You only get One-shot!

[KyleG]

Next week is time for a one shot and all the builds in my library are built to tell a characters story not a small adventure story.

So here's the brief...level 8, sustained damage (I'm not imaging a long rest and I don't like nova builds as a rule), a bearbarian in the party (no idea on others) and he needs to be built to be adventurous (this is a dungeon dive), a team player. Synergy with the bear, sure. Pounding out damage, awesome.
Whatever goes bar the following. Monk, bard, paladin sorcerer and barbarian are out as main class. Cleric I would dip if it works but I don't want to be a healer.

So what is out there, what is fun, what uses my action, and bonus action round after round, for several combats.

Love to see your thoughts.

[kazaryu]

Next week is time for a one shot and all the builds in my library are built to tell a characters story not a small adventure story.

So here's the brief...level 8, sustained damage (I'm not imaging a long rest and I don't like nova builds as a rule), a bearbarian in the party (no idea on others) and he needs to be built to be adventurous (this is a dungeon dive), a team player. Synergy with the bear, sure. Pounding out damage, awesome.
Whatever goes bar the following. Monk, bard, paladin sorcerer and barbarian are out as main class. Cleric I would dip if it works but I don't want to be a healer.

So what is out there, what is fun, what uses my action, and bonus action round after round, for several combats.

Love to see your thoughts.

i mean in general if your'e looking for sustained damage then you want a martial or a warlock.

in that vein you've got:
fighters:
samurai use their BA for advantage, although it is a long rest resource.,
echo knight use their BA to summon a flimsy echo and to swap places with it. echo knights feature is at-will with their only long rest feature being the extra attack. but the teleport itself can be useful and is at-will.
battlemaster doesn't necessarily use their BA inherently, but you can always go V.human (or spend an ASI) to gra PaM for consistent BA attacks.

as far as synergy with the bear, i mean, if your DM uses flanking rules then going melee can provide advantage. and going polearms means you can hide behind the bears muscles for your attacking.

Rogue
rogues as a general rule are entirely at-will. i don't have all of the subclasses memorized, but most subclass abilities don't run on a consumable resource. sneak attack is fairly weak if its hard to proc, but with a bearbarian in the party you shouldn't have much trouble finding eligible targets even if you can't get advantage. meanwhile having rogue skills (4 expertise at that level) can be a big help in a dungeon. TWF is pretty good on rogues since they're primary damage comes from just hitting once, rather than hitting multiple times, so thats a decent use of your BA (for when your main attack misses).
mastermind has a ranged BA help action which is great for teamwork, although the subclass itself is largely considered to be lack luster otherwise. (although **** them, i like mastermind.)

those 2 are probably the most sustainable damage, warlock obviously also has sustainable damage, but you don't get the same level of rider damage as you do from things like battlemaster or sneak attack. although it should be noted that warlock abilities like eyes of the runekeeper can be useful in dungeons, being able to decipher ancient scripts. (i say 'could be' because, obviously, if the DM doesn't do anything with language then its really just a useless invocation).

overall you might look at something along the lines of fighter 5/rogue 3. fighter gets you all kinds of nice combat abilities, where rogue gets you some useful out of combat abilities. going battlemaster you could also get some teamwork maneuvers like comanders strike, or bait-and-switch alongside mastermind rogue to give your allies advantage. of course you'd need to go either rapier or ranged in order to fully leverage the rogue dip, but it seems like it would make a nice well rounded character. good sustained damage, lots of room for teamwork with the bear/other team members. good options to help out of combat.

[KyleG]

We are allowed one rare item it seems so that's cool. Also conquest paladin 7s aura is awesome. I've always wanted to play one so maybe this is my chance, that could be an option.

[Khrysaes]

I would recommend artificer. 7 lets you add int to basically all checks. You will have expertise in thieves tools. You can make your own magic items.

Also, you said paladin was out.

My two recommendations, if dragonmarks are allowed.
Start 1 fighter, take blind fighting, 7 battlesmith mark of storm half elf. Cast fog cloud and hit things in it.
2 star druid/6 arcane cleric mark of sentinel human, Starry form dragon helps you maintain concentration, sentinel gives you shield and counterspell, arcana cleric 6 lets you mass remove debuffs with mass healing word, and cast spirit guardians for sustained aoe. Take thirn whip, shillelagh, and crusher, and smack things into and out of your guardians.

Edit:
Alternatively,
6 Artificer, 2 rogue: Expertise in thieves tools +2 skills, like perception and stealth, good for adventuring. Additionally you get the awesome cunning action.

I would recommend armorer or battlesmith for this.

[Chronos]

My stock character for one-shots is a rogue, The Notorious Hudon (he's such a successful thief that the police attribute any crime they can't solve to him). But then, that's because I'm most comfortable and experienced playing rogues.

[Bobthewizard]

I would go echo knight. The echo is flimsy but it's only a BA to resummon, so if it takes one hit every round, that's still amazing. And it's AC isn't terrible - 17 at this level - so sometimes the enemy will miss. You can place it next to the barbarian and stay in the back. And the at-will arcane eye from echo avatar should be useful in a dungeon.

Echo 6/barbarian 2 for reckless attack is pretty awesome. Advantage on your attack and then the enemies still need to get through the echo to get to you. You lose the avatar though.

Sentinel is a good feat for this build. The first ability works through the echo. The second and third only work from your location, not the echo's, but it's still a good feat just for that first bullet.


1. When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, the creature's speed becomes 0 for the rest of the turn
2. Creatures provoke opportunity attacks from you even if they take the Disengage action before leaving your reach.
3. When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn't have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature

[Eldariel]

Well. On this level, I'd probably lean towards Wizard. Bladesinger seems perfect for what you want. Let's see:

Half-Elf Bladesinger (Half-High Elf taking the Weapon Proficiencies of High Elf swapped to Hand Crossbow, Longbow, Heavy Crossbow & whatever). 18 Dex/16 Con/16 Int/screw the rest. You could have Elven Accuracy, you've got Extra Attack with the maneuver bonus, 18 Dex/16 Int, 3 uses of Bladesong, could take Sharpshooter or Crossbow Expert for ranged prowess and efficient bonus action use. Add on top of that the cantrip attack with Booming Blade/Green-Flame Blade, familiar using Help-action to grant advantage on the Booming Blade attack, and you're pretty golden.

You've got level 3 Shadow Blades for 3d8 base damage on your weapon attacks (just check the Booming Blade/Shadow Blade interaction first), you've got Summon Greater Demon on level 4 getting a Barlgura or a Babau 3/day as an additional full warrior or caster for a fight (you can just command them to tell you their truenames to make their saves harder, or Summon/Charm beforehand to tell you their truenames, and summon the ones you have truenames of) and then you can drop Concentration for another spell pretty effortlessly. In other words, for 3 encounters you can just turbocharge things and you can pretty much all day Shadow Blade enemies dead. This would look like +7/+7/+7 [tridvantage] for 4d8+4/3d8+4/1d6+4 (though you have to play around with the actions to load the Hand Crossbow; 48 DPR vs. AC 17) plus Barlgura for +7/+7/+7 (Adv) for 2d6+4/2d6+4/1d10+4 for 1d6 rounds, for a very respectable total amount of damage (27 DPR vs. AC 17).

You also have Haste for ranged kiting if that's possible, you have Shield/Absorb Elements/Mage Armor/Bladesong for a superb defensive setup, you have Blink as a superb secondary layer of defense where necessary, you have Pyrotechnics & Blindness as non-Concentration CC and you can even Fireball or whatever if need really be. But mostly you just full attack + bonus action hand crossbow enemy, with spells to make yourself hit harder and harder to hit (use False Life if you need extra HP) and you can kinda switch-frontline with your Barbarian; when you're Bladesinging, you can go up there and when you're not, they can Rage and you can fight at range.

[jaappleton]

I mean, isn't it incredibly obvious?

When you have one shot to seize everything you ever wanted, and you can capture it, or let it slip?

You know what you have to play.

Mom's Spaghetti.

[Segev]

Bear with bear friend(s)? Sounds druidic, to me.

Circle of Spores gets bonus hp out of a second use of wild shape. Circle of Dreams has healing, though I'm not terribly fond of it, myself. Circle of the Moon might be needed to get a full-on bear, though, as your wild shape form, now that I think about it.

[loki_ragnarock]

I mean, isn't it incredibly obvious?

When you have one shot to seize everything you ever wanted, and you can capture it, or let it slip?

You know what you have to play.

Mom's Spaghetti.

And here I was, pondering a throwing build...

[noob]

I mean, isn't it incredibly obvious?

When you have one shot to seize everything you ever wanted, and you can capture it, or let it slip?

You know what you have to play.

Mom's Spaghetti.

Or play dune.

[Segev]

To be honest, I'm a little surprised that the request from the OP didn't involve cat-people carrying very large light bulbs.
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