TheHalfAasimar
2024-02-24, 10:25 AM
So, I've had this build idea for a while, until it finally came to fruition.
For those of you who have XgTE, you know the Samurai fighter. Advantage at will, the whole shcaboodle. And for those of you who have the PHB, you know the Rogue. Extra damage, new DMs nerf it because 'it's too powerful' when it isn't. But I'm not here to make the rogue more powerful, I'm here to maximise damage output from a Samurai fighter.
Step 1:
You take your first level in Fighter. Choose Rapier as your weapon (because Finesse), then choose a race with a +2 DEX bonus. You also must choose the Dueling fighting style (so that you get a +2 damage with a weapon in one hand and nothing else in the other) for the DMG bonus.
Our stats will be as follows, from highest to lowest:
Dex (for Rapier)
Con (for HP)
Wis (for saves + passive perception + samurai stuff)
Str (just in case)
Int (still handy to be smart)
Cha (useless)
At level 2, multiclass into Rogue, take another level, then at level 4 go back to Fighter. When you get to choosing a subclass on Fighter, choose Samurai, and stay that way until you have 17 levels of Fighter. Why? Well, let's break down some of the stuff we get:
We get advantage at will at 3rd level (I think, don't quote me on this) and a bit of Temp. HP. It slowly improves as we level up, to becoming the best it can be at level 15. So why don't we stop there? I'll tell you why we don't stop there. Because, at level 17, fighters now have 4 attacks per turn. Now, at level 10, Samurai get an additional use of Fighting Spirit whenever they roll initiative, but that's far behind us.
Now, once we have 17 levels of Fighter and 2 levels of Rogue, get another level of Rogue. That way, we have 2d6 Sneak Attack dice that trigger on advantage. As for subclass, I don't think 3 levels is going to make much of a difference, unless the enemy is surprised. We choose Assassin for the ability to have advantage on all attack rolls against an enemy, provided they are surprised and haven't taken a turn yet.
So let's look at the bonus to hit:
Is this viable? Well, at this point, if you have a nice DM, you probably have a +3 rapier, max DEX, and a +6 proficiency bonus for a total of...
6+5+3=
14.
+14 to hit. Not bad, I'd say! Now, let's look at the average AC of a CR 20 creature. I didn't have the time to look through both the MM and FToD, so I just turned to the first ~CR20 creature I found, which, conviently, was a Solar, at CR 21.
Now, it's technically DC 7 to hit the Solar, because 7+14 is the bare minimum for whether you hit or not. So, you have a 70% chance to hit the solar.
But wait! We've forgotten something very important: Advantage.
I rolled dice a bunch of times for average Advantage bonus, and it came out to approximately +6. So, 14+6 (from advantage) is +20 technically, so it's DC 1 to hit a Solar. And at that point, getting a Nat 1 was the only thing that could stop you, anyways. Now, if you don't have a +3 rapier, it's DC 4 to hit, and you have about a 75% chance to hit, which, mind you, isn't that bad, but still.
Let's look at the damage:
If we have a +3 Rapier, max DEX, Sneak Attack 2d6, and the Dueling fighting style, let's see:
Assuming we're fighting the aforementioned Solar, we have a 95% chance of hitting each time, but with my luck, that's more like a 50%. But, in the chance we don't roll a single Nat 1, we're good.
Assuming we do the normal Action Surge for 8 attacks, all with advantage, and all of them but 1 hit, that's an average of:
+3 rapier: 1d8 +3, average of 7.5
Max DEX: +5
Sneak attack 2d6: Average of 7
For a grand total of (on average)
7.5+5+7=19.5, which is almost as much as a fireball.
19.5 * 8 (we'll probably hit all the times) = 156, which is more than a fully upcast lvl 9 Fireball, which does 14d6, and assuming it does max damage, and we reroll all 6s for more 6s (with that one Tiefling feat) the max damage for THAT MONSTER is 168, and that's MAXIMUM DAMAGE. Now what about max damage for this? Well, the odds are quite low, but here we go:
8+3+5+12 = 28
28 * 8 = 224.
Keep in mind that the Samurai fighter can do this basically one time per Initiative roll, but on combats 1 and 2 he or she will probably do this multiple times. So, yeah.
Thoughts?
For those of you who have XgTE, you know the Samurai fighter. Advantage at will, the whole shcaboodle. And for those of you who have the PHB, you know the Rogue. Extra damage, new DMs nerf it because 'it's too powerful' when it isn't. But I'm not here to make the rogue more powerful, I'm here to maximise damage output from a Samurai fighter.
Step 1:
You take your first level in Fighter. Choose Rapier as your weapon (because Finesse), then choose a race with a +2 DEX bonus. You also must choose the Dueling fighting style (so that you get a +2 damage with a weapon in one hand and nothing else in the other) for the DMG bonus.
Our stats will be as follows, from highest to lowest:
Dex (for Rapier)
Con (for HP)
Wis (for saves + passive perception + samurai stuff)
Str (just in case)
Int (still handy to be smart)
Cha (useless)
At level 2, multiclass into Rogue, take another level, then at level 4 go back to Fighter. When you get to choosing a subclass on Fighter, choose Samurai, and stay that way until you have 17 levels of Fighter. Why? Well, let's break down some of the stuff we get:
We get advantage at will at 3rd level (I think, don't quote me on this) and a bit of Temp. HP. It slowly improves as we level up, to becoming the best it can be at level 15. So why don't we stop there? I'll tell you why we don't stop there. Because, at level 17, fighters now have 4 attacks per turn. Now, at level 10, Samurai get an additional use of Fighting Spirit whenever they roll initiative, but that's far behind us.
Now, once we have 17 levels of Fighter and 2 levels of Rogue, get another level of Rogue. That way, we have 2d6 Sneak Attack dice that trigger on advantage. As for subclass, I don't think 3 levels is going to make much of a difference, unless the enemy is surprised. We choose Assassin for the ability to have advantage on all attack rolls against an enemy, provided they are surprised and haven't taken a turn yet.
So let's look at the bonus to hit:
Is this viable? Well, at this point, if you have a nice DM, you probably have a +3 rapier, max DEX, and a +6 proficiency bonus for a total of...
6+5+3=
14.
+14 to hit. Not bad, I'd say! Now, let's look at the average AC of a CR 20 creature. I didn't have the time to look through both the MM and FToD, so I just turned to the first ~CR20 creature I found, which, conviently, was a Solar, at CR 21.
Now, it's technically DC 7 to hit the Solar, because 7+14 is the bare minimum for whether you hit or not. So, you have a 70% chance to hit the solar.
But wait! We've forgotten something very important: Advantage.
I rolled dice a bunch of times for average Advantage bonus, and it came out to approximately +6. So, 14+6 (from advantage) is +20 technically, so it's DC 1 to hit a Solar. And at that point, getting a Nat 1 was the only thing that could stop you, anyways. Now, if you don't have a +3 rapier, it's DC 4 to hit, and you have about a 75% chance to hit, which, mind you, isn't that bad, but still.
Let's look at the damage:
If we have a +3 Rapier, max DEX, Sneak Attack 2d6, and the Dueling fighting style, let's see:
Assuming we're fighting the aforementioned Solar, we have a 95% chance of hitting each time, but with my luck, that's more like a 50%. But, in the chance we don't roll a single Nat 1, we're good.
Assuming we do the normal Action Surge for 8 attacks, all with advantage, and all of them but 1 hit, that's an average of:
+3 rapier: 1d8 +3, average of 7.5
Max DEX: +5
Sneak attack 2d6: Average of 7
For a grand total of (on average)
7.5+5+7=19.5, which is almost as much as a fireball.
19.5 * 8 (we'll probably hit all the times) = 156, which is more than a fully upcast lvl 9 Fireball, which does 14d6, and assuming it does max damage, and we reroll all 6s for more 6s (with that one Tiefling feat) the max damage for THAT MONSTER is 168, and that's MAXIMUM DAMAGE. Now what about max damage for this? Well, the odds are quite low, but here we go:
8+3+5+12 = 28
28 * 8 = 224.
Keep in mind that the Samurai fighter can do this basically one time per Initiative roll, but on combats 1 and 2 he or she will probably do this multiple times. So, yeah.
Thoughts?