look, this isn't your equip loadout but you try finding a beekeeper with a shield and ax. Credit to Matt Hiker on Twitter

The Mad Woodsman
Ahhhhh No! Not the Bees!
Axe-Throwing Swarmkeeper Who Ragdolls the Enemy

Spoiler: summary
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All the BG3 throwing goodness had me thinking about throwing builds in 5e and, well I realized that throwing axes are the only way to get ranged slashing and went from there. This ends up working a bit like a normal cheesegrater, but with a different loadout than usual and a focus on disabling the enemy in general rather than just using cheesegrating for damage.


Race: Variant Human(Slasher)
Abilities @ lvl 1 : 16 / 14 / 13 / 8 / 14 / 8
Classes: Swarmkeeper Ranger 5 -> Battlemaster 3
Fighting Style: Thrown, Dueling
Spells of Note: Entangle, Web, Spike Growth, zephyr strike, Longstrider, Plant Growth
ASIs/Feats: Slasher (vhuman), resilient:constitution, Crusher
Maneuvers: trip attack, quick toss, pushing attack

ACFS: Deft Explorer (expertise: stealth). Favored Enemy is probably better here since you'll generally be using concentration.

Spoiler: progression
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Levels 1-2: You're already quite effective at these levels. Using thrown handaxes deals pretty mediocre damage, but you can have a shield in the offhand and you are reducing enemy move speed, which allows you to lock down a lot of slower enemies.

Levels 3-4: Once you get spells, more specifically entangle, you can create difficult terrain that slows enemies down further. A 30 foot move speed becomes 20, and then gets halved to 10 because it has to cross difficult entangled terrain. Level three gives you swarmkeeper, which lets you punt one enemy a turn 15 feet back, and level four improves your HP and concentration. Longstrider is a bit expensive at this level, but both it and Zephyr Strike help you to avoid getting tied down in melee.

Level 5: Needless to say, you get a lot stronger here. Your damage improves significantly. You get access to web and spike growth, which are both excellent area denial spells. Spike Growth in particular gives you a LOT of damage potential, whereas web just destroys a significant number of types of enemies.

Level 6-8: NOW we are talking. You can cast spike growth then action surge + quick toss to attack three times, with each axe dealing +4 damage from the stacking fighting styles. On a hit you can push them either with the swarm or with pushing attack, and you can make them drop prone at the end as well with trip attack. That is potentially 12d4 damage from spike growth, 31.5 damage from the axes themselves, and 9 damage from the maneuvers. You do all this while having solid (~19) AC and good all-round saves and not sacrificing accuracy at all. And remember, the damage is great, but you're also laying down big AOE control spells and also screwing over enemy movement. 30 feet of forced movement + 10 foot reduction in speed + potentially forced to drop prone + difficult terrain all around.

But what about fliers? What about 'em? If you can hit them (more on this later) you can send them skyward and then drop them prone with trip attack.

A great thing here too is how nicely you're playing with allies. You're really enabling sharpshooters and wizards to stay way, way away from the enemy, and a lot of your techniques create advantage for your allies in various ways (entangle, fairy fire, trip attack)

Level 9+: From here its more or less up to you. Ranger levels let you do the same things but better. The core strat of disabling enemies gets better with conjure animals and plant growth. And a flight speed. (Note: longstrider improves your 'speed' and thus applies to all movement, including flight.) Daolock and crusher give you more forced movement.


Spoiler: customization
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Ambush is the best maneuver in the game by a pretty good margin, and you can sub and of your three maneuvers for it, or take a fighting style that gives you an extra SD and maneuver.

Other races have a lot to offer. Bugbear synergizes really well with surprise and winning inititiative, both things that this build can be really good at. Bugbear also gives you a 15' whip attack on your turn, which achieves a slightly worse but similar effect as the throwing axes. Dragonborn with dragon fear can prevent enemies from approaching and truly create a zone of forbiddance. Various races like fairy and centaur give you a lot of movement.


Spoiler: limitations
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Needless to say, this is somewhat a gimmick. A LOT of the key spells here target strength saves, which monsters tend to be pretty good at. You're locked into throwing axes to take advantage of slasher, and this limits your range dramatically. The notion of going within 20 feet to 'kite' enemies is inherently contradictory. Just kite them from 100+ feet away, dummy! Moreover, the kinds of enemies that tend to be easy to disable in this fashion tend to be the least dangerous enemies in general because of how badly spells like spirit guardians or features like sharpshooter counter them. Pushing attack and quick toss rely on your limited stock of superiority dice, meaning that you're a bit of a one-hit wonder. At the very least this is a 1/SR nova though, so its hardly that bad.

As one more questionable trait, this build also lacks good magical weapon support, since you're lazer focused on throwing axes. An artificer can infuse your ax but that's about the only way you're going to be able to function against nonmagical BSP immune enemies. (though spike growth pretty much works as normal)

What I do like though is that the basic structure here makes you pretty functional in a lot of scenarios. Melee is nearly as good as ranged play for you, and you have good stealth, and you genuinely have a lot of utility courtesy of your ranger abilities, while also being hardier than most rangers. I also like that the basic concept of throwing enemies back and lowering their speed works starting at level 3, and the high damage afforded by throwing/dueling combo is pretty sweet.