The Battery and the Blender - D&D: Optimized #26

[Music] welcome welcome welcome to d d optimized the show where each week we take a deep dive into one sometimes two specific character builds for dungeons and dragons 5e and we do our best to theorycraft on them and see if we can't make them as powerful as possible finding cool fun synergies and uh yeah trying to optimize them as it were um if you like me enjoy character creation and theory crafting in d almost as much as playing the actual game then welcome home this is a place for you so we are super happy to have you my name is colby i am your host and yeah um thanks for being here so according to youtube analytics um the vast majority of people who watch my videos don't listen to the last 30 to 40 seconds and i make some very important announcements that i don't want you guys to be missing so i'm going to make them now here we go point number one i love you guys and you're awesome and that's important for you to know point number two um check out our subreddit we do have a subreddit and we're growing a nice cool little community i think so you can continue the conversation and or throw up questions that you have or maybe builds that you want other people or me to take a look at and i don't respond to every thread but i i do my best to at least read all of them and i respond to to a lot of them so anyway um if you like the show of course please subscribe like share comment all of the things it really helps us we're growing nicely and i thank you for that and i'm looking for ideas when for when we hit 5000 um subscribers which probably will happen in the next couple of months i think so if you've got one feel free to share it i threw out on my sliding into my dms episode last week about potentially doing an asmr video as somebody had requested and that got some positive response but no please that it would probably be more of a parody of an asmr video but it could be fun and or funny if you want to laugh at me anyway um finally make sure to check out the graphs and the math and things if you're interested i do spend a lot of time kind of crunching numbers and plotting graphs and then comparing builds that i do to other builds that i've done and things like that so anyway you can find those um in the show notes and the video description so that's all the announcements thanks for listening um today we are going to do another team up build i've only done a couple of these and the ones that i've done you guys seem to like feels a little unique and cool and fun so i wanted to do another one the the two characters that i'm going to be kind of diving in on are both ones that i've had requests for but rarely to put them together um i think this would be a ton of fun to play with a friend that the team up is a cleric rogue combination and specifically an order cleric and a phantom robe though they do some multi-classing the concept is this one the cleric of course is sort of the the the support character the one who is built to empower their friend as much as possible with buffs with heels with additional attacks so they are the battery they are the juice of the of the combo and the rogue is the basically after having been empowered to the nth degree is just a power blender and they turn all of their enemies into pulp and so um yeah without further ado and no super long preamble for once um i present episode 26 the battery and the blender let's jump in all right at level one blender so yeah we're doing two characters right so i'm gonna have to do every level for every character we're probably going to go long and my episodes have just been getting longer and longer as some of you know most of you say it's fine some of you say dude you talk too much and that's okay and hopefully you can put me on two-time speed or use the chapter things down below to skip ahead if you need to but anyway i'm going to do my best to be concise and probably fail level one the blender we're starting off with the class of the barbarian and you're thinking you said this was a rogue build i know but hang on there's a few things that we get out of barbarian that are really great for us um first off rage is fantastic it gives us extra damage it gives us resistance second off we want a martial class that can potentially get to two attacks in a turn with extra attack and the barbarian does that for us and most importantly thirdly the barbarians get easy access to advantage advantage on every turn or every attack that they make in their turn i should say which is big right and number four it's just cool because it's very rarely done a barbarian rogue build right uh for a couple of reasons which we'll discuss the downsides of course are you know one it's going to delay our rogue levels but trust me it's worth it another downside there's kind of some weirdness with the barbarian and the rogue together in that in order to take advantage of rage um the barbarian needs to be making attacks with strength right strength-based weapon attacks um and rogues tend to generally favor dexterity for a number of reasons not that they have to but it benefits them in a lot of their roguey abilities like um you know disarming traps and stealthing and all those things so it can potentially make this character a little bit mad right multiple ability score dependent um so anyway that's that's a little funky but um we're going to just deal with it so um for our race we're gonna go custom lineage um because we get a plus two to an ability score which we'll put into strength and a free feet which we really really want for this build and that free feet is the revenant blade feet do i contradict myself very well i contradict myself i am large i contain multitudes that's your walt whitman uh quote for the day so here's the thing i know i put out an 30 minute short video a couple of weeks ago on why the double bladed scimitar was not as good as to weapon fighting or um great weapon fighting when you do the math for the most uh part um but in this case in this case we're gonna make an exception for for some really good reasons um first off we need we need our weapon to be a finesse weapon in order to get advantage from sneak attack damage um when rogues make attacks if they want to get sneak attack it has to be done with a finesse weapon right so so the double bladed scimitar covers that if we take the revenant blade feature um and and again we don't have to use dexterity as our as our plus to hit and plus to damage when we make an attack with a finesse weapon we just can but the weapon itself has to be classified as a finesse weapon okay um let's see and and so yeah outside of shadowblade the the double-bladed scimitar as far as i know someone's probably gonna correct me and that's okay um is the best the hardest hitting finesse weapon in game because 2d4 on the main hand attack is ever so slightly better than the 1d8 that you would get from a rapier on average right the 2d4 is on average 5 1d8 on average is 4.5 um so anyway uh 2d4 is greater than 1d8 you're both the the other great thing about the double bladed scimitar is of course it lets you make um uh as a bonus action you can make an offhand essentially or or another attack with the other side of your double-bladed scimitar there's two blades right think of it as like a staff or like a pole with two scimitars one on each end um so you can hit with one and then bonus action hit with the other the other only does one d4 of damage but you get to add your in our case strength modifier to the damage um and so if you were doing two weapon fighting instead you know rape well short sword short sword because there have to be light weapons unless you take a feet right and you could potentially be rapier rapier but even then you would have to have the two up in fighting style in order to be able to add your your ability score modifier to the damage of the bonus action attack and barbarians do not get fighting styles yes we could take a feet forward at some point yes we could take a level in fighter or ranger i guess to pick it up but we're going to be very jealous of every single one of our levels because um because for every two levels of rogue for this build we're going to get an extra 2d6 of damage per round and yes i said 2d6 on purpose um so anyway it just it just lets us kind of get right into our damage as quickly as possible and sort of check all the boxes of things that we need as far as being a finesse weapon getting to weaponize our bonus action um and still add our ability score modifier to that weaponized bonus attack and there's there's one other reason it won't come until later but later on we're going to benefit greatly from having all of our attacks be made with the same weapon instead of two different ones and and we'll get into that like i say later um final reason double bladed scimitars are just cool i mean they're just they're they just the concept of them is cool i think the the imagery and the the way that i imagine them looking and being used in combat i just i love and i think it feels cool and a lot of you have requested that i try and create a character built on using the double bladed scimitar so anyway that's what we're doing it's going to be great um one thing about the revenant blade feet it does have a prerequisite that you be an elf and yes we took custom lineage and we get into this all the time but you know hopefully at your table you can take custom lineage and still call yourself a custom elf and thereby qualify for this feat if that doesn't work at your table that's fine take an elf of your choosing enjoy the additional little perks and abilities that that you get as just an actual elf instead of custom lineage and then you're just gonna have to pick up revenant blade um when you hit level four and you might be a little bit behind in your damage but it's not going to be crippling and it'll still work so anyway the remnant blade feet is fantastic it um makes the it makes the double-bladed scimitar a finesse weapon otherwise it is not and thereby again you couldn't get sneak attack damage otherwise so you need it for that um and it gives us a plus one to our ac which is awesome and it gives us a plus one to our strength or dex of course we're going to take strength and thereby allows us to start with an 18 strength right at level 1 because moving on to abilities assuming point by as always you're going to buy 15 in strength 15 or sorry 4 so 15 in strength you get plus two for your racial uh plus one for your feet um so 18 total 14 con constitution 14 dexterity and then whatever else you want to do for equipment so barbarians can start with any martial melee weapon and so obviously take a double bladed scimitar they are expensive they are a hundred gold and so if you tried to go gold buy here that would take up most of your gold and you probably wouldn't be able to afford other things that you need so just go ahead and take standard equipment grab the double bladed scimitar for your marshall weapon um and right i already mentioned this here's the problem with going standard equipment right you you barbarians don't actually start with any armor you're proficient in light and medium armor but you don't start with any medium armor of course again if you did gold buy 100 gold for the double bladed scimitar probably wouldn't leave you with enough to pick up some good medium armor scale male is 50 gold right and so unless you roll really well on that gold by roll um you're just gonna have to settle for naked for now so hang out in your loincloth like like any good barbarian would and um start saving your money because our you know we we do get um as a level one barbarian we do get unarmored defense which lets you add your constitution and your dexterity modifiers to your armor class but our con and our decks are only 14 so plus two plus two so we're at a 14 armor class it's not fantastic start saving your money um eventually you'll be able to get up to half plate and that'll put you at a 17 total and that's you know that's respectable especially because we're going to be getting resistance to most of the damage that we take because of rage so let's just talk about rage make sure we're all clear on how it works for now as a bonus action you can enter a frothy frenzied rage right it lasts for a minute you have to always make sure that you either take damage or make an attack every turn or you're or you'll lose your rage but while raging you get an extra two to damage on every attack that you make every strength based weapon attack that you make and then you have resistance to bludgeoning piercing and slashing damage and and that includes magical bludgeoning piercing slashing damage i've made a mistake on this channel in the past when i talk about it and yes it's true you know you wouldn't have resistance obviously to other spell damage types but really most damage that you take unless you have a very mean dm or you're running a very odd campaign with lots of unique monsters and lots of spell casters or whatever most of the damage that's going to be coming your way is budging piercing or slashing um so that's great to take half damage on all of that right while raging you can't be wearing heavy armor which is fine and you can't cast or concentrate on spells which is also fine because any spells that we wanted to take would probably be to add damage to our attacks and or give us advantage and we already get those things out of the barbarian we'll talk about the advantage in a minute so level one for the battery um your class is cleric and it will remain cleric we're not doing any multi-classing on the battery there's just too many juicy things throughout the build that i just i don't want to delay for the race i'm going back to my old standby the variant human we want a free feed but the one that we're taking doesn't have racial prerequisites nor does it give a stat bonus so there's no real impetus to go with the custom lineage so we might as well go very inhuman i think mix it up a little but again not necessary you'll just want to take a feet once you hit level four the feet that we want is the magic initiate wizard feet um i want a familiar and i don't want a multi-class to get it so that's what we're doing here um the feet magic initiate wizard lets us choose one first level spell from the wizard class in our case um from the wizard spell list and we get to cast it once per day and hopefully we won't even need to do it that often because we're going to take some unfamiliar which you know once we've summoned that familiar it lasts until it we dismiss it or it dies basically and so it's awesome um we'll talk about why we want it momentarily as for your cantrips you get a couple of cantrips have fun with it but i would take at least booming blade if not booming blade and green flame blade we're going to be assuming that we're making weapon attacks every turn but we only get one as a cleric we're never going to get extra attack we're not multi-classing we're not going to be two weapon fighting for a bonus action attacks we just get one attack might as well cast booming blade for that attack um or green flame blade and get a little extra damage tacked on to that one attack that we make um so that uh yeah that gives us some nice perks that feet as far as uh the familiar again the way it works is you you summon a familiar it can take a form you know of like a cat or an owl or a bunch of different things and then you can get some nice benefits you can see through its eyes essentially and kind of scout ahead you can communicate telepathically with it and it does in combat roland it has its own initiative it cannot attack but it can take the help action as we've discussed you know several times on the channel before and so you are going to be essentially using your familiar to take the help action and give advantage to one attack because it only works for the next attack after the help action is taken but one attack from your um from your blender which will be important and we'll discuss it i have preston staring at me very creepily through the window right now um okay sorry um yes the the reason why i recommend that you take an owl the reason being that owls get a cool um feature that they can take the help action swoop in and then they get the flyby feature which means they can fly away without taking an opportunity attack and you're familiar only has one hit point so they are very fragile and if your dm decides to target it it will not live long so don't make it any easier than um it needs to be to kill as for equipment what's up mr rogers how's it going guys um equipment you guys want to talk about equipment for the uh for the for the order cleric right sorry about that um equipment equipment for your cleric so uh standard stuff make sure that you grab some chain mail because you are proficient with heavy armor because as your divine domain clerics do get to take their subclass at first level right and for your divine domain you're going order cleric as we've mentioned so order clerics are so good for our purposes especially you get proficiency with heavy armor like i mentioned and then the thing that we're really here for you get a feature called the voice of authority when you target an ally with a spell of first level or higher it's too bad it can't be a cantrip they can immediately use their reaction to make one weapon attack against a creature of your choice if your spell targets multiple allies then you choose who gets the attack this is so powerful especially for our our blender we'll talk about that momentarily spells um bless is one of my favorite buffs and you get that at first level as a cleric so excuse me it lets you target three allies up to three allies you can up cast it for more allies it does require concentration but then each of those who are targeted by the blessed spell get to add a d4 to all of their attacks and all of their saving throws until the spell ends um it's a lasts a minute i believe and that is so good um for you if you cast it on yourself potentially and for your allies i'd pick up cure wounds probably because it's slightly bigger healing but healing word is going to be kind of our go-to spell i think for the most part for a couple of reasons one you can you can it's a heal it only does it i think it's a d4 plus your wisdom modifier of healing um but you can use it from range you can use it as a bonus bonus action and um it's it's just going to be really good for us to use on our um on our blender to to get them going to get them extra attacks um it the the reason why i like healing word is because even though it heals for a little bit less than cure wounds it still leaves our action free to potentially use the booming blade can trip and make a weapon attack and and and that'll be some some nice damage it's not going to be nearly as much as your blender is doing but since i'm trying to optimize this companionship for damage um you know every little bit helps and what the what the battery can add will be a nice little bump um so right from the get-go combat for for this team is gonna look like this the blender takes their turn i mean who knows who goes first but regardless blunders takes their turn makes two attacks right one with their action one with their bonus action um then the battery let's say it's the first round of combat batteries gonna cast bless on multiple people including the blender thereby the blender will get to use their reaction to make yet another attack after that going forward when needed and when the battery has spell slots available they'll be you know going healing word as a bonus action to give the blender an extra attack and then taking you know taking an action attack to do booming blade and get some nice little damage with their mace you probably just have like a 1d6 weapon because you don't have proficiency in martial weapons and that's fine you know use a shield i should have mentioned that i guess in the equipment you want a shield you want your your chain mail so you've got a decent ac and you're pretty tanky yeah and uh so right from the beginning that blender is going to be getting potentially three attacks in a turn as long as as long as the battery has spell slots right which is fantastic at level one and it's just gonna get better at level two the blender gets reckless attack so now we get advantage on all of our attacks that we make during our turn that's important which is super fantastic at the cost of giving our enemies advantage against us until our next turn which is not here's the thing though one again because you're raging you have resistance to most of the damage that you'll be taking again in my experience your experience may differ most of the vast majority of the damage that characters take in game is you know slashing bludgeoning or piercing it won't always be but good to know um but also you have an ally who is dedicated to almost full-time healing on you so when you're taking half damage on most things and you've got somebody who's pretty dedicated to healing you almost every turn it makes you a pretty good tank because you can you can soak damage pretty well and and survive but also you do a lot of damage and the enemy has advantage on their attacks against you so you are an attractive target so that means that you're going to be drawing a lot of the enemy fire keeping your allies safe for the most part and you know with some pretty decent survivability um and pumping out a ton of damage so all of those things together make you a very powerful and threatening character you also at barbarian level 2 get danger sense which gives you advantage on dexterity saves against things you can see like traps and spells and things that's very nice to help you mitigate damage to something you're potentially weak against like a fireball spell or something and that will be even better later when we couple it with a nice rogue feature level two of the battery so you get channel divinity which as we all know lets you turn undead um you know you you try to turn undead creatures and if they fail their wisdom save they have to run away from you for for a minute um which is great but also as an order cleric you get um a channel given to the option that lets you try and charm an enemy instead not bad um my favorite thing for this build is the new feature from tasha's cauldron of everything harness divine power which lets you once per day for now at scales um at 6 and then 18 again to more times per day but for now once per day you can burn a use of your channel divinity to regain spell slots you just gain you just regain one spell slot equal to half of your proficiency bonus rounded up so this is just going to let you have more spells to be able to potentially cast on your blender to grant them extra attacks and and thereby more damage and since your channel divinity resets on a short rest um it's especially nice if you know if you're about to take a short rest and you have a channel divinity slot available that you haven't used go ahead and burn harness divine power regain a spell slot take a short rest and now you've got your channel divinity back at level three for the blender barbarians get their primal path their subclass i'm gonna recommend zealot um first off i think it works great thematically right you've your battery ally companion in battle is a cleric and they are healing you and buffing you and granting you all these extra attacks with their divine power it just seems natural that you would maybe sort of develop an affinity for their religion or god as well you also get two fantastic features as a zealot barbarian one divine fury which lets you once per turn do an extra 1d6 plus half of your barbarian level rounded down in damage to the first enemy that you attack and that you hit sorry in combat so right now that's a d6 plus one for us and it will go up next level but anyway um so a nice little damage bump but then you also get warrior of the gods which lets your battery or someone else i guess for that matter resurrect you bring you back to life if you die they can cast their say revivify spell on you without having to spend the expensive component of you know 300 gold in diamond dust or whatever which actually can be really nice for this build because you might be dying a lot especially early in the game since you will be such a threat on the battlefield and they will have advantage on all of their attacks against you even though you have resistance to a lot of that damage you still might be going down a lot at these early levels especially so being able to be rezzed uh without an expensive component will be really great for your team actually um also very importantly at level three barbarians get three rages per long rest now instead of just two and i feel like if we want to consider this rage damage and benefits sort of sustainable we've got to get at least to three in order to say yeah you know three times per day i mean every dm is different obviously but i think you can you can assume that you should have it available most if not all of your combat encounters again your experience may vary depending on your dm but having three is much better than two the battery at level three gets second level spells and there's some great options um aid is a really good one it lasts eight hours it doesn't require concentration and it increases the max hit points of three allies and then heals them for five hit points basically so it gives them it increases their max and then you know tops them off um that's not a ton of hit points but you know it adds up every little bit adds up and at level three an extra five hit points for three characters can be the difference maker a lot of times right um you know and and so wait to cast it in combat choose the three targets make sure one of them's your battery and and he gets an extra attack out of it as well so um that's a good one uh what else warding bond warding bond is nice it it does require or sorry it lasts an hour doesn't require concentration and it gives your chosen ally i'm presuming your blender um a plus one to their armor class and resistance to all damage but then when they take damage you take the same amount in return right um so this is obviously really good if the damage being dealt is not piercing bludgeoning or slashing because your your blender already has resistance to those assuming they're raging but if there's a lot of magic damage going on or something else this can be a good one to increase their survivability a little bit and again give them an extra attack when you cast them on it cast it on them let's talk about uh spiritual weapon so normally this is a second level spell and normally it's it's kind of a no-brainer go-to for most clerics right it lets you get some nice damage out of your bonus action um and it uses your spell your wisdom modifier to hit and the damage you can up cast it so it scales it doesn't require concentration it's a really good spell i'm probably gonna pass with this build in particular and and the reason is this um healing word as i've mentioned though it heals for slightly less is just a lot easier to count on because you can cast it from range and you just might not always be within touch to use um cure wounds more importantly as i've mentioned it's a bonus action and that's what you would need to use in order to get something out of spiritual weapon i like i like making a melee attack um with booming blade here and then using healing word as opposed to say using cure wounds and then a spiritual weapon attack your your your melee weapon attack is just going to scale a little bit better for this character than spiritual weapon would um booming blade is going to scale and you also are going to have divine strike once you hit level 8 and then again at 14 which also scales and so when you add all those things together it's just going to scale a lot better for for no resource cost right whereas um you'd have to up cast keep continually be up casting spiritual weapon in order to to make that do more damage every round um instead i think it's just easier and a little more effective to make a melee weapon attack and then bonus action healing word you may disagree and that's fine you know if you want to be a better cleric and buff your wisdom and and thereby get better healing and also you know damage from your spiritual weapon and then just rely on action spells to cast on your blender to get them those extra attacks that's fine go ahead and do that i prefer to stick with melee attacks for this guy so let's see level four blender if you're really anxious to get into rogue levels maybe especially if you are kind of the only rogue and are supposed to sort of fill the rogue role in your party um you could potentially start taking rogue levels here i would at least make sure you get to barbarian 3 for rage reckless attacks the zealot the really nice zealot features and the extra rage that you get at level 3 right i think at least getting that far is important if you're just worried about numbers and just worried about damage you're gonna be better off still going with barbarian here i know on the one hand um starting to get sneak attack damage is going to be nice right if you took two if you started taking rogue levels now you'd be two rogue levels ahead of the barbarian who goes to barbarian five which is our plan um and thereby you would always be one d6 of sneak attack damage ahead every turn and actually 2d6 per round therefore and i'll explain why in a minute in case you don't know but um you're gonna get more mileage out of a second attack than you will out of 2d6 more of sneak attack damage and so at level 5 of barb that's when we get extra attack and we get to make another weapon attack right so again better off and not only that but we're about to get our first ability score increase our feet if we go one more level into barb into barbarian here right and otherwise we'd have to wait four levels in rogue so i think we're just better off going five to barbarian so here at level four um we are just going to get an ability score increase we're going to bump our strength and cap it at 20. so already at level 4 we're capped on our strength which feels really great the battery is also of course going to get an ability score increase or feet to be honest with you i i've really been having a hard time knowing which which ability score increases and feats to take when for this character um there are so many things that i want resilient uh constitution is big for us so that we can maintain our concentration more than anything taking strength points would increase our damage taking wisdom would make us a better cleric generally speaking because this build is trying to push the limits of what's possible damage wise sustained damage wise and because only having a 15 strength like this character currently does just makes me cry when i'm trying to make weapon attacks i'm actually going to do a plus one to strength and a plus one with constitution here for my ability score increase so i'd have a 16 strength and a 17 constitution you may think i'm an idiot and that's okay and if you want to be a better support or cleric and heal for more and have a higher you know difficulty check on your spells and all those things go ahead and buff wisdom or whatever whatever else you think makes more sense but that's what i'm gonna do at level five the blender hits barbarian five they get their extra attack and they also get fast movement which grants an extra ten more feet of movement speed which is always welcome and so now again you're getting three attacks per turn plus a fourth if the if your battery has a spell slot to burn on you right um and that's so cool level five battery um gets third level spells again always lots of great options beacon of hope um is one that i'll mention so it targets any number of allies including your blender of course and gives them advantage on wisdom and death-saving throws which again depending on what enemies you're fighting could be great or depending on if they're about to die could be great and it causes any healing that you do on them while you maintain the spell and concentration to heal for max hit points which is really strong i mean that that will heal for a lot more right again because it requires concentration it means you'd have to choose between this and bless it might be worth turning off bless if the situation's looking dire in particular and you really need lots of big heels another option has a third level spell here is mass healing word which is like healing word but on multiple targets right great for topping off multiple friends in a pinch and you get your first uh resurrect spell revivify which will bring a target back to life as long as they've died within a minute and fortunately for you you can cast it on your zealot friend without the expensive material component the other third level spell i'll talk about is kind of another one of those every other cleric should take this but maybe not us and that's spirit guardians um it's so good and it's really strong it requires your concentration and so you're using up a spell slot and not getting extra attack from your blender out of it which is a bummer it does good damage um you know in in an area to targets round after round but again like i say it requires a concentration takes up a precious spell slot um the enemy would take 3d8 on a failed save or half otherwise but we don't have a great spell dc at least not the way that i'm building it your your experience may differ um so you know is that better than giving a plus d4 to hit to three of your allies especially when when you get an extra attack from your blender out of it when you cast that spell you know it's just going to depend on how many enemies your your spirit guardians may hit in a in a given turn um if they have a high ac or if they have a high wisdom save you know what you're putting points into for your own ability score increases and all that kind of stuff i'm going to assume when we crunch the numbers that we're not using spirit guardians that you're still using bless as your concentration again of course us you assess the situation make the call um you do you also your booming blade now that your fifth level your booming blade attack does get an extra 1d8 on hit and then of course as we all know uh when you hit them with booming blade if they move before um your next turn then they're going to take additional damage and now it's 2d8 damage alternatively you might be using green flame blade to hit the target and then it bounces and does damage to somebody standing next to him and that's fine too again green flame blade would also get an extra 1d8 damage on the initial hit now finally clerics at fifth level get destroy undead so if you're using your channel divinity to turn undead and the undead creatures are of a challenge rating one half or lower so you're kind of low level skeletons and things like that if the undead fails at save instead of being turned and having to run away it just explodes and there's nothing cooler than exploding a bunch of low-level undead creatures as a cleric to make you feel awesome at level six our blender is going rogue one so there is actually an argument to to go barbarian six here zealot barbarians get a nice little feature to help with their survivability but more importantly you get a fourth rage per day at level six barbarian and so if your dungeon master is prone to regularly give you four or more combat encounters between long rests give it a thought you might want to consider barbarian six otherwise you know plan on going plan on going rogue one here that's what i'm gonna do because my dms tend to not give us that many combat encounters per long rest i'd say three is pretty average anyway at rogue one you get a few features you get expertise right which lets you take a skill that you're proficient in and double your proficiency bonus for that skill for two you pick two skills which is great um and especially as we're if if we're trying to be a rogue you know being able to double double your proficiency in stealth and things like that will be very important you can double your proficiency bonus in thieves tools as well if you need to sneak attack double your proficiency bonus when you use thieves tools i should say sorry okay sneak attack here we go so as long as the attack is made with a finesse weapon which ours is right even though we're using strength for the attack it is a finesse weapon and you either have advantage on the attack or you have an ally within five feet of the enemy you're attacking then you once per turn get to add sneak attack damage and right now for us that's just one d6 and it goes up like i've said every two levels um fortunately we always have advantage on our attacks on our turn thanks to reckless attack right and so once per turn when we when we make a hit we're going to add that 1d6 plus the plus the zealot barbarian 1d6 plus half of our barbarian level that's also once per turn um so here's the great here's the great thing that i'll bet most of you know but i'll bet there's some of you who don't and when i first learned this it was i only learned this a few months ago um so i don't know i'm hoping that i wasn't the last one to the party sneak attack damage is applied once per turn it is not necessarily applied once on your turn only right you do get it on your turn but if you get an attack on someone else's turn you can also apply sneak attack damage so when you use a reaction to make an attack you are taking that attack on someone else's turn if it's an opportunity attack someone's running away and you get an opportunity attack as a reaction that's that character's turn that you're that you're doing that damage on and would therefore be able to apply the sneak attack damage bonus um similarly if you happen to have an order cleric battery in your party that's constantly casting spells on you and then you get to use your reaction to make an additional weapon attack yes you can apply your sneak attack damage um that is so fabulous and it's really the main reason why we're going rogue coupled with this uh with this order cleric as our blender battery um keep in mind again as i've mentioned when you as a barbarian are using reckless attack you only get advantage on your turn so on your reaction turns you don't necessarily have advantage and this is why the battery took a familiar so that the familiar could take the help action in order to give you advantage on the reaction attack that you're making so now you have advantage on all of your attacks and always get to apply your sneak attack damage when you land once on your turn once as your reaction as well so twice in a round just one quick note as far as trying to make that work rules as written some of if you have a dm that's kind of a stickler for this the way that you'll have to do it is have your familiar hold its action when it's its turn say hold it hold its action to take the help action when it sees the cleric cast a spell on you right so as soon as that happens it would swoop in um take the help action fly away and then the blender would get to make their reaction attack with advantage um at our table our dms tend to be a little bit hand wavy there and say yeah if you want your familiars to help you know just you tell me who the familiar is helping and then i know on their turn they'll get advantage on that attack but your dm might not work that way so at level six uh for the battery you get channel divinity twice per short rest instead of once which is nice so that means more spell slots for us because now harness divine power is is usable twice per long rest so now you're going to be able to turn more channel divinities into spell slots which is great you also get an embodiment of the law feature as an order cleric which means that wisdom times per day so three for us right now wisdom bonus times per day i should say um an enchantment spell with a casting time of action can now be cast as a bonus action that's not going to be huge for us but for example bless is an enchantment spell so now right at round one you don't have to take a round to set this up you can just bless as a bonus action and make your weapon attack so that's that's kind of nice get us into combat right from the get-go damage report for level six all right so just to recap what's happening in combat here i'm assuming that every turn the blender is getting three attacks right attack extra attack bonus action attack with a plus d4 hit because you've got bless going plus advantage on all of those attacks you're getting rage bonus damage you're getting sneak attack on one of those hits in on your turn with a fourth reaction attack that also gets the sneak attack and rage and the d4 to hit and is made with advantage um oh and don't forget your barbarian zealot damage on your turn if you make a hit for another d6 plus half of your barbarian levels anyway it's a lot of damage right um meanwhile the battery on their turn is casting a spell um on the blender to get them that bonus bonus attack and then making a single booming blade weapon attack uh on their turn with a plus d4 to hit i'm assuming that they've that they're including themselves in the blessed spell it might be better off going somewhere else i don't know that so i'm going to say you've got blessed for now the battery has including the harness divine power twice per day has 12 spell slots to burn uh on theoretically buffing and healing um their blender is that truly going to get you a reaction attack out of every single turn throughout the entire day probably not depends on your dm you know if you're getting if you're getting two combat encounters between a long rest which isn't inconceivable then yeah it is pretty sustainable if you're getting more than that no not necessarily right and of course for that matter you may be using spell slots to do other things heal other people buff other people resurrect somebody who's died um etc but you know for now we're just going to say when when this is happening and you're actually able to get that fourth attack out of your blender every turn against an enemy with a 10 armor glass between the two of you you're going to be averaging 71 damage per round and against an enemy with a 15 armor class you're going to be averaging 67 damage per round because most of that damage is being made with advantage um from your blender and that's a lot of damage at level seven the blender is rogue two and you get cunning action which means that you can as a bonus action dash disengage or hide and those things normally take an action um do those things when you need to ah the battery at level seven gets level four spells so death ward death ward is a fantastic one uh this is how it reads and i quote you touch one blender giving it a reaction attack and grant it a measure of protection from death so if the target would go unconscious it instead only goes to one hit point and the spell ends last eight hours no concentration and if something would kill it outright like i mean power word kill right um it just negates that thing completely so that is really powerful um freedom of movement is another good fourth level spell here it's uh you you touch one blender and it can't be slowed or restrained basically and it gets a bonus reaction attack because you're an order cleric at level eight your blender is a rogue three and your sneak attack damage goes to 2d6 every time you are using it so 46 per round for us potentially and you get your roguish archetype i'm taking phantom but you know what the reality is if we're just talking sustained damage for our purposes for for as far as we are going to analyze this build the rogue archetype no rogue archetype really increases your sustained damage the rogue archetypes give lots of fantastic options sometimes for mobility or utility or burst damage you know kind of expendable resource once in a while extra damage and or defense and great role play and all these kinds of things but for just pure sustained damage there's really not one that you can just count on increasing your damage around after round right that said phantom is my favorite here for a couple of reasons one i think i think thematically it's it's it is the best fit because this character is obsessed with religion and being easily brought back from death and obsessed with killing things and you know just kind of that whole life death obsession um that the phantom supposedly has i think works really well for this character that this character strikes me as someone who you know would fit that that sort of description but also you get some cool features so the phantom rogue gets whispers of the dead which gives you a skill or tool proficiency that you didn't already have and you can swap that out per short rest you get whispers from the grave you know a ghost tells you how to be really good at using a flute or artisan tools or survivability right or whatever whatever you may need at the time so that's nice utility you also get whales from the grave which is our damage for this subclass so proficiency bonus times per day so for us at level eight that's three before soon whenever you when when you deal sneak attack damage to a creature you can target a second creature that's within 30 feet and you roll half of the sneak attack dice so if we're rolling 2d6 for sneak attack then you would get to roll 1d6 if you're using whales from the grave um and and you deal that to you know that creature within 30 feet that second creature um you know what that's a nice little bump to help help push an enemy over the edge and into the grave um at level eight your battery gets a few things so destroy undead jumps to a challenge rating of one or lower you know if the undead creature fails their turn undead save they are just and you get divine strike so now again this was another reason why i wanted to focus on making melee attacks when you when you make a melee weapon attack once per turn and that's all we're doing um you get an extra 1d8 on that attack and it should work with booming blade because as part of boom part of booming blade you make a weapon attack for some reason your dm may rule otherwise but i think rules is written you apply both the booming blade damage and the divine strike damage um and that's nice you get an ability score increase or a feet and you know pretty soon concentration is going to matter even more than it already does so i'm going with resilient constant constitution here to give you a plus one to your constitution and it was a 17 so now it's 18 so that bumps our bonus right and it lets you add your proficiency uh to your concentration and therefore sorry to your constitution and therefore your concentration saving throws at level nine your blender is a rogue four and so you get another ability score increase your feet and there this is a bit of a conundrum i think at this point um especially there's sort of this fork in the road and you need to decide okay is my party looking for me to be primarily a frontline fighter that can soak up damage while dealing a bunch of damage too or are they really needing me to be a rogue and to fill that rogue role in the party right i'm assuming because of the way that i'm building this character that our primary function is as a frontline fighter even though we're a rogue and so for that reason for me i would take tough here because tough gives you two additional hit points per um per level it's it's almost like getting a plus four to your constitution right other than you don't get the benefits your constitution saves and things but still two extra hit points per level and and for us where we have resistance to to most damage types that you'll probably be taking in game um hit points are just worth a lot and and finding ways to bump our ac is maybe less good for us because since our enemies are going to have advantage on us all the time and our ac isn't super high anyway you know you're you're pro you're going to be you're going to get more mileage out of hit points um that said you know again if if you need to be functioning more as a rogue for your party you're probably going to want to be bumping your dexterity here so that you can be better at stealth so that you can have a better armor class that's nice but you know be better at your thieves tools to disarm traps and all those kinds of things that rogues need dexterity for you might even want to consider taking a medium armor master which will which will not make you have disadvantage on your stealth checks if you're wearing armor that otherwise imposes disadvantage like half plate which you should hopefully have some half plate right now um and and then it will also let you benefit by a plus three to your armor class your dexterity bonus you know can give you a plus three normally medium armor's capped at plus two um we've only had a 14 dexterity tell now so that hasn't mattered but you know if you're going to go this route obviously you're going to be putting points into your dexterity so that will benefit you and get your armor class higher um you know the reality is this character the way that i've built them is just not a great rogue um you could you could build it differently so that they could be right um but because we're needing strength for our weapon attacks um the build is just super mad it's super multiple uh ability score dependent right if you're gonna try and be a good rogue not saying you can't do it it's just going to be a little more difficult for you and your damage will suffer level 9 battery so this is this is a really good level for us we get some some great level five spells um greater restoration no self-respecting healer should leave home without it right it cures all sorts of ailments and when you need it you really need it mass cure wounds is a good one it's cure wounds but applied to multiple people so it's nice for a big group heal my favorite for this build in particular is holy weapon so you touch one weapon and unfortunately you're touching the weapon so you're not casting the spell on the blender so they don't get to make an extra attack when you do this but anyway you touch a weapon and for one hour any attack made with that weapon does an extra 2d8 of damage potentially 88 of damage on your blender's turn and reaction attack right um and more on a crit of course these are dice so they get to double when you get a crit and and since your blender is making a tax with advantage you have almost a 10 chance to crit on every one of those uh dice rolls so that's gonna come into play quite often um i love this idea now of this blender and it really is a blender right with a double double-bladed scimitar it's like the blender blade it's just like i mean they are they are they're putting out so much damage and this was another reason why we went with the double bladed scimitar because again the holy weapon affects the double-bladed scimitar meaning you're going to get that 2d8 on every attack you make with it whether it's the main hand portion the 2d4 portion or the 1d4 bonus action portion right and that's why this is even better one more reason why this is better than two weapon fighting here for for this blender build one thing to note about holy weapon as a bonus action on your turn you can dismiss the spell and cause an explosion of light to potentially damage and blind all enemies within 30 feet depending on if they make their saving throw or not that's pretty strong it's a nice aoe and blind is a is a really great condition to inflict on your enemies it makes them have disadvantage on attacks they make and everybody else has advantage on attacks made against the enemy that's blinded so that's great i wouldn't do it unless it's a pretty big group and or you're reasonably sure that they're going to fail their saves because you you do over time round over round you know at the end of an encounter um give up a lot of potential damage 88 potentially on that blender so i i would hesitate to detonate the the holy weapon unless you really need it um speaking of damage damage report level nine so again blender is getting four attacks in a round most of the time at least right with you know advantage with an extra 2d8 on each attack that lands from holy weapon plus 2 for rage plus 5 for your strength bonus an extra 2d6 of sneak attack damage on two of those four hits assuming that the reaction one lands right plus a d6 plus two for your divine fury on one of the attacks in a turn so much damage the battery is using concentration for holy weapon um assuming they have a fifth level spell slot meaning of course no bless but they are getting 1d6 for their weapon plus 2d8 for booming blade and divine strike on those weapon attacks plus their strength bonus at this point your battery has 16 spell slots with the help of divine of harness divine power in a day to potentially burn through to give your blender that fourth attack and you know if most combat counters last five six rounds which i think statistically if you look it up that's that's pretty typical you should have enough spell slots to consider that fairly sustainable assuming three actual combat encounters per long rest again results may vary depending on your dungeon master but assuming this is sustainable damage you can pretty much count on doing against an enemy with a 10 armor class 122 damage per round between the two of you and against an enemy with a 16 armor class 110 damage per round between the two of you um that's that's pretty impressive at level 10 your blender is a rogue five your sneak attack damage goes to 3d6 every time you get to use it and you get uncanny dodge this feature is super fantastic for our survivability when you get hit by an attack you can as a reaction have the damage um as often as you want as long as it is an attack that hits you right so um if we're talking spells scorching rey yes because they're making an attack roll fireball no because that's a saving throw on your part to avoid damage right we'll get something to deal with fireball shortly um so unkindly dodge is awesome and and yes it's it stacks with your reduction from rage so potentially if it's bludgeoning piercing or slashing damage you could uncanny dodge and only take a quarter damage on the thing that hit you now of course the big drawback here is that it takes your reaction so you would not get an extra attack that round from your order cleric casting a heal on you so you know great to use if your battery is running low on juice and or they need to actually freaking cast a healing spell on somebody else you selfish bastard um stop hogging all of their attention and spell slots or if it's just a really big hit and you're getting low and you need to stay on your feet you know and you need to to to have that damage um always a great option um just make sure that you communicate obviously with your um with your battery to let them know in character of course um you know that your reaction is unavailable that round so don't don't cast a spell on you unless they need to to keep you alive or whatever right um okay level 10 battery you get divine intervention it's super cool it's super thematic it lets you call on your god for a special boon or big huge help in the game and it almost never works in my experience [Laughter] i'm sure when it does it's awesome i'd love to hear your stories about when divine intervention did something cool for your character or your party i've never seen it not that i can recall anyway we haven't had a ton of clerics we've had we've had a few anyway i'm sure one day it'll work and it'll be really awesome um level 11 the blender is a rogue six and you get expertise which is fantastic another another bump of expertise another round of expertise i guess so again two more skills that you're not currently proficient or sorry that you are proficient with you get to double your proficiency so obviously take whatever you and your party need most if if you're trying to be the party rogue you should at least at this point have you know expertise in stealth in your thieves tools um perception probably to detect traps and and hidden doors and things and maybe either investigation or sleight of hand at this point so you know you've got pretty a pretty good suite of rogue skills um the battery at level 11 your destroy undead now goes to a challenge rating of 2 or lower that's awesome your booming blade damage jumps by another d8 on the attack and if they move so now that's an extra 3d8 of damage plus your weapon when you make a weapon attack that's pretty good and you get six level spells heal is my favorite it's um it's 70 hit points straight up you just heal for 70 hit points on on one target it'll scale if you upcast it and it even cures blindness and deafness and disease there are lots of other really cool powerful six level spells find one that you like and have fun at level 12 your blender is a rogue seven your sneak attack goes up yet again to 4d6 every time you get to use it and you get evasion this is another just fantastic tanky rogue skill and you know if nothing else creating this character has really made me realize just how powerful a rogue tank can be and i know i've had a lot of you request that i do a rogue tank and i will i don't know when exactly probably won't be too much longer um and and we're probably already seeing you know kind of the the base of what i think i have in mind for it but anyway evasion is great um when when you can see the effect that's causing you to make a dexterity saving throw to not take damage so a trap fireball etc right if you fail the save you still only take half damage if you make the save you take no damage and keep in mind that because you're a barbarian um and you got whatever the name of that ability is that i can't think of right now off the top of my head you have advantage on those saving throws so chances are you are not going to be taking a lot of damage from any of those kind of dexterity save or take damage things um you know you can you can have the damage of pretty much anything in the game right now almost um and and you can reduce it to a fourth if you really need to on a lot of it so very cool uh your battery at level 12 you get yet another ability score increase or feet and so again i feel like i'm repeating myself but what i'm interested in doing here is exploring what is possible damage wise right and not necessarily saying this is what you should do i just want to explore what's possible from a sustained damage per round perspective and then let you decide where you want to scale back my suggestions to let it be more practical if not the absolute extreme of of what's possible for damage so for that reason i'm taking strength here um to make sure that my weapon attacks land and that they do a little more damage you very well may decide to go otherwise and i would probably even encourage you to go otherwise um wisdom bump is always good here warcaster is a strong choice um because then you would almost never drop concentration right because you'd have advantage on your concentration checks plus it lets you cast spells with somatic components if you have your hands full of say a weapon and a shield for example and it lets you take a booming blade attack as an opportunity attack if you ever get one so lots of great things out of warcaster my other favorite potential option here would be intercept interception the fighting style well you'd have to take fighting initiate um and then take the fighting style intercept um which is new from tasha's and i've talked about it before i love it especially in this team because it lets you if you're standing within five feet of your blender say and they take damage you can intercept some of that damage it's a d10 plus your proficiency bonus so that's almost 10 damage on average anytime they get hit and you use your reaction to do it but considering that they're taking half damage on on almost everything you're really soaking up um more like closer to 20 damage you know if you if you were to use that so very powerful really increases the survivability of your blender and or you know the other components of your party it's a great support ability again i'm taking strength just because i want to explore what's possible so at level 13 your blender is a rogue 8 you get another ability score increase or feet and again because i'm assuming that this guy is a frontline fighter first and a sneaky lock picker second i'm taking constitution to bump my um hit points and saves again of course if you're the primary rogue in your party go decks or something else like we've discussed at level 13 the battery gets level 7 spells there are lots of great world bending mind altering stuff here have fun um damage report for level 13 against an enemy with a 10 armor class this combo can expect on average to do 144 damage per round and against an enemy with a 17 armor class it's 129. at level 14 your blender is a rogue 9 your sneak attack damage goes to a 5d6 every time you get it and phantoms get a cool feature called tokens of the departed so when someone within 30 feet of you dies it can be an enemy um as a reaction again as a reaction no no extra attack this turn or uncanny dodge um but as a reaction you can create a soul trinket and it creates this little trinket in your hand you can have up to your proficiency bonus of them so five for us right now and when you have one on your possession it gives you advantage on your death saves and your constitution saves which is really nice in and of itself but then also when you do your sneak attack damage you can destroy one of these and immediately then do whales from the grave without expending a use of our whales of the grave which is super cool so it just gives you more opportunities to do that it's almost sustainable if you didn't have to use a reaction in order to create one every time i might throw it into the number crunching or you can also crush one to ask a spirit of the dead a question which it may or may not answer truthfully but it's still a really cool role play opportunity no question if nothing else at level 14 your battery gets their undead their destroy undead goes to a challenge rating of three which is awesome and divine strike now does an extra 2d8 of damage on a weapon attack so you get an extra 4d8 of damage on that single weapon attack once per turn now assuming booming blade right which feels pretty strong for a single weapon attack for a cleric at level 15 your blender is a rogue 10 and rogues get an extra ability score increase or feet compared to most other classes anyways here at level 10. so again i'm probably taking my constitution to 18. you do what you need to do at level 15 your battery gets level 8 spells there are only four options they're all cool especially holy aura is my favorite aura take what looks the coolest at level 16 your blender is a rogue 11. your sneak attack damage goes to 6d6 and you get a cool roguish feature called reliable talent any time you make an ability check that you on something that you're proficient in a nine or less on the die when you roll it counts as a ten so especially if it's something that you have expertise proficiency in you should very rarely be failing um you know any of those any of those stealth checks and things now right at level 16 your battery gets your final ability score increase her feet at least as far as we're concerned um again i'm taking my strength to 20. if you'd rather be smart i'd take warcaster or fighting initiate maybe whichever you didn't take last time or bump your wisdom i mean our wisdom is still only a 16 which for a pure cleric seems stupid i realize that but i've explained myself and i don't need to do it anymore this character needs more feats and asis at level 17 your blender is a rogue 12 and you get your final ability score increase and i'm going to cap our constitution at 20. and the battery at level 17 booming blade gets yet another 1d8 bump so now between booming blade and divine strike you're doing an extra 5 d8 of damage on that one weapon attack that you're making each turn plus 48 if they move right if you hit them with booming blade and they move um that's a lot of damage your destroy undead goes to a challenge rating of four or less so man those undead you're just wiping out hordes of them and order clerics get their capstone ability orders wrath honestly if it weren't for this i i might not have even been suggesting taking strength all along the way despite my own argument to the contrary um this says that if you um once per turn if you d if you deal divine strike damage to a target then you can curse it when you hit it in that way and then next time the next ally that hits it um it takes an extra 2d8 of psychic damage so that's that's an extra 2d8 of damage for for us essentially the cleric that's that's who i'm attributing that damage to anyway and that's awesome so i really want my cleric sits to land you also get level 9 spells which is fantastic especially mass heal is my favorite it it heals 700 damage to as many allies as you want divvied up as you see fit it's rare that this spell would not heal your entire party to full even at level 17 depending on you know how close you are to death and how many hulking barbarians you have in your party i guess but anyway fantastic final damage report against an enemy with a 10 armor class this team built in this way can expect to do 178 damage per round and on average and against an 18 armor class it's just a little less 165 so much damage all right final thoughts um you know the question that i have of course is well how does this this combo stack up to the other two team builds that i've done so far um the yin yang which was basically a double hex blade warlock with a little bit of sorcerer thrown in on one of them and a little fighter on the other but anyway um and the other was the brainy and the beast the wizard druid kind of area damage area control combo um check the graph see for yourself but it holds its own for damage per round early on it's kind of in the middle of the pack for damage until higher enemy armor class at which point it actually takes the lead over anything um past the mid game the yin yang becomes pretty unbeatable for just pure damage per round and i don't know if anything is ever going to be able to compete with the reverse gravity prismatic wall combo that we were getting from brainy and the beast um but this the thing that i love about this um particular team the the the blender and the battery you get not only really great sustained sustainable for the most part damage per round uh from from a two character team up but one of them is a fantastic support character that can do you know they're not just doing damage i mean they've got plenty of ability to heal and help help their their team out right keep them alive resurrect buff all those things um and then in the other character you've got someone who's not only spitting out insane amounts of damage but is drawing enemy fire pretty survivable as a tank and can even function as a rogue depending on how you build them even if you build them as i've done they can make a passing brogue right a a b a b level rogue for all things stealthy and lock picky and disarmy of crappy um so so you get a lot more i think versatility um out of this combo that of characters that can fill these important roles in a party but also do insane damage it's almost like you could have these two and then also have two other characters that are just focused on damage and or maybe control and as a as a party as a foursome you'd be a juggernaut of of sustained damage per round um one thing that i think might potentially be difficult for this team up is it would really take i think the right personality to play that battery role um it would be a ton of fun to play but but but but this this character would have to i think really be the type that would be okay sort of letting their blender kind of hog the spotlight a lot i mean come on nobody is more loved at a table than your support healer character right we all know that um and as i've been saying so much of that damage that the blender is pumping out is actually your damage battery um they would not be able to even come close to the levels of damage per round that they're putting out if it weren't for you giving them all that juice right so anyway that's the show for the week i hope you guys enjoyed it um and i don't have any other announcements to make because i made them all at the beginning so i love you guys you're awesome thanks so much for your support and i hope you have the best day ever we'll see you soon you

Channel: d4: D&D Deep Dive

Views: 27,859

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Order Cleric, Phantom Rogue, Support, Healer, Tank, DPR, Character Creation, Combo, dnd, 5e, guide

Id: w-haeMbseQ4

Length: 82min 40sec (4960 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021