The stone wall: a pure tank build (AC 27+)

[Chryssis]

personally I would ditch the cleric entirely as the blessing of the forge is only really valuable for the first few levels until you would get a +1 armor so you are spending 6 levels for 1ac and a +2 ac concentration. you would be better off dipping 2 levels into wizard (warmage) since you are essentially a non-caster. gives you a permanent +2ac and +4 to saves against the first attack to hit you, which wont be very often with 27 ac(at the cost of spell casting for the next turn which you dont do much of) so you can cast shield for +4ac until its gone and then have the permanent bonus. this frees up 4 levels for something else. eg barbarian for small dmg boost, les MAD and resistance to all-psychic and a feat or paladin for some healing, better saves, and maintaining the shield of faith. Also i don't understand why you are focusing on Dex, it serves you very little purpose. you are wearing heavy armor so not getting the AC from it, and are losing out on the cavalier's unwavering mark. you'd be better off doing mountain dwarf (+2str +2con) or human to jumpstart your feat. i'm also not super keen on the kensei for this since at lvl 3 you can only get the +2ac 3 times/sr imo you'd be better served doing Cavalier 11/war mage 2/Paladin 7(ancients). or cav11/hexblade2/paladin7 to further reduce Mad and give you tonnes of race options (although id stick to half elf, human, or mountain dwarf) this gives you +2ac/+4save +int to initiave (+1) and 1xshield/sr when you are hit on reaction, or with hexblade 2xshield/sr and some invocations / +cha (+2) to saves, spell resistance, 1/sr restrain +2dmg from dueling style, shield of faith and if you want to boost damage a bit some smites.
with human starting stats = 15+1 str 9+1 dex 13+1 con 12+1 int 11+1 wis 13+1 cha and 4 feats so sentinal + 3 asi so +4str +2con 20,10,16,13,12,14 for more dmg, or +6 con for better concentration/hps or if less MAD hexblade 11+2 10 15+2 8 12 15 (Mountain dwarf) ASI +5cha +1con for 13,10,18,8,12,20 so worse initiative, better constant saves (but lower save vs 1 failed spell per turn) more inconsistent ac

apologies for the wall of text, it got late and i'm not thinking clearly anymore

 

[Gavin O.]

personally I would ditch the cleric entirely as the blessing of the forge is only really valuable for the first few levels until you would get a +1 armor so you are spending 6 levels for 1ac and a +2 ac concentration. you would be better off dipping 2 levels into wizard (warmage) since you are essentially a non-caster. gives you a permanent +2ac and +4 to saves against the first attack to hit you, which wont be very often with 27 ac(at the cost of spell casting for the next turn which you dont do much of) so you can cast shield for +4ac until its gone and then have the permanent bonus. this frees up 4 levels for something else. eg barbarian for small dmg boost, les MAD and resistance to all-psychic and a feat or paladin for some healing, better saves, and maintaining the shield of faith. Also i don't understand why you are focusing on Dex, it serves you very little purpose. you are wearing heavy armor so not getting the AC from it, and are losing out on the cavalier's unwavering mark. you'd be better off doing mountain dwarf (+2str +2con) or human to jumpstart your feat. i'm also not super keen on the kensei for this since at lvl 3 you can only get the +2ac 3 times/sr imo you'd be better served doing Cavalier 11/war mage 2/Paladin 7(ancients). or cav11/hexblade2/paladin7 to further reduce Mad and give you tonnes of race options (although id stick to half elf, human, or mountain dwarf) this gives you +2ac/+4save +int to initiave (+1) and 1xshield/sr when you are hit on reaction, or with hexblade 2xshield/sr and some invocations / +cha (+2) to saves, spell resistance, 1/sr restrain +2dmg from dueling style, shield of faith and if you want to boost damage a bit some smites.
with human starting stats = 15+1 str 9+1 dex 13+1 con 12+1 int 11+1 wis 13+1 cha and 4 feats so sentinal + 3 asi so +4str +2con 20,10,16,13,12,14 for more dmg, or +6 con for better concentration/hps or if less MAD hexblade 11+2 10 15+2 8 12 15 (Mountain dwarf) ASI +5cha +1con for 13,10,18,8,12,20 so worse initiative, better constant saves (but lower save vs 1 failed spell per turn) more inconsistent ac

apologies for the wall of text, it got late and i'm not thinking clearly anymore

The Cleric's ability works on anyone's armor, so even once I get a suit of magic armor (which in my experience is extremely rare, I almost always play in low-magic campaigns) I could always give +1 AC to someone else. I also feel like Shield of Faith is worth going Cleric for.

Arcane Deflection looks tempting, and it's probably worth dipping into Wizard for, the problem I see with it is that it requires your reaction to use, which means you can't use it with Sentinel to punish a creature who attacks an ally. This could be mitigated by going up to 18 levels in Cavalier for Vigilant Defender, but that means the build wouldn't come online until 20.

The reason I'm focusing on Dex is simply that I need a stat high enough to attack with, and since I needed 13 Dex to multiclass Monk I figured it would be better to max that instead of Strength. Having high AC doesn't mean much if the enemies can just ignore me, I need to be able to attack.

The Kensei Monk's AC bonus doesn't require Ki, you just need to make an unarmed Strike as part of your attack action. It hurts your DPR, but you can keep it up indefinitely.

 

[Gavin O.]

Stensia human is nothing different from variant human with fixed asi and the tough feat and intimidate skill.

Wow, I didn't even notice that. The Tough feat looks pretty respectable for a tanking build.

 

[Blue]

The reason I'm focusing on Dex is simply that I need a stat high enough to attack with, and since I needed 13 Dex to multiclass Monk I figured it would be better to max that instead of Strength. Having high AC doesn't mean much if the enemies can just ignore me, I need to be able to attack.

The Kensei Monk's AC bonus doesn't require Ki, you just need to make an unarmed Strike as part of your attack action. It hurts your DPR, but you can keep it up indefinitely.

If you were dropping Monk, would you stay DEX? In a vacuum, DEX is better than STR with a one handed weapon because of all the rest it adds in (major save vs. minor, initiative, more skills, etc.). But a higher STR would allow you to change races from Dwarf without getting a penalty to speed in heavy armor.

Is there a better race that would be worth the switch? Nothing leaps out at me.

 

[Blue]

Arcane Deflection looks tempting, and it's probably worth dipping into Wizard for, the problem I see with it is that it requires your reaction to use, which means you can't use it with Sentinel to punish a creature who attacks an ally. This could be mitigated by going up to 18 levels in Cavalier for Vigilant Defender, but that means the build wouldn't come online until 20.

On further thought, I think the reaction use is a show stopper. Cavalier's Unwavering Mark only provides disadvantage if the creature marked is within 5ft of you. Having Sentinel to stop movement of anyone who tries to move away is really important to the integrity of that, which means your reaction really needs to be available for OAs.

Plus Warmage doesn't grant +2 to AC, it grants +2 to AC against that attack. Now sure, with the sky-high AC it's likely that there won't be many attacks that hit, but still. (And probably a good percentage of those that hit are crits which will hit regardless of AC.)

 

[Gavin O.]

If you were dropping Monk, would you stay DEX? In a vacuum, DEX is better than STR with a one handed weapon because of all the rest it adds in (major save vs. minor, initiative, more skills, etc.). But a higher STR would allow you to change races from Dwarf without getting a penalty to speed in heavy armor.

Is there a better race that would be worth the switch? Nothing leaps out at me.

I probably would stick with Dex for the reasons above, the big draw of using Strength is access to two-handed weapons, but since we need a shield, we can't use them.The speed penalty for wearing heavy armor is only 10 feet, and since a Dwarf starts with a lower movement speed you're only losing 5 feet compared to a human dumping strength and just dealing with the movement penalty. (My DM would probably house rule that the speed penalty would be higher for a human with 8 strength running around in full plate, and I wouldn't blame them) That being said, I still think Hill Dwarf is the best race, with its relevant stat bonuses and free extra hit points. If Unearthed Arcana material is allowed, the Warforged race gives an extra point of AC which is probably worth it. The other option is Variant Human, which can start with Sentinel at level one and can also start with 16 Dex, if your DM is lenient about the heavy armor speed reduction.

 

[Gavin O.]

On further thought, I think the reaction use is a show stopper. Cavalier's Unwavering Mark only provides disadvantage if the creature marked is within 5ft of you. Having Sentinel to stop movement of anyone who tries to move away is really important to the integrity of that, which means your reaction really needs to be available for OAs.

Plus Warmage doesn't grant +2 to AC, it grants +2 to AC against that attack. Now sure, with the sky-high AC it's likely that there won't be many attacks that hit, but still. (And probably a good percentage of those that hit are crits which will hit regardless of AC.)

That's the one benefit you do get out of having high Strength on a build like this, the Cavalier's Unwavering Mark gives you a bonus action attack to punish a creature who hits someone other than you which can be used a number of times equal to your strength modifier. That being said, even with maxed Strength that's only 5 uses and it recharges on a long rest. It's probably not reliable enough to use as your primary punisher for enemies who attack your allies.

 

[bid]

Levels 8-10: Monk(3) We’re taking three levels of Monk for the Path of the Kensei feature Agile Parry (We’ll take Longsword and Longbow as our Kensei Weapons), which gives us +2 AC as long as we include an Unarmed Strike in our attacks. This also gives us a bonus action unarmed Strike every round to help with our damage.

Martial arts does not work with armor, so no BA attack unless you spend ki.

At least the cavalier trick makes you hard to ignore. You can keep up to 3 enemies on you if your sentinel reaction and both your normal attacks hit.

 

[Grue AC]

War Mage works better than Blade Singer. +4 to a saving throw once a round covers your NADs.

 

[Gavin O.]

War Mage works better than Blade Singer. +4 to a saving throw once a round covers your NADs.

That's true, but the fact that it takes your reaction to use is a big problem, since we need our reaction to make OAs with Sentinel, otherwise enemies can just run away from us. Also needing 13 Int is a problem. I think if you wanted to go Wizard for a build like this you should take at least 10 levels for +2 AC while concentrating on a spell, and have Wizard be your primary class.