It can’t be helped. They’re putting out more playable races and character options for Type V Dungeons & Dragons. It would be foolish to think they wouldn’t, but we’re about to find out whether they’re capable of exercising a little restraint. It’s expected at least four additional races will be introduced, cribbed from material previously available going back at least to the Planescape setting, the Genasi.

Genasi are plane-touched people, humans native to the various major inner planes of fire, earth, air, and water. They exhibit characteristics that make them better suited for survival in strange worlds dominated by forces hostile to normal life, as well as features that tie them in thematically with their affiliated element. The literal and allegorical natures of air, earth, fire, and water vary tremendously. By some ways of thinking they vary absolutely, which is why they were ever thought of as the fundamental building-blocks of the universe. Clearly they cannot be a single race for game purposes. Most of their characteristics would differ.

Let’s start by taking a look at how previous incarnations of this oddball cluster of player character races worked before.

2nd Edition Genasi

The Genasi of Planescape are the direct offspring of an elemental native (a djinn, sylph, ifrit, dao, etc.) and a mortal, and are exceedingly rare. They don’t get along with each other or other mortals very well and do not form communities among even same-type Genasi. They are described in terms that closely associate them with the themes of their elemental parent. From the Planewalker’s Handbook entry for Fire Genasi:

Fire burns, destroys, and consumes. Lesser creatures are afraid of fire, and so fire genasi believe themselves naturally superior – they are avatars of this fearful, destructive energy. It’s easy to see why those of other races dislike the arrogant and hot-tempered flame lords even more than other genasi. Most (sometimes wrongly) assume that fire genasi are innately evil.

• Air – +1 Dex +1 Int -1 Wis -1 Cha, can cast Levitate as a 5th level wizard, +1 on saves versus air-based magic for every five levels. May be priests, fighters, wizards, fighter/clerics, or fighter/wizards. Specialist wizards must specialize in air elementalism.
• Earth +1 Str +1 Con -1 Wis -1 Cha, natural AC 8, appraising proficiency, can cast Pass Without Trace as a 5th level wizard, +1 on saves versus earth-based magic for every five levels. May be fighters, wizards, or priests. Specialist wizards must specialize in earth elementalism
• Fire – +1 Int – 1 Cha, immune to normal flame, infravision 60′, can cast Affect Normal Fires as a 5th-level wizard, +1 on saves versus air-based magic for every five levels. May be fighters, wizards, or fighter/wizards. Specialist wizards must specialize in fire elementalism.
• Water – Amphibious, +1 Con -1 Cha, can cast Create Water as a 5th level wizard, +1 to saves versus water-based magic for every five levels. May be fighters, wizards, priests, rogues (including bards), fighter/priests, and fighter/thieves. Specialist wizards must specialize in water elementalism.

3rd Edition Genasi

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide was our introduction to 3rd Edition Genasi. In the Forgotten Realms they are presented as the descendants (but not direct offspring) of elemental creatures. They get lots of bullet points for maximum d20 splatbook satisfaction. Mmmm… Bullet points…

• Air – +2 Dex +2 Int -2 Wis -2 Cha, medium size, 30′ speed, darkvision 60′, can cast Levitate as 5th level sorcerer, +1 saving throw versus all air-based effects for every five levels, do not breath, outsider creature type, favored class fighter, +1 level adjustment.
• Earth – +2 Str +2 Con -2 Wis -2 Cha, medium size, 30′ speed, darkvision 60′, can cast Pass Without Trace as a 5th level druid, +1 saving throw versus all earth effects for every five levels, outsider creature type, favored class fighters, +1 level adjustment.
• Fire – +2 Int -2 Cha, medium size, 30′ speed, can cast Control Flame as a 5th level sorcerer, +1 saving throw versus fire effects for every five levels, outsider creature type, favored class fighter, +1 level adjustment.
• Water – +2 Con -2 Cha, medium size, 30′ speed, 30′ swim speed, darkvision 60′, can cast Create Water as a 5th level druid, +1 saving throw versus water effects for every five levels, Breathe Water as an extraordinary ability, outsider creature type, favored class fighter, +1 level adjustment.

Here we see a fair amount of standardization between the four. They’re all the same size, the same land speed, they all get darkvision, they’re all outsiders, they all have the same level adjustment value.

4th Edition Genasi

In 4th Edition we see the four separate races turned into one race with five kinds of souls and five manifestations to match. They all get +2 Strength and +2 Intelligence, are medium-sized, have a 6-square speed, with normal vision, +2 endurance, +2 nature.

• Earthsoul – +1 fortitude defense, +1 bonus to saving throws, Earthshock encounter power that knocks opponents prone as a minor action.
• Firesoul – +1 reflex defense, resist vs fire, Firepulse encounter power that deals damage as a reaction.
• Stormsoul – +1 fortitude defense, resist vs lightning, Promise of Storm encounter power that increases damage of lightning and thunder effects as a minor action.
• Watersoul – can breathe underwater, +2 on saves versus ongoing effects, Swiftcurrent encounter power that lets you shift your movement rate as a minor action.
• Windsoul – resist vs cold, Windwalker encounter power that lets you fly 8 squares as a move action.

In this edition they are treated as a species unto themselves with no particular animosity or affinity towards other races. This is a long stretch from their lone-wolf elemental-bastard origin from Planescape, but we can see here that the primary constant between takes on this character concept is change.

5e Genasi – Speculative

When putting together the Genasi for Type V Dungeons & Dragons, it is not necessary to tie yourself closely to previous takes on the theme considering all this flux. Trying to bear in mind the rough trajectory we’ve seen from 2nd edition to 4th and combining with what we’ve seen from the PHB playable races, I suspect we’ll see something like the following:

Common Features – +2 Charisma. A complete 180° turn from their initial incarnation, but we’re likely to see an elemental bloodline for the Sorcerer class, and the Genasi are a thematic slam-dunk as elementalists. They’ll be medium size because there’s no particular reason not to. They’ll probably speak and read Common and Primorial, depending on how 5e’s take on the Forgotten Realms pan out. They’ll get 60′ darkvision because almost everybody does. They’re giving out darkvision like candy. Pick one subrace.

Subraces – There will likely be more than the original four subraces, possibly the same as 4e, each with its own +1 to a single attribute (Strength for earth, Intelligence for fire, etc), resistance to an associated damage type, and two additional thematically-appropriate minor features. I expect wind-themed Genasi to have a higher movement rate, earth-themed Genasi to have some additional defensive benefit, and so forth.

The main thing we’re going to learn from this first post-release expansion to 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons is what they’ve actually learned from previous experience. Can they keep it in their pants? Has the cancer of character option bloat gone into remission? Or is every DM out there going to have to consider radical surgery and chemotherapy to keep their games off life support?

In which the author rambles incoherently about the Champion Fighter Archetype as found in Type V Dungeons & Dragons.

Looking at the Champion archetype in comparison to its counterparts the Battle Master and the Eldritch Knight, particularly from a character optimization mindset, it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. The Battle Master’s superiority dice allow you to bump up damage several times per short rest and achieve tactically-interesting results on top of dealing normal weapon damage. The Eldritch Knight has access to the low end of the Wizard spell list. All three have the core Fighter features of multiple attacks, good weapon and armor proficiencies, good hit points, and the Action Surge. What is the Champion bringing to the table that recommends it for selection?

Level 3: Improved Critical

Normally you only land a critical hit on a natural 20, that’s 5% of all rolls. With advantage it’s closer to 9%. A 3rd-level Champion scores a critical hit on a 19 or 20, 10% of rolls. With advantage that bumps up to about 19%. Granted, a critical hit isn’t always that impressive. A longsword dealing 1d8+3 damage (7.5 average) instead deals 2d8+3 damage (12 damage). A difference of 4.5. Happening 10% of the time, that’s an upswing of under half a hit point per swing. Combine this with the Great Weapon Master feat and a critical hit buys you a bonus action to attack again, which makes this feature a bit more appealing if you’re swinging a big hunk of weapon with both hands. Compared to the Battle Master’s maneuvers, which grab an extra 1d8 damage on a hit four times per short rest, plus another effect, just at the moment when you want it to, and it’s just not impressive at all.

Critical hits occur more often if we attack more often, so fighting with two weapons increases our odds somewhat. At 3rd level a Champion wielding two shortswords will land at least one critical hit every five combat rounds compared to a Battle Master two-weapon fighter landing one every ten. You can use the Great Weapon fighting style and the Polearm Master feat to get two attacks per round, one at 1d10 and one at 1d4, landing a critical at twice the normal rate and re-rolling 1’s and 2’s on the dice. Against an opponent with a 15 AC, a reasonably-put-together Polearm Master Champion would be doing 9.209 damage per round on average. By comparison a Polearm Master Eldritch Knight would be doing 8.88 damage against the same target. Four times per short rest, already knowing whether a critical applied or not, a Battle Master could add a superiority die to the mix, doing an extra 2d8 damage on that blow. If he were to consistently keep a die reserved for that purpose, his average damage bumps up to a little over 9.78 per round.

Given the opportunities provided by magical armament, some items add more dice to the weapons’ damage. These dice are also doubled on a critical hit, so a Champion with a Flametongue Longsword would deal 2d8+4d6 damage 10% of the time, improving the bang for her buck. If you could get your hands on a Flametongue Glaive, you could deal 2d10+4d6 on a critical hit with the main end and 2d4+4d6 with the other end. A 3rd level Champion with a Flametongue longsword attacking an opponent with AC 15 deals 11.535 damage per round. The Eldritch Knight, meanwhile, does 11.075 damage per round. The Battle Master dials it up to 11.525, just under the raw average output of the champion.

Arranging for advantage nearly doubles the odds of landing a critical hit, so off-label combat actions like grappling and shoving (to knock down) are somewhat more valuable to a Champion than to other Fighters. One such option is the Shield Master feat, which grants a bonus action that can be used to shove (abused somewhat by characters like the Savage Duelist). Taking from the Flametongue example above, using the Shield Master feat to knock an opponent prone grants advantage and shifts the Champion up to 16.885, the Eldritch Knight up to 15.205, and the Battle Master to 16.545. Here we see the Champion narrowly eking out an edge in the numbers game. Note that the Eldritch Knight has cantrips and couple 1st level spells to round things out, and the Battle Master’s maneuvers offer additional tactical effects and are essentially dealing identical damage over time. Over twenty rounds of combat the difference is only 6.8 hit points.

Find a way to get an additional attack, additional dice, and advantage consistently and you’re in business. That’s a lot of factors to jam together.

Level 7: Remarkable Athlete

This is basically a limited-purpose Jack of All Trades feature from the Bard class. You get half your proficiency bonus (rounded up) added to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already have a proficiency bonus added in. When you get this feature at 7th level it’s worth a +2. Most things you’re going to make ability checks for could already be covered by a skill, skills that you may have already been proficient with. Did you want to wait until 7th level to be pretty good at several tasks? I didn’t think so. But like Jack of All Trades this applies to Initiative checks, too, which makes it handy in a limited context. It also lets you jump a little further.

To get the most out of this feature we would want to eschew Strength and Dexterity-based skills for the first six levels of our adventuring career. What kind of character would do that? Somebody from a more hifalutin background than we might normally associate with the Fighter class. Several backgrounds lend themselves very well to more erudite, delicate character classes than the Fighter, but if you’re looking to create a sword-wielding adventurer from a more sedentary upbringing, the Champion can help smooth out some rough spots in your skill arsenal. Consider a Guild Artisan or Acolyte with no magical proclivities striking out into the world on some important calling. As she progresses in her adventuring career she finally gets the hang of all this skulking about and scaling cliffs and cartwheeling past foes, and finally gets over a little hesitation that was holding her back. At 7th level she’s out of her shell and surprising her allies with a bolder outlook complete with initiative bonuses and derring-do.

Compared to a Battle Master gaining one superiority die and the ability to size up an opponent, this is quite good if handled right. The Eldritch Knight meanwhile has gone on to casting 2nd level spells and can opt to cast a cantrip and attack during the same round instead of just casting a spell or just attacking twice.

Level 10: Additional Fighting Style

All Fighters get a fighting style at first level, but the Champion alone gets a second style at 10th level. Most of the styles don’t compliment each other simultaneously; you don’t get your +2 damage from Dueling and +2 to attack from Archer for the same attack. You can simultaneously benefit from Defense and any of the others, and Protection is even better with a second style than it is by itself.

Great Weapon + Archer is a lovely way to round out your tactical usefulness. A bonus to attack with ranged weapons. Insulation from bad damage rolls in melee. Note that the Great Weapon re-rolls apply to the extra dice on critical hits, so this compliments the Improved Critical feature as well.

Dueling + Defense is a mildly cheesy way to top of armor class. With plate armor and a shield, you would have a 21 armor class before any magical benefits your equipment confers. The Dueling style helps you keep up on damage output compared to your greatweapon-swinging buddies even while you’re harder to hit than any Monster Manual creature under Challenge Rating 20.

Two-weapon Fighting + Protection is an attempt to get as many actions as possible during a round, providing a reliable bonus action attack without spending a feat as well as an additional use to put your reactions to. One action, one bonus action, one reaction. In the 5th Edition action economy, that’s as good as you’re going to get. Your allies will appreciate bad-guys rolling at disadvantage, too.

By comparison, the Eldritch Knight applies a conditional disadvantage on spell saving throws and the Battle Master gets bigger superiority dice and two more maneuvers. Keep in mind that these are maneuvers he didn’t think were worth acquiring earlier, so they’re not that good. Again the Champion got a somewhat superior feature.

Level 15: Superior Critical

We go from a 10% critical hit chance to 15%. With advantage it’s nearly 30%. At 15th level the Champion Fighter is hitting just right an awful lot. You take maximum advantage of this feature in the same way as with the Improved Critical. More attacks, more damage dice, advantage on attack rolls.

By comparison, the Eldritch Knight gains the ability to teleport 30′ when using his Action Surge, which is potentially awesome. At this point he’s got 3rd level spells like Fireball, which are always crowd-pleasers. The Battle Master gets an extra superiority die and a means of recovering one at the beginning of every battle if he was already spent. Not so great.

Level 18: Survivor

When starting your turn under 1/2 your maximum hit points, automatically recover some hit points. This is more a means of saving somebody else’s spell slots between battles than a save-ass toughness thing. By the time you get this feature anything that would get you to under 1/2 your hit points is likely hitting you much, much harder than this heals.

Don’t plan on taking a character archetype in hopes of getting tons of use out of an 18th-level class feature. Your character will be long dead, the campaign long abandoned before you get this far, so don’t peg your hopes and dreams on recovering 5+(Con modifier) damage every round. At this level the Eldritch Knight can cast a spell and still take a single attack. For 18th level this is thoroughly unimpressive. The Battle Master get d12s for his superiority dice, upping their average value from 4.5 when he first got them to 6.5. Also underwhelming.

The Verdict

The Champion starts off with a pretty weak feature set that gets incrementally better as the character advances in levels. If you’re looking to create a character that grows from zero to hero, this archetype may work well for you, particularly if you think she may branch out to explorer other areas of expertise through multiclassing. There’s synergy to be found between the Fighter’s extra attribute improvements to have a character improve organically, becoming stronger, faster, tougher, smarter, etc. in keeping with the events unfolding in play as opposed to some grand master plan. The Second Wind, Action Surge, and Indomitable class features lend themselves to this as well, drawing upon raw inner reserves to accomplish great things where other characters rely on specialized training or magic.

I would consider the Champion archetype a good core component to an adventuring-detective character, likely paired with the Thief archetype for skill expertise. Here’s a possible D&D Jessica Fletcher:

In which we create a simple polearm specialist for use in Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Remember when Dungeons & Dragons loves polearms? My old orange-spined Player’s Handbook couldn’t get enough of them. To this day I crack a whimsical smile when I see a fauchard for sale at the Home Depot. Why? Because Fauchards and Glaives and Billhooks were the stuff of adventure, dammit.

A polearm is a beautiful thing. Attach something to the end of a long hand. Hit fools with it. What do you attach to it? Oh anything, really. Lots of polearms look like they started out life as farm or orchard tools re-purposed for slaughter. Those that showed promise eventually developed into refined, elegant, knightly implements of slaughter.

One problem that came up with some frequency was that of specialization. If an adventuring warrior were to specialize in the use of, say, the Bec de Corbin, he has put himself in a bit of a corner. With such a dizzying assortment of polearms available, what are the odds that a given villain, henchling, or long-buried hero of old would have a matching magical weapon? Warriors benefit tremendously from having enchanted armaments, and picking the wrong specialization is troublesome. Type V Dungeons & Dragons addresses this by doing away with specialization in the first place. Instead there are optional feats that lend themselves towards various broad categories of weapons and fighting styles. Whether you use shortbows or longbows or crossbows or thrown darts you can benefit from Sharpshooter. Similarly there is a Polearm Master feat that applies to most long-stick-intensive weapons.

Four feats are of particular interest:

• Great Weapon Master – This grants a bonus action to attack upon landing a critical hit or felling an opponent, plus the option to take a penalty to hit in exchange for more damage. Polearms are typically heavy weapons wielded in two hands, so this would apply to a polearm-swining lug just fine.
• Polearm Master – This grants a bonus action to attack with the butt-end of your polearm and grants a reaction attack when opponents enter within reach. Clearly this feat is best-used by characters that do not have a lot of other opportunities to trigger a bonus action or reaction.
• Shield Master – Has a few benefits for Dexterity-based saving throws and allows a bonus action to shove an opponent. You can wield a Quarterstaff one-handed, so technically you can benefit from both this and Polearm Master at the same time. Why this combination doesn’t apply to spears is beyond me, as the spear-and-shield combination is literally a classic. Bronze-age classic.
• Sentinel – Reduces the movement of anybody hit by an opportunity attack to zero for the turn, denies opponents the ability to Disengage safely, and allows a reaction attack against opponents that attack one’s allies. This is 5e’s melee lock-down mechanism, presumably present for the benefit of people who enjoy computer games and Type IV D&D.

The use of feats poses certain challenges, though. Most classes gain a feat at 4th, 8th, and 12th level, at the cost of foregoing an attribute score improvement. To select a feat is to pay an opportunity cost, and to pay dearly at that. One could invest three feats in Polearm Mastery, Great Weapon Mastery, and Sentinel, and thus become a heavy-hitting melee specialist locking down a 25′ swath of the battlefield. This combination sounds lovely, but your Dwarven Paladin isn’t going to have all the pieces in place until 12th level, at which point frankly your campaign is probably already over. It seems to me that, generally speaking, more than one feat is hard to justify for a typical campaign. Unless we get our feats for pennies on the dollar, that is! And boy, do I have a deal for you!

Start out by looking at the call-out on page 31 of the Player’s Handbook, the Variant Human option. Instead of taking +1 on all of your attributes, take +1 to each of two attributes of your choice and pick up a feat at 1st level. Lovely, we can start our adventuring career with part of our gimmick already in-hand. Now we can get our third feat at 8th level instead of 12th. But that means we won’t get to bump up any of our attributes, like the all-important Strength or Constitution, until 12th level. Assuming we’ll be retired or dead right around then, that’s still a bit of a delayed gratification.

Behold, another solution presents itself. Tucked away on page 70 is an under-rated character class called the “Fighter.” The Fighter, you must understand, is a newfangled specialist class introduced in 1974 that is supposed to be rugged and skilled in the use of arms. In 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons they have the distinction of gaining attribute improvements (and additional feats) at levels 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, and 16. This means we can have three feats at level six. That’s half the level as our baseline, leaving opportunities to maybe pick up a couple of bonuses before being put out to pasture.

We’ve picked a race (Human) and a class (Fighter), so it’s time to divvy up some starting attributes. I’m a fan of the standard array, as point buy leads to min/max abuses and cancer of the soul. All of our polearm trickery won’t be of much use if we aren’t hitting our targets, and none of our thematic weapons have the “finesse” quality, so our primary concern is Strength. Dexterity need not be of any great concern, as we can get by using heavy armor. Constitution is tremendously important for anybody whose primary role in combat is getting stuck in with the hostiles, so we’ll make it our secondary concern. Intelligence is lovely for anybody in the real world, but if you were really smart you’d get yourself a good steady job that doesn’t involve getting stabbed. Low priority. We could say the same about Wisdom, but some of the more concerning magic effects in the game use Wisdom for a saving throw, and skills like Insight, Medicine, and Perception all key off of this attribute. Tertiary priority. Charisma is of similar priority as Intelligence. Both are nice to have but non-essential to this gimmick. We assign 15 to Strength, 14 to Constitution, 13 to Wisdom, 12 to Charisma, 10 to Dexterity, and 8 to Intelligence. We apply our Human bonuses and end up with a statline of Str 16 Dex 10 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 14 Cha 12.

As a Fighter we’re entitled to a fighting style at level 1. Archer, Duelist, and Two-weapon don’t really apply well here. Duelist would if we were to use a Quarterstaff, but I want to go with a more traditional polearm aesthetic, so that leaves us with Defense, Great Weapon, and Protection. Protection allows you to use your reaction to impose disadvantage under some circumstances. We’re already looking to use reactions from other sources, so that isn’t so handy. Great Weapon fighting style lets us re-roll 1’s and 2’s on damage dice when using a two-handed weapon. That’s nice, but it’s just a little extra damage. We take Defense for a flat +1 to armor class. With no shield or Dexterity bonus and likely to be stuck in the scrum, we can use all the help we can get in that department.

For a background we’ll be boring and pick up Soldier. We roll some dice and see that we spent time as a Standard Bearer in the military, are always polite and respectful, we value “might” as an ideal, feel that those we fight with are worth dying for, and our hatred for our enemies is blind and unreasoning. This also gets us proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation as well as tool proficiency in one type of gaming set (Chutes & Ladders) and vehicles(land). For our Fighter skills we pick up Perception and Insight. Because we’re clearly some kind of social butterfly. For our free Human skill, we pick up Animal Handling. It goes with our land vehicle proficiency and suits our delicate nature.

At last, we pick up equipment. From the Fighter starter package we get chainmail armor, two Martial weapons (a Glaive and a Warhammer), two handaxes, and an explorer’s pack. From our background we get and insignia of rank, a trophy taken from a fallen enemy, a set of bone dice, a set of common clothes, a belt pouch, and ten gold coins.

At 1st level we look something like this:

From the outset he’s reasonably tough, is capable of laying out two attacks per round in melee for 1d10+3 and 1d4+3. Outside of a fight his athleticism is useful for physical challenges and at least not a liability socially. Let’s roll him forward to 6th level:

Pole Dancer

Human Battle Master Fighter 6 Soldier Background Lawful Evil Attribute Value Bonus Save Str 18 +4 +7 Dex 10 +0 +0 Con 14 +2 +5 Int 8 -1 -1 Wis 14 +2 +2 Cha 12 +1 +1 Skills: Animal Handling (+5), Athletics (+7), Insight (+5), Intimidation (+4), Perception (+5), Cook’s Tools Languages: Common, Orcish Hit Points: 52 Armor Class: 19 (Plate + Fighting Style) Initiative: +0 Speed: 30 Weapons: Glaive (+7 to attack, 1d10+4 damage) twice plus Glaive (+7 to attack, 1d4+4 damage) as bonus action, Warhammer (+7 to attack, 1d8+4 damage) twice, Handaxe (+7 to attack, 1d6+4 damage) twice Other notable features: Polearm Master feat, Sentinel Feat, Military Rank, Second Wind (recover 1d10+1 hit points as bonus action), Defense Fighting Style, Action Surge, Combat Superiority, Goading Attack, Lunging Attack, Trip Attack, Four Superiority Dice (d8), Student of War (Cook’s Tools), Extra Attack, Ability Score Improvement (Strength) Notable Equipment: Plate Armor, Glaive, Warhammer, 2 Handaxes, Explorer’s Pack, Lieutenant’s Bars, Hobgoblin Warrior’s Headdress, Bone Dice, Common Clothes, Belt Pouch, 10gp

At this point we could have taken Polearm Master, Sentinel, and Great Weapon Master feats, but the benefits of Great Weapon Master are a bonus attack under limited cirmstances and a bonus to damage at a heavy attack penalty. Bringing Strength up to 18 makes a lot of sense for getting more value out of it when we eventually pick it up at 8th or 12th level.

The Battle Master archetype is selected because we’ve more or less set ourselves up around being tricky in a fight. Being able to decide to trip an opponent during a reaction, extend from 10′ reach to 15′, or steal an opponent’s attention all fit nicely with a melee Swiss Army Knife approach to the world.

On the road to a typical campaign’s end-game, he’ll get another ability score bump or two, some magical arms and armor, a fifth Superiority Die, and maybe four more maneuvers, see his Superiority Die bump up from d8 to d10, and get a third attack per round with the main end of his weapon. With any luck he’ll have a broad range of implements with which to ply his trade during this time, from his first Glaive to a Halberd or two, maybe the DM will let him have a Ranseur or Bill Hook or Partisan. Who knows?

In which we continue our task, undertaken previously, to flesh out four 5th-edition Dungeons & Dragons characters whose stats were generated by a straight 3d6-in-order die roll in a public forum.

When last we left out intrepid heroes, they were hapless first level scrubs with the barest smidgeon of backstory, the most raggedy of starting equipment, and subnormal randomly-assigned statlines. They still have the random statlines, but now we’re going to check in on them at level 7.

Seven levels into a campaign, characters have seen a fair amount of action. They’ve developed and matured into their roles. Assuming none of them died and ignoble death at the hand of kobolds before level two (not a great bet) they should have come into their own. The spellcasters can cast 4th-level spells. The Fighter can attack multiple times per round. The Rogue has twice the Expertise skills and is dropping Sneak Attack damage like nobody’s business.

The Champion archetype is horribly underrated. For our clumsy Half-Orc buddy here it gets him half his proficiency bonus, rounded up, added to any ability checks he doesn’t already get proficiency bonuses for. That would include initiative. Speaking of which, the Alert feat (selected at 6th level) fixes what is likely a long-standing pet peeve in the Initiative department.

Hoo boy, do Bards get a lot of stuff. Her extra cantrip (Message), access to Invisibility, and Expertise in Stealth lets her pass up the Rogue as the de-facto scout of the party. With spells like Heat Metal and Dimension Door she can be a huge help in overcoming combat and non-combat challenges. And attacking twice per round for more damage than the Fighter isn’t such a bad thing to fall back on. Song of Rest helps everybody in the party recover hit points more quickly during breaks in the action, saving valuable Cure Wounds castings. Jack of All Trades (Jill of All Trades?) is like an improved Remarkable Athlete. With a +7 on initiative rolls, she stands a very good chance to drop a Faerie Fire or Heat Metal on an opponent in time for it to assist the whole group for the whole encounter.

Our Scheming Wizard was originally specified as an Evocation specialist. There are always supposed to be better things for a Wizard to be doing than laying down raw damage, but if you’re running an Evoker and don’t prepare Fireball every day once you’re able to, you’ve been wasting everybody’s time. Shape Spell lets him steer the mayhem away from his allies. Potent Cantrip doesn’t do us a lot of good, as there are only a couple of cantrips that even allow for saving throws. We could pick up Acid Splash or Poison Spray as our fourth cantrip, but I’d rather just write that feature off and pick up Ray of Frost instead. Unlike our Tambourine Bard, the Wizard may have any number of additional spells in his spellbook.

No surprises here, the Rogue is a straight-up killer. He has the hit points to hang with the Fighter up front in a fight, and is sneaky, smart, and athletic enough to deal with a wide variety of challenges. Having another party member with Expertise takes a bit of the shine off of him. Depending on the kinds of magical resources these goons came across during their adventures, the capabilities and responsibilities of each character could shift around dramatically. Picking exactly what would compliment each character best would be cheesy, so I refrained from doing so. It should be fair to assume they’ve got a handful of magical weapons, a few wondrous items, and several single-use potions, scrolls, and such.

This certainly isn’t the set of characters I’d expect the people in my play group to come up with, given the option of a 27-point buy or standard array, but there’s something to be said for skipping past the careful planning and asset management side of character creation and diving headfirst into play. In a high-lethality campaign it’s nearly as important to whip up a new character quickly as it is to produce a highly-effective one. There’s fun to be had during character creation, but far more to be had in playing with the results, right?

In which we continue our task, undertaken previously, to flesh out four 5th-edition Dungeons & Dragons characters whose stats were generated by a straight 3d6-in-order die roll in a public forum.

Today we’ll assign our party members some backgrounds, assign personality traits, bonds, ideals, and flaws. The goal here is to create playable characters that will work well together.

Pretty straightforward. We’ll want to pick up a background that compliments everybody else, plus two skills from the Fighter list. He’s proficient in Intimidation by dint of being a badass Half-orc. Rawr.

Plenty of skills to pick. Three from Bard, two from Half-elf, none of those restricted to a list. With four musical instruments to choose from, I think it would be prudent to pick something small, something big, something high-class, and something a little down to earth. Drums, Dulcimer, Flute, Lute, and Viol all look good from the PHB’s list of tools, but we can do better. We’ll stick with Drums (applying this to the Tambourine), switch out the Dulcimer with the Harp, replace the Flute with the Clarinet, the Lute with the Guitar, and the Viol with the Cello. Who doesn’t like a classy Half-elf lady rocking a cello? Nobody I want to game with, that’s who.

Wizards aren’t exactly your classic skillmonkey. They get their way by book-reading and bending the rules of reality. I shifted him from Guild Artisan to Guild Merchant because a Wizard on a Cart travelling from town to town peddling his murderhobo friends’ ill-gotten gains strikes a chord with me. Much more so than having his sweating away in some workshop all day.

Six skills, a set of tools to pick from being a Dwarf, two skills to have Expertise in… A lot of wiggle-room here. I went ahead and picked Mason’s Tools just to stay in stereotypical Dwarf territory. Let’s put the pieces together.

We’ve got an Entertainer and a Merchant. Clearly they should be able to handle the “face” duties between them. The Wizard already has the essential Insight and Persuasion skills. Round this out with Deception (using his pick-anything Human skill) and he’s got the makings of a proper con artist. From the Wizard list he gets intellectual with Arcana and Investigation, two Intelligence-based skills one rightly expects the party Wizard to keep on lockdown. As the token smart guy in the group, he opts to spend his feat on Skilled, picking up History, Nature, and Religion.

Our Bard has Acrobatics and Performance. Though she is quite charismatic, her poor Wisdom makes her somewhat of a liability diplomatically. Others are likely to pull one over on her, so they’ll try to let the party Wizard take care of that stuff. Leaning on her strengths, we’ll select Stealth and Sleight of Hand. This will help her tag along with the Muscle Rogue for scouting purposes. Speaking of which if she’s going to be sticking her neck out, proficiency with Survival and Perception will help cover for her poor Wisdom. A little, at least. That leaves one skill to assign. You never know when the DM is going to rule that Acrobatics isn’t the right tool for the job, so we give her Athletics to round things off.

The Fighter historically hasn’t had a lot to add to the mix, but it need not always be so. He only has one attribute that has a bonus and a skill associated with it. Athletics. We’ll want that. Several backgrounds offer this as a skill, but at this point I’m looking at the Fighter’s poor-but-not-terrible Wisdom score and thinking he may be able to cover gaps there, too. We select the Folk Hero background, picking up Animal Handling and Survival proficiency. The Wizard’s got a mule but isn’t particularly good with it. Now we have two characters that are kind-of-sort-of good with the beast of burden. For the Fighter skills we pick up Athletics and Perception. The Bard is already proficient with Perception, but having multiple players rolling is kind of like automatically having advantage just by keeping the party together.

With only eighteen skills in the system we’ve got a pretty good variety of skills covered by the time we get to the Rogue. He has four skills from an exhaustive Rogue skill list and two more from a background. Several of the backgrounds grant skills that overlap with the Rogue skill list. With the Wizard covering the party “face” and general smarty-pants duties, the Rogue is going to be overlapping what the Fighter and the Bard have already select. Athletics is important to the Muscle Rogue’s operation, he’ll take it and select it as one of his Expertise skills. For scouting purposes Stealth and Perception are vital. Investigation will help provide the all-important second pair of eyes on a conundrum. Each of these is on the Rogue skill list, so no need to pin ourselves down to a background just yet. How about Acolyte? This picks up Insight and Religion, and gives us some opportunities to have a more socially-adjusted Rogue than one might normally expect.

On to more intangible matters. Personality traits. Ideals. Bonds. Flaws. Background features.

Our Folk Hero Half-orc should have a defining event. We can roll randomly, but I love the idea of a clumsy-ass lunk rescuing people during a natural disaster. He nearly drowned himself saving a family from a flooded river. He benefits from Rustic Hospitality wherever he goes. For a Personality Trait we select “I misuse long works in an attempt to sound smarter.” It’s very important to give the right kind of impersonation, you see. For an Ideal, we select Respect: “People Deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.” For a Bond we select “I protect those who cannot protect themselves.” This ties in entirely too cleanly with his fighting style. I’m simple like that. His flaw will be “I have a weakness for the vices of the city, especially hard drink.” Drunken Fighters are the best Fighters.

Our Entertainer Bard gets one to three Routines. Since she’s so dexterous, it makes sense that she would have excelled as a Dancer, Juggler, or Tumbler. Taking all three seems a bit excessive, so we’ll take her performance-related skills (other than Performance) and tie them in. Acrobatics matches with Tumbler, her various musical instrument proficiencies match with Instrumentalist, and Sleight of Hand goes well with… Fire-eater. What’s Fire-eater doing on that table? How can you possibly expect me to not select that? She gains the By Popular Demand feature. Everybody loves a fire-eating gymnast that plays the guitar. For a Personality Trait we select “I get bitter if I’m not the center of attention.” This should provide some good intra-party drama. For an Ideal we select Creativity: “the world is in need of new ideas and bold action.” That’s the kind of ideal that leads to a life of adventure. For her Bond we select “I idolize a hero of the old tales and measure my deeds against that person’s.” Watching a player develop the story of her ancient hero strikes me as Good Stuff. For a Flaw we play up her poor Intelligence and Wisdom with “I have trouble keeping my true feelings hidden. My sharp tongue lands me in trouble.”

Our Merchant Wizard needs to have a core competency, business-wise. Presumably as a merchant, not an artisan, this would just be the business he’s most familiar with, not the sole commodity he’s working with. With proficiency in Arcana and Investigation, it seems he’s be keen on calligraphers, scribes, scriveners, cartographers, surveyors, and chart-makers. Yes, that’s two selections from the list. File your complaint at the Guild Hall. Ask for Steve. He gains the Guild Membership feature. I assume that means he gets medical, dental, vision, a solid pension, and a lawyer if anything comes up in the commission of his guild job. For a Personality Trait we’ll pick “I always want to know how things work and what makes people tick.” He’s outgoing like that. For an ideal we select Generosity: “My talents were given to me so that I could use them to benefit the world.” If he’s calling the shots, it will be in the DM’s interest to have him at least think of himself as the good-guy. For a Bond we take “I owe my guild a great debt for forging me into the person I am today.” Again, this is mostly throwing the DM a bone. If the guild needs something, this guy’s going to want to do right by them. For a Flaw we select “I’m quick to assume that someone is trying to cheat me.” Paranoid players are good players.

Finally our Acolyte Muscle Rogue gains the Shelter of the Faithful feature. For a Personality Trait it’ll be “I see omens in every event and action. The gods try to speak to us, we just need to listen.” For an Ideal we’ll take Faith: “I trust that my deity will guide my actions. I have faith that if I work hard, things will go well.” For a Bond we select “I would die to recover an ancient relic of my faith that was lost long ago.” We want him motivated to work with these crazy people. For a Flaw, “I am suspicious of strangers and expect the worst of them.” This should lead to a fair amount of violence, if your D&D group is anything like mine.

Where we stand:

Our Fighter’s not much good at his skills, and will be getting by mostly on his ability to take a hit. Heavy armor is a big plus here, as it ignores what would otherwise be a big hit to his Armor Class from his lack of Dexterity.

Oddly, her dismal Intelligence isn’t terribly likely to be a huge problem for our Bard, provided she’s got the Rogue or Wizard anywhere nearby to help out. She’ll be able to sneak around with the Rogue, is capable of dishing out damage in melee combat, and can provide solid spell support.

Party face and mob boss. Owns their transportation. Can lay down a variety of spells useful in and out of combat. If he weren’t so fragile he’d hardly need the rest of the group.

Get this Dwarf into some medium armor and you’re in business. He can take a hit nearly as well as the party Fighter and just needs a little more Armor Class than the starting equipment for his class provides. He provides most of the skills the Wizard needs to get your typical dungeon-delving job done with a little security and support from the Fighter and Bard.

In our final installment we’ll jump forward a few levels and see what these goons may look like once they’ve got a full complement of class features.

In which we use 3d6-in-order and some anonymous input to start making a 4-player 5th-edition D&D party.

Yesterday on the Traditional Games section of 4chan somebody decided to go old-school and roll up a character by having the board’s random number generator give him eighteen six-sided die rolls. He took the results, in order, and declared he had produced a Half-orc Fighter. A couple of us took up the banner and rolled up some companions for him by the same process. Let’s take a look at the quick-and-dirty results, turn them into proper Type V Dungeons & Dragons characters, and consider how well or how poorly this all turned out.

Hmm. Quite tough, not remarkably strong, incredibly clumsy, not a shining light intellectually or socially. Half-orc sounds just right. This brings his statline to Str 15, Dex 5 Con 17 Int 8 Wis 9 Cha 8. Our anonymous poster wants to go Sword & Board, so we probably shouldn’t select Great Weapon Fighting, Archer, or Two-Weapon Fighting for his Fighting Style class feature. We’ll also want to think about backgrounds. He only has two stats with bonuses, one of which has no skills associated (Constitution), the other has a single skill (Athletics) which is already available to Fighters. The background could be practically anything.  Let’s look at the rest of the party before committing to anything.

Okay, then. Highest-possible Dexterity. Highest Charisma that a point-buy can get you by the rules. Strength isn’t a liability. Dumb as a doorknob. Some kind of smooth-talking Rogue would be an obvious choice, but since we’re working with straight-up randomly-rolled character stats here it looks like a good opportunity to apply a well-rounded class to a lopsided pile of stats. Selecting Half-elf as a race gets us a +2 to Charisma and another +1 to invest elsewhere. Put it into Dexterity for a statline of Str 11 Dex 19 Con 8 Int 6 Wis 8 Cha 17. If we survive to get an attribute bump, we can split it between Dexterity and Charisma to get both of their bonuses up at the same time, capping off Dexterity at level 4.  The poster here has specified a College of Valor Bard. First level is premature for this, but it’s hard to justify a College of Lore selection with such poor Intelligence. The tambourine is a perfect ditzy hippy chick instrument, so I don’t care if it isn’t on the equipment list in the books.  The Entertainer background seems like the obvious choice. She probably met the Half-orc at a nightclub or something.

Really? An intelligent character right after the criticism of how dumb the first two were? As the person that challenged our anonymous interlocutor to roll up a smart character to balance things out, I was suspicious when I saw a 15 Intelligence on the first try. So suspicious that I checked an archive site for deleted attempts. Nope. The dice gods have smiled on our little endeavor.  This character is smart, rather charming, and has low-to-poor stats otherwise. Sounds like good Wizard material. As a Human (let’s assume we use the variant rule and get a free feat) he gets +1 to two attributes of our choice.  Since he’s probably going to be the brains of this operation lets invest those points in Intelligence and Wisdom. Intelligence to be good as wizardry, Wisdom to knock out the penalty to smart-guy skills like Perception and Insight. His statline is Str 10 Dex 9 Con 8 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 13. The way he’s described by this anonymous poster, he’s a bit of a scoundrel, so I’m thinking Criminal, Charlatan, Noble, or Guild Artisan. Leaning toward Guild Artisan. He met the Fighter through the Bard, who he pursued romantically the moment he spotted her at a farmer’s market or some-such.

Frighteningly-good rolls by comparison, with only one properly-bad attribute. With this many good rolls it’s tempting to make a Monk or Paladin, but the poster here has selected Muscle Rogue. I’ve written about Muscle Rogues before, and am fond of this niche archetype.  As a Mountain Dwarf his statline bumps to Str 17 Dex 14 Con 16 Int 12 Wis 14 Cha 7. He’s strong, he’s tough, he’s nimble enough to take full advantage of medium armor, but he’s got a personality like a cheese grater. Definitely not the boss of the party, that job stays with the Wizard, who has both the smarts and the people skills. Since we’ve had a glance at all four members of our little adventuring band, I’m inclined to have our Dwarf have a Soldier background. He knows the Fighter and Wizard from his previous professional career, and the Bard through them.

We’ve got the skeleton of an adventuring crew now. A Fighter, a Bard, a Wizard, and a Rogue. To make them work well together, they’ll need to each be reasonably good at their own jobs, compliment each others’ strengths, and mitigate each others’ shortcomings. The Fighter can do this through his Fighting Style, the Bard and Wizard through their spell selections, the Wizard has a feat selection coming to him, and all of them through their skills. The Fighter was rolled first, so we’ll start with him.

The Rogue and the Fighter are both going to be handy in a melee scrap. The Bard’s excellent Dexterity will make her dangerous with a finesse weapon like the Rapier, but her poor Constitution will leave her pretty fragile. The Wizard is also pretty fragile, and will be leading from the rear when things come to blows. Half of the group is a bit on the wimpy side and we have no dedicated healer-type, so we’ll have our Fighter pick up the Protection Fighting Style.

The Tambourine Bard is our only source of magical healing, so we want he to pick Cure Wounds as one of her first four spells. Healing Word is tempting, at the risk of becoming overly-focused. We’ll grab Faerie Fire for general combat support, instead. Dissonant Whispers is a great spell to use on a bad-guy within reach of our Muscle Rogue friend, making for a potential extra Sneak Attack. Round things out with perennial favorite Charm Person and let’s grab two cantrips. Minor Illusion and Viscious Mockery are both great go-to spells that anybody would be glad to have on-hand.

Our Scheming Boss-man Wizard has a lot of decisions to make. He knows three cantrips and six first-level spells. Eventually he’s going to be an Evoker, but that doesn’t burden his spell selection. It just speaks to his mindset. Any arcanist is well-served by knowing Detect Magic and Identify. Normally a Wizard would be happy to let his Bard companion take care of deciphering ancient runes and such, but our Half-elf friend isn’t intellectually gifted. We’ll pick up Comprehend Languages. His friends are already quite good at hurting individual opponents one at a time, so something like Burning Hands or Thunderwave would be a nice addition as crowd control. We could go with Sleep or Color Spray, both of which are file spells, but this guy’s going to be an Evoker some day, so let’s get off on the right foot. Thunderwave it is. Fragile fellow that he is, Mage Armor would be prudent. For our final first-level spell, we pick up Grease, which may have a dozen good uses in and out of combat. For cantrips we select Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, and Fire Bolt.

In our next installment, we’ll select backgrounds, personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, skills, and equipment.

In which we attempt to make a Druid whose focus is on archery for Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons

Let’s delve into a spellcasting class and do something a little different with it, shall we? Let’s take our favorite pointy-eared friends with Longbow proficiency and a bonus to Wisdom, the Wood Elf, and see if we can’t come up with a bow-wielding Druid that works reasonably well.

Racial selection is pretty simple. Wood Elves are thematically appropriate, they bring proficiency with the best ranged weapon to the table, they get a +2 bonus to Dexterity (nice for the bow) and a +1 bonus to Wisdom (nice for Druid spellcasting). For stats we use the standard Heroic array and place the 15 in Wisdom, 14 in Dexterity, 13 in Constitution, 10 in Strength, 8 in Charisma. After our racial modifiers we get a statline of Str 10 Dex 16 Con 13 Wis 16 Cha 8.

For a background let’s take Hermit. This isn’t a charismatic elf, so a solitary life surrounded by nature seems about right. This grants proficiency in Nature and Religion and a bevy of story-driving background hooks. As a Wood Elf we’re already proficient in Perception, so for our last two skills we select Animal Handling and Survival from the Druid list.

At first level we gain the Druidic language. Hooray. More importantly we gain spellcasting. We know two cantrips and can prepare four spells at a time. Cantrip selection is important. Guidance can make our ranged attacks more successful, so we definitely pick that up. Mending lets you get all your arrows back at the end of a fight and can be generally useful for fixing other things. Interesting 1st level Druid spells for an archer include Entangle, Jump, Longstrider, and most particularly Faerie Fire. Cast Faerie fire on a group of enemies and watch your allies fall in love with you.

At second level we gain Wild Shape and Druid Circle as class features. Wild Shape has a fair amount of utility, but we won’t be using it in combat. Bears don’t shoot bows, last I checked. They prefer to use polearms. Selection of a Druid Circle is fairly straightforward. The Circle of the Moon offers better combat-capable Wild Shape use. But we don’t care about Wild Shape in combat, so we select Circle of the Land. We get initiated in the Grasslands for reasons of spell selection and because archers thrive on the open steppes. Ask the Parthians. Or the Huns. Or the Mongols. This level the Circle of the Land grants us a Wizard-like ability to recover some of our spell slots as part of a short rest. It also grants us a third known cantrip. At this point we should know Druidcraft, Guidance, and Mending. Not a game-breaker, but nice.

At third level we gain access to 2nd level spells. As a Grassland Druid, we gain Invisibility and Pass Without Trace on our spell list, always treated as prepared, and available to cast normally. How handy Invisibility might be to an archer should be self-evident. Other 2nd level spells on your list include Enhance Ability (which doesn’t actually improve your ability score, but grants advantage), Heat Metal, and Spike Growth. You also gain a fourth cantrip. Let’s take Thorn Whip.

The fourth level we get our first feat or ability score bump. Sharpshooter is extremely tempting here. To avoid range and cover penalties we pick it up. With only a +5 to attack with a bow, taking a -5 to hit for a +10 to damage is something that would rarely be worthwhile at this point, but the option is there. We also get an improvement to Wild Shape, being able to take CR 1/2 forms, including those with swim speeds. Potentially very useful.

At fifth level all our Ranger and Fighter buddies just got their second attack. We’re super jealous, but our Druid Circle selection gets us Daylight and Haste. Why might we be interested in getting Haste? Hmm. A mystery.   Other 3rd level spells we may find interesting include Dispel Magic and Wind Wall.

At sixth level we gain Land’s Stride, allowing easier movement through non-magical rough terrain. This may be good for getting into an advantageous position.

At seventh level we gain access to fourth level spells, including Divination and Freedom of Movement. Other fourth level spells we may find interesting are Grasping Vine and Stone Shape.

At eighth level we finally get off our butts and improve that Dexterity score to 20. We attack once per round at +7 for 1d8+4 damage with a longbow, various means of assuring advantage on our attacks, pinning opponents in place, deterring them from closing into melee with us, and otherwise supporting our allies. We may also use Wild Shape to take CR 1 forms, including those that can fly.

At ninth level we get fifth level spells and our last round of Circle Spells in the form of Dream and Insect Plague. Neither of these are particularly on-theme for our bow-wielding Druid. Other fifth level spells of interest are Contagion, which is insanely good and should be house-ruled or tamed by errata of some sore, and Scrying. Our proficiency bonus bumps up to +4, and we are now at a point where using Sharpshooter for extra damage is frequently a reasonable choice.

At tenth level we gain a fifth cantrip. Considering how hard some things hit at these levels, Resistance can be a life-saver. We also gain immunity to poison and disease. We’re also immune to charm and fear from fey creatures, which I suppose is good for some campaigns.

At eleventh level we gain access to sixth level spells, and most D&D campaigns are winding down or rapidly approaching climax.  Take a look at Conjure Fey. Then look through the Monster Manual at what some of the creatures you can summon are capable of doing. Then scratch your head and wonder why you wouldn’t want a little of that in your life.

At twelfth level we bump Wisdom up to 18. Will we ever top off an attribute at twenty? Odds are we’ll never see level 16, so no. The DC to resist our spells stands at 18. We attack with our Longbow at +8 for 1d8+4 damage twice per round with Haste (which we can cast 3 times per day at 3rd level, nine times tops). We may optionally attack at +3 for 1d8+14 due to Sharpshooter. We have several ways to gain advantage for ourselves.

By way of comparison, a Battle Master Archer attacks three times per round, all day every day, with a 15% higher chance to hit and a hair more damage, with a few handy tricks for making those shots have tactical effects. She can’t, however, turn into a flying venomous serpent twice a day.

Please feel free to use in your own adventures, with or without attribution or even remembering where you got the idea. Games are made to be played.

In which we create a trick-shot artist that takes advantage of the Battle Master archetype’s lack of melee-only restrictions.

From a look at the D&D NEXT playtest material, one of the features I most looked forward to were the combat maneuvers. They had tinkered around with various ways of using martial dice with various classes to various effect. In the finished rules the martial dice are gone, replaced by “superiority dice” that are the purview of one Fighter archetype, the Battle Master.

The Battle Master strikes me as a nod to how Fighters and Warlords played in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. They can do tricky stuff that makes their allies more effective and their enemies somewhat useless, they can take a beating, they can hit hard. An excellent addition to any team. In 4th edition the Fighter and Warlord classes were heavily invested in being right up in the thick of it, scrapping toe-to-toe with the bad guys. You could use a polearm or whip to keep a little distance, but most of their features required an up-close-and-personal approach.

Which of course makes me want to fiddle with the 5th Edition D&D Battle Master as a ranged specialist, hanging back with the squishy spellcasters and such. Let the Blade Pact Warlock get his hands dirty, the Archery Master likes to phone it in from afar.

To start things out, we select a race. Ideally we want something that is dexterous and charismatic. This is neatly filled by the Drow and the Lightfoot Halfling, but light sensitivity is a serious drag and small creatures are no good with heavy weapons like the Longbow. That leaves us with High Elf or Wood Elf to get the full +2 to Dexterity, or Half-elf or Human to get a simple +1. Let’s hold our noses and take Half-elf. From the standard heroic spread we put the 15 into Dexterity, 14 into Constitution, 10 into Strength, 12 into Wisdom, 13 into Charisma, 8 into Intelligence. We get a +2 racial bonus to Charisma and +1 to each of two others, so we end up with a statline of Str 10 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 12 Cha 14. We select Perception and Medicine as our racial skills.

Our Archery Master isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed academically, but is wise, charming, nimble, and hale. Let’s select the Outlander background. This gets us the Athletics and Survival skill proficiencies, which would already have been ours to take as a Fighter, but we also get the opportunity to dispense pithy proverbs and back-woods wisdom to our civilized allies. For our first level we select Fighter and take the Archer fighting style. We select Acrobatics and Insight for our class skill proficiencies. We have 12 hit points, have an AC of 15 with leather armor, and attack at a +7 for 1d8+3 damage with a Longbow or at +5 for 1d8+3 damage with a Rapier. As a bonus action we may get a second wind, recovering 1d10+1 hit points once per short rest.

We continue with the Fighter class at second level, gaining the Action Surge feature.

At 3rd level we select Battle Master as our Fighter Archetype. This confers a few benefits. We gain three maneuvers from a list, four 1d8 superiority dice, and proficiency with an artisan’s tool. As an archer, woodcarver’s tools seem appropriate. Some maneuvers provoke saving throws, the difficulty for which is 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Dexterity Bonus, or 13 for us at the moment. For the moment we’ll select the following maneuvers:

• Commander’s Strike – spend a superiority die to let an ally take an attack out of turn. This can be used without engaging the target in melee, and can be used to allow the party Rogue to gain additional Sneak Attack chances. Note that Sneak Attack is limited to once per turn, not once per round. It isn’t the Rogue’s turn any more when this is used.
• Rally – spend a superiority die to grant temporary hit points to an ally. The number of hit points granted benefits from Charisma, hence the prioritization of Charisma earlier.
• Trip Attack – spend a superiority die to force your target to make a Strength save or be knocked prone. Depending on the target, this is better than a normal shove-to-trip attempt in melee. You also do your normal attack’s damage plus a little extra.

At 4th level we face a tough choice. Attribute improvement or feat? We bite the bullet and bump Dexterity up to 18, gaining a +1 to initiative, attack, and damage rolls, and improving Dexterity saves and checks. We currently attack at +8 for 1d8+4 damage with the Longbow, +7 for 1d8+4 with the Rapier. Saves against our Trip Attack are at DC 14.

At 5th level we gain an extra attack and our proficiency bonus goes up to three. At 6th we finally take the Sharpshooter feat. This lets us choose to attack at +9 for 1d8+4 damage or at +4 for 1d8+14 damage. We also ignore cover, can fire into melee or at extreme range without disadvantage. This allows us to support our close-combat allies more effectively.

At 7th level we gain the Know your Enemy feature, which is handy outside of combat. What, a Fighter that can do something useful outside of a fight? I know, right? We gain a fifth superiority die. We also get two more maneuvers and can swap out an old one. We drop Rally, as everybody we roll with should have a few hit dice on them finally, and grab three new ones.

• Commander’s Strike – spend a superiority die to let an ally take an attack out of turn. This can be used without engaging the target in melee, and can be used to allow the party Rogue to gain additional Sneak Attack chances. Note that Sneak Attack is limited to once per turn, not once per round. It isn’t the Rogue’s turn any more when this is used.
• Disarming Attack – spend a superiority die to force your target to make a Strength save or drop an object he’s holding. Shield? Weapon? Spellcasting focus? A double-scoop ice cream cone? On the ground you go. Particularly useful if you already know that one of your allies will get a turn between the disarm attempt and the target. No need to let the evil wizard pick his staff back up, right?
• Menacing Attack – spend a superiority die to force your target to make a Wisdom save or get frightened. This serves to keep enemies away from us personally and forces disadvantage to attacks and ability checks, improving our allies’ survivability.
• Pushing Attack – spend a superiority die to force your target to make a Strength save or get pushed fifteen feet away. Good to brush an opponent off an ally or nudge somebody into a spell effect or other hazard.
• Trip Attack – spend a superiority die to force your target to make a Strength save or be knocked prone. Depending on the target, this is better than a normal shove-to-trip attempt in melee. You also do your normal attack’s damage plus a little extra.

At 8th level we get another feat or attribute bump. We top off Dexterity because that’s the kind of thing you do. We now attack twice at +9 for 1d8+5 damage or +5 for 1d8+15 damage with the Longbow or at +7 for 1d8+5 damage with the Rapier. Our maneuvers have a DC 16 to resist.

At 9th level we get Indomitable. We get to re-roll a failed saving throw once per day. Also our proficiency bonus bumps up again.

At 10th level our superiority dice goes from 1d8 each to 1d10. We also get two more maneuvers. This is where the Battle Master model of character progression comes apart a bit. We already the five maneuvers we think are the most useful for us. So we get to pick up two of the also-rans. We choose Maneuvering Attack and Precision Attack because those are useful from time to time.

At 11th level we get our cherished third attack per round.

Please feel free to use in your own adventures, with or without attribution or even remembering where you got the idea. Games are made to be played.

In which we brew up a Sword & Board trip specialist that leverages Barbarian and Rogue class features to improve performance.

Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts frequently think of the Barbarian as an unarmored hulking brute that lashes out mindlessly, heedless of his own safety. The Fighter is frequently thought of as a heavily-armored knight or mercenary with a sword and shield deftly and methodically beating down his foes. Putting the two together is generally not the most efficient way to take advantage of either’s strengths. Let’s see what we can do to harness the fury of the Barbarian for a classic Fighter approach to things, with a side trip to Rogue for a little something extra.

To select a starting point, we look at the facets of a class that differentiate by multiclassing benefits. Both have proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, so no difference there. You start with full hit points, so the Barbarian’s d12 edges out the Fighter’s d10. The Fighter has a somewhat more broad selection of skills to choose from. The Fighter has proficiency in heavy armor only as an initial class. If we want to go with a heavy-armor sword & board approach, this is important. We’re going to skip that, so it’s immaterial. A point to consider at low levels is survivability. We cannot get a Fighter/Barbarian character until 2nd level, and 1st level characters are rather fragile. The Barbarian Rage feature grants resistance to non-magical weapons a 1st level, which along with a higher Hit Point value gives our Savage Duelist a better chance at living to see level 3. We start with Barbarian.

Traditionally a Barbarian is strong and wields weapons that benefit from this. In order to multiclass to Fighter we’ll need a 13 Strength, so from our Heroic Spread we put a 15 into Strength and 14 into Constitution. Our 13 goes to Wisdom, our 12 into Dexterity, our 8 to Intelligence, and our 10 to Charisma. We will be bouncing around a bit between character classes, so trying to beef up to take full advantage of Unarmored Defense probably isn’t going to pay off for us. We select Human because we are already enough of a special snowflake as it is, and we want an extra feat early on. +1 goes to Strength and +1 to Wisdom bringing our statline to: Str 16 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 12 Cha 10.

We have 14 hit points and an Armor Class of 17 with a chain shirt and shield. Our feat is Shield Master, which will be important mostly for the generation of bonus actions. To take best advantage of Shield Master, we make sure to select Athletics as a skill proficiency. The second goes to Perception because you never know when you’re going to need that one. The Outlander or Soldier background is a bit on-the-nose, so let’s select the Acolyte background, gaining Insight and Religion and two additional languages. Proficiency in Athletics will give us a +5 total to our Strength (Athletics) checks to shove or knock down opponents and when raging we gain advantage on all of our Strength checks, so we should be quite competent at that. We use a Rapier as our primary melee weapon. We attack at +5 and deal 1d8+3 damage on a hit. While raging this improved to 1d8+5 damage. Whenever we select the Attack action we get a free attempt to shove a target within five feet courtesy of the Shield Master feat.

At second level we switch straight away over to Fighter, gaining a Fighting Style in the process. As a Sword & Board specialist, Dueling makes a lot of sense with +2 to damage done when attacking with a single-handed weapon. We now attack at +5 and deal 1d8+5 damage with that rapier normally, 1d8+7 damage while raging. We also gain the Second Wind feature, allowing us to recover 1d10+1 damage as a bonus action.

We stick with Fighter for the next four levels, gaining the formidable Action Surge feature at Brb1/Ftr2, selecting Champion as our archetype for the Improved Critical feature at Brb1/Ftr3, bumping up our Strength to 18 at Brb1/Ftr4, then finally gaining the coveted Extra Attack class feature all Martial characters covet at Brb1/Ftr5. We could have picked Battle Master for the tremendously-useful combat maneuvers and superiority dice, but we already have a good go-to trick for the heat of battle, so why not leverage frequent advantage on attack rolls for a little taste of critical hits?

At sixth level we switch to Rogue for a little while. Sneak Attack damage is nothing to sneeze at, even at 1d6, but more importantly we can select Athletics for Expertise. This doubles our proficiency bonus for shoving and tripping. At Brb1/Ftr5/Rog1 we attack with the rapier twice at +7 for 1d8+6 damage and can trip as a bonus action at +7 with advantage while raging. If trip is successful, we’re attacking with advantage, allowing +1d6 sneak attack damage, improving our odds of hitting significantly, and scoring a critical hit worth 2d8+2d6+8 19% of the time. A little under once every other round.

Starting at seventh level we return to Barbarian, getting back to our roots for three levels. By Brb4/Ftr5/Rog1 we’re approaching the end of most actual Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. We select the Bear Totem archetype, gaining resistance to everything but Psychic damage. We finally bump our Strength to 20, and at this point we attack twice at +9 with our rapier for 1d8+9 damage, trip at a +13 with advantage, have an 18 AC with a Breastplate and Shield. We can rage three times per day.

Once we reach our eleventh character level we can resume advancement as a Fighter. This gets us another feat or a stat boost, but unlike our pure Fighter brethren it will be a long time before we pick up a third attack per round, not hitting that milestone until Brb4/Ftr11/Rog1, but that’s the price you pay.

At 10th level, while raging, we stand a 91.88% chance of tripping or shoving a creature with Strength or Dexterity of 20. Such a creature proficient in Athletics or Acrobatics stands only an 18.70% chance of keeping its feet under it.

Please feel free to use in your own adventures, with or without attribution or even remembering where you got the idea. Games are made to be played.

Since 2nd Edition AD&D there have been a few reasonably good ways to create a character whose primary distinction was “does skills well.” Those were to create a Thief (Rogue), a Bard, or a Ranger. From 3rd edition onward you could pull a few tricks to gain access to more skills, but would generally have to sacrifice effectiveness in some core skill competence to do so. In 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons the skill system is significantly different, as are the multi-classing and class feature rules, allowing for a formidably-effective skill specialist. Once you have proficiency in a skill, your bonuses on rolls keep improving regardless of class. Adding skills does not decrease your effectiveness in any of the ones you already have.

Let’s take a look at one approach, from character creation on:

Attributes: You’ll need at least Dexterity 13, Wisdom 13, and Charisma 13. With the standard Heroic Spread Str 8, Dex 15, Con 10, Int 12, Wis 13, Cha 14 can do the trick.
Race: Half-elf. Two skills, your choice. Nice. Charisma bumps up by two to 16, nudge Dexterity to 16 and Wisdom to 14.
Background: Any. you get two skills.

1st Level: Rogue 1. Four skills from a pretty heft list. Expertise lets you pick two of your eight skills to get a double proficiency bonus.
2nd Level: Cleric 1. Select the Knowledge domain. Gain two languages and two academically-themed skills from a short list. Gain double proficiency bonus on those two skills. Make sure your Cantrip list includes Guidance, which grants a +1d4 bonus to a single ability check. Skill checks are a subset of ability checks.
3rd Level: Bard 1. Gain one skill of your choice.
4th Level: Bard 2. Jack of All Trades gets you a bonus on the few skills you don’t have yet, tools, initiative, and ability checks your DM rules aren’t covered by a skill.
5th Level: Ranger 1. Gain one skill from a reasonably big list.
6th Level: Bard 3. Select College of Lore and gain three skills of your choice. Select two more of your skills for Expertise.
7th Level: Bard 4. Now that you have four levels in a single class, you can finally take the Skilled feat and pick up the whatever three skills are left. You are now proficient in every skill in the PHB and get double your proficiency bonus in six of them.

This quadruple-class approach has the virtue of gaining proper always-applicable proficiency as opposed to relying on limited-use or conditional effects to achieve basic competence. Availing yourself of two classes worth of Expertise has some appeal as well.

From here it’s tempting to level up as a Rogue, taking the Thief archetype. This gets you Cunning Action on your 8th character level, Fast Hands on your 9th, an attribute bump (or feat) at 10th 14th 16th and 20th, another two Expertise skills at 11th, Supreme Sneak at 15th and Reliable Talent at 17th. With an ever-growing list of proficient skills and a smattering of Bard and Cleric spells at your disposal you stand to become and remain the go-to guy for anything that doesn’t directly involve stabbing or blasting something. With Dexterity-based weapons and either the Archer or Duelist fighting style (from your level of Ranger) you aren’t a total liability in a scrap, dishing out Sneak Attacks worth about 3d6 less damage than a single-classed Rogue. There’s a price for anything.

Alternately you can just carry right on with the Bard progression, if stabbing fools isn’t your style. Bardic spells frequently solve problems indirectly, which suits the skillmonkey theme to a tee. Peerless Skill, gained at Bard level 14, isn’t as impressive as the Reliable Talent feature from Rogue, particularly considering how late you pick it up, but again there’s a price for anything.

You’re welcome to continue pursuing Cleric or Ranger, as well. The Knowledge Domain’s 2nd level Channel Divinity feature (Knowledge of the Ages) lets you act like you’re proficient in a skill or tool, which is only half-useful to the fully-fledged Skillmonkey. For campaigns that spend a lot of time in the wilds, Ranger is a strong traditional relied-upon-out-of-combat character class.