Low Level Builds
Building your character is one of the most exciting and important parts of the game. You spend time daydreaming of what your insanely powerful barbarian or warlock is going to look like at level 20, fighting liches, swarms of demons, and the occasional tarrasque. After rolling your stats you find yourself at a crossroads. What is my race going to be, what class am I going to play, what build am I going to use?
Going into the building process with a clear vision of what your character is going to look like and what role they are going to play is crucial. The decisions you make during the first three levels are going to have a huge impact on how your character is going to develop and what it will look like at later levels. I’m not saying that if you change the direction you wanted to go it is impossible, but it's going to take time and can render the choices you made at those lower levels moot. Multiclassing is also an option, using the strengths of the character you created to achieve your new vision with that new class you decided to go. Or maybe you decided you just had to take a dip into warlock for Eldritch Blast. I’m not sure it’s worth selling your soul for, but I know I’m in the minority there.
The problem is most character classes don’t come online until the 3rd or 4th level. It’s is easy to get bored with your wizard as you grind through the lower levels, anxiously awaiting your Fireball and showing that arrogant barbarian what real damage is all about. Or maybe you went arcane archer with your elf, and you know when you take the elven accuracy feat and get that ‘super advantage’ all archers need (I believe that elven accuracy is not broken), you’ll be stronger than the shifty rogue who is always eyeballing your stuff. There are plenty of DMs that start their party off at the 3rd level so that everyone can pick their path, archetype, tradition, etc. I understand why people prefer that style of gameplay, but for me, building a character and starting at the 1st level helps me develop a stronger bond with the character. I’ve nurtured him/her, watching and helping them grow from a fresh-faced adventurer who struggled to stay alive to a grizzled veteran, able to defeat a horde of kobolds all by themselves.
My problem is I’m really bad at building a character that can do much at those lower levels. I start my character off already thinking about the 3rd/4th/5th level and neglect them at the 1st and 2nd levels. It doesn’t make me love the character any less, but I find myself extremely jealous of the party members that start of the gate with a great armor class or the ability to do massive amounts of damage. Resentment isn’t a healthy thing to carry around. It can ruin party cohesiveness at the beginning of the game and can drain the enjoyment out of the game for you and the rest of the players.
I’ve never been much of a mid maxer. I’m no good at it. What’s worse, I don’t think much about backgrounds. Now my character isn’t that interesting and less powerful than the rest of the party! Ok, so this may not be exactly true, but it’s how I feel the majority of the time. I start full of excitement for my new character but slowly find myself watching that feeling slowly slip away as the early game progresses. This is what led me to research how to build powerful early game characters and interesting builds that may not be as strong, but fun to play. I‘ve broken it down into various categories based on the information I gathered from talking to players, reading and analyzing the books, and wandering around the internet. I know there are things I overlooked or do not mention below. This in no way means that they couldn’t work, but even in lockdown, I only have so much time. Between making breakfast lunch and dinner for 3 other people, reviewing homework, and doing all the tasks my wife now says I have the time to do, it’s amazing I have any time to write.
The Mid Max Character, sort of.
The two routes to go if you want an overpowered low-level character that most people talk about are the Moon Druid and Variant Human. I’m not going to talk about them in much detail since most people already know about these two. Being able to Wild shape and turn into a bear at the 2nd level is amazing, and can overshadow a majority of other characters at an early level. Sure, they fall off between the 5th-10th level, but the purpose of this article is to talk about the early levels, and most people I talked to say the Moon Druid is insanely powerful early on. As for the Variant Human, we will do that next week in part 2 of low-level characters
What I looked for this week were builds that focused on being strong in one specific area. They may not be the absolute highest in their category but I tried to mix it up to add a bit of flavor. I did set a couple of ground rules to try it to make it semi-realistic. No homebrew, buying plate at 1st level or variant humans (see above). If a spell is used, you must be able to cast it yourself. Use the standard array for your starting stats. Sure, you could roll and get three 18’s, but I mean come on.
How the hell is your Armor Class so high?
The warforged getting +1 to their AC right off the bat makes them the go-to race if you want a high starting AC. Thank god they nerfed it from the UA.
Warforged Forge Cleric - 1st Level
Chain Mail Armor: AC 16
Shield: AC +2 (AC 18)
Integrated Protection: +1 (AC 19)
Blessing of the Forge: +1 (AC 20)
Add Shield of Faith (AC 22) - for 10 minutes
Everyone loves the Warforged. You don’t have to sleep, immune to sleep spells, immune to disease, resistance to poison, Con +2, and +1 to any other ability score of your choice is pretty neat. It’s the integrated armor that pushes the race over the edge. Gaining a bonus to your armor class at level one is amazing. As you can see above, you can build a totally ‘legal’ warforged cleric and your static AC is 20! Cast Shield of Faith on yourself at the beginning of the fight, as a bonus action no less, and you are now at an AC of 22. There aren’t many creatures that are going to be able to hit you, so the rest of the party can hang back and watch you wade into the mass of Kuo-Toa who try to use their spears against you to no avail.
Let’s try to find a high AC character without the stupid warforged.
Beasthide Shifter Fighter - 1st Level
Chain Mail Armor: AC 16
Shield: +2 (AC 18)
Defense Fighting Style: +1 (AC 19)
Shifting Feature: +1 (AC 20)
The Shifter fighter is another new race from the world of Eberron. If you decide to tank for your party and go beasthide as your sub-race, you can max out your AC at 20 during battle. Your shifting feature gives you +1 to your armor class, and while it lasts for only one minute, that should be plenty of time for you and your party to dispatch those CR 1/2 creatures attacking you. While the rest of the party dances around trying to avoid getting hit, the only movement you’ll need to take is to chase down the poor creature that couldn’t hit you no matter how hard it tried.
Tortle Monk - 1st Level
Natural Armor: AC 17
Shield: +2 (AC 19)
Shell Defense: +4 (AC 23)
I’ve never played a Tortle, but the idea of being able to play a giant turtle does have its appeal. Its natural armor class of 17 is leaps and bounds higher than the next race’s natural AC, although they do get to add their Dexterity bonus while our Tortle does not. Once you grab that shield you’re sitting at a nice armor class of 19. RAW states that any class features will not stack with the Tortle. Both Blessing of the Forge and Defensive Fighting style state you have to be wearing armor so they are out as options to increase your AC further. So, this AC applies to any class you wish to play, and I just threw monk up on the heading because I always wanted to be a ninja turtle.
Now you can always retreat into your shell and gain a whopping +4, giving you a total AC of 23. The problem is when inside our shell, you can’t do shit. It’s an excellent defense mechanism if you are going to die the next time you get hit. You should not have to do this at 1st level and if you do then either you overplayed your hand against whatever creatures you are fighting or the DM is rolling nat 20’s all night long. (It has been pointed out, correctly, that monks cannot use shields. This build still works as a fighter, and if you go barbarian, things get really fun)
Barbarians aren’t the only ones that do damage
Next up is hitting things hard early on. Yeah, yeah, I know when you’re a bear as a moon druid you hit hard, but we aren’t talking about the moon druid remember? Hexblade also does high damage at lower levels, but since everyone knows that already, we are sidelining it with the moon druid. There are several different ways to go and while these may not be the highest damage builds out there, they are the ones I would like to try at some point in the future.
Bugbear Assassin - 3rd Level
Dex Bonus: +3
Action: Melee attack with a rapier - 1d8 damage
Racial Trait: Surprise attack - 2d6 damage
Rogue Ability: Sneak attack - 2d6 damage
Assassin Ability: Critical hit on surprise attack - x2 damage
Total: 8d6 (28) + 2d8 (9) + 3 (Dex.) / 40 average
We all know that rogues are one of the stronger class types at lower levels. Sneak attack is brutal for their enemies and as a first-level ability, it doesn’t have a class ability rival. Sure, Guiding Bolt does 5d6 damage when cast at the 2nd level, which most people will agree is pretty damn good. That’s an average of 17 points of damage, which pales in comparison to the damage our bugbear assassin just did. As a first attack, you have a chance of either dropping your target or wounding them so badly, they will start to regret the choices they made in their life that brought them to this point.
Any Race Paladin - 3rd Level
Action: Melee attack with a long sword - 1d8
Strength Bonus: +3
Bonus Action: Thunderous Smite spell - 2d6
Class Feature: Smite - 2d8
Fighting Style: Dueling +2 attack damage
Total: 1d8(4.5) + 2d6 (7) + 2d8 (9) + 2 (Dueling) + 3 (Str.)/ 25.5 average.
The paladin is one of my favorite classes to play in 5e. This combination is a nova blast for sure, as you only have 3 first level spell slots so you can do it once per encounter. I’m embarrassed to say I was at 9th level, doing the double smite with Blinding Smite, feeling all-powerful when I realized I could have used the combo at the 3rd level. It’s always good to go half-elf or human, but in my current campaign I was able to start with a 16 Charisma, so I decided to try something different and went Goliath. It’s fun being 8 feet tall.
Goblin Ranger - 3rd Level
Action: Ranged attack with short bow- 1d6
Dexterity Bonus: +3
Racial Ability: Fury of the Small - +3 attack damage (medium +)
Gloomstalker Ability: Dread Ambusher - 1d6 + 1d8
Bonus Action: Hail of Thorns spell - 1d10
Total: 2d6 + 6 (13) + 1d8 (4.5) + 1d10 (5.5) / 23 averageOR
Bonus Action: Hunter’s Mark - 1d6
Total: 3d6 + 3 (13.5) + 1d8 (4.5) / 18 average
Who thought a little old goblin could do so much damage. The first option is one round burst of damage. You replace the bonus action with Hunter’s Mark and you reduce your one-round damage but you will do an average of 18 damage per round, which makes way more sense (You can use Fury of the Small on the first round, but then it drops off). Burst damage is nice, but if you don’t wipe them out in a round or two, then combat can go from being a sprint to a marathon, and consistent damage overtime wins…at least for our little goblin friend, it does.
Fast as F&@k
This is for the people that like to go fast.
Tabaxi Monk - 2nd Level
Tabaxi Base Movement - 30 feet
Tabaxi Ability - Feline Agility, double speed for 1 turn
Monk Ability - Unarmored Movement, +10 feet base movement
Monk Ability - Step of the Wind, additional bonus action dash (1 ki point)
so…
Triple Dash: 40 ft./40 ft./40 ft. x2 (Feline Ag.) = 240 feet
That’s just stupid fast. Sure, you aren’t getting to hit anything, but you’ll be able to catch up to pretty much anything and hit them in the next round. Let’s say you catch up to said bad guy and trade blows with him, and he somehow manages to move far away again. Welp, since you had a movement speed of 0 and one more ki point to burn, you can run another 240 feet. Of course, you can get crazy at higher levels, as Stephen wanted me to point out to everyone:
At higher levels (5th), you can convince the wizard to cast haste on you then you are looking at: 80 + 80 + 80 = 240 * 2 = 480 feet
At 6th level: 90 + 90 + 90 = 270 * 2 = 540.
At 18th level and haste: 120 + 120 + 120 = 360 * 2 = 720 feet.For a blessed 6 seconds you would be running over 81 miles per hour.
But 3rd level is a decent jog at 27 miles per hour.Throw in Boots of Speed, and you can double that!
-Stephen Bandstra,
I swear he lays around at night thinking about this stuff. I don’t know about you but just reading about all this running is making me tired.
Up next week, low-level multi-class builds!
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Header Art Credit - Wizards of the Coast
