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Ultimate Assassin Tashified
🕑 Added 2022-02-08 23:29:14 +0000 UTCI should've done this one and a few others a long time ago, but now's better than later or never, so here we go.
Video will be done very soon too.
I'll copy-paste the wall of text describing the changes below and also attach an entire guide file if you prefer it the old school way.
Tasha Upgrades
Half-elf (PHB)
Since Tasha, every race can have whatever ability score it wants, so Half-elf does fit this character a bit better than Wood Elf. +2 to DEX, +1 to WIS and +1 to CON are your starting racial ability bonuses.
You do lose the Mask of the Wild trait, but unless you’re constantly sneaking around in foliage, snow and other environmental and weather conditions, you won’t need it really. You also have 5 feet slower movespeed, but with a longbowman like this one, I find it hard to imagine if it would ever matter.
You do get to choose 2 skills proficiencies. Perception is an auto-pick as usual, I’d pick Survivalhere as well, especially if you’re playing this character at a relatively low level and know that your DM will incorporate exploration and traveling through wilderness into the campaign. You could take Nature or Medicineif handling poisons will be something you know you’ll be able to do.
Rogue (Tasha)
Steady Aim feature has been designed specifically to help with the fact that Rogues typically only have 1 attack per turn. This character, on the other hand, gets plenty of attacks from Fighter levels, so this is almost completely useless to you.
Ranger (Tasha)
The alternative/optional Ranger features from Tasha do give this build a bit more versatility though.
Favored Foe is useless in big fights, because you’re concentrating on Hunter’s Mark spell, which can net you up to 16d6 extra damage if you can surprise your target during the first round, or up to 8d6 normally, assuming all 8 attacks hit with no crits. However, in smaller scraps and/or dungeon crawly sessions, where you want to conserve your precious few spellslots instead of wasting them on weak enemies, 1d4 extra damage isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing.
Deft Explorer: Canny is a bit redundant in terms of skill expertises, because you get the ones you need from Rogue. However, Survivalskill for exploration/wilderness travel-heavy campaigns, or Insight for more urban scenarios with more intrigue and social encounters, are both solid options.
The new Fighting Stylesaren’t relevant for this character specifically. There might be some edge cases where Blind Fighting would be actually more useful than Defense Fighting Style, but if you’re shooting your enemy from the distance of 10 feet, something went terribly wrong there. Archery is still a no-brainer of course.
Spellcasting Focus is nice, though of little importance in most cases. You have very few spells to worry about anyway. However, Primal Awareness does give you the ability to Speak with Animals so, if you’re one of the lucky few who have an awesome DM willing to let local rabbits and foxes tell you important info about the area, great.
Martial Versatility is also of low importance for your Ranger levels. The same cannot really be said for…
…Fighter (Tasha)
, as its Martial Versatilityactually offers you an option of not just switching Fighting Styles, but also your Battle Master’s maneuvers. If you ever find yourself not using a maneuver, now you have plenty of chances to switch it for another one.
Speaking about re-arranging known maneuvers, one new addition to the roster is Ambush. Adding extra 1d8 to your Stealth rolls is actually exactly what this character needs to minimize the effect of bad Stealth rolls, though you do lose out a tiny bit on maximum theoretical damage due to 1 less maneuver die.
Feats
Piercer (Tasha) feat offers meaningful bump in damage. Up to 8d8 extra damage from longbow crits is 36 damage on average, assuming everything hits. This is more than 10% increase to its base damage (no magic weapons, no poisons). Add to that rerolls of all 1s, 2s and maybe 3s (I wouldn’t really reroll 3s on d8s, even though it mathematically makes sense – I’m superstitious about my dice like that…), you’re looking at close to 40 extra damage on average.
But now, the problem is this character is already extremely feat-heavy. You already can’t max out your Wisdom score, so that bonus to Initiative is looking less and less consistent.
Weirdly enough, one of the solutions to this problem could be further reducing the number of Ability Score Improvements (ASIs) by swapping 4th Rogue level for 1st level of…
…Twilight freaking Cleric!
Yeah… well, you can thank a few of my Patreon Discord members (you know who you are) who pushed me just a bit over the edge and made me re-assess the earlier decision to keep this character a 3-class multiclass.
If there’s a character to make a strong case for as much darkvision range and invisibility as possible, it’s this one. Eyes of the Night’s 300ft darkvision (unfortunately it doesn’t stack with Umbral Sight, because it’s a subclass feature, not a racial trait…) makes it so much easier to position yourself in total darkness and still be able to see your clueless victim. But Vigilant Blessing is what takes the cake for me here, as that’s what fixes the aforementioned unreliable Initiative bonus.
You also get a few more spellslots and spells to play with, but that’s not that important.
Dilemma
However, losing that 4th Rogue level results in 1 less ASI and with 1 extra feat in the mix (Piercer), you’re now faced with a prospect of not even maxing out your DEX score – it caps out at 18 instead of 20. We can’t have that, right?
So, something has to go.
With Elven Accuracy’s 3d20 attack rolls and Vigilant Blessing advantage on Initiative and Ambush for high Stealth rolls, you could manage without Lucky feat. The main reason I crammed it into this build was to mitigate bad Initiative and Stealth rolls, but between all the advantages and high bonuses, it’s a “nice to have” rather than “I need this”.
However, if you still prefer having all the advantages and rerolls you could possibly get to maximize odds of success on all the rolls, this character is perfectly fine without the Piercer feat, still. Assuming all attack rolls hit, on average 350-ish damage without it or 380/90-ish damage with it doesn’t seem like a big difference in the context of 5e.
This choice will also affect your…
…Point Buy
There are multiple options here, depending on the feats you decide to go for. If you are playing this on lower levels, then you won’t have enough ASIs for both Elven Accuracy and Piercer feat anyway, so a min-maxed spread will do:
STR: 8
DEX: 17
CON: 16
INT: 8
WIS: 16
CHA: 8
You can opt for a more cerebral character though and it makes some sense too. Hitpoints aren’t everything, having 10% better INT saving throws may be important to some of you who regularly deal with DMs targeting your brain via Mindflayers and other brain invaders.
STR: 8
DEX: 17
CON: 14
INT: 12
WIS: 16
CHA: 8
You could switch the 12 in INT over to CHA too, I guess, to have an easier time against spells like Banishment, but now we’re getting into individual, table/DM/campaign-specific considerations, which will always differ slightly from one another.
However, both Piercerand Elven Accuracy, you have two feats that pump +1 into your DEX, so something like this:
STR: 8
DEX: 16
CON: 16
INT: 10
WIS: 16
CHA: 8
, or:
STR: 8
DEX: 16
CON: 16
INT: 8
WIS: 16
CHA: 10
seems clean enough to accompany all those half-ASIs.
Progression
I’m honestly not sure when’s the best time to slap that 1 level of Twilight Cleric into this character, because there are so many variables at play here, so I just let the d20 decide. I’ve decided to ditch the Lucky feat, but if you want it instead of Piercer, you can take it at the same level you would take Lucky.
1) Rogue 1: Sneak Attack, Expertise (Stealth)
2) Fighter 1: longbow proficiency, Archery Fighting Style, Second Wind
3) Fighter 2: Action Surge
4) Fighter 3: Student of War, Combat Superiority, Maneuvers
5) Fighter 4: Elven Accuracy feat
6) Fighter 5: Extra Attack (2 attacks)
7) Fighter 6: Sharpshooter feat
8) Ranger 1: Favored Enemy, Natural Explorer
9) Ranger 2: Defense Fighting Style, Spellcasting (Hunter’s Mark)
10) Ranger 3: Dread Ambusher, Umbral Sight
11) Cleric 1: Eyes of Night, Vigilant Blessing
12) Ranger 4: Alert feat
13) Fighter 7: +2 Maneuvers, +1 Superiority Die, Know Your Enemy
14) Fighter 8: Piercer feat
15) Rogue 2: Cunning Action (bonus action Hide)
16) Rogue 3: Assassinate, Bonus Proficiencies
17) Fighter 9: Indomitable
18) Fighter 10: +2 Maneuvers, Improved Combat Superiority (d10)
19) Fighter 11: Extra Attack (3 attacks)
20) Fighter 12: DEX +2
