Why not take the Piercer feat? Just think of the advantages: - Your Dex might be capped, but you can still increase Str by one. - If you get unlucky and roll a one on your blowgun damage die, you can reroll it, possibly increasing it to as high as one. - If you get a critical hit, you can roll another d1 to add to your damage. The Piercer feat was clearly designed with blowguns in mind!
25:40 Hidden benefit of taking artificer levels though. You can make yourself an Alchemy Jug. Which, in addition to providing gallons of condiments for the whole team, can provide you with fresh water that you can fill a bath-tub with! You can hydrate anywhere!
If you take 1 more level and go battlesmith, your defender can be that bathtub. And it can stay in the back lines with you using its reaction to give disadvantage against attacks against you.
If I was a DM and somebody actually wanted to use the Poisoner feat for a Blowgun build at my table, I'd say that when they craft their poison they store it in a large vial. A vial large enough to hold PB amount of blowgun darts. The 1 minute timer doesn't start for the ammo until its removed from the vial. Removing it from the vial is just part of the normal loading action.
I mean, I’m just kinda a weirdo who has given my players some crazy stuff like perm advantage and extra sneak attack die on a rogue. I’d just say that “ignores resistance” also takes down immunity to resistance. Also they’re immune to poison “damage” not the extra effects of poison. Make say drow poison and it will do stuff to them. Because it’s dumb to think drow would use poison if like a solid chunk of what they fight will just be straight up immune
I have a Grung battlesmith artificer that's a lot of fun to play. Riding around on his mechanical lizard defender and throwing or stabbing with his poison-coated trident, with the Returning Weapon Infusion of course ;-) Also, his name is K'met D'froag.
I disagree with being so quick to go artificer. Let's read loading: "Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an Action, bonus Action, or Reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make." You can still make multiple attacks with your blowgun in a turn just not as the same action. Because of this you don't lose on anything until you get extra attack. I purpose that we save artificer until levels 5-6 so that we can pick up sharpshooter faster.
Or just get DM permission to take crossbow expert and make it affect blowguns instead of crossbows. A "Blowgun Expert" feat. I can easily imagine most DMs would allow this because you're still going through taking a feat to get the loading property ignored on your weapon.
Welcome home, this is where you belong. That brings a smile to my face every time. You appear to take great pleasure in the work that you do for us, thank you and keep it up!
I think the lack of a damage die really blows, especially on a Samurai, with all the access to advantage and therefore a higher critchance. That beeing said, it is nice to see a build utillizing the Blowgun. I personally expected you to just go Rogue and add sneak attack damage to it.
heres an interesting idea for a poison focused character. if bloodhunter is allowed at your table you can take the blood curse of exposure that can negate resistance or if you amplify it you can turn immunity into resistance - the poisoner feat allows you to ignore resistance. so you can get loads of poison damage and as long as you have your reaction (which you should do on your turn) you can turn a creature thats immune to poison damage into an easy target with a damage theyd never expect.
Future idea: I'd love to see what you can do with a Sidekick (a la Tasha's). As a player's main character! You can choose ANY creature of CR 1/2 or lower. That should be quite a number of possibilities! I'd love to play in a campaign where we are all sidekicks actually, lol.
Some interesting option: Animated Broom -> Fly speed, Flyby, Blindsight, immunity to a ton of conditions, and Adv on initiative. Living Unseen Servant Kobold Inventor But these are the best IMO: Cackler -> +3 Dex mod, resistance to a ton of damage types, 120ft darkvision, Mimicry 3 skill proficiencies plus 2 languages and hands that can use weapons. Build it as an Archer using the Warrior class Fist of Bane -> Adv on all saving throws & ability checks in combat, Immunity to Fear, +3 STR, build as a Warrior Grippilli Warrior -> Multiattack including an auto-grapple, huge jump distance, 3x Skill profs, build as a Expert. Jacklewere -> immunity to non-magical Bludge/Slash/Pierc, Adv on perception, 3x skills Kalashtar -> 2d10 cantrip effectively, Adv on Wis, great stats, build as a mage or Expert Metallic Warbler -> fire immunity, tons of condition immunities, Telepathy, Fly speed, + mini Hypnotic Pattern Sage -> +4 Intelligence + extra spells Skulk -> +4 Dex + permanent Invisibility Tridrone -> 3x attacks
You are an artificer. I would ask the DM to let me craft needles that can pre-load and hold the potent poison from the poisoner feat. You are downgrading yourself using the blow gun, so I think using the flavor as an artificer to make needles is a decent argument.
Yeah honestly as an artificer you could simply upgrade to a crossbow (either hand or light depending on how you want to do things) and have your crossbow bolts store your poisons/anything else you want to use and have it be so that your bolts shatter upon breaking skin so you can administer your poison with no action cost but at the cost of not being able to reuse fired bolts
Hi ! Awesome episode, thank you very much ! I think you might have missed a huuuge potential improvement to the damages : By taking 2 levels of conjuration wizard, you could use your Minor Conjuration feature to summon... A purple worm poison vial. 12D6, DC 19 save. Thus your "preparation" round would be - Action : Conjure the poison - Bonus action : Apply it thanks to the poisoner feat Then you can go crazy on your nova round with a first attack hitting like a truck. On top of that, you might find an interesting spell to concentrate on with 2 or 3 wizard levels This is easy damages as soon as level 3
@@Datruuth77 I haven’t played in this guy’s campaign, but I’ve played through Strahd. I wouldn’t advise a poison build, as there are a lot of undead (don’t think that is really a spoiler). That being said, you do you. Strahd is a really fun campaign and there are plenty of enemies who aren’t undead and it is a long campaign and has a lot of rp. A poison focused character thematically seems perfectly reasonable
@@maybevoldemort8995 Strangely, I have also played a grung in Curse of Strahd. The poison was never useful. I accidentally poisoned my party often, and when we made a detour to a river so I could avoid a point of exhaustion, we got surrounded by wolves. I love that character, but man, CoS was not the right campaign for him. RIP Wibbly Hopkins
I love it when you tell us to play the character we want to play and not something that just does a lot of damage. This build brought me comfort with my BladeSinger Wizard that was laughed at by the other players, saying that "I hope you have another character ready, because you are going to die." Keep doing what you're doing!
I really liked the concept of this build, the poisoner blowgun frog seems really cool to roleplay. Though as mentioned a little homebrewing can go a long way. I think the same concept can be achieved with the famous crossbow expert - reflavored to blowgun expert + sharpshooter. I would go ranger here, since I think thematically would be more fun the the fighter. The gloom stalker matches very well with the guerrilla specialist I envision this character being. The build is not new what so ever, but it`s one of the strongest DPR builds out there. For the optmizers out there I think this would be a pretty fun way to play this poisoner frog character and still deliver crazy amounts of damage. Though another amazing episode Colby! Your creativity is inspiring! Very well done!
Some of my favorite videos of yours had to be when you take on the challenge of optimizing the lower powered weapons like your Whiperwhil and Sling Swarmkeeper. I already know it’s gonna be great.
I love the Cure Wounds: "Here my mate, take some heal. But sorry, now you're poisoned" That being said, I love your content :) And I once built a Trickery Cleric Grung with the idea of grappling (poison skin) and using even the grappler feat. The build was planned around making this "useless feat" somehow useful - and in theory it worked ^^
To avoid exhaustion “you need to find something like a decanter of endless water or a portable bathtub.” OR MAYBE, a 🧞♂️ vessel filled with water! I know that wouldn’t work with this build, but it’s a great way to get around that problem.
I’ve been playing a slightly modified version of your eldritch knight/Blade singer for my home game - and having an absolute blast. I can now proudly say I have a backup character, this little frog poisoner sounds so so fun!
I love when I'm thinking about a build and then one of your videos pops up on my feed that relates to what I was working on. I really look forward to hearing your insight wherever it happens.
There's a Ranger Subclass in Grim Hollow 5e that would be so sweet for this! Green Reaper Ranger. It adds Poison damage and special effects to attacks, and eventually has ways to deal with Poison Immunity (converts to Acid/Necrotic).
I actually created a similar build to this once! Instead of the poisoner theme I went for the old Eladrin with a blowgun disguised as a walking stick. Only level 9 but it went 8 Rogue Scout, 1 Forge Cleric (for the magical weapon). Elven Accuracy (4) and the Sharpshooter feat(8). The cleric spells Bless & Guidance are always great for accuracy and ability checks respectivly and it relies on using Steady Aim combined with Elven accuracy to Sharpshot/crit-fish(for sneak attack) making for moderate but very consistent damage. The Scout subclass allows us to move as a reaction saving our bonus action for steady aim each turn making chasing us down painful and if we get grappled we have Fey-Step to escape with a chance to frighten or charm!
I forget who I saw come up with it, but the best houserule I've ever seen to make blowguns useful is that attacking with one doesn't break stealth. And it makes sense if you think about it--attacking with a blowgun is much stealthier than attacking with, say, a bow. If I were DMing, I'd have the target of the attack make a perception check versus the stealth roll of the hidden blowgun user whenever they were targeted; on a failure the creature would remain hidden.
One fun and flavourful, if situational final feat, is skill expert. If you manage to encounter something you can extract poison from, the rules ask you for a DC 20 nature check. With expertise you have a minimum roll of 11, AKA at 50% chance of success assuming a +0 INT modifier. Not great, but with a little luck and help that boost a few attacks in a way that is completely in line with the character's flavour. Having the DM throw wyverns at you is an opportunity, if unreliable, but if you get your party involved, Find Familiar can summon a poisonous snake and warlocks with the pact of the chain get even better options.
Great timing! I just made my own Grung poisoner build! I didn't restrict myself with the blowgun though. I went a couple levels into Blood Hunter for the Blood Curse of Exposure, which can turn poison immunity into poison resistance! And then the poisoner feet makes it normal damage. The rest of the build tries to get as many attacks as possible to increase the likelihood the poison sticks. Fighter 11 for extra extra attack and the Echo Knight's Unleash Incarnation, and then Ranger 3 for the Gloom Stalker's Dread Ambusher. This gives me 5 attacks, and then Action Surge makes it 10. Each hit has Crimson Rite, Hunter's Mark, Sharpshooter, and a chance for poison. I'm just missing a reliable source of advantage.
Maybe with magic initiate you can pick up fairy fire. These are the exact same points (^refering to taking gloomstalker and bloodhunter) that I was considering.
@@jugglejunk fairy fire would work, though it takes an action and dread ambusher only works on the first round... and it contends with hunter's mark for concentration. I think I just need a friend to cast it, then we're golden😀
These are the types of builds I love. As I’m gaining a bit more experience playing, I find much more enjoyment from characters with a compelling theme/story than those I have built that focused just on combat mechanics from the onset and then personality as an afterthought.
As a dm I would home brew a pan pipe with 12 pipes that can act as a preloaded 12 shot blowgun. It would look like a musical instrument too for covert ops
A great build as always my friend. It reminded me of your Swarmkeeper Slingshot which inspired a character I made utilizing some of the same tactics of that character and a play on your "Alternate" Build with nature cleric. I've always been a fan of optimizing within a strict RP limitation as I find it presents a wonderful challenge to my Tactical Side. I ended up making some changes I thought you'd respect. It's for a Westmarches setting, so skill checks and expertise have been incredibly clutch throughout the Campaign. I started Rogue 1 for more skills and expertise, then Nature Cleric 1(2) for Magic Stone and Bless, then Ranger until extra attack. It was a beautiful way to build the character as one of my THREE expertises was Animal Handling and I was able to build my Swarm from birds we found in the Wilds. I thought you'd want to know that the forced movement of Crusher + the Swarm is INCREDIBLE and I haven't even gotten to Spike Growth. It's especially good with regards to the investment in Wisdom on a Ranger (which makes the class feel much more powerful). We're at total level 6, so I just got to Sharpshooter (18 Wis, due to Custom Lineage at start) and can't wait to one-shot an enemy with my tiny magic rocks. Thanks for the inspiration, thanks for your top-tier content, and thanks for your immaculate vibes. Been with you since 5k, be with you at 100k ✊️
I did a poison frog character for a campaign. I wanted to try a ranger so I came up with a similar concept. I went with Swarmkeeper subclass. My DM also allowed me to have 50 darts pre-poisoned with Crawler Mucus. The blowgun is the opening shot, followed by dual wielding a rapier and dagger. My grung is an orange, so he is rather smug out the lower greens.
How to grung step 1 - be a warlock with a genie patron step 2 - bring a bathtub into your genies vessel step 3 - use your bottled respite feature every day. While inside, sit in the bath.
If a player came to me with this build, you better believe there would be decent poisons to pick up off shady merchants. I might even make another "midlife" racial feat where the poison grows along with my froggy player. Knowing my group it would be called something like Slime Squeezin's or such. All in all, to make a renewable, concentrated version of grung poison definitely wouldn't unbalance the game as long as it is even moderately limited in scope and volume. Thanks again, Colby!
Love your stuff Colby! I love your takes on unique concepts and improving on things that we thought were the best already. Can’t wait to see all the new content you have in store for “One” Dnd 😁
As a DM I have used an expanded version of the poisoner feat. When you make your poison ammo you get to choose if the damage type is poison, acid or radiant (affects undead/ demons/ devils only) and the effect being poisoned, blinded, a prone that they can't stand up from or frightened. I also then allowed them at a higher level (after a quest) to learn to make poisons that can cause stun, and paralysis but cost more to make. I also made the save be 11 + proficiency. The reason for radiant was because of the idea of them creating blessed holy water (which is a poison to undead) because it fit with the character and meant we could do some other character's holy quest without making 1 person feel like their entire character sucks for 4 months solid. My other thoughts that I haven't playtested are: Potent poison stacking. For each additional hit, you gain an additional 2d8 poison damage and the DC increases by 2. Magical poisons. Allowing the casting of touch spells using potent poison. Allows you to coat weapon and cast spell using BA and A. Honestly, I tweak a lot of feats, they are so expensive it needs to be made actually worth it. I have become bored with always having someone at the table with polearm/ great weapon master/ sentinals or sharpshoot crossbow experts.
My wife challenged me to make a "poison" build with the Grung and a Blowgun a month or so ago and I went a somewhat different direction. I elected to go Rogue Thief/Artficer Alchemist with Poisoner feat.
@@O-D-X Level 1 Fighter for Martial Weapon Prof and Archery, then Artificer to 4 for Infusions, Poisoner at level 5 and the alchemy set, then Rogue the rest of the way. Build "comes online" at 8, which can feel late, level 9 for Sharpshooter. Rogue the rest of the way. If you decide Grung is a bit restrictive, Custom Lineage with Poisoner to start, the rest stays the same, Sharpshooter at level 5. Repeating and +1 AC infusions.
@@McTacoDelight Thanks for the reply, I will look it over when I get a chance and see which build I would prefer to use. I don't always go the most optimized way, but I do try to make sure my build is viable.
I was telling a friend about this build and accidentally told them it was called the "Poison Fart Dog." :p Lol. Needless to say, another fun build Colby!
A homebrew pitch that I'd certainly allow, despite not being RAW: Holy Water as situationally useful poison. -It's a fairly reasonable pitch to use the same action economy restrictions for applying it to a weapon, which would then be mitigated by the poisoner feat. -Jukes the poison immunity of fiends and undead, dealing 2d6 radiant damage on a hit. -IF you have an artificer in your party who can soup up the blowgun for you, or your DM is cool and gives you that semi-auto blowgun mentioned around 25:00, you could replace the Artificer levels in this build with two Cleric levels to gain the spell slots you need to make the HW. Grave and War domains have great synergies.
So, on the topic of scalability to your poisons, there *is* something to be said about taking 2 levels in wizard for conjuration wizard. This would allow you to conjure your own non-magical poisons such as wyvern venom, purple worm venom, etc. so long as you have seen them. Allowing you to have a DC19 con save or take 12d6 poison damage, save for half after just those two levels. Granted, due to the wording of the feature, you have to resummon the poison for each piece of ammunition, but it keeps for up to an hour and costs nothing to conjure. Serpents venom and wyvern venom are a bit less potent, but still work if your GM wants to give you a means to actually scale your poison. On top of that, there are all the different poisons that usually don't see any use because of cost and how many things are immune to/resistant to poison damage. There is also the fact that, if artificer is banned like it often is at my table due to your DM not wanting it in their world, you could just accept that the blowgun is going to have the loading property and go rogue/monk instead for the increased damage. I prefer rogue just due to skill expertise, personally. Kobold (the good one from volos) generally makes for a good race option if grung isn't available. You can actually get around their sunlight sensetivity through the fog and darkness spells. You don't even have to cast them on top of your enemies, just cast them about 4ft up from the ground so you can still see but medium and larger creatures can't while also blocking out the sun.
the repeating shot and poison-coated darts thing reminds me of how Monster Hunter's bow design solves this problem. when you apply a coating to your bow, you place a vial in a small compartment that automatically coats arrows you fire, without needing to individually coat arrows. maybe the blowgun uses a design like this, where the auto-loaded darts are coated when they're produced, given you place a coating into the device.
*Blowgun Expert:* Thanks to extensive practice with the blowgun, you gain the following benefits: • You ignore the loading property of blowguns with which you are proficient • Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls . • When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a blowgun you are holding. -Bob's Handbook
I am currently playing a Grung Fighter (Psiwarrior) with the Marine background. While he can and does sword-and-board, his specialty is the light crossbow, and he dishes out crazy poison damage, but his big contribution to combat is using the psychic stuff to knockdown targets.
When I saw the short, the video title and the description I knew straight away I would never have any intention of playing this character. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Your videos are always so thoughtful and well presented I just watch anyway even if I have no interest in the end result, just to see how you got there!
If Blood Hunter is allowed at your table, with 2 or 3 lvl you get: Blood Maledict - Blood Curse of Exposure, which removes resistance or immunities if amplified and Archery Fighting Style; The Mutant sub-class gives Celerity mutagens that increases by 3 your Dexterity score, as does your maximum for that score, by 4 if you consume this mutagen at 11th level, and by 5 at 18th level. This bonus is based in the character level not class level.
I found your channel recently and have been loving these optimized videos and all your content! I really liked what roll for combat is doing too and backed it. Never would have found it without your videos! Another great video, keep up the great work!
An extra level of artificer would let you drink an alchemist potion for an extra 1d4 for all attack rolls. But I really love this build! The way you make such fun exciting characters using odd weapons always make you a treat to watch.
A feat that I've often overlooked that might be worth taking at lvl 14 is abberant dragon Mark. Besides upping con by 1 you also get one sorceror cantrip and one sorceror spell that (importantly and kinda uniquely for spells you through feats) you get back on a short rest instead of a long rest. Just thinking with a sneaky blow dart Assassin type something like disguise self might be worthwhile on a grung even until later levels? Particularly as Grung stand out a fair bit. You use con for the spells so them being sorc spells doesn't matter so much, but best to pickup some defence or utility based things. Shield and absorb Elements of course always handy, particularly on a ranged character with not a ton of reaction usage.
Love the concept, as ever! Finally a reason to use one of those grung minis as a player :D Here's an idea: you can become even bigger student of poisons and dip 2 wizard / conjurer levels, for the (in)famous Minor Conjuration trick. It lets you recreate a small nonmagical object you have seen in your life - samples of various poisons are just that, small nonmagical objects (provided you have a vial on hand to store them in). This way, if DM allows, you could conjure a dose of up to Purple Worm venom (for much more impressive DC 19, 12d6 poison damage on hit, 1/2 on successful save), or any other poison you saw in your froggy life. This trick works within the limits of game rules, but may require a pass from the DM, as it can be bit abusive ;)
As someone who played a Grung variant of your mounted dual lance Battle Smith, I was excited to see that this build was made for Grung. I hope we get to see more "unofficial" content in the future whether it's more stuff like Grung, or some of the UA content out there.
I'm on vacation in Mexico on a long bus ride to my next destination and your video is a nice way to pass the time and calm my nerves a little, never traveled on my own before
Great build, Colby! I actually made a "Poison Dart Frog" character before you! Granted they were very different in their playstyle and general build. They are also a grung and mainly inspired by your Needler build, with levels in battle master fighter, gloomstalker ranger and kensei monk! It also didn't use the Poisoner feat because it's a pretty underwhelming feat imo. (Without homebrew there is no way to get magical throwing darts without using a repeating shot blowgun. The monk levels are a backup in case the DM doesn't give out some bag of infinite magic darts and the character ends up fighting high CR enemies) Also, Indomitable works on death saving throws, so maybe you're not giving it enough credit!
I love it. Id always be interrupting my RP talk, with huge ribbits. As far as a bargaining tool, maybe like a pally, you could give up some spell slots, to tinker, your poisons, to stay on your ammo for a day, vs a minute, so you could prepare them, when you would otherwise be preparing spells?
For my Grung Rune knight (grappler). I took 1 level in druid for Create Water and Shape water. As long as we get 1 short rest a day, exhaustion wont be a problem. Another option is Genie'Lock, pretty easy to say you have a bathtub in your little genie bottle.
At a non-D&D game once I had a player that REALLY wanted to play a river Merfolk character. The problem was that she didn't want to have to be so limited by the *needs to be in water or die* part of the race. So, I made an artifact pendant for her (magic item in D&D terms) that, while she was wearing it, covered her in a layer of moisture that satisfied her need to be in water. That helped. It also provided many nice narrative circumstances since 1) She had to be very careful not to lose the pendant, and 2) She was always wet. Not dripping, but definitely wet to the touch. So if she remained in the same spot for too long, she left a water mark on the floor. Really interesting when trying to sneak around. lol
just want to say thank you for making amazing and enjoyable content and always being so happy and positive in your videos. Definitely been enjoying getting caught up in your collection and Tuesdays have now become one of my favorite days cause i get to see a new one of your videos!!!
Haha hahaha, I lost my sh*t when you chose to go with the Samurai archetype. Brilliantly breaking all stereotype with this build. As always, love the stuff you 🖤☠️🖤🤘😝🤘🖤☠️🖤 Don't keep calm, ROCK ON
Conceptualizing my druid for the next campaign, and so torn between a stars druid or a spore druid (neither can multiclass at all). I was sold on stars until I saw your wizard/land druid build, realized spores druid got many of the same AoE spells, and through the low levels I could be more melee oriented with two weapon fighting + spores + poisoner feat. Not convinced to make the change yet, but am considering. Thank you for the video!!
There's an argument I'd make to allow applying the poison to 3 pieces of ammo per bonus action. The poisoner feat says that you can apply the poison to a melee weapon or "a" piece of ammunition as a bonus action "instead of an action". All poisons in the game say that you can apply them to a melee weapon or up to 3 pieces of ammo as an "action". The 2 highlighted parts in the poisoner feat contradict each other because the "instead of an action" part refers to the general poison rules so it would mean that the feat is letting you do that action as a bonus. The "a piece of ammo" is most likely an oversight imo. It wouldn't make sense that someone that specializes in poisons suddenly can only apply them to 1 piece of ammo instead of three.
Cool. :) I built this exact same character concept for a level 3 one-shot recently. It was fun, mostly because of the flavor. Looking forward to seeing how you put it together.
i was hoping for a more creative use of the blowgun aside from just multi-attacking sharpshooter. the blowgun is irredeemable then. as for poisoner, its really just a bad feat because of the low dc, high cost and poison dmg. since it's an opportunity cost of a feat, i'd rather just do the whole poisoning my ammunition the ritual caster way. step 1: cast find familiar (poisonous snake) and unseen servant step 2: get poisoner kit proficiency. step 3: command familiar to sleep (incapacitated). step 4: harvest the poisonous snake poison step 5: put it a bunch of containers and give a bunch to your unseen servant step 6: standing orders for unseen servant to apply the poison to your needles while you're in combat step 7: be a thief 3 for fast hands step 8: now you can attack 2x with poisoned needles (one applied by you via fast hands and one applied by your unseen servant). so both routes cost 1 feat but here that 1 feat, ritual caster, is infinitely more useful than poisoner both in combat (phantom steed, unseen servant, find familiar) and out of combat.
My DM counted the DC on my Grung's poison as 8 + prof. + CON mod. That made logical sense and make the poison scale rather fine. We started at level 6 and played to level 20+ and my little Rana went Rogue 4 (Assassin)/Fighter 12 (Battlemaster)/Ranger 4 (Gloomstalker) while using darts and the Archery and the Thrown Weapon Fighting styles for some extra to-hit and damage, which keeps the off-set of not gaining many ASI:s early on at bay. Was a nice nova round if he got a surprise, often doing over 300 points of damage the first round at 60 ft. range at higher levels. Poison immunity wasn't that much of an issue as it only was an average of 5 points per attack. I even did over 400 points of damage to two very poor wizards that was supposed to aid the BBEG, slaying them the first round of combat. With Expertise in Deception and Stealth from Rogue, getting inside and scouting disguised was a really fun thing to do outside of combat. Another nice thing with going Rogue was the Cunning Action, making sure you get out of melee safely. Then as he went Gloomstalker, being able to Hide as a Bonus Action is really handy. The invisibility in darkness from Gloomstalker also is a great way to ensure Advantage on attacks, making sure to almost always land all three attacks every round while Sharpshooting. As for the Battlemaster, Quick Toss is a lovely maneuver as well as Menacing Attack. An extra attack as a Bonus Action and having melee enemies not being able to approach you is simply awesome. My DM gave me a magical returning Dart, which helped with magical resistances and immunites to weapon attacks.
So the new hadozee (Flying Monkey from spelljammer) just made a really fun sharpshooter build possible. The race has the use an object haas bonus action Alchemist artificers have. The experimental elixir which as far as I can tell is not a magic item and uses an action (which the monkey turns into a bonus action) so all this great effects of experimental elixir are on bonus action timing making them so much easier use. The best of which are boldness (a budget bless) and a 10 feet fly speed (which as a reaction the monkey can fly a glide 50 feet) So the idea is fighter dip for archery Infusions for plus a +1 Bless or faire fire turn one: min of +1 or advantage Plus bonus action Boldness: min +1 You can quickly have a plus to hit in the 11-14 range and if you go fighter for the rest of your levels you have a great nova build where you may never have to turn off sharpshooter. If course this relies on the ruling of experimental elixir is not considered a magical item. But I'm confident that it can be ruled that way since it is never stated as a magical item and in his text description says as an action which is necessary to allow it to apply for the use an object action. But if you see any holes in the thought process let me know
Nice build, I personally reflavoured a Soul Knife for my grung, to use Poison Needles instead of the Psi Knifes, since it is Psychic Damage it is Neurotoxin for me. Of course Soul Knife isn't the heaviest hitter, but I really enjoy the utility and roleplay I get from being a surprisingly reliable Adventurer as a frog. Also Grung only speak "Grung" so using Telepathy is a nice bypass and makes the character playable while still sticking a bit to the no common concept.
Thanks for build a long range samurai! I'm building an Elf archer Samurai and i'll pick the Elven Accuracy feat to increase the hit and crit chance. Probably i'll go Sharpshooter at 4th lv > Elven Accuracy at 6th > and Piercer at 8th (boosting crits and avarage damage). These two last helps to pump Dex, whats great.
Why not take the Piercer feat? Just think of the advantages:
- Your Dex might be capped, but you can still increase Str by one.
- If you get unlucky and roll a one on your blowgun damage die, you can reroll it, possibly increasing it to as high as one.
- If you get a critical hit, you can roll another d1 to add to your damage.
The Piercer feat was clearly designed with blowguns in mind!
This comment wins everything.
🤣🤣
Wait... he has the tongue sticking out Pic, too! Pbtpd! My day has been made!
Last 5 levels should be rouge
literally the only weapon where you can double the weapon damage instead of doubling the dice... seems like a maths win as well.
25:40 Hidden benefit of taking artificer levels though. You can make yourself an Alchemy Jug. Which, in addition to providing gallons of condiments for the whole team, can provide you with fresh water that you can fill a bath-tub with! You can hydrate anywhere!
Ooooh thats clever!
And you could make more poison!
Of frick! Why didn’t I think of that?!?!?
If you take 1 more level and go battlesmith, your defender can be that bathtub. And it can stay in the back lines with you using its reaction to give disadvantage against attacks against you.
@@nathans.3618 BAHAHAHAHAHA!!! the battle bathtub with the grung blowgun master! that rocks so hard in the worst way!
The title scroll in the beginning still says Moon Guardian, by the way.
Blast! And can't edit it either. Bleh.
I never noticed it said the name of the episode in the intro
My first impression is fighter grunk that uses its poison from its skin as a weapon. :) I hope I'm right.
@@jaseannfoxoff3542 I was thinking rogue grung but I'm wrong
WHOOPS!!
WHOOPSIE!!
If I was a DM and somebody actually wanted to use the Poisoner feat for a Blowgun build at my table, I'd say that when they craft their poison they store it in a large vial. A vial large enough to hold PB amount of blowgun darts. The 1 minute timer doesn't start for the ammo until its removed from the vial. Removing it from the vial is just part of the normal loading action.
I mean, I’m just kinda a weirdo who has given my players some crazy stuff like perm advantage and extra sneak attack die on a rogue. I’d just say that “ignores resistance” also takes down immunity to resistance.
Also they’re immune to poison “damage” not the extra effects of poison. Make say drow poison and it will do stuff to them. Because it’s dumb to think drow would use poison if like a solid chunk of what they fight will just be straight up immune
I have a Grung battlesmith artificer that's a lot of fun to play. Riding around on his mechanical lizard defender and throwing or stabbing with his poison-coated trident, with the Returning Weapon Infusion of course ;-)
Also, his name is K'met D'froag.
I disagree with being so quick to go artificer. Let's read loading:
"Loading. Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an Action, bonus Action, or Reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make." You can still make multiple attacks with your blowgun in a turn just not as the same action. Because of this you don't lose on anything until you get extra attack. I purpose that we save artificer until levels 5-6 so that we can pick up sharpshooter faster.
Or just get DM permission to take crossbow expert and make it affect blowguns instead of crossbows. A "Blowgun Expert" feat. I can easily imagine most DMs would allow this because you're still going through taking a feat to get the loading property ignored on your weapon.
@@jonmacbuff2268 and using a straight up worse weapon
I have to admit. I don't see myself ever wanting to play this.
That said, I really enjoyed the theme and the building of the character 👍
Welcome home, this is where you belong.
That brings a smile to my face every time. You appear to take great pleasure in the work that you do for us, thank you and keep it up!
Absolutely agree! It really feels like a warm hug
I couldn't have said it any better, FullMetalPotato! A truly admirable sentiment, shared by us *all*! (I hope, 'leastways!)
This would be a perfect skink skirmisher build. They are from warhammer fantasy and this build is perfect.
Love the content. Thanks for always giving me material to get though my day!
(The banner for episode 101 moon guardian plays in the beginning)
Yeah, can't edit it either :(. Bleh.
I think the lack of a damage die really blows, especially on a Samurai, with all the access to advantage and therefore a higher critchance. That beeing said, it is nice to see a build utillizing the Blowgun. I personally expected you to just go Rogue and add sneak attack damage to it.
heres an interesting idea for a poison focused character. if bloodhunter is allowed at your table you can take the blood curse of exposure that can negate resistance or if you amplify it you can turn immunity into resistance - the poisoner feat allows you to ignore resistance. so you can get loads of poison damage and as long as you have your reaction (which you should do on your turn) you can turn a creature thats immune to poison damage into an easy target with a damage theyd never expect.
Future idea: I'd love to see what you can do with a Sidekick (a la Tasha's). As a player's main character! You can choose ANY creature of CR 1/2 or lower. That should be quite a number of possibilities! I'd love to play in a campaign where we are all sidekicks actually, lol.
Some interesting option:
Animated Broom -> Fly speed, Flyby, Blindsight, immunity to a ton of conditions, and Adv on initiative.
Living Unseen Servant
Kobold Inventor
But these are the best IMO:
Cackler -> +3 Dex mod, resistance to a ton of damage types, 120ft darkvision, Mimicry 3 skill proficiencies plus 2 languages and hands that can use weapons. Build it as an Archer using the Warrior class
Fist of Bane -> Adv on all saving throws & ability checks in combat, Immunity to Fear, +3 STR, build as a Warrior
Grippilli Warrior -> Multiattack including an auto-grapple, huge jump distance, 3x Skill profs, build as a Expert.
Jacklewere -> immunity to non-magical Bludge/Slash/Pierc, Adv on perception, 3x skills
Kalashtar -> 2d10 cantrip effectively, Adv on Wis, great stats, build as a mage or Expert
Metallic Warbler -> fire immunity, tons of condition immunities, Telepathy, Fly speed, + mini Hypnotic Pattern
Sage -> +4 Intelligence + extra spells
Skulk -> +4 Dex + permanent Invisibility
Tridrone -> 3x attacks
You are an artificer. I would ask the DM to let me craft needles that can pre-load and hold the potent poison from the poisoner feat. You are downgrading yourself using the blow gun, so I think using the flavor as an artificer to make needles is a decent argument.
Especially since you're also a Grung, and so even more familiar with poisons than just about anyone else.
Yeah honestly as an artificer you could simply upgrade to a crossbow (either hand or light depending on how you want to do things) and have your crossbow bolts store your poisons/anything else you want to use and have it be so that your bolts shatter upon breaking skin so you can administer your poison with no action cost but at the cost of not being able to reuse fired bolts
Hell, you're immune to poison and using a blowgun. You can just store the poison in your mouth and spit it out onto the darts as you attack.
@@lucasramey6427 Regular crossbow bolts can already deliver poisoner feat poison without issue.
The 'poisoned' condition, unfortunately, does not grant disadvantage on saving throws, but on ability checks (and attack rolls)
Hi !
Awesome episode, thank you very much !
I think you might have missed a huuuge potential improvement to the damages :
By taking 2 levels of conjuration wizard, you could use your Minor Conjuration feature to summon... A purple worm poison vial. 12D6, DC 19 save. Thus your "preparation" round would be
- Action : Conjure the poison
- Bonus action : Apply it thanks to the poisoner feat
Then you can go crazy on your nova round with a first attack hitting like a truck.
On top of that, you might find an interesting spell to concentrate on with 2 or 3 wizard levels
This is easy damages as soon as level 3
I’ve been playing a poison dart frog in a curse of strahd campaign for about a year; it was inspired by your needler build
Is it holding up well in that campaign? I’m starting curse of Strahd soon
@@Datruuth77 I haven’t played in this guy’s campaign, but I’ve played through Strahd. I wouldn’t advise a poison build, as there are a lot of undead (don’t think that is really a spoiler). That being said, you do you. Strahd is a really fun campaign and there are plenty of enemies who aren’t undead and it is a long campaign and has a lot of rp. A poison focused character thematically seems perfectly reasonable
@@maybevoldemort8995 Strangely, I have also played a grung in Curse of Strahd. The poison was never useful. I accidentally poisoned my party often, and when we made a detour to a river so I could avoid a point of exhaustion, we got surrounded by wolves.
I love that character, but man, CoS was not the right campaign for him.
RIP Wibbly Hopkins
Oh yes a poison frog! My dreams became true! Really excited about the build.
That Murloc impression threw me right back to 2004/2005 WoW. Very accurate Colby 😄
Level 1:(see above) [fighter 1, race & fighting-style]
Level 2:(see above) [artificer 1]
Level 3:(@18:12) [artificer 2]
Level 4:(@19:24) [fighter 2]
Level 5:(@20:00) [fighter 3 & sub-class]
Level 6:(@22:31) [fighter 4 & ASI]
Level 7:(see above) [fighter 5]
Level 8:(@26:03) [fighter 6 & ASI]
Level 9:(@28:57) [fighter 7]
Level 10:(see above) [fighter 8 & ASI]
Level 11:(@32:11) [fighter 9]
Level 12:(@32:59) [fighter 10]
Level 13:(@33:23) [fighter 11]
Level 14:(see above) [fighter 12 & ASI]
Level 15:(@37:47) [fighter 13]
Level 16:(@38:04) [fighter 14 & ASI]
Level 17:(@38:50) [fighter 15]
I love it when you tell us to play the character we want to play and not something that just does a lot of damage. This build brought me comfort with my BladeSinger Wizard that was laughed at by the other players, saying that "I hope you have another character ready, because you are going to die."
Keep doing what you're doing!
I really liked the concept of this build, the poisoner blowgun frog seems really cool to roleplay. Though as mentioned a little homebrewing can go a long way.
I think the same concept can be achieved with the famous crossbow expert - reflavored to blowgun expert + sharpshooter. I would go ranger here, since I think thematically would be more fun the the fighter. The gloom stalker matches very well with the guerrilla specialist I envision this character being.
The build is not new what so ever, but it`s one of the strongest DPR builds out there. For the optmizers out there I think this would be a pretty fun way to play this poisoner frog character and still deliver crazy amounts of damage.
Though another amazing episode Colby! Your creativity is inspiring! Very well done!
Some of my favorite videos of yours had to be when you take on the challenge of optimizing the lower powered weapons like your Whiperwhil and Sling Swarmkeeper. I already know it’s gonna be great.
So pumped for this. Have been theorycrafting this for a while, and have a mini ready. looking to see your take on it
0:47 Thank you so much mate!
I love the Cure Wounds: "Here my mate, take some heal. But sorry, now you're poisoned"
That being said, I love your content :)
And I once built a Trickery Cleric Grung with the idea of grappling (poison skin) and using even the grappler feat. The build was planned around making this "useless feat" somehow useful - and in theory it worked ^^
To avoid exhaustion “you need to find something like a decanter of endless water or a portable bathtub.” OR MAYBE, a 🧞♂️ vessel filled with water! I know that wouldn’t work with this build, but it’s a great way to get around that problem.
I love these "imposed constraint" builds! They're some of my favorite builds of yours!
You have a great voice colby. Loved you singing light of a clear blue morning.
I’ve been playing a slightly modified version of your eldritch knight/Blade singer for my home game - and having an absolute blast. I can now proudly say I have a backup character, this little frog poisoner sounds so so fun!
I love when I'm thinking about a build and then one of your videos pops up on my feed that relates to what I was working on. I really look forward to hearing your insight wherever it happens.
Alright the singing at the end deserves a like by itself haha. Thanks for the great content
There's a Ranger Subclass in Grim Hollow 5e that would be so sweet for this!
Green Reaper Ranger.
It adds Poison damage and special effects to attacks, and eventually has ways to deal with Poison Immunity (converts to Acid/Necrotic).
Pew pew pewsion! I love that this over the top concept gelled so well!
Love the build but I have to say thanks for sharing the song at the end didn't know how much I needed to hear something like that until now
I actually created a similar build to this once! Instead of the poisoner theme I went for the old Eladrin with a blowgun disguised as a walking stick. Only level 9 but it went 8 Rogue Scout, 1 Forge Cleric (for the magical weapon). Elven Accuracy (4) and the Sharpshooter feat(8). The cleric spells Bless & Guidance are always great for accuracy and ability checks respectivly and it relies on using Steady Aim combined with Elven accuracy to Sharpshot/crit-fish(for sneak attack) making for moderate but very consistent damage. The Scout subclass allows us to move as a reaction saving our bonus action for steady aim each turn making chasing us down painful and if we get grappled we have Fey-Step to escape with a chance to frighten or charm!
Dude who was praying this would be a Grung build on the short: This one's for you.
I forget who I saw come up with it, but the best houserule I've ever seen to make blowguns useful is that attacking with one doesn't break stealth. And it makes sense if you think about it--attacking with a blowgun is much stealthier than attacking with, say, a bow. If I were DMing, I'd have the target of the attack make a perception check versus the stealth roll of the hidden blowgun user whenever they were targeted; on a failure the creature would remain hidden.
One fun and flavourful, if situational final feat, is skill expert. If you manage to encounter something you can extract poison from, the rules ask you for a DC 20 nature check. With expertise you have a minimum roll of 11, AKA at 50% chance of success assuming a +0 INT modifier. Not great, but with a little luck and help that boost a few attacks in a way that is completely in line with the character's flavour. Having the DM throw wyverns at you is an opportunity, if unreliable, but if you get your party involved, Find Familiar can summon a poisonous snake and warlocks with the pact of the chain get even better options.
I do not know if you have ever looked in a mirror sweet Coby, but you are the living definition of Vanilla!
Thanks for the build! And very nice song in the outtakes
With your Faerie Fire and Poison Spray, you could name the character Jumpin’ Jack Flash (It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas)…
Great timing! I just made my own Grung poisoner build! I didn't restrict myself with the blowgun though.
I went a couple levels into Blood Hunter for the Blood Curse of Exposure, which can turn poison immunity into poison resistance! And then the poisoner feet makes it normal damage.
The rest of the build tries to get as many attacks as possible to increase the likelihood the poison sticks. Fighter 11 for extra extra attack and the Echo Knight's Unleash Incarnation, and then Ranger 3 for the Gloom Stalker's Dread Ambusher.
This gives me 5 attacks, and then Action Surge makes it 10. Each hit has Crimson Rite, Hunter's Mark, Sharpshooter, and a chance for poison. I'm just missing a reliable source of advantage.
Maybe with magic initiate you can pick up fairy fire.
These are the exact same points (^refering to taking gloomstalker and bloodhunter) that I was considering.
@@jugglejunk fairy fire would work, though it takes an action and dread ambusher only works on the first round... and it contends with hunter's mark for concentration. I think I just need a friend to cast it, then we're golden😀
I saw this at about 5 in the morning and misread the thumbnail as "the poison fart dog". It made me laugh. Thanks for another great video!
lol!
These are the types of builds I love. As I’m gaining a bit more experience playing, I find much more enjoyment from characters with a compelling theme/story than those I have built that focused just on combat mechanics from the onset and then personality as an afterthought.
Appreciation post for the subtitles!!!! Thank you!!!!!!
As a dm I would home brew a pan pipe with 12 pipes that can act as a preloaded 12 shot blowgun. It would look like a musical instrument too for covert ops
A great build as always my friend. It reminded me of your Swarmkeeper Slingshot which inspired a character I made utilizing some of the same tactics of that character and a play on your "Alternate" Build with nature cleric.
I've always been a fan of optimizing within a strict RP limitation as I find it presents a wonderful challenge to my Tactical Side. I ended up making some changes I thought you'd respect.
It's for a Westmarches setting, so skill checks and expertise have been incredibly clutch throughout the Campaign. I started Rogue 1 for more skills and expertise, then Nature Cleric 1(2) for Magic Stone and Bless, then Ranger until extra attack.
It was a beautiful way to build the character as one of my THREE expertises was Animal Handling and I was able to build my Swarm from birds we found in the Wilds.
I thought you'd want to know that the forced movement of Crusher + the Swarm is INCREDIBLE and I haven't even gotten to Spike Growth. It's especially good with regards to the investment in Wisdom on a Ranger (which makes the class feel much more powerful).
We're at total level 6, so I just got to Sharpshooter (18 Wis, due to Custom Lineage at start) and can't wait to one-shot an enemy with my tiny magic rocks.
Thanks for the inspiration, thanks for your top-tier content, and thanks for your immaculate vibes. Been with you since 5k, be with you at 100k ✊️
I did a poison frog character for a campaign. I wanted to try a ranger so I came up with a similar concept. I went with Swarmkeeper subclass. My DM also allowed me to have 50 darts pre-poisoned with Crawler Mucus. The blowgun is the opening shot, followed by dual wielding a rapier and dagger. My grung is an orange, so he is rather smug out the lower greens.
How to grung
step 1 - be a warlock with a genie patron
step 2 - bring a bathtub into your genies vessel
step 3 - use your bottled respite feature every day. While inside, sit in the bath.
If a player came to me with this build, you better believe there would be decent poisons to pick up off shady merchants. I might even make another "midlife" racial feat where the poison grows along with my froggy player. Knowing my group it would be called something like Slime Squeezin's or such. All in all, to make a renewable, concentrated version of grung poison definitely wouldn't unbalance the game as long as it is even moderately limited in scope and volume. Thanks again, Colby!
Love your stuff Colby! I love your takes on unique concepts and improving on things that we thought were the best already. Can’t wait to see all the new content you have in store for “One” Dnd 😁
As a DM I have used an expanded version of the poisoner feat.
When you make your poison ammo you get to choose if the damage type is poison, acid or radiant (affects undead/ demons/ devils only) and the effect being poisoned, blinded, a prone that they can't stand up from or frightened. I also then allowed them at a higher level (after a quest) to learn to make poisons that can cause stun, and paralysis but cost more to make. I also made the save be 11 + proficiency. The reason for radiant was because of the idea of them creating blessed holy water (which is a poison to undead) because it fit with the character and meant we could do some other character's holy quest without making 1 person feel like their entire character sucks for 4 months solid.
My other thoughts that I haven't playtested are:
Potent poison stacking. For each additional hit, you gain an additional 2d8 poison damage and the DC increases by 2.
Magical poisons. Allowing the casting of touch spells using potent poison. Allows you to coat weapon and cast spell using BA and A.
Honestly, I tweak a lot of feats, they are so expensive it needs to be made actually worth it. I have become bored with always having someone at the table with polearm/ great weapon master/ sentinals or sharpshoot crossbow experts.
I love how thoughtful he seems whilst reciting the same opening lines he uses in every video
My wife challenged me to make a "poison" build with the Grung and a Blowgun a month or so ago and I went a somewhat different direction. I elected to go Rogue Thief/Artficer Alchemist with Poisoner feat.
You should give us your level by level breakdown of your choices. I ask this because I had a similar thought when I saw this video's title.
@@O-D-X Level 1 Fighter for Martial Weapon Prof and Archery, then Artificer to 4 for Infusions, Poisoner at level 5 and the alchemy set, then Rogue the rest of the way. Build "comes online" at 8, which can feel late, level 9 for Sharpshooter. Rogue the rest of the way.
If you decide Grung is a bit restrictive, Custom Lineage with Poisoner to start, the rest stays the same, Sharpshooter at level 5.
Repeating and +1 AC infusions.
@@McTacoDelight Thanks for the reply, I will look it over when I get a chance and see which build I would prefer to use. I don't always go the most optimized way, but I do try to make sure my build is viable.
I wait each week to hear the sultry tones of this channel and theorycraft. I love the formula.
This was such a fun concept. Thank you :).
I was telling a friend about this build and accidentally told them it was called the "Poison Fart Dog." :p Lol.
Needless to say, another fun build Colby!
Ahh time for my weekly Colby asmr as I walk the dog
Never disappoints
This is one of the cutest builds ever! Love your content, as always. I use these builds for major NPCs in my home campaign.
A homebrew pitch that I'd certainly allow, despite not being RAW: Holy Water as situationally useful poison.
-It's a fairly reasonable pitch to use the same action economy restrictions for applying it to a weapon, which would then be mitigated by the poisoner feat.
-Jukes the poison immunity of fiends and undead, dealing 2d6 radiant damage on a hit.
-IF you have an artificer in your party who can soup up the blowgun for you, or your DM is cool and gives you that semi-auto blowgun mentioned around 25:00, you could replace the Artificer levels in this build with two Cleric levels to gain the spell slots you need to make the HW. Grave and War domains have great synergies.
I really appreciate your content and how light-hearted it is. Keep it up!
This needs to be in a party of Grung triplets: Bud, Weis, and Er. Entertaining video.
So, on the topic of scalability to your poisons, there *is* something to be said about taking 2 levels in wizard for conjuration wizard. This would allow you to conjure your own non-magical poisons such as wyvern venom, purple worm venom, etc. so long as you have seen them. Allowing you to have a DC19 con save or take 12d6 poison damage, save for half after just those two levels.
Granted, due to the wording of the feature, you have to resummon the poison for each piece of ammunition, but it keeps for up to an hour and costs nothing to conjure. Serpents venom and wyvern venom are a bit less potent, but still work if your GM wants to give you a means to actually scale your poison. On top of that, there are all the different poisons that usually don't see any use because of cost and how many things are immune to/resistant to poison damage.
There is also the fact that, if artificer is banned like it often is at my table due to your DM not wanting it in their world, you could just accept that the blowgun is going to have the loading property and go rogue/monk instead for the increased damage. I prefer rogue just due to skill expertise, personally. Kobold (the good one from volos) generally makes for a good race option if grung isn't available. You can actually get around their sunlight sensetivity through the fog and darkness spells. You don't even have to cast them on top of your enemies, just cast them about 4ft up from the ground so you can still see but medium and larger creatures can't while also blocking out the sun.
the repeating shot and poison-coated darts thing reminds me of how Monster Hunter's bow design solves this problem. when you apply a coating to your bow, you place a vial in a small compartment that automatically coats arrows you fire, without needing to individually coat arrows. maybe the blowgun uses a design like this, where the auto-loaded darts are coated when they're produced, given you place a coating into the device.
Hi Colby, thanks for the fun knowledge you provide and even more, the space and energy you create.
love flavorful builds like this
Crazy fun and inventive build this week!
*Blowgun Expert:*
Thanks to extensive practice with the blowgun, you gain the following benefits:
• You ignore the loading property of blowguns with which you are proficient
• Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls .
• When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to
attack with a blowgun you are holding.
-Bob's Handbook
I am currently playing a Grung Fighter (Psiwarrior) with the Marine background. While he can and does sword-and-board, his specialty is the light crossbow, and he dishes out crazy poison damage, but his big contribution to combat is using the psychic stuff to knockdown targets.
When I saw the short, the video title and the description I knew straight away I would never have any intention of playing this character. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Your videos are always so thoughtful and well presented I just watch anyway even if I have no interest in the end result, just to see how you got there!
Ha ha - thanks :)
If Blood Hunter is allowed at your table, with 2 or 3 lvl you get: Blood Maledict - Blood Curse of Exposure, which removes resistance or immunities if amplified and Archery Fighting Style; The Mutant sub-class gives Celerity mutagens that increases by 3 your Dexterity score, as does your maximum for that score, by 4 if you consume this mutagen at 11th level, and by 5 at 18th level. This bonus is based in the character level not class level.
Once again Colby is in my head all the way to my amygdala. Really looking forward to tucking into this one after work.
I found your channel recently and have been loving these optimized videos and all your content! I really liked what roll for combat is doing too and backed it. Never would have found it without your videos! Another great video, keep up the great work!
thanks!
Thanks for the guide Colby!
An extra level of artificer would let you drink an alchemist potion for an extra 1d4 for all attack rolls. But I really love this build! The way you make such fun exciting characters using odd weapons always make you a treat to watch.
A feat that I've often overlooked that might be worth taking at lvl 14 is abberant dragon Mark. Besides upping con by 1 you also get one sorceror cantrip and one sorceror spell that (importantly and kinda uniquely for spells you through feats) you get back on a short rest instead of a long rest. Just thinking with a sneaky blow dart Assassin type something like disguise self might be worthwhile on a grung even until later levels? Particularly as Grung stand out a fair bit.
You use con for the spells so them being sorc spells doesn't matter so much, but best to pickup some defence or utility based things. Shield and absorb Elements of course always handy, particularly on a ranged character with not a ton of reaction usage.
First Grunge, First Samuri...First Blow gun? I laughed so much thank you I really needed that this week 🤣
Love the concept, as ever! Finally a reason to use one of those grung minis as a player :D
Here's an idea: you can become even bigger student of poisons and dip 2 wizard / conjurer levels, for the (in)famous Minor Conjuration trick. It lets you recreate a small nonmagical object you have seen in your life - samples of various poisons are just that, small nonmagical objects (provided you have a vial on hand to store them in). This way, if DM allows, you could conjure a dose of up to Purple Worm venom (for much more impressive DC 19, 12d6 poison damage on hit, 1/2 on successful save), or any other poison you saw in your froggy life. This trick works within the limits of game rules, but may require a pass from the DM, as it can be bit abusive ;)
As someone who played a Grung variant of your mounted dual lance Battle Smith, I was excited to see that this build was made for Grung.
I hope we get to see more "unofficial" content in the future whether it's more stuff like Grung, or some of the UA content out there.
I'm on vacation in Mexico on a long bus ride to my next destination and your video is a nice way to pass the time and calm my nerves a little, never traveled on my own before
Great build, Colby! I actually made a "Poison Dart Frog" character before you! Granted they were very different in their playstyle and general build.
They are also a grung and mainly inspired by your Needler build, with levels in battle master fighter, gloomstalker ranger and kensei monk! It also didn't use the Poisoner feat because it's a pretty underwhelming feat imo. (Without homebrew there is no way to get magical throwing darts without using a repeating shot blowgun. The monk levels are a backup in case the DM doesn't give out some bag of infinite magic darts and the character ends up fighting high CR enemies)
Also, Indomitable works on death saving throws, so maybe you're not giving it enough credit!
I love it. Id always be interrupting my RP talk, with huge ribbits. As far as a bargaining tool, maybe like a pally, you could give up some spell slots, to tinker, your poisons, to stay on your ammo for a day, vs a minute, so you could prepare them, when you would otherwise be preparing spells?
Yes! I was refreshing YT waiting for this episode :D
5:02 that's why I wanna play it! A new campain is coming and Colby deliver this dart, perfect!
Beast barbarian / soulknife rogue (11)!
And I love the build. Nice to see something that's not hand crossbow or glaive.
For my Grung Rune knight (grappler). I took 1 level in druid for Create Water and Shape water. As long as we get 1 short rest a day, exhaustion wont be a problem. Another option is Genie'Lock, pretty easy to say you have a bathtub in your little genie bottle.
At a non-D&D game once I had a player that REALLY wanted to play a river Merfolk character. The problem was that she didn't want to have to be so limited by the *needs to be in water or die* part of the race.
So, I made an artifact pendant for her (magic item in D&D terms) that, while she was wearing it, covered her in a layer of moisture that satisfied her need to be in water. That helped. It also provided many nice narrative circumstances since 1) She had to be very careful not to lose the pendant, and 2) She was always wet. Not dripping, but definitely wet to the touch. So if she remained in the same spot for too long, she left a water mark on the floor. Really interesting when trying to sneak around. lol
just want to say thank you for making amazing and enjoyable content and always being so happy and positive in your videos. Definitely been enjoying getting caught up in your collection and Tuesdays have now become one of my favorite days cause i get to see a new one of your videos!!!
Haha hahaha, I lost my sh*t when you chose to go with the Samurai archetype.
Brilliantly breaking all stereotype with this build.
As always, love the stuff you
🖤☠️🖤🤘😝🤘🖤☠️🖤
Don't keep calm, ROCK ON
I'm really escited to see what you're able to put together once ONE D&D goes live / playtest :) Hope that is the plan for the future :D
Conceptualizing my druid for the next campaign, and so torn between a stars druid or a spore druid (neither can multiclass at all). I was sold on stars until I saw your wizard/land druid build, realized spores druid got many of the same AoE spells, and through the low levels I could be more melee oriented with two weapon fighting + spores + poisoner feat.
Not convinced to make the change yet, but am considering. Thank you for the video!!
There's an argument I'd make to allow applying the poison to 3 pieces of ammo per bonus action.
The poisoner feat says that you can apply the poison to a melee weapon or "a" piece of ammunition as a bonus action "instead of an action". All poisons in the game say that you can apply them to a melee weapon or up to 3 pieces of ammo as an "action".
The 2 highlighted parts in the poisoner feat contradict each other because the "instead of an action" part refers to the general poison rules so it would mean that the feat is letting you do that action as a bonus. The "a piece of ammo" is most likely an oversight imo. It wouldn't make sense that someone that specializes in poisons suddenly can only apply them to 1 piece of ammo instead of three.
Love you Colby,
Thanks for all your continued hard work!
Cool. :) I built this exact same character concept for a level 3 one-shot recently. It was fun, mostly because of the flavor. Looking forward to seeing how you put it together.
i was hoping for a more creative use of the blowgun aside from just multi-attacking sharpshooter. the blowgun is irredeemable then.
as for poisoner, its really just a bad feat because of the low dc, high cost and poison dmg. since it's an opportunity cost of a feat, i'd rather just do the whole poisoning my ammunition the ritual caster way.
step 1: cast find familiar (poisonous snake) and unseen servant
step 2: get poisoner kit proficiency.
step 3: command familiar to sleep (incapacitated).
step 4: harvest the poisonous snake poison
step 5: put it a bunch of containers and give a bunch to your unseen servant
step 6: standing orders for unseen servant to apply the poison to your needles while you're in combat
step 7: be a thief 3 for fast hands
step 8: now you can attack 2x with poisoned needles (one applied by you via fast hands and one applied by your unseen servant).
so both routes cost 1 feat but here that 1 feat, ritual caster, is infinitely more useful than poisoner both in combat (phantom steed, unseen servant, find familiar) and out of combat.
My DM counted the DC on my Grung's poison as 8 + prof. + CON mod.
That made logical sense and make the poison scale rather fine.
We started at level 6 and played to level 20+ and my little Rana went Rogue 4 (Assassin)/Fighter 12 (Battlemaster)/Ranger 4 (Gloomstalker) while using darts and the Archery and the Thrown Weapon Fighting styles for some extra to-hit and damage, which keeps the off-set of not gaining many ASI:s early on at bay.
Was a nice nova round if he got a surprise, often doing over 300 points of damage the first round at 60 ft. range at higher levels. Poison immunity wasn't that much of an issue as it only was an average of 5 points per attack. I even did over 400 points of damage to two very poor wizards that was supposed to aid the BBEG, slaying them the first round of combat.
With Expertise in Deception and Stealth from Rogue, getting inside and scouting disguised was a really fun thing to do outside of combat.
Another nice thing with going Rogue was the Cunning Action, making sure you get out of melee safely.
Then as he went Gloomstalker, being able to Hide as a Bonus Action is really handy. The invisibility in darkness from Gloomstalker also is a great way to ensure Advantage on attacks, making sure to almost always land all three attacks every round while Sharpshooting.
As for the Battlemaster, Quick Toss is a lovely maneuver as well as Menacing Attack. An extra attack as a Bonus Action and having melee enemies not being able to approach you is simply awesome.
My DM gave me a magical returning Dart, which helped with magical resistances and immunites to weapon attacks.
My inner child laughed so hard at my misreading the title “Poison Fart Dog” and now I want to play that character
lol
So the new hadozee (Flying Monkey from spelljammer) just made a really fun sharpshooter build possible. The race has the use an object haas bonus action Alchemist artificers have. The experimental elixir which as far as I can tell is not a magic item and uses an action (which the monkey turns into a bonus action) so all this great effects of experimental elixir are on bonus action timing making them so much easier use. The best of which are boldness (a budget bless) and a 10 feet fly speed (which as a reaction the monkey can fly a glide 50 feet)
So the idea is fighter dip for archery
Infusions for plus a +1
Bless or faire fire turn one: min of +1 or advantage
Plus bonus action Boldness: min +1
You can quickly have a plus to hit in the 11-14 range and if you go fighter for the rest of your levels you have a great nova build where you may never have to turn off sharpshooter.
If course this relies on the ruling of experimental elixir is not considered a magical item. But I'm confident that it can be ruled that way since it is never stated as a magical item and in his text description says as an action which is necessary to allow it to apply for the use an object action.
But if you see any holes in the thought process let me know
Nice build, I personally reflavoured a Soul Knife for my grung, to use Poison Needles instead of the Psi Knifes, since it is Psychic Damage it is Neurotoxin for me. Of course Soul Knife isn't the heaviest hitter, but I really enjoy the utility and roleplay I get from being a surprisingly reliable Adventurer as a frog. Also Grung only speak "Grung" so using Telepathy is a nice bypass and makes the character playable while still sticking a bit to the no common concept.
Thanks for build a long range samurai! I'm building an Elf archer Samurai and i'll pick the Elven Accuracy feat to increase the hit and crit chance. Probably i'll go Sharpshooter at 4th lv > Elven Accuracy at 6th > and Piercer at 8th (boosting crits and avarage damage). These two last helps to pump Dex, whats great.