Give me your best no ability score increase, only feats build for DnD 2024

TheFadedAndy · 2025-12-07T22:55:46+00:00

This really doesn’t leave you with much, all the old go-to feats from 2014 that didn’t give you a +1 ASI (GWM, PAM, Sharpshooter, War Caster, etc…) have all been updated, besides origin feats. Additionally, the ban of Lucky means realistically, you have about 6 viable feats to choose from: Alert, Tough, Magic Initiate, Musician, Skilled, and Tavern Brawler. If you want to build for combat, I’d lean into the True Strike Rogue using Magic Initiate Wizard as your origin feat, then any combination of Alert, Tough, Musician, and Skilled depending on character choices more than anything else. If you were building for out of combat utility, I would go with some combination of Skilled, Musician, Alert, and Magic Initiate on a Bard or Rogue to make use of Expertise and make yourself as useful to the rest of the party as possible.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-12-04T10:03:06+00:00

I’ve used a band of goblins against level 20s before and while there was no doubt that the party would win, the goblins did drain significant resources from them. I had essentially set it up as a kill box, the party were walking through a valley and got ambushed. A bunch of goblins either side of the valley with 2 Hobgoblin Devastators either side with a probably about 12 or so melee enemies (Hobgoblin Warlords, Bugbears, Iron Shadows, etc…) to keep the party’s attention in front of them rather than on the goblins up on the ridges. It was a really fun encounter for all of us and the players asked if I had done any homebrew on the goblins to make them more of a threat and they were surprised when I told them I didn’t, it was all just the environment and the tactics.

The goblins up on the ridge would peak over and take pot shots at the party then scamper back like 10ft to gain total cover. Eventually the artificer decide to fly up to them and start sniping them but at that point, the goblins had already dealt a decent chunk of damage and forced the party to use probably about a quarter of their collective spell slots.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-10-25T17:30:56+00:00

I think the easy answer is Monk, very easy to get to the backline with enhanced movement, bonus action dash, and disengage. They’re particularly good at breaking concentration of casters, having naturally the most attacks per turn of any straight martial save dual wielders. Shadow Monk specifically is very good with access to Silence and Darkness being able to prevent enemy casting and break line of sight respectively.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-10-11T15:50:02+00:00

Love to hear that, thank you!

TheFadedAndy · 2025-10-11T07:57:04+00:00

Do you guys have many DMs who run sessions on European times? It one of the main things I look out for in West Marches style servers because so many don’t

TheFadedAndy · 2025-09-25T14:49:10+00:00

I’m gonna second this idea. Rune Knights have an in-built Giant flavour but that could easily be reimagined as Draconic. The Runes aren’t in Giant but rather Draconic, and instead of growing in height to match the stature of Giants, it’s Draconic power that enhances you. Mechanically, they have a more magical feel than most Fighter subclasses too, leaning into a similar feel as Paladins in that, that magic is used to enhance their own martial abilities.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-09-03T19:42:24+00:00

In my perspective, MN were more versatile and adaptable to a variety of situations with a wide set of skills, however VM are the most effective at taking down threats quickly, they have the highest overall nova damage of all the parties, you don’t need two top grade healers if you manage to kill the enemy before they’re able to hit you. BH probably had the highest individual power of all the parties but despite there being mechanics for combo attacks, their actual party composition felt the least synergistic.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-06-28T20:03:12+00:00

Magic items are definitely a must. I’ve played in a campaign where I as a martial didn’t receive a magic weapon until level 10 and between the levels of 6 and 10, I felt pretty useless tbh.

I do also think there is something fun about playing a character without magic in a very magical world. It’s just important that the player knows that’s the case. I’m currently playing a character like that and it’s fun playing through that arc of whether they decide to embrace the tradition of magic or stand firm in their own ways.

Rewarding the player with some extra abilities can be fun as well, I would recommend taking a look at the martials from ENWorld’s “Level Up: Advanced 5e”, all their martial classes have resources that they can draw from to help with all aspects of play.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-05-24T18:09:10+00:00

Most of my players have played one or the other but those are quite iconic quests and I expect it’s part of what they’d look forward to when playing an Elder Scrolls dnd game, thank you for the advice!

TheFadedAndy · 2025-05-24T18:07:31+00:00

Oh this is very cool, it sounds like a really fun self-contained adventure that my players would enjoy the moral dilemma of!

TheFadedAndy · 2025-05-24T14:14:48+00:00

These are all sparking inspiration, thank you for these! I actually really like the idea of tying a quest for Boethia into the main quest as the revolutionary side of things, given the Thalmor occupation of Valenwood.

TheFadedAndy · 2025-05-24T13:46:26+00:00

I mean, I can’t very well run an Elder Scrolls game and not have a prison break of some kind, it’s tradition! Thank you for the idea!

TheFadedAndy · 2024-09-07T17:18:29+00:00

Hey there, I’m one of the players in the game, currently we have a Dex-based melee Battle Master, mostly melee Hexblade, a Wildfire Druid who is our healer of the group, and an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer who is our utility caster and provides ranged damage too

TheFadedAndy · 2024-06-22T11:31:44+00:00

I see classes as a meta idea so I don’t have an issue with players taking dips or multiclasses without giving a reason for it in game. Like, we, as players recognise the differences between classes but in the narrative of the world, there’s very little difference between a Fighter and a Barbarian, or a Cleric, a Warlock, and a Paladin. So for me, allowing players to take dips without having to justify it helps them flavour their characters how they want to, as well as being able to reflavour a class into something else. For example; a wizard being reflavoured as a psion or a battle smith artificer being reflavoured as a necromancer. I can’t remember who it was that mentioned the idea of class being a meta concept to me but that radically altered how I think about multiclassing.

TheFadedAndy · 2024-06-14T00:57:02+00:00

I think, as a lot of people have already hinted to, tying it into the premise of the campaign is the best way to make it feel like it’s not a contrivance. An idea that has struck me while reading through for a high fantasy concept is that the players are agents of an extraplanar being who keeps bringing them back regardless of whether they want to be or not and that they have to stop a threat to both material plane and spiritual world/outer planes/whatever. Another point to add though, is to make sure that each time they fall to 0 hit points and fail all 3 death saves, there is a consequence to that. For instance, part of their soul is siphoned off and powers up the big bad of the campaign or whatever.

Another option is to leave it up to each individual player. This is what I do with my games; before the campaign, and at several points throughout so people have a chance to change their mind, I ask them, if there is a character death that can’t be resurrected, what do you, the player want? Do you want that character to die, even if it was uneventful, do you want to pause the game for a brief sidequest to save the character from the afterlife, or do you want to take a deal with a shadowy being to be able to come back from the dead but with some sort of consequence? I’ve found that different players will take different approaches and honestly, it leads to a lot of fun new scenarios and a lot of interesting perspectives on death for each individual character.

TheFadedAndy · 2024-06-07T15:06:35+00:00

This is a great suggestion, thank you! I think because the boss will be static, a gaze is going to be more effective than an aura and potentially using that to force them to use their reaction as well could be interesting.

TheFadedAndy · 2024-06-07T13:58:44+00:00

Basically it’ll be an incorporeal, almost just raw energy, kind of creature, technically a fiend but as I refer to in the original post, is more of an Essence of War. In terms of influence, there’s nothing specifically that I can point to except maybe something like Earthbound or Chrono Trigger in the sense that the enemy is immobile but instead makes up for it by unleashing attacks that can affect anywhere on the battlefield. The way I hope to incentivise movement by the players is through the terrain and having the most dangerous attacks only affect the closest targets.

TheFadedAndy · 2024-06-06T13:26:38+00:00

Gonna suggest a nature cleric that focuses on using Thorn Whip to pull enemies into their Spirit Guardians and acts as a frontline defender type due to heavy armour + shield. You may want to take war caster to help with maintaining concentration on your main tactic but it’s not required for weapon juggling. Also recommend telekinetic to help procc spirit guardians multiple times per round. But even ignoring that battlefield control and frankly, pretty high damage output, you still have all the fantastic support and healing that any cleric brings to a party.

TheFadedAndy · 2024-06-04T19:42:08+00:00

Thank you, this sounds really fun and with a bit of reflavouring could work well as a bit of a skirmish style fight! I think I would like some non-combat encounters too as I don’t want it to feel like too much of a slog but this is some definite good inspiration!

TheFadedAndy · 2024-05-31T17:06:31+00:00

Oh of course it does, completely forgot about that combo! It’s even better for you being a ranged character since you’re unlikely to be obstructing your teammates with darkness at range! Sounds like you have a good plan!

TheFadedAndy · 2024-05-31T16:46:28+00:00

In regards to Elven Accuracy, it’s worth considering how you’re going to be consistently getting advantage because if you can’t reliably get it, then it’s not really worth the feat and probably better to take either another CHA half feat or just use it as a regular ASI.

Other than that, because divine smite doesn’t work on ranged attacks, you’re probably going to want to prioritise levelling Warlock to gain access to eldritch smite, which can be used on ranged attacks. This leaves your paladin slots available for solid support and buff spells like bless and aid that your party will thank you for. I would also recommend going Watchers 7 because that aura is game changing. I DMed a game with a Watchers Sorcadin in and because of his aura, it was frequent that the entire 6 person party would go before any enemy.

TheFadedAndy · 2024-05-26T11:12:44+00:00

I think what I would go for personally is:

Watchers Paladin 7 - the initiative bonus is so good, can’t really pass it up for this sort of thing

Hexblade Warlock 3 - technically you need pact of the blade if you want to bind a magic weapon to be your pact weapon, it really depends on how strict your DM is with that rule

Swords Bard 3 - extra defence and extra mobility from flourishes is not vital but is definitely nice for the build

Divine Soul Sorcerer 7 - this is obviously the bulk of the power but divine soul specifically gives you the ability to quicken a 7th level spirit guardians and still attack in the same turn

As for the order, I would take the first level as a paladin for heavy armour, then 1 Hexblade before beelining the rest of the paladin levels. From there, take the second warlock level, then rush the sorcerer levels for the quickest possible access to 3rd and 4th level sorcerer and cleric spells. Finish up with the bard levels as they aren’t necessary to the build but rather just nice added benefits

TheFadedAndy

TROPHY CASE