2014 DnD FIGHTERS (Remastered)! Unleashing Your Inner Warrior: Steps for Building the Iconic Class

Fall flavors are waiting for you at Whole Foods Market. Cozy picks all through the store, like maple leaf cookies from 365 brand. Swing by the bakery for pumpkin cheesecake, here for a limited time, and pumpkin turmeric bread freshly baked every single day. Sip the season with 365 brand cinnamon spice coffee and pumpkin spice creamer. While you still can, spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. It goes my margin. Not mine, brother. I switched to mudflap. But those other fuel carts just nail you with the fees. No, not mudflap. They don't have any fees. Mudflap, annual, out of network. Not a, what I say, I keep. That's what's up. Mudflap has your back. Carriers like you save thousands per year with mudflap. Get $100 in pre-fuel credits after approval when you sign up at Muddy.com/podcast. Spelled MUDDY.com/podcast. Terms of restrictions apply to mudflaping.com. Mudflap is issued by Celtic Bank or Community Federal Savings Bank. Resisting to a license from Visa USA King. Welcome to the rpgbot.podcast. I'm Randall James, and with me is Tyler Campstra. Hi, everybody. And Ashi Lai. Everybody was great certified team. Those cats were fast as lightning bolts. Absent of nothing. Tyler, what are we doing tonight? Damon, I always get a mark. We're going to talk about fighters. All right, just take that, take that out of context, put that in soundboard, just stick it in wherever we want, just ash saying, Damon, I always need a margarita. Any time. Yes, because it's true. I'm with you there, man. All right, so hey, we're going to talk about some real rpgbot stuff. And tonight we're going to talk about optimizing D&D 5E fighters. This might surprise literally no one. But one of our most popular podcast episodes was the episode on character optimization. So this year we're going to, we're going to like focus on some basics. And we're going to look at optimizing individual character options throughout the year. So classes, sometimes races, sometimes other stuff. You're really going to like do a lot of the same things that we're doing on the site, but more as a conversation. And I know some people have retaining information when it's a wall of text and I tend to turn out walls of text. So I'm going to turn out a wall of speech and see if that does better. Oh yeah, so much better. I do have to say like at least if we vary the speech and occasionally we use different voices, it'll probably it's going to be great. It's wanted to me that the character optimization is one of the most popular episodes. And what's the evidence we see? We see that the episode gets downloaded a lot. I honestly think people look at it. It's like, well, it's RPG bot famous for character optimization. Let's download the episode. I haven't listened to that episode more than once in like the 18 years since it came out. But I have to say I don't know that it's like it's probably not our past episode. Also, the other one that's really popular is our dice map episodes. So our audience here's what I said, dice math was awesome. That's probably still one of my favorite episodes. So we were good episodes. Yeah. Yeah. It's why do you all hate me? It your pain gives me some space. That's that's really what? Yes, yes. Your English sustains me. Oh God, the mountain. We said never again. That was actually really good. I like it. It's going to send that's going to look so weird in the transcript. So robot just hiding in corners like. Yeah, it's just a transcript bot going. I don't know what this is. It actually gets just like the mouth sounds. That's also what can happen. But yeah, I'm excited that we're here. Like we talked about character optimization in the third episode ever where we talked a lot. I don't know how much we actually said here we are so many years later. We are going to talk about building an optimal fighter and I'm here for it. Tyler, how do I do this? All right. Okay. So let's jump right into it. So so people might be asking why fighters? Why start there? And honestly, it's because the fighter is the simplest class. Fighter dates back to the earliest editions of D&D. Mechanically, conceptually, hasn't changed that much over time. It's a great baseline to start out and establish the basic concepts, establish what's the fundamental thinking behind a lot of these things and really just get your bearings before you go on to optimize something insanely complicated. Like how do we optimize a hex blade? Start with fighter. We'll go from this. So you're saying that if you pick fighter as you're starting class, you're basic. Don't answer that. I mean, that's the joke, but there's nothing wrong with that. Like you, yeah, you're the you're the every man, the like highly skilled competent person who's stepped up and been like, Hey, he's a wizard. She's a cleric. That person's some kind of like weird space ninja. And I am going to stab God with the same toothpick that I picked up at level one. That's the fighter. Hey, anybody who thinks that basic is an insult needs to watch Bradley Mulligan's video called Defender of the Basic in which he makes a good case that there is nothing wrong with being basic in braces. Turns out popular things are popular for a reason. That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. The most the most commonly built character on D&D beyond is a human fighter named Bob. Yep. That makes that makes sense. That makes a lot. Followed up by Bob, the Artiface here. Okay. So you're filling a childhood fantasy. Can we build it? Give it flames. Okay. Okay. All right. So let's jump right in. Let's start right from the ending level one. You're going to build yourself a fighter. So the order in which the player's handbook presents things is ability scores, race, class, and then depending on what your addition, like skills, feats, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. But those first three things, ability score, race, and class. Like you kind of want to do all three of those at the same time. Despite the what the book says, because if you plan out your ability scores and you're like, I want to be super strong and then you land on wizard, then you're going to have to jump around. It's this whole mess. So just plan to do it all at once. Of course, we're looking at fighter. It's already locked into that. So let's look at race and ability scores. Fighters are a martial class. They depend on strength and or dexterity to do the things that they typically do, especially in combat. We made jokes early about everybody. Great sword fighting. If you're going to use a great sword, you're going to use strength. If you're going to use range weapons or rapier or something like that, you're probably going to use dexterity. And there are pros and cons to both. Having high strength makes you really good at things like athletics or lifting things and grappling stuff like that. And we'll get more in that in a little bit. Dexterity makes you more likely to go early in initiative that protects you against area damage effects. Things that generally keep you alive, but weirdly, your AC will be lower because you're not full. Okay. I want to call this out and not that you sold it this way, but I'm going to sell it this way. What you're offering us is I could focus on strength and I can be really good at hugging people. Kind of. Yeah. Or I could take decks and I could dodge fireballs. Yeah. And what? Okay. Just I want to make sure we're on the same page. You can feel free to keep going. They get Dexter's probably just more more useful way to build your fighter because it's more useful for a more thing. That is true. Yeah. Having high dexterity lets you do a lot of things beyond combat. One of the places that fighters really suffer in five years, they don't have great skill options. There's only one skill that cares about strength in its athletics. Outside of combat, if you're built around dexterity, you are much more likely to be useful. You could easily fill in for a rogue if you get proficiency in like stealth perception and thief stools. There you go. That's really all you need, which when you pick really depends on what is your fantasy for the character? What is your role in the party? What things do you need to cover? Larger parties, you need to cover fewer things because there's more people to spread those responsibilities around. If you're in a three person party where you don't have a whole lot of skills, you don't have you just don't have the bodies to cover all those capabilities. A dexterity fighter might be more effective because you can cover more of those crucial competencies on the same character. It does mean you're going to suck it grappling though. That makes sense. Yeah, I guess the question you have to ask yourself when you're making a fighter is do I want to be really good in combat or do I want to be more generally useful because I think if you want to do big damage numbers as a fighter strength is probably the way to go just because higher damage weapons use strength. If you want to do less damage in exchange for being more generally useful outside of combat, then go dexterity. Yeah. Even the damage comparison gets a little bit fuzzy like once you get into feats and like really heavily optimizing a specific combat style dexterity can actually be really high damage especially if you're built around like crossbow expert or something like that. Baseline especially at very very low levels, you will generally have more damage output with a strength based character. Question, I don't know the south of the top of my head. Is a katana dex based or strength based weapon? Katana's don't exist in 5e, generally you'll just re-skin a long sword. Okay, because there's a samurai class but there's no katana. That's weird because long swords aren't finesse but that makes no sense because katana should definitely be dexterity. It does it like using your strength on a katana is like the opposite way you want to use it. Maybe re-skin a rapier and call it that. Yeah, accept the answer. Yeah. - I don't see any reason why you couldn't just use a rapier as a katana if you wanted to or a cimitar, yeah. - Yeah, cimitar would work. - That's one of those things where you could have like an endless nerd argument over like, which one of these generic blade weapons better represents a katana. And everyone will have opinions. Some of them are wrong, some of them are right. Doesn't really matter. Just pick which works for your group. - Yeah. - So we talked about strength versus dexterity. The next most important thing you wanna worry about is constitution for the hit points. If you're playing an eldritch knight, and this is like really one of the only fighter subclasses that gets weird with the ability scores. If you're playing an eldritch knight, you're gonna want decent intelligence. Like 14 is probably plenty. Don't stress too much. - Yeah. - And when you go to look at your race, if you're using any race published prior to Tasha's, they're gonna have fixed ability score increases. So you can use the custom origin rules and just shuffle those around however you like. If you're not gonna do that, look for a race that has an increase to either your strength or your dexterity depending on which one you pick. Realistically, it's 2024. Everyone's using the custom origin rules. It's fine, it's not killing anybody. - Yeah. - Let's see. So the fighter's proficiencies are pretty good, honestly. They get martial weapons, all the armor and shields. Their big save is constitution. So there's the three big saves, constitution, wisdom, dexterity. And then the other ones are less common. So they're less important. So every class gets one of the important saves and one of the less important saves. For a fighter, they're important when it's constitution. Now the heavy armor, shields, proficiency and constitution saves makes them a great first level class tip, especially for classes that don't already get armor or proficiency and constitution save. So like starting with one level and fighter is awesome for warlock, wizard, sorcerer. There's some nuance based on what those other classes get and artifice or makes things complicated. But still, it's a great one level dip, especially since the fighters get a ton of their features that levels one and two. So next up, fighters get fighting style. And we did an entire episode on that. Tons and tons of fun. This is gonna do a lot to define how your character plays. And this is where you're really gonna start distinguishing yourself from literally every other guy with a pointy stick. So I thought it might be kind of fun. There's three of us on the podcast, like each of us pick a fighting style and just as we kind of go through this, just think a little bit, but like, okay, what am I gonna do with my fighting style at this point? - I got it. I'm going archery. I'm gonna go sharpshooter as soon as I can get to the feet. But yeah, so archery for my fighting style and let the arrows fall where they may. - Yeah. - Archery's real good. How about you Ash? - I'm gonna go gray weapon fighting. - Gray weapon fighting feels really good if you roll bad. - Yeah. - Yeah, are you Ash? Are you like me and you always roll terrible on damage? - Yes, always. Except for on the DM, then I'll let my players, I believe some of whom are in the chat can attest that I crit a lot when I'm the DM. - I don't seem to crit at all when I'm a player, but I could a lot when I'm the DM to start like separating your dice. Like these are the DM dice. So the player dice chat is confirming, yeah. - And I just wanna say, and case anybody is doubting me, I'm not cheating when I do that. Literally, I just seem to crit more when I am playing monsters than if I am a player. I don't know why that happens, it just happens. I think it was my tier-by-modal dice. - I think it was either my playing scape game or my Ravenloft game and my players can correct me. Where during one battle, I think there was like, I crit three times and it was insane. - It was brutal. - Yeah, it was best, it was rough, but thank you there. Yeah, it was in play-in-scape. Yeah, there were two, yeah, our paladin got murked. (laughing) - I'm not gonna lie, that's a place where like, I might start lying as a DM. It's like, and that last one missed. I don't know, nobody look at that. - On a relatively easy encounter, it wasn't supposed to be difficult. - That's fair, okay. (laughing) - Hey, man, surprise crits as a DM can be fun, especially in play-in-scape, where the goal is to kind of kill your players. (laughing) - Yeah, if nobody dies, he miss out on the happy adventure. - Exactly. I tried so hard to kill one of the players in play-in-scape. I finally got one of them, and that was because I blatantly just made it so that like, just a ton of damage at you. There you go. (laughing) - That's what you wanted for Christmas, right? All of this damage. - We're getting off topic. - Yeah. - Yeah. - All of this damage. - Anyway, we're going off topic. - All right, so Ash is going for great weapon fighting. Randall's going for archery. I'm gonna go for dueling. So those three are like the really big popular options from the player's handbook, and like, they remain popular 'cause they still fit the fantasy really well. If you're ever not sure what to pick, just take defense, plus one AC is always useful, and it makes it easy to change weapons as you play through the game. If you decide, oh, using a sword and shield, I'm bored with this. I'm gonna switch to a great sword. Perfectly fine. Defense continues to work. (upbeat music) - Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have Exama. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let Exama take over when you can talk to your doctor about Epglyce? - Epglyce, Lebrichismab, LBKZ. A 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe Exama. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin, or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to Epglyce. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglyce. Before starting Epglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Pay partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Epglyce and visit Epglyce.com, or call 1-800-LilyRX or 1-800-545-5979. - And then just to give this out. So archery, you gain a plus two bonus to attack roles. You make with ranged weapons, nice and easy. Dueling when you're wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a plus two bonus to damage roles with that weapon. And great weapon fighting. When you roll a one or two, you get with melee weapon, you're holding with two hands, you get to re-roll it, and you keep it even if it's a one or two, and there's conditions on the weapons for that. Basically, you get to re-roll ones and twos. - Yeah. - All right. So these are the choices we've made. Yeah, let's see how this goes as we build our fighter. - So fighters get one last feature at level one, and I will forgive you for forgetting it exists because I've seen many fighters forget that it exists. Second wind. So bonus action, heal yourself for 1-D10 plus your fighter level. Now, this is, it's a decent chunk of hit points, especially at level one. The scaling is okay. You get it back once for short rest, and fighters really don't use their bonus action very much unless you've built for crossbow expert to weapon fighting, something like that. It's very easy for most fighters to fit into their tactics. Yeah, just use it anytime your hit points start drifting downwards, and maybe I'd like to not be unconscious, 'cause you can't use it when you're unconscious. So, yeah, use it frequently. Don't forget it's there. Take sure rest. Yeah, that gives us a level one fighter essentially. We've got ability scores, we've got a race, we've looked at our proficiencies or fighting style, we have second wind. Why don't we look at just, what does it like to play a fighter at this point? So you're gonna have four skills, depending on your background, you might have more from your race. Most fighters aren't gonna have a lot of social skills, unfortunately. - This is why people tend to play fighters a lot, especially when they're first starting out, because fighters are so front loaded. They get so much stuff just a level one. The point is early levels, especially at level one and two. Castors are miserable to play, and they become better as you get higher up. At the start of the game, fighters are really the only viable class at the very beginning, although if we do it optimally, like they can still hold their own, they pretty dang well at the first two levels. - They can get up there? - Yeah. - But trade off is once they get higher levels, they get outpaced by castors pretty quick. I mean, their feet certainly help, so that's good. - Yeah, honestly, keeping pace with other classes at high levels, you really do have to make those feats count. If you are playing in a game that doesn't use feats, fighters gonna feel really, really boring and really underwhelming. One of the major things that fighters get is you get additional mobility score increases. You get two more than any other class, and realistically, you're gonna get your primary ability score to 20 at either level six or level eight, and then most likely, you're gonna start looking at feats somewhere in there. So plan ahead, figure out which feats you want, and then you can absolutely make fighters a very, very viable at high levels with a bit of optimization. You might not quite keep pace with a wizard 'cause a wizard can teleport, there's no amount of being a good fighter that lets you teleport, but yeah. - But like, repeat it. - Yeah. - And they get to change reality, so. - Hey, I can change reality by stabbing it. - Look at that clean shirt. (laughing) - All right, so level one fighter. (laughing) So level one fighter, you've got a few skills, you've got your weapons, you've got your armor, you probably walked out with an AC somewhere in the range of 16 to 18, depending on whether or not using a shield, what fighting style you have. You're pretty durable, nice pile of hit points. More than likely, you are going to be your party's front line. Unless you're specifically building for archery, like Randall is, you are going to be your party's front line. And we have an article on the site that discusses rules within the party. And I try to avoid the video game term tank because tank applies that your entire job is to stand and be punched. And that depends on a concept called aggro, which doesn't exist in the tabletop rules 'cause you're not fighting a simulation, you're fighting a party. Curtain managing a simulation to try and make it feel like real creatures and real creatures on to me like, ah, yes, this guy has shouted profanity at me. Let's all go pointlessly flail against their armor unless you have some cool magic ability that does that. But by default, there's no agro mechanic in 5e. I generally prefer to use the term defender because your job is to defend the people behind you. And I've outright stolen this term from fourth edition, which is where I got it. Your job is to be durable, to stay alive, to prevent the people behind you from dying and, in general, keep the bad guys over there when they try to get past you. You know, there's a million ways to do that that we'll get into as we go. But that is most likely your most important job in the party is just keep everyone else alive. Yep. As we advance as fighter, second level, you're going to get action search, which is arguably one of the fighter's signature features. They do two things that are really, really cool that nobody else can match. They get action search, so you get an entire extra action, which is awesome. And then they get more attacks than anybody else, so you can use those way too many attacks another time on the same term. Action search is so good that for most classes, taking two levels of fighter is more impactful than taking levels 19 and 20 in your class. It is that good. It is an amazing, amazing feature. The higher level you get, the more powerful it gets. Yeah. It's just totally broken. All right. Let's see. Level three, you'll get your subclass. So there's a bunch of different subclasses. Like, there's a bunch of different ways to build a fighter. If you're looking at champion, stop. I got a list of them. Yeah. I've got a list of them. Let's see. Yeah, go for it. Arcane Archer, Battlemaster, Cavalier, Champion, Eldritch Knight, Cy Warrior, Purple Knight, Roon Knight, and Semmer. Oh, you mean Purple Dragon Knight? Purple Dragon Knight, do they say Purple Knight? I meant Purple Dragon Knight. So you said, if you're looking at a champion, stop. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, champions are boring. We'll know further. Well, okay. It's almost a trap, right? The idea of a champion immediately looking at it, oh, I get to crit on a 19 or a 20. I get to double my chances of critting. And if I can get advantage, it's even better. And folks, folks, folks, listen to this. This is insane at level 15, you know, because we all make it level 15 with our fighters. I get to crit on 18, 19, and 20. I get to, I get triple the chance of critting. Isn't that wonderful? Sure is, bud. I get to double. I get to double. Let me check. Let me look. A single D12, like a 10th of a time. No, but maybe it looks exciting and, hey, everybody likes critting, like, let's not, yeah. It is a ton of fun. It's just fun. It's not worth it unless you're playing Baldur's Gate, in which case you can stack that crit threat range to absurd levels. What if I crit on a 15-up and had advantage? Hey, Baldur's Gate. That's like, no, that's pretty common. That's pretty common in Pathfinder, I will say. So, like, you can get your crit threat down to a 12. I've seen people get their crit, like, if you roll a 12 or higher, you crit. It's ridiculous. Pathfinder. Woo! So, yeah. Champion, though. Yeah, the crates are really the big selling point. It is just a boring as heck subclass. Like, everything you get is passive. It doesn't give you any new buttons to push in. Boy, if there's anything the fighters need, they need more buttons. On the flip side, though, like, if you're listening to this and what you want to play as a simple character, it's super approachable. You don't have to do a lot of reading just, you know, roll good to quote Joe Katz. That's bad. We heard you like fighter. So, we put more fighter in your fighter. That's what champion is. I love the player's handbook. We're not going to go into every subclass. We don't have time for that in the space of one episode. Yeah. Just check our fighter subclass breakdown, we'll link in the show notes. Why don't we just say yay or nay on the subclass? Let's just say yay or nay. Sure. All right. Arcane archer. Nay. Hate it. All right. Battlemaster. Yay. It's real good. Okay. Look at all these buttons. Cavalier. Real good, but complicated. Yeah. Champion. We already said nay. Eldridge Knight. Do we skip Echo Knight? Oh, yeah. Echo Knight. Yeah. Echo Knight. It was really mediocre when it was just the player's handbook, but it got so much better when they added more spells. Side warrior. It wishes it was as cool as the Eldridge Knight or the soulknife for Rogue. Yeah. It wishes it was the soulknife for her. Yeah. Pretty much. Purple Dragon Knight. I'm going to say it's just a fancy champion. I eat purple Dragon Knight. I mean, it tries to be like a military leader thing. It doesn't really work. It's disappointing. I love the flavor. Knight. Root Knight. Root Knight. Really, really good. I've seen a couple of those in action, and there's just so much fun to play. The buttons to press are really fun. The abilities are really good. It's really powerful. And you get to turn yourself huge, and who doesn't like that? Yeah. Personally, my favorite subclass. Samurai. Really cool. Very bursty. I've seen so many Elven Accuracy Samurai belts. So many. It works really well. Yep. Elven Accuracy is broken with silver. Yeah. All right. What classes are you guys going for with your builds? Question. Randall? OK. It's a great question. How well will Samurai plus Elven Accuracy complement my archery? So well. You don't say it. You think it's a good idea? Incredibly well. I have seen my friend did Elven Accuracy with a bow and samurai and multiclassed into a hex blade. OK. And then end use darkness. And it was ridiculous. And I hated it. I hated it. Nothing we want to dive deep on. It's our Reign Books. Elven Accuracy. Essentially, I get advantage. But with three dice. Yeah. It's triple advantage. Yeah. So that's real good. And you might think, what if I Elven Accuracy plus a champion? Again, no. Don't. Stop. Slow down. Don't do that. OK. All right. So yeah. I'm going to go. You will crit a lot. And that's all you'll get. Yeah. All right. So Elven Accuracy Samurai archery fighting style. That's what I'm doing. Perfect. Yeah. Sounds good. So if I'm going great weapon master. And I'm using great weapons. I'm going to go rune night. And the two runes I'm going to pick are Cloud Rune and Fire Rune. And just do all the things. It's going to be great. All right. I'm going to go for Cavalier. This is one of my personal favorites. It's a really, really good defender build. Cavaliers. The unwavering mark is definitely a callback to fourth edition where you can mark enemies and basically force them to fight you. And being able to do that without a spell is basically unheard of in 5E. So it's just, it is an awesome frontline character. Got dual wings. I know like shield, spear, Cavalier build. What is the mechanism that is like make me fight you? Okay. So it's a subclass feature called unwavering mark. We won't go into it in super depth. But you mark a creature and they have disadvantages to attack anyone except you. So like they can still go and attack other people, but it's hard for them. And then your job is I just have to keep them right. Which means you're still doing your job. Exactly. And so it's a little bit similar to the battle maneuver going, going attack, which similarly like they get a saving throw, but if they fail it, same game. They get disadvantaged, attacking anyone else. So like you said before, like there's no idea of aggro, aggro. But if you can impose this advantage on them attacking anyone else, you've effectively like as a DM, you've got to make that choice. Like if I want to strike at all, I probably have to strike this person. Yeah. And the Cavaliers big selling point is. Yeah. Cavaliers are very fun. Yeah. And the Cavalier can do that as many times as they want. Yeah. I played a, I think I mentioned this before, I played a Cavalier known or half lane who rode on a pig and dual did Lances. I love that. And it was incredible. Yeah. Why a pig? Because it was the first I could take it indoors because it's like a medium sized creature. Yeah. And I'm a small creature. And it was also doubled as the animal companion for my niece. The beast companion for my niece's a ranger class. It was got to be was playing that. But the fighter was. I think I mentioned this before. He was based off. He was inspired by a very exaggerated version of Alex Jones. Yeah. Yeah. You talked about this. It's nice. Okay. The fighter was. Yeah. All right. Okay. So we've got our sub subclasses under our belt. We've reached level four. We get our first ability score increase. Now, hey, who wants to talk about Matt real quick? No. Why do you hate me? I will leave. I will leave. And I will do other things. I'll make it fast and painless. Okay. So fifth edition expects you to increase your primary ability score. Increase the modifier by one at levels four. And level eight. All of the math in the game is based on that assumption. Now, anytime that you don't do that, you need to make sure that whatever you do instead is worth that trade. Because you're going to fall below the 65% expected success rate. If you're going to take a feat, you want to be more impactful than that plus one. Or you can take like a half feet kind of cheat system. Sometimes you get to do that. Okay. I hear what you're saying. And you're making it very clear for me what I'm meant to do at this point. I think what I'm meant to do at this point is take charge. No. No, I think unfortunately, Tyler's right. Like if you're boring, you need to increase your dexterity so that they minus five doesn't affect you as much. But I will say this only factors in if you're using the boring method of producing skills. Producing attributes, which is point by our standard rate. Roll, roll your stats, getting a 20 right out of the gate is so awesome. And then you don't need to do any other score improvement. You can just spend it all on feets. It's great. Man, okay. You've never rolled my stats. Here's what's going to happen. happen if I roll my stats, I'm gonna lose. Did you know you could lose rolling ability scores? You can. Well, see, that's why I have a system in place where the way I do it is 46 drop the lowest. You can reroll 11 per stat. If your total stat array is 75, less than 75, I let you reroll the whole stat. Okay. All right. That feels pretty good. All right. I mean, I'll do that. I'm still taking a chart shooter though. It's done. It's too late. You could, you could just do it. I get, I get, I get, if you, real champions, roll the 20s for their stats. Ready to level up your day? Then join me and my friends at LoneStarCasino.com. That's L-O-N-E-S-T-A-R Casino, where you can experience the thrill of Las Vegas. No matter where you are, LoneStarCasino.com is an absolutely free-to-play social casino with thousands of games, daily bonuses, free spins, and jackpots that pop like fireworks. Hit Puzz on Life and hit play on LoneStarCasino.com. LoneStarCasino is a free-to-play social casino. Voidware prohibited. Visit LoneStarCasino.com for more details. Sign up today for an incredible welcome bonus. Play bold, win big. Planning your next adventure. With a smart buddy insurance app, travel insurance is just a hop away. In just 60 seconds, you can secure up to $1 million of coverage for medical emergencies or get trip protection for delays or cancellations right from your phone. Download the smart buddy insurance app today and travel smarter. Smart buddy insurance. Fast, easy, and always ready to hop into action. Smart buddy, smart buddy. Insurance sold by smart buddy insurance services ain't kind of written by various insurers, coverage, exclusions, and limitations may apply. So I think our example, our example samurai fighter build with Toronto Road and Rocco's in the chat right now. So hey, Rocco, correct me if I get this wrong. I'm pretty sure the build takes gunner at level four because it's one of those feats that gives you a pluswind-exterity increase. So if you come out at level one with a 17 in your primary ability score, a half-feet can get you 18, so you're still on that fundamental math, but you also get the benefits of whatever the rest of the feed does. Feets like gunner, elven accuracy, stuff like that can often be really, really good at fourth level. Now sharpshooter is still an awesome choice, especially with the archery fighting style. You're still going to be hitting reasonably often. You're going to get those big damage numbers. Both answers are good. So what I just heard is you could have some boring with your boring boring. No. Be a champion. I get to gamble every turn. I can take a penalty and have the opportunity to deal 10 extra damage every single time I roll. And as we know as a fighter, I've got my action surge pretty soon. I'm going to have my extra attacks. Like I'm just going to be piling on the gambling. Yeah. With the cabinet. Yeah. Awesome. Are we saying that that sharpshooter is a gambling addiction as a feat? Yes. 100% of this. Are you kidding me? You're taking a handy cap to try and hit those high numbers, man. And when you do, oh, it's better than sex. What do I say every time I activate the beat? I look at you, Tyler, and I say, I feel lucky. And then I throw that ice and I cry. But you know, when you crit, oh, it's so good. It's so glorious. Is that as a gift? Like, I don't know what, what is your, you're doing, you're doing Elvin accuracy with samurai. You don't need high. You've rigged the gambling table. All right, Ash, what are you doing at level four? I guess I'll just go for the strength increase. If, I mean, it depends on how we're doing it. So like, if I have standard array, then yeah, I'm going to go with the strength increase so that I can at least get to an 18. If I have been blessed by the dice gods by rolling, and I haven't like an 18 or higher or even a 17, then I'll probably go great weapon. Yeah, both good answers. And hey, we're going to have another one of these in two levels. So whatever you decide now, you can add on. That's going to be great. I'm going to go for Polar Master. Now, the Polar Master Sentinel combination, like, very classic works super well for the Cavalier and dueling applies to the additional bonus action attack that you get to make with Polar Master. So does great weapon fighting? Like, there's a ton of stuff that works with that, depending on what weapon you're using. I've got all these extra attacks. By now I've got, I've got unwavering marks. So yeah, I'm doing great. And I think it's worth calling out. Like, we talked about upfront, it can be a little bit difficult to find something to do with your bonus action as a fighter. So what you've solved by making the Polar Master selection, when you take the attack action attack, only with a Glaive Halbert or Core staff, you can use a bonus action to make a melee attack with the opposite end of the weapon. So now with our extra attack, with our action surge for every action, well, no, with every extra attack, we get to take the bonus action. I guess, do we still only get one bonus action per turn? Still only one per turn. Yeah. Okay. Well, still, you found something to do with your bonus action. I haven't done that yet. And hey, that's good. This is how we know that Randall has a first printing fifth edition players handbook. It doesn't say that's fair. Okay. I am going to question this then. So you have a chance to hit and then deal a D4, a D4 plus strength plus the two for calling. Okay. That's actually not bad. You know, a lot of guarantee damage. Yeah. So D4 plus five. Yeah. Really? The D4 is lying at that point. Kind of yeah. Also, I get to make an opportunity to attack when people enter my reach, which is neat. Okay. That's fair. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, okay. All right. So that's level four. All right. So now we go to level five. We have extra attack. Level five is where there's a there's a significant difficulty jump in the game. Monster stats advance quickly. All of the martial characters are doing double damage. Your casters have fireball and spirit guardians and all their cool stuff. So level five is where the game goes from like, okay, we're no longer baby adventurers. It's time for serious business. We've got enough hit points for us to do some cool stuff now. Now, unfortunately, that's all we get at level five is just extra attack. I mean, doubling your damage output is pretty great as a fighter, really any martial character. We have action surge and yes, you can use action surge to make to do two attacks again for a total of four in a single turn. So like, I know a lot of new players have had that question. So the answer is yes. Yes, you get to do the cool thing. Right about level six, we start to get mid level subclass features. So whatever subclass you're playing is getting. Oh, I'm sorry. Level seven. So you're going to get something cool. Level seven, level six, you're going to get another ability score increase or feet. So like I said earlier, fighters get two additional ability score increases, which makes feats much easier for them to take them for other classes. If you took an ability score increase at level four, if you take one now, you're ahead of the math for two levels or you can take a feat. It's up to you. There's really no super wrong answers. I take that back. There are super wrong answers. You can go take feats that will just actively not help you. If you choose something that's cool, you're going to be okay. All right, Randall, what are you taking? I probably go for the ASI at this point. I might dig in and try to find me that one point of that one point is going to make the difference. But level six, probably the ASI makes that ability score increase. I don't think we've actually said that I'll be hoping nobody's at home to be like, "What's an essay?" For me, it's either ASI or Sentinel is what I would do because if I'm getting large, my reach is bigger and I can tie down people more. There's a lot of wisdom in that. Now, if you're going for Sentinel, what weapon are you using? Great sword? Are you going for something with reach? Oh, that's a good point because I could use great weapon master with a Halbert or something. Yeah, let's do Halbert. Okay. All right, so we've got a Halbert wielding Rune Knight. Very nice. Yeah, when you're large, you'll have 15 feet of reach. Or no, let's do play. Play this just more cool. We don't need a tip on the end. What are you talking about? I'm not getting to get into how absurd five-he's handling of pull arms as we're just going to just acknowledge that it's weird and just move on. It's all we have time for. Level six. Oh, yeah, my feet. So I got pull arm master at four. I'm going to take Sentinel at six. So very important to the cavalier. Sentinel, let's me take an opportunity. Sorry, when I hit a creature with an opportunity attack, it reduces their speed to zero. Now, this is intended to keep enemies from moving away from you. I have unwavering mark, which imposes disadvantage if my marked creature attacks anyone but me. But that only applies while they're within five feet me. So if they step away from me, I'm no longer marking them and I'm ineffective. So Sentinel keeps them right next to me. So that Sentinel pull arm master combination, very classic. Usually, you want to do it with a reach weapon because you can stop them 10 feet away from you where they can't reach you, but I chose dueling. So I'm not doing it. It is the nothing's up. It is the nothing shall pass of fighter combos. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So we're going to get a subclass feature. Level seven. That's going to vary by subclass. And then level eight, we get yet another feet or ability score increase. I think I would just go straight for the strength at this point because I'm, you know, I was rocking 16 strength for a few levels longer than the game expected. So I want to be at 18. How about you guys? I'm going to go Gunner so I can shoot people when they're next to me too. Yeah. I'll go ability score improvement to get up to 20 if I'm assuming that I have 18 right now. And oh, I also get another rune at seventh level. And I think I'm going to take the hill rune to just sort of, if I'm going to area control, anything that's attacking me needs to get it. Now I have resistance when I should do what I can start on. Rune nights, man, they're freaking awesome. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Level seven, I get wording maneuver. It's like the interception fighting. style a number of times per day equal to my constitution modifier. Yeah, I get to borrow a fighting style and just protect my friends as a reaction. That's nice. I like that. Hell yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, Randall, you're samurai, you're looking at where to go, where to go, scroll through D&D Beyond. Here we are, elegant courtier. You get to add wisdom to your Christmas persuasion checks and you get proficiency and wisdom saving throws. You've got three saved proficiencies. Okay, that's pretty great. That part's nice. Yeah. Oh, I also get another feature at some level which allows me to make an attack, a reroll an attack if someone within 60 feet of me is hit by an attack, girl. So yeah, fine against me is going to be a miserable time. Oh yeah. Gosh, my first doom style combat playtest, my brother-in-law Hans brought a Rune Knight fighter and I hadn't seen one in action yet. And he's just pulling out all these reaction runes, countering everything, making me reroll attacks. I think like hour and a half of combat, I think I did five damage to the entire party. I learned things. Yep. Rune Knight's man. Yeah, the ultimate tank. They are real cool. All right, so that's all seven and eight. All right, level nine, we get indomitable. So indomitable lets the fighter once per long rest reroll a saving throw that they have failed. Now, this is nominally to make it really, really hard to save or suck fighters. But the big problem there is you're still rerolling with whatever garbage of saving throw modifier you had before. So Randall of the three of us, indomitable is the most useful for you simply because you have the extra save proficiency. But a lot of the time it's going to be like, oh yeah, should I use indomitable on this intelligence save with my minus one intelligence modifier? Great. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those like literally, if you rolled it to on something, you're otherwise good at great news. Let's go for it. But if it's like, yeah, I basically need to roll a 19 or 20, you could choose to use it. But probably you're just going to carry that unused into your next rest. Now, one D and D is looking to redesign this. They're still experimenting with it if I remember right. So I'm not sure what the final version is going to look like, but they know that it's a problem. They are trying to make it better. All right, level 10, we finally get yet another feat is literally every other level for a while. It's so nice. Levels four through like 14 are just awesome for fighters in my opinion. Why do you say that? So here, you get a level 10. Yeah, I don't think you get another feat at level 10. Do you? No, you get a subclass feature at level 10. Oh gosh, where's my brain? Okay, we'll settle for a subclass feature. I had an error in my notes, shame on me. I deal more damage and I get to pick an additional run, which is going to be the storm run, which allows me to just give people advantage and disadvantage whenever I want. That's great. Nice. I get hold the line, which is the important part of the Sentinel feat, and this is why it's important to plan your builds ahead of time, because I now have a feat that's mostly redundant. Look at me go, this is why I write things down, folks. And then at 10 level, I get tireless spirit. When I rule initiative and have no uses of fighting spirit remaining, I regain a use of fighting spirit, which was something I got way back at third level. Yeah, as a bonus action, I get to give myself advantage on all weapon attack rolls until the end of the current turn. Yeah, let's see, I get to give myself advantage or something. Yeah, also five temporary hit points. It's so good. This is why I open up, throw it in. Why not? Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, fighting spirit is why elven accuracy, samurizer thing, because you can just, I stand up, I declare fighting spirit, I use action surge and I machine gun something. Just advantage, you're hitting everything, you got sharpshooter, you're doing all this damage. Just, I'm going to solve this encounter right now. Look at that pincushion over there. And now you get to do that first turn. Yeah, exactly. Samurai is a cool fighter is a cool here. Sometimes they fix Abraham. Samurai is with a gun makes a lot of sense considering how history played out. Samurai is sometimes used guns. What? Oh, well, yeah, all those things existed at the same time, didn't they? That's sure. All right. So that's level 10. Level 11, we get extra, extra attack. So this is where fighters get their third attack. And this is where they look at all of the other martial classes. And they're like, Hey, how many attacks do you guys get? Oh, that's right. Less. That's so sad. I mean, Paladin's getting proved divine. Smite at this level, which is nice. You puny mortal. Barbarians get brutal critical, which we we've talked about on the honor of dark on episodes. Like, it sounds nice until you actually do the math on your like, Oh, this is bad and will not scale. So like, this is where fighters are like, yes, I'm going to continue being awesome and die levels. See, this is the place where I can imagine, like, feeling a lot of regret. Just, I'm multi class. And now it's like 10 and fighter one and anything else or, or, you know, 10 and fighter, three and anything else. I'm like, just want the extra attack. I want one more to level 11. You plebbed. Depends on what you're doing and what your campaign is. Like, a lot of campaigns end before level 10. So like, if you've made it to 11 in a single class, good for you. I hope you really enjoy this. All the staffing. Let's bet. Yeah. Unfortunately, like, 11 through 16 is, you get more of the same. Essentially, nothing really changes about the fighter from here on out. You get the extra ability score increases or feats so you can keep customizing that way. But within the core of the class, like, you have all of your features from here on out. It's just you're going to get numerically better. You're going to get to use your features more frequently. You get that extra attack at level 11, but nothing conceptually changes about the fighter class. Like, if you've mastered the class up to this level, you're basically done from here on out. It's just linear improvement on stuff you already know, which it might feel a little disappointing as, like, spellcasters are adding like really cool high-level spells and other class are adding all of these other interesting features. But it doesn't have to change because it just works pretty well. Yeah. I mean, once you get to level 20, they get to attack three times. So four times. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the best thing you could say is that if anyone ever makes it to level 20. At 12, 14, and 16, we get more ASI's or we can make the choice to take a fee instead. And you get to. Yeah. Two action surges. Yeah. And that extra degree of customization, like, that is why you build and play a fighter for this long because feats are cool. Okay. So I've never built a fighter up to this level. So I want to ask a question. Am I falling for trappers? It's actually a good idea. I built a seminar just the way we've described. I really hone in on using a ranged weapon. I take gunner. I said I take gunner so that I don't have disadvantage when I'm when I'm within five feet. So there's basically no reason for me to ever use anything but my bow. Let's say that's not my concept. I am occasionally getting in there. I'm pulling out the rapier because I want a decks weapon. I'm making attacks. Once I get my decks up to 20, should I just be looking for more feats to take instead of taking ASI's or is there some other ability score that I ought to keep my hand that like, you know what, I might as well be pumping this up. In other words, like, do I do I get my main to 20 and then just go for feats? Great question. Or should I be saying like, okay, well, one more point in constitution is going to be helpful. Look at all this health I'm going to get. Yeah. Increasing constitution for more hit points is great, especially if you're fighting in melee. Since you have gunner, you can walk around in melee using your ranged weapon and still be your party's frontline effectively. Absolutely. If you have gunner, you're probably going to be using a musket because, you know, D12 damage instead of D8 damage with a longbow. Plus, loud. Who doesn't like loud noises in combat? Yeah. So increase in constitution is great. Taking feats like resilient and tough can both be great. Lucky is always an awesome choice if you just ever have space and are like, I don't know what to do with this feat. Lucky. Let's see. So you get proficiency in wisdom saves as a samurai. So you've got strength, con, wisdom. So you have two of the big three. If you took resilient, resilient dexterity, that would give you a plus one dexterity increase. So you could do Elven accuracy to get one plus one, resilient dexterity to get another plus one. And then like some other half feet or just split an ability score increase. This is one of those things where it's really important to look at your build at low levels. Give me like, okay, I'm going to plan out when I'm going to get these ability score increases. It's something like, I have 20 dexterity and Elven accuracy gives me another plus one. And I can't use it because of the cap of 20. Yeah. So you have a whole lot of options. You can rearrange your feats. You can mix in defenses. And yeah, having those extra ability score increases as a fighter gives you so much room to play with that stuff. Okay. And but really what I'm hearing from you is go ahead and get dexterity as quickly as possible. Make sure you're being efficient with your feet selection. That if you're going to get a plus one, let's say to dex from from Elven accuracy or any other feet you take. Make sure you account for that that it is both the feet, but it's also getting you to 20 so that you don't waste an ASI. And at that point, probably my best bet is to look for a concept that's fun for me within feats as opposed to bringing anything else up. Like I heard you say sure getting more health is great, but honestly, maybe I should just be looking for a feet usually. Yeah. That's fair. Or find magic items that bump your bump your attributes past 20. Unfortunately, those are super rare. Like the ones for strength through the most common examples, most items that change your ability scores will increase them to 19 and then stop them. But there's like belt of various giant strengths to get up to like 23, 27. I can't remember something nuts. They are a good reason to be a strength faced fighter. Like look at me, my real strength is 14, but I can lift a house. Yeah. We talked about the fighting styles episode. The idea like technically I could double dip in another class just to get another fighting style. And so I guess if I really wanted to, I can dump those ASIs in a strength and take something like great weapon. Good. Am I going to be better? dealing damage, probably not. But if I'm more into the roleplay, if I'm more into the concept of, like, well, guess I'm going to drop this longbow and pull out a grade axe. I can have that fantasy and that might be the path to getting it. Just recognize it. We're talking strict like optimization. Let's go for the numbers. Probably not going to do it for you. But if you want to be awesome, feel free. Or if you really want to make a fun build, you know, ruin night and get an oversized longbow. The rules for oversized weapons are weird. All right. Let's see. So some things to worry about as a high level fighter, as you get into high levels, enemies that can fly are going to become more and more of a problem and fighters with absolutely no magical ability of any kind can't really do anything about that except attack at range. Yeah. I'm like, that Randall, your ability is a gun. You're fine. It's, it's why I came here. Yeah. Who cares? Shoot them out of the sky. Yeah. But yes, with oversized longbow, you and your eight dexterity. I'm sorry. You think I'm going to have it? You think I'm going to have problems? No. I can get an oversized long and shoot things out of the sky. Nothing flies over my head. And once I get to level 18, I can become huge. So I would like to see them try to fly past me. Yeah. I huge size with that much reach. If you grapple creatures that are in the air and reduce their speed to zero by grappling them, they fall and you can just like, Oh, you're 30 feet up in the air. Just like pinch ground works great. They take a lot of damage too. So it's beautiful, right? Yeah, exactly. If you're really clever, you can drop them on their friends too. That's fun. Let's see. So my cavalier is going to be out of luck against anything flying, you know, ground locked medium size, melee weapon. I could throw my spear and then not have a spear anymore. So realistically, what my character at least would be looking for is some way to fly winged boots, a cape, a broom of flying. Like broom of flying isn't Pegasus. What was that? A Pegasus. Oh, yeah. I'd take a Pegasus. Shoot. Yeah. Pegasus. I'm a really big fan of figurines of wondrous power for this. It's basically a pokeball that a creature comes out of depending on which one you have that'll have a different kind of cool down. The most efficient one if you just need something that'll get you off the ground is the Ebony fly. And as much as I hate the idea of riding around on a giant fly, it is very practical. I still hate it. I think you just need to find a Pegasus because it'll be useful to you both on the ground and in the air. True. I love that you're describing the Ebony fly as like the Toyota Corolla of mounts for getting into the air. It's more like the Ford Pinto of getting in there. Yeah, this baby's not much to look at, but it's so practical. It's the Ford Pinto of mounts and surfaces. I can just imagine like you're between turns. You're just waiting for your turn to happen. You've landed briefly and it does that thing that flies do where they just wrap their front legs together really fast. It's like, what are you doing? I feel like, yeah, I feel like when they they were doing that, I always thought it was just their way of, you know, giving us the finger like dropping their like germs everywhere. It's like, yeah, screw you humans. Enjoy your sandwich. So many sandwiches ruined. Try to kill me. Well, here's your sandwich. It's like when you're like when your brother is just like, oh, you want this? Well, I'm gonna lick it and now it's now it's mine. Okay, so yeah, we've talked about fighters from first level up into high levels. We mentioned at level 20, you get to attack four times traction, which is pretty great. But really, that's all there is to it. Like, biggest problems for fighters. They can't fly. They have some saving throw weaknesses and they don't have a way to get magic weapons. So if you have a magic weapon, a way to fly and some other defenses from your party, you're probably doing great. I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. Is there a way to make? Is there a way to make every fly? Somewhere. I'm sure. I wasn't ready. Oh, it was beautiful though. I liked it a lot. Okay, let me ask you questions. We get another extra attack at 20. Yeah. Opportunity cost. What level do you want to take your fighter to? Do you want to take the fighter at 20 to get that extra attack? Are you looking at this? Are there three other levels or two other levels somewhere else that if we do that, it will be so much more impactful for what we're building? It really depends. Three levels of barbarian for reckless attack is really great for melee builds. If you're building an Eldra tonight, one level of wizard or one level of artificer is awesome because you'll get more cantrips, more spells. Let's see. If you want to use your bonus action super heavily, two levels of rogue for cunning action can be a lot of fun. So if you get pull our master Sentinel and cunning action, enemy is run up to you. You hit them. You reduce their speed to zero and then depending on where they end up, you can use cunning action to disengage and attack. Attack. Attack. Disengage. Step away five feet and then make them come at you again. Not always super necessary, but it's a fun combo. If you were using a range weapon, that combo wouldn't be a reach. I said the wrong thing. If you're using a weapon with reach, that's less exciting, right? Because I'm already stopping in the mid 10 feet. I was never in there. That's right. Ideally, yes. If you are fighting at range, honestly, it's hard to pick another class and multi-class into. If you're fighting at range, because in terms of just shooting things with a bow and no magic, the fighter is it. You could go into Ranger and maybe use Hunter's Mark in favorite foe a little bit, but you're only going to get them a few times per day, so it's really not worth it. Yeah, generally, fighter can work fine on its own one to 20 as long as you fill in those gaps and you can usually do those with some low-rearity magic items or buffs from your party. I'm going to take Bard just so I can have any skills. Just take prodigy then. Oh, as a feat. That's fair. You don't need Bard. prodigy, skill expert, skilled. Actually, one level of rogue to get expertise in athletics is pretty solid if you're grappling a lot. That makes sense. Also, if you want to embrace the tank fantasy, going three levels in barbarian to get bare heart, bare totem, yeah. Become a bull work against everything. It's pretty great. It is pretty great. Resistance every damage type, except psychic. Twice per day, I think at that level, unfortunately, but yeah, that might be enough, honestly. Yeah, I'm not going any more in any other class because 18th level I get to be huge. Are you kidding me? Does that give you resistance to customer damage as well? It's not psychic damage. It's all damage types, except psychic damage. That's why people might be confused if you look at our Baldur's Gate handbook for barbarian. We actually rated bare heart pretty bad, poorly. It's not as good as it is in the tabletop because there's a lot of psychic damage in both of them. It's not going to fail a lot of dividends. There's also ways to get resistance to everything. If you're playing in a campaign with illithids running around, maybe that's not going to do as much good for you. It's not going to be great. We have a question of the week this week. Our question of the week comes to us from Jake Michael 1016. Would love to hear y'all's favorite BG3 items. Once again, Jake Michael, you've selected a question, not equipped to answer. I think it's great that you offered it, and I think it's very relevant to the hobby. It's very like Nason. It's here. I, unfortunately, I can't participate yet because I'm saving myself for my coasts. What a weird way to phrase that? I picked this one because fighters. I picked this one because fighters benefit a ton in the other way. Yeah. Really. Any combination of words you could have used, and that's what you chose. I picked this question because fighters benefit a ton from magic items, because they have no built in abilities, because they have relatively few active buttons to push. Adding on magic items can add a lot of interesting stuff for fighters. It can fill in those defensive gaps. It can boost their offensive capabilities. It can really make them much more engaging to play, and I think Bowler's Gate does that pretty well, so there's a ton of great examples. Ashley, I have any favorites? Yeah. Bowler's Gate has so many. Yeah, they're not great for fighter, but I do have some favorite ones. Well, one that's just decent for everybody, that's good for everybody is the adamantine armor that you can get. That's just really good. I like Fowler Alouve, the sword that you can find in the Underdark. Very fun. It has cool lore about it. It has a cool feature that I really like, and also the staff of Marcoca Shear, the best staff in the game, Bar None. Being able to cast six-level spell twice is just great. Plus, it gives you really cool features that gives you two really good spells based on what element you choose to attune to, really solid with my source tempest cleric storm sorcerer build that is on the website under the sorcerer handbook, if you're curious, that is a ridiculous build, especially with Marcoca Shear staff. There's just so many cool items in the game. Some that are useful, powerful, and some that are just fun and cool to have. I don't think I found that one somehow. I might have to have you point me to that. Yeah, offline. I'll tell you where it is off the pile. Okay, so I really liked the returning pike, which you can get pretty early in Act 1, one of the biggest problems for throne weapon builds. 5E is reloading essentially, and the easiest way to solve that is with a returning weapon, but unless you're an artificer, the most successful returning weapon for a very long time was the Dorven Thrower, which is very rare, so you're not getting that until you're fairly high level. So thrown weapon builds were borderline impossible, and because they're borderline impossible, no one ever makes them, so no one's ever going to need a Dorven Thrower. The returning pike neatly solves that problem, gives your fighters a great strength-based ranged weapon option at low levels. Just all around, opens up a ton of gameplay options, really, really works. Honestly, it's not so powerful that it breaks the game. Now, I'm forgetting the name of the weapon, but the thrown weapon that does break the game is this trident you can get. You know the genie that can turn you into, is it a spoiler to tell people this? There's a genie. If you piss them off once, they'll do something funny. If you piss them off twice, they'll do something funnier and send you to Jurassic Park. If you use Sur-- They sent you to chose. If you survive Chalt/Jurassic Park, there's a chest on the way out that has what I can only describe as an arm-propelled rocket. You throw it, it returns to your hand, it explodes. I have ended so many encounters with a fighter, with action surge, just bombing a room with this thing. Okay. Nothing else, Wizards didn't need cast spells, just explosions at the end of a spear. Oh, no, sorry. Not in that order. Jeez. The order of operations here really matter. What you said is you throw it, it returns to your hand, it explodes. Yeah. That sounds much better. Let's use that one. Yeah. I picked that up. I think it explodes. Yeah, it explodes once you hit something. It doesn't explode once it returns to you, because that would be a very bad thing. There are the boomerang of intelligence check, there are meme weapons and items like that in the game that are just like, press this die very fun. I'm specifically thinking of the thing that Gail can do, you can just end your campaign with a button on Gail's hot bar that you get at a certain point. Literally, it's just like, I'm done with this game, I want it to be over. So I'm just going to click this button. The fact that it's just on the hot bar, like why, I don't know why they put it there, but it's hilarious that they do, great. It's fantastic. Oh, Hill, the Leisure Luminati. I'm Randall James, you'll find me at amateurjack.com and on Twitter and Instagram @jackamature. I'm Tyler Camposio, you'll find me on RPGbot.net, Facebook and Twitter, RPG, B-O-T, D-O-T, N-E-T, most other socials as RPG bot. I'm Ashela, you'll find me fighting baddoers on Twitter, aggrivish, it's not really. Or on YouTube @ashravenmedia, if you want to hire me for one of your games, please check out contact me on StartPlaying.com's link in the show. If you've enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcast and rate us on Spotify or your favorite podcast app. It's a quick free way to support the podcast and helps us to reach new listeners. You'll find links in the show notes. You'll find affiliate links for source books and other materials linked in the show notes, as well as on RPGbot.net. Following these links helps us to make this show happen every week. If your question should be the question of the week next week, please email [email protected] or message us on Twitter @RPG, B-O-T, D-O-T, N-E-T. Please also consider supporting us on Patreon, where you'll find all kinds of great rewards. At any tier, you'll get early access to RPGbot.content and pulls from future content. At our $3 tiers, you'll enjoy your choice of @freepodcast episodes or @freeaccesstoRPGbot.net. At our $5 tiers above, you'll get both plus access to RPGbot.discord. You'll find us at patreon.com. You can find us at patreon.com/RPGbot. Funding for the public broadcasting system is fought to you by viewers like what it got for me, and I just wanted to go to sleep, so thank you for that. Another jam. Hey, blue. The UPS store to the rescue. Oh, your printer and I need to talk. Wow, much better. At the UPS store, we print banners, brochures, business cards, basically anything that says my business means business. And our printing pros are ready to help make sure everything looks sharp and isn't in comic sands. I like comic sands. No, you don't. With over 5,500 locations, there's a blue near you at the UPS store. Most locations are independently owned, product services, prices, and hours of operation may vary. See store for details.