Zardnaar
Legend
How Do Deal Uber Damage
The purpose of this thread is to show the basic ways to deal uber damage in 5E. Most of this is based on actual game play as opposed to theory crafting and crunching DPR in a white room where the opponent. Not all of this is purely my work as I have read the guides in the players help section, number crunching posters, and posters like Lawolf who seem very good at spotting various combinations. These builds as such tend to do unfair things where some players thing having a 20 in a prime ability score and using a big weapon is a decent damage build.
Now some of you have argued with me over how broken various things are mostly my claims around bless and dexterity being overpowered. Some of that depends on the context as I did claim dexterity was over powered in Basic D&D. This may not be the case in PHB 5E but the leading DPR martial candidate that works in real games is dex based so go figure.
In general to deal a lot of damage in 5E you want to
1. Enable multiple attacks. The more the better.
2. Add large damage bonuses to those attacks.
3. Make full use of your reaction and bonus actions.
Fairly basic stuff really and 1 and 2 are common to D&D going back to 1E. Put simply you want to do unfair things in a game kind of built around a narrow band of possibilities. For example you only get 1 bonus action per turn.
The following feats are the basic building blocks for martial types to really abuse the game.
Great Weapon Master
Sharpshooter
Crossbow Expertise
Polearm Master
They all allow extra attacks as a bonus action and/or grant extra damage. I would add another feat to this list.
Warcaster.
This feat helps with concentration rolls, as an added bonus you may even cast a spell occasionally as an attack of opportunity.
The last piece of the puzzle is for spell casters. This seems to be a notorious abuse of the rules and it is one of the highest damage builds in the game and easy to set up. It is the warlock abuse.
2 Levels of Warlock (+eldritch blast, agonizing blast and hex)
This is because every class in the game only gets a maximum of 2 attacks a round with the fighter and eldritch blast being an exception to that rule. The 2 level warlock dip is a great option for various classes but when combined with Sorcerer levels very silly things can happen very fast starting at around level 5. One can also combine the warlock eldritch blast ability with Bard, Fighters and Paladins but doing so offers less nova potential but it is otherwise a great idea especially with action surge.
The main abuse with eldritch blast is metamagic via Sorlock (Sorcerer/Warlock multiclass). The metamagic to use is Quicken Spell and Twin Spell which feeds right back into the multiple attacks comment I made earlier. The Sorlock can also cast warlock spells in Sorcerer spell slots which means lots of hexes being made available. Additionally you can sacrifice spell slots to convert to sorcery points which means more nova damage with eldritch blast. This is kind of like the fighters action surge but it only costs 2 points to quicken a spell or 1 point to twin a twinned eldritch blast. This means the Sorlock can nova more times per day than the fighter. If you get bored of abusing Eldritch blasts you have your normal sorcerer spells available as well for added utility.
To abuse the Soirlock even more a couple of fighter levels can boost the nova damage to truly absurd levels with 3 eldritch blasts being created which is potentially 12 rays or 12 attacks a round with charisma modifier to damage on all of them along with an extra 1d6 damage with hex. You are still probably better off with a basic Sorlock build but if there is a better nova in this game than Sorlock+2 fighter levels I do not know it.
Hunters Quarry is also an interesting spell for ranger and Paladin types but I regard that as a fair way to deal extra damage and it helps offset the extra attacks fighters get. From level 11+ fighters can get 3 attacks a round, 4 attacks a round with certain feats and sometimes 5 attacks a round. They can also nova via action surge to get 7 attacks a round. They do get a 4th attack by level 20 and a level 20 fighter is the only class that can come close to beating the eldritch blast abuse.
For the martial types the basic combo to deal uber damage is Crossbow Expertise +Sharpshooter feat along with the archery weapon style. Damage looks low at 1d6+ability modifier +magic but it is the +10 damage part that makes it so deadly. Consider at level 11
4 attacks a round 1d6+5 damage or (34 avg damage) assuming 20 dex
4 attacks a round 1d6+15 damage (74 avg damage)
Of course you have to suck up a -5 penalty to hit to do this but you are looking at double damage. Double damage seems to be very unfair in relation to PCs who do not do this. I have claimed feats are more powerful than stat bumps and that is why.
Now that is using ranged options. Melee users can also give this a shot. This requires the feats Polearm Master +Great Weapon Master. Once again at level 11 you are getting 4 attacks a round.
3 attacks 1d10+5 (20 str) avg 31.5 damage
1 attack 1d4+5 7.5 avg damage
Total 39.5 avg damage
With the power attack part of great weapon master damage jumps up to 79.5 avg damage or 82.5 average damage if the 4th attack is a cleave attack instead of a d4 butt strike. Technically the GWM combo deals more damage in practice the dex based build deals more damage due to the +2 to hit and the utility of being able to make ranged attacks as the melee build misses attacks at times due to range.
The strength based build does have one advantage though as the Great Weapon Master feat is good all by itself from level 1 and you are not reliant of being able to soak up a -5/+10 penalty to hit/bonus damage to deal uber damage. The feat also works well enough with nay great weapon build so instead of polearm master feat you could take the sentinel feat. The Polearm Master build will likely get 5th attack a round as a reaction as well due to 10’ threatening reach. What makes the Polearm, GWM and Sharpshooter Feats so good is that they are still great even without the -5/+10 part being used.
The power of these feats and the feat combos mean that the variant human is a very powerful race and you can have 4 feats and/or stat buffs by level 8 as a human fighter. The next way to deal uber damage is work out how to mitigate or neutralise the -5 penalty to hit to abuse the sharpshooter and great weapon master feats. The easiest ways I have found are.
1. Bless spell (also works great with eldritch blasts)
2. Advantage (prone, faerie fire, greater invisibility, foresight etc)
3. Class abilities (bardic dice, war clerics, Diviner portend ability etc)
Consider 2 parties. One party plays fair and takes a stat boost and a cleric and fighter take 20 wisdom and strength each. Party 2 takes 2 feats (warcaster sharpshooter) and party number 2 cleric casts bless which is an abundant resource at higher levels. Party number 1 fighter gets +1 to hit and damage, party number 2 has more or less negated the penalty to hit with the sharpshooter feat (+2 archery style, +2.5 bless) and gets +10 damage per attack. Our DMs tend to use higher AC opponents now (AC 18-20+).
It gets even more lop sided if party number 2 has something like a battlemaster fighter, bard or multiclass fighter/bard that uses the shield master feat which is a good feat all by itself to knock opponents prone and the sharpshooter fighter has the crossbow expert feat. That is why I said feats are better than stat bumps as you can get higher accuracy numbers (advantage, bless) and damage numbers via feats than stat bumps.
So that is more or less the uber damage guide putting together the basics for 5E.
The purpose of this thread is to show the basic ways to deal uber damage in 5E. Most of this is based on actual game play as opposed to theory crafting and crunching DPR in a white room where the opponent. Not all of this is purely my work as I have read the guides in the players help section, number crunching posters, and posters like Lawolf who seem very good at spotting various combinations. These builds as such tend to do unfair things where some players thing having a 20 in a prime ability score and using a big weapon is a decent damage build.
Now some of you have argued with me over how broken various things are mostly my claims around bless and dexterity being overpowered. Some of that depends on the context as I did claim dexterity was over powered in Basic D&D. This may not be the case in PHB 5E but the leading DPR martial candidate that works in real games is dex based so go figure.
In general to deal a lot of damage in 5E you want to
1. Enable multiple attacks. The more the better.
2. Add large damage bonuses to those attacks.
3. Make full use of your reaction and bonus actions.
Fairly basic stuff really and 1 and 2 are common to D&D going back to 1E. Put simply you want to do unfair things in a game kind of built around a narrow band of possibilities. For example you only get 1 bonus action per turn.
The following feats are the basic building blocks for martial types to really abuse the game.
Great Weapon Master
Sharpshooter
Crossbow Expertise
Polearm Master
They all allow extra attacks as a bonus action and/or grant extra damage. I would add another feat to this list.
Warcaster.
This feat helps with concentration rolls, as an added bonus you may even cast a spell occasionally as an attack of opportunity.
The last piece of the puzzle is for spell casters. This seems to be a notorious abuse of the rules and it is one of the highest damage builds in the game and easy to set up. It is the warlock abuse.
2 Levels of Warlock (+eldritch blast, agonizing blast and hex)
This is because every class in the game only gets a maximum of 2 attacks a round with the fighter and eldritch blast being an exception to that rule. The 2 level warlock dip is a great option for various classes but when combined with Sorcerer levels very silly things can happen very fast starting at around level 5. One can also combine the warlock eldritch blast ability with Bard, Fighters and Paladins but doing so offers less nova potential but it is otherwise a great idea especially with action surge.
The main abuse with eldritch blast is metamagic via Sorlock (Sorcerer/Warlock multiclass). The metamagic to use is Quicken Spell and Twin Spell which feeds right back into the multiple attacks comment I made earlier. The Sorlock can also cast warlock spells in Sorcerer spell slots which means lots of hexes being made available. Additionally you can sacrifice spell slots to convert to sorcery points which means more nova damage with eldritch blast. This is kind of like the fighters action surge but it only costs 2 points to quicken a spell or 1 point to twin a twinned eldritch blast. This means the Sorlock can nova more times per day than the fighter. If you get bored of abusing Eldritch blasts you have your normal sorcerer spells available as well for added utility.
To abuse the Soirlock even more a couple of fighter levels can boost the nova damage to truly absurd levels with 3 eldritch blasts being created which is potentially 12 rays or 12 attacks a round with charisma modifier to damage on all of them along with an extra 1d6 damage with hex. You are still probably better off with a basic Sorlock build but if there is a better nova in this game than Sorlock+2 fighter levels I do not know it.
Hunters Quarry is also an interesting spell for ranger and Paladin types but I regard that as a fair way to deal extra damage and it helps offset the extra attacks fighters get. From level 11+ fighters can get 3 attacks a round, 4 attacks a round with certain feats and sometimes 5 attacks a round. They can also nova via action surge to get 7 attacks a round. They do get a 4th attack by level 20 and a level 20 fighter is the only class that can come close to beating the eldritch blast abuse.
For the martial types the basic combo to deal uber damage is Crossbow Expertise +Sharpshooter feat along with the archery weapon style. Damage looks low at 1d6+ability modifier +magic but it is the +10 damage part that makes it so deadly. Consider at level 11
4 attacks a round 1d6+5 damage or (34 avg damage) assuming 20 dex
4 attacks a round 1d6+15 damage (74 avg damage)
Of course you have to suck up a -5 penalty to hit to do this but you are looking at double damage. Double damage seems to be very unfair in relation to PCs who do not do this. I have claimed feats are more powerful than stat bumps and that is why.
Now that is using ranged options. Melee users can also give this a shot. This requires the feats Polearm Master +Great Weapon Master. Once again at level 11 you are getting 4 attacks a round.
3 attacks 1d10+5 (20 str) avg 31.5 damage
1 attack 1d4+5 7.5 avg damage
Total 39.5 avg damage
With the power attack part of great weapon master damage jumps up to 79.5 avg damage or 82.5 average damage if the 4th attack is a cleave attack instead of a d4 butt strike. Technically the GWM combo deals more damage in practice the dex based build deals more damage due to the +2 to hit and the utility of being able to make ranged attacks as the melee build misses attacks at times due to range.
The strength based build does have one advantage though as the Great Weapon Master feat is good all by itself from level 1 and you are not reliant of being able to soak up a -5/+10 penalty to hit/bonus damage to deal uber damage. The feat also works well enough with nay great weapon build so instead of polearm master feat you could take the sentinel feat. The Polearm Master build will likely get 5th attack a round as a reaction as well due to 10’ threatening reach. What makes the Polearm, GWM and Sharpshooter Feats so good is that they are still great even without the -5/+10 part being used.
The power of these feats and the feat combos mean that the variant human is a very powerful race and you can have 4 feats and/or stat buffs by level 8 as a human fighter. The next way to deal uber damage is work out how to mitigate or neutralise the -5 penalty to hit to abuse the sharpshooter and great weapon master feats. The easiest ways I have found are.
1. Bless spell (also works great with eldritch blasts)
2. Advantage (prone, faerie fire, greater invisibility, foresight etc)
3. Class abilities (bardic dice, war clerics, Diviner portend ability etc)
Consider 2 parties. One party plays fair and takes a stat boost and a cleric and fighter take 20 wisdom and strength each. Party 2 takes 2 feats (warcaster sharpshooter) and party number 2 cleric casts bless which is an abundant resource at higher levels. Party number 1 fighter gets +1 to hit and damage, party number 2 has more or less negated the penalty to hit with the sharpshooter feat (+2 archery style, +2.5 bless) and gets +10 damage per attack. Our DMs tend to use higher AC opponents now (AC 18-20+).
It gets even more lop sided if party number 2 has something like a battlemaster fighter, bard or multiclass fighter/bard that uses the shield master feat which is a good feat all by itself to knock opponents prone and the sharpshooter fighter has the crossbow expert feat. That is why I said feats are better than stat bumps as you can get higher accuracy numbers (advantage, bless) and damage numbers via feats than stat bumps.
So that is more or less the uber damage guide putting together the basics for 5E.
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