D&D 5E Most powerful class in 5e

[pancakemaster808]

In Spelljammer: ram the victim with a Hammership. A 20th level pilot with a major helm would do 60 Hull Points or IIRC 60d6 Hit Points. More with a bigger ship.

I'm afraid I don't recognize what any of those items/classes are.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm afraid I don't recognize what any of those items/classes are.

Spelljammer is AD&D in fantasy space, just as Planescape is AD&D in the Outer Planes. Fantasy space is more... Ptolmaic? Aristotelian? than real life outer space, e.g. constellations are lights on the crystal shell around a solar system, not full-blown suns like our sun. It's full of urbane illithid info traders, beholder civil wars, elven biotechnology, superintelligent orcs called scro who recite insults in elvish prose, and planets covered in tarrasques. My 5E game is set against a SJ backdrop although the action often takes place on the players' home planet instead of wildspace--but they have been there and some NPCs are from there.

 

[pancakemaster808]

Spelljammer is AD&D in fantasy space, just as Planescape is AD&D in the Outer Planes. Fantasy space is more... Ptolmaic? Aristotelian? than real life outer space, e.g. constellations are lights on the crystal shell around a solar system, not full-blown suns like our sun. It's full of urbane illithid info traders, beholder civil wars, elven biotechnology, superintelligent orcs called scro who recite insults in elvish prose, and planets covered in tarrasques. My 5E game is set against a SJ backdrop although the action often takes place on the players' home planet instead of wildspace--but they have been there and some NPCs are from there.

I can't comment on those rules, since I don't know them unfortunately.

 

[Sacrosanct]

At my table this becomes one giant encounter, not eight separate encounters.

That's because you're probably like me and don't worry too much about encounter building or adhering to an XP budget. But if you use 5e, every encounter is somewhat following those guidelines. So if you take a dozen separate encounters and lump them all into one because the party decided to Leeroy Jenkins the dungeon, it would be WAAAYY over XP budget. So technically it wouldn't be just one encounter, but a dozen that just so happened to come all at once or one after the other in quick succession before the party gets a real chance to rest.

My only point was that it's very easy to do more than 6-8 encounters per day depending on what's happening in the game world, because it doesn't pause magically as soon as you hit X encounters per day, or as soon as the wizard is out of spells. I can't count the number of times we as a party decided to keep going on because the risk of stopping was greater than the risk of continuing.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I can't comment on those rules, since I don't know them unfortunately.

Okay, well then another way to get 60 dice of damage: paladin 11/red dragon sorc 9 casts quickened Hold Monster and smites for 16d8+Str damage per hit. Next turn he does it again but adds Quickened Scorching Ray VII for 32d8 + Str + 9x (6d6 + 5) damage. Grand total of 149 first round damage, 383 second round damage if all attacks hit. Cost: 2 sorcery points, 41 SP and your 7th level slot for the day.

Nova damage isn't really my style but paladins are good at it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's because you're probably like me and don't worry too much about encounter building or adhering to an XP budget. But if you use 5e, every encounter is somewhat following those guidelines. So if you take a dozen separate encounters and lump them all into one because the party decided to Leeroy Jenkins the dungeon, it would be WAAAYY over XP budget. So technically it wouldn't be just one encounter, but a dozen that just so happened to come all at once or one after the other in quick succession before the party gets a real chance to rest.

Yeah, it's over budget. But who cares? Those players did it to themselves. Maybe they'll even pull off a victory.

I agree that life doesn't pause and that dungeons which react realistically are good fun.

 

[pancakemaster808]

Okay, well then another way to get 60 dice of damage: paladin 11/red dragon sorc 9 casts quickened Hold Monster and smites for 16d8+Str damage per hit. Next turn he does it again but adds Quickened Scorching Ray VII for 32d8 + Str + 9x (6d6 + 5) damage. Grand total of 149 first round damage, 383 second round damage if all attacks hit. Cost: 2 sorcery points, 41 SP and your 7th level slot for the day.

Nova damage isn't really my style but paladins are good at it.

Is that 383 damage on a max roll?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Is that 383 damage on a max roll?

No, average.

But do note that anything that easy to paralyze wasn't much of a threat in the first place.

 

[pancakemaster808]

No, average.

Would you be willing to go through that math in a little more detail? My brain is tired and I'm having a hard time identifying all the sources.

 

[KarinsDad]

Okay, well then another way to get 60 dice of damage: paladin 11/red dragon sorc 9 casts quickened Hold Monster and smites for 16d8+Str damage per hit. Next turn he does it again but adds Quickened Scorching Ray VII for 32d8 + Str + 9x (6d6 + 5) damage. Grand total of 383 damage if all attacks hit.

Assuming that the first Hold Monster save fails. The entire first nova depends on it.

Assuming that the second Hold Monster save (at the end of the foe's next turn) fails. The entire second nova depends on it.

Nova damage isn't really my style but paladins are good at it.

Only at higher levels. At low levels, they run out of spells quickly. An extra 2D8 2 to 6 times per day (assuming that the Paladin doesn't use his spells for anything else) doesn't compare to many other classes.

For a most powerful class in 5E discussion, it should take into account all levels, not just 20th.