Become Death

Become Death

Primary Combat Role: Single-Target Damage
Secondary Combat Roles: Battlefield Control, Multi-Target Damage
Out of Combat Roles: Scouting, Healing, Pass Without Trace
Lineage: Sylvan Elf
Background: Lowlife

Build Notes

For the first five levels, we're a standard issue Ranger. Don't want to delay extra attack unless there's a really good reason, and there isn't. This is where the lion's share of your at-will single-target damage is coming from. Starting with Uncanny Accuracy gets our DEX to 18 early and lets us not have to worry about all that pesky cover that's lying around. Or standing around. Whichever. Once we get Power Attack at 4, we pretty much want to use it all the time, since betwen Archery style and never suffering from cover penalties, an enemy would need an exceptionally high AC for the -3/+6 not to be worth taking.

Next, a dip into Law Cleric gives us the Shield spell from a stat-compatible caster. I firmly believe every build should try to pick up Shield at some point.

Then we grab a Cunning Action's worth of Rogue levels, chiefly so that we can spend our bonus action getting advantage on as many attacks as possible; hopefully more than one per Hide attempt, given that we also pick up Stealth expertise. Cunning Action will also come in handy should an enemy try to get in our face and give us disadvantage on our bow shots: now we can just Disengage and Walk Away. The +1d6 damage per round is icing on the cake.

We could go all-in on being a single-target death machine by going to Fighter from here for Action Surge, but I went back to Cleric, primarily to give us a few more spell slots. Spike Growth never stops being a workhorse, and we also want to be maintaining Pass Without Trace when we're not using Spike Growth as much as possible. Plus, by continuing in Law Cleric we get some nice goodies like imposing disadvantage on enemies' saves vs Calm Emotions, Blindness, or Hold Person.

Ability Scores

STR: 10
DEX: 15+2
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 15+1
CHA: 8

Level Progression

1: Ranger 1 [Feat: Uncanny Accuracy (+1 DEX)]
2: Ranger 2 [Fighting Style: Archery]
3: Ranger (Hunter) 3 [Feature: Horde Breaker]
4: Ranger 4 [Feat: Power Attack]
5: Ranger 5
6: Cleric (Law Domain) 1
7: Rogue 1 [Expertise: Stealth, Perception]
8: Rogue 2
9: Cleric 2
10: Cleric 3
11: Cleric 4
12: Cleric 5

Spells Learned/Prepared

1: --
2: Goodberry, Hunter's Mark
3: Faerie Fire
4: --
5: -Faerie Fire, +Spike Growth, +Pass Without Trace
6: Bless, Healing Word, Protection from Evil and Good, Shield of Faith, ^Heroism, ^Shield 7: --
8: --
9: +Bane
10: -Bane, -Protection from Evil and Good, +Calm Emotions, +Blindness, +Silence, ^Branding Smite, ^Hold Person
11: +Aid
12: +Spirit Guardians, ^Counterspell, ^Lightning Bolt

^signifies a spell which is automatically prepared due to subclass