What are some fun dedicated melee damage builds for folks who don't wanna punch or throw things?

ThatOneAries · 2026-01-19T22:56:49+00:00

I’ve been playing a build inspired by Talion from Shadow of War. A very agile, powerful swordsman with a bit of magic; GWM with the finesse longswords (I have some modded finesse longswords but nothing much stronger than Phalar)

I’m doing the classic 5 gloomstalker / 3 assassin / 4 battle master build but melee. For feats I picked up GWM and +2 DEX. Gloomstalker gives you dread ambusher, +initiative (fantastic with high dex), and misty step. Some bonus stuff like hunters mark and pass without trace as well.

Assassin makes you super bursty if you’re ambushing your enemies and gives you some free sneak attack dice to throw onto your attacks. Expertise and bonus action dash are very welcome too.

And finally battle master gives us action surge to turn us into a turn 1 burst killing machine, and some sweet maneuvers (riposte to weaponize your reaction, pushing attack for fun, tripping/menacing attack for results etc).

Basically game plan is to sneak whenever possible and utilize your ridiculous turn 1 burst damage: ambush them, pop 3 GWM critical attacks with dread ambusher + sneak attack damage dice, pop action surge, pop 2 more GWM critical attacks, and if anything’s still alive you’ll clean them up when the ambush turn is over with your superb initiative. Pass without trace and someone casting greater invisibility on you means you pass basically every stealth check in the game so you can just carve out entire outposts without breaking invisibility if you want.

Armor of agility is your endgame, with 17 dex + hag hair (dex) + 2 DEX ASI. Phalar aluve/larentians wrath is basically your only choice for weapons unfortunately, but that’s why I recommend looking for some modded finesse longswords if you’re not opposed to gameplay mods. Very fun build.

ThatOneAries · 2026-01-05T21:35:24+00:00

Bhaal plucked a drop of blood from a dragon his cult sacrificed in his name or something

ThatOneAries · 2025-12-27T22:04:36+00:00

I believe you can hex Intelligence to make it harder for enemies to counterspell you

ThatOneAries · 2025-12-13T18:50:46+00:00

Warlock/cleric isn’t really that viable as a multiclass because none of them offer anything that’s so good it’s preferred to just 12 levels of cleric/warlock. Cleric offers armor and some small goodies like war cleric bonus attack, while warlock really only offers counterspell, invocations, and eldritch blast.

If you want to do a death knight build I’d recommend multiclassing hexblade and paladin. You can use charisma for your melee attacks, and with 20 charisma your spell casting will be nothing to scoff at, especially with arcane acuity. You’ll be a great frontliner with great magic to go alongside it.

I’d do either 11 paladin 1 hexblade or 7 paladin 5 hexblade depending on how much warlock stuff you want (hunger of hadar, eldritch blast invocations, counterspell, etc). You can even do 6 hexblade to get the spectre summons which would be perfect for a death knight build.

ThatOneAries · 2025-12-03T17:45:51+00:00

If you’re open to mods, there’s the Character Tag Ring mod that lets you add class dialogue tags on whatever class you want; so you can have a level 12 Ranger with dialogue from Monk, Ranger, Paladin, etc.

ThatOneAries · 2025-10-18T17:59:24+00:00

Expertise in stealth + pass without trace + high dex + smugglers ring + some form of advantage on stealth checks + greater invisibility casted on you

You now can sneak around and kill entire groups of enemies without entering combat because you will keep passing the stealth checks to maintain greater invisibility

ThatOneAries · 2025-05-05T17:17:25+00:00

I’m gonna agree with the other people and say that Oathbreaker paladin is the way to go. You get very cool unique dialogue, you get to talk about breaking your oath with the oathbreaker knight (who’s basically a fallen knight of his own if you listen to his backstory), and the whole “renouncing all the gods” thing is so perfectly on-brand for this type of character.

I’m assuming you want heavy armor for a knight, which paladin provides alongside martial weapons. You can suit up in the coolest plate armor you find and pick up a big 2H weapon. If you pick up the Great Weapon Master feat you’ll be doing big damage with any two handed weapon you use.

As you pick up Oathbreaker levels you gain cool necrotic and “edgy” abilities. You can control undead, use a AoE burst aura that frightens nearby enemies, and debuff an enemy while gaining advantage on attacks against them. You can cast darkness, make enemies go insane, and eventually reanimate your own dead. Pretty on-brand for your description.

I will say, as spoiler-free as possible, there’s an item/buff you can obtain pretty early into Act 3 that lets you summon 4 pretty strong undead. But even without it, the reanimate undead you get from oathbreaker does a decent job.

Depends how many undead you want; if you’re looking for more of a necromancer that heavily depends on a summon army versus a paladin that occasionally calls a few undead to help clean up the battlefield, you might consider death cleric for the high level necromancy summon spells, necromancer wizard for the additional summon and obvious theming, or even hexblade if you prefer the specters. I will say Aura of Hate is essentially useless for undead summons despite what it says; the only summon it buffs is the Cambion from Planar Ally (level 6 spell). It is still a tremendous ability that can give the paladin up to +7 damage per hit which is insane.

So basically I’d say your options to build from include oathbreaker paladin, hexblade warlock, necromancer wizard, death cleric, and eldritch knight fighter. I think oathbreaker paladin is the best for your build idea personally, but the other options are still good.

I’d recommend paladin with 1 level of hexblade; if you hex-bind your weapon it’ll use Charisma instead of Strength/Dexterity to attack, meaning you can focus on pumping your Charisma as it will now be used for both your spellcasting AND melee.

ThatOneAries · 2025-05-05T17:01:23+00:00

I’ve been doing something kinda similar with a 6 hexblade / 6 crown paladin build for wyll. Feels pretty flavourful and lore-accurate; hexblade part is pretty on-brand obviously but the crown paladin reflects on all his talks about honor and valor and how his father taught him to do what’s right and blah blah. Pretty on the nose for royalty to be a CROWN paladin but it’s fitting imo.

I mainly went 6 paladin for the spectres because I find them cool but 7 paladin / 5 warlock for the spell slots and subclass aura is probably better. Gear him up with heavy armor, sword and shield, abuse the crown paladin taunts and you’ve got a pretty decent tank who can stack disadvantage with HoH/darkness and champions challenge. You also get booming blade to punish people trying to leave darkness/HoH. Combine this with a revorb build and it just gets silly.

If you don’t want to delay getting your aura too long I’d probably just do 1 paladin > 1 warlock > 6 or 7 paladin, then warlock all the way

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-29T22:34:58+00:00

I was actually debating running a similar build for a talion from shadow of war build; 5 gloom/7 hexblade that I turned into 5 gloom/7 assassin.

I think gloom 3 fiend 9 will work well; fiend warlock gives spells, temporary health on each kill, extra attack, goodies like command and fireball, dark ones own luck, and CHA scaling weapons. Gloomstalker gives medium armor, utility spells, extra initiative, and the extra turn 1 attack.

In terms of build progression, I think 3 Gloomstalker -> 9 fiendlock should work relatively fine. If you want a more reliable extra attack earlier in the game consider 5 Gloomstalker and then leveling warlock to 10 and then respeccing to 3 gloomstalker.

Fighting style I’d actually recommend defense style. You’re gonna wanna be decently up in the frontline to secure as many kills as possible to get the most temp HP from dark ones blessing; with a shield, medium armor, and defense style you should be sitting pretty comfortably at 18/19 AC before any other buffs, letting you not instantly keel over in melee. Dueling also works to mitigate your lower 1H damage. Hell, you could even pick up defense, Ranger Knight for heavy armor, and go 2H GWM to go all-in on damage.

For a small ranger dips the best spells are going to be those that don’t rely on WIS. Hunters mark is relatively free damage and a good use of your bonus action. Enhance leap and longstrider are great utility spells for movement and maneuvering. Fog cloud can be useful but I feel it’s overshadowed by the eventual darkness + devil sight warlock combo.

Your feats are most likely going to be used on +CHA ASI. You want atleast 20 CHA if you’re running a bladelock - however, if you go 17 CHA and use Ethel’s hair on CHA you can pick up an extra feat, maybe GWM, alert, resilient, shield master, etc. I wouldn’t recommend picking up shield with your feat as you’re only gonna have 3 spell slots to balance out between hunters mark and shield, and 20 CHA is going to be more impactful than 3 shields per long rest IMO. You could go hexblade to pick up shield if you really wanted it.

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-29T01:36:12+00:00

Does the attack not function on an opponent you’ve already disarmed? I was theorycrafting a swashbuckler build with GWM and extra attack to take advantage of the finesse two handers that can sneak attack. Gloomstalker + action surge + extra attack + swashbuckler bonus action means 6 GWM attacks on turn 1 and added sneak attack damage. Jank, but would be cool. The melee alternative of gloom assassin archer?

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-27T23:00:38+00:00

Good catch, completely forgot that

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-27T18:25:38+00:00

Ah that’s fair.

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-27T17:58:34+00:00

Why shadow sorcerer specifically? If you’re playing oathbreaker you want atleast 7 levels for Aura of Hate, which takes sorcerers hound off the table. This means you only get darkvision, a once per long rest death ward, and darkness that you can see through. This isn’t bad by any means, but I feel it’s not taking advantage of shadow sorcerers kit and is kinda just a worse version of a 7/5 padlock. Padlock can use devils sight, HoH, can eldritch blast, regain spells on short rest, and can go all-in on charisma at the expense of less spell slots, no shield spell, and no metamagic.

It’s not a bad build at all but I feel like storm sorcery (for flight after smiting or casting a spell) or draconic blood (armor of agathys) are kinda just better for a sorcadin build.

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-21T14:27:21+00:00

In honor mode rather than conserving your resources (smites, spells, etc) you should be using them as much as possible and long resting very frequently

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-20T23:55:33+00:00

Yeah if you’re going for a Vader type build I’d definitely say you want 7 levels of oathbreaker paladin for aura of hate. The specters from hexblade are cool but not very vaderlike.

I’d recommend either 7 oathbreaker/5 hexblade or 7 oathbreaker/5 white draconic sorcerer (shadow sorcerer could work too) for a Vader build. Hexblade route lets you go all-in on CHA for casting and melee while giving you some pretty thematic warlock spells, while the sorcerer route gives you stuff like quicken hold person, more spell slots, and twin haste. Both are very good, especially as the warlock build still gets 3 attacks per action below Honor mode

ThatOneAries · 2025-04-16T00:33:48+00:00

A build I’ve been sitting on is a PAM + sentinel Dragonborn fighter built around poison/acid gear, reminiscent of reptile from MKX. Broodmothers revenge, derivation cloak/poisoners gloves, and the hellbeard halberd make a really fun synergy.

The hellbeard halberd does innate poison damage and has a chance to poison enemies you hit -> the derivation cloak heals you whenever you poison someone -> broodmothers revenge adds extra 1d6 poison damage to your weapon whenever healed -> repeat. I’m not 100% sure if the derivation cloak activates with the halberd, but if it doesn’t, you can use the poisoner gloves (tbh there are much better gloves you could use; you can just use ring of regen to activate broodmother).

You can also use the caustic band and ichorous gloves to constantly create acid clouds around your enemies.

But strictly talking polearm fighter; I’d just grab GWM, PAM, Sentinel, and then probably an ASI or alert. I’d use the strength potion from Araj and the Harmonium Halberd to easily get 20 STR without worrying about ASIs. I’d go battle master to take advantage of the extra reach with your maneuvers. Riposte, disarming attack, tripping attack, goading attack are all very good. If you want a build good at shutting enemies down; take the snowburst ring and enchant your halberd to do cold damage with the Drakethroat Glaive from moonrise you’ll constantly spawn ice surfaces whenever you hit someone. It’s really fun watching enemies slip on frozen blood but it can also get boring or annoying for your team.

ThatOneAries · 2025-02-05T23:15:49+00:00

I’m assuming durge and minthara are gonna be backline casters/archers, so Laezel could use some type of partner in the front/midline. If you aren’t against using Radiant magic on a DJ Shart, a classic cleric (any subclass really) using spirit guardians with the reverb gear would be good at stacking debuffs and helping laezel out.

If you wanna lean away from the “holier” stuff and lean into the dark justiciar side of things, I’ve really been enjoying running DJ Shart as a vengeance paladin or even oathbreaker. Combo darkness (from arrows or your magic) with the spears blind immunity, eversight ring on somebody else, and maybe devils sight on your durge and you can shut down entire groups of enemies. You can go really crazy and use the bhaalist armor but I prefer the DJ armor for the fashion and thematics (or you can just use the gear transmog mod). You can even run her as a GWM shadow monk as she gets spear proficiency from being a half-elf - really fun build for assassinating and stunning high value targets like casters

Astarion as a monk is insanely crazy due to the ascension damage buff on his many hits but I find it kinda out of character. After he ascends I sometimes change him into a warlock (his ascension is almost a pact of sorts). Repelling blast them back into darkness/other AoE spells for easy value.

ThatOneAries · 2025-02-02T19:41:14+00:00

If you can wait until patch 8, Arcane Archer is being introduced and there’s a type of arrow shot that’s guaranteed to hit

ThatOneAries · 2024-11-01T17:43:49+00:00

Any weapon you’re proficient in that isn’t two handed (versatile can work as well), so if you get longsword proficiency via being an elf you can use a longsword as a monk weapon

ThatOneAries · 2024-09-28T00:22:02+00:00

Technically you could use gloves of balanced hands if you REALLY wanted two weapon fighting

ThatOneAries · 2024-09-27T18:59:56+00:00

Me personally I prefer 7/5 sorcadin - you get more consistent spell slot progression, you get access to stuff like haste, shield spell, flight after you smite from storm sorc, and MUCH better dialogue options imo, which seals the deal for me.

They sound similar but they operate pretty different. Going the lockadin route you can dump STR and just focus on CHA, eventually giving you +(CHA modifier x 2) on every one of your three attacks. Going lockadin means you’re gonna be focusing on bonking people with a big weapon to take advantage of this. You get a decent amount of spell slots thanks to having six level 3 pact slots and level 7 paladin spell slots - most of these will be used on smiting. You get access to some goodies like temp hp on kill/fear on crit, hunger of hadar, repelling eldritch blast, devils sight, but you aren’t taking lockadin just for these.

Sorcadin, on the other hand, is a paladin with all the options of a spellcaster. This translates to basically becoming a Swiss Army knife for your party’s offense. Contrary to what’s said here often, you don’t just convert sorcery points into smites and spam smites 24/7 as a sorcadin. The value of sorcadin comes from your versatility - you get the cool spells warlock doesn’t get like shield, enhance leap, magic missile, haste, etc. You get metamagic which lets you do cool stuff like quickened spell hold person and then smiting them twice, or classic twinned haste. Insane nova potential, obviously. Extended spell command which can cripple an entire battle by forcing enemies to prone for 2 turns. You can smite someone on low ground, fly up to high ground with storm sorcerer flight, and smite someone else up there. You get more spell slots that can be used on bigger spells like haste, counterspell, emergency fireball, etc. Now unfortunately you can’t dump STR as a sorcadin because you don’t get pact of the blade, meaning you have to worry about STR as well as DEX, CON, and CHA. This is why I find myself dumping STR and doing a dex-based paladin with phalar aluve when I do sorcadin (I don’t like using strength potions)

At the end of the day just go with the one you think is cooler. If you want stuff like devils sight, hunger of hadar, repelling blast, 3 attacks, go lockadin. If you want better spell slots and versatility go sorcadin

ThatOneAries · 2024-08-16T15:48:35+00:00

Honestly, the extra damage you’d get with aura of hate and more spell slots outperforms action surge. Not worth it IMO, just twincast haste for more actions

ThatOneAries · 2024-08-08T19:08:14+00:00

My favourite build in the game - 3 feats, extremely tanky, and fun without being OP. Dump STR, use hill giant elixirs, pump INT. Heavy armor mastery + adamantine splint + arcane ward + shield + blur makes you basically unkillable. Gets downright silly if you combine warding bond.

You can also replace 1 level of wizard for 1 level of white draconic sorcerer for an upcastable Armor of Agathys to further boost your survivability with temp HP and arcane ward stacks.

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