For my first run, I focused largely on engaging the roleplay elements and didn’t worry too much about optimization.
For my tactician run, I’m attempting to utilize about as much OP shenanigans in my party as possible, and I’m having a great time with it so far. What are your favorite OP builds to actually play?
Bonus points if they’re viable all the way through the game without respec-ing.
My party:
Smiter: Paladin 5 / Warlock 7
Progression: P2 -> W5 -> P5 -> W7
Starting stats: 16, 10, 14, 8, 10, 16
Feats: PAM/GWM/Cha+2, Cha+2
Equipment: 2H weapon, best heavy armor, anything that grants advantage
Notes: Smite with warlock slots. Subclasses don’t matter much, but choose Pact of the Blade (extra attack stacks with Paladin’s).
Alternates: P5/W5/F2 for action surge.
Thrower: Berserker 6 / Thief 3 / Champion 3
Progression: B5 -> Ro3 -> F3 -> B6
Starting stats: 17, 14, 16, 8, 10, 8
Feats: Tavern Brawler (Str+1)
Equipment: Sword-and-board, best medium armor, throwing bonuses
Notes: Throw everything and everyone. Keep a few nice magic 2H weapons for bonus throws.
Alternates: B6/R4/F2 or B8/R4 for additional feats.
Sniper: Assassin 3 / Gloomstalker 5 / Champion 4
Progression: Ro3 -> Ra5 -> F4
Starting stats: 14, 16, 16, 8, 12, 8
Feats: Sharpshooter, Dex+2
Equipment: Dual hand crossbows, best light armor (until later…), anything sneak- or surprise-related
Notes: If surprising a group, drink a haste potion and end the encounter solo.
Alternates: Any combination of A3/G5/F2 or A3/G3/F5 seems viable.
Bear: Moon Druid 12
Starting stats: 14, 10, 17, 8, 16, 8
Feats: Tavern Brawler (Con+1), Warcaster, Wis+2/Resilient (Con+1)
Notes: Be a bear. Enough said.
Alternates: D7/C5–cast Spirit Guardians before assuming bear form.
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I can write a better guide if people want.
Please do if you get some time this sounds amazing
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Wow this was amazingly detailed and optimized.
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Pair this with Boots of Stormy Clamour and Thunderskin Cloak for a shutdown debuff build.
While you are building to Frozen, enemies will take themselves out of the fight.
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Not tips, you’ve shown you know as much as me. It’s just something for the community same as you. We build and engage.
Same team man. I always upvote and engage good build guides.
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And don’t forget to pick up the two pairs of boots that make you immune to falling on ice for your frontliners! As an Ice Storm fan, I find these to be very important in my team.
I recently discovered the Radiating Orb build, that thing is busted! Together with the Cloak of Displacement you’re basically untouchable! Everything around you will have around 8 Orb stacks permanently, and every stack reduces their attack rolls by one, on any target! It also does a nice bit of passive radiant damage, but that’s honestly just a bonus.
I’d say the bread and butter of this are the helm and the chest armor:
- Holy Lance Helm: Cause radiant damage to enemies who miss attacks against you
- Luminous Armor: Whenever you deal radiant damage, trigger a shockwave that applies Radiating Orb in an area
Other items then synergize with this setup and make it even stronger:
- Luminous Gloves: Radiant damage applies Radiating Orb
- Callous Glow Ring: Cause 2 extra radiant damage when illuminated
- Coruscation Ring: Any spell damage applies Radiating Orb when illuminated
- Cloak of Displacement: Enemies have disadvantage until first hit every turn
- … anything that does radiant damage or reduces enemy hit change
So enemies miss their attack, everyone gets damage and Orb stacks, and that causes even more misses, damage and stacks.
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Gloves of the belligerent skies let’s you stack reverberation when you do radiant damage, it’s a fun addition. Then you can add the ring of spiteful thunder and the boots of stormy clamor and there’s a cloak that also synergies well IIRC.
Reverb and Radiating Orb is a bit of a Hat on a Hat, but dear gods does it drive a point home.
A nice bonus…until the House of Hope.
spoiler
They don’t get Radiant Retort until Raphael draws souls, so you just swap out the helm and pop the Radiant AoE on round 1. You can end up with 9 stacks from one AoE which is more than enough to cover the rest of the fight.
Luminous Armor is one of the items in contention for best in game, and only avoids taking it outright due to Helmet of Arcane Acuity. Both are incredible since they mess with 5e’s bounded accuracy system. I personally wouldn’t allow either at my table but Larian giving them to us is soooooo much fun.
Seriously a Light Cleric with Luminous Armor only has a 1/400 chance of being hit from lvl 5 on. And they give that same ratio to their party at lvl 6. It’s broken.
Thief Rogue 4/Swords Bard 6/Fighter 2
It’s a skill monkey, sniper DPR, and buff bot rolled into one with action economy for days. Even with the Double Hand Xbow nerf this is still ridiculously powerful. I legitimately had issues playing anything else after the run that used this, because while there are builds that can match it for damage, nothing else is going to compare for skill checks.
The build is the definition of Main Character Syndrome.
I’ve had a similar experience playing swords bard with 2 levels of paladin. It’s so good at everything that every other class feels like it is missing a lot of things.
My goto Minty build is Paladin 2/Swords Bard 8/Tempest Cleric 2. There are only three enemies it isn’t able to oneshot. 5th lvl spell slots on a Paladin in a 12th lvl campaign is brutal.
It’s one of the builds in contention for equivalent damage that I was talking about. It just falls slightly short in the non-Cha skill checks and having to close with enemies in a campaign with large and vertical diverse maps.
I’m playing a Dark Urge No Companions run. I have nearly completed Act 1 with zero party members beyond the Dirge.
Right now I’m Rogue (Thief) 3 and Ranger 2
I’ve discovered that if you are sneaking (so you can see the vision cone), you can sneak attack, and re-hide, and as long as you don’t step into any vision cones during the process the enemy will spend its turn activating dash and staying in one place. They don’t attempt to find you 90% of the time.
Ah yes, the stealth archer
Does the Pact of the Blade extra attack still stack with the Paladin? I thought they nerfed that this most recent patch.
Maybe if it’s with the Paladin’s extra attack, but I’m still getting three attacks between Fighter and Pact of the Blade.
I’m using it in a Fighter/Lock/Paladin crit build and it’s disgusting. Two bonus 8d8 rolls per short rest at a 58% crit rate.
Steaming rothé innards, how did you get to a 58% crit rate? Advantage plus Champion gets to 19% per hit. Is the rest equipment, or is there some other class/race mechanic I’m missing?
Yeah, it’s all equipment plus Elixir of Viciousness. There’s four pieces of gear with an unconditional crit threat range boost, and a cloak that tacks on another if you’re hiding, but I can’t be bothered to do that, hah. 14-20 is good enough.
With the cloak, Dark Urge can get down to 11-20 at the end of the game.
I’ve outlined some of the pieces of equipment in my comment about my Ranger/Rogue build. I haven’t been able to verify if the sword and bow apply to all attacks, or just attacks with those weapons, however.
If the devs do their work it won’t continue to be a thing; it shouldn’t have been one. But use it while it works, this makes sure it gets patched.
It’s funny–there are legitimate features that work as intended, but seem unbalanced–Tavern Brawler being an example. In the latest update, I expected they might nerf it. Instead, they made it more effective (having it work in wildshape), which further empowers the feat as well as the most OP subclass in the game.
While it would certainly be reasonable for them to fix the three-attack thing, I suspect it’s pretty low on the priority list.
I read it was only in Honour mode, didn’t confirm it though
I haven’t been able to verify yet (I’m still in Act 1 on this playthrough), but it would make sense if they did. In which case, I’ll probably go with P2/W7/F3 and pick up the Champion subclass for those extra crits.
I am just going classic open hand monk with three levels of thief. A Sorlock for pew pew, Tiger Barbarian as front line and a lore bard as control and heal. That’s the plan for my honor mode run I have started yesterday.
Create water + Tempest Cleric’s channel divinity = Profit
Double that with Sorcerer’s Twinned Spell!
Damn, some super fun stuff! I feel OP just by being a pally and having some understanding of dnd on regular, but I’m planning on tactician next along with the harder mode after that. Just need cross platform so I can play with some of my PC friends (and an auto organization of items for the wheels on controller, it’s madness to try and organize it by conventional means).
Yeah, smites in general just feel awesome, even when not optimized. I actually did use something like the paladin/warlock build for Wyll on my first playthrough, seemed consistent with his character.
I’ve heard the game works well with a controller, but I can’t imagine not having a mouse. For what it’s worth, on PC, there are options to auto-sort your inventory, so hopefully there’s something in the works for console if it’s not out already). Here’s hoping they eventually implement cross-platform!
Oh man, maybe I’ve missed auto sort then, I’ll check. I also haven’t played since the big update recently, been busy. Gonna hop on tonight or tomorrow tho.
Also, I did make Astarion gloomstalker 7 / rogue 3 so far and that’s been super effective.
Paladin 2/Swords Bard 8/Tempest Cleric 2
It’s like giving a nuclear arsenal to a toddler. This is my goto Minty build.
There are only three enemies in the game that can’t be oneshot by this build, but only cause they just need the second dose.
Lol this sounds pretty fun
Have fun Matrim.
🎲🎲
Paladin and cleric are really strong in act 2 because almost everything you fight is vulnerable to radiant damage.
The best build I’ve played is my Bard in this playthrough. Swords bard, dex based sharpshooter, 2 hand crossbows, 2 hand fighting style, and 2 levels in paladin oath of the Ancients. You’re a skill monkey with dex and charisma, so you can do almost anything in the game as good as any other character, you have sleight of hand and persuasion expertise so you can disable traps, pick locks, and persuade conversations. You get medium armor proficiency, or heavy if you take pally first, so you have high AC and high dodge, so you can front line. You have smite and a ton of spells slots. You can one-shot big bads. With the ranged slashing flourish you can attack 5 times in a single turn for high damage. And to top it all off you have heals, crowd control, and a pretty great spell arsenal. There’s literally nothing this build can’t do. Not only can it do everything, it can do most things better than dedicated classes. The only two things I’ve found done better by other classes are mass healing from a cleric, or lots of AOE damage from a wizard. Anyways, I absolutely LOVE this build.
Eldritch Knight bound weapons seem better for throwing. Can combine with berserker and thief for extra throws.
Bound weapons are nice because you can repeatedly throw your best magic weapon without having to retrieve them. But IIRC, it takes a bonus action to summon them back, and the Berserker’s Enraged Throw takes a bonus action. With the Thief’s extra bonus action, that results in four throws each turn (more if hasted). So I usually just keep a bunch of throwing weapons handy to hurl a barrage of things each turn.
It doesn’t take anything for the weapon to return though there is a bug where it won’t return when throwing to start a battle. So at L5 I’m getting 4 throws with Action Surge. That being said, I’ve got Karlach using the returning pike because throwing is good enough to have on two characters.
For the sniper, why are you multiclassing to fighter?
Assassins get advantage and auto crit on first turn against enemies that haven’t taken a turn yet. Action surge is extra amazing here.
Yup, plus the Champion features extra crits.
I have a few different ones going on, but so far I have to say that my favourite has been a Ranger 2 / Thief Rogue 10 build that has really come into its own thanks to items.
Ranger 2 for medium armor proficiency (not relevant until Act II), fighting style, and Hunter’s Mark.
Thief Rogue 10 for extra bonus action, sneak attack dice, evasion, uncanny dodge, and feats.
This turned into a crit fishing build, and so we must turn off automatic sneak attacks. Change it so the game asks every time, and then only apply it on a critical hit, or the last attack of the turn if no crits happened.
Notable equipment includes:
- Covert Cowl to increase crit chance
- Armor of Agility to get his AC to 22
- Knife of the Mountain King for increased crit chance and Advantage against targets in the dark
- The Dead Shot for increased crit chance (and its other effect works amazingly well with Sharpshooter)
- Surgeon’s Subjugation Amulet for an auto-paralyze on a crit
- And finally, for your second melee weapon, anything Light with Finesse will do but if you want to destroy spellcasters I highly recommend Sussur Dagger.
- Elixir of Viciousness for big battles, to increase crit chance.
The crux of this build is to have as many possible chances to hit/crit as possible, and to attempt to get an extra Sneak Attack each round thanks to your Reaction. I took the Mage Slayer feat to give myself an extra chance, but Sentinel will also do. I was just building specifically to fuck up Cazador.
With one of those two feats, if you are in melee you should be able to trigger a reaction attack each round. Now, these reaction attacks are programmed poorly, and you seem to get both a main-hand and an off-hand attack on them, doubling our chances to get a hit/crit. You also get Sneak Attack on this if you have an adjacent ally or Advantage on the attack.
Additionally, a hit with the Sussur Dagger silences the target for two rounds, making casters unable to do much of anything except bonk you with a stick.
With this build you should be critting on a 17, getting Sneak Attack twice per round and hopefully applying it on a critical hit, be extremely hard to hit (add Cloak of Displacement to make it even harder,) shut down mages from casting with ease, and just generally a menace.
I did 5 rogue/7 fighter. Heavy on crit, combined with a particular weapon that causes vulnerability… I think I had like 30% crit chance. Astarion was very deadly.
I’m assuming Thief/Champion for pure Martial. Why not 8/4? SA is only once per turn so the extra 1d6(3.5) damage isn’t doing much compared with SS or extra accuracy.
I get the same number of feats. With going further in fighter, I gained better jump which allows me to get into position a lot easier. And I wanted the extra attack out of fighter as well. Supreme Sneak wasn’t something I needed or wanted. Most of my team couldn’t keep up with Lae’Zel and Astarion jumping up front and murdering everything in sight.
So really, I gained more mobility and a full extra attack and all I gave up was a single 1d6 on sneak attack.
I was asking about the other direction, 8 Fighter/4 Rogue. You lose 1d6 SA but gain an additional ASI/Feat.
I totally get why you want Fighter 5.
OH! Yeah I probably could have respec’d at that point. I wanted Uncanny Dodge, but by the end of the game, Astarion had more AC than anyone else on the team… like 26 I think? And most things died rather quickly.
