Four More Fun D&D Builds for Power Gaming

Ancestry 

Human – Variant: This build wants feats, and human allows us to get those feats with minimal delay.

Starting Stats

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

Level Split

• 2 druid – Circle of the Moon: Combat Wildshape and Circle Forms are the MVPs here.
• 5 barbarian – Totem Warrior – Bear: Powerful offensive capabilities paired with Resistance to almost every type of damage.
• 1 cleric – Life Domain: Allows us to restore any health we lose during fights.
• 12 fighter – Echo Knight: An efficient class to spend our remaining levels on.

ASI

• Level 1 (ancestry) – Polearm Master: Makes our character an effective level 1 damage dealer and sets up our main source of damage at higher levels.
• Level 6 – Great Weapon Master: This feat’s -5 hit for +10 damage is incredibly good when paired with the Barbarian’s Reckless Attack feature.
• Level 12 & Level 14 – Str + 2
• Level 16 – Sentinel: A tried and true combination with Polearm Master to lock down enemies and frustrate our GM.
• Level 20 – Tough: This build relies on its hitpoints to survive and doesn’t care about con saves that much, making this feat stronger than a +2 to con.

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: More damage is always good.
• Staff of the Woodlands: At-will Pass Without Trace is incredibly good and gives this character a host of powerful non-combat abilities.
• Winged Boots/Broom of Flying: This build’s lack of ranged options means gaining some way to fly is high on our list of priorities. Broom is the better item, but we’ll take whatever we can get.
• Slippers of Spider Climbing: Not as good as flying, but still nice to have.
• Gauntlets of Ogre power/Belt of Giant Strength: This build is a bit slow to max out its strength score, so increasing it artificially is very helpful to make sure your heavy hits connect.

Levels 1 and 2 see this build play just like any other melee druid. We start off making use of Polearm Master and our 16 strength to make 2 attacks with our quarterstaff. Level 2 has us gaining Combat Wildshape, allowing us to access forms such as the brown bear twice per short rest. A brown bear has 34 HP, a better attack bonus than our humanoid form, and 2 impressive attacks. This makes us as powerful as a level 2 character can be.

Levels 3–7 see the build transitioning into the barbarian class. We pick up powerful features like Rage, Danger Sense, and Reckless Attack. Once we have our extra attack, Wildshape becomes a bank of hitpoints to use in a dangerous fight instead of our main damage source. Against low AC targets,* we make constant use of Great Weapon Master’s -5 hit for +10 damage feature, switching to normal attacks against harder to hit enemies.

Level 8 has us taking a somewhat unusual 1 level dip into the cleric of all classes. This is to provide our build with sustainability between fights. One of the problems barbarians face is that even their large HP pools can be worn down over multiple encounters, compared to AC tanks who avoid damage completely. By combining the Life Domain’s Disciple of Life with the druid spell Goodberry, we can generate 240* hitpoints worth of healing that is doled out in 4 HP increments. This results in a barbarian capable of not only healing themself between fights, but their party as well.

At this point, the build has reached peak effectiveness. We hit hard, have constant advantage, have an effective HP pool of 294, and can serve as a main healer for out-of-combat healing.

I chose to fill the remaining 12 levels of this build with the Echo Knight fighter, although any subclass will do.* This subclass gives us more battlefield flexibility and a sizable spike in damage by using the Unleash Incarnation feature to generate a number of extra attacks equal to our Con mod per long rest.

As I said, these last 12 levels are pretty flexible in terms of subclasses and feats. I used Echo Knight, but Battle Master or Champion would also work fine. Sentinel is a great combo with Polearm Master, but something like Lucky would also be quite powerful. I created the Barbearian as an alternative to the many optimized builds* that don’t come online until levels 10-12. I think you’ll find it provides an excellent blend of damage, tanking and healing for all your adventuring needs.

View the math behind these numbers.

Ancestry 

Half-Elf – Drow: This ancestry gives us 4 stat bonuses, access to Eleven Accuracy, and an additional cast of Darkness once per day via the Drow Magic Feature. If your campaign ends before level 10, I recommend using the human variant, as it comes online more quickly.

Starting Stats

• Str –14: Only used at level 1 and to multiclass.
• Dex –10: Good save that we’d rather not have a negative modifier in.
• Con – 16: Secondary stat, good for concentration saves and higher health total.
• Int – 8: Dump stat.
• Wis – 10: Good save that we’d rather not have a negative modifier in.
• Cha – 17: This is our main stat; we raise it to 18 with Elven Accuracy later.

Level Split

• 1 Paladin: We start with this class to gain access to heavy armor.
• 1 Warlock – Hexblade: Now we can use charisma to attack and damage enemies, along with Hex, Hexblade’s Curse, and Shield.
• 4 Paladin – Oathbreaker: Grants us access to the Darkness spell without taking 3 levels in warlock and gives us more damage. Oath of Ancients also works but the level split does change slightly.
• 1 Warlock: Now we have Devil Sight.
• 13 Paladin: This gives us a host of powerful abilities and spells like Aura of Protection, Improved Divine Smite, and Find Greater Steed.

ASI

• Level 5 – Polearm Master: This the point where we swap from using a regular 1d8 weapon like the long sword or rapier to the quarterstaff. The extra attack is a great use of our bonus action and our flat modifiers means even 1d4 is impactful.
• Level 10 – Elven Accuracy – Charisma: Not only does this feat bump our Charisma to 18, but also means all our advantaged attacks are rolling 3d20 instead of 2, increasing our chances for those sweet critical Smites.
• Level 14 – Cha + 2
• Level 18 – Warcaster: Advantage on concentration saves and we no longer have to do the weapon drop dance* to cast somatic spells.

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: More damage is always good.
• Staff Magi/Power/Striking: These powerful magic quarterstaves are amazing for this build, and our 2 levels of warlock means we can attune to all of them.
• Gulthias Staff: This is without a doubt the best weapon for this build, if your GM allows you to always take it. Ten times per day, the staff lets you heal HP equal to the damage of your attack. With our flat damage boosts and Smite, this makes us almost unkillable. There isn’t even an action cost! The only downside is a wisdom save you almost can’t fail.

A necessary evil of this build is that we have a weak level 1. We can’t use our charisma for attack and damage roles yet, so we’re just an underpowered paladin. Thankfully, our 18 armor class and Lay on Hands mean we can provide decent tanking and support.

Level 2 is where this build gets going. We gain the Booming Blade, Hex, and Shield spells, plus we swap out strength for charisma as our offensive stat. We also gain a short rest rechargeable spell slot, which is great for smiting.

Note: Though I have listed Booming Blade as a damage source for levels 2–4, I am not factoring in any additional damage, as it doesn’t gain the guaranteed 1d8 until level 5. The spell is included as a best-practice in a real game, since it costs you nothing and will sometimes deal damage if the enemy tries to move. I am also only adding Smite damage to critical hits, as I believe it is unrealistic to assume a paladin can Smite every attack.

We continue taking paladin levels 3–6 to get the Extra Attack feature. The normal level 5 power spike that martial classes get is bridged for this build by the Polearm Master extra attack. While it’s not quite as good as a full second attack, it gets the job done well enough until we get our actual Extra Attack.

Level 6 is a huge power spike for this build. We gain not only the Extra Attack feature, but the 2nd level Find Steed spell as well. The way your GM runs mounted combat will determine how much damage our warhorse will add. However, it’s adding a huge amount of mobility no matter what, increasing our 20 feet of movement to 60.

At level 7, we grab our second level of warlock. Thanks to Oathbreaker’s subclass spell list and our ancestry, we already have access to 3 casts of Darkness per long rest, and now we can see through it. This means all enemies who can’t see through Darkness attack us at disadvantage, we attack them at advantage, and any spell or ability that requires the caster to see their target can’t target us. Be aware that some players get frustrated when you bring a Darkness build to the table, so consider that when moving around the battlefield. Any martial character can attack an enemy blinded by darkness without disadvantage,* but friendly spell casters can’t target enemies in the darkness, so try and leave some targets outside of it for them to attack. A lesser addition is that of Agonizing Blast, giving us a potent ranged option for when the enemies are outside of bopping distance.

Levels 8–10 consist of power spike after power spike for this build. Aura of Protection at 8 is one of the best class features in the game, granting both us and any friendly creature within 10 feet a bonus to all saves equal to our charisma mod. This is especially good for our paladin/warlock multiclass, as we can raise our charisma without sacrificing damage output.

Aura of Hate at 9 is a bit more offensive in nature, granting us and any undead or fiends within 10 feet of us bonus damage on melee attacks equal to our charisma mod. It’s important to note that this includes enemies as well as friendlies, so be careful when facing down your local vampire lord. Despite this weakness, adding another flat modifier to our already sizable bonus grants us consistently high damage numbers.

Lastly, we gain the Elven Accuracy feat at 10, bumping our charisma to 18 and granting us improved advantage.* Seeing as Darkness means most of our attacks are made with advantage, this is another major boost to damage, especially against high AC targets.

Speaking of power spikes, level 11 gives the biggest one of all: Animate Dead. Another offering from the Oathbreaker spell list, Animate Dead lets us convert the normally lackluster 3rd level paladin spell slots into an eventual total of 4 skeletons apiece.* At this point, our Hexstaff has their own entourage of skeletal and equine allies, providing transportation and ranged support as we move into close combat for a good bop. Level 13’s Improved Divine Smite is another decent boost, adding 3d8 per round from our 3 attacks.

Levels 14–16 sees our charisma raised to 20 and the spell Find Greater Steed. Now instead of the reasonably good warhorse we gain the amazing griffon. Permanent flight alongside a chunky 59 HP and decent damage output? Yes please. Since our mount plays such an important role in our build, we are saving our 4th-level slot for that spell instead of more skeletons.

Cleansing Touch is our 16th-level feature, and while not damage oriented like other features I’ve been highlighting, being able to end spell effects without a roll can be very useful.

Rounding this out, we have levels 17–20. Though not quite as big as earlier spikes, we do have some significant power increases here. The biggest of these is the level 17 feature Supernatural Resistance, granting us resistance to all non-magical slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage. This type of ability is good even at higher levels, as many high CR monsters deal non-magical damage. Alongside this increase in toughness come the Warcaster feat and yet more skeletons, ensuring we keep concentration and have even more crossbows to pepper our enemies with.

Even without summons boosting our damage to absurd levels, this Hexstaff build is a formidable force on the battlefield. The combination of our quarterstaff, Polearm Master, and Duelist Fighting Style gives us the defensive bonuses from sword and board while dealing damage similar to two-handed, dual-wielding, and crossbow builds.

This build is also very hard to hurt. Paladins have unmatched saves, with our weakest being a +4 to intelligence. As for physical attacks, we will almost always be shrouded in darkness, forcing our enemies to attack with disadvantage. If an enemy can see through our Darkness spell, we can simply use our concentration for spells like Hex, Shield of Faith, or Holy Weapon, depending on our level and the situation.

Even at range, this build holds its own, as Eldritch Blast plus the Agonizing Blast Invocation means we have a scaling ranged attack that at level 17 deals 4d10 + 20. While this isn’t as strong as we are in melee, it’s nothing to sneeze at, and it’s the perfect gap-filler attack while we attempt to close with the enemy. Altogether, this is one of my favorite builds and comes the closest of any I’ve made to having no substantial weaknesses. I highly encourage everyone reading to try this one out, if only to see the confusion on your party’s face when your paladin wanders in wielding a stick.

View the math behind these numbers.

Ancestry 

Human – Variant: As with any build interested in feats, this one looks to variant human. For this build, we use our free feat to improve our defenses with Heavily Armored.

Starting Stats

• Str – 9: Dump stat, only improved by our starting feat.
• Dex – 8: Dump stat.
• Con – 16: With our small hit dice, we need all the HP we can get, and improving our concentration saves is useful too.
• Int – 14: Makes our wizard spells and our Arcane Ward stronger.
• Wis – 10: All we could afford.
• Cha – 16: This is our primary stat, fueling both our Eldritch Blast and any attacks made with our Pact Weapon. If you want to focus more on offensive wizard spells, I recommend flipping this stat score with intelligence.

Level Split

• 2 Warlock – Hexblade : This 2 level dip grants us our main damage source, the proficiencies we need to have good AC, and two of the three key features/spells this build revolves around.
• 18 Wizard – Abjuration: Going this far into wizard means we gain access to the entirety of their incredible spell list and start scaling our Arcane Ward as soon as possible.

ASI

• Level 1 (ancestry) – Heavily Armored: As this character intends to be on the front line, we need to have decent AC. Just because we punish people for hitting us doesn’t mean we want every attack to land. Thankfully, Hexblade grants us medium armor proficiency, meaning we can upgrade that to heavy armor through our human ancestry feat.
• Level 6 – War Caster: Concentration saves are always important, so making sure we can pass those reliably is very important.
• Level 10 – Cha + 2
• Level 14 – Cha + 2
• Level 18 – Resilient (con): Makes our concentration saves even better.

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: Improving our AC and damage when we use Booming Blade is always useful.
• Rod of the Pact Keeper: Makes our Eldritch Blast more likely to hit and grants us an additional warlock spell slot.
• Staff of Power/Magi/Striking: All very powerful quarterstaves that would be huge boosts to the build’s power if we can acquire them.
• Headband of Intellect: This build is a wizard with low int. If we can find this item, it’ll make our ward and spells stronger.

These first 2 levels are where we lay the groundwork for the build going forward. We get all the proficiencies we need, our standard attack options in Eldritch Blast and Booming Blade, and the Armor of Agathys spell.

Now that we’ve picked up Arcane Ward, we can start reliably triggering Armor of Agathys multiple times per cast. For the purpose of damage calculations, I am assuming the retaliation damage will trigger once per round. A nice side effect of stacking Arcane Ward with Armor of Agathys is that our wizard/warlock now has more HP than a barbarian of the same level, making us an excellent tank. Our damage also receives a small boost, as our familiar can use the help action to grant us advantage on one of our attack rolls per round.

Levels 5–11 see us steadily adding to our Arcane Ward and Armor of Agathys HP. Spells like Fireball, Haste, Polymorph, and Animate Objects make excellent additions to our spell list, with the concentration spells acting as alternatives to Hex in harder fights.

Levels 12–14 have us maxing out our charisma and gaining the Tenser’s Transformation spell. While not a spell we’ll always want to use, the extra attack, on hit damage, and temporary HP can be quite useful if we need some extra bulk for our character. If you do use this spell, remember that temporary HP cannot stack, and Armor of Agathys’ damage only triggers when the temporary HP it generates is active, so either use Tenser’s when Armor of Agathys is down or be ready to choose which amount of temporary HP you want to use.

From level 15 onward, we are now doubling our damage output by introducing a perfect copy of ourselves through Simulacrum. This is a major damage boost and we should always have a copy active if we can. Alongside Simulacrum, we gain little things like Mind Blank, Meteor Swarm, Shapechange, Foresight, and Wish. We’ve also unlocked the Abjuration capstone of Spell Resistance, granting us advantage on spell saving throws and resistance to spell damage. All told, this build leaves us with a highly capable spell caster who returns high amounts of damage against any enemy who manages to land a hit on us in melee.

View the math behind these numbers.

Ancestry 

Yuan-Ti Pureblood: This build doesn’t need Elven Accuracy or any other feats. As such, we’re unlocked from the half-elf/human box most good builds find themselves in. If you don’t care about feats, Yuan-Ti Pureblood is one of the best ancestries out there, most notably for its innate magic resistance. A smaller bonus is the charisma-based poison spray cantrip giving us a way to attack with our charisma prior to taking levels of warlock.

Starting Stats

• Str -8: Dump stat.
• Dex –14: A good save, increases our initiative, and is required for one of our multiclasses.
• Con – 12: The highest value we could get while still fulfilling multiclass requirements.
• Int – 13: Only used for multiclassing.
• Wis – 13: Only used for multiclassing and saves.
• Cha – 16: Primary stat, eventually raised to 20.

Level Split

• 6 Wizard – Necromancer : This grants us the Animate Dead spell and Undead Thrall damage boost as fast as possible.
• 2 Warlock – Archfey: This 2 level dip grants us the respectable Eldritch Blast/Agonizing Blast package which is a powerful ranged attack option all the way through level 20. We take the normally weak Archfey for its subclass spell list that includes the Faerie Fire spell. This spell gives us a way to grant advantage to our massive skeleton army against multiple enemies while targeting a save many monsters are pretty bad at.
• 2 Ranger: I promise you didn’t actually click on a “4 joke builds” article. Ranger grants us the Defense Fighting Style and access to the Goodberry spell without giving up metal armor like a druid level would force us to.
• 1 Cleric – Life: Combines with our ranger’s Goodberry to provide the party with powerful out-of-combat healing.
• 9 Warlock – Archfey/Chain: Another first for my builds, taking warlock past level 5. Pact of the Chain grants us the slightly improved pixie familiar, and more importantly, the Gift of the Ever Living Ones invocation, maximizing any dice rolled to heal us. We also eventually get three 5th level spell slots for maximum skeletons.

ASI

• Level 4 – Cha + 2
• Level 15 – Cha + 2
• Level 19 – Alert: This slot can also be filled by pretty much any generically good feat such as Lucky of Observant.

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: This build will take as many magical ranged weapons as it can get its hands on to give out to skeletons, as each summon is capable of using and attuning to the same number of items as a player character.
• Rod of the Pact Keeper: Makes our Eldritch Blast more likely to hit and more importantly grants us an additional warlock spell slot to spend on skeletons.
• Battle Standard of Infernal Power: A little-known item added by the Descent Into Avernus adventure, this item grants all allies within 300 feet of you magical attacks for the purposes of overcoming damage resistance and immunity. Normally this is a pretty useless power for players, as by the time they need magical weapons, they almost always have them. However, the power becomes a lot better when you have a horde of skeletons that could really use magical damage to hurt that darn werewolf. Picking up this single item is a lot cheaper than attempting to outfit your entire army with +1 heavy crossbows.
• Night Caller: We love skeletons and this grants us 2 more.
• Bag(s) of Holding: Did you know that the average human skeleton weighs 19.04 pounds? Combining bone weight* with a heavy crossbow’s 18 pounds, we get 37 pounds as the weight of one fully equipped skeleton archer. A bag of holding has a maximum carrying capacity of 500 pounds, meaning it can hold up to 13 of our minions without trouble. Normally, putting a creature in a bag of holding has the problem of suffocating said creature, but our undead friends don’t have to deal with this issue. The end result of all this is that we can now transport up to 13 skeletons per bag of holding wherever we want without suspicion. Entering a town that doesn’t allow undead? Going to a noble’s party to prevent an assassination? Going to the same party to attempt an assassination? Our bags of skeletons will allow us to never be without bony companions.

Levels 1–4 for this build are, admittedly, not great. We’re a wizard with 13 intelligence, so outside of Magic Missile, our combat spells are far below the curve. Thankfully, our ancestry grants us the Poison Spray cantrip* with saves based on our charisma, so we have something we can do with our 16 stat. Since our damage spells are mostly garbage, we use these levels to take every ritual and defensive option we can. The only other offensive spell we take is Dragon’s Breath, which we hand out to our owl familiar. Our save might be pretty low, but any damage helps at this point.

Levels 5–6 see us finally getting to the summoning part of this summoner build. Each level 3 spell slot converts to a total of 4 maintainable skeletons, and thanks to arcane recovery we have access to 3 of these slots. A reminder that for these calculations I am assuming my skeletons are equipped with heavy crossbows instead of the short bows listed in their stat blocks, so your damage will vary depending on what your GM rules.

At level 6, we get the feature we took wizard levels for in the first place: Undead Thralls. The main selling point of this ability is we can now add our proficiency modifier to each of our skeleton’s damage rolls. This is a huge boost and gives the build damage scaling even when we’re not actively generating more skeletons.

As for other spell picks, we continue to grab rituals as all of our 3+ spell slots are used for beefing up the bone squad. Catnap is one exception, as later we can combine it with our warlock slots for even more skele-friends!

Now that we have our most important spell and feature, we can spend levels 7 and 8 improving our character’s offense and utility. A weakness I commonly see with summoners is that they personally do almost nothing, relying completely on their summons to protect them and kill their enemies. By taking 2 levels of warlock, we gain the Eldritch Blast/Hex combo and an easy way to grant mass advantage to our summoned army with Faerie Fire. For the purposes of damage calculations, I match our current spell save DC against the average dex save bonus of all 5E monsters* and give a percentage of skeletons’ advantage* equal to their failure chance.

Time to explain that ranger comment I tantalized you with in the build intro. Now I am on record that the ranger is one of the worst classes in 5E,* but with this build, I have finally found a place for the class. The whole point of these levels is the Disciple of Life/Goodberry combo, providing tons of healing for our character and the rest of the party. This is normally achieved with 1 cleric/1 druid. Unfortunately, taking a druid stops us from wearing metal armor.*

Given the target often painted on a summoner’s back, I’d like for this build to be as defensive as possible, which got me thinking about other ways to acquire Goodberry. Enter the 2 level ranger dip, granting us the Goodberry spell, plus 1 AC from the Defense fighting style, and still advancing our combined spell slots by 1 level. The cleric level is the other half of the combo, giving us heavy armor and Disciple of Life for 40 HP worth of healing per Goodberry cast.

Levels 12–13 are another relative weak point for this build. Warlock levels don’t progress our multiclass spell slots and our Pact Magic slots haven’t reached 3rd level yet. However, that doesn’t mean these levels are useless. Our 3rd level of warlock grants us Pact of the Chain and its stronger familiar: a pixie, in our case.

We also get the Gift of the Ever Living Ones invocation, maximizing any dice rolled to heal us. This is a very powerful effect and makes any healing directed at us significantly more efficient.

Level 14 sees another massive power spike for our summoner as our Pact Magic slots upgrade from 2nd level to 3rd. These slots refresh on short rests, meaning we can use them three times per long rest instead of the one time our normal slots can be used. The Catnap spell also nets us one additional 3rd level slot. All told, these new slots increase the number of skeletons we can field from 32 to 60.

The last 6 levels of this build have us increasing our warlock levels for larger pact spell slots, with a third slot coming in as our level 20 capstone. A nice bonus of all these extra warlock slots is the ability to take some of the lesser-used Eldritch Invocations. Repelling Blast and Tomb of Levistus aren’t necessarily bad picks, but are usually overshadowed by best-in-slot options like Sculptor of Flesh. This build is spending all its warlock slots on Animate Dead so any invocations that want to use those slots are worthless. As for our Mystic Arcanum, I picked Soul Cage mostly for its thematic value, although Conjure Fey bringing in a mammoth is probably worth more in a fight.

At final counting, we have 124 skeletons unleashing a torrent of crossbow bolts every round, their accuracy bolstered by our Faerie Fire. The damage output of this build is absurd and can down almost any monster in 5E in one round*. Its greatest weakness are monsters with AC 23 and up, but even against those, the damage per round is over 200.

Even without our summons, this build is fine. We have the always reliable Eldritch Blast/Hex combo, we can wear plate and a shield, and our ancestry ensures we have good saves against any spell or magical effects. The greatest weakness of this build is logistics and GM patience. Summon spamming can quickly bog down and break 5E combat encounters. If you do plan to bring this build to a real game, be very open with your GM about what it does and have a plan in place to make sure your turns aren’t taking 10-20 minutes at higher levels. A couple suggestions would be to pre-roll your skeleton attacks during other player’s turns, build a spreadsheet to record these rolls, and organize them by what ACs those attacks hit against, minimizing the time required to identify how many hits were made, and group skeletons into 12-creature units that move together on the battle map. I had a blast coming up with this, and I hope you all had fun reading it.

View the math behind these numbers.