Four Fun D&D Character Builds for Power Gaming

Level Split

• 1 fighter: Proficiency in con saves, heavy armor, and the archery fighting style.
• 18 bard – College of Swords: The main selling point of this build, combining spells in unintentionally broken ways.
• 1 sorcerer – Divine Soul: If you find a powerful arcane caster-only item.

Race

Human (variant). This build needs at least two feats before its damage potential really starts to show through. Picking human gives us one of those at level 1.

Starting Stats

• Dex: 16 (main stat)
• Con: 16 (secondary stat)
• Cha: 13. Only used for multiclassing, this build doesn’t make use of spells that require a high charisma.
• Wis: 12. Saves are good, and we have the points.
• Str & Int: 8

ASI

• Level 1 (racial): Crossbow Expert. This gives the build two attacks using a hand crossbow and the ability to fire at someone attempting to melee them. Combined with the archery fighting style, this gives us the highest consistent damage possible at low levels.
• Level 5: Sharpshooter. Increasing the build’s optimal range from 30 ft to 120 ft is huge, allowing us to stay far away from danger while still dealing damage. This feat also allows us to leverage our high accuracy (-5 hit for +10 damage) to deal truly absurd amounts of damage.
• Level 9 & Level 13: Dex +2.
• Level 17: Warcaster. Warcaster helps us hold on to our buff spells by providing advantage on concentration saves.

Magic Items

While not needed for any of my builds, these are a few magical items that I believe help more than most. I am not including any of these items in my damage calculations.

• +X Weapon/Armor: More damage and AC is always good.
• Cloak of Invisibility: Constant advantage is great, giving opponents constant disadvantage is great, and not being targetable by spells that require site is great; this item provides all three.
• Staff of the Magi: This is the reason we take 1 level of sorcerer, providing advantage on spell saves, the ability to absorb spells directed only at us, and a huge number of spells the staff itself can cast.
• Insignia of Claws: Gives your griffon’s attacks +1 hit/damage along with the magical property, bypassing many monster resistances.

This build revolves around combining the damage output of Sharpshooter with amplification spell effects like Haste, Find Greater Steed, Tenser’s Transformation, and Simulacrum. Prior to level 11, the build is on par with any martial option, making 3 attacks a round with Sharpshooter for upwards of 3d6+42.

At level 11 we gain Find Greater Steed, Haste, and Animate Objects. Find Greater Steed gives us a permanent griffon mount that receives any buffs we cast on ourselves, such as Haste. A Hasted griffon has 120 ft of movement, can make 2 attacks and then disengage, or make 3 attacks with a normal move. This combines with up to 4 attacks from the bard riding it. Animate Objects is another extremely powerful option: once summoned, 10 animated bolts provides 10d4 + 40 worth of damage a round, damage that requires at most a bonus action to activate.

At level 15 we can steal 2 more spells, namely Tenser’s Transformation and Simulacrum. Tenser’s provides many combat benefits, the best of which are an additional 2d12 on each damage roll and advantage on all attacks. Like Haste, this buff also applies to our griffon. Simulacrum, on the other hand, is a game changer. It allows us to make a carbon copy of our bardcher, complete with all the same features of the original. The only downsides to this are that the spell costs 1,500 gold to cast, the copy doesn’t regain spell slots, and it has half the health of the original. None of these come even close to the upside of doubling everything the build could previously do. It’s at this point that our caster archer leaves any martial option completely in the dust.

At level 19 we steal our final 2 spells, and while there are many good options available, I have opted for Shapechange and Wish. Shapechange is an incredibly fun and powerful spell that lets us turn into little things like demi liches or ancient white dragons; no matter how you slice it, the power and utility provided by this spell cannot be denied. Alongside dragon transformations, we grab the Wish spell. Wish is the most flexible spell in the game, even ignoring the “wish for whatever you want” portion of the spell. Being able to cast any spell of levels 8 and lower, such as Simulacrum, without requiring components of any kind, is great. Wishing for a Simulacrum lets us re-up our clone without the time or money requirements. On top of these stolen spells, we also get access to bard level 9 spells like Foresight, a powerful buff spell that lasts 8 hours and doesn’t require concentration. All these features add up to an incredibly powerful late-game character capable of killing enemies like Tiamat in between 1 and 2 rounds.

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Level Split

• 5 sorcerer – Divine Soul: Access to the all-important Spirit Guardians, along with sorcery points and other staple spells.
• 1 cleric – Life: Heavy armor and a bump to all our healing.
• 5 warlock – Celestial/Chain: Keeping with the holy theme, this grants us three eldritch invocations, our damage cantrip, and a bunch of extra healing dice we can maximize.
• 9 sorcerer: High-level spells, more sorcery points, and the ability to fly.
• Human (variant): This build wants several feats to bring its tanking abilities fully online. Human lets us get to that point the fastest without sacrificing any core stats.

Starting Stats

• Cha: 16. The build’s main stat and the only one we raise to 20.
• Wis: 15. Secondary stat and a good save.
• Con: 16. As a tank we need health.
• Str, Dex, & Int: 8

ASI

• Level 1 (racial): Warcaster. This build relies on concentration for its damage output and at later levels will be holding something in each hand, making this feat a must.
• Level 4: Resilience (wisdom). This feat brings us up to 16 wisdom and adds our proficiency to those saves. Your party will thank you when you resist the vampire’s charm effect.
• Level 10: Lucky. Lucky is one of the most flexible feats in the game. It protects us from crits and gives us a much-needed edge on critical saving throws.
• Level 13: Cha +2.
• Level 17: Cha +2.

Magic Items

While not needed for any of my builds, these are a few magical items that I believe help more than most. I am not including any of these items in my damage calculations.

• +X Armor/Shield: Being a tank, this build wants as much AC as it can find; prioritizing these items is a good idea.
• Rod of the Pact Keeper/Wand of the War Mage/Staff of the Magi/Staff of Power: These items are all different flavors of the same idea, which is buffing our spell casting and providing some other bonus. Personally I think Staff of the Magi is the strongest, as it does roughly 1 million useful things, but any of these are good options.
• Amulet of Health: If you know your character will have access to this item, you can completely change this build, dropping starting con for a 16 in dexterity and grabbing the Shield Master feat instead of one of the other ASI. For space reasons I don’t fully map out that variant here, but I play this version of the character in Adventurer’s League and it is quite good.
• Cloak of Invisibility/Cloak of Displacement: Giving attackers disadvantage is great for any tank, and while the Cloak of Invisibility is strictly better, the Cloak of Displacement is a great option for lower-powered games.

Levels 1–5 are spent as a normal sorcerer. Depending on your campaign, you could rearrange the levels to fit what your party needs, but this is how I did it. At level 6, we take 1 level of life cleric. It’s at this point we can start standing on the front line using our increased AC from heavy armor to protect us. The Life cleric’s increased healing is also nice, although its strength will show through later.

Levels 7-11 see us picking up Celestial warlock and Pact of the Chain. Five levels in this class gives us Spirit Guardian spell slots on short rest and our bread-and-butter cantrip. Pact of the Chain is especially useful as it contains a unique invocation that, as long as our familiar is within 100 ft of us, all healing dice rolled to heal us are automatically maximized. Combined with Life cleric’s bonus to healing spells, we can keep ourselves alive through exceedingly high amounts of damage.

Levels 12-20 are spent increasing our sorcerer levels. This gives us more spell slots of higher level to play with, and powerful synergies like regeneration, healing 10 hp per round thanks to Life cleric. Though this build does take a bit of time to become the tank it was meant to be, it’s never weak at what it’s trying to do, and if you’re playing in a campaign that will go past level 10, I highly recommend trying out the triple-holy tank.

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Level Split

• 20 druid – Moon: As the name suggests we take all our levels in druid, as the class’s capstone ability is so powerful that no amount of multiclassing can come close.
• Human (variant): As this build spends most of its time as other creatures, we want as many abilities that carry over to our wildshaped forms. Feats are one of those abilities.

Starting Stats

• Wis: 16. Main stat.
• Con: 15. Secondary stat, raised with feat.
• Dex: 16. Tertiary stat for saves.
• Cha & Int: 8

ASI

• Level 1 (racial): Warcaster. This is a front-line build that will want to have a concentration spell up most of the time, which makes this feat a must.
• Level 4 – Resilience (constitution): As with Warcaster, this feat ensures we can maintain concentration while taking hits.
• Level 8 – Grappler: Significantly increases our accuracy and incentivizes inviting enemies to our bear hugs.
• Level 12 – Prodigy (Athletics): This gives our druid expertise in the Athletics skill, doubling their proficiencies whenever they try to grapple someone, making it very difficult for enemies to avoid the hug.
• Level 16 – Ritual Caster: Rituals, especially Find Familiar, are good; let’s get some of those.
• Level 19 – Alert: Alert is a generally good feat that will help us go first in any combat encounter.

Magic Items

While not needed for any of my builds, these are a few magical items that I believe help more than most. I am not including any of these items in my damage calculations.

• Insignia of Claws: The only way I’ve found to give animal forms +1 to hit and damage. If you can get this item for your Moon druid, it is 100% the best choice.
• Ioun Stone (Mastery): A magic item that can continue giving you its +1 proficiency while you are in animal form.
• Staff of the Woodlands: Although you can’t use it while transformed, this staff is very flexible and the ability to cast Pass without Trace at will is very powerful.

Levels 1-4 see us turning into a brown bear, providing your party with a tank/damage dealer more powerful than the members of the party dedicated to those roles. The druid can assume these shapes twice per short rest, meaning they will likely have the ability to wildshape in every fight.

Level 7 grants us the Polymorph spell, allowing us or any ally to become a giant ape, a creature with 157 hp and 6d10+12 worth of attacks per round. As we gain further levels in the class, our Wild Shape also gets stronger. This combined with Conjure Animal’s excellent upcast bonuses provide our druid with a steadily increasing power curve that can dominate encounters.

At level 8 we pick up the Grappler feat, allowing us to leverage our beast form’s increased strength to gain easy advantage on most enemies, along with forcing them to stay with us. Our ability to do this increases even further at level 12, almost guaranteeing we succeed at any grapple check we make, even against powerful enemies.

This all leads to the Archdruid ability at level 20, which bumps the number of times we can wildshape per rest from 2…to infinite. This is such a huge increase in power that I am amazed this made it into the game, as no other class’s capstone even comes close to this feature. Archdruid also grants us the ability to cast almost every spell while we’re transformed, allowing our druid to remain as your friendly neighborhood magical mammoth for as long as they please.

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Level Split

• 19 wizard – Bladesinger: Wizard is one of the strongest classes in the game, so we’re never mad to have so many levels in it.
• 1 monk/fighter: If you know you can get items like Staff of the Magi/Power, take monk; if not, take fighter.
• High elf: Since Bladesinger requires some form of elf, our hands are tied.

Starting Stats

• Dex: 17. Primary stat, raise to 20.
• Int: 16. Secondary stat, raise to 20.
• Con: 14
• Wis: 10
• Cha & Str: 8

ASI

• Level 4 – Resilience (dexterity): Bumps our dexterity to 18 and increases one of the best saves at the same time.
• Level 8 – Dexterity +2: Increases dexterity to 20 for more damage and AC.
• Level 12 – Dual Wielding: This feat gives us several important features. The ability to dual wield non-light weapons, +1 AC that nudges our defenses even higher, and the double unsheath/resheath mechanic, which is useful if your GM enforces those rules.
• Level 16 – Intelligence +2: More AC and our mage spells get better.
• Level 19 – Intelligence +2

Magic Items

Unlike previous entries this build is much more reliant on the recommended magic items to achieve its full effect, and while I assume that the character doesn’t have any for the detailed calculations, keep in mind that these items greatly enhance its power.

• Staff of the Magi: A +2 weapon that gives you protection from single-target spells, advantage on spell saves, and a wide variety of spells you can cast without using your own spell slots.
• Staff of Power: Another +2 weapon that increases your defensive values by +2 and can hit for an additional 1d6 every attack.
• Bracers of Defense: Since this build doesn’t use any armor, this is a great way to get +2 AC early on.
• Cloak of Invisibility: With this build’s extremely high AC, imposing disadvantage on the enemy makes it near impossible to hit you, requiring double crits on each attack roll.

Level 1 presents us with multiple combat options to suit the situation. Thanks to being an elf, we can already dual wield short swords with a constant AC of 16 from Mage Armor. We also have access to Toll the Dead, Fire Bolt, or a longbow for ranged damage options. While none of these are spectacular, it keeps us roughly on curve with other level 1 characters.

Levels 2-4 gives us a couple important features: Shadowblade as a powerful concentration spell, more low-level spell slots to burn on things like Shield, and the all-important AC increase that Bladesinger gives us. What makes this AC boost unique is how it stacks with preexisting AC calculations. Normally when a character has access to a feature like Unarmored Defense and casts an AC buff spell like Mage Armor, they have to choose one of those calculations to determine their AC. Bladesinger doesn’t have that issue; it just stacks on top of whatever was already there. This means that, with Mage Armor, our AC becomes 13+dex modifier+int modifier.

Levels 5-7 are where we pick up our second attack, Haste, and Polymorph. Haste is a great work-a-day combat buff that replaces Shadowblade as our primary concentration spell. Polymorph is a great buff for either ourselves or our party members. Which spell we choose to use is based on how important we think the fight is.

Levels 8-11 see us gaining spells like Animate Objects and Tenser’s Transformation. Both of these are great damage-increasing options.

Levels 12-19 grant us a steady increase in power, with spells like Simulacrum and Shapechange standing out as both fun and powerful additions to our toolbox. The fact that this build is both a potent melee fighter and a full spell caster gives us a huge number of options to choose from. We can mix it up on the front line, leveraging our good saves and massive AC, or play it safe and launch fireballs from the backline. Thanks to Spell Mastery, we have constant access to both Shield and Mirror Image, and Arcane Recovery ensures we will have spell slots to use for almost every combat.

Level 20 is an interesting level for this build, and one I’ve waffled on quite a bit. The capstone for wizards is bad, so we don’t lose a lot by multiclassing to pick up a specific level 1 feature, but which class and when to take the level has been tough to nail down. For this build, I chose fighter for the two-weapon fighting style; if I knew I could get a Staff of the Magi/Power, I would take a level of monk instead. This dip doesn’t necessarily have to happen at level 20, but I felt delaying all my power spikes by 1 level simply for +5 damage per round wasn’t worth it.

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