#which is just a bonus because i would have done this multiclass anyway for that sweet sweet channel divinity that tempest clerics get

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

she’s everything to me btw 🌩

[utilitycaster]

Level Up: Bells Hells Level 12

As always: are there errors or major omissions? Let me know! Your preferred feat or spell isn’t listed? That’s because it’s not my preferred feat or spell, and you should make your own post for your own preferences! Additionally, because level-ups are no longer done at the end of sessions but are rather their own separate videos, I now include speculation for the next level(s) since there’s often very little time to speculate on the current level.

Chetney: He could take another rogue level, as Fearne has, but I think leveling in blood hunter is by far the wiser choice, though Travis does have the rare carte blanche for being good at mechanics award I just made up. Anyway, rogue would give him cunning action, but blood hunter is a big one: hemocraft die goes up to d8, unarmed strike bonus goes up to +2, and he not only gains another use of hybrid transformation per rest but also can now regenerate a small number of hit points at the start of each turn while injured, which will improve his already impressive tanking prowess. Looking forward: I think he should stick to the single rogue level, honestly, and keep leveling in blood hunter. 12 is an ASI level, so: ASI to strength, int, or con, all key stats, would be best in my opinion. He could even out his wisdom score, but also he's rarely been badly afflicted with bloodlust and this party does not lack for wisdom but does need all the int, str, and stacks of HP it can get.

Laudna: You've already seen my thoughts on sorlock before (if you haven't, basically: I think it's not as strong as people think) so this is a bit tough to optimize. Anyway, warlock 4 is a very narratively valid choice if Marisha wanted to level in order to indicate the impact returning to Delilah has had. It would grant her an ASI/feat, another spell, and another cantrip. Personally, I am once again asking Bells Hells to get some intelligence; as a warlock base Laudna's WIS save is already pretty solid, though a DEX bonus wouldn't hurt her either. I don't actually have a ton of feats in mind since she came in with a bunch of feats. Meanwhile, if she continues in sorcerer, level 9 is something of a milestone level and grants access to 5th level spells (and a new known spell) in addition to the usual sorcery point increase. Ultimately this is a tough choice - I think sorcerer is the superior choice mechanically, but warlock might make more sense in-story. Looking forward: really dependent on which path she takes, honestly, but if she does level in warlock I think she should level in sorcerer next. [Note from JUST NOW: she's taking sorcerer; place your level 5 spell bets now]

FCG: It's an ASI level for the non-multiclassers of the group, and: Wisdom. Up wisdom. I don't care if it's a +1 feat or a +2 ASI, either are valid, but increase wisdom. Last time I mentioned skill expert and observant as options; skill expert is I think the better choice since Orym has observant covered. Looking forward: it's a quiet but powerful time for clerics; level 13 grants seventh level spells and pals, all of them are bangers. Plane Shift and Resurrection are the famous ones, but Fire Storm? Divine Word? Etherealness? Symbol? Not a dud in the bunch.

Fearne: She took rogue last time so I do hope she takes a druid level, because cauterizing flames seems thematically appropriate with the shard and with embracing her power -both its healing and harmful sides - and also it's a fantastic ability. If she does take rogue, I feel like thief is the subclass that makes most sense because in combat, she's going to be relying on druid powers, and thief provides some great out-of-combat utility (and is generally an underrated rogue class). Looking forward: I do like the idea of thief Fearne, but also, level 11 is when she gets Transport via Plants, which is pretty key. Level 11 has a bunch of other great druid spells, as fans of Keyleth during the Briarwoods arc would know: Heal and Heroes' Feast both overlap with FCG's abilities but it doesn't hurt to have access to both; giving Fearne Conjure Fey is particularly funny; Sunbeam rules and she's done great things with Daylight; and Bells Hells is already learning the value of Wind Walk.

Imogen: ASI level and I say even out your stats: + 1 each to INT and WIS. She has a lot of feats already and the only one that I think makes sense to take now is War Caster, but right now she does not have a great wisdom save bonus and again, even a +1 to INT wouldn't hurt (plus she is, iirc, proficient in investigation, making her better at it than anyone but Chetney, so another point in that won't hurt in this part). Looking forward: I am assuming she's going to keep leveling in sorcerer and if things happen re: Predathos or Kord it will be represented by a subclass change rather than a class change or multiclass, but watch this space. Anyway, level 13 is time for seventh level spells, and my vote is for teleport since FCG can cover Plane Shift, but I must admit I do love Prismatic Spray.

Orym: it's another ASI and he gets a zillion of them! My boring ASI-loving ass says +1 to INT and CON. He could also take Sentinel although the big three generals can all probably teleport so I don't know if it's that useful, but Mage Slayer probably would be. Looking forward: At level 13 he gets a second use of indomitable, which is great but there's not a ton to say about it. At level 14 he gets another ASI and he should take whichever of the recs I have up here he doesn't take at level 12.

Ashton: An ASI to them too. I feel the move is to max out strength at this point. The CON loss sucked but their CON was already very good; focus on hitting a little harder. Sentinel and Mage Slayer are also valid options for them, though I'd go for the ASI and let Orym, he of the zillion ASI levels, take those. Looking forward: Brutal critical comes at L13, and a path feature at L14; as their subclass is homebrew I have no idea what that feature might be, but I'm excited.

[wishing-stones]

Looking at the DnD post, what race bonus do you think the monsters get? And the twins assuming their semi-spirit nature have different stat boosts

Hm! I just did a poke around to see if someone had successfully made an Undertale TTRPG system to cross-reference before I spout off a bunch of homebrew. I haven't had a proper look at Dialtone, since I'm at work and don't feel comfortable downloading it to my work computer, but it looks promising.

According to this one, though, Skeletons have natural buffs to their constitution with immunity to poisoning, strangulation, and drowning. I agree, and would say that Skeletons, on the whole, get +1 to constitution, but -1 to strength.

Leveling up here could be done in two ways: actual levels, which open up new stat boosts, abilities, features, and the like, and LoVE, which unlocks these faster, but comes at an alignment change drawback. Your character will become Evil if they kill too much, end of story.

Classes are a whole different deal, but just for shits and kicks:

Killer is a rogue specializing in knives, with dexterity as his highest stat. Charisma is a close second. He has access to magic, too. Dust is a multiclass necromancer (with only one level in it) and some variant of a spellcaster class-- he uses his magic more than physical weapons. His intelligence is his highest stat. Axe is a barbarian, with strength as his highest stat and intelligence as his dump stat (he's still smart, of course, but he's not as quick on the draw as the others.) Cross is a swordsman with access to magic, but I wouldn't call him a warlock. A fighter who has access to spells, maybe? Strength is highest stat, with his wisdom as his dump stat. Baggs strikes me as a Chaotic Neutral Cleric. He'll put you back together, but by god, you'd better not fight him while he does it. Charisma and wisdom are the same level as his highest stats, and strength is his dump.

And Nightmare technically counts as a deity. He's level 30, his LoVE is way higher than that, but he's not really a threat because he doesn't like bothering with things personally. That's what his boys are for.

As skeleton monsters, they get that +1 Con, -1 Str, but get buffs from their feats, classes, and pact-- which all of them have, warlock or not.

I also feel like a racial feat for them (and all monsters) is the ability to access 1-3 spells for free, basically as cantrips. These are limited to their bone attacks and blasters, for the most part, but those who can still use magic effecting the soul get that one as a freebie, too.

All of them can "Call the Boss" as a free action, but had better do it only if they really need him there.

They're high in actual level as well as LoVE, so some of them have bonus points or feats they've gained to help level out some of their shortcomings stat-wise. A lot of their feats, abilities, proficiencies, and the like are all homebrew.

All monsters, skeletons included, take 2x damage from physical attacks from humans, but get a bonus to attack rolls for ranged magic.

That's what I'd do for a TTRPG for them, anyway, it depends on the system, how it's created, how complex it is, and how firmly it sticks to 5e or any other TTRPG insofar as framework is concerned.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #184

Oh shit we’re a day late. Sorry. Now that Summer’s over, Fate and Phantasms is heading out to Shimousa, starting with the Archer of Inferno! You know the deal by this point; true name spoilers and build breakdown below the cut, character sheet over here, but still expect a little bit of spoilage because you can’t spread out a character over 20 levels and not spoil a bit about them.

Next up: I thought the ghost of an occultist driving a car made by a talking lion would be the most convoluted character design for a while. I was wrong.

Tomoe Gozen is a Battle Master Fighter to talk with her fists and throw people around as well as a Hunter Ranger to get her fiery arrows and to specialize in fighting massive crowds.

Race and Background

Tomoe is kind of halfway between an oni and a human, never quite at home in either world. Thankfully that’s exactly what Tieflings are as well, so getting her race is pretty easy. As a Mephistopheles Tiefling she gets +1 Dexterity and +2 Wisdom, Darkvision for night raids, Hellish Resistance to fire damage (it would be awkward if you died to your own inferno), and the Legacy of Cania. This gives you the Mage Hand cantrip immediately, with one casting of Burning Hands and Flame Blade with your Charisma per long rest at third and fifth level respectively.

As the wife of a Lord, you’re the definition of a Noble, giving you proficiency with History and Persuasion. People just like you, y’know?

Ability Scores

Step one; Dexterity. You’re an archer, this shouldn’t come as a surprise that this is pretty high. (I mean I say that, but there’s ton of archers that don’t use bows, so...) Anyways, second is Strength. You throw people around like sacks of potatoes, so you gotta be pretty good at lifting them. Go with Wisdom as your third highest ability. Large scale battles are hectic, you’ve got to have a sharp eye to do your best work in them.  Your Constitution isn’t half bad, oni tend to be able to take a beating. Your Intelligence isn’t that high purely because we need other stuff more, so we’re dumping Charisma. You’re a bit awkward no matter which side of the family you’re talking to.

Class Levels

Ranger 1: Starting off as a ranger gives you plenty of goodies, including plenty of proficiencies, like Strength and Dexterity saves, plus three skills; Insight and Perception to read your enemies and Athletics to make it easier to haul them around. First level rangers also become Deft Explorers, which makes you Canny with athletics. That doubles your proficiency bonus for extra oni strength when you push and pull objects. You can also set a Favored Foe as a bonus action, dealing an extra d4 of damage once per turn after hitting them with an attack. You can do this proficiency times per long rest, and the damage grows as you level up.

Ranger 2: At second level, you gain the Archery fighting style for an extra +2 to your ranged attack rolls. The archer class is really made up of archers, huh? You also learn how to cast Spells using your Wisdom to cast them. Theoretically. You don’t actually have any spells that bother with that. At first level you can use Longstrider to move around the battlefield easier and Absorb Elements to add a little bit of fire to your arrows immediately. That helps less than the other elements since you’re already resistant to fire damage, but we suffer for our art here. Well, you do.

Ranger 3: Making it all the way to third level without burning out grants you entrance to a shiny new conclave, and the Hunter conclave turns you into a Horde Breaker when you take the subclass, specializing you towards dealing with large groups. Once per turn you can make an extra attack, as long as your second target is within 5′ of the first. You also gain Primal Awareness, letting you Speak with Animals. I don’t think anything in canon says you can do this, but your event is one of the only times we hear the servant animals talk, so I’m counting it. You also learn how to cast Zephyr Strike, speeding yourself up and possibly dealing extra damage at the same time. Controlling your spacing is vital when it comes to dealing with tons of enemies.

Ranger 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Strength for stronger punches. They’ll get even stronger in a second, don’t worry.

Fighter 1: Bounce over to fighter for the Unarmed Fighting fighting style. Now your punches deal 1d6 damage (or 1d8 if you have both free) and you can deal damage to grappled creatures at the start of your turn. You also get a Second Wind, which will heal you as a bonus action.

Ranger 5: We’re done multiclassing for a while, since heading back over to ranger will net you an Extra Attack each action. Now you’ve got two attacks against one target, or three if you can use horde breaker. You also learn second level spells, like Beast Sense and Enhance Ability. I don’t think you’re strong enough yet, so that latter spell will give you advantage on strength checks for the duration. (Or a target creature advantage on any one kind of checks, that’s just the most in-character option.)

Ranger 6: At sixth level Favored Foe grows to a d6, and you also become Roving, which increases your speed and lets you climb and swim without slowing down.

Ranger 7: Seventh level rangers will find it a lot easier to Escape the Horde, forcing disadvantage on all opportunity attacks against you. Right now you’ve still got to keep your distance from your enemies to use your bow and arrow, so this will help. You can also cast Aid to increase your maximum HP along with that of a couple of friends for something that will really excitate your whole lineage.

Fighter 2: Bouncing back to fighter gets you an Action Surge for two actions per turn once per short rest. Now you get up to five attacks in a turn thanks to Horde Breaker and your extra attack.

Fighter 3: If we keep on trucking we’ll hit third level, which is where things get really spicy. As a Battle Master, you get four Combat Superiority d8s per short rest, and you can add one per attack to attack you make, dealing extra damage and adding effects to the blow. Technically. Only one of your maneuvers actually deals with attacks, but that’s Pushing Attack, which will do a lot of work for you. When you hit a creature you deal extra damage, and if they’re smaller than Huge and fail a strength save, they get pushed 15 feet away. Your other maneuvers are Evasive Footwork, adding the d8 to your AC while you move to make fighting you even harder, and Tactical Assessment, adding the die to an Investigation, History, or Insight check. We might not have been able to make you smart, but this should cover whatever tactics you need. You’re also a Student of War, giving you proficiency in any one artisan’s tools. Pick your fave, you’re not exactly Hokusai.

Fighter 4: Our last level in fighter grabs the Crusher feat for +1 Strength and once per turn you can push someone an extra 5 feet as long as they’re large or smaller. Also, critical bludgeoning hits give all attacks against their target advantage until you start your next turn. Now you can fling someone 20′ away, and while that technically doesn’t let you throw them in the air I’d allow it. Honestly, if someone’s moving that far away their feet have got to be leaving the ground at some point.

Ranger 8: Going back to Ranger for good now gets another ASI right away, and Gunner is a weird feat to pick, but hear me out. It’s basically the crossbow expert feat, but it trades that bonus action attack for a +1 to Dexterity, which is way more useful since you don’t use a hand crossbow. You also get proficiency with and can ignore loading on firearms, but most D&D games don’t have those anyway, so it’s fine to be a bit out of character. The real good reason we’re here is to ignore disadvantage on your ranged attacks if people are near you. Archery and brawling don’t normally go together, now they do. You also get Land’s Stride so you can move through difficult terrain easier and have advantage on saves against magical terrain. You leave a lot of corpses around in Shimousa, but this’ll help you keep your footing in that demiplane of skulls you do your boss fight in.

Ranger 9: Ninth level rangers get third level spells, like your Primal Awareness spell Speak with Plants. That might sound totally out of character, but it turns out there’s a legit reason for it: Hey look over there, it’s Flame Arrows! Finally, you can dip 12 arrows into fiery goodness, and each one deals an extra 1d6 fire damage on a hit. You’ve got up to an hour to use all of them, but it also takes concentration so don’t get too attached.

Ranger 10: Tenth level rangers are Tireless, letting you heal yourself with temporary HP as an action Proficiency times per day, and you heal exhaustion on short rests. Some people call that inhuman, I call it efficient. Gilgamesh wishes he had what you do. You can also use Nature’s Veil to turn invisible for a round as a bonus action Proficiency times per long rest. Think of it like a smoke bomb. Or a wildfire bomb. Just set things on fire, hide in the fire, done.

Ranger 11: At eleventh level, hunters can let out a Volley of ranged attacks, letting you attack every creature within a 10′ radius of a point you can see. Technically, this means you can pump out up to 50 attacks per round thanks to Action Surge, assuming a lot of creatures are dumb enough to clump up next to each other. 51, sorry, Horde breaker’s still there. To make getting into position easier you also learn the UA spell Flame Stride, negating opportunity attacks, bumping your speed up by 20 feet, and dealing fire damage to nearby creatures when you run by them. It also explicitly sets items on fire, so now we know how you caused so much damage in Shimousa.

Ranger 12: Use this ASI to round up your Strength and Dexterity for stronger punches, tougher punch saves, better arrows, and a higher AC. A banner level for you.

Ranger 13: Your new fourth level spell from Primal Awareness, Locate Creature is way easier to justify than the last one. You just know where the enemy general is located, even in the thick of battle. We’re basically building a Dynasty Warriors character at this point, aren’t we? You also get Freedom of Movement, just in case you need to speed around the battlefield without setting stuff on fire. I know, it’s boring without the fire. You just have to make due for two more levels.

Ranger 14: Your Favored Foe grows again, and you can Vanish as a bonus action, hiding yourself without any way to track you, bar magic.

Ranger 15: Your final spell of the build will turn you into a mighty inferno that can burn down all of Shimousa! Well, not really, but if you Summon Elemental then Vanish away, it’s almost like you turned into a fire elemental, right? You can also Stand Against the Tide, using your reaction to redirect a missed melee attack at another creature. It’s really hard to hit you when you run away, so I suggest fishing for attacks of opportunity for extra damage.

Ranger 16: Use your final ASI to grab the Tough feat for an extra 40 HP. Onis, man. They’re hard to kill.

Pros:

You specialize in dealing with large groups of enemies, with plenty of ways to move through them and attack over large areas at once.

Working with your bow and fists means you’re never in a bad position in a fight. Hah hah, you ambushed the archer, I guess you’re just getting your skulls bashed in instead.

Your range and speed, combined with your punches’ pushing power, means you are great at choosing your fights. For the most part you can determine where and when you fight an enemy, giving you a pretty solid advantage. As long as your DM doesn’t make all the fights take place in a vacant plain somewhere.

Cons:

Your charisma is pretty dismal, so even if you have a plan in mind good luck getting people to follow it.

You’re also pretty unfocused, and I mean that in every sense of the word. You’d be a lot more consistent with damage if you only focused on punching or arrows, and since you’re specialized for bunches of weak enemies single bosses can be tricky.

Most of your magic damage is Fire, which is easy to resist. If you’re up against a demon or devil, you might just have a bad time.

[tigerkirby215]

5e Hank J. Wimbleton, the Protagonist build (Madness Combat)

(Artwork by AndrewKO on Newgrounds.)

Friday Night Funkin’ Tricky Mod reminded me of the Madness Combat series... man it’s a trip in the best possible way. I honestly miss the old days on Newgrounds where stuff like Madness Combat could get extremely popular just off fan reception alone.

Anyways I think the fantasy of playing a bloodthirsty expert killer is something that most people can identify with in D&D, and Hank is certainly a badass in his own right. So while this was mostly a spur-of-the-moment sort of build here’s Hank J. Wimbleton with as many of his abilities I could reasonably put into a build at once, from Madness Combat 1 all the way to Madness Combat 11: Expurgation.

Also I finally get to use artwork from a website other than DeviantArt which is pretty awesome.

GOALS

Avenger - Hank shoots guns good and Madness is a series of guns first and foremost.

Aggregation - Hank is also more than capable in melee combat, being able to use all sorts of weapons including his fists!

Redeemer - Spoilers for Madness Combat 9 I guess.

RACE

The characters in Madness don’t really look like anything in reality, but it’s fairly safe to say that they are meant to be some sort of human. So we’re going to be going for Variant Human: yup not even an Eberron race since we do need everything that Variant Human provides. Increase your Constitution and Dexterity both by 1 and grab Acrobatics proficiency to dodge incoming knife swings and gunfire. And as per standard take whatever language suits your campaign.

Now you’re probably expecting Crossbow Expert as our level 1 feat, right? Or perhaps even Gunner? That’s where you’re wrong! Hank throws punches far earlier than he starts using guns, and he also uses a lot or improvised weapons throughout the mainline Madness Combat series. So grab Tavern Brawler for a +1 to Strength, a d4 unarmed strike (it’s not earth-shattering but it gets the job done), and proficiency with improvised weapons. And the grappling part which honestly doesn’t impact us much, but it’s nice to grab a human shield.

ON THE GUNNER FEAT: Going to make a quick mention now that this build is made under the assumption that your DM will not allow firearms in their campaign, and as a result we will be reflavoring crossbows as firearms. In short we’re not taking the Gunner feat, but if your DM allows it go ahead and take it.

Honestly if your DM allows firearms it would probably be a good idea to play whatever firearm-based class they added to play as Hank, instead of the build I made here. This build however is meant for the average D&D campaign.

ABILITY SCORES

Hank is MAD, rather fittingly. So MAD in fact that I can’t contain the madness within Standard Array. So rejoice we’re actually going to be using Point Buy!

STRENGTH; 9 - The vast majority of Hank’s weapons are either firearms or weapons that I would constitute as finesse based. With the +1 from Tavern Brawler this is still enough for your punches and improvised Strength weapons to pack a punch at least.

DEXTERITY; 15 - As mentioned above we will primarily be using firearms (crossbows) and finesse weapons.

CONSTITUTION; 11 - Mostly to round out the build, which along with the +1 from our race gives us a bit of bulk which will help with all the killing.

INTELLIGENCE; 14 - There’s many ways I can justify this but the easiest way is to say “it’s a multiclassing requirement.”

WISDOM; 14 - Wisdom is tied to perception as well as survival instinct, and is a multiclassing requirement.

CHARISMA; 8 - Hank is of the quiet sort and doesn’t talk much between all the killing. Yes he can intimidate info out of people but you try keeping your cool with a gun pointed to your head.

BACKGROUND

There was a man who sought the sheriff, and to slay the sheriff you’re automatically made a Criminal. I am however going to suggest swapping your skills out for Intimidation and Slight of Hand (IE Gun Tricks.) Feel free to take whatever Gaming Set you want, but thankfully as a Criminal you can choose Land Vehicles as your tool proficiency, because Hank does run over some guys in part 4!

Criminal Contact will let you get in contact with Sanford and Deimos in case you... you know, die? You can always get your message across when needed: D&D doesn’t have computers but you can still find some shady merchants or corrupt guards to get into contact with your crew.

(Artwork by redemer19 on Newgrounds.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ARTIFICER 1

Starting off as an Artificer because CON saving throw proficiency is nice. So is proficiency in Investigation, Perception, and a tool of your choice.

Tinkerer’s Tools technically counts as gunsmith tools if we go with Matt Mercer’s homebrew, but you already get those for free (along with Thieves’ Tools) as an Artificer. I personally opted for Smith’s Tools as the next best option which will also double for taking care of swords and knives.

You can also get a Boombox to dance to thanks to Magical Tinkering. You can infuse magic into a Tiny object to give it a variety of effects: make it glow, have it display a message, or most importantly have it play the Chicken Dance song. You can have a number of these equal to your Intelligence modifier, which is to say not many.

You do also get Spellcasting: You get two cantrips from the Artificer list: Mage Hand will let you grab a weapon for yourself that’s out of reach, and Acid Splash will serve as a starter shotgun for some buckshot against multiple enemies. As for your leveled spells you can prepare a number of spells equal to your Intelligence modifier plus half your Artificer level, which is to say... not many. Feather Fall can be useful when up in high places, and Detect Magic is universally useful for finding any anomalies created by the Improbability Drive.

LEVEL 2 - ARTIFICER 2

The main reason we went for Artificer first is Infusions, gear you can bring at the start of the fight for an upper hand. Of course the main weapon we’ll be grabbing is the Repeating Shot Weapon which will be how you make basically all your guns. Not having to reload is nice and not having to worry about ammo is better!

ON YOUR WEAPONS: For now the only weapon you can reasonably use is a Light Crossbow, however soon you’ll be able to put Repeating Shot on either a Heavy Crossbow (rifle) or Hand Crossbow (pistol) depending on your preference.

Other than that you can borrow from Sanford’s book and make a Returning Weapon to throw a hook and pull it back, create Sending Stones to keep in touch with your crew, and have a Rope of Climbing to sneak into the sheriff’s office. Or you can choose your own tools for the job as I am merely suggesting what makes the most sense for Hank, but the Repeating Shot Weapon is the only one you truly need.

You can also prepare another spell like Identify, to know what weapon you’re picking up.

LEVEL 3 - RANGER 1

This is a bit out of left field isn’t it? Well Ranger gives a number of things, the first of which being Stealth proficiency for your initial entrance. You also get Deft Explorer (instead of Natural Explorer) for Canny, giving you two languages (pick your poison) and Expertise in one skill of your choice (go for Acrobatics to evade attacks and stay alive.)

You also get Favored Foe (instead of Favored Enemy), letting you concentrate on an enemy’s weak points to kill them quickly. When you hit an enemy you can choose to mark them so they take an extra d4 of damage once per turn from your attacks. You do have to concentrate on this effect (like a spell) but aiming for the head is a good way to end someone quickly.

LEVEL 4 - RANGER 2

Second level Rangers get to choose their Fighting Style and you’re probably expecting me to tell you to take Archery, right? Well even if you’re mostly going to be using guns you do have proficiency with melee weapons too, and since our Strength is kinda bad I’d suggest taking Druidic Warrior for some simple boosts to your combat proficiency.

Shillelagh will be a good place to start by letting you swing a blunt object with your Wisdom instead of your Strength. The main weapons Hank uses in the Madness series other than shortswords is clubs, bats, and pipes which I’d all consider as viable targets for Shillelagh if your DM’s cool.

Mending will be useful to keep your outfit in check after taking a bad hit.

Feel free to take Archery if you want as it’s likely more useful for this build. Again I am opting for what’s the most accurate for Hank, not for what’s the most optimal to build.

But if you want to keep yourself in check after taking a bad hit you can grab some Ranger Spellcasting. Cure Wounds will let you bandage yourself (or an ally) up in the thick of a fight, and Zephyr Strike will let you rush in while avoiding danger to deliver a deadly strike on a key foe.

LEVEL 5 - RANGER 3

There’s quite a few reasons we didn’t go for Rogue levels in this build (spoilers btw): Hank does most of his fighting solo, doesn’t really opt for stealth except for at the start of missions, and because the Gloom Stalker is far better for how Hank operates. For a start you get Umbral Sight for 60 feet of Darkvision with your dumb human eyes, but you can also hide in the dark so well that even creatures with darkvision can’t see you! Which is good because Dread Ambusher gives you a bonus to initiative rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier along, but more importantly lets you move 10 feet faster on the first round of combat. And you can also attack one extra time on the first round of combat, and if you hit with that extra attack you’ll deal an extra d8 damage to down a foe quick and give yourself more options.

You can learn a new spell at this level like Hail of Thorns for some buckshot, and you also get Gloom Stalker Magic, adding Disguise Self to your spell list so you can look like a regular dude who isn’t covered with bandages. You also get Primal Awareness, because even if Speak With Animals makes no sense for Hank it’s still better than Primeval Awareness.

(Artwork by LegendaryPanettone on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 6 - RANGER 4

4th level Rangers get an Ability Score Improvement: Dexterity controls everything we do currently so increase that by 2 for better AC, shooting, sword-swinging, and DEX saves.

LEVEL 7 - RANGER 5

5th level Rangers get an Extra Attack, allowing them to shoot twice and even allowing you specifically to shoot 3 times on your first turn!

You can also learn second level Ranger spells now: Primal Awareness gives you Beast Sense and Gloom Stalker Magic gives you Rope Trick for a place to hide and ambush from. And Enhance Ability (ty Tasha’s) will let you push yourself when violence is needed.

LEVEL 8 - RANGER 6

6th level Rangers see Favored Foe turn into a d6 to be somewhat on-par with Hunter’s Mark. You also get Roving from Deft Explorer for 5 extra feet of movement, as well as a swimming and climbing speed.

But now that you’ve gotten all your killing done it’s time to die. Because you do not kill clown; clown kills you!

(Artwork by Jinxsaw on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 9 - ARTIFICER 3

You can’t kill the protagonist! We’re at 9th level which translates perfectly to Madness Combat 9, which means you can be revived as an Armorer Artificer! Your consciousness will be placed inside of a suit of Arcane Armor, replacing any missing limbs you may have and genuinely account for all your injuries. The armor also doesn’t have a Strength requirement and can be used as a focus for your Artificer spells.

There’s two different Armor Models to choose from but for now I’d suggest keeping to guns and going for the Infiltrator model (mostly because your Intelligence is bad so it would be better to opt for Dexterity to fire your guns.) The Lightning Launcher is like a handgun except it has very good range (90/300) and does Lightning Damage, and even lets you do an extra d6 damage once per turn! You also get Powered Steps for an extra 5 feet of movement speed (adding up to 40 total thanks to Ranger!) and a Dampening Field will give you Advantage on Stealth due to your black outfit.

You also get some Armorer Spells: Magic Missile for some unavoidable gunfire and Thunderwave to give yourself some space. You can also choose a different set of Artisan’s Tools from Tools of the Trade since you likely already have Smith’s Tools proficiency. You can pick whatever you think will be useful, but it’s worth mentioning that you can make a tool with 1 hour of work thanks to The Right Tool for the Job. And no Hank; weapons are not tools. At least not by this definition.

LEVEL 10 - ARTIFICER 4

4th level Artificers get an Ability Score Improvement. Wouldn’t it make sense to increase your Intelligence as an Artificer now that you can use your Armorer weapons with INT? Yes. Anyways increase your Dexterity by 2.

WOULD IT HAVE MADE MORE SENSE TO MAX OUT INTELLIGENCE FOR THIS BUILD? Yes. Now that you have Armorer levels you’re basically never going to be using crossbows again realistically. Oops. Having good INT instead of good DEX would mean that you could start using the Guardian armor to punch some stuff, and 14 in DEX would still allow you to wear Medium armor. You could’ve easily taken 3 (or more realistically 5) levels in Artificer at the start of this build and then gone for Ranger to not have to deal with bad ranged weapons while having good stats for an Artificer.

There’s still strengths to having high DEX obviously (good initiative, good Stealth and Acrobatics checks, good DEX saves, and you get Mirror Image as an Armorer Artificer) but it’s really not that important for this build. But I’m still maxing it out first as it’s accurate to Hank. In the average D&D campaign you’re not going to be picking up weapons from enemies you kill to use them when you run out of ammo. There’s many things I took in this build that are impractical for anything other than a combat heavily inspired by Madness Combat.

Basically feel free to min-max this build if you so desire; it’s quite viable in its own right when you do so. Again I’m trying for accuracy over viability. Also P.S. After this build comes out I’m going to release a “pre-MC9″ Hank build if you want more of the traditional Hank who isn’t in power armor.

You can also prepare another spell at this level but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 11 - ARTIFICER 5

5th level Artificers get an Extra Attack... which you already have. Oops.

Well at least you get access to second level spells! As an Armorer you get Mirror Image to dodge gunfire, and Shatter! For a grenade! But to continue dodging attacks Blur works well as long as the enemy doesn’t have Truesight, which the AAHW may have by total level 11.

LEVEL 12 - ARTIFICER 6

6th level Artificers can prepare more Infusions! A Spell-Refueling Ring will let you restock on spell slot bullets mid-fight, and Boots of the Winding Path will let you jump back after getting into melee combat.

You also get Tool Expertise which is exactly what it says on the tin. You double your proficiency bonus when making checks with tools.

To top it off you can prepare another spell like Catapult. Why are we preparing a first level spell? Because Hank throws big rocks at Tricky in Madness 11. Told you I did research.

(Artwork by ramblinshroom on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 13 - ARTIFICER 7

7th level Artificers get to feel the pain of my choice to max out Dexterity instead of Intelligence as Flash of Genius scales heavily off Intelligence. When you or an ally within 30 feet makes an ability check or a saving throw you can use your reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to the roll. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

LEVEL 14 - ARTIFICER 8

8th level Artificers get another Ability Score Improvement and now that your Dexterity is maxed out... more Wisdom lol? Look we’ll deal with your Intelligence in a bit but Wisdom gives you better initiative among other things.

You can also prepare another spell but next level will get us third level spells, so...

LEVEL 15 - ARTIFICER 9

9th level Artificers can get used to their new revived bodies thanks to Armor Modifications. The chest, boots, helmet, and weapons of your armor all count as individual items for the sake of infusions, and you can have two more infusions active! (As long as they’re on your armor anyways.)

You also get Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Bolt as an Armorer, for a flashbang and some purgatory powers. And you can prepare a spell like Haste, to move so fast it’s like the world is in slow motion.

LEVEL 16 - ARTIFICER 10

So you know how we just got two more infusions for your armor? Well 10th level Artificers can make Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a Headband of Intellect to finally get your Strength and Intelligence to a reasonable level. Again probably a bit late to do so but it does mean that you can finally use melee weapons well, or your Guardian Armor to do some punching! (I’m not going to cover the Guardian Armor now but know that you can punch people and give them disadvantage to hit your allies, and also give yourself Temporary hitpoints.)

And the best part is that you can still keep attuned to other useful items as  Magic Item Adept gives you one more attunement slot, meaning that you can be attuned to 4 items total!

And to top it off more Intelligence means more spells and holy shit another cantrip! For your cantrip you can finally take Message to keep in contact with your party, and for your leveled spells...

People die a lot in Nevada: Revivify can help if one of those people are a friend.

See Invisibility will help you avoid ambushes.

Lesser Restoration can help you in a pinch if you’re pinned down.

But again I seriously can not stress enough that you are more than welcome to pick spells that you feel are stronger, as I am merely picking spells for a simple guy who really likes killing.

(Artwork by marcipancakes on Newgrounds.)

LEVEL 17 - RANGER 7

Very quickly going back to Ranger to grab the last few abilities we missed: 7th level Gloom Stalkers have an Iron Mind for proficiency with Wisdom saves. Yup that’s it. Well at least you can add () to your Ranger spell list.

LEVEL 18 - RANGER 8

8th level Rangers get Land Stride to not be slowed down by the difficult terrain during Expurgation, and even giving yourself advantage against magical terrain made to harm you in purgatory.

But more importantly you get an Ability Score Improvement to pump your Wisdom up a little more. But really I only waited this long to get Ranger 8 to talk about Martial Versatility from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything: talk to your DM about it but I’d actually suggest grabbing Archery proper now instead of Druidic Warrior because you’ve got the Strength to use weapons.

Oh yeah you could also totally like... use the Guardian armor and carry a repeating crossbow for ranged combat.

LEVEL 19 - ARTIFICER 11

11th level Artificers can bring out the heavy artillery with a Spell-Storing Item. You can store a first or second level spell from the Artificer spell list in one  simple or martial weapon (or a spellcasting focus) that requires 1 action to cast.

While holding the object, a creature can take an action to produce the spell’s effect from it, using your spellcasting ability modifier. If the spell requires concentration, the creature must concentrate. The spell stays in the object until it’s been used a number of times equal to twice your Intelligence modifier (minimum of twice) or until you use this feature again to store a spell in an object.

There are plenty of good spells you can choose from but I’m going to just say this: put Shatter in the item. There are perhaps more useful choices, but isn’t a grenade belt the embodiment of Madness?

LEVEL 20 - ARTIFICER 12

12th level Artificers get our last Ability Score Improvement which means hey: maxed out Wisdom! Yes there are perhaps feats you could get (some ideas I’d suggest would be either the Dual Wielder feat [carry a Repeating Hand Crossbow in one hand and your magical fist in the other] or the Sharpshooter feat) but I simply opted for maxing out stats.

And you can prepare one more spell like... I don’t know? Blink for more dodging?

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Abrogation - I came into this build with the intent of making you capable with all weapons regardless of type and well... I certainly accomplished that. You have good Dexterity for any finesse and ranged weapons and your Strength is strong enough to swing a bat around.

Antipathy - You are also damn capable in combat with an insane opening turn and very good DPS regardless of if you choose to fight with fists or guns, not to mention a good supply of spells and class abilities to truly slaughter your foes.

Apotheosis - It wasn’t my intent but... 20 in two stats and 19 in two others? Excluding your Charisma and Constitution you’re a superhuman of a man.

CONS

Depredation - You have to be level 16 to finally get a decent Strength and Intelligence score, and while low STR doesn’t matter much low INT really hurts as an Artificer.

Consternation - “High stats except Constitution” is a problem. Honestly going 15 in Artificer and 5 in Ranger would’ve gotten you level 15 infusions for a Hill Giant’s Belt for 21 STR and an Amulet of Health for 19 CON.

Inundation - There’s a lot of little tweaks worth changing in this build, notably the focus on Dexterity versus Intelligence. Realistically having 20 INT and 14 DEX is more useful for you as an Artificer than having 19 INT and 20 DEX. 

But who cares if it’s messy; as long as it’s effective. Killing everyone somewhere in Nevada will give you plenty of experience to reach your maximum Madness level. You are the Protagonist and they are the Victims... but don’t go into any D&D campaigns with that mentality, or else you may be the Clown.

(Artwork by Teknodice on Newgrounds.)

[niftybottle]

Hey @tulipsandsake, I’m your @bering-and-wells-exchange person. I saw you reblog D&D and Critical Role stuff, so I thought I’d do designs for Myka and Helena as D&D characters. Helena is a half-Drow multiclass Bard (College of Glamour)/Artificer (Battle Smith), while Myka is an old-school (2e/AD&D/Baldur’s Gate era) human dual Kensai->Mage. (I don’t have races/subclasses for everyone, but Artie is a college of lore bard, Claudia is an Artificer, Pete is a fighter, and I’m not sure what Leena is). Helena is very much a “seduce anything that moves” ~D&D Bard~, while Artie is very much not - he leans hard into the collection of lore/jack of all trades angle, and while he can play music very well he borders on anti-social. This is the source of some of the tension between them, with his distrust for her Drow parentage occupying most of the rest.

At this point I’m going interrupt to give a blanket apology if I explain something you already know - it’s hard to judge knowledge levels with a gift exchange without ruining the surprise, so I’m going to err on the side of explaining things just in case.

Helena is a bard to capture the importance of her novels, but novel-writing isn't the most practical in a fight or as a live performance, so I gave her an instrument. I chose the hurdy-gurdy, which is a (real) instrument with a very silly name. I picked it because it is very complex and mechanical, like something she might have invented or cobbled together. It’s kind of like an automatic violin or fiddle - rather than being plucked or bowed, a crank on the side is rotated, which moves a wheel across the strings. Rather than frets there are keys which hold the strings at certain points when pressed. There are also “drone” strings, which play a given note (that can be adjusted using a tuning peg) whenever the wheel is turned. You can technically “play” a drone string by holding a sting as if a guitar string as the wheel turns, but that isn’t traditional. Both drone and melody strings can be adjusted using tuning pegs, and apparently you can adjust the exact note the keys play. Some hurdy-gurdys (but not Helena's) also have additional strings not played by the wheel that can be played like a guitar. Hurdy-gurdys do not have much standardization, and the number/presence of all the different kinds of strings can vary.

Helena's bard college I went back and forth with - the college of glamour is about charming, as in the magic, which does suit her, but the college of lore would also be good. Ultimately I decided that college of lore would be better for Artie. Battle Smith, her artificer specialization, I kind of chose to make the character a little more practical to play - artillerist might have suited her character a touch more, but not too much more, and the battle smith's ability to use intelligence for (magic) weapon attacks/damage reduces the important stats to two (int and cha) rather than three (adding str or dex for weapon rolls). Helena's Steel Defender is Dickens the Mechanical Cat, and he can turn the crank for the hurdy-gurdy, letting her play it with one hand.

I don't have her backstory completely pinned down; I feel like her Drow parent escaped to the surface rather than being a functioning member of Drow society, if only to reduce the sketchiness of the alternative method of conception. Christina is definitely a valid "reason for adventuring", but Endless Wonder or fleeing the consequences of a lab accident or charm spell wearing off are also possibilities.

In terms of the illustration itself, I tried to balance bard flamboyance, artificer practicality with a touch of mad science, and Helena's canonical slightly Victorian elegance. I definitely needed the fancy bard hat, because I am of the firm belief that every bard needs a fancy hat. She's wearing a cute pair of overalls (and I now have "stylish overalls" in my google search history), but they got covered by Dickens :( . With the more muted browns inspired by the artificer half as well as her canon style, she was looking a little drab for a bard, so I added a little cape. In terms of skin/hair/eyes and being half-Drow my thoughts were kind of: leaning in to the purplish/blue/lavender skin thing some illustrations of Drow have, because between the inherent problems of the evil elves having black skin and wanting to stay fifty feet away from anything that might come close to being a race-bend I wasn't going to deal with having her skin be darker. I think it turned out OK? For some reason Helena's eye color is significant to me, so they stayed brown rather than Drow purple or something, though they wound up a bit brighter thanks to my attempts to add a little purple. Jaime Murray's hair is iconic, but more for its smoothness and luster than its color, so I was fine making it white as long as I kept the style. The hurdy-gurdy was a bit of a nightmare (twice over, since I had to ink it), which isn't surprising - I kind of cursed myself with that instrument choice, but it was so perfect ;_; . In general, and especially in comparison with Myka, Helena's illustration fought me the whole way down. If you watch the time-lapse, you can see some of the references I used, but far from all - I streamed so much hurdy-gurdy playing youtube is still confused, and the pose went through some shenanigans.

Now, to Myka. Thinking of her pre-med before pre-law before secret service vaguely remembered quote, I thought of the old Baldur's Gate fighter(kensai)->mage cheese build, and thought it might be a good way to capture that simultaneous indecision and discipline/intelligence.

Going very briefly into Baldur's Gate/2e: Kensai, in BG, is a Fighter kit. Kits, in BG and 2e both, are a little like specializations in 5e, in that they are a kind of further customization beyond the class itself. The difference is, not every character has a kit - there is a base class (fighter) and a kit is a set of trade-offs, taking away base class features in exchange for various benefits. So fighter, the base kit, is pretty similar to the fighter in other editions - good at using weapons and armor and attacking a lot. Can equip the best stuff, and use it well, but doesn't get a lot of bonuses apart from that of equipment. Kensai (in BG), on the other hand, trades the ability to wear armor (and use non-thrown ranged weapons) for scaling bonuses to to-hit and damage (abstracting some things for you), and a minor one-time bonus to natural armor, as well as the Kai ability, which temporarily maxes out damage on successful attacks, usable a few times a day, depending on class level. In short, they trade off the armor portions of the Fighter class for additional weapon bonuses.

In Baldur's Gate, if you want to build a dual fighter/wizard, kensai is a great pick for kit, since wizards can't cast in armor anyway, but they can cast spells to boost their AC, mitigating some of the disadvantage of the kit. Mage is a base class and basically what would be called a wizard in later editions. Mage kits, with the exception of wild mage (in BG), which is a whole thing I won't get into, are pretty much picking a school to specialize in - they get bonuses to spells of that school, but there is an "opposing" school which they can't use at all. I wouldn't be terribly interested in those specializations even if I could use them for Myka, but I couldn't, because of how dual-classing works.

Dual-classing in BG and 2e is one of two methods to have more than one class on a character. Which one you can do depends on your race (as does a lot of things in 2e). If you're human, you dual-class; if you're not, you multi-class. Multi-class characters are more what you'd expect from multi-classing in other editions - you have two classes, you gain levels in both. There are differences (exp is divided evenly between classes, rather than choosing what to level, class and combination restrictions), but most relevantly, you can't use any kits with multi-class characters. So, we want to dual-class, not multi-class, so that Myka can use the Kensai (BG) kit, which makes her human, which is fine.

Dual-classing, compared to multi-classing, is weird. Basically, you start off in one class, with a kit if you like, and level normally in that class/kit until you decide to switch, at which point you are done with the first class and can't level in it anymore. Then you *start over* in your new class (which cannot have a kit), as if you were a level one character in that class, without (effectively) the ability to use anything from the previous class (except hp). This continues until the number of levels in the second class exceeds that of the levels in the first class, at which point the character regains all the qualities and abilities of their first class. Dual classes can wind up quite powerful, but they require both planning and a willingness to be weaker for a time to be more powerful later (which I feel suit Myka well - she's a planner and has the patience and discipline to accept temporary weakness to be stronger later). So, given that we want to use the Kensai (BG) kit, Myka needs to start with it, and then switch to mage later, since the second class can't have a kit.

At this point I want to clarify why I keep specifying Baldur's Gate and/or D&D 2e for things. Turns out, Baldur's Gate does use D&D 2e as a base, but makes some modifications. One of the changes it makes, which I didn't know when I started this, is the Kensai kit itself. Kensai is not officially a 2e kit, and technically isn't in 2e at all. There is a (fighter-ish) class in the "Oriental Adventures" book for first edition, but it isn't quite the same, more it's own class that happens to share some tables with fighter. Since the end goal is character design, not creating a legal 2e character, I won't go too far into it, but I did create both a (cheated to level up) Baldur's Gate kensai -> mage and a (1e-ish)Kensai->(2e)Mage, using the rules from 2e for most things not directly in the Kensai class description (and ignoring the stat requirements for dual-classing since I didn't roll any 17s); screenshots of both should be in the supplemental reblog, in addition to a link to Helena's dndbeyond character sheet.

Fortunately for me and my lack of foresight, both BG Kensai and 1/2e Kensai have similar flavor: a heavily "eastern" inspired warrior with even more discipline and asceticism than standard fighters, focused on their weapons and unable to wear armor, with a restriction to either lawful (1/2e) or at least not chaotic (BG) alignments (if this sounds a little monk-ish WotC agrees - kensai is a monk specialization in 5e, being a monk that can use a not-monk weapon). Also fortunately for me, mage is wizard is mage, regardless of edition. Magic from book learning/intelligence. Not too complicated.

In terms of character narrative, in canon, I feel like coming to the Warehouse was a significant breakpoint in Myka's life and worldview. Not being a writer, this small essay notwithstanding, I'm going to sum it up as a break from tradition and from seeking the approval of her father. Where joining the Warehouse crew was for canon Myka, I want dualing from Kensai to Mage to be for DnD Myka, with reaching the point where she can use Kensai features again representing the peace with her past she eventually reaches at the warehouse in canon. What I'm picturing is: Myka is from an isolated and very traditional mountain village where the kensai tradition (and 2e mechanics) has been preserved. Myka is trained in this tradition, and has both the mental discipline and physical capabilities to excel. The people of this village are purists and don't believe in using magic, especially in conjunction with being a kensai. Somehow (at this point my having thought this through starts to fail) Myka gets ahold of some spellbooks, and with her love of books and curiosity, begins to read and reread them, until one day she casts some magic. This is against the rules, and she's kicked out of the village for "corrupting" their traditions, and now she has to make her way through the world with only her fledgling mage talent to rely on.

Talking about the illustration/design itself: given the heavily eastern vibe, I'm trying for a samurai/ronin style based on my recollections from my weeb phase. I wanted in particular with the robe/kimono to make something that would be in between the plain practicality of Myka's kensai kimono and the flashiness of wizard robes (if you watch the timelapse, you may spot the part where I accidentally took a left turn into fallout's vault boy coloration before tweaking it a bit). I also wanted to have her using magic, and I think the magic effect turned out well. Really, this illustration just came out really easy. I was just … drawing hands. If you watch the timelapse, I even saved a third hand for a while because it was so nice (but at the wrong angle). I don't know what happened. Really the only snags were the aforementioned Vault Boy Moment and coloring Myka's hair (although I did decide to leave her face as a sketch rather than try to ink it).

I think maybe I've babbled enough for now. I'll reblog this in a moment (since tumblr hates links) with character sheets, timelapses of the drawings, and a bonus doodle that came to me reading the artificer specializations.

[captain-lonagan]

anyway someone has probably already done this but. d&d build ideas for c!tommy, c!wilbur, c!tubbo, c!techno, and c!phil

below the cut off because jesus christ

c!tommy: multiclass of swashbuckler rogue and life cleric

okay i know thief rogue is the most obvious rogue way to go here but hear me out.

the basic description is “While some warriors are brutes clad in heavy armor, your method of fighting looks almost like a performance.”

and one the abilities at third level is “your confidence propels you into battle. You can give yourself a bonus to your initiative rolls equal to your Charisma modifier.” our chommy our streamer. one of the later abilities is called Panache and i think he’d have fun saying Panache. also Panache is a charisma check ability and if he passes the check whoever attacks him has disadvantage for the next minute.

the life cleric levels i defend with church prime and just vibes really. the description for the subclass is “The Life domain focuses on the vibrant positive energy—one of the fundamental forces of the universe—that sustains all life. The gods of life promote vitality and health through healing the sick and wounded, caring for those in need, and driving away the forces of death and undeath.”

coincidentally, the level 5 spells for a life cleric are “beacon of hope” and a revival spell. so that’s Interesting.

c!wilbur: you fucking guessed it he’s a bard

look. look we all knew this. HOWEVER. i will say he’s specifically a lore bard because (1) Ha Lore and (2) the description is “Bards of the College of Lore know something about most things, collecting bits of knowledge from sources as diverse as scholarly tomes and peasant tales. Whether singing folk ballads in taverns or elaborate compositions in royal courts, these bards use their gifts to hold audiences spellbound. When the applause dies down, the audience members might find themselves questioning everything they held to be true, from their faith in the priesthood of the local temple to their loyalty to the king”

something something that one quote about c!wilbur’s words and butterflies in your head. i do think it would be funny if he had a single level in wild magic sorcerer just so he could be stressed about wild magic surges on top of all his other bullshit. also if he’d stuck to the fuckin bit and made drugs i think he would’ve taken a few levels of alchemist artificer just for fun

c!tubbo: multiclass oath of watchers paladin with a couple levels of artillerist artificer

now path of watchers paladin’s description doesn’t really match c!tubbo that much, it’s kind of a men in black thing, BUT i think he’d have fun with the spells. there’s alarm (if anyone/anything enters the spell area it’s Noise Time), detect magic, see invisibility, and fucking Counterspell which is very useful for fighting spellcasters. paladins get their power from their oath and their dedication to it, i think after doomsday he stops leveling in paladin and switches fully to artillerist artificer. they make magic machine guns, not oaths.

c!techno: battle master fighter w/ dueling fighting style

not a lot to say here it just gives a lot of combat buffs and dueling style lets you do more damage with oh idk maybe a sword. also battle master has a feature called “Student of War” and i think the sun tzu stan would enjoy that

c!phil: hexblade warlock w/ pact of the blade

i know crazy i know but hear me out hear me out. the description of hexblade may not match one to one with c!phil but hexblade and pact of blade gives you like five flavors of smite And a shield spell And it’s just nice for combat in general and i think kristin would be a fun warlock patron i think she’d have a good time.

[lenn-ey]

so, there’s this handy online character sheet tool called dicecloud. it’s great! it’s really easy to share character sheets with your friends and players as well as save them onto an online cloud.

the problem is that there’s basically no tutorial resources that are really accessible to the average person. there’s a guide on the website, but it’s... basically a massive wall of text. yikes.

now, the first thing you want to do is, obviously, create a character. as of writing this, when you create your character, it gives you an input box like this:

as it says, you can always change these values at a later time; you don’t need to decide right away, and none of the inputs you put here have any real effect on dicecloud’s Inner Workings. they’re just words.

once you do that, you’ll be treated to a screen like this:

(some key features are different, of course, but that’s only because this is a premade character.)

this is just an easy location for your stats and proficiencies and such. you can’t edit anything on this screen other than your HP, death saves and hit dice. (it seems just a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s how it works.)

(fun tip: if you want, you can change the color of basically any element that has a gray header. neat huh?)

the first thing you want to do is go over to that journal tab on the far right:

as you can see, laureli has a racial box (half-beast) and a class box (warlock 1) under the level 1 header. (you can consider “half-beast” to be level 0, if you’d like.) we’re going to be looking at race first, and then at class, though you can do it in any order.

when you click on the racial box, you’ll see another popup like this appear:

you’re gonna wanna click that little pencil in the top right to edit this, since it’s going to be empty when you create your character.

once you do that, you’ll see something like this;

what we’re going to focus on in this section is effects and proficiencies.

basically, effects are what you use with number values; for example, laureli gets a +1 to charisma, which is handled in the effect. you use these for stats, spell slots and HP.

proficiencies are more or less binary in nature; you can either have a proficiency or not. (you can also have a double or half proficiency, but you get the idea.) you use these for languages, tool proficiencies and skill proficiencies.

in this tab, you’ll add any stat buffs your racial features grant you (for example, the +1 charisma) in effects, and any proficiencies they grant you (for example, the charisma saving throw proficiency).

second, we’re gonna look at that little class menu (the one that says “warlock 1″ or whatever).

this is, more or less, the same stuff we’ve already looked at; any class bonuses that deal with actual integers will go in as effects (like that one level 1 spell slot), whereas anything else goes in as a proficiency (eg, the deception proficiency). pretty easy once you get the hang of it!

next, we’re going to move over to the tab that says features.

your screen should definitely not look like this, but it might look something like it when we’re done here. first, we’re gonna add racial features.

laureli has the sharp vision racial trait; however, this trait is not always active and only activates at certain times. if i had given him an effect that just gave him proficiency in perception and investigation, it would have been too confusing and difficult to remember when that is and is not active. therefore, i put it in features instead, as plain text.

to add a feature, just smash that red plus button in the corner and start typin away. you can add flavor text or, like i did, just the description of what the feature does. sometimes a feature is associated with an effect; for this reason, you can also add effects and proficiencies to features.

additionally, there are fields to specify whether or not the feature is enabled and whether or not the feature has limited uses; it all depends on the specific feature. for both racial and class features, i just put them in as plain text since they don’t have associated effects or proficiencies.

the last thing we’re gonna do in this features tab is edit the base ability scores, found here:

you’ll notice this doesn’t have any text associated with it, and that’s because it’s all effects, babey.

when you open it up, you’ll see something sorta like this, except there won’t be fields for hit points and speed and all the base ability scores will be 10. you can edit these using effects; simply edit the effects for the ability scores for the desired value, and add effects for hit points* and speed and set them to the desired value.

* for hit points, set it instead to [base hit points specified by class, eg, 8]+ constitutionMod. you can use “[ability]Mod” anywhere in effects or attacks, and it will automatically replace that with the specified ability modifier.

your stats menu should look something like this now. cool huh!!

now we can get to the inventory, which is significantly easier because of the new dicecloud update. as of june 20, 2017, you can automatically add certain items to your inventory with premade descriptions and effects.

the first thing you want to do in your inventory is create a container. you can do this by pressing the big red button in the corner and then pressing the button that looks like a little briefcase;

this should prompt you to input a gold and weight value for this container. usually it’ll be a backpack, worth 2 GP and weighing 5 lbs, but sometimes it differs.

from here, you can add most objects using this button:

this will open up a search menu of a selection of items found in the 5e player’s handbook.

simply search for the desired item, click on it, and press ok. voila! you now have that item, and you can drag and drop it into the container you previously made.

however, a lot of the time there are objects you can’t find in this list. for this reason, you can also create an object yourself by pressing this button:

you’ll get a menu that looks like this, and from here, you usually only need to specify its quantity, weight, gold value, container and description, all of which are fairly easy. sometimes you can add effects to an item, but you probably have a pretty good grasp on effects regardless.

you can also add an attack to an item. when you add an attack, a menu will come up that looks like this:

in “attack bonus”, you’ll be specifying which bonuses are granted by this attack; for example, if it’s a sword and i’m proficient in them, i’ll input strengthMod + proficiencyBonus. if not, i’ll just input strengthMod.

“damage” is pretty straightforward. you put in the base die value of how much damage the weapon does (in XdY format) and add the relevant modifier (in curly brackets).

if you don’t have a spellcaster, you can (technically) stop reading this tutorial now! there’s a bit at the end that’s not super relevant all the time and you basically get the idea anyways, and the next section we’re going onto is spells. obviously, we’re moving to the spells tab.

now, if you did your class features right, you should have something here that says how many spell slots you have and of what level. after this, you’ll want to make a spell container (it’s a good idea to have different spell containers for different classes if you’re multiclassing, but not necessary). you do the same thing for a spell container as you do with an item container, with one extra step;

you’re going to want to make a name for it (ofc), and then change the fields in “save DC” and “attack bonus” to reflect your spellcasting modifier. for laureli, it’s charisma.

from there, you can add spells in a similar manner to how you would add objects in the inventory; many spells are in a premade list which can be automatically filled in.

however, sometimes they’re not, and you have to be prepared for such edge cases.

you can make a spell by pushing the exact same button you would to make an item in your inventory, though there are several more fields you have to keep track of. however, these are more or less similar to how you would fill in an object’s details yourself. you can also add attacks to spells, just like with an object.

finally, we can move to the persona menu. this is mostly just for fleshing out your character; almost all of these boxes are usually going to be plain text.

you can also add images to the first box. how lovely!

and... that’s it. unless i forgot something extremely important, you just made a character in dicecloud. congratulations!

in order to share this character with the world, you simply go to the menu in the top right corner and click on those three dots, which will create a popup menu:

then, click share, and it’ll take you to this menu:

from here you can set it to be shared with anyone to the URL to the sheet or only individuals who you’ve shared it with via your dicecloud account, as well as setting their ability to edit the sheet. with link sharing, simply copy/paste the URL to whoever you’re sharing it to.

and that’s all! that’s the entire guide to making a character in dicecloud, without being a massive, uninterrupted wall of text. you’re welcome, gamers.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #187

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making Yagyu Tajima-no-Kami Munenori, living proof that you can prevent spoilers by spoiling other things. Anyways, he’s an Inquisitive Rogue to defeat his foes with facts and logic, as well as a Samurai Fighter to defeat his foes with a goddamn sword because he’s in the saber class.

Check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: Domo Arigatou, Kaa-san Roboto

Race and Background

Yagyu beef is still a Human, but he’s a Variant Human for the extra skills. This gives him +1 Wisdom and Dexterity, as well as proficiency with Investigation to put that big brain to work. That’s not enough skills though, so grab the Skill Expert feat for another +1 to Dexterity, as well as proficiency with Animal Handling for your riding skill and doubled proficiency with Perception. I know we didn’t get regular proficiency yet, but it’s happening at level one so it’s fine.

Yagyu might have been as rich as a noble, but that doesn’t mean he was one. We’ve been using Mercenary Veterans for swordsmen for a while now, and I see no reason to stop now. This background gives him proficiency with Athletics and Persuasion.

Ability Scores

First up make your Wisdom as high as possible. Yagyu’s a clever boy, and wisdom-based skills are the more applicable part of that equation for you. Secondly, your Dexterity has to be good- Yagyu is a master swordsman, and he’s not exactly swinging a greatsword around. His Intelligence is also pretty solid, but it’s just lower since it’s not quite as directly helpful for the build. Yagyu’s Constitution isn’t half bad, he’s got to be tough to survive feudal Japan. That means his Charisma is pretty low- he’s scary, but not much else. That means we’re dumping Strength. He’s an old man, and we don’t really need it for the build.

Class Levels

Rogue 1: Starting off as a rogue nets us a couple extra skills, more than we’d get from multiclassing in later. Rogues start off with proficiency in Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as four rogue skills, like Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and that Perception we mentioned back in the Skill Expert feat. Told you not to worry about that.

They also get Expertise in two skills for double their proficiency bonus. Double down on Insight for more logic and Intimidation to put that logic to good use scaring the crap out of people. You also get a Sneak Attack once per turn, dealing 1d6 extra damage as long as you are using a finesse or ranged weapon and either A) have an ally next to your target or B) have advantage on that attack. It’s complicated, but we’ll make it real simple soon enough.

Oh yeah, you also get Thieves’ Cant. It’s a language.

Fighter 1: Okay, the underhanded stuff is done for a while. Bouncing over to fighter gives you the Dueling, adding 2 to damage rolls with a one-handed weapon, like a short-sword, which you can now wield since you’re proficient with martial weapons. You also get a Second Wind each short rest that will heal you as a bonus action. Taking a break when you need one is smart. You’re smart, so you take breaks when you need one. That’s the transitive property.

Fighter 2: Second level fighters can use all that break-taking to push themselves once per short rest, making an Action Surge to take two actions in a single turn. Fighting your hardest can also be the smart thing to do sometimes.

Fighter 3: Third level fighters get their martial archetype, and as a Samurai you learn to unleash your Fighting Spirit, spending your bonus action to gain some temporary HP as well as advantage on all your attacks for the turn. You can do this three times per long rest.

You also get History proficiency. It’s almost cheating given that you’re a historical figure, but hey, we had to get another proficiency here.

Fighter 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Dexterity.  Your sword uses dex, your armor uses dex, it’s just a really good ability to improve upon.

Rogue 2: Going back to rogue lets you stuff even more into a single turn thanks to your Cunning Action, letting you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action. I’m not saying you’re faster than a monk now, but you could definitely keep up with one for a bit.

Rogue 3: Third level rogues get 2d6 in their sneak attack, and they get their roguish archetype. as an Inquisitive, you gain an Ear for Deceit, so your insight checks to determine lies always get die rolls of at least an 8. You also have an Eye for Detail now, letting you spot hidden creatures with perception or find clues with investigation as a bonus action. You’re really getting a lot out of those things, huh?

Continuing the bonus action train, you can use Insightful Fighting as a bonus action, forcing a contested insight check against a creature’s deception. If you win, you can use sneak attacks against that creature for up to a minute without needing advantage or a nearby ally. Your fighting spirit has limits, but you can use this one as many times as you need- just keep in mind you can only target one creature at a time.

Rogue 4: We’ve got more feats we want, so use this ASI to become a Defensive Duelist. Use your reaction to add your proficiency bonus to your AC for one melee attack, potentially avoiding the attack entirely. You need to be holding a finesse weapon, but somehow I don’t think that’ll be an issue for you.

Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters finally get their Extra Attack, letting you attack twice per action. You can still only use your sneak attack once per turn, but now missing once isn’t the end of the world!

Fighter 6: You get another ASI now, so lets grab Keen Mind to show off how clever you really are. Your Intelligence bumps up by 1, and you’re really good at keeping track of yourself in time and space thanks to knowing which way north is and the number of hours left until sunrise or sunset. Most importantly, you have a photographic memory of the last month.

Fighter 7: Seventh level samurai are Elegant Courtiers, giving you proficiency with Wisdom saves to prevent your emotions from getting the better of you. You can also add your wisdom modifier to persuasion checks now. I’d prefer that to be intimidation, but if you can’t talk your DM into that it’s not the end of the world.

Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues get an Uncanny Dodge, using your reaction to halve damage from one attack. Defensive Duelist would reduce the damage more, but even enemies score natural 20s sometimes. Also, your sneak attack grows to 3d6. It’s been a while, just wanted to make sure you remember that.

Rogue 6: At sixth level you get another round of Expertise; double down on Investigation to be a clever boy and History to prevent your party from repeating it.

Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues can deal more damage with 4d6 sneak attack, and they can avoid consequences of using that damage thanks to Evasion. If you fail a dex save you only take half damage. If you succeed, you take 0.

Rogue 8: Use this ASI to max out your Dexterity, giving you the most accurate and deadly swordplay available to mere mortals. It also makes your AC good as a side effect.

Rogue 9: Ninth level inquisitives gain a Steady Eye, giving you advantage on perception and investigation checks as long as you move at half speed that turn. It’s not quite Reliable Talent, but it’s still pretty useful. This also means your sneak attack grows to its final size, 5d6.

Fighter 8: Use your final ASI to bump up your Wisdom for better Insightful Fighting, Wisdom saves, and perception checks.

Fighter 9: Ninth level fighters are Indomitable, letting you re-roll a failed save once per long rest. Even when you fail a wisdom save you succeed it, that’s how solid your mind is.

Fighter 10: Tenth level samurai get a Tireless Spirit, so if you start a fight without any Fighting Spirit, you get one back for free. Also, your fighting spirit gets a bit better, giving you 10 temporary HP when you pop one.

Fighter 11: Your capstone level is simple, but effective. Another Extra Attack lets you attack thrice per turn, up to six times with action surge.

Pros:

With a maxed out attack stat and plenty of attacks per turn, you can dish out pretty consistent damage, especially if you use your fighting spirit to fish for critical hits. 6d6 per turn without spending any resources is nothing to sniff at.

As befitting any rogue, you’re also very skilled out of combat, lending insight and knowledge to the party.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating- mixing a fighter’s health pool with a rogue’s damage reduction techniques makes for a very solid combo, especially when you throw Defensive Duelist in as well for an even higher AC and Fighting Spirit for extra health to chew through.

Cons:

You have great AC and some extra health in reserve, but that doesn’t change the fact that your HP is rather low for a front-line fighter. Your damage reduction makes up for it, but it’s something it has to make up for, you get me?

You’re too focused on your sword. It makes you really good with your sword, but not very flexible in combat. If you’re playing to character, you’ll have trouble with flying creatures and those that resist or ignore nonmagical attacks. (Assuming your DM doesn’t give you a magic weapon. Hopefully your DM’s nice enough to notice you’d be hosed without one, but for a guide like this it’s best to assume the DM gives you nothing.)

You need your bonus action to activate your fighting spirit, cunning action, eye for detail, and insightful fighting. Similarly, your reaction is split between opportunity attacks (which are super useful for rogues with their sneak attack), uncanny dodges, and defensive duelist uses. Basically, your main action is too simple, but everything else is really complicated for some reason, and you’ll have to sort all these options out for yourself.

Hey, nobody said being smart was easy.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #177

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making Nitocris (Assassin), the return of best girl! All we gotta do for this build is make a build where you can defend yourself with a super powerful sheet, drown your enemies, and summon Medjed for combat. Super easy.

Oh yeah, we also have to make a super-adaptable vehicle that can defend us from any kind of harm because SOMEBODY went ham on the safety features and left us with having to stick them in the build. I’m not saying names though, and Scheherazade should be grateful.

Anyways, this build’s mostly a Shepherd Druid because druids are busted like that, but we’re still dipping into Grave Cleric for a bit of flavor and Monk for her defenses and a better time in melee combat.

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Team Killer Demon King of the Xth Heaven!

Race and Background

Surprisingly, putting on a swimsuit doesn’t change your life story that much. Nitocris is still a Fallen Aasimar Noble, giving her +1 Wisdom, +2 Constitution, Darkvision, Celestial Resistance to radiant and necrotic damage, Healing Hands to heal people as an action, the Light cantrip, and proficiency with History and Persuasion. You are a pharaoh, and you are Nitocris. That’s all you need to understand history and to persuade people.

Ability Scores

Actually surprisingly, putting on a swimsuit does change your physical abilities a little bit. Your Wisdom is still the highest stat, you’ll want that for ruling and for summoning god magic. However your second highest stat is Constitution. That sheet can really take a beating. Dexterity comes next so you don’t die while wearing a swimsuit. Your Charisma isn’t bad, I wish it could be higher, but we don’t need it mechanically. Your Intelligence is a little low, but it’s summer, everyone’s relaxed. Finally, dump Strength. You still aren’t a powerhouse, except in our heart.

Class Levels

1. Druid 1: Starting off as a druid gets you proficiency with Intelligence and Wisdom saves, as well as two druid skills. I’d grab Religion and Animal Handling. You’re really good and handling those medjed, and mechanically most of them will be beasts in this build.

You can also write Druidic (it’s a language!) and cast and prepare Spells using your Wisdom. You can pick from any spells on the druid spell list, but you’re limited each long rest to a number equal to your wisdom modifier plus your druid level.

You also get a couple cantrips that you’ll always have; I suggest Guidance so you’re always a bit better than those plebians, as well as Shape Water as a taste of what you’ll be able to do later.

In order to shape water, you’ll first have to make it, with Create or Destroy Water. A lot of your drowning spells require standing water to work, so you’ll be well acquainted with this one moving forward. You also get Absorb Elements and Protection from Evil and Good to serve as your early defensive buffs from your cloak.

2. Monk 1: For further defense, we’re bouncing over to monk real quick to get Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC of 10 plus your dexterity modifier plus your wisdom modifier. You also get Martial Arts, letting you make physical attacks using your Dexterity instead of strength, dealing a minimum of 1d4 damage. Also, you can attack as a bonus action after attacking as an action. The medjed are great, but sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.

3. Cleric 1: One last multiclass, I swear. As a Grave cleric, you learn and prepare some more Spells using your Wisdom, and you also have a Circle of Mortality so your healing spells automatically do as much healing as possible on creatures that are at 0 HP. You also get a buffed version of Spare the Dying that you can cast at range as a bonus action. On top of that, your Eyes of the Grave can use your action Wisdom modifier times per long rest to sense undead nearby.

You also get even more cantrips! Grab Resistance for more defense, Thaumaturgy to truly capture the godly aspect of being a pharaoh, and Toll the Dead for just a bit of ghosts. As a treat.

You also get first level spells, including Bane and False Life for free! Being covered in medjeds makes it hard to do stuff, and again, that’s one cool cloak. You can also swap protection from evil & good and create & destroy water over here to free up some druid space, but for new spells check out Command for a pharaoh’s intimidating presence and Shield of Faith to either increase your own AC or throw your towel on another ally.

Since this is your third level overall, you also get your Necrotic Shroud, spending an action to create a true beach panic in a 10′ radius around you. When you transform, you force a charisma save (8 + proficiency + chr mod) on all creatures in range, and if they fail they’re frightened for a round. For a minute afterwards you can add necrotic damage to your attacks once per turn. Afterwards, you can’t do this again until you take a long rest.

4. Druid 2: Now that our multiclassing is done, we can go back to our main class and become a Shepherd druid. As a second level druid, you can either use Wild Shape to transform into an animal yourself (not really canon, but you know how egyptian gods are) or you can use those charges to summon a Wild Companion with a free Find Familiar spell. If you turn into a beast, it has to be cr 1/4 or lower, and can’t have a swimming or flying speed. Your physical stats get replaced with the new stat block, but you keep your proficiencies and your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. The beast’s HP effectively becomes extra HP for you, and once that’s depleted you turn back into a human. er, aasimar. You keep all the cool stuff from your race & classes, but you can’t cast spells while an animal.

Whether you use your wild shapes to turn into an animal or find familiars, they both last Half your Druid Level hours, and you get two uses per short rest.

As a shepherd druid, you can use your Speech of the Woods to speak Sylvan or to animals, and you also get a Spirit Totem that can protect your party for up to a minute that you can summon as a bonus action once per short rest. Later we can call these safety features in your car, but for now they’re just kind of here.

If you summon a bear spirit, creatures you choose in the aura get temporary HP, and advantage on strength checks & saves. If you summon a Hawk Spirit, you can use your reaction to give advantage on an attack in the aura, and all allies have advantage on perception checks. If you summon a unicorn spirit, you get advantage on all checks to detect creatures (kind of horning in on the hawk’s territory, but w/e) and you can heal each creature inside the aura at the same time you use any healing spell. Perfect if your best friend is terrified of death!

5. Druid 3: Third level druids get second level spells, like Summon Beast for your very first medjed! It’s not spectacular, but you can create land, sea, or air medjeds to give those mini nobbus a run for their money. You could also use Animal Messenger for utility medjeds. If you need to make a quick escape, pull down your hood to Pass without Trace. I won’t bring it up each level, but feel free to grab healing spells too. It’s what Scheherazade would have wanted. Also, feel free to ask the gods for advice with Augury.

6. Druid 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to become Resilient against dexterity saves. This rounds up your dexterity for stronger punches and a better AC, and you also become proficient in dexterity saves so that fireball won’t be quite as dangerous.

Your Wild Shape improves a bit, letting you transform into swimming creatures of CR 1/2 or less.

You also learn the Mending cantrip, because that cloak of yours has seen a lot of action by this point, and it probably needs some loving.

7. Druid 5: Fifth level druids get third level spells, like Conjure Animals. You can summon eight beasts of CR 1/4 or lower, four of CR 1/2, two of CR 1, or 1 of CR 2. They’re friendly, and listen to your commands. I’d recommend some smaller creatures for a medjed swarm, or one big creature for your car. Aurochs are good for flat land, Cave Bears for water, a young bulette if you expect to run people over... this is a pretty versatile solution.

You can also use Protection from Energy for more... protection, and Tidal Wave for your first true drowning option against your foes. Creatures in a 30′ by 10′ by 10′ area must make a dexterity save, and if they fail they take bludgeoning damage and get knocked prone. On a success they take half damage and stay standing. Afterwards, the water spreads out an extinguishes fires, but sadly it doesn’t stick around, so you’ll still have to use Create & Destroy Water for the bigger spells coming up.

8. Druid 6: Sixth level shepherds become Mighty Summoners, giving their creations two more HP per hit die and letting them slip through nonmagical damage resistances. The medjed are gods in their own right, getting stopped by a devil would just be weird.

9. Druid 7: Seventh level druids get fourth level spells like Control Water, which lets you control freestanding water within a 100′ cube. You can create floods which create waves in larger bodies of water, you can part water to move through them (...Ozymandius will not be happy to see that little trick pop back up in his life), redirect the flow of water in impossible ways, or create a Whirlpool in larger bodies of water that traps creatures who fail an athletics check.

If you want your medjed to be a little more godlike, try Conjure Woodland Beings to summon fey creatures instead of beasts. At least they’ll have magic?

10. Druid 8: Eighth level druids get another Wild Shape improvement, so now you can fly as a creature of CR 1 or lower. (Also it’s weird that Wild Companion didn’t get any buffs as you level up.) Either way, use your new ASI to bump up your Wisdom for stronger spells and a better AC.

11. Druid 9: Ninth level druids get fifth level spells, like Antilife Shell, the ultimate in anti-personnel protection! For up to an hour, living creatures outside your barrier can’t enter or make attacks against you unless they have ranged or reach weapons. The downside is that if you get surrounded and can’t move the other creatures away, you’re stuck unless you pop that bubble. You could also Awaken a huge or smaller creature or plant to act as your car on a more permanent basis. Awakened trees aren’t the fastest rides, but they’re pretty sturdy. The awakened thing is charmed for up to 30 days or until your party does something stupid, afterwards it’s up to the target to decide how it feels about you. Don’t mistreat your car.

12. Druid 10: Tenth level druids get another cantrip, and Druidcraft is just really versatile. It’s good. Your spirit totem also become a Guardian Spirit, healing your summoned creatures at the end of their turn by half your druid level.

13. Druid 11: With sixth level spells, you can summon a great medjed to lead your troops with Conjure Fey, creating a fey or beast of CR 6 or lower. It’s friendly while you maintain concentration, but if that drops it becomes hostile and might attack. A lot of your spells work best with good charisma checks, thankfully you’re Nitocris. You can also create Primordial Wards, giving you resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage for up to a minute. During that time, you can react upon taking damage of those types to gain immunity to that type until the end of your next turn, at which point the spell ends.

14. Druid 12: Use this ASI to max out your Wisdom for all those reasons that are still there since last ASI.

15. Druid 13: Most of your new seventh level spells aren’t super in character, but you can use Symbol to set traps for unsuspecting enemies and leave them scattered about your car. Technically you can’t move an object symbol after you set it, but a surface symbol as no such issue, so it’s time for a paint job. There’s a lot of different symbols, but most of them are very unpleasant for your foes.

16. Druid 14: Your final Shepherd goody turns your car into a Faithful Summons. When you’re reduced to 0 HP or incapacitated, you can instantly use Conjure Animals as a ninth level spell, creating 4 beasts of CR 2 or lower. That’s right, your car really does protect you now. The beasts will automatically defend you and fight against your foes, and the spell doesn’t require concentration. You can do this once per long rest.

17. Druid 15: Seventh level didn’t have much for you, but eighth level spells are a bit better. Antipathy/Sympathy helps your car defend you by repelling creatures from it. You can cast the spell on a huge or smaller object/creature and pick one kind of intelligent creature. Antipathy then forces any named creature within sight or 60′ of the target to make a wisdom save or be frightened while it remains near the car. While frightened, it has to move away from the target until it can’t see it, and it will automatically become frightened again if it moves back into range. If an affected creature ends its turn out of range, it can make another save, if it succeeds, the spell no longer affected and knows about the spell. Creatures that make their save are immune for a minute.

That’s a mouthful, but it’s not the only spell we want here! Tsunami creates a tsunami, creating a wall of water 300′ by 300′ by 50′. Each creature within the wall has to make a strength save, and if they fail they take bludgeoning damage. At the start of your turn after casting the spell, it moves 50′ away, along with creatures inside it. Then all the creatures it ran into/had already make another strength save or take more damage. At the end of each turn the wall moves, it loses 50′ in height and it deals less damage. When the wall is 0 feet tall, the spell ends.

Creatures can try to escape the wall by making an athletics check, but if they fail they can’t move at all.

18. Druid 16: Use your last ASI for a higher Dexterity to get more AC and stronger punches. They pale in comparison to a tsunami, but you can only do that once per day.

19. Druid 17: Congrats, you finally get ninth level spells! Shapechange will let you transform yourself into a true Medjed (assuming you’ve seen one by now). It works similar to your wildshape, but it isn’t limited to beasts and the CR limit is your level. (That being said, you could also turn into a leviathan next level if you’ve seen one, but that’s not in character)

20. Druid 18: Your final level of the build gives you a Timeless Body, reducing your aging by a factor of 10 so you can rule the beaches for centuries to come. You also get Beast Spells so you can cast spells without material components while you’re a beast.

Pros:

You make big waves, and big waves have big areas of effect. You’re very good at pushing around huge groups of people, both thanks to those waves and thanks to your summons.

Another benefit of being a big summoner druid is that you’re tough to get at. If your enemies can get through your medjed swarm you’ve still got an AC of 17/19 and plenty of healing to chew through before they can take you down. And taking you down just makes your medjed army bigger.

While your Awakened Tree car isn’t going to win you any first place medals, you aren’t limited to the one. Think about it- get enough money together and you can pretty much set up a living mobile base, so long as you stay on good terms with the trees propping it up.

Cons:

You are, however, limited to one spell at a time. A lot of your defensive spells and almost all your summons all need your concentration to function, and not only do they blink out of existence if you fail a constitution save, but they also  might attack you!

Those big floody spells you have? They’ll also hit your army. Unlike FGO, your medjed don’t pop back to a pocket dimension when their turn’s over- you’ll have to deal with them getting caught in the waves. That’ll also hurt your standing with the trees, probably.

Until you hit level 17, your best water-based spell is Control Water, which requires water to already exist in the area. You also are probably the only racer who has to make sure their car actually likes them. What I’m trying to say is you have to put up with a lot of fiddly setup to make your powers work as well as they can.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #124: Hassan of the Serenity

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re making the most adorable of the Hassans, Hassan of the Serenity! Lookit her! I just wanna pinch her little cheeks!

But I won’t.

For this build we need poison skin, poison daggers, and the ability to shapeshift into other people which literally never gets brought up. Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Rice is nice, but twice the rice is thrice as nice.

Race and Background

Like a couple characters, you’re really a human, but those idiots don’t get poison skin. Fortunately, WotC came up with a solution! It skirts the edge of officialness, but the Grung do exist in a Wizards of the Coast rulebook, so you can play as them! (Just not in Adventurer’s League games.) Being a grung increases your Dexterity by 2 and Constitution by 1. You gain proficiency in Perception, get a walking and climbing speed of 25 feet, are Amphibious, and get Poisonous Skin. Any creature that directly touches you must make a DC 12 Constitution save or be poisoned for a minute, with additional saves each turn they aren’t touching you. You can also poison your piercing weapons as you attack, forcing another constitution save that deals poison damage on a failure. Finally, your Standing Leap lets you jump 25′ across and 15′ straight up, even without a running start, for those anime-style rooftop battles. All this does come with a drawback, though. Your Water Dependency means if you don’t submerge yourself in water for an hour each day, you suffer exhaustion that can’t be taken away without either magic or another long bath. Good luck dealing with that in the desert!

Like the other Hassans, you’re an Acolyte, giving you proficiency in Insight and Religion. Why rock the boat?

Ability Scores

Like many assassins, you’ll want to focus on Dexterity for this build. Your schtick is more about social manipulation, but being able to duck out when you need to is pretty important too. After that is Charisma, so you can sucker your mark into bed with you. After that is Wisdom- being able to charm a person is good, but you have to be perceptive enough to figure out how to do it in the first place. Your Constitution isn’t that great, but people should be giving you a wide berth anyway. We don’t need Intelligence, but you’re not dumb, so we’re dumping Strength. Straight-up brawls are not your thing.

Class Levels

1. Monk 1: We’ll get into your assassin skills in a bit, but I think your poison needs a bit of buffing first. That’ll take a while, but right now you get proficiency in Strength and Dexterity saves, as well as two monk skills- Stealth and Acrobatics will serve you well.

You also get Unarmored Defense, making your AC based on your dexterity and wisdom instead of just the former. That’s good, because you can’t use your Martial Arts in armor. This lets you use dexterity instead of strength for your monk attacks, and you do a minimum of 1d4 damage with unarmed attacks and monk weapons that’ll increase as you level. Finally, you can make an unarmed attack as a bonus action if you make the attack action with monk weapons.

2. Monk 2: Second level monks can use Ki Points to make two attacks, dodge, disengage, or dash as a bonus action. It should be mentioned that doing either of the latter two doubles your already considerable jump distance, in case your DM thinks a 50 foot chasm is enough to stop you. To help with that, your Unarmored Movement helps make up for your reduced speed, adding 10 to your movement speed.

3. Monk 3: As a Way of Mercy monk, your paws get just a bit more poisonous thanks to your Hands of Harm. You can spend a ki point once per turn when you hit a creature with an unarmed attack to deal extra necrotic damage to them. You also get some Hands of Healing that use ki once per turn to heal a creature, but that’s less in character. And also a really bad idea, what with that poisonous skin and all.

You can also deflect missiles, reducing damage from ranged weapons and possibly even spending ki to throw it back as part of the reaction.

4. Monk 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to grab some Squat Nimbleness. This feat increases your movement speed by 5′ to negate being small, gives you +1 Dexterity, proficiency in Athletics, and advantage on your checks to break free from grapples. I feel like that last bit probably won’t be much of an issue for you, but you never know.

You can also Slow Fall as a reaction, to help with the inevitable side effect of all that jumping you can do.

5. Monk 5: Fifth level monks get an Extra Attack, and can spend ki to make a Stunning Strike, forcing a constitution save (DC 8 plus your proficiency plus your wisdom modifier) or they become stunned for a round. You can also use Focused Aim to turn ki points into extra points on your attack roll, to avoid wasting all that poison.

6. Monk 6: Your Ki-Empowered Strikes make your unarmed attacks magical to overcome resistance, and your Physician’s Touch empowers your hands of healing and harming. The former can end one instance of blinding, deafening, paralyzing, poisoning, or being stunned (or I guess replace those with another instance of being poisoned), and the latter makes the target poisoned with no save for a round. Hey, you get what you pay for.

7. Rogue 1: Now that your poison is up to snuff, we can focus on your assassin skills. Multiclassing into rogue nets you a Deception proficiency and the ability to speak Thieves’ Cant. Grungs don’t get common as a racial language, so this might actually help when you try to communicate with the rest of the party. You also get a Sneak Attack for extra damage with finesse weapons. You also get Expertise in two skills, doubling your proficiency with those skills. Your Deception and Insight game are on point now.

8. Rogue 2: Second level rogues can make a Cunning Action on their bonus action. They can use this to dash, disengage, or hide. Hey, that’s most of what monks have to spend stuff to do!

9. Rogue 3: Third level rogues get their subclass, and as your class name would suggest you’re an Assassin! As an assassin, you can Assassinate targets, giving you free advantage on creatures who haven’t taken a turn yet and giving you free critical hits on surprised creatures. Your poisonous skin doesn’t actually kill people in this universe, but a knife to the back can be pretty good too.

10. Bard 1: We need spellcasting for a feat we’re grabbing later, so sorry for the third class. I promise we were trying to make something simple this time. As far as justification goes, you’re the embodiment of a fictional story, the “Poison Damsel”.

You can cast Spells using your Charisma, and you can hand out Bardic Inspiration to your allies (thankfully not by touch), giving them an extra d6 to use on one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw. You can inspire people a number of times per long rest equal to your charisma modifier. You also get another skill proficiency. Sleight of Hand is pretty useful, especially when your hands kill people.

For spells, grab Friends and Charm Person to string your enemies along, Longstrider and Feather Fall to make up for all the monk levels we’re missing out on, and Minor Illusion and Disguise Self to perfect your disguises. Not that being a frog isn’t still and issue for you- your size will seriously limit how many people you can pretend to be.

11. Rogue 4: Use this ASI to become a Poisoner, allowing you to ignore resistance to poison damage, apply non-grung poisons to weapons as a bonus action, and create powerful poisons with a poisoner’s kit. More powerful than your skin, at least.

12. Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues can use their Uncanny Dodge as a reaction, halving damage from an incoming attack. Smart enemies will be using reach weapons, which tend to hurt a bit. Try not to touch the pointy bits.

13. Rogue 6: You get another round of Expertise, doubling your proficiency for Stealth and Sleight of Hand for the perfect getaway.

14. Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues get the powerful Evasion technique, turning your failed dexterity saves into successes for avoiding damage, and successes negate all damage entirely! Also, your sneak attack grows to 4d6. We’re not going to bring it up every time, just know it grows on odd levels.

15. Rogue 8: Having to rely on spell slots for shapeshifting is for nerds! Use this ASI to become an Eldritch Adept, allowing you to get the invocation Mask of Many Faces, which lets you cast Disguise Self at will! Now you can save all those spell slots for more useful things.

16. Rogue 9: Ninth level Assassins get Infiltration Expertise, allowing you to spend a week making a new identity that lasts until others are given obvious reasons to call you sus. Looking the part can only get you so far- nobody mistrusts paperwork.

17. Rogue 10: Now that we have your feats down, we can finally start boosting your abilities! Use this ASI to round up your Constitution and Wisdom scores for more survivability. 

18. Rogue 11: Eleventh level rogues have Reliable Talent, meaning all your d20s will always roll at least a 10 when making checks you’re proficient in. You’re not bad at the things you’re good at, surprising I know.

19. Rogue 12: Use your last ASI to bump up your Charisma for stronger disguises. Wait, we’re done already?

20. Rogue 13: Our capstone level nets you the Imposter ability, allowing you to copy another creature perfectly if you spend three hours studying their speech, handwriting, and mannerisms. You also get advantage on deception checks to maintain the charade. Then it’s just a matter of time before you sink a poisoned sneak attack in their neck and vent out of electric.

Pros:

Rogues with sneak attacks are scary. Rogues with guaranteed crits on their sneak attacks are even scarier. Rogues that can reliably poison their guaranteed critical hit sneak attacks are seriously bad news. You can do some serious damage if you get the drop on someone, is what I’m trying to say here.

Like all Hassans, this build is pretty mobile, with 45 feet of running and climbing speed, ridiculous hops, and a smaller size to squeeze into places other races can’t follow.

When you’re not dealing absurd damage, you can deal plenty of status effects too. Poison, stun, charm, it’s all yours to deal out as you wish!

Cons:

Poisoning things isn’t good. Even ignoring the fact that you’re eating up a bonus action to add some damage to one attack (even rangers get a better deal than that) plenty of creatures in the monster manual are immune to poison anyway. Thankfully you’re not completely defenseless, since your sneak attack doesn’t care what kind of damage it deals. All the coolest poisons are hidden in the dungeon master’s guide anyway.

Grung are a lot of things, but masters of disguise is not one of them. Your size means your ability to use Disguise Self is severely limited, and any nonmagical disguises will have their work cut out for them. Disguising yourself as a different grung won’t help much, they’ll still track you down because you’re probably the only other grung they’ve seen in town.

Just going to come out and say it- your magic isn’t nearly as powerful as it needs to be to be reliably used for disguises. Fortunately very few people bother investing in Investigation, but it can still be a serious issue when your spell save dc is around 14 for most of the game.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #106: Jeanne d’Arc (Alter)

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re making the burning dragon witch of France, Jeanne d’Arc (Alter)! Jalter’s pretty good- Fire, more fire, and bullying dragons into serving you- solid kit!

Check out Jalter’s build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: We’re really testing that “All Dogs Go to Heaven” theory, huh?

Race and Background

Like I said with Mash, Homunculus isn’t really a race in D&D, so we’ll have to keep things simple. While you are a magically made copy, you’re a copy of a Human, so we’ll have to stick with that. This gives you +1 to all abilities. Make up the Magic Doppelganger background (or just use Haunted One) for Arcana and Religion proficiencies. You’re made of magic, and you have to know about God in order to spit in His face. 

Ability Scores

If that custom background wasn’t weird enough, we’re also using the Point Buy system for this build, because we need a lot of stuff right away. You were made by an evil wizard, so a little bit of minmaxing is probably fine. Unfortunately, we have to keep Intelligence at 8- I’d like to make it higher, but we need the points for other abilities. You don’t really go on a self-improvement kick until you’re a berserker anyway. After that, set Dexterity and Wisdom to 12- they’re needed for multiclassing. You can fight (and presumably dance) in a dress, and you can still pick people out in your Grondement du Haine, so they can’t be that bad. Set Constitution to 13 for some toughness-you’re a frontline fighter, and your Avenger class makes absorbing peoples’ hatred (read: their attacks) a bit easier. That leaves us just enough points to bring your Strength and Charisma up to 14. You have one of the highest attack stats in the game, and you’re damn scary when you want to be-and you always want to be scary.

Class Levels

1. Barbarian 1: Avengers are good at hitting things and taking hits, and so are barbarians! When you pick up the class, you get proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, as well as two barbarian skills- Intimidation and Athletics. You’re strong and scary. (Pretty sure we said that already.)

Either way, barbarians can Rage as a bonus action, gaining extra attack damage, advantage on strength saves and checks, and resistance to the physical attack types. In exchange you can’t cast or concentrate on spells, and it ends early if you don’t attack or get attacked by something in a round.

You also get Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC based on your dexterity and constitution. I’d highly recommend not using that because yours is pretty bad, but it’s available if you really need to fight in a ballgown. Sometimes showing up the Ice Bitch Queen is worth the pain.

2. Sorcerer 1: A Jalter just wouldn’t be a Jalter without plenty of fire and draconic imagery, and that’s why you’re a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer. A black dragon would be more on brand, but we have to go with a Red Dragon Ancestor for the fire damage. This also lets you read and write draconic, and more importantly, your proficiency bonus is doubled for charisma checks against dragons. You may not have magical control over them yet, but you can probably keep the younger ones in line already.

Your Draconic Resilience gives you an extra hp per sorcerer level, as well as an AC of 13 + your dexterity modifier. That’s still not great, but it’s much better than what you had going before.

Finally, sorcerers can cast Spells using their Charisma as the casting ability. Control Flames, Green-Flame Blade, and Burning Hands should give you more than enough fire to start with. Friends will make it even easier to control dragons, while False Life will give you just a touch of healing. NP bars don’t exist in this game, so we had to represent your Self-Restoration somehow.

3. Barbarian 2: Hitting things with sticks powers up a lot faster though, so let’s stick with that for now. Second level barbarians can make Reckless Attacks, giving themselves advantage, but also giving enemies advantage against them. Your Danger Sense also gives you advantage on dexterity saves you can see coming. You don’t really care where your spells hit-this will help keep you out of your own fireballs.

4. Barbarian 3: You might have figured out where this was going with all that fire talk, but your subclass here’s the Storm Herald! When you rage (and as a bonus action each turn afterwards), you can use your Storm Aura to deal extra damage to enemies. The desert aura deals a bit of fire damage to all creatures within range save free! A perfect option for those fidgety monks and archers. You also gain Primal Knowledge, giving you proficiency in Animal Handling. I mean, for a given definition of “Animal”, I guess that works.

5. Ranger 1: You didn’t think we were done making this build weird, were you? I promise this will make more sense in a bit. For now though, you get Perception proficiency, as well as the ability to mark a Favored Foe with your bonus action. For a minute afterwards (or as long as you keep up concentration) you can add an extra 1d4 damage to any damage done to it once per turn. Also, while it does use your concentration, it technically isn’t a spell, so maybe it works with rage? (I’d rule it does, but I’m not your DM.)

A less complicated feature you get is Deft Explorer, specifically the Canny feature, which doubles your proficiency bonus in a single skill. Power up your Intimidation to become even scarier to everyone, but especially dragons. A +14 to intimidate means you can really turn heads, even at level 5.

6. Barbarian 4: We’re about to jump back into sorcerer now, but it might be a good idea to be skilled at casting spells before we do that. Use your Ability Score Improvement to nab the War Caster feat for advantage on concentration saves, the ability to cast cantrips as opportunity attacks, and most importantly, the ability to cast spells with full hands. Now you can upgrade to a proper flagpole pike!

7. Sorcerer 2: It’s been a while, but now that we’re back you’ve become a Font of Magic, giving you Sorcery Points that you can spend on metamagic (later) or more spell slots (right now). You also get another first level spell. Shield’s useful at least, but we’ll get something more “you” at a later level.

8. Sorcerer 3: Now that you’re level three, you get that Metamagic thing we just talked about. Casting an Empowered Spell will let you re-roll damage dice to make sure everything hurts as much as possible, while a Heightened Spell will make it harder for a target to resist. Trust me, you do not want a dragon breaking out of Charm Monster.

Speaking of spells, you get second level ones now, like Dragon’s Breath, which will let you turn anything you want into a smaller, less cool dragon. Other flavors are available, but why would you not pick fire breath?

9. Ranger 2: Bouncing around even more, you get a Fighting Style. Rangers don’t get any styles for big weapons, so we’re just grabbing Defense for an extra point of AC while wearing armor. You can go without, but you have a look to maintain, you know? 

You also get another set of Spells that use Wisdom to cast. Your wisdom isn’t that powerful, but luckily Searing Smite and Absorb Elements don’t use it, so you’re set! I guess good things really do happen to bad people!

10. Sorcerer 4: We’ve had way too many odd numbers for way too long, it’s time we did something about it. Use this ASI to round up your Strength and Charisma for stronger hits and stronger spells.

You also get even more spells- Blade Ward gives you some defense without having to rage, and Aganazzar’s Scorcher got you covered on the offensive side. There’s a bit of a theme here, if you haven’t noticed.

11. Barbarian 5: It took us a while, but you finally get an Extra Attack for each attack action. You also get Fast Movement, adding 10 feet to your walking movement. It’s about time you got a little violent.

12. Barbarian 6: Our last level of barbarian unleashes your Storm Soul. The desert soul gives you resistance to fire damage, and you can also ignore extreme heat, which is super useful given how much black you wear. You can also set objects on fire by touching them.

13. Ranger 3: Now that we’re finally getting to this subclass, it’s time we justified this multiclass. You get Primeval Awareness to help you track down and “convince” dragons to help you, but if your DM is really uncooperative, you can also summon a dragon thanks to your subclass. (We know, we went ranger to make a build less situational. We think we just saw hell freeze over. 

Surprisingly, there are still subclasses left in UA after Tasha’s blew through. The Drakewarden lets you cast Thaumaturgy thanks to your Draconic Gift. You can also summon a Drake Companion as an action once per long rest (or by spending a spell slot) You have to use your bonus action to command it, but it can always use its reaction to infuse weapon attacks with its element of choice. (Do I even have to say we’re picking fire?)

You also learn Entangle this level. Your Grondement du Haine leaves a lot of spears all over the place-it’d be pretty hard to pick your way through those.

14. Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers get third level spells, but they also get Magical Guidance, letting you spend 1 sorcery point to re-roll a failed ability check. I’d save those for something you’re really good at, like intimidation.

You also learn Erupting Earth at this level, in case you wanted to actually do damage with your noble phantasm. Sadly your spears are a bit dull, but bludgeoning damage is still better than no damage at all.

15. Sorcerer 6: Sixth level dragon sorcerers get an Elemental Affinity, adding their charisma to fire spells. You can also spend sorcery points to resist fire damage, but you’re already good on that front.

Speaking of things that aren’t really needed, you can cast Fear this level. You already have Expertise/Super Expertise in intimidation, but sometimes you just need magic.

16. Sorcerer 7: Seventh level sorcerers can cast 4th level spells, and you can finally cast Charm Monster to take control of a dragon of a dragon for up to an hour. We can also finally replace Shield with Wall of Fire to really set the scene for your dramatic confrontation with that goody-two-shoes you share a face with.

17. Ranger 4: Use your last ASI (they go by so fast, don’t they?) to become an Elemental Adept in fire. This means every die you roll for fire damage will always count as at least a 2. Also, your spells now ignore fire resistance! Just your spells though, your rage is out of luck.

18. Ranger 5: Your Extra Attack doesn’t do anything this level, but you do learn how to cast Spike Growth, for those times you want to sit back and let your enemies throw themselves on your spears.

19. Ranger 6: Your Favored Foe bumps up to a d6, and you become Roving! This adds 5 feet to your movement, and you can climb or swim at the same speed. Now nothing will be able to escape your wrath!

20. Ranger 7: Your capstone ability gives you a Bond of Fang and Scale, allowing your drake to fly and deal more damage with its bite. You also gain resistance to whatever damage type your drake deals, which can help your survivability against themed enemies (like you).

You can also cast Lesser Restoration this level. Memory correction is a little vague-status correction is a bit easier to implement.

Pros:

You’re good at burning things, and yes we count people in there. You can deal a lot of fire damage through rages, dragons, and spells. You also have multiple ways to make that fire even more dangerous, and can spread it at a touch. Great for property damage!

It can be pretty hard to escape you, thanks to your buffed movement speed and the ability to swim and climb faster than most people. Worst comes to worst, you also have a dragon you can sicc on people.

You’re pretty terrifying, especially towards dragons. Beyond having direct control over them, you can also intimidate them with advantage, a third die from sorcery, and a +27 to the roll. Barring an act of god, you can probably get most dragons to stand down, if not obey you outright.

Cons:

You have some power in your corner, but it’s all focused on fire, one of the most immune-to damage types in the game. When it’s good it’s great, but when it’s bad it’s awful. At least you can swap out your dragon damage each summon if you really need to.

Speaking of, your drake’s pretty weak, with only 40 HP at level 20. It’s probably best for you to think of it as a limited use feature than a companion, because it is absolutely not sticking around.

Really there’s a lot of multiclassing problems to go over here. Beyond the classic “spells and raging” thing, there’s also a severe lack of ASIs, several overlapping abilities, both your rage and drake using up all your bonus actions, and an overall lack of focus. You might not be great at doing any one thing, but nobody will have the nerve to criticize you.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #121: Lancelot (Saber)

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re building the one Frenchman who could do no wrong (until he did) Lancelot du Lac! This time instead of his snarly dog version we’re making his Saber class form, so buckle in for a huge smite and a whole lot of other stuff to fill time between getting smites.

Check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here! 

Next up: How sad. Alexa, play Despacito.

Race and Background

Fun fact: Lancelot was raised by the Lady of the Lake, the same woman who would one day give Artoria her sword. Sorry, I think I said that wrong, I meant to say he was raised by a lady in a lake. Like, under the water. To celebrate this weird ass origin story, we’re making Lancelot a Triton, because I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get another excuse to make one of those. Tritons get +1 to Strength, Constitution, and Charisma, as well as the option to breathe air and water thanks to being Amphibious. You’re also an Emissary of the Sea and Guardian of the Depths, allowing you to talk to any water-breathing beasts, and giving you resistance to cold damage to boot. You can also Control Air and Water, which right now means you can cast Fog Cloud once per day using charisma.

Finally, as a knight of the round table you’re a Knight of the Order, giving you proficiency with Persuasion and Religion. 

Ability Scores:

As fitting of someone who turns lancers into fine smears on the ground, your Strength is going to be your highest score. After that is Charisma. Half the time you’re in some sort of situation where nobody can tell who you are, but they still like you anyway. I’d think a high charisma would make you less forgettable, but I’m not English. After that is Constitution- Dolorous Guard requires you to fight twenty knights, and they cheat on top of that! You’d better be ready for the long haul. Your Dexterity isn’t terrible, you’ll mostly be in plate mail anyway. Your Intelligence is a bit low, but your plans generally get summed up as “hit things”, so it’s not much of a loss. Finally, dump Wisdom. If you could resist charm effects you wouldn’t be in this mess. 

Class Levels

1. Paladin 1: I hope this isn’t too surprising. First level paladins get proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma saves, as well as two paladin skills. Athletics will help you lug three shields around, and Intimidation will make that look even remotely scary to anyone else.

You also get a Divine Sense that will help you detect celestials, fiends, or undead near you for a turn. If you’re hunting down the holy grail, it’s probably guarded by celestials or undead, so this might give you an edge on your son. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to 1 + your charisma modifier. You can also Lay on Hands for a bit of healing that recharges each long rest.

2. Paladin 2: Use your new Fighting Style to get better with your great sword with Great Weapon Fighting. This lets you re-roll ones and twos on your damage rolls with two handed weapons. when you combine this with your smites, it’ll get a lot of use. Oh, speaking of, you can use Divine Smite to add some radiant damage to your melee weapon attacks by burning a spell slot. Speaking of speaking of, you can cast and prepare Spells now using Charisma. Lance is more about the smiting than anything else, and you can also swap spells at will, so don’t get too worked up over what you take. 

3. Paladin 3: As a knight to the great King Arthur, you’re an Oath of the Crown paladin, meaning you can use your Channel Divinity in two different ways. Once per short rest, you can either issue a Champion Challenge or Turn the Tide. The former forces creatures within thirty feet of you to make a Wisdom save (DC 8 + your charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus) or they’re unable to move more than 30′ away from you. This ends if you can’t fight any more, or the creature is ever more than 30′ away from you. Interestingly enough, this doesn’t end if they’re incapacitated, so it’s good for locking down prisoners. The latter heals creatures you choose nearby if they’re bloodied. A lot of people get bloodied near you later, so it might be a good idea to save this. Both options use your bonus action.

You can also Harness Divine Power, spending a bonus action and your channel divinity use to regain a spell slot. Once again speaking of, you get the oath spells Command and Compelled Duel, meaning you don’t have to prepare them to use them. Forcing people to duel you would have solved a lot of problems you had while questing. Not the big one, but a lot of them.

Also, your Divine Health makes you immune to disease. Also also, Control Air and Water makes a comeback, and now you can cast Gust of Wind once per day too.

4. Paladin 4: We’re giving you a breather from all that stuff we got last level. This level, use your first Ability Score Improvement to grab the Tavern Brawler feat. This bumps up your Strength by one, makes you proficient with improvised weapons, improves your unarmed attacks by making them 1d4 instead of 1 damage, and you can grapple enemies as a bonus action after attacking with an improvised weapon. “A knight’s hands are never empty”, after all.

5. Paladin 5: Fifth level paladins get an Extra Attack with each attack action, and Control Air and Water comes back once again for one more freebie. Now you can cast Wall of Water once per day.

Speaking of casting, crown paladins get another level of spell slots and two more oath spells. Warding Bond will protect your fair maiden for up to an hour, giving them a bonus to AC and forcing you to take half their damage. You also get Zone of Truth, whose main purpose is to make things incredibly awkward between you and Artoria.

6. Paladin 6: Our last stop on the paladin train gives you an Aura of Protection, giving you and nearby allies a bonus to all saves equal to your charisma modifier. You’re good at saving against charms now, but at least you were lore compliant early on.

7. Warlock 1: Remember how you were raised by a faerie early on? It’s time to collect. Thanks to your Archfey patron, You can use your Fey Presence to frighten (or charm) creatures that fail a wisdom save once per short rest. You also get Pact Magic, spells that recharge on short rests that don’t quite mix with your existing magic. Just keep your paladin slots and warlock slots how they look on the paper. One class’s slots can cast the other’s spells though.

Speaking of spells: Sword Burst and True Strike for swording good, Armor of Agathys for armoring good, and Cause Fear to be more intimidating.

8. Warlock 2: Second level warlocks get Eldritch Invocations, ways to customize their changeling experience. You get Fiendish Vigor so you can cast False Life on yourself at will, and save the other one for next level. You can also cast Charm Person- nobody said you weren’t sexy.

9. Warlock 3: Getting fancy new swords must be pretty common for knights. At third level you enter the Pact of the Blade, giving you a fancy greatsword you can summon as an action. If you’d prefer something a bit lighter, you can also cast Shadow Blade for a smaller blade... made of shadow.

You also get the invocation Improved Pact Weapon, adding 1 to your attack and damage rolls.

10. Bard 1: You’re the poster boy of being good at just about everything you try, with the exception of keeping it in your pants. That’s a bard, alright. First level bards get any one skill proficiency- Animal Handling will help you stay on your horse better (It doesn’t actually, but it really should).

You also get Bardic Inspiration, d6 you can hand out to allies to help them with attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws that recharge on short rests. Finally, you get another round of Spells that use Charisma to cast. These spell slots mix with your paladin slots, so check the multiclassing page to figure out how many you have at any given time.

Grab Friends to be scarier and more charming, Dancing Lights and Faerie Fire for a bit more faerie magic, Heroism to lead your knights to glory, Longstrider to push yourself, and Speak with Animals. There were a lot of talking animals back then.

11. Bard 2: Being a Jack of All Trades makes you somewhat good at just about everything, adding half your proficiency to all skills. Camelot also gets a bit livelier thanks to your Song of Rest, adding a d6 to healing done on short rests.

Half the time you can hide your identity with as little as a new shield, so you can practically cast Disguise Self already.

12. Bard 3: You’re a master of weaponry, and so are Swords bards. You get another Fighting Style, and the Dual Wielding style will help you out when your hands are full by adding your strength to your offhand attacks. You can also spend your inspiration on Blade Flourishes, adding that much damage to your attack and gaining one of three options. A Defensive Flourish adds the same number to your AC, a Slashing Flourish deals that damage to another creature near you as well, and a Mobile Flourish forces the target backwards, and you can react to push the initiative. You can only flourish once per turn, but even if you don’t, attacking also adds 10 feet of movement to your speed for the turn.

You also get Expertise in two skills, doubling your proficiency in Religion and Intimidation. You came in second place in the Grail treasure hunt. That’s something to be proud of.

You can also cast Enhance Ability this level. It’s not quite the strength of four men, but it does give you the strength of two Lancelots, which is still quite a bit.

13 Warlock 4: It’s been a while since our last ASI, huh? Grab Fey Touched to bump up your Charisma and cast Misty Step or Gift of Alacrity once per long rest for free, or at any time like a normal spell. The former is teleportation, the latter gives a creature +1d8 to initiative for up to eight hours. You can also cast Booming Blade for even more swording, and Calm Emotions to delay your execution once the whole Guinevere thing gets out.

14. Warlock 5: Fifth level warlocks get third level spells like Spirit Shroud, giving you that cool shadowy thing your berserker self has to deal extra damage, slow down creatures nearby, and prevent them from healing. You also get the invocation Eldritch Smite- now you can smite while you smite!

15. Bard 4: Use this ASI to round up your Strength. This leaves you with one odd number-feel free to put this into anything you’d like, maybe you already got a +1 from something your DM gave you?

You also get Prestidigitation because I’m running out of cantrips to give you and Knock for a handy battering ram.

16. Bard 5: At fifth level of barding, your inspiration increases to a d8, also increasing the amount of damage your flourishes do. You also become a Font of Inspiration, allowing you to recharge inspiration dice on short rests.

Your final bard spell is Fear, because we haven’t spent enough time hammering home how scary an angry man wielding literally everything is yet.

17. Warlock 6: Sixth level feylocks can Misty Escape away when they get hit, using their reaction to turn invisible and teleport up to sixty feet away. Again, this would have been very useful in a multitude of situations while you were questing. Frankly this also would be super useful with the whole adultery thing too. Just bite your tongue and you’re out of the bedroom! You can use this once per short rest.

You can also call in a favor from your extended family by casting Summon Fey.

18. Warlock 7: Seventh level warlocks get fourth level spells, and we’re just gonna dip into your berserker self real quick, just for flavor. You get Shadow of Moil for another version of your shadow cloak, and the invocation Cloak of Flies for yet another version that makes you even scarier than usual.

19. Warlock 8: Use your last ASI to bump your Charisma even higher for stronger spells, stronger saves, and stronger persuasions. You can also cast Banishment now to help in your fight against more supernatural foes. Remember how I said the holy grail is probably guarded by celestials? Now you can deal with them.

20. Warlock 9: Your capstone level of warlock gives you fifth level spells and more importantly, fifth level spell slots. You can cast Contact Other Plane if you want to chat with those celestials you just threw back to Mount Celestia if you really want to. You can also use your final invocation Whispers of the Grave to chat with your ancestors or King Arthur.

Pros

Much like your boss, you’re really good at Smiting. A greatsword, plus eldritch smite, plus divine smite, plus a spirit shroud, plus a blade flourish, plus a crit is 4d6+28d8+5 damage in a single swing. It just beats out Lartoria’s smiting power, dealing an average of 145 points, with the added benefit of blocking the target from healing that back for a full round.

Bardadins are kind of good at everything. With at least half proficiency on all checks and +4 on all saves, you’re just about as skilled as you can get without excelling at anything. Aside from scaring your enemies.

Being good at everything also relates to being able to turn anything into a deadly weapon. Smiting a lich with a sword? Pedestrian. Everyone knows if you kill a lich with their own shinbone all their phylacteries break out of shame.

Cons

Your saves might be a bit better, but you still have low wisdom. Good luck finding that grail when you can barely find your own armor.

One big flaw of all that smiting? Almost no range. Flying and fast enemies can seriously put you through your paces.

Like most three fold multiclasses, this build takes forever to get online. You don’t get your final subclass until level 12, and you don’t get Eldritch Smite, which is kind of a selling point of the build, until level 14. Most games don’t even get that far.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #99: Queen Medb

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the queen of Connacht and queen bitch of Chaldea, Queen Medb! (Pronounced Mae-ve) Medb is plenty charming in her own right, but unlike other charm-heavy servants like Stheno and Mata Hari you’re skilled with a riding crop and come packing some goodies from your various lovers as well.

Check out Medb’s build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Up next: The big 100!

Race and Background

Some people think you’re the incarnation of a god, but we’re going to keep things simple and canon compliant and make you a Human instead for +1 to all ability scores. Like many other servants, you’re also a Noble, gaining proficiency in History and Persuasion. This also makes it a lot easier for you to hobnob with other nobles at social gatherings. There is no party like a Medb party, because a party without you in it isn’t really a party at all.

Ability Scores

Make your Charisma as high as possible- it’s your spellcasting modifier and also you’re just good at it anyway. Second is Constitution to help you keep up with Fergus. Dexterity comes after that, the closest thing to a riding crop in D&D is a whip, and that’s a finesse weapon. You’re a clever girl, so keep that Intelligence on the positive side. Your Strength isn’t that high, but you have other people to do that for you. Finally, dump Wisdom. You built your perfect husband, but forgot to include a sex drive. No, I will not let you live that down.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: Don’t worry, the obvious class is coming. This just gives you more health, and the starting proficiencies work for you anyway. Speaking of, starting as a fighter gives you proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, as well as two fighter skills, like Acrobatics and Insight. You’re very flexible, and you can read the room. You don’t care about the room, but you can still read it. You also get the Dueling fighting style to make your whip a slightly less bad idea, and you can use your Second Wind as a bonus action to heal yourself once per short rest. You’ve got to be able to get your beauty sleep in, no matter what you’re doing at the time.

2. Bard 1: Despite the lack of a musical instrument, I don’t think this is coming too far out of left field. Multiclassing gives you and additional skill proficiency; grab Performance for roughly the same reasons as Fergus. You can also give Bardic Inspiration to your adoring braves as a bonus action, adding 1d6 to an attack roll, check, or save of their choice within the next 10 minutes. You’re a giver, what can we say? You have a number of them per long rest equal to your charisma modifier.

You can also cast Spells, using Charisma as your casting ability. Grab Friends and Vicious Mockery to have the full range of social encounters available as cantrips. You also get leveled spells though, we’ll have to go over those as well. Grab Heroism and Charm Person to empower your braves and add new ones to the fold. You also get Earth Tremor thanks to Fergus letting you borrow his sword for a bit and Cure Wounds to protect your Golden Rule.

3. Fighter 2: Second level fighters get an Action Surge, letting you add an extra action to your turn once per short rest. Your time is valuable, so treat it like it is.

4. Fighter 3: Third level fighters get a martial specialty, like the Echo Knight. This lets you Manifest Echo as a bonus action to create an Echo near you that you can switch places with as a bonus action, attack from their position whenever you would attack, or make attacks of opportunity from their position by spending your reaction as usual. The echos only have one HP, but you always have reserves. Yes, technically they’re all copies of you, not your braves, but I’m sure a bit of reflavoring is fine.

While your echo is out, you can also Unleash Incarnation when you make an attack action to make an additional attack from your echo. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your constitution modifier.

5. Fighter 4: For your first Ability Score Improvement, pick up the Defensive Duelist feat to add your proficiency bonus to your AC as a reaction when attacked. Your armor may be light, but you’re really good with that riding crop.

6. Fighter 5: As a reward to making it to fighter level five, you can now make an Extra Attack each time you attack as an action. You can still only Unleash Incarnation once per action, but that still means you’re up to three attacks per turn until they run out.

7. Bard 2: Popping back over to bard for a bit makes you a Jack of All Trades, adding half your proficiency bonus to checks you aren’t proficient in. Rocking people aren’t bad at stuff, and you definitely rock, Queen Medb. You can also perform a Song of Rest over short rests, adding 1d6 to healing done during them. Your inspiration also becomes Magical Inspiration. Inspired creatures can now add their inspiration die to magical damage and healing, boosting a spell’s effect on a single creature.

Speaking of spells, you also pick up Identify as a gift from King Conchobar. I’m not entirely sure how one gives people their clairvoyance, but I guess he’s figured that out well enough.

8. Bard 3: Third level bards graduate from college, and like the charmers before you you’ll also graduate from the College of Glamour. This gives you a Mantle of Inspiration that you can make as a bonus action by spending a use of Bardic Inspiration. When you do so, a number of creatures up to your charisma modifier gain temporary HP and can react to move without causing attacks of opportunity. Some people are so pretty it hurts, but you’re so pretty it prevents damage. 

Your Expertise doubles your proficiency bonus for Performance and Persuasion checks, making you very persuasive, as well as very “persuasive”.

You can also make an Enthralling Performance, charming a number of creatures that fail a wisdom save after making a performance of at least 1 minute. This charms lasts up to an hour, and creatures that succeed on their saving throw can’t tell you tried to charm them. You can use this once per short rest.

Speaking of Enthralling, did you know Enthrall was a spell? It is! Any charmable creatures within hearing distance that you choose must make a wisdom save, and on a failure, they have disadvantage on perception checks to notice any creature other than you. The spell lasts up to a minute if you can keep talking for that long. You always thought you were the center of the universe, but now a lot of people will agree with you.

9. Bard 4: Use this ASI for the Slasher feat! Dealing slashing damage causes a target creature to lose 10′ of speed on their next turn, and critical slashes force the target to make their next turn’s attacks at a disadvantage. Like I said, you’re really good with that riding crop.

You also get the Dancing Lights cantrip for a bit of a lightshow, and the Shatter spell as another gift from Fergus.

10. Bard 5: Fifth level bards see their Bardic Inspiration increase to d8s, and they become a Font of Inspiration, meaning your inspiration replenishes on short rests rather than long ones. The amount of temporary HP given by your Mantle increases at this level too.

One last gift from King Conchobar nets you the Clairvoyance spell, letting you see or hear a location of your choosing that is either familiar to you or obvious (such as behind a door you can see). 

11. Fighter 6: I think you should be charming enough for a while. Back in fighter, you get another ASI, and it’s one we’ll finally use to improve the score of an ability. Bump up your Charisma for better spells, tougher saves, and more Inspiration.

12. Fighter 7: Seventh level Echo Knights can make an Echo Avatar, using your action to see and hear through your echo. You can do this for 10 minutes at a time, and while this is happening they can move up to 1,000 feet away from you. You’re typically a bit too in the limelight for spy shenanigans, but it never hurts to have some flexibility.

13. Fighter 8: Use this ASI to round up your Dexterity and Constitution for more health, more incarnation unleashing, a higher AC, and a stronger whip. A good level all around for you!

14. Fighter 9: You’re now Indomitable, meaning you can re-roll a failed saving throw once per long rest. Now your wisdom score is slightly less of an issue! ...Congrats?

15. Fighter 10: Thanks to Shadow Martyr your braves are now as expendable as they should be. When a creature you can see would be attacked, you can use your reaction to teleport your echo within 5′ of them and have them take the attack instead. You can use this feature once per short rest. Darn unions.

16. Bard 6: Our braves are nice, but I think we should take a couple “me” levels. Sixth level bards get Countercharm, eating your action to give nearby creatures advantage against being charmed or frightened. You also get a new mantle, the Mantle of Majesty. When activated and each turn afterwards as a bonus action you can cast Command without spending a spell slot. Creatures charmed by you automatically fail the save to be commanded. You can use this once per long rest, and you have to use your concentration to keep it up, but you can literally turn a gaggle of men into your slaves while this is active. Or women, we won’t judge here.

You also learn how to cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut for some “private time” with up to nine other medium or smaller creatures. It’s not quite your chariot, but it’ll do in a pinch.

17. Bard 7: At seventh level of bard you get fourth level spells, like Compulsion, which can force creatures you see in range of the spell to move to your tune if they fail a wisdom save. I’m pretty sure “towards me” can technically count as a direction for this spell. Check with your DM about that.

18. Bard 8: Use your last ASI to maximize your Charisma for the most inspiration and strongest charms. Speaking of, you also get Charm Monster this level. I know we just made a humanoid build for Cu Alter, but there’s a pretty good chance he’d be a monstrosity if he showed up as an NPC, so we should take that into account.

19. Bard 9: Ninth level bards have a stronger song of rest, as well as fifth level spells. Your Geas forces a creature to make a wisdom save, and on a fail they’re forced to obey a command for 30 days. Once per day, disobeying your geas deals 5d10 psychic damage for a bit of encouragement. Remember when I said you were so pretty you prevented damage? I lied. You’re definitely so pretty it hurts.

20. Bard 10: Your capstone level gives you an even stronger Inspiration, a round of Magical Secrets, and another round of Expertise. Double up on Insight and Acrobatics for a little more flexibility, both socially and physically.

You get two spells this level, from any spell list you want. (You also get another cantrip, grab Prestidigitation for the hell of it.) Dominate Person gives you a much more fine-tuned control over your braves than your other spells, and Conjure Woodland Beings grants you a way to summon even more braves to the battlefield, as long as you’re okay with your braves being fey creatures. 

Pros:

You’re very charming, and I mean that in every sense of the word. A maxed out charisma stat, expertise in persuasion, and plenty of charming spells means that you stand a pretty good chance of defeating a lot of your problems without ever throwing a punch.

Unlike other charm-heavy builds, you’re also pretty good when the punches start flying! Echos are great at covering the battlefield, and when you add your whip’s range to that, plus your conjured braves, and it’s going to be really hard to avoid your influence in a fight. You can also affect the flow of battle, slowing down creatures with your whip and keeping them at arm’s length the entire fight.

Not only are you good at charming, but your spells specialize in affecting large groups. Enthrall and Compulsion don’t have an upper limit of creatures you can target, so you’ll be even stronger against larger armies. Just as long as a lone, dashing spearman doesn’t show up, your victory is assured.

Cons:

Whips are good for covering ground, but not so much for dealing damage. Sorry, 1d4 just isn’t very powerful.

You have one use of Indomitable later into the build, but your low Wisdom means you’ll probably be using it to avoid someone else’s charms. Building your own army is fun, but turning it on the rest of the party after one bad roll is probably going to cause some problems.

Most of these builds end up with too much to do in their bonus action, but you have to deal with crowded reactions instead. You can make attacks of opportunity, defend yourself with your whip, or defend your allies with your braves. You’ll also always have to weigh the current situation to every later turn between now and your next turn. Nobody ever said it was easy being queen.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #89: Beowulf

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re making the King of Savagery, Beowulf. The bare-knuckled swordsman is equally good with his weapons, his fists, and his leadership skills.

Check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: Here comes the bride!

Race and Background

Beowulf is definitely a Human, and being a Variant Human will help us wield two beowulf-sized weapons at once with the Dual Wielder feat. This gives you +1 AC while dual wielding, the ability to ignore the lack of a light property on your weapons for the purposes of dual wielding, and the ability to draw or stow two weapons at once for fewer complications. Hrunting and Naegling are many things, but light isn’t one of them. You also get +1 Strength and +1 Charisma, and Insight Proficiency. 

Beowulf is a skilled fighter and sailor, making him a Marine. This gives him Athletics and Survival proficiencies. He’s also a really good king, but that’s as far from backstory as you can get; we’ll pick it up later.

Ability Scores

You’re the original dragon slayer and you can tear monsters’ arms off. Safe to say, your Strength is pretty high. You’re also tough enough to wrestle monsters in the first place, and survive a dragon long enough to get off some last words, so that’s Constitution sorted. Good kings inspire the people, so let’s get the Charisma up there too. Your Dexterity isn’t super great, but it’s not like you avoid hits. Your Wisdom sadly couldn’t be that high either, we just needed other things more. Hopefully the Insight proficiency makes up for it. Finally, dump Intelligence- you’re not too badly affected by your Madness Enhancement, but you were never one to think things through anyway.

Class Levels

1. Barbarian 1: Starting off as a barbarian nets you a whole lot of HP, plus Strength and Constitution save proficiencies, and proficiency in Intimidation and Survival. You try telling me that guy ain’t scary, you’ll just be wrong.

You also get the ability to Rage, adding extra damage to your attacks, have advantage on strength checks and saves, and you resist physical damage. You also get Unarmored Defense based on your constitution and dexterity. You don’t wear armor. Or a shirt, for that matter.

For this build we’re calling Hrunting a Long-sword and Naegling a War-hammer. They’re both big enough that normal people would wield them two-handed, but you dual wield them instead, because you’re just that good.

2. Barbarian 2: Second level barbarians can make Reckless Attacks, giving you advantage on a turn for all attacks at the cost of giving everything advantage against you until your next turn. Try killing everything before that happens. You also get a Danger Sense, giving you advantage on Dexterity Saves you see coming like, say, a dragon’s breath weapon.

3. Fighter 1: Popping over to fighter nets you a Fighting Style, and Unarmed Fighting lets you throw away those children’s toys and settle things like a man, dealing 1d6 bludgeoning with a one-handed attack or 1d8 with both hands free. You can also deal 1d4 damage at the start of each turn to any creature you’re grappling.

First level fighters also get a Second Wind, healing you as a bonus action once per short rest. Now you’ll be able to stay in the fight even longer!

4. Fighter 2: Second level fighters get an Action Surge, adding an extra action to your turn once per short rest. Multiclassing right out the gate means your extra attack comes a little late, so this’ll have to make up for it. Though you already get an extra attack kind of thanks to dual-wielding...

5. Fighter 3: Beowulf may be rough, but he’s still a natural born leader, so the Banneret subclass from the sword coast isn’t that out of left field. Unless you have no idea that the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide even existed, in which case you’re in good company along with WotC.

Regardless, when you take the subclass you get a Rallying Cry. When you use your Second Wind, you also heal up to three creatures within 60′ of you, if they’re your allies. Those creatures regain your fighter level in HP if they can see or hear you.

6. Fighter 4: At sixth level we finally get our first Ability Score Improvement, which we’re using to get the Crusher feat. This increases your Strength by 1 point, and once per turn you can push a creature 5′ away if it’s large or smaller and you’re dealing bludgeoning damage to it. Also, if you score a critical hit with a bludgeoning attack, all attacks against that creature are made with advantage until your next turn. So you’re really good with your fists and Naegling now.

7. Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters get an Extra Attack, bringing your total attacks per turn up to three while dual-wielding or five with an Action Surge.

8. Fighter 6: Hrunting was feeling a little left out from that last ASI, so use this one to pick up Slasher. This gives you another +1 Strength, and hitting a creature with slashing damage reduces its speed by 10′ once per turn. Critical hits with slashing damage cause the creature to have disadvantage on all its attack rolls until your next turn.

9. Fighter 7: Seventh level Bannerets become a Royal Envoy, giving you Persuasion proficiency and doubled proficiency with persuasion checks. You can talk freaking Yaga into making you their king. Admittedly most of that was beating the shit out of them, but that’s just yaga diplomacy at work.

10. Fighter 8: I swear we’re almost done with feats, just pick up Inspiring Leader for one last boost in your leadership skills. Spending 10 minutes giving up to six creatures a pep talk gives them temporary hp equal to your level plus your charisma modifier. You can only use this on a creature once per short rest, so save it for the dramatic conclusion. Also, make sure you DM doesn’t try to actually make you do a ten minute speech, that would be very long.

11. Fighter 9: Ninth level fighters are Indomitable, giving you a second chance at a failed save. You can use this once per long rest, so I’d save it for something you should’ve made. Failing a wisdom save sucks, but you weren’t going to pass it anyways, trust me.

12. Fighter 10: Tenth level bannerets have an Inspiring Surge. When you use your Action Surge, a nearby creature of your choice can react to make a weapon attack if it can see or hear you. That’s right; not only do you get extra attacks, but now so does your party.

13. Fighter 11: You get another Extra Attack for even more stabbing/hitting per action; three with your fists, four while dual-wielding and using your bonus action, and seven while dual wielding and using your action surge.

14. Fighter 12: Now that all the feats are out of the way we can finally focus on ability scores with this ASI. Bump up your Constitution for more health and AC.

15. Fighter 13: At this level you get another use of Indomitable per long rest. Yeah I know it’s not that interesting.

16. Fighter 14: Use this ASI to bump up your Dexterity for better dex saves and AC. If you haven’t been going up against a lot of dex saves, feel free to move this over to constitution instead, it’s up to you.

17. Fighter 15: Fifteenth level bannerets become a Bulwark. When you use your Indomitable feature to reroll a failed Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma save, an ally within 60′ can also reroll their save. Now rerolling wisdom saves might make sense; two mind-controlled party members is rough.

18. Fighter 16: Use your last ASI to finally maximize your Strength for the best swordplay and boxing you can have.

19. Fighter 17: You get an additional use of Action Surge and Indomitable, because they totally didn’t run out of ideas for main class features back at level 11.

20. Fighter 18: Your capstone level sees your Inspiring Surge get just a bit better. Now using Action Surge lets two allies attack instead of one, so you can lead an entire army into the fight.

Pros: 

Persuasion expertise, intimidation proficiency, and a decent insight means you can serve as a pretty good party face in an emergency.

You don’t need armor, and your weapons are more a formality than anything else, so you’re always ready for a fight.

Your abilities help the party just for doing things you’d be doing anyway, helping you turn the tide of a battle just by being that kickass. That’s not just your class abilities either. Crusher and Slasher can seriously hinder an enemy’s movement, protecting squishier party members.

Cons:

Like a majority of berserkers, you lack ranged or magical options. High level enemies might be a problem if you don’t pick up any magical weapons.

Your wisdom is low enough that you shouldn’t be using Indomitable charges on it, but one of your features is specifically about rerolling soft stat saves. Wasting your own save to help another party member might be worth it, but there’s less painful ways to do that.

Literally all your weapons are versatile, but you only have two hands. If you want to maximize damage in any one weapon you’d have to drop the rest to do so, but that gets rid of your versatility. It’s a balancing act.

[grailfinders]

Servant #2: Artoria Pendragon (Saber)

Moving along, our next subject is the face of Fate, King Arthur herself! For this build, we need to accomplish three things: A very fancy sword, laser beams coming out of said sword, and mana burst-esque abilities for when you need to give it 110%. A quick rundown of the build can be found here, and details under the cut!

Race and Background

Surprising no one, Artoria is a Human, meaning she gets +1 to all abilities.

Once again we are using the standard array (15,14,13,12,10,8). You can roll if you want to, but make sure it’s good enough for multiclassing. 

We start with Strength as our highest stat. If we’re putting this much effort into pimping out our sword, we better be worthy of wielding it.

Next is Charisma. Artoria’s the king for a reason, and it’s because she’s surprisingly good at deception. That, and being a paragon of goodness and all.

This is followed by Dexterity. Artoria needs to be able to move if she wants to.

After that is Constitution. Artoria is tougher than your average bear, but it’s not what she’s known for.

Then we choose Intelligence. Artoria has a good head on her shoulders, enough to know she needs to keep Merlin around anyway.

Finally, Wisdom is our dump stat. She doesn’t have a good sense for interpersonal relationships, even if she can rally an army. Just ask Lancelot. Or Mordred.

For Artoria’s background, the obvious choice is the Noble variant, Knight. This gives you proficiency to History and Persuasion, and gives you the Retainers skill: three ordinary people who’ll take care of all that day-to-day stuff for you. Feel free to base them after your less popular family members. My personal suggestion is to make three clearly different people and claim they’re all Gaheris. Nobody will be able to prove you wrong.

Class Levels

1. Paladin 1: Starting off to no one’s surprise as a paladin, Artoria has proficiency with Wisdom and Charisma Saves, as well as All armor and weapons, and Intimidation and Religion. Your status leaves you difficult to approach, and you’re most well known for hunting down religious artifacts. This is your life now, you’re the shiny cup guy.

You also get Divine Sense, letting you sense extraplanar entities around you, and Lay on Hands, providing  yourself and your allies with welcome healing.

2. Paladin 2: At second level, you gain your fighting style, Great Weapon Fighting. Even from an early age, Excalibur is calling to you.

You also gain Spellcasting with Charisma as your ability. There are plenty of spells you can use here, I’d suggest looking at Ceremony, Detect Magic, Divine Favor, and  Searing Smite. Searing Smite lets you turn your sword into a lightshow and bring the pain, which is one step off of our final goal. 

You also have Divine Smite, a skill that lets you burn spell slots to make your sword moreso.

3. Paladin 3: You’re finally taking the Oath of the Crown, for obvious reasons. With this oath, you gain Command and Compelled Duel as your oath spells, and can Channel Divinity by issuing a Champion Challenge or Turning the Tide. As king of England you will need to set an example for all the realm to follow; no evil can be allowed to get past you. This is also around the point you meet Merlin, and everything goes to hell.

4. Warlock 1: Merlin is your Archfey Patron, granting you a whole trove of magical goodies. At this level, you gain a Fey Presence, letting you spend an action to force a wisdom save on everything within 10′ of you or else they are charmed/frightened of you until the end of your next turn. Now that Merlin is in your support, everybody wants to be on your friends list.

You also gain Pact Magic. It should be noted that unlike most magic multiclassing, pact magic and spellcasting don’t mix. You get exactly the spell slots listed for each level of paladin and warlock you gain. You can, however, use warlock slots for paladin magic and vice versa.

 At this point you should pick up the Booming blade and Eldritch Blast cantrips, along with the spells Expeditious Retreat and Faerie Fire. Expeditious retreat is functionally replacing part of your Mana burst ability, allowing you to move much faster at the cost of magical power. Eldritch Blast is a stable of the Warlock Community, and one day it will become the closest thing to a laser sword we can manage. 

5. Warlock 2: At this level, you gain Eldritch Invocations, small effects that alter your life just a little bit, like everything Merlin does to you. Here, choose Repelling Blast and another invocation that will be getting immediately replaced next level. You also gain another spell at this level, but that will be getting replaced shortly as well, so pick whatever you’d like right now. Also, Repelling blast isn’t absolutely necessary, so feel free to pick whatever flavor of blast you’d prefer.

6. Warlock 3: At this level, you gain your Pact of the Blade. By now, you’ve probably noticed your life is getting pretty much dominated by oaths and pacts. This is kind of a running theme for you. The good news is you finally get Excalibur, the magical greatsword you’ve spent so long working towards! If you find a cooler sword later, you can also turn that into your pact weapon, but for now let’s bask in your achievement.

At this point, replace that one invocation with Improved Pact Weapon, turning your sword into a spell focus so you can shoot lasers out of it, plus turning it into a +1 weapon in the process.

You also gain another spell, and your slots move up to the second level. Gain Calm Emotion and Invisibility. Now your allies can repress their emotions as well as you do, and I’m sure if you asked nicely your DM will let you target your sword instead of a creature for the latter spell.

7. Warlock 4: For your first Ability Score Improvement, add to your constitution and charisma, to make your spells a bit stronger. At this level you also gain a new cantrip, Create Bonfire, and a new spell, Enthrall.

8. Warlock 5: For your final stop as a warlock, your spell slots move to the 3rd level, and you gain another spell, Tongues. You also gain a third eldritch invocation, Eldritch Armor. This allows you to spend an action to magically put on any suit of armor you can touch, even if someone else is already wearing it. The effect only works if you’re not already wearing armor though, so don’t go thinking you can sneak two sets of armor on. I would think it should also let you take off armor as an action, but you’d have to talk to your DM about that. It would be pretty on point for Artoria, though.

9. Paladin 4: Now that Merlin’s done ruining your life, we can get back on point. Put your next Ability Score Improvement into Strength, and try to forget the last 5 levels happened.

10. Paladin 5: You gain an extra attack each turn, and some 2nd level spell slots that won’t leave you like the warlock ones did. You gain Warding Bond and Zone of Truth as Oath spells, and should also take a look at Branding Smite when you get a chance to prepare your normal spells.

11. Paladin 6: You gain an Aura of Protection. Friendly creatures (including yourself) gain a bonus to saving throws equal to your charisma modifier if they’re within 10′ of you. You’re so good at ruling you inspire people just by being around them.

12. Paladin 7: You gain another crown skill, Divine Allegiance. If someone within 5′ of you is going to take damage, you can react and throw yourself in front of the bullet.

13. Paladin 8: Another Ability Score Improvement, once again going into Charisma. A lot of your abilities are riding on this stat now.

14. Barbarian 1:  We’re taking another detour to grab some barbarian skills. Rage acts like your mana burst, giving you a sudden boost of strength when you need it the most. You’ll need to remove your heavy armor for this (again, push to tweak that Eldritch armor with your DM), but in return you gain advantage on strength checks and saves, +2 to melee attacks, and you resist bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. This eats up your mana pretty quickly though, so you can’t use spells or concentrate while doing so. You also get Unarmored Defense, so you aren’t completely defenseless when your armor’s off. The lowest your AC can go now is 10 + your dexterity modifier + your charisma modifier. A good king is ready at any time, after all.

15. Barbarian 2: You gain a Reckless Attack, letting you have advantage on all attacks this turn in return for your enemies having advantage on their turns. Hopefully by this point your sword is fancy enough that they don’t get those.

You also gain Danger Sense working in place of your instinct skill. This gives you advantage on all dex saves caused by sources you can see.

16. Paladin 9: Back on track yet again, you gain your third level spell slots, complementing the warlock slots quite nicely. You gain Aura of Vitality and Spirit Guardians as oath spells, and should look into preparing Daylight and Crusader’s Mantle.

17. Paladin 10: You gain an Aura of Courage. Your presence is so calming, allies within 10′ of you can’t be frightened.

18. Paladin 11: You’re so holy now, you have Improved Divine Smite. Now your weapon is so fancy it deals 1d8 extra radiant damage without even trying.

19. Paladin 12: Spend your last ability score improvement on Inspring Leader. Good kings send good men to die for them in battle. Great kings make them happy to do so.

20. Paladin 13: At your final level, you gain the ability to cast 4th level spells. You gain Banishment and Guardian of Faith as oath spells, and should look into Aura of Purity and Aura of Life as well.

The strength of this build lies in its combat versatility. You’ve got one fancy sword with 57 flavors of smite for close combat, a couple useful cantrips for midrange fighting, and even a bit of healing if things go Camlann. 

The tradeoff is you’re not particularly great at any one thing, a condition I like to call “Terminal Protagonist Syndrome”. You’re also pretty bad at social interactions, but you’re Artoria, so that’s to be expected. Finally, if you can’t convince your DM to let you tweak Eldritch Armor so you can take your armor off with it, your barbarian levels are pretty much wasted. Nobody said it was easy being the king.