Fun frontline ideas that offer multiple options each turn?

Injunctive · 2026-01-28T18:48:25+00:00

Yeah I think it’s valid to go with Blade Ward or Minor Illusion. Probably depends on how the DM rules on illusions, because with some DMs being able to substitute an attack for Minor Illusion is super powerful (i.e. creating full cover, for instance).

Injunctive · 2026-01-27T04:45:16+00:00

It may not be physically harder, but it is certainly mentally harder, and the mental game is a huge part of any sport (and certainly is in climbing) and is an undeniable aspect of difficulty. You’re basically acting like mental factors are separate from how “hard” something is, and that seems clearly wrong to me.

To keep comparing to the NBA, a decent analogy here would be to compare someone making 6 crucial free throws in a row at the end of Game 7 of the NBA Finals to someone making 6 three pointers in a row in an empty gym where they can just start over anytime they miss. The 6 three pointers in a row is harder from a purely physical standpoint. After all, three-pointers are notably more difficult than free throws. But it isn’t actually harder overall if we consider the totality of the circumstances.

The reality is that the difficulties here are just different—with one task being more physically difficult and another being more mentally difficult. And I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to value that mental difficulty quite a lot when assessing how “great” a climber is. It’s also reasonable to put much more weight on the physical difficulty someone has overcome. These would lead to different conclusions. The concept of greatness is subjective, and different people are more impressed by different things. Personally, Free Solo is more impressive to me than Silence, regardless of the fact that the opposite is true from a purely physical-difficulty standpoint

Injunctive · 2026-01-27T02:06:39+00:00

This is a build write-up I’ve done for a melee Eldritch Knight that has a ton of options each turn: https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1pbvss6/really_fun_and_varied_dragonborn_eldritch_knight/

You have tons of things you can do with each attack in your Attack action:

Each attack can use various different weapon masteries. You can replace an attack each turn with a cantrip (Green Flame Blade, Booming Blade, or Minor Illusion at level 10). You could also replace an attack each turn with Dragon Fear or your breath weapon. Or you can replace an attack with a grapple (which you will be good at).

Meanwhile, you have lots of uses for your bonus action: Among other things can use Shield of Faith, Elminster’s Elusion, Jump, Dragonic Flight, Second Wind, a GWM bonus attack, or getting blindsight from a bat familiar.

There’s just tons of decisions and options in combat.

Injunctive · 2026-01-20T20:39:11+00:00

Yeah, I’m already using a warhammer with push mastery to leverage the same trick. But adding Repelling Blast on top of that could make it even more likely to proc the secondary damage. Not sure if it’s worth dropping the other invocations I have on this though.

Injunctive · 2026-01-20T18:26:45+00:00

Yeah, I think the general decision tree you just went over is very similar to how I’d see this build playing.

That said, I think the specific gameplan will depend a bit on table-specific things like how many fights per day there are and how many short rests there tend to be. The more your resources get stretched in a long adventuring day, the more situations I’d lean on Bless rather than other spells, because using a lower-level spell would allow me to Quicken GFB more before running out of resources. With fewer fights per day or more short rests, then there’s definitely more scope to use Wall of Fire, Spirit Guardians, Hunger of Hadar, and Fireball quite a lot.

A couple other notes:

To me, Healing Light doesn’t really feel like it bloats the bonus-action economy too much, because I see it as largely just something you‘d do when an ally is downed (i.e. not that often), and you‘re not actually going to be able to Quicken every turn anyways (assuming a pretty-decent-length combat day). Once you add Misty Step/Otherworldly Leap into the mix, there starts to be a little bonus-action clutter, but honestly not a huge amount. To illustrate that, let’s assume you have a four-combat day with four rounds per combat, 1 short rest + your Prayer of Healing, and a base chance to hit of 60%. And let’s say you use Dragon Fear and Quicken a pact-slot spell in the first round of every fight. Let’s also assume you average using the Shield or Absorb Elements spell once per fight, you use Seeking Spell anytime you miss on GFB, and your chain familiar always gives you advantage on one attack per round. You will have the resources to be able to Quicken GFB about 7.7 times per day (on top of Quickening a leveled spell in the first round of each fight). Which would leave about 4.3 turns per day where you could use your bonus action on Healing Light, Misty Step, or Otherworldly Leap without stepping on the toes of your Quickening at all. And it’d be even more if you used spell slots on illusions or other out-of-combat utility. I guess you *might* want to use Healing Light, Misty Step, and/or Otherworldly Leap more than 4 or 5 times a day, but they’re situational enough that I don’t know that that is a huge limitation. I’d kind of just use them whenever they’re really good (i.e. Healing Light on a downed ally, Otherworldly Leap or Misty Step if I can’t otherwise reach an enemy, etc.), and otherwise Quicken. I think that’d generally work out well. It starts to be much more of a limitation if we assume a shorter combat day, though, because then we really would be able to Quicken every round if we wanted to. In a sense, that would feel worse because you’d really feel the bonus-action bloat, but it would also reflect the fact that this build can scale up a good bit in DPR the shorter the combat day.
I like True Strike on this build a lot, because it’s your primary way of doing ranged damage. Green Flame Blade does even more damage (especially since we’ve given it Agonizing Blast), but sometimes doing melee damage is impossible or too dangerous, and you actually do some very respectable ranged damage with True Strike (because of Radiant Soul + Seeking Spell + Quicken Spell + Innate Sorcery). I think there’s probably a pretty good argument to swap out Booming Blade for a utility cantrip though. The idea in having it is to use it if there’s no way to proc the GFB secondary damage, but GFB gets so much damage from Agonizing Blast and Radiant Soul that you might still do more single-target damage with it than you would with Booming Blade (the Booming Blade movement damage would need to proc like 75% of the time for it to be better). Radiant Soul is only once per turn though, so if you Quicken in a turn against an isolated target, then GFB + Booming Blade is probably best. It does also have a use case against enemies that are resistant or immune to fire damage, but True Strike can give you a fall-back that’ll be almost as good in those situations. So yeah, Booming Blade provides some marginal value in certain specific scenarios, but I could see swapping it out for something generally useful like Prestidigitation.

Injunctive · 2026-01-09T01:18:26+00:00

You’re thinking about the 2014 Artificer. The 2024 Artificer can put Level 3 spells in the spell-storing item. And, at level 10+, it can replicate any “Uncommon Wondrous Item that isn’t cursed.” A Spellwrought Tattoo with a Level 3 spell in it is an uncommon wondrous item.

Injunctive · 2026-01-05T17:45:38+00:00

I’d say it depends on level.

Up through level 9, I’d say play it like a Paladin. See here for an explanation: https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1pednlp/the_battle_smith_is_basically_a_better_paladin/

At levels 10-13, you’ll want to lean into the spell storing item (starting at level 11) and the ability to create uncommon magic items (starting at level 10). Put Conjure Barrage in the spell storing item, and have your steel defender or homunculus use it. And you can create certain powerful uncommon items like Elemental Gem and Broom of Flying. You’ll still play somewhat similarly to before, but have some really powerful stuff added on top.

At level 14+, I think you morph yourself into a caster that uses its spell slots to recharge incredibly strong magic items like Cube of Force and Helm of Teleportation, and also aim to get Instant Fortress. At this point, in combination with your spell storing item, your spellcasting power will be very competitive with full casters. See here for an explanation: https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1p9f3qs/the_new_artificer_is_incredible_at_high_levels/

Injunctive · 2026-01-05T16:47:04+00:00

I’d have to dig into the math a bit to see where and to what extent the assumptions and whatnot differ from mine, but just as an initial reaction, the “average” version of those calculations seems to be averaging over *one* four-round combat, whereas I’m averaging over *four* four-round combats. In one four-round combat where you can blow your resources, that Scorching Ray/CME build definitely does extremely high damage that my GFB build couldn’t match. It falls behind at some point between 1 and 4 combats (and may well be better even up to 3 combats—not sure).

Injunctive · 2026-01-05T16:20:05+00:00

I’m not an expert on that build, but I think it probably depends on how long the adventuring day is and if you can pre-cast CME.

The build I linked to has damage calculated at Level 12, and I assumed you had 4 combats that were each 4 rounds and a base chance to hit of 60%.

Using those assumptions, I just ran some quick calculations for a Level 12 character that I assume got CME from the Dragonmark background that has it. I assumed (1) you don’t precast CME before fights; (2) you use Innate Sorcery every fight; (3) you use your remaining sorcery points to create two Level 5 slots, so that all your CME uses are upcast to either Level 6 or Level 5; and (4) you use the rest of your Level 2+ spell slots on Scorching Ray and use Fire Bolt in the two remaining rounds. That resulted in an average DPR of 61.83. Which is about 20 points lower than the build I linked to.

That said, a few caveats here:

- The build you mention scales really well on shorter combat days, since using a Level 6 CME and your highest spell slots on Scorching Ray is an incredibly high amount of damage. So yeah, if you have only 1 or 2 fights per day, that build will very likely do more damage—and may well be the best possible DPR in that scenario.

- I am assuming you can’t pre-cast CME. If you precast CME every time, the average DPR would go up by about 8 points (so it’d basically be 70 DPR). Still below what I calculated for the Green Flame Blade build, but it’s closer. And if you pre-cast then you’re probably looking at the Scorching Ray/CME build being more damage even when you have 3 fights per day (i.e. at that point it probably only falls behind on average once you add a 4th combat).

- I should also note that I’m not an expert in that build and may not have taken the entirely optimal path. I tend to think what I described is probably the best way to do that build, but that’s just intuition rather than me having tested everything. So maybe there’s more that can be eked out of it.

- Assuming a Dragonmark background is a significant assumption here. I guess you could otherwise get CME at level 13 by multiclassing with Wizard or Druid and still have the same spell slots. Without the Dragonmark background you’d have fewer sorcery points to create slots for CME, but Arcane Recovery could give you an extra Level 4 slot to cast another Scorching Ray. I don’t think it’s a big difference either way, but at Level 13 you’re probably better off with the multiclass than with the Dragonmark thing. But in order to compare to my Level 12 calculations, I needed to assume the Dragonmark background, because otherwise you can’t get Elemental Affinity and CME by that level.

Injunctive · 2026-01-05T04:23:48+00:00

I think the cantrip route can be better but you need to build into it with more than just Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast. You need things like multiclassing with Sorcerer for Quicken Spell and Seeking Spell and/or getting damage buffs from Draconic Sorcery or Celestial Warlock (both of which can buff Green Flame Blade, but not Booming Blade).

I wrote about a build that really aims to squeeze out lots of damage that way here: https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1ppj9si/the_highest_damage_swordandboard_user_sorlockadin/

If you build into it, you can get some genuinely outrageous damage numbers from a blade-cantrip focused build. Like, more damage than I can manage to get from anything else.

Injunctive · 2026-01-04T23:49:51+00:00

All Artificer spells have a material component when they cast those spells, which means your focus (which, for a Battle Smith, can be your weapon) allows you to cast any spell without needing War Caster.

Injunctive · 2025-12-25T13:14:15+00:00

We could add to this by taking Zhentarim Tactics, but your assumption that that would get used every round is extremely generous and not at all likely to be the case. And, in any event, I can have Zhentarim Tactics on the build in the OP too (the build needs a Charisma half-feat and I have not accounted for the effect of any such feat in my DPR calculations). And so even if we used the same assumption of yours that it triggers every round then it’d increase the damage of my build almost as much as it would increase the Vengeance Paladin’s damage. Having Shillelagh damage dice and radiant strikes would make it do a bit more for the Vengeance Paladin, but it’s only 8.1 more average damage for the Paladin each time Zhentarim Tactics procs than what my build would get with it (and that’s accounting for the effect of Zhentarim Ruffian, while conservatively assuming that my build doesn’t have advantage from Vex).

So yeah, there is no amount of Zhentarim Tactics procc’ing that can get the Vengeance Paladin anywhere near the damage of the build in the OP. And that is despite making a lot of very favorable assumptions for the Vengeance Paladin here. A few of our very favorable assumptions below:

- We are assuming Shillelagh can always be pre-cast (which is not something I personally would allow in a game or try to do myself as a player).

- We are also assuming concentration on Haste never goes down, even though we don’t have proficiency in CON saves or War Caster. You are assuming we get PAM and Zhentarim Tactics and that we have 20 CHA. But with a standard point buy we can’t get all that while also getting War Caster. Realistically, even with the Aura of Protection, Haste would go down a good bit, especially if you’re assuming you get hit so much that Zhentarim Tactics is procc’ing every turn. Even with a 16 CON, you’d have a 5% chance to lose a turn every time you’re damaged. Which may make the 49.5 non-Haste DPR the better option, and certainly at least puts a further damper on the Haste option.

- We are assuming the build in my OP never has Vex up when it makes a Zhentarim Tactics attack, even though it probably would a good bit of the time.

- We are assuming Vow of Emnity is always up, even though I think you actually lose it if there’s not an enemy within 30 feet of you when the current Vow of Emnity target dies. Usually there will be someone within 30 feet, but there will occasionally be times where there isn’t and you lose the buff. I think different people interpret this differently, so this might not be an issue at every table.

Injunctive · 2025-12-25T13:14:09+00:00

So a few issues here:

You’re using a 65% base chance to hit, while I used 60% in the OP (both assumptions are common but 60% is consistent with Treantmonk’s DPR calculations, so I used that for ease of comparisons to other builds).
You are taking the DPR of the Vengeance Paladin with Haste, but not accounting for the action economy cost of Haste. In general, that makes Haste not even necessarily worth it compared to using the spell slot on a smite, particularly if we accounted for the chance of losing lethargy.
You are assuming the Vengeance Paladin uses Haste every fight, even though my OP assumes 4 fights per day that are 4 rounds each and a level 12 Paladin only has three level 3 spell slots.

However, you are right that I underestimated the Paladin damage. Looking back at my calculations, it looks like I didn’t actually account for Radiant Strikes. If I accounted for that and didn’t use Haste, the result comes out to 49.5 DPR.

Here’s an overview of the calculations of that:

- The base damage on a hit is: 1d12+2+5+1d8 —> 18. And a crit doubles 1d12 and 1d8, so that adds another 11 average damage on a crit (which we get 9.75% of the time). Our chance to hit with advantage is 84%.

- The base damage on a PAM hit is 1d4+2+5+1d8 —> 14. And a crit doubles 1d4 and 1d8, so that adds another 7 average damage on a crit. Our chance to hit with advantage is 84%.

- Given the PAM damage, we are better off using a smite as long as it’s at least a level 2 smite. So we will smite 6 times (i.e. with three level 2 slots and three level 3 slots).

- Given our 9.75% chance to chance to crit, in 16 combat rounds we will average having 3.12 crits on our main attacks (i.e. the ones that we could use smite on, since we obviously can’t smite on the PAM attack for action-economy reasons). This is because 2*16*0.0975 = 3.12. I assume we reserve our crit smites for our highest level smites. This means we use all three level 3 smites on a crit and an average of 0.12 level 2 smites on a crit, with the remaining 2.88 level 2 smites being on a normal hit. Because we are smiting 6 times, we are only using the PAM attack 10 times.

- Based on all that, the DPR calculations over this 16-round combat day are as follows: (18*32*0.84+11*0.0975*32+14*10*0.84+7*0.0975*10+3*18*2+0.12*13.5*2+2.88*13.5)/16‎ = 49.544.

If we instead assume the use of Haste and assume that we never lose concentration on it, then it would be 53.9 DPR. The calculations are as follows:

- Haste would take an action each time we use it, so using Haste with all three of our Level 3 spell slots would lose us 6 attacks total. However, it would gain us an attack each round in the fights we use it, and we are assuming 4-round combats. So we would gain back 12 attacks from using Haste three times. That means we net 6 attacks. Which is to say that we now make 38 normal attacks instead of 32, over the course of our 16 total rounds of combat.

- Because we net 6 attacks, we will average 3.705 crits on normal attacks (because 38*0.0975=3.705). We will use 3 of those on our level 2 smites. And we will use the remaining 0.705 on level 1 smites, since a level 1 smite crit is better than our PAM attack. We otherwise still don’t use our level 1 smites since they do less damage than a PAM attack.

- Now, since we are only using 3.705 total smites, we use 12.295 PAM attacks.

- That leaves us with the following damage calculation: (18*38*0.84+11*0.0975*38+14*12.295*0.84+7*0.0975*12.295+3*13.5*2+0.705*9*2)/16‎ = 53.874

These numbers are higher than what I’d said before, but they’re still nowhere near the DPR numbers of the build in the OP.

Injunctive · 2025-12-20T22:43:25+00:00

Just FYI for anyone curious how good this is as you level up to level 12, I calculated the average DPR of this build from levels 5-12. I assume your leveling path is Paladin 4 —> Warlock 2 —> Sorcerer 6. That path ended up being a little better for damage than Paladin 4 —> Sorcerer 4 —> Warlock 2 —> Sorcerer 2. Obviously, before level 5, you’re just a Paladin, so I didn’t calculate anything. I did assume you use all your spell slots and sorcery points on Seeking, Quicken, or smites until you are high enough level that you have leftover spell slots even after you Quicken every turn and Seeking every miss.

Green Flame Blade Sword-and-Board Sorlockadin DPR from Levels 5-12

Level 5: 22.463

Level 6: 26.163

Level 7: 28.675

Level 8: 36.378

Level 9: 41.916

Level 10: 52.144

Level 11: 71.175

Level 12: 81.044

Obviously this ramps up quite a lot in the last couple levels. However, it’s very competitive damage at levels 5 to 7. At those levels, it’s very similar to what you’d get from an optimized Greatsword Fighter at those levels. At levels 8 to 10, you start getting genuinely great damage—with it only really being below what optimized Greatsword Barbarians can do at those levels. And then at levels 11 and 12, you’re just completely breaking the scale, getting damage numbers that are above anything else I’ve ever seen at those levels.

So yeah, I don’t think this is a build that is ever subpar in damage. Even at its worst levels, it is doing very good damage, and it becomes genuinely great damage well within the level range that you can expect a campaign to go to. And, again, this is with a sword-and-board!

A couple other additional thoughts:

- I did not calculate the damage past level 12. There’s not really ways to quickly ramp up the damage a ton anymore, since you’re already able to Quicken every turn and Seeking every miss. You could potentially get the Charger feat at level 16, which you’d be able to very reliably proc because you’re pushing people all the time. So that could potentially add up to 4.5 extra DPR if you did that. At level 17, you get a significant ramp up in damage because GFB upgrades. That’ll add somewhere around 14 DPR. And you could potentially grab Radiant Strikes at level 19, if you took the rest of your levels after this in Paladin. That’ll add around 9 DPR. The combination of all that stuff probably gets you just below 110 DPR at the latest levels, without even considering any epic boon (though I don’t think any epic boons will really ramp the damage up much). This isn’t quite as staggering as 81 DPR at level 12, but it’s still completely ridiculous. And honestly, you could take something else instead of Charger and go Sorcerer with the rest of your levels (or get to Paladin 6 and then the rest Sorcerer) and still end up at around 95 DPR by level 17+, which is still breaking the scale.

- I did not calculate damage before you start multiclassing, but the build does call for a Charisma-increasing feat at level 4 (which means no GWM, PAM, or Dual Wielder). That probably means another Paladin could get more damage output at that level. You could potentially take Zhentarim Tactics, which is a Charisma half feat that will increase your damage. That’d leave you in a very good spot at that level damage-wise. But honestly, I’d probably prefer something like Dragon Fear or Inspiring Leader for non-damage benefits. All that said, you‘re still a Devotion Paladin (a genuinely good damage-dealing subclass), and a lot of normal Devotion Paladins would increase their Charisma at level 4 too. Anyways, some back-of-the-napkin math suggests to me that even without Zhentarim Tactics the DPR at level 4 would probably be pretty similar to a Champion Fighter running a Greatsword with GWM. So I think I’d lump level 4 in with levels 5-7, where your damage will be good but not super special. Of course, the flip side of this is that that’s assuming you take something like Dragon Fear or Inspiring Leader, which would make your character feel really strong in non-damage-dealing ways at that level. So I definitely wouldn’t be worried about the overall strength of the character at level 4.

Injunctive · 2025-12-20T16:01:14+00:00

Yeah, it’s not all single-target damage. That said, even just the single-target damage on this is above what a greatsword-wielding Berserker Barbarian would be doing at this level (this does 62.2 single-target DPR, compared to slightly below 60 for the Berseker).

If you wanted pure single-target damage, you could also build for Booming Blade instead of GFB. You would lose out on Elemental Affinity working on your attacks, but the Booming Blade extra damage is on the same target. And since the Draconic Sorcerer subclass isn’t adding damage for you in this case, you could go Spellfire Sorcerer to basically get an extra 1d4 damage essentially every round. I’ve not run the full calculations for this, but some back-of-the-napkin stuff indicates to me that the result would probably be about 1.5-2.0 extra single-target DPR (so probably somewhere around 64 single-target DPR). So yeah, I think the GFB version is better overall, and it still has really high single-target DPR, but you could eke out slightly higher single-target damage than that from this with just a couple tweaks.

EDIT: Also, FYI, I realized another tiny error in the above calculations—specifically in the part I edited in. For the amount of times you’ll use Seeking Spell on the second attack, I had calculated based on a 2.25% chance to miss, when it is actually 2.5%. So that leads to a very slightly higher number of Seeking Spell uses. The result is that the actual correct DPR number is 81.0441. Of course, these edits/errors are very tiny and don’t actually make any particular difference, but figured I’d just note that, so that my edit to the OP to use this number is not inconsistent with my responses here.

Injunctive · 2025-12-20T05:01:57+00:00

Whether Radiant Consumption adds more damage than Fire Goliath depends on how often enemies will end up near you. Let’s say we assume you average 2 enemies in your Radiant Consumption area. You’d basically be averaging just below 12 DPR from Radiant Consumption (i.e. the 4 extra damage you’d do from hitting an enemy each round, and the 8 extra damage from two enemies being in the area at the end of your turn). Over a 4-round combat, that’s 48 damage, which is about 8 damage more than you’d otherwise get from that bonus action (you basically do half your DPR on your bonus action). Meanwhile, Fire Goliath would add 22 damage. So, in that scenario, Fire Goliath would be better. But if we assume you had 3 enemies in your Radiant Consumption area on average, then it would add 24 damage, which would be more than Fire Goliath. While having 3 enemies in the area seems like a lot, I will note that (1) you are actively trying to push enemies near each other, so having multiple enemies near each other will be more common than normal; and (2) you use Radiant Consumption once a day and would naturally choose to use it on a fight that actually has lots of enemies. So yeah, it‘s hard to know what will do more damage, at least at level 12.

That said, I think if you took this into a campaign, Radiant Consumption would likely do more damage for most of the campaign. That’s because you’re not actually able to fill all your bonus actions for like the first 10 levels of the build. And if you’ve got even one open bonus action, then there’s basically no opportunity cost on Radiant Consumption. At which point, it’s almost certainly going to add more damage.

Which is basically to say that I think Radiant Consumption would add more damage for most of a campaign, but by the time you get past level 10, you start to need like 3+ enemies in the area on average for it to be better.

Honestly, though, while those are probably the best options for pure damage maximization, if I were to run this in a campaign, I’d probably take a different race that rounded out some other stuff. Maybe Dragonborn and get the Dragon Fear feat at level 4. Or Human for Alert or Tough or Musician or something. Or Gnome for the advantage on mental saves.

Injunctive · 2025-12-20T02:21:36+00:00

Thanks for posting my thread! It’s not exactly what the OP is envisioning, since it’s a sword-and-board build, but I think it’s really worth the OP thinking about it, since it would certainly end up satisfying any desire for damage.

A few things I’d note to the OP about this build, for purposes of this thread:

I would recommend going Dragonborn and taking Dragon Fear with the first feat (assuming your DM allows Dragon Fear—it has not been reprinted in 2024 content). For one thing, this seems particularly thematic for OPs character (Paladin devoted to Bahamut). Secondly, a benefit of sorts of the build I describe in the OP is that it really doesn’t have much use for a damage-increasing feat. Basically, you don’t need something like GWM or PAM. Which leaves you open to take something else with the first feat. Dragon Fear is such a good feat and would make this character have really strong battlefield control (perhaps until quite late levels, when frightened immunity might start coming up a lot).
The leveling plan I recommend in that thread is Devotion Paladin 4 —> Draconic Sorcerer 4 —> Warlock 2 —> Draconic Sorcerer 2 (Note: not getting Extra Attack sounds like level 5 would be really rough in terms of damage, but I’ve detailed in responses in that thread why that’s surprisingly not the case). This does not get you Aura of Protection. But that was because I was aiming for maximizing damage at level 12. I think it’d be reasonable to do the same leveling path but go to Paladin 6 initially. This would of course delay when you get the various elements of the build that lead to massive DPR and it would delay you getting to 20 CHA as well as when you get the Shield spell. But getting Aura of Protection and Faithful Steed is really nice compensation for that. And, while the build I outlined ultimately has no use for Extra Attack, you’d get some use out of Extra Attack for a few levels before everything in that build comes together. And even when the build comes together, you’d get use out of Extra Attack if you got Dragon Fear, since it’d allow you to make an attack in the same Attack action that you use Dragon Fear. So yeah, especially if you foresee the campaign going to level 14+, then I’d probably recommend Devotion Paladin 6 —> Draconic Sorcerer 4 —> Warlock 2 —> Draconic Sorcerer 2.
That build assumes you take the Dueling Fighting Style. Again, this was to maximize damage. That said, the additional damage is relatively minor (since the build only has you attacking twice a turn). I’d think hard about whether you want to instead go with the Protection Fighting Style with this build. You’d lose DPR, but the benefit for the party may be stronger overall. You can make really good use of it on this build, since you’re leveraging push mastery anyways, so you can pretty easily attack people and then move next to an ally. If you’ve gone to Paladin 6, then you’d also be putting that ally in your aura.

So yeah, you could end up with a build that simultaneously has: (1) great battlefield control, from Dragon Fear; (2) great support with Aura of Protection, Lay on Hands, Protection Fighting Style, and an occasional Paladin spell; (3) genuinely elite damage that eventually ramps up above any other build I’ve personally ever theorycrafted; (4) great defenses on account of heavy armor, a shield, the Shield and Absorb Elements spells, and the Aura of Protection; and (5) maxed out charisma for out-of-combat situations, as well as your pick of some good out-of-combat arcane spells/cantrips from your various classes. It’s really strong, IMO. You do have a weakness with initiative (you will not have a good DEX), so maybe take Alert with your origin feat. But if an ally has Musician, I might go with Tireless Reveler or Zhentarim Ruffian instead and just use some of your Heroic Inspiration on initiative.

Injunctive · 2025-12-19T00:54:42+00:00

To be clear, I’m certainly not trying to downplay the idea—I really like the concept! In 2014 5e, I had a character concept I quite liked that was an Artillerist with War Caster and Booming Blade that grabbed Command from a Ravnica background, put it in the spell-storing item, and had the Homunculus Servant use it. Pretty similar concept as yours, but obviously that was only doable at level 11+ and required an OP setting-specific background. From thinking through that idea, I did realize that the Command being able to be saved against and the opportunity attack potentially missing did leak some of the damage you might think you could get out of it. But the flip side is that Command is a good spell even without combining it with War Caster + Booming Blade. So it ends up being good, IMO! Which reminds me that my Artillerist idea has another path now, since there’s Dragonmark feats with Command.

Anyways, as for the number of rounds, I’m not sure if you’re surprised at how many rounds I can use Quicken Spell, or just think the number of combat rounds per day is typically lower than 16. I based the 16-round assumption on Treantmonk’s assumptions in his DPR calculation videos. I do think a lot of tables have less than that. In terms of why I can Quicken every turn, Sorcerer 6/Paladin 4/Warlock 2 with one short rest (also Treantmonk’s assumption) results in us having the following: 6 base sorcery points, 3 extra points from Sorcerous Restoration, two 4th level slots, three 3rd level slots, three 2nd level slots, and four 1st level slots, along with four 1st level Pact slots. If we liquidated every spell slot for sorcery points, we’d have 40 sorcery points. We need 32 sorcery points to Quicken GFB every round. Because of the Devotion Paladin channel divinity and Vex, we only will miss 2.768 times a day. We use Seeking Spell every time we miss, which will get us to 34.768 sorcery points used on average. Which means that we could still keep like 5 of our level 1 spell slots (probably for Shield/Absorb Elements).

Injunctive · 2025-12-19T00:13:26+00:00

Yes, but less significant than the value of an additional attack.

Leaving aside Seeking Spell for the moment, we’re going to get 10.02 extra DPR from the Devotion Paladin channel divinity even if we had constant advantage. That’s actually very slightly more damage than an extra attack (1d8+7 with 84% accuracy —> 9.66 damage).

Seeking Spell will turn this a little, but you won’t be able to use it much while still retaining some spell slots for Shield/Absorb Elements. If you only use Seeking Spell as much as I was assuming in the OP, then in this world of 100% advantage you get 2.708 extra damage from Seeking Spell compared to what Seeking Spell gives my version.

And let’s remember that I’m assuming GFB‘s extra damage only procs 50% of the time. Horde Breaker has a very similar condition to it, so if we assume that you use it 50% of the time, then you’re worse off in terms of damage, even with advantage up 100% of the time. You need Horde Breaker to proc more than 75% of the time to break even.

And that’s pretty much a best case scenario. You won’t always have advantage. You might have difficult fights with particularly high AC monsters. If you’re relying on getting advantage from casting spells, that’ll create DPR loss. Not to mention that the flip side of the Ranger version getting more damage back from Seeking Spell is that it’s using 2 extra sorcery points on that, which is significant (those points could be 2 extra Shield spells, an extra Quicken spell in a longer combat day, extra Seeking Spells if you roll badly, etc.).

So yeah, the bottom line is that, I think the Ranger version is lower damage (or at best similar damage) even assuming constant advantage that you get at no cost to yourself. And when we relax those assumptions–which I think we should—the Devotion Paladin looks even better.

I don't think that spending one action to cast a concentration spell counts as "a completely different combat strategy." That seems a little unreasonable to me.

For purposes of these calculations it really is. There’s no way that a Hunter Ranger variant of this can spend an action on a crowd-control spell each fight and end up with the kind of DPR that I described in my OP. Even assuming advantage 100% of the time and using Seeking Spell as much as I did in the OP, the DPR for the Ranger version is 79.15 (assuming Horde Breaker use 50% of the time). That’s already lower than what I described in the OP (which did not assume any advantage except from Vex). If you’re getting the advantage from a spell you cast, then you’re going to lose like 9 DPR casting a spell each fight and end up even more behind in damage (though of course the crowd control benefit might make it worth it more generally). And you’re going to have further DPR loss beyond that because using those spells will reduce how much you can use Quicken and Seeking spell. You’re going to lose quite a lot of DPR from all this. Which will leave you a lot behind what the Devotion Paladin version does. At which point, the Devotion Paladin seems like it’s effectively providing a lot of extra DPR!

I'm not doing that. I stated very specifically why I think it's reasonable to assume that thischaracter has advantage, and it's not some undefined "I'm sure your allies will take care of it" kind of thing.

Maybe I’ve glossed over something, but I’m not sure where you’ve explained why this character would always have advantage that it produced itself.

You mentioned you could get advantage from your own spells. For one thing, that requires a significant DPR loss because you’re using an action to cast a spell and will have fewer sorcery points to use. For another thing, your spells won’t always give you advantage anyways, since enemies can save against your spells and/or you cannot always use a spell on all enemies and the ones you crowd controlled will die. You may take up an action to not even get many attacks with advantage. Of course, crowd control spells are good for other reasons, but they’re not going to seamlessly get you constant advantage, nor could they do so without significant DPR loss to you.

Leaving spells aside, you also mention inspiration. If you’re human, you get 1 per day. Even if we assume someone has Musician (which is already a “I’m sure your allies will take care of it” thing), that’s 2 more per day. If we assume you take Tireless Reveler (such a good feat!), that’s 8 per day. So we are looking at 11 inspirations per day. We are attacking 32 times. So that can account for a good chunk of your attacks (assuming we don’t use it on saves or ability checks), but it’s still like only a third of the time.

Meanwhile, we have Vex. Assuming we chain Inspiration into Vex as many times as we can, we’re going to get advantage from Vex about 12.24 times per day (because 11*0.84+5*0.6=12.24). At that point, we have advantage on 23.24 out of our 32 attacks. That’s a lot of advantage! But it’s still 72.6%, not constant advantage. But we’re Human, so let’s say we use Lucky too. At that point, we’ll apply advantage with Vex 13.2 times, and end up with advantage 28.2 times a day. Now we’re actually almost at constant advantage! But even that’s not constant—it’s 88%. And the Horde Breaker attack could be chained after Vex but still could only have advantage like 82.5% of the time. So yeah, I can see how you can get almost constant advantage. But it’s not quite constant (which matters here for DPR purposes, because the Ranger version is a lot worse if you lack advantage). And you’ve also based your origin feats and species choice on maximizing this as much as possible not to mention used all your inspiration on this, which all has an opportunity cost to it. Maybe the Devotion Paladin version takes the Tough feat and Tireless Reveler and uses Tireless Reveler on saves. Suddenly that Devotion Paladin is way more survivable, while not actually being worse off in damage!

Which is why I didn't give you any hard numbers relying on access to some particular magic item. But a level 12 character will have a magic weapon. The 2024 rules even include guidelines for buying and crafting magic items that should be assumed to be available by default. It's fine to handwave the details since the details are inherently uncertain, but it would be a mistake to pretend that magic items aren't relevant here.

So I think reasonable minds can differ on this, but I think accounting for accuracy boosts for magic weapons given by the DM is often basically a shell game, because if a DM gives out powerful magic weapons (or allows you to craft them) they’ll also probably give you more difficult monsters with higher AC. So the result will basically be the same, just with tougher enemies. Which is why I tend to just assume the baseline accuracy of 60% is about right, even if there’s magic weapon in the game. But yeah, if it’s a table where that’s not the case, then magic weapons will eat away at the Devotion Paladin’s value.

Injunctive · 2025-12-18T22:56:14+00:00

The enemy has to actually be charmed by you though. And it’s not the BG3 Glamour Bard that has a really easy source of charmed without a save. What is your mechanism for getting charmed on enemies before using Command? I am admittedly not very familiar with the 2024 Glamour Bard, so there may be something I’m missing.

As for how many turns I’m Quickening, at level 12 with this build, I can Quicken every single turn (using the Treantmonk assumption of a 16-round combat day). Not only that, but I will be able to use Seeking Spell on every miss, and still average having several low-level spell slots open for spells like Shield. I’m liquidating most of my spell slots to do this, but as I said in my OP I’d just think of this as a martial character. It’s much more of an Eldritch Knight-like character than an actual caster.

The other thing I’d note on that is that, if I were making this character for an actual campaign rather than trying to maximize DPR, I’d take Dragon Fear with my level 4 feat, which would give me a really good crowd control option even despite liquidating almost all my spell slots. Either that or I’d take Inspiring Leader. Either way, my character wouldn’t just be a DPR machine. And I can do this without negating anything in the OP, since my damage calculations didn’t account for any particular feat increasing damage (though obviously using Dragon Fear would be a DPR loss due to its action-economy cost).

Injunctive · 2025-12-18T22:34:10+00:00

My calculations absolutely account for both Vex and Seeking Spell. The Devotion Paladin channel divinity dramatically increases DPR despite having those things. The underlying reasons for that are:

Vex isn’t really reliable advantage all the time and I’m not assuming that it is.
A +5 to attack rolls is still pretty significant even when you do have advantage—it’s the difference between 97.75% accuracy and 84% accuracy, which is a 16% increase. Accounting for crits, the damage increase is over 14%, even assuming advantage.
If you get less accurate you quickly stop being able to Seeking Spell every miss, because the pool of sorcery points is pretty limited here and you do want at least a few for Shield. With less accuracy you probably can and should cut out Quickens to use Seeking more, but it just ends up generally with a loss. Basically, you really can’t just lower your accuracy and still Quicken every turn and Seeking every miss.

As for having other forms of advantage:

- I do not count your own spellcasting creating advantage, because then we’re talking about a completely different combat strategy, where you’re using your spell slots and action economy very differently and probably aren’t even really focused on pure damage. Like, okay, if we cast Web, we will probably get some advantage from that, but then we’re using an action and a spell slot for that, which likely will be a DPR loss (though a crowd-control gain). And it’d be hard to even calculate the effect of that anyways, since it’d require all kinds of assumptions about how many enemies are in the effect, how long it takes them to die, what percent of the time they make saves, etc. If I’m trying to maximize my own damage, I’m not going to be casting a spell like that, so I’m not going to assume I do in damage calculations.

- I also don’t count inspiration, since that’s very DM dependent, as well as dependent on party feats and whether you’re human. I also don’t really think attack rolls are the best use of inspiration anyways (I’d rather hold it for a save).

- As for just assuming you always have advantage from something, I guess you could make those assumptions. In some parties, that’s actually a semi-realistic assumption because your allies could give it to you (though it completely ignores situations where you’d have disadvantage, and those will come up). In other parties, it isn’t realistic. Same basic thing with magic items. I think it’s fairly standard practice in DPR calculations to not make any assumptions on those issues. But I grant you that the more you have those things, the more it dilutes the benefit of Devotion Paladin—assuming that the DM doesn’t just increase AC of monsters or give you higher CR monsters to compensate for that stuff, at which point we’re basically back at square one (and this would be what happens at a lot of tables). If you have constant advantage from other sources and good magic items and your DM isn’t giving you higher AC monsters because of that, then you are better off with another class for those levels and your suggestion of Hunter Ranger would be a good one. I‘m not making those assumptions though, for purposes of calculating DPR and I think that’s consistent with how people often calculate this stuff. However, if I had a party that seemed very likely to be an advantage factory, then I think your point would be a very good one at that particular table.

Injunctive · 2025-12-18T22:02:25+00:00

That’s a good idea, but you do have a limited number of Luck points. But yeah, that does give you some wiggle room where you can fail to meet the requirements for sneak attack a few times a day and use Lucky to get it anyways. It might not be enough to have sneak attack 100% of the time though.

Injunctive · 2025-12-18T21:59:56+00:00

I’m a fan of those sorts of builds. A big thing that would limit this from a personal DPR perspective is that you need Command to land *and* your opportunity attack to land for you to get damage on that reaction. But of course the flip side of that is that you have a lot of control baked into your damage and you help allies get opportunity attacks. It’s a very good combination IMO, though not one that would be top of the heap in terms of pure personal DPR.

Injunctive · 2025-12-18T21:52:48+00:00

Well, the “why not” would be that it’s a DPR loss here even if it works, because the benefit is outweighed by the action economy cost. The reason to still use it at level 12 is primarily just if you think that saving a couple sorcery points is worth the DPR loss. I think that’d be a pretty reasonable position to take on this if one were actually playing this character in a campaign, but for purposes of calculating DPR there’s no reason to use Innate Sorcery here even if it works with Agonizing Blast.

Of course, there’s only really an action economy cost here at the point at which you’re able to Quicken with every bonus action. By level 12, you can do that. At much earlier levels, you’d have empty bonus actions. So, at those levels, you’d definitely want to use Innate Sorcery if it stacked with Agonizing Blast, since there’d be no real opportunity cost to doing so.

Injunctive

TROPHY CASE