[5E Optimization]Joining a 5E Starter Set game, cheese me up

[JigokuBosatsu]

The casual coed gaming group my wife and I belong to is spinning off a D&D night, and I can't resist. While I am not familiar with 5E yet, I do have more general D&D knowledge than anyone that is involved. I've warned them of that, but advised that I will be flexible for the purpose of fun. That being said, the DM is a competent guy but previous experience gaming with him tells me that we are going to butt heads on anything that approaches MTP.

So in the interest of game harmony (or at least a wild ride before it flames out) I'd like your help in getting some nice low level RAW cheese. We're doing the starter set scenario so this will be levels 1-5. And don't worry if it's a weird concept- I will be glad to roleplay the most ridiculous shit imaginable. I know there have been some optimizations mentioned so far, but let's go ahead and have this be a thread for 5E cheeze!

And if this game turns out silly or awesome, I will be glad to do a writeup.

[Korwin]

It's only coming online at Lvl. 5... but from the other thread

The biggest wreck so far is the necromancer with animate dead.

It starts off at level 5, with 8 skeletons each with 18 hp, +4 to hit and 1d6+5 damage with shortbows. Right then and there that is probably enough damage for 2 party members. And you still have level 1 and 2 spells.

IT goes up to level 20 where he can have 144 of the skeletal friends, which is enough to kill 2 CR 16 dragons per round, and still have damage to spare!

It starts off at level 5, with 8 skeletons each with 18 hp, +4 to hit and 1d6+5 damage with shortbows.

I'm reading the PHB and, unless my reading skills suck right now, you can only create one skeleton per casting unless you use a higher-leveled slot (to a max of 13 skeletons for a level 9 slot).

At level 5 a necromancer has 2 lvl 3 slots and can use Arcane Recovery to get one of these back during the day. Each casting of animate dead used to reassert control over animated undead targets 4 creatures. So the deal is:
day 1: three spells to animate three undeads
day 2: one spell to reassert control over three undeads, animate two more.
day 3: two spells to reassert control over five undead, animate one more
day 4: two spells to reassert control over six undead, animate one more
day 5: two spells to reassert control over seven undead, animate one more
day 6: two spells to reassert control over eight undead, GO TO TOWN.

Things get much better by lvl 6, because the animating efficiency doubles (necromancer power) and undeads you animate start getting more hit points and damage. Sadly there's no word if Undead Thralls also doubles how many skellies you can reassert control over with each casting but even at the most restrictive reading the game right now allows enterprising 6th level necromancers to enter a cemetery and exit it two days after behind 12 controlled skeletons. So yeah, pretty brutal.

You don't need to wait 2 days. You can cast Animate Dead 4 times, long rest for 8 hours, then immediately cast it again. With 8 hours (and ten minutes) notice you could cast Animate Dead 8 times and walk into town with 16 Skeletons. Sure you'll lose control of them by tomorrow but who cares? Destroy a town and if any of your Skeletons have survived just command them to stand there while you kill them and, by 5E's XP rules, they will even give you XP. Once the former Skeletons have been reduced to piles of bones they are now legal targets for more Animate Dead castings. It's the circle of unlife.

I actually think the winning move for a Necromancer would be to walk into town with 14 Skeletons and keep a Vampiric Touch spell loaded. Vampiric Touch gives you a 3d6 Necrotic damage melee attack for a whole minute that heals you for half of what you hit for and anytime you kill someone with it you regenerate 9 hp. A 6th level Human Necromancer could have 57hp and regenerate ~5hp per attack with a 9hp boost each kill which is amazing regeneration especially when he's wading into melee with his OTHER contribution of 14 Longsword attacks each round for 1d8+3 damage apiece.

[Prak]

It's the circle of unlife.

cheese me up

Clearly you should make your character a former cheese monger, and then try to relate everything to a long, rambling, cheese story. That you lose the point of, and turn into a complete non-sequitor.

I think it'd be really great to go with the "I'm convinced that people are always trying to steal my secrets" trait, but specifically cheese making secrets. Bonus points if your cheese making secrets are either the actual basic process of making cheese, or completely, wildly opposed to the process ("I leave the strained curds in a hole in the wall overnight"). Bonus bonus points if your bond is either an ancient treatise on cheese-making, or a library of them. Bonus bonus bonus points if your flaw is either "unlocking an ancient mystery is worth the price of civilization"
(and you constantly seek ancient mysteries about cheese) or "I can't keep a secret to save my life, or anyone else's" and you always blurt out your cheese making secrets in times of danger and risk.

This should actually help you play a powerful character, because a lot of people think that power gamers can't roleplay. So clearly, a necromancer with this much obnoxious character couldn't possibly be power gaming.

[Dean]

While the Necromancer will rock the game from level 5 on I think the strongest low level build is a Cleric of War. Martial weapon and Heavy Armor proficiency, full casting, 2 attacks per round 3 times per rest, +10 to hit to one attack per rest. The character can be virtually unhittable and can output strong damage through a mix of spells and multiple weapon attacks.

Here's a build I put together using the Alpha Draft, make changes if required.

Brell of Cox, Cleric of War
Variant Human Cleric with War Domain
Stats: Str 16, Dex 8, Con 16, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 8
Feat: Heavy Armor Master
Gear: Longsword, Shield, Chain Mail
Spells you care about:
1st: Shield of Faith, Divine Favor, Healing Word
2nd: Magic Weapon, Spiritual Weapon
3rd: Animate Dead

You start off with AC 18 and DR 3 which will upgrade to AC 20 as soon as you get a little money. You can bump your AC 1 higher by using Shield of Faith but I'll assume you keep Divine Favor on for extra damage. Assuming you get to rest before you fight you can make 2 attacks a round for 2d8+3 damage apiece and guarantee one hit per fight. You can also heal someone within 60 feet for 1d8+2 hp as a swift action. That's a nasty first level Cleric.

As you grow you're gonna keep using Healing word for all but one of your first level slots letting you throw around a lot of swift action healing. At 3rd level you'll grab Spiritual Weapon which will add another 1d8 damage attack per round for an entire combat and Magic Weapon for +1 to hit and damage on all your attack neither of which are concentration spells. At 5th level you'll take Animate Dead and start wandering around with a Skeleton Crew that helps you beat the shit out of people. This character is tough as fuck from level one. He's got huge AC, DR, swift action healing, and will reliably put out good damage by combining many attacks and his Divine Favor buff. At 5th level he will become part of a Skeleton wrecking crew and will just fuck everything up from there.

So for an extremely low level game that's what I recommend.

[Lago PARANOIA]

5E D&D characters don't do very much, especially at low levels, so I don't think that this thread really has a purpose. It's like asking 'help me pimp out my plastic wagon, which eventually gets upgraded to a scooter'.

[Ferret]

Human (feat variant) barbarian polearmist. Use your human feat for Polearm Master so you grab your rage dice boost 2x per round every round with the bonus attack. Bump STR/CON, maybe WIS if you want to be perceptionguy (and you do).

Go Totem Warrior, Bear Totem at 3 for Resistance vs. All Damage unless the rest of the party needs you to carry them, in which case go Wolf to grant your allies Advantage vs the enemy you are attacking.

[JigokuBosatsu]

5E D&D characters don't do very much, especially at low levels, so I don't think that this thread really has a purpose. It's like asking 'help me pimp out my plastic wagon, which eventually gets upgraded to a scooter'.

Okay, but if there was a year the new models rolling off Detroit assembly lines were all plastic wagons, at least pimping one out and trying to drive can provide a precious few moments of grim laughter.

[Deathfork]

You can bump your AC 1 higher by using Shield of Faith...
You can also heal someone within 60 feet for 1d8+2 hp as a swift action.
At 3rd level you'll grab Spiritual Weapon which will add another 1d8 damage attack per round for an entire combat and Magic Weapon for +1 to hit and damage on all your attack neither of which are concentration spells.

Shield of Faith is +2 AC.
Healing Word is d4+stat.
Magic Weapon is a Concentration spell. You can still have it up the same time as Spiritual Weapon, which is a pretty good spell by itself, even if the scaling is a little weird.
There's a copy of the full book floating around out there; going off of the alpha is doing you no favors.

[OgreBattle]

Are the classes front loaded enough to encourage 1 level dips?

[Deathfork]

Are the classes front loaded enough to encourage 1 level dips?

1 level...usually not.
Interestingly, dipping your foot into another casting class when you're already a caster is a pretty good deal. Your spell slots and maximum level never take a hit. You gain spells known based on level, but depending on your dip, it can be a pretty good trade off. Bard dipping into Sorcerer or Warlock can provide a pretty nice boost.
The main drawback to multiclassing, it seems, is that feats/ability score is a function of class level rather than character level, so grabbing levels before you're at cap can put you behind the curve.

The strongest multiclass combinations appear to be fighter 3/barbarian17 and fighter 3/rogue17 since fighter can grant a significant advantage to both in either champion or battlemaster. But even doing that still puts them behind any full caster.

[nockermensch]

Are the classes front loaded enough to encourage 1 level dips?

What Deathfork said. 5e is right now favoring 1 or 4 level dips.

[Deathfork]

What Deathfork said. 5e is right now favoring 1 or 4 level dips.

4 or 3 depending on if you really want that 17th level thingy. Some of them are pretty good. Spell Thief and Death Attack are probably worth giving up that Feat. Thief's Reflexes probably isn't.

Also, Fighter4/Paladin 16 can work too. The expanded crit range does help your smites, since smites happen after you hit.

[Dean]

Shield of Faith is +2 AC.
Healing Word is d4+stat.
Magic Weapon is a Concentration spell. You can still have it up the same time as Spiritual Weapon, which is a pretty good spell by itself, even if the scaling is a little weird.
There's a copy of the full book floating around out there; going off of the alpha is doing you no favors.

Agreed. I've fixed that now so I'll stop being wrong all the time.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't think 5E D&D will support level dips for long. You end up behind on stat bonuses and opportunities to gank feats. Eventually the game will release enough classes and alternate classes and enough feats so that it just becomes a trap option unless you're doing something extra-abusive.

[Deathfork]

I don't think 5E D&D will support level dips for long. You end up behind on stat bonuses and opportunities to gank feats. Eventually the game will release enough classes and alternate classes and enough feats so that it just becomes a trap option unless you're doing something extra-abusive.

It barely supports it now. At least they learned one thing from 4e: Having not-shitty high level abilities is good.

[Dogbert]

Background: Murderhobo Adventurer

Insert bullshit text about living for tomb-robbing, breaking-and-entering, murder, and other forms of professional crime high, heroic adventure and how it has always been your calling in life.

Proficiencies: Perception, Stealth (Or whatever 2 skills you value the most for dungeon-delving).
Tools: Thieves Tools
Feature: Wanderer

The PHB specifically encourages customizing existing backgrounds to fit your character's concept, so if your DM doesn't allow this, accuse him of being a roll-player and leave.

[Voss]

Seriously doesn't matter. As the background section notes, if you'd end up with a duplicate skill or proficiency, you can pick anything you'd like of the same type. I had wondered why several of the 'quick builds' were so terrible with duplicates, but it turns out to be an advantage, as the hermit druid can set himself up with medicine and religion as class skill picks, and gets free range of any two skills he wants. And the same with the herbalism kit, that becomes anything at all.

Since character creation is a step-by-step process, you might as well milk the backwards crap for every advantage. Which is to say, Perception every time, because it fucking matters for everyone, because otherwise bugbears, dopplegangers and etc pop out and mug you for even more extra damage. Most of the other skills weigh in as somewhere between 'nifty' and 'flavor text'


For multi classing, keep in mind that apart from the stat mods/feats, it also impacts extra attacks: you either have it or not, so multi classing is rather bad for non-spellcasters until after they hit level 5.

For spell casters it also impacts your access to higher level spells. A wizard 5/cleric 5 still uses the spell chart as if he was 10th level, but is limited to fireball and animate dead rather than hold monster and contagion, which is a bit of a big deal.

Without something really specific in mind (and acknowledgement that you probably aren't going to play to high levels anyway), multi classing seems pretty worthless, a quite a few cross-class gimmicks won't work due to the hard limit on one bonus action per turn.



But as far as cheese goes, there are too many limits on what you can cheese out in 5e, simply for lack of any choices. From level 2-4, the Moon Druid is one of the better options since you get to be a spell caster then fuck you, brown bear, with more HP (that doesn't affect your HP as long as you aren't dropped), and the equivalent of a longsword and great sword attack every round, which is straight up better than most melee guys can do during those levels.

Past level 4, however, and this subclass goes seriously down hill. The Giant Boar (which opens up at level 6) is pretty much worse than the brown bear (the polar bear is a marginal improvement), and the giant scorpion (at level 9) gets three attacks (and the sting is pretty decent damage) but the hp is pretty sad, and the AC will remind you of being a first level character again. It scales up to Mammoth at 18th level, but the elemental forms you get at 10th are pretty much better than that.


This is one of the things that makes this another caster edition: apart from some of the ridiculous things spells can do, the spell casters are the ones with meaningful choices and options.

[Voss]

So in the interest of game harmony (or at least a wild ride before it flames out) I'd like your help in getting some nice low level RAW cheese. We're doing the starter set scenario so this will be levels 1-5. And don't worry if it's a weird concept- I will be glad to roleplay the most ridiculous shit imaginable. I know there have been some optimizations mentioned so far, but let's go ahead and have this be a thread for 5E cheeze!

And if this game turns out silly or awesome, I will be glad to do a writeup.

Going back to the original, examples of cheese for 1-5. This is actually really hard, because there aren't many useful decision points and many of those are just 'does this race have bonuses to the two stats I want?'

Suggestion #1:
Human paladin, great weapon mastery feat, perception, Str 16, Chr 16, Con next, and fuck everything else.
Try to get goblins clustered up so you can spawn bonus attacks.

level 2: great weapon fighting style, take searing smite as one of your spells
when something big appears- expend a spell for divine smite and cast searing smite (bonus action), for 2d6+3+2d8+2d6. Add the power attack feature of great weapon mastery if you think you can hit with a -5 for an +10 damage on top. Beg or borrow or grab some method of gaining advantage from the party (or inspiration from the DM) or some other bonus like bless or inspiration. Use this only when the big monster/boss for each section appears.

level 3: oath of devotion is best for the channel divinity: sacred weapon. Charisma as an attack bonus on your sword, particularly when delivering the big attack from great weapon mastery is quite helpful.

level 4: might as well stick around for the stat up (str)
level 5: might as well stick around for the extra attack
If things continue, level 6 as a paladin is a no brainer for +chr on saves for everyone.


Suggestion #2
Bear Druid. (Comes online at level 2). melee or cast spells as you like.
At level heat metal is insane, and then you can go bear.
Starts to fall behind at level 5, but for this adventure, seriously whatever. In a longer campaign, fuck it and take the other option for druids.
The advantage to this build is it takes little thought or experience. Produce flame, entangle and faerie fire are your starting point, then heat metal and hold person, and finally conjure animals, because why not have meat shields?
Human, wood elf, or hill dwarf. If you go human, I'd suggest either alertness (+5 initiative, aim for eating people as fast as possible), or Observant (+1 wis, and +5 to passive perception, which is pretty ridiculous) Resilient also works (con, I would think). A quirky one is Magic Initiate and grab mage armor, because honestly druid armor options are shit. Sadly the feat was reworded for the final version, so you can't grab good attack cantrips as use your primary stat.

Honestly, as you're the experienced person, I'd suggest this build for someone else. Its straightforward blast or beatstick, with echoes of Druidzilla from 3e. It does fall apart at later levels (as the animal forms are limited to CR level/3), but for a 1-5 adventure its pretty close to perfect.

Potential cheese: Take monk 1 instead of druid 5, and successfully argue that a bear can make unarmed attacks. This gives you an additional (though shitty) attack, and a better AC.


Suggestion #3
Human ranger with sharpshooter feat. This is pretty much exactly like the paladin build, except dex and rangers don't need as much wisdom, since they have very few attack spells and the save spells are easily avoidable in favor of other things. Hunters mark is your signature spell. Less bursty than the paladin, but more sustained damage (and the +2 for archery style makes the -5 for +10 damage feel less bad.
Colossus slayer probably has the most utility at level 3, though take horde breaker only if the DM likes to group up monsters. The downside to colossus slayer is you don't want to attack first.

This could also be done with a fighter, I suppose, but, eh. I'd rather have the spells, and not hope that short rests are allowed to happen to recharge action surge. The eldritch knight honestly wants too many things in exchange in being incredibly inferior to real spellcasters, though the battle master does give you the ability to add +1d8 to hit or damage through precision attack or menacing attack, and they can be combined with action surge and sharpshooter from some pretty heavy and reasonably accurate attacks. (basically the hit roll for precision is d20+5-5+1d8, and damage is 1d8+3+10). Again, no point in passing up levels 4 and 5 when you have stat ups and extra attacks to look forward to.


Other options:
half-elf dragon sorcerer or gnome wizard. Because magic.
Bards are also possible, but honestly don't get really good until 6, at which point they start stealing spells or actively taking a dump on fighters.

[Neurosis]

5E D&D characters don't do very much, especially at low levels, so I don't think that this thread really has a purpose. It's like asking 'help me pimp out my plastic wagon, which eventually gets upgraded to a scooter'.

Cannot reconcile this statement with someone else's previous declaration of "144 Skeletons That Can Kill Two CR 16 Dragons A Round". Someone help.

[Voss]

5E D&D characters don't do very much, especially at low levels, so I don't think that this thread really has a purpose. It's like asking 'help me pimp out my plastic wagon, which eventually gets upgraded to a scooter'.

Cannot reconcile this statement with someone else's previous declaration of "144 Skeletons That Can Kill Two CR 16 Dragons A Round". Someone help.

The 144 come in at level 20. You're orders of magnitude lower at level 5. As nockermensch's summary shows, after 6 days of burning your 3rd level slots, you've got a squad of 8 guys following you around, and you can keep them under your control by burning both 3rd levels slots each day. This gets better over time, and while it is one of the better cheese options offered by 5e, the skeletons are horribly vulnerable to area attacks unless you have a ridiculous amount of space to spread them out.

But when you get right down to it, at 6th level they have 19 hp each, attack at +4 and hit for d6+5 damage, and they are archers. You essentially have 8 extra attacks every round, and monster ACs are low enough that they actually matter (against a lot of targets they're at least 50/50, which means about 32 damage every round). You can toss firebolts and dick around with sleep, hold person or whatever while Team Archer Squad provides some desperately needed DPR. Just hope no one comes along and fireballs, breathes fire or otherwise obliterates them with an area attack, because it will take you a couple days to put the squad back together (though at 6th level, it only takes 3 days rather than 6)

[Dean]

Cannot reconcile this statement with someone else's previous declaration of "144 Skeletons That Can Kill Two CR 16 Dragons A Round". Someone help.

It's simple really. There's no ability available to low level characters to become 144 different characters. If there was we'd recommend that power.

What Lago and Voss are saying is correct. There's almost no abilities or powers that really matter. You can be a sorceror and get a 1d10 fire attack, upgrading quickly to gaining a bonus actions 1d10 fire attack. You can also choose to be a Bard and use your 1d10 slashing attack, soon upgrading to a second 1d10 slashing attack as a bonus action. There's lots and lots of choices there's just very few that matter or deliver any consequential results.

The Necromancer past 6th level may be the only build I've seen so far that offers actual abilities instead of reskinning the same 3 options dozens or hundreds of ways. "Minions a-million" may not be the most interesting power suite but at least if you file the serial numbers off of it it's not identical to what everyone else has.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you think that the 5E Devs aren't going to emasculate the necromancer, bard, and other classes that can actually do shit that's not some variation of 'I FLAMING SPHERE the orc!' then you've got another think/thing coming.

[erik]

If you think that the 5E Devs aren't going to emasculate the necromancer, bard, and other classes that can actually do shit that's not some variation of 'I FLAMING SPHERE the orc!' then you've got another think/thing coming.

See, that kind of shit totally curdled my already tenuous interest in even trying to keep up with 4e. Balance tweaks as though it was a MMORPG do not belong on a TTRPG. I am sure they lost a fair amount of players to the irritation of not knowing what was the expected ruleset to be found from table to table.

[Voss]

Yep. The really cheesemonger stuff takes several levels to get engaged. Keep in mind you don't have your basic complement of class abilities until level 3 in most cases, and the really sweet stuff doesn't turn on until level 6. And keep in mind what you get at level 6 is based on your archetype/path/whatever choice that you made back at level 1 or 2 or 3, which is your first choice since character creation. Your second will be stat or feat at level 4 (unless you multi classed), so really, your potential for cheesemongering is spells or nothing for levels about 4 levels at a time.

Now, there are spells that you can fuck with the game with. Leomund's Tiny Hut (3rd) is a must have for bards, wizards or Tome warlocks, because it is inexplicably invulnerable and inviolate so is a safe place to short (or long) rest and lets the party get their abilities back. Happily its a ritual so you just take 11 minutes and your functionally safe from everything unless some fucker comes along with dispel magic.

Demiplane (8th) is crazy abusable for a lot of different functions. It also has weird fucking wording, and you can possibly trap yourself in it. Basically, you create a door that connects to a demiplane, in this case a 30x30 room with nothing else. At the end of an hour, the door disappears, trapping any objects or creatures inside. Every time you cast the spell you connect to a new demiplane or to one you've already created... or if you somehow know the 'nature and contents' of one created by someone else. Note, however, that the door only connects _to_ the demiplane, you can't use it to get out if you're inside.

Now you can use this as a prison, or to transport a small force literally anywhere (but they may run out of air to breathe. or maybe not, since the spell fails to mention that), or keep a private armory, secure a shitload of stuff or deliver large quantities (30 cubic feet) of anything (water, lava, etc) that you can get through the damn door (sized for medium critters). But you could definitely pack in your personal hit squad of undead and unleash them into an unsuspecting sucker's secure location, since the casting time is literally just an action and a gesture. Need to deliver 1000 swords to the rebel army? You can do that. Pack up a vampire lord and get rid of him forever? Yep. Fill it with acid and set up the door later as a trap for some idiot? Yep.

While some 5th to 9th level spells are honestly 'why would I not just cast Hold Monster?,' others are instead seriously 'how can I break the game today'? Which means of course that high level play is pretty much exclusive to bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, wizards and warlocks (whose Mystic Arcanum work exactly like the single 6th to 9th level slots other classes get, though some of their choices are really limited. But honestly thats true for the cleric as well.). Honestly I feel like the overcompensated on up gunning the bard and downgrading the cleric. Druid wild shape is rather pants, but the spell list has enough Spells That Kill People to be entirely worthy.

The downside is the Spells That Kill People is a much shorter list, and some are really target specific (like hold person). But at the same time they're just as good at level 20 as they are at level 3. However, the big effect is you'll see people spamming the same stuff over and over again, because that is the only stuff that works. Otherwise you spam scaling attack cantrips and find as many ways as possible to get extra actions.

This makes the HP bloat on monsters really unfortunate, because every encounter is either SoL if able, or alpha strike if not. Or bring/summon a brute squad.

If you think that the 5E Devs aren't going to emasculate the necromancer, bard, and other classes that can actually do shit that's not some variation of 'I FLAMING SPHERE the orc!' then you've got another think/thing coming.

Flaming sphere is both area and concentration. Its actually one of the better options against weak group monsters, especially since you move it (and thus do damage) as a bonus action.

But... if they do, they're going to face a lot of pushback. The necromancer finally does what it says on the tin, and the bard is worthwhile for the first time ever. And frankly, encounters at the moment are imbalanced in favor of the monsters as you go up in level, so nerf errata for the people who are going to have to carry the party is an absolute clusterfuck of an idea. You'll quickly see calls for 'No errata' games of 5e.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think that in the long run, the sorcerer is going to become the best class short of 5E D&D deciding to make Pearls of Power really cheap and available or deciding to make the encounter design deliberately embrace the 5-minute workday. They're just structurally the best-built class. They have access to the highest numerical amount of spells and all that's needed to make metamagic the best class feature in the game are a couple of feats or new archetypes. Thus all they really need are a couple of expansion books to widen their utility.

But... if they do, they're going to face a lot of pushback. The necromancer finally does what it says on the tin, and the bard is worthwhile for the first time ever. And frankly, encounters at the moment are imbalanced in favor of the monsters as you go up in level, so nerf errata for the people who are going to have to carry the party is an absolute clusterfuck of an idea. You'll quickly see calls for 'No errata' games of 5e.

I'll believe it when I see it. The 4Erry crowd clapped like trained, brain-damaged seals in clown suits every time new errata came out. Even when unpopular errata like the Magic Missile came out no one objected to 4E D&D's way of dealing with errata in the abstract.