An Eclectic Collection of Fun and Effective Builds

[Wraith]

There are a lot of really fun and interesting builds listed in his thread, but I haven't seen much from people who have tried to play as them - would be great to see if any of them live up to the 'hype' that comes from the theory.

So, money-where-my-mouth-is time; I started a new campaign recently and decided to use a Eclectic, Fun & Effective Build™ for my character. My GM is running us through a tweaked version of Rime of the Frost Maiden - I say 'tweaked' because I thought that I had played it before, but I don't remember anything that has happened so far, but that might just be on me.

My first choice was the Eye of Annihilation, primarily because it was one of my ideas and I really, really want to blow stuff up. The alternative was the Soulknife by LudicSavant because I haven't played as a Fighter since before 3rd Edition, I haven't played a Dex-build since ever, and also I like the idea of being very self-sufficient in terms of not needing equipment, armour, or anything else - just me and my spells slots against the world.

Unsure of which to go with, I asked my GM to decide which would be the most suitable for his campaign and he said he preferred the Soulknife, with a caveat - please don't be an elf. The campaign exists within his pre-existing world which we explored in a prior campaign, and elves have... problems. Specifically, they met the previous PC party and there aren't a lot of them left who are willing to step foot outside of their own country. Which is entirely deserved, by the way. Jerks.

I'm okay with that. I've instead taken Variant Human with Fey-Touched as my feat - I still get the one-per-day teleport that I would have from being Shadar-Kai, but instead of the one round of Resistance I got an additional level 1 spell instead (I took Command, because I'm a firm believer that characters with Wizard spellcasting should pick up Cleric or Druid spells wherever possible), so after tweaking my stats a little (Dex 16 is as good as Dex 17, it just means my first ASI will be +2DEX instead of Elven Accuracy) it's basically the same.

And I have to say, it's working pretty well. We're still low levels so I don't have the eponymous Soulknife (the Shadow Blade spell) yet, but it's not far off and in the meantime it turns out that being able to use spells instead of needing to buy armour, decent weapons and the rest? REALLY handy when you're travelling through a frozen wasteland and basic equipment is price-gouged to heck and back.

The only thing I'm struggling with is getting Booming Blade to proc. I've only used it a few times so far, but in each case I've hit the enemy, sheathed them in thunderous power...And then they just stand there and try to hit me back. It'll be great at level 5 when it starts to do extra on-contact damage, but until then I don't know if there's a reliable way I can get my opponents to move themselves that I haven't noticed, or if it's just part-and-parcel of the wonderful, hellish existence that is "being level 3".

All in all - the build isn't 'pure' due to the requirements of the campaign and the series of unfortunate personal choices that led me to this point, BUT apart from that I like it a lot. Lots of different things to do, plenty of points to build a personality around (Wult is a hard-bitten, determined Bounty Hunter that uses magic and a variety of tricks to make sure that nothing stands between him and his quarry - see the 'teleports through a Wall of Force' gif in Ludic's original post) and I have a pretty solid role in the party as Magic Tank without overshadowing anyone. Neat.