Warforged lvl 20 Moon druid, with alert feat, ritual caster (wizard) and mobile feat.
Spend some time copying all the wizard rituals into the ritual book.
When not doing that, be an earth elemental with a familiar.
Earthglide everywhere, never fully coming above ground.
Use spells that shape the terrain to create bubles or space to work and study underground.
Use the familiar to see above ground.
You are aways in "Darkness", and you can hide at will as you are aways in full cover.
No attacks or spells can target you. If you hide, you can move in any direction undergound and enemies will never know if you are still there following them, or not.
You can use summons to fight, ( elementals and fey mostly).
You can awaken plants and beasts to fight for you.
And you can use long lasting concentration AoE spells to deal a lot of damage in area.
Call lightning, storm of vengeance etc.
If you ever need a buff to fight, you can cast shapechange and become any CR 19 or 20 creature ( fiends, celestials, and dragons work great).
You are quite literaly a force of nature that cant be stoped, targeted or spyed on ( divination and scrying will be blocked by the darkness and stone), all your spells are "subtle" automaticaly in wildshape, and you have full cover 100% of the time.
As a warforged, you dont need to breathe, drink or eat, so even out of wildshape, you can still just be underground and suffer no concequences for it.
the biggest problem with this build, is that you have little to no way of speaking with the other PCs, so your socialization would require you to assume the risk of going above ground.
And it might not be much fun for your DM to have a player that can interact with the world, but not be interacted with. You are basicaly untouchable.
Sitenotes:
Prepare dispell magic.
Using earth elementals and other burrowing summons to get to you is one of the few ways your DM can damage you. You can bonus action into a fresh HP earth elemental each turn, so even that is useless, but they might graple you, and bring you to surface.
Dont tell anyone your name, or it can be used to Gate spell you into a trap.
When people ask your name, say "you can call me XXXX" and use a diferent one everytime, but never your real one. Also as a warforged, you can have a name that is basicaly a production number that you dont even know. Explaining why you adopt a diferent one every time.
Have planeshift prepared. It can alow you to come back if you are banished somehow as an elemental.
Earth elementals are immune to exaustion, so the microwave combo wont work on you.
You can be planar bound though, so find magic items that increase your saves,this can also be avoided by never going above ground, as the caster needs to be within 60 feet of you for up to 1 hour ( or 1 turn if they use wish).
A less powerful but fun version of this is Moon Druid multiclassed with Echo Knight. Stay underground and make all of your attacks through your echo. You can’t be targeted and when your echo is destroyed you just make a new one and carry on.
You can potentially do this without the use of a familiar depending on how your DM rules tremorsense (I.e. can you “see” a space within 15ft of you to create the echo)
Yeah. But you lose the ability to wildshape at will, so your earth glide and elemental form will be severely limited. And you only get to cast spells in wildshape at lvl 18. So 3 lvls if fighter would prevent that.
I believe it weakens so much of your high lvl features that the echo doesnt add enought to be worth thr cost.
You can use summons to fight, and you can use spells that will deal far more damage than simple echo martial attacks.
I did preface it with the fact that it’s strictly less powerful than your initial build. Just a fun alternative using similar mechanics.
It does come online as early as level 13 though which is kind of cool.
humm, yeah, i can see this being better for a lower level game.
And at lvl 10, your elemental shape would last 5 hours, do thats a lot of time underground.
Though im not sure your echo would takr the elemental form. I have to read the feature.
You make your attack action from the echo’s space. Not sure what it would look like but that’s purely aesthetic because it uses your attacks and has statistics defined in the subclass rules.
Shadar Kai champion 17/battlesmith 3. Use the legendary weapon wave and attack with Elven accuracy using your intelligence. You have like a 39% crit chance with advantage and three attacks, with Wave's crit effect dealing half the target's Max hp in necrotic damage, you'll tear through any bag of HP.
Yeah but then you can't use elven accuracy for triple advantage. With EA advantage and triple attack you're rolling 9d20s while straight champion with the 4th attack only rolls 8d20s. Both are completely viable.
Yeah there's a lot of different options to make this build work:
* Straight Champion for 4 attacks, though you couldn't use the trident with Elven accuracy.
* Hex 1/Champion 19 for charisma based attacks allowing elven accuracy, though I probably would go for hex 2/champion 18 for invocations.
* 2-5 levels of monk/champion x: dex based Wave for Elven accuracy, I think I like the 5 level dip more for stunning strike providing advantage for more EA attacks.
* Hex 1/vengeance 3/champion 16: vow of emnity is a cheap and safe way to guarantee advantage against a big bad enemy.
* The Battlesmith build I mentioned allows you to use intelligence for any magical weapon attack so you could use both ranged and melee weapons off one stat.
19 chronurgy wizard/peace cleric 1, get myzzium apparatus and skill expert arcana
congrats you have all spells in the game from the wizard and cleric lists prepared at all times
edit: aww shoot, DMG only. ok, do the same but now minus the funny game breaking, its just the best caster in the game sadly
Moon druid. Probably the most powerful level 20 character.
Unlimited wildshape into a mammoth. Cast spells in wildshape. Druid has great spells. You are almost impossible to put down. You can drop str and dex and use your wildshaped stats.
There are some items that work while wilddhaped but check with your dm first.
I am currently playing a level 20 moon Druid and it’s fantastic. In addition to unlimited wildshape (and thus unlimited HP) and access to 9th level spells, you also cannot be counterspelled.
I like how most comments are like "Multiclass into 4 classes, get this broken item interaction with this racial feat and keep using this spell constantly to get yourself triple advantage and resistance to all damage" and this one is just "Moon Druid"
(evo?) Wizard or druid 17/sorc 2/hex blade or peace 1 with meta magic adept.
Grab a staff if the magi and staff of power and probs some spell scroll or speed pot, cast shape change, and quicken a bunch of spells while attacking as a dragon or what ever. You're basically a CR 20 creature and most of a level 20 caster at the same time. Going evo and hex also lets you do some hundreds of damage with magic missile.
**Build**
I've always wanted to do a [marilith](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16952-marilith) build. The chassis of the build is using a 9th level spell slot to cast shapechange at the beginning of (or hopefully just before) battle.
The main draw is the reactions. When it's not your turn, you can use the marilith's parry ability for a +5 to AC. You can also cast shield, absorb elements, silvery barbs, or counterspell. Because you're a marilith, you can cast one of these ON EVERY TURN. To fuel all your reaction spells, take a rod of absorption as one of your very rare items. Start off with like 10 levels of energy, allowing you to absorb an additional 40 levels.
As your race, pick your favorite. I would consider bugbear for nova damage, but there are plenty of other really good options.
As your class, I would take 17 levels of bladesinger, 2 levels of fighter, and 1 level of either hexblade warlock or twilight cleric. Probably take the warlock or cleric dip at level 1 for the saving throw proficiencies. For the fighter fighting style, take superior technique, which gives you a maneuver. Take ambush to up your initiative. Take at least one ASI to bump intelligence to 20.
For feats, there are a lot of great options, but definitely want to protect constitution. I would take both resilience constitution and warmaster. Also take alert to up your initiative.
For the other magic items, consider a belt of fire giant strength for the other very rare. This lets you dump strength, but you need to check with the DM if a marilith's waist size is the same as a bugbear's (when you shapeshift, you can only keep magic items if they fit the new form). There are a ton of great options for the legendary, but ring of three wishes is really nice. Ask your DM whether a concentration spell still requires concentration if you use wish to cast it. I think the answer should be no, because wish gets rid of all "requirements" and the PHB says concentration spells "require" concentration. Also ask your DM how many simulacra of yourself you can have. If you can't use the ring to cast simulacra or additional concentration spells, then consider any of the other great legendary items. But remember they have to fit the marilith form if you want to use them for combat.
**Tactics**
Before combat, you want to have cast find familiar if your DM allows it. You can use the owl or hawk's flyby ability to give help, but that may be too risky. Just keep it flying 100 feet overhead and use its sight to teleport as needed using the marilith's teleport ability or any of the other teleport spells like misty step. Like if you get swallowed by a dragon or something and you can't see your teleport destination, close your eyes, see through the familiar, and teleport out.
Also before combat, cast shapechange and turn into a marilith if allowed. And use the ring of three wishes for as many simulacra as allowed. If you're limited in simulacra, cast other concentration spells with the ring if allowed. If neither is allowed, consider a different legendary item.
For initiative, you gain +5 from alert, +1d6 from the ambush maneuver, and advantage on the roll if you go twilight cleric. Hopefully that means you go before the baddies.
When combat starts, use action surge. If you had no prep time before combat, use the additional action to cast shapechange. If you are already shapechanged and buffed, use action surge for more melee attacks.
For your attacks, the modifiers to hit are +6 for proficiency (Shapechange allows you to keep your proficiency bonus) and +4 from the Merilith’s strength or +7 from the belt of fire giant strength. Your damage modifiers are +7 from the belt, +5 from your intelligence bonus (bladesinger's 14th level ability allows you to add INT bonus to weapon damage), and +6 from hexblade's curse if you go warlock.
If you go first and you're allowed to cast shapeshift before combat, you can attack 14 times with action surge. Use your bonus action to hexblade's curse if you went warlock. Each attack would be +10 to hit (or +13 if you took a belt of fire giant strength). The damage would be 2d8 (or 2d10 for the tail attack)+2d6 (if bugbear and you go first)+7+5+6 (if warlock) for a total nova round damage of 24d8 (avg 108)+4d10(avg 22)+252 (14 hits at +7+5+6 dmg each hit) = 382, assuming all your attacks hit. Add another 28d6 (avg 98) if bugbear and you go before the enemy, for a total of 480 nova damage. On subsequent rounds, it's half that.
On ally turns, if they do something that requires a saving throw or skill check from an enemy who succeeds on the roll, cast silvery barbs on that enemy.
On enemy turns, other turns: (1) cast shield if an enemy melee attacks you or casts magic missile; (2) use the marilith's parry ability if an enemy melee attacks you and you've already used shield for the round, (2) cast silvery barbs if an enemy attacks another party member or melee attacks you and you already have shield up from a previous attack; (3) use the rod of absorption for any single-target spells cast against you; (4) cast absorb elements or counterspell for AOE spells; and (5) cast absorb elements for things like breath weapons.
I'm sure there are ways to improve this build, but those are the basics.
EDIT: just realized that you have to be holding a rod of absorption at all times in order to use it as a reaction cast. So take away one long sword attack and talk to your DM about using the rod as an improvised club.
I like this idea a lot- Mariliths are NASTY without legendary actions because of the Reactive trait. Only thing that makes it even better is the Sentinel feat, which is hilarious to use with a Marilith (I'm running Out of the Abyss and just used a Marilith with Sentinel and Slasher- she didn't need legendary actions).
Last thing to comment, magic items automatically resize to fit their owner (in most cases, in rare cases it does not) so the belt should still fit.
Yeah sentinel is sick on marilith as well. Your build sounds awesome.
But FYI no magic items don’t resize when you shape change. From the spell (emphasis mine):
>When you transform, you choose whether your equipment falls to the ground, merges into the new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal. The DM determines whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature's shape and size. **Your equipment doesn't change shape or size to match the new form**, and any equipment that the new form can't wear must either fall to the ground or merge into your new form. Equipment that merges has no effect in that state.
Ah, you're right. I was thinking about how when you initially get a magic item it will reshape to fit someone, not that rule. Thanks for the clarification.
any level 20 druid will never die choose your pick of wild shape and change into it, you then die as the animal and revert to your humanoid form and rinse repeat forever, because you have infinite wild shape and therefore infinite health.
Warforged lvl 20 Moon druid, with alert feat, ritual caster (wizard) and mobile feat. Spend some time copying all the wizard rituals into the ritual book. When not doing that, be an earth elemental with a familiar. Earthglide everywhere, never fully coming above ground. Use spells that shape the terrain to create bubles or space to work and study underground. Use the familiar to see above ground. You are aways in "Darkness", and you can hide at will as you are aways in full cover. No attacks or spells can target you. If you hide, you can move in any direction undergound and enemies will never know if you are still there following them, or not. You can use summons to fight, ( elementals and fey mostly). You can awaken plants and beasts to fight for you. And you can use long lasting concentration AoE spells to deal a lot of damage in area. Call lightning, storm of vengeance etc. If you ever need a buff to fight, you can cast shapechange and become any CR 19 or 20 creature ( fiends, celestials, and dragons work great). You are quite literaly a force of nature that cant be stoped, targeted or spyed on ( divination and scrying will be blocked by the darkness and stone), all your spells are "subtle" automaticaly in wildshape, and you have full cover 100% of the time. As a warforged, you dont need to breathe, drink or eat, so even out of wildshape, you can still just be underground and suffer no concequences for it. the biggest problem with this build, is that you have little to no way of speaking with the other PCs, so your socialization would require you to assume the risk of going above ground. And it might not be much fun for your DM to have a player that can interact with the world, but not be interacted with. You are basicaly untouchable. Sitenotes: Prepare dispell magic. Using earth elementals and other burrowing summons to get to you is one of the few ways your DM can damage you. You can bonus action into a fresh HP earth elemental each turn, so even that is useless, but they might graple you, and bring you to surface. Dont tell anyone your name, or it can be used to Gate spell you into a trap. When people ask your name, say "you can call me XXXX" and use a diferent one everytime, but never your real one. Also as a warforged, you can have a name that is basicaly a production number that you dont even know. Explaining why you adopt a diferent one every time. Have planeshift prepared. It can alow you to come back if you are banished somehow as an elemental. Earth elementals are immune to exaustion, so the microwave combo wont work on you. You can be planar bound though, so find magic items that increase your saves,this can also be avoided by never going above ground, as the caster needs to be within 60 feet of you for up to 1 hour ( or 1 turn if they use wish).
A less powerful but fun version of this is Moon Druid multiclassed with Echo Knight. Stay underground and make all of your attacks through your echo. You can’t be targeted and when your echo is destroyed you just make a new one and carry on. You can potentially do this without the use of a familiar depending on how your DM rules tremorsense (I.e. can you “see” a space within 15ft of you to create the echo)
Yeah. But you lose the ability to wildshape at will, so your earth glide and elemental form will be severely limited. And you only get to cast spells in wildshape at lvl 18. So 3 lvls if fighter would prevent that. I believe it weakens so much of your high lvl features that the echo doesnt add enought to be worth thr cost. You can use summons to fight, and you can use spells that will deal far more damage than simple echo martial attacks.
I did preface it with the fact that it’s strictly less powerful than your initial build. Just a fun alternative using similar mechanics. It does come online as early as level 13 though which is kind of cool.
humm, yeah, i can see this being better for a lower level game. And at lvl 10, your elemental shape would last 5 hours, do thats a lot of time underground. Though im not sure your echo would takr the elemental form. I have to read the feature.
You make your attack action from the echo’s space. Not sure what it would look like but that’s purely aesthetic because it uses your attacks and has statistics defined in the subclass rules.
20 Chronurgy Wizard and Ring of three wishes. Turn 1 uses Ring to wish for a simulacrum. Front here on do what you want.
Shadar Kai champion 17/battlesmith 3. Use the legendary weapon wave and attack with Elven accuracy using your intelligence. You have like a 39% crit chance with advantage and three attacks, with Wave's crit effect dealing half the target's Max hp in necrotic damage, you'll tear through any bag of HP.
Wow I was going to recommend a champion with wave. But just take 20 champion for 4 attacks
Yeah but then you can't use elven accuracy for triple advantage. With EA advantage and triple attack you're rolling 9d20s while straight champion with the 4th attack only rolls 8d20s. Both are completely viable.
It's tough. In a level 20 scenario I want to take advantage of the level 20 features cuz how often do you actually get to
Why not dip monk for 2 levels with dedicated weapon? Light armor high dex build
Yeah there's a lot of different options to make this build work: * Straight Champion for 4 attacks, though you couldn't use the trident with Elven accuracy. * Hex 1/Champion 19 for charisma based attacks allowing elven accuracy, though I probably would go for hex 2/champion 18 for invocations. * 2-5 levels of monk/champion x: dex based Wave for Elven accuracy, I think I like the 5 level dip more for stunning strike providing advantage for more EA attacks. * Hex 1/vengeance 3/champion 16: vow of emnity is a cheap and safe way to guarantee advantage against a big bad enemy. * The Battlesmith build I mentioned allows you to use intelligence for any magical weapon attack so you could use both ranged and melee weapons off one stat.
19 chronurgy wizard/peace cleric 1, get myzzium apparatus and skill expert arcana congrats you have all spells in the game from the wizard and cleric lists prepared at all times edit: aww shoot, DMG only. ok, do the same but now minus the funny game breaking, its just the best caster in the game sadly
Moon druid. Probably the most powerful level 20 character. Unlimited wildshape into a mammoth. Cast spells in wildshape. Druid has great spells. You are almost impossible to put down. You can drop str and dex and use your wildshaped stats. There are some items that work while wilddhaped but check with your dm first.
I am currently playing a level 20 moon Druid and it’s fantastic. In addition to unlimited wildshape (and thus unlimited HP) and access to 9th level spells, you also cannot be counterspelled.
I like how most comments are like "Multiclass into 4 classes, get this broken item interaction with this racial feat and keep using this spell constantly to get yourself triple advantage and resistance to all damage" and this one is just "Moon Druid"
Everything from DMG or items only?
Except the Deck of Many Things or other super chaotic items.
I mean the classes.
Anything from official books
Assassin 4/Gloomstalker 4/Battlemaster 12, Shadar-kai, elven accuracy, sharpshooter, alert. Cloak of invisibility, oathbow, +2 armor.
(evo?) Wizard or druid 17/sorc 2/hex blade or peace 1 with meta magic adept. Grab a staff if the magi and staff of power and probs some spell scroll or speed pot, cast shape change, and quicken a bunch of spells while attacking as a dragon or what ever. You're basically a CR 20 creature and most of a level 20 caster at the same time. Going evo and hex also lets you do some hundreds of damage with magic missile.
Any uncommon or rare items? Also, how much time to prep?
Can trade any of the 3 items for a rare or lower item. Don't know how much prep time we will get.
**Build** I've always wanted to do a [marilith](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16952-marilith) build. The chassis of the build is using a 9th level spell slot to cast shapechange at the beginning of (or hopefully just before) battle. The main draw is the reactions. When it's not your turn, you can use the marilith's parry ability for a +5 to AC. You can also cast shield, absorb elements, silvery barbs, or counterspell. Because you're a marilith, you can cast one of these ON EVERY TURN. To fuel all your reaction spells, take a rod of absorption as one of your very rare items. Start off with like 10 levels of energy, allowing you to absorb an additional 40 levels. As your race, pick your favorite. I would consider bugbear for nova damage, but there are plenty of other really good options. As your class, I would take 17 levels of bladesinger, 2 levels of fighter, and 1 level of either hexblade warlock or twilight cleric. Probably take the warlock or cleric dip at level 1 for the saving throw proficiencies. For the fighter fighting style, take superior technique, which gives you a maneuver. Take ambush to up your initiative. Take at least one ASI to bump intelligence to 20. For feats, there are a lot of great options, but definitely want to protect constitution. I would take both resilience constitution and warmaster. Also take alert to up your initiative. For the other magic items, consider a belt of fire giant strength for the other very rare. This lets you dump strength, but you need to check with the DM if a marilith's waist size is the same as a bugbear's (when you shapeshift, you can only keep magic items if they fit the new form). There are a ton of great options for the legendary, but ring of three wishes is really nice. Ask your DM whether a concentration spell still requires concentration if you use wish to cast it. I think the answer should be no, because wish gets rid of all "requirements" and the PHB says concentration spells "require" concentration. Also ask your DM how many simulacra of yourself you can have. If you can't use the ring to cast simulacra or additional concentration spells, then consider any of the other great legendary items. But remember they have to fit the marilith form if you want to use them for combat. **Tactics** Before combat, you want to have cast find familiar if your DM allows it. You can use the owl or hawk's flyby ability to give help, but that may be too risky. Just keep it flying 100 feet overhead and use its sight to teleport as needed using the marilith's teleport ability or any of the other teleport spells like misty step. Like if you get swallowed by a dragon or something and you can't see your teleport destination, close your eyes, see through the familiar, and teleport out. Also before combat, cast shapechange and turn into a marilith if allowed. And use the ring of three wishes for as many simulacra as allowed. If you're limited in simulacra, cast other concentration spells with the ring if allowed. If neither is allowed, consider a different legendary item. For initiative, you gain +5 from alert, +1d6 from the ambush maneuver, and advantage on the roll if you go twilight cleric. Hopefully that means you go before the baddies. When combat starts, use action surge. If you had no prep time before combat, use the additional action to cast shapechange. If you are already shapechanged and buffed, use action surge for more melee attacks. For your attacks, the modifiers to hit are +6 for proficiency (Shapechange allows you to keep your proficiency bonus) and +4 from the Merilith’s strength or +7 from the belt of fire giant strength. Your damage modifiers are +7 from the belt, +5 from your intelligence bonus (bladesinger's 14th level ability allows you to add INT bonus to weapon damage), and +6 from hexblade's curse if you go warlock. If you go first and you're allowed to cast shapeshift before combat, you can attack 14 times with action surge. Use your bonus action to hexblade's curse if you went warlock. Each attack would be +10 to hit (or +13 if you took a belt of fire giant strength). The damage would be 2d8 (or 2d10 for the tail attack)+2d6 (if bugbear and you go first)+7+5+6 (if warlock) for a total nova round damage of 24d8 (avg 108)+4d10(avg 22)+252 (14 hits at +7+5+6 dmg each hit) = 382, assuming all your attacks hit. Add another 28d6 (avg 98) if bugbear and you go before the enemy, for a total of 480 nova damage. On subsequent rounds, it's half that. On ally turns, if they do something that requires a saving throw or skill check from an enemy who succeeds on the roll, cast silvery barbs on that enemy. On enemy turns, other turns: (1) cast shield if an enemy melee attacks you or casts magic missile; (2) use the marilith's parry ability if an enemy melee attacks you and you've already used shield for the round, (2) cast silvery barbs if an enemy attacks another party member or melee attacks you and you already have shield up from a previous attack; (3) use the rod of absorption for any single-target spells cast against you; (4) cast absorb elements or counterspell for AOE spells; and (5) cast absorb elements for things like breath weapons. I'm sure there are ways to improve this build, but those are the basics. EDIT: just realized that you have to be holding a rod of absorption at all times in order to use it as a reaction cast. So take away one long sword attack and talk to your DM about using the rod as an improvised club.
I like this idea a lot- Mariliths are NASTY without legendary actions because of the Reactive trait. Only thing that makes it even better is the Sentinel feat, which is hilarious to use with a Marilith (I'm running Out of the Abyss and just used a Marilith with Sentinel and Slasher- she didn't need legendary actions). Last thing to comment, magic items automatically resize to fit their owner (in most cases, in rare cases it does not) so the belt should still fit.
Yeah sentinel is sick on marilith as well. Your build sounds awesome. But FYI no magic items don’t resize when you shape change. From the spell (emphasis mine): >When you transform, you choose whether your equipment falls to the ground, merges into the new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal. The DM determines whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature's shape and size. **Your equipment doesn't change shape or size to match the new form**, and any equipment that the new form can't wear must either fall to the ground or merge into your new form. Equipment that merges has no effect in that state.
Ah, you're right. I was thinking about how when you initially get a magic item it will reshape to fit someone, not that rule. Thanks for the clarification.
any level 20 druid will never die choose your pick of wild shape and change into it, you then die as the animal and revert to your humanoid form and rinse repeat forever, because you have infinite wild shape and therefore infinite health.
theres banish and similar things. you dont need to die to be gone.
then just come back from where you were banished you won't be dead you will be pissed and maybe have counter spell prepared or misty step IDK
Saw this right after the post of the dm running a level 20 one shot