What's your favorite OP build?

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.

Anticorp,

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.

CookieOfFortune,

Eldritch Knight bound weapons seem better for throwing. Can combine with berserker and thief for extra throws.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

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.

CookieOfFortune,

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.

pyrflie,

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.

Anticorp,

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.

pyrflie,

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.

CaptPretentious,

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.

pyrflie,

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.

CaptPretentious,

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.

pyrflie,

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.

CaptPretentious,

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.

inasaba,

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.

Stamets, (edited )
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

The Ray of Frost machinegunner.

Draconic bloodline sorcerer. Take a cold option. Get the Morning Frost staff in the Underdark and the Winters Clutches gloves from the lady in mountain pass who wants gith egg. After killing gith boss, there’s a necklace of elemental something or other in the room to the right. In Last Light there’s a room in the back on the bottom floor with a floorboard that has a snowburst ring hidden in it. Also get the super awesome Potent robes from the Bard tiefling by going to Moonrise and saving everyone. While you’re there, stop in the necromancers room for the coldbrim hat. Also have someone nearby with create water. Make sure to take haste.

Congrats. You’re now pumping out a minimum of an extra 10-15 damage per hit from ray of frost without them being wet and a huge attack roll bonus. The ray will also stack something called encrusted with frost which can outright freeze them solid and make them skip their turn and chilled as well which gives them cold vulnerability. Patches of frost will also immediately appear under them, forcing them to make a save or fall probe. Everytime you hit them they also have to make saves. Burn every spell slot for metamagic and twin/quicken to your hearts content. Hasten yourself and you’re harder to hit and blast more.

So much fun. I can write a better guide if people want. I’m on toilet and half asleep at moment.

Edit: I did write a better guide.

sickday,
@sickday@kbin.social avatar

I can write a better guide if people want.

Please do if you get some time this sounds amazing

Stamets,
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

Okay. So.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This build can work with a Durge build but requires extra steps. They will be listed.

Level 1: Draconic Sorcerer. Take whatever cold option you want but personally I’d recommend White as it gives you Armor of Agathys. You won’t be using many spell slots in the game so it’s worth having. This is sort of a given, but take the Ray of Frost cantrip as a Sorcerer option. You can choose whatever race you want but if you choose Ray of Frost through racial stuff this build will immediately fail as it requires the spell to be scaling off your Charisma and not another ability like Intelligence, which is what your spell will scale off of if you take it as a half-elf as an example.

Level 2+: Keep taking Sorcerer. Your metamagic options should be twinned and quickened. Other options are personal choice but Distant works well. When given the option for a Feat, take an ability score increase. Keep doing so until you have a 20 in Charisma. Hag Hair also works. You can take a Bard level very early on (Your second level) if you’re so inclined but it will mess with that ASI. I usually do for extra skill bonuses or performance stuff. I would also heavily recommend taking the Haste spell when you gain access to it. As a spellcaster, you should almost always be concentrating on a spell to begin with and nothing is better for this build than perpetual Haste concentration. Although you could also slap Haste on Gale and just have him hide in the corner, boosting you and protecting himself. A third option is to twin cast Haste (such an amazing option) and slap them on Frontline, have Gale cast Haste on you, and then proceed to fucking destroy everything in a three mile radius. Also would highly recommend taking Create Water on a separate caster to increase damage.

However this build does revolve specifically around effects and items. Here is a list of those effects and items.

DURGE WARNING: One of these items requires that Tiefling bard to be alive in the Second Act of the game. As you may or may not be aware, that bard will die if you’re playing Durge. To prevent her death you must sneak up behind her and knock her out. Make sure to use non-lethal damage. Magic will kill her so stick to physical attacks. Leave her there unconscious and then go meet Kagha. Once you meet Kagha, leave the grove and take a long rest. Normally at this point Alfira the Bard will drop by your camp but she’s knocked out so you get the secondary NPC, Quill Grootslang, who will come to your camp during that Long Rest instead. Guide here.

Status 1 | Wet: Affected entity is immune to burning, Wild Magic: Burning, resistant to fire damage and vulnerable to cold and lightning damage.

Item 1 | Morning Frost: Continue the game as you normally would until it is time to go to either the Mountain Pass or the Underdark. We will be going to both but choose the Underdark first. Once there make it your lifes mission to get the three pieces of Morning Frost and assemble it. The benefit of Morning Frost is that it adds 1 to all cold damage and it also has the chance to apply Chilled to the target. What’s Chilled you ask?

Status 2 | Chilled: Affected entity is Vulnerable to Cold damage and Resistant to Fire damage. Combining this with Wet will replace both conditions and make the target Frozen. (Sidenote but we’ll get to Frozen in a bit.)

Item 2 | Winter’s Clutches: Once you’ve got the staff, you can either continue to fuck up the Underdark or head off to the Mountain Pass and return later. In the Mountain Pass, well before the Creche, is an NPC named Lady Esther. Before you do anything else with her, go to her trading options and buy an item called Winter’s Clutches. They are a set of gloves. Their benefit is that whenever you do cold damage you apply 2 turns of Encrusted with Frost.

Status 3 | Encrusted with Frost: Affected entity has disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws. When there are 7+ turns of Encrusted with Frost applied to an enemy, they must make a DC12 Con Save. On a success they take 1d4 cold damage (effected by your items/abilities). On a failure they become Frozen. The item will say otherwise but the items text is wrong. Or was. Not sure if they fixed that.

Status 4 | Frozen: Affected entity is utterly enameled in ice and is Incapacitated. If it is dealt Bludgeoning, Thunder, or Force damage, the ice shatters, ending the condition. Gains Vulnerability to Bludgeoning, Damage Types Thunder, and Force damage. Gains Resistance to Fire damage. Gains immunity to Burning and Encrusted with Frost until no longer Frozen.

Item 3 | Necklace of Elemental Augmentation: Enter the Creche. Do what you want but once you get to the Inquisitor and vanquish him, the room to the right (if facing the same direction as when you entered) has said necklace. The benefit is that when one of your Cantrips deals Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage, add your Spellcasting Modifier to the damage dealt. By now this should be a +4 or a +5.

Item 4 | Coldbrim Hat: Whenever you’re done with the Mountain Pass and the Underdark, head on to Act 2 through whatever method you prefer. Once in, head directly to Moonrise Towers and act as if you belong. If you follow that Half-Orc lady and talk to her, she’ll give you a key to Balthazar’s room. Take it and head in, close the door, and check one of the corpses for a heart on the floor. Grab it. Then walk up to the bookcase. There are multiple books that act as levers with most being trapped. Find the one talking about organs and pull it. When you do, a pedestal will open. Add the heart. Another room will open. Inside the chest in that room is the Coldbrim Hat. The benefit of the hat is that whenever you apply any condition to an enemy, they also now gain 2 turns of Encrusted with Frost. Because Encrusted of Frost itself is also a condition that is being added from your Clutches, you are now adding 4 turns of Encrusted with Frost on every successful attack.

Item 5 | Potent Robe: Upon getting the hat, head towards the Prison/Dungeon in the basement of Moonrise. Here there are a number of Tieflings that are held behind bars with some guards patrolling around. Whether through conversation or violence, make sure that you will not be seen and help the Dwarves. I would highly recommend either giving them a hammer or going to get the hammer they require. While you can just open the gate, they’ll head through the front door and things will be way more difficult. When they smash open the wall they’ll save the Tieflings and escape through a secret passage that leads to a boat. You can go with them if you like or just head to Last Light Inn yourself and meet them there. Inside the main chamber of the Inn is Alfira, the bard. She is reunited with someone close to her and celebrating. Talk to her and she will give you the Potent Robe, the best set of robes any Charisma Caster can ask for. Why? The benefit of the Potent Robe is all of your cantrips now do damage equal to your Charisma modifier and at the start of every turn you will gain temp HP equivalent to your Charisma modifier.

But there’s still one more thing to grab.

Item 6 | Snowburst Ring: On the ground floor of the Inn, in the back right (provided you’re facing the direction when you came into the building) is a single room with a Tiefling child in it. Upon passing a perception check you will spot some floorboards that are loose. When you remove them you find the ring. The benefit of the ring is that whenever you apply any cold damage, a patch of ice 4.5m/15ft will appear under the enemy and they must make an immediate dexterity saving throw or fall prone.

At this point your Ray of Frost should be getting +15 to all damage thanks to your subclass and various items, provided your Charisma is 20. When the enemy becomes chilled from your staff (or wet from other stuff) they take double damage for a minimum of 32 points of damage with a maximum of 70. You’re also getting a pretty decent bonus to your attack rolls so the vast majority are going to hit anyway. Even more so If someone has Faerie Fire. Then you have the Encrusted with Frost that has a low save which means most people are succeeding and then taking even more cold damage which somethings will affect. Because that cold damage is coming from you, it also means other things can apply and because of your hat, anytime something applies so does Encrusted with Frost. You just keep stacking up psychotic amounts of cold damage. Now that’s from a single fucking cantrip that outperforms most spells but you’re a sorcerer. You can fire three of those, minimum, per turn. Add in haste? 5 attacks per turn.

Congratulations. You’re now terrifying. Have fun!

hexabs,

Wow this was amazingly detailed and optimized.

Stamets,
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

I was asked. I deliver.

pyrflie,

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.

Stamets,
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

Well I’m doing another run with this build atm so I’ll add it in. Thanks for the tips!

pyrflie,

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.

Stamets,
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

Completely agree buddy. I can’t wait to test this out.

inasaba,

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.

shrugal, (edited )

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:

So enemies miss their attack, everyone gets damage and Orb stacks, and that causes even more misses, damage and stacks.

Stamets,
@Stamets@startrek.website avatar

This is my go to when I play a cleric. Or my go to for Shadowheart. Makes the game so much easier.

quirzle,
@quirzle@kbin.social avatar

A nice bonus...until the House of Hope.

pyrflie, (edited )

spoilerThey 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.

pyrflie,

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.

Silaor,

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.

pyrflie,

Reverb and Radiating Orb is a bit of a Hat on a Hat, but dear gods does it drive a point home.

Kuro,
@Kuro@feddit.de avatar

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.

Pooptimist,

For the sniper, why are you multiclassing to fighter?

Shayeta,

Assassins get advantage and auto crit on first turn against enemies that haven’t taken a turn yet. Action surge is extra amazing here.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

Yup, plus the Champion features extra crits.

FireTower,
@FireTower@lemmy.world avatar

Create water + Tempest Cleric’s channel divinity = Profit

shrugal,

Double that with Sorcerer’s Twinned Spell!

Tidesphere,

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.

EonNShadow,

Ah yes, the stealth archer

Whirling_Ashandarei,

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).

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

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!

Whirling_Ashandarei,

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.

pyrflie, (edited )

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.

Whirling_Ashandarei,

Lol this sounds pretty fun

pyrflie,

Have fun Matrim.

Whirling_Ashandarei,

🎲🎲

Anticorp,

Paladin and cleric are really strong in act 2 because almost everything you fight is vulnerable to radiant damage.

LopensLeftArm,
@LopensLeftArm@sh.itjust.works avatar

Does the Pact of the Blade extra attack still stack with the Paladin? I thought they nerfed that this most recent patch.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Ashtear,

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.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

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?

Ashtear,

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.

inasaba,

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.

Silaor,

I read it was only in Honour mode, didn’t confirm it though

pyrflie,

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.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

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.

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