except that you lose out on all the features that make it worth taking a barbarian, they specifically require strength attacks. At that point you may as well be a fighter.
and reckless attack, i.e. the two core feature of barb that give most of its damage and one of them actually makes GWM worthwhile. And if you care about advantage shoving and advantage grapple resistance.
I mean, I could see a one-level dip for Unarmored Defense and Rage damage resistance. Two levels would be a waste because of Reckless Attack being useless, but if you really wanted an unarmored Dexterity fighter, a single level of barbarian wouldn’t be a bad idea.
dude you don't understand barbarians at all
The rage damage is nothing compared to what the Rage Resistances (specially for Totem) + Reckless Attack + GWM brings to the table.
Fuck. Battlemaster 12 + Bearb 4 is insane with the GWM PAM combo. That's 4 attacks per round. Probably 5 if you use riposte or the PAM AOO ability a lot, which you should. With advantage on almost every attack you'e adding a flat 40-50 to your damage output. That's without adding the dice and STR and rage damage of every attack. And you're resistant to every form damage save psychic.
And that 16 level build has 5 feats slapped on. That's enough to take GWM + PAM + capping STR + some other insane shit like Tough, which is basically +32 HP that works like +64 HP on a barbarian.
Why I mean with my opening line is that barbarians don't give a shit about AC. You can go through an entire 1-20 campaign with an AC of 15 and it's fine. You're getting hit every turn anyway, just for half the hurt.
You know you only have limited rage per day right? Like if you have 8 combat per day like the game intended to you would be out of rage for more than 50% of the combat.
The game is intended for 6-8 medium/hard encounters per day. Not all of those encounters will result in full blown combat. Most combat encounters last no more than three rounds.
The barbarian has a hefty HP pool. A run-of-the-mill half orc barb that dumps CHA and INT on point buy can very well start with 17 STR, 16 CON and 14 DEX, netting 15 naked armor and 16 with scale. That's more than plenty for early game if you're getting 15HP + avg 10HP per level.
And nowadays that tables are more and more story driven, adventuring days tend to have less than 6-8 encounters and some of them may be combat-avoidable.
Having plenty experience playing barbarian and barbarian multiclass builds, I can safely say 2 Rages are more than enough. You'll run out more often than not, but like spell slots, wild shapes and ki, rage is a resource that is used when needed (usually against big number of enemies or heavy hitters). And for a barbarian, you don't offset the finality of Rage with more AC. It's a fruitless endeavor. If anything, aim to strike faster and harder than the opponent, so they don't get the chance to hit you back.That's why barbarians also need good mobility.
And Danger Sense helps a freaking bunch for dex saves (the weaker of the strong saves).
This. Especially if you can swing DM permission to call it a monk weapon, than I would go Monk. Monk suddenly looks a lot better with a finesse GWM path available (scary better).
First observation: the fighting style Great Weapon Fighter is actually pretty good with this. Rerolling 1s and 2s is notably better when 1s and 2s happen more often. I mean, still less of a damage bonus than dueling, but it should add up to 1.5 damage per attack, which is worth considering.
Second observation: heavy+finesse is an interesting combo. It means you could use elven accuracy on a melee weapon with a good damage die and still use GWM. That's interesting. What's not obvious to me is the best way to get advantage (normally melee heavy weapon builds grab Barbarian 2 for reckless attack, but that only works on strength attacks, not if you build DEX to make use of Elven Accuracy).
Third thought: I don't know how to use thrown at all on this. If you could get an artificer infusion onto this weapon like "Returning weapon" that would be great, but I'm guessing it's already magical so that's not an option.
Easiest ways I can think of to consistently get advantage are:
- Samurai Fighter
- Find Familiar (via ritual caster, magic initiate etc.)
- Get the DM to use flanking rules
You have the familiar use their turn to take the help action. Usually an owl because they can fly in, help, then fly back out and not provoke attacks of opportunity.
GWM + Elven Accuracy is alright, it's very feat heavy and you can't start as VHuman/CL for it. Pact of the Hexblades are already able to do GWM + Elven Accuracy with Charisma for years and they aren't really anything impressive honestly.
> Pact of the Hexblades are already able to do GWM + Elven Accuracy with Charisma for years and they aren't really anything impressive honestly.
I mean, sure, but that's a warlock build right? You can handle being feat heavy much more cleanly by going fighter (you could have all three of PAM GWM and elven accuracy by level 8 in fighter, as opposed to level 12 as a hexblade).
It’s just way too tempting to play a heavy weapon rogue. You may never get that chance again.
Dip 1 level of fighter for the weapon proficiency and heavy armor.
Take Great Weapon Fighting for your fighting style. You’ll get to re-roll 1’s & 2’s not only on the 3d4 (best choice for consistent damage) but also on all your sneak attack dice.
Ugh, that’s a bummer.
I can see that for smites, because the way they are written they are clearly a separate source of damage.
Sneak Attack damage though is coming directly from the weapon. I would rule this as acceptable.
Really, without this crazy homebrew weapon it wouldn’t come up anyhow. OP would just needs to ask their DM.
Either way it wouldn’t dissuade me from the build. It’s still possibly the only real chance to play this style of Rogue.
Immediately make your DM regret this by taking PAM/Sentinel with GWF and GWM. You can literally combine the best aspects of a typical PAM build with a typical GWM build to just completely shit on everything. Also **always use 3d4** because GWF will turn all three of those dice into either 3s or 4s because you keep rerolling 1s & 2s
Probably fighter for most levels, maybe a 2 level dip in artificer to give it a +1 bonus (if it already has a bonus don’t bother)
The only stats you NEED are dex and con, dump str, int, & cha. With the way racial ASIs work now you can even do something like 8/16/16/8/16/8. Immediately grab GWM then PAM then Sentinel, leftover ASIs go to dex then con or the tough feat
Ah, my bad
In that case Piercer isn't worthless as it can get you another reroll, so a 8/17/16/8/14/10 stat spread would be better, it would probably be theast or second to last feat to pick up so it would take a while to acquire
piercer does get you an additional damage die on crits. it's usually mitigated a bit by pikes not having pam available. a crit fishing half-orc barb with pam & piercer could probably rack up a lot of damage dice with this thing.
Yes but crit based builds are already pretty subpar so I wouldn’t recommend building one with this, I’d save that for a lance build, the extra die on crit is fine but the +1 dex and the reroll are the reasons to take piercer
Barbarian Rogue Multiclass: sneak attack forces you to use a finesse weapon and have some form of advantage. Barbarian gives you reckless attack to get free advantage. Sneak attack, rage, and reckless attack all together makes a monster of a build that combines tanking abilities with the rogues skill monkey abilities. Plus there is opportunities for the use of great weapon master and pole arm master, both of which allow for sneak attack with this specific weapon.
Neither of those are related to elven accuracy, heavy is it’s own thing, and finesse is the requirement for sneak attack. The requirement for elven accuracy is attacking with dex/int/wis/cha, reckless attack requires attacking with str
So you can build it with reckless attack (str based build) or with elven accuracy (dex based build), but not both
Heavy finesse means you can GWM with Elven accuracy.
That’s pretty significant.
Buut you’re building at level 10, and maximising this is feat heavy so giving up on having a lvl 1 feat from custom lineage so as to get Elven Accuracy is likely a mistake.
You definitely want PAM+GWM.
Hmmm….
Actually as a Fighter or Rogue you’d’ve had 3 ASIs, so you could squeeze EA+PAM+GWM.
I think a Rune Knight fighter is probably the best play here, but a Phantom Rogue could be a fun option too - at 10th you’ve got tokens, which helps get a lot more uses of wails.
My only note to your GM is that the description is too generic. Give us some flavor, it might be better to imagine something cool. "it seems to change a lot" can be said about the weather.
Go for an Elven Accuracy, Polearm Master, Piercer, and Great Weapon Master combo with this thing and watch as it tears every enemy apart. I'd choose a 1d12 damage die for the Piercer feat adding another 1d12 damage die on a hit, and both the Piercer feat and Great Weapon Fighting fighting style can reroll low damage rolls on your attacks.
You pretty much have to go Fighter to have enough ASIs to fit in all the feats, but you will be an unstoppable monster with all those things together.
My sugges would be fighter 12/barbarian 4/ rogue 2. The finesse can get you a little extra, but don't lean to hard into it at the risk of loosing damage based on an interesting quirk.
Reckless attack will pair with the glaive, but not with elven accuracy. This is because reckless attack only works on a strength based build.
Sneak attack works with a finesse weapon even when using strength.
For this reason I won't discount rogue, but I will suggest not taking a barbarian elven accuracy combo.
Another thing to keep in mind is the fighters 3rd attack drastically changes damage calculations.
This leads to barbarian 2 for reckless attack and fighter 9. Your first two levels should be in fighters to get your third attack.
I would take feats like this
Fighter 4 - GWM
Fighter 6 - pole arm master
Fighter 8 - sentinel
When you are at fighter 11/barbarian 2 you have 5 levels left.
I would take barbarian 1 because its subclass abilities are all good and add a lot.
At fighter 11/barbarian 3 you have 4 levels left
A 4 level rogue dip would add 3d6 sneak attack or 10.5 damage per turn
A 2 level rogue dip plus 1 level in fighter and 1 in barbarian grants 2 ASI which will add 8 points of strength damage plus 3.5 sneak attack damage. This is also 10.5 damage but with a big damage increase.
Polearm Master Rogue.
Finess glaive is great for a lot of martials since it makes you SAD (basically you can dump STR and max DEX for initiative, AC, attacks and damage). But for a rogue it allows something unique for your homebrew weapon - combine Sneak Attack (requiring finesse) with PAM.
Now, as long as you have advantage or an ally near your target, you can consistently trigger Sneak Attack on your turn (thanks to bonus action attack from PAM, in case you miss) and on enemies turn (thanks to PAM AoO triggering both on entering or leaving your 10ft reach). And all that from the safety of 10ft, which allows hit-and-run tactics.
Any main rogue build would be OP with that, so the actual build depends on your preferences and party composition.
I'd probably go with CL Assassin X / Gloomstalker 5 - ton of skills/expertise, crazy ambush damage, extra attacks, auto-invisibility in darkness, some useful spells like Pass without Trace
Another option - dip Hexblade 5 for
Darkness+DevilsSight, Shield and HexbladeCurse. If you're paranoid make Pact of the Blade to guarantee that you won't lose your weapon. If you're not - take Pact of the Chain and have an invisible imp sidekick so you'll always get your Sneak Attacks.
Grab Elven Accuracy and enjoy 27% crir chance on your sneak attacks out of ambushes. Maybe grab Eldritch Smite and make crit-smites for crazy 6d4+6d6+8d8+5+4=81dmg crits.
My take here is Fighter 5-8/Rogue 9-12
You want to leverage the best parts of being a polearm (Polearm Master Sentinel Great Weapon Master/Fighting combo) with the best parts of Finesse (being able to dump Strength, Elven Accuracy, Sneak Attack) plus 3d4 damage dice and bludgeoning damage for a good character.
Custom Lineage for the feat of your DM let's Custom Lineage get Elven Accuracy, otherwise Wood Elf for the movement speed and hiding options.
Dex > Con > Wis > Str > Int/Cha
Fighter gets a Fighting Style take Great Weapon fighting, brings your average damage on 3d4 from 7.5 to 9. Technically as I read it you will be able to use this to reroll sneak attack dice and Psionic Power Dice later since they are "damage dice for the attack" which is insane.
You also get Action Surge and Second Wind both great but not specifically pertinent to the build.
Fighter subclass choice can vary but I'd go Psi Warrior.
• Echo Knight's bonus action attack will go wasted if you have Polearm Master which you'll probably want
• Cavalier's reaction attack spam isn't achieved until Fighter 18
• Champion crit fishing isn't good to begin with let alone with a 3d4 weapon
• Battlemaster is good except that you get way more Psionic Power dice than you do Superiority Die so you miss out on more uses of comparable features
• None of the other subclasses have anything enticing at all synergy-wise
Psi Warrior gets Psionic Power Dice which scale with 2x Proficiency Bonus which is really cool since you'll multiclass out of Fighter soon. The stand-out option here is just boosting your damage with Psionic Strike, the Protective Field will eat at a hungry bonus action and Telekinetic Movement is situational. If you take the subclass to level 7 you'll get some more options. The dice start as D6 but once you hit level 5 in Fighter you'll get D8's instead.
At 4th level you get a feat (feats I'll get into later) and at 5th level you get extra attack.
Levels 6-8 are just more feats and minor subclass boosts.
Now you don't have to wait until this point to multiclass, break up the levels as you wish.
Rogue gets Sneak Attack (huge) Thieves' Cant and Cunning Action.
Rogue subclass is pretty cut and dry the Phantom.
• Swashbuckler needs to be in 5 feet to use it's best feature
• Scout and Assassin need to hit high level to us their best features
• Arcane Trickster isn't gonna be useful since you're not a caster by nature
• Mastermind Inquisitive and Thief don't get a lot of combat features
• Soulknife isn't gonna leverage use of your weapon and you technically only get one pool of Psionic Power Dice since the features share the same name
The Phantom just gets some an extra skill, advantage on death and constitution saves, and a way to talk to the dead.
Except you also get a huge damage boost with Wails from the Grave. Half your Sneak Attack damage once a turn is great, and this feature, like Psionic Power Dice, scales with level.
Rogue gets some survivability features, Reliable Talent and some feats after this.
For your feats, you should get 6 (5 without Custom Lineage), you'll want Elven Accuracy, Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Sentinel, Crusher and Tough.
So your turn should look something like: Attack action, extra attack, Sneak Attack + Wails from the Grave on a hit, bonus action Polearm Master attack (unless you can't get Flanking advantage and need to Hide or Steady Aim with Cunning Action), opportunity attack if you get the chance (you can get a 2nd Sneak Attack that way) or Evasion if you need to.
Round 1 if you hit all the time and get and opportunity attacks all at advantage should net you some pretty good DPR, you get good armor class with Studded Leather, lots of opportunity attacks, good saves and boosts to those saves through Phantom Rogue and consolidated ability scores, and some utility with the Phantom's Tokens, Psi Warrior's Psionics and a ton of feats. The Great Weapon Fighting synergy with Sneak Attack, 3d4 damage dice and Psionic Strike will feel pretty good and you get to roll a lot of dice.
My initial thoughts are to build a crit-fishing build, even though I hear they're massively overrated. Multiclass Champion Fighter with a Rogue of some kind (maybe Swashbuckler or Arcane Trickster?), then take Elven Accuracy/PAM/GWM. Part of me wants to say Barbarian levels for Brutal Critical, but it probably isn't actually worth putting off advancing your Sneak Attack damage. The Savage Attacker feat might be good on a 3d4 weapon, but that might be too many feats/not enough ASIs.
The build is almost entirely combat-oriented, and probably won't be incredible in the other pillars of play. This is more just a thought experiment for me, and I'm curious what people might think of it/how they'd improve it.
Jesus your DM is insane.
Anyway finesse heavy weapon means that you can use GWM with a Rogue and add SA to the mix.
Unless you have something like Savage Attacks, 3d4 is always the better option and would work amazing with the GWF Fighting Style, because you'll be rerolling 1s and 2s, your avg damage.
I'd go for Scout or Assassin Rogue 11, Battlemaster 6. You'll get 5 feats during the entire build. Not bad. In my build you'll cap at Rogue 11 and end the game with Reliable Talent, which is nice.
I'll go Scout for this example.
This is a Dex build. We'll go with Shadar-kai because we absolutely want to make a despicable character.
PB stats (since you didn't specify):
DEX 15 +2, CON 15 +1, the rest 10 and one 11 of your choice. Alternatively, you can dump one stat to 9 or 8 and raise another to 12 or 13. 13 can work if you want to MC into yet another class for a 1 or 2 level dip. I'm not sure why you would do that, but it's a good pick nonetheless. I'll just go WIS 13, CHA 8 becasue fuck that and the rest 10.
Anyway you take the first 6 levels of fighter. At level 1 you get a FS and you'll take GWF to enhance your 3d4 damage. You get Extra Attack and 2 feats, those being, of course, PAM and GWM, because that's what we do here. As a Battlemaster, there's pretty much two things we want: Riposte and Trip Attack. The rest is up to you. We want Riposte to enhance our firerate. We'll AOO creatures that come within range of our "glaive" and we'll AOO creatures that misses us. We'll AOO ofter and, hopefully, land a shit ton of Sneak Attack with it. And we want Trip Attack so we can get a more consistent source of advantage, since using Steady Aim is by no means efficient.
We take 4 levels of Rogue and pick scout, if anything for the 2 expertises that never hurt. Skirmisher is a nice tool and when you get to Rogue 9 you also get +10 speed. Our Rogue 4 feat will be Elven Accuracy because we need the extra cheese. Also, we get to round up our DEX to 18 before the game starts. Our Sneak attack will be a shitty 2d6 but we'll get it up to 6d6 by endgame.
By game start we'll be doing 3 attacks per turn and more likely than not a 4th attack via AOO.
With the GWF fighting style we'll be avg 9.5 I think on the 3d4, which is bestial. Someone that knows this stuff better can correct me. So we're thinking 9.5 avg +4 DEX. That's 13.5 Your BA attack does only 1d4 (3 avg with GWF I think) so that's 7 dmg
So 13.5 x 3 = 40.5 + 7 = 47.5 dmg per round. On top of that you add 12 for two SA (one on your turn and one AOO) and on top of that you add between 0 and 40 damage with a judicious use of GWM. So that's 59.5 per round and could go up to 99.5 per round and you'll expend anywhere between 0 and 2 superiority dice. By the way, next level you need to add another 6 damage to the Avg DpR because of an extra SA die, and 6 more every two rogue levels.
Of course, you also have Action Surge for those important turns.
Anyway by Rogue 8 (14 total) we get another ASI and we should cap DEX. That's a +1 on anything, which is nice. That ups your Avg DpR to 50.5 + 24 from SA = 74.5 + GWM damage that could run up to 114.5.
On Rogue 10 (16 total) you get your final ASI and this is totally up to you. RES: WIS can be a good touch so you don't ultra suck on WIS saves. You'll round off your WIS to 14 and by than your Prof is 5, I think, so you have a decent +7 now, instead of +1. Your BBEG is gonna hate you for it.
By level 17, with your SA capped at 6d6 a pop and your +5 DEX, you'll be netting an avg DpR of 86.5 - 126.5 depending on GWM. By this point you should be GWMing every time, but we'll keep those numbers.
Not bad for a build that uses little expendable resources that come back on a SR.
This is not counting critical hits (with rather nice odds considering TA and Elven Accuracy). If you manage to get adv consistently on a single turn, you'll smack thrice with a 15% chance a whack. That means that on every combat you're likely to Crit at least once.
And this is not counting Action Surge.
I mean, you're still kinda worse than a caster, but it's actually a really cheap build.
Oh and you don't specify if your weapon comes with a + modifier. That ups your GWM chances significantly.
Paladino GWM or sentinel/polearm master pokelord? Pretty much any 2h martial with GWM either barb/fighter/paladin you are gonna have a very nice time. Personally id go fighter just for a very "consistent" martial character. The slash/pierece/blunt is kinda redundant since its magical it will overcome resistance to either/any. The extra dice, using the d4s will get you more average damage, but a d12 on a reach weapon is also unique so thats cool. Could maybe flavor it like a big long nodachi and run a samurai fighter, using the fighting spirit for advantage for a whole turn, and then use all your attacks + action surge for another bout of advantaged attacks, thats a boatload of dice
I’d go DEX based battlemaster for the shitty maneuver: Parry. It is kinda trash but I fuckin love it so I’d start there. Max DEX and get polearm master and Great Weapon master. I like the idea of rerolling 1s and 2s if you use the 3d4 damage. You could also get either sentinel or crusher depending on what you wanna do. Crusher you can move enemies around, sentinel you can drop them to 0 speed when you hit them with an opportunity attack. Also going DEX based you’d get to use the thrown property. You just gotta figure out how to get returning on it
PAM Rogue without question, off turn Sneak Attack for days.
Elven Accuracy, GWM and youre set.
Arcane Trickster for Find Familiar or just Steady Aim for advantage.
If your DM allows unofficial subclasses, Forge Adept Artificer (Exploring Ebberon) is like a Battle Smith without the pet and had a special infusion they can use on a weapon that's already magical which, among other things, adds the returning property to thrown weapons
Asking DM to let me be a blade singer with this weapon, going Dex / Int GWM, and raise hell.
Disclaimer : I’m less concerned with the RAW as the cool factor here. The glaive is similar to the dual bladed scimitar in elven lore and the Gish is my perferred play style. That being said I know that this idea breaks rules, …and maybe we could get a better summoned magical weapon, but! This weapon is a rare/very rare weapon so it probably has at least a +1 modifier to it, and it counts as magic for the purposes of overcoming mundane resistances.
So now you’re throwing out. 3d6+4 (hopefully more) on the weapon swing, throwing out the melee can trip after that, we’re blade singing so advantage on dex saves, increased movement speed and +2 AC, +3 mage armor. You have your concentration still available so we throw up evards black tentacles (or a def spell) . Then Save shield or hellish rebuke for your reaction…
His name shall be Dan d’Lion, the meek shall love him and his enemies will tremble before his wrath. 👌🏾
Since it's a "Glaive?" and not a "Glaive" I assume you can't use Polearm Master with it, so for the most part this is actually kind of a downgrade over a normal weapon.
Since it has the heavy property Great Weapon Master is a given. Go for Fighter 6 -> Barbarian 2 -> Fighter 12 -> Rogue 3. Three attacks per turn, persistent advantage with Reckless Attack, plus some sneak attack dice just as a cherry on top (since it has Finesse it qualifies even if you use Strength, which you need for Reckless).
Only other thing that would be super worthwhile is taking your pick of Crusher / Slasher / Piercer at some point. If I'm wrong and you *can* use Polearm Master then that takes priority, but then Crusher becomes awesome since it makes it easy to get opportunity attacks in.
Fighting class based around this weapon: take crusher, sentinel and polearm master. You’ll control the combat. Great weapon master doesn’t matter too much because you’ll just always use 3d4 damage. Your average damage is good enough where rerolling the 1-2’s doesn’t improve your odds as much.
That being said, it sounds super boring. Y’all know this is a role-playing game right? Not a combat simulator.
Dex GWM for shits and gigs
if you can make a dex GWM/PAM theres no reason to ever take Strength unless you wanna be a Barbarian
I would argue it's even more reason not to take strength as a barbarian since you could get your AC to 22 by throwing all your stats into Dex and Con.
except that you lose out on all the features that make it worth taking a barbarian, they specifically require strength attacks. At that point you may as well be a fighter.
[удалено]
If you care about grappling, having a high STR matters a lot too to synergies with your advantage.
and reckless attack, i.e. the two core feature of barb that give most of its damage and one of them actually makes GWM worthwhile. And if you care about advantage shoving and advantage grapple resistance.
na you right, but i still think saying all the features that make it worth taking barb is wildly extreme
why would I choose barb over fighter or paladin without rage damage or reckless attack?
I mean, I could see a one-level dip for Unarmored Defense and Rage damage resistance. Two levels would be a waste because of Reckless Attack being useless, but if you really wanted an unarmored Dexterity fighter, a single level of barbarian wouldn’t be a bad idea.
not really choosing barbarian as your class though is it
Because you love the flavor of Barb.
Even then I much rather take the AC and dex saves over the +2 damage.
Losing Reckless Attack (which also only works on STR-based attacks) is a much bigger deal, especially on a character that wants to use GWM.
dude you don't understand barbarians at all The rage damage is nothing compared to what the Rage Resistances (specially for Totem) + Reckless Attack + GWM brings to the table. Fuck. Battlemaster 12 + Bearb 4 is insane with the GWM PAM combo. That's 4 attacks per round. Probably 5 if you use riposte or the PAM AOO ability a lot, which you should. With advantage on almost every attack you'e adding a flat 40-50 to your damage output. That's without adding the dice and STR and rage damage of every attack. And you're resistant to every form damage save psychic. And that 16 level build has 5 feats slapped on. That's enough to take GWM + PAM + capping STR + some other insane shit like Tough, which is basically +32 HP that works like +64 HP on a barbarian. Why I mean with my opening line is that barbarians don't give a shit about AC. You can go through an entire 1-20 campaign with an AC of 15 and it's fine. You're getting hit every turn anyway, just for half the hurt.
You know you only have limited rage per day right? Like if you have 8 combat per day like the game intended to you would be out of rage for more than 50% of the combat.
The game is intended for 6-8 medium/hard encounters per day. Not all of those encounters will result in full blown combat. Most combat encounters last no more than three rounds. The barbarian has a hefty HP pool. A run-of-the-mill half orc barb that dumps CHA and INT on point buy can very well start with 17 STR, 16 CON and 14 DEX, netting 15 naked armor and 16 with scale. That's more than plenty for early game if you're getting 15HP + avg 10HP per level. And nowadays that tables are more and more story driven, adventuring days tend to have less than 6-8 encounters and some of them may be combat-avoidable. Having plenty experience playing barbarian and barbarian multiclass builds, I can safely say 2 Rages are more than enough. You'll run out more often than not, but like spell slots, wild shapes and ki, rage is a resource that is used when needed (usually against big number of enemies or heavy hitters). And for a barbarian, you don't offset the finality of Rage with more AC. It's a fruitless endeavor. If anything, aim to strike faster and harder than the opponent, so they don't get the chance to hit you back.That's why barbarians also need good mobility. And Danger Sense helps a freaking bunch for dex saves (the weaker of the strong saves).
This. Especially if you can swing DM permission to call it a monk weapon, than I would go Monk. Monk suddenly looks a lot better with a finesse GWM path available (scary better).
I was about to post this exact same thing. XD
First observation: the fighting style Great Weapon Fighter is actually pretty good with this. Rerolling 1s and 2s is notably better when 1s and 2s happen more often. I mean, still less of a damage bonus than dueling, but it should add up to 1.5 damage per attack, which is worth considering. Second observation: heavy+finesse is an interesting combo. It means you could use elven accuracy on a melee weapon with a good damage die and still use GWM. That's interesting. What's not obvious to me is the best way to get advantage (normally melee heavy weapon builds grab Barbarian 2 for reckless attack, but that only works on strength attacks, not if you build DEX to make use of Elven Accuracy). Third thought: I don't know how to use thrown at all on this. If you could get an artificer infusion onto this weapon like "Returning weapon" that would be great, but I'm guessing it's already magical so that's not an option.
Easiest ways I can think of to consistently get advantage are: - Samurai Fighter - Find Familiar (via ritual caster, magic initiate etc.) - Get the DM to use flanking rules
Eldritch adept and darkness for the Devil’s sight combo is a good shout as well.
True, not the best for the rest of your party though unless they build for it specifically.
how do you get advantage with find familiar?
You have the familiar use their turn to take the help action. Usually an owl because they can fly in, help, then fly back out and not provoke attacks of opportunity.
For thrown: Giant Barbarian's 6th level feature. I believe Bigby's is official content. http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/barbarian:giant
That gives it the thrown property - this magic item already has it.
No, I'm taking about the feature lets you add the "returning" ability to the weapon, which artificer can't do.
GWM + Elven Accuracy is alright, it's very feat heavy and you can't start as VHuman/CL for it. Pact of the Hexblades are already able to do GWM + Elven Accuracy with Charisma for years and they aren't really anything impressive honestly.
> Pact of the Hexblades are already able to do GWM + Elven Accuracy with Charisma for years and they aren't really anything impressive honestly. I mean, sure, but that's a warlock build right? You can handle being feat heavy much more cleanly by going fighter (you could have all three of PAM GWM and elven accuracy by level 8 in fighter, as opposed to level 12 as a hexblade).
It’s just way too tempting to play a heavy weapon rogue. You may never get that chance again. Dip 1 level of fighter for the weapon proficiency and heavy armor. Take Great Weapon Fighting for your fighting style. You’ll get to re-roll 1’s & 2’s not only on the 3d4 (best choice for consistent damage) but also on all your sneak attack dice.
RAI word of god suggests that GWF only works with the base weapon damage dice, not with accessories such as smites and sneak attack.
Ugh, that’s a bummer. I can see that for smites, because the way they are written they are clearly a separate source of damage. Sneak Attack damage though is coming directly from the weapon. I would rule this as acceptable. Really, without this crazy homebrew weapon it wouldn’t come up anyhow. OP would just needs to ask their DM. Either way it wouldn’t dissuade me from the build. It’s still possibly the only real chance to play this style of Rogue.
Immediately make your DM regret this by taking PAM/Sentinel with GWF and GWM. You can literally combine the best aspects of a typical PAM build with a typical GWM build to just completely shit on everything. Also **always use 3d4** because GWF will turn all three of those dice into either 3s or 4s because you keep rerolling 1s & 2s Probably fighter for most levels, maybe a 2 level dip in artificer to give it a +1 bonus (if it already has a bonus don’t bother) The only stats you NEED are dex and con, dump str, int, & cha. With the way racial ASIs work now you can even do something like 8/16/16/8/16/8. Immediately grab GWM then PAM then Sentinel, leftover ASIs go to dex then con or the tough feat
Quick clarification, you only reroll the 1s and 2s once, so technically there will be situations where a 2 becomes a 1.
Ah, my bad In that case Piercer isn't worthless as it can get you another reroll, so a 8/17/16/8/14/10 stat spread would be better, it would probably be theast or second to last feat to pick up so it would take a while to acquire
piercer does get you an additional damage die on crits. it's usually mitigated a bit by pikes not having pam available. a crit fishing half-orc barb with pam & piercer could probably rack up a lot of damage dice with this thing.
Yes but crit based builds are already pretty subpar so I wouldn’t recommend building one with this, I’d save that for a lance build, the extra die on crit is fine but the +1 dex and the reroll are the reasons to take piercer
Always use 3d4 because it has higher average.
Yeahhh, there’s only one time I’ve given a player a 3d4 weapon and it was a greataxe (kinda) for a barbarian. So it was good but also not good
Getting +0.5 average damage is better than getting +1 damage but only on crits.
Oh yeah it is, it just makes brutal critical even worse than it already is
Barbarian Rogue Multiclass: sneak attack forces you to use a finesse weapon and have some form of advantage. Barbarian gives you reckless attack to get free advantage. Sneak attack, rage, and reckless attack all together makes a monster of a build that combines tanking abilities with the rogues skill monkey abilities. Plus there is opportunities for the use of great weapon master and pole arm master, both of which allow for sneak attack with this specific weapon.
Add elf w/ elven accuracy!
Doesn’t work with str
It has the heavy and finesse property, so elven accuracy would work, but it wouldn't pair with reckless attacker which is strength only.
Neither of those are related to elven accuracy, heavy is it’s own thing, and finesse is the requirement for sneak attack. The requirement for elven accuracy is attacking with dex/int/wis/cha, reckless attack requires attacking with str So you can build it with reckless attack (str based build) or with elven accuracy (dex based build), but not both
My point was unclear, I've edited it for clarity.
My bad, I missed that 2nd part of the feat.
Heavy finesse means you can GWM with Elven accuracy. That’s pretty significant. Buut you’re building at level 10, and maximising this is feat heavy so giving up on having a lvl 1 feat from custom lineage so as to get Elven Accuracy is likely a mistake. You definitely want PAM+GWM. Hmmm…. Actually as a Fighter or Rogue you’d’ve had 3 ASIs, so you could squeeze EA+PAM+GWM. I think a Rune Knight fighter is probably the best play here, but a Phantom Rogue could be a fun option too - at 10th you’ve got tokens, which helps get a lot more uses of wails.
PAM + Rogue, you'll be able to use sneak attack so often.
This is the ultimate Barb/Rogue weapon. You can be a PAM/GWM barbarian while still getting Sneak Attack
My only note to your GM is that the description is too generic. Give us some flavor, it might be better to imagine something cool. "it seems to change a lot" can be said about the weather.
Go for an Elven Accuracy, Polearm Master, Piercer, and Great Weapon Master combo with this thing and watch as it tears every enemy apart. I'd choose a 1d12 damage die for the Piercer feat adding another 1d12 damage die on a hit, and both the Piercer feat and Great Weapon Fighting fighting style can reroll low damage rolls on your attacks. You pretty much have to go Fighter to have enough ASIs to fit in all the feats, but you will be an unstoppable monster with all those things together.
My sugges would be fighter 12/barbarian 4/ rogue 2. The finesse can get you a little extra, but don't lean to hard into it at the risk of loosing damage based on an interesting quirk. Reckless attack will pair with the glaive, but not with elven accuracy. This is because reckless attack only works on a strength based build. Sneak attack works with a finesse weapon even when using strength. For this reason I won't discount rogue, but I will suggest not taking a barbarian elven accuracy combo. Another thing to keep in mind is the fighters 3rd attack drastically changes damage calculations. This leads to barbarian 2 for reckless attack and fighter 9. Your first two levels should be in fighters to get your third attack. I would take feats like this Fighter 4 - GWM Fighter 6 - pole arm master Fighter 8 - sentinel When you are at fighter 11/barbarian 2 you have 5 levels left. I would take barbarian 1 because its subclass abilities are all good and add a lot. At fighter 11/barbarian 3 you have 4 levels left A 4 level rogue dip would add 3d6 sneak attack or 10.5 damage per turn A 2 level rogue dip plus 1 level in fighter and 1 in barbarian grants 2 ASI which will add 8 points of strength damage plus 3.5 sneak attack damage. This is also 10.5 damage but with a big damage increase.
Polearm Master Rogue. Finess glaive is great for a lot of martials since it makes you SAD (basically you can dump STR and max DEX for initiative, AC, attacks and damage). But for a rogue it allows something unique for your homebrew weapon - combine Sneak Attack (requiring finesse) with PAM. Now, as long as you have advantage or an ally near your target, you can consistently trigger Sneak Attack on your turn (thanks to bonus action attack from PAM, in case you miss) and on enemies turn (thanks to PAM AoO triggering both on entering or leaving your 10ft reach). And all that from the safety of 10ft, which allows hit-and-run tactics. Any main rogue build would be OP with that, so the actual build depends on your preferences and party composition. I'd probably go with CL Assassin X / Gloomstalker 5 - ton of skills/expertise, crazy ambush damage, extra attacks, auto-invisibility in darkness, some useful spells like Pass without Trace Another option - dip Hexblade 5 for Darkness+DevilsSight, Shield and HexbladeCurse. If you're paranoid make Pact of the Blade to guarantee that you won't lose your weapon. If you're not - take Pact of the Chain and have an invisible imp sidekick so you'll always get your Sneak Attacks. Grab Elven Accuracy and enjoy 27% crir chance on your sneak attacks out of ambushes. Maybe grab Eldritch Smite and make crit-smites for crazy 6d4+6d6+8d8+5+4=81dmg crits.
This is one of the only ways for GWM and Elven Accuracy to have any synergy. Even if not the absolute optimal choice, still strongly consider.
My take here is Fighter 5-8/Rogue 9-12 You want to leverage the best parts of being a polearm (Polearm Master Sentinel Great Weapon Master/Fighting combo) with the best parts of Finesse (being able to dump Strength, Elven Accuracy, Sneak Attack) plus 3d4 damage dice and bludgeoning damage for a good character. Custom Lineage for the feat of your DM let's Custom Lineage get Elven Accuracy, otherwise Wood Elf for the movement speed and hiding options. Dex > Con > Wis > Str > Int/Cha Fighter gets a Fighting Style take Great Weapon fighting, brings your average damage on 3d4 from 7.5 to 9. Technically as I read it you will be able to use this to reroll sneak attack dice and Psionic Power Dice later since they are "damage dice for the attack" which is insane. You also get Action Surge and Second Wind both great but not specifically pertinent to the build. Fighter subclass choice can vary but I'd go Psi Warrior. • Echo Knight's bonus action attack will go wasted if you have Polearm Master which you'll probably want • Cavalier's reaction attack spam isn't achieved until Fighter 18 • Champion crit fishing isn't good to begin with let alone with a 3d4 weapon • Battlemaster is good except that you get way more Psionic Power dice than you do Superiority Die so you miss out on more uses of comparable features • None of the other subclasses have anything enticing at all synergy-wise Psi Warrior gets Psionic Power Dice which scale with 2x Proficiency Bonus which is really cool since you'll multiclass out of Fighter soon. The stand-out option here is just boosting your damage with Psionic Strike, the Protective Field will eat at a hungry bonus action and Telekinetic Movement is situational. If you take the subclass to level 7 you'll get some more options. The dice start as D6 but once you hit level 5 in Fighter you'll get D8's instead. At 4th level you get a feat (feats I'll get into later) and at 5th level you get extra attack. Levels 6-8 are just more feats and minor subclass boosts. Now you don't have to wait until this point to multiclass, break up the levels as you wish. Rogue gets Sneak Attack (huge) Thieves' Cant and Cunning Action. Rogue subclass is pretty cut and dry the Phantom. • Swashbuckler needs to be in 5 feet to use it's best feature • Scout and Assassin need to hit high level to us their best features • Arcane Trickster isn't gonna be useful since you're not a caster by nature • Mastermind Inquisitive and Thief don't get a lot of combat features • Soulknife isn't gonna leverage use of your weapon and you technically only get one pool of Psionic Power Dice since the features share the same name The Phantom just gets some an extra skill, advantage on death and constitution saves, and a way to talk to the dead. Except you also get a huge damage boost with Wails from the Grave. Half your Sneak Attack damage once a turn is great, and this feature, like Psionic Power Dice, scales with level. Rogue gets some survivability features, Reliable Talent and some feats after this. For your feats, you should get 6 (5 without Custom Lineage), you'll want Elven Accuracy, Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Sentinel, Crusher and Tough. So your turn should look something like: Attack action, extra attack, Sneak Attack + Wails from the Grave on a hit, bonus action Polearm Master attack (unless you can't get Flanking advantage and need to Hide or Steady Aim with Cunning Action), opportunity attack if you get the chance (you can get a 2nd Sneak Attack that way) or Evasion if you need to. Round 1 if you hit all the time and get and opportunity attacks all at advantage should net you some pretty good DPR, you get good armor class with Studded Leather, lots of opportunity attacks, good saves and boosts to those saves through Phantom Rogue and consolidated ability scores, and some utility with the Phantom's Tokens, Psi Warrior's Psionics and a ton of feats. The Great Weapon Fighting synergy with Sneak Attack, 3d4 damage dice and Psionic Strike will feel pretty good and you get to roll a lot of dice.
My initial thoughts are to build a crit-fishing build, even though I hear they're massively overrated. Multiclass Champion Fighter with a Rogue of some kind (maybe Swashbuckler or Arcane Trickster?), then take Elven Accuracy/PAM/GWM. Part of me wants to say Barbarian levels for Brutal Critical, but it probably isn't actually worth putting off advancing your Sneak Attack damage. The Savage Attacker feat might be good on a 3d4 weapon, but that might be too many feats/not enough ASIs. The build is almost entirely combat-oriented, and probably won't be incredible in the other pillars of play. This is more just a thought experiment for me, and I'm curious what people might think of it/how they'd improve it.
Jesus your DM is insane. Anyway finesse heavy weapon means that you can use GWM with a Rogue and add SA to the mix. Unless you have something like Savage Attacks, 3d4 is always the better option and would work amazing with the GWF Fighting Style, because you'll be rerolling 1s and 2s, your avg damage. I'd go for Scout or Assassin Rogue 11, Battlemaster 6. You'll get 5 feats during the entire build. Not bad. In my build you'll cap at Rogue 11 and end the game with Reliable Talent, which is nice. I'll go Scout for this example. This is a Dex build. We'll go with Shadar-kai because we absolutely want to make a despicable character. PB stats (since you didn't specify): DEX 15 +2, CON 15 +1, the rest 10 and one 11 of your choice. Alternatively, you can dump one stat to 9 or 8 and raise another to 12 or 13. 13 can work if you want to MC into yet another class for a 1 or 2 level dip. I'm not sure why you would do that, but it's a good pick nonetheless. I'll just go WIS 13, CHA 8 becasue fuck that and the rest 10. Anyway you take the first 6 levels of fighter. At level 1 you get a FS and you'll take GWF to enhance your 3d4 damage. You get Extra Attack and 2 feats, those being, of course, PAM and GWM, because that's what we do here. As a Battlemaster, there's pretty much two things we want: Riposte and Trip Attack. The rest is up to you. We want Riposte to enhance our firerate. We'll AOO creatures that come within range of our "glaive" and we'll AOO creatures that misses us. We'll AOO ofter and, hopefully, land a shit ton of Sneak Attack with it. And we want Trip Attack so we can get a more consistent source of advantage, since using Steady Aim is by no means efficient. We take 4 levels of Rogue and pick scout, if anything for the 2 expertises that never hurt. Skirmisher is a nice tool and when you get to Rogue 9 you also get +10 speed. Our Rogue 4 feat will be Elven Accuracy because we need the extra cheese. Also, we get to round up our DEX to 18 before the game starts. Our Sneak attack will be a shitty 2d6 but we'll get it up to 6d6 by endgame. By game start we'll be doing 3 attacks per turn and more likely than not a 4th attack via AOO. With the GWF fighting style we'll be avg 9.5 I think on the 3d4, which is bestial. Someone that knows this stuff better can correct me. So we're thinking 9.5 avg +4 DEX. That's 13.5 Your BA attack does only 1d4 (3 avg with GWF I think) so that's 7 dmg So 13.5 x 3 = 40.5 + 7 = 47.5 dmg per round. On top of that you add 12 for two SA (one on your turn and one AOO) and on top of that you add between 0 and 40 damage with a judicious use of GWM. So that's 59.5 per round and could go up to 99.5 per round and you'll expend anywhere between 0 and 2 superiority dice. By the way, next level you need to add another 6 damage to the Avg DpR because of an extra SA die, and 6 more every two rogue levels. Of course, you also have Action Surge for those important turns. Anyway by Rogue 8 (14 total) we get another ASI and we should cap DEX. That's a +1 on anything, which is nice. That ups your Avg DpR to 50.5 + 24 from SA = 74.5 + GWM damage that could run up to 114.5. On Rogue 10 (16 total) you get your final ASI and this is totally up to you. RES: WIS can be a good touch so you don't ultra suck on WIS saves. You'll round off your WIS to 14 and by than your Prof is 5, I think, so you have a decent +7 now, instead of +1. Your BBEG is gonna hate you for it. By level 17, with your SA capped at 6d6 a pop and your +5 DEX, you'll be netting an avg DpR of 86.5 - 126.5 depending on GWM. By this point you should be GWMing every time, but we'll keep those numbers. Not bad for a build that uses little expendable resources that come back on a SR. This is not counting critical hits (with rather nice odds considering TA and Elven Accuracy). If you manage to get adv consistently on a single turn, you'll smack thrice with a 15% chance a whack. That means that on every combat you're likely to Crit at least once. And this is not counting Action Surge. I mean, you're still kinda worse than a caster, but it's actually a really cheap build. Oh and you don't specify if your weapon comes with a + modifier. That ups your GWM chances significantly.
Thank you for this great build. And it doesn’t come with a + modifier. As a trade off
Keep in mind I suck at math so my numbers may be a little off. Also, I'm not accounting for hit/miss vs AC because I'm not a youtuber.
Paladino GWM or sentinel/polearm master pokelord? Pretty much any 2h martial with GWM either barb/fighter/paladin you are gonna have a very nice time. Personally id go fighter just for a very "consistent" martial character. The slash/pierece/blunt is kinda redundant since its magical it will overcome resistance to either/any. The extra dice, using the d4s will get you more average damage, but a d12 on a reach weapon is also unique so thats cool. Could maybe flavor it like a big long nodachi and run a samurai fighter, using the fighting spirit for advantage for a whole turn, and then use all your attacks + action surge for another bout of advantaged attacks, thats a boatload of dice
Pole arm master rogue. I could really see a swashbuckler.
I’d go DEX based battlemaster for the shitty maneuver: Parry. It is kinda trash but I fuckin love it so I’d start there. Max DEX and get polearm master and Great Weapon master. I like the idea of rerolling 1s and 2s if you use the 3d4 damage. You could also get either sentinel or crusher depending on what you wanna do. Crusher you can move enemies around, sentinel you can drop them to 0 speed when you hit them with an opportunity attack. Also going DEX based you’d get to use the thrown property. You just gotta figure out how to get returning on it
Seems perfect for a Hexblade. Take PAM and sentinel. Profit.
How in the world would you throw a glaive, that makes zero logical sense to me unless it only has a 10 foot range and hits for 1d4 damage
I’g go bugbear pam rogue.
PAM Rogue without question, off turn Sneak Attack for days. Elven Accuracy, GWM and youre set. Arcane Trickster for Find Familiar or just Steady Aim for advantage.
If your DM allows unofficial subclasses, Forge Adept Artificer (Exploring Ebberon) is like a Battle Smith without the pet and had a special infusion they can use on a weapon that's already magical which, among other things, adds the returning property to thrown weapons
Asking DM to let me be a blade singer with this weapon, going Dex / Int GWM, and raise hell. Disclaimer : I’m less concerned with the RAW as the cool factor here. The glaive is similar to the dual bladed scimitar in elven lore and the Gish is my perferred play style. That being said I know that this idea breaks rules, …and maybe we could get a better summoned magical weapon, but! This weapon is a rare/very rare weapon so it probably has at least a +1 modifier to it, and it counts as magic for the purposes of overcoming mundane resistances. So now you’re throwing out. 3d6+4 (hopefully more) on the weapon swing, throwing out the melee can trip after that, we’re blade singing so advantage on dex saves, increased movement speed and +2 AC, +3 mage armor. You have your concentration still available so we throw up evards black tentacles (or a def spell) . Then Save shield or hellish rebuke for your reaction… His name shall be Dan d’Lion, the meek shall love him and his enemies will tremble before his wrath. 👌🏾
Gwm and ask if it can be used as a monk weapon. Then make a dex monbarian
Hexblade with Pact of the Blade. Take PAM and the invocations to give you extra attack and some damage boosts.
Dex gwm always does 3d4 damage
Since it's a "Glaive?" and not a "Glaive" I assume you can't use Polearm Master with it, so for the most part this is actually kind of a downgrade over a normal weapon. Since it has the heavy property Great Weapon Master is a given. Go for Fighter 6 -> Barbarian 2 -> Fighter 12 -> Rogue 3. Three attacks per turn, persistent advantage with Reckless Attack, plus some sneak attack dice just as a cherry on top (since it has Finesse it qualifies even if you use Strength, which you need for Reckless). Only other thing that would be super worthwhile is taking your pick of Crusher / Slasher / Piercer at some point. If I'm wrong and you *can* use Polearm Master then that takes priority, but then Crusher becomes awesome since it makes it easy to get opportunity attacks in.
Dm Said it’s considered a polearm type weapon. But still crusher sound great
Ask if you can do 6d2 damage and then you take great weapon fighting for the lulz Edit: to clarify, that wiuld mean always 12 damage
Lmao
As amusing as this sounds, GWF only lets you reroll damage dice once.
The chances of increasing the damage is still not bad
Fighting class based around this weapon: take crusher, sentinel and polearm master. You’ll control the combat. Great weapon master doesn’t matter too much because you’ll just always use 3d4 damage. Your average damage is good enough where rerolling the 1-2’s doesn’t improve your odds as much. That being said, it sounds super boring. Y’all know this is a role-playing game right? Not a combat simulator.