which you should have from level 1 if you're running a Mountain Dwarf.

I.. huh.. honestly that one is completely on me as I must have just assumed it still worked like it does in 3.5e/Pathfinder 1e after reading the dwarf feature and have just never had a chance to play a character that used Heavy Armor due to simply having poor luck finding tables.

Thankfully, this was a minor detail as the main reason to play Dwarf was because Dwarven Thrower's can only be used by Dwarves.. and it's just by far the best weapon you can get for a Thrown Weapon build IMHO.

[Khrysaes]

I.. huh.. honestly that one is completely on me as I must have just assumed it still worked like it does in 3.5e/Pathfinder 1e after reading the dwarf feature and have just never had a chance to play a character that used Heavy Armor due to simply having poor luck finding tables.

Thankfully, this was a minor detail as the main reason to play Dwarf was because Dwarven Thrower's can only be used by Dwarves.. and it's just by far the best weapon you can get for a Thrown Weapon build IMHO.

Dwarven throwers can also be used by high enough leveled artificers. Level 14.

That does defeat the purpose of fighter levels though.

That said, as mentioned dwarf can ignore the movement penalty for armor, which is a result of str. You can theoretically make a thrower, maybe not dwarven thrower i dont know, with your idea and dex13, int13, and wis13, since fighter can be dex or str. Ranger is dex +wis and artificer is int requirements. This would be the same stat requirements, numberwise as a fghter, paladin, artificer.

[Sherlockpwns]

Honestly I thought the optimal route would be to start as a Mountain Dwarf and pick up 2 levels in Ranger and either Artificer or Paladin depending on party composition and how generous your DM will be with Magic Items.


My DM only gives out what is pre-planned in the campaign with no ability to buy or craft magic items so I tend to forget other DMs give out more magic stuff (I assume this would not be the case if we were playing in Eberron, but alas, not).

STINGY DM!

Anyway, yeah you could build around a dwarven thrower too for ranger 2 / fighter 18. I don't think Paladin brings a lot to the table here, though there's nothing wrong with it either. In essence I'd say the Paladin direction just gives you a few heal options while the ranger will push dpr further. Obviously a dwarven thrower will ramp the DPR of a throwing build through the roof pretty much regardless of what dip you take (if any).

[Naanomi]

If I am going full champion, I may as well crit-fish right? Piercer, Half-Orc, etc

[Gurgeh]

Savage Attacks only works for melee attacks, unfortunately; if you're willing to commit to javelins then Piercer is solid (but if you're running Champion then you might want to keep the option for an offhand throw alive, in which case you need to either downgrade to hand axes / daggers or burn a feat on Dual Wielder).