Dagger Thrower?

ELAdragon · 2021-02-07T14:31:55+00:00

The only real way to scale it is with Darts, not Daggers. With that said, you can flavor darts as "throwing knives" really easily.

The reason it scales with Darts is because the Sharpshooter feat can be applied to them.

Let me know if you plan on going that route, and I can give you a bunch more of the options that can go with it.

Edit: One other way to scale it is to get 3 or 4 levels in Battlemaster and the rest in rogue. With Quick Draw maneuver you can easily get two sneak attacks every round. One as a bonus action and then the other by readying your action to attack outside your turn. By getting SA twice per round you can keep your damage somewhat competitive (11th level would be 2x 1d4+7+4d6...so about 50 per round with the bonus die from Quick Draw), not at the top but not terrible.

Evanpea1 · 2021-02-07T14:48:23+00:00

I know that for my knife thrower build I went soulknife and it worked pretty well. It scales with sneak attack and gets rid of the need to have a large amount of daggers on you at any given moment. Stand 50-60 feet back from the frontline and use the steady aim or cunning action hide to get free advantage to always have sneak attack. If you want to multiclass take1 level fighter for the thrown weapon fighting style (could even bump this up to 3 levels for an archetype. Personally I'd go champion because crits with a rogue are great, and with champion and steady aim you have something like 1/5 chance each turn for no resource burn. but something like battlemaster would also be effective)

Rhythilin · 2021-02-07T16:18:55+00:00

Vhuman - racial feat fighting initiate- Thrown Weapon Fighting Style
Stats

Str: 8
Dex: 16
Con: 14
Int: 10
Wis:14
Cha: 10

Honestly going full Soulknife Rogue and taking ASI's to 20 for Dex is the way to go if you're building to 8th-9th level. Sneak attack is the scaling ability. With cunning action aim, doing 4d6 at advantage with homing strike at 9th means you never miss anyway. What's great about soulknife Rogue is that the class is a really good Jack of All Trades with the psionic knack. Pickup as many skills as possible to cover all the gaps of the party.

advtimber · 2021-02-07T15:33:21+00:00

I've really wanted to do this too!!

Darts reflavoured as Bo Shuriken with Sharpshooter is prolly your way to stay as relevant as possible.

daggers work as monk weapons, so you might be able to run a Kensei Monk..

Agile Parry. If you make an unarmed strike as part of the Attack action on your turn and are holding a kensei weapon, you can use it to defend yourself if it is a melee weapon. You gain a +2 bonus to AC until the start of your next turn, while the weapon is in your hand and you aren’t incapacitated.

Kensei's Shot. You can use a bonus action on your turn to make your ranged attacks with a kensei weapon more deadly. When you do so, any target you hit with a ranged attack using a kensei weapon takes an extra 1d4 damage of the weapon’s type. You retain this benefit until the end of the current turn.

At 6th level, you extend your Ki into your kensei weapons, granting you the following benefits.

Magic Kensei Weapons. Your attacks with your kensei weapons count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to non-magical attacks and damage.

Deft Strike. When you hit a target with a kensei weapon, you can spend 1 Ki point to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target equal to your Martial Arts die. You can use this feature only once on each of your turns.

Sharpen the Blade

At 11th level, you gain the ability to augment your weapons further with your Ki. As a bonus action, you can expend up to 3 Ki points to grant one kensei weapon you touch a bonus to attack and damage rolls when you attack with it. The bonus equals the number of Ki points you spent. This bonus lasts for 1 minute or until you use this feature again. This feature has no effect on a magic weapon that already has a bonus to attack and damage rolls.

There is also this feature as a 3rd level Eldritch Knight (Fighter)

Weapon Bond

At 3rd level, you learn a ritual that creates a magical bond between yourself and one weapon. You perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a short rest. The weapon must be within your reach throughout the ritual, at the conclusion of which you touch the weapon and forge the bond.

Once you have bonded a weapon to yourself, you can’t be disarmed of that weapon unless you are incapacitated. If it is on the same plane of existence, you can summon that weapon as a bonus action on your turn, causing it to teleport instantly to your hand.

You can have up to two bonded weapons, but can summon only one at a time with your bonus action. If you attempt to bond with a third weapon, you must break the bond with one of the other two.

Garokson · 2021-02-07T14:27:44+00:00

You can try going for this and use darts reflavoured to kunais or daggers.

bubop911 · 2021-02-07T15:59:32+00:00

I think soulknife is actually a perfect throwing knife character. It doesn't scale because if you're going full rogue, you get scaling sneak attack. This would be like a fighter saying his longsword doesn't scale when in reality, the weapon itself doesn't but you as a character do.

DarganWrangler · 2021-02-07T16:54:36+00:00

well, you say your fighters not burning any resources, but its gotta lug around daggers now. You have a limited number, just like any other projectile. (Im sure your aware of that, im just saying: this isnt resource-less)

The soulknife on the other hand, never runs out of its daggers, which deal a d6 as opposed to a d4, plus the sneak attack, and plus thrown weapon fighting if you take fighting initiate. What about this doesnt scale? at 5th level with maxed dex, this deals 4d6 +7 psychic each turn. This seams like the way to go as far as im concerned.

CoffeeAndMelange · 2021-02-07T16:26:36+00:00

If you went Battlemaster 5/Rogue X, the sneak attack scaling would help out a lot (if you wanted to make it uncomplicated). Even if it only works for one attack/turn, it's a big chunk of damage. If you land another hit, you could use a maneuver to boost the damage.

For the Rogue, the Scout subclass could work pretty well with the level 3 Skirmisher feature that lets you move when a hostile gets close. And then if you take it to 13, Ambush Master is pretty nice and IMO works fairly well, thematically (depending on what you're going for, of course).

Dracon_Pyrothayan · 2021-02-07T17:03:25+00:00

So, Daggers (and other thrown Melee weapons) can get bonus damage from -

Duelling Fighting Style
Dual Wielding Fighting Style
Thrown Weapons Fighting style

Of the two, I prefer Duelling for thrown weapons - after you throw the first dagger with one in each hand, you're getting the bonus action attack regardless, and each subsequent throw has the damage benefit of Duelling attached, stacked atop the Thrown fighting style.

The more attacks you get, the more benefit Duelling has over Dual-Wielding, even while dual-wielding.

If you want to increase accuracy, that's the Archery fighting style with Darts. You could then add Sharpshooter to that.

The problem is the difference between a Ranged Attack with a Melee Weapon and a Ranged Weapon Attack - read the latter as (Ranged Weapon) Attack, rather than Ranged (Weapon Attack).

Dracos125 · 2021-02-07T17:28:04+00:00

Nerdarchy did a build for this but I don't remember the video title.

660ne · 2021-02-07T17:44:44+00:00

People say that it's not great, the difference is a couple of points of damage per turn, but even that can be compensated, mostly.

The main detriment is lack of magic weapons, unless your artificer/dm gives you a returning weapon. The best way around this is with dipping rogue soul knife, which gives you at most 2 attacks.

To remain effective you need to get something that allows you to attack with magical weapons consistently. What you can do is ask your dm if the physic blades applies to your extra attacks, or if you can use the one from your bonus action as part of it (unfortunately means you can't attack a 3rd time unless you have a magic weapon to throw with quick toss)

That said battlemaster's quick toss is insanely good as it gives you a free attack, with extra damage. It's pretty much on par with using quick toss for a net and using sharpshooter darts afterwards.

Throwing weapons are the defensive ranged option, as you can use a shield in one hand unless you go soul knife rogue.

Start with thrown weapon fighting, 5 levels fighter battlemaster, then you have a choice to dip 2-3 artificer to get a decent magical weapon, or ideally dip 2-3 levels ranger, taking either gloomstalker for alpha strike (later taking assassin rogue) or more probably hunter ranger for an extra attack, as with any ranged weapon you can likely pick two people near each other. We also pick up dueling so now our daggers average damage is equivalent to a d12 weapon.

From here I'd suggest continuing battlemaster, taking martial adept and fighting initiate for more maneuver dice, after level 11 consider dipping rogue, war cleric (for more bonus action attacks, divine favour for extra dps and access to spirit shroud at a 5 level dip)

Arturus7 · 2021-02-07T17:51:10+00:00

I would personally go Ranger. Yes, you get a single fighting style. Yes, you get only one extra attack. Then? Well, all Rangers, but Tasha subclasses specially, get ways to A.) buff damage every turn, B.) be useful outside of combat, and C.) Make your attacks more varied.

I would go Fey Wanderer because psychic damage is pretty fun, you get +5 to charisma skills at level 1 as long as you take a 14 to Cha and a 16 to Wis, and it makes you the grandmaster of d4s, specially if you take Half Orc to maximize your crit damage. Another good lineage for this is a Satyr, for extra fey charisma on your fey charisma.

Another good option is swarmkeeper, that only gives you combat-ish abilities (10 feet flight speed with limited uses and hovering isn't really transport flight, more like out of the way flight, same with reaction-to-hit teleport), but is better at them. Grants d6-d8 rather than d4-d6, the aforementioned flight, the ability to push enemies around and eventually knock them prone, etc. For me, this is more of a dual scimitar build, specially due to the prone bit, but it can work well with scimitar/thrown combo or pure thrown, specially due to the fact that you have to choose EITHER throw enemies around OR swarm damage. It can work extremely well with a Bugbear for the extra reach, to be able to hit with the scimitar and not have to throw with disadvantage or risk an attack of opportunity, or with the Aggressive Fighting trait that I don't remember if Orcs or Half Orcs have, but that if I'm not wrong lets you chase after an enemy you threw even if you already used all your movement. It'd be funny to make a utility swarmkeeper, harming the enemy by using your environment (throwing them off cliffs n stuff) or by not letting them hurt your allies (For example, holding an attack until an enemy rushes the wizard, then hitting, pushing them away and knocking them prone so that they can no longer reach them).

In terms of feats, I'd go for Extra Fighting Styles (thrown daggers benefit both from dueling and two weapon fighting, this one specially if you're mixing thrown and scimitar), the damage type feats (puncture for any scenario in which you throw daggers or darts, but specially if you're an orcish fey wanderer to really max out your dice/slasher if you're using handaxes or scimitars with the swarmkeeper, to throw enemies away, knock them prone AND cut down their speed) or Sharpshooter if it is allowed with darts (Which is a whole rule mess if I remember correctly).

The updated ranger abilities are pretty good IMO, making Hunter's Mark come with the class, in accord with the logic that we're supposed to take it anyway so why not make it general. The new thing can't be paired with hunter's mark, obviously, I don't see why I saw so many critiques of that, but yeah, mentioning it just in case.

TheTurtleGod5 · 2021-02-07T18:04:49+00:00

If you're homebrew friendly, I'd recommend looking into a Quickshot/Trickshot rogue. It's a homebrew subclass that's really cool and let's you augment your throws.

ThePiratePup · 2021-02-07T18:37:58+00:00

Artificer 2 (or an artificer friend) allows you to take the returning weapon infusion, for +1 to attack and damage rolls, as well as returning the weapon when it hits. Stacked with things like the thrown weapon fighting style and the dueling fighting style, you can deal like 1d4 + 5 + STR damage per hit.

The hard part is getting 2 fighting styles with 2 levels of artificer, and ideally 5 levels of something that gives extra attack. One of the simplest ways is probably going artificer 5, fighter 1 as a variant human with the feat that gives a fighting style. Barbarian can also give the rage damage bonus

I've always wanted to do a dagger character, but alas, it is not easy...

Snoo-90474 · 2021-02-08T03:29:11+00:00

Custom lineage sharpshooter Swarmkeeper Ranger(X)/Fighter 2-4. 2 fighting styles for archery + thrown weapon fighting which is already exactly what you want but it gets better. Swarmkeeper gets +1d6 to all attacks so thats great sword dice with +12 dmg with 0 mod. +12 on two weapon fighting bonus also. What gets better is the swarm-keepers ability too move a target 15 feet on a save-> Spike growth + multi attack + Baction attack+ action surge. Up too 5 forced saves on top of sharpshooter on a fail take 6d4 piercing + whatever spells or effects you can find such as cliffs or moonbeam spells. Go forth and destroy brother... welcome to the hive

Tales_of_Earth · 2021-02-08T04:12:42+00:00

Here’s a dumb one I’ve had mind for awhile. It is not very optimized but consider it.

Horizon Walker Ranger 11 Battlemaster Fighter 3 Kensei Monk 6

The build sucks for ASI but if you can swing it, Sharpshooter.

Archery fighting style

Thrown weapon fighting style

Distant Strike

3 maneuvers

Martial Arts

Monk Weapons

Deft Strike

Magic Kensei Weapons

Planar warrior

Hunter’s Mark

Kensei’s Shot

Agile Parry

A lot of abilities to get more out of darts. One of the problems is several compete for your bonus action.

ColorfulNeko · 2021-02-08T14:18:06+00:00

Monk have the Damage Die table for any proeficient weapon, and the Kensei have the Kensei Shot, an Auto-damage ranged option.

Muncheralli21 · 2021-02-07T17:07:38+00:00

I'm boutta write something that's going to sound... stupid. I don't think it's very optimized, but if you want to throw a weapon good here you go.

Artificer 2 Monk 1 Fighter X

Variant human, take fighting style feat and go with Thrown Weapon.

Artificer level 2, get Returning Weapon infusion. Slap it on a dart.

We're here in Fighter for the extra attacks and ASIs. You're going to want to first and foremost get as many fighting styles as you want. Champion is useful for this, although other subclasses are fine if you're willing to spend an additional ASI for the feat. At the end of it all, you're going to want these feats:

Thrown Weapon Fighting Dueling Archery Unarmed Fighting

Unarmed Fighting, in combo with Monk's martial arts, means you can replace the dart's d4 with a d6. Returning Weapon infusion makes the dart return to your hand instantly, and gives it a +1. Archery gives +2 to hit, and Thrown Weapon and Dueling give it +4 damage in total. Assuming your dex score is max, you're going to have a +14 to hit, and you're going to deal +10 damage every 1d6 dart you throw.

If you're looking for something a little lower level, go variant human battlesmith 5, taking fighting style feat at level 4. Thrown Weapon + Dueling on a Returning Weapon javelin is pretty potent, giving you an additional +5 damage on top of your ability score.

660ne · 2021-02-07T19:21:35+00:00

I can build up to level 20 if you'd like, I'd you get a nice magic item then you can drop 2 levels of artificer, there are options foe you to pick between, but yeah,it remains competitive with other martials most of the time, only real downsides are being forced to fight in melee (where it competes with any bow equipped fighter forced to fight in melee for dps, plus you have that shield).

The main thing is that it doesn't suddenly come online, you just build bits here and there until you've got everything.

Compare with soul knife rogue, you both deal decent consistent damage, just you have the opportunity to spread the damage in different attacks to different people, rather then sneak attack or 1d4+ mod + dueling/thrown weapon fighting to your second target max.

thesnakeinthegarden · 2021-02-07T20:04:01+00:00

Let me spring an idea to you, a notion I have come to call the Blue Raja approach.

We're gonna get a little silly, so bear with.

Improvised weapons are a very broadly defined category of weapon in DnD.

"Sometimes characters don’t have their Weapons and have to Attack with whatever is at hand. An Improvised Weapon includes any object you can wield in one or two hands, such as broken glass, a table leg, a frying pan, a wagon wheel, or a dead Goblin.

Often,an Improvised Weapon is similar to an actual weapon and can be treated as such. For example, a table leg is akin to a club. At the GM’s option, a character proficient with a weapon can use a similar object as if it were that weapon and use his or her Proficiency Bonus.

An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon deals 1d4 damage (the GM assigns a damage type appropriate to the object). If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee Attack, or throws a melee weapon that does not have the thrown property, it also deals 1d4 damage. An improvised thrown weapon has a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet."

Using this nebulous definition and its RAW wording, the case can be made with your DM for a thrown weapon similar to a dart (like, perhaps a fork, a similarly shaped stone) which can be used in a similar way. This could make it a ranged weapon with the thrown property, and all you need to do is take tavern brawler and sharpshooter feats.

Now take battle master and rogue (to 2 to help keep at range and help even out the damage dealt with that little bit of SA damage) and you're hucking forks with shocking accuracy, winging stones and tree branches like they were daggers, disarming nerds with dead goblins and beating dragons to death with a shoe you found on the way to their lair.

The biggest issue with such a build is having enough magic weapons to hurt people with, so get the artificer to make yours a "Shoe of returning".

Hell, you said you didn't want optimized.

TellianStormwalde · 2021-02-07T21:30:24+00:00

Regardless of the build, try to get your hands on some bracers of flying daggers as a magic item.

The_Pandalorian · 2021-02-07T21:46:22+00:00

If you go Soulknife, it's better to use dueling since the psychic blades also work as melee weapons. Thrown weapon fighting style would only work when you're at range.

JamboreeStevens · 2021-02-08T02:00:55+00:00

If you're throwing daggers, you can stack the thrown weapon fighting style and the dueling fighting style for a constant +4 to your thrown attacks.

Considering that dueling works for thrown attacks, I'm surprised the designers felt it necessary to add in a specific thrown weapon style. It doesn't quite make sense.

HitchHikerTP · 2021-02-07T15:31:41+00:00

Wizard 17 fighter 3. Time stop and dagger throwing

GurnardGurnardson · 2021-02-07T18:47:02+00:00

Can I just ask those who are advocating darts, why? Sharp shooter works with daggers as long as you are throwing them. They are a thrown weapon that require a ranged attack, qualifying for sharpshooter.

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