All posts tagged Pact of the Blade

Gish Optimized 6: The Barbarian Hellblade Tank, Myra Helkey

So it’s time to crack open our Dungeons and Dragons books again for another episode of Gish Optimized! Because D&D is much more fun when you Gish! And boy are we going to Gish today — in the form of a fantasy character as a D&D character build! She delivers some big booms, a lotta splat, serious tankage, and a heapin’ helping of Hellish sizzle!

Welcome to the Barbarian Hellblade Tank — Myra Helkey!

Thus far in our build series, we’ve explored two straight-classed Gishes — the Stab and Smite Dexadin and the Battle Sorcerer. Both pack a serious punch and demonstrate the 5e truism that you don’t have to multiclass to kick serious character optimization butt in D&D. We’ve also explored three dip Gish builds — the Hexblade-Fighter, the classic Fighter-Mage, and the Tempest Cleric-Storm Sorcerer. All dip builds included just 1-3 levels in their secondary class.

For our Barbarian-Hellblade Tank, we’re going for another dip. We’re just taking one level in a second class — Barbarian — to help enable an explosive piñata style tank that is also primarily a caster.

“Explosive pinata, what the eff does that mean?” you ask?

It’s exactly what it sounds like! This tank basically blows up in the faces of bad guys who beat on it. Now doesn’t that sound like fun? Yeah! Explosive pinata! Say it with me now! Sounds like Mustafa! Explosive pinata! And for our explosive pinata tank, that one level dip in Barbarian is going to carry one helluva lot of beefy, damage-soaking weight. The rest, the ice shards piercing bad guys, the shields of magical fire and cold, the temporary hit points stolen from each fallen foe, will be delivered by the nineteen levels coming from Warlock.

Now let’s jump into it!

Myra Helkey as Explosive Pinata Hellblade

Our new build gets its RP cred straight from the Helkey modern fantasy series that many of you have been enjoying here. Though this build will not perfectly mirror Myra Hellkey’s abilities from Into Infernia, it will provide you with a powerful full caster who’s capable of laying down severe blasts of magical power, of delivering some rather devastating NOVA damage, and, most importantly, of tanking like a champ on the battlefields of D&D. With these goals in mind, we’ll leverage both the Hellishly cool mojo of Myra from our series and the D&D ruleset to give you a great template for combat and RP fun in your games.

Myra steals both secrets and powers from devils. IRL, Myra would side with Ukraine in its existential struggle against the diabolical Vladimir Putin. A conflict that forms one back-drop of this modern fantasy tale.

Story-wise, our Myra gains her magical powers through her name curse tattoo. This source of magic is not a Warlock’s fiendish pact in a strictly traditional sense. Instead, Myra has been gifted by her mage parents with the ability to steal power from fiends — either by slaying them directly or by sheltering souls the fiends have taken in her name curse. These souls, in turn, gift Myra with magical energy. In past role-play, I’ve described Myra taking souls from slain fiends (which end up residing in her shadow, perhaps to be redeemed later) and by liberating the souls of the damned in the lower planes (which end up in her name curse, perhaps to be resurrected or carried to the celestial realms later).

This build is heavily lower planes themed. However, the character’s backstory, I find, works great for almost any campaign. Since there are many ways to render and describe Myra Helkey mechanically in D&D 5e, our guide here will be the first of many for Myra. One made more enjoyable owing to its improbable nature. A Fiend Warlock that steals power from fiends — tipping the tables against them. The build also makes excellent use of a Barbarian dip, often considered non-optimal, to great effect. A reverse Elric of Melnibone — in which the soul-sucking nature of fiends comes back to haunt them. Our version of Myra here is thus a rough-and-tumble Paladin — by other means. It often feels like pulling off a major coup to play her. I hope you enjoy her as much as I have.

Level 1 — Strength, Charisma, Constitution, Dexterity, Half-Elf, Barbarian

Starting with ability scores, the first thing we notice is we’re really, really MAD. We need Charisma for our spellcasting, we need Strength for our melee because man are we gonna melee, and we need Constitution because we want to be tough. In addition, we want a decent Dexterity because we don’t want to have a terrible AC. We also want max Strength and Charisma at high level. That’s a lot. But don’t fret! We have an awesome build plan that’s gonna make all this MADness work out for us. We’re just going to have to do some serious ability score gymnastics to accomplish our admittedly ambitious goals.

We begin with Strength — which is our first primary statistic. Using point buy, we dump 9 points into the physical might and prowess attribute. This gives us a 15 before we begin to tap into our racial bonuses. We’re taking Strength all the way to 20 (unless we gain a Belt of Giant Strength as an item drop, of course) and this buy gives us a great start. It also empowers our melee strikes. Since we are taking Fiend Warlock, not Hexblade for our main class, Strength is going to do a lot of work to help us stand tough in close fights. To this point, we’re not going to avoid close fighting. Instead, we’re going to run right into most fights with a high confidence in our power to take a literal crap-load of incoming physical punishment. Hell yeah! Because our Myra Helkey is a real scrapper. Indeed!

For our next stat, we drop 7 points into Charisma. This gives us a 14 before we access any of our race’s ability modifiers. Charisma’s our casting stat and we don’t want to neglect it. Sure, we’re going to be amazingly tough and badass in melee combat. But we are a Gish after all. And by level 6 we gain access to some seriously heavy blast effects. In addition, we have access to the wonderful Eldritch Blast and related supports. To fail to leverage our caster side in this build would be to hand in our Gish card. And we really don’t want to do that.

Moving on to Constitution, we drop 5 points into the stat for physical toughness and resiliency to end up with a total of 13 before any adds from our race. We’re not as heavily concentration focused as some of our other builds (which we’ll discuss more below). However, we do need the HP since we’re going to be wading into melee quite a lot. And though we don’t rely on any specific set of concentration magic, we may want to avail ourselves of a number of wonderful spells from the Warlock list like Hex, Shadow of Moil, or Spirit Shroud, from time to time.

We’re going to rely on our physical toughness, on our magic, and on the Fiend Warlock’s ability to generate temporary hit points for our main defense. However, we don’t want to have absolutely terrible armor class. Since we’re main-lining a Greatsword for our primary weapon and won’t have use of a shield, and since we’re stuck with medium armor from Barbarian, we want at least a halfway decent Dexterity. I’m gonna go ahead and drop 4 of our remaining points into Dexterity. This buy gives us a 12. We won’t max out medium armor. But starting with a 15 AC together with scale mail and all our other fun features ain’t half bad.

Myra prepares to enter Hell.

After being considerably MAD, we are only left with 2 points to spend on Intelligence and Wisdom. I’m not comfortable dumping Myra’s Int, so I’m going to drop these last 2 to get her a 10 in the smarts stat. That leaves Myra with an 8 Wisdom. I’m cool with her having a lower Wis. She’s always getting herself into trouble in fiction. A low Wisdom in-game lets us really lean into this RP characteristic.

So before choosing our race, we end up with 15 Str, 13 Con, 12 Dex, 10 Int, 8 Wis, and 14 Cha. A solid spread and yet somehow not stretching ourselves too thin.

Moving on, we go ahead and take Half Elf for our race. In RP, Half Elf works great as Myra Helkey is the daughter of the angelic and fey Beatrice Lushael. We could go Aasimar for this RP theme. But I’m more partial to Half-Elf both mechanically and story-wise. For one, Myra’s father, Robert Mori, is Human. Second, Beatrice comes from the very Fey Heaven that is Oesha. Third, Half-Elf gives us some great stats to help us out.

Adding in bonuses (+1, +1, +2) from Half Elf, we boost our Strength to 16, bump our Constitution to 14, and increase our Charisma to 16. Our final ability scores are Str 16, Con 14, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 16. These are solid stats. From Half-Elf, we also gain Darkvision, two extra skills (which we can trade for 5 feet of extra movement or a wizard cantrip, though I’m partial to the extra skills or movement, myself), advantage on saves against being charmed and magic can’t put us to sleep.

Now at last we come to class. We’re a Gish. But for our first level in this build we are going all in for Barbarian. We’ll never see another level in this class again. But at first level, we get a lot from the Barb. Our starting HP is 14. Wof! We pick up Scale Mail for a 15 base AC — about average. But we’re not too worried given our combined Rage and high HP. We gain proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves. We grab a Greatsword. For ranged attacks, we pick up hand axes or javelins. And, perhaps most importantly, we gain Rage which effectively doubles our Hit Points relative to physical attacks, buffs our damage, and gives us advantage on Strength checks while raging. In RP, I describe Myra’s Rage as an effect of her magical name curse tattoo. Of course this is pure fluff. But, again, I find this distinction from typical Barbarian Rage to be a fun story element.

Overall, at first level, we have nothing to complain about. Our strong ability scores, high HP, ability to Rage and versatility coming from Half Elf are our high points. We might lag a bit behind pure class Barbarians. But we’re no slackers. Our unique capabilities, however, begin to manifest as we progress to level 2.

Level 2 — Fiend Warlock, Eldritch Blast, Armor of Agathys, Dark One’s Blessing

Here we gain access both to our magical nature and to a rather unique combination that I’m calling the explosive pinata tank. To access this new talent, we take level 2 in Fiend Warlock. Immediately, we gain two Cantrips. I’m taking Eldritch Blast and Light. I enjoy Light for its utility and as a party aid. I often run into parties where members lack Darkvision — which can be a real impediment in dungeons if a light source isn’t available. Eldritch Blast is pretty self explanatory here. It immediately provides us with a medium range attack that does decent damage and scales quickly as we level. We can’t use it while we’re raging. But when we’re raging, we’re also tanking. Just in case we need a ranged attack, we keep a few javelins or hand axes at the ready.

We also gain access to two spells. I’m leaning toward picking up the thematic Burning Hands for a blast. Although Arms of Hadar might be a better choice. In any case, we grab a blast of some kind to give us an AOE option. The second spell, however, is pretty crucial. Armor of Agathys both gives us a resilience buff in the form of 5 temporary hit points (THP). This spell requires no concentration. And it lasts for 1 hour. Due to our short rest spell recharge, we can cast this spell multiple times per day. Combined with our two rages, Armor of Agathys gives us a serious edge as a Tank. Here’s how it works. Right now, we have 21 Hit Points. When we Rage, we take half damage from physical attacks. When we cast Armor of Agathys, we gain an additional 5 THP. And when we are hit, our attackers take 5 cold damage so long as some of the THP from Armor of Agathys remains. With rage active, it turns our 5 points of THP into an effective 10 THP for physical attacks. This means we are more likely to deliver that 5 cold damage multiple times. So attackers are taking damage from hitting us. Their hits are less effective due to our Rage. And we are also smacking them around with our Greatsword for 2d6+5 damage as we Rage. Explosive pinata!

Armor of Agathys — Ice Armor with a bite.

Moving on to our Fiend Pact, we get a nice cherry on top of our, already strong, resiliency suite as we gain Dark One’s Blessing. This power enables us to pick up 4 THP every time we reduce an enemy to 0 hit points. It doesn’t stack with other sources of THP. But it can give us a carry-over effect. For example, say we enter combat with six kobolds. We have Armor of Agathys already cast. We Rage and run into battle smashing one to bits. We gain 4 THP that doesn’t matter, because we still have 5 THP from Armor of Agathys. All five kobolds attack. Two hit. The first does 6 damage (reduced to 3 because we Raged) and the second one does 5 damage (reduced to 2 because we Raged). Typically, the first hit would take down our Armor of Agathys. Since we Raged, our spikey ice armor survives the first shot. This means that we have now killed two Kobolds as our Armor of Agathys delivers 5 cold damage to each. We’ve taken zero damage off our base HP. Our Armor of Agathys goes down from the second hit. But, we now have 4 THP because our Armor of Agathys killed the second Kobold that hit us. Only two Kobolds remain. They get lucky and we miss our attack. They attack us, again getting lucky and hitting twice. They each do 4 damage. Because of our Rage, we again lose none of our base HP. It all gets taken off the THP we gained from Dark One’s Blessing. Next round, we kill one of the Kobolds and recharge our THP to 4. The last Kobold crits us for 8 damage, which we turn to 4 because of Rage. Then on our turn, we kill the last Kobold and recharge our THP again. So far, we’ve taken 27 damage, reduced to 13 because we Raged, reduced to zero+4 because we racked up 17 THP in total. In addition, two of the hits against us killed enemy attackers.

Explosive pinata, baby!

Level 3 — Agonizing Blast, Hex

At level 3 we pick up Eldritch Invocations from Warlock along with a new spell and our second Warlock slot. For our first Invocation, we take Agonizing Blast. Devil’s Sight is somewhat less useful for us than for the Hexblade-Fighter as we won’t be leveraging magical forms of darkness to gain advantage very often. We also like to have the powerful ranged option provided by Agonizing Blast during the times when we are not raging. Our second spell slot also gives us a number of helpful options. We can, for example, cast Armor of Agayths prior to combat, wade into battle, on round 1 cast an AOE like Thunderwave, Burning Hands or Arms of Hadar. Then, for our bonus action, we activate rage and begin tanking. For our third spell choice, we pick Hex which allows us to further buff our Eldritch Blast to 1d10+1d6+3 when we are not raging. This provides us with a nice switch-hitting option and adds versatility to the character.

Level 4 — Pact of the Blade, Shatter

Reaching level 4 we hit level 3 in Warlock — granting us our Pact. Since we are an explosive pinata style tank, we immediately jump on Pact of the Blade. Now, our attacks count as magical with this amazing weapon we summon from mid-air by invoking the power of our name curse (err… patron). We set aside our second invocation at level 3, so we go ahead and immediately use it to buff our summoned Hellblade with Improved Pact of the Blade — granting us a +1 Greatsword. Mechanically badass and thematic.

Our Warlock spell slots bump up to level 2. Armor of Agathys delivers 10 THP and 10 damage to attackers that hit us in melee. Assessing our tankishness, we’ve probably accessed Half Plate for 16 AC, our base HP is 35 or about in line with the fighter/ranger average. Armor of Agathys gives us 10 THP and Dark One’s Blessing grants 6 THP when we reduce a creature to 0 HP. Rage effectively doubles both our Hit Points and THP against physical attacks. While raging and while Armor of Agathys is up, we also deal about 23 damage per round assuming our Greatsword attack lands and we’ve been hit once. With Rage ongoing, we can expect Armor of Agathys to reliably last for 2-3 hits or more, resulting in 20-30+ single target damage while also effectively absorbing 20 hit points of incoming fire. When Armor of Agathys goes down, we can still boost our survivability through Dark One’s Blessing (at 6 THP per pop) so long as we can land hits and reduce critters to 0 HP.

Last of all, for our new spell choice, we pick up Shatter. This choice grants us another, more powerful AOE which we can use to good effect just prior to activating our Rage.

Level 5 — Great Weapon Master, Misty Step, Mirror Image

This level isn’t as big for us as for many other builds, mainly due to the fact that we dipped into Barbarian right from jump. That said, level 5 does bring with it a number of major perks. First off, we gain a feat/ASI and we use it to pick up Great Weapon Master. Now, we can subtract 5 from our to hit roll to add 10 to our damage. In addition, we can use a bonus action to deliver another attack after we roll a critical hit or reduce a creature to 0 HP. These features provide us with another boost to our melee damage.

Picking up a new spell slot gives us access to the mobility-enhancing Misty Step. We don’t tend to use it as much as other builds due to a combination of high Strength and access to Eldritch Blast. But we have it for a rainy day when we need to get into or out of trouble quick. Eldritch Versatility also allows us to retrain one spell. We use this ability to switch out our level 1 AOE for Mirror Image. Now we have another spell we can cast in addition to Armor of Agathys that does not require concentration and is compatible with our Rage. It also adds to our tankiness. So we’re all over it.

Level 6 — Thirsting Blade, Fireball

At level 6 we get a big boost. First, we pick the Thirsting Blade Invocation. This grants us two attacks per round with our Greatsword. In addition, we gain a new known spell. We pick Fireball from our Fiend Warlock spell list.

By now, in addition to having access to a solid tanking ability, we also have some powerful offensive options. We can enter combat with Armor of Agathys pre-cast to give us 15 THP and 15 explosive pinata damage. On round 1, we might cast Fireball, then bonus action to Rage. If, on a subsequent round, we score a critical hit with Great Weapon Master, we do an average of 46-76 plus 15 reactive damage if we are hit once for a total of 61-91 damage on a NOVA round. Very solid damage for a build that leans more heavily toward tanking.

Our tanking at this level is also pretty badass. We have 49 base HP. But adding in 15 THP from Armor of Agathys brings us to 64. Our Rage effectively doubles our hit points against physical attacks. Due to Rage, our reactive damage from Armor of Agathys likely lasts for 2-3 hits or more for a total of 30-45 off turn damage. Our Dark One’s Blessing adds 8 THP every time we reduce a target to 0 HP. These THP additions now happen more often with our extra attacks and Fireballs.

Level 7 — Dark One’s Own Luck, Fly

By level 7 we pick up a little boost to our saves and ability checks in the form of Dark One’s Own Luck. I’m partial to saving this clutch ability to add a d10 roll onto a failed save or concentration check. We’re already a little weak on our Int, Dex, and Wis saves. Dake One’s Own Luck helps to fill that gap and shore up a major vulnerability. For our spell choice, we gain some amazing mobility options by picking up the Fly spell. Fly allows us to zoom around the battlefield while spreading havoc with our Greatsword or Eldritch Blasts if mobility is something we decide we need.

Level 8 — Eldritch Smite, Fire Shield

Rolling into level 8 we gain another set of enhancements to our explosive pinata style tank. For one, our key Armor of Agathys jumps to 20 THP. With our base HP at 63, Agathys gives us an effective HP of 83. This compares to a typical Barbarian of this level at approx 85 with the addition of reactive damage. We can’t Rage as many times as the Barb’ so we need to choose our moments. But when we do, we are a serious impediment to foes that try to blow through us. Armor of Agathys lasts for at least 3 hits against most physical attacks while we rage for an average of around 60 reactive damage. We are also now getting 10 THP additions from Dark One’s Blessing. This is all pretty amazing for a tank.

For our new Invocation we pick up Eldritch Smite. I’m honestly not as jazzed about Eldritch Smite on this build as I am with other melee Warlocks. However, if we do manage to land a critical hit, we can burn one of our precious spell slots to add 45 average damage to that single strike. Overall, this net effect is lower than casting Armor of Agathys while raging and taking physical hits. But there are encounters when we will find this extra potential critical hit damage more effective — for example, when we need to take down a big bad, when enemies are resistant to cold damage, or when we are dealing with an encounter when we are mainly dealing with energy-based damage and our Rage ability isn’t as effective.

Speaking of energy damage, we look to add some options for resistance in this category and gain some additional reactive damage by picking up Fire Shield for our spell selection. With both Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield active, we can deliver a total of 20+2d8 reactive damage for an average of 29 each time we are hit so long as Agathys is still up. If we’re in combat against a creature that does Fire or Cold damage, and we have the wherewithal to apply Fire Shield to help deflect this damage, our combat tankishness also gets a boost.

Level 9 — 18 Strength, Counterspell, Wall of Fire

At level 9 with get another ASI. If we don’t have Gauntlets of Ogre Power or a Belt of Giant Strength by this time, we boost our Strength to 18. If we do have one of these highly desirable items, we can either increase our Dexterity to 14 and gain some much-needed AC, or we can increase our Charisma to 18 to further buff our spells. I’m more partial to option 2, but you do you.

Assuming no magical Strength enhancement, the ASI boost to 18 gives us 2d6+7 damage with our Greatsword when we Rage, 2d6+17 if we use our Great Weapon Master feature. Solid. Now our NOVA rounds are looking pretty strong at 123-153 if we’re hit once while Armor of Agathys is active, if we crit, and if we activate our Eldritch Smite on a critical hit. Adding such a high damage potential on top of our already impressive tankishness is pretty amazing to say the least. Though our 2 slots from Warlock make such NOVAs a clutch choice as we decide to unload a lot of our available resources into an admittedly powerful combination.

Using Eldritch Versatility, we might switch Shatter to Counterspell. We are heavy on fire-based magic. However, our ability to use Eldritch Blast does provide us with a force option to counter most damage resistances. I tend to want to have access to Counterspell by this level, so I’m going to recommend it for our Myra Helkey Gish.

Wall of Fire is an effective area denial spell.

Speaking of fire, we decide to double down on this particularly hot elemental damage type by gaining access to Wall of Fire. We probably stole this spell from some devils somewhere. So let’s use it wisely to divide up our foes during a clutch moment.

One caveat — if we’re in the lower planes on a hunt for fiendish souls to power our magic, fire becomes less effective. So we may instead want to keep Shatter and take the wonderful area denial spell that is Sickening Radiance if our Myra is out to go get the fiends.

Level 10 — Devil’s Sight, Synaptic Static

At level 10 we gain access to 5th level spells. I’m not super jazzed about our options. But picking up some non fire AOE damage seems like a good choice to me. So I’m going to recommend Synaptic Static — providing us with tough to resist psychic damage and a nice debuff against monsters with even just a little jot of Intelligence. We also gain another Eldritch Invocation. Since we’re stealing powers from fiends, we now pick up the wonderful Devil’s Sight granting us 120 feet of Darkvision that also ignores magical darkness.

Gaining fifth level spell slots also boosts our signature Armor of Agathys to 25 THP. Combined with our base HP of 77, we have 102 effective HP for most encounters. Rage grants us resistance to physical attacks and our Fire Shield can give us resistance to cold or fire, two very common damage types. Our Dark One’s Blessing grants 12 THP when we bring creatures to 0 HP which we now do rather often given our sweet collection of offensive abilities. We can also boost our reactive damage to 25+2d8 for an average of 34. Our Armor of Agathys typically lasts through three or more hits while raging. So we can expect to do upwards of 75-102 reactive damage over the lifespan of Agathys.

Level 11-13 — Fiendish Resilience, Circle of Death, 18 Charisma, Lifedrinker

Reaching level 11, we are now a level 10 Warlock and we access another trait from our name curse (err… Fiend Patron). This trait — Fiendish Resilience — grants us one resistance of our choice at the end of a short or long rest. I’m partial to fire, necrotic, cold or lightning resistance considering we already have access to Rage. This extra resistance pairs nicely with our ability to cast Fire Shield. Yet another helpful addition to our tankish suite. For our level 11 spell choice I’m going to suggest Dispel Magic. It adds still more versatility to our suite. Since we’re getting another spell slot next level, this spell can be pretty clutch. For us, it’s more potent than your typical dispel, as it’s always upcast to level 5.

Level 12 grants us our first Mystic Arcanum. For it we take the very large AOE that is Circle of Death. This spell gives us a huge 60 foot radius area in which we inflict 8d6 necrotic damage. It’s like a gigantic necrotic Fireball. Speaking of Fireball, we can now also cast three of these bad boys at level 5 for 10d6 damage on top of our Circle of Death. Blasting isn’t our main schtick. But our spell choices enable us to still provide powerful blast support when we need to.

By level 13 we’ve hit level 12 in Warlock and gained another ASI. We use it to boost our Charisma to 18 granting us a +4 bonus. As we now lob three Eldritch Blasts, we can do 3d10+12 total damage if all hit. Yet another arrow in our quiver of versatility. Boosting Charisma also fuels our newest Eldritch Invocation — Lifedrinker, which adds our Cha bonus to our Pact Weapon attacks as necrotic damage. Our melee attacks using our Pact Weapon now deal 2d6+9 total damage, 2d6 +11 when we Rage, and up to 2d6 +21 if we use our Great Weapon Master ability to add 10 damage. Pretty badass.

Level 14-17 — Crown of Stars, Hurl Through Hell, Maddening Darkness, Witch Sight, 20 Strength

Level 14 grants us our second Mystic Arcanum. We use it to choose the amazing Crown of Stars. Now we have a ranged bonus action attack that we can use without concentration. This gives us another spell we can cast pre-Rage and use while we Rage. The damage from Crown of Stars at 4d12 is considerable. If we are outside of Rage, this ranged option adds to our already impressive Eldritch Blast. When we wish to, we can buff both of these effects with Hex for a total of 4d12+4d6+3d10+12 or 68.5 average damage per round if all attacks land. Wof!

With the arrival of level 15, we access our final Fiend Warlock feature — Hurl Through Hell. Now, when we hit a creature with any attack, we can take it out of combat until the end of our next turn and inflict 10d10 psychic damage to it if the creature is not a fiend. It’s like a free no-save one-turn banishment combined with a boatload of psychic damage to non-fiends. My fluff for Myra’s RP of this power is that the fiends trapped in her shadow shoot out to engulf the target, temporarily tearing it out of existence and pulling it into a deadly, hellish dimension only to spit it out again six seconds later. On single strike, if we land a critical hit, unload Eldritch Smite and Hurl Through Hell, we do 4d6+12d8+10d10+21 (if we are Raging and if we use Great Weapon Master) or 134 average damage. Our NOVA round damage including Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield is now 224 average. This on a build primarily optimized for HP and THP tanking.

Hell is deadly. So is being hurled into it unexpectedly.

Level 16 grants us our third Mystic Arcanum and we choose the amazing spell that is Maddening Darkness. With this spell, we fill a huge 60 foot radius area with magical darkness that damages opponents for 8d8 psychic each round all while lobbing Eldritch Blasts into the zone. Nasty.

Level 17 provides us with our fourth ASI which we use to boost our Strength to 20. Our Eldritch Blast jumps to 4d10+16 from all missiles. Finally, we pick up the Eldritch Invocation Witch Sight allowing us to see through shape-changing and illusions that mask physical forms. As an alternative, we might want to take Lance of Lethargy to make it more difficult for creatures to leave our damaging area denial zones like Maddening Darkness by reducing their movement by 10 feet when we hit them with our Eldritch Blasts.

Level 18-20 — Foresight, Eldritch Lance, 20 Charisma

Rounding out our high level gains, we pick up Foresight for our Mystic Arcanum at level 18. Foresight grants us advantage on our attack rolls, ability checks and saving throws while causing attacks against us to be made with disadvantage. This powerful buff lasts for eight hours and does not require concentration — meaning it is yet one more spell we can use while we Rage (against the dying of the light…). At level 19 we pick up Eldritch Lance to increase the range of our Eldritch Blast attacks to 300 feet. And last of all, by level 20, we boost our Charisma to 20. If we haven’t yet picked up Spirit Shroud, we go ahead an take it as another melee buff option when we are not Raging. We might need it for some long, high level adventuring days. Spirit Shroud also trades our resilience for some powerful potential NOVA rounds.

For both ranged and melee, we are looking pretty impressive. Our Eldritch Blast attacks now do 4d10+20, our melee attacks with our Greatsword now do 2d6+11 up to 2d6+23 while raging and using Great Weapon Master to boost our damage by 10.

Our NOVA critical round, while raging, hasn’t improved too much from level 14. But it has risen a bit to the hefty 8d6+12d8+10d10+2d8+72+25 or 242. With Spirit Shroud active, we can boost this NOVA by another 8d8 (subtracting 6 from the loss of Rage) for 272. Right up there with our other powerful NOVA builds.

Our tanking also remains very impressive when we do Rage. Our base Hit Points + THP are now 147+25 or 172. While raging, we take half damage from physical attacks. With Fiendish resilience, we’ve chosen one energy resistance. With Fire Shield, we can gain resistance to cold or fire. With Foresight active, attacks are made at disadvantage against us and we have advantage on our saving throws. When we bring a creature to 0 hit points with one of our powerful attacks, we gain 24 THP. The Barbarian has long since outpaced us on base hit points — averaging about 264. However, we surpass the Barb in average HP + THP if we reduce just four creatures to 0 HP over the course of one or more combats. Meanwhile, our strong suite of magical options provides us with powerful ranged attacks, various other buffs, deadly NOVAs, and amazing area denial and AOE damage effects.

Our girl — Myra Helkey as a Hellblade Tank — is one helluva Gish. She’s got badass RP mojo. As I mentioned from a start, I’ve played many versions of Myra throughout my career as gamer. I’ve enjoyed her so much I’ve even written a book about her. I hope your experience with this build version of Myra Helkey is as fantastic as mine has been. We will likely be returning to explore further D&D build renderings of this particular OC.

Love to you all and happy gaming!! 💙💛

1 Comment
by robertscribbler on March 21, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by robertscribbler on March 21, 2022

https://scribblersfantasticalworkshop.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/gish-optimized-6-the-barbarian-hellblade-tank-myra-helkey/

Gish Optimized 2 — The Hexblade-Fighter (aka Raven Queen’s Herald)

Welcome to the next installment of Gish Optimized. Man, are you guys in for some fun! Because we have an awesome new build for you! It’s one of my favs for a number reasons. Greatsword attacks without strength, some serious heat coming from our spells, a tough character that can take a lot of physical punishment, and beaucoup tactical options on the battlefield. So put on your Dungeons and Dragons, spell flinging, sword swinging, gishy character optimization hats and get ready!

Discussion of this Hexblade-Fighter build.

In our first post, we explored a special build for the optimized Dexterity-based Paladin — aka the Dexadin. This build was primarily melee-focused relying on superior mobility, smites and buffs to deliver heavy hits in combat. A serious stab and smite kind of gish. Now it’s time for a bit of a switch. One with a dash of darkness, a helping of noir artistic flare, and well more than a dalliance with death…

The Spank and Flank Chex-Fighter

For this episode, we’re going to shift gears to a Charisma-based, great weapon wielding hexblade-fighter or Chex-Fighter. But unlike our Dexadin, this character is going to have some serious magical heat under the hood in the form of various buffs, buddies, and blasts. We summed up our Dexadin as a stab and smite kind of gish. Well, the Chex-Fighter is, instead, a gish of the spank and flank variety. Spank because she’s gonna hit real damn hard with her great weapon. Flank because she’ll employ her warlock spells to conjure buddies or buffs to grant her combat advantage. You’ll find out more as we progress! So let’s get into it!

Level 1 — Charisma, Constitution, Half-Elf, Prismari, Fighter

Jumping right in at first level, let’s start out with stats. Remember, we’re a Chex-Fighter and the C in Chex stands for Charisma. So we’ll allocate major pointage here — throwing a full nine at the stat pre-racial bonuses. That gives us a 15 starting out. Solid.

Moving on to our secondary stat, we find that C also stands for Constitution because we’re dropping another full nine points into the tough stat. Why so heavy on Con? Well, we’re mostly a front-liner with our greatsword. Sure, we’ll be able to throw down some ranged heat. But we’re going to want to mix it up in melee big-time. And we really want both high HP and high Con saves. A lot of our melee spells need high rolls for concentration checks too. So we drop those nine points and start out with a 15 in Con as well.

Beatrice Lushael as Raven Queen’s Herald

Our third most important stat is Dexterity. We’re not a Dexadin. But we still want decent initiative rolls for our character. We’ve also decided to go the medium armor route and dump strength. Why? Well, what’s more cool than going full anime and having our badass Raven Queen’s Herald artistically wielding a large but nimble greatsword with nothing more than the ample force of her personality to power her strikes? For all these reasons, and because we are indeed a shiny dancer, we drop 5 points into Dexterity for a starting score of 13.

After spending like a drunken sailor on these three stats, we have 4 points left over for Strength, Wisdom, and Intelligence. I’m gonna dump Str to 8 and go with 10 in Wis and 10 in Int. This seems right to me for our Ravenqueen Herald’s mojo. If you want something else — go for it!

So we’ve got our base stats. Now let’s look at race. Ah! There are so many options! And I must say I’ve used both Elf and Human for this build. I love each for different reasons. Human lets us get a feat right off the bat. Elf gives us so many juicy options. And one of them we really, really want. But we also want some beautiful stat bumps. They’re actually pretty key. So we’re going to go for fancy this time, split the difference, and take Half Elf. Holy racial stat bonuses Batman! We get a +2 in one stat and +1 in two others. This is amazing!

Now we really want Charisma so we throw 2 points of our Half Elf bonuses into that for a starting stat of 17. Remember Con? Yeah. We’re putting 1 point into that for a 16. And last of all for Dex we get our final stat bonus. So finalizing our level 1 stats, we end up with S 8 C 16 D 14 I 10 W 10 Ch 17. Not bad at all! But it gets better…

… With our Background. Typically, I wouldn’t talk background for character optimization. But with the advent of Strixhaven, I’d be remiss not to mention the amazing mage college backgrounds. As a Raven Queen’s Herald, we are playing an artiste of the Queen of Death. Our paintbrush for spell and combat — a pact blade. In this artistry we’re enabled by a somewhat macabre twist on the Prismari background found in Strixhaven. Typical Prismari focus on mastering the arts and the elements. Our Raven Queen’s Herald will hone in on the dire and yet beautiful artistry of fate and death. By picking this background we also get two cantrips, access to some cool spell choices, and an extra first level spell. Since we’re mostly a warlock, this extra spell slot really helps us out. I’ll leave the cantrip choices up to you. But what I’m really here for is the fate-bending power of Silvery Barbs. Right out the gate our servant of death gains the ability to twist the threads of fate as a reaction in order to impose disadvantage on an attack roll, an ability check or a saving throw that previously succeeded. We get an extra slot from which to cast this spell AND we can add this spell to our list. Now, if your game doesn’t allow Strixhaven as a resource, just ignore all of the above and some of the below, then drive on with the core build. It’s already amazing. Strixhaven just provides some delicious gravy.

Our mage background also helps round our character out as we go into first level. Because for this build we are starting with fighter. Why? Well, for one, we really want to be trained in Constitution saving throws. We also get some survivability in the form of Second Wind. Our Defense Fighting Style option adds 1 to our AC — making us even tougher. Since we didn’t start out as Warlock, we’re going Dexterity for our level 1 fighting. So we pick rapier, shield, and scale mail. From Strixhaven mage we also pick up Chill Touch for our ranged attacks. Our starting HP is 13. Our AC is 19. This makes us both tough and versatile at lvl 1. Even though we are not a heavy hitter, we can take some serious heat, attack reliably both in melee and at range, and occasionally pull a clutch debuff with Silvery Barbs. That’s pretty badass. But it gets better.

One word to the wise on level delay — this optimization guide does delay key features by one level. So you’ll lag a bit behind straight-classed options in exchange for some really nice build options. This delay is not too terrible as our build really starts to hum at level 6 and even moreso at level 9. However, if you want to race to gain badass features at level 5 and forego some of the amazing tweaks, just pick Variant Human, take Resilient Constitution at level 1, and go straight Hexblade until 17 at which point you’ll take the final three levels as fighter. I’m doing just that in a campaign I’m playing this build in right now. So don’t feel bad if you want those powers sooner. We’re just showcasing the more idealized version of the build here.

Level 2 — First Level of Hexblade Warlock

Now that we’ve set up a strong chassis for our Ravenqueen’s Herald, we move into the core class of the build which is Hexblade Warlock. We’re taking Hexblade all the way to level 17. And it’s going to give us so many wonderful things.

At level two we initially gain two amazing features. The first is Hexblade Curse — letting us set up some serious focus fire on one opponent by using our bonus action to apply this curse to a target we can see within 30 feet. This curse expands our crit range to 19-20 and gives us a buff to our damage rolls against the target. The second feature from Hexblade is Hex Warrior — allowing us to use our Charisma with one melee weapon of our choice that lacks the two handed property. We pick a Longsword. Then we drop the shield and go two-handed with it because it’s versatile. We now do 1d10+3 damage or 1d10+5 damage with our Hexblade Curse. Our AC drops to 17. But we’re not here for the AC. We’re here for doing a dance of death with our large and nimble blade.

The Bladelock Fighter is one of the more potent 5e gish builds.

We are now a solid damage dealer for level 2. But we’re going to pick some spells up that help us even more. For Cantrips we take Eldritch Blast for our ranged option and never look back. We get another Cantrip which I’m leaving open — so have fun. For First Level Known Spells, we’re taking Hex and Armor of Agathys. Hex adds 1d6 on top of our already strong 1d10 damage with Eldritch Blast and Longsword. With proficiency in Constitution saves, it’s unlikely our Hex will be lost if we take a hit. Armor of Agathys gives us 5 Temporary Hit Points and deals damage if a foe hits us in melee. Since we have a 22 HP, those 5 THP stacked with Second Wind really makes us pretty darn tough while also giving us good reactive damage in close combat. These spells give us strong choices at level 2 for our spell slots.

Level 3 — Invoking the Raven Queen

At level 3 (level 2 Warlock) we get two Eldritch Invocations. And it’s here that our build’s specialty really starts to come on line. We don’t get to benefit from our choices in a major way just yet. But our deathly artistry arising from our pact with a blade blessed by the Goddess of Death is starting to take shape. Our eyes begin to take on a red gleam as we take Devil’s Sight. This gives us 120 feet of darkvision in both normal and magical darkness. The coolness factor here is just to die for (quoth the Raven Queen). What this invocation gives us by level 6 is just beyond amazing. It yields benefits earlier. But the cherry on top is our big surprise coming at levels 6 and 9. We want something special with our other invocation at level 4. So we set it aside for now.

At level 3, we also get another spell choice for level 1. I’m partial to having a blast option, so I’d pick Arms of Hadar. I also like the cinematic flare of arms of darkness erupting from you to batter your foes. This isn’t key to the build, so if you want something else like Hellish Rebuke, go for it!

Level 4 — Forging a Pact With a Blade Blessed by Death in Darkness

By level 4 our mojo is really starting to shine. We forge a pact of with a blade blessed by the Raven Queen. For my character, I’ve picked a weapon possessed by the spirit of the good death. There are many shades of death so our options here are broad. For game purposes, our Pact of the Blade now allows us to summon a special magical sword that can be used as an arcane focus for our spells. We also now use our second invocation to empower this sword — taking Improved Pact of the Blade. Now we gain two more boons — our weapon is a Greatsword which we can use with our Charisma. It is also enchanted to +1. So our base damage jumps again — hitting 2d6+4, 2d6+6 if we’ve applied our Hexblade Curse, and a maximum of 3d6+6 if we’ve cast Hex. Pretty significant.

We also gain another spell and our Warlock slots jump to level 2. This means Armor of Agathys hits 10 THP. So our base 31 HP can be pushed to an effective 41 even as we are possibly doing 10 damage if something strikes us with a melee attack. With this bump in spell level comes another spell choice. We pick Darkness. Now you probably saw this coming when I chose Devil’s Sight. But I must emphasize that Darkness is not a core feature of the build. It instead represents a situationally powerful option that can also harmfully debuff your allies if you’re not careful. Walking around with 15 feet of darkness surrounding you blinds everyone, even your buddies (although, if you team up with a Gloomstalker Ranger, you’ve just thrown down a major party buff). Unless the party is optimized to fight in Darkness, the spell is a bit clunky to say the least. That said, if you are wise about when you cast it and you do something clever like casting Darkness on an object that’s easy to mask with a free action or an object interact action, then you’ll get more mileage out of it. Admittedly, the advantage you can gain and the disadvantage impacting your foes can be pivotal. Just think about your buddies before popping this out.

Level 5 — Great Weapon Master

At level 5 we are a level 4 warlock and we immediately throw our ASI into the Great Weapon Master feat without looking back. We already have access to Darkness, which allows us to apply advantage — making hits more likely when we choose to subtract 5 to hit to add 10 damage. But we are still in training mode here. Though a main feature has just come online, we’ve got much more to look forward to.

Even so, we’ve just unlocked some serious NOVA-crit potential. If we have Darkness active, pop Hexblade Curse, and attack our foes with advantage we can now strike for 2d6+17 damage. For a single hit, this results in a seriously beefy 24 average damage. But due to Hexblade Curse, we now also crit on a 19-20 and when we crit we make a second attack as a bonus action. Our NOVA-critical does 6d6+34 for a total average damage of 55. Not as brutal as our stab and smite Dexadin at level 5. But remember, we haven’t even picked up extra attack yet. So we are well on the way.

At level 5 we also get another spell to choose. I’m partial to Mirror Image, Shatter, or Misty Step. None are critical to our build. So have fun!

Level 6 — Flank and Spank!

Ahhh… Level 6… Beautiful, glorious level 6… This level is the level where our build finally comes on line. We’ve laid all the groundwork. We’ve made all the choices and now we can unlock our optimization to deliver some serious spanking and flanking against our foes.

But before we get into that, let’s just take a moment to celebrate because we’ve gained access to extra attack through our new Invocation — Thirsting Blade. When using our pact weapon which is an incarnation of the blade of the good death, we now get to attack twice when we take the attack action. Our melee rounds just got really brutal for the bad guys.

Our summoned fey is a badass little flanker from the Shadowfell.

Still, it gets even worse for the bads because at level 5 we pick a really clutch spell in the form of Summon Fey. With this spell, we call forth a special flank buddy Fey Spirit. This guy or gal is a mean little bugger — packing quite a wallop in her diminutive 3 foot tall package. With one attack she unloads 2d6+6. Not too shabby. But the real feature for us comes from our Fey Spirit’s bonus action. Why? Because we want darkness. And when we want darkness we want it not to harm our allies. Enter our Tricksy Fey Spirit who can use a bonus action to cover one 5 foot square in darkness. A square our Chex Fighter is now standing in. Hello advantage! Hello let’s beat the tar out of the badguys with our greatsword! Hello to spank and flank!

With Summon Fey active, we now attack twice for 2d6+4 base damage and our ally attacks once for 2d6+6. Our Chex Fighter attacks with advantage if the Tricksey Fey has summoned darkness into our square. If all these attacks land, we average 35 damage. Not too shabby. But our maximum potential damage just went through the roof. On a NOVA-crit round after we applied Hexblade Curse, we now do 10d6+57 damage for a total average damage of 92. Woof! That’s some serious heat. And we’re not even action surging or smiting yet!

So nice!

Level 7 — Accursed Specter

Now that our spank and flank is fully online, we want more options for flank buddies. Our flank strategy will carry us on for a long time — through level 18. This strategy will afford us with multiple options for achieving advantage on attack rolls. At level 7, level 6 in Warlock, we gain another of these options — our Accursed Specter. When we slay a humanoid affected by our Hexblade Curse, we summon a special specter which we command. The specter has its own initiative and full set of turns. It can use these turns to deal another 3d6 necrotic damage — further buffing our DPR. Depending on its place in the initiative order our specter ally can also use the Help Action to give us advantage on attack rolls against a foe. This addition isn’t key to our build. But it does provide us with another helpful spank and flank option.

For spells we also gain another choice. I’m partial to Counterspell. When you need it, you really need it. But it can hurt to unload one of your only two spell slots on Counterspell when you could otherwise be Summoning Fey for multiple encounters and getting a juicy 15 THP from Armor of Agathys to buff your already beefy 67 HP at level 7.

Level 8 — Eldritch Smite

By now we’re starting to pick up quite a managerie of nasty critters and equally brutal powers. At level 7, we add a keystone in our NOVA Critical capability in the form of Eldritch Smite. It’s worth noting, though, since we’re a Warlock that we need to hold one of our two precious warlock slots in reserve to deliver this smite as part of an attack series. Ideally, we’ve got our Summon Fey up, we’re getting advantage from our buddy’s helpful square of darkness, and we’re holding our second 4th level spell slot in reserve for our smite.

This combo is a once per short rest spark of deathly glory. But when it goes off, it is just insanely good. So let’s get into some basic math. Our flank buddy Fey now attacks twice for 2d6+7 damage on each hit. Assuming he hits, that’s 28 damage. Oof. Our specter, if he hits does 10.5. We’ve applied our Hexblade Curse and we’re adding +10 from great weapon master even though our advantaged attacks still aren’t super-accurate. But we still have a good chance of landing hits due to that second roll. If we crit, land all three, and smite on the crit we do 10d8+8d6+51 for a total of 123 damage. Our flank buddies add 38.5 for a grand total of 161.5 damage at level 8. If we don’t risk the -5 to hit, we still do 131.5 average damage if all hits land. Absofrigginlutely brutal!

At this level, it’s worth noting that another spell can give us our cozy shroud of part-friendly darkness. That spell, Shadow of Moil, is a worthy addition to our arsenal as it obscures you for 1 minute while also doing 2d8 necrotic damage to any foe that does manage to hit you. So we add this buff to our arsenal.

Level 9 — Elven Accuracy!

But wait… It gets even better. At level 9, we’re a level 8 warlock and we get our second ASI. We choose to spend it on Elven Accuracy. A half feat, we use the point to bump our Charisma to 18. We are now +9 to hit with our magical greatsword. If our Fey buddy throws some nice shade over us, we now roll 3 times to hit when we have advantage. Yikes. Now we can feel a lot more confident about using great weapon master.

For spells, I’m kinda partial to the area denial option that is Sickening Radiance. Since we’re a Prismari Mage background, we might also take Wall of Fire or Freedom of Movement. Again, these diverge from our core options. But we might find situations when we’re glad we have them. We’re a gish after all!

Level 10 — Eldritch Pain

By level 10, we finally have space to enhance our ranged attacks by picking up the Eldritch Pain Invocation. Our eldritch blasts now do 1d10+4 on each shot, 1d10+8 if we apply Hexblade Curse. Pretty nasty. We also now have access to 5th level spells. It’s worth taking Cone of Cold for some extra blast damage in a pinch. If we took an ongoing AOE option last level, we’ve just built us a solid off-blasting secondary option. Although, we’ll primarily be working with our flank buddies over longer time periods vs throwing down quick and heavy blasts due to our limited spell slots.

Level 11-13 — Armor of Hexes, Circle of Death, and Lifedrinker

Coming up on level 11 we now attain Armor of Hexes which is a solid defensive buff against a single foe. Now, targets we lay down the focus fire on with Hexblade Curse are quite a bit less likely to hit us. We can use our reaction when a foe hits us to roll a d6. If we roll a 4 or higher, the attack misses. If our flank buddy is throwing shade on us, foes are also attacking us with disadvantage unless they can penetrate magical darkness. This kind of layered defense can be quite difficult to pierce — adding to our dueling capability. At level 11, we also have the ability to cast Armor of Agathys for 25 THP to add to our pretty beefy 103 base HP.

By level 12 we now have 3 fifth level spell slots and 1 first level slot for Silvery Barbs. This gives us more options. One we add to with our Mystic Arcanum which we use for the big AOE that is Circle of Death. If you prefer another lvl 6 spell, go for it. Circle of Death isn’t pivotal to our build. But I like the option for more backup AOE throw down.

Upon hitting level 13 we finally max out our Charisma at 20. We also pick up the Lifedrinker Invocation. Now our consistent damage gets a serious bump to 2d6+11 when we add in the extra 5 necrotic damage from Lifedrinker. Our Fey and Specter flank buddies are also starting to lag a little due to our warlock slots not continuing to accrue and the Specter not scaling. They’re probably still decent for most combats. But we’ll start relying on our solo abilities more and more from this point forward. So it’s nice to get a damage buff. Updating our NOVA-crit round and including Hexblade Curse, we’re doing 12d8+8d6+78 for 159 individually plus 10.5 from the Specter and 30 from the Fey for 199.5. Very substantial damage that we can potentially deliver on two consecutive rounds.

Level 14-17 Creature of Light and Maddening Darkness

At level 14, we get our second Mystic Arcanum. Now I’m partial to Crown of Stars. But this comes with a note — it sheds bright light which interferes with our darkness abilities. In my view, taking Crown of Stars gives us a good long lasting option when we want to hang back and deal extra ranged punishment. It’s not concentration. And it lasts for an hour. It also helps us fill a possible gap when flinging darkness might be less helpful or even hurt. Thematically, this makes us a creature of light and darkness, which is pretty amazingly cool. It also fills another one of our versatility gaps. Which from the gish standpoint is pretty darn cool.

At level 15 we pick up the amazing Master of Hexes ability. When a creature affected by our Hexblade Curse dies, we can then apply our curse to another creature as a bonus action. This effectively gives us continuous use of our Hexblade Curse so long as our cursed foes continue to fall. Presently, our curse adds 5 to our damage rolls for a total of 2d6+16 or 2d6+26 if we use our great weapon master feature. So the ability to fling this curse around more often is a major buff. Just be aware that your bonus action now has quite a lot of competition for its use. This is a good thing. But we’re going to need to manage it to eek out our highest level of effectiveness.

Maddening Darkness is one of the most devastating area denial spells. Image source: Innocent Bystander.

At level 16 we get our 8th level Mystic Arcanum. For it, we choose the devastating and huge Maddening Darkness. The utility of this massive area denial and enemy debuff spell is compounded by our Devil’s Sight which allows us to see the enemies who are now stumbling around in the psychically crushing darkness we’ve just conjured. Our quiver of darkness has thus been added to yet again — and this added arrow is seriously devastating if used at the right time. We also get another Eldritch Invocation which we use to shore up our already strong ability to concentrate on spells. To do that we take Eldritch Mind as our Raven Queen patroness fortifies our ability to focus.

At level 17, we gain another ASI. We take Constitution which now bumps us up to 18. We now have +10 on Constitution saves, advantage on concentration checks and +4 hit points per level. Pretty significant for a character that’s mostly a Warlock. For resiliency we’re sitting pretty at this point with 174 HP and the ability to conjure our Armor of Agathys for an extra 25 THP. We also hold onto our spells with a difficult to shake tenacity even when we take significant amounts of damage.

Level 18 — Foresight

Over the past 4-5 levels we’ve been steadily transitioning away from a flanker and into more of a spanker. We’ve still made good use of our flank buddies. But combats where they’re effective have become more and more limited. Meanwhile, our own individual abilities have begun to really shine. We have access to a combination of strong AOEs, ranged attacks, and area denial. Our core ability to rip bads apart with our greatsword has only gotten stronger. And our ability to stand strong through the fray is quite respectable.

At level 18 we complete our transition. We become a pure spanker who’s no longer reliant on flank buddies. We might still use them. But our core abilities have propelled us beyond that need. A key part of that transition is our gaining access to the Foresight spell for our Level 9 Mystic Arcanum. This amazing spell grants us advantage on attack rolls, saves, and ability checks for 8 hours. We can’t be surprised and attacks against us are at disadvantage. Because we are using a greatsword with Elfin Accuracy and using Charisma we roll 3 times to hit during those 8 hours. And when we apply our Hexblade Curse, we roll a critical hit on a 19-20. This makes our NOVA Critical strikes really brutal. But we’ll hold off on a full assessment of the damage for now…

Level 19 and 20 — Action Surge and Battlemaster

Moving on to levels 19 and 20 we achieve the keystone features of our build. By taking our last two levels in Fighter we gain the amazing action economy and NOVA buff that is action surge. We also go one better to get Battlemaster because we really want to be able to use the Riposte manuever up to 4 times per short rest. Why? Well, let’s do some basic math.

At level 20, our NOVA critical is now among the most devastating in the game. When we NOVA, we’ve set up our Hexblade Curse on our chosen target, we’ve cast Spirit Shroud (which I haven’t mentioned before, but which we’ve used our Eldritch versatility to switch out one of our 3rd level known spells for), and we are operating under Foresight. This takes about 2 rounds to set up. So maneuver yourself accordingly. When we unload, we action surge. And when we crit, we use our Eldritch Smite. This makes our NOVA-crit devastating at 24d8+12d6+135 for 285 average damage. But wait, it gets even better when we riposte and do a total of 74.5 addition damage with a second Eldritch Smite and the added riposte damage for a total of 359.5 damage on a NOVA-crit + riposte round. All this without magic weapon support, assuming a crit and that all hits land. This devastation is about 25 percent above that applied by our stab and smite Dexadin. However, our nimble Paladin may benefit more from some specific magic item support. So YMMV.

Final Notes — A Really Fun NOVA Build That Can Throw Down Powerful Spells

Overall, I really love what this build has to offer. It’s tough. It can throw down some AOEs, particularly at higher levels. And it really goes for those head shots with that greatsword. I would love to see this with a vorpal weapon. Although I’m sure a DM wouldn’t! Or maybe they would…

That concludes our Raven Queen’s Herald optimized gish build. I hope you enjoy it! If you do, please send us a little love by mentioning where you found her. Until next time — may the goddess of nat 20s smile upon you!

Check out the Stab and Smite Dexadin build here.

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by robertscribbler on December 26, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by robertscribbler on December 26, 2021

https://scribblersfantasticalworkshop.wordpress.com/2021/12/26/gish-optimized-2-the-hexblade-fighter-aka-ravenqueens-herald/

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