Premise of the build: Achieve the highest possible AC, and a large amount of hit points, and some form of mark to discourage the enemy from attacking your allies, in order to effectively mitigate the monsters' damage, while not completely sacrificing our own offensive potential and while being playable at all levels.
Race: Hill Dwarf: The best race for this build would be Stensia Human from Plane Shift Innistrad, but since that's not legal in sanctioned play, here's the next best choice. Con and Wis bonuses, no speed penalty in heavy armor allows us to dump Strength, and extra HP per level. The biggest downside is we're starting with a lower attacking stat.
Starting Stats: 8 Str, 15 Dex, 15+2 Con, 8 Int, 15+1 Wis, 8 Cha
Stensian Human Starting Stats: 15+1 Str, 13 Dex, 13+1 Con, 8 Int, 14 Wis, 9 Cha
Starting Class: Fighter
Fighting Style: Defense
Our starting AC, with Chainmail, a Shield, and Defense Style, is 19, and our starting hit points is 14. A CR ¼ creature like a Skeleton has a to-hit bonus of +4 and deals about 5 damage per hit, which means it would take it over 17 rounds of attacking to bring us down.
Levels 2-6: Up to Fighter(6)
Our first ASI is spend on +1 Dex/+1 Con, bringing our hit bonus up to +3 and giving us 5 extra HP and a better Con save. Our second is spend on the feat Sentinel in order to punish foes who attack our allies instead of us, we're also taking the Cavalier subclass for that purpose.
Assuming we’ve not found any magic items up to this point, but we have upgraded our armor to Splint, our AC is now 20, and we’ve got 69 HP.
Level 7: Cleric(1) The forge cleric domain allows us to fortify our armor for +1 AC, as long as the armor isn’t magical, and also gives us access to the spell Shield of Faith, which has a bonus action cast time, lasts 10 minutes, and grants +2 AC. With our maxed out Con and Con save proficiency, we’ll easily be able to maintain concentration.
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.
Levels 11-15: Cleric(6) We’re going up to 6 levels in Forge Cleric for Soul of the Forge, which gives us +1 to AC in addition to free fire resistance. We get one ASI which we use to take our Dex to 20.
Levels 16-20: Fighter(11) Finally, we finish up with our Fighter levels to get another Extra Attack.
AC without magic items: 18 (Plate) +2 (Shield) +2(Agile Parry) +2 (Shield of Faith spell) +1 (Defense Style) + 1 (Soul of the Forge) +1 (Blessing of the Forge) = 27 AC (achievable at level 10, or 14 if you rush for Extra Attack)
AC with +3 magic shield and +3 magic armor: 32
Hit points at level 20: 285
Tell me what you think. Am I missing some obvious way to increase my AC? Is a build like this viable?
Race: Hill Dwarf: The best race for this build would be Stensia Human from Plane Shift Innistrad, but since that's not legal in sanctioned play, here's the next best choice. Con and Wis bonuses, no speed penalty in heavy armor allows us to dump Strength, and extra HP per level. The biggest downside is we're starting with a lower attacking stat.
Starting Stats: 8 Str, 15 Dex, 15+2 Con, 8 Int, 15+1 Wis, 8 Cha
Stensian Human Starting Stats: 15+1 Str, 13 Dex, 13+1 Con, 8 Int, 14 Wis, 9 Cha
Starting Class: Fighter
Fighting Style: Defense
Our starting AC, with Chainmail, a Shield, and Defense Style, is 19, and our starting hit points is 14. A CR ¼ creature like a Skeleton has a to-hit bonus of +4 and deals about 5 damage per hit, which means it would take it over 17 rounds of attacking to bring us down.
Levels 2-6: Up to Fighter(6)
Our first ASI is spend on +1 Dex/+1 Con, bringing our hit bonus up to +3 and giving us 5 extra HP and a better Con save. Our second is spend on the feat Sentinel in order to punish foes who attack our allies instead of us, we're also taking the Cavalier subclass for that purpose.
Assuming we’ve not found any magic items up to this point, but we have upgraded our armor to Splint, our AC is now 20, and we’ve got 69 HP.
Level 7: Cleric(1) The forge cleric domain allows us to fortify our armor for +1 AC, as long as the armor isn’t magical, and also gives us access to the spell Shield of Faith, which has a bonus action cast time, lasts 10 minutes, and grants +2 AC. With our maxed out Con and Con save proficiency, we’ll easily be able to maintain concentration.
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.
Levels 11-15: Cleric(6) We’re going up to 6 levels in Forge Cleric for Soul of the Forge, which gives us +1 to AC in addition to free fire resistance. We get one ASI which we use to take our Dex to 20.
Levels 16-20: Fighter(11) Finally, we finish up with our Fighter levels to get another Extra Attack.
AC without magic items: 18 (Plate) +2 (Shield) +2(Agile Parry) +2 (Shield of Faith spell) +1 (Defense Style) + 1 (Soul of the Forge) +1 (Blessing of the Forge) = 27 AC (achievable at level 10, or 14 if you rush for Extra Attack)
AC with +3 magic shield and +3 magic armor: 32
Hit points at level 20: 285
Tell me what you think. Am I missing some obvious way to increase my AC? Is a build like this viable?
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