An Eclectic Collection of Fun and Effective Builds

[Amechra]

Good sources of advantage?

Wildhunt Shifter is your friend.

[Dalinar]

Wildhunt Shifter is your friend.

I don't have that sourcebook.

*google*

Sorry, I should clarify. My point is that it might be easier to get a Stunning Strike off first, then subsequently do your grapple at a 100% success rate, rather than rely on just having a big grapple check with advantage. So I'm looking for ways to get advantage on the attack so that our Stunning Strike is likelier to work.

In other words, something like this:

Spoiler: beeg image

Show

Stun and Run

You are a Kobold. Either Volo's or MOTM will work; Volo's will need to pick up Ritual Caster for Find Familiar or just have your allies give you Pack Tactics or Help, while MOTM can be more flexible but may need backup sources of advantage if you run out of roars.

You are an Astral Self Monk of at least 5th level.

Run up to something (hopefully you have your Arms of the Astral Self out from a prior round), get advantage from either Draconic Cry or Pack Tactics or a Help action or whatever. Hit the thing. Use Stunning Strike. Follow it up with a grapple check. If your stun went off, you have a 100% chance of success, as stunned creatures automatically fail versus grapple. If they succeeded, you still have a decent check due to applying your WIS score to Athletics.

So now what? You need a way to take advantage of that grapple. Most obvious solution is Spike Growth, so I'm gonna go that route. Fastest way to do that is either Druid 3 or Nature Cleric 3 off the top of my head.

So now your combat looks like this: spike growth in a convenient place and pop out your arms round 1, then do your grapple combo round 2 and shred on the spikes.

---

See what I'm getting at?

[strangebloke]

Some useful info on grappling as a Monk. Seems to me your best option might be to pump your Stunning Strike effectiveness if you want to grapple. Good thing you gain both accuracy and save DC by pumping WIS as Astral Self!

So I don't have a lot of time to pore over our options, but what are some things we can do to raise our accuracy as an Astral Self Monk? Good sources of advantage? How can we conserve our ki?

The main weakness of monks and astral self specifically is that it doesn't have easy access to synergy for its abilities. Indeed, this has always been a problem for the monk, and the monks that have synergy effects usually want to use multiclassing or non traditional monk builds to get access to them. Shadow monk with blindfighting, Kensei a

There's a few notable magic items like the eldritch claw tattoo, and perhaps more significantly the dragonhide belt or whatever its called. Those are a +1 to attack/damage and stunning strike DC respectively.

Beyond that you've got the same options available to most melee characters. Personally I find it hard to argue against a few levels of either fighter or cleric with a monk. With fighter every level gives you so much you want. 1 gets you extra hp, weapon damage, and a fighting style (superior technique!). 2 levels gives action surge. 3 levels give you battlemaster. (precision attack, ambush, etc.) Then for clerics you can get hyper-efficient concentration spells like bless and shield of faith and divine favor.

[Quietus]

So now your combat looks like this: spike growth in a convenient place and pop out your arms round 1, then do your grapple combo round 2 and shred on the spikes.

---

See what I'm getting at?

Better combo would be popping arms out round 1, attack action, try for a stun on the first hit and grapple with your second attack. Round 2, drop your spike growth and grate'em like a block of cheese.

[Llez]

Better combo would be popping arms out round 1, attack action, try for a stun on the first hit and grapple with your second attack. Round 2, drop your spike growth and grate'em like a block of cheese.

Yeah its all about flexibility, i might have focused on the grappling a bit too much. Probably open any combat by popping the astral arms for that nice wis melee. Too far away? Archer. Dragon buffs basically everything in your kit with concentration, grappling, even just saves. People getting hit too much? Chalice, and so forth. Shifter is also helpful for an emergency boost if you REALLY need it or want to negate the enemies advantage. If combat is going slowly/badly you have enough time to start stacking things as needed. It gives you a lot of options over the kit, and all this flexibility kicks in at level four and you can always do all of the things but you can change your specialty on the fly. I still think it has some value, but maybe needs some poking/adjusting.

[Jaxtal]

I love this thread and all the builds, but there is one I am not seeing. Is there a way to make a good bard archer that comes online before level 10? I have searched a fair amount and everything seems to based around stealing Swiftquiver at level 10. Would love to see a build for this that is solid the whole way through. Thank you in advance!

[meandean]

I love this thread and all the builds, but there is one I am not seeing. Is there a way to make a good bard archer that comes online before level 10? I have searched a fair amount and everything seems to based around stealing Swiftquiver at level 10. Would love to see a build for this that is solid the whole way through. Thank you in advance!

The obvious, boring answer is Hexblade 5, then Bard.

Swift quiver is garbo anyway. Let's say you're a Valor Bard (to be fair, Swords or Whispers are very likely better, but that's the classic build), so yay... you cast this 5th-level spell and make four (non-magical, unless the bow is) longbow attacks. I calculate that, with +8 to hit (level 10, 18 DEX) vs. an AC of 17, you're averaging 21 DPR. Sorry, that should be 21 DP2R, damage per 2 rounds, because swift quiver doesn't do anything on the round you cast it. And while it's up, you can't Inspire, or use your subclass capstone Battle Magic ability, or cast other concentration spells (that's most of your list! you're a Bard!)

Also a 5th-level spell, that requires concentration, and gives non-magical attacks with +8 to hit? Animate objects. Except it's 10 attacks, and ends up averaging 40 DPR vs. AC 17. On the first turn the objects attack, not starting in the second like swift quiver. And usually, after the first round, they require no further maintenance -- you're combining what they do with your own action and bonus action. Which might, among whatever else you can imagine, include using dissonant whispers or command to give the objects another 10 opportunity attacks, or maybe your teammate has an ability that can do that. Alternatively, you could opt for synaptic static, which on an often-failed save does ~28 damage (magical, and of a type almost never resisted) to each of a group of enemies, and renders them ineffective for another round or two afterwards... again, that will all take place on your actual first turn. Needless to say, Bards can literally get any spell in the game, so I could go on.

Of course, you can try to salvage things with archery-related feats, because Bards get so many ASI that it makes sense to use them to make a 5th-level concentration spell have some sort of useful effect. Seriously, why this.

[stoutstien]

I love this thread and all the builds, but there is one I am not seeing. Is there a way to make a good bard archer that comes online before level 10? I have searched a fair amount and everything seems to based around stealing Swiftquiver at level 10. Would love to see a build for this that is solid the whole way through. Thank you in advance!

No matter what I'd avoid swift quiver. Past that there's a bunch of different ways you can pull off this concept depending on how focused you want to be on using the bow compared to spells and what optional rules are in play. A whisper bard/soulknife combo has a pretty seamless mix at most points or a valor hex pact of the blade combo if you want multiple attacks rather than one big one.

For a example a changeling whisper bard/soul knife has a good mix of damage, espionage/information gathering, utility, mobility, general spell casting, and bullet proof ability checks to work with about any party.

[Eriol]

I love this thread and all the builds, but there is one I am not seeing. Is there a way to make a good bard archer that comes online before level 10? I have searched a fair amount and everything seems to based around stealing Swiftquiver at level 10. Would love to see a build for this that is solid the whole way through. Thank you in advance!

Both of the previous replies unfortunately miss the boat: the OP wants to play an archer bard. The "suggestions" you have either are pure bard (ditch archer) that summons, or a hybrid bard... that doesn't archer either.

My suggestion is either do a Dex-fighter Samurai that flavors as a singer/musician (but isn't a bard), or you accept that it's underpowered and go for a valor bard (or whatever) that focuses on their archery and just chooses actions that maybe aren't 100% ideal, but work for the concept. Or if somebody else has an actual bard/archer (even a multiclass) that's relatively great, awesome, but I'm not the best "builder" out there either. But I get concepts, and to my reading, neither of the two previous posts go for the concept of dancing/singing/playing archer.

And maybe DPR isn't the focus. Is it buffs? You're singing out your buffs, throwing in the occasional shot? Maybe that's a better focus.

[stoutstien]

Both of the previous replies unfortunately miss the boat: the OP wants to play an archer bard. The "suggestions" you have either are pure bard (ditch archer) that summons, or a hybrid bard... that doesn't archer either.

My suggestion is either do a Dex-fighter Samurai that flavors as a singer/musician (but isn't a bard), or you accept that it's underpowered and go for a valor bard (or whatever) that focuses on their archery and just chooses actions that maybe aren't 100% ideal, but work for the concept. Or if somebody else has an actual bard/archer (even a multiclass) that's relatively great, awesome, but I'm not the best "builder" out there either. But I get concepts, and to my reading, neither of the two previous posts go for the concept of dancing/singing/playing archer.

And maybe DPR isn't the focus. Is it buffs? You're singing out your buffs, throwing in the occasional shot? Maybe that's a better focus.

Nothing about The Bard is mandatory dancing and singing so that's a conceptual restraint that you are adding.
By the Numbers there's nothing actually wrong with a pure whisper bard archer. You hit as hard as a rogue enough rounds that you'd probably not notice a gap and can grab the standard CBE/archery/SS and still max out Cha. Tack on holy weapon, TT, or whatever and you'll meet any baseline that people insist on using for damage.

[strangebloke]

I love this thread and all the builds, but there is one I am not seeing. Is there a way to make a good bard archer that comes online before level 10? I have searched a fair amount and everything seems to based around stealing Swiftquiver at level 10. Would love to see a build for this that is solid the whole way through. Thank you in advance!

Swift Quiver is just one spell that boosts your output. I'm not as negative on it as others are, but its not the only thing bards can do. For a relatively simple archer bard, consider the following:

The Raven's Teeth

8/14/14/8/12/15
Clineage
(15 CHA becomes 17)
(take elven accuracy as the bonus feat, CHA becomes 18)

Level 1 we start with bard because we want to start with bonus proficiencies
Level 2 we dip hexblade for hex warrior and hex curse, though 1/sr shield is also good.

After that we go into whispers bad. Whispers lets you trade a BI for sneak attack damage, which is a pretty solid damage progression by itself. You have limited BI, but that's okay because you're not trying to attack every round. You're still a bard and you still want to be casting fear or animate objects or similar things. The bow attacks are there to replace your cantrips, not your big leveled spells, and with potentially 5 uses per short rest you'll have enough for that purpose.

And oh yeah! You have hexblade's curse and Elven accuracy, so if you cast something like faerie fire round 1 you can pretty often get a crit on round 2 or 3.

Now, you may feel conflicted about casting so many spells when you're an archer, but this is where your handy 'ol reflavoring stick comes in. Something like animate objects usually uses rocks or ball bearings, but there's no reason you can't animate your quiver or a bunch of daggers like you're shiro from fate stay night.

Personally I would avoid CBE. You also have other uses for your BA like healing word, mass healing word, animate objects, hexblade's curse, or swift quiver if you eventually take that. If you do take swift quiver, you will probably want sharpshooter as well - its just a good feat even without considering the -5/+10, and you'll have already maxed AC and CHA by the time you get your second ASI at level 9.

And ultimately you're also a whisper bard, something like a Bloodraven. You're a skilled manipulator who can set enemies up for failure, or assasinate enemies from a mile away.

[x3n0n]

8/14/14/8/12/15
Clineage
(15 CHA becomes 17)
(take elven accuracy as the bonus feat, CHA becomes 18)

Note that not all DMs will allow Elven Accuracy on a Custom Lineage.
That said, if they don't, it looks like the build would still work fine with any other Cha-boosting half feat (Fey Touched?), just without the tri-vantage boost to Hexblade's Curse crit fishing.

[strangebloke]

Note that not all DMs will allow Elven Accuracy on a Custom Lineage.
That said, if they don't, it looks like the build would still work fine with any other Cha-boosting half feat (Fey Touched?), just without the tri-vantage boost to Hexblade's Curse crit fishing.

Personally I don't know why you'd allow Clineage but ban taking EA with it. Still, you bring up a good point, and in any case crit-fishing is just there for fun. You don't have the attacks to get good mileage out of HC anyway.

If EA is off the table I would go with Telepathic for flavor. Detect Thoughts without components is a great spymaster ability

[CMCC]

To be ffaaaiirrr you can rage in H armor. You just get none of the benefits.

Misconception. You do get some of the rage benefits of certain subclasses. More TRDSIC than RAW though.

[CMCC]

This was overruled by the devs, so even subclass features that rely on rage doesn’t work in heavy armor.

That’s RAI. The rules don’t support the conclusion.

Note that not all DMs will allow Elven Accuracy on a Custom Lineage.
That said, if they don't, it looks like the build would still work fine with any other Cha-boosting half feat (Fey Touched?), just without the tri-vantage boost to Hexblade's Curse crit fishing.

That’s not a DM thing. WotC weighed in and that was their decision. No racial feats for custom lineage.

[x3n0n]

That’s not a DM thing. WotC weighed in and that was their decision. No racial feats for custom lineage.

Agreed that there is no RAW supporting racial feats on custom lineage and that WotC said that their RAI does not include racial feats on custom lineage.
That said, I think strangebloke may not be far off in saying that at a non-AL table, many DMs that allow custom lineage would allow racial feats to be assigned.

[Dalinar]

Custom Lineage using racial feats was a sufficiently common interpretation of the rules (until Crawford shot it down) that every optimizer and their mom was taking CL with Elven Accuracy on anything that was regularly firing off attacks at advantage. Starting with an 18 in a stat AND having both EA and Sharpshooter by 4 is incredibly potent.

[strangebloke]

Custom lineage as written can literally represent a full elf while EA can be used by half elves.

Crawford's ruling is stupid.

[Chaos Jackal]

Stupid or not, in TCE's December 2021 errata this was added in:

Custom Lineage (pg. 8). The following sentence has been added to the end of the sidebar, after the hanging list: “Your race is considered to be a Custom Lineage for any game feature that requires a certain race, such as elf or dwarf.”

So both RAW and RAI apparently, at this stage.

[strangebloke]

Stupid or not, in TCE's December 2021 errata this was added in:

So both RAW and RAI apparently, at this stage.

Funny my book doesn't say that.

I refuse to acknowledge stuff like this. I own the book, it says what it says.

[zariel_paladin]

the clockwork beast

trying to add an image, kinda new to this site so have no idea how currently
6 beast barbarian/14 clockwork soul sorcerer
starting stats: 15+1, 13+1, 14, 10, 8, 12+2
asis: 18 strength@7, 20 strength@11, tough feat@13, 16 con@18

this build is an attempt to build a functional rage mage, who comes online as early as possible and is overall a functional character, my goal is to make something stronger than a straight barbarian, not stronger than a straight sorcerer

level 1: we start as a half elf barbarian, we will be wearing medium armour cause this build is mad as all get out, so our ac should be 16 at this level, which isnt terrible. (if you roll stats or get a belt of giant strength then feel free to pick a different race, we just really need those extra stats)

level 5: at this point we suck a little bit, we are a 3 beast barbarian 2 clockwork sorcerer, our sorcerer levels give us armour of agathys, a couple of free recklesses and not much else, i picked beast barbarian because we arent getting extra attack for a while, so if you start at high levels, a similar build using ancestral guardians is probably reccomended for more aoa shenanigans.

level 11: by this level, we have almost reached full potential, as a barbarian4/sorcerer7. we have access to high level slots for armour of agathys, bastion of law to nullify damage, and our damaging crown: tiny servant. i dont see this talked about enough, but you can make a hand crossbow into a tiny servant and have it fire at enemies, in this case, we will have our armour modified so they can pop in and out, giving them full cover when neccesary, i like six (using two fourth level spell slots) as the line between using all our resources and having a good number of free bonus action attacks. so you are know a beast, as you run around slashing at people with your claws whilst your tiny servants use you as a mobile artillery battery. all the while you punish those who dare to attack you with the powers of lesvistus himself.

level 20: now this is the fun part, at this level, we finally achieve the vaunted extra attack, we are now the embodiment of calculating fury, we can reckless attack for days with absolutely no penalties, and our armour of agathys casts are dealing 35 damage a pop. also we basically cannot miss, cause we cant go below a 10 on the dice,

just realised i forgot to even mention bastion of law.... its good, especially with armour of agathys

[Dalinar]

Looks like zariel_paladin and I had some similar ideas! Let me show you what's been kicking around in my brain the past few days:

insert picture of a barbarian/warlock here
Frozen Fury

Rage is a great defensive ability. There are a lot of great defensive spells, but you can't cast those while raging. So if we're going to use spells to augment our rage-tanking, we need something you can cast before you hit the rage button, ideally something that takes only an action or lasts a long time or both.

How about Armor of Agathys? Enter Barblock.

For our race and stats: we need Strength as high as possible for our melee offense, Charisma 13+ to take Warlock levels, Constitution as high as possible to survive as long as we can, and Dexterity 14 since we're in medium armor. That's a lot of stats! There's also one feat I particularly want, Polearm Master, for the same reason many martials want it: we want to hit things more often. Great Weapon Master is normally pseudo-mandatory on Barbarians, but I think we can delay it for a little because we want bigger Armor of Agathys casts early and that means focusing on Warlock levels--that is, no Reckless Attack until later in our career.

Any +2/+1 race (or Variant Human with a half-feat in the relevant stats) can result in this spread: 16/12/16/8/8/14. Mountain Dwarves or Half-Elves can get 14 DEX in exchange for only 13 CHA. Not sure I'd take that trade, to be honest. I expect we'll do a non-zero amount of switch hitting via Eldritch Blast, and it'll feel really bad at only 13 CHA compared to 14. Could always just use javelins, I guess?

Our main specialty is going to be toe-to-toe'ing with the enemy melee, while enemy archers and spellcasters are going to be something more of an issue. Yuan-Ti Pureblood for the improved saving throws against magic is an excellent choice. There's also Hill Dwarf for the extra hit points, hard to go wrong there.

Typical combat should involve softening things up with javelins and Eldritch Blast, then when things get hectic popping Armor of Agathys followed by rage for a sudden burst of tankiness. I'll gloss over non-AoA spell choices, since they're not as relevant to the concept; pick your faves.

Anyway, here's how I expect the progression to go:

At level 1, you're a typical Barbarian with one less AC. Your job is to have a lot of hit points and hit things hard, probably using a glaive or halberd. You'll chuck javelins at things that you can't get to. Life is good.

At level 2, you're a Barb1/Warlock1. My patron of choice for this is Undead. The most obvious martial warlock patron, the Hexblade, doesn't help us that much, since we still need a ton of Strength to do Barbarian things anyway (namely Reckless Attack later, and take advantage of our Rage damage bonus in the more immediate term), or at least a 13 to multiclass. Armor of Agathys is basically a mandatory pickup, it's kind of the whole point of the build, but beyond that try to pick things that will help in situations where Rage will not. Undead gives us Form of Dread, another rage-compatible source of temp HP that also lets us frighten things on a hit. Pop it when your Armor of Agathys runs out.

At level 3, we take Warlock 2, getting us invocations. At this point I'm looking at Eldritch Sight and Fiendish Vigor for out of combat utility and even more temp HP spam respectively. Agonizing Blast is a little worse than usual for us since we're only at 14 CHA, though it might still be worth it if we want to switch-hit a little harder outside javelin range. In any case, there's nothing too critical to pick up quite yet.

At level 4, we get a pact. There's one invocation I really want from Chain and one I really want from Blade. The one I want from Blade is just Thirsting Blade so that we have another attack relatively on time compared to our party members. Chain would instead get us Gift of the Ever-Living Ones to maximize healing from dice. If you've found yourself getting healed a lot and aren't worried about your offensive capabilities, you can take Chain now, but Blade will help us kill things faster during T2 (best defense being a good offense and whatnot), and you can switch to Chain later once we get Extra Attack from Barbarian.

Level 5 is a nice one. Barb1/Warlock 4 means we get an ASI. If you've found yourself needing more in a stat, feel free to just take the +2 here, but I suspect Polearm Master is gonna go farther than most of the things you could do with that. It's basically a discount Extra Attack for us, plus a source of more reaction attacks, so hopefully this level won't feel too bad compared to your martials that just got Extra Attack and your casters that just got Fireball.

Level 6 is another big one. We'll grab Thirsting Blade to have two attacks plus a bonus action attack from our polearm. We have roughly 50 HP by my count, with another 30 temp from two casts of Armor of Agathys on each short rest, then another d10+5 from Form of Dread three times per long rest for another 30.

At level 7, we're staying Warlock just a little longer to get Grave-touched, which isn't the most exciting feature but does up our damage against weak-to-necrotic foes or when Form of Dread is up. Neat!

Level 8, aka Warlock 7, gives us another invocation and fourth-level slots. That's another 10 temp HP per short rest, more outgoing cold damage against melee, and, I dunno, Tomb of Levistus looks fun? Or you can take Sculptor of Flesh if your party needs Polymorph badly.

We take a break from Warlock levels at 9 to return to our Barbarian roots. Our proficiency bonus goes up, so we get another Form of Dread use (now d10+7 four times per long rest). At this point we have so many sources of temp HP that I think it's safe to use Reckless Attack frequently. The reason I chose this point to take more Barbarian levels is that, per Tasha's, we can switch our pact out at any warlock level that grants us an ASI, which would have been this level. I'd like to switch over to Chain, but I don't want to lose Extra Attack, so we're going to swing back to Barbarian and pick it up.

Level 10 gets us to Barb 3/Warlock 7. Compared to a regular Barbarian, you don't spend as much time raging, which means your subclass doesn't matter as much since it generally just improves your rage. Ancestral Guardian makes things focus you more, Bear Totem makes elemental damage hit you for less, Zealot makes you hit slightly harder and also really easy to Revivify. All are good choices. Your call.

At level 11, when most single-class builds are getting huge power spikes, we're just getting an ASI. Now that we have Reckless Attack, I think Great Weapon Master is likely the play, though again our stat spread makes a +2 tempting as well.

Level 12 is mostly a dead level since we already have Thirsting Blade, but it's necessary to make level 13 happen. We do get ten feet more movement, though!

Level 13 is Barb 5/Warlock 8. Switch to Chain pact and take Gift of the Ever-Living Ones. Having a familiar is a great source of utility that's been discussed to death, but now you regain max HP any time someone rolls dice to heal you. Short resting? Max HP from hit dice. Potions? Max HP from the d4s. Got a Life Cleric in the party? Their Cure Wounds is worth 11+WIS on you, and another 8 per level upcast; their Aura of Vitality is 170 HP over a minute from a third-level slot (2d6 maxed, plus 5 from their subclass feature, ten times). This synergizes so well with the damage resistance and high HP pool of a Barbarian that I'd honestly consider Barb 5/Warlock 3/Barb X, but that's a slightly different character concept. Oh yeah, our PB hit 5, too. Unfortunately Form of Dread doesn't restore HP, technically.

I think at this point we at least want Warlock 9 to maximize the power of our Armor of Agathys. I am not the hugest fan of the rest of Warlock for the purposes of this build, except 11 which gives us a third AoA cast per short rest as well as a sixth-level spell per long rest. Maybe Create Undead? Could also grab Fighter levels along the way, since GOTELO makes Second Wind a more noticeable heal than it otherwise would be.

Anyway, hope you thought this all was cool.

[zariel_paladin]

Looks like zariel_paladin and I had some similar ideas! Let me show you what's been kicking around in my brain the past few days:

insert picture of a barbarian/warlock here
Frozen Fury

Rage is a great defensive ability. There are a lot of great defensive spells, but you can't cast those while raging. So if we're going to use spells to augment our rage-tanking, we need something you can cast before you hit the rage button, ideally something that takes only an action or lasts a long time or both.

How about Armor of Agathys? Enter Barblock.

For our race and stats: we need Strength as high as possible for our melee offense, Charisma 13+ to take Warlock levels, Constitution as high as possible to survive as long as we can, and Dexterity 14 since we're in medium armor. That's a lot of stats! There's also one feat I particularly want, Polearm Master, for the same reason many martials want it: we want to hit things more often. Great Weapon Master is normally pseudo-mandatory on Barbarians, but I think we can delay it for a little because we want bigger Armor of Agathys casts early and that means focusing on Warlock levels--that is, no Reckless Attack until later in our career.

Any +2/+1 race (or Variant Human with a half-feat in the relevant stats) can result in this spread: 16/12/16/8/8/14. Mountain Dwarves or Half-Elves can get 14 DEX in exchange for only 13 CHA. Not sure I'd take that trade, to be honest. I expect we'll do a non-zero amount of switch hitting via Eldritch Blast, and it'll feel really bad at only 13 CHA compared to 14. Could always just use javelins, I guess?

Our main specialty is going to be toe-to-toe'ing with the enemy melee, while enemy archers and spellcasters are going to be something more of an issue. Yuan-Ti Pureblood for the improved saving throws against magic is an excellent choice. There's also Hill Dwarf for the extra hit points, hard to go wrong there.

Typical combat should involve softening things up with javelins and Eldritch Blast, then when things get hectic popping Armor of Agathys followed by rage for a sudden burst of tankiness. I'll gloss over non-AoA spell choices, since they're not as relevant to the concept; pick your faves.

Anyway, here's how I expect the progression to go:

At level 1, you're a typical Barbarian with one less AC. Your job is to have a lot of hit points and hit things hard, probably using a glaive or halberd. You'll chuck javelins at things that you can't get to. Life is good.

At level 2, you're a Barb1/Warlock1. My patron of choice for this is Undead. The most obvious martial warlock patron, the Hexblade, doesn't help us that much, since we still need a ton of Strength to do Barbarian things anyway (namely Reckless Attack later, and take advantage of our Rage damage bonus in the more immediate term), or at least a 13 to multiclass. Armor of Agathys is basically a mandatory pickup, it's kind of the whole point of the build, but beyond that try to pick things that will help in situations where Rage will not. Undead gives us Form of Dread, another rage-compatible source of temp HP that also lets us frighten things on a hit. Pop it when your Armor of Agathys runs out.

At level 3, we take Warlock 2, getting us invocations. At this point I'm looking at Eldritch Sight and Fiendish Vigor for out of combat utility and even more temp HP spam respectively. Agonizing Blast is a little worse than usual for us since we're only at 14 CHA, though it might still be worth it if we want to switch-hit a little harder outside javelin range. In any case, there's nothing too critical to pick up quite yet.

At level 4, we get a pact. There's one invocation I really want from Chain and one I really want from Blade. The one I want from Blade is just Thirsting Blade so that we have another attack relatively on time compared to our party members. Chain would instead get us Gift of the Ever-Living Ones to maximize healing from dice. If you've found yourself getting healed a lot and aren't worried about your offensive capabilities, you can take Chain now, but Blade will help us kill things faster during T2 (best defense being a good offense and whatnot), and you can switch to Chain later once we get Extra Attack from Barbarian.

Level 5 is a nice one. Barb1/Warlock 4 means we get an ASI. If you've found yourself needing more in a stat, feel free to just take the +2 here, but I suspect Polearm Master is gonna go farther than most of the things you could do with that. It's basically a discount Extra Attack for us, plus a source of more reaction attacks, so hopefully this level won't feel too bad compared to your martials that just got Extra Attack and your casters that just got Fireball.

Level 6 is another big one. We'll grab Thirsting Blade to have two attacks plus a bonus action attack from our polearm. We have roughly 50 HP by my count, with another 30 temp from two casts of Armor of Agathys on each short rest, then another d10+5 from Form of Dread three times per long rest for another 30.

At level 7, we're staying Warlock just a little longer to get Grave-touched, which isn't the most exciting feature but does up our damage against weak-to-necrotic foes or when Form of Dread is up. Neat!

Level 8, aka Warlock 7, gives us another invocation and fourth-level slots. That's another 10 temp HP per short rest, more outgoing cold damage against melee, and, I dunno, Tomb of Levistus looks fun? Or you can take Sculptor of Flesh if your party needs Polymorph badly.

We take a break from Warlock levels at 9 to return to our Barbarian roots. Our proficiency bonus goes up, so we get another Form of Dread use (now d10+7 four times per long rest). At this point we have so many sources of temp HP that I think it's safe to use Reckless Attack frequently. The reason I chose this point to take more Barbarian levels is that, per Tasha's, we can switch our pact out at any warlock level that grants us an ASI, which would have been this level. I'd like to switch over to Chain, but I don't want to lose Extra Attack, so we're going to swing back to Barbarian and pick it up.

Level 10 gets us to Barb 3/Warlock 7. Compared to a regular Barbarian, you don't spend as much time raging, which means your subclass doesn't matter as much since it generally just improves your rage. Ancestral Guardian makes things focus you more, Bear Totem makes elemental damage hit you for less, Zealot makes you hit slightly harder and also really easy to Revivify. All are good choices. Your call.

At level 11, when most single-class builds are getting huge power spikes, we're just getting an ASI. Now that we have Reckless Attack, I think Great Weapon Master is likely the play, though again our stat spread makes a +2 tempting as well.

Level 12 is mostly a dead level since we already have Thirsting Blade, but it's necessary to make level 13 happen. We do get ten feet more movement, though!

Level 13 is Barb 5/Warlock 8. Switch to Chain pact and take Gift of the Ever-Living Ones. Having a familiar is a great source of utility that's been discussed to death, but now you regain max HP any time someone rolls dice to heal you. Short resting? Max HP from hit dice. Potions? Max HP from the d4s. Got a Life Cleric in the party? Their Cure Wounds is worth 11+WIS on you, and another 8 per level upcast; their Aura of Vitality is 170 HP over a minute from a third-level slot (2d6 maxed, plus 5 from their subclass feature, ten times). This synergizes so well with the damage resistance and high HP pool of a Barbarian that I'd honestly consider Barb 5/Warlock 3/Barb X, but that's a slightly different character concept. Oh yeah, our PB hit 5, too. Unfortunately Form of Dread doesn't restore HP, technically.

I think at this point we at least want Warlock 9 to maximize the power of our Armor of Agathys. I am not the hugest fan of the rest of Warlock for the purposes of this build, except 11 which gives us a third AoA cast per short rest as well as a sixth-level spell per long rest. Maybe Create Undead? Could also grab Fighter levels along the way, since GOTELO makes Second Wind a more noticeable heal than it otherwise would be.

Anyway, hope you thought this all was cool.

honestly, your build is probably stronger than mine, but i look at your stats (and the amount of temp hp you generate) and think you could benefit from subtracting some points in con, wearing medium armour and sticking with blade pact to grab lifedrinker (and even if you dont do that, wear medium armour, your stealth is bad anyway and it is strictly more ac)

[Neoh]

*SNIP*

I had a very similar build, took a bit of a different approach though, I ended up at Barbarian 3 / Warlock 17.

I felt like Barbarian didn't need to go any higher than 3, the only real benefit being some extra speed and not using an invocation for extra attack, which didn't feel like a problem to me anyway. And if the game lasts until level 20, you end up with 4 spell slots instead of 3. Bear Totem or Ancestral Guardian felt the best to me too.

As for Warlock, I chose Hexblade with Pact of the Blade. The extra damage and crit on a 19-20 felt better, I don't bother with the charisma thing. I also like the flavour of being able to summon the weapon, especially with Ancestral Guardian. Pact of the Blade allows me to pick Eldritch Smite, since there will be fights where Armor of Agathys isn't really worth to cast. It also allows to spend the spell slot on a crit, with Reckless Attack on a 19-20 crit range, which is always a feels good moment. I pick Relentless Hex for a free bonus action blink with Hexblade’s Curse, which once again feels really good for a Barbarian.
Armor of Hexes can deny an enemy's crit, which works pretty nicely with Armor of Agathys. And it synergizes even better with Ancestral Guardian, since it makes the enemy focus fire on you, but now you have a feature to dodge some of the damage.

[Malaketh]

snip Demonweb Monk

I really love this concept and I have a variation question.

How much of a straight up DPR loss would it be if you went bugbear from MotM, drop Con to 14, have a starting Dex of 16 and Wis 17. For ASI's get Fey touched: Gift of Alacrity, 18 Dex, 20 Dex.

Keep the level progression and everything else the same.

You'd still get advantage, just not triple advantage, you'd lose a free darkness, but your opening round would be painful for the enemy.

From a numbers perspective are we looking at a loss? Break even?

Thanks for any input!

[LudicSavant]

I really love this concept and I have a variation question.

How much of a straight up DPR loss would it be if you went bugbear from MotM, drop Con to 14, have a starting Dex of 16 and Wis 17. For ASI's get Fey touched: Gift of Alacrity, 18 Dex, 20 Dex.

Keep the level progression and everything else the same.

You'd still get advantage, just not triple advantage, you'd lose a free darkness, but your opening round would be painful for the enemy.

From a numbers perspective are we looking at a loss? Break even?

Thanks for any input!

The much-buffed MotM Bugbear is currently one of the best races for Monk, and would likely make up for sustained DPR losses via the benefits it gets from its first turn burst mechanic (and other handy features). Especially since that build would be capable of a 6 attack opening salvo, getting +2d6 on all of them. You could very easily find yourself ending encounters before monsters even get a turn, especially if you're using the Shadow Monk's kit to facilitate ambushes for your party members too.

Of course, the exact results (e.g. loss, break even, gain) would depend on variables like the enemy's initiative, how many turns the combats last, etc.

[Malaketh]

The much-buffed MotM Bugbear is currently one of the best races for Monk

Thanks for the reply!!!!

Would you change the demonweb build much differently then the way I proposed? The 14 Con is meh and losing a free darkness but I don't know a better route. Unless I go straight Mercy Monk??

[ftafp]

The Vadalis Toxicologist

Race: Human, Mark of Handling
Class: Beast Master 5, Hexblade 15
Progression: Hexblade 1, Beast Master 1-5, Hexblade 2-15
Base Stats: 8 Str, 14 Dex, 13 Con, 10 Int, 13 Wis, 17 Cha
ASI: Crossbow Expert@5, Resilient(+1 Con)@9, Fey Touched(Gift of Alacrity, +1 Cha)@13, +2 Cha@17
Canny: Nature
Fighting Style: Archery
Ranger's Companion: Flying Snake
Eldritch Invocations: Eldritch Mind, Investment of the Chain Master, Sculptor of Flesh
Pact Boon: Pact of the Chain
Spells of Note: Goodberry, Gift of Alacrity, Find Familiar, Cordon of Arrows, Flock of Familiars, Pass Without Trace, Conjure Animals, Polymorph, Danse Macabre
Proficiencies: Poisoner's Kit


Poison in 5e has a bad reputation. With a wide slew of creatures not only resistant but outright immune to poison, even some of the most ardent optimizers have written it off as an unusable damage. However, the toxicity does not do the stuff justice. A full 72% of all published creatures have no defenses against poison beyond their Con saves, and even for creatures of CR 20-30 that number only shrinks to a little less than half. True, the saves are often bad and Constitution is often the worst to target, but many poisons offer half damage on a failure and their sheer variety and ease of acquisition means that a single arrow can be game-breakingly dangerous. Thus we come to our build. let's lay things down

We start off pretty bland with Hexblade at level 1. Our weapon of choice is going to be a hand crossbow rather than eldritch blast. This ensures when we start stockpiling poisons later on we have something to apply them to. At level 2 we switch into ranger. Canny in Nature is chosen because even though we have a poisoner's kit proficiency to avoid accidentally poisoning ourselves we are going to be making DC 20 checks regularly so expertise is good to have. We also have Goodberry which we can cast with our warlock slots. It's good to take an hour or two at the start of each day to stock up because goodberries do good healing. At 3 we take the Archery fighting style which will boost our accuracy but the real gem is 3 when we finally get our first pet, the flying snake.

Flying snake is an interesting critter. Despite being a tiny beast with a CR of 1/8, it has an absurdly poisonous bite that not only does 3d4 damage on a hit, but does not permit the target to make a saving throw. It being our companion only strengthens that poison, adding our PB to the damage. Now, with 5 hp a flying snake isn't safe flying into melee to bite, and given how hard a flying snake is to replace you wouldn't want to risk that anyway. Instead, we're going to keep our snake safe and on the sidelines, preferably as far away from a fight as possible, and instead use the poison harvesting rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide to milk it while it's asleep. RAW there's no limit to how much poison a creature can produce and unlike basic poison or the poisons created by poisoner, poisons we extract from creatures can remain on weapons indefinitely, allowing us to apply that poison to bolts for our hand crossbow ahead of time. This means we should have a steady supply of poison bolts that do an extra 3d4+PB poison damage on a hit, and that is just the start of it.

At level 5 we get crossbow expert, which will double our dpr. Ideally we would have had it earlier but sacrifices must be made for more poisons later on. At 6 our offensive prowess is tripled when we get extra attack. We also get Pass Without Trace at this level as well as Cordon of Arrows. Right now we're not going to be wanting to use that spell much, but that will change soon enough. Back into warlock at 7 we get a second pact magic spell slot, and then at 8 everything happens at once.

First, we get pact of the chain, which adds 6 new sources of poison to our repertoire with the Poisonous Snake, the Spider, the Imp, the Quasit, the Pseudodragon, and the Sprite. Combined with Investment of the Chain Master all 6 of these options use our warlock spell save DC, and the familiars with hands can also help in our milking duties. On top of this we gain Flock of Familiars, which allows us to summon multiple varieties of poisonous familiar for an hour, which is plenty of time to get ~20 milkings in after which you can restore the slot with a short rest. Bear in mind that there's no rule saying that different poisons can't be stacked on an arrow. We can use that to turn some of our bolts into darts of instant death. That's not all though. Your pact magic slot can also be used for Pass Without Trace now ensuring you always have the element of surprise, and with Cordon of Arrows. This might seem like an odd spell choice, but not only can the arrows you enchant bear your poisons, but no rule in the spell forbids you from just picking the arrows back up and taking them with you. That means for every casting you stack up, enemies who come near you will need to make one extra dex save or suffer one of our poison darts. Our save may be low, but few monsters have exceptional dexterity.

At level 9 we get another feat. Resilient (Con) will ensure when we get Conjure Animals at 10 nothing is going to break our concentration. Of course, conjure animals adds a whole slew of other poisonous beasts to summon, beasts you can summon a few times at the start of each day and milk for a truly ludicrous variety of poisons, all of which you can stack on your bolts. At 11 we suffer a dead level from hexblade but 12 we get sculptor of flesh, giving us access to the poisons of stronger monsters like giant scorpions and coral snakes. (Technically, half-green dragon brontosauri are also beasts of CR 8 which you should be able to make now and can 16d6 poison damage, but that's a little cheesy even for this). Level 12 gives us another ASI, Gift of Alacrity is always welcome on a warlock, if a bit overdue, and 13 gives us Danse Macabre, which is going to boost our offense into the stratosphere

Now wait, you might be saying, isn't that just a weaker conjure animals? and you'd be right that it is normally weaker, but the difference is that danse macabre can summon skeletons, and skeletons have bows and arrows. See where I'm going with this? Plus, in addition to adding your CHA bonus to their hit chance, it also adds it to every single damage roll they make. Considering they can be making as many as 20 poison damage rolls per attack, that is a whopper of a damage booster.

The build goes on beyond this point but I'm tired of writing. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.

[MagneticDragon]

Oh.

Oh wow.

I knew a forum such as this would be a wonderful and remarkable place to expand my knowledge of possible builds and potential ways to play the game. But I generally did not expect to find a thread such as this so easily and so well kept.

Thank you LudicSavant for keeping this thread organised, as well as posting your own builds. And thank you everyone else for the builds as well. This is going to be a very useful resource for me moving forwards!

[Chaos Jackal]

Make sure to bookmark it, because it'll likely be moving soon, as we're approaching 1500 posts here.

Cheers on that, by the way.