Whacky and Wild Powerbuilds

[Nagog]

For you power-builders, min-maxers, or eccentric character players out there, what is the weirdest or most fun thing you've ever built a character specifically to do?

My favorite was my Githyanki Str Monk who was powerbuilt for Jump Distance. With Step of the Wind, Jump (as a racial spell), and maxed Strength, he could jump 120ft in one mighty leap. Everything else about him was pretty garbage, but it was very satisfying to get shot by a longbow then immediately leap right next to the guy who'd fired it.

[CTurbo]

Weird and fun? I'm currently playing a extra Wild Magic Barb/Wild Magic Sorcerer that's been a lot of fun.

My weirdest character was probably a LG Human Long Death Monk/Fiend(Chain) Warlock with an Imp familiar constantly trying to corrupt him. He had 20 Dex, Wis, and Cha. He was blind and could only see through the eyes of the imp. The Imp had the Observant feat and could cast Suggestion once per day for free. Was definitely a fun wild character.

[RogueJK]

I had fun several years ago with a "quick draw gunslinger" build. It was a Battlemaster Fighter/Gloomstalker Ranger leveraging Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Extra Attack, Action Surge, and Dread Ambusher to be able to make 7x hand crossbow shots in the first turn of combat, dropping up to 7d6+2d8+105 damage (plus additional damage from BM maneuvers). That was one of the first super-optimized "nova" builds I played in 5E, shortly after XGtE came out.

I had a later Echo Knight/Ancestral Guardian with Polearm Master and Great Weapon Master who could do similar with 7x melee polearm attacks. That one wasn't limited to just the first turn of combat, but could still only do it a couple times per day due to Unleash Incarnation's CONMOD/LR limitations.

[Dork_Forge]

My Jedi build (Githyanki Psi Warrior) was a lot of fun, you can jump and flip all over the place, that, combined with having a sunblade and being disarmed at one point (so I could use the Force to bring it back) was one of the more memorable one shots.

Playing a Tabaxi Soulknife was also funny, mostly because of the insane Stealth checks and mobility.

[Blatant Beast]

Horizon Walkers are pretty cool.
Etherheral Step let’s the Ranger bypass walls, ceilings, and floors for a round.

I was in a game with Dao-Genie Warlock/Rune Knight 3 that had the Crusher Feat and Gauntlets of Ogre Power, and used the Runes of Fire and Stone, as well as the Repelling Blast Invocation and Eldritch Smite for control, in addition to spells.

Thematically, the pieces complimented each other…..it was a very good combo.

[Nod_Hero]

STR-build Centaur Beast Barbarian 6/Mercy Monk 14
Some Bestial Soul Jump, some Step of the Wind, throw on Horseshoes of Speed and you go very whoosh and very vroom...

[DarknessEternal]

For you power-builders, min-maxers, or eccentric character players out there, what is the weirdest or most fun thing you've ever built a character specifically to do?

My favorite was my Githyanki Str Monk who was powerbuilt for Jump Distance. With Step of the Wind, Jump (as a racial spell), and maxed Strength, he could jump 120ft in one mighty leap. Everything else about him was pretty garbage, but it was very satisfying to get shot by a longbow then immediately leap right next to the guy who'd fired it.

Do you only want builds that break the rules? Because your movement per round jumping is still limited by your speed.

[RogueJK]

Do you only want builds that break the rules? Because your movement per round jumping is still limited by your speed.

120' movement in a turn is easily achievable by a Level 2 Monk. 40' base movement + 40' Dash Action + 40' Step of the Wind Bonus Action. And that goes up by another 15' total every 4 levels.


20 STR gives you a 20' horizontal jump (with a 10' head start). Jump spell triples that to 60'. Step of the Wind then doubles that to 120'.


So with access to at least 130' total movement, you could jump that full 120', since it takes a 10' running start. And at least 130' total movement is doable from Monk 6+. (Or earlier if you have the Mobile feat.)

[da newt]

I've had a bunch of fun playing a grumpy older gloomstalker/twilight cleric sniper w/ slippers of spider climb and SS who uses Zephyr Strike w/ reckless abandon and refuses to walk on the ground/floor unless it's the only option. Conditional invisibility, 300' of dark vision, spider climb, and SS combo nicely in the right conditions. If I built him again I'd probably add Elvin Accuracy.

[Psyren]

I've been trying to make a character that bases as many things on Wisdom as possible. So far I've got Fey Wanderer 3 and Astral Self Monk for Wis to AC, attack, damage, spell DC, and face skills, and I'm open to more suggestions.

[Dork_Forge]

I've been trying to make a character that bases as many things on Wisdom as possible. So far I've got Fey Wanderer 3 and Astral Self Monk for Wis to AC, attack, damage, spell DC, and face skills, and I'm open to more suggestions.

Warding Flair from the Light Cleric and the War Cleric's attacks are based on Wis.

Stars Druid gets some damage and healing tied to Wis from starry forms.

[Oramac]

I'm not sure these count as "builds" per se, but two of my most fun were thus:

1) Hill Dwarf Bearbarian w/ Tough. I made him specifically for hit points. I don't remember the exact number, but at 20th level he had something like 348 hit points. With the bear totem rage, nearly 700 effective hit points was all kinds of fun. Meteor Swarm? Meh, bring it on. I can handle it!

2) The Naked Monk: Nothing special here. I just noticed that Unarmored Defense only requires that you don't wear armor. It never specifies that you need to wear anything at all. So I made an Open Hand monk that basically walked around in Jedi robes, then when combat began he threw them off to fight the battle in the buff.

[Fredaintdead]

Warding Flair from the Light Cleric and the War Cleric's attacks are based on Wis.

Stars Druid gets some damage and healing tied to Wis from starry forms.

The number of times the War Cleric can use their bonus action attack is based on Wis, but the actual attack itself is still Str/Dex based.

[animorte]

My favorite Warlock shenanigans:
Pact of the Chain.
Relentless Hex invocation.
Cast Hex on your familiar.
All day free Misty Step :smallbiggrin:

[Dork_Forge]

The number of times the War Cleric can use their bonus action attack is based on Wis, but the actual attack itself is still Str/Dex based.

In a world with Shillelagh that isn't really an issue, but I was just listing some stuff that uses Wis

[Hairfish]

My favorite Warlock shenanigans:
Pact of the Chain.
Relentless Hex invocation.
Cast Hex on your familiar.
All day free Misty Step :smallbiggrin:

I'd think that your patron would very pointedly ask you what sort of message you think you're sending to it when you regularly mistreat the minion it specifically awarded you as a gift in exchange for your pact of loyalty and service.

[Kenny_Snoggins]

For straight bonkers power probably a tier 4 campaign that lasted a year where I was running an eloquence bard hexblade multiclass who had become a full on monster PC Vampire (with his regular bard class features) at LVL 16. That was one of my first campaigns and I didn't realize how amazing our DM was at the time that he could comfortably run a table with 6 PCs where a full on CR14 Vampire + Hexbard with cloak of invisibility, blood fury tattoo, and gauntlets of soul stealing was a middle of the road PC in terms of power. And it was still a challenging campaign where I got perma-killed (no misty escape) in the finale. Very fun and amazing he was able to manage that much player power. I wish every PC got the opportunity to play a super high power campaign like that at least once.

For wacky power, I'm a big fan of Eloquence Bards. Especially in a caster heavy party. He's such a beast of a denial piece. The mind sliver + unsettling words + silvery barbs set up for your wizards nuke is just vile.
"The demon passes his save against your banishment spell, wizard."
"Don't forget to take a D4 off for mind sliver"
"Oh, right. Still passes"
"And that D20 For unsettling words."
"Look, bard, the monster saved on a Nat 20"
"Reaction, silvery barbs"
*demoralized DM noises*
If the bard stays up, any BBEG single target without Magic immunity of some kind is going to be dead in 4 turns, max (assuming legendary resistances). And it's a devils bind because he's not really doing any damage, so you have to either divert actions to target this guy who is not really actively damaging you in anyway, or get nuked sideways by his debuffs. And he's shockingly hard to take down with Mirror Image, 18 AC minimum, a griffon so he's almost always out of range anyway, shield and silvery barbs.

The best part is, he's not even a combat PC. That's like his tertiary party role. His full time job is breaking bounded accuracy with a minimum persuasion or deception result of like 23 on a natural 1. Get a ring of spell storing and cartomancer and with that and the pact magic slots your sitting on a minimum of 11 (usually way more) casts of your interrupting reaction spells every adventuring day.

[Yakmala]

If your DM is foolish enough to allow Silvery Barbs, reward them for their foolishness by having your Silvery Barbs caster take a one level Order Cleric dip.


Use your reaction to give the enemy disadvantage.
Give an ally, preferably a Rogue or Paladin or other build with high single attack damage, advantage on their next attack.
Use your 1st level ability Voice of Authority to immediately allow the targeted party member to use their reaction to attack with advantage.



It doesn't matter if your party is level 2 or level 20, this is a major increase to the damage output of your heaviest hitter, and all for the minor cost of a 1st level slot and your reactions.

[Nod_Hero]

If your DM is foolish enough to allow Silvery Barbs, reward them for their foolishness by having your Silvery Barbs caster take a one level Order Cleric dip.


Use your reaction to give the enemy disadvantage.
Give an ally, preferably a Rogue or Paladin or other build with high single attack damage, advantage on their next attack.
Use your 1st level ability Voice of Authority to immediately allow the targeted party member to use their reaction to attack with advantage.



It doesn't matter if your party is level 2 or level 20, this is a major increase to the damage output of your heaviest hitter, and all for the minor cost of a 1st level slot and your reactions.

My Chef Background (https://koboldpress.com/bards-with-class-chef-background/) Mark of Hospitality Halfling Creation Bard took a 1 level Order Cleric dip and it's been amazing.
We don't call it "Voice of Authority" tho, we call it "YES, CHEF!"

[Blatant Beast]

If your DM is foolish enough to allow Silvery Barbs, reward them for their foolishness by having your Silvery Barbs caster take a one level Order Cleric dip.

If your DM allows, it also likely means they will use the spell as well.
I do. I have used a Volo Statblock Cloud Giant Smiling one with Silvery Barbs and a customized spell selection/spell list, as the commander of a group of Mercenary Giants, including quite a few Volo Stone Giant Dreamweavers with their Petrifying touch.

DM’s can combo off, just as much as players can. ;)

[Oramac]

If your DM is foolish enough to allow Silvery Barbs


If your DM allows, it also likely means they will use the spell as well.

Yup. This. I regularly tell my players "anything you can do, the monsters can also do".

I'm totally cool with the shenanigans. I quite enjoy watching them come up with wacky ideas, in fact. But I temper it with the knowledge that the monsters may possibly use those same tactics, especially after seeing the PCs do it.

[Crushgrip]

Currently I have a Bard 2/Fighter 1 that is a WWE style wrestling (grappling) Bard that has a tag-team partner who is a Fighter 3 Rune Knight that is also a grappler. Haven't had a lot of play with them so far but the ability to control single target is pretty awesome. We are essentially traveling galdiators/showmen looking to make some coin and get our names out there!

[Amnestic]

I've been trying to make a character that bases as many things on Wisdom as possible. So far I've got Fey Wanderer 3 and Astral Self Monk for Wis to AC, attack, damage, spell DC, and face skills, and I'm open to more suggestions.

Samurai 7 gets you Wis to Persuasion (which stacks with Fey Wanderer's wis-to-face-skills) and wis save proficiency, though the latter is less interesting depending on how high you're taking monk.

[sithlordnergal]

My favorite character I've ever made was an Ancients Paladin/Dream Druid/Divine Soul Sorcerer, the split was Paladin 8 / Sorcerer 1 / Druid 11. I ended up taking PAM, and made great use of Shillelagh with a Quarterstaff and Shield.

Not only did I have a ton of healing, battlefield control, and party support options, but I was solid when it came to being in the frontline. Though I did need to find non-metal armor, which was a bit of a pain.

A current character I have is a Rune Knight Fighter/Forge Cleric Fairy. I focused on Grappling and Unarmed attacks. Its surprisingly effective when you stack Giant's Might and Enlarge to become Huge

[Damon_Tor]

I loved my shadowblade specialist sorcerer. Very much a skimisher. Mobile feat, twincast/quicken booming blade with a 3d8 or 4d8 weapon. Cha as a secondary stat, he was built as a dex primary. Dragon ancestor helped keep AC and HP at skirmisher levels. Duck in and out of melee like a monk or rogue does. Flexible spellcasting makes sure we we can melt down the spell slots that don't actually increase the blade and turn them into more 5th level slots or sorcery points.

Out of combat his dex/cha build made him a viable sneak and face, augmented by a sprinkling of utility spells and the fact that he wears no armor and carries no weapons, so he can be combat-ready in a diplomatic environment where being armed and armored wouldn't be appropriate.

[Mindflayer_Inc]

For you power-builders, min-maxers, or eccentric character players out there, what is the weirdest or most fun thing you've ever built a character specifically to do?

My favorite was my Githyanki Str Monk who was powerbuilt for Jump Distance. With Step of the Wind, Jump (as a racial spell), and maxed Strength, he could jump 120ft in one mighty leap. Everything else about him was pretty garbage, but it was very satisfying to get shot by a longbow then immediately leap right next to the guy who'd fired it.

Bunch of people with Animal Messenger, a bunch of flying snakes, and a target city.


It was called "Snake Tsunami" because one the animal messenger runs out, you still have a flying snake (like thousands if you have an army of mages or humans with the ritual caster feat).


You could nuke a city at the least.