Level Up (A5E) Hard Walled by Queen Bee Berserker Build Idea

[tabletopjess]

I'm not on that Discord! I bet it would be fun to peruse through. Is it open to players in general?

This is the EN Publishing work one - so not open to players unfortunately. But I'm willing to be a spy and report back in the forums on any gossip for you!

 

[VenerableBede]

I'd love to hear about it And glad to hear that I can be part of a spark that initiated discussion! That's always a cool feeling

As far as game design is concerned, I don't mind when certain classes—like the berserker—appear designed to be used in a specific way. For example, you're never going to be using Furious Critical with ranged weapons, and that's ok. It's part of the defining flavor of the class, and flavor is really important... and the base flavor of the class also makes it way more interesting when specific archetypes or unexpected class combinations allows you to do something that goes entirely against the grain. I love hunting for those niche cases—so I'm so pumped it appears this idea will work out!

I love hunting for weird and unexpected combinations. Few things are as exciting as making the table go "Wait, that's possible?!?! And it's actually viable?!?!?!" in an excited way.

 

[tabletopjess]

I'd love to hear about it And glad to hear that I can be part of a spark that initiated discussion! That's always a cool feeling

As far as game design is concerned, I don't mind when certain classes—like the berserker—appear designed to be used in a specific way. For example, you're never going to be using Furious Critical with ranged weapons, and that's ok. It's part of the defining flavor of the class, and flavor is really important... and the base flavor of the class also makes it way more interesting when specific archetypes or unexpected class combinations allows you to do something that goes entirely against the grain. I love hunting for those niche cases—so I'm so pumped it appears this idea will work out!

I love hunting for weird and unexpected combinations. Few things are as exciting as making the table go "Wait, that's possible?!?! And it's actually viable?!?!?!" in an excited way.

I love weird character builds too. I'm currently playing a rogue in my campaign which is the party healer.

It's about as effective as it sounds

 

[Mike Myler]

This is the EN Publishing work one - so not open to players unfortunately. But I'm willing to be a spy and report back in the forums on any gossip for you!

So be it

 

[Jacob Vardy]

Given the rules for customizing armaments (p321), I'd create a heavy scimitar (heavy relative to the base scimitar, not the "heavy" property). Take the scimitar base, but increase its size. Because of that, it loses its dual-wielding property, but instead gains a versatile property. That gives you a weapon with three properties: Defensive (light), versatile (1d8), finesse.

The defensive property doesn't do you any good if you always use the two-handed mode, but it's still a practical option due to it being versatile. You could always tweak it more, but this design seemed like the quickest and least divergent approach.

Something like that existed IRL. The zhanmadao or "horse chopping saber". It's a light-ish sabre that can be used with two hands. I found them a little while ago when looking for something for an NPC. Zhanmadao - Wikipedia

 

[Xethreau]

For further inspiration, I would also suggest the spiked chain and/or estoc (two-handed rapier).

 

[Xethreau]

Also, for folks of the Grippli culture (found in MoAR: Wilderness), javelins, spears, and tridents count as finesse weapons!

((Been waiting months to tell the world about this! #threadnecromancy ))

 

[Steampunkette]

Gentry and Martin are -awesome- writers. I'm buying my copy as we speak.

 

[Steampunkette]

DINO RIDER CULTURE?!

How is that not one of your sales hooks?!

 

[thuter]

I have been trying to solve a very similar puzzle over the last weeks: A Dex-based Kobold Queen Bee Berserker.

The Kasurigama solves one of the problems, but not the other. It is a dual-wielding two-handed weapon, which would qualify for Feel My Sting and Furious Critical without the need for Heavy to be tagged on, but is not finesse (so no attacking with Dex, still a possibility for small STR based d12 attacks).

Another piece of the puzzle could be the O5E feat Revenant Blade from Eberron: Rising from the Last War, which requires you to be an elf (maybe cultures count?) and gives the Double-Bladed Scimitar the finesse property when you wield it (which makes it a finesse two-handed weapon).

A trio of magical solutions in the lightsaber theme would be the Sun Blade, which is a longsword (in O5E, in A5E the wording is more vague) with the finesse trait, the O5E Dawnbringer (longsword with finesse) or the O5E Sunsword (longsword with finesse). Finally: Windvane, an O5E legendary spear with the versatile and finesse traits.

Any update from the writers regarding a Zeitgeist errata?