D&D 5E How to Deal Uber Damage

[TarionzCousin]

I'm bookmarking this thread for future reference: if any of my players decide to go Max Uber, Super Monster Killer, I'll check back here for ways to build NPC's to challenge them.

This sort of uber powerful character isn't my preference, but I honestly appreciate people who post these sorts of characters; it helps me to understand and DM those types of PC's.

tl;dr: thanks.

 

[guachi]

Honestly, if you go straight with one character class, it looks like you'll be powerful. It just depends on whether it's something you like. The MC cheese comes in because you really have to work hard to create a character that's better at something and doesn't totally suck outside of that. For example, you can create a character with proficiency in all 18 skills, but would you be anything other than a burden in combat?

 

[Celtavian]

Pretty much what I calculated as well. Does leave you open to getting pasted as you will have weak saves and defenses. You'll definitely be an uber damage dealer.

Paladin/Fighter can nova impressively with better defenses, but their round to round damage won't match the Eldrtich Blast combo or a Great Weapon Master.

Even 5E couldn't stop an obvious best combination. Not sure why they allowed bless as it is with Great Weapon Mastery and Sharpshooter. But they did, it is going to create a vast damage differential between those with those feats and those without. You take them or you're much weaker. That's pretty lame.

 

[Ristamar]

Sentinel + Rogue = sneak attack on your turn and sneak attack on another turn.
Action - attack
Bonus Action - saved for Cunning Action or Dual Wield (your choice)
Reaction - Sentinel or Uncanny Dodge

The damage output is consistently quite high. The negative is that you can't sentinel from 10 feet away using a reach weapon. And that means you can't cheese it up using a whip and standing behind the burly fighters. You can combine this with all sorts of MC options, if you want, for all sorts of fun.

As mentioned above, Assassin is quite powerful for burst damage and it's consistent, too. Combine with anything that grants extra attacks and/or extra die of damage and all those automatic assassinate crits add up. One example, skulker feat doesn't reveal position on a ranged miss. This essentially means you can keep firing until you get a hit, which will be a crit and you'll get sneak attack damage because it's a surprise attack and therefore you have advantage.

For more cheese, take 5 levels of fighter, archer, rogue for the other levels, assassinate, skulker, sharpshooter. Now you can fire a longbow from 600' without disadvantage. Now you'll get your sneak attack dice because the surprise attack grants advantage vice just canceling the disadvantage. Skulker means if you miss with the first shot you don't fire again in the round and use your sharpshooter -5/+10 ability on the attack as missing has no real consequences. Heck, use it on every shot as you have advantage. When you do hit, fire your second shot. Move. Bonus action to hide again. Rinse. Repeat. You can also use your short rest abilities and use action surge and Battlemaster maneuvers for extra attacks and extra 1d8(x2) damage per hit.

I don't think the DM has to allow surprise if the first round shot/volley doesn't score a hit, even with the Skulker feat. While the hidden assailant doesn't reveal his position with a miss, it doesn't mean the target never realizes he was just attacked by something. And once the target has been struck, he isn't going to be surprised again during the encounter, even if the archer stays hidden.

 

[Dausuul]

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.

Hmm, let's see here. Assume that you are converting all your spell slots to sorcery points and using them to Quicken or Twin your eldritch blasts. Twin is preferable since it costs less sorcery, but Quicken allows you to focus fire on a single target or spread your blasts out over many--Twin commits you to exactly two targets. Figure you'll use them about half and half.

5th level (sorc 3/war 2): 11 sorcery/day, +2 sorcery/short rest. Cha 18. Eldritch Blast is dealing 2d10+8 (average 19); enhanced, that goes up to 38. So each day you get 7-8 enhanced blasts, and each short rest gives you 1-2 more.

11th level (sorc 9/war 2): 58 sorcery/day, +2 sorcery/short rest. Cha 20. Eldritch Blast for 3d10+15 (average 31.5); enhanced, 63. Each day you get 38-39 enhanced blasts, and each short rest gives 1-2 more. Practically speaking, this might as well be at-will.

Pretty impressive stuff. Add in hex, and it becomes 45 points on an enhanced blast for the 5th-level sorlock and 73.5 for the 11th-level sorlock. I wonder if the DMG will give us a way to convert eldritch blast to, say, fire damage--then you can use the dragon sorcerer ability that lets you add your Cha mod to damage of your favored element.

 

[Zardnaar]

Pretty much what I calculated as well. Does leave you open to getting pasted as you will have weak saves and defenses. You'll definitely be an uber damage dealer.

Paladin/Fighter can nova impressively with better defenses, but their round to round damage won't match the Eldrtich Blast combo or a Great Weapon Master.

Even 5E couldn't stop an obvious best combination. Not sure why they allowed bless as it is with Great Weapon Mastery and Sharpshooter. But they did, it is going to create a vast damage differential between those with those feats and those without. You take them or you're much weaker. That's pretty lame.

I had a a hand cross bow user nova off last night power shot on every attack. 6/7 hits dealt 124 damage. Low damage is around 30 or 40 per round which is more than most of the other PCs high damage. 4 attacks a round 1d6+17 damage power shotting 100% of the time unless he says otherwise.

That PC is turning into a problem.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hmm, let's see here. Assume that you are converting all your spell slots to sorcery points and using them to Quicken or Twin your eldritch blasts. Twin is preferable since it costs less sorcery, but Quicken allows you to focus fire on a single target or spread your blasts out over many--Twin commits you to exactly two targets. Figure you'll use them about half and half.

5th level (sorc 3/war 2): 11 sorcery/day, +2 sorcery/short rest. Cha 18. Eldritch Blast is dealing 2d10+8 (average 19); enhanced, that goes up to 38. So each day you get 7-8 enhanced blasts, and each short rest gives you 1-2 more.

11th level (sorc 9/war 2): 58 sorcery/day, +2 sorcery/short rest. Cha 20. Eldritch Blast for 3d10+15 (average 31.5); enhanced, 63. Each day you get 38-39 enhanced blasts, and each short rest gives 1-2 more. Practically speaking, this might as well be at-will.

Pretty impressive stuff. Add in hex, and it becomes 45 points on an enhanced blast for the 5th-level sorlock and 73.5 for the 11th-level sorlock. I wonder if the DMG will give us a way to convert eldritch blast to, say, fire damage--then you can use the dragon sorcerer ability that lets you add your Cha mod to damage of your favored element.

The theory craft on the Sorlock gets very scary fast. I have only seen one in action up to level 5 but even a basic 1d10+ charisma modifier at low levels is not awful especially with hex being available. The build seems to work fine in a real game at low levels as opposed to white room theory crafting where you need the right situation and/or be higher level to make it work.

 

[Celtavian]

It's amazing that one simple choice of making the Warlock's Eldritch Blast into separate beams has created a damage capacity that far exceeds what is intended. It goes to show that for all the careful work on 5E, even they left some seriously over-powered combinations slip through. My hope is that they do not wait to shut these combinations down with errata. Allowing -5/+10 damage was too much with easy buffs like bless available and bounded accuracy.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's amazing that one simple choice of making the Warlock's Eldritch Blast into separate beams has created a damage capacity that far exceeds what is intended. It goes to show that for all the careful work on 5E, even they left some seriously over-powered combinations slip through. My hope is that they do not wait to shut these combinations down with errata. Allowing -5/+10 damage was too much with easy buffs like bless available and bounded accuracy.

I think they thought the -5part was a big deal but it is easy enough to get around it. Bless and archery style being the most obvious one, getting advantage in various ways being another.

 

[Mirtek]

I also just realised you could potentially take the Archery fighting style if your DM allows you to consider ranged spells as archery

That style specifically requires a ranged weapon to be used. Other ranged options that only say ranged attack roll work on ranged spells (e.g. crossbow master to not have disadvantage in melee)