An Eclectic Collection of Fun and Effective Builds 3

[LudicSavant]

I like a bunch of your builds to be honest. The Wood Elf Samurai generalist, the Vengeance Paladin, this one, etc...

I only wish you'd put them all together somewhere I could find them easily lol ;)

Ask and ye shall receive!

So began my humble little collection. A million views, over 1500 posts, and a mountain of builds and build discussions from a whole lot of optimizers later, the thread was finally locked for length. Then I kept you waiting altogether too long for a proper continuation! Well, it's about time I did something about that -- with a fully updated link compendium (adding another 62 builds and counting), and new builds!

Hopefully these help provide people with some ideas for fun and viable builds. Enjoy! And as always, feel free to post your own builds or experiences with builds, too!

As usual, my builds are designed to be strong from 1-20, perform both in and out of combat, and are tested against 6+ Deadly encounters a day.

To kick things off, here's a build exploring some of the things that have changed from one beginning to the next:

The All Natural Space Blender
This build was created for a person asking for advice on creating a Spirit Guardians blender. Folks were recommending my very own Arcana Cleric Frontliner, one of the first build guides I ever posted in the Eclectic Collection. And while that's certainly still an effective and fun choice, new supplements have provided a lot of interesting new opportunities for Cleric blenders.

This build shows off how much Nature Clerics have benefitted from the times. It has an extremely well-rounded defense (which it can also use to tank and protect allies), strong support and control, and considerable combo damage, be it against single target or groups.

The concept is for an astral traveler that got stranded on the material plane and learned to love and defend nature.


Githzerai (MPMM) Nature Cleric 20
Starting Attributes: 17 Wis, at least 15 Con, 14 Dex, rest to taste
ASIs: Telekinetic (+1 Wis), Warcaster, Res:Con (+1 Con), +2 Wis, Metamagic Adept (Subtle & Quicken)
Cantrips: Thorn Whip, Psionic Mage Hand, Toll the Dead, Word of Radiance, Sacred Flame, Guidance, Light
Blessed Strikes or Divine Strike? Blessed Strikes, of course.

Highlights
- With Dodge + SG + Shield (as a Cleric spell known via Githzerai), basic physical attacks are all but harmless.

- With Dampen Elements, Psychic Resistance (from Githzerai), and Poison Resistance or Immunity coming from non-concentration spells like Protection from Poison or Heroes' Feast, elemental attacks bounce right off of you, too. The only common damage type that you don't laugh at is Necrotic, and Clerics tend to be extra strong against things that deal Necrotic damage anyways.

- What's more, you can efficiently protect your allies from elemental damage, too! You can also keep more physical enemies off of them with your many pulls, slows, and so forth.

- You have high Constitution saves (and advantage on the Concentration ones from Warcaster), high Wisdom saves (and advantage on many of them via Githzerai), Resistance to the damage types that usually come from Dex saves, and the usual Cleric features that deal with status effects.

- All of the above not only make you far more durable against a wide variety of threats, but also make it considerably more difficult to interrupt your Concentration. Halving elemental damage makes Concentration DCs much lower (especially when getting hit by dragon breath or the like), and your AC makes it so that you make far fewer concentration saves to begin with. And near-immunity to charms and the like means you're rarely going to lose your Concentration to a Hypnotic Pattern or Dominate, either.

Between Warcaster + Res:Con + Shield + Dampen Elements + more elemental resistances + Cleric Wis saves (further reinforced by Githzerai Advantage) + etc, your SG is not likely to go down. Attacking you is often a futile effort.

- Warcaster cantrips punish any movement away from you for 3d12+1d8 resourceless reaction damage (or more if you're spending spell slots). Blessed Strikes-enhanced Thorn Whip and Telekinetic let you pull multiple creatures at a time into your Spirit Guardians (or make multiple attempts on the same creature), to proc the damage twice (potentially more, if your allies can move enemies too). On top of the fact that Spirit Guardians is already slowing their movement. Escape is Futile.

- You can also create a blender with your 2nd level spell slots, via Spike Growth + Blessed Thorn Whip + Telekinetic. By level 5, you already have 6 blenders a day (3 L2 slots, 2 L3 slots, and an extra from Harness Divine Power). And by level 6, you'll have 8! Basically, you can do this all day (and then some). Like Captain America. If he was into making enemies return to his deathtrap like his shield returns to his hand.

- Your Blessed Strikes-boosted cantrips can target Wis, Dex, Con, or AC, allowing you the freedom to go after enemy weaknesses. Also, being able to target AC means being able to bypass magic resistance, legendary resistance, etc. Also, being cantrip-based means you're SAD -- no shillelagh spam required.

- Plant Growth is a heavy movement debuff that doesn't take Concentration and stacks with Spirit Guardians to make enemy movement virtually zero with no save. Consider carrying around some seeds so that you can cast Plant Growth in more environments -- and for roleplaying purposes, of course!

- Your Channel Divinity is relatively lame, but you can use Harness Divine Power instead.

- You get componentless Detect Thoughts and Mage Hand, which means you can easily use these in discreet social situations, to escape bonds, whatever.

- If you're not averse to necromancy, you can make some fungus-ridden servants out of Animate Dead (I suggest flavoring it the same way a Spore Druid would). These can add even more map control, or it can just give you a squad of archers to harass the enemies stuck in the walking death bog that is you, further boosting your damage. All your control will help keep 'em safe.

- If you're stuck in a very long range engagement, you have tools like Wind Wall or the ability to just summon a Celestial archer or the like.

- At high levels, Metamagic Adept can help you get off that critical spell even when counterspellers are taking aim at you, or quicken can let you lay down extra burst in a critical situation.

Variants:

• Some other good races for this include (but are not limited to)...
  
  Spoiler: Alternate Races

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  - Custom Lineage / VHuman for an extra ASI.
  - Shadar-Kai for Necrotic Resistance rather than Psychic (both are in the running for most common monster damage type after Poison), still keeps charm resistance, and gets a prof/day bonus action teleport for some more mobility (and resistance to all damage on the turn you use it).
  - Winged Tiefling will let you fly in medium armor, and pulling foes into the air with Thorn Whip will drop them prone!
• Of course, being a different race will lose your Shield. However, you can grab Shield 1/short rest from the Aberrant Dragonmark half-feat or (if you have the stats for it) a 1-level dip into something like Divine Soul Sorcerer (which will also boost saves).
• One other useful choice for Metamagic Adept is Extended Spell. Clerics have a lot of long-term buffs. Extending an Aura of Vitality essentially doubles its non-combat healing.
• You can also pick up Shillelagh + Booming Blade instead of Thorn Whip, if you prefer. If you want to go this route, you'll have to pick up Booming Blade from something like Spell Sniper, Magic Initiate, Aberrant Dragonmark (which can be an alternate way to get Shield for non-Githzerai, by the way!), or a race (like high half-elf or MPMM kobold). This will make your opportunity attacks hit even harder than they already do, but will have less ability to move and blend enemies than Thorn Whip.