Fighter Poison Dart Frog
The Why:
In my spare time, I love reading through the special abilities of different classes and races to find inspiration for my builds. On one such occasion, I read through the Grung abilities and honed in on their Poisonous Skin ability. Among other things, a Grung can add “poison to any piercing weapon as part of an attack with that weapon… The target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or take 2d4 poison damage.” Free potential extra damage got my creative juices flowing and I began theory-crafting a poison-based attacker build.
Introducing: the Poison Dart Frog.
The Build:
*As with all my builds, please note that my breakdown will mostly highlight the important stuff. If I don’t specify a choice, feel free to customize as you see fit 😊
Level 0 Grung: As previously stated, we are going to be of the Grung race. Alongside the Poisonous Skin ability, we also get proficiency in Perception and a walk/climb speed of 25 ft. We can breathe water and are immune to poison damage and being poisoned. We also get a standing long jump of 25 ft and high jump of 15 ft. Conversely, the Grung needs to be immersed in water for 1 hour a day or suffer a point of exhaustion. Also the Grung also does not speak Common, only Grung. We have ways of mitigating these drawbacks, but let’s ignore those for now. Our background will be Soldier for proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation, a broken blade, and the Military Rank feature.
Brief aside to discuss roleplaying choices: Grung society is a strict caste society, with the skin color of the Grung denoting his/her role. From lowest to highest caste, Grungs can be green, blue, purple, red, orange, or gold; these colors represent soldiers, artisans, administrators, mages, elite warriors, and leaders, respectively. Thinking of the caste system as being analogous to ranks in the military, this works well with the Military Rank feature we get from our background. It is possible to move up in caste, but only on rare occasions, ie perhaps a sole Grung going off and making a name for himself elsewhere (cough cough, that’s what our Grung’s story arc will be).
Our Grung wound up in the red mage caste though he has no real talent for spell casting. He dreams of making it into the orange elite warriors, but no one will teach him how to fight since he’s of the mage caste. Using his rank, he’s able to bully some green soldiers into teaching him the basics, but it’s not until a chance encounter with a traveling Ronin that he begins to look elsewhere for training. Our Grung bests this samurai with his own broken blade and leaves to learn the way of the samurai. It’s at this point that I make another roleplaying choice and ask my Dungeon Master if he would let me use the broken blade as a blade-catching jitte to serve as a re-skinned shield (providing that I don’t try to use it in a non-shield way). He says it’s fine 😊
Grung names are weird, but after consulting an online name generator I have named our Grung b’Ahloo’g’Ahroo (Baloo for short)
Level 1 Fighter 1 (1FG): We are going samurai fighter all the way! For stats, we’re point-buying up to 10 STR, 14 DEX, 15 CON, 8 INT, 14 WIS, and 10 CHA. As a Grung, our DEX and CON get bumped up to 16. We also get to pick a fighting style, and for our poison-fighter we’re picking Thrown Weapon. This gives us the ability to draw a throwing weapon as part of an attack as well as increases our thrown weapon damage by 2. For equipment, we will take leather armor and a short sword, two daggers, plus as many darts as the DM will allow us to have.
Level 2 thru 20 Fighter 2 thru 20 (20FG): Usually I break down the build path by level, but for this particular build I think it makes the most sense to break it up categorically. Lets start with Ability Score Improvements (ASIs).
ASIs: The fighter gets the most ASIs of any class, and we are going to put those to good use. Every ASI, we can add 2 to a stat or 1 to 2 stats. Or we can grab some feats, and there are a couple of great feats for our build.
Poisoner (LVL 4): Our first feat should be Poisoner for maximizing the Poisonous Skin ability. This allows us to ignore an enemy’s poison resistance, which is the most often resisted damage type. We can’t get through immunity, but this still helps greatly. We also can craft special poisons in our spare time which gives us a fun out-of-combat crafting hobby 😊
Sharpshooter (LVL 6): Darts are actually classified as ranged weapons, so we can use them with the Sharpshooter feat. With this, our normal dart range increases to 60ft, we can ignore all but full cover, and by taking a -5 to our chance to hit we gain +10 to our damage.
Magic Initiate (LVL 8): Depending on what kind of adventure Baloo is going on, it might be hard for him to meet his necessary daily bath. To account for that, we’re grabbing Magic Initiate and picking Druid for the cantrip Shape Water. We now have access to easy baths as long as we have enough water on hand. For our second cantrip, I’m picking Thorn Whip and roleplaying that the cantrip shoots out of Baloo’s mouth like a big frog tongue. Our once per day druid spell is going to be a fun one: Jump, which triples our jump distances. Now we can jump an insane 45 ft high or 75 ft long for 1 minute. So much fun 😊
Et Cetera (LVL 12-20): Baloo gets 4 more ASIs throughout his career. In my opinion, we should use the first 2 to maximize Dexterity, then maximize Constitution. It is worth considering dropping one of the Constitution increases to grab an additional feat. Fighting Initiate for the Archery fighting style would be a good choice. Other options include Tough for more HP or Piercer for more potential damage output. For simplicity’s sake, we’re sticking with the 3 feats mentioned above.
Samurai: Next it’s time to talk about how our samurai features help to shape our build into the ultimate poison-wielding fighter.
Fighting Spirit (LVL 3): This is the bread and butter of the build. Thrice per long rest, we can use a bonus action to give ourselves advantage on all attacks that round. Combining this with the Fighter’s Action Surge (once per short rest), this gives us two attacks with advantage at this level, four attacks at 5th level, six attacks at 11th level, and a whopping eight attacks with advantage at 20th level! For most combats, we’ll start our first round by activating Fighting Spirit and doing as much damage as possible. Fighting Spirit also gets us a few temporary hit points, upwards of 15 at 15th level. We also get to add Common to the languages Baloo can speak. Our little frog is growing up so fast (sniff)!
Elegant Courtier (LVL 7): Baloo learns some manners. We can now add our Wisdom modifier to persuasion checks and we are proficient in Wisdom saving throws. This is a nice little boon and it’s why Wisdom is sort of our tertiary stat option at 14.
Tireless Spirit (LVL 10): We no longer have to worry about conserving our Fighting Spirit uses, because when we roll initiative without any left we regain one use. This works well with our personal fighting style, since we always want to try to start a fight with our Fighting Spirit / Action Surge combo.
Rapid Strike (LVL 15): Remember how Fighting Spirit is the bread and butter of this build? This ability makes it that much more buttery! Now, once per turn, we can trade one attack with advantage for two regular attacks when we take the attack action. Now our Fighting Spirit / Action Surge combo does seven attacks: 5 with advantage and 2 regular. At our max level, this turns into 9 attacks in our first round. Awesome 😊
Strength Before Death (LVL 18): Dying doesn’t kill us anymore! Instead we get an extra turn and fall unconscious only if we still have 0 HP at the end of it. This doesn’t change too much about our build, but it is a neat survivability ability. Make sure to save Second Wind or some other healing ability to use during this extra turn!
Summary: And that’s it! Let’s take a look at our end of game damage stats for our burst round. We’re doing 9 attacks (7 with advantage and 2 without), each attack does an average of 19.5 damage for a total of 175.5 damage. We can do this twice per day and essentially once per short rest after that due to Tireless Spirit. We also have 9 chances for our opponent to lose their (admittedly low DC) Con save to take poison damage. Should they fail them all (it can happen), that’s 18d4 or 45 more damage on that first round! Side note, for our regular rounds we’re still making between 4 and 5 regular attacks. Per round that’s an average of 78 or 97.5 damage. Sound fun?
