Hello once again! I've got a new game coming up, DM'd by a good friend of mine, and so I will need a new character to play!

My thought process going in to creating a new character has changed drastically since the olden days. I used to try and make the most powerful and versatile character possible, which was good fun to be sure, but I have slowly soured on that process over time.

AND SO my new process is to ask what will be the most hilarious, yet not completely impractical, build I can make?

ENTER THE BLOWGUN MASTER

Blowguns in 5E are intended, I believe, to be weapons solely for the remote administration of poisons. Their regular range is 20 feet, and their maximum range is 100 feet with disadvantage. The darts only deal 1 piercing damage, which is very lol, but I think I have a way around that.

Parts of this build stem from the research I did to find out which was the most effective archer build in 5E. I still haven't finished my evaluation, but this build will contain part of my analysis toward that end.

RACE

First things first, of course, and that first thing is race. Many of the races in 5E have some cool intrinsic features that can influence how that character can be played. I've chosen Halfling because of a couple features: Halfling Nimbleness, and Lucky. The latter isn't like the feat, but is still quite useful: upon rolling a natural 1 for Attack rolls, Saving Throws, or Ability Checks, you may reroll the die but must use the new roll. This came up in my last game, actually; Daisy, our Halfling Monk, rolled double 1s on an advantage roll, and because of Lucky I allowed both of those to be rerolled. On the second time through, a 16 and 12 were had, which is an obvious improvement.

Halfling Nimbleness is a really fun feature, and is unique to this race. This feature allows the PC to move into occupied spaces as long as those spaces contain creatures of a size larger than the PC. Halflings are size Small, so this feature will let me move into most other creatures' spaces without any detriments. I'm going to use this for lots of FUN.

For subrace, I've chosen Ghostwise Halfling, which gives some bonuses to the important attributes (Dex +2, Wis +1) and also gives Silent Speech, a one-way form of telepathy. Neat!

STARTING CLASS

Next up is class, and I'm starting with Fighter. Why Fighter? Because I like Fighter, that's why! I also like the starting proficiencies, the higher starting health, the saving throws, and I like getting a Fighting Style right away. I chose Unarmed, because this guy is destined to be a Monk. I will be choosing Guild Artisan as the background, picking Glassblower's Supplies as my tool. An extra tool proficiency granted by my DM will be for Woodcarver's Tools. I have a secret plan for these tools, hehehehe.

For subclass, I will eventually have Battle Master. Because Battle Master is awesome, and easily one of the coolest feature sets in the entirety of 5E. The main conceit behind the Battle Master is the use of Superiority Dice and Maneuvers. When a Battle Master hits with a weapon attack, a Superiority Die can be expended to add on some damage and another deleterious effect to the blow. So, if I swing and hit an orc with my long sword, and declare I'm performing a Tripping Attack maneuver, I'd roll my Superiority Dice to see what damage I can add on and the target rolls a save against my maneuver's DC (which is 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Dexterity or Strength modifier.) If the orc fails the save, he gets knocked prone and I tack on the extra damage with the regular damage from my long sword.

The extra silly part? Many of the maneuvers DO NOT SPECIFY A MELEE ATTACK. So probably a good 75% of the maneuvers can be used with ranged weapons, like a long bow or heavy crossbow. Or in my case, a blowgun.

I CAN PERFORM A TRIPPING ATTACK WITH A BLOWGUN

Suddenly, instead of dealing just 1 piercing damage with my blowgun, I'm now dealing 1d8 + 1 + Dex mod piercing damage with my blowgun. Just like a regular long bow!

That's not all. I've got more in stock, and it all plays out with more levels.

MULTICLASS

Right out the gate, I'm tellin ya, I love me some multiclassing. Class capstones are neat and all, but my groups tend to stop playing around level 10 anyway, so I like getting all sorts of class features way before that level so as to have too much fun!

With this character, I plan on multiclassing nearly right away. Two levels of Fighter, then two levels of Monk. And then be some Ranger, I'm not sure yet. I know for certain I want to hit level three with Fighter and Monk to get my subclasses, Battle Master and Kensei respectively. Once I get Kensei, I can declare my blowgun as a Kensei weapon, which will allow me to switch its damage die to my Martial Arts die. Now my damage calculation with a maneuver will look like this:  1d4 + 1d8 + 4 (Dex mod for 19, more on this later.) 

More importantly, with the Monk levels taken into account, the second part of my play style will be able to come out: using Halfling Nimbleness, I will occupy an enemy's spot and make ranged attacks at other enemies with my Attack action and I'll do unarmed strikes with my Bonus Action to strike the groin!

Another fun thing I can do at longer range comes to the fore with the Kensei class and Ki features of the Monk class: I can use a Bonus Action to cause my ranged weapons to deal extra damage, being a +1d4 of the same damage the weapon deals. I can also spend 1 Ki to negate disadvantage on my long range attacks for the rest of the turn, using a new feature called Distant Eye. Eventually, with six levels in Monk, I'll be able to spend some Ki to enhance the attack further, adding my Martial Arts die to the weapon attack. Those attacks will also be magical, so that's neat.

So at level six, this is what my damage rolls will look like when I attack strictly from range using maneuvers: 2d4 + 1d8 + 4

CLASS SYNERGY

The mix of classes may seem a bit odd right now, so let me explain. The Monk class depends on Dexterity and Wisdom as its primary abilities. The Fighter depends on Constitution a bit, but not nearly as much as it depends on Dexterity or Strength. Since we've chosen Dexterity, the abilities line up between the two and make this build Dual Ability Dependent. Increasing Dexterity helps both classes, and increasing Wisdom benefits both classes as well, although more indirectly; Wisdom increases AC for the Monk, and a Fighter benefits from higher AC just as much as a Monk.

Increasing Wisdom also increases the save DC for Ki usage. The only thing I have for that is Stunning Strike, which can cause the stunned condition if the target fails a Constitution saving throw, but only with a melee weapon attack and for the cost of 1 Ki. Kind of situational, but it's a great thing to have anyway.

All of these abilities and maneuvers cost either Superiority Dice or Ki. With only three levels in each class, I've got three Ki points and four Superiority Dice. At level six I'm not using Ki for the main attacks just yet, but that's only four attacks with extra damage and three Flurry of Blows.

But that's okay. I can regain Superiority Dice and Ki by taking a short rest. With the other features I gain by taking this route, I can still be useful in and outside of combat even without a short rest. Not as effective, but still pretty good.

FEATS

At levels seven and eight, I get two Ability Score Improvements as part of my class progressions. I pretty rarely actually take the normal +2 to my ability scores, I usually go with a feat.

My first choice is going to be Crossbow Expert.

You may ask why.

Well, you see, taking that feat will allow me to attack at range while standing next to an enemy without any disadvantage on my attacks. Normally if you attack with a ranged weapon while within five feet of an enemy, you attack at disadvantage. In the first levels of this character, I'll still try to attack at disadvantage. I'm somewhat protected in this case because of the Lucky racial feature, so I at least have only a small chance of a natural 1 affecting me. But with this feat, I'll be able to stand underneath my enemies while shooting at their friends and launching uppercuts.

My second feat is going to be Martial Adept.

This one is pretty self-explanatory: I get another Superiority Die, and I get two more maneuvers. 'Nuff said.

By level eight, I'll have five Superiority Dice and four Ki points with which to do murder.

ABILITY SCORES

I usually roll up by throwing 6d20 and letting the numbers fall where they may, which results in hilarity most times like Strength scores of 3 or Charisma scores of 20, great stuff.

This time around, I used the official standard: 4d6, drop the lowest roll and add the other three together.

I did pretty good:

STR:     9
DEX:    17
CON:    12
INT :    12
WIS:    14
CHA:     9

The only thing I allowed myself to change was the order of Wisdom and Charisma, switching the 9 and 14 around. My race gets +2 to Dex and +1 to Wis, making those scores 19 and 15 and their modifiers +4 and +2. With Unarmored Defense from my Monk levels, my base AC is 16.

So that's about it! I'll probably max out Monk levels, but I might take some Ranger levels because spellcasting is fun and Hail of Thorns is amazing. I've got PLENTY of other character builds, I'll write them up one of these days if there's any interest.

kthx for reading byeeeee